American Holocaust

[RZM]

66. I just can't buy the 'it's economics' argument in the Nazi context

The truth is Hitler's goals, worldview, and opportunities all dovetailed in the East. Poland by itself wasn't even the main objective. The ultimate goal was the Soviet Union, specifically European Russia and Ukraine where the German Empire was to achieve its 'Lebensraum' (better translated as 'living space').

We do know what the Nazi plans were for the occupied Soviet Union. Had the Germans won the war there by the end of 1941, which is what Hitler expected and planned for, the first war winter called for the forcible starvation of roughly 30 million Soviet citizens. Then the subsequent ejection of some more and the retention of a small number to serve as slave labor in German 'pearls of settlement,' in Himmler's famous phrase.

Plans for Poland are less clear. Some authors, notably Jan Gross in his landmark 1979 book about German-occupied Poland, argue that the Germans would have carried out a holocaust-like genocide against gentile Poles had they won the war. We'll never know for sure. They had systematically murdered the Polish elite, but it's an open question what would have been done after.

But we know for absolute sure what Nazi plans for the Jews were. They were to kill every single Jew they could get their hands on. It's not for nothing that in some areas of the Baltic states, the Einsatzgruppen succeeded in killing every single Jewish person in certain areas, which the Nazis then trumpeted as being 'Judenfrei' (Jew-free). I have no doubt that had the Germans won the war in the East, they would not have kicked out or retained any Jews as slaves. They would have killed all of them. That's not the same for what they probably would have done to the Slavs, as barbaric as their conduct towards them was and would have been.

To me that points toward a racial argument. Specifically a racial hierarchy, where Jews occupied the absolute bottom rung. That's how Hitler always spoke of them and that's how he behaved towards them. It's taken many decades, but we're finally figuring out for good that Hitler really meant what he said. As bad as people always thought he was, in reality he was actually a bit worse.

BTW, if you're interested, I have book titles out the wazu on all of this stuff.