Did Germany suffer its own "holocaust" during WW2? Certainly, many innocent, or more or less innocent people died in the latter stages of the war, and immediately after. Civilians were killed during the massive bombing campaigns of the British and American air forces. The death toll on some of these raids may have topped that of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Refugees poured westward from the Russian front, and out of occupied countries, seeking perceived better treatment in the US and British zones of occupation. Many died along the way of exposure or starvation, or were killed by various militias or others taking retribution for Nazi crimes. Some have fixed a number of 2 million for the total non-combatants that lost their lives. The writer Gunter Grass publicised one incident, the sinking of the refugee ship the Wilhelm Gustoff, in his writings about the era. This was perhaps the worst maritime disaster ever, with a loss of life somewhere between 6-10,000 civilians, mostly women and children.

But the Wilhelm Gustoff is not a well known name, nor are other similar events from the time commonly remarked upon. These events have received scant exposure, at least until fairly recently. The reasons why are, of course, obvious. Germany committed horrendous crimes itself, and so matching retribution should not come as a surprise, many might say. Feelings of guilt in Germany made it awkward to bring up some of these issues after the war.

The question comes up though, what is fair in these sorts of situations, if fair is a word that has much utility. Those that put themselves in harm's way must expect some danger, but there were many who didn't fit this categorey. It also gets one pondering the fuzzy line between collateral damage, as it is now called, and war crimes. How, exactly, to deal with a nation in which very many have done awful things, and it is hard to know just how complicit each citizen is.......or isn't? If individuals express loyalty to such a regime, although perhaps not knowing all the details of its actions, do they share a portion of guilt? How much?

No, it wasn't a "holocaust.
No, the sinking of the Wilhem Gustloff wasn't similar to holocaust casualties - the military personnel onboard being evacuated made that a legitimate military target.

Certainly there were too many innocent casualties - but 1) it was the nature of war at the time and 2) a large part of the blame was due to placing major industry within civil centers.

At that time it was accurate bombing to take out half a city to destroy a single factory.

This is an interesting topic, but I'm not sure 'holocaust' is the correct term.

To my thinking, it is necessary to divide the issue into two time periods; the final few months of the war, up to May 1945 and
the years after that.
The first few months of 1945 saw some of the most violent episodes in human history. The bombing of Dresden and other cities, the Soviet January offensive,the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff and other refugee ships, the storming of Berlin, the destruction of the German armies along the Baltic. It was Germans who were mostly the victims of this spasm of violence, as opposed to earlier phases of the war in Europe.

And then, in the period after May 1945, when Germans were expelled (ethically cleansed) from both historical German lands. (Konigsberg, now Kalliningrad, Breslau, now Wroclaw) and from other lands with a long history of German presence. (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Silesia and so on)
12 million Germans were uprooted in the period 1945-1947, with approximately 2 million deaths.
Millions of German men remained in prison camps in Russia,in dire conditions, until well into the 1950's.

Now, I am not excusing the crimes of the Nazis. I differentiate Nazi militarism and genocide from allied war winning tactics. Put simply, for the Western allies, the concept was 'If we win, the killing stops.' Whereas, for the Nazis, the concept and practice was: 'If we win, the killing starts.'

But, in all fairness, the sufferings of the Germans in the final few months of the war and for several years afterward cannot be simply excused under 'VAE VICTIS'. Violent death, starvation, exposure and dispossession were facts of life for millions of Germans for several years after the war actually ended.

Over the years, in meeting German people, I have been very impressed by the candor of Germans in dealing with the crimes of the Nazis. As 'victor nations' we should, I believe, be equally candid in acknowledging the sufferings of the German people, and appreciative of their reinvention of themselves as true Europeans and good neighbors.

For anyone interested in looking at the war in Europe from the point of view of the losers I recommend the following books.

Homecomings. Returning POW'S and the Legacy of Defeat in Postwar Germany. Frank Biess

A Terrible Revenge. The Ethnic Cleansing of East European Germans. Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

After the Reich. The Brutal History of Allied Occupation. Giles MacDonough

The Eastern Front. 1941-45 German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare. Omer Bartov

T[i]he Fall of Berlin. [/i]Anthony Beevor

The Cruellest Night Christopher Dobson, John Miller and Ronald Payne

The bombing of Dresden has been blown out of all proportions. 30 000 died in the bombing, which for a WW2 bombing was really nothing special.

Certainly there are innocent casualties in conflicts of this magnitude, and given the bombing technology of the time.

But this question really goes deeper than that. As horrendous as the bombing campaign was (and it was not aimed at factories towards the end in many cases, but intended to emcompass whole cities, regardless of bombsight technology), the greatest number of deaths were very personal. It was the eviction of German civilians from former national territory in the east, and in the Sudetenland that topped the list, according to many historians. Some of these were killed outright, by individuals or militias getting even for German actions during the war, or died of starvation or exposure during the eviction process.

The question arises as to who in modern war is responsible for actions taken by a countries leadership. Saying all are seems a gross simplification, but if not all, then who? Farmers have an essential job, for example, producing food for industrial workers and the military- are they part of the equation? How about doctors- surely an essential part of society?

The label we put on this depends on how such arithmetic is calculated.

The overall destruction of the two World Wars were probably the prime drivers to the modern thought that civilians were innocent victims of war and shouldn't be targeted. Before that rolling hard over innocent civilians, and engaging in serious tit-for-tat retribution against the losing civilians, were expected techniques of waging war.

Also, it should be remembered that the Germans who suffered during and at the end of the war were countrymen to those who had started the whole damn thing. They are in no way similar to the completely innocent Jews from Polish ghettos who were invaded, subjugated, rounded up and murdered.

Applying a later morality, that civilians are innocent and all reasonable efforts must be taken to protect them, then determining that the bombing raids against German and Japanese cities were war crimes akin to the Holocaust is simply bad logic - you might as well declare that the reprisals against civilians in the Hundred Years War were akin to the Holocaust.

Weaver wrote:The overall destruction of the two World Wars were probably the prime drivers to the modern thought that civilians were innocent victims of war and shouldn't be targeted. Before that rolling hard over innocent civilians, and engaging in serious tit-for-tat retribution against the losing civilians, were expected techniques of waging war.

I'm not sure that this is accurate. Certainly there were horrible atrocities all through past history, but even going back as far as the 18th century, we can see some attitudes emerging that sought to limit war. The Geneva Conventions starting in 1864 also attempted to address the limitation of war. Even in WW2, bad as it was, there was some trepidation at first about how ruthless a party should be, certainly when retaliation was possible. The cycle of violence increased during the war, and some of the most bloody events came near the end. And since WW2 there have been no end of civilian casualties in war.

Weaver wrote:
Also, it should be remembered that the Germans who suffered during and at the end of the war were countrymen to those who had started the whole damn thing. They are in no way similar to the completely innocent Jews from Polish ghettos who were invaded, subjugated, rounded up and murdered.

This brings us to the core issue. What constitutes reasonable guilt, and hence reasonable treatment? You make the point that they were all Germans, all countrymen- is that enough? If it is, then every retired grandma in Florida, and every paperboy in New York is a legitimate target for those that feel they have a grievence for American military actions. Those that committed the crimes against Jews and Poles definitely deserve retribution of some sort, but where is the line for those that had the most peripheral connection to these events, like only having the same ethnicity?

Weaver wrote:

Applying a later morality, that civilians are innocent and all reasonable efforts must be taken to protect them, then determining that the bombing raids against German and Japanese cities were war crimes akin to the Holocaust is simply bad logic - you might as well declare that the reprisals against civilians in the Hundred Years War were akin to the Holocaust.

Don't get me wrong here, I am neither trying to limit the impact of the horrendous crimes of Nazi Germany, nor condeming the bombing campaign against Germany. My interest is- where is the line that is crossed from unfortunate tragedy to criminality? And how easily can one lump together readily identifyable groups, and condem them all, despite the huge variation we will see in any large population. It's easy to say "they did it, so it's on them", but the "they" part can be complex.

Rome Existed wrote:The bombing of Dresden has been blown out of all proportions. 30 000 died in the bombing, which for a WW2 bombing was really nothing special.

According to German historians it was less, probably around 18,000 no more than 25,000, it was special though, well Churchill thought so.

On a separate note, people always refer to Hiroshima or Nagasaki when talking about death toll, but the firebombing of Tokyo was much worse...

Weaver wrote:Also, it should be remembered that the Germans who suffered during and at the end of the war were countrymen to those who had started the whole damn thing. They are in no way similar to the completely innocent Jews from Polish ghettos who were invaded, subjugated, rounded up and murdered.

Read 'Downfall' by Anthony Beevor which goes into terrible detail about the Russian's victory over Germany based on personal testimony and Russian/German records... all I could think was, what if my little girls had been born in Berlin/East Germany at the end of WW2, what would have been their guilt? It really effected me, it wasn't that the Nazis and their supporters didn't deserve it, but what about those caught up in a situation of lawlessness.

On the question 'Did Germany suffer its own "holocaust" during WW2?' Yes, read Anthony Beevor's 'Stalingrad' and realise that Hitler sacrificed a whole army, then read 'Downfall' by the same author and realise he did the same to the civs of Germany... Hitler's holocaust wasn't just racial.

There are several pitfalls when dealing with this topic, the main one being some kind of attempt to equate the victims of Nazism with the German victims of the allies.
This line of thinking is, to my mind, not acceptable or justified.
(Not that anyone here has toyed with that line of thought I'm glad to say, but I've come across it on other forums.)

There was certainly a move by the Nazi authorities towards the end of the war to publicize and over-exaggerate German losses.
The incidents at Nemmersdorf were milked for all they were worth by the Nazi propaganda machine, and the deliberate exaggeration of the number of dead at Dresden was a cynical ploy by Goebbels and his underlings to 'stiffen' German resolve and, with astonishing gall, place Germany as a 'victim' nation.
(Far from the 140,000 claimed by the Nazis, the accepted figure by respectable historians is 25,000-30,000. (See "Dresden" By Frederick Taylor for a good overview of the attacks and their aftermath. Mind you, 25,000 people burned to death in a 24 hour period is enough horror for me to be to be going on with.)

Weaver, you voiced your own views with soldiery pragmatism and, although I come from a slightly different direction I'm inclined to agree with the thrust of what you said, if I have understood you correctly, in that equating anything with the holocaust is faulty logic. Using the emotionally loaded word 'Holocaust' to refer to anything else than the Hitlerian genocide of Jews serves no purpose in discussing the morality of what happened elsewhere in the war.

So, to my mind, 'holocaust' is not a useful term in discussing what happened in Germany to Germans in the final few months of World War Two, and, crucially, in the few years immediately afterward.

But that is not to say we should not engage in discussion of the facts and morality of those events.
In the same way that there is a desire for Germans to be open and honest about their history, that is, neither to engage in the insult of denial, nor sweep the past away in oblivion and forgetfulness, we, as victor nations should also be wary of any attempts to underplay,downplay, ignore or explain away German suffering with platitudes of the 'they got what they deserved' kind of thinking, however tempting.
'They' were human beings too, and herein lies the crucial difference between the Western allies and the Nazis in the perception of what or who the enemy were.

don't get me started wrote:There are several pitfalls *snip*

I've met several Germans who suffered at the end of the war and during the aftermath (rape, ethnic cleansing, forced labour), but given what had happened and the general dehumanization on all sides, it was an unfortunate effect of Nazi policy. Even Hitler thought the Germans got what they deserved when they turned out to not be the invincible superhumans he had hoped for.

Rome Existed wrote:The bombing of Dresden has been blown out of all proportions. 30 000 died in the bombing, which for a WW2 bombing was really nothing special.

Tell that to my mother in law ,she was there ... and lost most of her hearing !

As a franco german family ,in both wars they had family fighting each other . She was caught on the wrong side at the beginning of WWII and spent most of the war years teaching french to german officers in Dresden .
One day an officer gave her a bag of potatoes and telling her to make her way back to France as fast as she could , the russians were coming...

vsop44 wrote:

Rome Existed wrote:The bombing of Dresden has been blown out of all proportions. 30 000 died in the bombing, which for a WW2 bombing was really nothing special.

Tell that to my mother in law ,she was there ... and lost most of her hearing !

As a franco german family ,in both wars they had family fighting each other . She was caught on the wrong side at the beginning of WWII and spent most of the war years teaching french to german officers in Dresden .
One day an officer gave her a bag of potatoes and telling her to make her way back to France as fast as she could , the russians were coming...

Your mother in law being there doesn't mean it beats Tokyo's 200 000 dead, or 140 000 dead from both of the atomic bombings. Just because you know someone who was there doesn't change how it compares. A baby elephant is not larger than an adult elephant just because you've touched a baby elephant.

Although the firebombing of Tokyo and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, do in one sense 'beat' Dresden, i.e. in the strictly numerical sense, I'm sure there was not much to choose from in terms of what it was actually like to experience the events first hand.
Being on the receiving end of large scale, organised violence and witnessing violent death in the scale of tens of thousands is, I would imagine, pretty much the same, regardless of the final tally of the butcher's bill.

I'm pretty sure rebuilding is easier if you lose less though and that surely counts.

The overall destruction of the two World Wars were probably the prime drivers to the modern thought that civilians were innocent victims of war and shouldn't be targeted. Before that rolling hard over innocent civilians, and engaging in serious tit-for-tat retribution against the losing civilians, were expected techniques of waging war.

I don't know where you got this, but it's false. Attacking an entire population is actually a fairly recent war choice. The Empires of old were created by capturing and utilizing existing peoples in other territories. Gaining control over other people in order to use them as supporting resources was often the whole POINT of wars of conquest.

The thought of applying the word "holocaust" to any large group of civilian deaths seems to be politically motivated. An attempt to deflate it's value in association with the mass murder and attempted genocide by the Germans against various peoples during WW2.

igorfrankensteen wrote:

The overall destruction of the two World Wars were probably the prime drivers to the modern thought that civilians were innocent victims of war and shouldn't be targeted. Before that rolling hard over innocent civilians, and engaging in serious tit-for-tat retribution against the losing civilians, were expected techniques of waging war.

I don't know where you got this, but it's false. Attacking an entire population is actually a fairly recent war choice. The Empires of old were created by capturing and utilizing existing peoples in other territories. Gaining control over other people in order to use them as supporting resources was often the whole POINT of wars of conquest.

From recorded history ie the Assyrians, cities' civs have been the target of death and enslavement just like the Nazis in World War 2.

The thought of applying the word "holocaust" to any large group of civilian deaths seems to be politically motivated. An attempt to deflate it's value in association with the mass murder and attempted genocide by the Germans against various peoples during WW2.

You are refering to The Holocaust, a holocaust is massive death and or destruction as in 'nuclear holocaust'. To me your objections seem motivated?

You might be interested in some of John Sack's articles describing the post-war concentration camps for German civilians run by Jews (some of the concentration camp survivors). If you've ever harboured the sentiment that being a victim (or even having a shared heritage with victims) makes people morally pure/unable to pour petrol on random kids because they're German and set light to it, prepare to be disabused.

Can't find the direct link to the article, but this page on his website describing Germans and Jews who refuse to believe other Germans/Jews could have done such things is interesting and perhaps pertinent:

http://www.johnsack.com/daniel_in_the_deniers_den_4.htm

Here's the wiki article for the book (not the article describing the writing of the book):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Eye_for ... ns_in_1945

Marios

I saw the 'holocaust exhibition' at the Imperial War Musuem, today (London). It clarified my thoughts on the matter: how anyone can compare the cold and insane treatment of the Jewish people, et al, with [German] civilian deaths brought about through bombing, is beyond me. It's a bit like comparing Jack the Ripper with Robin Hood, I think. Killing people can sometimes be justified [perhaps] (hence the death penalty, for instance). We also have to remember that it had been Germany's policy to bomb the British populace into submission as early as 1940 - but I wouldn't class this as a holocaust, since Hitler wouldn't have carried on killing Brits had he achieved sovereignity over them. In other words, he killed Brits for reasons other than them being Brits.

... In my opinion, the word 'holocaust' should be reserved for the murder of a people - borne of a pure hatred for those people - as opposed to the murder of people to achieve nothing but victory in a war.

Usually, warmongerors kill for greedy/selfish reasons. The Roman massacre of Jews which culminated with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, for instance, was about the preservation of Roman power - and had nothing to do with the desire to butcher Jews for the love of doing so. As such - in line with my own thinking of how we should define 'holocaust' - that should not be defined as a holocaust. In fact, if the Romans had had the same mentality as the Germans did, then the Jews would have ceased to exist as a people, since the Jews lacked the power to resist.

Ultimately, the German people as a whole were Hitler's power. You cannot get away with atrocities such as Kristallnacht unless the populace as a whole lets you do so. In a sense, the German people as a whole were guilty - so that the German people as a whole were the enemy.

War stinks, but if a society as a whole allows for [and instigates] a situation whereby other races/peoples/nations suffer, then we should not call it 'a holocaust' when difficulties whip-back on those instigators as a whole - and not just the military who do their bidding. Would we have called it a holocaust if the airforce of Israel had bombed Rome in AD 70? Of course not. We'd have called it a desperate attempt to win a war. Indeed, had they done so, the bombing would have stopped. One has to wonder what would have happened to the Jews had Hitler won. Certainly, having seen what I saw today, there is no doubt in my mind that he would have culled the whole lot.

... That, is the difference between a holocaust and any other attrocities you might wish to associate with war.

jamest wrote:I saw the 'holocaust exhibition' at the Imperial War Musuem, today (London). It clarified my thoughts on the matter: how anyone can compare the cold and insane treatment of the Jewish people, et al, with [German] civilian deaths brought about through bombing, is beyond me. It's a bit like comparing Jack the Ripper with Robin Hood, I think. Killing people can sometimes be justified [perhaps] (hence the death penalty, for instance). We also have to remember that it had been Germany's policy to bomb the British populace into submission as early as 1940 - but I wouldn't class this as a holocaust, since Hitler wouldn't have carried on killing Brits had he achieved sovereignity over them. In other words, he killed Brits for reasons other than them being Brits.

... In my opinion, the word 'holocaust' should be reserved for the murder of a people - borne of a pure hatred for those people - as opposed to the murder of people to achieve nothing but victory in a war.

Usually, warmongerors kill for greedy/selfish reasons. The Roman massacre of Jews which culminated with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, for instance, was about the preservation of Roman power - and had nothing to do with the desire to butcher Jews for the love of doing so. As such - in line with my own thinking of how we should define 'holocaust' - that should not be defined as a holocaust. In fact, if the Romans had had the same mentality as the Germans did, then the Jews would have ceased to exist as a people, since the Jews lacked the power to resist.

Ultimately, the German people as a whole were Hitler's power. You cannot get away with atrocities such as Kristallnacht unless the populace as a whole lets you do so. In a sense, the German people as a whole were guilty - so that the German people as a whole were the enemy.

War stinks, but if a society as a whole allows for [and instigates] a situation whereby other races/peoples/nations suffer, then we should not call it 'a holocaust' when difficulties whip-back on those instigators as a whole - and not just the military who do their bidding. Would we have called it a holocaust if the airforce of Israel had bombed Rome in AD 70? Of course not. We'd have called it a desperate attempt to win a war. Indeed, had they done so, the bombing would have stopped. One has to wonder what would have happened to the Jews had Hitler won. Certainly, having seen what I saw today, there is no doubt in my mind that he would have culled the whole lot.

... That, is the difference between a holocaust and any other attrocities you might wish to associate with war.

The IRA comes looking for you James, because after all, you're responsible for the some of the more controversial aspects of the prosecution of the war in Northern Ireland, are you not? There may also be loyalists from Libya on the lookout for you- be careful when you go outdoors- because of your participation in the bombing campaign against Tripoli. There may also be some folks from Iraq looking for an internet poster named James. And why not? You're a Brit, so by your logic you are as responsible for everything your government has done as they are.

By this logic, the old grandmas fleeing eastern Germany in 1945 were as guilty as Hitler. Eight year old boys were also genocidal killers. POW's of course, we don't need to mention.