Hitler joins gun debate, but history is in dispute

[Paul E Ester]

When the president of Ohio's state school board posted her opposition to gun control, she used a powerful symbol to make her point: a picture of Adolf Hitler. When a well-known conservative commentator decried efforts to restrict guns, he argued that if only Jews in Poland had been better armed, many more would have survived the Holocaust.

In the months since the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, some gun rights supporters have repeatedly compared U.S. gun control efforts to Nazi restrictions on firearms, arguing that limiting weapons ownership could leave Americans defenseless against homegrown tyrants.

But some experts say that argument distorts a complex and contrary history. In reality, scholars say, Hitler loosened the tight gun laws that governed Germany after World War I, even as he barred Jews from owning weapons and moved to confiscate them.
Advocates who cite Hitler in the current U.S. debate overlook that Jews in 1930s Germany were a very small population, owned few guns before the Nazis took control, and lived under a dictatorship commanding overwhelming public support and military might, historians say. While it doesn't fit neatly into the modern-day gun debate, they say, the truth is that for all Hitler's unquestionably evil acts, his firearms laws likely made no difference in Jews' very tenuous odds of survival.

"Objectively, it might have made things worse" if the Jews who fought the Nazis in the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising in Poland had more and better guns, said historian Steve Paulsson, an expert on the period whose Jewish family survived the city's destruction.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/Hitler-joins-gun-debate-but-history-is-in-dispute-4378784.php

[gejohnston]

1. I don't think either side is correct

because of the many variables. I have a question, for Mr. Paulsson,

"Objectively, it might have made things worse" if the Jews who fought the Nazis in the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising in Poland had more and better guns, said historian Steve Paulsson, an expert on the period whose Jewish family survived the city's destruction.

How could it have been worse if the Jews had more and better weapons?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto#Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising_and_destruction_of_the_Ghetto

[Paul E Ester]

2. Jewish Military Union

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Military_Union

Initially consisting of only 39 men, each armed with a Vis pistol, with time it had grown to become one of the most numerous and most notable Jewish resistance organizations in Poland. Between 1940 and 1942 additional cells were formed in most major towns of Poland, including the most notable groups in Lublin, Lwów and Stanisławów. Although initially formed entirely by professional soldiers, with time it also included members of pre-war right wing Jewish-Polish parties such as Betar (among them Perec Laskier, Lowa Swerin, Paweł Frenkel, Merediks, Langleben and Rosenfeld), Hatzohar (Joel Białobrow, Dawid Wdowiński) (Political Chair), and the revisionist faction of the Polish Zionist Party (Leib "Leon" Rodal and Meir Klingbeil).[2]

The ŻZW was formed in close ties with Iwański's organization and initially focused primarily on acquisition of arms and preparation of a large-scale operation in which all of its members could escape to Hungary, from where they wanted to flee to join the Polish Armed Forces in the West. With time however it was decided that the members stay in occupied Poland to help organize the struggle against the occupiers. In the later period the ŻZW focused on acquisition of arms for the future struggle as well as on helping the Jews to escape the ghettos, created in almost every town in German-held Poland. Thanks to the close ties with the Związek Walki Zbrojnej and then the AK (mainly through Iwański's Security Corps, the Polish underground police force), the ŻZW received a large number of guns and armaments, as well as training of their members by professional officers. Those resistance organizations also provided help with weapons and ammunition acquisition, as well as with organizing the escapes.[4]

Although the ŻZW was active in a number of towns in Poland, its major headquarters remained in Warsaw. When most of the Jewish inhabitants were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, the ŻZW remained in contact with the outside world through Iwański and a number of other officers on the Aryan side. By the summer of 1942, the League had 320 well-armed[5] members in Warsaw alone.[6] During the first large deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto, the ŻZW received the news of the German plans and managed to hide most of its members in bunkers, which resulted in less than 20 of them being arrested by the Germans[citation needed]. Although Dawid Mordechaj Apfelbaum could not convince Adam Czerniaków to start an armed uprising against the Germans during the deportation, the organization managed to preserve most of its members - and assets. It also started to train more members and by January 1943 it already had roughly 500 men at arms in Warsaw alone. In addition, the technological department of the ŻZW, together with Capt. Cezary Ketling's group of the PLAN resistance organization managed to dig two secret tunnels under the walls of the ghetto, providing contact with the outside and allowing smuggling of arms into the ghetto.[4]

peace

[holdencaufield]

3. "Objectively, it might have made things worse"

The Nazis might have got angry with them? The Jews would have been slaughtered twice? I'm unclear on what is worse than dead?


That's not meant for you -- but for that asinine quote in the OP

[SunSeeker]

5. I guess the thinking is that if there was an armed insurrection, Hitler would have just bombed them.

At least with the rounding up there was time for some to escape or hide. And as for those who didn't escape the roundup, many did survive the camps. If the jews in the ghettos had taken up arms and engaged the German army, they all would have been immediately obliterated. At least that is how I understand this argument...

[holdencaufield]

6. While I won't get into which makes you more dead ...

Last edited Sun Mar 24, 2013, 06:18 AM - Edit history (1)

... bombs or gas ... I will say that part of the reason Hitler killed six million Jews versus ten million Jews was simple logistics. The Holocaust as a large-scale project began in early '43 (after the Wansee Conference) at which time, America was in the war. Nazi Germany had finite amounts of resources and manpower to put into the extermination of Jews. Anything that would have made that effort more difficult for the Nazis would have saved lives either by allowing Jews to escape or diverting resources away from their war effort.

There is nothing to you can say that would convince anyone that submissively lining up to get on box cars without a fight saved any Jewish lives.

[Straw Man]

7. Yes, that's what the thinking is.

The thinking is wrong.

At least with the rounding up there was time for some to escape or hide. And as for those who didn't escape the roundup, many did survive the camps. If the jews in the ghettos had taken up arms and engaged the German army, they all would have been immediately obliterated. At least that is how I understand this argument...

There was no chance of escape from the Warsaw ghetto. It was walled in and surrounded by German troops. There was no chance of hiding in the Warsaw ghetto. The Germans had embarked on its liquidation, which meant going house-to-house to find whatever Jews were left and take them off to the camps.

The only choice in the Warsaw ghetto was to go meekly to the slaughter or to die fighting. I don't blame those who did the former; I pity them. I certainly don't blame those who did the latter; I admire them.

[Straw Man]

4. The Bielski Partisans

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/28/bielski_brothers.asp

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007563

It's really hard to argue that armed resistance in the Holocaust "might have made things worse." Hitler's aim was total destruction of the Jewish population of Europe and ultimately the world. I don't think anyone believes that armed German Jews could have defeated Hitler, but some small groups may have survived, like the Bielskis, or at worst lived their last days with some measure of dignity. The Bielskis saved 1200 people who otherwise would have perished in the camps. It's not a large number given the scope of the overall tragedy, but, as I so often hear here in these forums, "If it saves one life ..."

Paulsson said it is possible that if Polish Jews had limited their resistance, Nazi troops might not have destroyed the ghetto, allowing more to survive in hiding or escape. When armed Jews shot at mobs or troops at other times in 1930s and 1940s Poland, it incited more vicious counter-attacks, he said.

Is he really trying to claim that the Jews could have survived by cooperating with the Nazis? The Warsaw ghetto uprising was sparked by the launch of the final liquidation campaign by the Nazis. The inhabitants of the ghetto were doomed and they knew it.

I think the parallels between Nazi gun control and contemporary gun control are too simplistic to be of much value, but denial like Paulsson's is absurd.