# Regarding the Holocaust: Did this crime benefit the perpetrator's plans? Did they expect it to? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 21, 2019, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857 "2019-04-21T16:44:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/1 "2019-04-21T16:44:59Z")
One topic I don’t see discussed much is _why_ the Nazi’s committed the Holocaust. Yes, they did it. Yes, it was a terrible crime. Yes, they murdered about 11 million people in a horrific way. _Why_ did they do it? Usually, I hear the argument that they were just irrational and stupid. That the groups they murdered (not just Jews but gypsies and other groups they tagged as undesirable) were just scapegoats and in no way causing an impediment in their overall plans to conquer all of Europe and build a huge fascist empire. That by causing Jewish atomic scientists to flee they also sowed the seeds for their own defeat. So I thought about it. And I realized that if you wanted to run a fascist regime, you need a society of all conformists. All bootlickers. It helps if everyone looks about the same to prevent there from being isolated ethnic subgroups. You need everyone to behave the same, and to dutifully report any suspected traitors to the police. The Jews…and other subgroups…were noncomformists. They kept themselves apart from their neighbors in many ways, socially and religiously. Germany wasn’t originally a monoculture, it would have originally been a bunch of isolated tribes and later medieval kingdoms, and somehow the “modern” Germany of the 1930s would have been a more integrated monoculture with the exception of out-groups. Is this why they were murdered? Or were the planners of the holocaust just robots obeying orders and Hitler was an irrational moron with a hatred for the groups he murdered? ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/2 "2019-04-21T16:49:28Z")
I think they sincerely believed the groups they targeted were subhuman, and presented an existential threat to “real” people, both as current “deadwood” in society and as a genetic threat. This is why dehumanizing rhetoric to any group is so dangerous; once you’ve decided some group isn’t people, you don’t have to have empathy. You can gas 3-year olds in the same way I can eat meat–slaughtering cows is . . .distasteful . . . to me, but I’m fundamentally okay with it. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/3 "2019-04-21T17:07:03Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > I think they sincerely believed the groups they targeted were subhuman, and presented an existential threat to “real” people, both as current “deadwood” in society and as a genetic threat. This seems to be in the class of “the Nazis were morons” explanations. Obviously no rational person would consider these targetted groups to not be humans and they would not conclude they were an existential threat without evidence of such. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ecks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bcef8e/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ecks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ecks)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/4 "2019-04-21T17:23:23Z")
The answer is: the nazis were a bunch of conspiracy theorists not too different than the ones around today, and they actually believed what they said. When they said that the Jews had conspired to make Germany lose World War One, they weren’t trolling, that’s what they actually thought happened. Their beliefs weren’t subject to facts, just like conspiracy theorists now. So yeah, idiots. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/5 "2019-04-21T17:24:13Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > This seems to be in the class of “the Nazis were morons” explanations. Obviously no rational person would consider these targetted groups to not be humans and they would not conclude they were an existential threat without evidence of such. How so? It’s more normal than not in history for people to consider those outside the tribe to be subhuman. The goal–genocide–isn’t new or remarkable. All that is remarkable is the efficiency with which it was pursued. The Nazis certianly thought they were rational. I’m honestly not going to go down the rabbit-hole of explaining the early 20th century/Nazi logic of eugenics, because explaining it comes perilously close to sounding like I am justifying it, and I really don’t want neo-Nazis to read that into an explanation. But there were a lot of people that felt eugenics were entirely rational, and that bag genes represented an existential threat to real, “pure” humanity. There’s lots of people that feel that way today. I don’t think they are morons. But they like the set of “facts” that puts them on top and rationalizes hatred, violence, and scorn. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/6 "2019-04-21T17:40:23Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ecks](#): > > The answer is: the nazis were a bunch of conspiracy theorists not too different than the ones around today, and they actually believed what they said. When they said that the Jews had conspired to make Germany lose World War One, they weren’t trolling, that’s what they actually thought happened. Their beliefs weren’t subject to facts, just like conspiracy theorists now. > > So yeah, idiots. But…how. Didn’t the USA joining in add another million soldiers to the fight? Weren’t they fighting the world’s premier power at the time? (Britain) Didn’t their enemy have the material resources to eventually develop tanks and other battlefield changing innovations? I would expect to lose in a scenario like that… ---
**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:** [April 21, 2019, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/7 "2019-04-21T18:07:45Z")
One thing that it should not be forgotten is that in WW I Jews fought for Germany, the difference later was the antisemitism and bigotry from the likes of Hitler and other influential groups (that included conservative Christians) that later set the state into a path to eventually exterminate what they saw as a threat. > **[Why did Hitler hate the Jews?](https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/why-did-hitler-hate-jews/)** > > Why did Hitler hate the Jews? Read more about his introduction to antisemitism, the role of the First World War and why he turned the Jews into scapegoats. > [@](#): > > What we do know is that two Austrian politicians greatly influenced Hitler’s thinking. The first, Georg Ritter von Schönerer (1842-1921), was a German nationalist. He believed that the German-speaking regions of Austria-Hungary should be added to the German empire. He also felt that Jews could never be fully-fledged German citizens. > > From the second, the Viennese mayor Karl Lueger (1844-1910), Hitler learned how antisemitism and social reforms could be successful. In Mein Kampf, Hitler praised Lueger as ‘the greatest German mayor of all times’. When Hitler came to power in 1933, he put similar ideas into practice. > [@](#): > > Jews as the scapegoats for the lost war > > The German defeat was hard to swallow for many Germans, and for Hitler, too. In nationalist and right-wing conservative circles, the ‘stab-in-the-back legend’ became popular. According to this myth, Germany did not lose the war on the battlefield, but through betrayal at the home front. The Jews, Social Democrats, and Communists were held responsible. > > The prejudices about the role of the Jews in the war were false. An investigation carried out by the German Government proved as much. Over one hundred thousand German and Austrian Jews had fought for their fatherland. Otto Frank, who had fought in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, was just one of them. > [@](#): > > Radicalisation of Hitler’s antisemitism > > Against the backdrop of revolution and violence, Hitler’s antisemitism was becoming increasingly radical. It is noteworthy that he said he did not support uncontrolled ‘emotional’ pogroms (outbursts of anti-Jewish violence). Instead, he argued for an ‘antisemitism of the mind’. It had to be legal and would ultimately lead to the ‘removal’ of the Jews. > > As early as August 1920, Hitler compared the Jews to germs. He stated that diseases cannot be controlled unless you destroy their causes. The influence of the Jews would never disappear without removing its cause, the Jew, from our midst, he said. These radical ideas paved the way for the mass murder of the Jews in the 1940s. > [@](#): > > Hitler’s racism: not just the Jews > > Hitler viewed the world as an arena for the permanent struggle between peoples. He divided the world population into high and low races. The Germans belonged to the high peoples and the Jews to the low ones. He also had specific notions about other peoples. The Slavic people, for instance, were cast as inferior, predestined to be dominated. > > Hitler felt that the German people could only be strong if they were ‘pure’. As a consequence, people with hereditary diseases were considered harmful. These included people with physical or mental disabilities, as well as alcoholics and ‘incorrigible’ criminals. Once the Nazis had come to power, these ideas led to the forced sterilisation and killing of human beings. What happen in Germany was confirmation of the old words from Sir James Porter’s on the religion, law, government, and manners of the Turks, 1768: > [@](#): > > ``` > The Turks have a homely proverb applied on such occasions: they say "the fish stinks first at the head", meaning, that if the servant is disorderly, it is because the master is so. > > ``` ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/8 "2019-04-21T18:20:01Z")
Any indecent nonworthwhile autocratic regime needs Enemies to blame internally, people whose fault the current sociopolitical situation can be asserted. It’s convenient if there’s a category of people that the autocrats and/or their loyal followers have a pre-existing antipathy for, but if necessary one invents the category. Gotta point a finger at some cluster of people and shout that everything is their fault. They need to represent a threat to domestic tranquility sufficient to get people nodding in agreement when you explain the need to curtail individual freedom in favor of police powers of investigation, apprehension, surveillance, censorship, extraordinary rendition, detainment, proactive intervention, and so forth. It’s _everyone’s_ individual freedom going down the drain, of course, but the reason people agree to losing theirs is the overwhelming need to stop Those People from Doing What They Do. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/9 "2019-04-21T18:20:48Z")
Killing millions of undesireables was not a means to an end for the Nazis, and it did not further their goals. It was, itself, the end and the goal. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/10 "2019-04-21T18:22:13Z")
Well, shit. Frankly this explanation of the holocaust makes it seem even worse. It would be one thing if the mass murders at least had a logical, though evil purpose. If you’re going to burn villages and slaughter puppies it should be for a purpose, right? But from a conspiracy theory? Instead the mass murders seem to be just another problem with dictatorships. In them, if the dictator gets a wrong idea, even if it’s just a conspiracy, they end up wasting resources (and lives in this case) on [stupid things](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunkers_in_Albania). ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/11 "2019-04-21T18:24:04Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > They need to represent a threat to domestic tranquility sufficient to get people nodding in agreement when you explain the need to curtail individual freedom in favor of police powers of investigation, apprehension, surveillance, censorship, extraordinary rendition, detainment, proactive intervention, and so forth. It’s _everyone’s_ individual freedom going down the drain, of course, but the reason people agree to losing theirs is the overwhelming need to stop Those People from Doing What They Do. This would be why after the Oklahoma city bombing there were no curtailings of civil liberties, but after 9/11 there were? (because the first crime was committed by a member of the “in-group” while the latter was committed by a foreign “out-group”) ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/12 "2019-04-21T18:51:36Z")
I would guess that a large component of it was resources - it wasn’t just 6 million Jews, it was also 6 million Roma, gays, mentally handicapped, etc. as well. The Nazis probably felt that by exterminating them, they thus eliminated 12 million mouths to feed. Of course, the Holocaust consumed a considerable amount of resources as well, but I think the Nazis were partly motivated by thinking that they were alleviating a food burden thusly. Along with, of course, the other motives. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/13 "2019-04-21T18:59:05Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > But…how. Didn’t the USA joining in add another million soldiers to the fight? Weren’t they fighting the world’s premier power at the time? (Britain) Didn’t their enemy have the material resources to eventually develop tanks and other battlefield changing innovations? I would expect to lose in a scenario like that… The key here is your term “eventually.” In 1914, Britain had an all-volunteer army of only 120,000, as compared to the much larger, trained, disciplined conscripted armies of the Central Powers. Of course, those numbers would change as the Allied nations drafted and trained massive numbers of troops, but that would take time, and the Schlieffen Plan had the Central Powers taking France within 45 days. Germany also mistakenly thought it could keep Russia at bay, assuming it’d be slow to mobilize. And of course, at the beginning, nobody–including the US–knew the US would join the war. Isolationism and pacifism were so strong that Wilson successfully ran for reelection in 1916 with the slogan, “He kept us out of the war.” Finally, the Germans were getting war news from outside Germany. What we want to believe colors our perceptions, and the German people saw a few setbacks that their troops could overcome To Germans, the Armistice came as a shock, and the terms of Versailles a humiliation–one that had to be someone else’s fault. Existing stereotypes and antisemitism made it easy to believe Jews had supported the Weimar Republic, which had sued for peace, had secretly sided with Russia, worked to weaken morale on the home front and, despite facts to the contrary, had lower numbers at the front. When people can’t face the truth, they tend to select the already-reviled as a scapegoat. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/14 "2019-04-21T19:40:47Z")
Haters gonna hate. > [@SamuelA](#): > > The Jews…were noncomformists. They kept themselves apart from their neighbors in many ways, socially and religiously. Not only that, they were pushy, always horning in where they weren’t wanted.\* \*Having a working irony meter helps here. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/15 "2019-04-21T20:11:35Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Haters gonna hate.Not only that, they were pushy, always horning in where they weren’t wanted.\* > > \*Having a working irony meter helps here. Are you accusing me of antisemitism? Is it not a factual statement to say a particular group was being nonconformist? I am in no way implying it was _good_ to be a conformist - read the rest of the original post above instead of cherry picking a part you don’t like. Being a conformist means being a Nazi bootlicker who will also rat his or her friends out to the police at the slightest sign of disloyalty. > [@SamuelA](#): > > So I thought about it. And I realized that if you wanted to run a fascist regime, you need a society of all conformists. All bootlickers. It helps if everyone looks about the same to prevent there from being isolated ethnic subgroups. You need everyone to behave the same, and to dutifully report any suspected traitors to the police. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/16 "2019-04-21T20:30:33Z")
You are all forgetting something very important. Or maybe you never learned it. The _long term plan_ was to depopulate Central and Eastern Europe to give the “master race” more space in which to live. That is, the long-term plan was to exterminate the rightful owners then move in, take their goodies, their land, and everything. It was called [_lebensraum_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum) and slated the non-Aryans for either extermination or expulsion. This plan was why, after the Jews, the next largest group enslaved and killed in the concentration camps were the Polish - they were next for the Final Solution after the Jews were gone. So no, it wasn’t just conspiracy theories and scapegoating (even though those played a part). It was a plan to obliterate people and take their stuff and territory for their own. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/17 "2019-04-21T20:39:20Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > You are all forgetting something very important. Or maybe you never learned it. The _long term plan_ was to depopulate Central and Eastern Europe to give the “master race” more space in which to live. That is, the long-term plan was to exterminate the rightful owners then move in, take their goodies, their land, and everything. It was called [_lebensraum_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum) and slated the non-Aryans for either extermination or expulsion. > > So no, it wasn’t just conspiracy theories and scapegoating (even though those played a part). It was a plan to obliterate people and take their stuff and territory for their own. I never learned it. This plan makes far more logical sense. It’s also the kind of thing humans have likely done to each other for thousands of years, just more efficient. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/18 "2019-04-21T20:51:56Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Well, shit. Frankly this explanation of the holocaust makes it seem even worse. \*\* It would be one thing if the mass murders at least had a logical\*\*, though evil purpose. If you’re going to burn villages and slaughter puppies it should be for a purpose, right? But from a conspiracy theory? Autocratic regimes destroy reality. They destroy the truth based on facts, and replace that truth with their own. Trump may not be intentionally playing 24-dimensional chess when he gaslights us - it’s probably just how he managed to con his way to riches in the world of real estate. But what worked in business, is a transferable skill to this arena. > [@SamuelA](#): > > Instead the mass murders seem to be just another problem with dictatorships. In them, if the dictator gets a wrong idea, even if it’s just a conspiracy, they end up wasting resources (and lives in this case) on [stupid things](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunkers_in_Albania). One of the greatest misconceptions is that dictators are evil geniuses. They’re geniuses when it comes to acquiring power, but that’s usually as far as their genius goes. They almost always fail spectacularly in terms of raising the long-term welfare of the state. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/19 "2019-04-21T20:56:21Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > The Jews…and other subgroups…were noncomformists. They kept themselves apart from their neighbors in many ways, socially and religiously. Germany wasn’t originally a monoculture, it would have originally been a bunch of isolated tribes and later medieval kingdoms, and somehow the “modern” Germany of the 1930s would have been a more integrated monoculture with the exception of out-groups. There were plenty of German Jews who fit in quite well with their neighbors and many weren’t able to tell them apart from other Germans without getting to know them or perhaps by their names. In fact there was some tension between Jews who were assimilated and those who were not assimilated. ---
**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2019, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857/20 "2019-04-21T21:18:49Z")
It’s a _both-and_ (well, _many-and_) situation, and the reasons cited above all come up in the historical record: 1. extreme anti-Semitic hatred, which has its own complicated roots, including conspiracy theories as mentioned 2. \*Lebensraum \*-- clearing space for the thousand-year empire 3. the fascist logic that you have to get rid of those who aren’t participants in “the nation.” Re the last point, it’s worth remembering that street criminals were victims of Nazism, as were political opponents, people with disabilities, et al. Part of what defines fascism is the quasi-militarization of society: all citizens have a part to play, all move in the same direction, all fall in the chain of command. “Nonconformism,” as the OP put it, can’t be tolerated, whether intentional (political opponents, street criminals) or not (minority groups, people with disabilities). And one more practical “reason” for extermination (as opposed to just some form of exile or incarceration): the pressure of fighting a war. North Korea seems content to warehouse the vast majority of its un-persons, but if they were fighting a two-front war they might make the calculation that extermination saves resources and manpower. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/regarding-the-holocaust-did-this-crime-benefit-the-perpetrators-plans-did-they-expect-it-to/832857.md?page=2)