Given the bolded part, what do you think being ‘treated accordingly’ means?
To be fair, that could just as easily be read the other way. That the term extermination means, in practice, the evacuation of the Jews.
The Wannsee conference is much clearer, that was the plan.
Never mind that the plan isn’t worked out yet. The order is given, lower echelons will work out the details.
Perhaps you should acknowledge what it means, then.
You know who else has demonstrated no connection to reality at all? YOU.
This is some of the most inexcusable and explicitly pro-Nazi justification you’ve posted in this thread.
Reading on, I should have known that wasn’t going to happen. I’m not aware of road gangs, but then, I do know that a lot of people were worked to death or otherwise killed in the camps. Even by the standard you’ve set, the argument you’re using here is embarrassing: you’re claiming there was no plan because part of the plan may have been changed.
He can’t explain what it means but he knows what it means well enough to state definitively what it doesn’t mean, even though he’s basing the assessment of what it doesn’t mean on information he doesn’t know anything about (road gangs in the East). Thus he can conclusively say that it doesn’t say what it clearly appears to say because it couldn’t possibly say that according to information he doesn’t have.
Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?
Or there’s the obvious explanation that you don’t want to admit to. That the reason you can’t find a valid coded meaning is because there is no coded meaning. When Himmler talked about exterminating the Jews he meant it literally - he was exterminating the Jews. In which case, his statement was directly related to the camps and the Einsatzgruppen and the holocaust that he was in charge of.
Read the whole of Himmler’s statement that I linked above, and its clear that the meaning is evacuation = extermination and not the other way round.
Gack, I’m waiting for your interpretation especially of the two together. Wannsee conference and Himmler’s statement. It is?
Evacuation means evacuation. Big surpirse.
Sigh. Analyzing speeches is not my strong point. I do believe it is conceded that the speech is legit. In any case I don’t want to go through the necessary twists and turns of reasoning to challenge its authenticity of the basis of its provenance, though Butz does do that and he’s usually but certainly not always right.
But right at the top this remark occurs …
- “The Jewish people is being exterminated,” every Party member will tell you, “perfectly clear, it’s part of our plans, we’re eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, ha!, a small matter.”*
The idea that ‘every party member’ would tell you that the Jews are being exterminated, is absurd. It runs counter to every other thing I know about the holocaust and I don’t think there is a shred of evidence for it, that is, that the rank and file Nazi party members discussed exterminating the Jews freely.
If you look at the Nuremberg testimony, no one, that is no defendant, said that they knew anything at all about the extermination of the Jews. The only man who was charged in direct participation testified that he learned of the program from allied radio …
*DR. KAUFFMANN: What attitude did you adopt when you heard about it?
KALTENBRUNNER: I had no knowledge of Hitler’s order to Heydrich regarding the final solution of the Jewish problem at the time I took up my office. In the summer of 1943 I gathered from the foreign press and through the enemy radio… *
So, what to make of a speech where Himmler says Party members discussed it freely as a ‘small matter’?
The US had broken the Nazi codes and intercepted many communications, yet there is no record of anyone discussing the exterminating the Jews even in secret conversations.
So, I think the content of the speech makes it suspect. If Himmler said these things he must have been indulging in some sort of hyperbolic flight of fancy. The speech does not correspond to reality for the reasons given.
OK, enough speeches, on to … the experiment.
You do realize that it is a bad idea, dangerous to yourself and others and will prove nothing.
If you want to indulge in dangerous and questionable experiments, perhaps you should consider reanimating dead flesh with lightning instead. At least if it were to succeed, you’d have something worth discussing.
I just had a thought - I may watch Iron Skies tonight - for some reason, I’m kind of in the mood. By the way, Gack, it isn’t a documentary.
Once again you miss the forest for the trees. The important part of the statement is that “it’s part of our plans, we’re eliminating the Jews, exterminating them”. The “every party member” may be hyperbole or just an incorrect claim, but the important (and not controversial) thing is that Himmler said that part of the plans of Nazi Germany was the extermination of the Jews.
How much doubt is there in you? Are you certain the Nazis didn’t try to kill all the Jews and succeeded in killing 5-6 million? Are you mostly certain? Just partially certain? Considering the preponderance of evidence and the thousands upon thousands of eyewitnesses (including perpetrators and victims), it seems much easier for me to believe that it happened, than to believe in this massive conspiracy that must have included so many thousands of people, including relatives of me and several posters in the thread.
You appear to be saying “I can’t refute this so I’m going to pretend it’s dubious even though I have no reason to”.
(bolding mine)
Once again you’re basing your assessment on what you personally know or, more precisely, what you don’t know. A reasonable person would go find out rather than attempting to parse tiny phrases in the most tortuous way possible. You dissect and semantically nitpick while providing exactly zero evidence for your case, all the while dismissing the rather substantial witness statements, confessions, physical evidence and other historical records that the rest of us are relying on. This is not a robust argument by any standard, and comes perilously close to denial (not even "Holocaust denial; just general, run-of-the-mill denial).
And please don’t do the chicken burning thing. It will prove nothing and ruin some perfectly good chicken.
So the people being charged with war crimes said that they were innocent, and this is proof to you. I hope if I’m ever on trial, I get you on my jury.
Ummm, except for the recording of Himmler’s speech we were just discussing.
Another statement by Himmler in the Posen speeches:
I ask of you that that which I say to you in this circle be really only heard and not ever discussed. We were faced with the question: what about the women and children? – I decided to find a clear solution to this problem too. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men - in other words, to kill them or have them killed and allow the avengers of our sons and grandsons in the form of their children to grow up. The difficult decision had to be made to have this people disappear from the earth. For the organisation which had to execute this task, it was the most difficult which we had ever had. […] I felt obliged to you, as the most superior dignitary, as the most superior dignitary of the party, this political order, this political instrument of the Führer, to also speak about this question quite openly and to say how it has been. The Jewish question in the countries that we occupy will be solved by the end of this year. Only remainders of odd Jews that managed to find hiding places will be left over.
Undoubtedly Gack will try to deny Himmler said this. But he did say this- there was no conspiracy to create false speeches and false witnesses- the Nazis planned this (and there is overwhelming evidence for this), the Nazis talked about it (also overwhelming evidence), and the Nazis perpetrated it (leaving overwhelming evidence).
Gack, you are being deceived, and it must be terribly hard to admit it. But you’re putting your trust in the most extreme bigots and charlatans who have no real interest in the truth. All of those elderly Jews are not making up their experiences- they really were in camps, and they really saw their friends and relatives murdered before them.
Hey, why stop with quotes from Himmler? Let’s see what Hitler had to say:
*"One thing I should like to say on this day which may be memorable for others as well as for us Germans:
In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. During the time of my struggle for power, it was in the first instance the Jewish race which only received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the state, and with it that of the whole nation, and that I would then, among many other things, settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their face. Today, I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe, for the time when the non-Jewish nations had no propaganda is at an end. National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy have institutions which enable them, when necessary, to enlighten the world about the nature of a question of which many nations are instinctively conscious, but which they have not yet clearly thought out."* - Speech of January 30, 1939
Hang on just one god damn minute here chief. How can it run counter to every other thing you know about the holocaust when you claim the holocaust didn’t happen?
You know who else said that? Hi…oh wait never mind
So to sum up:
- The leaders and key members of the Nazi party stated what they planned to do, what they were doing and (afterwards) what they had done.
- There were and still are vast numbers of direct eyewitnesses, including victims, perpetrators and bystanders
- Members of the armed forces of several nations saw the camps at the end of the war
- There is a tremendous amount of physical evidence still in existence including the remnants of mass graves
But on the other side there’s a small group of Internet scholars, virtually all of which were born after the war, asserting a conspiracy that would have required the collaboration of millions from both sides of the war for generations including the apparently willing continued absence of several million human beings.
These two sides aren’t even in the same galaxy of plausibility.
No, but denial in the face of facts and evidence is.
Yes, enough with the tortured logic and denial rhetoric. On with the experiments and burning.
I sincerly hope this bit of irony isn’t wasted on you.
And of course they wouldn’t lie about that, because… err… they’d sworn on the Bible not to, that’s why !
Get real. If I’m on trial for a stabbing murder where the cops found me with the bloody knife in my hand, the corpse at my feet and screaming “I’m glad I stabbed that bastard !”, my first defense will be that I didn’t know anything about it, wasn’t there, didn’t do it on purpose, it wasn’t me and it wasn’t even the deceased I never stabbed, so there. Let them prove different.
“The defendant says he didn’t do it. That’s good enough for me.”
So, Gack, what was it like serving on the O.J. Simpson jury?