Holocaust Exceptional All Jews Die Nazis Rule World a Myth Mazower

Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe, by Mark Mazower. 2008

A Fallacy: Nazis Were to “Conquer the World” and Thereby Kill ALL Jews. Polokaust Detailed, Including GENERALPLAN OST

The author uses many scholarly sources. For example, he praises historian Marek Jan Chodakiewicz’s BETWEEN NAZIS AND SOVIETS as a pioneering work. (p. 637).

THE POTENTIAL FOR A WWI-ERA JUDEOPOLONIA IN THE EVENT OF A GERMAN VICTORY

Consider the WWI German incursion into Russian-ruled Poland. Although Mazower does not mention Judeopolonia, he illustrates the setting that could have led to a joint Jewish-German rule over eastern Poland. He writes, (quote) The German army also had a conscious policy of supporting the Jewish press in Poland and the governor, General Hans von Beseler, set up a Jewish self-government. In short, the Germans tried to present themselves as liberators from Russian tyranny, and Beseler urged the formation of a “Polish national state” “in the closest association with Germany”–basically a revival of the post-Napoleonic Congress of Poland but this time under German not Russian rule. (unquote)(p. 23).

NO EVIDENCE THAT NAZI GERMAN ALLOWING SOME JEWS TO LEAVE MEANT THAT THEY WOULD LATER BE KILLED “AFTER THE NAZIS CONQUERED THE WORLD”

Now on WWII. The Hitler Youth song, “Today Germany is ours, and tomorrow the whole world” should not be taken literally. There is no agreement among historians as to how geographically distant Nazi German geopolitical ambitions actually went. (p. 2). Thus, the Holocaust uniqueness argument, that the Nazis intended to kill all the world’s Jews, once having gotten into a position to do so, is a myth.

GERMAN-CONQUERED POLAND

After conquering Poland, the Germans flouted the Geneva Convention by turning Polish POWs into civilian laborers–based on the rationalization that the Polish State had ceased the exist. (p. 160). [This was the exact same farcical excuse given by the Soviet Union for its aggressive impulses towards Poland throughout and after WWII.]

As for the lack of a Polish Quisling, Mazower takes a middle view between that of Germans not wanting one, and the Poles refusing to provide one. He realizes, for example, that Poland’s former long-term prime minister, Wincenty Witos, was repeatedly approached by the Germans as a prospective Quisling, but refused. (p. 447).

During the Nazi German occupation of Poland, policies governing the Polish UNTERMENSCHEN were sometimes inconsistent. Thus, Poles were required to give the Hitler salute to German officials at some locations, while being forbidden to use this salute at other locations. (p. 93).

Although Poles and Jews were “unequal victims” in terms of group outcomes, Nazi German attitudes towards them overlapped considerably. For example, in the German-annexed regions of conquered Poland, Germans were forbidden from fraternizing with Poles, because “There are no decent Poles, just as there are no decent Jews.” (p. 94).

NON-GENOCIDAL JEWISH DEATH RATES

The author provides many numerical figures. Thus, the Jewish mortality rate in the Warsaw Ghetto was, per 1,000 inhabitants, 23.5 in 1940, 90 in 1941, and 140 in 1942. (p. 95). In the early part of the Nazi occupation of the USSR, at least, some 5% of Soviet guerrillas were Jews. (p. 173). In the spring of 1945, approximately 100,000 of the 600,000 freed inmates of various German camps were Jews. (p. 411).

POLISH ECONOMIC LOSSES DURING THE POLOKAUST

As for Poles, they experienced a catastrophic 40% drop in national income following the 1939 war, and it never recovered. (p. 266). An amazing 7.4% of the ENTIRE population of the General Government was forced laborers inside the Reich. (p. 261),

German grain-requisitions in rural occupied Poland were onerous in scale and draconian in conduct. (p. 277). Poles struggled to avoid starvation, and the ration for Polish children dropped below 500 daily calories. Sugar and salt were rarely available. (p. 281). The privations were severe enough to cause a marked drop in the population of Poland (along with that of Greece and Yugoslavia). (p. 289). [The Germans took advantage of all this by offering Poles food rewards (such as a bag of sugar) in exchange for a denounced fugitive Jew.]

THE UNFOLDING POLOKAUST AND THE EVENTUAL MASS EXTERMINATION OF POLES

Mazower details the long-term GENERALPLAN OST. He assesses Erhard Wetzel’s ideas as follows, (quote) But according to Wetzel’s calculations, there would in fact be some 60-65 million people to deal with, and at least 46-51 million to deport. He singled out the Poles in particular as “numerically the strongest and therefore the most dangerous of all the alien ethnic groups which the Plan envisioned for resettlement”. Reckoning their population at 20-24 million, Wetzel feared that resettling them in western Siberia would create “a source of continual unrest against German rule.” Yet mass murder did not seem possible either. In his revealing words, “it should be obvious that one cannot solve the Polish problem by liquidating the Poles in the same way as the Jews’ since the Germans would be burdened with guilt “for years to come” and would alienate their neighbors as well. On the other hand, Germanization, even if one avoided excessively strict criteria, would by no definition cover more than a small fraction of the population. Looking further ahead, Wetzel worried that a radical resettlement of the notoriously fast-breeding Russians would merely sow the seeds of another race war in twenty-five or thirty years’ time. (unquote) (p. 209).

Let us analyze this. Erhard Wetzel has been misquoted by those who think that the Nazis held Poles in significantly higher esteem than Jews. Clearly, the different treatment to be afforded Poles relative to Jews stemmed from consequences to Germany, and other practical matters.

In addition, there is a slippery slope between resettlement and extermination. After all, the Nazis first thought in terms of the mass resettling of Jews, to such places as the Lublin area or Madagascar. (pp. 118-120; 38-39). As recently as the start of Operation Barbarossa, some German officials, local ones at least, believed that the flight of Soviet Jews beyond the Urals was an acceptable part of the “Final Solution” to the Jewish problem. (p. 177).

Genocide is also latent in the thinking behind GENERALPLAN OST. The Slavs, like the Jews, stood in the way of fundamental German plans. They were both a problem requiring a solution. With some exceptions, Slavs could not become Aryans any more than Jews could. [No more than 3% of Poles were reckoned Germanizable–in actually, to be re-Germanized. (p. 188)] In addition, the proposed mass resettlement of Slavs, no less than that of Jews, would relocate and postpone the respective problems, not solve them. Mazower accepts possible Slav extermination as an outcome of a Nazi victory. (pp. 414-415).

Meanwhile, GENERALPLAN OST was tried by the Germans, on a small scale, in the Zamosc region. Some Poles were gassed at places such as Maidanek. Fierce Polish resistance eventually ended the operation. (pp. 214-216).

THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF THE POLISH UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT

Mazower characterizes the Polish Underground movement as follows (quote) From the summer of 1940, therefore, the Poles concentrated on building what became the most remarkable underground state on the continent–complete with its own educational, judicial, welfare and propaganda wings. Its purpose was to preserve Polish society from disintegrating under the pressure of Nazi occupation policies, while preparing for the moment when the Germans could be driven out. (unquote)(p. 473).

SOME SHORTCOMINGS OF THIS BOOK

The author repeats the German myth about BLUT SONNTAG (Bloody Sunday) at Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) in 1939. For the truth, please click onDywersja niemiecka i zbrodnie hitlerowskie w Bydgoszczy na tle wydarzen w dniu 3 IX 1939 (Polish and German Edition), and read the detailed English-language Peczkis review.

Mazower uses the at-worst mendacious and at-best misleading phrase: “Polish death camps.” (p. 174). This may be half-excusable for a sloppy journalist, but not a historian, regardless of any “innocent” motives.