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Notes -
I imagine this is an extremely fringe view even among Holocaust revisionists, but I know a few people who deny that the Germans ever intended to exterminate the Jews, because the Germans are just too civilized to commit such barbarism. When pressed about the large number of Jews who went missing during the war, they blame the Russians. Everyone knows they’re bloodthirsty and evil, and we know they committed genocides against other groups. Clearly they must be to blame.
I don’t really find it all that convincing, but it is a view I’ve encountered several times before.
But as Mandalay said, and as revisionists often gleefully claim, there were plenty of Jews in the Soviet military and broader leadership. Would they really have stood by and allowed the large scale extermination of millions of Jews on the basis of race without ever discussing it? That seems unlikely, especially if claims about Jewish solidarity and ethnic identity are true. Before Germany and the USSR turned on each other, Soviet Jews pleaded openly with Stalin to lobby Hitler for better treatment of Jews in the German half of Poland, for example.
Oh, I agree. Like I said, I don’t find it convincing, but it is a few I’ve encountered several times in the wild, always from Americans of German descent. I imagine there is a bit of motivated thinking as a result of their ancestors’ ethnic background.
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