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Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 16, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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is fictional, like other allegations here of a "Hunger Plan"

I wonder which claim you claim to be fictional.

or plans for mass extermination of Slavs because of German racial theory

Maybe it was not German racial theory but regular German imperialism, but mass extermination and oppression was already running during war.

Regarding the “Hunger Plan” I already commented on one aspect of it above in another response, and I’ll only add that if you check out the Wikipedia article on it in general, you’ll see that it essentially lumps together multiple aspects of Nazi policy that are objectively not closely related, I think. And what it markedly does not argue is that the plan was designed with the deliberate genocidal aim of starving masses of Slavs to death, or that it was ever implemented on a larger scale:

By the end of 1941, plans to starve the entire civilian population of some areas had been abandoned, due to the failure of the German military campaign[1] and the impossibility of cutting off the food supply to cities without causing major uprisings.[6] Except in isolated cases, the Germans lacked the manpower to enforce a 'food blockade' of the Soviet cities; neither could they confiscate the food.

Also, any lengthy Wikipedia article that almost entirely hinges on just one official document, in this case a policy proposal made during a meeting of state secretaries, is rather suspect in my opinion.

Regarding the so-called “Generalplan Ost” it was actually not even that, as it was supposedly an early resettlement policy proposal put together in multiple versions, but not one copy survived the war. Only second-hand sources and commentaries on it exist.

it essentially lumps together multiple aspects of Nazi policy that are objectively not closely related, I think

Even assuming that this claim is 100% true, I am quite confused how it changes things substantially.

The "Hunger Plan" is a term that was never officially used, and was instead invented as a reference specifically to the supposed Nazi masterplan to exterminate the Slavic peoples of the USSR through manufactured famine. You'd think that the Wikipedia article on it will provide detailed evidence of this. What it describes instead are 1. the massive death rate of Soviet POWs in general (again, not all of them were even Slavs, and the idea that this was a pre-planned act of mass murder is suspect, as I mentioned in another comment in this thread) 2. Jews in ghettos not receiving sufficient food (again, this was a measure against Jews, not Slavs) 3. famine in German-occupied Greece (which has scarcely anything to do with the matter at hand.) Such Wikipedia articles are suspect in my eyes, because it's obvious that they were written by political activists.

For me it makes precious little difference whether Nazis caused millions of deaths according to some masterplan or through massive cruelty/incompetence/disregard. At minimum, they had no problem with causing millions of deaths in their war started together with their ally USSR.

See also Mao, killing millions through combination of badly broken leadership model and massive incompetence. It is not much better or worse than doing it as a deliberate plan, at most it has some different aesthetic. I guess that makes Mao largest and lamest loser ever and Hitler more demonic figure, but it is only aesthetics of not so great import, both caused terrible evil.

Intent, I think, very much matters if we want to examine if an ethnic cleansing (of Slavs, in this case) took place or not. But anyway, now that I checked this discussion again, it seems the original post was removed, so it's sort of pointless to continue, as it can no longer be seen what the original argument was.

Original post was about claim that Nazis were not anti-Slav. Which seem clearly false to me and does not require fully-deliberate extermination master plan to falsify.

it seems the original post was removed

very poor form

I wonder which claim you claim to be fictional.

I literally listed three right in my comment: the allegation that the Germans considered slavs non-Aryan and subhuman, the allegation that the Germans had a secret "Hunger Plan" by which they planned to genocide the Slavs by intentional starvation, and the allegation that "Generalplan Ost" was a secret plan to exterminate the slavs. None of those claims are true. All of those claims are aimed to misdirect from the fact that the real problem the Germans had was with Bolshevism, which they regarded as Jewish.

The idea their animus was motivated by their racial theories surrounding "subhuman slavs" is just propaganda meant to handwave the fact that the Germans fielded the largest foreign volunteer army in history composed of Slavs also animated against Bolshevism. That would be a highly inconvenient fact, so you make shit up about the Germans having secret plans to exterminate the Slavs and people, even otherwise smart people, completely fall for it. Just like they fall for the cartoonishly absurd claims that millions of people were tricked into entering gas chambers that had been disguised as shower rooms.

WWII mythos is just half-remembered plotlines written by Hollywood Jews.

the real problem the Germans had was with Bolshevism, which they regarded as Jewish.

This is a blatant and clear lie. And you are lying.

If that would be true they they would not cooperate so deeply with USSR. And would cooperate with anti-bolshevik group rather than oppress them.

They had real problem with many other things. They rampaged through Poland and murdered and oppressed so widely that it was counterproductive to what they tried to achieve.

Their behaviour in occupied Poland was unusually bad, no matter how you compare it. Even after excluding what they did to Jewish Poles.

Schooling of Polish children was curtailed to a few years of elementary education, as outlined by Himmler's May 1940 memorandum: "The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans. ... I do not think that reading is desirable"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Poland_(1939%E2%80%931945)

During the following weeks Polish schools beyond middle vocational levels were closed, as were theaters and many other cultural institutions. The only Polish-language newspaper published in occupied Poland was also closed, and the arrests of Polish intellectuals began.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_culture_during_World_War_II

Including endless executions, rape and murder and destruction would be easy here.

WWII mythos

It may come to shock to you but culture exists outside USA. WW II left quite deep wounds in Poland (not surprising with 16% of population murdered, decades of occupation and permanent loss of large part of country area and many other effects).

That would be a highly inconvenient fact, so you make shit up about the Germans having secret plans to exterminate the Slavs and people

Well, you can drop secret here. Invading country, banning any higher education, claiming that any smart Pole who ever lived was German, starting shooting people for flimsy reason or no reason, stealing anything not nailed down and imposing starvation rations etc were hardly secret. And even if you believe your claims that death camps have not existed and apparently Jews teleported to USSR - all other things are enough to present German occupation as being one of extreme subjugation based on their racial/ethical/howeryouclassify theories.

Joseph Goebbels and Hans Frank and Adolf Hitler were not exactly subtle.

the fact that the Germans fielded the largest foreign volunteer army in history composed of Slavs also animated against Bolshevism. That would be a highly inconvenient fact, so you make shit up about the Germans having secret plans to exterminate the Slavs and people

Maybe some people have problems with considering both USSR and Third Reich as monstrously evil as they assume that at least one main player must be good but I assure you that I have no such problem. And I am not going to make claims that there is no comparison to their evil - to not look far, Mao and Pol Pot and plenty of ancient empires handily compete. If you exclude what they did to Jews they were still clearly anti-polish. And "UK and USA did war crimes" is not breaking my brain. "Poles did war crimes and evil oppression" also is not breaking my brain either. And neither changes than in Poland Germany and USSR did far more evil than either of that.

But claiming that "the real problem the Germans had was with Bolshevism, which they regarded as Jewish." is a blatant lie and trying to whitewash German nazi empire. And I am quite happy that your side lost WW II, pity that USSR could not also lose but even USSR was a bit better than Third Reich Germany.