Today's Washington Post brings an update on the spat over the records housed at the International Tracing Service in Arolsen, Germany. The story first broke just over a month ago, when it was revealed that more than 20 countries were calling on Germany to open up access to the Arolsen archive to both historians and relatives.
The archive, administered since 1955 by the Federal Republic of Germany, contains records created by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) after 1945 through their efforts to trace and locate the countless displaced persons, refugees and concentration camps. Reputedly, over 17 million names are contained in these records.
So why are the Arolsen archives of interest to both historians of the Holocaust as well as to Holocaust deniers? For more, see below the fold.
The reason, it appears, for the obstinacy of both the ICRC and the German government lies in the strict privacy laws which govern access to German archives. If you've ever wondered why Christopher Browning and other leading historians have to write of Hans K. or invent pseudonyms for eyewitnesses, then it's because of German data protection law. This applies both to victims as well as perpetrators, with the result that unconvicted or acquitted SS men accused of war crimes in German courts cannot be named by historians, even though their identities can be freely established by resort to the SS personnel files available in the US National Archives.
From today's WaPo story, it would appear that the ITS is also lagging behind in its primary function, with an alleged backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases requiring identification. This hurts not only those seeking to establish the fate of missing relatives, but also might undermine the compensation cases brought by survivors under existing schemes. Yet it appears that the German government might fear an avalanche of new claims should the archives be opened.
But compensation is a second-order issue to the main controversy surrounding access to ITS files. This concerns access for historians. As historians already labour under incredibly tight restrictions on privacy in other German archives such as the former Zentrale Stelle für Landesjustizverwaltung in Ludwigsburg, which houses the records of West German war crimes investigations, there are already precedents for how privacy concerns can be managed. So far, because of German opposition, no agreement has been reached among the 11-nation oversight committee in charge of Arolsen concerning establishing even a working group of scholars to assess the value of the records for historians.
Among the research centres that have protested the lack of access to Arolsen include the University of Amsterdam and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The irony of the entire controversy is that many files from Arolsen have long been copied to other archives, including the US National Archives, and through then, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
So what do these existing collections contain? The 189 reels of microfilm at NARA alone contain records of some but not all German concentration camps, but more interestingly also an incomplete set of deportation lists from Berlin and several other German cities. They therefore help document the number of Jews transported to Auschwitz, including thousands of Berliners deported during the so-called Fabrikaktion of early 1943, about which Wolf Gruner has recently written at length.
Moreover, other Arolsen files have been copied to Yad Vashem Archives. It was in these files, for example, that Christian Gerlach found a copy of a 1945 report indicating the numbers of arrivals at Auschwitz during 1944 who were selected for work, thereby clarifying the fate of Jews deported during the Hungarian Action.
Thus, the ITS files offer cold comfort for Holocaust Deniers such as Ernst Zundel, who claims that the Arolsen materials prove a far lower death toll inside German concentration camps.
The value of the Arolsen archive to researchers does not lie in the opening-up of files relating to the main concentration camps, since most of these are already available for public access at NARA. Moreover, the detailed records for many camps like Majdanek and Neuengamme were destroyed, never to be recovered. Nor does Arolsen contain materials relating to the Aktion Reinhard camps. It cannot be ruled out that the Arolsen archive may also contain more documents related to the fate of Jewish deportees like the Glaser report mentioned above. But this is not the only material that Arolsen holds.
Rather, the ITS archives could also help to clarify the fates of literally millions of other deportees, especially non-Jewish forced labourers from Western and Eastern Europe, but also the victims of ethnic expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe after 1945. Arolsen is therefore of concern not just to historians of the Holocaust, but to historians of the Second World War and its aftermath as a whole. Research into the deportation of well over 7 million foreign workers to Germany, the postwar movements of Displaced Persons, repatriaton programs and the ethnic expulsions will all be immeasurably enriched by access to the ITS files.
In this sense, Holocaust deniers expose their lack of imagination and lack of humanity when they concentrate solely on the fate of European Jews, ignoring the fate of millions of non-Jews who also suffered because of Nazi policies of deportation. Nor do they seem as concerned with the fate of ethnic Germans expelled from east of the Iron Curtain. Perhaps, in this last case, because it is easier to spout superficially sourced figures than to do proper research.
Update: see a reply to AAARGH here.
I say it bitterly, but I wouldn't be surprised if the cause of German reluctance to open its archives would really be that they are afraid that new compensation claims would be made. They had to be dragged before US courts before they agreed to the current compensation package.
ReplyDeleteMore people able to prove they were hurt by the Third Reich?
ReplyDeleteMillions were hurt by the Allies and their bellicosity too. But that is okay. It was the Good War. Somebody has to take one for the team.
ReplyDeleteScott: there were numerous differences.
ReplyDelete1. The Allies were liberating the countries conquered by the Germans, not attacking those which were at peace. (With the exception of the USSR, that is).
2. The West Allies caused deaths which were collateral damage. This is in stark contrast with mass murders committed by Wehrmacht and other German troops. And yes, Russia should be held responsible for what it did in the countries it occupied.
3. The West Allies did not hunt civilian people for slave labour like the Germans did. And yes, Russia is guilty of this, too.
If you said "Why does not Russia pay?" I would say you're right in pointing out this assymetry, but wrong when claiming this means Germany should not pay (two wrongs do not make a right). But you claim that
a) all Allies did it -- absurd
b) that it was because of their "bellicosity" -- does the name Munich mean anything to you? and the only Allied country which could be held responsible for using slave labor, the USSR, was the least bellicose of all of them.
Roman said:
ReplyDelete<< 1. The Allies were liberating the countries conquered by the Germans, not attacking
those which were at peace. (With the exception of the USSR, that is). >>
No, the war would never have arisen if the Entente had not tried to restore the Versailles hegemony by denying German self-determination by severing chunks of territory with ethnic German populations in order to aggrandize states like Poland and Czecho-Slovakia, that were created strictly in order to suppress German influence and capability vis-a-vis the Entente. For example, German-Austria was forbidden by the Versailles treaty to join the Reich.
The Wilsonian principle of the self-determination of peoples only applied to minority populations in moribund Empires like the Austro-Hungarian, the Tsarist, and the Ottoman, and certainly not to the imperialism of the English monarchy, nor to French imperialism. And it always came out of German national expense when the fate of German populations were decided. Hitler didn't even want Germany's old overseas imperial colonies back.
The Entente resolved after buying some time at Munich for rearmament to make the issue of Danzig a de facto casus belli. The Entente had no right to keep Danzig from being German and to promote Polish hegemony. And they knew that Hitler could not ignore that Danzig was ethnically-German and wanted to be German. The British knew that any brinksmanship giving Poland a blank check on Versailles borders would either cause Germany to lose face or very likely serve as the pretext for finally renewing the world war to oust Hitler and restore Versailles hegemony.
Neutral countries were just Allied pawns as well because, as in WWI, economic warfare and blockade was extended to any neutral countries that might trade with Germany. The Allies also conspired to put air and naval bases into "neutral" countries in order to attack Germany. Why else did German documents carried by a Luftwaffe staff officer whose aircraft was forced down by weather in neutral Belgium in 1940 wind up in Entente hands? (This disclosure led to disaster for the Allies because Hitler adopted a different plan to invade France than the one proposed by his General Staff). And the German invasion of Norway was merely preemptive to the dallying British invasion already underway there.
Even neutral Spain and Portugal were forced to limit food and tungsten sales to Germany because of the threat from the Allied embargo of international trade for petroleum--diesel oil being vital to their fishing industry.
And considerable pressure was put by the Allies during the war to get Turkey to cease trading with Germany, but as Turkey feared Russia gaining control of the Bosphorus this was not successful until near the end of the war. The British also backed an anti-German coup in Yugoslavia in 1941 which would have extended the Allied encirclement and cutoff German trade with the Balkans, including essential Romanian oil and Turkish chromium.
The Allies backed various partisan movements which only put the people in these countries in the firing line and subject to reprisals. Churchill called his own state-terrorism "setting Europe ablaze."
And the Allies had no inhibitions about bombing neutral countries when convenient, such as Norway, or even former allies, such as France. But what can one expect from a regime that even bombed the French fleet, their former ally before the BEF quit the continent, just to keep them from surrendering to the Germans or acting neutrally?
Before Pearl Harbor, while supposedly a neutral, the American Navy was escorting British convoys and shooting on sight all German ships. And Lend-Lease, to arm the Allies at war with Germany, was nothing if not an act of war. This was supposed to be a military-economic loan, like lending a fire hose to your neighbor to put out a fire, as FDR avuncularly described it, but it was really an incitement since, as the Isolationist Senator Taft noted, "Lend-Lease is actually like chewing gum--you don't want it back."
If the situation had been reversed and America had been defeated by a hostile foreign alliance, made to adopt "War Guilt," and thus forced to accept open-ended reparations payments, which were either in gold or borrowed at compound-interest, and had a treaty dictated to us in which several American states like California and Texas and their American populations, now minorities, were given to Mexico or some combination of hostile states, precisely in order to weaken the influence and gross national product of the American nation, then one can only wonder why Germany did not go to war sooner than 1939 to redress this!
Albion has long felt that they have to balkanize the continent in order to cheaply control the trade routes of the globe with their Royal Navy. They wanted to keep Germany encircled and her markets open to predatory financial exploitation--but they wanted to do it on-the-cheap, which is why it took them so long to bullheadedly oppose Hitler.
<< 2. The West Allies caused deaths which were collateral damage. This is in stark contrast with mass murders committed by Wehrmacht and other German troops. And yes, Russia should be held responsible for what it did in the countries it occupied. >>
The West may have claimed this but it was a bald-faced lie. The RAF bombing policy was intended to do maximum damage to worker housing in order to lead to economic paralysis and regime-change by destroying the homes of workers. The Cherwell Plan (from Churchill's close science advisor, Frederick Lindemann) was declassified in the early-1960s and lays it right out.
Furthermore if the USAAF hitting targets like the Bahnhoff in the city center was not INTENDED to cause "collateral" damage, then they must have just been pretty poor shots. Collateral damage was and is a BONUS at the very least. It is complete nonsense to suggest otherwise.
How can you strafe all German trains and bomb the train stations and not expect to kill thousands of German civilian passengers? Even farmers pulling wagons were not spared because his potatoes went to feed the German people.
The U.S. Government falsely claimed that Hiroshima was a "military target" too. There might have been a Japanese soldier or two on leave, after all.
<< 3. The West Allies did not hunt civilian people for slave labour like the Germans did. And yes, Russia is guilty of this, too. >>
That's only because they did not have a labor shortage. The Americans merely brought under-employed Negroes from the South into the Northern armaments factories or built arsenals in the South. And they brought in Mexicans to work the California fruit and vegetable farms.
The British had the cheap labor and the entire markets of the globe as their oyster; most of their overseas colonies were not under Japanese control. Democracy-Capitalism thinks nothing of exploiting people with "market forces," as if coolies had any real bargaining power.
<< If you said "Why does not Russia pay?" I would say you're right in pointing out this assymetry, but wrong when claiming this means Germany should not pay (two wrongs do not make a right). But you claim that a) all Allies did it -- absurd >>
"Absurd" only because the Allies and their Court Historians have written the history unilaterally. The Germans are judged for fighting the war harshly but it doesn't count that their enemies fought harshly and for keeps too.
<< b) that it was because of their "bellicosity" -- does the name Munich mean anything to you? >>
Hitler had two goals at Munich, neither of which he thought would be met; thus he had planned to send the Entente packing and send the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe against Prague.
The first goal was reasonable, the second one less so, but both were necessary from the German point-of-view.
Hitler used their own Allied propaganda against them by asking for the return of territories with ethnic-German populations. Germany wanted the Sudetenland; the Sudetenland wanted to be free of Czech rule and join the Reich; what was the problem? Did this grandiose Wilsonian principle of the "self-determination of peoples" only apply to non-German populations and only at German expense?
Versailles hypocrisy was by then well-known and Hitler's intractability against Versailles was what brought the Nazis to power over the compromising bourgeois parties, and this legitimated his leadership.
From a rational point-of-view the Entente could not say NO to the annexation of the Sudetenland by the German Reich. But they had to make a stand somehow to save Versailles soon.
It was clear that Hitler was not bluffing. He would make short work of the Entente's Czecho-Slovakia satrapy if rebuffed. Even the Duce played peacemaker.
But the reason for giving the Sudetenland to Prague in the first place was to make them economically viable as an "independent" Allied catspaw against Germany in Eastern Europe--a principle called "balkanization," where all these hostile petty-nationalisms are controlled by London (or so they thought) for the one purpose of reliably giving Germany neighbor problems.
Czecho-Slovakia was given natural defensive mountain frontiers by controlling the Sudetenland, and Prague had thus built fortifications against Germany. But would not keep the Luftwaffe out, even if it might have slowed the Panzers some.
So Hitler's second essential goal, which went unasked for due to propaganda purposes since he didn't expect to get the first demand anyway, was to dismantle Prague's rule over Slovakia. And guess what--the Slovaks didn't want to be ruled by the Czechs either, not then and not now.
Chamberlain played it cool at Munich and gave Hitler exactly what he asked for but as little as possible of what he wanted. Chamberlain took a personal hit for the team by calling it "peace for our time" while his own Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax called it "Appeasement." This also elevated Churchill's status as the Germanophobe in the Cabinet and his eventual assumption to Prime Minister. Churchill was also taking personal bribes from Czech agents like Benes.
Rather than be appeased, Hitler knew perfectly well that he had been cheated and was furious. Therefore, he backed a Slovakian coup and moved on Prague himself.
The Entente then used this as the pretext to "guarantee" Polish borders in March, 1939 and to ultimately force the issue over the status of Danzig. Previously, Hitler had sought to make Poland an ally. Hitler understood that at stake was even more than the fate of Danzig, however, that the Entente had to renew the world war against Germany at some point in order to restore Versailles--and German fortunes faired better sooner rather than later when Allied rearmament and economic warfare would hopelessly overtake and strangle Germany, as it had in the last war.
<< and the only Allied country which could be held responsible for using slave labor, the USSR, was the least bellicose of all of them. >>
Least bellicose? Tell that to Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bessarabia, and arguably, Ukraine.
Hitler had to keep his Army guarding his Eastern borders against the Soviets instead of using it against England somewhere.
And in November, 1940 when Molotov demanded control of Romania and the Bosphorus to continue the Molotov-Ribbentrop partnership, which would have made Germany a client-state to the Soviet Union, Hitler understood correctly that Germany's only chance was a preemptive war waged against the Soviet Union as soon as possible. Even so, the German General Staff under-estimated the actual Soviet threat by at least half the number of tanks and aircraft available in 1941, more than all armies of the world put together. And heavy and medium Soviet tanks were far more formidable than the lightly-armed German Panzers, which were then built for movement.
No, the war would never have arisen if the Entente had not tried to restore the Versailles hegemony by denying German self-determination by severing chunks of territory with ethnic German populations in order to aggrandize states like Poland and Czecho-Slovakia, that were created strictly in order to suppress German influence and capability vis-a-vis the Entente. For example, German-Austria was forbidden by the Versailles treaty to join the Reich.
ReplyDeleteRead your history books more thoroughly, Scott. Poles were offered the independence for the first time during WW I in 1915 by... the Germans. So it's not as if they were then still clutching to the lands they've grabbed in the end of the XVIIIth century from the Polish Kingdom.
The reason why Poland reappeared on the map was pretty simple: Poles made a huge effort to gain statehood. Poland sacrificed 400,000 of its people to get the political clout necessary to become a sovereign country once more. Polish politicians Dmowski and Paderewski, from the opposite sides of the political spectrum, were frantically working in the end of the WW I to secure the recognition of the Polish state. Pilsudski at the same time was busy creating the Polish Army. Ditto Haller. Already before the war, lots of Poles were working in the underground nationalistic organizations (incl. at least two of my direct ancestors :D). Polish independence was not a gift from heaven, it was earned with sweat and blood and defended once more in 1920 from the Soviet Union with even more sweat and blood.
The Wilsonian principle of the self-determination of peoples only applied to minority populations in moribund Empires like the Austro-Hungarian, the Tsarist, and the Ottoman, and certainly not to the imperialism of the English monarchy, nor to French imperialism. And it always came out of German national expense when the fate of German populations were decided. Hitler didn't even want Germany's old overseas imperial colonies back.
1. Poles were not a minority but a majority on a rather wide stretch of land from Warta to Niemen.
2. Germany kept a large part of the lands which were disputed between it and the Poland.
3. "Old overseas imperial colonies" is an absurdity. The Germans started playing catch up in the colonialism business just when the old colonial empires began to crumble or think about shutting the business down.
The Entente had no right to keep Danzig from being German and to promote Polish hegemony. And they knew that Hitler could not ignore that Danzig was ethnically-German and wanted to be German.
And they didn't even try. You may check that in 1939, Danzig was basically run by NSDAP, hence it was de facto a part of Hitler's realm. Hitler could keep it that way or even formally include it in the Third Reich, do you think anyone would start a war about it? Get real.
Danzig was just a pretext for Hitler to grab Poland. Much like the border stage show the Germans made at Gliwice.
The only reason the Entente lost temper with Hitler was that he repeatedly broke promises he made before.
Even neutral Spain and Portugal were forced to limit food and tungsten sales to Germany because of the threat from the Allied embargo of international trade for petroleum--diesel oil being vital to their fishing industry.
And Lend-Lease, to arm the Allies at war with Germany, was nothing if not an act of war.
Neutral countries trading war supplies with Germany: good.
Neutral countries trading war supplies with Allies: bad.
Ah, I see.
The West may have claimed this but it was a bald-faced lie. The RAF bombing policy was intended to do maximum damage to worker housing in order to lead to economic paralysis and regime-change by destroying the homes of workers. The Cherwell Plan (from Churchill's close science advisor, Frederick Lindemann) was declassified in the early-1960s and lays it right out.
The Germans brought it upon themselves. As Thomas Mann said "I remember Coventry".
Not also that tactical bombing of cities was legal at the time (i.e. not a war crime). Moreover, most large German cities (incl. Dresden) contained factories producing war equipment which were legitimate targets par excellence. Also, they were defended -- which made them targets too. Add to it the limited precision of bombers at the time, and you get the blues.
Re Hiroshima: the goal was not to kill some soldiers. The goal was to do what had been done: to raze the whole city and shock the Japanese into surrender, saving millions of lives which would be lost during the land invasion of the Japanese mainland.
<< and the only Allied country which could be held responsible for using slave labor, the USSR, was the least bellicose of all of them. >>
Least bellicose? Tell that to Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bessarabia, and arguably, Ukraine.
Apart from Finland, all the rest was taking an opportunity. Stalin was not a risk-taker in foreign policy.
Compare it to Britain and France going to war over Poland. Who's more "bellicose" ?
The USSR had Ukraine long before WW II.
Churchill was also taking personal bribes from Czech agents like Benes.
Source, please.
But the reason for giving the Sudetenland to Prague in the first place was to make them economically viable as an "independent" Allied catspaw against Germany in Eastern Europe--a principle called "balkanization," where all these hostile petty-nationalisms are controlled by London (or so they thought) for the one purpose of reliably giving Germany neighbor problems.
Ah, so German nationalism: good. All the others are petty and hostile. Not like the noble blonde masters.
I see.
Thanks, Scott. It was funny but now I have something else to do. Cya.
Roman said:
ReplyDelete<< Read your history books more thoroughly, Scott. Poles were offered the independence for the first time during WW I in 1915 by... the Germans. So it's not as if they were then still clutching to the lands they've grabbed in the end of the XVIIIth century from the Polish Kingdom. >>
The Germans supported Polish nationalism against Tsarist imperialism during WWI, yes, but Poland did not want peace with Germany, and the Entente cultivated those ambitions against Germany.
<< 1. Poles were not a minority but a majority on a rather wide stretch of land from Warta to Niemen. >>
Nobody would have complained if borders had been determined by plebiscite universally instead of for balkanization at German expense.
<< 2. Germany kept a large part of the lands which were disputed between it and the Poland. >>
The Entente gave Poland a blank check guarantee, which means that border disputes could not be settled diplomatically.
<< 3. "Old overseas imperial colonies" is an absurdity. The Germans started playing catch up in the colonialism business just when the old colonial empires began to crumble or think about shutting the business down. >>
Hitler was not interested in the overseas colonies of the Kaiserreich stolen at Versailles. At best it was a bargaining chip to be conceded away in negotiation as Hitler ruthlessly dismantled Versailles.
Although bankrupted by two world wars, the British Empire was still the game until the mid-1950s, when the USA refused to back England against Egyptian rebellion.
<< And they didn't even try. You may check that in 1939, Danzig was basically run by NSDAP, hence it was de facto a part of Hitler's realm. Hitler could keep it that way or even formally include it in the Third Reich, do you think anyone would start a war about it? Get real. >>
LOL! Then they could have simply accepted Hitler's offer of peace in exchange for road and rail access between Pomeria, Danzig and East Prussia. Why the fuss?
This would have extended a German customs union and opened the port of Danzig without necessarily going through Gdynia or Polish/English middlemen. The "Free City" concept came at German expense and was an Entente tool just like any other imperial trade preferences.
<< Danzig was just a pretext for Hitler to grab Poland. Much like the border stage show the Germans made at Gliwice. >>
Hitler would have preferred cooperation with Poland and peace with England that was oriented against Soviet Communism, nor did he want anything from the French. But the Polish irredentists thought that in the event of war they would be in Berlin in a couple of weeks with Entente help--and oily British diplomats like Lord Halifax encouraged those delusions.
<< The only reason the Entente lost temper with Hitler was that he repeatedly broke promises he made before. >>
Hitler made one promise--and that was non-negotiable--which was to eradicate Versailles root and branch. If the bourgeois Entente politicians didn't get that, as their propaganda asserts even today, then they were idiots as well as fools.
<< Neutral countries trading war supplies with Germany: good. Neutral countries trading war supplies with Allies: bad.
Ah, I see. >>
Germany did not have a sufficient high-seas fleet to blockade England and limit trade by neutrals in either war. When she tried to blockade England with unrestricted submarine warfare in 1915 and again in 1917 the United States declared war to protect its massive investments as the Allies started to falter (Russia dropping out of the war completely). We couldn't let something like German U-boats come interfering with our erchants-of-death and the arms trade.
In WWII, American neutrality was merely a smokescreen from the start, as the U.S. Navy attacked German ships on sight and military and economic largesse for the Allies was given away (or Lend-Leased, in official Orwellian parlance). And after Pearl Harbor it was okay for the U.S. Navy to practice unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan, whether neutrals wanted to trade with them or not.
<< The Germans brought it upon themselves. As Thomas Mann said "I remember Coventry". >>
Mann was a traitorous German expatriate who conveniently forgets that England bombed the Ruhr and Berlin long before the Luftwaffe bombed Coventry. And the German target at Coventry was--you guessed it--the British bomber manufacturing industry. The Coventry attack caused severe collateral damage, being at night and using radio navigation, but only about 600 died IIRC, less than the RAF attack on Cologne, which used the cathedral itself as their aiming point.
<< Not also that tactical bombing of cities was legal at the time (i.e. not a war crime). Moreover, most large German cities (incl. Dresden) contained factories producing war equipment which were legitimate targets par excellence. Also, they were defended -- which made them targets too. Add to it the limited precision of bombers at the time, and you get the blues. >>
Then nobody should whine about the Luftwaffe bombing Warsaw, Rotterdam, Belgrade, Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad in direct support of German ground troops.
<< Re Hiroshima: the goal was not to kill some soldiers. >>
General LeMay said that every Japanese housewife had a drill press in her cottage, so that the American firebombing of Japanese cities was militarily necessary. Even the Wrigleys chewing gum factory could be considered a war-making factory by the logic of strategic bombardment and blockade.
<< The goal was to do what had been done: to raze the whole city and shock the Japanese into surrender, saving millions of lives which would be lost during the land invasion of the Japanese mainland. >>
Sure, the same could be said of Sherman's sacking of Georgia and South Carolina, as well as Japan's "Rape of Nanking."
<< Apart from Finland, all the rest was taking an opportunity. Stalin was not a risk-taker in foreign policy. >>
A non-risk taker who was willing to spend the lives of millions of his own soldiers and citizens to meet his goals, nonetheless. Stalin could have had peace with even Hitler but he overplayed his hand. Fortunately for him, nobody could have defeated the Americans and they were mildly pro-Soviet and perfunctorily Anglophile.
<< "Compare it to Britain and France going to war over Poland. Who's more "bellicose" ?
The USSR had Ukraine long before WW II. >>
Stalin considered Ukraine a suspect nationality in the Russian Empire just as Chechnya is today. He took preparatory steps long before the war of relocating industry east to the comparative safety of the Urals and practicing a ruthless and effective scorched-earth policy during the war. In the 1930s, Ukraine was squeezed to the point of famine so that the Soviet Union could export surplus grain in order to generate western foreign exchange necessary to finance industrialization and arms production with Western technology.
<< "Churchill was also taking personal bribes from Czech agents like Benes."
Source, please. >>
Irving covers this in his three-volume set on Churchill. Look not to Winston's hagiographers like Martin Gilbert.
<< Ah, so German nationalism: good. All the others are petty and hostile. Not like the noble blonde masters.
I see. >>
The scales are determined by what is needed for Entente interests exclusively. By the same token today, brutal and despotic regimes which Washington supports are "embracing Freedom and Democracy." And we believe in their democracy only as long as they vote the way that we want them to.
<< Thanks, Scott. It was funny but now I have something else to do. Cya. >>
Thanks as well. Blogs aren't very good for involved discussions, though. For that there is RODOH.
;-)
Jesus... so many Nazis in here trying to show how good and benign the western allies were and how evil the Soviet Union was and how the quase-pacifist Nazi-Fascist Germany was forced to attack the Soviet Union in self defense....
ReplyDeleteYup.. the whitewashing of Nazi crimes and of the deliberate western appeasel towards fascism is well under way, hand in hand with the demonization of the Reds, which were (and still are) the only ones that never coward out from the fight against fascism..
Scott used Irving's biography of Churchill as a source? It was described when Irving inflicted it on his publishers as "a bucketful of slime," which accepted any rumors, no matter how ridiculous, about Churchill as fact.
ReplyDeleteThe book painted him as an obese, drunken puppet of Jewish interests, and had no connection to reality besides that in Irving's mind...which is probably why the only place you can buy it is from Irving himself. Just shout out your request through the cell bars.
Having whitewashed Hitler, Irving moved on to sliming Churchill. At least he's consistent...sometimes.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAdolph Hitler, by John Toland and published by Doubleday in 1976; cites evidence provided by the actual records - diaries, conversation and meeting notes, etc. - directly from top Nazis and their assistants to document the rise and fall of the Third Reich, and is as objective and benign as any study of the Second World War one can find. However, all of you pseudo-intellectuals from both the quick-to-condemn wealthy Left, and the intolerant jingoist Right, may be surprised to find that there were numerous attempts by Hitler or his henchmen to end the war and avoid needless death and destruction both before the invasion of Poland and near the end of the War. The Allies rebiuffed all attempts, making clear statements that the War would not end until "the annihilation of Germany." Indeed, Hitler initially did not want to kill even one Jew - his early plan was to send them anywhere (Madagascar was mentioned) simply to rid his country of them. The post-war death camps managed by Eisenhower that needlessly killed hundreds of thousands of non-military Germans -- all documented by the Canadian and French Red Crosses -- along with the murderous sinking of the medical evacuation ship ship MV Wilhelm Gustloff, offer further evidence of the blatant disregard for human life by both the Western Allies and their Soviet friends.
ReplyDeleteMay I update Dr Terry's post on this impotant topic?
ReplyDeleteYour readers may not have apprehended the shocking news about the ‘release’ of what is now called the ITS (International Tracing Service) archives, which were originally the International Red Cross archives held at Bad-Arolsen. The one thing everybody wants to know from these archives, are the total numbers – of whatever they have got. And they have supressed all of these. The ITS data has now been sent to various different centres eg the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and the Weiner Library here in London, and we can look up and track down all sorts of individual cases using these. What one cannot do, is ascertain eg how many inmates were alive in the Dachau camp, or how many died, in any year or month or in total.
We know they have this data, because on three previous occasions they have given it out 1979,1984 and1993 (See my book Breaking the Spell, the Holocaust: Myth & Reality, Chapter 5 ‘One Hundred Times Less’ – which gives, if you want it, some real arithmetic) In the Auschwitz camp for example the total registered mortality figure was cited as 52,309, 53,633 and 60, 056 on these three occasions: showing the Arolsen database gradually growing, as we would expect.
Dr Terry could do something very useful by using his university headed notepaper to write and protest over this disgraceful cover-up. Furthermore, from glimpses of ITS pages which they have shown on their website in a tantalising manner, I surmise that they also have the total-inmate population broken down into the four basic groups, of Poles, Russians, Jews and Germans (political prisoners), which is how the daily coming-and-going data is presented in the British intelligence decrypts, Betchley park, now in the National Archives see eg here ).
The Weiner Library kindly allowed me access to this newly-released ITS database which is how I know this. The expert lady in charge of the database agreed with me that there was no way any total numbers of anything could be obtained from the data. Finally I tried to get info about the serial numbers given to prisoners in the camps, eg were they continuous, what did they to up to, etc, but even this was unobtainable. Could we perhaps agree that it is of equal interest to Revisionists as well as Holo-believers (you lot) to release this data?
www.BreakingTheSpell.co.uk
One thing I have noticed in all of these types of blogs is that there are 2 major categories of posters. The first, are the pro-holocaust types who usually tend to struggle with exonerating evidence on behalf of Germany. It is rare that these people will immerse themselves in objective history, instead gravitating towards the victors narrative of "allies fought the good war" and "Germany bad". Those who are well read still tend to cherry pick the parts of history that fit into their pre-determined view.
ReplyDeleteThe second type of people, and I am speaking in a rather general sense, are those who have been inundated for decades with the victors version of history. And I do mean inundated through schools, movies, print and electronic media, the talkshow circuit, internet and anywhere else they can utilise to get their version into the mainstream.
This 2nd group of people have carefully considered all they have been told and then gone looking for the other sides version (which hasn't been easy to find over the years). It is only in the last decade or so that Revisionists have used the internet to publish their information, thus enabling two sides of the story. As any Socratist will have to concede, you simply cannot make an informed decision with one half of the information.
Those who have at least read through objective history can clearly see that the powers that were on the European continent have subjugated Germany under the heel of mammon on many occasions through whatever means available. The triple entente was one such vehicle to be used for this purpose, only to be dealt the same harsh hand upon completion of its use-by date. That is, undermining French, English and Russian culture, destruction of their organic virtues, massive 3rd world immigration....the list goes on and on.
This is how the uber-criminals thank those who have supposedly helped them throughout history. The USA is learning this valuable lesson as we speak.
The USA, in its Weimer-esque death rattles, will end up as a balkanised, skeleton of its former founding fathers vision. Unfortunately the lessons of history were not heeded by those who are / were blinded by their avaricious ways at the expense of their long term existence.
In order to be objective, all evidence must be considered. The obvious lies and mistruths (of which there are many unfortunately), must be buried forever. The swathes of anti-Germanic hatred must also be ignored so that facts can rise to the surface without the pre-determined influence of "Delenda Deutschland" ringing in the ears of those who choose to listen to the victors side.
Furthermore, it is quite easy to swim with the tide on these matters. One of the most difficult acts for any human is to oppose their fellow man on contentious, existential issues like WWII and its after-effects. Standing strong for your beliefs in the face of adversity is one of the highest acts of virtue and shows a level of courage far above the average man. Not many can make it to this level without being cut down by numerical superiority or threats against themselves or their families.
I will finish by repeating a famous saying: "There are three things that cannot be hidden, the sun, the moon and the truth".