bombsaway wrote:Hektor wrote:bombsaway wrote:Sorry I meant to answer this. The Kube document shows that yes, genocide was policy, at least in Belarus. As Mattogno says, it was justified (from their perspective), but genocide nonetheless
Where does the document show this, again?
"In the area of Minsk county Jewry has been completely eliminated"
Planned, systematic killing by multiple uncoordinated agencies: "Without contacting me, the Army Rear Zone Command liquidated 10,000 Jews, whose systematic elimination had in any case been planned by us."
Elderly Jews, children, those unable to work, German (so non-Yiddish , non-Russian speaking) deemed political threat : "In the city of Minsk about 10,000 Jews were liquidated on July 28 and 29. Of these 6,500 were Russian Jews mainly old men, women and children and the rest Jews incapable of work, who were sent to Minsk in November of last year by order of the Fuehrer, mainly from Vienna, Bruenn, Bremen and Berlin."
Stated desire by highest civilian office and SD to kill the employable Jews after they can be replaced by other workers: "Naturally I and the SD would like it best if Jewry in the Generalbezirk of Byelorussia was finally eliminated after their labor is no longer required by the Wehrmacht. For the time being the essential requirements of the Wehrmacht, the main employer of Jewry, are being taken into consideration."
Perhaps one might argue that these Jews were not being killed, rather liquidation/elimination means they were resettled somewhere else, but Mattogno sees these actions as brutal "massacres", probably because they dovetail with separately documented EG killings.
Quite clearly this is not part of any program to exterminate the Jews, assuming the document is genuine. Notice that Jews were being sent to the region with no intention to be treated as prisoners, otherwise they would not have been expected to be able to contribute to partisan/terrorist activity. A policy of Jewish resettlement is implicitly confirmed. Additionally, a demand was made to stop sending Jews to the region, as their involvement in partisan/terrorist activity was creating problems.
The death tolls of these claimed executions, which were clearly a response to the ongoing [illegal] partisan warfare, were within the realm of the civilian-targeted bombing campaigns conducted by the "Allies." You could call this "genocide" if you want, perhaps, but then why not also consider the bombing of Tokyo or Berlin to be genocide?
Consider also that executing "innocent" civilians in reprisal actions that were a response to terrorist attacks by partisans was not illegal at the time.
Mark Mazower in his book 'Hitler's Empire' notes that the partisan warfare and the brutality of it was not a specifically Nazi invention, but rather a traditional method of European warfare, stating (p. 353):
"Germany's allies may have occasionally been shocked by the Wehrmacht's brutality in the Ukraine and Belorussia, but in the face of their own partisan threat, they did not respond very differently. The uncomfortable truth is that the counterinsurgency war was more the product of a certain European way of fighting than of Nazism itself. Technologies had changed in the previous decades, but in other respects they were fighting in much the same spirit, and according to the same rules, as they had observed in their colonial campaigns and in the First World War."
The document you provide does not led any credibility to the position that there were "extermination camps" set up with homicidal gas chambers. They did not say that they executed Jews by sending them to any of the so-called "extermination camps" such as Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Auschwitz, etc. Further, a policy of Jewish resettlement is recognized in a document describing mass executions of Jews.
We should also recognize that if there was a policy of killing every Jew solely on the basis of their Jewishness, justifications for executions of Jews would not be provided.
It may cause some people emotional distress to read about Jewish civilians - women, children, the elderly, etc - being killed in a war. However, it might make you feel better that non-Jewish civilians suffered the very same fate. In fact, being shot in the head can be considered a quick and painless death compared to burning alive in a firebombing campaign.
Part of the reason why partisans did not have the same rights as uniformed soldiers was to discourage this illegal practice. Their mode of operation is to blend in with civilians. This creates a serious issue where it becomes extremely difficult - or even impossible - to stop so long as this civilian population is present in this manner.
Consider that if these Jewish civilians were voluntarily aiding the German war effort, rather than aiding the partisans the Germans were fighting (even actively engaging in this activity) then this sort of response would not have been seen appropriate. And yes, I recognize it's obvious that Jews wouldn't be helping the Germans, for obvious reasons. But now you can maybe understand why it's obvious that this would have happened to the Jews - even without any "extermination policy" in response to this described behavior.