FACT VERSUS OPINION: What did Germans and Austrians know, during the war, about the concentration camps?
There has been an exchange between a reader and myself about what Germans and Austrians did or didn’t know, during the war, about the concentration camps.
She holds that, based on what she heard from a very good honest German who fled Germany BEFORE the war, that Germans knew about the camps or anyway knew that something nefarious was going on.
I hold this is false, based first and foremost on what my father told me, that he - a young teen in Austria - did not know, and in fact that no one around him knew. Information about the camps was not broadcast, but hidden. People were told Jews were taken into custody for safe-keeping. I have, as an adult, also heard this from other sources.
The end of the reader’s answer:
Elsa, I've read Weisel and many of the best memoirs by survivors these last few years, plus viewed many documentaries. I disagree with your opinion.
The end of my response:
I am not giving opinion. I am giving facts - the fact of what my father knew, the fact also of what the people around him heard on the Nazi-controlled media, facts about what Nazi media was sending out (you can check into this) …
You believe my father was lying. You are entitled to hold whatever opinions you like.
This morning, I got an email from a friend whose family emigrated from Germany to Canada in 1955:
My father was drafted into the German army in 1942 and fought until it was over. He never heard of any camps and the lies in our history books compared to his and my mother’s tales, had so many contradictions that I spent my high school years disputing the lies and being kicked out of history class constantly.
The winners print the stories and the losers suffer outrageous attacks.
In 1957 we had a rock thrown through our window with a message of Nazis go home.
Canadian tolerance wasn’t a thing back then for me or other Germans.
Sincerely,
Jurgen
If Jurgen's father never heard of any camps, that means that, almost certainly, likewise around him none of the other soldiers heard of any camps. That goes with what my father (a few years younger, so he did not get into the army) told me: that he never heard of any camps, not from the news, not from anyone.
In fact, it was devastating for him to find out, after the war, that everyone in the one Jewish family in his village was killed.
If you want the full exchange between the reader and myself, it’s in the comments below the post. I will give the link again at the end:
truthsummit.substack.com/p/what-really-happened-at-the-rhine-meadows-camps
The reader leaps, for instance, from a fact about her good honest German friend - “He quite literally had relatives who knew and supported the Third Reich” - to her belief that people knew what was happening for reasons such as that she had “watched footage of Jewish people rounded up in ghettos, public squares, in train stations.”
My answer was that I have no idea even about what is going on in the train station of the closest city. In fact, I haven’t been near that train station - or any other - for years. Also it’s an enormous leap from seeing people rounded up, to believing they’re being taken to a camp to be killed.
But yes, there definitely was widespread anti-Semitism - as there was throughout the West.
On the other hand, did people know about the camps? According to reading I have done, until 1942, Hitler was trying to find a country, like Liberia, where the Jews could be shipped.
A big question. How to cool down and sort through the facts.
By the way, about yesterday’s post on the 2 very different accounts of what happened in the Rhine Meadows camps for German prisoners of war, my sense is that the weight of the evidence is that James Bacque’s account - that a large number of German POWs died - is fact-based.
Note that if you are in the UK, you can’t access Bacque’s video, Other Losses. It is blocked as hate speech!!! My suggestion to the people who wrote about this was that VPN might be helpful. It enables you to relocate your computer (in the virtual world) to another country which can give you access to see the film. My main suggestion: see both films for yourself, also do further research.
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Here again is the full exchange which sparked this post. You can find it in the comments right below the post:
What really happened at the Rhine Meadows Camps? In the world of "narratives," how do we figure that out?
Here are 2 utterly different accounts of what happened in the American-run prisoner of war camps for German soldiers. In one account, about one million German soldiers (out of about 5 million) died of starvation, dehydration, lack of shelter and consequent illnesses. In the other account, a few thousand (out of about 3 million) German prisoners of war d…
Posted November 15, 2023
A comment from a reader:
A couple of yrs ago I questioned now a close friend, originally an older colleague, born in 1933, about the end of the war in Bavaria. She said she, and her mother, were shocked to the core to learn of the atrocities in the concentration camps.
THAT IS WHAT MY FATHER ALSO TOLD ME. He was especially devastated to learn that A classmate - a friend - had been killed, along with the whole family. This was personal. I believe his classmate’s name was Ernst.
Here is a comment from a reader. He has given me permission to post it (with no name):
I write regarding your recent email: 'balanced reporting' (BBC style!) of the Rhine Meadows Camps following your preceding email which highlighted the film 'Other Losses'.
I am neither a scholar nor an historian but I did spend a lot of time 'researching/investigating' - looking for - the truth of the all-pervading 20th century [Western] history narrative. Although I did not come across Bacque's film I did come to know of the Rhine Meadows Camps.
Bacque tells the story broadly as I know it ... from the internet!
I thank God that the hit piece video by the court historian was short. Surely no one is taken in by his shilling?
This link https://x22report.com/aiovg_videos/harley-schlanger-soros-global-bankers-are-attempting-to-destroy-nationalism-patriots-are-rising-up/ is to a recent (in the last few days) interview with Harley Schlanger of The LaRouche Organisation. Harley now lives in Germany. Please listen for a couple of minutes from the four minute mark. Harley says (in passing) that the Germans were subjected to a psychological operation by the Allies post WWII to eradicate any sense of national pride in the German people. You may know this already. The information hardly comes as a surprise.
In fact, there's no reason to suppose the psychological operation has ended or that such post WWII psychological operations were limited to Germany. On the contrary, there is every reason to suspect that post WWII psychological operations were broader in scope from the outset and continue to this day. The Rhine Meadows Camps hit-piece would appear to confirm the suspicion.
The court historian states that there was no German government after the war. This is factually incorrect. If there is any doubt that this 'historian' is other than a fully paid up member of the dis-information machine, this error alone gives the game away, At the very least, he has failed to check the evidence - the most basic of facts.
This link http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p305_Thompson.html is to a lengthy essay from the late nineteen eighties which you may be disincline to read in full but it's salient point is made without undue delay. I'll summarise (and perhaps to pique your curiosity): Adolf Hitler's final act as German's Chancellor was to appoint a successor - Grand Admiral Karl Donitz. Donitz immediately set about forming a government.
Governments do not lose wars, armies lose wars and governments govern according to the prevailing circumstances. The Donitz government negotiated the surrender of the German forces to the Allied powers. Soon thereafter, the entire Donitz government was kidnapped by the Americans, at which point US, Britain, France and USSR became a government in occupation. This occupation persists to this day - Germany is not a sovereign nation state. Today, and since the dissolution of USSR, Germany is occupied by US, Britain and France.
I hope you find this information helpful!
I DID FIND IT HELPFUL!! I VERY MUCH APPRECIATE IT!