Did Nazis kill "10 million Christians"?

Factual Questions
1

This is quite possibly the wrong forum to post this question…please move it as appropriate.

My wife received a combination glurge/revisionist history/hate mail in her e-mail. Here it is in all its gloriously bad linebreaking:

Leaving aside the fact that it’s a stupid chain letter…leaving aside the attempt to whip up religious hatred…

What do they mean by asserting the Nazis killed “10 million Christians”?

As far as I know, and I have some background reading about WWII history, the Nazis didn’t specifically single out Christians as holoocaust targets.

If they’re talking about “people the Nazis killed in battle and conquest other than Russians,” such as British and American soldiers, how do they know all those folks were Christian (by the narrow definition of American evangelicals, such as the person sending this item)?

Isn’t it pure spin to imply that the Nazis persecuted Christians with the same vigor they went after Jews?

It’s no accident the number comes up higher than the mere six million Jews killed, I’d guess. This smells of a revisionist attempt to paint Christians as bigger victims of Hitler than Jews. Sure, lots of those killed in WWII were Christians, I’m not denying that. But to say “6 M Jews and 10M Christians murdered” sounds different.

How do these worthies know how many of the 20 million Russians were Christian? Surely the communist soldiers for Stalin weren’t all party-line atheist s…surely a country with Russia’s religious traditions had a few Christians in her foxholes. Don’t they count?

Am I overlooking anything? I’d like to rebut the several implications of this item, specifically:

  1. That Christians were singled out and persecuted by Nazi Germany like the Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, and Romany;

  2. That more Christians than Jews died as a result of said persecution (admittedly more died in the war, but I’d argue the Germans shot at them because they were soldiers shooting back, etc.)

  3. That “Russians” is a bloc similar to and separate from Christians and Jews

And what does that part where the “Germans and Russians looked the other way” imply? One can impute serious evil to Stalin’s Russia…but the 20 million Russians who died in the war weren’t exactly ignored by Russia, and I just don’t think you can pin the Holocaust of the Jews on Russians “look<ing> the other way.”

All in all, it seems to me to be bad history, slanderous assertion, and consicious, revisionist, sinister spin with evil intent. But I lack firm cites – it’s not on Snopes for example. And it’s vaguely possible I’ve misunderstood some aspect of what the e-mail is really getting at…if so, please clue me in before I make a fool of myself “calling” the sender on it.

Sailboat

2

I suspect the e-mail says “Christians” to emphasize that the Nazis killed other groups besides the Jews. I don’t think they’re saying the Nazis were going after Christians (weren’t most Germans Christians?), but that the Slavs, Romany, and others they killed were non-Jewish. It’s often forgotten that the Nazis did kill millions of such non-Jewish “undesirables”. I don’t recall the numbers, but I didn’t think they were as high as 10 million. Maybe the’re counting combat deaths.

3

Well, some Christian denominations WERE targeted by the Nazis. Jehovah’s Witnesses for instance. But that wasn’t persecution because they were Christians, it was persecution because they refused to swear oaths, which meant they were treated as traitors.

But it seems to me the glurge is using “Christian” to mean “People who weren’t Jews or Russians”. I guess that includes the gays, gypsies, handicapped, political prisoners, and so forth all rolled into one group.

I suppose the “20 million Russians” are separated out because they weren’t killed in the camps but rather during the ordinary prosecution of the war.

4

Here’s a table listing WWII deaths by country, which may be useful. I note that it says in a footnote

I’m not sure what they mean here either by “deaths due to the Nazi Holocaust” aside from the Jewish ones.

Of course these kinds of spam can’t be expected to make any kind of logical sense. However, the way I read it it doesn’t seem to be intended to minimize Jewish deaths relative to Christian ones, but rather to emphasize that the “Islamo-Facists” (whatever they are) also killed a lot of Christians. The intended target here is Muslims. By linking them with Nazis and also detailing the non-Jewish deaths the intent is to make them out to be the enemies of Christians and Jews alike.

5

Since the email seems to have been prompted by Holocaust denial in the Islamic world, it’s kind of disingenuous to include combat deaths in the totals. It sounds to me like the author is trying to avoid coming off as too “pro Jew”, which is an odd position to take if your starting point is the anger over Holocaust denial.

FWIW the “Islamo-Fascists” don’t want to “do it again”. There’s no ideological continuity between the original Fascists and what some people today call “Islamo-Fascists”. In fact, “Islamo-Fascists” aren’t properly fascists at all.

6

In short, the OP is under no obligation to forward the chain letter because the previous sender invoked Godwin, thus ending the entire conversation. :cool:

7

Does this mean that 10 million Christians were killed by the Nazis, or that 10 million Christians were killed in World War II (altogether)?

Or does the 10 million figure include those who were humiliated but not killed? Are we counting those who were humiliated by the Nazis in a Hogan’s Heroes-type situation?

8

I think you misread the original

Since the email in the OP says “with the German and Russia peoples looking the other way”, they may be referring to both the total killed by the Nazi Holocaust (about 12-13 million, roughly half Jews, as I recall) plus the total killed in Stalin’s Soviet Gulag camps (about 20-24 million, I think). That total (32-37 million) is near the 36 million that this email glurge gives, so it’s probably roughly accurate (within a million or two).

I don’t see the logic relating this to the action that they are requesting, however. But then, such glurge generally doesn’t make much sense, logically. Personally, anything that says “please pass this on …” I delete immediately.

9

Since the first paragraph clearly deals with combat deaths, the statement “the German and Russia [sic] peoples looking the other way” is utter, utter bollocks, because by the time the Russians were being killed, the Russian people were certainly not looking the other way, they were fighting or starving, and the German people were fighting or being bombed.

“The Holocaust” in the second paragraph refers specifically to the genocide - excluding combat troops and civilian victims of conflict - but including gays, Roma, physically and mentally ill people, many of whom would be Christian, as well as the overwhelming majority of Jews, but certainly not ten million Christians.

Twaddle. Delete. And if you feel like it, deconstruct and “reply all”.

10

Anyone have a clue why the 1,900 Catholics are separated from the 10 million Christians? :dubious:

11

I sincerely doubt that the Nazis killed ten million Christians simply because they were Christians. That said, they did go after Christians who would not submit to full control by the Nazi party (especially the Underground Church, which wished to maintain its doctrinal integrity). Martin Niemöller, for example, spent the war in a concentration camp, while Dietrich Bonhoeffer was garreted. To be fair, Bonhoeffer was involved in an assassination attempt on Hitler.

So, to answer your question, no, but Christians weren’t exactly being given cookies in the streets, either.

12

The glurge seems designed to deceive the reader into thinking that Christians were not only responsible for the Holocaust,* but that they were even bigger victims than the Jews. I doubt the 10 million number is anywhere near accurate, and none of them were targeted because they Christian. This is really a vile little piece of revisionism which I think subtly intends to belittle what was done to Jews by making it seem smaller than whatever was done to people who were incidentally Christians. The more I think about it, the more insulting I find it.

*They were. Hitler did not invent anti-semitism, he just exploited what had already been there for hundreds of years. Christian pogroms against Jews were a long standing tradition for centuries before Hitler. The holocaust was just the inevitable culmintation of that particular social pathology.

13

I think this email is total BS and close to reductio ad Hitlerium agruement as you can get but to state flatly that no “Christian” died in the Holocaust does a disservice to those that probably from their view did die for being Christian. I am talking about people who would say “I am here in this Camp because I said Mass or Witnessed or passed out Bibles or celebrated St. Diogenes day” and the Nazis would say: “That pastor was arrested because of anti-Government political activity” – and both would be telling the truth from their perspective.

The Nazi’s had a special barracks at Dachau for non-Jewish Clergymen. Only a relatively few (probably under 5,000 ) clergymen died as a result of being a Christian Clergyman in Nazi controlled territory. Now, to echo straightman’s point, by and large they were killed not really because the Nazi’s targeted them as Christians per se, but for the same reasons non-Jewish Polish Intellectuals were killed – they were community leaders and were seen as a threat to the new Nazi order. But I think flat out stating that no Christian was killed in the holocaust for being a Christian probably pushes the point too far, and does a disservice to these folks. (~5000ish? Maybe out of 11 million – but I think that dismisses 5,000 brave people out of hand – and after all worship would be an easy enough thing to cut the hell out in the face of the SS)

Inside Germany very early there were Clergy who were targets of the Nazi’s William L. Shirer, in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
"Not many Germans lost sleep over the arrests of a few thousand pastors and priests or over the quarreling of the various Protestant sects.”

Bottom-line: There was no where close to 1/2 of 1% of 10,000,000 Evangelical/ hard-core Catholic/Protestant Christians killed simply for being Christians by any sane measure - Just be careful how you phrase that rebuttal.

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14

Good point. That only underlines my suspicions about the real motivations of this thing. It’s disgusting that they’re trying to co-opt the holocaust in this way.

15

I would run rapidly from the implication of even thinking of saying anything in support of this bit of glurge, but before someone draws the wrong conclusions, what is distinguished from the “10 million Christians” is not “1,900 Catholics” but “1,900 Catholic priests.” Why they in particular are set apart is up for WAGination, but it’s not the old evangelical Catholic vs. Christian meme that would be invoked by the misreading of 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholics.

16

Since the message is directed largely against Iranian Holocaust deniers, I really don’t think that is its main intent:

17

It reads 1,900 Catholic Priests :wink:
A carriage return spoils the party.

18

They’re still trying to piggyback themselves onto the holocaust and diminish the distinction of the death camps.

19

I have no cite, but I can look one up if need be. The total number cited for Holocaust deaths is usually 11 million, though this is debated by historians, because so many were machine gunned in front of mass graves and didn’t have the paper trail the camp victims often did.

That 11 million includes 6 million Jews, plus Poles, Roma (gypsies), homosexuals, political prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses (for refusing to renounce their beliefs and pledge allegiance to Hitler- of all the concentration camp prisoners, JW’s were the only ones with the option of leaving, if they signed a document renouncing their faith) and… that’s all I can think of?

20

My bold. I disagree. I believe most social pathologies do in fact remain thus without turning into genocide. They take a “special” kind of catalyst to promulgate.