RUSSIANS SPLIT ENEMY IN POLAND; SAY NAZIS LOST 539,890 IN MONTH (7/25/44)

Marks’s successor, von Choltitz, will watch his defenses crumble and his Corps destroyed. His reward? Commandant of Paris, for which he will be forever remembered as the fat German guy played by Gert Frobe in “Is Paris Burning?”

Maybe Marcks had a better fate....

The Soviet Union was supposedly an ally but they were rounding up and killing a lot of people, accusing some of being agents of the British! Their supposed ally. Like Manachim Begin.... "As a prominent pre-war Zionist and reserve status officer-cadet, on 20 September 1940, Begin was arrested by the NKVD and detained in the Lukiškės Prison. He wrote about his experience of being tortured in later years. He was accused of being an "agent of British imperialism" and sentenced to eight years in the Soviet gulag camps. On 1 June 1941 he was sent to the Pechora labor camps in the northern part of European Russia, where he stayed until May 1942. Much later in life, Begin would record and reflect upon his experiences in the interrogations and life in the camp in his memoir White Nights." "In July 1941, just after Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and following his release under the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, Begin joined the Polish Anders' Army as a corporal officer cadet. He was later sent with the army to Palestine via the Persian Corridor, where he arrived in May 1942.[12] Upon arriving in Palestine, Begin, like many other Polish Jewish soldiers of the Anders' Army, faced a choice between remaining with the Anders' Army to fight Nazi Germany in Europe, or staying in Palestine to fight for establishment of a Jewish state. While he initially wished to remain with the Polish army, he was eventually persuaded to change his mind by his contacts in the Irgun, as well as Polish officers sympathetic to the Zionist cause. Consequently, General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, the second in command of the Army issued Begin with a "leave of absence without an expiration" which gave Begin official permission to stay in Palestine. In December 1942 he left Ander's Army and joined the Irgun.[13]" he hated the British....

I still firmly believe that the German people knew what was happening in the camps.

I believe there is abundant evidence that ordinary Germans knew something terrible was happening but probably in a similar sense to what ordinary Russians knew about what was going on with the red terror and gulags.

The Holocaust was murder on an industrial scale, and there were so many support industries. Most notable was the railways that shipped everything, and everyone, to the camps. I’m sure the Reichsbahn workers all knew what the Auschwitz run was all about.

I'm not so certain about that for a number of reasons. One reason is that depending on the length of the run, a rail crew might be switched out several times. To maintain cover, the Nazis in many western areas loaded Jews aboard 3rd class passenger cars for "resettlement in the east".

The crew of such train loaded in Antwerp might travel as far as the German border before switching with a westbound train back to Antwerp. In the meantime, the passenger cars may have been uncoupled at a siding where the passengers were then herded into boxcars. I also believe passenger cars delivered Jews all the way into the camps.

In any event, the new crew might go as far as Dresden, or the German-Polish border before switching to a westbound train. Meanwhile, I seem to recall Volksdeutsch were used quite a bit in Poland to operate the railroads.

I'm only speculating now but I wouldn't be surprised given the secrecy if once a train arrived at Auschwitz, that delivering crew would board another train and go back to where they came from while a "special crew" took the Holocaust train inside the camp.

Another reason is that railcrews also transported a lot of foreign workers and POWs into the camps. So, a few carloads of Jews wouldn't necessarily attract a lot of notice.

As for why the Germans did nothing about it, read “Biedermann und die Branstifter” by Max Frisch. That and “Besuch der Alte Dame” were the best pieces of German literature I read while in college. Very chilling insight into mass psychology. And yes, I believe that “we were just following orders” is either a defense, or you have to execute an entire population as being culpable. And that in itself is also genocide under the rationalization of “they did it too.”

The time for the German people to do something about the Nazis was in 1932. Most people do not grasp the powerlessness individuals possess in a totalitarian state such as Nazi Germany when you are never more than an odd look from being reported by a neighbor.

The most difficult thing for most Americans to accept is that it CAN happen here. In 1928 the average German would have scoffed at the notion of the Holocaust. Because we’re pre-programmed to follow the herd and “just follow orders” it can happen anywhere. Just look at how the left jumps on anyone who poses a religious or philosophical opposition to the cult of sodomy worship. And how quickly they get anyone who speaks out to publicly cave. Not only can it happen here, it already is.

You've got that right.

So, which side of the debate are you on? Was von Cholnitz the hero who defied Hitler and saved Paris? Or was he a Nazi toady who didn’t have the resources to carry out the order after the Resistance uprising and French 2nd Armored entered the City?

I hate to say this, but believe it to be true: Americans are at least as aware of the holocaust being committed TODAY against millions of innocents in the abortuaries as the German people were aware of the atrocities being committed against Jews and others in the extermination camps during the nineteen forties.

If a person is dissatisfied with life, there are several possible explanations. One is that he’s done something wrong or unproductive, and therefore is unsuccessful through his own fault. Another is that there’s a lot of entropy in the universe, and sometimes you can do all the smart things and still end up with disaster. Neither of these explanations is very comforting to many people.

Another possibility is that it’s Somebody Else’s Fault. The stab in the back, the conspiracy, the Jews, the Tutsis, the bourgeoisie ...it’s their fault! As soon as an object of hatred is fixed, many people will revel in their downfall, and want it to be as painful and degrading as possible.

As Eternal Vigilance observes, babies are such an object in our present society. What a good life we could have, if we just don’t have children. What a good life we could have, if other people didn’t have children. What a good life we could have, if it wasn’t for “overpopulation.”

I’ve often observed that you can tell bad people by their anti-Semitism, but you can also tell them by their embrace of “overpopulation” ideology.

(My apologies, Homer, if this is too far off topic. If you’d prefer, I will in future refrain from excesses of philosophy!)

One of the purposes of reading history is to learn from others’ mistakes, right?

After all, those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I’ve just started a book by Chaim Potok, “Old Men at Midnight.” One of the first characters introduced is a teenaged boy who is the sole survivor of the Jewish community of over 4,000 people, from a village near Crakow.

In 1991 I traveled to Oświęcim, Poland, or as it was known in German, Auschwitz. I was traveling through Europe and on the way there had hooked up with a very generous Jewish couple from Florida, and benefited from their hired translator. There I met the town's only remaining Jew, a man who lived in what used to be the synagogue and remembered the war, but was crazy at that point. It was a haunting experience I will never forget.

My apologies, Homer, if this is too far off topic. If you’d prefer, I will in future refrain from excesses of philosophy!

You may wax as philosophical as an idea takes you. We are here to learn and we don't need set limits.

After all, those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Yes, that point haunts me. As henkster's earlier post pointed out, there's a growing impression that we're doomed to repeat it anyway.

So, which side of the debate are you on? Was von Cholnitz the hero who defied Hitler and saved Paris? Or was he a Nazi toady who didn’t have the resources to carry out the order after the Resistance uprising and French 2nd Armored entered the City?

Both. Or neither.

I think von Choltitz was burned out by the battles in Normandy by the time he was named Commandant in Paris. He clearly saw the writing on the wall. As I've said, the German generals at this point are looking over their shoulders at the verdict of history. Choltitz knows he's going into captivity upon the imminent fall of Paris.

Given the resources and energy, I think Choltitz would have done damage to the infrastructure of Paris that would serve a military/logistical purpose, such as the Seine bridges and the rail yards. It's the same thing the Germans did to the port facilities at Cherbourg. He would have seen no military purpose in the indiscriminate destruction of residential and cultural assets, and I think he would have refrained from doing so.

In the end, the lack of time, lack of resources and a lack of will kept him from doing anything.

I'm on vacation, so a little slow. This is an Ernie Pyle column from 7/25/1944.

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Ernie Pyle » Wartime Columns » In Praise of Ordnance »

From time to time Pyle turned his attention from the infantry to the units that helped supply or support the infantry.

In Praise of Ordnance

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Pyle and Marine PFC Urban Vachon

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Listen to this column read by School of Journalism Professor Owen V. Johnson (5.43MB)

IN NORMANDY, July 25, 1944 – One of the things the layman doesn’t hear much about is the Ordnance Department. In fact it is one of the branches that even the average soldier is little aware of except in a vague way.

And yet the war couldn’t keep going without it. For ordnance repairs all the vehicles of an army and furnishes all the ammunition for its guns.

Today there are more vehicles in the American sector of our beachhead than in the average-sized American city. And our big guns on an average heavy day are shooting up more than ten million dollars worth of ammunition. So you see ordnance has a man-sized job.

Ordnance personnel is usually about six or seven percent of the total men of an army. That means we have many thousands of ordnancemen in Normandy. Their insignia is a flame coming out of a retort – nicknamed in the Army "the flaming onion."

Ordnance operates the ammunition dumps we have scattered about the beachhead. But much bigger than its ammunition mission is ordnance’s job of repair. Ordnance has two hundred seventy-five thousand items in its catalog of parts, and the mere catalog itself covers a twenty-foot shelf.

In a central headquarters here on the beachhead a modern filing system housed in big tents keeps records on the number and condition of five hundred major items in actual use on the beachhead, from tanks to pistols.

We have scores and scores of separate ordnance companies at work on the beachhead – each of them a complete firm within itself, able to repair anything the Army uses.

Ordnance can lift a thirty-ton tank as easily as it can a bicycle. It can repair a blown-up jeep or the intricate breech of a mammoth gun.

*

Some of its highly specialized repair companies are made up largely of men who were craftsmen in the same line in civil life. In these companies you will find the average age is much above the army average. You will find craftsmen in their late forties, you’ll find men with their own established businesses who were making thirty to forty thousand dollars a year back home and who are now wearing sergeant’s stripes. You’ll find great soberness and sincerity, plus the normal satisfaction that comes from making things whole again instead of destroying them.

You will find an IQ far above the average for the Army. It has to be that way or the work would not get done.

You’ll find mechanical work being done under a tree that would be housed in a fifty-thousand-dollar shop back in America. You’ll find men working sixteen hours a day, then sleeping on the ground, who because of their age don’t even have to be here at all.

Ordnance is one of the undramatic branches of the Army. They are the mechanics and the craftsmen, the fixers and the suppliers. But their job is vital. Ordinarily they are not in a great deal of danger. There are times on newly won and congested beachheads when their casualty rate is high, but once the war settles down and there is room for movement and dispersal it is not necessary or desirable for them to do their basic work within gun range.

Our ordnance branch in Normandy has had casualties. It has two small branches which will continue to have casualties – its bomb-disposal squads and its retriever companies that go up to pull out crippled tanks under fire.

But outside of those two sections, if your son or husband is in ordnance in France you can feel fairly easy about his returning to you. I don’t say that to belittle ordnance in any way, but to ease your worries if you have someone in this branch of the service overseas.

*

Ordnance is set up in a vast structure of organization the same as any other Army command. The farther back you go the bigger become the outfits and the more elaborately equipped and more capable of doing heavy, long-term work.

Every infantry or armored division has an ordnance company with it all the time. This company does quick repair jobs. What it hasn’t time or facilities for doing it hands on back to the next echelon in the rear.

The division ordnance companies hit the beach on D-day. The next echelon back began coming on D-day plus four. The great heavy outfits arrived somewhat later.

Today the wreckage of seven weeks of war is all in hand, and in one great depot after another it is being worked on – repaired or rebuilt or sent back for salvage until everything possible is made available again to our men who do the fighting. In later columns I’ll take you along to some of these repair companies that do the vital work.

Source: Ernie's War: The Best of Ernie Pyle's World War II Dispatches, edited by David Nichols, pp. 314-16. Pictures courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

You make some very good points. But I still don’t see how the Nazis could pull off something as massive as the Holocaust in total secrecy. It’s not that everyone knew everything. Most people knew enough.

Similarly in the West during the cold war the joke about Eastern Bloc athletes was that failure meant a future in the salt mines.

More recently, we joke about the price of failure in China being one's kidneys.

There is an awareness that terrible things happen in these nations but the level of awareness is not sufficient to trigger moral outrage.

Similarly in Nazi Germany, I believe there was an awareness of what was happening. I recall reading years ago that a murmur arose among certain segments of the German population that the bombing of their cities was retribution for what they did to the Jews. However, these same people murmuring about what was done to the Jews would have also heard whispers by servicemen and families of men returning from the East and Greece about what was being done to both Jews and Gentiles in those areas. Remember, in Poland as many Gentiles were killed by the Nazis as were Jews. In Greece, the Nazis starved the population in a manner similar to that done by Stalin in the Ukraine. In Russia, one didn't want to know what civilians in Nazi occupied areas had to do to survive.

So, while there was an awareness among German civilians that something terrible was happening to the Jews that were sent east, the backdrop was one of terrible things happening in the east period.

Another thing most people don't know is that common German criminals would also be thrown into the concentration camps. Petty crooks could be sent to Dachau. If they survived their sentence, they would be instructed that if they told anyone about what happened inside, they would be sent back... permanently. Naturally, some upon release would tell.

Going back to the subject of the German railroad workers, Auschwitz was a huge sprawling county sized complex of some 50 named camps, only one, Auschwitz-Birkenau was an extermination camp. Trains would have been coming to the camp loaded with raw materials, foreign laborers, POWs, and Jews. Jews would not have been the only human cargo in wretched condition transported by the Reichsbahn.

There is an awareness that terrible things happen in these nations but the level of awareness is not sufficient to trigger moral outrage.

Where is the moral outrage in the United States of the gay mafia silencing its critics? I'm believe that the notion of "it can't happen here" is a form of mass denial, a disconnect from the reality that people know exists. I think the Germans were shielding themselves with that form of denial, so they would not have to confront the moral implications. But once that shield goes up, there are no longer any moral constraints on a totalitarian regime. Its people can be led down the path of ever increasing barbarity, and they will turn a blind eye to each new atrocity. For the Germans, it was after the war that the psychological facade was dropped, and they had to confront it. In reading German literature, it took them about ten years to get to the point where they could address it in the works I cited earlier. And even then, the issue was addressed allegorically.

However, these same people murmuring about what was done to the Jews would have also heard whispers by servicemen and families of men returning from the East and Greece about what was being done to both Jews and Gentiles in those areas.

And that did happen. The neighbor of a good friend is a now-elderly lady who came to the United States from Germany. She had an older brother who fought in the east. She said he was home on leave once and said: "We can't lose this war. If they find out what we have done, they will kill all of us." I think it goes a long way toward explaining why the German soldier continued to fight so hard even though they knew the war was lost. Was it specific to the Holocaust? Probably not, as you say.

To me, the Holocaust is a subset of the atrocities of the Nazi regime. The Germans, collectively, knew of them. Finally, if the New York Times is printing stories about the murder of millions of Jews, as they did a few weeks ago, it's obviously known. And the sources of that information came from inside occupied Europe. If that word is getting out to the west, it's not a secret. People know, even if they don't want to admit it.

Some of its highly specialized repair companies are made up largely of men who were craftsmen in the same line in civil life. In these companies you will find the average age is much above the army average. You will find craftsmen in their late forties, you’ll find men with their own established businesses who were making thirty to forty thousand dollars a year back home and who are now wearing sergeant’s stripes. You’ll find great soberness and sincerity, plus the normal satisfaction that comes from making things whole again instead of destroying them.

Of all the advantages the United States had over it's foes in World War 2, this one is not given that much credit. We had more men with specialized technical knowledge as mechanics than any other country. Parshall and Tully make this point in their book "Shattered Sword, The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway." They argue that the biggest personnel loss for the Japanese was not the pilots (they really didn't lose that many at Midway) it was the hangar crews, cut down by their own bombs exploding in chain reaction. Those men had the technical knowledge to keep airplanes flying. They were scarce in Japan, and the Japanese Navy invested years in training those men. They never really replaced them after Midway.

While we never had that many technical men lost, as Pyle writes, we had a supply of them that no other country could match.

Ordnance has two hundred seventy-five thousand items in its catalog of parts, and the mere catalog itself covers a twenty-foot shelf.

In a central headquarters here on the beachhead a modern filing system housed in big tents keeps records on the number and condition of five hundred major items in actual use on the beachhead, from tanks to pistols.

What those guys would give for my Dell laptop and bar code reader...

Thanks as always for the Ernie Pyle posts.

Where is the moral outrage in the United States of the gay mafia silencing its critics? I'm believe that the notion of "it can't happen here" is a form of mass denial, a disconnect from the reality that people know exists.

That and a lack of understanding of history. How many churchgoers today know about Bismarck, the Kulturkampf and the secularization of Germany? How many know that Nazism was a neopagan political religion? You ask about gay mafia but mention gay with Nazis and only a short countdown is needed before someone here on FR will emphatically tell you that some of the SA leadership may have been gay but the Nazi party eliminated from its ranks the SA and therefore all gays in 1934.

I think the Germans were shielding themselves with that form of denial, so they would not have to confront the moral implications. But once that shield goes up, there are no longer any moral constraints on a totalitarian regime. Its people can be led down the path of ever increasing barbarity, and they will turn a blind eye to each new atrocity.

Yes but for good reason. In 1932, they could have stopped it with a stroke of the pen at the ballot box. After 1932, it would require their lives.

I can't remember if it was one of Homer's threads, or elsewhere but I remember a cleric, I believe he was American, or British in the 1930s saying very eloquently that the German church/people was/were about to undergo a winnowing process... a trial by fire.

For the Germans, it was after the war that the psychological facade was dropped, and they had to confront it. In reading German literature, it took them about ten years to get to the point where they could address it in the works I cited earlier. And even then, the issue was addressed allegorically.

Some were probably more aware than others. Collectively, perhaps a decade may have been required. I can't say. I don't recognize the titles you mention but I'll certainly add them to my reading list.

However, these same people murmuring about what was done to the Jews would have also heard whispers by servicemen and families of men returning from the East and Greece about what was being done to both Jews and Gentiles in those areas.

To me, the Holocaust is a subset of the atrocities of the Nazi regime. The Germans, collectively, knew of them.

Some knew while others didn't want to know. Not too different from what was happening in the 1970s following the U.S. withdrawal from SE Asia. Some knew of the terror that was taking place in South Vietnam and Cambodia while others simply refused to know.

Last Christmas at my parents house I watched the classic WWII documentary The World at War. In one of the final episodes a lady being interviewed told of the Red Army being near Berlin and Goebbels coming on the radio and saying miracle weapons being delivered to the army were about to decisively turn the tide of battle. She said her mother rejoiced. When she told her mother that it was all lies, her mother admonished her by saying something to the effect of "In this time of national peril our leaders would not lie to us".

Finally, if the New York Times is printing stories about the murder of millions of Jews, as they did a few weeks ago, it's obviously known. And the sources of that information came from inside occupied Europe. If that word is getting out to the west, it's not a secret. People know, even if they don't want to admit it.

We can go back 3-4 years to publication of The Black Book of Poland and its documentation of wholesale slaughter of Jews and Gentiles in Poland. Word has steadily been getting out.

This has been a lively discussion. I think we probably agree on a lot more than we disagree, but are looking at the issue from different perspectives. I’ve enjoyed reading your viewpoints; you have excellent insight and I am giving what you have posted serious consideration as I continuously re-evaluate my opinions about World War 2, and the human condition in general.

Thank you.

I agree, I think a lot of German officers are seeing the writing on the wall at this point. Some are already dead, like Himmler, but others like Cholnitz have a shot at good treatment.

I suppose we should give credit to Ike also for his decision that Paris had no military value and should be bypassed. Events and French disobedience forced his hand, but by then the German line units had also left Paris.

This has been a lively discussion. I think we probably agree on a lot more than we disagree but are looking at the issue from different perspectives.

I suspect any disagreement concerns as you say, hunches formed of differing perspective.

I’ve enjoyed reading your viewpoints; you have excellent insight and I am giving what you have posted serious consideration as I continuously re-evaluate my opinions about World War 2, and the human condition in general.

Thank you and I can assure you that the feeling is mutual.