@To_Mandalay comments on "Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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To_Mandalay 2yr ago

Even reading Tacitus shows the same continuity of character.

Tacitus also says that the Germans nailed people to trees and burned them alive as sacrifices to Wotan.

The Germans wouldn't have wasted delousing chemicals to kill people or have wasted forced labor that would allow them to feel self-righteous in perpetuity.

Old people and children are not wasted force labor, they're dead weight.

The notion that Germans would use euphemisms in the one extant documented meeting concerning the implementation details is absurd to anyone that has ever met a rank-and-file German.

Here is Himmler talking openly about the extermination of European Jews without use of code-words in the Posen speech of October 6 1943:

In this connection, I may comment before this very tightly knit group on a matter which you, my Party Comrades, all take for granted, and which is the most difficult task I have ever faced in my life, the Jewish problem. All of you gladly take it for granted that there are no longer any Jews in your administrative districts. All Germans — with a few individual exceptions — are aware that we could not have endured the bombings, the hardships of the fourth year of the war, and could not endure fifth and sixth years of war that are perhaps yet to come, if we still had this demoralizing pest in our national body. "The Jews must be eradicated ["ausgerottet"]." This brief sentence is easily said. But for the man who must carry out what it calls for, it is the gravest and hardest thing in existence. Now, look, after all they're Jews, only Jews. That's plain enough. But just think about how many people — including Party comrades — have addressed to me and other officials those famous petitions of theirs in which they say: The Jews are all bastards, of course, but so-and-so is a good Jew and should be left alone. I daresay, judging by the number of such appeals and the number of people who express such opinions, the number of "good Jews" in Germany must have exceeded the total Jewish population! In Germany we have millions and millions of people who each have their "one good Jew." I mention this only because you can see in the vital field of your own administrative districts how many respected and upright National Socialists have their "good Jew."

I ask that you assembled here pay attention to what I have to say, but not repeat it. The question came up: Well, what about the women and children? — I came to a determinedly simple conclusion about that, too. I did not believe that I had the right to wipe out ["auszurotten"] the men — rather I should say, kill ["umzubringen"] them or have them killed — and let their children grow up to avenge themselves on our sons and grandsons. The hard decision to wipe this people ["Volk"] off ["verschwinden"] the face of the earth had to be made. For us, the organization that had to carry out this task, it was the most difficult one we ever had. But it was accomplished, and without — I believe I can say — our men and their leaders suffering any mental or spiritual damage. That was clearly a danger. To become too brutal, too heartless, and lose respect for human life, or to be too soft and bring oneself to the point of a nervous breakdown — the path between these two ever-present possibilities is incredibly narrow, the course between Scylla and Charybdis.

We have turned over to the Reich Ministry of Economics all the wealth we confiscated from the Jews — the sums were staggering — right down to very last penny. I have always maintained: We have a duty to our people, to our race, we have a duty to a leader such as has been given to our people only once in 2,000 years, not to be petty here, but to go the limit, as we must do in all things if we are to win the war. Yet we do not have the right to take even one penny of the wealth confiscated from the Jews. At the outset, I laid down the line: Any SS men who take so much as a mark of it are as good as dead. In the past few days, I've had to sign a number of death sentences — I might as well say it, there were about a dozen. One has to be strict here, or everyone will suffer. I considered it my duty to speak very openly to you — the highest bearers of the will, the highest dignitaries, of the Party, of this political order, of this political instrument of the Führer — about this matter and to give the facts as they are. By the end of the year, the Jewish problem in the lands we have occupied will be solved. There will be left only remnants, individual Jews who are in hiding. The problem of Jews who are partners in mixed marriages and the problem of half-Jews will, in accordance with this policy, be rationally examined, decided upon, and resolved.

Source is this thread on the CODOH revisionist forum, which anyone can read if they want to see whether the revisionist interpretation of such a speech holds up.

Context

SecureSignals Training the Aryan LLM To_Mandalay 2yr ago · Edited 2yr ago

In the Posen speeches Himmler describes the policy as "Judenevakuierung", which is alleged to have been a code-word. So he is still using the "code" at Posen. And months later he continues describing a policy of evacuation/resettlement/emigration to the East with the killing of Jews being in the context of partisan reprisals (which revisionists do not deny happened).

To_Mandalay SecureSignals 2yr ago

So he is still using the "code" at Posen.

In other speeches at Posen he uses the word "Judenevakuierung." In this speech he uses the word "umbringen," which unambiguously means "kill."

the killing of Jews being in the context of partisan reprisals

Partisans are in fact mentioned much earlier in the speech and then Himmler says, 'enough about partisans,' and then moves on to talking about other stuff, and finally when he discusses the solution to the Jewish question in the excerpted paragraphs partisans are not mentioned once.

The hard decision to wipe this people ["Volk"] off ["verschwinden"] the face of the earth had to be made.

Partisans are not a "Volk" and "the East" is a place on the face of the earth.

By the end of the year, the Jewish problem in the lands we have occupied will be solved. There will be left only remnants, individual Jews who are in hiding.

Goal is no Jews left in German-occupied territory by the end of 1943. Which included "the East," however you define it.

Yes, in speeches at Posen he describes the policy as evacuation. Two months after that October 1943 speech, in December, he also describes the policy as evacuation:

We are also too close to the development that is taking place in Europe. For the first time, as far as we can determine it historically since approximately 2 1/2 thousand years ago, we are at the point where the Germanic peoples have united, from a 65 million people in 1933 which has become 85 - 88 million people in 1941, which during the war some big migrations have taken place, a migration of 700,00 Germans who have immigrated, of 2 million foreigners who have emigrated, of such and such many Jews who have emigrated to the East; Movements of peoples, as we call them in history with infinite names, have taken place within the framework of this rapid development.

Although he mentions the killing of Jews in this December speech as well, in the context of partisans:

Measures, gentlemen, which we are shirking today, will be welcomed by our grandchildren. If I was forced to take action against partisans and against Jewish commissars in a village - I am saying this in this circle, as it is only intended for this circle -, then I gave the basic order to have the wives and children of these partisans and commissars killed as well. I would be a weakling and a criminal of our descendants if I let the hateful sons of these subhumans, who were killed by us in the fight of man against subhuman, grow up.

His defense of the decision to conduct reprisals against the families of partisans and commissars "If I was forced to take action" would not make any sense in the context of an extermination policy where extermination of all Jews would have been the policy. You are saying his statement here is just theater right? To provide cover for the fact he actually ordered the extermination of all Jews?

You are basically saying:

Posen October 4th <- evacuation euphemisms + partisans
Posen October 6th <- partisans + admitted the policy was to exterminate all Jews
Weimar December 15th <- evacuation euphemisms + partisans

Why did Himmler go "mask off" only in the October 6th speech but maintain the euphemisms in the other speeches? The Revisionist position is more sensible, that his statements about the hard decision to kill Jews in the October 6th speech resembles the same statements in the December speech which is unambiguously about partisans.

Hermann Goering- the one who actually gave the "Final Solution" order to Heydrich and would have been as aware as Himmler of its actual nature, maintained that it was a policy of evacuation for emigration and not a euphemism for extermination in the Nuremberg Trial. That stands as more significant than a narrow interpretation of a single passage which stands in contrast with other speeches before and after that single passage.

His defense of the decision to conduct reprisals against the families of partisans and commissars would not make any sense in the context of an extermination policy where extermination of all Jews would have been the policy.

Partisans and commissars were not only Jews.

Memo from January 1944:

Largest stabilisation in the G.G. since the solution to the Jewish question. – Race war. Total solution. Not allowing avengers to rise against our children.

"No avengers" refers to the solution to the Jewish question in general. Which includes Jewish partisans and commissars but is obviously not limited to partisans and commissars. There were no 'commissars' in the General Government.

It's pretty clear the 4 October speech refers to physical annihilation as well, but the 6 October speech leaves even less wiggle room.

The Revisionist position is more sensible

In one speech Himmler talked about killing partisans in particular and in another speech he talked about killing Jews in general. This demonstrates only that when Himmler wanted to talk about killing partisans he was fully capable of using the word 'partisan' to indicate that he was talking about partisans. The unjustified assumption that Himmler is talking about partisans on October 6th because he talked about killing partisans in a different speech two months later is not sensible at all.

that his statements about the hard decision to kill Jews in the October 6th

No, he said it was a hard decision to wipe a "people/race" off of the face of the earth. Once again, partisans are not a "Volk."

Women and children killed along with the men. The race wiped off the face of the earth. No Jews to be left in occupied territories except those "in hiding."

Very clear.

SecureSignals Training the Aryan LLM To_Mandalay 2yr ago

It's pretty clear the 4 October speech refers to physical annihilation as well

So much of your case rests on an extremely narrow interpretation of a few selected passages, while dismissing the much more extant documentation as "euphemism" and "coded language."

You say that the 4 October speech refers to physical annihilation because Himmler describes:

Ich meine jetzt die Judenevakuierung, die Ausrottung des jüdischen Volkes.

I am thinking now of the evacuation of the Jews, the extirpation of the Jewish people.

Your entire assumption is based on the assertion of what "Ausrottung" is supposed to denote. The meaning of this term was something of a mild controversy at the Nuremberg Trial and in the David Irving trial as well. It's misleading to call it "pretty clear" when it has been a controversy in court.

This question was brought to Alfred Rosenberg at Nuremberg:

MR. DODD: This is something you will be interested in. Will you look up and read out to the Tribunal what the definition of "Ausrottung" is?

ROSENBERG: I do not need a foreign dictionary in order to explain the various meanings "Ausrottung" may have in the German language. One can exterminate an idea, an economic system, a social order, and as a final consequence, also a group of human beings, certainly. Those are the many possibilities which are contained in that word. For that I do not need an English-German dictionary. Translations from German into English are so often wrong-and just as in that last document you have submitted to me, I heard again the translation of "Herrenrasse." In the document itself "Herrenrasse" is not even mentioned; however, there is the term "ein falsches Herrenmenschentum" (a false master mankind). Apparently everything is translated here in another sense.

MR. DODD: All right, I am not interested in that. Let us stay on this term of "Ausrottung." I take it then that you agree it does mean to "wipe out" or to "kill off," as it is understood, and that you did use the term in speaking to Hitler.

ROSENBERG: Here I heard again a different translation, which again used new German words, so I cannot determine what you wanted to express in English.

MR. DODD: Are you very serious in pressing this apparent inability of yours to agree with me about this ward or are you trying to kill time? Don't you know that there are plenty of people in this courtroom who speak German and who agree that that word does mean to "wipe out," to "extirpate?"

ROSENBERG: It means "to overcome" on one side and then it is to be used not with respect to individuals but rather to juridical entities, to certain historical traditions. On the other side this word has been used with respect to the German people and we have also not believed that in consequence thereof 60 millions of Germans would be shot.

Hitler warned of the "Ausrottung" of all European peoples (including the Allies) if Germany lost the war. Obviously this did not mean that every single European person would be killed, but something more like "an allied victory will lead to the Bolshevization of Europe," which he considered to be an Ausrottung.

So to say that it's pretty clear Himmler is referring here to physical annihilation rather than the sense used by Hitler and Rosenberg, which completely fits the evacuation policy, is grasping at straws.

It's pretty clear because Himmler says things like:

Most of you know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, when 500 lie there, or if 1,000 lie there. To have gone through this, and at the same time, apart from exceptions caused by human weaknesses, to have remained decent, that has made us hard.

and

We had the moral right, we had the duty to our own people, to kill this people which wanted to kill us

Luckily we have the 6 October speech to take us from "pretty clear" to "crystal clear." Where Himmler says, one more time:

I did not believe that I had the right to wipe out the men — rather I should say, kill them or have them killed — and let their children grow up to avenge themselves on our sons and grandsons. The hard decision to wipe this people off the face of the earth had to be made.

Please explain how "the hard decision to wipe this people off of the face of the earth" can refer to either the killing of partisans or resettlement.

The very first thing he said before the first two passages you posted was "Ich meine die Judenevakuierung": "I mean the evacuation of the Jews." So is he using a euphemism or is he being clear he means extermination? You are saying he is going back and forth, and then in Weimar two months later he's back to the euphemism.

Revisionists don't doubt the brutality of a forced resettlement/deportation operation which would have had a high mortality. Passages like:

Sounds like a recognition of a bloody affair, which the evacuation undoubtedly was. It sounds like a speech a general could have given to troops justifying the firebombing of German or Japanese cities: "You all know what it's like to see mass death, and we know these actions are taking the lives of women and children but we have to be tough or the fascists will conquer the world blah blah". A general giving such a speech would not even consider the possibility of people later trying to infer a secret policy to exterminate all German people from a speech like that.

There is obviously tough talk and recognition of a bloody affair, but inferring a specific policy from such a speech would only be the act of desperation from someone who cannot rely on the documentation to definitively establish the policy being claimed. Especially when the very first sentence completely contradicts your interpretation of the policy inferred from these general words, and when later speeches continue to describe the policy as an evacuation.

Because this:

Sounds like it's trying to convey the same point made in a speech only two months later, where he also describes the policy as resettlement and it's obviously tough talk to rationalize reprisals against partisans and commissars:

I know you want to claim that there's no way these two passages from two different speeches were intended to convey the same idea, you are saying that these two passages had completely different meanings, but just reading them side by side it seems clear the point of this part of the speech is the same: it's tough talk to justify reprisals and the undoubtedly brutal forced resettlement.

Lastly, the dilemma presented in the passage you are leaning on doesn't make sense if you assume he is admitting to an extermination policy. Himmler justifies killing women and children so the children don't grow up and take revenge... but if the plan was to exterminate them all then this would never have entered into the decision calculus. The dilemma between killing children or having them grow up to take revenge (a dilemma also presented in the December speech which describes a policy of resettlement) only makes sense in the context of targeted killings and does not make sense in the context of a policy of extermination, in which case this would be a non-issue.

-1

"Ich meine die Judenevakuierung," and then he clarifies, "die Ausrottung des jüdischen Volkes."

Among ourselves, it ought to be spoken of quite openly for once; yet we shall never speak of it in public.

Weird thing to say, considering "evacuation" was what the Nazis told the world they were doing with the Jews.

I know you want to claim that there's no way these two passages from two different speeches were intended to convey the same idea, you are saying that these two passages had completely different meanings

No, actually they have very similar meanings, I don't know what you are imagining that I am saying.

Five times Himmler refers to this idea of "not allowing avengers to grow up."

In the speech of 6 October, in the December 1943 speech, in his notes for January of 1944, in the Sonthofen speech of 5 May, and in the Sonthofen speech of 24 May, always in the context of the solution to the Jewish question, and only once does he refer to "partisans and commissars."

"No avengers" is a generic policy applied to Jews in general, as evidenced by the fact that 4/5 times that Himmler employs this formulation he makes no reference of partisans or reprisals. Naturally it also includes the families of Jewish partisans and commissars.

I will say once more, partisans are not a "Volk." Himmler uses the word two-dozen times in the speech and every single time it refers to a race or a nation.

Lastly, the dilemma presented in the passage you are leaning on doesn't make sense if you assume he is admitting to an extermination policy. Himmler justifies killing women and children so the children don't grow up and take revenge... but if the plan was to exterminate them all then this would never have entered into the decision calculus.

What? Killing children to prevent avengers IS the extermination policy.

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