When would the Nazis have finished their 'Final Solution'

[Dissonance]

Generalplan Ost, the plan to exterminate, ethnically cleanse, or reduce to illiterate slavery Slavic peoples from Europe envisioned two phases,

The final version of Generalplan Ost, essentially a grand plan for ethnic cleansing, was divided into two parts; the “Small Plan” (Kleine Planung), which covered actions which were to be taken during the war, and the “Big Plan” (Grosse Planung), which covered actions to be undertaken after the war was won, and to be implemented gradually over a period of 25 to 30 years.

…

After the war, under the “Big Plan”, Generalplan Ost foresaw the removal of 45 million non-Germanizable people from Central and Eastern Europe, of whom 31 million were “racially undesirable”, 100% of Jews, Poles (85%), Belorussians (75%) and Ukrainians (65%), to West Siberia,[3] and about 14 millions were to remain, but were to be treated as slaves.[5] In their place, up to 8-10 million Germans would be settled in an extended “living space” (Lebensraum). Because the number of Germans appeared to be insufficient to populate the vast territories of Central and Eastern Europe, the peoples judged to lie racially between the Germans and the Russians (Mittelschicht), namely, Latvians and even Czechs, were also supposed to be resettled there.

@madsircool

Actually, a Final Solution was decided before the Germans invaded the USSR. Einsatzgruppen units followed the German Armies advance and killed all the Jews they encountered city by city; village by village.

Not just Jews, though they did comprise the majority of those murdered by Einsatzgruppen, Jews accounted for 1.3 million of the 2.2 million or so they murdered. Were it not for the detailed records they enthusiastically kept of their activities committing mass murder, it would seem almost inconceivable that the four Einsatzgruppen comprised only 3,000 men. Initial orders for the Einsatzgruppen were

After the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the Einsatzgruppen’s main assignment was to kill civilians, as in Poland, but this time its targets specifically included Soviet Communist Party commissars and Jews.[33] In a letter dated 2 July 1941 Heydrich communicated to his SS and Police Leaders that the Einsatzgruppen were to execute all senior and middle ranking Comintern officials; all senior and middle ranking members of the central, provincial, and district committees of the Communist Party; extremist and radical Communist Party members; people’s commissars; and Jews in party and government posts. Open-ended instructions were given to execute “other radical elements (saboteurs, propagandists, snipers, assassins, agitators, etc.).” He instructed that any pogroms spontaneously initiated by the occupants of the conquered territories were to be quietly encouraged.[49] On 8 July, he announced that all Jews were to be regarded as partisans, and gave the order for all male Jews between the ages of 15 and 45 to be shot.[50] On 17 July Heydrich ordered that the Einsatzgruppen were to kill all Jewish Red Army prisoners of war, plus all Red Army prisoners of war from Georgia and Central Asia, as they too might be Jews.[51] Unlike in Germany, where the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 defined as Jewish anyone with at least three Jewish grandparents, the Einsatzgruppen defined as Jewish anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent; in either case, whether or not the person practised the religion was irrelevant.

@KarlGauss

In any case, by 1941, extermination of the Jews had become an ideological must in the minds of those who called the shots, primarily Himmler and, as you said, by Heydrich. However, it is absolutely untenable to postulate that Hitler had essentially washed his hands of it and let Himmler take charge of the “Jewish question”. For one, that is the opposite of the way things worked in Nazi Germany - Hitler had absolute power. He would delegate, of course, but only to do what he wanted or to achieve his goals. Equally, there was no way that Himmler or anyone else would commit the enormous resources required to exterminate the Jews without Hitler’s support. This is especially true during “Total War” when resources are marshalled for one and only one cause: victory.

To be absolutely clear, none of what follows is intended to promote the absurd notion that Hitler was unaware the holocaust was occurring as David Irving, holocaust denier would have it. However, the notion that things only happened in Nazi Germany on Hitler’s orders or as a result of him delegating authority simply isn’t true. Things did happen behind his back. To give some examples, there were thousands upon thousands of Russians serving in the German army as Hiwis or in Osttruppen battalions not only without Hitler’s knowledge, but entirely against his desires before he became aware of it. From here:

It is not known when and where exactly the first units of volunteers from the USSR, and from the countries annexed by Russia after 1939, were organized to fight against the Soviets on the German side. Their beginnings were shrouded in great secrecy, for fear of Hitler who was categorically opposed to any form of participation of Soviet citizens in the war against Russia. But needs of the army on the Eastern Front, and the enthusiastic desire shown by hundreds of captured and escaped officers, by thousands of Soviet soldiers, and by almost the entire local population induced German commanders to accept the services of volunteers to fight the Soviet regime even against the clear orders of the Supreme Command. When the existence of numerous formations of Eastern volunteers came to light with the passing of time, Hitler was unpleasantly surprised. The hopeless military situation of the Reich forced him to approve this state of affairs.

…

The next step taken by the German Commands in the east behind Hitler’s back was the organization of voluntary military troops, called “Osttruppen,” clad in German uniforms and designed to guard communication lines, fight Soviet partisans in the rear of the German armies, and sometimes even hold less important sectors of the front. These troops seldom exceeded the strength of a battalion. In the middle of 1942, there were already 6 such battalions in the rear of Army Group Center alone.

The StG-44 assault rifle was developed, put into production and issued to the front lines against Hitler’s explicit instructions. From wiki:

As work moved forward to incorporate this new firing system, development temporarily came to halt when Hitler suspended all new rifle programs due to administrative infighting within the Third Reich, ordered that more, newer submachine guns were to be built and strongly disagreed with the use of the new ammunition. To keep the MKb 42(H) alive, the Waffen Amt (Armament Office) re-designated it into the Maschinenpistole 43 (MP 43) and making a few improvements, billed as an upgrade to existing submachine guns.

This deception was eventually discovered by Adolf Hitler who again had the program halted. In March 1943, he permitted it to recommence for evaluation purposes only. Running for six months until September 1943, the evaluation produced positive results and Hitler allowed the MP 43 program to continue and in order to make mass production possible. The first MP 43s were distributed to the Waffen-SS, and then in October 1943, some were especially issued to the 93rd Infantry Division on the Eastern Front. Production and distribution continued to different troops until April 1944, where Hitler ordered it to be re-designated as the MP 44 with adding minor updates after taking some interest in the weapon tests. In July 1944, at a meeting of the various army heads about the Eastern Front, when Hitler asked what they needed, a general exclaimed, “More of these new rifles!”. This caused some confusion (Hitler’s response is reputed to have been “What new rifle?”), but once Hitler was given a chance to see and test-fire the MP 44, he was impressed and gave it the title Sturmgewehr. Seeing the possibility of a propaganda gain, the rifle was again renamed as the StG 44, to highlight the new class of weapon it represented, translated “Storm (Assault) rifle, model 1944”, thereby introducing the term.

When the Pz-III was being up-gunned from a 37mm to a 50mm gun prior to Barbarossa, Hitler had ordered the long barreled 50mm L/60 gun to be used, the weapon used as a towed anti-tank gun. However, somewhere along the line the decision to use the short barreled 50mm L/42 was made, and it was this lower velocity gun that Pz-IIIs were equipped with when they invaded the USSR.

[ralph124c]

Exactly when did it dawn on the Nazis that killing people (who could be made to work-making stuff like aircraft engines, tanks, guns, etc.) might not be a good idea? From my readings, by late 1941 the German Army was taking all the young men available; later, middle aged men were drafted into the army-this caused a severe labor shortage. This was partially remedied by using Poles,Frenchmen, Italians, etc. as slave labor. But wasting resources by killing them made no sense.

[aceplace57]

Canada, Australia, US, and Britain had Jewish populations too. Probably other countries too that hadn’t been conquered by Germany. The final solution was a long, long way from being done.

[aceplace57]

Germany implemented their plan any time a new country fell. Thank goodness they were stopped in Europe.

[Mr.Kobayashi]

@aceplace57

Canada, Australia, US, and Britain had Jewish populations too. Probably other countries too that hadn’t been conquered by Germany. The final solution was a long, long way from being done.

I was thinking specifically within the Greater German Reich and occupied territories; it’s a popular idea but ‘world conquest’ was never part of Hitler’s or the Nazis agenda. Neither I believe (someone correct me if I’m wrong, but this has been the interpretation I’ve always heard) was exterminating every single Jew in the world, rather they wanted to rid all aspects of German life - and therefore the occupied territories - from Jewry;

Above all, German culture, as its name alone shows, is German and not Jewish, and therefore its management and care will be entrusted to members of our own nation. …Nor can I see a reason why the members of this race should be imposed upon the German nation, while in the States, which are so enthusiastic about these “splendid people,” their settlement should suddenly be refused with every imaginable excuse. I think that the sooner this problem is solved the better; for Europe cannot settle down until the Jewish question is cleared up. It may very well be possible that sooner or later an agreement on this problem may be reached in Europe, even between those nations which otherwise do not so easily come together.

http://www.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/documents/part1/doc59.html

[Leo_Bloom]

@Leo_Bloom

Anybody here know what “The Final Solution” means?

Simple question. Simple answer.

@Mr.Kobayashi

Die Endlösung der Judenfrage; the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Although it’s my fault since I specified other victims in the OP, so my bad.

Just to finish this, let me add that surely the vocabulary of the English language can reserve the word “Holocaust” to mean that-thing-the-Nazis-did-to-kill-all-the-Jews.

Judeocide. Kind of a novel idea to be carried out.

That-thing-the-Nazis-did-to-kill-all-the-others-they-wanted-to-kill, en masse or not, planned to a fare the well or not, is something(s) else.

People hardly know what The Final Solution means. The killing-the-Jews stuff many still get as The Holocaust.

The Israelis and other speakers of Hebrew say Shoah, which means “destruction” or “calamity.”

[Leo_Bloom]

Oy.

At the Wansee Conference Heydrich specifically cited 11,000,000 Jews as falling under the plan.

Doesn’t anybody read?

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

The Nazi Holocaust included gays & lesbians, and since they are constantly being born (5-10% of the population, by best estimates), there would always be more victims to kill.

[Dissonance]

@Leo_Bloom

Just to finish this, let me add that surely the vocabulary of the English language can reserve the word “Holocaust” to mean that-thing-the-Nazis-did-to-kill-all-the-Jews.

Except that’s not what it means. There were 11 million victims of the holocaust, only 6 million of them were Jews. The second largest group of victims of the holocaust was Soviet POWs, 3.3 million of whom were killed, worked to death, or murdered by neglect by letting them die of starvation or exposure. The first victims of Zyklon B at Auschwitz were in fact Soviet POWs:

The Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek extermination camps had originally been constructed for the Soviet POWs that Heinrich Himmler had claimed for himself. The POWs were to be put to work in the huge industrial conglomerates that the SS was planning to set up together with firms such as I.G. Farben. But in January 1942, only a few hundred of the Soviet prisoners who had originally been brought to Auschwitz – out of a total of 10,000 – were still alive, and no further influx was expected. For this reason Himmler decided, in the week following the Wannsee Conference, to fill the camps with 150,000 Jews. In this manner the SS camps for POWs became part of the infrastructure for the murder of the Jews.

It was when dealing with Soviet POWs at Auschwitz that camp commandant Rudolf Hoess and his assistants experimented with the means of killing that has since become the symbol of Nazi genocide: Zyklon B. In early September 1941, 600 Soviet POWs were selected for execution. Hoess decided to gas them with Zyklon B, also known as hydrogen cyanide, in the Auschwitz I gas chamber. The experimental gassing here also included 250 inmates who had been designated unfit for work. The Nazis had already experimented with gassing as the means to kill people they considered disabled beginning in October 1939. A method was thereby found that would kill millions of people with minimal effort. Those lessons were subsequently applied first to Soviet POWs and then to Jews. By February 1942, 2,000,000 of the 3,300,000 Soviet soldiers in German custody up to that point had died from starvation, exposure, disease, or shooting.

That-thing-the-Nazis-did-to-kill-all-the-others-they-wanted-to-kill, en masse or not, planned to a fare the well or not, is something(s) else.

Again, it’s not something else that can be neatly seperated out. As noted earlier, the Einsatzgruppen murdered 2.2 million people in the USSR of whom only 1.3 million were Jews.

People hardly know what The Final Solution means. The killing-the-Jews stuff many still get as The Holocaust.

Perhaps it’s conformation bias, but I don’t recall anyone discussing the Final Solution not knowing that it meant the Nazi’s Final Solution to the Jewish question.

[Leo_Bloom]

I see. It is now a fact that the Holocaust means all that.

The word was invented in historical terms separate from ancient Greek offerings because there was no word to describe that-thing-the-Nazis-did-to-the-Jews-because-it-was-central-to-their-being.

Tell me it wasn’t.

[Zakalwe]

Leo Bloom, you’re coming across as somewhat aggressive here and I’m not sure why.
If you insist that there be a separate term just for the killing of Jews by Nazi Germany why not use the one they use? The Shoah. IMHO, The Holocaust refers to all of the killing done by the Nazis. I think one of the big issues here is that the term we use for the killing of a specific people (genocide) needs further clarification since the Nazis were attempting genocide on multiple peoples, not just the Jews.

[Dissonance]

@Leo_Bloom

I see. It is now a fact that the Holocaust means all that.

Yes. It’s meant that for a long time. What’s your problem with that? You’re coming across as very aggressive for no reason. If you want to talk specifically about the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and not include the other 5 million people they murdered, there are already two perfectly good expressions for it, both of which you have already even mentioned. The Final Solution clearly refers to this, and as I said I don’t know anyone using the phrase and not knowing precisely what it means and what it is referring to. The other is שואה or Shoah, which is the term preferred over holocaust in Hebrew as the meaning of holocaust can be taken as theologically offensive.

[Martin_Hyde]

I can’t remember a time when the Holocaust wasn’t used interchangeably to mean “the German systematic murder of around six million Jews” or that and “and the systematic murder of Poles, Soviet POWs, Roma, homosexuals and the handicapped.” I think both uses have been around for as long as I’ve been aware of the word Holocaust.

Something that always strikes me about it is just how bad Poland got it in WW2. Of the six million Jews murdered, half were Polish Jews. On top of that up to two million ethnic poles died in camps as well, although they often were not executed systematically with the same vigor as the Germans killed Jews, they were basically enslaved and worked literally to death. At around 16% of its pre war population murdered by the Nazis (and another quarter million soldiers killed on the battlefield) Poland actually suffered the worse proportionally than any other country in WW2 (including the USSR.) Then after the war they basically were force vassalized by the Russians until the end of the Cold War.

[KarlGauss]

@Martin_Hyde

Then after the war they basically were force vassalized by the Russians until the end of the Cold War.

The Soviets didn’t wait until the war was over. In addition to the Katyn Massacre, where the Soviets did the killing themselves, they also allowed the Germans to do it for them. A good example is when the Soviets effectively abetted the killing of a huge number of Poles (including their most committed and ‘talented’ fighters, as well as a quarter million civilians) by deliberately not coming to their assistance during the Warsaw Uprising, or, at least, waiting an unforgivingly long time to relieve them (NB. this is a different time and circumstance than the very famous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). Stalin’s purpose was clear: it was a way of removing the core (and then some) of any potential post WWII Polish resistance to the forthcoming Soviet hegemony.

I agree completely with you: Poland and its people got it from both sides.

[Deeg]

@lisiate

According to this old threadsomething like 67% of all European Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. This sitegives a country by country breakdown.

We hear about the Holocaust so much that sometimes I think it’s easy to forget how truly awful it was. That site helps put it back into perspective. Yikes.

[Melbourne]

@KarlGauss

In any case, by 1941, extermination of the Jews had become an ideological must in the minds of those who called the shots

And also (or rather) an institutional practice in the hands of those who just turned up for work every day.

Which leads me to suspect that, like putting in more traffic lights or writing new laws, or even the French Terror (1793-1794) those responsible for the day-to-day implementation of the ‘final solution’ would never have found a ‘final’ point.

They would have just kept on identifying more individuals and larger catagories.

[get_lives]

@Deeg

We hear about the Holocaust so much that sometimes I think it’s easy to forget how truly awful it was. That site helps put it back into perspective. Yikes.

The whole war itself was Biblical-scale hardship and suffering, for many people on both sides, even non-combatants. For example, Audrey Hepburn nearly starved to death during the war, and many thousands of japaneses DID starve to death. It surprises me that there wasn’t more long-term crippling PTSD among even non-combatants.

[Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker]

“Holocaust” was used back in the 12th or 13th century to describe a purge of Jews in the Britain.

And an earlier thread on the word “Holocaust.”

I do have a nitpick on “Final Solution,” but that’s irrelevant because it’s entrenched as part of the English Lexicon now. A better translation would have been “Total Solution,” but it’s a little too late for that now. Well, at least according to Goering, but I still think would have been a better rendering.