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EvanSchenck posted:After the Nazis began to draw more and more support, people had to take them seriously and give them a second look. Around this time the conservative German elite (i.e. officer corps, aristocrats, industrialist) began to see them as a group of people with whom they could work. They did not believe that Hitler or the Nazis were sophisticated enough to run the country on their own but rather they could be used as a broad base of support through which congenial policies could be enacted. It's really interesting to work through the literature and find, that the Heeresführung in '41 actually thought that they could "get rid" of the Nazis after winning the war in the east. I fail to see logic in that - Hitler rode on a wave of popularity after France, which made it basically impossible to dispose of him, those guys even lamented that fact while talking about these plan. So how would they want to do that after basically defeating the nazi's archenemy, the SU and legitimizing H. even more? I don't see the argument "we'll be popular too by winning the war" cut it. Such a plan may work someday in a longterm, but it just feels like "well, eventually we'll get there, but for now we're comfortable". Talk about same goals and worldviews of the national-conservative elite. It's really a bloody mess.
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Jun 21, 2013 12:17
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Slark posted:I just checked the book on Wikipedia, it must be a nice one written by Adam Tooze. Thanks for your suggestion. If you're able to read german, there is "Kalkulierte Morde" by Christian Gerlach. It's extremely detailed. If there's something like a worst place to be in 1941, it's probably White Russia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan
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Jul 7, 2013 18:48
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Slark posted:Holy crap engineered famine, this is really scary and I didn't even know before. The failure of this engineered famine is actually one of the main reasons why they widened the target groups of people to shoot, and in the end engineering industrial means of killing people by gas or through work. Turns out that you can't just let people starve on such a scale if you want to supply your troops directly off the land. They tend to get agitated by that and resist. Who would have guessed that? Don't misread what I just said, it's one of the main reasons, but not the only reason. There were many different interests at work in form of the everlasting powerstruggle within the administration and the associated paladins. In the end it mattered what appealed to H., but there was also the consideration of which course the war took. Hitler wasn't dead set on ideological goals, as long as the issue was properly presented within his framing. E.g.: Failing to take Moscow and beating the Sowjets basically meant that they couldn't free up a bunch of divisions (50 if I recall that right) to put the soldiers as workers back into the industry. So by spring '42 you suddenly have Göring and certain parts of the bureaucracy probing to push russian pows into the industry instead of just letting them starve or freeze to death on the open field. (Which was first commented on by Göring something like "Hey, we can always capture more of them if we need to".). The fate of the russian pows is a tragedy of epic proportions, I might add. Anyway, to get back to the famine that was meant to kill around 25mil. russians - killing the jews in the east was a means to an end, something that was to facilitate the plan of colonizing Russia and reducing the population there to a manageable slave caste. In the frame of that world view, the jews were the core of the bolshevik system, if you eliminate them, you take off the head of the snake. The rest of the people were said to be just a bunch of slavs that are incapable of organizing anything. Like Kershaw said, there is a peculiar mingling of long- and shortterm goals that was at play here - the course of the war always was in dialogue with the policies put in motion. That is especially true for Russia, as the whole thing was an insane gamble that went awry. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 17:21
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From my study of the limited number of titles that I had to work with, it seems certainly as complementary measures, as starvation on that scale was unrealistic and infected the troops in the area with a number of diseases. Shootings alone faced several logistical, personal and political (they couldn't hide them from the population) difficulties. It's important to understand that the work of the Einsatzgruppen, the widening of their group of targets are evolutionary processes - with the colonisatory plans of the east as the driving *grand* policy behind the efforts. You could argue, that the way Barbarossa was organized put the train on track. The whole war in the east was conceptualized as Vernichtungskrieg, there is really not much room for "what if's" (that doesn't mean that there weren't enough voices that were in favor of a "more smart" occupational strategy. For example such familiar names as Staufenberg, Moltke and von Wartenburg were advocates for policies that would use the hatred of the population for the soviets in the occupied territories from the start of the campaign). What happened to the russian pows and the civilians was no accident, the Generalquartiermeister planned the logistics for the campaign in such a fashion that millions would starve. The pows were always meant to die. From the start. Again, there were figures and entries found in diaries from high profile guys in the Heer and bureaucracy that showed in a very early stage of the operational planing the ideas later featured in the "Grüne Mappe", which were concepts for economic policy in the east. It all points to a guy called Herbert Backe. There is an entry on Wikipedia that does the importance of this person no justice. At least in the english version. Operational plans for the war in the east differ quite drastically in the early stages by 1940. Then there's the orders, 5 of them of which you probably already read here, that gradually widened the group of targets that were to be annihilated (which involved the Wehrmacht in the whole process, labeled as actions against "partisans" - which is a mockword for just shooting random villages full of people for whatever reason). The guys from T4 made a pretty fast start into Russia, as initial feedback got back from the Einsatzgruppen to the RSHA. The name slipped from my memory, [but I think it was Heydrich who was approached by some guy from the bureaucracy (a man from the Parteisekretariat, or possibly Bormann himself, as T4 was initially connected with this agency) and got them on board and tried to put their experience to use]. e: [The connection of the Parteisekretariat or Sekretariat des Führers with T4 is narrated by Ian Kershaw in "Hitler: a Profile in Power", but seems to be quite earlier than I recalled. As you can read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Stangl , the connection of T4 and RSHA is essentially a basic factor from the start, but of secret nature. I clearly don't know too much about this issue. Maybe somebody else can elaborate of how this connects exactly.] If I recall that right, by end of '41 there were 11 gas waggons in use in Belorussia. The whole process turned out to be quite ineffective, as you could kill a maximum of around 400 people with each waggon per day. Most waggons performed far below that figure. The engines would often break down, they weren't prioritizes with fuel and it took quite some time to build up enough gas. Going around on the countryside was considered dangerous due to expected partisan activitiy. Somebody had to clean them out afterwards, dispose of the bodies, etc. The work of Gerlach that I posted up there quotes a bunch of original reports that go into detail of the problems. That's some disturbing stuff. Like, they had to use axes to get the bodies out. So, anyway, my first language isn't english - what do you mean by AR? I can give some details about the fate of the russian pows and occupational policies in Belorussia. It's not fresh for me, I have some serious gaps and mix up things, but I can give a fairly good overlook of what's going on and why. There is really an excellent corpus of literature in german on these issues. Lots of original documents left. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 16:09
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Sadly, I cannot give a competent account of Aktion Reinhardt and the connection with the Hungerplan ad hoc, I'd have to look up a few things. It's definitely connected in such a way that the Hungerplan was an overlaying strategy that dictated the shape in that the operational planing, occupation-policies and "partisan"-actions were conceptualized. Once the whole thing starts, it gets modified on the run. It's a back and forward of reports and ideas of the concerned agency and the guys in the field. Lots of meetings and paper that gets thrown around. As you've probably read, the Einsatzgruppen were active from the start of the campaign, logistically supplied by the Wehrmacht, but their main target was the male jewish population and kommisaires (Jews = Bolsheviks = Partisans). That would get modified quite fast and the group of people that was to be shot widened. It is arguable, but the work that they did was framed as "combating the partisans" from the start (which were non-existant in that early stage and would really flare up hard as a reaction to the stories about the mass-killings and who's going to be next). Think of it as a measure to facilitate the occupation and stomp out any possible resistance. You get lots field post of the common soldier thanking the guys for "doing something about the partisans". So the info about the whole bunch of problems that you have by shooting literally 100k people within a few days flows back to the RSHA, the guys there have a meeting over a fine bottle of red wine in the evening and discuss possible solutions to these practical problems. So one guy goes: "So, a few years ago we had a project where we'd use the exhaust fumes of diesel engines..." The Hungerplan is basically dead within a few months into Barbarossa, but the consequences of that premise are still left in place and are pretty much insoluble. You made an enemy of the population by killing civilians in droves, indisciminately. You gave the russian soldier a reason to fight unto death or as partisans, as the fate of the pows was known. The actions against the "partisans" and how Himmler was able to present himself and his agency in that light greatly boost his influence with H. and enable him to get the ok for things like Sobibor and Treblinka. More or less, Himmler is off the leash. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 17:06
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:I have a question, I keep seeing the phrase, "they could have done things differently, but if they did well they wouldn't have been the Nazis". Which seems to make sense on the surface. The racist principles of the Nazi movement were a fundamental part of their ideology. However, I wonder about two points. There are several reasons why they would move to exterminate these groups rigth from the start. Ideologically, the Nazis ascribed the defeat in WWI to the crumbling of the homefront - with famine as a major factor. So by 1940, when the guys at the Reichsernährungsministerium go through their numbers and projections for the last years and the coming years, they dramatically fall short of the basics. By that time it was clear that something was coming up against Russia, then there was that idea about the fertility of the Ukraine (which proved quite wrong) and some cooked up numbers of how much that would yield. So Backe in his function gets to meet all the important guys like Generalquartiermeister Wagner, Göring, etc.; If we keep in mind everything else that I already said, the projections at least showed, that it would be impossible to keep the soldiers fed via these distances and circumstances. From the operational perspective it was clear that the war in the east had to be executed with the utmost speed, therefore the troops had to be completely supplied with food directly off the land (and the surplus that fitted into the empty freight rolling back into the Reich was for Germany to support the living standard. What was left after that was the stuff that the local *working* population had to make do with). The logistic reason for that decision was, that the transportational infrasturcture in western Russia was practically non existant, left for some neural centres that were connected by railway (that had to be adjusted for german track width). There were practically no fortified roads, at best, what was labeled as roads were a dirt tracks. Incapable of carrying large numbers of trucks when rain set in. So you see that the lifeline that supplied the troops with ammo, fuel and supplies that couldn't be obtained on the run was very vulnerable and on it's own prone to logistical problems, as everything that ran via rail had to be timed perfectly. You meant other reasons than logistics, but it was certainly meaningful to elaborate this. The other grand reason is of ideological nature, but always connected to the operational planing: What follows next in the planing is at least 2 pronged. First, you have the Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos, that were tasked to kill anyone suspected as partisans, which I already mentioned meant Jews (as the carrier of Bolshevism in the Nazi's worldview.), but also cadres of the communist party. Basically this was sold to the OKH as effort to keep everything running smoothly, but as we read here already, the officer's corp was hardly less antisemitic (and anticommunists) than the Nazis themselves. So no meaningful objections here. It's useful to remind yourself, that each agency connected certain practical tasks with their own intentions, and in case of the SS and Himmler, it's quite obvious what that was. Anyway, for the OKW and OKH you can google the speech that Hitler held for his Generals on the 30.March 1941 The 2nd prong was the decision to basically authorize the common soldier with power over life and death of the civilians with what in the german literature is called "Verbrecherische Befehle" or criminal orders, 5 of them, each more radical than the last. That speech that I mentioned before was described as a framework for these orders. From what I've understood, next to the obvious ideological hogwash it was sold to the common soldier and the troop leaders via the widespread fear of partisans. That was partly ideologically fueled by the formula that I already mentioned, but also by the strategical problems that partisans posed for the logistics and the helplessness of the leadership of how to deal with them (This issue dates back to the 1870s war, but more recently the officer's experience in WWI Belgium). So, anyway, H. manages to get the Wehrmacht involved, you have the Einsatzgruppen and various local Hiwis. So, like you said. These "what if" questions make no sense, since you'd eliminate all the premises that the decisions based on "Weltanschauung" put in motion. The war was planned in terms of ideology. Not in a pragmatic fashion as e.g. the campaign against France. Every rule was swept aside in the stage of planning to assure the chance of victory. This wasn't just a total war, but a war of annihilation, where it was clear and agreed upon from the outset, that millions of civilians and pows would die. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Jul 12, 2013 |
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Jul 12, 2013 16:44
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MothraAttack posted:I would be interesting in learning about the Belarussian occupation, though. What was the general Nazi outlook for the fate of Belarussians? How serious was the attempt to build an extermination camp at Mogilev? In the initial economic planning for the occupied territories, there was a distinction between areas that had an overproduction of foodstuffs and areas that were mostly consumers ("Zuschussgebiete"). Belorussia was considered to be an area of "overconsumption", as the geography is largely swampy and forested. In my last post I have already mentioned the logistical considerations, as what was there to be harvested in foodstuffs was hierachically distributed. First choice goes to the troops, what's left after that goes to Germany according to transport capacity, after subtracting this the local *working* population gets few with what's left, etc. POWs and jews were all the way down the list. The initial planning is more vivid in my memory, there are dairy notes left of the guy that was to govern that occupied part of the soviet union. It showed that they planned to let the big cities starve to leave the countryside only with the task of supplying foodstuffs. Of course that was a pretty stupid and unrealistic idea. E.g. who would organize the population and work once they shot all the intellectuals and the members of the administration (which they did)? What would happen to the local markets? Who would supply tools for the workers? A few weeks into the occupation that policy gets dropped. I recall reading the reports back and forth. It's really astonishingly deluded. What was left in place was that hierarchical order or supplying food, that would stay for a few years, officially at some time by 1943 or end 1942 the rations of the civilians and pow workers were adjusted to the level of german citizens, but in reality stayed far behind that, as the army was sucking up everything. I cannot give a detailed account of such a camp at Mogilev as it slipped from my memory, but Mogilev is a name that will make your blood freeze if you read into what was done there and the area surrounding it. It's basically a ground zero for what was to come in terms of shootings, but also it was the place where the germans kept most gas waggons. Gerlach mentioned several reports and considerations why Mogilev was ruled out as a place for such a camp, but I forgot what that was. The requirements were unpopulated spots along train lines, but not within centers where the main transports ran. Sidings so to speak. I suppose the consideration of the threat that partisans posed in more populated areas were a reason too. An example for such early camps is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maly_Trostenets_extermination_camp , a place where most exclusively Austrian jews were murdered (nearly every jew from Austria that went east at that time, ended up there). Mogilev is actually a very interesting question, I'll look it up when I find time. e: I completely forgot, that Himmler came to Mogilev to witness the shootings there. After that and seeing how it affected the men, he moved to look for other means of murder. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Jul 12, 2013 |
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Jul 12, 2013 17:49
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I just downloaded the pdf. The reason why the idea for a camp at Mogilev was dropped was that the railway network was overstrained, so they planned to ship the jews up the Bug and Dnjepr, but the waterway and the facilities were damaged by fighting (the Soviets blew up a dam at Dniepropetrovsk, which resulted in a drop of the waterline in the canal) and were overburdened with freigth transports. Also they were constant targets of partisan activity. It seems that Mogilev was a place where they intended to bring some big economic plans to bear for the waterways, but that failed as there was a shortage of ships and railway engines. Another factor that made them rule out the ship option was, that the canal froze by late fall and began to thaw only in spring. By Summer 1942 the Dnjepr-Bug canal was completely paralyzed by partisans. In the end, the plans for an extermination camp at Mogilev failed because the deportation plans there failed, and because of the resistance of the Red Army. Apparently the ovens that were ordered were of a capacity of 3000 bodies per day. They were for a rather unknown camp at Mogilev that was under the controll of the HSSPF (under von dem Bach-Zelewski), not Einsatzgruppe B. This camp was initially used to gather up displaced persons or refugees, or vagabonds as it was called, for anti-partisan measures. Himmler's visit from 23. to 25 October seems to have put new plans in motion, but it is not exactly clear to what end, it seems to have been an order to look for new, "more humane" methods of killing. His visit only marks the moment of the decision, but the use of gas was mentioned and tested earlier by August 1941 on jewish women in Latvia. There is also a mention of the experiments with explosives that you refered to. Apparently this was carried out on inmates of a psychiatric asylum from Novinki. Then there's the gassings with exhaust fumes that we already mentioned, and some reference to the "Kanzlei des Führers" that I brought up, who the Kriminaltechnisches Institut that was tasked with that research (as they were with T4) reportet to. Apparently there was a group of bureaucrats there tasked with this specific assignment. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Jul 13, 2013 |
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Jul 13, 2013 10:18
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Konstantin posted:One interesting counterfactual I've wondered about is, what if Röhm won the Nazi Party's internal power struggle in 1934? No Night of the Long Knives, the SA becoming the new Reichswehr, implementing the "second revolution", would it have caused the course of history to be that different? Was it something that "was always going to happen" or was it something that could have been avoided if, say, Röhm wasn't gay? Hitler over time eliminated any threat to his power, which is quite a natural mechanic to any dictator, but at that time he was far from having absolute power (that happened, actually pretty late, at around mid 1943). So as you probably read, the SA was the only thing inside the party that could've posed a threat to H., but that doesn't mean that the SA was something that could've endangered the powerstructure of Germany at that time. It was very clear to see who had the real hard power. The SA becoming the new Reichswehr was never going to happen, the power of the old national-conservative elites was unbroken at that time and H. had to appease the military and broker a deal. The Generalstab basically could've wiped out the movement at whim if they wanted to up to after France (which they almost did, facing H. back and forth when starting the war). The success in the west meant that H. popularity made him untouchable. There was talk that the Generalstab wanted to remove H. after being done with Russia, but I can't follow the reasoning behind that argument. H. was never a friend of the revolutionary wing of his movement, it was a more functional relation that became a burden once he got into office and had to deal with the established powerstructures. The remarkable thing about this man is, that he managed to subvert the system with very great determination and stamina. e: Since you mentioned it: Homosexuality wasn't such a big deal if you didn't practice it too openly. Even in the SS. If you had the wrong enemies on the other hand....Himmler kept files about any bigger rival in his safe. Seemingly looking away was a great way to be able to blackmail the person sooner or later when a favor was needed. With Röhm it was just a pretense and a welcome means to discredit him in public. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Jul 13, 2013 |
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Jul 13, 2013 19:13
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MothraAttack posted:Much thanks, that makes sense. One point I'm confused on are the ovens. Were they for the same camp at Mogilev that Himmler visited, where gas vans were in action? Or, rather, what was the difference between camps controlled by the HSSPF and the Einsatzgruppe B? Anyway, thanks again. Himmler also visited Dulag 185, which was a big pow camp close by. This visit to Mogilev was probably meant to cover several issues. The ovens were meant for the camp that I mentioned, but the use of the camp wasn't rigth away for extermination - it was just a structure that was there already and that could be used (it was also close to a factory complex that was planned to house the gas chambers). Those early camps weren't much more than an open space with barbed wire around and mgs on 4 corners. At first it was meant for the policeforce that the germans brought with them, which was affiliated to the SS. They'd gather up and screen vagabonds and shoot them (or probably hand them over to the SD) if they looked suspicious. I don't know too much about the Einsatzgruppen, but they were a relatively small taskforce that would move in and do the executions after the wehrmacht or SS troops locked down the area and the policeforce screened anyone they found there. It's rather confusing, as the police would also do lots of executions (and the Wehrmacht too sometimes) if men were needed, but any bigger operation (shooting loads of civilians) would generally fall to the Einsatzgruppen. I honestly have no idea about the organisational subdivisions, but those things are certainly on the internet somewhere if you want to look it up. E.g. the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) would screen the pow camps for commisaires and jews and identify hiwis. Then there's the division between Einsatzkommandos and Einsatzgruppen, which had something to do with the proximity to the area of operation of the Heer. The details about Himmler's visit are sparse, but it is known that he watched several executions. I'm not 100% sure about the gas waggons, but I'd suppose so. How was the German intelligence? The guy who was used for the idea with the ships antagonized alot of people (he got thrown out of the SS some time before and he pulled alot of other strings to get the job), so it might have been that they didn't supply him all informations, "Dienst nach Vorschrift" so to speak and let him run aground. He also didn't seem to be overly capable. From what I've read, the intelligence could be pretty good, but it's another story that the right information reaches the rigth people in time, and they'd migth not belive it's validity. By the way, I often came across several estimates by the Gernalstab and various sources that the war in the east would be done in 4 to 10 weeks. There was a wealth of information about a realistical estimate about the strength of the red army, but those in charge didn't take notice of that for ideological reasons. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 11:05 on Jul 14, 2013 |
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Jul 14, 2013 10:52
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NikkolasKing posted:So this is a bit of a bump and I hope that's okay? I've never posted in this section before. I didn't dig too deep into that, but I read a book about the Black Sun a few years ago. Himmler was the one if you're looking for occult stuff or ambitions to create some kind of ressurection of "the old germanic" faith. Hitler didn't put out his colors in that sense - it was his policy to appear not too connected to anything that would be considered odd by a large part of the population in terms of religion. Interestingly it is mentioned in Hitler's Tischgespräche that he held Hörbiger's Welteislehre favourably (pretty crazy stuff). H. had definitely alot of touch with all the crazy occult writing of the time, the magazine "Ostara" and all the likes from these circles when he was a bum in Vienna. There are several witnesses that did account for that independently. weavernaut posted:So why did the camps hold gay men, marked with a pink triangle? Why did the Nazis destroy Institut fuer Sexualwissenschaft's library and close it down? I'm not trying to start fights, I'm merely questioning your insistence that homosexuality wasn't a "big deal" to the Nazis, when they actively persecuted queer people. I don't doubt they turned a blind eye to high-ranking gay Nazis, just like they ignored Goebbles's club foot while persecuting the disabled, but I don't think that translates to homosexuality, previously illegal in the Weimar Republic, illegal under the Nazis and liable to get you into a lot of trouble anyway, being "[not] such a big deal". I don't know the story behind the closing of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, but I assume that the Institute itself wasn't favourably towards homoseuality to begin with, much like any official agency back then. You're probably looking at claims of "Verjudung" of such an Institute, which could mean about anything, ranging from too modern, to too much science to just another intrigue to start up the same Institute under another name, run by opportunists close to (or in) the party. You mistake the stuff that a common person would not get away with that what a member of the party could allow himself. People who grew up in western democracies often forget that party membership does make a huge difference - you're not dealing with an egalitarian society where everybody is the same in face of the law. Highly stratified. If you imagine the Third Reich as a place where laws were strict, but applied to everybody, you're wrong. The higher up you get in the hierarchy, the more untouchable you get, and you start to get the effects of "being someone better" and becoming gradually invulnerable for the common part of the not party-state sphere pretty much by entering the party. That's not to say that it was possible to display your gayness openly - that would be suicidal, but if you kept everything discreete, it was overlooked. Somewhat like victorian England. Or like I said, somebody kept notes on your in case that he needed a favor from you (Himmler's speciality). It is documented that Hitler lamented the gayness of certain circles in the SS (accidentally it was the clique around somebody influential of the Thule society, the name escaped me. That guy poisoned himself later on for other reasons). For the common person: As long as you didn't get denunciated too often and by several sources, or not caught red handed you're ok. Denunciation was ominpresent, not only in this aspect, but day to day life. You don't eat your green potatos? -> possibly Wehrkraftzersetzung (happened to my grandma). It's interesting to read how agencies would handle you showing up on the radar. You don't get sacked usually for the first time (unless you did something stupid in public) - since there was so much denunciation, that they'd know that 90% is just bullshit. Get reported more often and by different sources and you're in trouble.
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Sep 7, 2013 22:01
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I understand your commitment and agree that the LGBT perspective of this part of history is useful and neccessary - it's just not a perspective that I concentrated on yet. That doesn't mean that it just slips my attention whenever I read or that I dismiss it as not relevant - I told you what I came across about this theme in my studies. That being said, it's also useful to realize that while the NS system liked to paint itself as following law to the letter, it didn't. Arbitrariness is the right word, at least whenever it comes to some kind of political resistance. I think we touched it earlier and other posters mentioned it, that a certain wing of the party was marxist inspired and rather egalitarian, but the powerstructure within the party was reorganized as soon as the party came into a position of power within the state. It had to strike a deal with the old elites and put an end to anything within the national socialists that had any revolutionary aspiration. Whenever you approach your material in your studies, it is useful not to think of the state populated by zealots, where every misstep automatically meant doom. Reality is potentially even more cruel and disgusting, as the people would go with the wind and try to rig the current ideology of the system in their favor for this or that gain. While reading short biographies may give you the impression of "first strike and out", I found that the individual stories of political resistance sometimes drag on over years until some agency connects information, and then you're hosed. Since you asked for it, I tried to find some referential cases here (which is an excellent source to start off for Austria): http://www.doew.at/erforschen/recherche/archiv If you look into the categories of victims, you will find surprisingly that there is no category for homosexuals. Which is very odd, but probably a matter of lacking finances. I'm sure there are several dissertations on this in the database of my university, but that won't do you any good unless you're fluent in german. By the way: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/w...e%2Findex.jsonp Power Khan fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Sep 9, 2013 |
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Sep 8, 2013 10:10
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Mycroft Holmes posted:None, as the Nazis rearmament program was destroying their economy. They were only kept afloat by seizing other countries currency reserves. This. Austria's surprisingly large gold reserves took it a long way, but only so far. The next moves cover a weird mix of very longterm and shortterm (economic) goals, up to what has already been said about Russia. I'm still surprised what terrible rational argumentative power lies behind issues cloaked in seemingly objective numbers, and the way things were justified as "economic" neccessities. That somehow does sound familiar, doesn't it?. What the nazis did was called a giant raid by various authors, but this is just one dimension. Whenever I read about this, it seems to me that there is a pool of arguments that were meant to hold something for everyone who was in a position to decide something substantial. Beside blindly following orders, or at least make it sweeter.
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Sep 21, 2013 13:56
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CreepyGuy9000 posted:I was surprised by this I always had the impression the German economy was quite strong under the Third Reich. Qualitiy of lifing improved over the 30s, but stagnated on the outset of the war for the reason Ferrosol gave. We've touched the situation of foodstuffs already with the hungerplan - there wasn't really much opportunity to improve the agricultural sector as almost any nitrogen formerly used to make fertilizers went to the arms sector. The same is true for the production of tractors. Hitler didn't really think that the allies would declare war so early on - the date for the war that he planned was around 1943. As I recall, that was the year that Stalin too was aiming for with the reorganisation of the red army. Germany would skim the occupied countries for consumer goods and foodstuffs, but as we've mentioned, they couldn't make ends meet to keep the standard of living while the arms production was soaring. Anyway, the german economy of 1939 up to 1941 wasn't ready for war on that scale in terms of structure and organization (still producing consumer goods, and being decentralized), but the reorganization shows in 1942 and especially in the dramatical increase in armaments production through '43 to '44. With the war in the east, the economy would be run alot more centralized. That statement about assembly lines is untrue by the way. From the perspective of planing: Industrial capacities that need to be developed and adapted over a few years don't matter if the germans overrun your country within a few weeks thanks to their new tactics. Once that's impossible, it's logical what follows. It's interesting to read or hear what life was like in Germany and Austria from 1945-50. The war completely destroyed the capital stock and industrial base, people in the cities would turn simple barter for the next years to avoid starvation. The black market was a big thing. They would hike to the farmers in the surrounding area and swap their last belongings for a sack of potatoes or meat. The running joke of that time was "People are desperate what to barter with the farmers. They already have everything. Even their cows now wear diamond earrings." The radio that you meant is the Volksempfänger. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Sep 23, 2013 |
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Sep 23, 2013 09:06
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Peruser posted:I remember reading at one point or another some account that towards the end of Hitler's life he came to regard the Russians as the master race and that he cursed the German race for being weak and blamed them for losing the war. Is this just an apocryphal story or did this actually happen? This is more or less consistent with the worldview that H. held. No idea if there are multiple sources that back this story up, but then, there is also this decree, which was to make sure that Germany was leveled for good. If you look at the wikipedia entry of Speer, it is also mentioned.
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Sep 24, 2013 11:59
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Slip Slap posted:I suppose I'm looking at this from the perspective of someone living in the year 2013, but I just do not understand why the undesirable groups allowed themselves to be treated in this way. Again, easy for me to say in this day and age but I do not get it. Surely, there had to be an inkling of what was in store for them during the later round ups. At the very least, upon entering the camps and smelling that unmistakable smell and realizing what was coming, wouldn't you fight? If someone tried to take my son away from me, I would fight to the death. The prisoners outnumbered the guards by a decent amount, why not just riot? If I realized I was about to die anyway and my family was being threatened, there is just no way I would silently be led to my death. When the germans disolved the ghettos in Belorussia (read: shoot everyone) in late '41, the elders of other ghettos would argue, that they don't belive the news, and that they germans would keep them as workers, because they were already being put to work. Mind you at that time, these people had shitloads of infos on what the germans did. What you need to realize is, that jews weren't bound to these ghettos hermetically, they would travel from one to the other looking for food or evading the shootings, and so the news spread. I think there's a scene of that in "Defiance" that illustrates that well. When it comes to the transports from the western territories, the level of deception that the nazis used is remarkable. Personal belongings would be taken note of, people were told that it would be transported seperately and they'd get a receipt. People would be animated to send back greeting cards how awesome it's back there, and that the ohters should come too. Nobody could imagine (or wanted to) what was going on there. For the most people that was just unthinkable. You can read about how the early extermination camps were organized, Sobibor for example and it's road to heaven. You surely read about the camoflage of the gas chambers as showers and the whole procedure. That's all part of the masquerade. Later camps would have the areas for the killing more seperate, but also there was an economic aspect connected, where people would have a reason to think that they could possibly stay alive a little longer if they just worked and did as ordered. But yea, you can google for the uprisings. If somebody asks you if you know any people that deserve to be called heroes, it's them. Incredible stories.
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Sep 27, 2013 20:38
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WrathofKhan posted:What is Wehrkraftzersetzung? And what is the deal with green potatoes? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanine Not the first choice if this will be the only meal for you and your kids. Kemper Boyd posted:Since there's a bunch of records we don't have, it's possible that a whole lot of people just got transferred out of the camps after not being able to cope. It was mentioned earlier on in either this thread or the military history thread that the Nazis were concerned with the ability of the soldiers to keep functioning while carrying out mass killings. I think it's useful to clear up a few things. The SS guarding the camps has nothing to do with figthing forces whatsoever. They were dedicated for this job, and weren't forced to do this. "We got a nice job for you in the east, you might make a career - but we need tough men for the job. Are you a tough man?". If you look at the personel it's mostly people of questionable character and skill that used this as a way to at last make some halfway decent career in the system. For the really dirty work, they were also using Hiwis (= Hilfswillige), who were often formerly Red Army soldiers of different nationality, like Ukrainians, Belorussian or Lithunians. They looked for these guys in the "pow camps" that we mentioned earlier, and gave them a choice instead of starving. If we digress a bit and look at the mechanisms to cope with shooting truck/trainload after truckload of women and children, it's amazingly horrible that the men used for this would find ways to rationalize it and the large majority kept on going. There *never* was any backlash that personally put you in danger if you couldn't keep on doing it (my Professor did look into that for some time). Peer pressure - yes, or you'd get transfered to some other lovely job and could kiss your career as a gasman or shooter goodbye. The man that run Sobibor or Treblinka "sucessfully", I forgot his name, found the job horrible, but still did it and took pride in running everything perfectly. He was planting flowers all over the camp to give it all a nice touch. I read other stuff of a guy in one of the Einsatzgruppen that meant that at his first truckload of women and children, his hands shook and he cried and vomited, but after a few loads he didn't give and second thought and his hands and aim were sure. Another guy would just shoot children, and his friend just their mothers. So he rationalized that he'd redeemed them from not being able to live with their mothers, and the other guy would do the same just the other way around. I think I need a drink now. If we now switch to the Wehrmacht, people in the Truppenführung and OKH were concerned that the unlawful and arbitrary killings of pows and civilians would erode discipline and brutalize the men, so that the officers would lose the grip on them. Remember, that this arbitraryness was exactly what H. called for, what was known to every soldier in the east, but it wasn't covered legally or in any other sense, other than what H. proclaimed about what the war is going to be and that there won't be prosecution for anything that went that way. Mind you that then still enough officers would be filled with classical prussian ideas about knightly honour and would forbid such actions, but they were being overridden by H. vague orders - so short or long undermining their authority and making every single soldier master about life and death. The OKH and higher leadership let these officers out in the rain. No support whatsoever. You can look at the orders and see that they were still within a traditional frame (Partisans will be shot), in the sense that they didn't just openly state "well, just shoot everyone you like", but they were enabling a simple soldier to use the term "Partisan" or "resisting" on just about anyone they came across and shoot them without any retribution. Wrong haircut, bad luck - swing on the piano string. We already said enough about the role that the Wehrmacht played in the extermination politics and planned events like "Partisanenaktionen". Alcohol was never far away from such actions. The men were often issued double rations for that task, or more precicely, the drinking started afterwards. It's hard to make a general statement about the common soldier. The degree that these men were brutalized was enormous. Some would still feel being sullied by such actions, others would join in for shooting, like tourists, some would feel forced and used, but still do it, because they didn't want to appear like wimps or fear for their career, others will supress their memories so profoundly that they'll claim to have never heard of anything and even belive that. Others will point to their honour and claim that it was just the SS and curse their names. Think of other possibilities. If you understand german, there is a cheaply made documentation about the Wehrmachtsausstellung on youtube, where these memories and the men clash and try to speak about it. Look for "Jenseits des Krieges" A cherry on top of that - they recruited many many police officers for "security services" in the east. Lots would serve in either the Einsatzgruppen or the SD, so you know what that means. After the war, these people would just go back to their jobs. No questions asked. Daddy is home. e: To add something to the psychological aspect: My Professor was one of the organisators/advisors of the Wehrmachtsausstellung. I'm a bit too young to have noticed what was going on at the first exhibitions, but others have been put to the task of looking into that. One word: supression. About the documentation that I mentioned, there's more. Angry demonstrations, bombthreats, wild attacks in the press, families quarreling. You can get a taste of that if you look for Wehrmachtsausstellung on youtube. It's hard to understand for somebody who is not part of this society and grew up with silence or this place in memory, where we don't look. This was one of the more massive erruptions of different narratives, and for the most part supressed memory - on a collective scale. It's like sticky tar that gets passed from father to child. "Where were you, what did you do?" Suddenly, large numbers of people who were there in Russia would errupt with stories, after they were dead silent for decades. Others would deny everything with a vehemence that was telling and desperate. It's really incredible how a person is able to supress memory. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 19:10
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I've read that it's most likely that H. had Parkinson's disease. Dr. Morell was treating him with a huge cocktail of substances, among them something called Pervitin - which reminds me to watch the last episode of breaking bad. I'm not exactly sure, but I think around mid 1942 H. starts to take over more and more competences in warfare, putting enormous workload on him. He wanted to micromanage alot of things at the front, so it's likely that the stress and the pressure of the failures that started then excacerbated his symptoms. I don't know if you've seen it yet, but there are is also film material from the olympic games of '36 that was censored, that shows H. displaying some weird tics, but then that's not so unlikely for somebody who was in WWI. At a certain point H. stops to appear in public, people that meet him then find the man changed. Aged rapidly.
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Sep 30, 2013 17:27
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I saw it once in a german documentary, but then never again. He was sitting in his seat at the games and had the upper body tilted slightly forward, circling around with his torso back and forward, left and right. Reminded me of the tics that people with shell shock displayed. Hats off to you if you manage to find it. I didn't.
Power Khan fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Sep 30, 2013 |
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Sep 30, 2013 18:34
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Business Gorillas posted:I'm not trying to offend you or anything, but what's up with calling him "H"? Is it a German thing to not even recite his name out of disgust or something? Ah no, although I just could ctrl&v the Führer. It's tiring to write and read Hitler over and over, and everybody knows what is meant anyway (hopefully). I picked it up from Ian Kershaw I think. There are laws in Germany and Austria that prohibit the use of nazi symbols like the swastika or Hitlergruß. Wearing a swastika will get you arrested, or depending on the policeman, you're told to remove it or you'll get arrested. I have the impression that the nazi salute isn't prosecuted so strictly, but maybe that's just my impression. http://derstandard.at/1379291805845/Graz-Hitlergruss-bei-FPOe-Wahlkampftour Politicians of right parties sometimes substitute them with other gestures or symbols that resonate with the recipients. I can't tell you about how Germans deal with it today, because I'm not a German and never lived there. Here in Austria you will have contact with the thematics in school, but it's by no means omnipresent in history classes. I can't exactly recall the curriculum, but I think we've been to a concentration camp at 12 or 13 or so, and then had some more in history class at 16 or 17. It's nothing that is too present in everyday life. I think I mentioned it in connection with the dying out of the last people that were grown ups at that time, but it feels very much like it's gone most of the way, to transcending to history. Regarding the latest elections here, the FPÖ is certainly a radical right party, but the hard core of radical nationalists is a comparatively small number of voters. That doesn't mean that the messages don't resonate with a potentially substantive part of our society, looking at the fact that the political discourse drifted so far to the right in the last 30 years or so. It's almost impossible to talk about something natural like immigration without suddenly having the conversation revolving around asylum/social security abuse. that's certainly not a local phenomenon, but it carries more weight with our history. e: I managed to forget about holocaust denial. There's certain parlamentarians of said party that sport comments like that every now and then or have known neonazis in their staff. While they're protected by their immunity as delegates, this immunity will get revoked for stuff like denying the holocaust. By the way, what is it like to go to a jewish school? For obvious reasons it's hard to have many jewish friends here without trying hard. How present is the holocaust in your life? NihilCredo posted:A quick googling says it appears in an episode from the NatGeo documentary "Nazi Underworld", called Patient Hitler. It should be somewhere in these 45 minutes: I can't watch it atm, too much work at work. The sequence that is mentioned here will most likely refer to the last appearance of H. on film, he awards a bunch of medals to kids that shot up tanks. There is also another one where he is shown visiting his injured staff after the bomb of the 20th july. The documenation that I mean was produced by the ARD or ZDF, but maybe my memory fails me. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Oct 1, 2013 |
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Oct 1, 2013 08:06
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Thank you for sharing. Did your father join the partisans or was he in the regular troops of the Red Army? I'm currently reading Hannah Arendt "The Origins of Totalitarism" on the side, but I'm not much further than her take on how jews were closely associated with the state in the 18th century - but she gives a short introduction of a later chapter where she does look into the jewish discourse on why jews were often targeted. So I'm naturally curious when you said you learned why jews were targeted.
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Oct 1, 2013 12:40
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I think we're leaving the boundaries of this thread, but there is surprising depth to the history of european jews and the genesis of the modern nation state. Which is interesting, because the roots of modern antisemitism take a new twist with these developments. As you might have read, Germany was a patchwork of lots of different principalities ruled by dukes and princes. So shortly after the French Revolution we have alot of German philosophers that are favourable towards the ideal of it. That changes with the Napoleonic Wars and the occupation of large parts of Germany, yet the napoleonic code of laws will leave a large footprint. What changes is, that because of the occupation and what they experienced as foreign tyranny, those german philosphers will abandon the ideals of the revolution and put the ideas about nationhood and what makes a nation on a different base. So instead of the voluntarism of the french, the german philosophers turn to the idea of blood. That means, you can only be a member of the german nation if you have german heritage. So it's a good question what makes a german? That's where the jews come into play. The jews were the only notable group that were noticably different in terms of their religion and the way they were segregated. It was also noticed that since the 1500s certain jews that lent large sums of money to the emperor gained substantial wealth and influence (although at the cost of denying the rest of the jews access to both). By the time of Napoleon the exemplaric name Rothschild was practically known everywhere all over Europe. These influential families of bankers played a large part in financing wars and simple state projects in absence of a modern code of taxation, yet they seldom got engaged with manufacture, as their proximity to the state guaranteed them security that they would not have gotten in absence of a modern code of laws. To make it short, the jews were a convenient target, because one could ascribe alot of traits to their otherness and the unknown and thereby also build up a counter-image of yourself. You understand it when I give examples like "Jews don't farm, but most of the germans are farmers". If you look at influential thinkers like Fichte, that's what he's going on all about - and it's also the part from where german concepts of nationhood take off. So instead of the idea that you can be a member of this nation if you adhere to certain principles and feel attached to them, you can only be a true member of this nation if you have it's blood. Whatever that might mean. It's also a point where you suddenly have mentions of jews here, jews there, everywhere all over the arts. Everyone starts being obsessed with what the jews are supposed to be, but it's mostly for the reason to tell yourself what you think you want to be. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Oct 1, 2013 |
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Oct 1, 2013 13:45
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Still, the rescue of the danish jews is something worth remembering that we need to hear more about.
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Oct 1, 2013 15:34
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Huttan posted:As for "why Jews", I think the book and TV series Heritage: Civilization and the Jews covers a lot of the discrimination, marginalization and abuse throughout European history. Series on YouTube. Amazon link for book. I agree with Ebba Abban's remark that the history of Western civilization is also the history of the Jews. In the book, the first documented case of "kill all the jews" in Europe happened in 1084. The hatred isn't new, I think it is baked into the DNA of European culture. By dialing that hatred up to 11 and institutionalizing it, the Nazis made it unacceptable to continue. I thought that the laws against Holocaust denial would do a good job of stamping it out, but the spasms of the collapse of Yugoslavia show that sort of institutionalized murder won't die out. Good to see somebody studying Inclusion/Exclusion. I'd be wary though to see antisemitism as something inevitable to our culture that rules out everything else or likewise concentrate overly on the role of jews as victims or scapegoats, when western culture is inseparable from jewish culture. Think of intellectual life - it's just impossible to think of. There's just more depth than this. About birthers and the teaparty, let me just tell you that only the fringe of the fringe right comes close to this here in Europe. It's just inconceivable that people like that wield any political power. I think I understand what you mean with Yugoslavia. It's important to remember that eastern countries might have had laws that made holocaust denial punishable, but by and large, there was no broad examination of the own role in making the holocaust possible. Maybe that's going to happen some time in the future, but looking to Hungary (wtf?) doesn't exactly make you optimistic for the moment. I don't know if it already came up in this thread, but going to countries of the former eastern block, you will encounter pretty mindboggling casual antisemitism that is unthinkable in Austria or Germany. Even more Germany. That's not on the main part because of laws, but because of a public discourse that modified the image. I know it's a bit more complicated. Antisemitism is definitely "in the DNA" of the right, and since the 70s also of the left, but for other reasons. It's a topos - whenever you are commenting on this, you are refering to said image in memory and the discourses around it. Whenever you have unfavorable event X featuring jews, it might come up from under the carpet. See Waldheim So, to wrap it up and join what you posted, the right picked new groups of people as their main enemies and scapegoats here, but in the eastern countries the old images remain largely untouched. Whatever the mechanic or psychology behind this is, it's similar. What Haidt states seems valid. And I tend to see "rightness" as a psychological rather than a political flaw. e: I think we're touching alot of very interesting things here. I have a really hard time staying cohesive and deleted the parts about the thoughts of unfinished and inhibited nationalism in eastern countries that kind of seems to pick up where it stopped 1945. Or at least it's not something that these countries were able to "exorcize". And then we're at the point where economic difficulties contribute to the spread of old ideas in new and old clothes, etc. etc. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Oct 2, 2013 |
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Oct 2, 2013 09:17
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It's definitely a revolt against modernity, though I doubt that one could explain it sufficiently with it being a revolt against capital or the consequences of industrialization. The sources from where H. drew his worldview, which he just took over for the most part from Deutsch-Nationale fringe movements of the fin de siècle in Vienna, follow the red line of being a revolt against the ideals of the french revolution and the ideas of enlightenment. They instead posit something that sounds like bad fiction to the modern reader (and for the most part to the people back then). We touched that with the talk about occultism. All that talk about germanic tribes and a white superrace in the north that was supposed to be the *real* craddle of civilization, a huge pool of made up poo poo about germanic religion and meaning of runes and sites. It's really a panopticum that makes the tea party look like a science congress. What made these parties especially virulent and radical was the fact that the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was a multienthnic state that barred these german nationals from joining up with the German Reich. It was also a state with serious political problems, where the parliament was visited by citizens to have a laugh, because the delegates of all the different nations would hold speeches in their mother tongue, obstruct each other, filibuster, brawl or make so much noise as to make normal operation impossible. These parties drew their lessons from this, they were strictly antidemocratic and led by more or less charismatic men. They also had a tendency to split up and evaporate once these charismatic leaders were gone. The consequences of rejecting enlightenment are obvious, you will also reject rationality and collective decision making, but that leaves you with the problem of legitimacy. From where would you draw that if you also reject the dynastic principle or the clerus? A logical step that most other national ideologists used was to refer to a distant and therefore vague past, but the problem that these german nationalists had, was that there was no substantive history known about the people that formerly inhabited this part of the world. Roman sources that paint a too positive or negative picture, a few excavations, but no written primary sources that could be used to construct anything useful politically. I can't think of anything that H. personally added, aside from just concentrating on the jews as a singular enemy, but that was mostly for political raison. He literally concentrated all the other points into "the jews". Power Khan fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Oct 2, 2013 |
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Oct 2, 2013 16:49
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I will look in the database of my uni. There is surely something. I recall reading about something similar in a magazine a few years ago. Something about black jazz musicians. e: I found these ad hoc in my uni's library, but it's more general literature: Bilé, Serge (2006): Das schwarze Blut meiner Brüder [Original title.: Noirs dans les camps nazis] Campt, Tina (1990): Other Germans This looks better: Czinki, Gertrud (2004): Repräsentation der Schwarzen im NS-Spielfilm 1934-1944 im Kontext der Geschichte Google did a better job, each of these links also offers sources on blacks in nazi germany: http://www.bpb.de/gesellschaft/migration/afrikanische-diaspora/59423/nationalsozialismus?p=all http://www.museenkoeln.de/ausstellungen/nsd_0211_schwarze/aus_10.asp http://media.de.indymedia.org/media/2007/11//199954.pdf http://www.exil-club.de/dyn/9.asp?Aid=98&Avalidate=390789210&cache=39081&url=56369.asp I don't know. The whole thing seems to be difficult regarding access to the sources (if you want to do a really solid job) - if you're not in Germany for recherche. It looks like a task where you need money to succeed. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Oct 7, 2013 |
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Oct 7, 2013 07:27
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I'd take the stuff that I said about central european jews and their relation to the state with a grain of salt. It seems to be very complex. Again, the political and social environment of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy seems to the be key to understand many many things about national socialism. I'm curious if there's any recent backing to Arendt's thesis that groups who were opposed to the state, were as a consequence, automatically opposed to the jews. Don't get me wrong, she makes a very good case, but it isn't treated with satisfying much depth, as this isn't the subject of the book. Anyway, "The Origins of Totalitarism" is brilliant. It kind of puzzles me as to how radical right movements want to utilize the state. It seems to be a very difficult question to answer. Whenever we pose this question now, at least for you Americans, the answer seems to be very obvious - but that's not the case, as we saw with any fascist movement in the past.
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Oct 8, 2013 15:10
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I can hardly think of anything in social science that is so well documented and researched as what the 3rd reich did. I think you'd need to invent a new level of being full of poo poo to come up with ideas like these revisionists.
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Oct 12, 2013 22:23
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The Monkey Man posted:Is there any merit to the argument that the Allies would've beaten the Nazis easily if they'd made a preemptive strike in 1936 or '37? Those "what if" scenarios don't make any sense, even more if you remove any political context from them. It's easy now to look back at something with information that the actors back then didn't possess or didn't deem valid. At that time none of the big players in Europe was eager/ready for another war. H. real political goals remained unknown. I often hear "But everything is he planned to do is in Mein Kampf". Yes, it is. That book is so full of poo poo that nobody would seriously assume that somebody in central Europe would get such complete controll of a modern state's apparatus to be able to pull this off. There were few people who read it as a whole, and even fewer who took that stuff serious who were in a position of power. It was just unthinkable that H. would be able take things so far before getting into conflict with the old elites. At that time the power of the german military was still a serious threat to H. himself and the party, so he was by no means completely free to decide without considering the goals of the military complex. Whatever you might think of H., he was a master of political maneuver and managed to outplay just about everybody in Germany. Maybe most importantly, there was no way to sell a preemtive war against Germany to the public of France or Britain at 36 or 37, with the memory of the bloody grind of WWI still fresh. That was what everybody was expecting from the next war.
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Oct 15, 2013 09:34
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A month ago, I read about this movie. Might be interesting for you guys. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_radikal_B%C3%B6se_(Film)
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Jan 30, 2014 20:53
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We treated the topic as to why the war in the east was inseparable from the holocaust extensively. Just look back a few pages. The war had to be won in 8-10 weeks or else.
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Feb 9, 2014 10:16
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Comrade Koba posted:You're assuming the everyday Soviet citizen hated Stalin and Soviet Communism with a passion and would gladly take up arms against their own people to fight it. What do you base this assumption on? He probably mistakes Belorussians and Ukrainians for Russians. The example that the Wehrmacht gave to the soviet soldier and the civillians what they're in for made anything else but resistance to the death a non existing option. But yes, the Germans were often welcomed with open arms in the Ukraine, but they lost their support relatively fast by killing surrendering soldiers, pows and civilians in large numbers. Word travels fast. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 13:40 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 13:21
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Ensign Expendable posted:But seriously, keep in mind that the Germans considered Slavs just a little above on the racial totem pole than Jews and Gypsies. Why would you ever recruit people that you consider inferior to fight with you? This isn't the middle ages (or early modern, whatever) where you can pay off the enemy mercenary company to fight for you instead. Don't think of the apparatus as a monolithic block as in "the Nazis". The Abwehr might have lost the political fight about the treatment of pows and general occupation politics in the planning, but their voices were still being heard. By July 1941 the SD was combing pow "camps" not only for jews and commissars, but also for ukrainian and belorussian nationals. The motivation for joining isn't so hard to make out if you heard what happened there. Anyway, these new recruits were used for "special duty", not taking a notable role in combat, but by killing civilians and later helping to keep the deathcamps running. As the war progressed and more manpower was needed, the excluding rules fell one by one. Contrary to urban legend, the leadership acted quite rational when it came to keeping the war running and ignored ideology when it had to. By 1943 they'd just take anyone willing to join the legions and declare them to be honorary aryans or being of a brother race. Look at how the people in the Ostlegionen looked like. I'm sure some people in the party shat their pants when they saw them.  Cossacks too. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 21:35
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Just as Raskolnikov38 said, and I'm sure Himmler's guys would have constructed a nice PR story why you're a brother's people of the masterrace. Celtic people of the north, welcome on board. Too bad for you if you other heritage containes Poles, Russians, any Asians or Jews. Also, malus points for having a long crooked nose, thick lips, etc.
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Apr 18, 2014 07:32
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Noctis Horrendae posted:I would like to think that they were marginally more civilized, but oh so marginally. Also, that point goes for every war and country ever, not just Germany in World War II. Don't say such things. It's actually pretty clueless to do so. The war in the east wasn't a "normal" war. Look to the numbers of POWs that died in the Westfeldzüge compared to that.
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May 5, 2014 09:03
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:What's your take on Austrian draftees? I heard they were mostly sent to the Eastern front as regulars. When I studied in Austria 3 years ago, one of my friends told me how he never met his grandpa because he died in Russia during the war. Up until that point I hadn't really agreed with the "first victim>first collaborator" notion. But then this story followed by other experiences including that hour-long monologue "Der Herr Karl" ("Naja, Österreich war immer unpolitisch. Aber a bissel a Geld is z'sammkummen, net?") led me to believe they were indeed just finding a way to tread water after Versailles and the Depression. I posted on this in the german thread about a year ago or so. A large part of the Austrians that were drafted went to the Balkans (e.g. Infanteriedivision 717), especially Serbia (Greece too, google Waldheim), where regular Wehrmacht units killed a shitload of civilians, labeled as "Partisanenbekämpfung". My Professor did some mayor research on that. Eastern front too obviously. I had/have family members that were in Stalingrad and France. German Austria wanted to join Germany after WW1, but was barred from that. So people were stuck in a state that nobody wanted, where everything was conceptualized as the nerve centre for Austro-Hungaria, too big for such a small country. Everybody was expecting economic disaster, but things turned out ok, until the great depression. Add in political chaos between red and black with the nazis as the wildcard. I kind of struggle what to make of it. First victim is obviously bullshit, but that clause in the Moscow declaration offered an easy way out after the war, when again, they had to make a state that nobody wanted. We had the highest (? or at least very, very high) per capita NSDAP membership in the whole Reich, with around 587k members if I recall that right. Resistance movements? Hardly anything more than grafiti and papers. There's really no way that you can dodge the draft with the Nazis. That war was like a force of nature, that swallowed everyone in it's path. For a normal person, there was hardly a way out of the country, even before the war. You get drafted, end up somewhere. Maybe you'll start to like it, maybe not. Either way, you go to war. People accomodated to the new situation. New opportunities, you see. I want to emphasise what Meat Sweats said...the whole apparatus worked towards the Nazi's goals, and willingly too. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 19:46 on May 5, 2014 |
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May 5, 2014 19:33
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Raskolnikov38 posted:I seem to recall from Bullock that before WW1 that he mostly lived off his father's pension and sold postcards to tourists. Additionally he would board in homeless shelters from time to time. He received a partial pension from his father's death, which he used to pay living in a small appartment with a friend in Vienna. I can't recall the details, but he had to ask his mom and his mentally handicapped aunt for money, since the pension only covered parts of his costs. When he turned 21, he was asked to give up his part of the pension in favour of his mentally handicapped (half?)sister, since he was now old enough to start working. He refused. I'm not sure if they sued him or something, but he cut contact with his relatives. The only person that he really cared for was his mom, she died in 1907. He was a bum in the street for a few months in 1909 and later lived in the homeless shelter in the Meldemannstrasse for 3 years. Some guy there noticed that Hitler was good at painting and the two teamed up. He painted postcards and then later bigger pictures of famous buildings that the other guy would sell to a jewish framemaker who needed them for his showcase. Apparently it wasn't bad money, but Hitler only painted when he felt like it. Drama because of money, etc., etc. I don't exactly recall why Hitler goes to Munich in 1913 (apart from finally receiving money from his father's inheritance), but I think he wanted to avoid to get drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army. As far as verifiable, Hitler never worked a regular job, or really any manual labor. Bum life.
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May 9, 2014 07:56
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ThePriceJustWentUp posted:Yes but it's always been very dry and clinical and largely ignores Hitler's personal magnetism except to demonize it. I haven't read everything but I did read that Kershaw biography for example. Germany was swept up by the power of Hitler's conviction, and that's also why they fought until the bitter end. Hitler found out late what he was really good at. It was never his first choice of occupation. Where would he have been without WW1? The great depression and Versailles got him into power, not his personal magnetism or charisma in absence of complete economic and political crisis. When the economy got better, the nazis continually lost voters, that special ideological strain of nationalism never had appeal to the majority. Hitler hit it big, because he was able to strike a deal with the old elites, who thought they could outmaneuver him. Germany didn't fight to the bitter end because Hitler was so fantastically convincing, but because his actions and decisions in the east put everyone in a position that made them think that the war had to be won or else face what was thought to be the same stuff that they planned for the SU. Naturally it makes sense if you just think within the framework of that worldview, but that doesn't mean that everybody will act/think so radical. He just burned all the bridges. ThePriceJustWentUp posted:And my other opinion is that Hitler brought nationalism to its logical conclusion. Every nation with an army has enemies and latent tensions, only in Germany were those all brought out to the surface, sometimes honestly and sometimes deceitfully, by the state. It exposed the brutality of the very existence of the nation-state and in a way we've been trying to cover it up again ever since. Now leaders talk about world peace and disarmament and worldwide alliances but they all know those go against the very heart of the modern state and will never actually happen. What I am saying is that Hitler was more honest in his brutality. Like the scarface quote "I tell the truth even when I lie." You're assuming an awful lot of general things. Nations work on the basis of exclusion (and inclusion), but genocide isn't the logical consequence. It's like saying "driving cars gets people killed, therefore the nature of driving is to kill people". Power politics or whatever you want to call the constant conflict about ressources was played long before somebody thought about nations or race.
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May 9, 2014 21:25
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Mr. Sunshine posted:Jews were specifically targeted by the Nazi regime from its very inception. No other group of Nazi victims, apart from maybe communists, was so openly and constantly vilified. Jews were murdered by the Nazis trough ad-hoc executions in the east, through sickness, starvation, exhaustion and random violence in the labour camps, and through gassing in the extermination camps. You did a good job writing that up. It is no coincidence that jews and communists got targetet together, because in the planning of Barbarossa and into the operation 5 seperate orders were given to the Wehrmacht by it's leadership (in german literature called "Verbrecherische Befehle", and to clarify, each of them expands the scale who is considered a target) that explicitly linked jews and communism and at first called for the liquidation of jewish men of education, communist functionaires and state officials like clerks. For the Wehrmacht it was presented as a logical step (but also resonating with conservative beliefs about communism), because the operation ran on a tight schedule and had extremely long supply lines and bottlenecks that were correctly identified to be vulnerable to partisan activity. Reading about the role and planning of Generalquartiermeister Wagner, I'm surprised that the state didn't dig up his remains and launch them with great ceremony into the next sewer. Probably because of his later role in the 20th July resistance to Hitler. It was formulated as "der Jude als Hauptträger des Bolschewismus", meaning jews being the core cell and source of bolshevism, and the logical step, if you buy into this worldview is, that if you want to wipe out resistance aka bolshevism, you have to wipe out the jews. That wasn't a new development, but a core belief of the system (Marx being jewish, communism being *the* nemesis etc.). There is another formula that was used back then: "Judentum ist Partisanentum" and "Judentum ist Bolschewismus", you could use these terms interchangeably and everyone in Germany would know what was meant. Maybe this is a good time to point out the different goals (and with that a certain disposition politically, e.g. the Abwehr as a conservative force that at heart despised the nazis, or the RSHA pushing very hard to get done with the jews, etc.) that each department pursued, or really the parallel structures within the state that Kershaw mentions, each with their own goals vying for Hitler's ok. Extermination of the jews is a sideproduct in the plans for the war in the east and it expanded/changed in close dialogue with the developments/requirements on the front and at home, it wasn't the actual goal, more like an "inherrent necessity" if you follow the arguments of this worldview and the utter radicality of war planning and execution. There were other solutions to where to transport the jews (see Madagaskarplan and everything else that was discussed at the Wannseekonferenz), but the development of the war in 1940 barred these. The colonial plans for the east were even more grotesque, but I already posted extensively on that. I was always fascinated by the paradoxon that fascism called for the return to an imaginated past (really, in the best sense of "making shiiiiiiit up" [google Guido von List for great profit], like the atlantis of the north or what have you), but at the same time was a futuristic movement (see the connections of italian futurism, actionism and fascist movement) that was obsessed with technology. It's only partially true that the nazis had no philosophical or theoretical background or foundation. It goes back to the 19th century discourse what makes a nation, for Germany this was to be decided by "blood" (see Renan vs. Fichte, surviving today as jus sanguinis, etc) instead of voluntaristic principle, e.g. attachment to certain core values of what makes your nation (e.g. liberté, egalité, fraternité). It is no coincidence that this issue was especially virulent in Austro Hungaria, as this was a state that defied all the nationalistic developments in favour of the dynastic principle, while it's extremely heterogenic citizenry very well received the discourses of the time. Vienna is really the focal point to understanding where the train would go. You can read up on the roots of these ideas of fringe movements in Austro Hungaria that Hitler shamelessly copied 1:1 in Hamann, Brigitte (1999): Hitler's Vienna : A Dictator's Apprenticeship. It's definitely a book worth reading that also does an excellent job on presenting Hitler's time in Vienna and the environment that he was in. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 20:34 on May 10, 2014 |
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May 10, 2014 20:07
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I'm just summing up Hannah Arendt and adding the little that I read. If you want to give props, it's hers.
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May 10, 2014 20:27
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