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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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.
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.
very poor form
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link