The World at War
Discussion
Eric Mc said:
The extermination camps were part and parcel of the ideology of the Nazi regime - although Nazi policies were often "on the hoof" and not as formally planned out as many might have assumed. You have to look at them as the extremely logical outcome of a thought process that formed the essential core beliefs of Nazism - even if the notion of a death camp would not have been on a Nazi official's agenda in (say) 1935. By 1944, the idea had been normalised and they were able to exercise this extermination policy stating fully worked out justifications - as far as they were concerned.
That is the truly scary aspect of The Holocaust. It's not that it happened, it's that it happened in a country which was looked on as advanced in culture, science, philosophy, art and technology.
I think that it was evident fro 1934 when the Nürnberg Laws were passed that the Nazis wanted to eliminate the Jews from German soil and from any further conquests. A series of ever more onerous laws were passed long before the Wansee conference in 1941 that set the Final Solution in motion.That is the truly scary aspect of The Holocaust. It's not that it happened, it's that it happened in a country which was looked on as advanced in culture, science, philosophy, art and technology.
Progressively from 1934 on Jews were progressively disenfranchised, banned from the professions, forbidden driving licences, and even forbidden typewriters.
Many of the German Jews could see it coming and made early escapes before Krystallnacht in 1938.
This has generally had little documentation, but a fascinating diary surfaced in Leipzig about 15 years ago by Victor Klemperer, a WW.! veteran who was married to a gentile and had a sort of shadow status...no rights but no concentration. He chronicles daily life under the Reich for a Jew and it is simply terrifying reading, the thoroughness and endless privation for which the Jews were singled out. It is called I Will Bear Witness, and gives a crystal clear report of what life was like form him from 1933 to 1945. I highly recommend it..it is NOT about the camps, but about the way the socieaty worked every day.
As someone who has held senior positions in a railroad, I am very clear that the degree of organization to carry out the Holocaust was vast in scope, the number of people involved to make it happened was huge, and the target was very clear. By and large, it succeeded. There are endless towns in Poland, Austria and Hungary which had large Jewish populations,.,they are all gone.
RDMcG said:
I think that it was evident fro 1934 when the Nürnberg Laws were passed that the Nazis wanted to eliminate the Jews from German soil and from any further conquests. A series of ever more onerous laws were passed long before the Wansee conference in 1941 that set the Final Solution in motion.
Progressively from 1934 on Jews were progressively disenfranchised, banned from the professions, forbidden driving licences, and even forbidden typewriters.
Many of the German Jews could see it coming and made early escapes before Krystallnacht in 1938.
This has generally had little documentation, but a fascinating diary surfaced in Leipzig about 15 years ago by Victor Klemperer, a WW.! veteran who was married to a gentile and had a sort of shadow status...no rights but no concentration. He chronicles daily life under the Reich for a Jew and it is simply terrifying reading, the thoroughness and endless privation for which the Jews were singled out. It is called I Will Bear Witness, and gives a crystal clear report of what life was like form him from 1933 to 1945. I highly recommend it..it is NOT about the camps, but about the way the socieaty worked every day.
As someone who has held senior positions in a railroad, I am very clear that the degree of organization to carry out the Holocaust was vast in scope, the number of people involved to make it happened was huge, and the target was very clear. By and large, it succeeded. There are endless towns in Poland, Austria and Hungary which had large Jewish populations,.,they are all gone.
I used to have tea with a Jewish woman in Petticoat Towers, Petticoat Lane (Middlesex St), who was sent from Germany by relatives around 1936. Her stories as a woman in her middle/late 20s in Germany were quite horrible. Daily inhumane treatment, and this before the roundups, was encouraged. None of the balance of her immediate family escaped. Progressively from 1934 on Jews were progressively disenfranchised, banned from the professions, forbidden driving licences, and even forbidden typewriters.
Many of the German Jews could see it coming and made early escapes before Krystallnacht in 1938.
This has generally had little documentation, but a fascinating diary surfaced in Leipzig about 15 years ago by Victor Klemperer, a WW.! veteran who was married to a gentile and had a sort of shadow status...no rights but no concentration. He chronicles daily life under the Reich for a Jew and it is simply terrifying reading, the thoroughness and endless privation for which the Jews were singled out. It is called I Will Bear Witness, and gives a crystal clear report of what life was like form him from 1933 to 1945. I highly recommend it..it is NOT about the camps, but about the way the socieaty worked every day.
As someone who has held senior positions in a railroad, I am very clear that the degree of organization to carry out the Holocaust was vast in scope, the number of people involved to make it happened was huge, and the target was very clear. By and large, it succeeded. There are endless towns in Poland, Austria and Hungary which had large Jewish populations,.,they are all gone.
One thing which stuck in my mind was a time she mentioned the limits put on immigration of Jews by 'the West'. She asked me if I knew what the UK had done. My ignorance infuriated her and she sent me away to discover the answer. It seemed that many countries actively restricted Jewish immigration. There was an agreed 'quota' system which some countries preferred not to honour. When the treatment of Jews, and others, was admitted by the West there was an attempt to up the quotas but this was rejected. Some countries, some which were called civilised, and still are, actively blocked all refugees. The UK doubled its quota, although it never reached this number, the start of the war curtailing the ability to do so.
For those who have not seen it, I advocate watching the film, Conspiracy.
A most excellent and chilling story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(2001_fil...
A most excellent and chilling story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(2001_fil...
The Nazi philosophy was definitely to eliminate Jews and Jewish influence on German society and culture. And that was their aim from the very beginning. However, in its earlier forms it was not about mass murder. They had various schemes to encourage Jews to leave the country and, of course, after they had conquered most of Western and Eastern Europe, Europe as a whole. At one point, after the fall of France, they even considered using Madagascar as a destination for Jewish deportees. At that time Madagascar was a French colony and negotiations were begun with the Vichy government to see if such a scheme was feasible. Of course, it wasn't.
As a result of their perceived insoluble (by their definition), "Jewish Problem, in 1942 a secret meeting was held at Wannsee to discuss what they needed to do to solve this "problem". It was from this meeting that a decision was made to effectively exterminate Jews living in the Greater Reich.
As mentioned above, in 2001 an excellent, if disturbing, drama was made for TV by BBC and HBO starring Kenneth Brannagh. It covers the story of this meeting.
As a result of their perceived insoluble (by their definition), "Jewish Problem, in 1942 a secret meeting was held at Wannsee to discuss what they needed to do to solve this "problem". It was from this meeting that a decision was made to effectively exterminate Jews living in the Greater Reich.
As mentioned above, in 2001 an excellent, if disturbing, drama was made for TV by BBC and HBO starring Kenneth Brannagh. It covers the story of this meeting.
The truly shocking aspect of the Wannsee conference is the sheer matter-of-factness of it.
That a small group of seemingly educated and influential people could meet and, in the course of a few hours, resolve to exterminate millions of people is a testament to man's capacity for inhumanity
That a small group of seemingly educated and influential people could meet and, in the course of a few hours, resolve to exterminate millions of people is a testament to man's capacity for inhumanity
Halb said:
I can recall the chat of discussing just how inefficient a bullet is at killing, that they cannot create enough.
That's where the business Topf and Sons stepped in, when you read in to the organisation behind the FS its scale and the number of businesses/people involved you realise that they (the German population at the time) were in the main all complicit in what went on. The subsequent denials about knowing had more to do with them being in "denial" in an attempt to keep themselves sane when faced with the utter horror they had allowed to happen. People point to him as a dictator, but forget that the Germans voted him in and they knew what he stood for, yet powerful industrialists and statesman backed him, funded him and the people voted for him.
Wills2 said:
People point to him as a dictator, but forget that the Germans voted him in and they knew what he stood for, yet powerful industrialists and statesman backed him, funded him and the people voted for him.
From many countries too.an experiment which showed how cruelty, apathy and desensitivity can become matter-of-fact
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
The final episode of the series was on tonight. It was the most sobering of all I think as it was about those who died and were injured both physically and mentally. It started, as did the first episode, with the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane:
Down this road, on a summer day in 1944 ... The soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, a community which had lived for a thousand years ... was dead.
This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road ... and they were driven ... into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then . . . they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle.
They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousand upon thousand of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a World at War ...
The only difference was that in the final episode they added the word Remember.
One really awful, terrible, scene in this episode was old men being separated from their women and children, the men being led away to be killed.
Down this road, on a summer day in 1944 ... The soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, a community which had lived for a thousand years ... was dead.
This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road ... and they were driven ... into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then . . . they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle.
They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousand upon thousand of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a World at War ...
The only difference was that in the final episode they added the word Remember.
One really awful, terrible, scene in this episode was old men being separated from their women and children, the men being led away to be killed.
I've watched the World at War many times over, but it wasn't until a few years ago that I was intrigued by the aerial shot of Oradour that they show I think in the final episode. I ended up visiting there two years ago - a very sobering place indeed, and fascinating in equal measure. Well worth going.
Derek Smith said:
The final episode of the series was on tonight. It was the most sobering of all I think as it was about those who died and were injured both physically and mentally. It started, as did the first episode, with the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane:
Down this road, on a summer day in 1944 ... The soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, a community which had lived for a thousand years ... was dead.
This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road ... and they were driven ... into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then . . . they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle.
They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousand upon thousand of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a World at War ...
The only difference was that in the final episode they added the word Remember.
One really awful, terrible, scene in this episode was old men being separated from their women and children, the men being led away to be killed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLgJmyJc9nsDown this road, on a summer day in 1944 ... The soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, a community which had lived for a thousand years ... was dead.
This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road ... and they were driven ... into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then . . . they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle.
They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousand upon thousand of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a World at War ...
The only difference was that in the final episode they added the word Remember.
One really awful, terrible, scene in this episode was old men being separated from their women and children, the men being led away to be killed.
mcelliott said:
I've watched the World at War many times over, but it wasn't until a few years ago that I was intrigued by the aerial shot of Oradour that they show I think in the final episode. I ended up visiting there two years ago - a very sobering place indeed, and fascinating in equal measure. Well worth going.
It's on my list, thanks to TWAWDerek Smith said:
The final episode of the series was on tonight. It was the most sobering of all I think as it was about those who died and were injured both physically and mentally. It started, as did the first episode, with the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane:
Down this road, on a summer day in 1944 ... The soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, a community which had lived for a thousand years ... was dead.
This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road ... and they were driven ... into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then . . . they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle.
They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousand upon thousand of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a World at War ...
The only difference was that in the final episode they added the word Remember.
One really awful, terrible, scene in this episode was old men being separated from their women and children, the men being led away to be killed.
As happened almost exactly 51 years later at Srebrinica. The series ended with the word "remember" but not enough of us did or do. Man's capacity for inhumanity to fellow man is undiminished. Only the willingness of society to check and challenge that capacity can change. I am not confident that it has.Down this road, on a summer day in 1944 ... The soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, a community which had lived for a thousand years ... was dead.
This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road ... and they were driven ... into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then . . . they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle.
They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousand upon thousand of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a World at War ...
The only difference was that in the final episode they added the word Remember.
One really awful, terrible, scene in this episode was old men being separated from their women and children, the men being led away to be killed.
Wacky Racer said:
I think the series is on UK TV Play.The final episode is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky3kagIwppk
ClaphamGT3 said:
As happened almost exactly 51 years later at Srebrinica. The series ended with the word "remember" but not enough of us did or do. Man's capacity for inhumanity to fellow man is undiminished. Only the willingness of society to check and challenge that capacity can change. I am not confident that it has.
There seems to be bugger all we can do about it. What an epitaph for the millions of dead in the war.Halb said:
an experiment which showed how cruelty, apathy and desensitivity can become matter-of-fact
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Rather the experiment showed that if people are brought up to obey orders and they see the authority figure as being morally virtuous/right they may go as far as killing to order. The experiment shed very little light on the Nazi's behaviour during the Holocaust, the context was, obviously, completely different. Further, the experiment revealed only 60% of people involved were prepared to 'go the whole way', and for very few it was 'matter-of-fact' as almost everyone needed several prompts to coerce them to proceed. I don't recall reading of any "apathy and desensitivity" in the individuals involved in the experiments, though it's probably fair to assume there was some similar behaviour to that displayed. Of course what Milgram really needed to complete his experiment successfully was total war and a majority population brainwashed (and in too deep to turn back) into accepting and obeying whatever their psychopathic narcissist leader told them.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Gassing Station | TV, Film, Video Streaming & Radio | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff