This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
A few comments from the editor: first, sorry this is a little late, but you know--holidays and all. Furthermore, the number of quality contribution nominations seems to have grown a fair bit since moving to the new site. In fact, as I write this on January 5, there are already 37 distinct nominations in the hopper for January 2023. While we do occasionally get obviously insincere or "super upvote" nominations, the clear majority of these are all plausible AAQCs, and often quite a lot of text to sift through.
Second, this month we have special AAQC recognition for @drmanhattan16. This readthrough of Paul Gottfried’s Fascism: Career of a Concept began in the Old Country, and has continued to garner AAQC nominations here. It is a great example of the kind of effort and thoughtfulness we like to see. Also judging by reports and upvotes, a great many of us are junkies for good book reviews. The final analysis was actually posted in January, but it contains links to all the previous entries as well, so that's what I'll put here:
Now: on with the show!
Quality Contributions Outside the CW Thread
@Tollund_Man4:
Contributions for the week of December 5, 2022
@problem_redditor:
Sexulation
@problem_redditor:
Holocaustianity
Coloniazism
Contributions for the week of December 12, 2022
@Titus_1_16:
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"This is the sense in which, post-2010s, all marriages are gay marriages."
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"Oppression makes brutes of a people, and the oppressor ends up riding a tiger."
@YE_GUILTY:
Contributions for the week of December 19, 2022
@To_Mandalay:
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Let's recap then. Historians claim that the "Final Solution" denoted the extermination of the Jews, using mostly gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. Historians furthermore claim that the Wannsee Conference stands head and shoulders above other documents in proving the intent of the "final solution."
But if you actually press the issue, you learn that there is no mention of gas chamber extermination whatsoever in any of the Protocols, and that the Protocols explicitly describe the "final solution" as the evacuation of the Jews to the East. This is what Revisionists say the "final solution" was, and this is what the document says. The best the mainstream can do to support the "Wannsee Conference" legend is cite a couple paragraphs in a 10-page document that predicts labor attrition but otherwise makes no reference to gas chamber extermination. Here they lean very heavily on the accusation of "euphemism and coded language", because the language itself supports the Revisionist case.
Even in the most comprehensive, top-secret direct report from Globocnik to Himmler after the major resettlement actions, there was no reference or allusion whatsoever to mass gas chamber extermination. The "so-called evacuation" was discussed as an evacuation. So To_Mandalay, who relies very heavily on the trustworthiness and accuracy of NKVD documents which were released decades after the fact by the FSB, accuses the SS of using deception to hide their treatment of the Jews in their own top-secret internal reports.
In addition to Globocnik's report, which identifies the "so-called evacuation" as an evacuation, there is also:
Hans Frank, the Governor General, who would have known without any doubt that the "so-called evacuation" was a euphemism but he denied any knowledge of that and testified to his understanding of a policy of resettlement and not extermination.
Josef Bühler, Frank's deputy, who attended the Wannsee Conference and testified to the fact that the conference was about the resettlement of the Jews and not the extermination of the Jews.
Goering himself, who gave the famous "final solution" order to Heydrich, but at Nuremberg flatly denied that this was a policy of extermination, and stated it was a policy of resettlement.
Oswald Pohl, who worked directly with Himmler and Globocnik on Operation Reinhardt, and also testified to his understanding of a policy of resettlement and not a secret policy of gas chamber extermination. And so did the rest of his organization that was involved in this initiative.
All of these high-level officials directly involved in these events and related documents would have known about the actual policy underneath the "so-called resettlement" but they all maintained that this was not euphemism, it was the actual plan. Historians rely on the confessions of lower-level officials extracted under torture or duress in show-trials after the war (in many cases, decades after the war), and the dubious testimony of Jewish eyewitnesses.
But the coup-de-grace is the debate on the physical evidence which you will notice none of my interlocutors want to touch with a 10 foot pole. They want to say that 900,000 people were gassed, buried, unburied, cremated, and reburied in a known location within a small camp in Poland. But they do not want to discuss the physical evidence for that claim, they are only interested in demographic studies and a paragraph here and there from the Wannsee Protocols.
They know that the biggest strength in the Revisionist critique lies in the technical arguments made by Revisionists, technical arguments which were proven true at the alleged Majdanek extermination camp and which mainstream historians will never acknowledge or try to answer.
You are disingeniously moving the goal posts because you cannot address my very simple point. The starting point of the discussion was not the claim "all or most Jews were murdered via gas chambers", it was your claim that:
To which I pointed out that there was, for Europe.
And no matter how much you try to avoid the issue, there is clear, explicit evidence, that there was a German plan to kidnap millions of Jews (and yes, this number is also in the document, p.5-7), murder them via forced labour, and "treat" the survivors. Your obsession with the fact that this murderous undertaking was euphemistically called an "evacuation" when the very document from which this nomenclature stems explicitly details its murderous implications is rather telling.
But since you are so keen on physical evidence, I'd like to ask you where the evidence of resettlement is. Where are the thousands of Eastern cities and villages to which the Jews were evacuated? And where are they and their descendants now?
So @SecureSignals are you going to continue to ignore this?
Why would I address it when you aren't even trying to defend mainstream historiography?
Mainstream historiography states that "evacuation" was a euphemism for "one-way ticket to homicidal gas chambers", where millions were allegedly murdered and buried in known locations- and precisely 0 of the mass graves allegedly associated with this secret plan have ever been excavated. You refuse to engage in any sort of debate for the physical evidence for that claim, like everyone else who has argued with me so far. And you furthermore try to take the non-mainstream position that "evacuation" was a euphemism for "murdered with forced labor."
You are quite the Revisionist already, since your proposal for the denotation of the "euphemism" stands in contradiction to mainstream historiography!
The Germans predicted high mortality with evacuation and labor, that's true. You can call that murderous, that's no sweat off my back. Although forced labor in the Soviet Union would have to be regarded as murderous as well. You could also call being conscripted and sent to the front line "murderous." You don't think the German, or Allied governments for that matter, would be aware of high mortality for conscripts being sent to the front line? "We will deploy workers here and we expect high mortality" is less murderous than conscription for active combat?
Documents show that these workers were very important for the war effort, and the German government was desperate to reduce the mortality rate in the concentration camps. The head of the WVHA sent orders to all the concentration camps demanding reductions in the mortality rate of workers (during the period when the German government was allegedly murdering them in gas chambers).
Yes, the German government deported the Jews and concentrated them in camps where they were made to perform labor. That is very different from the allegations in mainstream historiography- of chemical slaughterhouses where millions were murdered in makeshift gas chambers disguised as shower rooms and buried on-site, which you aren't even bothering to defend in your comments.
The reason it's not a euphemism is because evacuation actually meant evacuation, it wasn't code for "murdered in gas chambers" as claimed in mainstream historiography.
Because Germans were famous for not-terrible-treatment of conquered areas where everyone had first-hand experience of USSR.
Oh wait, they were so terrible that people as result initially welcomed USSR as liberators (despite that things then went almost as bad as "liberation" by Third Reich). And put plenty of effort into sabotaging German war effort to help USSR.
Germans had hilariously poor treatment of potential recruits and workers, they actually believed that they as subhumans and failed to even pretend otherwise.
This is hilariously backwards. Ukranians volunteered for the German War effort at such a rate that Germany had one of the largest foreign volunteer armies in history, composed mostly of slavs and Soviet citizens. IIRC it was something like a million Soviet citizens volunteered for the German war effort. The legacy of eager Ukranian support for Germany lingers to this day.
What happened was as the Soviets advanced an enormous number of people fled to west and caused overcrowding and catastrophic conditions as Germany was being destroyed from all sides. Then the Allies roll in and say "look at all the people the Germans murdered", which fine, if you want to say that they were under German custody so dying in any way counts as "murder", that is up to you. But that isn't the essence of the Holocaust lore, that essence are the matters that none of you want to talk about because you know the case for it is very weak.
It is well known that the Germans gave some prisoners at Auschwitz the option to either remain in the camp to be liberated by the Soviets or flee west with them. Many chose to go with the Germans, if you can believe that, with Elie Wiesel being among the prisoners who chose to go with the Germans rather than wait for the Russians.
not checking this, but given how "evacuations" were defined by Germans I would be suspicious what will happen with remaining ones. Also, if people there were aware of what awaits people "liberated" by Soviets vs actually liberated, then trying to escape both Third Reich and USSR would be a good idea.
(See German armies trying to escape to Elbe’s shore to not end under USSR rule, with help to substantial numbers of civilians marking a rare case of Wermacht doing something good during WW II)
And guess, how many Poles volunteered? And why ratio was so low despite USSR being evil, dangerous and both fact known widely in Poland?
Elie Wiesel and his father were given the option to wait for the Russians or go with the Germans, and they chose the latter.
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So you are agreeing that Germans murdered millions of Jews, just not with gas chambers?
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I am not interested in where you moved the goalposts for the umphteenth time. I am no mainstream historian, I am no historian at all. I am, however, interested in this eyebrow-raising claim of yours:
But there was, for Europe. There were plans to "rake through Europe, West to East" (p.8), to round up "roughly 11 million" (p.5) Jews, subject them to forced labour, during the course of which the majority was expected to die (p.7) AND "treat" the survivors so they would not serve as the "gamete of a new Jewish reconstruction" (p.8).
It is this second part that you once again ignored, willfully, for the fifth time. I ask you again: what do you think "treatment" means in this context?
This, my dear SS, is no mere labour expedition, this is planned genocide. How many of the victims that were rounded up during this process later died in gas chamber is immaterial for this discussion.
I call that genocidal.
When historians say that the Germans had a plan to exterminate the Jews, what they mean is that the Germans secretly decided that the final solution to the Jewish Question was to murder them all. It is claimed that this murder took place mostly with gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. These are the core claims that Revisionists contest.
It is strange to accuse Revisionists of "moving the goalposts" when you refuse to defend the core elements of the mainstream narrative. You are of course free to not take the mainstream position and propose your own historical interpretation, and that makes you a Revisionist. Congratulations.
You are trying to say "the concentration of Jews in labor camps is an extermination plan". You are free to say that but it has no relation to what the "Holocaust" actually is. The translation I am reading says:
This passage clearly means that they are not to be allowed back into Europe, but it is obviously vague on how this is supposed to happen. Given the continuity of the Wannsee Protocols with the Havaara Agreement and Madagascar Plan, it is clear that that "treated accordingly" would mean "moved away and not allowed back in." You are free to use your imagination for what "treated accordingly" is supposed to mean, but you are only proving how weak your case is for using the most vague parts of the document as the best evidence for your claims.
Obviously this question was not even in the scope of the conference.
You all rely on:
Desperately avoiding debate for the physical evidence of what you claim happened.
Assuming euphemism and coded language in hundreds of documents across a sprawling bureaucracy with an extremely impressive compliance... not to mention the confusion that would be caused by using "resettlement" as a code word when even historians admit there were all kinds of resettlements of people that were not euphemism.
Citing a few sentences from a document, where the document as a whole supports the Revisionist case, take something vague like the words "treated accordingly" and use that as the best evidence you can come up with for your interpretation of the document.
This is one of the reasons the mainstream has generally moved away from emphasizing Wannsee Protocols so much... when you actually read it and consider the context then you're just left desperately pointing to something like "look, it says 'treated accordingly'!" while the document as a whole is simply a verification of what Revisionists are claiming.
You are evading again. I am not interested in discussing gas chambers. I am interested in your claim that there were no genocidal plans. Which is clearly wrong. What was planned at Wannsee (working Jews to death and "treating" the survivors) is also not incompatible with systematic extermination, by what means whatsoever.
It clearly doesn't mean that, given that the first part of the document discusses how the expulsion from Europe plan is to be abandonded in favour of "evacuation" to the East. You yourself quoted to me correspondence showing that the Madagascar option was off the table by 1942.
"Evacuation" means that victims were to be systematically rounded up, moved to the East, worked to death and minority of survivors "treated". The only parts of the document describing moving anyone out of Europe are those in the first part describing the approach that is to be abandonded. Nowhere in the documents is there any mention of moving the survivors out of Europe.
You also realise that this claim of yours is wholly incompatible with your other claim, that the Endlösung means resettlement to the East. There is no evidence for this in the documents other than the word "evacuation" which refers to what happens to the Western occupied territories, not what will happen to the victims after evacuation. There is also no physical evidence of resettlement efforts in the East.
Now, you could claim that "the East" is not Europe (which would be ridiculous, given, e.g. camps in Poland), and that therefore the victims were in fact moved out of Europe. But why then the preoccupation with "treating" the survivors as not to serve as the gamete of a new Jewish revival if those people were already deported to places of no concern to the Nazis?
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and then you quote
I think that you found the genocide confirmation that you were looking for?
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Personally I am not familiar with gas chambers details and I am unwilling to spend 20+ hours on research just to debate with neonazi on the internet on some obscure forum. Sorry SS if you are not a neonazi but I asked you multiple times about that and about origin of your username and you never responded so I assume that you are.
But I am far more certain that Germans murdered millions of people, many of them for being Jews. And that part is much, much easier to defend without spending overly long time to research this things.
So if you deny that Nazis murdered millions of people that is much easier thing to discuss for me, and if you do not deny then you would become more interesting to debate details. If you would deny that Germans forced Jews into ghettos then things would get even more obvious.
Where did they kill them? How? When? What is the physical evidence for the crime you are alleging at those locations? Where are all the bodies?
Can you reply to:
do you deny that Nazis murdered millions of civilians in areas they occupied
are you a neonazi
is SS as acronym deliberate
?
What you claim to happened with people who were transported into for example Auschwitz?
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Sorry for imposing on you, but please say again where to find this "treated accordingly" passage. I'd like to take a look at the German version.
I was surprisingly not able to find a PDF of the Protocols in German, but I found scans and this is the page.
entsprechend behan, clearly vague, but implies that the question was simply not dealt with in the conference and was a question for a later time- probably after the war. It is said that this entire conference only lasted 90 minutes, which doesn't exactly live up to the weight it's given in historiography.
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See https://www.themotte.org/post/297/quality-contributions-report-for-december-2022/51776?context=8#context
Even if you interpret it in painfully positive way it still has explicitly (1) A majority of people will not survive this (2) The survivors will have to be "treated" as not to serve as a "gamete" for the reconstruction of European Judaism (3) Mixed children will, with some exceptions, be expelled, forced into "evacuation", or sterilised.
Calling it evacuation is extremely misleading and you know it. I bet that you would be really unhappy if you and your family would be "evacuated" in this way.
Of course I would be unhappy about it. I might be motivated to lie about my experiences in order to inflict maximum damage on my oppressors, and I'm sure the Soviet Union or Steven Spielberg would have been happy to use my eyewitness testimony in their investigation and show-trials and Oscar-winning films.
The "final solution" was the expulsion of Jews from Europe. So the Protocol's emphasis that Jews cannot be allowed to reestablish themselves in Europe after the war is 100% consistent with that interpretation. Why would they expel them just for them to come back after the war? That doesn't mean they are going to be exterminated. On the other hand, the long-standing Nazi support for the idea of a Jewish state as well as documents proving the Madagascar Plan was still under serious consideration by Hitler himself well into the war... these well-documented plans were fully compatible with the proclamation you are trying to claim is indicative of an extermination plan.
Again, the direct reading is what Revisionists claim while historians rely on allegations of coded language.
Except that by 1942, when the Wannsee conference took place, this effort had been abandonded. In fact, expulsion was banned. All of this is explicitly described in the Wannsee protocols.
In fact, you quoted the part of the document mentioning that expulsion had been banned in another reply to me, so you must have read it. Why the amnesia?
You have misunderstood the documents. Voluntary emigration was banned for security reasons. Involuntary deportation was the final solution.
Yes. Involuntary deportation to different parts of Europe during the course of which the majority of victims was expected to die and the survivors would have to be "treated". That is very different from your claim that the Endlösung means "expulsion from Europe".
What do you think "treated" means in this context? If you wanted to be extremely charitable, you could argue that it means sterilisation. But I'd like you to actually make that claim.
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