WW2 politics, and leading up to the War and beyond...

[Markk]

The Germans went to war with no plan to feed and house millions of prisoners, that’s true. It was definitely not because they just hadn’t thought of the problem, though. This was not a bunch of amateurs stumbling into a family vacation and forgetting about the pets. This was the goddamned German General Staff.

They didn’t plan to feed millions of prisoners, because they planned for millions of prisoners to die.

Exactly how these people would die could be worked out along the way; it wasn’t a high priority to do it efficiently right from the start. So it wasn’t a detailed plan from the outset. It wasn’t even necessarily an actual goal of the generals themselves, as opposed to the Nazi leaders, to kill so many prisoners and civilians. It was certainly no better than conscious and deliberate negligence, though, on the part of a large team of world-class experts in large-scale logistics. There is no excuse here whatever.

I am not even sure where to start here.

Are you implying here that the German General staff, as opposed to the those Hitler put in charge of the Jewish Solution, were well, directing policy for the Jewish Question?

Himmler who was in 41 charged with dealing with the final solution had no real military training. he was basically in boot camp when ww1 ended. Goring was a ace in ww1, and flew with the Red Barron, but was a morphine attack and no leader. Hess was a mess, and we know his story. Heydrich was sadistic and competent for the task but was assassinated after Himmler put him in charge in 41 or 42.

You link is actually, to be polite, "a link," it has nothing to do with the "Jewish question" and it's evolution. Did you even read it, start with the July plot.

Before and during the early part of the war, some General Staff officers, notably the Chief, Franz Halder, considered a coup d'état to remove Hitler from power, and avoid what they believed would be a disastrous and premature war. They planned a coup as response to Hitler ordering war on Czechoslovakia to seize the Sudetenland, when Britain and France were opposed. But France and Britain capitulated at Munich, which removed the danger of war and justified Hitler's policy; the dissidents let the matter drop.[55] In November 1939, Halder, still fearing the war would end in disaster, discussed a coup with Army C-in-C von Brauchitsch and Carl Goerdeler of the Schwarze Kapelle, but finally decided Hitler was untouchable until Germany met a "setback".[56]

Opposition to Hitler nevertheless continued, including among the General Staff officers of the Ersatzheer ("Replacement Army"), which had charge of all new troops being organized in Germany for the field army. They set up Operation Valkyrie, in which Ersatzheer detachments would take control of Germany. On 20 July 1944, the conspirators tried to kill Hitler, thought they had succeeded, and initiated Valkyrie. But most line officers and the bulk of the General Staff refused to obey the Valkyrie plotters; when Hitler was known to be alive, the coup collapsed entirely.

However, many General Staff officers were clearly implicated in the plot, and the General Staff was revealed as a center of dissent. In the months after 20 July, several dozen General Staff officers were arrested and in most cases executed. Also, Luftwaffe, SS, or "National Socialist Leadership Officers" were appointed to positions normally occupied by General Staff officers in new or rebuilt formations.[57]

Like Stalin's purge, Hitler did also. Many ended up later trying to assassinate him, and he had thousand officers executed, and even a forced suicide of Rommel. The allies, at stopped their assignation plans against Hitler in that they did not want the Generals involved in he planning, in that Hitler was so incompetent.

I am more that willing to go through this with you.

[canpakes]

Can you answer any of my questions, now? I’ve made both even simpler for you to answer, by indicating sources:

1. Markk, can you explain why the Nazis “kept the Jews in ghettos and worked and starved them to death for the most part, when they were not beating and shooting them” (your words from a previous post)… but then felt stressed when they rounded them up and couldn’t starve them fast enough while stuffed into concentration camps? (your anecdote from a previous post)

2. Do you believe Cooper’s claim that the Nazis really didn’t mean to kill the Jews, but ended up doing so for ‘humane’ reasons? (as noted in the transcript and by you in previous posts)

As a way of rephrasing #2, do you believe that the Nazis had any intention of keeping their Jewish prisoners well-fed and healthy, to be released at some future time?

Do you want to dodge again?

This is actually great, and aging how you keep changing questions after I answer them. Question 2 started as " 2. Do you believe Cooper’s claim?" to this version.

Cakes: As a way of rephrasing #2, do you believe that the Nazis had any intention of keeping their Jewish prisoners well-fed and healthy, to be released at some future time?

No, I see no historical evidence for that at all. They put them in the Ghetto as a means of segregation to keep track of them as Huck and I are discussing. And while their they starved them, forced them in slave labor, beat them, shot them etc. This was for lack of a better term the "middle" of the Jewish question, until the problem could be ironed out, as I already explained by the Heydrich at the Wannsee Conference for the final solution of the Jewish Question.

Generally the first stage was was Hitler getting control of the nation. The propaganda machine against the Jews began, then the laws formed against them and the policies to take away their rights and property. The first hope of this was for the Jews to pack up and leave Germany, which many did. Roughly there were just over have half a million Jews in in Germany, by the September Campaign into Poland in 39 there were around 200, 300 thousand had immigrated away from there homes and business's in Germany, may here.

After Fall Weiss, the Germans came into what I referred to as the middle stage of the Jewish Question where, as you learned in an earlier post, that almost over night they had 3 million Jews to deal with. They shot them, beat them, starved them, and isolated them eventually into Ghettos and camps throughout Poland. The Warsaw Ghetto was established about a year after the invasion into Poland.

Keep in mind also that the Germans not only persecuted the Jews, they also persecuted JW's, communists, pollical leaders, and other "undesirables."
They shot and killed thousands of Gypsies in Poland, and more as they went East. They murdered well over 1.5 million non-Jewish Poles during the war.

I can go on and on, but I think even you can see the point here in this answer to you last question.

Since you haven’t directly said so, but seem to be strongly implying it, I’m going with the conclusion that you believe that the Nazis did plan to kill their Jewish prisoners, regardless of what stage along that path they arguably were, or how ready any particular killing apparatus was to handle the task. Or, phrased alternatively, the Nazis had no plans to release them later, unless you consider burying or burning to be forms of ‘release’. Is that a fair conclusion?

If you got some kind of profound other reconstruction and interpretation of History, please do tell me it and how my interpretation is wrong.

I think that you mean to say that Cooper is the one offering a ‘profound other reconstruction’. What I was trying to determine was if you were buying Cooper’s implication.

by the way, in one of your other rephrased question #2, I never heard Copper say that the Germans didn't mean to kill the Jews, II heard him say this,

"when they went into the east in 1941, they launched a war where they were completely unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war, of local political prisoners and so forth, that they were going to have to handle; they went in with no plan for that...and, they just threw these people into camps and millions of people ended up dead there. You have letters, as early as July August 1941 from commandants of these makeshift camps they are setting up for these millions of people who were surrendering, or people they were rounding up, so two months after, or a month or two after operation Barbarossa was launched, and they are writing back to the high command in Berlin saying, "we can't feed these people, we don't have the food to feed these people," one of them actually says..." Rather to wait for them to slowly wait for these people to starve this winter, wouldn't it be more humane for us to finish them off quickly now..."

These are his words....quoting the Actual commandants of the camps.

The bolded part implies a plan to keep them alive.

The excerpt introduces the idea that killing them via (insert method of choice) was more humane (actual word from that passage) than not killing them, or supposedly letting them starve. The excerpt also paints a picture of the eventual Holocaust outcome merely being a result of poor planning on the part of the Nazis, which is fairly ludicrous, given what even you have laid out above about their testing of kill methods, and it flies in that face of what we know about the Nazi war effort in general. It’s also ludicrous given that the Nazi regime went through so much effort to kill their prisoners as to even build ovens and gas chambers disguised as showers. Oops!

There’s also the issue brought forth by Marcus’ reference, regarding the accuracy and intent of what’s referred to in Cooper’s paraphrasing.

[canpakes]

The Germans went to war with no plan to feed and house millions of prisoners, that’s true. It was definitely not because they just hadn’t thought of the problem, though. This was not a bunch of amateurs stumbling into a family vacation and forgetting about the pets. This was the goddamned German General Staff.

They didn’t plan to feed millions of prisoners, because they planned for millions of prisoners to die.

Exactly how these people would die could be worked out along the way; it wasn’t a high priority to do it efficiently right from the start. So it wasn’t a detailed plan from the outset. It wasn’t even necessarily an actual goal of the generals themselves, as opposed to the Nazi leaders, to kill so many prisoners and civilians. It was certainly no better than conscious and deliberate negligence, though, on the part of a large team of world-class experts in large-scale logistics. There is no excuse here whatever.

I am not even sure where to start here.

Then don’t start. You’re doing the same thing again, heading down that weird apologist road with your distraction about what stage of planning was made when and by who, and how everyone was an amateur and just trying to do proper war things as opposed to executing a genocide.

Generally, it’s probably best to not pretend that this was just the Nazi bunch from Hogan’s Heroes.

[Markk]

Since you haven’t directly said so, but seem to be strongly implying it, I’m going with the conclusion that you believe that the Nazis did plan to kill their Jewish prisoners, regardless of what stage along that path they arguably were, or how ready any particular killing apparatus was to handle the task. Or, phrased alternatively, the Nazis had no plans to release them later, unless you consider burying or burning to be forms of ‘release’. Is that a fair conclusion?

No it is not fair, in that you are not reading what I am saying or what the historical account "says."

Now you are trying to through away the fact that the "Jewish Question" evolved, which is critical in understanding the what occurred.

Hitler was a mad man, and he may have envisioned a totally extermination of the Jews early on, and as I wrote he hinted at it. But has History presents, it just was not clear what the intensions were.

Establishment of Ghettos
The Germans began World War II by invading Poland in September 1939. The Nazi leaders then shifted priorities in anti-Jewish policy from expulsion from German-controlled territory to concentration of European Jewish populations in locations suited to future permanent removal. It is not clear that the Nazi leaders were already envisioning mass murder as their "solution" to their so-called Jewish problem.

As a temporary measure, while the top leadership considered long-term options, German authorities established ghettos in the Generalgouvernement (that part of German-occupied Poland not directly annexed to Germany, attached to German East Prussia or incorporated into the German-occupied Soviet Union) and in the District Wartheland, commonly called the Warthegau (an area of western Poland directly annexed to the German Reich). From late 1939, German SS and police authorities deported Polish, German, Austrian, and Czech Jews to these ghettos.

Did the Nazis immediately begin to carry out the mass murder of Jews?
No. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they did not immediately start to carry out the mass murder of Jews. However, antisemitism was a central part of Nazi ideology. Once the Nazis controlled the German government, they used their power to persecute Jews in Germany.

In the 1930s, the Nazis discriminated against Jews. They excluded them from German society. They boycotted and confiscated Jewish-owned businesses. They passed discriminatory laws, such as the Nuremberg Race Laws. They attacked Jews in a nationwide riot called “Kristallnacht,” or the “Night of Broken Glass.” The goal of these policies was to make life in Germany so unbearable that German Jews would choose to emigrate. The Nazis’ ultimate aim was to make Germany “cleansed of Jews” (judenrein).

The Nazis’ efforts to persecute Jews became more radical over time

This is my position, and I have tried to find something that contradicts this in the record, but I can't. It just isn't clear. I totally concede, linked, and discussed, how it evolved ....that is equally history, a very sad and sick one.

I can't make you accept my position or the history behind it, but I can ask you your opinion and your history behind it. Give me a narrative of you opinion on this? Stop asking me modified questions, I answer over and over for a moment, and state your opinion, with cf, and then we can take it from there.

[canpakes]

Since you haven’t directly said so, but seem to be strongly implying it, I’m going with the conclusion that you believe that the Nazis did plan to kill their Jewish prisoners, regardless of what stage along that path they arguably were, or how ready any particular killing apparatus was to handle the task. Or, phrased alternatively, the Nazis had no plans to release them later, unless you consider burying or burning to be forms of ‘release’. Is that a fair conclusion?

No it is not fair, in that you are not reading what I am saying or what the historical account "says."

Now you are trying to through away the fact that the "Jewish Question" evolved, which is critical in understanding the what occurred.

Hitler was a mad man, and he may have envisioned a totally extermination of the Jews early on, and as I wrote he hinted at it. But has History presents, it just was not clear what the intensions were.

Establishment of Ghettos
The Germans began World War II by invading Poland in September 1939. The Nazi leaders then shifted priorities in anti-Jewish policy from expulsion from German-controlled territory to concentration of European Jewish populations in locations suited to future permanent removal. It is not clear that the Nazi leaders were already envisioning mass murder as their "solution" to their so-called Jewish problem.

As a temporary measure, while the top leadership considered long-term options, German authorities established ghettos in the Generalgouvernement (that part of German-occupied Poland not directly annexed to Germany, attached to German East Prussia or incorporated into the German-occupied Soviet Union) and in the District Wartheland, commonly called the Warthegau (an area of western Poland directly annexed to the German Reich). From late 1939, German SS and police authorities deported Polish, German, Austrian, and Czech Jews to these ghettos.

Did the Nazis immediately begin to carry out the mass murder of Jews?
No. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they did not immediately start to carry out the mass murder of Jews. However, antisemitism was a central part of Nazi ideology. Once the Nazis controlled the German government, they used their power to persecute Jews in Germany.

In the 1930s, the Nazis discriminated against Jews. They excluded them from German society. They boycotted and confiscated Jewish-owned businesses. They passed discriminatory laws, such as the Nuremberg Race Laws. They attacked Jews in a nationwide riot called “Kristallnacht,” or the “Night of Broken Glass.” The goal of these policies was to make life in Germany so unbearable that German Jews would choose to emigrate. The Nazis’ ultimate aim was to make Germany “cleansed of Jews” (judenrein).

The Nazis’ efforts to persecute Jews became more radical over time

This is my position, and I have tried to find something that contradicts this in the record, but I can't. It just isn't clear. I totally concede, linked, and discussed, how it evolved ....that is equally history, a very sad and sick one.

I can't make you accept my position or the history behind it, but I can ask you your opinion and your history behind it. Give me a narrative of you opinion on this? Stop asking me modified questions, I answer over and over for a moment, and state your opinion, with cf, and then we can take it from there.

What I see you saying is the following:

1. The Nazis did not want to implement a ‘Final Solution’ (kill the Jews)
.
.
.
.
10. The Nazis did want to implement a ‘Final Solution’ (kill the Jews)

At what point in their history did the Nazis appear to move from 1 to 10? Any ideas? After 1941? Before invading Poland? Last Tuesday?

Again, not a ‘gotcha’ question. I’m trying to understand how you process the evolution of the Holocaust.

[Markk]

Cakes: The bolded part implies a plan to keep them alive.

Keep who alive?

[Markk]

No it is not fair, in that you are not reading what I am saying or what the historical account "says."

Now you are trying to through away the fact that the "Jewish Question" evolved, which is critical in understanding the what occurred.

Hitler was a mad man, and he may have envisioned a totally extermination of the Jews early on, and as I wrote he hinted at it. But has History presents, it just was not clear what the intensions were.







This is my position, and I have tried to find something that contradicts this in the record, but I can't. It just isn't clear. I totally concede, linked, and discussed, how it evolved ....that is equally history, a very sad and sick one.

I can't make you accept my position or the history behind it, but I can ask you your opinion and your history behind it. Give me a narrative of you opinion on this? Stop asking me modified questions, I answer over and over for a moment, and state your opinion, with cf, and then we can take it from there.

What I see you saying is the following:

1. The Nazis did not want to implement a ‘Final Solution’ (kill the Jews)
.
.
.
.
10. The Nazis did want to implement a ‘Final Solution’ (kill the Jews)

At what point in their history did the Nazis appear to move from 1 to 10? Any ideas? After 1941? Before invading Poland? Last Tuesday?

Again, not a ‘gotcha’ question. I’m trying to understand how you process the evolution of the Holocaust.

That just dumb and show you are not reading what I wrote, and certain not answering my questions, which shows you have no opinion, just questions, which is your MO.

What is said over and over is that it is not clear. This all happened in about ten years. I have answered this question with a begging, middle and end up the Himmler given the task for that final solution. in late 41 if I remember correctly.

It's you turn, if you know a history I don't know about, go for it, tell me the history.

[canpakes]

Cakes: The bolded part implies a plan to keep them alive.

Keep who alive?

The Jewish prisoners.

Who else would I or Cooper be referring to?

[canpakes]

What I see you saying is the following:

1. The Nazis did not want to implement a ‘Final Solution’ (kill the Jews)
.
.
.
.
10. The Nazis did want to implement a ‘Final Solution’ (kill the Jews)

At what point in their history did the Nazis appear to move from 1 to 10? Any ideas? After 1941? Before invading Poland? Last Tuesday?

Again, not a ‘gotcha’ question. I’m trying to figure out how you process the evolution of the Holocaust.

That just dumb and show you are not reading what I wrote, and certain not answering my questions, which shows you have no opinion, just questions, which is your MO.

What is said over and over is that it is not clear. This all happened in about ten years. I have answered this question with a begging, middle and end up the Himmler given the task for that final solution. in late 41 if I remember correctly.

It's you turn, if you know a history I don't know about, go for it, tell me the history.

OK, is it fair to conclude that you believe that prior to the end or so of 1941, the Nazis still intended to release those Jewish prisoners they held (In other words, not already killed)?

[huckelberry]

That just dumb and show you are not reading what I wrote, and certain not answering my questions, which shows you have no opinion, just questions, which is your MO.

What is said over and over is that it is not clear. This all happened in about ten years. I have answered this question with a begging, middle and end up the Himmler given the task for that final solution. in late 41 if I remember correctly.

It's you turn, if you know a history I don't know about, go for it, tell me the history.

OK, is it fair to conclude that you believe that prior to the end or so of 1941, the Nazis still intended to release those Jewish prisoners they held (In other words, not already killed)?

My post got lost , I thought the confusion was over what Cooper thought .

It does not seem likely that there was a unity at the beginning of the war, certainly not in the Germsn military. Likely the Nazi leadership saw the final solution but the means were uncertain

I just am puzzled as to how Nazi apologetic fits Coopers other views. He is positive about labor struggles Jim Jones racial program and socialized medicine. Perhaps Carlson influenced the path of the interview.