MovieChat Forums > Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter (2014) Discussion > The german point of vieuw would be filmi...

The german point of vieuw would be filming the diaries of rudolf hoss


That would be interesting

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[deleted]

His family adores you now already, director.

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There is a movie about Rudolf Höß:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075708/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Never seen it, though, but I have the book its based on.

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No, it wouldn't be. Because his name is Rudolf Hess.

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There were two main Nazis with very similar names:

- Rudolf Hess, the offical deputy of Adolf Hitler in the Nazi party
- Rudolf Höß, one of the commanders of the Auschwitz camp

I think OP refers to the latter one (makes more sense), but its mispelled anyway.

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That wouldn't be the German point of view. That would be the Nazi point of view (and even a very simplistic at that). And saying that Germans=Nazis is very silly indeed. There were way more nazis and their symphatizers in Austria than in Germany at all times during the Third Reich and even the claim that this fil/series makes of Poles being more antisemitic than the germans as a whole is true. My uncle was in Poland just few years ago and heard some "civilized" or at least well educated poles refer to the jewish inhabitants in their country as "the jew problem"

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There were way more nazis and their symphatizers in Austria than in Germany at all times during the Third Reich and even the claim that this fil/series makes of Poles being more antisemitic than the germans as a whole is true.


Except it's historically not true re Austria or Poland.

My uncle was in Poland just few years ago and heard some "civilized" or at least well educated poles refer to the jewish inhabitants in their country as "the jew problem"


I know more than my fair share of educated Poles and I've never had that experience.

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"I know more than my fair share of educated Poles and I've never had that experience. "

Well I didn't say that they are as antisemitic now as they were then... and to be fair before the world wars anti-semitism was more common in many countries, so never was just a Polish thing.
And it hasn't gone away any more than other forms of racism. Just now as many places in Europe seem to be heading extremely right-wing I just read that one of the large and popular political parties in Greece is now openly national socialist and among the news was an antisemitic comment from some supporter who didn't seem particularly lowly educated or otherwise in a predicament that could give any excuses (not that I think it would be excusable anyway).
Also Hungary, I believe, has had a growing strain of anti-semitism and racist overtures past few years.

What I simply meant is that if there are still people in Poland who refer to (the very small) Jewish population there as the jewish problem, after all these years I would say that it does give creedence to that there was considerable amount of antisemitism in Poland before and after the war. Hopefully lessening every year but still. There are tales of very violent treatment of jewish people even after Germany had lost. In Art Spiegelmans "Maus", which is a graphic novel version of his grandfathers memoirs, his grandfather told how he was on his way back home, to Sosnowiec when he is warned that the Poles are still killing jews. and is told of another Camp survivor who went back there to his familys bakery, only to find it was being help by Poles who beat him up and hanged him after they found him sleeping in "their"/his familys shed (and they knew who he was, didn't mistake him for an intruder)

Also in one memoir of Holocaust called "Neighbours" That describes in great details the brutal acts of Poles i occupied Poland against the jewish population with little to no encouragement from the Germans at all. There were even parts of the book which noted that sometimes the arrival of German forces at the pogrom was the only thing that actually saved the jews.
It makes rational sense too. The orders to exterminate jews from those areas had not been given yet, and the Polish vigilantes were causing a disturbance, ergo they had to be stopped... Still how bad do your oppressors have to be when your salvation, however short, comes from the local German occupation forces, most likely consisting, or including members of the Gestapo or the divisions of SS tasked with dealing of the jews?
The book also mentions Poles who helped the jews and who received such a social stigma from that that they had to migrate, because even after the war their neighbours wouldn't forgive them.

Antisemitism was running rampant in eastern Europe before, during, and -somewhat more quietly- after the war. In "Everything is Illuminated"
Which is based on a book of the same name by a renown jewish author Jonathan Safran Foer in is claimed that some places in ukraine were as bad as Berlin
And that when Hitler invaded Foers Grandmother actually thought it would be an improvement. While artistic freedom was used in the movie I doubt they would pull such claims out of their asses

And west had its fair shair of anti-semitism as well.
Edward VIII of England was believed to be a nazi symphatizer and from his work as the Governor of Bahamas he blamed of trouble and civil unrest on
""mischief makers – communists" and "men of Central European Jewish descent, who had secured jobs as a pretext for obtaining a deferment of draft""

I remember reading about french soldier who joined werhmacht (don't remember if he initially fought against the germans when they invaded France) and fought with them through the war. When interviewed he said that they knew that they didn't know about the concentration camps. They did know though that the jews were being sent away or treated badly, but that didn't faze him too much for he had been taught already at school that jews rape women and cut their breasts off or something of the sort.

Oh and in Austria people were waving flowers at the "invading" germans.
there's an old witty anecdote about how Austrians have a funny way of remembering Mozart as a wonderful Austrian composer and Hitler as a horrible German tyrant.

So yeah, both of the claims I talked about in my earlier post are true either entirely or partially.
But I didn't bring them up to excuse those germans who participated in the holocaust of anything or to say that every Austiran or Pole was this or that but of how stupid a generalization of condensing the whole german pov to one nazi official would be.
Kind of like if one was to condense the american point of view to Lt. Winters from BoB. If one was to do that surely it would seem that your basic american pov was that of an impeccable soldier with great character and pure soul who never did anything wrong.

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All of this is true.

None of it supports the contention that the Poles were 'as' antisemitic as the Germans. Nor does it support your absurd contention that the Poles were more antisemitic than the Germans.

Re Austria - Indeed there were lots of Nazis in Austria - as there were in Germany. You could point out that there was also a higher proportion of Austrians in the SS but conversely there is a higher proportion of Austrian Righteous Among the Nations. Why you want to divide the two (Germans and Austrians) and shift the blame onto the latter, is beyond me.

Incidentally, I find the Frenchman's account that he had never heard of concentration camps impossible to believe. Maybe you don't remember what he actually said.


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"All of this is true.
None of it supports the contention that the Poles were 'as' antisemitic as the Germans. "
Yes it does. If you admit there to be truth in all of this, including about places in eastern europe where the Nazi arrival may have been thought to be an improvement even among the jewish population, it definately lends creedence to the possibility that there were a lot of people there as antisemitic if not even more so than Germans. Well just maybe "more so" goes a bit far. But I wouldn't count "as" out, from any who gave their jews away en masse, and/or practised violence towards the jews even without german encouraging or forcing them.



"Why you want to divide the two (Germans and Austrians) and shift the blame onto the latter, is beyond me. "
I don't. Don't put ideas into my text that are not there. I simply put forward that there was a larger support for nazis in Austria than in Germany since at the time, before any cruelties surfaced they'd be understandably proud of one of their own rising to lead Germany.

German Nazis were as guilty of everything as any other nazis or their collaborators in the matter. I'm not shifting the blame to anything.
However many Austrians and other none Germans who worked for the nazis military or otherwise tried to do exactly that by pointing at them and trying to make a case that the Germans were to blame, they were being pressured and forced to follow orders.
The humorous anecdote in my previous post was simply about that.



True I don't remember exactly what the French soldier said, but I think he meant that they didn't know about the concentration camps as in what went on there besides maybe forced labour and poor conditions. Afterall alot of people did not know, at least extensively what went on there.
I seem to remember a documentary about how after the war, some occupation forces who did did what was shown in Band of Brothers and took germans (and possibly other populus from around camps that were in different countries) to see the camps. And I believe it was said that a lot of them dressed well and were rather on a jolly mood on their way there as they had no idea where they were being taken. And of the shock on their faces when they finally arrived there.

Also going back to Art Spiegelmans MAUS. The grandfather told at one interview that they had met concentration camp survivors who had escaped even during the occupation, who came back to the gettos or elsewere and told what had happened to them and that they did not, could not believe that such things were happening. This from the people whom nazis were already treating badly told by the members of the same people whom the nazis had been treating even worse.
If they didn't know and wouldn't believe, is it truly too hard to believe that those who were not being persecuted didn't know and wouldn't believe at least the most horrific stuff?
If the nazi propaganda did its job wouldn't seem odd to me that they'd be just happy that jews were transported elsewere and that they were now someone elses problem. Also even if suspected, they probably didn't want to know.
Which admittingly isn't that much better.

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I could give you more information about betrayals by Poles of Jews and discuss the level and nature of antisemitism in prewar Poland.

However, it is still absurd to say that the Poles (or other nations) were worse than or as bad as the Germans. The Germans carried out the extermination of between 5 and 6 million people and German antisemitism and not the assistance of local populations was the sin qua non of the holocaust. It's important not to get confused about this, and unfortunately, this series does rather play down German antisemitism - as if it was just a uniquely 'Nazi' view, held by a group of people who we are led to believe were in the minority and everyone else involved in the extermination was just following orders that they didn't believe in.

Re the Austrians - Then I simply don't understand why you feel the need to make a distinction between them and the Germans. Neither do I except that the basic premise that the Germans were less Nazi than the Austrians.

Re the concentration camps.- I find it hard to believe that they were in a 'jolly mood'.

There were 20,000 concentration camps throughout occupied Europe and thousands in Germany itself, the first (Dachau) set up in Feb 33 to deal with the communists) so that is why I find it difficult to understand if people were unaware of their existence. Having such a large number of camps spread throughout Germany meant that hundreds of thousands of Germans worked in them, around them or knew family or friends who worked in them. So again, it is difficult to argue that they did not know what the conditions were like.

As to the conditions of the camps. Some were a death sentence (Mauthausen) others not necessarily so. What makes the concentration camp system different to a prison or a POW camp is that it was run by the SS and thus outside of the law. If we are to believe that Germans were afraid of concentration camps then it is obvious that they must have had some inkling of the conditions in these camps.

Similarly, people would be well aware of the types incarcerated in concentration camps (Slavs, communists, homosexuals) and would be aware of the regimes attitude towards them. As indeed were people aware of euthanasia actions against the disabled or public hangings of slave labourers in Germany.

That's not to say that they wouldn't have been shocked at the extent or at the graphic horror (especially at Bergen Belsen), but they rather not in a 'jolly mood'.

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Well I do think that the antisemitism of both the germans and the peoples whoever sent their jews to them, conquered or not, and performed acts of cruelty towards the jews. Again without even the nazi encouragement are not too distinct The Holocaust could not have happened, at least not nearly on the scale that it did if those others had been more reluctant to co-operate in this.

However I do agree with you that the series down plays it too much. I didn't have aproblem of the five friends and one of them a jew premise or that none of them really harbored any such feelings (even if they went with some conflict of concious/duty at times, like Charlotte & Lilja at the hospital), unlikely as that might be. Also possibly even though it might have been better and more interesting to have a POV character, otherwise possibly even likable who'd harbor such sentiments. I do agree that at least they should've shown more germans with antisemitist predicaments and also a bit more variety of feelings on that among the polish resistance.

I don't really make a distinction between the Germans and Austrians. I merely bring out the large nmber of Nazis and that a large portion of them nazi or not actively or tacitly worked wth the germans that they had a huge hand in it too. Something that, yes I'm sure that I don't need to tell you and that seems to be more known nowadays which is good, but it has sometimes seem to me that Austrians and other perpetrators seem to be forgotten in this matters and germans, yes whom I too still see as the main perpetrators, just not nearly the only ones, seem to be sometimes almost only ones remembered.

Well it was years and years ago when I saw the document or a part of it, but I think that the occupation forces who took them there didn't tell where they were taking them. I think that something was mentioned to them mysteriously about letting them see what their countrymen had been up to during the war. But perhaps they regarded it at first as somekind of a field trip.
As some people might be in America if they were taken to see a battlefield of the Civil war era.
I do believe that the document described them very shocked.
Again having an inkling what may have been going on, or that the jews were treated very badly still isn't the same as knowing. and even to those who knew or thought they knew is another thing.
Even if they knew someone who worked at the camps, well those people may have been ordered not to tell, at least in detail whats going on there. Such things could have a bad effect on the morale, even if the victims were not considered to be real humans. How do you even bring such a thing to your family anyway "pass the potatoes honey... by the way you won't believe what Dr Mengele found out today..." makes a very bad digestive conversation. The men may not have even wanted to trouble theifr families with what they saw. Just like many war vets never wanted to (or couldn't) necessary tell their families what they went through and just kept it all bottled up even when it ate them alive inside and led to bad mental healt. Some may have told or let it slip. Or they may have been more vague about their jobs at the camp. Migh be that they jsut let friends and family know that they didn't need to worry about the "undesirables" that they wouldn't be coming back to bother them. So if that conjures up a thought that they are being killed even that thought would probably be a relatively innocent a bullet to the back of the head, which would've been alot better that what they went through. So even if you have known that, or thought you did, throughout the nazi regime. To be shown the entire horror would be something quite different.
Even to us who have known about that part of the history for so long to actually see a concentration camp, if one hasn't seen it before would most likely have a profound effect.
Well perhaps you've been to one(in which case you could probably attest to that hypothesis). I haven't yet. Probably going to one of these days. So far jsut hasn't coincided with vacation plans when I've been able to take such abroad.

Also wasn't there still a sort of difference or "hierarchy" to concentration camps such that some where still more or mostly forced labour camps, not to say that lethality rate wasn't probably high in those as well especially due to abhorrent living conditions and violence and such. But still those camps wouldn't have been operating on terminating basis. What I'm getting at is that even if one had seen such a camp, or even been inside one, it might not have prepared them to see such things as Mathausen or Bergen Belsen etc.
Am I completely in the woods with this one? I simply seem to recall that when I first took interest in holocaust and saw a map in some book detailing the camps and their uses that surprisingly a lot less of them were extermination camps, at least purely, that I had thought (well at that point I had seen only stuff about Auschwichs and maybe one or two of some of the more infamous camps and thought that all of them were such).

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Again without even the nazi encouragement are not too distinct The Holocaust could not have happened, at least not nearly on the scale that it did if those others had been more reluctant to co-operate in this


The point is that the holocaust could not have happened without the Germans; planned wholly and in large part carried out by the Germans. It was their idea to arrive at an eliminationist solution and large numbers of Germans carried out the holocaust and other genocidal activities effectively without question.

In comparison can we say that non Germans (ie Poles) were as bad as the Germans. In contrast to the German experience large numbers of Poles assisted Jews and were executed for helping Jews. Further, in contrast to the German experience, in the East the punishment for assisting Jews was death and the death of family members. The scale of the holocaust was very much down to Nazi policy.

Further, can we equate the nature of antisemitism in other countries to that which existed in Germany?

I disagree that the 'other perpetrators' are forgotten either in the academic literature, news, film and tv. And I further believe it is important to focus on these other perpetrators - but not to the extent that we begin to mischaracterise the German experience.

Re concentration camps. I agree with your characterisation. As I said, they must have had an idea of what went on in concentration camps for the reasons I gave above, but little could have prepared them for the actual horror to which Bergen Belsen or Dachau had descended to by 1945.


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The Holocaust could not have happened, at least not nearly on the scale that it did if those others had been more reluctant to co-operate in this


It could never have happened to the extent that it did without the all-too-willing "franchises" run by the Poles, the Lithuanians, and the Ukrainians.

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I think many people wanted to look the other way. Half part of my family was very Prussian and kind of conservative. My Granny (who is still alive) did not like the Nazis much (she was kicked out of their youth organization as young girl), but about the terrors she is saying something like, "It was war and we were preoccupied with our own sorrows". And that she was not political at the time. She said, though, that she witnessed one of the notorious "death marches" in 1945, after the concentration camps in Poland had to be closed down because of the Red Army's approach and the prisoners were driven westwards by their guards. She remembered how poor and hungry they looked and said that she passed some of them some food clandestinely.
I often do not know what to make of their position, but from the perspective, I totally believe that this family branch just does not wanted to know what happened - there were only 1 or 2 nazi party members, but the family had a tradition to work in state jobs or for the church.

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That's the impression that I get. Nazi society certainly did not encourage one to ask questions or think for oneself. Though I think what is often missing from the characterisation of Germans in this period is that they were racists living in a world where racism and prejudice were the norm, in contrast to today.

What tends to be emphasized today is the obedience, duty and lack of choice in a totalitarian system. What is played down is the level of hatred for other races and the central role that racism played in National Socialist ideology and to a broader extent German identity.

It's interesting to note that when the luftwaffe (who are generally regarded as 'gentlemenly' flyboys and the least Nazi) bombed Warsaw in 1939, the area that was heavily hit was the Jewish district. One can really only conclude that it was targeted by the pilots because Jewish people lived there.

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"In contrast to the German experience large numbers of Poles assisted Jews and were executed for helping Jews. "

Well I will not really speak ill of any possibly righteous people who hid jews or helped them otherwise. But In many of the survivor stories I've read, many from Poland as well it seemed to me that the only poles who hid jews were people whom jews afforded to pay or otherwise make ends meet for their help
So often it seemed not so much altruism as "risk may be worht the reward"-thinking. Sure this is probably not the whole truth.

"Further, can we equate the nature of antisemitism in other countries to that which existed in Germany? "

Well again the fact that if there were people among even the jewish community, in the east who thought that the nazi invasion might be an improvement. As I discussed and mentioned earlier especially in relating the tale of Foers grandmother seems to say that there were places there where jews and possibly other minorities had hellish times before the nazi invasion and speaks also volumes of antisemitism in Eastern Europe.
Also the frenchman of whom we discussed previously, regardless of how much he knew about the concentration camps, remember that he said that had learned already at school, or could be that it was around the time he went to school that jews raped women and cut off their breasts or something equally horrifying.
I would say that it speaks of there being at least areas in France as well (wouldn't wonder too much if elsewhere in Western Europe as well) where antisemitism was strong.

"The point is that the holocaust could not have happened without the Germans"

Of course it could've in any country where a dicktator could manage to get the reins of power and turn peoples feelings toward a common enemy.
True many people are not as brilliantly systematic with everything as Germans. So a less organized people might have had a bit more trouble doing all of that.
Still more civilian people died during Stalins terror than Hitlers and Russians where considerably less organized than Germans. If Stalin had gotten the idea first he coul've very easily purged the jews in Soviet Union. Hell he might've even afterwards done it if he had more time and strenght... or tried to. See in his final times Stalin actually became convinced that his final illness was because of a conspiracy by jewish doctors.
I don't recall if he ordered something to be done about it or if he died before it could be acted upon, but had he lived a while longer could be that life for jews in Soviet Union would've become really hard, at least for a while. Once Stalin got something like this into his head even Chuck Norris couldn't convince him otherwise.

Also people in power have always been rather good at dispersing others, even when they didn't mean to. When Spaniards and the portuguese invaded Americas I believe that within a decade or so the native population had died by the numbers that would make the Nazis blush by their own inferiority in such matters.
Granted they died mostly on unfamiliar diseases and unnecessarily hard treatment malnourishment and so and at no point had the invaders meant to cause a genocide, but the point remains I believe that since they managed to kill so many by accident, had they decided to commit a genocide they would've been able to do it rather quickly and that was before anything that could fire more than a single bullet at a time was invented.

I actually turn to your own words here which I thought rather nicely cahracterisized the world in which the National Socialist regime was born and in which it coul've happened anywhere if a charismatic leader managed to gather the reigns of power and point the people into one direction

"Though I think what is often missing from the characterisation of Germans in this period is that they were racists living in a world where racism and prejudice were the norm, in contrast to today. "




"One can really only conclude that it was targeted by the pilots because Jewish people lived there."

This is just a very minor point and I'm not gonna start an argument over this one as you might well be right, but the fault might not lie with Luftwaffe here(at least not the fault of a hate crime). They may have just observed a point they were ordered to bomb, without even knowing that it was the jewish district and they coul've been told by their commanders, or figured out themselves that "if they want us to bomb that place surely it has a strategic value. Maybe the polish army hides a secret HQ there or an ammo depot or something". As far as they knew. At least the men who flew the planes it could've had nothing to do with jews

Or it could've been that they just noted it as a bombing of Warsaw a military routine. Now we can always act horrified about bombing of civilian cities but every side of the war did that, so thats not something that Germans should be singled out with in anycase. It can be said that the Allied went much further than needed with it bombing cities in germany when it was very clear that Germany would lose and was pretty much defeated except some of the fanatical troops.
And it has been practiced ever since (and probably before that to some extent)
in every war fought after that.

When Americans invaded Iraq, in the 2000's, there was at one point in the news (at least of my country) where it was said that they had bombed heavily a place in Baghdad, I think, where there were childrens hospitals and schools. One of the more sarcastic news programs quipped that next week they hit their main target: "The homes for the elderly", but at no point did anyone seriously think that they had singled those places out because they contained children.

But again you could be right and it could even be that were both right. That the orders came from high up to bomb the jewish district simply because, but that the commanders of Luftwaffe were ordered to mask it as sotmehing strategic.
Though they sure may have said "yeah its a stratagem and as a bonus you get to bomb some jews while your at it"

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Again, that doesn't really evidence your argument that the Poles were worse or as bad as the Germans. Maybe all Polish helpers did it for purely selfish motives but they did it all the same and the punishment (well publicised and enacted) was death for them and their families). In contrast to the Germans.

If people thought that the Nazi invasion would be an improvement they were quickly disavowed of this notion. They should also have known better given what they should have known by that time about the Nazi regime.

Certainly, genocides can happen anywhere given the right conditions. But here we are talking about the historical holocaust of WW2 and the this could not have happened without the Germans. To continue your quotation from me - "What is played down is the level of hatred for other races and the central role that racism played in National Socialist ideology and to a broader extent German identity."

re the bombing of the Warsaw district. It was specifically ordered by the Luftwaffe and the Jewish population was specifically targeted as the enemy. Here, in the very first weeks of the war we can clearly see the racist antisemitic mindset of the Germans in action, and not the SS but the Luftwaffe.

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" In contrast to the Germans. " Now which does this refer to. That the Germans did not help, or that the punishment for getting caught was more lenient?
Because while the 553 Germans reported in the Righteous list is certainly less than the 6454 among the Poles (still more than the Austrians, just to correct your previous notion that the Austrian number is higher, they have 95) is certainly nothing. There is also a notion on the web page that for the lack of info and evidence not all germans who helped could be honored. Though I do imagine that also goes for every country.


"re the bombing of the Warsaw district."

Ok no more about that, though it did not come clear in your first post. So you can understand how such thoughts could surface

" But here we are talking about the historical holocaust of WW2 and the this could not have happened without the Germans. To continue your quotation from me - "What is played down is the level of hatred for other races and the central role that racism played in National Socialist ideology and to a broader extent German identity." "

Again yes it could have. At the very least in the countries where a strong paranoid dictator held the reigns of power. I.e Stalin, or Mao, during whose reign more civilian people died than Hitlers or Stalins (yeah though Mao probably wouldn't have targeted the jews. There were only six million of them in China around that time.). Eastern Europe and Russia did have more than a fair share of antisemitism in them, they did have pretty much the right conditions had a strong insane leader arisen. We can only speculate what could've happened if Stalin had lived longer after getting that paranoid delusion into his head. And had he gotten it before Nazi terror was widely known, or before the nazis ever even surfaced as a party there are very few things if any that could've stopped him.
Stalin held his position from 1922 till 52. That is a pretty long time to excercise a reign of terror to anyone he pleased. Even if his staff weren't nearly as effective as nazis. Still the total bodycount of his is higher than Hitlers.
Also you could argue that Stalins terror was in a sense more terrifying than Hitlers because in Hitlers purges there were an assembalnce of logic, sick and twisted as it was. Everyone he thought of being a mortal enemy of the reich. But the other population, as long as they did not resist had no trouble.
During Stalins reign no one was safe. Not even bothering to mention the usual enemies and suspects of the bolsheviks. Every other shadow spooked the Man of Steel as well and made him send some one to the camps or to the firing squad. "that one because he looked at me funny on the street" "that one because his neighbour said something negative about him" "that one, my most trusted advisor because he stroked his moustache funny while we were discussing strategy, he must be a traitor". And yet the NKVD carried out every such order as random as they were, and you really can't get more random than that, without hesitation. If he had also focused hsi paranoia against a certain group of people or ethnicity they would've been snatched and executed fairly quickly have no doubt of that.

Japanese too proved more then efficient regarding brutalities towards civilians
Though funnily enough never really took actions against jews or extracted them despite pressure from nazis. At one point when they were already losing they started deporting some jews to sort of Ghettos, though apparently while they were not ideal to live in they were still much better than the nazi counterparts

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The number of Austrian Righteous Amongst the Nations is proportionally higher than Germans - as indeed, the number of Austrian SS members is proportionally higher - exactly, as I said above.

Certainly, not all Germans who helped could be honoured because of lack of info or evidence. Considering that the Poles and Ukrainians etc were subject to Nazi genocide, millions of the civilian population killed and, for example, the city of Warsaw literally wiped off the face of the map, you can imagine that there are quite a few Polish and Ukrainians who are not honoured due to lack of surviving evidence. Unlike for example Holland, where the population was not subject to genocide.

We can speculate about Stalin and other issues etc - perhaps Stalin could have developed a virulent strain of racist belief. But we don't need to speculate about the holocaust because it happened. When you say above that the holocaust 'could not have happened' without local cooperation this statement does not agree with the actual evidence of what happened.

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I said at least on that scale, which still applies. If the conquered terrotories had all made a firm stand against it , it could not have happened outside Germany. Or at least Nazis would've had to put way more recources and people into it, which would've slowed their war effort down considerably which again means that less territory conquered from which to weed out the undesirables.
And since it went down among allies as well (my point on the Japanese being fairly easy going towards the jews and actually helping a significant amount of jews to migrate in the years 1938-41, and Mussolinis actions towards the jews from nazi pressure were lackluster at best), it sure could've happened in the occupied terrotories as well. nazis were in a hurry to subjugate Europe so if a firm stand was made, when faced with the option of slowing down or dealing with the "jew problem" later, I'm pretty convinced that they would've chiosen the latter. That of course does leave jews inside Germany proper

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what you said was

Again without even the nazi encouragement are not too distinct The Holocaust could not have happened, at least not nearly on the scale that it did if those others had been more reluctant to co-operate in this.


Firstly, the holocaust happened because of Nazi ideology and the actions of the regime - this is well documented. Without this it could not have happened. One cannot identify another nationality as being as bad as or worse than the Germans because no other nation had attitude or intent comparable to the Germans.

Certainly, the scale of the holocaust was greater because of the complicity of some of the people in the occupied nations. But the vast scale of the holocaust was due to German planning and German perpetrators were in the vast majority. From civilians denouncing or attacking their neighbours, ordinary soldiers perpetrating mass killings or SS camp guards. Again, if we are talking of scale other nations are incomparable.

If the conquered terrotories had all made a firm stand against it , it could not have happened outside Germany. Or at least Nazis would've had to put way more recources and people into it, which would've slowed their war effort down considerably which again means that less territory conquered from which to weed out the undesirables.
And since it went down among allies as well (my point on the Japanese being fairly easy going towards the jews and actually helping a significant amount of jews to migrate in the years 1938-41, and Mussolinis actions towards the jews from nazi pressure were lackluster at best), it sure could've happened in the occupied terrotories as well. nazis were in a hurry to subjugate Europe so if a firm stand was made, when faced with the option of slowing down or dealing with the "jew problem" later, I'm pretty convinced that they would've chiosen the latter. That of course does leave jews inside Germany proper


This is all incredibly naive.

Any member of the occupied territories who took a stand against the German occupiers was either killed or sent to a concentration camp. In the east of Europe, the Germans didn't even wait for the civilians to make a stand against occupation policies. In the first six months of the occupation of Poland 60,000 teachers, doctors and other professionals were shot purely because they posed a potential threat (Intelligenzaktion). And in the occupied USSR it was worse.

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Some fair ponts. I had forgotten their side of the elimination of the intellectuals. I'll consider that.
Anyway feels like we've been going in circles. For now let's agree to disagree and go on about aour ways. I'm sure we both have better things to do with our summer.

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Anti semetism WAS HUGE in Europe at that time...and is still big in Poland today. I only say Poland because I have heard it with my own ears. It's probably true of other countries also.....especially how Israel is demonized today.

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As indeed it was huge everywhere. I have also heard anti semitic comments with my own ears from Germans, British, Americans, Russians and French.

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Yeah, no doubt....u got a grat point there.....the idea that GERMANY was the biggest ant semetic country in Europe is balony.

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Try reading the Nuremberg Laws and consider that anti-Semitism was a central plank of the Nazi party platform - eg point 4 of the Nazi 25 point plan.

No matter how abhorrent other countries were before 1939 in their treatment of Jewish citizens, Nazi Germany stands out.

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I understand, but those laws were put in by , if not ONE individual, a small group of individuals.....antisemitism is in people's hearts.....just because it wasn't put down on paper and made into law, doesn't mean a country was any less antisemetic. I would bet that MANY ww2 European countries would have gone along.

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But the vast scale of the holocaust was due to German planning and German perpetrators were in the vast majority.

IBM was an indispensable help in the Holocaust. Don't ever forget IBM's considerable help in designing and operating a punch-card system which streamlined the German efficiency even more in their movement of and elimination of Jews.

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What I simply meant is that if there are still people in Poland who refer to (the very small) Jewish population there as the jewish problem, after all these years I would say that it does give creedence (sic) to that there was considerable amount of antisemitism in Poland before and after the war.


What an appalling thing to use as an argument. Of course there's a very small Jewish population in Poland because of the very fact that they were murdered at an alarming and criminal rate. Your point is lost if you use that as an example that there isn't as much anti-semitism in Poland now. Like the child who murders his parents then pleads before the judge for leniency because he's an orphan. Really, now.

This movie was a very impotent attempt to make a WWII movie/miniseries of some sort of romantic value towards the average German but instead still comes off as most Germans still do today: self-pity mixed with complete arrogance. No sale.

It's completely unrealistic, for instance, to imagine that no one in the entire army where the brothers served knew anything at all about what was happening to the Jews. Charlotte feels guilty for about 30 seconds over her betrayal of an educated Jewish doctor, the singer is self-absorbed to the point of narcissism and all that it shows is that she sleeps with a Nazi to help her friend to assuage her own guilt, temporarily, the two brothers provide no gravitas to their own inner feelings and merely react, so it was with great relief to fast forward to find out it was all over, pretty much, for all of them and their stupid lives.

It was a shame that the author or director or writer didn't provide a lot more insight into the insides of these people especially Jakob's family but focused instead on the every day petulance of the much more privileged Germans that they experience as they are slowly but assuredly beaten down, eventually, by a larger and much more determined enemy.

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You're simply not comfortable with the fact that all germans weren't cold hearted murders.........but it's a fact, regardless of what you think.......

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What an appalling thing to use as an argument. Of course there's a very small Jewish population in Poland because of the very fact that they were murdered at an alarming and criminal rate.

A great many of the Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust and eventually managed to return to Poland, were VERY quickly also convinced to emigrate because of their homes and possessions having been confiscated by Poles and by the renewed aggression that they still faced. Their war was not really over. It just took a new form.

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I've seen it spelled more commonly as "Hoess", even in German sources.

You're right, they are similar, and to those who don't speak German, they appear to be the same. But they are pronounced differently.



"The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen."

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Which was the nutty one that flew over here to Scotland to have tea and cake with Churchill?



Ya Kirk-loving Spocksucker!

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Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy. He wanted to meet the Duke of Hamilton, actually, whom he had met in the Thirties, and hoped that Hamilton would serve as an introduction to Churchill and the rest of the government.

"Hess" is pronounced differently from "Hoess", in German, at least. The usual way the pronunciation is described is to round your lips as if to say "o" but say a short "e", as in "bed" or "leg".



"The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen."

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LOL. Hoss was the commandant of Auschwitz. smh Here's yer sign.

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