Did it really happen

In all I came away just none the wiser about how a group of well educated modern western otherwise normal people (not the Nazis, normal germans) did this….

If you, or anyone on here is interested, the novel ‘The Kindly Ones’ by Jonathan Littell provides one of the most remarkable explorations of one man’s psyche in relation Nazism I have ever come across.

A strongly recommended read, and very relevant to this discussion.

crankboy – Member

Ernie i am not sure i have the tools to win this debate but in defence of Rommel

To be fair I’m not interested in having a debate about Rommel – it’s you who seemed to want to have one. I just stated my opinion in one sentence and in terms of probability and was happy to leave it at that, without any need to retract – as bizarrely requested to do.

However, given that the world in general was just getting away from the bi-plane at the outbreak of WW2

1939 german nuclear energy program

Names for 2/3 of jewish victims. Sorry, I got the wrong page in my last post.

Typical of the lies and propoganda we have been fed by the global Zionist conspiracy. Some of those names are in there twice!

Same name, or same profile, DOB and name. There are hundreds of me. I’d like to bet a lot of John Smiths share the same DOB and given the jewish affection for biblical first names and a limited number of surnames I’m not surprised many names appear twice or more.

I was referring to Francos treatment of the Jews (relevant to this thread) not his murderous dictatorship, guess I didn’t make it clear.

yeah, sorry for the ukip quip, was a cheap shot, was just getting heated about this subject– but i stand by the thrust of my argument, in order for fascism to prosper certain conditions need to be in place,authoritarian regimes need support from existing structures, usually church based, the rc church shares many of the same traits, hence the coincidence that they go well together, i am not saying that individuals of that faith are fascistic, far from it, many have died fighting it, but as an institution the vatican has a long and inglorious history of oppression and denial, allied to its avowed patriarchal ideology , it has been a fair weather friend of all fascistic regimes.As they say , they both piss in the same pot….

Don’t back down you have a good point, Rudeboy. Down here the Catholic church was guilty of genocide. The Cathars were ruthlessly suppressed and finally exterminated by the Catholic Church in the 14th century..

I wasn’t there but I’m pretty sure it did happen.

edukator– did not know about that particular episode in history, i can imagine the threat they posed to rc ideology, so yes , the original fascists did what they do best–genocide of all opposition.

I am not backing down, was just clarifying my position,and i did aim a cheap shot at the man, ukip is a nasty insult !

Interesting read on this thread but backpeddling a bit….

Anyone else remember or have seen Conspiracy, Kenneth Branagh

I thought this was a gripping insight into the high level discussion of The Final Solution. Like some of the reviews, almost like the debates at corporate strategy meetings but with very sinister outcomes.

Of course it happened but this makes interesting reading as an example of Glupton’s point.
Auschwitz Numbers

Of course it happened but this makes interesting reading as an example of Glupton’s point.
Auschwitz Numbers

What point – that you can find some total rubbish on the Internet? Have a look at the homepage of that site – can you seriously tell me that the people behind that are not completely off their trolleys?

as an example of Glupton’s point.

It’s an example of how NOT to choose your sources of information.

The person responsible is almost as “batshit mental” as the point glupton attempted to make. 🙄

Jeff Rense

Conspiracy Theorist.

So why did they change the numbers on the plaques then? Shits’n’gigs?

I’m not sure if you realise it or not, but you are peddling the same argument that Holocaust Denial loons have been using for ages. 😯

You might want to read this.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/denial-of-science/four-million-01.html

Brake-neck – Member

So why did they change the numbers on the plaques then? Shits’n’gigs?

IIRC the original number was based largely on Eichmann’s claims, which weren’t reliable. Eichmann was such a final solution enthusiast that he carried on even after german high command ordered the end, and he also resisted destroying evidence as he didn’t want it to be hidden.

So ironically rather than it being Teh Zionist Conspiracy, it was a boastful engineer of the holocaust who thought 900,000 wasn’t enough and massaged the figures.

Not really too surprising that the original plaque, put up just 3 years after the camp was liberated, was subject to revision once better information was available. Even at the time it wasn’t considered definitive.

chickenman – Member
My mother, who’s german, was 18 when the war finished. She’d seen her home (and the rest of the city) in Cologne destroyed by bombs. Like most others her age she will have been in the Hitler Youth.
After the conflict had finished she was debriefed by british intelligence and when asked what she had heard about the systemic murder of Jews, she replied that that was all rubbish. She was then shown a shoebox full of photos taken in KZ camps. She changed her mind after that…

hmmm, surprised your mum thought that.

as one of the resident residents of zee farzerland germany i have talked to various people who were about during the war.

one interesting conversation was with a landlady of a mountain hut and an eight fingered carpenter friend of hers. she told me that during the war her mum used to threaten to send her to Dachau if she didn’t behave.

despite living in Munich i have never visited Dachau. i don’t want to. there is plenty of other evidence around without me upsetting myself (and having to travel to Dachau – not the prettiest place, IMO) as to what went on during the war.

whilst living on the shores of Lake Constance (Bodensee) i was surprised one day whilst riding my bike to come across a sign in the next village. it detailed the exsistence of a forced labour camp where many jews, dissidents etc were worked.

history is not covered up here. the “authorities” are honest about what went on and to what extent.

school kids in the Munich area make at least one trip to Dachau KZ during their education.

sure there are some that are interested in the events before, during and after the war. i’ve had the displeasure of meeting/seeing large groups of fascists that are no doubt upset that germany was defeated (google Coburger Convent….. i used to live in Coburg).

i occasionally hear people making a joke about beating the french (much as we do in the UK, seems to be some common ground there) and even making a joke in reference to the holocaust, but i do not consider these people to be “nazis” or deniers of the holocaust. the best “joke” i heard recently was when i asked a work colleague for a light “i only have gas for Auslanders” was his response.

i’ve had one guy bitch at me about the bombing of Dresden (he was drunk) but i asked him about the bombing of Coventry and London, the holocaust and whether either of us were there at the time. we weren’t. very few of us around today were and the majority of those that were were far too young to have done anything about it (my kinda-M-in-L, for example).

did you know that Hermann Goerings brother, Albet, was an anti-Nazi and has been commemorated at Yad Vashem for helping save Jews from death?

on another random and slighty related note i recently worked with one of the descendents of the Goering family. nice guy, too.

Going back to one minor aspect of the OP: we can’t spend too much time worrying about what 14 year olds think.

So ironically rather than it being Teh Zionist Conspiracy, it was a boastful engineer of the holocaust who thought 900,000 wasn’t enough and massaged the figures.

Yes, wasn’t it him who when he was told that a miilion would die through starvation and famine, asked “is that enough?”

she told me that during the war her mum used to threaten to send her to Dachau if she didn’t behave.

It doesn’t mean people all knew about the death camps though. Until the start of the war it was more of a brutal prison where people died more often than they should. Even in the height of the war it wasn’t a death camp like the others but a labour camp which didn’t really care if people lived or died. I think somewhere around 30-40k people died.

It was open until the late 50s or the 60s as an internment camp/prison run by the Americans if I remember correctly.

All that said, from everything I’ve heard, a large part of the population knew about the existence of death camps and the things the soldiers had done on the Eastern front. Too many people were involved for it not to get out. Whether they imagined things were as bestial as they actually were is a different matter.

Except if you let people reach adulthood with insane beliefs they are quite hard to shift. I’ve rarely encountered bigots of any stripe who weren’t brought to that opinion when they were in formative years.

chickenman – Member
My mother, who’s german, was 18 when the war finished. She’d seen her home (and the rest of the city) in Cologne destroyed by bombs. Like most others her age she will have been in the Hitler Youth.
After the conflict had finished she was debriefed by british intelligence and when asked what she had heard about the systemic murder of Jews, she replied that that was all rubbish. She was then shown a shoebox full of photos taken in KZ camps. She changed her mind after that…

alpin – Member

hmmm, surprised your mum thought that.

as one of the resident residents of zee farzerland germany i have talked to various people who were about during the war.

one interesting conversation was with a landlady of a mountain hut and an eight fingered carpenter friend of hers. she told me that during the war her mum used to threaten to send her to Dachau if she didn’t behave.

I think chickenman is talking about the death camps which were used specifically for extermination purposes and tended to be on foreign territory, rather than concentration camps on home soil which were used extensively to incarcerated political opponents and whose existence was widely reported to the German population as a means of suppressing dissent. For example :

The first camp in Germany, Dachau, was founded in March 1933. The press announcement said that “the first concentration camp is to be opened in Dachau with an accommodation for 5,000 persons. All Communists and – where necessary – Reichsbanner and Social Democratic functionaries who endanger state security are to be concentrated there, as in the long run it is not possible to keep individual functionaries in the state prisons without overburdening these prisons.”

In contrast the German population would not have known about the systemic murder of Jews. In fact the SS went to extraordinary lengths to mislead Jews themselves right up until the moment they were killed. This is a speech given to condemned Jews by an SS officer at Auschwitz :

Speech (paraphrased) given by Obersturmführer Franz Hössler to a group of Greek Jews in the undressing room shortly before the group was led into the gas chamber to be killed:

“On behalf of the camp administration I bid you welcome. This is not a holiday resort but a labor camp. Just as our soldiers risk their lives at the front to gain victory for the Third Reich, you will have to work here for the welfare of a new Europe. How you tackle this task is entirely up to you. The chance is there for every one of you. We shall look after your health, and we shall also offer you well-paid work. After the war we shall assess everyone according to his merits and treat him accordingly.”

“Now, would you please all get undressed. Hang your clothes on the hooks we have provided and please remember your number [of the hook]. When you’ve had your bath there will be a bowl of soup and coffee or tea for all. Oh yes, before I forget, after your bath, please have ready your certificates, diplomas, school reports and any other documents so that we can employ everybody according to his or her training and ability.”

“Would diabetics who are not allowed sugar report to staff on duty after their baths”.

Even the governments of the Allies were only aware of rumors of SS death camps towards the end of the war and they were reluctant to believe that such a horrific thing could be true. The German public would not have been aware, and any suggestion of death camps would have been dismissed as anti-Nazi propaganda.

In much the same way as neo-Nazis still dismiss it as anti-Nazi propaganda today.

I’m not sure if you realise it or not, but you are peddling the same argument that Holocaust Denial loons have been using for ages.

You might want to read this.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/denial-of-science/four-million-01.html
You might want to read the first four word of my post 😉
There was a difference in the numbers and I was curious to why that all, however as its you I’ll throw my swastika bed sheets out when I get home 🙄

Even the governments of the Allies were only aware of rumors of SS death camps towards the end of the war, and they were reluctant to believe that such a horrific thing could be true.

Well the Vrba–Wetzler report (aka Auschwitz Protocols) were fairly late in the war, yes, but the US Government definitely knew about it (and by association we can assume the British did too) before then as they were the ones who confirmed this to Jewish groups in the US in 1942. The depths and details of the horrors were probably not easily imagined of course.

From a personal perspective, my grandmother in France knew the Germans were killing jews and the people at the end of the road were hiding people from the Germans in their basement at a penalty of deportation or death themselves. Again, I doubt she knew what was happening beyond them being killed, but if a housewife in the west of France knew, I’m sure the free Allied governments did.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. There will have been a holocaust, but it wont have been to the numbers that the allied forces reported.

I find it incredibly sad that some people can be so ignorant of the truth. As has been pointed out, the accepted figures quoted are the result of extensive research over decades, using huge amounts of data including official Nazi records, census figures and eyewitness accounts. To suggest that the real number has been somewhat ‘sexed up’ is either incredibly ignorant or incredibly insensitive and deliberately provocative.

Glupton1976; I don’t wish to judge you unfairly, but I sincerely hope you are the former and not the latter. Please, for your own sake, and that of others around you, and indeed anyone who thinks similar, please read up about the holocaust and the wholesale extermination of tens of millions of people by the Nazis. because it did happen. And those figures are real. Because even if you never admit you were wrong on here, you will at least have learned the truth.

And if you (or anyone else) are simply making such statements deliberately to provoke, then that’s just downright nasty, and I feel sorry for you.

Interesting view George, especially coming from a Scottish National Party fan. I have always found them a bit sinister, disliked their view of “Scottishness” and the path it leads to, and you really aren’t helping.

I am somewhat disturbed by your reasons for posting such a statement, glupton1976. What is it exactly that you are trying to say here? From your comments, you don’t strike me as someone who is actually particularly educated about the holocaust, so I’m wondering exactly why you (or anyone) would question figures that are universally accepted as being pretty damn accurate. What’s your motivation for challenging the publicly accepted view? Do you have your own evidence which proves official figures as inaccurate?

I have to say; it’s really rather depressing to read a thread like this on this forum. Debate is one thing; I can’t see what good will come from such a challenge to consensus.

You might want to read the first four word of my post
There was a difference in the numbers and I was curious to why that all, however as its you I’ll throw my swastika bed sheets out when I get home

And you might want to read the first seven words of mine…..

I’m not sure if you realise but …..

Quite clearly I was giving you some information, and alerting you to the fact that the question over the numbers has been well used by the Holocaust Denial bunch for years, in case you were not aware.

Don’t try and pretend I was accusing you of being a Nazi sympathiser, that’s a pathetically weak argument 🙄

I wasn’t TRYING anything, and yes, I did interpret your comment in the way you describe hence my response but was trying to reply in a non inflammatory manner which I see worked well.
I hope comments can be taken in context now.

spchantler – Member

However, given that the world in general was just getting away from the bi-plane at the outbreak of WW2
1939 german nuclear energy program

If you look at your own somewhat dubious source, either our secret services were a bit quick off the mark, or alternatively you should stick to daffodils.

konabunny – Member
Going back to one minor aspect of the OP: we can’t spend too much time worrying about what 14 year olds think.

http://www.chilloutzone.net/video/warum-faehrst-du-nach-auschwitz.html

very strange. ignorant or bigoted?

ernie_lynch – Member

I think chickenman is talking about the death camps which were used specifically for extermination purposes and tended to be on foreign territory, rather than concentration camps on home soil which were used extensively to incarcerated political opponents and whose existence was widely reported to the German population as a means of suppressing dissent.

i’m pretty sure that the general population of germany at the time of the war were aware of what was happening to their jewish neighbours.

i’m sure that they did not believe that the jews were being harrassed, having their properties vandalised, their livelihoods taken from them before rounded up and beaten (something that the general population were encouraged to par-take in (jews being made to scrub the streets in front of everyone (read about Albert Goering))) with the intention of rehousing them somewhere nice.

unfortunately a large majority of people actively took part in abusing the jews. there are many documented cases (and interviews conducted after the war) where the locals openly said that they were happy to see the jews removed from society. (can’t remember the name of the series, but it’s something like 14 hours in total; some guy goes around and talks to survivors about their experiences – many of them said that they were happy the Germans took away the jews, and this wasn’t even in Germany.)

many soilders wrote back to their families detailing what they had seen. returning servicemen would no doubt have told people about what they had seen. agreed, the general population may not have known the true extent of slaughter, but they could have been in no doubt that jews were ultimately being killed in very large numbers.
[/i]
and i dispute that the allies did not know about the death camps. there were a great number of operatives in germany and occupied countries who would have seen first hand the abuse dished out to the jews. read about Frank Foley, officially the british passport control issuer at the british embassy in Berlin. he knew about the camps and was in MI6.

they also knew about the camps from secret recordings at Laitmer House, where the German officers were housed and openly talked to one another about what they had witnessed and what they had committed.

obviously it in to modern Germany’s advantage to play down the extent to which the population at the time of the war knew about the goings on, but i think people (real people that i have met and talked to) will tell you that they knew. even if it the extent of it wasn’t openly discussed, they knew that the jews were never coming back once they had left town and that the Nazis wanted rid of these people (something they openly said when the Nazi party was created) for ever.

After Crystal Night it was pretty clear to the world what way things were going.

^^ exactly.

I find it hard to believe that Germans did not know about the extermination of Jews
The stench from the camps must have been horrendous, I know many we’re not in Germany, but still
What about all the German soldiers working in the camps, would they not have mentioned it to family.
Etc , etc

As per alpin’s post, much of the stuff actually being debated on here is simply not in question:

The allies were fully aware of the extent and purpose of the Axis extermination camps during the war.
Bombing them was discussed, but decided against.

The majority of German people were fully aware of this also.

Has no one actually watched any of the numerous documentaries interviewing German civilians or allied intelligence personal that have been broacast over the last couple of decades?

All this stuff is in the public domain.

If you can find them, try and have a look at Laurence Rees’s
‘Nazis: A Warning from History’, ‘Auschwitz: the Nazis and the Final Solution’ and ‘The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler’.
The first two won Baftas and a Grierson award respectively, the latter was on just before Christmas and went into detail about the relationship between the German people, Hitler and his plan to exterminate European Jews.

Let’s not cast any doubt on the facts – both the Allies and the German people were fully aware of what was happening.

i’m pretty sure that the general population of germany at the time of the war were aware of what was happening to their jewish neighbours.

They didn’t know that they were being gassed on arrival to the concentration camps – no. Not even the Jews themselves knew that, which explains how the SS was able to maintain the pretense that they were going to receive a shower on arrival at Auschwitz. They even fixed shower fittings in the gas chambers so that it wasn’t until the doors had been shut and the Zyklon B pellets had been dropped, that they realised they would die.

I fully believe and understand chickenman mother’s claim that despite being in the Hitler Youth she was totally unaware of the extermination camps.

i dispute that the allies did not know about the death camps

Throughout most of the War the Allies were completely unaware of the extermination camps, it was towards the end of the War that rumours first surfaced as the result of escapee accounts. But although there was credible evidence in the final phase of WW2 the full horror and extent of the killing wasn’t understood until the extermination camps were finally liberated.

I see no evidence to suggest that the great mass of the German population were better informed.

Just to give this some context – this is being written from my flat in Cologne. About 1/3 kilometre away is a plaque at the Mungersdorf sports stadion in memory of the Jews, and others, interned at the camp there, before being shipped onwards and outwards to Poland.

Cologne was not a hot bed of Nazism – but many obviously supported what was considered the winning team, and joined / supported the Nazi Party. However many didn’t and were killed as a result. If anyone every comes over go and visit the National Socialism Museum in Cologne, where the cells has been kept as memorial to those killed / held there. Most we shot in the courtyard. They were not all jewish, but Slavs, russians, regular crims etc.

In the 90s – a local artist decide the best way of remembering the people side of the holocaust was to to make “stolperstein” – these are brass plates inserted into the pavement out side a house where a victim of the nazis used to live. It details name, DOB, when the were “taken” to where and place of death etc.
They are now all through Europe and actually quite moving when you come across them for the first time.

I have visited both Belsen Bergen and Dachau. At BB most of those who dies were not gassed – but died of Typhoid and basic neglect. For those doubters or David Irving followers , just go and stand in front of a mass grave to 10.000 people and trivialise the event. Oh, and btw, there isn’t just one, but several …

There is a huge irony that it is the Germans that do seem to have learned most about the holocaust. They are truly ashamed that it ever happened and could happen in Germany. They will discuss it openly – and many will sight the “our grand parents didn’t know it was happening” Off the record , the will admit they did – but turned a blind eye. They do get very uncomfortable when you mention Belsen – way too populated an area for people not to know what was going on – even though the camp itself is in forest, 10 kms from a big town.

It is perhaps a shame that the jewish people / zionists have not taken on board the issues associated with a chosen people, a superior race and religion, a divine right to destroy their enemies etc. It would have been good to see that ideas concepts and the failure of the past being taken to make a better future.

Unfortunately Rwanda, the Balkans, Stalin in Russia, Cambodia etc have proved that genocide is stictly still on the agenda when it comes to war.

Unfortunately, this thread only goes to prove how many want to believe in a the right wing/ white race superiority doctrine.
Germany has an issue with neo-nazism at the moment, around the Rostock area. Ironically, many of these people are of slavic descend, a race /creed that Hitler thought were just as sub-human as the jews. The cause of the issue is that they are badly educated, ignorant with some strong agent provocateurs lead the “hate sheep” – not sure how Germany will actually solve this issue … it is an West/East thing.

PS , I think the OP is trolling ….

It is perhaps a shame that the jewish people / zionists have not taken on board the issues associated with a chosen people, a superior race and religion, a divine right to destroy their enemies etc.

That’s quite a statement. Do you mean some Jews/Zionists, rather than the Jewish people ?

i think we all know he means Israel ernie but that is another thread
I think we all know he means some

Odd you would choose that as it was an excellent post deserving of praise IMHO – I do agre with you on Rommell FWIW

This book looks interesting – lots of first hand accounts re what was known and by whom.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=203103

Passage from a contemporary German resident.

“Walter Sanders states that, with the escalation of anti-Semitic propaganda and agitation, “when the Jews were deported, we knew that something was going to happen to them”. He was a communications officer on the Russian front, and he describes the atrocities he witnessed and recounted to relatives and friends when he came home on leave during the war. He concludes: “A large part of the population did know about it… They knew that there were concentration camps. They knew that Jews were kept there. Later word got around that they were gassed. It wasn’t for nothing that it was said in those years: ‘Take care, otherwise you’ll go up the chimney.’ That was a familiar figure of speech. It circulated everywhere in Germany.””