It is also important to note that many of the initial slaughters, especially in the Baltics were not only committed by the Germans. The Germans set up pogroms recruiting willing accomplices to commit some of the atrocities. Many of these recruits were violent criminals released from the prisons as the Germans occupied these areas.
As an example of this there was the man called the "Death-dealer of Kovno" which I mentioned last month. He was Lithuanian who it is reported had lost both of his parents, killed by the NKVD only days before. A German colonel who was a adjutant to the staff for Army Group North witnessed this man at work on 27 June 1941:
On the concrete forecourt of the petrol station a blond man of medium height, aged about twenty-five, stood leaning on a wooden club, resting. The club was as thick as his arm and came up to his chest. At his feet lay about fifteen to twenty dead or dying people. Water flowed continuously from a hose washing blood away into the drainage gully. Just a few steps behind this man some twenty men guarded by armed civilians, stood waiting for their cruel execution in silent submission. In response to a cursory wave the next man stepped forward silently and was then beaten to death with the wooden club in the most bestial manner, each blow accompanied by enthusiastic shouts from the audience.
This is just one example, but there were many. It is important to understand that the Germans didn't come across their anti-Semitic ways strange. The Jews had been driven East for hundreds of years. The English expelled the Jews from the islands in 1290 marking the first such expulsion. The French expelled Jews in 1306 followed by the Spanish in 1492. Western European countries continually forced Jewish populations east. There were also expulsions by the Russians over a period of history that basically compressed the bulk of European Jewry into the areas of the Baltic states, Poland (with the largest number), and other countries in that region. Unfortunately, even where the bulk of the Jews ended up concentrated, Antisemitism was still prevalent which is why the Germans found it so easy to round up willing accomplices among the local gentry to have "spontaneous actions" against the Jews in the newly occupied territories.
CougarGA7:
"The English expelled the Jews from the islands in 1290 marking the first such expulsion.
The French expelled Jews in 1306 followed by the Spanish in 1492." Of course, there is a very long, sad history, going all the way back to the Jewish Revolts against the Roman Empire, and the later teachings of St. Augustine regarding the special status of Jews in Christian lands.
If anyone wishes, we can review all this in great detail.
But the important point is, beginning with the Age of Enlightenment, the American Revolution and especially the French Revolution, the status of Jews in Europe had improved significantly -- until, that is, until the Nazis came to power.
But the Nazis did not simply turn back the clock to some prior age, they executed a program -- the methodical Final Solution -- that no previous age had even imagined.
So no matter where we look in history for some possible precursors, or earlier examples which might "explain" the Holocaust, we won't find them in ancient or early modern history.
Where we find them is in Adolf Hitler's personal history, and in the examples set by his, in effect, mentor -- yes, I said "mentor" -- Joseph Stalin.
In response to a cursory wave the next man stepped forward silently and was then beaten to death with the wooden club in the most bestial manner, each blow accompanied by enthusiastic shouts from the audience. How absolutely horrific.
I wonder why people cheer the barbaric beating of another human being. Fear of being identified as one who sides with those being convicted to death? Maybe. But I see similarity in some of the public humiliation and vicious treatment of others today where there is no threat of mob retaliation. It hasn't risen to clubbing and killing....yet. But then again, there are the reports of mob killings in gang infested areas, however those involve the fear I mentioned earlier.
