Holocaust Studies: Nazi Apologia

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Clarissa

November 16, 2015

From just a single example of Nazi apologia that gets published daily by seemingly normal people:

Do you know why the Nazis built gas chambers? I mean, gas chambers are a lot more expensive than bullets, right? Well, it turns out they had a shortage of soldiers willing to put bullets into the heads of unarmed civilians. ‘Cause looking at an innocent person that you’re killing pretty much breaks the heart of anybody who has one. Soldiers would shoot a few civilians, then turn around and shoot their officers who had ordered them to shoot the civilians.

I have no idea from what sappy Hollywood flick this idiot got the ridiculous idea he popularizes here but the reality was not nearly as warm and fuzzy.

Most of the Jews killed in the Holocaust were not gassed. Most were shot at close quarters by soldiers who described in letters they sent home how much fun it was to hurl Jewish babies in the air and shoot them in mid-flight (I have exact quotes if anybody needs them.) These same soldiers would also bring over their own wives and children to admire their shooting skills or gush about their exploits in letters sent home.

But gosh, isn’t it nice to be able to blame the Holocaust on an impersonal bureaucratic machine that was hidden from view in a well-defined, secluded space of Auschwitz while actual human beings wept with pity for the suffering of Jews?

Millions of Jews were killed at close quarters by people of all nationalities who had no trouble looking in their victims’ eyes while slaughtering them. This is a very unpleasant truth but the least we can do for the victims is wake up from these idiotic Hollywood-inspired stories of broken hearts and noble Nazis who feel sorry for the Jews they kill.

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17 responses to “Holocaust Studies: Nazi Apologia”

Vic Crain

November 16, 2015

What’s amazing is the willingness of so many people to voice opinions on things about which they have no data. Carson simply represents a major portion of the population which would rather make up their reality than deal with what’s really happening.

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J. Otto Pohl

November 16, 2015

There is an element of truth to this. The gas chambers starting with Chelmno were in part motivated by concerns about the psychic toll on Germans in the Einsatzgruppen involved in the mass shootings. The gassings in camps killed about three million Jews versus about a million and a half shot before their establishment. The remaining million and a half died of deprivation in concentration camps, labor camps, ghettos, and on death marches.

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1. Clarissa
  
  November 16, 2015
  
  Maybe one day we will find ourselves in a world with “a shortage of soldiers willing to put bullets into the heads of unarmed civilians.” That world is not here yet and the only reason why the linked author – who’s actually one of those liberal racists you mention – constructs this narrative is that it’s convenient for his political stance today to do that.
  
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  1. J. Otto Pohl
    
    November 16, 2015
    
    There wasn’t a shortage of volunteers. But, the move to gassing was in part motivated by reducing the burden on the executioners. Alcoholism among the Einsatzgruppen was becoming an increasing problem for instance. The transition to gassing was also motivated in part by a desire for greater efficiency in the killing. But, Himmler did express an opinion that the shootings were too stressful on the shooters and that they should gas the Jews instead.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      November 16, 2015
      
      Alcoholism among Soviet soldiers soared, too, and never really went away after the war. My grandfather, for instance, came back from this war an alcoholic. Regular armies traditionally go to battle half-drunk or strung out on drugs. This is done to make them lose the fear of dying and not because their hearts bleed for victims.
      
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jeff

November 16, 2015

I find these posts on the Holocaust fascinating. Thank you for posting them.

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1. Clarissa
  
  November 16, 2015
  
  There will be more to come!
  
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Vic Crain

November 16, 2015

Reality check. Estimates place the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust as just over 5.9 million. Of these, 3.5 million died in concentration camps. (The camps were used for a large array of unwanted people besides Jews.) Many of the Jews in the camps died of a variety of causes other than gas, included many who were shot.

Browning and Goldhagen published contrasting views in the 1990s on how very ordinary, middle class German men and women could be motivated to shoot Jews with no moral qualms. They did, many with enthusiasm. The notion that gas chambers were built to deal with morale problems seems to fly in the face of ample facts. The simpler explanation is that the chambers were more efficient. When the chambers had to be closed for maintenance, the executions continued.

Bottom line: you’ve got 2.4 million who were killed away from the camps, and the bulk of the killing came after the camps were built, not before. The Einsatzgruppen killed 300,000 just in the one month of December 1941 using rifles and hand grenades. They didn’t bother shipping them to camps.

Clarissa is right in that Russia is trying to inflate the figures for Auschwitz in order in part to minimize the role of Russian collaborators in murders of Jews. Russia is showing numbers that are roughly 4x accepted figures for what that camp actually did.

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1. Clarissa
  
  November 16, 2015
  “The notion that gas chambers were built to deal with morale problems seems to fly in the face of ample facts. ”
  
  Exactly.
  
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Shakti

November 16, 2015

‘Cause looking at an innocent person that you’re killing pretty much breaks the heart of anybody who has one. Soldiers would shoot a few civilians, then turn around and shoot their officers who had ordered them to shoot the civilians.
The blogger is not familiar with Hitler’s Willing Executioners(Goldhagen) or Ordinary Men (Browning) because large numbers of soldiers did not turn around and shoot their commanding officers. Also, people forget the Geneva Conventions are very recent developments in the mores of international war.

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1. J. Otto Pohl
  
  November 16, 2015
  
  Goldhagen isn’t very good. Browning is quite good. The fact remains, however, that the head of the SS, Himmler thought that the shootings were demoralizing the Einsatzgruppen and that was one reason to move to gas chambers.
  
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  1. Pen
    
    November 16, 2015
    
    “Goldhagen isn’t very good. Browning is quite good.”
    
    -This is important. Goldhagen’s views have permeated a lot of places, and they aren’t even logically consistent.
    
    There were also lots of accounts of Nazi soldiers handing off the shootings to local police forces, especially outside of Germany.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      November 16, 2015
      
      “There were also lots of accounts of Nazi soldiers handing off the shootings to local police forces, especially outside of Germany.”
      
      This wasn’t done because the Nazis were tender-hearted but because this was part of a consistent program of creating complicity between locals and invaders.
      
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      1. Pen
        
        November 16, 2015
        
        Oh, yes. I know. There was nothing acceptable about their actions. This tendency to forgive people for their crimes because of their backgrounds is dumb — the crime was still committed, and however sad their life was the fact was they still did it. I think a lot of people don’t believe it’s possible to empathize without absolving the perpetrator. But it’s really the only way to process an event like the Holocaust. That’s complicated, though, and the vast majority of people would rather have everything simple.
        
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  2. Clarissa
    
    November 16, 2015
    
    “Himmler thought that the shootings were demoralizing the Einsatzgruppen and that was one reason to move to gas chambers.”
    
    We can’t know what he thought. We can only know what self-serving phrases he chose to pronounce.
    
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cliff arroyo

November 16, 2015

A large part of the modern or post-modern sensibility is willfully maintained ignorance of human nature (good, bad and indifferent).

The real darkness that human beings is capable of is terrifying and so people make up fables to convince themselves it doesn’t exist.

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1. Clarissa
  
  November 16, 2015
  
  Absolutely. You are so right. And this is also the source of sentimentalizing narratives about the Paris terrorists and Daesh.
  
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