tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post2526262335050461669..comments2024-03-17T20:28:40.281+00:00Comments on Holocaust Controversies: Bloodlands, by Timothy SnyderNicholas Terryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14852758011968360596noreply@blogger.comBlogger70125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-83932405458299159142011-05-12T08:42:21.720+01:002011-05-12T08:42:21.720+01:00What is that urge to say this is fake??
to stand ...What is that urge to say this is fake??<br /><br />to stand out and be different? to what price? to what price should you hurt othr people just to have it make up for the times your dad did not show you enough attention?<br /><br />Cause let me tell you THATS what this is. People like DAVID, who try so hard to not believe this or deny it. <br /><br />you don't wanna believe the picture? good, you shouldn't. WHY DON"T YOU READ A FCKIN BOOK THOUGH??? see how many JEWS we're murdered. Read a historiocal book are you gonna deny all the witnesses, historical books written, physical evidence found? and for what to stand out different? All these pictures doubled, times ten would not resemble the number of people MOSTLY JEWS, murdered by the Nazi genocide strategies.zhigeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09492942881028924358noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-40690308819774147512011-03-18T06:03:54.279+00:002011-03-18T06:03:54.279+00:00A great novel for sure, really enjoyed reading as ...A great novel for sure, really enjoyed reading as to what ever is shared in the post a lot... Well done... Keep posting stuff like this....electroniccigarettehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14450204631061308888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-89517075275977769362010-12-07T12:20:49.593+00:002010-12-07T12:20:49.593+00:00Fire away.Fire away.Roberto Muehlenkamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03608133715777146924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-2732727701819749562010-12-06T22:18:45.450+00:002010-12-06T22:18:45.450+00:00i am too late for this conversation should i start...i am too late for this conversation should i start here?<br /><br />- John Devis<br /><a href="http://free-magentoextensions.com/magento-themes.html" title="Magento Theme" rel="nofollow">Magento Themes</a>Jhon Davishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14032506731847867155noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-68317934043660959922010-11-26T22:15:36.489+00:002010-11-26T22:15:36.489+00:00@ Sam, you made these comments powerfull then actu...@ Sam, you made these comments powerfull then actual post. thank you! <br /><br />- Tanya<br /><a href="http://www.unitedsol.net" title="Web Design Firm" rel="nofollow">Web Design Firm</a>taniahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10360272528264257557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-58285564350338192822010-11-18T22:47:07.739+00:002010-11-18T22:47:07.739+00:00"Ruthlessness is not the same thing as effici...<i>"Ruthlessness is not the same thing as efficiency, and German planning was too bloodthirsty to be really practical"<br />(Snyder page 166)<br /><br />I think Snyder means here that the Germans (not the Nazis, "the Germans" as most of the time) decided on war moves, or policy in general, usually based on how many people they can kill here or starve there, and not on trying to win the war, survive the blockade, etc.</i> <br /><br />I think he just means that the starvation plan - which was not only a colonial depopulation program but also (and, as long as Germany was at war, mainly) a means to obtain foodstuffs from the Soviet Union in order to improve Germany's chances of winning the war - was too ambitious to be implemented in practice with the means at hand. <br /><br /><i>I also like that at a later chapter he practically blames the mass rapes of German women by Soviet troops on Hitler's refusal to evacuate his people from homes where they lived for 100s of years. But I let you find where that is.</i> <br /><br />I'll probably find this interpretation as far-fetched as your other interpretations. <br /><br /><i>He hit the nail on the head, on both counts above.<br /><br />take care my friend</i><br /><br />You too. Despite the differences (or because of them) it was nice talking to you.Roberto Muehlenkamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03608133715777146924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-79831253898183340972010-11-18T21:27:56.854+00:002010-11-18T21:27:56.854+00:00"Ruthlessness is not the same thing as effici..."Ruthlessness is not the same thing as efficiency, and German planning was too bloodthirsty to be really practical"<br />(Snyder page 166)<br /><br />I think Snyder means here that the Germans (not the Nazis, "the Germans" as most of the time) decided on war moves, or policy in general, usually based on how many people they can kill here or starve there, and not on trying to win the war, survive the blockade, etc.<br /><br />I also like that at a later chapter he practically blames the mass rapes of German women by Soviet troops on Hitler's refusal to evacuate his people from homes where they lived for 100s of years. But I let you find where that is.<br /><br />He hit the nail on the head, on both counts above.<br /><br />take care my friendUnknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847299656773502198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-56011635522267982412010-11-18T17:17:40.300+00:002010-11-18T17:17:40.300+00:00.. call me whatever names you want, I just have a ...<i>.. call me whatever names you want, I just have a hard time believing that the Germans eradicated whole villages because Polish women were giving milk to Russian POWs. If Snyder claimed a half a dozen other reasons for the destruction of those villages that would have been another story, even as part of his 80-85% elimination of Poles it would sound more plausible.</i> <br /><br />Many things happened that you or I may have "a hard time believing", so that's hardly a relevant argument. All that matters is the evidence. As to the projected elimination of much or most of the Polish population by expulsion to Siberia, Snyder's claim is supported by what becomes apparent from Wetzel's commentary to the <i>Generalplan Ost</i>. Plausibility considerations are a feeble argument against documentary evidence. <br /><br /><i>The "bloodthirsty" comes from Snyder's book.</i><br /><br />Page and context? <br /><br /><i>And yes, there are some lunatics like me around, that try to figure out if that war, god forbid, could have been avoided so tens of millions (incl. 5-6 m Jews) would have survived, and half of Europe didn't end up in Stalin's hands, Europe devastated, cold war, etc Not just as an alternative history (ie if we never let Hitler come to power, appeased him etc) but, perhaps, to understand why a next, even more devastating war may happen.</i> <br /><br />Most of those tens of millions (including most of the 5 to 6 million Jews) died in the course or context of Hitler's war against the Soviet Union. With an eastern colonial empire being the most important of Hitler's projects and anti-Bolshevism plus anti-Semitism at the core of his ideology, it's rather unlikely that World War II in Europe (or at least the deadliest part of it, the Nazi-Soviet conflict) could have been avoided. Fortunately a next, even more devastating war is just as unlikely.Roberto Muehlenkamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03608133715777146924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-11202083143456571822010-11-18T17:04:54.272+00:002010-11-18T17:04:54.272+00:00The whole subject is getting more interesting than...<i>The whole subject is getting more interesting than I thought, but I if you want me to stop talking "trash" we can end it.</i><br /><br />I'll leave that up to you. <br /><br /><i>Snyder tells us that it was in Sept that Germans were instructed to live off the land. Beevor it seems mentions May.</i> <br /><br />Beevor mentions the directive dated 23 May, 1941, which few officers knew about. Orders to the troops to live off the land, based on that directive, were issued at a later stage. Such orders are expressly mentioned by Beevor. <br /><br /><i>Also, from Beevor's passage why "few officers" saw it. isn't t suppose to be an order?</i><br /><br />Few officers saw the directive on the basis of which the orders to live off the land were issued. The orders themselves, which Beevor also mentions, must have been widely known. <br /><br /><i>Beevor's passage about killing Jews, partisans, etc I don't think it's related, at least directly, to the treatment of POW's.</i> <br /><br />No, but I also quoted a passage that is only about the treatment of POW's. <br /><br /><i>There is also other type of passages in Beevor that indicate somewhat different things or at least confuse the issue. But please allow me a couple of days to put that together, again if you care.</i> <br /><br />I don't, but I'll leave it up to you if you want to continue. <br /><br /><i>As far as Stalin's dismissal of the impending attack, I believe Snyder has a better argument, that the Germans did not provision for a winter campaign and Stalin couldn't believe that that was possible (it's part of Surorov's thesis), but that could also be one of my stupid opinions.</i> <br /><br />Suvorov's claims may be stupid, but it's not improbable that absence of preparation for a winter campaign supported Stalin's belief that no German attack was imminent and warnings to the contrary were a British provocation. <br /><br /><i>Not long ago, I saw at some bookstore a compilation, published by the NYTimes, something like "100 years of NYT front pages", (a rather tall and wide book as you can imagine). One of the headlines, a couple of months before the war, was something like this "Hopes For Peace, Herr Hitler agrees to take Danzig only [and not the corridor], as long as there is a road connecting Germany with Danzig". (I assume something like West Berlin connecting with a roadway to West Germany. )<br />Apparently, that proposal must have been turned down.</i> <br /><br />That must have been because Hitler had lost all credibility by solemnly stating at Munich that he had no further territorial claims in Europe after the Sudetenland and taking over the whole of Czechoslovakia half a year later. <br /><br /><i>Anyways, let's stick to Snyder's thesis,ie the POW extermination, etc<br />Or maybe we should stop, it doesn't seem that you care much for what I have to say.</i> <br /><br />Now you hit the nail on the head.Roberto Muehlenkamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03608133715777146924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-5224985249921381452010-11-18T16:28:26.423+00:002010-11-18T16:28:26.423+00:00.. call me whatever names you want, I just have a ..... call me whatever names you want, I just have a hard time believing that the Germans eradicated whole villages because Polish women were giving milk to Russian POWs. If Snyder claimed a half a dozen other reasons for the destruction of those villages that would have been another story, even as part of his 80-85% elimination of Poles it would sound more plausible.<br /><br />The "bloodthirsty" comes from Snyder's book.<br /><br />And yes, there are some lunatics like me around, that try to figure out if that war, god forbid, could have been avoided so tens of millions (incl. 5-6 m Jews) would have survived, and half of Europe didn't end up in Stalin's hands, Europe devastated, cold war, etc Not just as an alternative history (ie if we never let Hitler come to power, appeased him etc) but, perhaps, to understand why a next, even more devastating war may happen.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847299656773502198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-74251374228846254692010-11-18T14:46:53.732+00:002010-11-18T14:46:53.732+00:00The whole subject is getting more interesting than...The whole subject is getting more interesting than I thought, but I if you want me to stop talking "trash" we can end it.<br /><br />Snyder tells us that it was in Sept that Germans were instructed to live off the land. Beevor it seems mentions May. Also, from Beevor's passage why "few officers" saw it. isn't t suppose to be an order?<br /><br />Beevor's passage about killing Jews, partisans, etc I don't think it's related, at least directly, to the treatment of POW's.<br /><br />There is also other type of passages in Beevor that indicate somewhat different things or at least confuse the issue. But please allow me a couple of days to put that together, again if you care.<br /><br />As far as Stalin's dismissal of the impending attack, I believe Snyder has a better argument, that the Germans did not provision for a winter campaign and Stalin couldn't believe that that was possible (it's part of Surorov's thesis), but that could also be one of my stupid opinions.<br /><br />Not long ago, I saw at some bookstore a compilation, published by the NYTimes, something like "100 years of NYT front pages", (a rather tall and wide book as you can imagine). One of the headlines, a couple of months before the war, was something like this "Hopes For Peace, Herr Hitler agrees to take Danzig only [and not the corridor], as long as there is a road connecting Germany with Danzig". (I assume something like West Berlin connecting with a roadway to West Germany. )<br />Apparently, that proposal must have been turned down.<br /><br />Anyways, let's stick to Snyder's thesis,ie the POW extermination, etc<br />Or maybe we should stop, it doesn't seem that you care much for what I have to say.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847299656773502198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-33757545756800949762010-11-18T00:10:36.245+00:002010-11-18T00:10:36.245+00:00Pp. 44/45
«German troops, most of them, no doubt,...Pp. 44/45 <br /><i>«German troops, most of them, no doubt, having fathers and sons at home, indulged in a sort of sick war tourism in Russia. An order had to be circulated which forbade the 'photographing of executions of [German] deserters', events which had greatly increased with the sudden decline in morale. And executions of partisans and Jews in the Ukraine – to judge from the audience shown in the pictures – attracted an even greater throng of amateur photographs in Wehrmacht uniforms.»</i> <br /><br />P. 55<br /><i>«The behaviour of many soldiers in Army Group Sout was particularly gruesome. Reichenau's Sixth Army headquarters issued the following order on 19 August 1941: 'In various places within the army's area of responsibility, organs of the SD, of the Reichsführer's SS and chiefs of the German police have been carrying out necessary executions of criminal, Bolshevik and mostly Jewish elements. There have been cases of off-duty soldiers volunteering to help the SD with their executions, or acting as spectators and taking photographs.' It was now forbidden for any soldiers, 'who have not been ordered by a superior officer', to take part in, to watch or to photograph any of these executions. Later, General von Manstein’s chief of staff passed the message to the Offizierskorps of the Eleventh Army in the Crimea that it was 'dishonourable for officers to be present at the execution of Jews'. German military logic, in another of its distortions of cause and effect, does not appear to have acknowledged the possibility that officers had already shamed themselves by furthering the aims of a regime capable of such crimes.»</i> <br /><br />P. 58<br /><i>«The terrible truth, which very few officers could bear to recognize, was that the army’s tolerance or support for the Nazi doctrine of a 'race war' on the eastern front, exempt from normal military and international law, was bound to turn it into a semi-criminal organization. The failure of generals to protest demonstrated a total lack of moral sensibility, or of moral courage. Physical courage was unnecessary. The Nazis, in the earlier stages of the Russian campaign, would not have dared to do anything worse to a senior officer who objected than remove him from his command.»</i><br /><br />P. 59 <br /><i>«For those who reached prisoner-of-war camps alive, the chance of survival turned out to be not much better than one in three. Altogether, over three million Red Army soldiers out of 5.7 million died in German camps from disease, exposure, starvation and ill-treatment. The German Army itself, not the SS nor any other Nazi organization, was responsible for prisoners of war. Its attitude was reminiscent of Kaiser Wilhelm’s remark in 1914 that the 90,000 Russians captured at Tannenberg 'should be left to starve'.»</i> <br /><br />Sounds very much like Snyder, doesn't it? <br /><br />Please forgive me if I don't see much of a difference between Beevor's assessment of Nazi Germany's criminal policies and Snyder's. Maybe my friend failed to notice the above-quoted passages when enthusiastically reading Beevor. Or maybe he considers them to be about the "brutality of war" because they are from Beevor. I'm sure that if Snyder had written the same he would be castigated for expounding a <i>"bloodthirsty Germans" thesis</i>. <br /><br /><i>(ps at times you are a little too quick with insults, it's ok I am getting used to it by now)</i><br /><br />That's good, because the trash you talk is bound to keep them coming.Roberto Muehlenkamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03608133715777146924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-42326268150424849392010-11-18T00:08:11.924+00:002010-11-18T00:08:11.924+00:00And here's some more Beevor for my friend, quo...And here's some more Beevor for my friend, quoted from the Penguin paperback edition of <i>Stalingrad</i>: <br /><br />Pp. 15/16: <br /><br /><i>«What is particularly hard to assess in retrospect is the degree of initial ignorance at regimental level about the true programme, in which perhaps the cruellest weapon of all was to be starvation. Few officers saw the directive of 23 May, which called for the German armies in the east to expropriate whatever they needed, and also to send at least seven million tons of grain a year back to Germany, yet it should not have been hard to guess the basic outline, with the orders to live off the land. Nazi leaders had no illusions about the consequences for civilians deprived of Ukraine’s resources. 'Many tens of millions will starve,' predicted Martin Bormann. Goering bragged that the population would have to eat Cossack saddles.»</i><br /><br />That's Beevor on the Nazi Hunger Plan, 11 years before Snyder.Roberto Muehlenkamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03608133715777146924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-52168430612991278172010-11-18T00:07:16.538+00:002010-11-18T00:07:16.538+00:00the more I read the passage from Beevor the more r...<i>the more I read the passage from Beevor the more real it sounds: the brutality of war. And here are some "senior officers" complaining about their soldier's actions (contrary to Snyder's "bloodthirsty Germans" thesis). Same repulsions that American or British officers felt I am sure in instances in Normandy, Germany, vietnam, Iraq etc</i><br /><br />Apparently my friend didn't read the last sentence of the quoted paragraph carefully enough, otherwise he would have realized that those senior officers were complaining not about their troops' brutality but about the troops not being properly dressed: <br /><br /><i>Senior officers complained that their soldiers looked like Russian peasants, but <b>no sympathy was spared for the victims robbed of their only hope of survival in such conditions</b>. A bullet might have been less cruel.</i><br /><br />Emphasis added.Roberto Muehlenkamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03608133715777146924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-84312867959680036252010-11-17T23:58:22.180+00:002010-11-17T23:58:22.180+00:00Actually yes, this last story you mention DOES sou...<i>Actually yes, this last story you mention DOES sound to me much more real than the Germans erasing whole villages because women gave milk to POWs, or the horse guy.<br />(As far as the woman with the sickle, ... forget that)<br /><br />I lived in Europe for a while and heard stories of heroic resistance, German barbarism, even erasing of villages, and most of the time it turned out not only that they didn't happen but the Germans had never even been there, or the people who told them they were too young to fight or even to remember, and the villages looked as old as medieval castles.<br /><br />It's a personal feel, anyways with these stories.</i><br /><br />My friend still hasn't understood that his "personal feel" doesn't matter a thing. One wonders what "stories" he is talking about, and by what evidence or other criteria he determined "not only that they didn't happen but the Germans had never even been there". It must have been his "personal feel". <br /><br /><i>You keep asking me about books my source books, sorry I m not as organized as you. I read many books over the years, sometimes only chapters of interest ie the month before the war and the Danzig situation, perhaps because of some weird perversion in my part to see if that war could have been avoided.</i><br /><br />Not with Adolf's objectives, which Adolf himself knew could only be achieved by force. It might at most have been postponed if the Poles had also bowed to Adolf's pretensions, starting with the "reasonable" quest for Danzig as an appetizer. <br /><br /><i>btw, I really like "war of the world". Except Ferguson kind o lost me when he claims that Stalin was still disbelieving, even though he was told from dozens of sources about the pending invasion, because he trusted Hitler. It's a little hard to believe that the paranoid about everything dictator would trust that much a man he never met and, in many ways, a mortal enemy.</i> <br /><br />My friend can’t help dishing up the irrelevant "hard to believe" argument. Actually Stalin's failure to heed warnings of a German attack goes down well with his paranoia, in that he considered these warnings a British attempt to drag the Soviet Union into the war. Additionally there was probably a refusal to admit to himself that his policy of waiting out the war and be strong at the end of it had been a disastrous failure.Roberto Muehlenkamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03608133715777146924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-75267374393422218392010-11-17T22:31:00.142+00:002010-11-17T22:31:00.142+00:00the more I read the passage from Beevor the more r...the more I read the passage from Beevor the more real it sounds: the brutality of war. And here are some "senior officers" complaining about their soldier's actions (contrary to Snyder's "bloodthirsty Germans" thesis). Same repulsions that American or British officers felt I am sure in instances in Normandy, Germany, vietnam, Iraq etc<br /><br />(ps at times you are a little too quick with insults, it's ok I am getting used to it by now)Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847299656773502198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-82122666761842039622010-11-17T21:06:35.081+00:002010-11-17T21:06:35.081+00:00Actually yes, this last story you mention DOES sou...Actually yes, this last story you mention DOES sound to me much more real than the Germans erasing whole villages because women gave milk to POWs, or the horse guy.<br />(As far as the woman with the sickle, ... forget that)<br /><br />I lived in Europe for a while and heard stories of heroic resistance, German barbarism, even erasing of villages, and most of the time it turned out not only that they didn't happen but the Germans had never even been there, or the people who told them they were too young to fight or even to remember, and the villages looked as old as medieval castles.<br /><br />It's a personal feel, anyways with these stories.<br /><br />You keep asking me about books my source books, sorry I m not as organized as you. I read many books over the years, sometimes only chapters of interest ie the month before the war and the Danzig situation, perhaps because of some weird perversion in my part to see if that war could have been avoided.<br /><br />btw, I really like "war of the world". Except Ferguson kind o lost me when he claims that Stalin was still disbelieving, even though he was told from dozens of sources about the pending invasion, because he trusted Hitler. It's a little hard to believe that the paranoid about everything dictator would trust that much a man he never met and, in many ways, a mortal enemy.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847299656773502198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-82451601934956408702010-11-17T16:58:42.768+00:002010-11-17T16:58:42.768+00:00If a deliberately extermination plan with the Sovi...<i>If a deliberately extermination plan with the Soviet POW's was at works Snyder doesn't explain how the almost other half survived in German captivity</i><br /><br />The other half survived because at a certain time the Nazis realized that they needed them as a labor force and couldn't afford to just let them die of starvation and exposure. If Snyder doesn't mention this (though I think he does), his colleagues Streit and Gerlach do. <br /><br /><i>He also doesn't say much to what happened to the German POW's, isn't part of his 'bloodlands' thesis? Somewhere at a later chapter he mentions, I believe, almost 400,000 dead, but no explanations that I saw on how how they died, etc. ( I like how he gives exact % s , not approximations of the POW dead, on both sides, who knows maybe everything was catalogued)</i> <br /><br />German POWs in Soviet hands were treated differently by the Soviet government than Soviet POWs in German hands were treated by the Nazi government. The Soviet government tried to keep these POWs alive as a labor force, though not always efficiently due to a number of factors including administrative corruption and incompetence. And that although it was much more difficult for the Soviets to feed POWs at a time when they could barely feed their own population, a situation the Germans never faced. For details see <a href="http://rodohforum.yuku.com/reply/38411/t/The-Fate-of-Soviet-Prisoners-of-War.html#reply-38411" rel="nofollow">my translation of Christian Streit's article about German and Soviet prisoners of war</a>. <br /><br /><i>No little anecdotes either like the ones he gives about the other side like erasing whole Polish villages because Polish women were giving milk to the Soviet POW's [is Snyder serious?] or a German commander riding his horse and trumping to death POWs [did the commander kept trumping the people with his horse until they were dead? I can just picture it] Or the skeletal women in Leningrad about to mercy kill her daughter with a sickle [as a parent I seriously doubt that's how someone would end their child's life]<br />But who knows maybe those kind of stories happened.</i> <br /><br />They certainly didn't fail to happen just because some bar-room wise guy (who with his belly full and fat thinks he knows how he "as a parent" would behave if he were in the process of starving to death and seeing his children in the same situation) professes his irrelevant personal incredulity. <br />If the evidence is solid, there's no reason to doubt that these events occurred. <br /><br /><i>Anyways I ll get back to you with specific passages from Snyder and Beevor.<br /><br />Even the small stories that Beevor recounts feel so much more real, pain, agony, joy, etc on all sides, you feel that you are there.</i> <br /><br />Like this one from page 45 of <i>Stalingrad</i>, right? <br /><br /><i>«A German officer described how shocked he and his soldiers had been when Russian civilians had cheerfully stripped the corpses of their fellow countrymen. Yet German soldiers were taking clothes and boots from living civilians for themselves, then forcing them out into the freezing wastes, in most cases to die of cold and starvation. Senior officers complained that their soldiers looked like Russian peasants, but no sympathy was spared for the victims robbed of their only hope of survival in such conditions. A bullet might have been less cruel.»</i>Roberto Muehlenkamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03608133715777146924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-12060283861491210372010-11-17T16:53:42.293+00:002010-11-17T16:53:42.293+00:00and Churchill also said publicly that the German p...<i>and Churchill also said publicly that the German people should be sterilized so in 2-3 generations there wouldn't be any Germans left (Ferguson tells us that he was joking)</i><br /><br />Obviously so, as no steps in that direction (let alone any that would compare to the Nazis' starvation of Soviet POWs and Leningrad citizens vis-a-vis the Nazi starvation plan) seem to have been taken. A politician's public statements may be dismissed as mere rhetoric. Not so insider planning not meant for the public eye, or private statements revealing a head of state's personal expectations (like what Göring told Ciano). <br /><br />What publication of Ferguson's is this Churchill statement mentioned in, by the way? <br /><br /><i>And Roosevelt replied to a comment that many Germans will die during their expulsions with "so?"</i> <br /><br />And so? Nobody is arguing that the Western Allies were up to higher moral standards. But it's one thing to be callous about deaths in the course of expelling an ethnic group from war-torn countries in which it had become unwanted by siding with an aggressor, and another to plan the ruthless exploitation of a country to be attacked and conquered at the expected cost of tens of millions of starvation deaths among that country's population. <br /><br />Where can I look up Roosevelt's reply or a reference thereto, by the way? <br /><br /><i>and an American commander said when asked what will happen to the Japanese-Americans, that they ll be send to the camps till they disappear from the face of the earth.</i> <br /><br />That idiot's blather, if accurately rendered (what's the source?) doesn't seem to have reflected government policy, as mortality among interned Japanese-Americans wasn't high IIRC. <br /><br /><i>Why would the Germans, according to the Snyder's thesis (as in the Hunger Plan), wait for people to starve and leave, why not just kill them?</i> <br /><br />Starving people to death is a way of killing them, if you ask me. Is the killing of tens of millions by shooting, gassing or other direct methods supposed to be easier or more advantageous under all aspects than starvation or expulsion, or where is this imbecilic question supposed to lead us? <br /><br />The question is also irrelevant given the documentary evidence. For the expectation that tens of millions of people in the Soviet Union's food deficit regions would starve to death or have to emigrate to Siberia is not "Snyder's thesis", but something that is expressly stated in contemporary high-level German documents - which, by the way, reflect a stage of policy that preceded the Nazi extermination camps.Roberto Muehlenkamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03608133715777146924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-38915773377176438482010-11-17T14:54:49.435+00:002010-11-17T14:54:49.435+00:00and Churchill also said publicly that the German p...and Churchill also said publicly that the German people should be sterilized so in 2-3 generations there wouldn't be any Germans left (Ferguson tells us that he was joking)<br /><br />And Roosevelt replied to a comment that many Germans will die during their expulsions with "so?"<br /><br />and an American commander said when asked what will happen to the Japanese-Americans, that they ll be send to the camps till they disappear from the face of the earth.<br /><br />Why would the Germans, according to the Snyder's thesis (as in the Hunger Plan), wait for people to starve and leave, why not just kill them? <br /><br />If a deliberately extermination plan with the Soviet POW's was at works Snyder doesn't explain how the almost other half survived in German captivity<br /><br />He also doesn't say much to what happened to the German POW's, isn't part of his 'bloodlands' thesis? Somewhere at a later chapter he mentions, I believe, almost 400,000 dead, but no explanations that I saw on how how they died, etc. ( I like how he gives exact % s , not approximations of the POW dead, on both sides, who knows maybe everything was catalogued)<br /><br />No little anecdotes either like the ones he gives about the other side like erasing whole Polish villages because Polish women were giving milk to the Soviet POW's [is Snyder serious?] or a German commander riding his horse and trumping to death POWs [did the commander kept trumping the people with his horse until they were dead? I can just picture it] Or the skeletal women in Leningrad about to mercy kill her daughter with a sickle [as a parent I seriously doubt that's how someone would end their child's life]<br />But who knows maybe those kind of stories happened<br /><br />Anyways I ll get back to you with specific passages from Snyder and Beevor. <br /><br />Even the small stories that Beevor recounts feel so much more real, pain, agony, joy, etc on all sides, you feel that you are there.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847299656773502198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-78451712120534660782010-11-17T11:29:25.020+00:002010-11-17T11:29:25.020+00:00On page xvii Snyder says that if the German war ag...<i>On page xvii Snyder says that if the German war against the USSR has gone as planned, 30 million would have been starved [by the Germans] in the first winter, 10s of millions more ...<br /><br />So if the Germans won in 12 weeks as planned, Snyder says there would have been tens of millions more dead in the first winter than with a brutal war going on, scorched earth, poisoning of wells, no homes for people, diseases spreading faster with concentrations of people in armies and POW camps, etc<br /><br />Either I am naive or Snyder is hallucinating.</i><br /><br />If the Nazis had won the war as predicted, they would have had three million troops available to completely seal off Soviet cities and other food-deficit areas, more completely than they had sealed off Leningrad (where the whole population would have starved in the winter of 1941/42 if the Soviets had not managed to keep open the Ladoga ice road) and without facing any military resistance. They could have repeated Stalin's Ukrainian famine of 1932/33 on a much larger scale. People are easiest to kill, by hunger or otherwise, when they are no longer able to resist. <br /><br />Göring, incidentally, told the Italian foreign minister Count Ciano in November 1941 that within a year 20 to 30 million people would starve to death in Russia. He added that maybe this was a good thing, for certain peoples needed to be reduced (Gerlach, <i>Kalkulierte Morde</i>, pages 51 and following, transcribed and translated <a href="http://rodohforum.yuku.com/reply/38501/t/The-Nazi-Hunger-Plan-for-Occupied-Soviet-Territories.html#reply-38501" rel="nofollow">here</a>).Roberto Muehlenkamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03608133715777146924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-3696723066987652952010-11-17T11:14:41.321+00:002010-11-17T11:14:41.321+00:00A) Russian POW's:
Despite some fleeting refer...<i>A) Russian POW's:<br /><br />Despite some fleeting references Snyder makes to war situations, I take his thesis to be clear and unmistakable: 3 plus million Soviet POW's died, not because of war realities (German advance, food shortages, weather, etc), not even because of some criminal negligence or utter disregard for human life, or a combination of the above, BUT because the Germans wanted to kill them either though starvation or shootings.<br /><br />I can show passages from his book and also compare it to Beevor's but it will take me a little more time.</i><br /><br />Do that, please. I'd like to see what passages of Snyder's book exactly you base your conclusions on, and from what passages of Beevor's book exactly you derive a different assessment. <br /><br />As concerns the Soviet POWs captured in 1941, homicidal intent was demonstrated by Gerlach long before Snyder, see the excerpts from Gerlach's writings in the RODOH thread <a href="http://rodohforum.yuku.com/reply/38407/t/The-Fate-of-Soviet-Prisoners-of-War.html#reply-38407" rel="nofollow">The Fate of Soviet Prisoners of War</a>. Food shortages in the occupied Soviet territories (from which alone Soviet POWs were allowed to be fed, as the last in chain of priorities after the German armed forces, the German home front and the Soviet civilian population, and from a certain time on only if they were able to work) were mostly caused by German exploitation, and even where there were none (like in Ukraine after the 1941 harvest) the civilian population was mostly not allowed to feed the POWs despite its willingness to do so. The weather kills if no provisions are made to protect POWs against it, and most German commandants of POW camps didn't even try. Christian Streit's refutes these and other apologetic claims in his book <i>Keine Kameraden</i> and also addresses them in his article <i>Deutsche und sowjetische Kriegsgefangene</i>, which I translated <a href="http://rodohforum.yuku.com/reply/38411/t/The-Fate-of-Soviet-Prisoners-of-War.html#reply-38411" rel="nofollow">here</a>. <br /><br />As concerns the Soviet POWs who perished after the spring of 1942, you may attribute their deaths to criminal negligence and utter disregard for human life, which is also what Snyder does if I understood him correctly. The difference only in the degree of intentionality – <i>"I’ll treat them as I see fit no matter how many of them die"</i> instead of <i>"I’ll let them die"</i>.Roberto Muehlenkamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03608133715777146924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-45056373521915575202010-11-17T10:50:32.738+00:002010-11-17T10:50:32.738+00:00Apparently there was even a book written in 1943 a...<i>Apparently there was even a book written in 1943 and yet such a contemplated mass slaughter still didn't make it to Stalins, Chhurchills, Roosevelts, Polish in exile leaders' speeches? Or a copy of the document in the front page of the NY Times? (Or maybe it did and I am not aware.).<br /><br />I haven't heard anyone to this day saying "the Germans were planning to exterminate 30-40 million people" You don't even hear it from Polish people, who according to Snyder 80-85% of them would have been killed (wow, why even bother leave the 15-20% around?). As of a few years ago, tour guides at the Wannsee Villa told you that the Germans were planning to exterminate about 3 million Poles (imagine at the time I thought it was probably an exaggeration), perhaps they'll update their numbers now to 20 million or about.<br /><br />Did the press or leaders everywhere not do a good job bringing it into the public conscience? Instead, every other time WW2 comes up you hear that Hitler wanted to conquer the world, which I personally haven't encountered in any historian's book.<br /><br />[guess I got to read the Nuremberg trials section now to see what it really says].</i><br /><br />So what's the argument supposed to be? That the Nazis' plans for Eastern Europe didn't exist because nobody (other than a book author in 1943 and historians like Aly, Gerlach, Pohl, Streit, Tooze, Kay, Snyder and even our mutual friend Beevor) paid due attention to it? <br /><br />I'd call that a rather silly appeal to incredulity. Whatever the reasons for it's not having been publicized when you think it should have been, the Hunger Plan is <a href="http://rodohforum.yuku.com/topic/2515" rel="nofollow">well documented</a>, and so is the <i>Generalplan Ost</i>, through Dr. Erhard Wetzel's commentary mentioned <a href="http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2009/07/belzec-mass-graves-and-archaeology-my_2802.html" rel="nofollow"> here</a>. "Why wasn't it talked about" - considerations are a feeble argument against documentary evidence, if they can be called an argument at all. Big catastrophes or related plans sometimes escape public attention, big deal. Not even the staunchest anti-Communist in the late 1930s knew anything about Stalin's purge that killed almost 700,000 people in 1937/38, and the Soviet famine of 1932/33 also caught little attention in the West, even though those were actually implemented mass murders. The Nazi Hunger Plan, on the other hand, didn't get beyond the conception stage, unless you consider the starvation of Leningrad citizens and Soviet prisoners of war an implementation of the Hunger Plan on a smaller scale (as German historian Christian Gerlach does). Both these mass crimes occurred within the context of the most devastating war in history, yet they didn't escape the attention of criminal justice at the IMT and NMT trials. <br /><br />You should drop that "I haven't heard anyone to this day" - stance also for another reason. If lack of public divulgation is a feeble argument at best, your personal ignorance is no argument at all.Roberto Muehlenkamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03608133715777146924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-56323394368644480752010-11-17T01:16:01.156+00:002010-11-17T01:16:01.156+00:00On page xvii Snyder says that if the German war ag...On page xvii Snyder says that if the German war against the USSR has gone as planned, 30 million would have been starved [by the Germans] in the first winter, 10s of millions more ... <br /><br />So if the Germans won in 12 weeks as planned, Snyder says there would have been tens of millions more dead in the first winter than with a brutal war going on, scorched earth, poisoning of wells, no homes for people, diseases spreading faster with concentrations of people in armies and POW camps, etc<br /><br />Either I am naive or Snyder is hallucinating.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847299656773502198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24597325.post-4362065682503911152010-11-17T00:49:44.890+00:002010-11-17T00:49:44.890+00:00Apparently there was even a book written in 1943 a...Apparently there was even a book written in 1943 and yet such a contemplated mass slaughter still didn't make it to Stalins, Chhurchills, Roosevelts, Polish in exile leaders' speeches? Or a copy of the document in the front page of the NY Times? (Or maybe it did and I am not aware.). <br /><br />I haven't heard anyone to this day saying "the Germans were planning to exterminate 30-40 million people" You don't even hear it from Polish people, who according to Snyder 80-85% of them would have been killed (wow, why even bother leave the 15-20% around?). As of a few years ago, tour guides at the Wannsee Villa told you that the Germans were planning to exterminate about 3 million Poles (imagine at the time I thought it was probably an exaggeration), perhaps they'll update their numbers now to 20 million or about.<br /><br />Did the press or leaders everywhere not do a good job bringing it into the public conscience? Instead, every other time WW2 comes up you hear that Hitler wanted to conquer the world, which I personally haven't encountered in any historian's book.<br /> <br />[guess I got to read the Nuremberg trials section now to see what it really says].Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01847299656773502198noreply@blogger.com