No Shoah

What are the possibilities that could arise had there been no 'final solution'? What differences could this make to the outcome of the war, and also everyday actions in the war???

 

One thing is probably for sure there would have been more transport and rolling stock with which to make the german army operate. Possibgly this would have made the movement of units between front easier and therefore, maybe made a difference at crucial points of the war.

 

A lot more people would have become soldiers and they could have produced more tanks, ... and off course last but not least they could have transport troops from one front to the other much easier.

 

Here are some things that could have happened if there would have been no such thing:

-More men available for the front.
-More resources of every kind available for the front.
-No slave labour. So, no TOTAL war industry.

 

Uh, I disagree somewhat...

- Less men for the front (instead serving in jobs that were done by slaves).

- Less production (the front would probably get priority anyway).

- Somewhat more heavy transportation available.

 

Exactely.

- Less food. (feeding additional 5 M during 1942-1944)

- Less stolen goods (money)

- More partisan activity / opposition in the occupied area.

Cheers,

 

Well, I thought more about all the security troops involved in the deportations, guarding, extermination, etcera... who could be deployed in the front instead. Let's see if those butcher bastards of the ASS were as good killing Russians as they were killing unarmed civilians.

But I didn't consider that without the slave workers more German men would have had to work in the factories... Even if I did think about the reduction of the weaponry production.

 

Indeed, there would be positive points:

- more production
- more soldiers
- more trains to transport the troops and materials to the front

 

Thats all assuming Hitler got to power. Using the Jews as a scapegoat was very vital for Hitler, wasn't it? Assmuing there was no Holocaust, that Hitler never once voiced opinions against Jews, and jews had no problem with Hitler.

More troops ready for conscript,
More tranports,
No Totenkopf division,
Germans would of had to rely on slave labour from occupied countries,
Camps would of still been built, to house Communists, Homosexuals, etc.

 

The question remains, what would he have done with them if he did not bring the final solution?

I think maybe an option to deport all of them somewhere, as happened in small scale, but to where? I know the Germans pushed for madagascar and also Isreal.

The Germans would have more rolling stock, fuel but without the labour force available.

 

They wished to deport them to such countries untill war came about, and deporting so very many appeared to be harder then killing them, in Himmler's eye. The massarce of jews at Kiev seemed to be the answer.

 

Had Hitler not been down on the Jews at all,Germany may have produced an Atomic Bomb before America.Quite a few of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project were immigrants who fled Nazi Germany and Europe for America.Had they stayed in Germany,they could very well have worked on the German A-Bomb project.

 

Danzing, (welcome aboard by the way ) Hitler would not have gotten into power without scapegoats like the Jews and other groups. Persecuting them came with the territory of a government ran by Hitler. But had he not killed million in deathcamps, he could have used the prisoners of the camps for more labor, as cannon fodder for use against the Russians, as second-rate soldiers for occupation duty(under the watchful eye of the SS/Gestapo of course).

But the most important effect of no Final Solution would have much broader implications: no huge bloodstain on Germany's past.

 

Maybe not, but the vast majority of Germans disagreed with the harshest anti-Jewish measurements - at latest since the Reichskristallnacht.

It was definitely irrational madness. The consequences are hard to tell, but... indeed Germany would have been in a much better position.

 

Have to throw a few facts out here:

Firstly, while Hitler spoke out against the jews in passing in the early years, it was almost entirely against the Jewish Bolshevik menace (communism) until he gained power. His truely virulent anti-semitic speeches and propaganda did not start until after 1933. Further, many parties were anti-semitic, not just the Nazis. In 1930, while it was clear that the jews were greatly disliked by the Nazis, they were just one of many groups scapegoated. Mein Kampf speaks very little about the jews, but it speaks a lot about the jewish-bolsheviks to the East.

Secondly, especially after 1943, jews were not used as slave labour very much. Yes, there was extensive work done in the camps, but it was all low-order stuff, nothing of real significance to the war effort (clothing, etc). German labour depended on POWs (after early 1942) and on "imported" workers from occupied states. The jews comprised a tiny percentage of actual slave labour, in fact if Jews were found in most industrial labour camps, they tended to be removed.

Thirdly, the final solution in an organised manner only really came about when other options became impossible. Though individual shootings and brutality was common, systemic extermination was only implemented once the possibility of forcible emmigration to places like Madagascar became unviable. There were many acts of massacre separate from the "shoah" itself, so when you start to really study the period it becomes difficult to separate them. For example, both the Criminal Justice Decree and the Commissar order of May 1941 were responsable for some of the worst massacres in the East. The decision to not feed Russian prisoners of war captured in 1941 resulted in the deaths of over a million Russian POWs in 1941, this policy was only reversed when it became clear that POWs could serve to remedy the labour shortage.

Both these decisions took place before the Wansee conference. The Holocaust was not an individual event, nor was it a long-time planned event. It is the most brutal and horrific example of how Germany dealt with opponents as the war went on.

 

Where did you get that from?

In fact the vast majority of the country demonstrated significant aparthy towards the topic, they were not against the anti-semitic measures, rather in most cases they were greatly in favour of them, in particular in rural areas. This is a huge and well studied body of research, but books over the last dozen years have all demonstrated the same evidence: The Gestapo functioned almost entirely on tips and information from the German people who spoke out against Jews and jewish sympathisers. Anti-semitic measures (short of the extermination) were often used as media value to encourage the people. People spoke not at all against the persecutions until 1944 when people started becoming afraid of the "jewish retribution" if Germany lost the war.

The vast majority of the German population were aware of at least everything up to the holocaust, if not elements of the holocaust itself, and either did not care or Generally approved. I recommend a dozen or so recent books on the topic: Daniel Goldhagen, Arno Meyer, Noakes and Pridham, Richard Overy, Michael Burleigh, and in particular the Excellent text:
"Backing Hitler: Consent and Coersion in Nazi Germany", by Robert Gellatley. This book will explain in great detail just how "opposed" the german people were to the anti-Jewish measures.

 

Dasreich,thanks for welcoming me aboard,and,yes I know how Hitler got to power,I just thought this was a "What if" forum.Sorry.

 

Any sources to support this?

Thanks.

 

Vermillion, AndyW:

My source is the German WWII benchmark "Der Zweite Weltkrieg: Zeitgeschichte in Wort, Bild und Ton".

In an analysis of the Reichskristallnacht, Jochen R. Klicker quotes the British charge d'affaires in Berlin (unfortunately not mentioning his name, but the date is November 16, 1938):

[re-translated from German]
"I have not met one single German, no matter the stratum, who does not, at different degrees, at least disapprove what has happened. But I'm afraid that even the clear-cut condemnation on the part of declared nazis or major officers of the Wehrmacht won't have any influence on the horde of madmen currently ruling Nazi-Germany."

I will try to find his name and further details. Further I will check your sources Vermillion. However, at least Goldhagen is often criticized severely as biased and unobjective.

 

I am not sure a comment made to the British Charge d'affaires after Kristalnacht qualifies in this case, as here is no reason for this to be anything other than a political facade.

Opposed to that is a truly impressive body of literature which states the exact opposite. Gellatley will lay it all out for you. As for Goldhagen, his latest book presented three main thesies in three chapters, one of which has been soundly attacked, not the other three. I can happily cite you mny more sources on this relatively clear and conclusive historical debate.