# Himmler's Posen speech - what was his thinking? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 10, 2015, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208 "2015-10-10T22:23:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2015, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/21 "2015-10-11T16:01:35Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > That doesn’t mean he wasn’t in favor of it. Most people who get a big project dumped on their desk have as their first reaction, “Holy crap, how the hell am I going to get this done?”, and being told you’re in charge of killing nine and a half million people is a pretty big project. Fair point. IMO he and the SS were neutral as far as the wanting the Holocaust (I have never seen evidence that anyone was lobbying for it) but, once ordered. their concerns about it werent the innocent lives of their victims but the effect the killing would have on the killers. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2015, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/22 "2015-10-11T17:11:46Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > IMO he and the SS were neutral as far as the wanting the Holocaust (I have never seen evidence that anyone was lobbying for it) but, once ordered. their concerns about it werent the innocent lives of their victims but the effect the killing would have on the killers. Are you serious? Quite a few Jews and other undesirables were killed prior to the Final Solution quite zealously by the SS. The [_Einsatzkommandos_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzkommando) were organized in 1938 under [SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Heydrich). Prior to killing over a million Jews, communists and other by shooting in the wake of Barbarossa in 1941, the Einsatzkommandos had murdered 61,000 in Poland following the invasion in 1939. Heydrich was also behind [Kristallnacht](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht) which was carried out by the SA and the SS. The 30,000 Jews arrested on Kristallnacht were sent to concentration camps run by the SS, where more than 2,000 were killed prior to the remainder being released three months later on the condition that they leave Germany. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2015, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/23 "2015-10-11T18:31:43Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Are you serious? Quite a few Jews and other undesirables were killed prior to the Final Solution quite zealously by the SS. The [_Einsatzkommandos_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzkommando) were organized in 1938 under [SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Heydrich). Prior to killing over a million Jews, communists and other by shooting in the wake of Barbarossa in 1941, the Einsatzkommandos had murdered 61,000 in Poland following the invasion in 1939. Heydrich was also behind [Kristallnacht](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht) which was carried out by the SA and the SS. The 30,000 Jews arrested on Kristallnacht were sent to concentration camps run by the SS, where more than 2,000 were killed prior to the remainder being released three months later on the condition that they leave Germany. And? The Kristalnacht action was taken at the behest of Goebbels and was not a part of the Holocaust. The Einsatzgruppen were sent to murder the Jews at the specific order of Hitler. Please provide any evidence that anyone in the government or the SS other than Hitler was lobbying for the wholesale physical extermination of the Jews. Also, Hitler was sure that the world wouldnt notice and specifically mentioned the Armenian Holocaust. No one cared or remembered it. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2015, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/24 "2015-10-11T18:35:59Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Fair point. IMO he and the SS were neutral as far as the wanting the Holocaust (I have never seen evidence that anyone was lobbying for it) but, once ordered. their concerns about it werent the innocent lives of their victims but the effect the killing would have on the killers. I had quoted this in a previous thread, but here are parts of the lyrics of two SS marching songs. > [@](#): > > Sharpen the knives on the paving stones > so they cut into Jewish flesh and blood better! > When the hour of vengeance comes > we’re ready to start the massacre! and > [@](#): > > When the stormtrooper enters the fire, he keeps his courage, > and when Jewish blood spurts from the knife, everything is twice as good. > Throw out the whole bunch of Jews! > Throw them out of the Fatherland! > Send them back to Jerusalem and cut their throats, > or they might come back. So, “neutral on the Holocaust” isn’t exactly the term I’d use to refer to the SS. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2015, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/25 "2015-10-11T18:55:26Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > I had quoted this in a previous thread, but here are parts of the lyrics of two SS marching songs. > > and > > So, “neutral on the Holocaust” isn’t exactly the term I’d use to refer to the SS. I meant neutral in relation to a complete annihilation of the Jewish people. The lyrics you quoted mention expulsion. Until the war started that is what the government was trying to do. The British wouldnt let em go to Palestine; we wouldnt let em into the USA. Like so much in Hitlers Germany the Holocaust was an unplanned reaction to events on the ground driven by the murderous will of one man. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2015, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/26 "2015-10-11T18:58:26Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > I meant neutral in relation to a complete annihilation of the Jewish people. The lyrics you quoted mention expulsion. Until the war started that is what the government was trying to do. The British wouldnt let em go to Palestine; we wouldnt let em into the USA. Like so much in Hitlers Germany the Holocaust was an unplanned reaction to events on the ground driven by the murderous will of one man. It’s not believable that one of the greatest mass murders and genocides ever perpetrated on earth can be pinned on pretty much just one man. It’s ludicrous to suggest that the SS and senior Nazi leaders weren’t totally onboard with exterminating Europe’s Jews. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2015, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/27 "2015-10-11T19:14:19Z")
Read the Kershaw link I posted and try to wrap your head around the culture of Germany in the early 20th century. The Fuhrer spoke and people obeyed. No Hitler; no Holocaust. Also read Brownings Ordinary Men: Police Battalion 101 to learn how non Nazis participated in Genocide. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2015, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/28 "2015-10-11T19:18:30Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > It’s not believable that one of the greatest mass murders and genocides ever perpetrated on earth can be pinned on pretty much just one man. It’s ludicrous to suggest that the SS and senior Nazi leaders weren’t totally onboard with exterminating Europe’s Jews. There must have been a whole lot of Germans who got the word and said “What! Are you freakin kidding? How the hell are we supposed to do that?” If you weren’t a psychopath that would be your first reaction even as an anti-semite. Way up on the chain it would seem like a bizarre quest, way down it would seem completely grim and thankless. Many non-psychos wound up on that bandwagon. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2015, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/29 "2015-10-11T19:30:05Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Read the Kershaw link I posted and try to wrap your head around the culture of Germany in the early 20th century. The Fuhrer spoke and people obeyed. No Hitler; no Holocaust. > > Also read Brownings Ordinary Men: Police Battalion 101 to learn how non Nazis participated in Genocide. I’ve read several books on the Holocaust, though not those in particular. The notion that the German people were culturally helpless to resist orders from above is easily demonstrated to be false – the German people as a whole rejected [Action T4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_T4#Voices_of_opposition), euthanasia for disabled people, and due to mass protests the Nazi government stopped it in 1941. During the occupation, more than a third of Germans responded to polling that extermination of the Jews was necessary for the security of Germany. So no, it wasn’t just “the Fuhrer spoke and the people obeyed”. When they disapproved of something strongly enough, the people protested. That they didn’t protest the extermination of Jews, for the most part, tells us something about the German people at the time. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2015, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/30 "2015-10-11T20:23:56Z")
The actual Holocaust was a state secret and was carried out far from German territory. There were hints but not much else. Germany was an extreme police state and public opinion didn’t matter. Officially the T4 program stopped but not in reality. Check out Liftons Nazi Doctors. And; yes it was Hitler spoke and people obeyed. Again this is difficult to understand to people who don’t value oaths. Name me the other times the German people protested. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2015, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/31 "2015-10-11T20:35:54Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > The actual Holocaust was a state secret and was carried out far from German territory. Guess it depends on what you mean by “actual Holocaust” since Belsen Dachau Sachsenhausen Buchenwald Dora-Mittelbau Ravensbruck Mauthausen and more, were all located in “German territory” (and, in fact, within the borders of pre-WWII Germany and Austria). You may respond by stating that none of the above were ‘extermination camps’. I would respond in turn, that extermination through forced labour and disease is still extermination. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2015, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/32 "2015-10-11T21:02:06Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Like so much in Hitlers Germany the Holocaust was an unplanned reaction to events on the ground driven by the murderous will of one man. Unplanned? :dubious: > **[Holocaust Encyclopedia](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/en)** > > The Holocaust was the state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jews by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. Start learning today. AFAIK the reality was that even if resources and materials were needed more than ever for the war effort, the extermination of the Jews on many occasions got priority like with the use of transport trains. It was indeed a plan that took place regardless of the events on the ground. And that was another reason why the Holocaust is seen as worse than other genocides because instead of reacting to what was going on the Nazis just continued with the schedule. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2015, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/33 "2015-10-11T23:01:04Z")
It’s also possible that, as a matter of internal politics, Himmler was worried about keeping up SS morale and discipline. I’ve no evidence on that, but he does talk about “strain” and the difficulty of the task, also specifically warns against his people wanting exceptions for this or that individual. There’s a curious item in the “Topography of Terror” exhibition in Berlin (or was when I last saw it) - a letter from an SS officer to a colleague in charge of deportations from Berlin complaining about the behaviour of the men collecting together the people and asking for “some humanity” in the process, which makes you wonder whether SS people would have been fed the same lies as the civilian population, and would be shocked at the reality, despite all their years of anti-Semitic indoctrination. One other footnote on Hitler’s own responsibility/initiative. If you read the Wannsee Protocol, it’s quite clear that it’s meant to be read by others rather than those present at the meeting, to show that, at Goering’s request (he was nominally in charge of economic planning) the SS had undertaken to produce a plan for the “Final Solution”, and all the relevant ministries had agreed that the SS would be in charge of the whole process, including the economic exploitation of slave labour. And who would they need to confirm this to, if not Hitler? ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2015, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/34 "2015-10-12T00:43:12Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > Guess it depends on what you mean by “actual Holocaust” since > > Belsen > Dachau > Sachsenhausen > Buchenwald > Dora-Mittelbau > Ravensbruck > Mauthausen > and more, > > were all located in “German territory” (and, in fact, within the borders of pre-WWII Germany and Austria). > > You may respond by stating that none of the above were ‘extermination camps’. I would respond in turn, that extermination through forced labour and disease is still extermination. None of which were death camps ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2015, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/35 "2015-10-12T01:49:45Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > None of which were death camps Not that the Nazis did not make an effort to make them so (specially when the allies were getting close, many prisoners were killed by the Nazis that did not want them to go free), in Buchenwald it is estimated that more than 50,000 died because of illness, harsh camp conditions, starvation, literally “worked to death”, human experimentation or fell victim to the SS guards. Also many of those camps in Germany were collection points to sent people to the death camps in the east outside of Germany proper. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2015, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/36 "2015-10-12T01:52:19Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > None of which were death camps Auschwitz-Birkenau was in Upper Silesia, which was annexed to Germany after the invasion of Poland. And, regarding other big protests, the other big protest was the Rosenstrasse protest, where the non-Jewish families of Jewish Berliners arrested in preparation for deportation got them released. Look, Nazi Germany was a police state, and protest against the regime’s actions was dangerous. I agree with you there. I also agree that probably the vast majority of Germans, on their own, wouldn’t have come up with genocide. But to say that Hitler was the only one who was pro-Holocaust is just not true. To say that Himmler was like, “Eh, kill the Jews or don’t kill the Jews, whatever, doesn’t matter to me.” doesn’t match up with the record of the stuff he said and wrote. And when you said “The lyrics you quoted mention expulsion”, that’s true, they do. But they follow “Throw them out of the Fatherland!” with “Send them back to Jerusalem and cut their throats, or they might come back” ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2015, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/37 "2015-10-12T03:25:10Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > You may respond by stating that none of the above were ‘extermination camps’. I would respond in turn, that extermination through forced labour and disease is still extermination. > [@madsircool](#): > > None of which were death camps Just as I predicted. Please don’t try to say that a “death camp” is different than an “extermination camp”. ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2015, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/38 "2015-10-12T07:24:45Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Yes he was…butressed by statements from secretaries who saw Himmler directly after the meeting where Hitler ordered the Holocaust. > [@Steken](#): > > Which meeting would that be? A cite would be great. Thanks in advance. > [@madsircool](#): > > Here we go… > > [http://www.holocaust-history.org/hitler-final-solution/](http://www.holocaust-history.org/hitler-final-solution/) Just so we’re clear: That a single secretary is convinced that Hitler ordered Himmler to execute the Holocaust at that specific meeting doesn’t mean that that’s what happened. We don’t know if there was ever any such meeting, let alone when and where. We also don’t know Himmler’s immediate reaction. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2015, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/39 "2015-10-12T08:02:49Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > Just so we’re clear: > > That a single secretary is convinced that Hitler ordered Himmler to execute the Holocaust at that specific meeting doesn’t mean that that’s what happened. We don’t know if there was ever any such meeting, let alone when and where. We also don’t know Himmler’s immediate reaction. True. But in the memoirs of George Clare (an Austrian who got away at the Anschluss and ended up an intelligence officer with the British Army in Berlin in 1945), he has details of one of Himmler’s appointments diaries from the winter of 1939-40 which note that he got verbal approval from Hitler of reprisal shootings in Poland of small numbers of Jews and prominent Polish citizens. Someone who does that is not, barely a year later on his own authority and without telling his boss, going to create a system paying hundreds of men for killing thousands of people in the wake of the invasion of the Soviet Union, and within a year after that, suborning the entire government machine to put himself and his organisation in charge of everything to do with the enslavement and murder of every Jew they can lay their hands on right across Europe. Plus, of course, we also know that Hitler’s last “political testament” more or less says “The Germans let me down, but at least I killed as many Jews as I could”. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2015, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208/40 "2015-10-12T08:08:33Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > Just as I predicted. > > Please don’t try to say that a “death camp” is different than an “extermination camp”. A death camp is different than an extermination camp. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/himmlers-posen-speech-what-was-his-thinking/734208.md?page=3)