They believe those things, they just do not care to defend them because it's much harder to engage the physical and documentary evidence for those claims. So instead of defending the sensational but hard-to-prove claim, which they believe (otherwise they are Revisionists), they retreat to a much less sensationalist but easier-to-defend claim of "murderous intent" with deportation and forced labor.
Would you stop engaging in mind-reading? I repeatedly told you I am not interested in "mainstream history". I am interested in your claim that there were no plans to exterminate European Jews. I didn't "retreat" to it. It was the very first post I made on that subject. You evaded a discussion of that claim as much as you could, instead fighting the windmills of an imagined "mainstream historian" interlocutor.
I am interested in your claim that there were no plans to exterminate European Jews.
This is a Motte and Bailey. "There was a plan to exterminate the Jews" is a stronger and more sensational claim than "there were plans to exterminate Jews." Many Jews died of many different causes, including executions. Many Germans died to the same. The Allied fire-bombing of Japanese and German civilian areas, where (NSFL) many thousands of women and children melted inside their bomb shelters- actually did burn alive and suffocate with poison gas, would also fall under the weaker framing of an "extermination plan" that you are proposing. If you mean "there were plans to exterminate Jews" in the sense that there were plans to kill German and Japanese civilians, you can hold onto that. But nobody means the claim in that sense except for you.
You made the (inverse) claim, not me. I merely questioned its veracity. You don't get to accuse your opponent of motte-and-bailey when they object to a very specific claim of yours (and explicitly do nothing but).
Also not interested in your whataboutism. Let me rephrase: there was (at least) one plan to round up and kill all the Jews (or as many as possible given external constraints) within the European territories under German control. This is ethnic cleansing AKA genocide. I don't care to what degree this does or does not line up with "mainstream history".
I also believe that Allied fire bombing was a war crime, but that is irrelevant to our discussion. Were there plans to round up and kill all Germans or Japanese within the territory controlled by an Allied power? Then that, also, is a genocidal plan. Not that it would be relevant to the central claim under investigation here.
one plan to round up and kill all the Jews (or as many as possible given external constraints) within the European territories under German control. [...] ethnic cleansing AKA genocide
A minor nitpick. Ethnic cleansing traditionally means removing an ethnicity from an area, backed by threat of violence. By this definition, the Paris Peace Treaties signatories engaged in genocide by repatriating ethnic germans from Eastern Europe to Germany after WW2.
I'm not a fan of attempts to expand the definition of genocide, as it eventually waters down to "bad thing I don't approve of". (In the most extreme, I've heard HAES activists say Michelle Obama was engaging in an anti-fat genocide with her MyPlate program.) I'd prefer genocide just mean "an intentional attempt to prevent a category of people from leaving descendants, thus genetically eradicating them".
Interesting. I was under the impression ethnic cleansing referred to systematic killing (within a certain area). I do agree with your definition of genocide, which fits the plan detailled in the Wannsee conference protocols to a T.
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Notes -
Would you stop engaging in mind-reading? I repeatedly told you I am not interested in "mainstream history". I am interested in your claim that there were no plans to exterminate European Jews. I didn't "retreat" to it. It was the very first post I made on that subject. You evaded a discussion of that claim as much as you could, instead fighting the windmills of an imagined "mainstream historian" interlocutor.
This is a Motte and Bailey. "There was a plan to exterminate the Jews" is a stronger and more sensational claim than "there were plans to exterminate Jews." Many Jews died of many different causes, including executions. Many Germans died to the same. The Allied fire-bombing of Japanese and German civilian areas, where (NSFL) many thousands of women and children melted inside their bomb shelters- actually did burn alive and suffocate with poison gas, would also fall under the weaker framing of an "extermination plan" that you are proposing. If you mean "there were plans to exterminate Jews" in the sense that there were plans to kill German and Japanese civilians, you can hold onto that. But nobody means the claim in that sense except for you.
You made the (inverse) claim, not me. I merely questioned its veracity. You don't get to accuse your opponent of motte-and-bailey when they object to a very specific claim of yours (and explicitly do nothing but).
Also not interested in your whataboutism. Let me rephrase: there was (at least) one plan to round up and kill all the Jews (or as many as possible given external constraints) within the European territories under German control. This is ethnic cleansing AKA genocide. I don't care to what degree this does or does not line up with "mainstream history".
I also believe that Allied fire bombing was a war crime, but that is irrelevant to our discussion. Were there plans to round up and kill all Germans or Japanese within the territory controlled by an Allied power? Then that, also, is a genocidal plan. Not that it would be relevant to the central claim under investigation here.
A minor nitpick. Ethnic cleansing traditionally means removing an ethnicity from an area, backed by threat of violence. By this definition, the Paris Peace Treaties signatories engaged in genocide by repatriating ethnic germans from Eastern Europe to Germany after WW2.
I'm not a fan of attempts to expand the definition of genocide, as it eventually waters down to "bad thing I don't approve of". (In the most extreme, I've heard HAES activists say Michelle Obama was engaging in an anti-fat genocide with her MyPlate program.) I'd prefer genocide just mean "an intentional attempt to prevent a category of people from leaving descendants, thus genetically eradicating them".
Interesting. I was under the impression ethnic cleansing referred to systematic killing (within a certain area). I do agree with your definition of genocide, which fits the plan detailled in the Wannsee conference protocols to a T.
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