Hitler's Allies Believed that the Jews Were Being Exterminated

[HistorySpeaks]

For example Horthy said in a 19 March 1944 meeting of the Crown Council that Hitler was furious at him for not allowing the Jews to be massacred:

See: https://twitter.com/History__Speaks/sta ... 8095387649

What reason would Hitler's allies have to make up false smears about Germany during the war?

[Hektor]

For example Horthy said in a 19 March 1944 meeting of the Crown Council that Hitler was furious at him for not allowing the Jews to be massacred:

See: https://twitter.com/History__Speaks/sta ... 8095387649

What reason would Hitler's allies have to make up false smears about Germany during the war?

Do you have anything else then hearsay for Hitler making such a statement?
Assuming Horthy really said that, how do you know that he didn't misunderstand something.

The smears precede the 19 March 1944. In fact this already starts in milder form already before the NSDAP took over in Germany.

If it was indeed a serious evidence-based belief, the following makes more sense:
https://archive.org/details/ColonelBeck ... t1June1944
https://archive.org/details/HungarianOf ... WarCabinet

Again. 'physical extermination of the Jews' is NOT the best explanations for the documentation at hand. There could of course be other documentation, but why would those that got hold of it (The Allies) hide this from public access. Didn't they want proof for the extermination thesis to be known to the world?!

[Whodunnit?]

For context... Ally Horthy

Just before the deportations began, two Slovak Jewish prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, escaped from Auschwitz and passed details of what was happening inside the camps to officials in Slovakia. This document, known as the Vrba-Wetzler Report, was quickly translated into German and passed among Jewish groups and then to Allied officials. Details from the report were broadcast by the BBC on 15 June and printed in The New York Times on 20 June.[61] World leaders, including Pope Pius XII (25 June), President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 26 June, and King Gustaf V of Sweden on 30 June,[62] subsequently pleaded with Horthy to use his influence to stop the deportations. Roosevelt specifically threatened military retaliation if the transports were not ceased.
[...]
In August 1944, Romania withdrew from the Axis and turned against Germany and its allies. This development, a sign of the failing German war effort, led Horthy in Budapest to reconsolidate his political position. He ousted Sztójay and the other Nazi-friendly ministers installed the preceding spring, replacing them with a new government under Géza Lakatos. He stopped the mass deportations of Jews and ordered the police to use deadly force if the Germans attempted to resume them. While some smaller groups continued to be deported by train, the Germans did not press Horthy to ramp the pace back up to pre-August levels. Indeed, when Horthy turned down Eichmann's request to restart the deportations, Heinrich Himmler ordered Eichmann to return to Germany.[69]

Realizing that Hungary's position was untenable, Horthy also renewed peace feelers to the Allies and began considering strategies for surrendering to the Allied force he distrusted the most: the Red Army. Although Horthy was still bitterly anticommunist, his dealings with the Nazis led him to conclude that the Soviets were the lesser evil. Working through his trustworthy General Béla Miklós, who was in contact with Soviet forces in eastern Hungary, Horthy sought to surrender to the Soviets while preserving the Hungarian government's autonomy.
[...]
After his arrest, Horthy was moved through a variety of detention locations before finally arriving at the prison facility at Nuremberg in late September 1945. There he was asked to provide evidence to the International Military Tribunal in preparation for the trial of the Nazi leadership. [...]
Horthy gradually came to believe that his arrest had been arranged and choreographed by the United States in order to protect him from the Russians. Indeed, the former regent reported being told that Josip Broz Tito, the new ruler of Yugoslavia, asked that Horthy be charged with complicity with the 1942 Novi Sad raid by Hungarian troops in the Bačka region of Vojvodina.[31] Serbian historian Zvonimir Golubović has claimed that not only was Horthy aware of these genocidal massacres but had approved of them.[9] American trial officials did not indict Horthy for war crimes. The former ambassador John Montgomery, who had some influence in Washington, also contributed to Horthy's release in Nuremberg.
[...]
In March 1948, Horthy returned to testify at the Ministries Trial, the last of the twelve U.S.-run Nuremberg Trials; he testified against Edmund Veesenmayer, the Nazi administrator who had controlled Hungary during the deportations to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944.[31] Veesenmayer was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment but was released in 1951
[...]
In exile, Horthy wrote his memoirs, Ein Leben für Ungarn (English: A Life for Hungary) [...] Horthy was one of the few Axis heads of state to survive the war, and thus to write post-war memoirs
[...]

Fill in the blanks yourself.


By the way, didn't know about this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kastner_train

The Kastner train consisted of 35 cattle wagons that left Budapest on 30 June 1944, during the German occupation of Hungary, carrying over 1,600 Jews temporarily to Bergen-Belsen and safety in Switzerland after large ransom paid by Swiss Orthodox Jew Yitzchak Sternbuch, Recha Sternbuch's husband.[1] The train was named after Rudolf Kastner (aka Kasztner), a Hungarian-Jewish lawyer and journalist, who was a founding member of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee, a group that smuggled Jews out of occupied Europe during the Holocaust. Kastner negotiated with Adolf Eichmann, the German SS officer in charge of deporting Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland, to allow over 1,600 Jews to escape in exchange for gold, diamonds, and cash.[citation needed]

[Archie]

The essence of the comment is that Horthy was "soft" on the Jewish question, and that is true since by all accounts conditions were relatively good for Jews in Hungary through that point (March 1944). We are then to believe that subsequent to this Horthy caved and let Hitler gas 400,000 Jews at Auschwitz. As usual, we have a series of fragilely stacked assumptions. The remark implies that Hitler wanted to "massacre" the Jews, so let's just take that to mean he gassed millions of them. That's too aggressive of an inference. It always comes back to the actual evidence for the holocaust and that is where it falls apart.

But I do have to commend Matt for accidentally stumbling onto an interesting topic here. I will counter and present a document that suggests Mussolini was NOT in the loop on "the Holocaust." Himmler discussed Jewish policy with Mussolini during a visit in October 1942. Here is what Himmler reported saying.

Die Juden würden aus ganz Deutschland, dem Generalgouvernement und allen vonuuns besetzten Ländern herausgenommen, da sie überall die Träger der Sabotage, Spionage und des Widerstandes sowie Bandenbildung seien. In Russland hätten wir eine nicht unerhebliche Anzahl von Juden, und zwar Mann und Weib, erschiessen müssen, da dort selbst die Frauen und halbwüchsigen Kinder Nachrichtenträger für die Partisanen gewesen wären. Der Duce betonte von sich aus, dass das die einzig mögliche Lösung wäre. Ich sagte dem Duce, dass wir die Juden, die politisch belastet wären, in Konzentrationslager verbrächten, dass wir andere Juden zum Straßenbau im Osten verwendeten, wobei allerdings die Sterblichkeit eine sehr hohe sei, da die Juden ja im Leben noch niemals gearbeitet hätten. Die ältesten Juden würden in Altersheimen in Berlin, München und Wien untergebracht. Die sonstigen alten Juden wären in dem Städtchen Theresienstadt, als Altersghetto der deutschen Juden, eingesetzt worden, bekämen dort ihre Pension und ihre Bezüge weiter und könnten sich dort ihr Leben völlig nach eigenem Geschmack einrichten, allerdings stritten sie dort in lebhaftester Form miteinander. Einen anderen Teil der Juden hätten wir versucht im Osten durch Lücken in der Front zu den Russen herüberzutreiben, wobei allerdings die Russen des öfteren auf solche Judenhaufen geschossen hätten und sie offenkundig ebenfalls nicht gemocht hätten.

Here is the computer translation (not that you need it, being a self-professed expert in the German language)

The Jews would be taken out of all of Germany, the General Government and all countries occupied by us, since they were everywhere the vehicles of sabotage, espionage and resistance, as well as the formation of gangs. In Russia we would have had to shoot a not inconsiderable number of Jews, men and women, since even the women and adolescent children there would have been messengers for the partisans. The Duce himself emphasized that this was the only possible solution. I told the Duce that we were taking the Jews, who were politically charged, to concentration camps, that we were using other Jews to build roads in the East, although the mortality rate was very high, since the Jews had never worked before in their lives. The oldest Jews would be accommodated in retirement homes in Berlin, Munich and Vienna. The other old Jews would have been deployed in the small town of Theresienstadt as the old-age ghetto for the German Jews, would continue to receive their pension and salaries there and could arrange their lives there according to their own taste, although they fought with one another there in the most lively form. We would have tried to drive another part of the Jews in the east through gaps in the front to the Russians, although the Russians would often have shot at such groups of Jews and obviously would not have liked them either.

Source: T175 microfilm, roll 69 (from NARA)
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/273863802?objectPage=229

Let's see. Himmler talked to him about killing partisans, about using Jews for labor in the East, about sending them to live in Theresienstadt with pensions, and about trying to push them East into Russia. If we are to believe the Holocaust, Himmler is outright lying here and not telling Mussolini the actual policy, which by October 1942 (after "the final solution") was to execute virtually all Jews. He did not tell him for instance that hundreds of thousands were being gassed at this time at Treblinka. Why is Himmler so coy here if in fact "Hitler's allies believed that the Jews were being exterminated"? Notice also how much more specific and detailed the above is vs your method of latching onto the single word "massacred."

[Whodunnit?]

Just a detail: "Banden" was the German term for Partisan gangs. Great find, btw..

[HistorySpeaks]

Himmler is outright lying here and not telling Mussolini the actual policy, which by October 1942 (after "the final solution") was to execute virtually all Jews. He did not tell him for instance that hundreds of thousands were being gassed at this time at Treblinka. Why is Himmler so coy here if in fact "Hitler's allies believed that the Jews were being exterminated"? Notice also how much more specific and detailed the above is vs your method of latching onto the single word "massacred."

Himmler was indeed lying. And the documentary evidence indicates that Mussolini and Ciano were aware of the exterminations. See https://phdn.org/histgen/documents/nazisdoc.html

btw never professed to be an expert in German. There are plenty of blind spots in my German (David Irving would run circles around me). I am however a fluent reader of the language.

[hermod]

Assuming the word used during that meeting was indeed "massacred" (and not the usual mistranslated ausgerottet or vernichtet ), one can't fail to notice that having such a thing put on record at that specific time of the war (the beginning of the German occupation of Hungary & the imminent deportation of Hungary's Jews) looks like a very, very convenient way for Horthy to cover his own ass in order to increase his chances of surviving the growing possiblity of a final Axis military defeat and the only too predictable [and often announced] subsequent purge of their vanquished enemies by the Judeocracies of the west and the east...

[Archie]

Himmler is outright lying here and not telling Mussolini the actual policy, which by October 1942 (after "the final solution") was to execute virtually all Jews. He did not tell him for instance that hundreds of thousands were being gassed at this time at Treblinka. Why is Himmler so coy here if in fact "Hitler's allies believed that the Jews were being exterminated"? Notice also how much more specific and detailed the above is vs your method of latching onto the single word "massacred."

Himmler was indeed lying. And the documentary evidence indicates that Mussolini and Ciano were aware of the exterminations. See https://phdn.org/histgen/documents/nazisdoc.html

btw never professed to be an expert in German. There are plenty of blind spots in my German (David Irving would run circles around me). I am however a fluent reader of the language.

Well, I see we can add French and Italian to your dazzling list of languages. I will note that the document (which you didn't have the courtesy to quote) yet again hinges on aggressive and frankly anachronistic interpretations of "holocaust" words. Just as you have focused on "massacre" in the OP, here you have jumped on "liquidation" and "dispersion and elimination" (ignoring the dispersion part), in the context of Croatia no less, as proof that Mussolini knew about "the final solution." Moreover you would have us believe that even though Mussolini knew, he and Himmler decided to pretend in a private conversation that the policy was something else.

Also, the way you misquoted my comment here does not inspire confidence in your treatment of sources.

[Hektor]

Himmler is outright lying here and not telling Mussolini the actual policy, which by October 1942 (after "the final solution") was to execute virtually all Jews. He did not tell him for instance that hundreds of thousands were being gassed at this time at Treblinka. Why is Himmler so coy here if in fact "Hitler's allies believed that the Jews were being exterminated"? Notice also how much more specific and detailed the above is vs your method of latching onto the single word "massacred."

Himmler was indeed lying. And the documentary evidence indicates that Mussolini and Ciano were aware of the exterminations. See https://phdn.org/histgen/documents/nazisdoc.html

btw never professed to be an expert in German. There are plenty of blind spots in my German (David Irving would run circles around me). I am however a fluent reader of the language.

How could 'Mussolini and Ciano' possibly know about this?
They were in Italy and knowledge at best would be about Italy.
Now they could have their own intelligence reports on this. Have they been found? Have they found Italian intelligence reports stating that 'i nazisti sterminarono gli ebrei'?

Or was that just rumors, perhaps relating to mistranslations and misunderstandings like thinking "Ausschaltung" means elimination, means extermination? One would have to exclude this, before one could state that they were actually 'in the know' of an otherwise unproven extermination program. Which has been asserted into existence later... And which was an accusation that actually precedes world war two.


David Irving suggests that documentary prove for deportations is a substitute for real evidence for extermination. He did do so after the Lipstadt-Trial debacle were he thought he could single-handedly could defeat a whole industry of Holocaust peddlers. Predictably this didn't work.

Heinrich Himmler was cited by Norbert Masur, representative of the 'World Jewish Congress', as having denied 'extermination of the Jews. Masur visited Himmler in April 1945. I would have expected Himmler to brag about this to him as to get concessions. Himmler was quite aware that he wouldn't survive world war two, at least not for long. Norbert Masur did of course believe what his organization was preaching already for a longer period of times.

Aren't you familiar with the report by Norbert Masur on his meeting?

[Archie]

Himmler is outright lying here and not telling Mussolini the actual policy, which by October 1942 (after "the final solution") was to execute virtually all Jews. He did not tell him for instance that hundreds of thousands were being gassed at this time at Treblinka. Why is Himmler so coy here if in fact "Hitler's allies believed that the Jews were being exterminated"? Notice also how much more specific and detailed the above is vs your method of latching onto the single word "massacred."

Himmler was indeed lying. And the documentary evidence indicates that Mussolini and Ciano were aware of the exterminations. See https://phdn.org/histgen/documents/nazisdoc.html

btw never professed to be an expert in German. There are plenty of blind spots in my German (David Irving would run circles around me). I am however a fluent reader of the language.

How could 'Mussolini and Ciano' possibly know about this?
They were in Italy and knowledge at best would be about Italy.
Now they could have their own intelligence reports on this. Have they been found? Have they found Italian intelligence reports stating that 'i nazisti sterminarono gli ebrei'?

Or was that just rumors, perhaps relating to mistranslations and misunderstandings like thinking "Ausschaltung" means elimination, means extermination? One would have to exclude this, before one could state that they were actually 'in the know' of an otherwise unproven extermination program. Which has been asserted into existence later... And which was an accusation that actually precedes world war two.


David Irving suggests that documentary prove for deportations is a substitute for real evidence for extermination. He did do so after the Lipstadt-Trial debacle were he thought he could single-handedly could defeat a whole industry of Holocaust peddlers. Predictably this didn't work.

Heinrich Himmler was cited by Norbert Masur, representative of the 'World Jewish Congress', as having denied 'extermination of the Jews. Masur visited Himmler in April 1945. I would have expected Himmler to brag about this to him as to get concessions. Himmler was quite aware that he wouldn't survive world war two, at least not for long. Norbert Masur did of course believe what his organization was preaching already for a longer period of times.

Aren't you familiar with the report by Norbert Masur on his meeting?

I think it is impossible to keep something like this a secret so there wouldn't be much point in trying to keep your own ally in the dark. If a mass extermination program had been going on, probably the Italians would have picked up on it. The Italians certainly would have had some knowledge about Croatia (the subject of the the document that Matt linked) but Croatia has never been a major spot for the holocaust. The Vatican with its information networks across Europe would have been in a good position to know something about Poland and there is much to suggest that they also did not "know" in any meaningful sense.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13227

Yes, I am familiar with Himmler's interview with the WJC, which is a rather strange episode. Starting the year before Himmler had evidently been trying to negotiate in some way with the Allies. That he was talking to the WJC at that point (supposedly after having killed six million Jews) is simply bizarre, as is his suspicious death in allied custody shortly thereafter. The substance of his comments is also of interest, as he explains why they built crematoria and explains how this was being misrepresented by allied propaganda.

[HistorySpeaks]

I just google translated the PHDN documents I linked to, because I don't know French or Italian.

These documents are numerous and damning. For example, there was an intelligence report provided by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 10 May 1942 (notated as seen by Mussolini in Ciano), that literally saysregarding the Jews sent to the East from the German-occupied zone of France, ""they are eliminated by means of toxic gases."

[fireofice]

I just google translated the PHDN documents I linked to, because I don't know French or Italian.

These documents are numerous and damning. For example, there was an intelligence report provided by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 10 May 1942 (notated as seen by Mussolini in Ciano), that literally saysregarding the Jews sent to the East from the German-occupied zone of France, ""they are eliminated by means of toxic gases."

Rumor and hearsay. Where they got this information from, they don't say. Clearly, Himmler tried correcting this falsehood to Mussolini on October 1942, just like he tried correcting the extermination falsehoods to Norbert Mauser much later.

[fireofice]

They may have been "allies" in the sense that they formed an alliance, but they weren't natural allies by any means. A lot of it was out of convenience, like with the Soviet Union which as we all know ended up not working out, to put it mildly. Horthy and Hitler didn't see eye to eye on the Jewish issue, and Horthy may have been prone to believing the worst about what was happening to the Jews. Mussolini and Hitler had conflicts in the past. Here's a video that goes into more detail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRcYPqqXcP4

[Hektor]

.....
I think it is impossible to keep something like this a secret so there wouldn't be much point in trying to keep your own ally in the dark. If a mass extermination program had been going on, probably the Italians would have picked up on it. The Italians certainly would have had some knowledge about Croatia (the subject of the the document that Matt linked) but Croatia has never been a major spot for the holocaust. The Vatican with its information networks across Europe would have been in a good position to know something about Poland and there is much to suggest that they also did not "know" in any meaningful sense. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13227

Indeed impossible to keep secret. That's why the 'we didn't know about this' from older Germans is actually evidence against the notion of a "Holocaust". They knew about deportation and concentration camps, though. Just not about the idea that those were 'extermination centers'. People often conflate that. That they only heard in 1945 and afterwards.

But even if there widespread 'knowledge'... This could also be due to rumors and picking stuff up on the Allied radio stations. Some people indeed picked up atrocity stories from this. Famous example is that "White Rose" group. They put some of it onto pamphlets as well. They had zero first hand knowledge about this. And they were driven by resentment as well. If the Holo was for real, they'd picked it up though, simply because some of their friends were in the army and so where millions of other Germans. And well many also worked with people from concentration camps, since there were factories next to the camps which had both civilian and camp inmate staff. There is no feasible way that the information flow would have be that controlled.

Doesn't mean that some German soldiers or civilians wouldn't have witnessed real life executions (including of Jews)... but conflating this with "the Holocaust" is intellectually dishonest. Some of the present day German WW2 authors are masters in this. It does however become clear after a while that their primarily target is 'being moral teachers' and only after that historians. That's how fairy tales get created... they always have a 'moral of the story'. That moralism can be a rather bad and damaging thing... doesn't ring with many Germans. When they hear moral, they think it must be good and those that 'preach morality' must be good. Plenty historical examples were that wasn't the case.

.....
Yes, I am familiar with Himmler's interview with the WJC, which is a rather strange episode. Starting the year before Himmler had evidently been trying to negotiate in some way with the Allies. That he was talking to the WJC at that point (supposedly after having killed six million Jews) is simply bizarre, as is his suspicious death in allied custody shortly thereafter. The substance of his comments is also of interest, as he explains why they built crematoria and explains how this was being misrepresented by allied propaganda.

...
He also explains why they killed *some Jews*. So he was rather sincere there. And I also believe that Masur tried to give an accurate report on his meeting. Doesn't mean that he wasn't subjective and biased though. And well, Masur must have believed the Jewish organizations and Allied propaganda. He may have had second thoughts but on whom did his career depend? Clearly on the WJC's side and he could not pick a fight with them there, since that would have landed him on a dead end socially and professionally.

[Archie]

I just google translated the PHDN documents I linked to, because I don't know French or Italian.

These documents are numerous and damning. For example, there was an intelligence report provided by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 10 May 1942 (notated as seen by Mussolini in Ciano), that literally saysregarding the Jews sent to the East from the German-occupied zone of France, ""they are eliminated by means of toxic gases."

Where are you getting May 10, 1942? The date given in your link is November. That makes a huge difference since May would be before the Bund report (very early!) whereas by November gas chamber propaganda was fairly common. If we check phdn's source (footnote 170), we see they are actually relying on a well-known book by Walter Laqueur (which is in English, incidentally). It's page 35 in my copy.

Mussolini had been informed by Hitler about the true meaning of the 'final solution' in early 1942. Later that year Himmler had talked to him about it in some detail. How many other Fascist leaders knew cannot be established. Some did, this refers above all to the generals and diplomats dealing with East European affairs. The Italians in their occupied zone in France probably knew, they helped the Jews escape the deportation dragnet much to the annoyance of Eichmann and his aides. General Guiseppe Pieche, who represented the Italian carabinieri in northern Croatia and Slovenia, wrote in a note to his government that the Jews from the German zone of occupation were deported to the eastern territories and 'sono stati eliminati mediate l'impiego di gas tossico nel treno in cui erano rinchiusi'.* This message was dated 4 November 1942. It was seen by Ciano, the Foreign Minister, and General Roatta and eventually it was submitted to Mussolini. Mussolini read it, wrote with a blue pencil 'Visto dal Duce', seen by the Duce--and there was no comment.

By why should there have been reason for surprise? On 21 August 1942, four months earlier, there had been a memorandum from the Italian Foreign Ministry to Mussolini, according to which von Bismarck, the adviser of the German Embassy in Rome, had submitted a request by the German authorities that all Croatian Jews should be extradited so that they could be deported to the East. The memorandum made it clear that deportation meant 'in practica--eliminazione ...' The Duce commented in his handwriting: 'Nulla osta' -- 'No objection'.

*'...are eliminated by the use of toxic gas in the train in which they are locked.'

Wow.

1) The claim here that Himmler talked about the final solution with Mussolini "in some detail" is an outrageous distortion of that conversation which by some coincidence I already quoted right here in this thread. Laqueur's summary here is simply dishonest.

2) The document about toxic gases is from November, not May. It would merely be one of many gassing stories at the time. Furthermore, notice that it says "toxic gas in the train in which they are locked." But since when has the story been that Jews were gassed in trains??? That is just false. The Italians cannot have "known" about Jews being gassed in trains because by universal agreement Jews were not gassed in trains. You cannot "know" about something that isn't true! The phdn website omitted the part about the train (for very obvious reasons.)

3) The other document from August, like I said, is a wildly aggressive interpretation of "elimination." Especially since the original says "dispersion and elimination." Laqueur of course omits "dispersion."

4) Laqueur also reads way too much into routine and perfunctory annotations on these documents. Like how he laughably assumes Mussolini remembered some random report from months before or that Mussolini understood that document to refer to "the Holocaust." I very much doubt Mussolini gave these two documents a second thought. It was only decades later that people like Laqueur and Wyman tried to use these sorts of documents to say so-and-so "knew" about "the Holocaust."