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In the broad sense of "genocidal killing" the U.S. should be listed for her deeds in Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and other suffered areas. In a narrow sense only Germany is appropriate. Maveric149 seems to apply the narrow meaning for the U.S. and the broad one for the rest.-- Pinko
I think we need to get rid of this word "genocidal". Imperial Japan killed a huge number of Chinese & Koreans. (From memory, 10 to 20 million, but I'd have to check my texts to be sure.) Given the then-prevailing Japanese attitude to the "sub-humans" of China and Korea, I shold think that that would count as "genocide" even under a fairly strict definition. Better, though, to get rid of that emotive word entirely and rephrase the sentence. Tannin 08:12 May 14, 2003 (UTC)
There are a couple of misconceptions here. The first is the definition of Holocaust itself and how a society can be brought to perpetuate a "holocaust." In fact, the Holocaust was a gradual process in which anti-Jewish measures built up into the frenzy of mass murder. The first of these was the boycott of shops on April 1, 1933, followed by book burnings, Nuremburg Laws, etc., and culminating in Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938), almost a year before the war broke out. Whether physical eradication of the Jews was the final aim at this earlier stage is debated by historians, but there can be no doubt that there was a progression of violence. As for documented evidence, there are different interpretations of what Hitler says in Mein Kampf, as well as of his first address to the Nazi party in the 1920s (which we have). When the war began, trains carrying German soldiers into Poland were covered with grafitti saying "We're going to Poland to defeat the Jews," in other words, the "war against the Jews was used as an incentive to fight." Roundup of Jews through ghettoization was proposed almost as soon as Poland was conquered, but contained for over a year because of a debate within the German administration of the Generalgouvernment between the SS, Wehrmacht, and civilian administration. In other words, all three factions were involved in a debate over the most utilitarian way to handle the Jewish population--should they be killed, put on a reservation in southern Poland, or used for slave labor. Training for Einsatzgruppen began in spring 1941, so that they would be ready to follow the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union on 22 June. They began operations on 23 June. Jan Karksi, who had been smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto and Belzec for the Polish resistance, reported to the government in exile in London in 1942 (I'm writing from memory, so the date eludes me) and spoke to Churchill, before going to the United States where people had a hard time believing him (see David Kennedy for a report on Karski's meeting with Jewish Justice Felix Franfurter). Reports on the Holocaust appeared in the press at the time with some frequency--I have the clippings from the New York Times to prove that. As for affecting Germany's conduct of the war, it certainly did. Think of the resources (human, transportation, cost, etc.) that were diverted for this effort. When you say "high up officers didn't know" what officers do you mean? The occupation forces? Of course they knew? The invasion forces? They were followed by the Einsatzgruppen (wow, and I'm not even getting into Browning's arguments, which are controversial). As for Americans not caring about what was happening in Germany, that is not the case. The country was in the throws of a debate on how to respond. Large sections of America did support stopping Hitler. Jack Warner of Warner Brothers ordered that all filming in Germany stop as early as 1933. I do not believe stopping the Holocaust became an Allied objective until they began encountering the concentration camps as they entered Occupied Europe. On the other hand, as I said earlier, the diversion of resources to engage in the Holocaust certainly had an impact on the German military. Danny
That sounds authoritative, Danny, and squares with what I remember. Now, back to the immediate question, how do we deal with the mass deaths of civilians 1930ish to 1945? We have, in roughly descending order of barbarity:
Plus several others that are difficult to slot in, including the goings-on in the Balkans (an area with history that confuses the daylights out of me), and, I should imagine, some pretty dreadful stuff by the Italian Facists in Africa.
Where do we draw the "genocide" line? Wherever we draw it, how do we respond to the very reasonable claim that we should also include event X, because X was near-enough to just as bad as Y? Or, to the claim that we should not include Y, because Y was not quite as nakedly genocidal as Z?
I thnk it is best if we get rid of that emotive and poorly-defined word entirely and just outline the major slaughters without slant or comment. The facts themselves should be sufficent comment. Tannin 07:27 17 May 2003 (UTC)
A bit late, but wanted to note that I disagree with much of Stan's claims as to the Holocaust somehow not being a part of World War II. He compares the SS shooting thousands of Jews to the US Army Corps of Engineers doing flood control work doing World War II. I'm not sure what the point of this is. The Holocaust formed a major part of the Germans' military occupation of the rest of Europe. Are the other details of German military occupation of Europe somehow irrelevant to the conduct of the Second World War? He also says that the Holocaust played no role in determining the outcome of World War II militarily. This would have surprised a fair number of Germans, who argued against the Holocaust because it deprived them of slave labor that would be useful for the war effort. Furthermore, and more importantly, in the mind of Hitler and other top Nazis, the murder of the Jews was a part of the war. They saw the Jews as the leaders of a conspiracy against them, and saw the final solution of the Jewish question as one of their principal objectives in the war.
But this may all be besides the point, as Stan's principal purpose seems to be to suggest that talking about the Holocaust as part of the Second World War somehow glorifies the Allies unfairly, since they weren't actually fighting the war to stop the Holocaust. While this is largely true, it's beside the point. Whether or not stopping the Holocaust was one of the allied goals in fighting the war (for the most part, it wasn't), it was most certainly one of the Nazis' goals when fighting the war. To say that it somehow wasn't a part of the war because the allies didn't care about it is to assume that the war ought to be viewed from the point of view of the allies (and especially the western allies.) So, again, the Holocaust was most definitely a part of the Second World War. john 04:07 20 May 2003 (UTC)
OK, I've seeded the reference list. It would have been easy to make it as long as one's arm, but I stuck to general histories, figuring that more specialized works, such as "Navy in WWII" and the like, should be referenced in their own articles.
Stan 16:51 20 May 2003 (UTC)
Stan, Liddell-Hart is a military historian, interested in the details of military campaigns. The history of a war is about far more than just the course of military campaigns in that war. Does Liddell-Hart go into much detail on the home front of any of the countries? In any event, there are many general histories of the war that do talk about the holocaust. There's that damned huge recent one, whose title and author I can't recall. As far as the German generals not knowing anything about it, they may not have known about the gas chambers. Other aspects of the holocaust were widely known. The fact that the Jews of various countries were being gathered and sent off to camps in Poland, for instance, was hardly a secret. Nor was the fact of the vast massacres on the Eastern Front, carried out as the army advanced, unknown. So, you're right, the Holocaust was not a *military* part of the Second World War, but a history of World War II cannot simply be limited to military activities. john 21:19 20 May 2003 (UTC)
Simple. The European Theater in World War II is essentially about the fight against Nazism. After the war, the Nuremburg Trials tried the Nazi leadership for their war crimes, which were deemed "crimes against humanity." These war crimes included the Holocaust. Ergo, the Holocaust was considered a part of World War II by a body as authoritative as that. Danny
Stan, I agree that the Holocaust should include only the extermination part, at least in its tightest construction. And, at the moment, I don't have any sources at hand which would say "the Holocaust was part of the war". (or any very good sources about World War II, period). Perhaps that statement is too sweeping. But what I will say is that the German war effort and the German treatment of the Jews were pretty closely integrated, and that it becomes very hard to speak of one without referring to the other. Debates over slave labor, for instance, the use of the railway system, etc., were important to both the Holocaust and the war effort. And, as I said before, German motives in launching the war and in launching the extermination of the Jews were closely interrelated. As to the Holocaust article, at present, is not very good. Currently, I don't particularly have the time or resources to redo it, but there's a lot more that could and should be said about the mechanics of the process, especially with respect to the Jews. (Oh, and I agree with Danny's remarks.) john 23:23 20 May 2003 (UTC)
Just a note on when America knew about the Holocaust. According to David Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom from Fear (1999), on page 794, news reached the Americans in August 1942 of what was happening, it was treated with disbelief but confirmed and corroborated, so that on December 8, 1942, Roosevelt summoned Jewish leaders to his office to inform them that there was now "proof that confirms the horrors discussed by you." Danny
With the new expansion (good work, btw) we have a Hitler-Stalin pact in addition to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Djmutex, are they the same or did you have different treaties in mind? TeunSpaans 20:58 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I'm not sure I like the current lists of "allied countries" "supporters of the allies" "axis countries" "Supporters of the axis" and "Countries that were occupied or switched sides". The idea that the Soviet Union (and France, for that matter) are not listed on the allied side, but a bunch of Latin American countries that did practically nothing are, is pretty ridiculous. And that the Soviet Union, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland are all in the same category is pretty ridiculous. Perhaps some better system could be worked out here. john 00:04 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)
This is very true. Also the table on losses would need some work. -- Ruhrjung 01:35 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)
To be honest I pasted the Soviet Union in "Countries that were occupied or switched sides" just because I found this list rather insulting for France, Poland and Czechoslovakia and certainly others. Ericd 11:06 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Sorry Tannin, my source wrote British troops. You know the free French forces in Italy where mainly Moroccan, Tunisian or Algerian we don't have any word like Commonwealth for French Empire this could be useful in many cases. Ericd 12:49 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | → | Archive 10 |
In the broad sense of "genocidal killing" the U.S. should be listed for her deeds in Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and other suffered areas. In a narrow sense only Germany is appropriate. Maveric149 seems to apply the narrow meaning for the U.S. and the broad one for the rest.-- Pinko
I think we need to get rid of this word "genocidal". Imperial Japan killed a huge number of Chinese & Koreans. (From memory, 10 to 20 million, but I'd have to check my texts to be sure.) Given the then-prevailing Japanese attitude to the "sub-humans" of China and Korea, I shold think that that would count as "genocide" even under a fairly strict definition. Better, though, to get rid of that emotive word entirely and rephrase the sentence. Tannin 08:12 May 14, 2003 (UTC)
There are a couple of misconceptions here. The first is the definition of Holocaust itself and how a society can be brought to perpetuate a "holocaust." In fact, the Holocaust was a gradual process in which anti-Jewish measures built up into the frenzy of mass murder. The first of these was the boycott of shops on April 1, 1933, followed by book burnings, Nuremburg Laws, etc., and culminating in Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938), almost a year before the war broke out. Whether physical eradication of the Jews was the final aim at this earlier stage is debated by historians, but there can be no doubt that there was a progression of violence. As for documented evidence, there are different interpretations of what Hitler says in Mein Kampf, as well as of his first address to the Nazi party in the 1920s (which we have). When the war began, trains carrying German soldiers into Poland were covered with grafitti saying "We're going to Poland to defeat the Jews," in other words, the "war against the Jews was used as an incentive to fight." Roundup of Jews through ghettoization was proposed almost as soon as Poland was conquered, but contained for over a year because of a debate within the German administration of the Generalgouvernment between the SS, Wehrmacht, and civilian administration. In other words, all three factions were involved in a debate over the most utilitarian way to handle the Jewish population--should they be killed, put on a reservation in southern Poland, or used for slave labor. Training for Einsatzgruppen began in spring 1941, so that they would be ready to follow the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union on 22 June. They began operations on 23 June. Jan Karksi, who had been smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto and Belzec for the Polish resistance, reported to the government in exile in London in 1942 (I'm writing from memory, so the date eludes me) and spoke to Churchill, before going to the United States where people had a hard time believing him (see David Kennedy for a report on Karski's meeting with Jewish Justice Felix Franfurter). Reports on the Holocaust appeared in the press at the time with some frequency--I have the clippings from the New York Times to prove that. As for affecting Germany's conduct of the war, it certainly did. Think of the resources (human, transportation, cost, etc.) that were diverted for this effort. When you say "high up officers didn't know" what officers do you mean? The occupation forces? Of course they knew? The invasion forces? They were followed by the Einsatzgruppen (wow, and I'm not even getting into Browning's arguments, which are controversial). As for Americans not caring about what was happening in Germany, that is not the case. The country was in the throws of a debate on how to respond. Large sections of America did support stopping Hitler. Jack Warner of Warner Brothers ordered that all filming in Germany stop as early as 1933. I do not believe stopping the Holocaust became an Allied objective until they began encountering the concentration camps as they entered Occupied Europe. On the other hand, as I said earlier, the diversion of resources to engage in the Holocaust certainly had an impact on the German military. Danny
That sounds authoritative, Danny, and squares with what I remember. Now, back to the immediate question, how do we deal with the mass deaths of civilians 1930ish to 1945? We have, in roughly descending order of barbarity:
Plus several others that are difficult to slot in, including the goings-on in the Balkans (an area with history that confuses the daylights out of me), and, I should imagine, some pretty dreadful stuff by the Italian Facists in Africa.
Where do we draw the "genocide" line? Wherever we draw it, how do we respond to the very reasonable claim that we should also include event X, because X was near-enough to just as bad as Y? Or, to the claim that we should not include Y, because Y was not quite as nakedly genocidal as Z?
I thnk it is best if we get rid of that emotive and poorly-defined word entirely and just outline the major slaughters without slant or comment. The facts themselves should be sufficent comment. Tannin 07:27 17 May 2003 (UTC)
A bit late, but wanted to note that I disagree with much of Stan's claims as to the Holocaust somehow not being a part of World War II. He compares the SS shooting thousands of Jews to the US Army Corps of Engineers doing flood control work doing World War II. I'm not sure what the point of this is. The Holocaust formed a major part of the Germans' military occupation of the rest of Europe. Are the other details of German military occupation of Europe somehow irrelevant to the conduct of the Second World War? He also says that the Holocaust played no role in determining the outcome of World War II militarily. This would have surprised a fair number of Germans, who argued against the Holocaust because it deprived them of slave labor that would be useful for the war effort. Furthermore, and more importantly, in the mind of Hitler and other top Nazis, the murder of the Jews was a part of the war. They saw the Jews as the leaders of a conspiracy against them, and saw the final solution of the Jewish question as one of their principal objectives in the war.
But this may all be besides the point, as Stan's principal purpose seems to be to suggest that talking about the Holocaust as part of the Second World War somehow glorifies the Allies unfairly, since they weren't actually fighting the war to stop the Holocaust. While this is largely true, it's beside the point. Whether or not stopping the Holocaust was one of the allied goals in fighting the war (for the most part, it wasn't), it was most certainly one of the Nazis' goals when fighting the war. To say that it somehow wasn't a part of the war because the allies didn't care about it is to assume that the war ought to be viewed from the point of view of the allies (and especially the western allies.) So, again, the Holocaust was most definitely a part of the Second World War. john 04:07 20 May 2003 (UTC)
OK, I've seeded the reference list. It would have been easy to make it as long as one's arm, but I stuck to general histories, figuring that more specialized works, such as "Navy in WWII" and the like, should be referenced in their own articles.
Stan 16:51 20 May 2003 (UTC)
Stan, Liddell-Hart is a military historian, interested in the details of military campaigns. The history of a war is about far more than just the course of military campaigns in that war. Does Liddell-Hart go into much detail on the home front of any of the countries? In any event, there are many general histories of the war that do talk about the holocaust. There's that damned huge recent one, whose title and author I can't recall. As far as the German generals not knowing anything about it, they may not have known about the gas chambers. Other aspects of the holocaust were widely known. The fact that the Jews of various countries were being gathered and sent off to camps in Poland, for instance, was hardly a secret. Nor was the fact of the vast massacres on the Eastern Front, carried out as the army advanced, unknown. So, you're right, the Holocaust was not a *military* part of the Second World War, but a history of World War II cannot simply be limited to military activities. john 21:19 20 May 2003 (UTC)
Simple. The European Theater in World War II is essentially about the fight against Nazism. After the war, the Nuremburg Trials tried the Nazi leadership for their war crimes, which were deemed "crimes against humanity." These war crimes included the Holocaust. Ergo, the Holocaust was considered a part of World War II by a body as authoritative as that. Danny
Stan, I agree that the Holocaust should include only the extermination part, at least in its tightest construction. And, at the moment, I don't have any sources at hand which would say "the Holocaust was part of the war". (or any very good sources about World War II, period). Perhaps that statement is too sweeping. But what I will say is that the German war effort and the German treatment of the Jews were pretty closely integrated, and that it becomes very hard to speak of one without referring to the other. Debates over slave labor, for instance, the use of the railway system, etc., were important to both the Holocaust and the war effort. And, as I said before, German motives in launching the war and in launching the extermination of the Jews were closely interrelated. As to the Holocaust article, at present, is not very good. Currently, I don't particularly have the time or resources to redo it, but there's a lot more that could and should be said about the mechanics of the process, especially with respect to the Jews. (Oh, and I agree with Danny's remarks.) john 23:23 20 May 2003 (UTC)
Just a note on when America knew about the Holocaust. According to David Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom from Fear (1999), on page 794, news reached the Americans in August 1942 of what was happening, it was treated with disbelief but confirmed and corroborated, so that on December 8, 1942, Roosevelt summoned Jewish leaders to his office to inform them that there was now "proof that confirms the horrors discussed by you." Danny
With the new expansion (good work, btw) we have a Hitler-Stalin pact in addition to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Djmutex, are they the same or did you have different treaties in mind? TeunSpaans 20:58 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I'm not sure I like the current lists of "allied countries" "supporters of the allies" "axis countries" "Supporters of the axis" and "Countries that were occupied or switched sides". The idea that the Soviet Union (and France, for that matter) are not listed on the allied side, but a bunch of Latin American countries that did practically nothing are, is pretty ridiculous. And that the Soviet Union, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland are all in the same category is pretty ridiculous. Perhaps some better system could be worked out here. john 00:04 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)
This is very true. Also the table on losses would need some work. -- Ruhrjung 01:35 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)
To be honest I pasted the Soviet Union in "Countries that were occupied or switched sides" just because I found this list rather insulting for France, Poland and Czechoslovakia and certainly others. Ericd 11:06 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Sorry Tannin, my source wrote British troops. You know the free French forces in Italy where mainly Moroccan, Tunisian or Algerian we don't have any word like Commonwealth for French Empire this could be useful in many cases. Ericd 12:49 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)