[wolf78]

Given the tremendous importance of Jewish scientists, mostly European refugees, in the Manhattan Project, there is a good deal of truth to this claim.

Had these men been working for Germany rather than the Allies, Hitler might well have had the bomb first.

True: Hitler was THE most anti-German traitor. In driving large parts of its intelligentsia out of the country (or simply killing them), Hitler weakened Germany right from the start. Compared to the somewhat sensible policies of the German empire (after all, WWI started as a completely legit war on terror), he was an incredible idiot. If you look all the scientific potential concentrated in Germany around 1900, Germany could have become one of the worlds leading powers by 1950, 1960 - far eclipsing Russia et alii.

That's (not the only reason) why every true German conservative fervently hates Hitler ;-) .

[Restorer]

Hitler was not a German nationalist, he was an Aryan "volkist."

Jews formed part of the German nation, but not of the volk. So they had no value to him.

I wonder if anybody has ever calculated how much military power the resources put into the Holocaust could have been translated into? Surely all that hauling of millions of people around Europe was an enormous waste in economic and military terms.

One of the odder things that nobody ever recognizes about the extermination camps and all that is that they were set up because of resistance by the German army to being used in extermination. After all, there were a good many more German and allied soldiers than Jews in Europe. If they had been willing to do so, each of them would have only had to fire once to kill all the Jews.