hitlers mistreatment of ukranians ,czechs ,poles , balts and russians was a foolish blunder . but of course hitler was not all about freeing his untermench comrads ,he wanted those spaces resettled with proper aryan stock ...
. That's the difference between a conqueror and Hitler . A conqueror beat a country army , bash them into surrender , accept their submition and absorb the vanquished in his forces or resources and leave gods, women and laws well alone , a lighter taxation does work wonders too Classic form , if you get trashed by a world conqueror , it's not so bad , It's like loosing to Brazil playing soccer Hitler was a greeny , non-smoking , vegetarian.. in other words a inhuman freak .
True enough, but that was, IMHO, an excuse. Given Russia's vast expanses, there was plenty of room for his "Aryans" and anyone else who chose to live there. He was far more interested in exterminating those he considered inferior than he was in actually defeating the Soviet Union.
Bit of both, he wasn't averse to letting slavs live all the while they might be of use to Reich, wasn't there a something about teaching Polish children to spell their name, read street signs and count up to five so that they might be of service, but they were to be untermensch, sub-humans, and of as much consequence as animals.
Why trust inferior people to make the bullets for your great people? they might mess it up and get your soldiers killed..
This is part of the problem with discussing things on a military forum. Not everything is about putting bullets in guns, a huge if not the major part of any military expedition is getting the bullets to the guns in the first place. Yes, if you know what you're doing you can subtley subvert the tolerances in a munitions factory and send out dodgy ammo, but why even put untermensch in a position to do so in the first place when you need fruit pickers for the farms, labourers for the roads and rails and construction sites, packers for factories... None of which require education and none of which are that critical.
. Matter of fact the highest levels of war material production were obtained in 1944 By that time occupied countries , drafted labor , slave and war prisoners were extensively used for production , it was all a matter of controls and punishments of which the Nazis had a fine appreciation slave labor can be usefully used if the right incentives are used , a bit of carrot and some serious stick . Their labor relations were based on petty rewards ,summary executions , transport to concentration camps and plain old beatings amongst the rewards the most bizarre was to the successful forger team of concentration camp inmates who produced fake sterling bank notes some sample were send to the swiss central bank with doubt being voiced as to their authenticity , the Swiss take money seriously and REALLY checked them out , their verdict was that they were real , a grateful reich had the forger team decorated ......... then gassed :smok: .
I disagree, Simon; the Nazis treated animals like horses, cows, pigs and even dogs better than they treated those whom they dubbed "untermensch".
A little note here. In a book "Luftkrieg 1939-1945" by Janusz Piekalkiewitz there is a very good description of Franch and British plans for bombing soviet oil fields in Baku and some other oil targets in Caucasus. Photo recce was done from Iraq and planes should also take off in Iraq ( british) and Syria ( French). Aftermath was that Germans happily delivered captured French plans to Stalin. That puts a bit of a twist to Stalin's paranoia regarding Churchill and his plans/offers/whatever. I have to find that book since it does contain flight routes for recce fight ( and includes registaration numbers of plane involved) and relatively detailed description of the plans.
stalin , in 39 , considered an alliance with the french and british and assured them that, if they were attacked by hitler , he would crash into the german rear with something like 27 russian divisions .when he asked the anglo french leaders about how many divisions THEY would attack with , were the situation reversed , he was met with a defening silence ..... nyet answerski , nyet treatyski .
I'll vouch for this. I visited Breendonk concentration camp a few weeks ago. Horrible stuff - 90% casualty rate among inmates. They had a stall with 4 pigs whom were given names (which the prisoners pointedly were not) and the prisoners had to feed them Red Cross food parcels originally intended for themselves.
Without wishing to seem like I'm splitting hairs, I didn't say the Nazis treated those they regarded as subhuman like the would animals, just that their lives had as much consequence as a animal's. In any case the point of that that was to show that it wasn't necessarily the policy of the Nazis the completely exterminate those in the East, all the while the conquered and cowed populace might serve a purpose. That they treated those they saw as subhuman brutally is beyond question.
I'd call that last a masterpiece of understatement, Simon; what the Nazis did to those people far surpassed brutal.
Corp, a quick check of online dictionaries comes up with the following definition Now, I really cannot be bothered to get into an depth argument with you over this, but I don't think that to describe the Nazi occupation of eastern Europe as in effect "Savage, Cruel and Inhuman" is "a masterpiece of understatement". If I'd said they were mean or not nice, then perhaps, but as a one-word summary of the occupation it seems reasonably appropriate and not "a masterpiece of understatement" which I feel implies that I have little or no understanding of the realities of the situation for the conquered eastern territories.
I apologize if I unintentionally hurt your feelings; such was not my intention. I was trying to be ironic.
I apparently took that out of context from your original intention then. Shame we don't have a shake-hands-and-make-up emoticon!