Study: Western intelligence failed to anticipate Holocaust

[Violet_Crumble]

Western communications intelligence failed to uncover Nazi Germany's preparations before World War II, or its efforts during the war to annihilate European Jewry, claims a new study of the American National Security Agency (NSA), published this week in Washington.

The failure was mainly a result of the Nazis' extreme caution in using telephone and wireless communications for messages pertaining to the annihilation, said the NSA, which is responsible for the collection, decryption and analysis of communications messages.

Despite the negligible contribution of communications intelligence to revealing the Holocaust atrocities in real time, the intercepted communications are still valuable as research materials, because the Nazis systematically destroyed all records of the annihilation in their defeat.

The study, entitled "Eavesdropping on Hell: Western Communications Intelligence and the Holocaust, 1939-1945," by Robert J. Hanyok, was published by the historical division of the NSA, and brought to the attention of the Israeli public by Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

One of the study's conclusions, which is not original but is still earthshaking if one considers its official status, is that anti-Semitism in the ranks of the political, security and intelligence establishments in the West, and in Britain in particular, caused the information about the destruction of European Jewry to be received skeptically and even with indifference.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/586767.html

[Maple]

1. Or they could have just read

Mein Kampf

[Behind the Aegis]

2. Makes one wonder...

...what else is Western intelligence failing to anticipate!? Of course, I also wonder, even if they had known, would they have cared?

[Violet_Crumble]

8. I don't understand how they could have anticipated the Holocaust...

The article says: 'Western communications intelligence failed to uncover Nazi Germany's preparations before World War II, or its efforts during the war to annihilate European Jewry,...'

Wouldn't it have been impossible to anticipate preparations for the Holocaust prior to WWII, considering it wasn't until after the invasion of the USSR that Hitler set plans in motion to exterminate European Jewry? Should the growing and disturbing rise in persecution of German Jews after the rise to power of the Nazis have set off warning signals in Britain and other countries? Considering a large number of German Jews saw enough to flee Germany before it was too late, and that even though the Nazis did make attempts to hide the persecution from the outside world (eg, the 1936 Olympics where all signs of anti-semitism were temporarily wiped), enough foreigners were returning from Germany with stories about the mistreatment of Jews that governments could not help but notice...

As for whether anti-semitism played any great role in Western intelligence not uncovering efforts while the Holocaust was happening, I don't agree with it. If that was the case, why did Britain once it had enough information about what was happening (I think it was from around 1943 onwards) continually broadcast to German audiences what it knew of the Holocaust, along with warnings that the German public wouldn't be above punishment. Why did the RAF drop leaflets over German cities with the same information and warnings? Why did the British Parliament have a silence in memory of those who'd already died? If anti-semitism played a big part in what happened, none of that would have happened, because there would have been a near to zero care factor. While anti-semitism existed, that doesn't automatically mean it was all on the same murderous level as that of the Nazis who planned and carried out the Holocaust. If it had been, Hitler would have had no qualms about being honest with the German population about the Holocaust. He wasn't and he was quoted as saying he thought the German people were too selfish and soft to know what had to be done, etc. Once people found out, they did tend to give a shit about the Holocaust, and that explains the manifestations of Western guilt (in that they should have known sooner and acted more decisively) that have happened ever since...

Violet...

[The Magistrate]

3. That Last, Ma'am, Is Very True

It takes an effort to realize how saturated with casual Anti-Semitism western culture, and particularly the upper classes of the western countries, were in the early decades of the twentieth century. Nazism, once its excesses were manifest and undeniable, gave te thing rather a bad name, and passed it out of polite company and conversation.

Hitler's speechifying against Jews really did not look or sound much different than the sort of thing some European politicians had been doing for decades. Even a thing like Krysallnacht was not much different than pogroms conducted not long before in the Ukraine. His declarations Jews were responsible for Communism was the common wisdom of a whole political class at the upper reaches of European and U.S. society, shared by luminaries like Wilson and Churchill, and industrial figures like Ford. The latter was a believer in the Protocolds of the Elders of Zion.

Another element that aided in promoting disbelief of early accounts, wuite accurate in themselves, of Nazi atrocities, was the tremendously exaggerated propagandas of German atricities in the recent Great War. There actually was damnably atrocious conduct by German soldiers in the march through Belgium, but it feel far short of the routine fare of raped and crucified nuns and bayonetted babies to which the English press in particular treated the world during that war. In the peace that followed, it became clear to just about everyone these tales had been mere fictions, and as a result, the proverbial "Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on me" standard became engaged in many minds to operate against belief in the tales that began to circulate by the late thirties, and that began to emerge after the occupation of Poland and invasion of the Soviet Union.

[aquart]

4. German efforts to eradicate Jewry

were not what you'd call a problem for most of Europe. With breathtaking exceptions.

Their shock was finding out that they, too, were expendable.

[Behind the Aegis]

7. Very true

The sad thing now is that anti-Semitism is creeping into the left, and sometimes, it is not even well-disguised.

[Violet_Crumble]

9. On the subject of WWI atrocity stories...

Another element that aided in promoting disbelief of early accounts, wuite accurate in themselves, of Nazi atrocities, was the tremendously exaggerated propagandas of German atricities in the recent Great War.

I started doing a course on the Great War this semester and decided to write about wartime propaganda and the atrocity stories. So I trotted off to the library and picked up a bunch of books, only to get home and discover that one was published by the rather disgusting folk at the Institute of Historical Review, and that while the book had been written in the period between the wars, some dangerous fool had taken it upon themselves to write a long introduction insisting that the Holocaust was a fraud and the WWI atrocity stories proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt, and they claimed that reading the book and the debunking of the WWI atrocity stories would leave readers in no doubt that the Holocaust was another atrocity story. I'm sure the author of that book would have been rolling in his grave at the way it's now being abused by the Holocaust Deniers...

Violet...

[bennywhale]

5. Yep, its the fault of those dastardly anti-semitic Brits again

[Behind the Aegis]

6. Kinda sucks, huh?

Really sucks when you feel that your country or the country you love is ALWAYS deemed responsible.

However, I don't think it was just Britain, even if the article indicates the "primary" lack/misinterpretation of intelligence. Many countries turned a deaf ear and blind eye to what was really happening. There is a thread in LBN where Senator Rangel tried to say the same thing (although, not very well).

When historians look back, will they say the same about the US and, sorry, Britain and the deaf ear and blind eye we have turned toward the situation in Iraq?

Hindsight is 20/20. Too bad foresight needs a stronger prescription.

[bennywhale]

10. It does indeed "suck". I wouldn't, however, even

dare to posit that my (beautiful) country and countrymen are victims of hatred and prejudice on the same scale that real prejudice and hatred exists IE Jews, Blacks, Romanies. However it does get tedious and (slightly) hurtful when it appears that my Granddad-who gave his life to free Europe from Nazism, and previously was attacked by the army on Churchill's orders for striking (he was a coal miner), and trying to force a democratic consensus in the 30s- is an anti-Semite. And that British people are taken to be imperialists, racists, anti-Semites, war mongers, and plotters who stroke their well groomed moustaches while overseeing the slaughter of some (glorious and righteous) Scottish or Irish tribes.

Aah well, thats life. My family are coal miners who have been just as oppressed by the British ruling class as any African tribe. You may be surprised by this ascertain but listen to this quote.

"We need to build from the same obedient stock as are in this county. Outsiders will disrupt their rhythm and confuse them." Lord Londonderry's secretary, talking of my Granddad and our community, when deciding whether to bring the Irish in as Back legs to break the strikes. Hollywood and popular culture in general tends not to include this take on Englishmen.

But hey, us Brits are all the bloody same.

[Behind the Aegis]

11. Exasperating

Although, you are not comparing the British to the victims of other prejudices, I feel you understand what some of the Jews on this board feel sometimes. We know not all critics of Israel are anti-Semites, but to pretend they are not there is very dangerous. Every country has its dark-side, but most also have a wonderful side and wonderful people.

My post was a little 'snarky.' I shouldn't have been and I apologize for that.