I’m getting ready to buy Schindler’s List on DVD, and one of the things that struck me in this movie was the incredible resources, bureaucracy, and manpower it must have taken to build and maintain the concentration camps.
If Hitler had spent his resources on the war effort, and not so much to eliminating “inferior” races, do you think he could have won? Ivylad thinks he still would have lost, because he was fighting a two front war. I wonder if all the manpower and resources he poured into the concentration camps had instead been poured into the war effort would have made a difference.
This thread has been done before several times…most recently just a few weeks ago. I"m too lazy to look them up but you can do a search and find them I’m sure if you are interested.
The short answer is that it probably wouldnt have made that much of a difference, except to drag the war out longer. Once Germany committed itself to a war in Russia it was a life or death struggle. Further committing itself to fighting the British and the US sealed its fate. If Germany had NOT gone to war with Russia, then there would probably be a Greater German Riche in Western Europe ATM. Had Germany not gone to war with the US and had of sued for peace with Great Britian, then they MIGHT have beaten Russia if they could have delivered a knock out blow swiftly enough. But even with the resources freed up by not persecuting the Jews, the Germans still couldnt have taken on Russia, the US and Britian and won in the end IMO. It just wasn’t in the cards.
While the infrastructure and bureaucracy used to round up and murder Jews and undesirables looks pretty impressive in movies, it was still a very, very small fraction of the German effort as compared to what they were dedicating to fighting the war.
Germany actually had a lot of systemic problems in economic development, production and organization, and was very inefficient and unproductive as compared to its enemies. A lot of that stemmed from Hitler’s unwillingness to delagate anything and the lack of a civilian cabinet. Nazi Germany never really had strategic economic planning of the scale the USA, UK and USSR had, and in terms of technological development went down a lot of pointless rat holes (e.g. the endless attempts to build magical fighter planes that could win the air war overnight) while neglecting critically important elements of warmaking (such as intelligence and electronic warfare.)
The “Final Solution” was only one of a wide range of systemic problems that crippled Germany’s economic ability to construct a war-winning effort. Even without it, they still would have been behind the Allies in this regard.
I think you’ll find a stronger argument, as alluded to already in this thread, that the campaign against Russia was the determining factor in whether German could have won the war or not. Specifically, IMHO, Hitler’s decision to invade Yugoslavia which inevitably delayed the attack on Russia by 4-6 weeks may have been the single decision that cost Germany victory on the continent. History dramatically shows that if you want to take Russia you better achieve victory before the cold weather sets in. Hitler’s delay of the launch date resulted in the Russian winter hitting a few short weeks before gaining total victory over Russia.
With Russia defeated, Hitler could have continued to bomb London by air and increased his efforts again the British Empire in Africa. Although it would be doubtful he could have pulled off the invasion across the channel, he could have pressured England into sueing for peace.
MeanJoe
I think the above posts pretty much sum it up. Hitler had a limited time frame for victory, before the Allies brought their superior industrial and manpower strengths to the table.
The delay in Yugo was detrimental for sure, as it also tied down a good many troops for garrison and partisan duty, that would not be available for the Eastern front.
The decision to divert manpower and resources to dealing with the Jews, certainly had an impact though. In fact I believe that a good many of those he persecuted worked in the factories producing war stuffs, as laborers, and their loss would be sorely felt as the tide of war built.
Whether or not this was the deciding factor is questionable, as stated above, it may have delayed the inevitable, but the inevitable it was.
I have read a few accounts that even during the last days of the Reich, the trains rolled on, quite astonishing when you think about it, Germany was being overrun but until the last days they still pursued the madness.
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the involvment of the US in the war just as dooming? Maybe not for direct millitary powers, but would we still would have gotten the Nuclear Bomb, wouldn’t we? Might Russia’s involvment mearly changed the targer from Berlin to Nagasaki?
Related to Hitlers hatred of the Jews was his hatred of the slavic people in Eastern Europe. When the Germans first invaded Ukraine and other areas of the Eastern Soviet Union, they were hailed as liberators,(considering how bad Stalin treated them, I wouldn’t blame them), and Hitler could have easily armed them and gain a significant number of troops to fight the Russians, in addition to having to deal with fewer partisans. But Hitler decide to treat them poorly, ship them off to slave labor camps, and so on, negating their use as potential allies.
Of course, for Hitler, the entire point of starting WWII was to gain living space for Aryans in Eastern Europe, so if he didn’t hate Slavs he wouldn’t have started the war in the first place.
Can’t remember the program but it went into Hitler’s early rise to power. He hated many groups of people but he chose Jews because they were a convenient target. He used a technique that shows up in history a lot. Create a nemesis that has to be defeated and use it as a rallying cry. It could just as easily have been Poles or Gypsies or any other group that was identifiable. It was necessary for his rise to power.
The final solution was a fundamental part of Hitler’s character and plans. For Hitler to not follow through on the persecution and slaught would have meant that he was a fundamentally different person. That of course would have meant a different war all together.
Hitler had one, and only one way to ‘win’ the war - he should have sued for peace after gaining significant territory.
There were very strong isolationist/peace movements in both Britain and the U.S. It’s hard for some to remember now, but the U.S. and Britain were both dragged kicking and screaming into that war. If Hitler had invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia, and then immediately called a halt to their advancement and made overtures to the west, Germany might have gotten away with that land grab. Then he could have sat back, consolidated his gains, built up his technological lead even further, and then perhaps attacked Russia at a time and place of his choosing - say, spring of 1947 or something. If he had masked that aggression as ‘fighting the threat of communism’ or something, he might have gotten away with that too.
The Jews fit into this picture because their widespread extermination would have made it very, very difficult to settle a long-lasting peace with the west. But you know, we might have tolerated it - after all, the west looked the other way while the Soviet Union slaughtered tens of millions.
The scary thing to me is that if Hitler had been a little smarter and less fanatical, he might have actually found a significant number of allies in the west. There was quite a strong pro-Germany movement in the U.S. in the 30’s.
The invasion of Yugoslavia did not hurt the invasion of Russia that much. The ground was still wet at that point and the Panzers would have been slowed down. I think one has to look at Hitler’s refusal to be conservative (oddly enough seeing as how he did not just wipe out the BEF at Dunkirk [in part because he believed the Luftwaffe could prevent a seabourne escape]) in dealing with the attack on Moscow and his general refusal throughout Russia to pullback and avoid a fixed defense. Dividing his forces and sending them at Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad/the Caucuses was a mistake as well.
Rob4 Interesting points, may I ask where you get the information concerning the ground still being wet in early Spring, etc.? I am not doubting your claim, it is one I have not heard before and I would like to learn more about it as a possible factor.
I do agree, regardless of the start date of the offensive, that Hitler’s decisions once the campaign was underway did impact the ultimate result, most specifically dividing his forces.
Russian spring was pretty notorious for rain and mud, MeanJoe. I’m too lazy to look for a cite, but I remember later campaign footage showing the German war machine totally bogged down in mud. The Russians even had a word for the spring mud which escapes me atm but it meant something like ‘sea of mud’. If you think about the stepps with all that grass and very little trees and then picture torrential spring rains as well as the melting of the frost layers you will get the idea…
I can see how the spring thaw could be a factor in establishing a start-date for a campaign into Russia, that seems very valid to me. I guess my question was more to the point that I had not heard of it being an actual factor in this particular instance. I’ll do some poking around myself to try and find cites on this issue - as I mentioned, I had always thought the action against Yugoslavia was the main factor in the later start date.
I’ll also ask my wife, who is Russian, if she recalls the term for the spring thaw/mud.
Really? I had the impression that the concentration camps made a profit for the Nazi’s.
Most of the camps were ‘work camps’, after all, and people were worked to death. This work was free labor for the Nazi economy.
And almost nothing was spent on the ones that were killed – remember the scenes of them right off the railroad cars being sorted out and the strong sent off to work and the weak, old, & very young sent immediately to the gas chambers? Plus everything that could be reclaimed (clothes, possessions, gold fillings, etc.) was collected and reused. And this was after seizing all their homes & property when they were arrested.
Plus the effort to maintain them wasn’t that great. Once you’ve strung up the electrified wire fences, a few machine gun guard towers, etc., it’s not too expensive to run. Especially when you don’t have to spend much on food, clothing, medical expenses, etc. I don’t have figures handy, but I expect that the Nazi soldiers maintaining the camps were a small percentage of their men.
I suspect that german efficiency made the camps a net gain for the Nazi war economy.
The Judenverfolgung (persecution of the Jews) was not really a financial drain. In fact the Nazis looted gold, cash, art and other goods from Jewish victims to the tune of perhaps billions. Furthermore, the persecution was the initial underpinning of the Nazi movement that brought Hitler to power. The Jews were blamed for the dreadful collapse of the European economy, then accused of burning the Reichtag.
As far as cost of rounding up Jews was concerned, there was abundant help both within and without Germany. In occupied countries like Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, for example, Nazis enlisted the help of locals to identify Jews, so rounding them up when it suited the Nazis to do so was no problem.
I don’t think the persecution affected the progress of the war for the Nazis one way or the other.
Actually if we’re going to play revisionists you have to look much earlier to the Battle of Britain for a deciding factor in the war. The Battle of Britain was an incredibly marginal victory for England. Poor tactical choices on the part of Goering and Hitler to shift bomber target priorities lead to the Luftwaffe’s failure to establish air superiority on the southern coast. Any full-fledged German invasion of Britain would have precluded any attack on Russia.
Had Germany won the Battle of Britain, its debatable how long the attrition on the island could last and if the British populace were truly willing to “Never Surrender” (I personally believe that every man, woman and child would have fought to their last breath). With the British thus tied up, I find it extremely doubtful the US would ever have gone it alone to either invade continental Europe or break the siege (Canadians and ANZACS excluded).
Ultimately you’d either have the German attrition rate on the island too high where they fall back to the continent and rule it uncontested and extract an armistice from Britain or they conquer the British Isles and you get into a protracted scenario where the British High Command re-locates to Canada to continue the fight (which they had provision to do). In the latter case its hard to predict what would happen beyond British attempts to liberate the British Isles.
The slave labour used in the Nazi camps was not profitable. Read Primo Levi’s account - he slaved in na I.B. Farbin factory that produced, in the end, nothing at all.
Moreover, the movement of millions of people to the camps occupied valuable rail resources, which could have been put to better use. The perversity of this was evident, particularly towards the end when the Nazis were clearly losing - and yet still insisted on using rail stock to ship Jews to the camps, in preference to shipping supplies to their desperate soldiers!
None of this was war-winning or losing stuff, though - as several have mentioned.
The best argument for the “war losing” aspect of the anti-Jewish campaign was the neglect of nuclear science that went with it. Many of the best nuclear physicists were, in fact, Jews - like Einstien. In fact, it was Einstien who put his signature to a letter, addressed to the US president, which started the Manhattan Project and ultimately led to the development of atomic weapons.
The Nazis drove out or killed many of these scientists - and many went straight to work on the Manhattan Project. In fact, I heard that the Nazis associated nuclear physics as “Jew science” and discouraged it altogether.
Playing the “what if?” game, what if the Nazis hadn’t persecuted the Jews, and instead recruited these scientists to work on a Nazi bomb?
I seriously doubt, even then, that it would have been possible - the resources required were simply too great, probably no nation but the US could have afforded it. But, if they could have pulled it off, they could have had the nuke first - which may have had truly war-altering effects.
Let’s not forget the Jewish brain drain. If the Nazis hadn’t been such a threat to Jesih scientists, Einstein and co. likely would have remained in Europe, and it’s possible they could have furthered the German war effort.
