Corneel wrote:The concept of war crimes was already under significant development:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_1907
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions

While the concept of crimes against humanity was less developed, the term had been used to describe the practices of the regime of Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo Free State and the genocide of the Armenians.

A genocide of Jews (and other undesirables) limited to Germany and territories annexed before the outbreak of war would also have had a lesser impact. About half of all Jews killed in the Genocide where from Poland (about 3 million), and Jews from Soviet territories occupied by Nazi Germany (about a 1,5 million) account for another quarter or so. The combined Jewish population of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia did not even amount to half a million.

We could also expect that, it being peace time, more jews would have been able to escape.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:On the other side of the question, I don't think the Allies would intervene, given how they were loathe to interfere when entire countries were being invaded.

chairman bill wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:On the other side of the question, I don't think the Allies would intervene, given how they were loathe to interfere when entire countries were being invaded.

You mean like the UK declared war on Germany as soon as they invaded Poland?

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

Corneel wrote:The concept of war crimes was already under significant development:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_1907
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions

While the concept of crimes against humanity was less developed, the term had been used to describe the practices of the regime of Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo Free State and the genocide of the Armenians.

A genocide of Jews (and other undesirables) limited to Germany and territories annexed before the outbreak of war would also have had a lesser impact. About half of all Jews killed in the Genocide where from Poland (about 3 million), and Jews from Soviet territories occupied by Nazi Germany (about a 1,5 million) account for another quarter or so. The combined Jewish population of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia did not even amount to half a million.

We could also expect that, it being peace time, more jews would have been able to escape.

On the other side of the question, I don't think the Allies would intervene, given how they were loathe to interfere when entire countries were being invaded.

Corneel wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

Corneel wrote:The concept of war crimes was already under significant development:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_1907
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions

While the concept of crimes against humanity was less developed, the term had been used to describe the practices of the regime of Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo Free State and the genocide of the Armenians.

A genocide of Jews (and other undesirables) limited to Germany and territories annexed before the outbreak of war would also have had a lesser impact. About half of all Jews killed in the Genocide where from Poland (about 3 million), and Jews from Soviet territories occupied by Nazi Germany (about a 1,5 million) account for another quarter or so. The combined Jewish population of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia did not even amount to half a million.

We could also expect that, it being peace time, more jews would have been able to escape.

On the other side of the question, I don't think the Allies would intervene, given how they were loathe to interfere when entire countries were being invaded.

Well, that's more or less my point by saying that a genocide limited to German controlled territories as they were before the invasion of Poland would have a lesser impact. Not only in terms of the number of people killed, but also in terms of the reactions.

I now also see that this scenario ("return of the Versailles territories") would require Poland and France to part with the parts of of their territory that formerly belonged to the German Empire, which included important industrialised areas and, for Poland, its access to the sea. It's extremely unlikely that either would have parted with these territories without a war as both were fairly powerful countries in their own right, however weary they might have been of war.

Not only that but the Lebensraum part of Nazi ideology practically required war to its east and it's highly unlikely that anything that Poland could or would have given would have ever satisfied Hitler who was mainly looking for an excuse to attack Poland via his different claims and complaints about the treatment of ethnic Germans.

So the scenario is extremely unlikely, and would not have resulted in anything on the scale of the holocaust as it took place. The holocaust as it took place is hard to imagine without expansionist policies and ambitions of Nazi Germany to its east and they are very much intertwined (and let's not forget that a large part of the non jewish victims of the Holocaust were Poles and other ethnic Slavs).