Posted on 05/20/2009 1:55:14 PM PDT by lizol
Der Spiegel - other nations helped Germany in Holocaust
20th May 2009
Poland, among other countries helped Hitler mastermind the mass murders, the German weekly says
The Der Spiegel weekly claims that Germany would not have been able to prosecute its WWII mass-murder campaign against the Jews on its own and the country required the cooperation of other nations, including Poland.
The magazine's front-page story, entitled "Partners. European associates in murdering Jews," cites the case of John Demjaniuk, a former Ukrainian SS-officer, who is currently awaiting trial in Munich, in its bid to prove that without the support of citizens from occupied states the extermination of European Jews would not have been possible.
"Obviously, only Hitler and his associates or the Wehrmacht, were able to stop the Holocaust. This, however, does not weaken the argument that without foreign allies, thousands if not millions of the six million Jews killed would have been saved," the Der Spiegel article reads.
In addition, the weekly claims that while the French, Dutch and Belgians could not have really known what was happening to the Jews, Poles were well aware of the fate that awaited them in concentration camps. Historians and experts from Poland and Germany have undermined the weekly's claims, saying it has made a number of misinterpretations.
I do too, for other reasons.
Poland has a good history of ( mostly Catholic) moral spirituality, and there were Germans too who helped Jews at great risk to themselves...priests and nuns sent to the camps.
I think we can find good and hate in all groups of people, IF they are given the opportunity to show goodness and morality. Unfortunately there are millions of Muslims who are not in an environment where there “goodness” is allowed to flourish...again the political ideologies that are the ‘problem’ ( and one too few americans are willing to accept).
The Continuation War followed a year after the end of the Winter War. That is the Finnish word for it ~ the Germans didn't consider it a war, and the Russians thought of it as just one of many fronts (they were then up to their necks in alligators).
The Continuation War is exceedingly complex. Along the way 1/4 million German troops ended up in the country.
To STOP THE CONTINUATION WAR the Finns agreed with the Russians to expell the German troops, which they did.
It can take several hours to read through any one of several major briefs that cover both wars.
From the American standpoint the Winter War was just part of the Continuation War. From the Finnish standpoint the two wars were separate events.
All things considered, Finland had always been "subordinate" ~ either under the Mongols, under the Russians, under the Swedes, under the Russians, etc. Yet, they whuthed the Russians and the Germans in succession.
One of their secrets was the use of highly trained "ski troops". For the first time in their history the Sa'ami (Lapplanders) actually participated in a war. apparantly they are very good at such events ~ a natural inclination possibly, or just better at handling winter.
For their pains the Sa'ami suffered the total destruction of their provincial capital Rovaniemi. This town is also known in Inari Sami as Ruávinjargâ, Northern Sami as Roavenjárga and Roavvenjárga and in Skolt Sami Ruäˊvnjargg. This last version has a counterpart in the term "Ama rugia" used to describe a part of Southern Indiana settled originally by Finns fleeing the Russian takeover of 1810.
BTW, this last event is known by the Finns as yet a third-war ~ the Lappland war.
Whatever the case, Jews in America were warned against the thoughts of people they usually never came into contact with.
And vice versa.
This is not European style antisemitism.
Very strange KKK really. More interested in selling propaganda and robes than in doing stuff.
Israel has plenty of Jew-hating Arabs.
Poles in the German Army? U.S. soldiers at Normandy reported taking Polish prisoners in German uniform. They may have been ethnically German. I know the Germans enrolled people with German surnames in Russia whose families had been there 300 years having been invited by Catherine the Great.
I think it’s true that a lot of Poles reported Jews or killed them during the war period. There are stories of Poles massacring Jews who tried to return to their homes after the war.
Strangely, my first reaction was also Awesome.
My maternal family are German, so my grandfather was fighting the Soviets (and the U.S. a bit, too.) It's not quite awesome.
Excellent point. The Germans were evil (and I am half German) and this attempt to spread the blame for the Holocast sickens me.
“Like everyone else in the world, except Israel.”
Nah, the secular hate the religious. (The religious also hate the secular, but I am religious, so I deny that.)
I believe that the Klan in Louisiana was largely concentrated in the northern part of the state, and the "American" nabes in New Orleans, as the Klaverns were dead set against any Catholics (who dominate the population in south Louisiana) from joining.
They used to be have their NJ headquarters in Hightstown (between Princeton and the shore), with cross burnings well into the 1960s, until the Jewish Defense Leagues started pelting them.
There was no place for Poles in the SS.
I don’t think that was true by the end of the war. The Germans attempted to create SS divisions out of volunteers from other nations including French, Dutch, Belgians, Bosnian Muslims, Swedes, etc.
I don’t recall that they actually managed to recruit enough of any to form an entire division but they definitely created smaller formations . Toward the end I’m sure that some Poles could be looking forward to “liberation” by the Red Army with some concern. After all, the Germans didn’t perpetrate Katyn.
I’m not denying that isolated incidents occurred, I am very familiar with Kielce and Jedwabne.
It is one of the tragedies of the war, that between the Nazis and the Soviets, they created an ever greater wedge between Gentile and Jewish Poles. And the post-war Soviet-Puppet Communist government of Poland, managed to drive out most of the remaining Jews from Poland.
Only with the fall of Communism, were Poles made aware of the true extent of the Holocaust and the atrocities that occurred on their soil. The current Polish government has gone to tremendous lengths to raise awareness and to commemorate these horrible events, and for that, they deserve a lot of credit.
As General Anders told Patton, "With the Germans, we lose our lives, with the Russians we lose our souls."
I don’t think it made much sense for the Germans to stay in Finland after the Finns capitulated. I read a recent history of the 11th SS Nordland Division (Twilight of the Gods) by a Swedish SS volunteer. Although there was some scrapping along the way the Germans essentially withdrew to the ports and went home.
The Finns were forced to capitulate and weren’t too keen on attacking their former allies. The Russians, of course, insisted on full scale attacks by the Finns on the Germans. I don’t think the Finns did any more than they had to do in attacking the Germans based on the authors story.
There was not, at the end of the Dark Ages, clear cut divisions between German/Frankish people and the Slavic people. In fact, the lines of demarcation between those two and the Scanderhoovians were hardly all that clear.
You had intermixed communes speaking various languages all over the place.
The Germans went right to the heart of the problem (Lappland) and started a scorched earth campaign. For their pains the Finns fought back and sent the Germans packing up through occupied Norway (not South to ships).
There was a major military objective in Northern Finland at the time ~ access to Nikel Oblast. That's where there's a huge nickel/iron meteor imbedded in the Earth that's the source of most of the nickel used in modern industry. Makes Sudbury look like a banana peel for that matter.
There's also a major iron ore range running from Sweden through Finland to Russia. This Northern range was the source of Swedish technological advantages over other Europeans in the Thirty Years War (when the Swedish Empire was established).
The Germans didn't really want to give that spot up.
Recall Nickel Mines in Pennsylvania where the crazy guy killed those Amish girls several years ago? That area was originally settled by Sa'ami Finns from Nikel Oblast ~ they named Nickel Mines after Nikel after the Nickel found there. Commercial mining was done in the 1700s and then the mid-1800s.
Nikel Oblast is also the site of the world's deepest hole.
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