One of the biggest things that I absolutely despise about how WWII history is taught is how ‘Hitler killed 6 million people.’
This is wildly incorrect. Hitler’s camps killed somewhere around the lines of 14 million people, 6 million of which were Jews. Were Jews singled out in particular, and enslaved and exterminated with extreme prejudice? Absolutely. But there are millions of others that died in Nazi concentration camps, many of them communists, the mentally or physically disabled, homosexuals (who weren’t upper class) and Roma. As well as the explicit desire for Lesbarum which would have likely seen most of the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbians, and anyone who could have been considered Slavs under Nazi race law would have been explicitly culled to a peasent farming and resource extraction class.
The Nazis were not just a threat to Jews, they were a threat to ALL of working class Europe. Our hyper focus on Nazi crimes against Jews downplays their crimes, and it is baffling to me when I have discussions with literal history majors still quoting this number. This was something the Soviets understood all too well, as was repeatedly talked about in any communist commentary at the time, with them going off of Lenin’s theory of imperialism.
…and the 14 million is just camps. The most current estimate is 17 million people total. About 3 million people were murdered by being shot, stabbed, or beaten to death by Germany’s armed forces out in field before getting tossed into mass graves. These were deliberate acts of ethnic cleansing and they only stopped because it required too many resources and soldiers started developing psychological problems. The death camps were the solution to this as they could kill more people with less and because the entire process allowed Germans to distance themselves from what they were doing, if they weren’t sadists who volunteered for it.
But the total number is over 70 million people dead as a result of WWII, for whom the Nazis, Imperial Japan, and Italy share most of the blame. They have their puppet states and collaborators to be blamed for everything else. Saying anything less is Holocaust denial.
Ironically, Jew were also painted as all that’s wrong with capitalism. The majority of German workers were anti capitalist at the time and vilifying the Jews got them on board.
Yes. I finally read Finklestein’s The Holocaust Industry and it’s shocking how recent and intentional this focus is. We can see the consequences of it in arguments about the Ukraine war - “the Azov Battalion can’t be Nazis, because Zelensky is Jewish!” As if fascism begins and ends with a singleminded desire to kill all Jews.
when I was an anarchist I had a sort of pride in the fact that the very first people the nazis realized they had to kill were the anarchists.
but that doesn’t actually prove that anarchists ideas were ideologically or strategically the most correct, just that they were the ones with an ideology/strategy most likely to include immediate violent resistance (which is not necessarily the most effective idea at all times). which is why I am now a communist. but I did take some sort of twisted pride in thinking the nazis knew anarchists were the first they needed to take out, as if that meant anything more than just that anarchists are the most willing to fight back no matter what is strategically effective, and that likely made them the nazis first target.
but yes the fact that the emphasis all gets placed on the jewish deaths in the holocaust is a political project for sure. to erase leftist repression/resistance, to use it to justify israel, etc. that said everyone should go to the US Holocaust Museum if you are ever in DC. it’s very moving. and it does at least mention and talk a bit about the leftists the nazis killed before moving on to the jews and others.
Lots of stuff on this topic just says “homosexuals” and yeah maybe that’s all the Nazis identified people as, but queer people of any stripe were in the Nazis’ sights. Many trans people iirc were killed.
One of the biggest things that I absolutely despise about how WWII history is taught is how ‘Hitler killed 6 million people.’
This is wildly incorrect. Hitler’s camps killed somewhere around the lines of 14 million people, 6 million of which were Jews. Were Jews singled out in particular, and enslaved and exterminated with extreme prejudice? Absolutely. But there are millions of others that died in Nazi concentration camps, many of them communists, the mentally or physically disabled, homosexuals (who weren’t upper class) and Roma. As well as the explicit desire for Lesbarum which would have likely seen most of the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbians, and anyone who could have been considered Slavs under Nazi race law would have been explicitly culled to a peasent farming and resource extraction class.
The Nazis were not just a threat to Jews, they were a threat to ALL of working class Europe. Our hyper focus on Nazi crimes against Jews downplays their crimes, and it is baffling to me when I have discussions with literal history majors still quoting this number. This was something the Soviets understood all too well, as was repeatedly talked about in any communist commentary at the time, with them going off of Lenin’s theory of imperialism.
…and the 14 million is just camps. The most current estimate is 17 million people total. About 3 million people were murdered by being shot, stabbed, or beaten to death by Germany’s armed forces out in field before getting tossed into mass graves. These were deliberate acts of ethnic cleansing and they only stopped because it required too many resources and soldiers started developing psychological problems. The death camps were the solution to this as they could kill more people with less and because the entire process allowed Germans to distance themselves from what they were doing, if they weren’t sadists who volunteered for it.
But the total number is over 70 million people dead as a result of WWII, for whom the Nazis, Imperial Japan, and Italy share most of the blame. They have their puppet states and collaborators to be blamed for everything else. Saying anything less is Holocaust denial.
Again, another good follow-up. Imma gonna stop now.
deleted by creator
Great follow-up
Ironically, Jew were also painted as all that’s wrong with capitalism. The majority of German workers were anti capitalist at the time and vilifying the Jews got them on board.
Yes. I finally read Finklestein’s The Holocaust Industry and it’s shocking how recent and intentional this focus is. We can see the consequences of it in arguments about the Ukraine war - “the Azov Battalion can’t be Nazis, because Zelensky is Jewish!” As if fascism begins and ends with a singleminded desire to kill all Jews.
when I was an anarchist I had a sort of pride in the fact that the very first people the nazis realized they had to kill were the anarchists.
but that doesn’t actually prove that anarchists ideas were ideologically or strategically the most correct, just that they were the ones with an ideology/strategy most likely to include immediate violent resistance (which is not necessarily the most effective idea at all times). which is why I am now a communist. but I did take some sort of twisted pride in thinking the nazis knew anarchists were the first they needed to take out, as if that meant anything more than just that anarchists are the most willing to fight back no matter what is strategically effective, and that likely made them the nazis first target.
but yes the fact that the emphasis all gets placed on the jewish deaths in the holocaust is a political project for sure. to erase leftist repression/resistance, to use it to justify israel, etc. that said everyone should go to the US Holocaust Museum if you are ever in DC. it’s very moving. and it does at least mention and talk a bit about the leftists the nazis killed before moving on to the jews and others.
annoying, stupid
Lots of stuff on this topic just says “homosexuals” and yeah maybe that’s all the Nazis identified people as, but queer people of any stripe were in the Nazis’ sights. Many trans people iirc were killed.