By MB.
Some of “MB’s” family were imprisoned in concentration camps under the Hitler regime and then in 1952 fled the communist regime in East Germany. Arriving in Munich they witnessed how those with Nazi beliefs were prominent in post war Germany, in the founding of the European Union and in German politics today.
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Germany has undoubtedly engaged in more genocides than any other nation on earth. In the 20th century alone at least five to six genocides were planned and executed by Germany. Several others, not covered here, were carried out by German allies.
I set out here a short list of German crimes which would certainly qualify as genocides under modern genocide definitions by the United Nations.
This article gives a brief overview of some of those genocides: (i) the Jewish Holocaust, (ii) genocide against Soviet-citizens/Russians, (iii) genocide against Armenians, (iv) genocide against Herero/Nama-tribes, (v) genocide against Poles, etc.
I. The Jewish Holocaust: 1933/1938/1942-1945 – probably the only German genocide known and acknowledged worldwide. Known for its “perfection” of an industrialized extermination of people, for the large-scale murder of children (murdering children by head-shots, by injections, by gassing them, by beating them to death), known for medical experimenting on children, on pregnant women, known for gassing millions to death, for using the bones and hair of the murdered to make soap, using skin of the murdered to make lamps, removing gold teeth from the corpses, robbing and taking-over thousands of family-owned mid-sized companies from those murdered, stealing and hiding hundreds of thousands of pieces of art, paintings, etc., and much more.
The official number of people murdered in the Holocaust is 6 million.
Sources and proof are plenty, and all of them are important. I would also mention one book which would be “Soldaten” by Soenke Neitzel, where the mentality of some of the killers is well described.
II. Genocide against Russian/Soviet citizens 1941-1945.
Although well over 20 million Soviet citizens (mainly Russians and to a large extent civilians, with probably no more than 40% military losses) were victims of the German attack, the extent to which this was planned murder rather than just “collateral” killings in war, is much less known.
This genocide is usually hidden under the “war”-narrative. This in spite of the fact that it is well known that Germany had from the very beginning planned to exterminate up to 100 million Russians (those living in the geographical European part of the Soviet Union), in order to settle a German population up to the Ural-mountains-range.
From the beginning Germany called the war against the Soviet Union an “extermination-war” (“Vernichtungskrieg”). To the knowledge of the author of this article Germany has never recognized the wilful and planned murder of millions of Soviet citizens as genocide – which amounts to nothing else but another attempt at the falsification of history.
There are hints, however, that this genocide had started before the German attack of 1941 in the form of the so called “Ukrainisation” – a partly successful attempt to destroy the identity of the population of what today is Western Ukraine, and replace it with a new, artificial identity.
The Daily Mail in 1919 would publish the following article about this:
“The Ukraine – The old name of an area in Russia … the word ukraine in Russian means “furthest limit, frontier district” … The Germans and Austrians before the war, had secretly supported a Ukraine movement to separate the Ukraine from Russia and make it independent under their protection … German troops marched in on the pretext of liberating the Ukrainians … The Ukraine territory had been made by the Germans to extend into Poland proper, including the Polish province of Kholm. It was now increased by portions of twelve other provinces of Russia, with an area of about 220,000 square miles and a population of 27,000,000, most of whom had never heard of such a country as the Ukraine, and could not understand a word of its dialect. These were successively occupied by the Germans. … The country became a German colony, and German administrators took over control of the railways, and scoured the country for wheat and other forms of food, which were sent to Germany and Austria. … In actual fact, serfdom was re-established in Southern Russia, and any resistance was punished with extreme sternness. … The Germans removed Government after Government which dissatisfied them…..and made General Skoropadsky, who had been brought up in Germany, head of the new State, which was treated as a German dependency … But here, as everywhere else, the Germans rendered themselves insupportable by their brutality … whole villages were burnt down or drenched with gas-shells. On July 30 Field-Marshal Eichhorn, the person responsible for these atrocities was assassinated at Kieff. “
(The Daily Mail yearbook for 1919, page 58, … “Germanys New Vassal-States”)
III. Genocide of the Turks against the Armenians (German advice, planning , etc. )
It is little known that Germany was the driving force behind the Turkish genocide against the Armenians in 1915/1916. Germany provided the idea, the organizational advice, planning and execution advice – not by accident the Turks would carry out the genocide in a similar way to the German 1905/06 genocide in what today is Namibia. (see Ambassador Morgenthau’s story, chapters 24, chapter 12, chapters 1-9)
A few days before the aggression on Poland, Hitler stated: “Who still remembers today the annihilation of the Armenians?” (source: 2010 documentary film on the Armenian genocide, “Aghet- a genocide”, there at minute 79)
As the most able of the Pan Germanists Friedrich Naumann wrote of the massacres: “We see in the Armenia massacres a matter of internal Turkish policy, merely and episode through which a great empire is passing”. And the notorious German Ambassador in Turkey Wangenheim told the US Ambassador there “I shall do nothing whatever for the Armenians” while the German military attache said: “Armenians and Turks cannot live together – one of these races has to go”.
The Turkish leadership, including Talat Pasha, who had orchestrated the genocide against Armenians and other Christians in Turkey was evacuated by the German military in 1918 to Berlin. In 1943 Germany by way of an official act-of-state transported the mortal remains of Talat Pasha back to Turkey.
IV. Genocide against Herero/Nama tribes in South-west Africa (today’s Namibia)
In 1905/1906 Germany would conduct a planned and well organized genocide against the Herero- and Nama-people in todays Namibia (south-west Africa). Up to 100,000 people were rounded up, driven into concentration camps and then forcibly led into the desert to die there. The areas bordering with the desert would be guarded by soldiers so that no one should escape.
At this point it should be also remembered that Turkey would force the Armenians into the Syrian desert in a similar manner committing a most vicious genocide.
There are different sources covering this genocide, one being the 2004 German-language-documentary “Weisse Geister”, director: Martin Baer.
In 2015 the government of the Federal Republic of Germany finally used the term genocide to describe it. Nevertheless, Germany has been continuing to refuse the Herero- and Nama-people negotiations about reparations, and moreover, they remain excluded from economic-aid negotiations between Germany and the Namibian government (the Namibian-government has no members of the Herero and Nama-tribes, both of which are a minority in Namibia today).
The Daily Mail in 1919 published the following article about this genocide:
“… the practical extermination of the tribes… Hereros 1904 – 80,000, 1911 – 15,100 … in other words, 80% of the Herero-people had disappeared … … they had decided upon the practical extinction of the whole tribe … … [von] Trotha had issued an “extermination order” in terms of which no Herero-man, woman, child, or babe – was to receive mercy or quarter. “Kill every one of them”, he said, “and take no prisoners” These orders were only too faithfully carried out. “
“… and proves that the Germans have shown themselves to be totally unfitted for the responsibilities of governing the native races of this or any other territory.”,
(The Daily Mail yearbook for 1919, page 62, …), “German Rule in Africa – Terrible Evidence from Official German Sources”;
V. Genocide against Poles …
“On Aug 22, 1939, a few days before the attack on Poland (which prompted Britain to declare war on Germany), Hitler stated to high officers of the Wehrmacht: “I have set up my skull-and-bone units with orders to kill without pity all people of Polish origin, men, women and children.”, he added, “Who still remembers today the annihilation of the Armenians?”. The Nazis’ merciless extinction of Warsaw in 1944 bears witness to the German hatred of the Poles.
(source: 2010 documentary film on the Armenian genocide, ‘Aghet- a genocide’, there at minute 79)
VI. some other German genocides
There are plenty of sources about other German atrocities which might qualify as genocides as well: including genocides in the Baltic nations, against homosexuals, against disabled people, in Greece, etc. – there is probably no area over which Germany throughout its history had some kind of control, where no genocide was carried out.
VII. German attempts to rewrite history …
The attempt to limit the focus on one genocide (on the Holocaust), instead of on multiple genocides, to build museums only for victims of one genocide, instead of for victims of all German genocides – this is a well planned attempt by the German political class to control the historical narrative and to avoid a horrific historical pattern becoming evident to the world.
The attempt to limit the perception of national-socialism and genocide to the years 1933-1945 by basically saying that German national-socialism started with Hitler’s rise to power, and ended with his death, is certainly the most vicious lie of German revisionism – nor was Hitler the original ideological father of national socialism, nor was he among the long-term profiteers from the national-socialist re-distribution of European wealth (the German families that mainly profiteered from national-socialism economically certainly did not die out in 1945), nor did German national-socialism end in 1945.
Indeed post war research has clearly demonstrated that the Federal Republic of Germany (BRD) was mainly been built up by national-socialist minded people with a past in the NSDAP, SS, or other national-socialist organizations. For example 80% of the members of the German judiciary branch after 1945/1949 had been NSDAP-party-members. It is no wonder that they would acquit each other in thousands and thousands of criminal cases concerning the years 1933 to 1945.
The German judicial system is today still full of national-socialist legal doctrines and pseudo-rationales. Just recently in 2015 the German supreme court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), indirectly, made it clear once again, that it opposes the position of the US Supreme Court (and traditional British law) concerning democracy and the rule of law, and rather sticks to a “German version” of democracy, which structurally-systematically undercuts the rule of law and justice.
It is also a fact (as so clearly demonstrated in Rodney Atkinson’s books “Europe’s Full Circle” “Fascist Europe Rising” and “And into the Fire”) that leading national-socialist figures were instrumental in the building of the European Union (with even their words mimicked by modern “democratic” leaders), which is why the European Union has become a largely Germany-dominated project serving German interests, with a dominant German economy, Germany-influenced judiciary and Germany-influenced notions of “democracy” undercutting civil progress well established in the anglo saxon world and taken up step by step world wide.
Germany has recently stepped up efforts, little by little, to rewrite history – one example is the attempt to call Auschwitz a “Polish concentration camp” (the German state-run television ZDF did that recently, which caused an outcry in Poland, so that Poland would eventually enact a law making the expression “Polish concentration camp” punishable under criminal law). Among other “older” efforts are to focus public attention on the Holocaust only. The goal clearly is that other genocides shall not be examined, and that the pattern of Germany as a genocide-nation and as a multiple offender remains hidden.
To sum up this article …
Germany has recognized the Holocaust as a genocide against Jews basically on merely political considerations, i.e. as it had no other choice – recognition most probably was a precondition by the Allies to allow Germany to continue to exist as a self-administered country.
(2) Germany has not recognized the Armenian genocide and its leading involvement in it. Germany has not recognized the probably largest genocide in numbers: against the Soviet-/Russian people.
(3) The German government in 2015 (after 110 years) has finally acknowledged the Herero-genocide, but has been continuing to refuse to talk to Herero and/or Nama representatives about any reparations. Moreover, Germany would negotiate with the Namibian government about economic help, fully aware of the fact that Herero people who today are a minority in their country are not part of the Namibian government, and thus are excluded from having a say in their own people’s tragic history and genocide. In January 2017 the Herero people filed a lawsuit against Germany in the United States. We must also remember that only 10 years later Turkey, then Germany’s ally, would mimic the Herero genocide in the extermination of Armenians.
(4) Germany today is still consciously living on the wealth that was acquired by its citizens and corporations in the years 1935-1945: thousands of expropriated companies, hundreds of thousands of art pieces ,paintings, etc, hundreds of thousands of properties, also gold, land, and so on. The former owners were either murdered or if they survived being refused restitution (in 2013 in an ordinary Munich-apartment around 1000 stolen paintings stolen by the Nazis were found, hidden there since 1945 – Bavaria/Germany refused restitution initially, so that in 2014 an 88-year-old Holocaust-survivor by name David Toren filed lawsuits against Germany and Bavaria in the United States). Germany like no other nation is literally living on bones and blood, on stolen property from the Nazi exterminations. Moreover, Germany has in many cases turned the stolen property into corporate-fascist-mega-cartels, in order to dominate entire markets – in Europe, Britain and worldwide.
(5) in Germany today, not only army barracks are named after high-ranking national-socialists from the Hitler-era, but even universities bear the name of leading SS-figures: The “Otto-Beisheim-School of Management” bears the name of Otto Beisheim, who was a leading SS-figure, and who was said to have helped many other perpetrators to escape to Latin-America after 1945. An SS-man turned into a manager and a model for a leading German business-school!
(6) A common narrative among average Germans today is: “other countries have also done this. Like the extinction of the indians in America.” Such national-socialist mind-set among many Germans today is extraordinary – and it is obvious that those parts of the German population bearing such opinions and drawing such outrageous comparisons are indeed beyond the reach of reason.
(7) The German genocides date back before the rise of Adolf Hitler, so we can clearly understand that German national-socialism neither started with Adolf Hitler (who most probably did not even have the mental capacity to develop an elaborate ideology), nor did German national-socialism end with Adolf Hitler.
A German hegemony over Europe would always be a national-socialist dominance over Europe – in what ever form it might try to appear. Uniquely dangerous but clearly totally unacceptable!
The German psyche currently finds its expression for example in the mass movements of impoverished European citizens from Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, the Baltic countries, Bulgaria, Romania, etc., as the German Euro together with German business-cartels and German political leverage destroy European economies, destroy European judicial systems and national social and health systems – all reflecting in a slightly different form an attack on civilization as such. Mass migrations, mass suicides in Greece and thousands of premature deaths in bankrupt Euro countries are all too reminiscent of some horrors of the German past.
A German atomic bomb is an even more sickening thought, but theoretically entirely possible within a short period with the right kind of political support. Not much has changed, and Germany has remained what it always has been, with influential circles in control of the economy and in the judiciary that have adopted systems and beliefs which dominated when the Kaiser ruled, at the time of the Herero- and Armenian-genocides and when Hitler rose to power.
And had it not been for around 50,000 to 80,000 US-troops permanently stationed in Germany since 1945, and several countries surrounding Germany with nuclear-deterrence, the true German face might have become visible again very quickly …
