How bad was German occupation?

[clewder]

You always hear how terrible the Germans were in the territories that they occupied during WW2, but is it mostly a myth? Or were they really massacring people left and right?

[HistorySpeaks]

They were savages. At the end of the war they razed Warsaw out of spite (more ethnic Poles died in the razing of Warsaw+various other German "reprisals" for the Warsaw Uprising than Japanese died in the atomic bombings). They deliberately starved to death civilians in Leningrad and Stalingrad. In addition to their Jewish victims, many millions of Eastern European Gentiles were murdered under Nazi occupation.

[Otium]

They deliberately starved to death civilians in Leningrad and Stalingrad.

This is nonsense. Saying it was "intentional" is misleading. It was intentional in the sense that the Germans and their Army were to be fed first, with the knowledge that there would inevitably be civilian casualties (eg. the infamous Document 126-EC, makes no moral or ideological claims, merely harsh practical ones; Mattogno, Kues, Graf, The “Extermination Camps” of “Aktion Reinhardt”, pp. 170 ff. Similarly, Manstein on November 20th, 1941 makes ideological pronouncements on the noble cause of destroying Communism, and describes the necessary feeding of the German Wehrmacht and Fatherland in practical terms; 4064-PS, IMT, Vol. XXXIV, pp.129 ff.). Attributing this to malice is another question entirely and no doubt you conflate the two. Stalin however, certainly chose to allow civilians to die in these crowded cities, quite maliciously and intentionally to serve his own ends, not out of necessity:

Cities that were captured by Hitler’s armies were sealed off so that people could not flee. Densely populated cities, Stalin assumed, would be more difficult for the occupiers to manage and keep supplied. Only able-bodied men, functionaries, scientists, artists, and other privileged persons were allowed to be evacuated from the cities by the security organs. According to Stalin’s calculations, people caught in the crossfire would blame the aggressors rather than the defenders for their misery. This is also why the residents of Stalingrad were forced to remain in their city even after autumn 1942 when it became a bloody battlefield. Stalin’s plan worked. The Germans did not want to feed the population in the occupied areas and only wanted to plunder them. But the less that was available to plunder, the worse the occupiers’ chances of living off the land, as the German leaders had originally intended, became. The area in direct proximity to the front was to be made uninhabitable. On November 17, 1941, Stalin ordered the army leadership to destroy and burn “all villages situated in the hinterland of the German forces, to a depth of 40 to 60 kilometers from the front line and 20 to 30 kilometers to the left and right of the roads.” Everything here was “to be destroyed and reduced to rubble.” Airplanes were to destroy from above and leave nothing behind that the invaders could use. The Germans had no winter clothing and were defenseless against the cold. With neither shelter nor provisions they were easy targets for the Red Army. Stalin’s order from January 11, 1942, which called for the city of Rzhev to be “completely destroyed” by artillery fire, followed the same logic. What would happen to the civilian populations in these cities was not part of Stalin’s calculations.

[...]

With the German conquest of Stalingrad the city became a slaughterhouse. Due in large part to Stalin’s ban on leaving the city thousands of civilians, most of them women and children, died under miserable conditions.

Jörg Baberowski, Scorched Earth: Stalin's Reign of Terror (London: Yale University Press, 2016), pp. 377, 380.

Wars of attrition weren't illegal, nor was the tactic of starving out your enemies. This is a tactic as old as time. Equating this with "occupation policy" rather than war tactics is a ridiculous conflation. The Germans couldn't decide who would starve, whether it was civilians or the enemy soldier; the blame therefore rests with Stalin who made the decision to trap them.

While the decisions made by the Germans that impacted civilians were made to make a tragic, yet necessary trade-off for their army to function successfully and their own people to be provided for, the Soviets intentionally put their civilians in harms way:

From a purely military view, the death of millions of civilians, Belorussian families starved and frozen while their Jewish counterparts were beaten to death, has little to do with the course of the war, unless one subscribes to the view that it was a diversion of Hitler’s increasingly scarce resources. Stalin, however, planned to do considerably more. His intention was to involve the civilian population of the German-occupied zones in a separate war directed against the German military. His actions deliberately ensured that their suffering would be maximized. Not content with destroying their towns and their food, from the very first he demanded their active participation in the war, in effect forcing the civilian population to fight and thus amplifying their suffering.

“Demanded” is not an exaggeration. In his May 1943 address he issued the following directive:

"I order . . . that men and women guerillas strike powerful blows at the enemy’s rear establishments, communications, military stores, headquarters and factories; that they destroy the enemy’s telegraph and telephone lines; that they draw the wide strata of the Soviet population in the areas captured by the enemy into the active struggle of liberation, and thus save Soviet citizens from extermination by the Hitlerite beasts; that they take merciless revenge on the German invaders."

John Mosier, Deathride: Hitler vs. Stalin, The Eastern Front 1941-1945 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), p. 314.

The result was brutal, yet arguably necessary German reprisals against these partisans and whoever might be associated with them.

The tragedy of the citizens living under the Communist yoke, is that they were brutalized by their leaders and by the partisans more so than the Germans (eg. the composer Dmitri Shostakovich remarked that "Leningrad" was a city already destroyed by Stalin and merely "finished off" by Hitler; Mosier, pp. 144, cf. p. 409, n. 4. Partisans also ensured the starvation of villagers by stealing their cattle; Mosier, pp. 329 f.). German occupation policy was as brutal and savage as it needed to be to respond to the savagery of the Communists. This is evident by how different occupation policy was in the West. If Russia had not been the brutal and terroristic regime that it was then there's no reason to think occupation policy would've been the same.


Criticizing the Germans for their conduct during the blockade of Leningrad is ridiculously hypocritical:

The Soviet Union has always described the blockade of the city and fortress of Leningrad, which began in September 1941, as one of the “most frightful crimes of the German-fascist conquerors,” the “methodical murder of the peaceful residents of the city.” [...] The hypocrisy of all these ever-shifting accusations is revealed by the incontrovertible fact that the blockade, bombardment, and starvation of fortified, defended cities and fortresses are permitted by the laws of war, being entirely in compliance with all applicable international law relating to the laws and customs of war. Soviet troops also resorted to such methods of blockade without any hesitation at all, attempting to bring about the capitulation of enemy cities such as Königsberg, Breslau, and Berlin in 1945, through encirclement and bombardment by all available methods. The former defender of Leningrad, Marshal of the Soviet Union Zhukov, considered it an honor to have fired no fewer than 1,800,000 heavy artillery shells at the defended city of Berlin between April 21, and May 2, 1945. “Smoke the rats out of Konigsberg” was the official Soviet slogan on February 15, 1945.'

The cost in human life to the blockaded city of Leningrad was in fact high, and no one familiar with the frightful details will be unable to sympathize with the victims of the blockade. It was, however, war; and blockade is a permissible method of waging war under international law. As Yuri Ivanov, writer and President of the Kaliningrad section of the Russian Cultural Fund and Joint Publisher of the Kenigsbergskij Kur’er (Königsberg Courier) remarked in 1992: “When I was starving and eating rat meat in Leningrad, Zhdanov, the fat official, had his schnitzel flown into the city every day.”'' There is another notable difference as to the victims of the blockade. Books are written about the victims of Leningrad; solemn wreath laying ceremonies and memorial commemorations are regularly held in Leningrad cemetery (Piskarevskoe Memorial ‘noe Kladbisce), while the victims of Königsberg—mostly old people, women and children—lie buried and forgotten. At the same time, according to the detailed studies by the Königsberg professors of medicine Schuberth and Starlinger, 90,000 of the 120,000 civilians captured by the Soviets in April 1945 either died of starvation or from epidemics—not during the blockade, but rather, after the end of the fighting, and even after the end of the war, under Soviet administration, for which there is no justification under international law.

Soviet propaganda describes the blockade and bombardment of the city of Leningrad as criminal, while totally suppressing the fact that the Soviet Union never paid the slightest attention to civilian populations whenever it suited their political or military purposes. Thus the attack on tiny Finland on November 30, 1939, began with surprise bombing attacks by Soviet combat aircraft units on the residential districts of the cities of Helsinki, Hangé, Kotka, Lahti, and Wiborg, to achieve the immediate destruction of the morale of the unprepared civilian population and paralyze all resistance. According to a Finnish empirical report of February 13, 1940, the Finnish “industrial centers (in the cities of Kymi and Vuokseniska) and transport junctions (Antrea, Kouvola)” were only “secondary” objectives of Soviet aircraft. On August 17, 1941, Ehrenburg gloated over the appearance of a few Soviet Stoer aircraft over Berlin. On April 30, 1942, he called the destruction of the cities of Lübeck and Rostock by the Royal Air Force “a good start,” simultaneously stating: “We shall strike the beast wherever we can."

The Germans continue to be held solely responsible for the “crime” of blockading and bombarding the city of Leningrad, right down to the present day; yet contemporary Soviet war propaganda invariably mentioned the Finns as well—in the same breath, as it were. According to reports from the Soviet information bureau, Finnish officers had always been “the chief instigators of the bombardments.” “Now the Finns are bombarding Leningrad,” wrote Tikhonov in an article on January 27, 1944, piling up insult after insult against the Finns, calling them “assassins,” “vile stepsons of nature,” “lunatics,” and “crazy creatures.”' Tikhonov also accused the Finns of rejoicing over the sufferings of Leningrad during the hunger blockade, claiming that it was their wish to “wipe Leningrad from the face of the earth.” Since the Finns failed to do so, they were accused of committing atrocities against the peaceful Russian population in the Finnish-occupied section of the Karelian peninsula, in a manner overshadowing “even the most sadistic Gestapo agents in baseness, cruelty, and terror.”

Joachim Hoffmann, Stalin's War of Extermination 1941-1945: Planning, Realization and Documentation (Uckfield: Castle Hill Publishers, 2015), pp. 202-204.

The tragedy of Leningrad lies squarely at the feet of the Soviets. They have absolutely no right to moralise, and anyone moralising against the Germans while simultaneously ignoring or mitigating atrocities on the same basis but committed by the Allies similarly has no room to moralise.

From you Cockerill, history doesn't "speak", it shouts when it desires, and stays absolutely silent when it'd prefer to cover-up inconvenient facts.

[HistorySpeaks]

The catastrophes underwent by the Russian, Polish, Belarusian, and other Slavic civilian populations were planned and intentional, as were the razing of Soviet cities. These motivated were justified by Nazi racial ideology, which depicted Russians, Poles, etc as "sub-human."

HItler ordered, for example, that Leningrad would not be permitted to capitulate, but would be razed. This order was relayed from the Wehrmacht Supreme Command to the Army Supreme Command on 7 October 1941: "Der Führer hat erneut entschieden, dass eine Kapitulation von Leningrad oder später von Moskau nicht anzunehmen ist, auch wenn sie von der Gegenseite angeboten würde."

In the same document, the Wehrmacht Supreme Command relays to the Army Supreme Command that it would be irresponsible to use German soldiers to feed or otherwise aide Soviet civilians, since the food should be going to the German homeland: "Das Leben deutscher Soldaten für die Errettung russischer Städte vor einer Feuergefahr einzusetzten oder deren Bevölkerung auf Kosten der deutschen Heimat zu ernähren, ist nicht zu verantworten."

https://www.geschichtsforum.de/thema/2- ... 041/page-3

In his famous Posen speech, Himmler alludes to the extermination through labor of Russians, and expresses indifference to their deaths, saying: "Whether 10,000 Russian women fall down from exhaustion in building a tank ditch is of interest to me only insofar as the tank ditches are finished for Germany." https://codoh.com/library/document/hein ... 101943/en/

Out of curiosity do you also think that the systematic razing of Warsaw and all the Poles killed/displaced thereby was also unintentional by the Germans?

[Otium]

The catastrophes underwent by the Russian, Polish, Belarusian, and other Slavic civilian populations were planned and intentional, as were the razing of Soviet cities. These motivated were justified by Nazi racial ideology, which depicted Russians, Poles, etc as "sub-human."

Catastrophes were, as I more or less already stated, incidental to the war effort and largely entwined with Soviet policies that enflamed such tensions.

You've also said this kind of thing before, yet provided no such evidence. The raising of cities was mentioned, but hardly 'planned'; Halder wrote in his diary that the raising of Moscow would be carried out by bombing from the Luftwaffe: "Die Städte sollen durch die Luftwaffe vernichtet werden. Panzer dürfen hierfür nicht eingesetzt werden." Bombing is exactly the tactic utilized by the allies to annihilate German cities, Churchill even desired the bombing of Rome "to the utmost". These things are the results of war, and inevitably will be an issue when dealing with titanic struggles between two polar opposites. This is how world history is forged, and it has never been pretty. I do not see it as my obligation to lament the destruction of Soviet cities in particular, for the Communists had no affinity for cultural heritage at all. Anyway, no Nationalsocialist today would allege it was his goal to raise Warsaw or Moscow, it's not a plank in "Nazi" doctrine. It's not even relevant politically today, which makes your moralising about it even more absurd seeing as the concern for people like you is that Nationalsocialism will become a valid political "ideology".

On another note. There's no proof (that I can recall seeing) that any of this was "motivated and justified by Nazi racial ideology".

Moreover,the Nationalsocialists never used the term "Untermensch" in the way you allege. It was not a term used to describe whole "races" (or European ethnicities) of people, but a term which delineated people of poor quality in terms of morals or temperament, which may sometimes encompass many people of a particular group who were still recognized as 'Aryan'. Not even the Germans themselves were absolved from being "Untermensch", particularly if they were Communists. The most famous example of German "propaganda" Der Untermensch, of which you're no doubt aware, made quite clear that someone can be "turned into" an Untermensch, and by logical extension, be turned back. This completely destroys the idea that the "Nazis" viewed the term as having anything to do with biology, which is what people like you always insinuate.

HItler ordered, for example, that Leningrad would not be permitted to capitulate, but would be razed. This order was relayed from the Wehrmacht Supreme Command to the Army Supreme Command on 7 October 1941: "Der Führer hat erneut entschieden, dass eine Kapitulation von Leningrad oder später von Moskau nicht anzunehmen ist, auch wenn sie von der Gegenseite angeboten würde."

In the same document, the Wehrmacht Supreme Command relays to the Army Supreme Command that it would be irresponsible to use German soldiers to feed or otherwise aide Soviet civilians, since the food should be going to the German homeland: "Das Leben deutscher Soldaten für die Errettung russischer Städte vor einer Feuergefahr einzusetzten oder deren Bevölkerung auf Kosten der deutschen Heimat zu ernähren, ist nicht zu verantworten."

This is a poor example, because it's not proof of anything!

There's nothing in this document to indicate malicious motivation based on "racial ideology". Rather, Jodl states it's necessary because the Soviets have potentially trapped the city with mines, and it would be dangerous to send German soldiers in: "Just as in Kiev the gravest hazard arose for the troops from blasts set with time fuses, the same, and worse, must be expected in Moscow and Leningrad. The Soviet radio itself has announced that Leningrad was mined and would be defended to the last man." (DGFP, D, XIII, Doc. 388, p. 623.) Again we see the Soviets taking the lead in brutality (in this case, the Soviets threatening to blow up their own cities!) and the Germans taking them seriously and devising a plan for how to deal with these potential obstacles. Because of this, Jodl continues, "no German soldier must enter these cities." (Ibid.) The logical conclusion therefore is that: "For all other cities the word is likewise that before seizure they are to be ground down by gunfire and air raids and their population induced to flee." (Ibid.)

The quote you tried to use as a convincing example for your claim was without context (even without context it doesn't prove your point). With context what we see is simple, to the Germans it's necessary to destroy these cities because they may be riddled with traps, thus it's better to use the Luftwaffe to raise them to the ground and induce the population to flee before taking them.

You again conflate necessity and practicality with malice. There's nothing ideological about this, other than Hitler desiring to do what any leader would and prevent his troops from dying and the Germans back home from going without, I guess that could be considered ideological. . . But also logical.

Out of curiosity do you also think that the systematic razing of Warsaw and all the Poles killed/displaced thereby was also unintentional by the Germans?

The razing of cities is of no particular concern. If the Germans desired in their new empire to change the landscape in such a way to suit their own cultural desires after a long war, that's their business. I'm not particularly fussed about it. In history such things are ubiquitous, even today, although in more discreet ways. Woe betide those whom laments such things but show utter indifference to the destruction of European culture by masses of foreign hordes and cultural degradation. By this metric the raising of Warsaw and the already decrepit and rank Soviet metropolis' is of minimal importance, although I do think is regrettable nonetheless as I'm generally in favour of maintaining cultural artefacts.

Regarding the deaths of Poles killed and displaced, the majority were killed and displaced by the Soviets, not the Germans.

Polish Population Losses during World War Two by Dr. Otward Müller | Archive

The number of victims murdered by Soviet authorities in occupied Poland by June 1941—about five hundred thousand—was likewise three or four times higher than the number of those killed by the Nazis. Amazingly—despite his own war of conquest against Poland being, if not as deadly as Hitler’s during its military phase, then marked by a geometrically larger number of executions and deportations and far more destruction in economic terms—the Vozhd received not even a slap on the wrist from the Western powers for his crimes.

Sean McMeekin, Stalin's War: A New History of World War II (New York: Basic Books, 2021), p. 110.

In more detail from another source we read:

Finally, I must comment on the loss of life among the Polish people under the two occupiers. According to figures compiled by the Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, 100,000 Polish Jews were killed or died as a direct consequence of German measures during the first two years of the Nazi occupation. From 1939 through 1941, 10,889 Poles were shot by the Germans in mass executions. Perhaps another 10,000 were killed clandestinely, in the backyards of prisons. Thus, during the first two years of occupation the Germans killed a total of about 120,000 victims in Poland. The Soviet security police, on the other hand, matched that figure in just two episodes of mass execution. The NkvD may have killed as many as 100,000 people during the evacuation of prisons in the Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia during June and July 1941 (about two-thirds of the prison population at the time), and in the spring of 1940 the Soviets murdered Polish prisoners of war. (About 5,000 bodies were discovered in mass graves near the Katyn forest, and the remaining 10,000 have never been accounted for.)

But the total list of casualties for which the Soviets are responsible is much longer. Scores of people were killed during the first weeks of the occupation, and executions continued throughout.’ Further, one fourth of the deportees and concentration camp inmates must have been dead by the end of summer 1941—another 300,000 victims. These very conservative estimates show that the Soviets killed or drove to their deaths three or four times as many people as the Nazis from a population half the size of that under German jurisdiction. This comparison, I repeat, holds for the first two years of the Second World War. . . This somewhat mechanistic comparison may at least serve to counter any possible incredulity at the record of Soviet rule in the Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. Life was more dangerous in many respects under the Soviets than under the Nazis. And, as I have stated before, people at the time compared the two. Many, including thousands of Jews, came to this very conclusion and voted accordingly “with their feet.”

Jan T. Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Beolorussia (Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 228-229.

The author notes that the losses under the Soviets could even be as high as 750,000:

“By the time that the Amnesty was granted in 1941 (for crimes that had not been committed), almost half of the one-and-a-half million Poles deported in the previous years were already dead. The victims included 100,000 Polish Jews, headed by the Chief Rabbi of Warsaw, Moses Shore. The exact numbers will never be known.” This is the assessment of Norman Davies in his deservedly acclaimed history of Poland, God’s Playground, 2: 451. I believe he chose the highest plausible estimates; but, if we accept 1.5 million as the total number of Polish citizens sent to the Soviet interior, then perhaps the staggering 750,000 dead is not far off the mark. Two Polish government reports prepared in London at the end of the war estimated that 800,000 to 850,000 Polish citizens remained in Russia following the breach of Polish-Soviet diplomatic relationships in April 1943. Given that 120,000 were evacuated when the Anders Army left the Soviet Union and that the total number of deportees might have been 1.25 million to begin with, I think an estimated 300,000 deaths in exile is more plausible.

Ibid., p. 229.

Regarding deportations of Poles, they suffered much more under the Soviets:

Of the 2.5 million victims of German deportations, 1.5 million were sent from western Poland (incorporated into the Reich) to central Poland (the Generalgouvernement). The others were Pows, victims of street roundups, and conscripts sent to work in Germany. (Only a small fraction of this group, 6—7 percent, was confined in concentration camps.) Their trip to either destination was brief—one to three days at most—so that they suffered much less than those deported by the Soviets (assuming they traveled in similar conditions), who faced ten days to three weeks or more of discomfort.

The circumstances awaiting the Nazi victims at the end of the journey were also much less forbidding. Those dumped into the Generalgouvernement were literally abandoned to their own devices upon arrival, to the great annoyance of the local authorities, who would suddenly have a transport of destitute people to provide for. Some, ideally, could be accommodated by relatives or assisted by friends. In any case, they were among compatriots and eligible for some rudimentary form of assistance through the Main Welfare Council (Rada Gtéwna Opiekuricza). Those sent into Germany for labor were treated shabbily; workers from Poland probably suffered the most among all foreign workers.’ But they were not dying from exhaustion, hunger, and exposure to the elements, as were scores of their compatriots whom the Soviet authorities forcibly resettled. If nothing else, Germany had a better climate and was much better off materially than the Soviet interior in Stalin’s time. That meant the difference between life and death for tens of thousands of people.’ As for confinement in camps, several hundred thousand people were sent to Soviet concentration camps at the time, while substantially fewer than one hundred thousand met with a similar fate at the hands of the Nazis.

Ibid., p. 228.

Just because this happened, am I to claim the Soviets did it because of race? No. Similarly, the Germans cannot be accused of such things just because they had ideas about race which were not as exclusive as you may think, but very complicated and argued about constantly. You like to conflate these things.

[HistorySpeaks]

First off, it is hilarious that you are making excuses for the razing of cities. Like white nationalism, the core value of revisionism is exonerating the Nazis ('Nazi LARPing'); nobody cares about innocent victims of war and genocide, whether Polish Jews or Polish gentiles.

Second, if McMeekin actually claims that the Germans only killed 100,000 ethnic Poles, and that quotation is not out of context (e.g. linked to a specific time period), then he is a laughable propagandist. The Germans killed far more Polish gentiles than the Soviets did. As I said, the razing of Warsaw/other reprisals for the Warsaw Uprising, by itself, killed many more ethnic Poles than Japanese the atomic bombs.

Read Polish historians on how savage the Germs were. Their barbarism included massive ethnic cleansings of Poles to make room for racially superior German settlers. Read upon on the Warthegau and Zamosc, among other ethnically cleansed traditionally Polish communities.

[Otium]

First off, it is hilarious that you are making excuses for the razing of cities. Like white nationalism, the core value of revisionism is exonerating the Nazis ('Nazi LARPing'); nobody cares about innocent victims of war, whether Polish Jews or Polish gentiles.

And the core value of conservatives and liberals is exonerating the Soviets (among many others of history's greatest murderers). Big whoop.

My point was less focussed on "making excuses" but pointing out your own hypocrisy by simply saying that I'm disinterested in your moral outrage at "the Nazis" because all those things which you dislike about them (true or not) are many of the things you currently do yourselves, or totally ignore when others do them either in the past or present.

Second, if McMeekin actually claims that the Germans only killed 100,000 ethnic Poles, and that quotation is not out of context (e.g. linked to a specific time period), then he is a laughable propagandist. The Germans killed far more Polish gentiles than the Soviets did. As I said, the razing of Warsaw/other reprisals for the Warsaw Uprising, by itself, killed many more ethnic Poles than Japanese the atomic bombs.

He says quite clearly "by June 1941", I presume the 100,000 figure is the corresponding one for the Germans at that time.

Read Polish historians on how savage the Germs were. Their barbarism included massive ethnic cleansings of Poles to make room for racially superior German settlers. Read upon on the Warthegau and Zamosc, among other ethnically cleansed traditionally Polish communities.

I don't think I will engage with "propagandists". Thanks though.

Although now you mention it, the Poles really aren't ones to talk about ethnic cleansing, seeing as they almost entirely ethnically cleansed East Prussia of Germans, and had the desire to go even further. Which, you know, is fine, I really don't care. If that was the Polish modus operandi for their own survival and cultural proliferation then that's their business too. They shouldn't complain when it happens to them, and it shouldn't be ignored when it happens to the Germans, just as it did after the second world war. For example, I don't believe you've ever moralised against "the Commies" for Stalin's deportation of ethnic Germans.

Poles in any case, weren't seen as racially inferior, or, rather, weren't seen as not being Europeans or Aryan (which is typically what people mean when they say that), just of lower "racial quality" in many cases. Common mistake. This again though, isn't a problem politically today. Nationalsocialism makes no such demands, except some individual Nationalsocialists in individual cases way back when.

[Lamprecht]

This actually only explains the motives for your positions, rather than any else's here.
It's also rather telling that you ignored the challenge I posted for you: viewtopic.php?p=105040#p105040

Like white nationalism, the core value of revisionism is exonerating the Nazis ('Nazi LARPing'); nobody cares about innocent victims of war and genocide, whether Polish Jews or Polish gentiles.

[Hektor]

You always hear how terrible the Germans were in the territories that they occupied during WW2, but is it mostly a myth? Or were they really massacring people left and right?

It's a myth.

An objective look quickly tells you that the repressiveness of German forces is a function of partisan activity in those area. The more civilized the population acted the more civilized the occupation was.

Reprisals for partisan activity are normal war time measures. This includes executing those that aren't directly responsible them. The German modus operandi was however to pick those for execution where there were already sufficient reasons to believe that those people were involved in Anti-German activities. E.g. if you were a Communist functionary or agitator beforehand. If a lot of your friends were partisans etc.

Procedures under martial law are of course not as much in favor of the accused than peace time proceedings are. That would of course be an interesting field still to research. Strange how that is mostly ignored by the official world war two historians. Are they afraid that they would have to admit that the German behavior was mostly correct during the occupation, that German soldiers acted far more humanely to civilian populations that than the Allies did under similar circumstances.... etc.?

One should not be so naive to ignore that a lot of post-war politics is build on the officious narratives crafted mostly after world war two. It IS what Plato called a "Noble Lie" and functions to further political agenda. One could also argue that it served to further "social harmony" in the sense that people wouldn't rebel against all the injustices and insults done to them. (I'm thinking mainly of the Germans here, but it seems that it applies to other Western societies as well). To the Jews it serves as glue for social cohesion in a secularized world. And Jews are more prone to be atheists than other population groups right now. So 'God's Chosen' would not work as instrument to keep them together as a group. Believing to be a Holocaust survivor because Amalek (Germans/Axis) tried to exterminate you is something that anyone can believe be it religious in the traditional sense, be it full blown atheist that pretends to believe in "science".

[Waldgänger]

It's a myth.

My journey into revisionism began with this one hypothesis, which became an epiphany, then simply a reason. All historiography is myth-making.

A great example is the poetic irony derived from the fact that Hitler's "thousand year Reich" lasted only 12 years. The only source for the claim that Hitler claimed to be founding a thousand-year order in Germany is William L. Shirer. His personal recollection was having heard Hitler say the words while Shirer was a journalist in Berlin. There is nothing else. But great philosophical mush has been made of it.

The same is true for the broader idea, that Nazis called Jews inferior or subhuman. Nothing could be further from the truth. Propaganda compared their influence to vermin, but they acknowledged only "Clever", "Cunning" people could subvert whole nations, in their estimation of history.

The uncritical acceptance of myths - first of mere sayings, then of whole ideologies, and then legendary actions themselves - is a great cause of much evil and confusion in this life. How many people, based on stories about Nazi talk of "subhuman Jews", believe as a matter of course that Jews were killed by Tom & Jerry reverse-shotguns, or electrified grates, or conveyor-belts into pits of fire? Willing to believe fake testimonies of random SS guards throwing into the gas chambers whatever person they felt like picking on that day. It has spiralled into merely Hitler=Satan, Nazis=Demons, 1940s=Hell. Morally speaking.

Once you believe those basic mythic things, you will believe anything. Ironically, this is the same process the propagandists blame for causing fanatical Nazi fervour leading to genocide.

[Hektor]

It's a myth.

My journey into revisionism began with this one hypothesis, which became an epiphany, then simply a reason. All historiography is myth-making.

A great example is the poetic irony derived from the fact that Hitler's "thousand year Reich" lasted only 12 years. The only source for the claim that Hitler claimed to be founding a thousand-year order in Germany is William L. Shirer. His personal recollection was having heard Hitler say the words while Shirer was a journalist in Berlin. There is nothing else. But great philosophical mush has been made of it.

Indeed.... That "Thousand Year Reich" theme appears in a propaganda movie as well. But thinking it's policy is a stretch. It's more like the car dealer telling you that you will do the best deal of your life there.

The same is true for the broader idea, that Nazis called Jews inferior or subhuman. Nothing could be further from the truth. Propaganda compared their influence to vermin, but they acknowledged only "Clever", "Cunning" people could subvert whole nations, in their estimation of history.

Again correct... Some minor opinions are taken to be policy. Jews got their citizenship revoked. But per definition only full blooded Germans or kindred of Germans could become citizen. So this wasn't even about the Jews. And stripping someone of citizenship or declaring him persona non-grata IS NOT declaring him to be subhuman or non-human. The word subhuman was used in connection with degenerate Germans who wouldn't work, were addicts and prone to criminality. It is used in one booklet for hordes from the East ("Der Untermensch"). And isn't a epithet used for all Slavs. Quite to the contrary the booklet portrays Slovaks, Croatians, Ukrainians etc. (all Slavs) in a positive light.

The uncritical acceptance of myths - first of mere sayings, then of whole ideologies, and then legendary actions themselves - is a great cause of much evil and confusion in this life. How many people, based on stories about Nazi talk of "subhuman Jews", believe as a matter of course that Jews were killed by Tom & Jerry reverse-shotguns, or electrified grates, or conveyor-belts into pits of fire? Willing to believe fake testimonies of random SS guards throwing into the gas chambers whatever person they felt like picking on that day. It has spiralled into merely Hitler=Satan, Nazis=Demons, 1940s=Hell. Morally speaking.

Once you believe those basic mythic things, you will believe anything. Ironically, this is the same process the propagandists blame for causing fanatical Nazi fervour leading to genocide.

They did however sanitize the narrative from that kind of obvious sensation-stories lacking credibility. They did however help in creating the Myth. And they don't care how Jews were killed or if Jews were killed at all.... It is about mythical content and the power of the Myth. They aren't bothered how real it is or not... Just would persecute deniers, when they can.

My take is that the Holocaust may get ditched this decade altogether. It's done its job. Billions of "compensation" was paid... all kinds of irrational policies were justified. They don't need it anymore, just will use it when opportunity dictates it. "Hitler" (the myth) may even loose it's job in the pantheon as the last deity and incarnation of evil. I'd guess they demonize somebody else. Right now Putin seems to be such a candidate. And make no mistake about it. The whole Hitler Myth was one of demonization, starting in the 1930s to get steam. Peaking during the war and at other occasions afterwards. It's the dark deity that is used to justify secular post-war morality. If Hitler did something it is bad, if he was against something we must declare it sacred in some way. Isn't that how they portray it that the National Socialists portray Jews?