Nazis Saw Jews and Poles Similarly Breitman

The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution, by Richard Breitman. 1992

Victimhood Competition: Holocaust Vs. Polokaust. Nazis Saw Jews and Poles Similarly

Unfortunately, Breitman repeats the Nazi-propaganda canard of Poles killing several thousand Germans, at Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) as fact (p. 70). Otherwise, this book seems to be free of obvious errors. The author traces Nazi German policies against various groups, with especial attention paid to the Jews.

JEDWABNE: A GERMAN CRIME DISGUISED AS A POLISH CRIME

The author provides information relevant to the Jedwabne massacre without mentioning it. He shows that the Germans tried to disguise their first wave of murders of Jews, at the start of Operation Barbarossa, as the work of locals acting alone (p. 172, 207).

IS THE TERM HOLOCAUST FOR JEWS ONLY?

Breitman (pp. 19-21) addresses the debate as to whether the term Holocaust should refer only to the Jewish or to all the victims of the Nazis. He believes that the extermination of the Jews is sui generis in many ways (p. 21), for example, because: “The Nazis are not known to have spoken of the Final Solution of the Polish problem or of the gypsy problem.” (p. 20). Yet he demolishes his own argument in several ways. To begin with, he elsewhere tacitly acknowledges that his is an argument from silence: “Other cases of genocide in history have not left much evidence of advance plans either.” (p. 27).

WHEN IS A GENOCIDAL DECISION A DECISION?

There is also the problem of semantics: “Could one really say that Hitler had already decided upon genocide? A lot depends on what constitutes a decision. Is it a decision if a person keeps an idea firmly in his mind but tells no one about it and does nothing about it? Or is the decision made only when the individual begins to commit himself—not necessarily to start the executions, but at least to commit time and resources to the preparations?” (p. 27). Finally, there is the question of earnestness: “With mass murder or even genocide, however, there is a huge gulf between talk and action.” (p. 63). Considering the many European Jews still left alive at the end of the war, can it definitely be said that the Germans were really serious about exterminating ALL known and accessible European Jews?

GENOCIDES DEVELOP GRADUALLY

Author Richard Breitman shows that exterminatory plans against Jews developed gradually (p. 206) and, by implication, so did parallel exterminatory plans against Poles: “Anyone planning a campaign of mass murder had to start thinking on a smaller scale than the continent.”(p. 65). Also: “If the Polish intelligentsia was now being killed off, could large number of Jews be far behind?” (p. 104). One could just as easily reword this: “If the Polish intelligentsia was now being killed off, could large numbers of other Poles be far behind?”

POLES WERE ALSO SEEN A PROBLEM IMPLICITLY DEMANDING A SOLUTION

In many places in his book, Breitman undermines the Holocaust-uniqueness argument by acknowledging that the Poles were seen as a problem (that, by implication, demanded an eventual solution) no less so than the Jews: “[In addressing Mussolini] Himmler added that this also meant solving the Polish question, the Slavic question, and the Jewish question.” (p. 92). Also: “Next he [Himmler] explained that the Fuhrer had had given him the task of resolving the Eastern situation, which was not so much a political problem as a racial problem.” (p. 113). Finally: “The eastern races posed another major obstacle to Hitler’s and Himmler’s racial and geopolitical goals.” (p. 246).

NO DUALISM BETWEEN THE NAZI CONCEPTS OF THE JEW AND THE POLE

Pointedly, the destruction of one group (the Jews) cannot be dichotomized from the eventual destruction of other groups: “There was a logical as well as a technological link between Nazi euthanasia and genocide. The Nazi concept of a healthy and pure German Volk excluded a number of groups. Within Germany itself, the misfits were the mentally disturbed and physically deformed, the criminals and those considered socially deviant, and, of course, Jews and gypsies. Outside of Germany or in the annexed territories were Poles, Czechs, and other Slavs, whose racial status was regarded as inferior. Their treatment depended in part on Nazi plans for their territories and in part on how usefully they could serve the Nazi was machine. Actions to clear the Third Reich of all these groups—either by expulsion, sterilization, imprisonment in concentration camps, or mass murder—were part of the same effort to purify and extend the German race.” (p. 91).

Ironically, during the early years of the Nazi occupation of Poland, some German officials had recommended that Jews be better treated than Poles because of their economic productivity (p. 85, 119). Otherwise, the Germans never attributed any more inherent worth to Poles than to Jews. For instance, in sharp contrast with the fear of the “race defilement” of Germans, the Nazis saw no problem of interbreeding between Poles and Jews (p. 138).

LOGISTICS FORCED GERMANS TO TREAT POLES AND JEWS DIFFERENTLY

So Poles and Jews became “unequal victims” owing solely to practical considerations. Already in 1940, Hans Frank had concluded that the Polish population was too large to be exterminated under existing conditions (p. 97). There was also the problem of keeping genocide secret (p. 207). Even the earlier resettlement of Jews to the Lublin region had generated unfavorable publicity for Germany (p. 120). Mass gassings became attractive because of their relative unobtrusiveness compared to the earlier-used mass shootings (p. 92). But if the extermination of a few million Jews couldn’t finally be kept secret, how much less the extermination of tens of millions of Poles!

THE UNFOLDING POLOKAUST AND PLANNED EVENTUAL EXTERMINATION OF THE POLES

Hitler himself juxtaposed the eventual fate of the Poles at the hands of the Germans with the extermination of the Armenians at the hands of the Turks: “…with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race or language. Only in such a way will we win the vital space that we need. Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?” (p. 43). In addition: “…a Swiss doctor named Theo Lang…told a British Secret Service agent in December 1941 that he knew definitely that Himmler’s staff had been considering ‘for a long time’ the sterilization of all adult Poles.” (p. 153). Odilo Globocnik also had plans for the extermination of Poles (p. 186).