Wannsee Conference in 100 Facts

[RolandVT]

Hans Paul Oster was a deputy head of Abwehr (German military intelligence and counter-intelligence service) … and a leading figure (CEO, practically) of the anti-Nazi German resistance from 1938 to 1943. To put it simply, a traitor (is anyone surprised that Germany lost the Second Great War?)

Still, in the very last days of September of 1938, Hans Oster could have prevented the Holocaust by killing Adolf Hitler (and, most likely, Himmler, Heydrich and Göring as well) – and destroying the whole Nazi government (Führerstaat)… if only his “September Conspiracy” (“Oster Conspiracy”) had been successful. It wasn’t.

The Oster Conspiracy was a highly detailed plan to overthrow German Führer Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime if Germany went to war with Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland (which prior to Munich Agreement was a foregone conclusion).

Oster and his co-conspirators believed (incorrectly) that by using the military force to get back Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia Hitler was getting Germany into a war that they believed it would disastrously lose. It was not the case because neither Britain nor France would go to war with Germany over keeping Sudetenland under Czechoslovakian rule.

The plotters planned to use loyal (to them) Wehrmacht commandos to storm the Reich Chancellery, kill Hitler and other top Nazis and restore the Monarchy under Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, the grandson of Wilhelm II.

The plan could have worked because Oster managed to bring on board such powerful Wehrmacht generals as Generaloberst Ludwig Beck (highly influential ex-head of General Staff); General Wilhelm Adam (commander of Military District VII); Generaloberst Walther von Brauchitsch (Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, no less), Generaloberst Franz Halder (Chief of General Staff), Admiral Wilhelm Canaris (chief of Abwehr), and Generalleutnant Erwin von Witzleben.

Witzleben’s units, which garrisoned the Berlin Defense District, were to have played a decisive role in the planned coup. Commando unit led by Count Hans-Jürgen von Blumenthal to lead a storm party into the Reich Chancellery and kill Hitler… and quite likely other leading Nazis.

The conspirators also had contact with Secretary of State Ernst von Weizsäcker and the diplomats Theodor Kordt, Erich Kordt and Hans Bernd Gisevius. Theodor Kordt was considered a vital contact with the British on whom the success of the plot depended; the conspirators needed strong British opposition to Hitler’s seizure of the Sudetenland. It never happened.

However, Neville Chamberlain, who had no desire to start the Second Great War over such an unimportant matter as who would own the Sudetenland (and needed Hitler as counterweight to both France and the USSR negotiated at length with Hitler and eventually conceded strategic areas of Czechoslovakia to him. French leaders (who had no desire to go to war period) joined him… and the Munich Agreement was the result.

This destroyed any chance of the plot succeeding, as Hitler was then seen in Germany as the greatest statesman of all times at the moment of his greatest triumph, and the immediate risk of war had been neutralized. In other words, support for ousting Hitler and doing away with Nazi regime evaporated.

Was the failure of Oster Conspiracy a good thing? On the one hand, it was as Hitler and his Führerstaat (the Third Reich) were the only force capable of saving Germany, Europe and the whole world from being destroyed by Bolshevist hordes (and they did).

On the other hand, their (in the opinion of some historians, almost miraculous) survival on September 30, 1938, paved the way to the Holocaust – in many ways the worst genocide in human history.

Therefore, the (almost mystical) failure of Oster Conspiracy became another major step on the Road to Holocaust – and another slab in the “stack of slabs” that ultimately killed four million Jews.

[RolandVT]

Contrary to an almost universal misconception, Nazi leadership did not want the November pogrom of 1939 (aka Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass) to happen – for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, Adolf Hitler stated in 1919 – in his (in)famous Gemlich Letter – that he was firmly against Jewish pogroms. His position – that had not changed since – was that all persecution of Jews (up to making Germany Judenrein) must be carried out not by general public, but by government agencies.

And must proceed in an orderly manner. Consequently, it is not surprising at all that all persecution of Jews in Greater Germany was brutal and ruthless – but not violent. Both before and after the Night of Broken Glass.

The second reason was that at that time the (then pragmatic) Nazis were not interested in physically harming the Jews – they wanted Jewish property. First and foremost, their real estate. Which in every pogrom suffers badly – to put it mildly – thus causing harm to financial interests of the Nazis and their Führerstaat.

And, finally, the nationwide pogrom is a high-risk endeavor – things can easily get out of control by the authorities (in November 1938, they almost did) … and cause a catastrophic harm to the state and to the people.

For this reason (again, contrary to the almost universal misconception), police and government in general in Imperial Russia had nothing to do with Jewish pogroms in that country. On the contrary, it did everything possible – including using the deadly force – to stop these events (alas, not always successfully).

That said, the Nazis still bear the ultimate responsibility for the horrific results of November pogrom – because their incessant and ugly anti-Semitic propaganda created the environment where Kristallnacht was inevitable.

In reality, the pogrom was the inevitable spontaneous reaction of radical German anti-Semites (not associated with SS, SA, NSDAP or Nazi government system in any way) to the Paris murder of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew.

Nazi leaders only wanted to control the inevitable… as it turned out, not very successfully. No surprise here – it is practically impossible to control a pogrom without using a deadly force which was politically impossible for the Nazis.

Murder of Ernst vom Rath was a very strange homicide – to put it mildly. Grynszpan stated to the police that he shot vom Rath to avenge the Jews brutally persecuted in Nazi Germany.

It sounded plausible… however, Grynszpan was never put on trial – neither in independent, nor in occupied France… nor in Germany for that matter. After the fall of France, Grynszpan was extradited to Germany. Initially, he was incarcerated in (in)famous Moabit prison in Berlin – but was soon moved to the concentration camps system. First to Sachsenhausen and then to Flossenbürg.

In September of 1942, he was moved to the prison at Magdeburg… and then just disappeared. According to Adolf Eichmann, Grynszpan may still have been alive in late 1943 or early 1944… but he did not know what happened to him.

My guess is that Grynszpan was executed by the SS right before the end of the war meeting the same fate as Georg Elser who planned and carried out an elaborate assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler (another very strange crime).

The bizarre fate of Herschel Grynszpan points to a totally different motive (or even motives) for his crime. I have no doubt that one of the motives was to become a global celebrity… which he did.

Vom Rath’s death and the horror of Kristallnacht brought Grynszpan international notoriety. Enjoying his celebrity status, he was frequently interviewed in his prison cell and wrote letters to celebrities around the world.

In KL he continued to receive the celebrity treatment – at Sachsenhausen he was housed in the bunker reserved for special prisoners with Kurt Schuschnigg, the last pre-Anschluss chancellor of Austria.

However, circumstantial evidence points to a totally different – and a far more personal – motive. Vom Rath was homosexual – and so was Grynszpan. Vom rath met Grynszpan in Le Boeuf sur le Toit (a well-known Paris gay bar), they became lovers, one thing led to another… and at some vom Rath had promised to use his influence to legalize Grynszpan’s French residency (Hershel was an illegal alien). When vom Rath reneged on his promise, Grynszpan just shot him.

This theory appears to be close to the truth – with such motive neither the French nor the Nazis had any desire to bring Grynszpan to trial as it would have been just way too scandalous.

Curiously, no Jew ever attempted to avenge persecution of German Jews by killing a Nazis – although in Imperial Russia it happened many times (and the Bolshevist revolution was the result).

Most likely, even the Jewish hotheads – one of the hottest in the world – realized that this revenge will make the fate of Jews much, much worse… although they could not have imagined the horrors of the Holocaust.

November pogrom was horrific. Jewish homes were ransacked all throughout Germany. Although violence against Jews had not been explicitly condoned by the authorities, there were cases of Jews being beaten or assaulted. Following the violence, police departments recorded a large number of suicides and rapes.

Over 1,400 synagogues and prayer rooms, many Jewish cemeteries, more than 7,000 Jewish shops, and 29 department stores were damaged, and hundreds of synagogues were burned or otherwise destroyed.

More than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, primarily Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen – most likely, to prevent them from fighting back (it would have been a bloodbath). After the pogrom ended, almost all of them were promptly released.

Police predictably were instructed to seize Jewish archives from synagogues and community offices – these came very handy during the Holocaust. Not surprisingly, the Nazis used the pogrom to their financial advantage: Jews were forced to pay a collective fine of one billion Reichsmarks for the murder of vom Rath, which was levied by the compulsory acquisition of 20% of all Jewish property by the state.

Six million Reichsmarks of insurance payments for property damage due to the Jewish community were instead paid to the Reich government as “damages to the German Nation”.

The number of emigrating Jews surged, as those who were able to leave, abandoned the country. In the ten months following Kristallnacht, more than 115,000 Jews emigrated from the Reich. The majority went to other European countries, the United States or Mandatory Palestine, though at least 14,000 made it to Shanghai, China. As part of government policy, the Nazis seized houses, shops, and other property the émigrés left behind.

About a hundred Jews lost their lives in the pogrom, which made the latter a key step on the Road to Holocaust – and a very heavy slab in the “slab stack” that three years later triggered the “Holocaust Avalanche” that killed four million Jews.

Although Kristallnacht was not intended to be a mass murder, it became one. For the first time in Nazi Germany a significant number of Jews were killed simply because they were Jews: not for what they did, but for who they were. Which made the subsequent Holocaust so much easier for the Nazis.

Internationally, the pogrom crossed critical line: Nazi Germany had left the community of civilized nations. It made any alliance between the latter and western democracies impossible – which ultimately destroyed the Third Reich and killed its Führer (and many other Nazi leaders).

[RolandVT]

German occupation of Czechoslovakia (of Bohemia and Moravia, to be more precise – of whatever remained of it after it lost Sudetenland to Germany) was inevitable for four key reasons.

First and foremost, the Great War with the Bolshevist Soviet Union was inevitable – whether Hitler wanted it or not (he did). To fight and win this war, he desperately needed Czech military (especially tanks) and economic resources (Czech military industry was second only to German).

Second, by March of 1939 Germany faced a murderous (literally) foreign exchange crisis as it had run down its foreign exchange reserves and urgently needed to seize the gold of the Czechoslovak central bank simply to survive. Nothing personal – just the basic survival instinct. Cut and dry, plain and simple.

Third, after the loss of Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia became militarily indefensible (without the natural defensive barrier of the mountains of the Sudetenland and system of border fortification its army stood no chance against the Wehrmacht).

And, finally, the Munich Agreement of 1938 proved beyond the reasonable doubt that neither Britain nor France would go to war with Germany to defend the independence of Czechoslovakia.

So, Hitler predictably scheduled German invasion of Bohemia and Moravia for the morning of March 15, 1939. However, this time he decided to use proxies – pro-German leaders of Hungary and Slovakia.

On March 13, he held talks with Slovakian Prime Minister Jozef Gašpar Tiso (a Catholic priest) and on the next day, the Slovak parliament convened and unanimously declared independence of Slovakia.

Carpatho-Ukraine also declared independence but Hungarian troops occupied and annexed it on the same day. No surprise here – Carpatho-Ukraine historically belonged to Hungary and had been detached in 1920 by the 1920 Treaty of Trianon (same thing as Treaty of Versailles – only with Hungary) from the Kingdom of Hungary and attached to newly created Czechoslovakia.

After the secession of these two regions, Czechoslovakia ceased to exist for all practical purposes. Hence, its president Emil Hácha had no other choice but to agree to German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia.

On the morning of March 15, German troops entered the remaining Czech parts of Czechoslovakia, meeting practically no resistance. Hungarian invasion of encountered some resistance but the Hungarian army quickly crushed it.

On 16 March, Hitler from Prague Castle proclaimed the formation of German protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia claiming that “Bohemia and Moravia have for thousands of years belonged to the Lebensraum of the German people“.

Thus reviving the (in)famous Drang nach Osten – a 19th-century German nationalist intent to expand Germany into Slavic territories of Central and Eastern Europe.

Adolf Hitler was not disappointed – by occupying Czechoslovakia, Germany gained 2,175 field cannons, 469 tanks, 500 anti-aircraft artillery pieces, 43,000 machine guns, 1,090,000 military rifles, 114,000 pistols, about a billion rounds of ammunition and three million anti-aircraft shells.

This amount of weaponry would be sufficient to arm about half of the then Wehrmacht. Czechoslovak weaponry later played a major part in the German conquests of Poland, France and the Soviet Union.

Czechoslovakia had fielded a modern army of 35 divisions and was a major manufacturer of machine guns, tanks, and artillery, most of them assembled in the Skoda factory in Plzen. Czechoslovakia also had other major manufacturing companies. Entire steel and chemical factories were moved from Czechoslovakia and reassembled in Austrian city of Linz.

German occupation of Czechoslovakia became a significant step on the Road to Holocaust because it continued to accumulate a “critical mass” of Jews under German control that two years later launched the “Holocaust Avalanche” killing four million Jews. In Bohemia and Moravia, the Nazis acquired 118,000 Jews. By 1946, only about 14,000 remained.

It should be noted that occupation of Czechoslovakia resulted in establishment (on November 24 1941) of Theresienstadt Ghetto that would play an important role in the “Holocaust by Gas” project.

Operation of Einsatzgruppen was expanded: Einsatzgruppe I Prague and Einsatzgruppe II Brno were set up. They were in turn divided into nine Einsatzkommando – and arrested around 10,000 people.

However, the most important consequence of German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia was that Hitler got convinced that no one would prevent him from expanding the Lebensraum in the East. This belief led to German invasion of Poland and the Soviet Union… and ultimately to the Holocaust.

[RolandVT]

In July of 1939, SS Einsatzgruppen underwent a radical – and genuinely murderous – transformation. This transformation (into genuine SS death squads that did not exist before) became another major step on the Road to Holocaust – and another slab in the “stack of slabs” that ultimately killed four million Jews.

Prior to the summer of 1939, Einsatzgruppen were essentially hybrid SD/Gestapo units: they collected valuable intelligence from documents, interrogations and informants and arrested and detained the “enemies of the Reich”.

Acting on direct orders from Hitler, SD, SiPo and Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich (who conceived and ultimately commanded the Einsatzgruppen) radically expanded their functions into so-called “pacification” of occupied Poland.

Unlike in Austria, Sudetenland and Bohemia and Moravia, Nazis expected fierce resistance in occupied Poland. For Adolf Hitler, extreme violence (including murder) was the preferred method for solving this problem – so he ordered “pacification” of Poland by identifying and murdering all potential activists of Polish Resistance. This task was assigned to Heydrich’s Einsatzgruppen.

Heydrich re-formed the Einsatzgruppen to travel in the wake of the German armies – and “pacify” territories occupied by the latter. Seven Einsatzgruppen of battalion strength (numbered I to VII) were wormed – each was subdivided into four Einsatzkommandos of company strength. Membership at this point was drawn from the security services: the SD, the police, and the Gestapo.

Heydrich placed SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Best in command, who assigned Hans-Joachim Tesmer to choose personnel for the task forces and their subgroups, called Einsatzkommandos, from among educated people with military experience and a strong ideological commitment to National-Socialism. Some had previously been members of paramilitary groups such as the Freikorps.

Initially numbering 2,700 men (and ultimately 4,250), the Einsatzgruppen’s mission was to murder members of the Polish leadership most clearly identified with Polish national identity: the intelligentsia, members of the clergy, teachers, and members of the Polish nobility.

These orders were given by Heydrich in mid-August following Hitler’s command that “… there must be no Polish leaders; where Polish leaders exist, they must be killed, however harsh that sounds“.

These orders meant that it was now OK to murder anyone considered an “enemy of the Reich”. As all Jews were seen as such by Nazi ideology, this step made serial mass murder of Jews so much easier for the SS.

The Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen – lists of people to be murdered – had been drawn up by the SS as early as May 1939, using dossiers collected by the SD from 1936 onward.

Einsatzgruppen committed mass murders with the support of the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, a paramilitary group consisting of ethnic Germans living in Poland. During the “Holocaust by Bullets”, SS death squads will also utilize local paramilitaries – Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, etc.

Another reason for this radical transformation of Einsatzgruppen becoming a major step on the Road to Holocaust was a series of massacres of Polish Jews (men of military age for now).

Dozens and hundreds of Jews were murdered at the same time for no other reason than being Jews. Hence, it became OK to mass murder Jews… which made “Holocaust by Bullets” so much easier for the SS.

It must be noted that the SS, the Wehrmacht, and the Ordnungspolizei also shot civilians en masse during the Polish campaign. In addition to potential activists of Polish Resistance and male Jews of military age, all of the above murdered Jews, prostitutes and (of course) the mentally ill.

Psychiatric patients in Poland (sentenced to death by Aktion T4 personnel) were initially murdered by shooting, but by spring 1941 gas vans (reinvented by Germans) were also used.

[RolandVT]

“Holocaust by Gas” was but radically scaled-up reincarnation of Aktion T4 (involuntary euthanasia program). Even the number of killing centers was the same – six. And all used the same tools – gas chambers (stationary or mobile).

Reincarnation indeed – the first death factory of the Shoah became operational almost exactly four months after Aktion T4 was officially terminated. It is important to note that key personnel of Aktion T4 were then transferred to its reincarnation where they served in pretty much the same capacity.

Hence, Aktion T4 became a major step on the Road to Holocaust as it was far easier to copy and scale up something (even by a factor of 35 or so) than to create something from scratch. Especially something of such magnitude.

Aktion T4 became a colossal slab in the “slab stack” that even before its official termination triggered the “Holocaust Avalanche” (killing four million Jews) because it was the first program of large-scale mass murder (in the tens of thousands) of the whole social group deemed to be an “unacceptable burden” on the Reich and the German people. Which made Holocaust much easier.

Carefully selected German physicians were authorized to select mental patients “deemed incurably sick, after most critical medical examination” and then administer to them a “mercy death” (mostly by poison gas or lethal injection).

Curiously, Aktion T4 was the only program of serial mass murder explicitly authorized by Adolf Hitler in writing. In October 1939, Adolf Hitler signed a “euthanasia note”, backdated to September 1st, which authorized his physician Karl Brandt and Philipp Bouhler (Chief of the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP) to commence this murderous program. Thus, making it legal.

Initially, Aktion T4 was limited to children under 17 but later it was extended to adults. Six killing centers were established at psychiatric hospitals in Germany and Austria: Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim, and Sonnenstein.

Initially limited to Greater Germany (Germany + Austria), after the invasion of Poland Aktion T4 was extended to occupied Polish territories and then to other lands under German control. The total number of victims is difficult to estimate but the total death toll might be as high as 300,000 (1/10 of “Holocaust by Gas”).

Aktion T4 had to be canceled due to public outrage and (especially) harsh criticism from Lutheran and (mostly) Catholic Church. Which forced the Nazis to silence Pope Pius XII right after the decision was made to commence “Holocaust by Gas” – months before it was commenced in Chelmno killing center.

[RolandVT]

After the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 – and especially after Britain and France started World War II by declaring war on Germany – Jewish emigration was out of the question… but the Nazi commitment to make Germany Judenrein was stronger than ever.

With the easiest (and the most humane) way to achieve this objective now totally impossible, the escalation and radicalization of methods were now inevitable. Predictably, the next step was escalation (graduation) from forced emigration to deportation (internment) to some kind of a giant concentration camp (reservation).

Poland was a natural choice as more than 85% of Jews under German control were living in Poland. Specific location for such reservation (conceptually similar to Indian reservations in the USA) was chosen by Adolf Hitler himself in the beginning of September 1939.

The chosen area was a remote corner of the Generalgouvernement territory (occupied territory of Poland not annexed into the Reich), bordering the cities of Lublin and Nisko. In reality, it was the death sentence for all Jews from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland as they would have inevitably died from murderous “living” condition… or from “extermination through labor”.

Hence, it was for the better (for the Jews) that the “Nisko Plan” as it was called was abandoned in spring of 1940. Much for the better because death from the bullet or poison gas was far more merciful than from starvation, disease or being worked literally (and deliberately) to death. Much more merciful genocide, in short.

During the early implementation of the plan, the Nazis set up a system of Jewish ghettos to use them as forced labor for the German war effort. The first forced labor camps were established for the Burggraben project intended to fortify the Nazi-Soviet demarcation line and to supply the local SS units at Lublin.

Interestingly, the Lublin are was chosen for the Nisko plan (as well as for SS killing centers) for ideological and even mystical reasons. In fact, Lublin had been the focus of Nazi planners since the early 1930s, as Nazis believed it to be the center of Jewish worldwide power (!) and source of their genetic potential (!!).

By April of 1940, when the Nisko Plan was abandoned, 95,000 Jews had been deported to Lublin from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. The plan was abandoned because there was simply no way to fit almost four million Jews under German control into that reservation… or into any reservation for that matter.

Hence, the failure of Nisko Plan became one more step on the Road to Holocaust.

[RolandVT]

Such was the perception of the Nazis – and, alas, perception is the only reality (especially for such fanatics as National-Socialists). This (incorrect) perception was based on a very strange (to put it mildly) letter written on August 29, 1939 – three days prior to the German invasion of Poland and five days before Britain and France declared war on Germany – and thus started World War II.

The latter in question was written by Chaim Weizmann – president of World Zionist Organization president Chaim Weizmann – and addressed to no other than British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

The letter included the following key statement:

“In this hour of supreme crisis, the consciousness that Jews have a contribution to make to the defense of sacred values impels me to write this letter. I wish to confirm in the most explicit manner the declarations which I and my colleagues have made during the last month and especially in the last week: that the Jews stand by Great Britain and will fight on the side of the democracies“

Why on Earth would Chaim Weizmann – a very smart individual – write such an idiotic passage (and make it public)? For starters, he had no right to speak on behalf of all Jews – Zionists were in the minority and not all of them belonged to WZO.

Idiotic because he publicly stated that in the future conflict between Nazi Germany and Western democracies ALL Jews under German control will become the “fifth column” of the latter – and thus the existential threat to Germany.

It was not true at all – but the Nazis deeply, sincerely and passionately believed that it was. While the total number of Jews under their control (in Greater Germany, Bohemia and Moravia) was around half a million, such a belief would have “only” sent all Jews to concentration camps.

But when (after occupation of Poland) this number increased almost eightfold to almost four million, Nazis came to believe that in order to protect themselves from being annihilated from within by this “fifth column”, they had no other choice but to kill them all – men, women, children and elderly.

The timing of the letter was highly unfortunate as well – it made Nazis believe that Britain and France transformed the local conflict between Germany and Poland into world war under influence by “world Jewry”.

Hence, this letter became a major slab in the “slab stack” that two years later triggered the “Holocaust Avalanche” that killed four million Jews.

[RolandVT]

Yes, you read it right – Britain and France started World War II (the latter started on September 3rd – not September 1st). By declaring war on Germany on a former date, two giant colonial empires transformed the local conflict between two neighboring nations (Germany and Poland) into a full-fledged world war.

Contrary to an almost universal misconception, neither Germany nor France had to declare war on Germany after the latter invaded Poland. True, on August 25, 1939 (two days after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact), Great Britain and Poland signed an agreement for mutual military assistance… but it did not promise that Britain would declare war on Germany if the latter attacked Poland.

It only promised that “His Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power” – without specifying this support. Actually, British Chiefs of Staff noted that “we could give no direct help by land, sea or air“. Neither would (or could) the French.

Actually, this promise was not only empty, but hypocritical as it offered the military assistance only if Poland was attacked by Germany. If Poland was attacked by any other nation (i.e., the Soviet Union), no military assistance was forthcoming (actually, both Britain and France ignored invasion of Poland by the USSR).

No surprise here – the pact did not include any statement of either party’s commitment to the defense of the other party’s territorial integrity. So much for British (or French) guarantees to Poland.

On the same day that Britain pledged its support of Poland, Lord Halifax stated, “We do not think this guarantee will be binding“. Cut and dry, plain and simple.

Hence, the decision by Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany had nothing to do with the invasion of Poland by the latter (it was only the pretext). Most likely, leaders of both nations decided (correctly) that Hitler will shortly attack France (to get Alsace-Lorraine back) and wanted to pre-empt Hitler in order not to be caught by surprise (a few months later, France was anyway).

The Nazis (predictably) perceived the declaration of war in their own perverted way. Due to “Jewish declaration of war on Germany” on August 29th (see next section), they believed that the “world Jewry” somehow made the leaders of Britain and France declare war on Germany and that the latter was a “global Jewish plot”.

Neither was true… however, this declaration of war became one more slab in the “stack of slabs” that two years later triggered the “Holocaust Avalanche” killing four million European Jews.

[RolandVT]

“Pacification” of Poland via mass shootings of potential Resistance activists (which led to exactly the opposite result) became one more step on the Road to Holocaust – and a very heavy slab in a “slab stack” that less than two years later launched the “Holocaust Avalanche” that killed four million Jews.

It became a model for the “Holocaust by Bullets” – the initial stage of Shoah. It became such a model because this “pacification” was a perfect example of a democide – extermination of a social group (in this case, Polish elites).

After this line has been crossed (this was the second democide launched by the Nazis – after serial mass murder of mentally sick), it became far easier – and almost “natural” – to commit another democide.

This time of male Jews of military age (initially) – which was subsequently expanded to total genocide of all Jews (first in the Soviet Union and then in all territories under German control). This expansion was made even easier because in Poland hundreds of Jews became victims of ad hoc “local democides” committed by Einsatzgruppen, Order Police or Wehrmacht or Waffen SS units.

Murderous “pacification” of occupied Poland was implemented in tree partially overlapping stages: Operation Tannenberg, Intelligenzaktion and AB-Aktion.

Operation Tannenberg was the first stage in this democide – it lasted from September 1939 to January 1940. Around 20,000 Poles (out of a proscription list of more than 61,000 members of the Second Polish Republic’s elite) were shot in 760 mass killings, which were followed by the shooting and (mostly) gassing of hospital patients and disabled adults as part of the Aktion T4 forced euthanasia program.

The Intelligenzaktion was a series of mass shootings committed in 1939-40 against the Polish intelligentsia (teachers, priests, physicians, and other prominent members of Polish society). The death toll was around 100,000.

The AB-Aktion took place between March and September 1940. As with the Intelligenzaktion, it aimed to eliminate the members of Polish elites. While the latter had taken place in the territories annexed by Germany, AB-Aktion took place in the General Government, the territories that were merely occupied.

Both primarily targeted government officials, social and political activists, artists, educators, business leaders and priests… in other words, all potential activists of Polish resistance. With over 7,000 activists eliminated, the Nazis believed the remaining Polish population would be docile and surrender to German rule.

Big mistake.

[RolandVT]

The Holocaust (initially as “Holocaust by Bullets”) was obviously triggered by German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. However, it would have almost certainly happened anyway – and it was made inevitable by German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 (and subsequent occupation of the latter).

It was made inevitable because it brought 3,350,000 more Jews under German control increasing the total number of Jews in German-controlled territories to totally unmanageable 3,800,000 or so.

Totally unmanageable because the Nazi leaders deeply, sincerely, passionately (and incorrectly) believed – especially after idiotic “declaration of war” made by Jewish leader Chaim Weizmann on August 29, 1939 – that ALL Jews under German control were the “fifth column” of external “enemies of the Reich”.

And thus, the existential threat to Germany. As almost four million Jews simply could not be securely kept in ghettos and/or concentration camps – or so the Nazi leaders believe – the only realistic solution to now existential (for Germany) Jewish question was total extermination of the Jews under German control.

Hence, German occupation of Poland, indeed, made Holocaust inevitable (its most murderous stage – “Holocaust by Gas” – happened on Polish territory). Thus, it became a giant step on the Road to Holocaust – and a colossal slab in the “slab stack” that less than two years later triggered the “Holocaust Avalanche”. Killing four million European Jews.

The invasion of Poland was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak Republic, and the Soviet Union. The German invasion began on September 1, 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union had approved the pact giving Hitler green light.

The Red Army invaded Poland on September 17. The Polish campaign ended on October 6, with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty.

For both Nazi Germany and Bolshevist Soviet Union, it was a brutal colonial war – far more so for the Third Reich. Leaders of the latter ultimately wanted to acquire all Polish territory as their Lebensraum and to enslave all Poles (ruthlessly murdering anyone who might even think of resistance).

However, the whole thing was not as simple as it might seem at the first glance. For starters, the Versailles criminals robbed Germany at gunpoint (let’s call a spade a spade) of 51,000 square kilometers and gave it to Poland.

Austria (in 1939 part of Greater Germany) was forced by the same criminals – this time in Saint-Germain-en-Laye – to cede Austrian Galicia (almost 80,000 square kilometers) to Poland.

Hence, Hitler could justifiably claim that Germany had the moral right to get these territories back – using any and all means available (including the military force). Just as almost a year prior he got back Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia – and no one in the West objected.

Another little-known issue was the persecution of German ethnic minority by the Polish government and radical nationalists in the general public during interwar years (1919-39).

While claims made by Nazi propaganda regarding these persecutions are totally outlandish, the sad truth is that racial (ethnic) policies of supposedly democratic Polish government in reality were not that much different from the Nazis.

The officially stated objective of Polish government and ruling elites was that Poland must become a mono-ethnic, mono-cultural and mono-religious country. Comprised only of Catholics with only Polish blood in their veins.

Everyone else had to leave the country – Germans (mostly Lutheran) to Germany; Ukrainians (mostly Orthodox) to the Soviet Union… actually, that’s exactly what happened after the Second Great War.

To make it happen, the Polish government instituted the policy of (not exactly) “soft” ethnic cleansing both in the West (of Germans) and in the East (Ukrainians). Not exactly because it involved harassment, arsons, assaults… and, yes, murder.

While the actual death toll among Germans in Poland was nowhere near the 58,000 claimed by Nazi Propaganda (it was in the hundreds at most for all interwar years), it still was a casus belli for any nation (the USA would have invaded Mexico over such crimes against Americans in a heartbeat).

It is also worth noting that the first war crime of the Second Great War (it happened on the very day it started – on September 3) was committed… by Poles. During the so-called Bloody Sunday in then Bromberg (now Bydgoszcz) Polish soldiers and civilians brutally murdered around 300 German civilians for no other reason than being German. Which was a local genocide – plain and simple.