WW2 Holocaust precedents in WWI, WWI as a precursor and relationship to the WW2 Holocaust Options

[PGL]

Sorry, can someone explain this thread and it's purpose to me in very simple terms?

[dutchbarge]

Interestingly enough Isabel Hull threw the Armenian massacre into the mix in her book "Absolute Destruction..." on German military practice. The chapter seems misplaced in her book, the connection tenuous at best.
For the other side of the coin see "Germany, Turkey, Zionism, 1897-1918," By Isaiah Friedman, pages 370-373, describing the actions of General von Falkenhayn to stop Turkish excesses againt the Jews in Palestine.

"We, and the rest of the [Jewish] population must hold Falkenhayn in deep gratitude for having prevented the projected total evacuation and thus preserved the civil population from destruction."

John, there are connections between what German soldiers experienced in the East and the "Drang nach Osten," continued during the Second World War, but the roots of this were much, much older. I'm just not seeing hidden and secret signs of the Holocaust in the occupation policies of Ober Ost.

Reading Ludendorff's ideas on modernisation of Jewish schools, and "Ludendorff's soup kitchen," as well as Germany's overall policies on the Jews in the East during the Great War make it clear that the stance was something quite different than the murderous policies of Hitler's Germany. If there was any connection it is in the fact that Hitler and company believed most of the policies of Ober Ost were failures and changed them to their own nightmare version.

Paul

Hey Paul,

As always a very well informed response. Must say I never thought much of the claim that it was Hitler's supposed fascination with the Turkish masacre of the Armenians that inspirated his 'Final Solution', but it's the only, if weak, connection between WW1 and the Holocaust I've encountered. Certainly the Jewish Museum in Berlin (a must see if you're in Berlin) is silent on the subject. The Museum portrays persecution as an eternal state for the Jewish Race and Hitler's Holocaust as one of many (if exceptionally horrific) historical manifestations of long standing (and continuing) animosity towards the Jews. Definately a sobering (and hugely depressing) view of how we humans are capable of acting towards one another. Cheers, Bill

[dutchbarge]

Sorry, can someone explain this thread and it's purpose to me in very simple terms?

The thread's originator would have us believe that the Jewish Holocast of WW2 has connections to the Eastern Front of WW1. I, and others, tend to disagree. Cheers, Bill

[Pete1052]

Quote from the conclusion of Traverso's book: "The massacres of the imperialist conquests and the Final Solution are linked by more than 'phenomenological affinities' and distant analogies. Between them runs a historical continuity that makes liberal Europe the laboratory of the violences of the twentieth century, and Auschwitz an authentic product of Western civilization."

Enzo Traverso is said to be an Italian-born Trotskyite who teaches at a French university. His theory on the origin of the Holocaust has that all-embracing universal quality about it that is characteristic of Marxist writings.

[John Gilinsky]

Rather than engaging in ad hominem criticisms what about the opinions and assertions raised with the supporting facts to his position that the Holocaust is directly linked to what happened in the great war and even earlier?
John

[(Hugh)]

I can't think of any links between the Holocaust and WW1, but there are parallels in reprisals against civilians, deportation and forced labour.

[Desdichado]

I can't think of any links between the Holocaust and WW1, but there are parallels in reprisals against civilians, deportation and forced labour.

Oh there are some links but I don't believe they are as extensive as some people claim. I suppose that if one really wanted to, a link between the anti-jewish acts of Richard I and Hitler's attempted extermination of European jewry could be made. Perhaps it's me but I really don't understand this seemingly constant need by some historians to drag the holocaust into everything they do. I know one particular academic who is obsessed with it, almost to the point where eyes roll upwards and a collective "On no, not again" is heard. It can become a bit tedious.

[John Gilinsky]

Oh there are some links but I don't believe they are as extensive as some people claim. I suppose that if one really wanted to, a link between the anti-jewish acts of Richard I and Hitler's attempted extermination of European jewry could be made. Perhaps it's me but I really don't understand this seemingly constant need by some historians to drag the holocaust into everything they do. I know one particular academic who is obsessed with it, almost to the point where eyes roll upwards and a collective "On no, not again" is heard. It can become a bit tedious.

To clarify with reasonable explanations based on sound historical methods the actual links is to elevate history's social importance in understanding where we as a society derive from. While one can easily dismiss someone as not from the mainstream, or harp on the "obsessions" of colleagues or others placing the Holocaust(s) of World War Two [ remember that World War I / Great War was a HOLOCAUST in its own right ] in its historical context incorporating the roles that WWI played or did NOT play is vital for us and future generations.

Thanks for your post,
John

[Desdichado]

To clarify with reasonable explanations based on sound historical methods the actual links is to elevate history's social importance in understanding where we as a society derive from. While one can easily dismiss someone as not from the mainstream, or harp on the "obsessions" of colleagues or others placing the Holocaust(s) of World War Two [ remember that World War I / Great War was a HOLOCAUST in its own right ] in its historical context incorporating the roles that WWI played or did NOT play is vital for us and future generations.

Thanks for your post,
John

I disagree. The works that have been mentioned on her, Isabel Hull's for example, have not employed what I would call 'sound historical methods" but rather an agenda. I really don't understand your point about WWI being a holocaust John as it appears to be out of context in this thread.

[John Gilinsky]

I disagree. The works that have been mentioned on her, Isabel Hull's for example, have not employed what I would call 'sound historical methods" but rather an agenda. I really don't understand your point about WWI being a holocaust John as it appears to be out of context in this thread.

I have not read Hull's works (and by the way the work that I have quoted from does not mention her at all nor does the author refer to her in his bibliography). WWI as a holocaust (the word was actually used at least in 1918 and possibly earlier is an aside to show how some terms distinguish certain conflicts) is not the thrust of this thread. Rather, it is how ww1 / great war impacted, caused, influenced the Holocaust of ww2.
Thanks again for your post,
John

[Paul Hederer]

John,

From what you've posted about your interests I would imagine you've read "Dynamic of Destruction, Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War," by Alan Kramer.

I haven't read the book myself, but I was struck by some of the excerpts mentioned by Simon Sebag Montefiore in his review of the book.

...the creation of a military-colonial state known as Ober Ost and its occupation of great swaths of Eastern Europe and Russia were brutal and ruthless, providing a foundation for racial stereotyping and merciless depredation. (Still, as Kramer takes care to note, these were not 'a pilot program' for the Third Reich.)

...Nonetheless, everyone can learn something from Kramer's nuanced and sensible conclusion: "Total war", he writes, "which tends towards annihilation, bears within it the potential for genocide. Yet genocide was not an inevitable consequence of total war."

Two points a few of us have been trying to make here as well.

Paul

[John Gilinsky]

John,

From what you've posted about your interests I would imagine you've read "Dynamic of Destruction, Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War," by Alan Kramer.

I haven't read the book myself, but I was struck by some of the excerpts mentioned by Simon Sebag Montefiore in his review of the book.

...the creation of a military-colonial state known as Ober Ost and its occupation of great swaths of Eastern Europe and Russia were brutal and ruthless, providing a foundation for racial stereotyping and merciless depredation. (Still, as Kramer takes care to note, these were not 'a pilot program' for the Third Reich.)

...Nonetheless, everyone can learn something from Kramer's nuanced and sensible conclusion: "Total war", he writes, "which tends towards annihilation, bears within it the potential for genocide. Yet genocide was not an inevitable consequence of total war."

Two points a few of us have been trying to make here as well.

Paul

Thanks Paul for some excellent and relevant and materially important quotes. I know of the book and only skimmed it briefly and did NOT read it.

The quotes in fact establish the significantly important and valuable roles that ww1 overall and the Eastern Fronts in particular played in serving as a laboratory for legitimizing brutal treatments of peoples especially occupied and subject "others" during the war. As such the great war definitely substantially fuelled societal beliefs that such behaviours were not only tolerable in such national emergencies but ideologically sound since the life of the nation state and one's own cultural survival were at stake. Compound this even further by the rapid rise of Bolshevism/ state communism versus the Free Corps at the end of the war and extreme right wing ideaolgues who sprang up to rationalize the war in the 1920's and we realize how profound the war was on setting the mental mind set and societal expectation that war is war (this goes back of course to Clausewitz and others even).
Thanks again Paul for good quotes,
John
Toronto

[Desdichado]

Thanks Paul for some excellent and relevant and materially important quotes. I know of the book and only skimmed it briefly and did NOT read it.

The quotes in fact establish the significantly important and valuable roles that ww1 overall and the Eastern Fronts in particular played in serving as a laboratory for legitimizing brutal treatments of peoples especially occupied and subject "others" during the war. As such the great war definitely substantially fuelled societal beliefs that such behaviours were not only tolerable in such national emergencies but ideologically sound since the life of the nation state and one's own cultural survival were at stake. Compound this even further by the rapid rise of Bolshevism/ state communism versus the Free Corps at the end of the war and extreme right wing ideaolgues who sprang up to rationalize the war in the 1920's and we realize how profound the war was on setting the mental mind set and societal expectation that war is war (this goes back of course to Clausewitz and others even).
Thanks again Paul for good quotes,
John
Toronto

Er, how does this tie in with your original premise?

[John Gilinsky]

Er, how does this tie in with your original premise?

While I inititated the thread deliberately choosing the word DIRECT cause/effect relationship what many of us have been discussing or bringing up are INDIRECT FACTORS that influenced or set the stage for the ww2 Holocaust during ww1. We simply do NOT know the great biographical details of those who served in the SS or the organizations responsible for the Nazi extermination camps if they also had served or what their expereiences had been during 1914 - 1919.

I hope this explains my response to Paul's excellent contributions.

John

[John Gilinsky]

I can't think of any links between the Holocaust and WW1, but there are parallels in reprisals against civilians, deportation and forced labour.

Three areas that is forced marches/removals from the fronts (the Jews in winter/spring 1914 - 1915 in the Pale / Galicia);
Belgiana and Northern French men/boys deported to Germany for forced labour; collective reprisals initiated right from the start of the war by German and AH occupation authorities. Not to mention "mass" public executions.
John

[Paul Hederer]

Three areas that is forced marches/removals from the fronts (the Jews in winter/spring 1914 - 1915 in the Pale / Galicia);
Belgiana and Northern French men/boys deported to Germany for forced labour; collective reprisals initiated right from the start of the war by German and AH occupation authorities. Not to mention "mass" public executions.
John

John,

You are referring to Russian removal of Jews from the Western part of the Russian Empire?

Paul

[Warney]

I'm not qualified enough to comment on all that has been said before in the thread. However my granfather was taken a POW in the German Offensive in 1918. One of the few things that he relayed about WW1 was that he was mistaken for a Jew in the POW camp and was beeten up as a result.

My feelings are that the roots of WW2 are firmly embedded in WW1 - the bad feeling amongst the defeated troops, the war reparation damages the lack of access to independent news media, the working class weren't as educated, so were easily lead - we see that in the inner cities even now in the 21st centuary. Blame culture was to find an easy scapegoat - that been the Jewish population. I don't think you can completely seperate the wars, I maybe over simplyfying things, but I look back 20 years, and the late 80's dont seem that long ago - the same would have been the case in the late 30's.

[John Gilinsky]

John,

You are referring to Russian removal of Jews from the Western part of the Russian Empire?

Paul

Yes. If I remember my readings rightly this occurred especially in the spring of 1915 with the Russians nervous/paranoid of 5th columnists in anticipation based on "Russian intelligence" of impending German offensives in the east.
John

[John Gilinsky]

Lets not leave out Austro-Hungary's occupation policies and practices. Indeed there is I know a fair if not large corpus of literture on the great difficulties to put it mildly as to how AH managed its multilingual and multicultural armed forces during the war. Cultural clashes and conflicts may have contributed to cultural hegemony and cultural chauvinism which in turn may have contributed to superior and inferior cultural vantage points - directly descended from the aristocratic/feudal lord/master - servant/serf mentality which however faultingly carried over into the 19th century concept of the nation state and service to the state instead of the local lord. Again all of this coalesced MAYBE into the CAUSES of the war AND also the way the war was not only waged but VIEWED and PERCEIVED during and after the actual fighting was over. Survivalist mentality of the remnants (eg. Russian noble emigres in the West, displaced pows settling in strange lands) as well as survivalist mentalities engengered by the war's sheer destructive forces impelling an inward looking self-preservationist mentality combined with an increasing noted hostility directed towards strangers in their midsts and "others."
John

[Siege Gunner]

Cultural clashes and conflicts may have contributed to cultural hegemony and cultural chauvinism which in turn may have contributed to superior and inferior cultural vantage points ...

John – us English speakers call that "them and us" ...

[(Hugh)]

Yep, excuse me for butting in, and I haven't got an axe to grind, but I do have an interesting postcard.

The people dressed as civilians are clearly standing in front of their own graves, and this does presage events in WW2.

What I had in mind was that this postcard would probably not have equivalents in other combatant countries in WW1, and to me indicates that brutality against civilians was seen as correct in certain circumstances. Insofar as this is a generally circulated postcard to send to friends and family.

Attached File(s)

 Hyanen_des_Schlachtfeldes.JPG ( 91.94K ) Number of downloads: 2

 

[John Gilinsky]

Lovely propaganda postcard presumably from late 1914 or early 1915. Moral high planes would have appealed both to the better educated and the overall reactionary instincts of hating an obviously INFERIOR enemy. War time hatreds irrespective of their origins must have fuelled again the mind set establishing if these people are capable of anything then they deserve whatever they get attitudes and actions (or inaction by the vast majority of observers - to whit the countless Germans who did see their neighbours being rounded up and sent packed in freight trains away at short or no notice).
John

[Pete1052]

What's odd about that postcard is that the artist, Emil Krupa-Krupinski (1872-1924), was a German who lived in Bonn. Click here for a portrait he painted of the mythical Lorelei of the Rhine.

[Siege Gunner]

Something else odd about the postcard is that its caption, "Hyänen des Schlachtfeldes", meaning "Hyenas of the battlefield", is the title of a book of stories from the Franco-Prussian War. The phrase may have been carried forward to the Great War – but I'd still be interested in an expert opinion on the uniforms and rifles depicted in the painting.

[John Gilinsky]

Er...cough...cough...what about this or indeed other postcards or other types of images such as photos, films, posters showing the actual or imagined horros of the war as relevant to contributing to factors or causes of the ww2 Holocaust? Indeed the values of propaganda carried over beyond the war and fuelling the sentiments of peoples of the "other."
John