D-Day did not liberate Europe, it began to but it did not happen on that day all alone, nor did WWII end on D-Day nor begin on it.
Nor were Americans the only guys standing on the beaches at Normandy.
Don’t use hollywood as your history teacher, they are movies, American movies, so of course they are going to tell the American part of the story, same as i would expect a British or Canadian movie to tell there part.
I was going to type a big wall of text but instead i will suggest to go read some actual history books, there are very many good ones written in various countries and most available in english translation.
Spielberg is not a History Teacher, he is a story teller.
Exactly what is it you are saying here?
The loudest voices writing these facts, well you may be in for a shock, because they aren’t the Jewish survivor. The loudest most damning voices are the self incriminating ones, the rest is character testimony.
Imagine having grown up an orphan because your parents were brutally murdered. Your whole life, your cousin insinuates that either they weren’t really murdered, they died through their own carelessness, or they simply abandoned you as unlovable. She also insinuates that certain aspects of your orphan state, like a moderate life insurance payment you received, or the fact that your grandparents are a little extra attentive to you on your birthday–are grossly unfair and might even be the reason you drove your parents away.
Don’t you kinda wanna punch her in the face every time she asks an “innocent question”? Are you really comforted by her theory that the crime scene photos of your parent’s murder were faked?
The OP consists of some extremely tortured logic. For instance:
That hypothetical scenario relies on the notion that Holocaust deniers actually have evidence for their outlandish claims. Of course they do not. The Holocaust has been exhaustively studied for decades, the facts are not in any doubt at all. To imagine a bizarre situation in which evidence magically reveals that the Holocaust did not happen, or affected drastically fewer people, takes us so far away from reality that it becomes utterly meaningless. Where has that information been lurking all these years? Surely no one with an ounce of historical awareness would take such claims seriously. It makes perfect sense to consider the source and look to the motivations of the deniers. Of course any ordinary person would view such attempts at historical revisionism with skepticism. And hostility.
I don’t really want to get sidetracked by discussing Quincy, but there was a young guy who starts out as a denier, and later accepts the Holocaust-- in the beginning, he has painted a swastika on Martin Balsam’s business door front, but we don’t know it was him until the end. Anyway, Norman Lloyd’s character is a completely separate character.
The father of my aunt was IN Auschwitz, and two of her brothers died there-- her sister was in Bergen-Belsen.
You know, we have so much testimony from Jews, and we have photography, and on top of that, we have every gentile soldier and person like you uncle who can testify to what they saw with their own eyes.
But more than that-- we have the admission of the German nation. Which incidentally has apologized and made some reparations.
There is precious little data period. It comes with the territory.
The Soviets in particular had basically no idea how many of their civilians died - Google offers a spread, yes a spread, of 13 million civilians. There is no way to know how many Germans died, or gypsies, or homosexuals, etc, etc.
To quote Wikipedia:
It’s some ballpark.
Since computerisation it’s been a little easier to collate data and various countries have updated their estimates - China, for example, now uses a figure of 20 million.
But somehow, in all that utter chaos and destruction, we have had a pretty exact number for 60 years for a class of civilians drawn somewhat randomly from across Europe and facing a number of possible scenarios.
I think part of it is some countries trying to hide their involvement. Thats why they put all the blame on Germany or Hitler himself.
Truth is many countries like France, Holland, Belgium and especially eastern countries like Poland willingly rounded up Jews and sent them away. Even worse, when some survivors came back, they killed them rather than giving up their new stolen property. Today in modern Poland it must be interesting when kids ask grandpa how they were suddenly able to afford such a big house.
But then the US firm IBM made the computers that helped organize the holocaust and many americans were also anti-semite so the US is also not blameless.
Cite for the claim about IBM? IBM’s first computer was the Mark I, co-developed with Harvard in 1944 near the end of the war as a one-off for the use of the US Navy. What IBM computers – or computers from any Allied country – were allegedly involved in the holocaust?
Well, even before the advent what we’d see as an early computer, IBM manufactured various machines for rapid counting and sorting of data, though using this to blame IBM (or the United States) for the Holocaust is a bizarre leap. You may as well blame the person who invented railroads or bullets.
I’ve been looking into IBM’s involvement for the last 15 minutes, since reading Mr. Redneck’s post. The technology seems to have been punch card. The important book was IBM and the Holocaust. It apparently was well researched, and won legitimate awards. There are, of course, disputes and counter-claims.
Possibly a better descriptor would be “a pretty consistent number”, with independent estimates in the ballpark of ~5.5 million. Seems like a fairly minor thing to nitpick.
Thanks for that. So it wasn’t a “computer”, but indeed punch card technology was central to census tabulation and was the main technology introduced by IBM when it was still the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company.
From what I’m seeing here and from my limited knowledge of the pertinent history, IBM’s alleged complicity is questionable and, to say the least, extremely controversial. After reading Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, I was struck by the American government’s amicable relationship with Hitler during most of the 30s (and indeed, that of most of the Allied powers). It’s easy to sit in armchair judgment of alleged Nazi collaboration while losing sight of the political climate and perspective of the times.
The Larson book talks about how the evil potential of the Nazi regime only gradually dawned on the then US ambassador to Germany William Dodd, even as his own impetuous daughter, impressed with the pomp and trappings of the regime, was carrying on affair with none other than Rudolf Diels, at that time the head of the Gestapo. Meanwhile back home, US Under Secretary of State William Phillips was one of the most virulent anti-Semites around. I suppose if there’s a moral here, it’s that history is complicated.
The thing is that pathology evidence never identified cases of death due to gas? People who die from carbon monoxide or cyanide poisoning leave a cherry red corpse. That is not how they are described. The alternative explantion is that the pictures are of people who died of typhus & starvation. That fits with British Intelligence intercepts from 1942 onwards, Red Cross Reports.
Remember similar war propaganda was used in WWI.
From looking at the topic, the revisionists raise a number of points such as the following:
It was initially claimed that people were killed by gassing in Germany (along with claims about skin being used for lampshades & other atrocities).
Paul Rassinier, an inmate at Buchenwald, pointed out that wasn’t correct.
Dr Charles Larson, US Pathologist, noted that there were no cases of deaths by gas in Germany. Larson couldn’t inspect the camps in Poland as they were under Soviet Control.
From 1960 onwards it has been accepted that the claim about gassing in Germany was false (similarly claims about skin being used for lampshades have also been accepted as completely false).
British Intelligence intercepted German communications from 1942 onwards. They noted that in relation to Auschwitz there were never any references to gas. There was however references to death due to typhus outbreaks - which was also a major problem in WWI (3 million died from typhus) and in Germany during WWII.
Over 3000 children were safely born in the camp. No deaths.
During the week prisoners of war were employed at labour camps but on Sunday allowed to play football. Games would take place on a field outside the camp with armed German guards watching. The Red Cross provided the teams with four sets of shirts - English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh. Ron Jones was held in E715:
There was a camp cinema - where every week different, mainly cultural and non-political films were shown.
There was also a swimming pool which inmates could use.
The Jerusalem Post reported on the following:
Maria van Herwaarden was in Auschwitz-Birkenau from December 1942 to January 1945. In her time there she saw no evidence of mass murder. People did however die from disease.
The admissions from German officiers, such as Auschwitz Commander Hoess, were extracted after days of torture. US Judge van Roden wrote an article about this ‘American Atrocities in Germany’. See also, R. Butler, Legions of Death, Hamlyn, (London, 1983), p.237.
The Red Cross inspection team visited Auschwitz and other camps during the war. This is what the Red Cross did note:
People who have died from cyanide or carbon monoxide poisoning leave pink or cherry-red corpse. That doesn’t match the descriptions.
Chemical tests of the areas where the homicidal gas chambers are claimed to be reveal low levels. In contrast, there IS, significant cynanide residue in the delousing rooms (clothes were deloused to stop the outbreak of typhus).
Given the extent the official version has changed and the above inconsistencies it’s not surprising their is a degree of skeptism?
Yes, you’ll recall that Anne Frank died of typhus. it also killed around 3 million in WWI. Epidemics were a major problem in camps. The reason for delousing chambers using zyklon was to kill lice which spread disease such as typhus. That is what the British Intelligence decrypts of German comms from 1942 onwards also revealed. There are also various orders to REDUCE the death rates due to disease. As noted above, bedding and clothing were placed in delousing chambers. These still have high levels of cyanide residue. The levels of cyanide in samples from the alleged gas chambers for people have negligible levels.
Again, the same claims were made in relation to German camps. However, there were US physicians who found deaths were due to typhus and disease not gas. Dr. John E. Gordon, Russell Barton, Dr Charles Larson, for example. They couldn’t inspect camps in Poland as they were under Soviet control.
Search isn’t throwing up any of the threads, but one of Edwin Black’s researchers on IBM and the Holocaust was a Doper and he did discuss the issues on the boards. Independently of that, I have to say that I wasn’t entirely convinced by all of Black’s case when I read it, but it’s absolutely an important book and utterly worth reading.
