This is all said long before Hitler was even a lunatic fringe candidate, though I repeat myself.
Hitler said a lot of things long before he became a candidate. He loved to talk.
Was Hitler always obsessed with race and Jew-hatred? Yep. Did his actions seem in accord with this? Amazingly so.
Not amazingly so. The Jewish problem was a back-burner issue which was pursued with minor energy and in a variety of ways like allowing emigration and planning expulsion to Madagascar compared to much bigger issues like re-arming Germany, reducing unemployment, preparing for war with America & USSR, etc. Read through something like Wage of Destruction or Savage Continent, and one does not get the impression at all that killing Jews was Hitler’s top priority, or even fifth top priority. You keep stating this and I’m not seeing it. There’s only a straight line from parts of Mein Kampf to Dachau when you ignore everything else.
On the other hand, you get exactly that impression by reading… what the actual Nazis said, all the way to the top, and the experiences of people living through that period. During the height of the second world war, they insisted on using scarce resources like trains and troops to keep up the Jew killing—they were willing to risk their own war aims to complete this task.
You keep citing these books but you don’t give any evidence from them.
The entire program was to saturate society with racial hatred and frenzy. Children in school were terrified by long harangues about racial purity and so on.
There seems to be nothing that I can say that will convince you, no piece of evidence from the entire action and behavior of the Third Reich that could possibly indicate to you that they meant what they said. The very idea of a Nazi empire was to establish lebensraum for “pure” Aryans to repopulate. Racial ideology wasn’t window dressing in that empire, it was the very cause and basis of that empire.
On the other hand, you get exactly that impression by reading… what the actual Nazis said, all the way to the top, and the experiences of people living through that period.
They also talked a great deal about the threat from Great Britain, France, the USA, and the USSR. You’re completely ignoring this. If a word count were done, which would be bigger? I know what I expect. You’re arguing that Hitler talked about the Jews a lot, which is totally uncontroversial, but does not prove your point: that he talked about Jews the most of all topics that concerned him.
During the height of the second world war, they insisted on using scarce resources like trains and troops to keep up the Jew killing—they were willing to risk their own war aims to complete this task.
You know what would be even more effective for pursuing an overriding terminal goal of killing Jews and nothing else? Not starting that war in the first place.
That’s the problem: all the effort and resources thrown into the concentration camps late in the game absolutely pale in comparison to the efforts put into the war and rearmament—they wrecked the German economy just preparing for WWII, never mind actually running it.
You keep citing these books but you don’t give any evidence from them.
The entire mass of Wages of Destruction, to focus on one, is devoted to marshaling the evidence and details about the reorganization of the German economy and Hitler’s grand strategic plan (as mentioned in his Mein Kampf sequel, which I note you’re not mentioning despite your interest in ‘what the actual Nazis said’) to fight the USA, in which the slave labor camps of millions of people (only some of which were Jews) were a late solution for acute labor shortages and the killings purely tangential. What am I going to do, paste the whole book inline? There’s not any one detail that’s decisive, it’s the whole thrust of the reorganization of German society from the tiny inefficient farmer up to the industrial giants and his activities during the war which combine to show that Jews were a matter more of rhetoric than the overriding terminal end goal to which all of all Hitler’s plans were subordinate, as you claim.
The very idea of a Nazi empire was to establish lebensraum for “pure” Aryans to repopulate.
Which is different from a terminal end-all-be-all goal of ‘killing Jews’.
I think you’re engaged in just motte-and-bailey tactics here: you make the claim Hitler’s sole motivation was killing Jews, and when you get any pushback, you retreat to some well-established fact like ‘a lot of Jews died’ or ‘there was a lot of anti-semitic education’ or ‘Hitler talked about the Jews a lot’, which do not show your main claim.
Just to take your last point, my response is that this is both a strawman and an argument from intimidation. Take this:
“you make the claim Hitler’s sole motivation was killing Jews”
Did I? Where? I said that Hitler’s motivation was his fanatical racism and that the desire to murder the Jews was a large part of that—was, in fact, an inextricable part of that. His racism wasn’t the result of the war, it was the cause of the war. As you admit towards the end.
“You know what would be even more effective for pursuing an overriding terminal goal of killing Jews and nothing else? Not starting that war in the first place.”
Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary “The Führer recognizes the enormous opportunity that the war provides”. Hitler needed the night and fog of war, not to mention the hysteria that war brings, to carry out his plans.
“What am I going to do, paste the whole book inline? ”
Well, quote something from the book rather than just drop its title.
“he slave labor camps of millions of people (only some of which were Jews) were a late solution for acute labor shortages and the killings purely tangential. ”
The mass murder of those considered racially inferior was purely tangential? Well, if that’s the way you think, then that’s the way you think. There is a simple answer to this: the Wahnsee decision was to exterminate the Jewish people, and then the Slavs (there is some evidence that Hitler wanted to depopulate Africa after Europe was conquered), and there were camps that were purely devoted to the business of mass murder, no slave labour involved—Sobibor, Chelmno, Treblinka. The Nazi camps were not like the labour camps of the Soviet Union, they were murder facilities. To argue that the mass murder in the east is tangential is completely ahistoric.
Since the civilized tone of debate has become strained here, I think I will leave it there.
Hitler said a lot of things long before he became a candidate. He loved to talk.
Not amazingly so. The Jewish problem was a back-burner issue which was pursued with minor energy and in a variety of ways like allowing emigration and planning expulsion to Madagascar compared to much bigger issues like re-arming Germany, reducing unemployment, preparing for war with America & USSR, etc. Read through something like Wage of Destruction or Savage Continent, and one does not get the impression at all that killing Jews was Hitler’s top priority, or even fifth top priority. You keep stating this and I’m not seeing it. There’s only a straight line from parts of Mein Kampf to Dachau when you ignore everything else.
On the other hand, you get exactly that impression by reading… what the actual Nazis said, all the way to the top, and the experiences of people living through that period. During the height of the second world war, they insisted on using scarce resources like trains and troops to keep up the Jew killing—they were willing to risk their own war aims to complete this task.
You keep citing these books but you don’t give any evidence from them.
The entire program was to saturate society with racial hatred and frenzy. Children in school were terrified by long harangues about racial purity and so on.
There seems to be nothing that I can say that will convince you, no piece of evidence from the entire action and behavior of the Third Reich that could possibly indicate to you that they meant what they said. The very idea of a Nazi empire was to establish lebensraum for “pure” Aryans to repopulate. Racial ideology wasn’t window dressing in that empire, it was the very cause and basis of that empire.
They also talked a great deal about the threat from Great Britain, France, the USA, and the USSR. You’re completely ignoring this. If a word count were done, which would be bigger? I know what I expect. You’re arguing that Hitler talked about the Jews a lot, which is totally uncontroversial, but does not prove your point: that he talked about Jews the most of all topics that concerned him.
You know what would be even more effective for pursuing an overriding terminal goal of killing Jews and nothing else? Not starting that war in the first place.
That’s the problem: all the effort and resources thrown into the concentration camps late in the game absolutely pale in comparison to the efforts put into the war and rearmament—they wrecked the German economy just preparing for WWII, never mind actually running it.
The entire mass of Wages of Destruction, to focus on one, is devoted to marshaling the evidence and details about the reorganization of the German economy and Hitler’s grand strategic plan (as mentioned in his Mein Kampf sequel, which I note you’re not mentioning despite your interest in ‘what the actual Nazis said’) to fight the USA, in which the slave labor camps of millions of people (only some of which were Jews) were a late solution for acute labor shortages and the killings purely tangential. What am I going to do, paste the whole book inline? There’s not any one detail that’s decisive, it’s the whole thrust of the reorganization of German society from the tiny inefficient farmer up to the industrial giants and his activities during the war which combine to show that Jews were a matter more of rhetoric than the overriding terminal end goal to which all of all Hitler’s plans were subordinate, as you claim.
Which is different from a terminal end-all-be-all goal of ‘killing Jews’.
I think you’re engaged in just motte-and-bailey tactics here: you make the claim Hitler’s sole motivation was killing Jews, and when you get any pushback, you retreat to some well-established fact like ‘a lot of Jews died’ or ‘there was a lot of anti-semitic education’ or ‘Hitler talked about the Jews a lot’, which do not show your main claim.
Just to take your last point, my response is that this is both a strawman and an argument from intimidation. Take this:
“you make the claim Hitler’s sole motivation was killing Jews”
Did I? Where? I said that Hitler’s motivation was his fanatical racism and that the desire to murder the Jews was a large part of that—was, in fact, an inextricable part of that. His racism wasn’t the result of the war, it was the cause of the war. As you admit towards the end.
“You know what would be even more effective for pursuing an overriding terminal goal of killing Jews and nothing else? Not starting that war in the first place.”
Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary “The Führer recognizes the enormous opportunity that the war provides”. Hitler needed the night and fog of war, not to mention the hysteria that war brings, to carry out his plans.
“What am I going to do, paste the whole book inline? ”
Well, quote something from the book rather than just drop its title.
“he slave labor camps of millions of people (only some of which were Jews) were a late solution for acute labor shortages and the killings purely tangential. ”
The mass murder of those considered racially inferior was purely tangential? Well, if that’s the way you think, then that’s the way you think. There is a simple answer to this: the Wahnsee decision was to exterminate the Jewish people, and then the Slavs (there is some evidence that Hitler wanted to depopulate Africa after Europe was conquered), and there were camps that were purely devoted to the business of mass murder, no slave labour involved—Sobibor, Chelmno, Treblinka. The Nazi camps were not like the labour camps of the Soviet Union, they were murder facilities. To argue that the mass murder in the east is tangential is completely ahistoric.
Since the civilized tone of debate has become strained here, I think I will leave it there.