IIRC that is only Vlassov’s ROA. There’s also the Cossacks and independant Ost-Battalione.
Closer to a million actually. The reason they ‘fought’ for the Germans was actually because German policy was what it was; the choice was starvation in a POW camp or working for the Germans as a hiwi or in an Ost-Bataillon.
If you’ve got no actual defense when called on stating bullshit just say so, don’t invent hypothetical people who will come to your aid with more invented ‘facts’.
And often various practical reasons are given by some for why so many Jews died during the war other than the Holocaust, usually involving typhus. We all know which side of their bread is buttered when people try these claims; they’re called holocaust deniers. There is only one reason 3.3 million Soviet POWs were murdered by starvation by the Nazis during WW2, and that is Nazi racial policy. From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, bolding mine:
I guess ‘Nazi racial policy’ is bit of an advance on ‘Hitler was evil and was looking for a scapegoat’, but not much.
I can see where this is going, you seem to be suggesting that any attempt at looking at this question in a broader context is tantamount to denying the Holocaust.
I disagree, genocide is a recurring feature of human society and the holocaust is one of the most documented. It should be studied from all angles and all contributing factors should be considered and evaluated because this is one of the most important lessons from history.
However, there seems little point in discussing it further in this forum given the trajectory the tone is taking.
The million includes the unarmed laborers. I’m talking about Russians who actively took up arms. But while some joined to avoid starvation in PoW camps, there were a number who actively signed up for ideological reasons, or to get rid of Communism or Stalin. There were actually some Red Army soldiers who surrendered with the intention of switching sides.
Lizzie Collingham presents an unusual argument in The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food. She says that the primary motive for the Holocaust was food.
War consumes a lot of resources and reduces food production. And Germany had experienced widespread hunger during World War I as a result of the blockade.
So Hitler wanted another war but he was afraid of a repeat of the WWI-era hunger. He felt the Nazi regime might lost its public support in the face of that. So he insisted that Germans would not experience any economic suffering during his wars.
The result was the Hunger Plan. It argued that while food production might decline during a war, it could be compensated for by reducing food consumption. In blunter terms, it said that “enemies of Germany” should be eliminated so the food they would have otherwise eaten could then be diverted to feed Germans. And given the existing Nazi views, the Jews were the first group designated as being undeserving of the food they consumed.
Personally, I think Collingham oversells the argument. The Hunger Plan did exist but I don’t think it was as central to the Holocaust as she claims. At most, it gave the Nazis further reason to do something they already were inclined towards. But it did present a rationale for killing Jews on a large scale rather than via a smaller more gradual program.
Not that I am here to make unfounded accusations of Hitler ever making any sense, but, why no just put all these people to work growing more food?
Clearly you don’t see where this is going; you have absurdly suggested that the Einsatzgruppen murdered 2 million Jews and communists in open air mass shootings during Barbarossa “In order to suppress any organised uprisings”, taken the fear of communists infecting the German people as they had in 1918 according to the stab-in-the-back myth as the reason for the Commissar Order at face value rather than the historical tripe about Judeo-Bolshevism that it is, and suggest that there was some reason other than Nazi racial policy that 3.3 million Soviet POWs were deliberately starved to death or that the Nazis planned on virtually exterminating the Slavic peoples after they had won the war.
The only reason there is little point in discussing it is the utter lack of validity to the bullshit you are claiming.
In that case the number, while hard to pin down with any real precision, is at least 427,000, the figure reported in Ostlegionen in late 1943 when Hitler first demanded they be disbanded, but relented when presented with the figures and instead ordered most of them transferred to the West. Wiki:
Indeed some did, imagining that the devil they didn’t know would be better than the devil they did know, but compared to the total numbers they were very much in the minority. Hell, there were even a few British POWs who signed up with the Nazis to rid the world of communism.
In any discussion of this subject it is worth pointing interested parties to Kenneth Branagh’s film “Conspiracy”. Based on the 1942 Wannsee Conference held by Heydrich.
It doesn’t directly address the OP’s question but the discussions held do give some insight. Also, it acts as a perfect illustration of “the banality of evil” ( plus Kenneth Branagh is on top form and that is always worth watching)
[QUOTE=the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]
Second only to the Jews, Soviet prisoners of war were the largest group of victims of Nazi racial policy.
[/QUOTE]
I suppose one could argue that the entirety of Operation Barbarossa falls under “Nazi racial policy,” in which case the Soviet dead all in all (some 20 million) far outnumber the Jewish dead (some 6 million).
Yeah. Göring, who had Hitler’s ear, insisted on absolute autarky, precisely to avoid the disasters of WWI. Schacht, his Minister of Economics 1934-1937, considered this absolutely bugfuck idiotic, and “argued that goods could be obtained through foreign trade at a fraction of the cost of developing the goods internally or creating ersatz substitutes.” But Hitler wouldn’t budge, Göring got his way, and Schacht was pushed even further towards his eventual resignation.
That would be a rather foolish comparison, as the figure of 20 million Soviet war dead on the Eastern Front from 1941-45 (Operation Barbarossa only covers until the end of '41 at best) is just that - dead as a result of war, not necessarily dead as a result of racial policy. The 6 million Jews and 3.3 million Soviet POWs as well as the Romani, homosexuals, mentally and physically disabled murdered by the Nazis were defenseless victims when murdered by their captors and killed by the Nazis specifically for racial or ideological reasons, not as a result of the vagueness of battle.
It might come as a surprise to you that not only was Auschwitz originally constructed as a camp for Soviet POWs, but it was there that the first victims of Zyklon B were killed: 600 Soviet POWs:
There’s a limit to how much extra workers will increase food production. So the argument was that putting ten million more people to work on farms wouldn’t produce much more food but killing ten million people who weren’t producing food would mean more food for everyone who was still alive.
We are discussing it.
However, you keep presenting “reasons” that somehow remove it from the realm of simple xenophobia by trying to come up with after-the-fact excuses. The Commissar order has no serious bearing on the actions of the Einsaztgruppen who murdered entire villages or Jewish communities from larger cities including the old and infirm and those too young to present any sort of problem to the Wehrmacht.
Studying an issue from all angles does not mean that we have to accept non-facts into the discussion any more than studying evolution from all angles means that we have to allow Creationists or Intelligent Design proponents to be included in scientific discourses.
Many among the Nazi leadership probably did buy into the Dolchstosslegende (stab-in-the-back legend), and, had the Germans limited themselves to murdering intellectuals and communist leaders, one might make an argument that that was the basis of their actions. Once they began murdering entire populations–which is what they did from the first day–then we can dismiss that argument as something contrived by Nazi apologists with no basis in fact.
As with the “seize their money” idea that you first floated, the rationale seems plausible, but it crumbles when subjected to an analysis of the actual facts.
That’s right although I think religious factors were also significant. Hence the ADL saw it as quite significant when Pope Benedict wrote that Temple authorities were the accusers of Jesus, rather than all the Jews.
I didn’t see reference to this yet, but in actual speeches and writings Hitler claimed that his it was his religious faith that inspired him to fight the Jews. See Cecil’s column on Hitler’s religion.
So, he claimed that it was his Christian faith that inspired him to ‘fight’ ‘the Jewish poison’, and that he was following Christ’s example of wrath against them. I think that this should be taken seriously as forming at least part of his reasons for committing genocide.
Except that one could make the case that the war against the Soviet Union was, arguably, itself “a result of racial policy.” The basic idea being to crush / subjugate the Slavs, a supposedly “lower” race of men, and re-populate their lands with pure-blooded Übermenschen.
Nah. German anti-Semitism had many sources, many roots, many forms – religious, nativist, financial, etc. Hitler, politician that he was, exploited them all. Sometimes, he brought up the Christian angle, as in the example you cite. At other times, he brought up Jewry’s supposed ties to Bolshevism (Judäo-Bolschewismus). At other times, he brought up its supposed ties to international finance (Finanzjudentum). And so on. To focus solely on the religious angle, to the exclusion of all others, seems quite unwise.
I was trying to imagine what makes people participate in genocide, the footsoldiers rather than the generals. I have read that some were reluctant to kill innocent people and some refused and it made them much less effective as a military force. These people were indoctrinated with all kinds of reasons why the killing should be done and yes, many were rubbish.
Looking at it that way is not to be an aplogist, a holocaust denier or anything else, it is simply trying to answer the question ‘why did it happen’. What did people believe that made it acceptable to do this both in Germany and in the invaded countries. Many people, even soldiers, are not easily turned into killers. I want to how it happended from the ground up, what the ordinary joe thought, what they believed.
‘Hitler was evil’ and ‘it was Nazi racial policy’ seem very incomplete answers, as does ‘simple xenophobia’ to account for the actions of the people on the ground.
However, I appreciate that questioning from this sort of angle is easily misunderstood and so I have abandonned it.
Well, one consideration is that when your average G.I. Joe would have trouble commiting the murders, you recruit people who will. Put them in uniform and Hey Presto!, you have ‘soldiers’ committing crimes.
I bet average Joe is not cut out to be a CIA interrogator either.
You seem to be saying that some of these reasons were not rubbish. Could you expand on this?
No.