There’s no way to know whether Hitler needed to try to exterminate all the Jews he could to avoid losing World War II and to make his 1000 Year Reich a reality.
But the subject is important, so a schematic reaction might help a bit.
The historical research tells us that the Jews were not a declared goal of Hitler's war. There is no document in which he states that the Jews must die.
In the war as it was waged, the explicitness grew, says Sebastian Haffner. Was there something in the ragged ideology of nazism, a pre-occupation with purity?
It is speculation and psychologising that brings us little.
Looking to the mechanisms working is enough: racial or etnic profiling feeds the feeling that there are sorts of people, that they have different traits and that policies are needed to handle them.
Thank you for you first comment, Tommy, and your thoughtful salient reasoning. As I said, I'm not an historian and I called what I was doing spitballing, what you might say was "speculation and psychologising that brings us little."
What I hoped to shed some light on was how Hitler could have just gone about his attempt to conquer Europe and England and make it all part of his German Reich, or Empire, and just left Jews out of the equation.
" In 'Mein Kampf'Hitler expressed strong anti-Semitic views, portraying Jews as the primary enemy of the Aryan race and blaming them for various societal problems. He advocated for the preservation of racial purity and saw Jews as a threat to this ideal, which fueled his ideology and the policies of the Nazi Party."
Consistently Trump has demonized immigrants as a threat to some kind of national purity. I can see why he did this to attract bigoted voters, but he's no longer running for anything. I then wondered why he keeps doing it despite the public blowback. I offered some possiblities.
Yes Hal, problem is to exchange this in the open. It is a tricky theme.
But one remark: it was not Hitler who left the Jews out of the war effort and equation, but the Allies did the same.
A historian wrote about the reconnaissance flights over Germany, one which you could see the gas chambers, the smoke and the rows of people waiting. The images were clear enough, and misunderstanding was impossible. But did they know? Maybe not, because it was "unspeakable news". (I cannot remember his name now)
But the core of the consideration was: mass murder or not, it was irrelevant for the war and the speed of the warfare . So feeding railways to the camps were not bombed.
As a political scientist I try to understand what the Trump regime does. Stephen Miller looks a maniac and psychiatric patient in the videoclips, so there can be an element of racial purity involved. It can be a natural preference for suffering and cruelty as well.
But the core of the matter is not in the immigrants, thieves and rapists. The regime is stupid and incompetent in stirring up resistence by ICE, but it will fall because of stupidity in economic policies and political habits of both parties, courting billionaires.
The racist mentality has always been there in the US; the biggest danger is that the regime seems to wake it up, in a modern form.
This is from Wikipedia confirming what I recall reading about:
In the decades since the Holocaust, some national governments, international bodies and world leaders have been criticized for their failure to take appropriate action to save the millions of European Jews, Roma, and other victims of the Holocaust. Critics say that such intervention, particularly by the Allied governments, might have saved substantial numbers of people and could have been accomplished without the diversion of significant resources from the war effort.
Other researchers have challenged such criticism. Some have argued that the idea that the Allies took no action is a myth—that the Allies accepted as many German Jewish immigrants as the Nazis would allow—and that theoretical military action by the Allies, such as bombing the Auschwitz concentration camp, would have saved the lives of very few people. Others have said that the limited intelligence available to the Allies—who, as late as October 1944, did not know the locations of many of the Nazi death camps or the purposes of the various buildings within those camps they had identified—made precision bombing impossible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_response_to_the_Holocaust
This story fits with my picture, but partly so. Some remarks:
1. The myth that the Allies did nothing is justifiable. They did not bomb railways to the camps, did no military actions when it was possible.
2. They did something or tried: there was a deal of 10.000 lorries in exchange for Jewish prisoners, but it did not work out.
3. After the war the Jews found out that they had not many friends: the British favoured emigration to Israël (Leon Uris, Exodus). The cities in the Netherlands had them pay rents, settle accounts before 1940. (See: Tony Judt, Postwar)
4. Is the picture of Wikipedia wrong? I would not say so, but it needs more nuances and details. "Trails in the sky" was a wartime memory of a Dutch Jewish prisoner. Why don't the Allies do something for us, here in hell?
5. I was in the US in 1986: hungerstrike of four veterans on the steps of the Capitol, about the Contra scandal. (who knows what it was). I talked to them, when they still could talk. But for the passing politicians it was only strange.
And so on. I'm glad with the anger about the shooting of Renee Good, but why is it so intense? Because she was a white, protestant mother? Floyd's death was also a cause for turmoil. How different are they?
I do not know. I studied with a scientist who coined the concept of "compartimentalisation"; when you sort people out, because of their traits, color, bodily aspects, you create conditions for mass murder.
So, I look to the US with shivers along my spine...
This is much to much, for this context.
But the subject is important, so a schematic reaction might help a bit.
The historical research tells us that the Jews were not a declared goal of Hitler's war. There is no document in which he states that the Jews must die.
In the war as it was waged, the explicitness grew, says Sebastian Haffner. Was there something in the ragged ideology of nazism, a pre-occupation with purity?
It is speculation and psychologising that brings us little.
Looking to the mechanisms working is enough: racial or etnic profiling feeds the feeling that there are sorts of people, that they have different traits and that policies are needed to handle them.
Thank you for you first comment, Tommy, and your thoughtful salient reasoning. As I said, I'm not an historian and I called what I was doing spitballing, what you might say was "speculation and psychologising that brings us little."
What I hoped to shed some light on was how Hitler could have just gone about his attempt to conquer Europe and England and make it all part of his German Reich, or Empire, and just left Jews out of the equation.
This is from https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/literature-and-writing/mein-kampf-outlines-nazi-thought
" In 'Mein Kampf'Hitler expressed strong anti-Semitic views, portraying Jews as the primary enemy of the Aryan race and blaming them for various societal problems. He advocated for the preservation of racial purity and saw Jews as a threat to this ideal, which fueled his ideology and the policies of the Nazi Party."
Consistently Trump has demonized immigrants as a threat to some kind of national purity. I can see why he did this to attract bigoted voters, but he's no longer running for anything. I then wondered why he keeps doing it despite the public blowback. I offered some possiblities.
I look forward to hearing more from you.
Yes Hal, problem is to exchange this in the open. It is a tricky theme.
But one remark: it was not Hitler who left the Jews out of the war effort and equation, but the Allies did the same.
A historian wrote about the reconnaissance flights over Germany, one which you could see the gas chambers, the smoke and the rows of people waiting. The images were clear enough, and misunderstanding was impossible. But did they know? Maybe not, because it was "unspeakable news". (I cannot remember his name now)
But the core of the consideration was: mass murder or not, it was irrelevant for the war and the speed of the warfare . So feeding railways to the camps were not bombed.
As a political scientist I try to understand what the Trump regime does. Stephen Miller looks a maniac and psychiatric patient in the videoclips, so there can be an element of racial purity involved. It can be a natural preference for suffering and cruelty as well.
But the core of the matter is not in the immigrants, thieves and rapists. The regime is stupid and incompetent in stirring up resistence by ICE, but it will fall because of stupidity in economic policies and political habits of both parties, courting billionaires.
The racist mentality has always been there in the US; the biggest danger is that the regime seems to wake it up, in a modern form.
This is from Wikipedia confirming what I recall reading about:
In the decades since the Holocaust, some national governments, international bodies and world leaders have been criticized for their failure to take appropriate action to save the millions of European Jews, Roma, and other victims of the Holocaust. Critics say that such intervention, particularly by the Allied governments, might have saved substantial numbers of people and could have been accomplished without the diversion of significant resources from the war effort.
Other researchers have challenged such criticism. Some have argued that the idea that the Allies took no action is a myth—that the Allies accepted as many German Jewish immigrants as the Nazis would allow—and that theoretical military action by the Allies, such as bombing the Auschwitz concentration camp, would have saved the lives of very few people. Others have said that the limited intelligence available to the Allies—who, as late as October 1944, did not know the locations of many of the Nazi death camps or the purposes of the various buildings within those camps they had identified—made precision bombing impossible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_response_to_the_Holocaust
This story fits with my picture, but partly so. Some remarks:
1. The myth that the Allies did nothing is justifiable. They did not bomb railways to the camps, did no military actions when it was possible.
2. They did something or tried: there was a deal of 10.000 lorries in exchange for Jewish prisoners, but it did not work out.
3. After the war the Jews found out that they had not many friends: the British favoured emigration to Israël (Leon Uris, Exodus). The cities in the Netherlands had them pay rents, settle accounts before 1940. (See: Tony Judt, Postwar)
4. Is the picture of Wikipedia wrong? I would not say so, but it needs more nuances and details. "Trails in the sky" was a wartime memory of a Dutch Jewish prisoner. Why don't the Allies do something for us, here in hell?
5. I was in the US in 1986: hungerstrike of four veterans on the steps of the Capitol, about the Contra scandal. (who knows what it was). I talked to them, when they still could talk. But for the passing politicians it was only strange.
And so on. I'm glad with the anger about the shooting of Renee Good, but why is it so intense? Because she was a white, protestant mother? Floyd's death was also a cause for turmoil. How different are they?
I do not know. I studied with a scientist who coined the concept of "compartimentalisation"; when you sort people out, because of their traits, color, bodily aspects, you create conditions for mass murder.
So, I look to the US with shivers along my spine...
Found this in the Harvard Law Library Archive of the War Crime trials. Not sure this is on point.
“As a result Horthy was summoned by Hitler who in the presence of
Ribbentrop warned him on April 17, 1943,
"Jews must either be exterminated or taken to
concentration camps." (IMT, Vol. I, p. 287.
TN10670
See this cite https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/ TN