We'd be speaking German today, if the internet & cable tv had been around during WWII

[SoCalDem]

Thankfully, a lot of people pay no attention to much of what's said on both, but there is SO much "information" tossed around, it's got to be troubling to what remains of the "secret-agent set".

Al Qaeda blogs, terrorists recruit suicide bombers online, everything anyone has ever said, shows up online somewhere (sometimes with photos--real or otherwise), only to be regurgitated and re-routed to every cable show & radio show and re-hashed, ad nauseum.

We see battles in real-time, with geographic markers (Poor Geraldo..he was ahead of the curve with that stick & sand drawing he made)....

We see revolutions-in-the-making..on Twitter.

Everyone's a "correspondent"..at least everyone with a cellphone, is.

Nothing is ever "off the record". Someone always has a "recording device". Ask George Allen.

It might seem that we are the better for it, in that it might make politicians think twice, but recent and ongoing events seem to indicate otherwise.

We are all so comfortable with being on camera, and have given up on anonymity, that everything is fair game.

We expect to know everything we can about everyone we know...and even people we don't know.

The element of surprise is gone forever. (as a war tactic)..and spying has to be an endangered occupation if you have ever tweeted, emailed or "friended".

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Goebbels wouldn't have had a chance if internet had been around.

[virgogal]

2. I agree. eom

[anonymous171]

24. Nah, his job would have just been a lot harder. nt

[stillwaiting]

34. What percentage of Americans today really understand to what extent our media is filtered?

Certainly many know that the news is mostly infotainment, but most have absolutely no idea (nor do they want to know) what fails to get attention in our media.

In our news media where every "opinion" is treated as a possibility facts be damned, it seems that spinning propaganda is pretty darn easy. And unchallenged in any real or meaningful way on almost all occasions.

[no_hypocrisy]

39. Welcome to DU stillwaiting.

[Marr]

40. Very few. Even the cynics mostly dismiss media bias as simple "laziness"

or "sensationalism" on the part of producers. They look at the coverage of this story or that story and criticize the way it was reported, without ever considering what was *not* reported, and why.

It's amazing to me, but most people seem to actually believe that these massive conglomerates run neutral news programs. Or even more baffling-- that the news is "liberal".

[sofa king]

42. I don't know about that. His understudy did pretty well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Rove

[walldude]

3. You say that like it's a fact.

But the fact is, that the world would have known much sooner what was going on in Germany and the only question is would we have done anything about it or just sat back and watched. Either way we certainly would not be "speaking german".

[Vinnie From Indy]

5. I always laugh a little when I hear folks say with all sincerity and belief that

America might some day be invaded and occupied by a foriegn power. I doubt any military on the planet could make it through a single southern state. Everybody and their dog has a gun in America.

The whole mantra about fighting them "over there rather than over here" is nonsense. America will be taken out from within long before it is ever invaded and occupied.

[proteus_lives]

9. A quote from a Japanese general circa WWII.

"We could never invade the United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."

[MadHound]

10. Actually we were quite aware of what was going on in Germany at the time it was happening

And yet we didn't do a damn thing about it until it started to effect this country indirectly.

But as far as the Holocaust was concerned, yeah, we knew exactly what was going on at the time. And sadly, many US corporations enabled it and helped it along.

[Confusious]

11. Where did you find that information?

In all my reading about WW2, I have never run across a single sheet saying we knew anything about what was going to happen, in fact, Hitler didn't even formulate the "final solution" until the United States had entered the war. And even if we did know, what could we have done about it? Parachute people in to free the camps and have them be captured too? Bomb them? We had no smart munitions, we did carpet bombing. We would have wiped out everyone and everything.

So if we knew he was going to exterminate all the Jews before he did, please kindly point me to that documentation.

Otherwise, we were doing all we could. Carpet bombing Germany, stopping them in north Africa, opening a front in Italy, invading France.

[MadHound]

13. Welcome to my wheelhouse

First of all, as far as knowing about the Holocaust, it was common knowledge. Go to your local library and go through the New York Times back issues from 1933 on. You will find story after story about how the Jews were being treated.

Furthermore, if you go through the Jewish press of the time, you will find even more accounts of what was happening in Germany.

Hell, the treatment of the Jews even made it onto Movietone News in the mid-thirties.

Not to mention that it was a pretty open secret, especially as the thirties wore on, that Hitler was gearing up for a major military encounter at some point in the near future. After all, it isn't like corporations like Ford and GM were helping him with this, they were, as were numerous financial institutions and the likes of IBM and Standard Oil.

Of course then there was always that big red flag known as Mein Kampf. Not that it was taken seriously at the time of its publication, but it became apparent during the early-mid thirties that Hitler was following that script, all the way to the bitter end.

Where to start you on reading. I suggest Edwin Black's "IBM and the Holocaust" as a starting point. You also might want to read Henry Ford's "The International Jew" simply to realize that we too, as a country, were horribly anti-semitic. Ford posed the Jews as the world's problem, and he was a huge inspiration for Hitler and his Final Solution. "Nazi's and World Trade" is another good book to explore this topic. I could go on and on, drag you through the same cesspool that I went through writing my thesis, but these are good places to start.

The US wasn't an innocent player in this, we just covered our tracks much better than others. The US limited the number of people who could come in from Eastern Europe, especially Jews. Hell, we even provided the impetus for the final solution since it was in the US that eugenics really took off during the last part of the nineteenth century, all the way up through war itself.

Really, I should stop here, otherwise I'll simply rewrite my thesis, albeit poorly.

[dustbunnie]

14. And don't forget Martin Luther. Hitler took big cues from his writings as well.

Followed them like a playbook.

[justabob]

16. .

What was your thesis about specifically? I ask only because I have studied the Nazis for years and never cease to be amazed. The books I like best are the diaries/memoirs and how people of all stripes coped with the madness.

[MadHound]

29. My thesis actually deals with the role played by US corporations in aiding Hitler's Reich

And why they acted as they did. Specifically I'm looking at IBM, Standard Oil, Brown Bros. Harriman, GM and Ford. But this took me all through an ugly cesspool of US/Nazi collaboration both before and after the war.

Couple of interesting post-war tidbits: George Kennan, the author of the X article that essentially set out our Cold War policy of Soviet containment was an ardent admirer of fascism, and thought that the US should switch to it and do away with democracy. Of course fascists are deadly foes of communists, which explains, in part, our over the top hatred of everything Soviet after the war.

The main man in our Soviet post war intelligence was Reinhard Gehlen, a Nazi war criminal that we rescued and put to work for us. He eventually became head of West German intelligence, though he continued collaboration with the US. The thing is, he fed the US completely overblown reports of Soviet military strength, stating that the Soviets had hundreds of nuclear missiles, instead of the dozen or so that they actually had at the time. Even we our outside confirmation (in the form of U2 overflights) refuted his assertions, we continued to accept and act on his information. The arms race might not have been near so quick if it wasn't for this man, but what else would you expect from a fascist war criminal with a fanatical hatred of all things Russian?

The US has always had a pretty wide streak of fascist thought that runs through it. We tend to look away and not acknowledge it, but it's still there. It became discredited and went underground during and after WWII, but lately in the past twenty, thirty years it has been rearing its ugly head again.

[Confusious]

17. I have no arguement that corporations helped out germany

I have no argument that henry ford or other people ( Bush's granddaddy) helped finance the NAZIs

I have no argument that we knew about it while it was going on, to some degree.

But it would be a reach (during the 1930's, not today) to think that someone would go from just abusing people to outright exterminating them all.

Again, I ask the question, Hitler formulated the "Final Solution" after America entered the war. We spent billions on equipment, millions entered the workforce and military to fight.

What more could we have done to stop something that could have only been stopped 5 years before, and then WE would have been the aggressor?

"Hell, we even provided the impetus for the final solution since it was in the US that eugenics really took off during the last part of the nineteenth century, all the way up through war itself."

But still , we stopped it and said it was bullshit. You can't say America was responsible for the holocaust because some loon really liked eugenics.
Thats just another America does evil in everything they do argument. We're damned if we don't do anything, we're damned if we do.

And Mein Kampf would be a book long forgotten if Hitler had never come to power. he sold 250,000 copies in Germany, and less then 30,000 in other countries. You expect our government officials to be reading every book put out by raving loons?

Maybe they should have read it when he did come to power... but I think they had a lot of other things to worry about, then reading book which probably wasn't remembered until AFTER the war started.

If it was such an open secret that Hitler intended to attack other countries, why was Russia so surprised?

[MadHound]

26. Again, let me refer you to the New York Times back issues

Primary documents are always the best in any sort of historical research, and in those spools and spools of microfilm, or if you want and have access, the electronic archive, you will find testament to my thesis, that Hitler's Final Solution was a well known fact, one that was confirmed time and again by reliable witnesses before we entered the war. You're forcing me to go to my files to prove this point to you, so here you go:

Tolischus, Otto D. "Reich Seizing 25% of Fortunes of Jews; Ruin of many more businesses forecast" NYT, 9/8/36.

"10 Big Reich Cities lose 40% of Jews" NYT, 5/15/38

"Nazis smash , loot and burn Jewish shops and temples until Goebbels calls halt" NYT 11/11/38

"Terrors of Nazis related by Benes" NYT 6/3/39

"Portugese ship brings 458 here from war stricken countries. One arrival on liner Nyassa tells of cholera killing men in concentration camps in France" NYT 12/5/40

"Refugees are pouring into England and France with harrowing tales" NYT 5/13/40

"New deportations of Jews reported" NYT, 1/23/40

"Transport of Jews in Stettin Reported" NYT 2/14/40

Hitler had already formulated, and was carrying out his Final solution well before we entered the war, and we were aware of this, again, well before the US entered the war. There are literally dozens and dozens of articles, in addition to those I mentioned above, that testify to this. In fact many historians are now coming to the conclusion that the Final Solution was the entire point of Hitler's rise to power. His hatred of Jews was fanatical, to the point where he made gross strategic blunders in order to keep the camps going instead of winning the war. Oh, and let's not forget that the Dachau concentration camp was opened in March of 1933, just a few months after Hitler came to power.

As far as nobody being able to conceive of such genocide, I have to disagree. Not only were there many small scale genocides during the nineteenth century (Native Americans, Africans, and Australian aborigines come to mind), but there was also the well known example of the Turkish extermination of 1.5 million Armenians during WWI. Such horrors were known to occur.

I agree that Mein Kampf was probably not widely read by the American government during the 1920's, but I can assure you that when the man came to power in 1933 that book was immediately reprinted and distributed throughout the government. It would be foolish to think otherwise since the author was now the leader of what was arguably the most powerful country in Europe.

What could we have done. Here are a few suggestions, first open our doors to Jewish refugees. As the thirties moved along we continued to shut the door on more and more Jewish refugees from Europe.

Second, as soon as hostilities broke out in Europe we could have forced US corporations to halt all business with the German Reich. If we would have done that in 1939 the European Front of WWII would have been a sharp, short war. Between Ford and GM, US corporations provided half the war machinery for the Nazis. Take that away and Germany would have been in dire straits, quickly. Likewise with IBM. If Thomas Watson and IBM had been forced to stop providing Hollerith machines(the punch card computers of the day) and the cards that went with them, the Holocaust would have been magnitudes less devastating and that crisp German adherence to times and schedules would have ground to a halt amid confusion and consternation. Let men give you an example. When Germany took over France there were about a dozen Hollerith machines in the country, give or take a few. A high up minister in the French Statistical Records office personally took control of these machines and proceeded to play a deadly double game throughout the rest of the war. This minister was, of course, working for the French Resistance, and he set those machines working on everything and anything other than the information that Hitler and the Reich wanted, counting chickens and other livestock, etc. As a result, the extermination of Jews in France was seventy five percent less than in other countries in the Reich, and confusion reigned in France throughout the war. Hell, it took two weeks for the Reich to locate empty train cars to transport anything, soldiers, armament, or Jews. These were IBM machines, IBM technology, and Thomas Watson and IBM continued to supply that technology to the Germans throughout the war. If they hadn't, the German war machine would have quickly ground to a halt.

As far as eugenics go, the only reason that we stopped it was because it got such a bad reputation due to Hitler's actions. And even after WWII, eugenics hung on and still does to this day in one form or another. But we did stop the worst of the eugenics abuses during WWII, but not before US authorities sterilized over 235,000 people, 80,000 of them in California alone. Whites, blacks, whoever the eugenicists found to be wanting. And yes, the US provided the impetus for eugenics, along with the money to spread it to Europe. Eugenics first came to prominence in England with Francis Galton, but soon jumped the pond to the US, where Charles Davenport took up the cause. Eugenics laws spread throughout the country, as did mandatory sterilization and in some cases euthanasia. During WWI, we continued to hold this banner high, and since the US had been relatively unscathed after the war we had the money and resource to bring eugenics back to Europe, England first, and then Germany. In Germany eugenics found fertile soil and was soon transformed into the Final Solution. Another book selection for you, Black's "War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race"

One last thing, Russia wasn't surprised, at least not about Germany's intentions. It is likely that Stalin was surprised of the timing, he probably thought, like the rest of the world, that Germany wouldn't open a second front until after it had conquered England, but he certainly wasn't surprised about Germany's military ambition. After all, that's one of the reasons Russia originally allied itself with Germany, to give itself a breathing space to build up its military forces before having to face Germany on the battlefield. Neither party to that alliance ever thought it would last, that it was simply a matter of time and timing.

Look, I know that much of this runs contrary to what we all learned in high school and even college survey courses. I realize that it is a rude shock to the system, because everybody likes to think that WWII was the last good US war. But the fact of the matter is that our role in the run up to the war was nowhere as pristine as we would like to believe. There were several opportunities for the US to either stop that war, or at least prevent it from being as severe as it became, same with the Holocaust. But time and again money and personal beliefs won out over doing what was right. That's the sad truth of the matter. This isn't because I believe that everything America does is evil(I don't), this is simply historical fact. For this country to grow and progress, morally and ethically, we need to examine these facts and learn from them. It's that simple.

[Confusious]

33. I take issue with you singling out the United States

If Russia had not given germany a large grain shipment ( ribbentrop pact ) they would have run out of food within a few years.

If france and britian had challenged Hitler when he walked into the Rhineland, he would have run back across with his tail between his legs.

If the swiss hadn't traded gold, the german would have been out of money.

There's a lot more blame to go around. Our actions were the actions of the rest of the world. We had our problems, and didn't want to deal with other peoples problems, just like every other country at the time. If have some blame, and every country in the world shares in that blame, because they acted in the same way.

You are wrong on the "Final solution" point. When talking about it, everything you listed '36 - '40 has nothing to do with the "Final solution". If you are telling me that, ALL of the documentaries, every history page ( not the pages they teach you in high school or college, the other books. I know your a graduate student, but other people have intelligence and read too, though you might find that hard to believe )

"This decision to systematically kill the Jews of Europe was made either by the time of or at the Wannsee conference, which took place in Berlin, in the Wannsee Villa on January 20, 1942. The conference was chaired by Reinhard Heydrich. He was acting under the authority given to him by Reichsmarshall Göring in a letter dated July 31, 1941. Göring instructed Heydrich to devise "...the solution of the Jewish problem...""

The NAZIs had no plans to commit genocide until that time. Hitler maybe, but the german command, no. Again, every dosumentary, every book has agreed on that point.

"As far as nobody being able to conceive of such genocide, I have to disagree. Not only were there many small scale genocides during the nineteenth century (Native Americans, Africans, and Australian aborigines come to mind), but there was also the well known example of the Turkish extermination of 1.5 million Armenians during WWI. Such horrors were known to occur."

Did you know the word "Genocide" is from 1944. Didn't exist before then.

Every one of those was covered up in some fashion. Why does the Armenian genocide have such prominence now? it didn't 20 years ago. If I, as a history buff had not heard about it even 10 years ago, how well was it hidden?

Besides that, most of them had been against brown people, not white people. Other places had "savages" ( The Turks ) where that happened ( In the 1930's view ), this was a rich, educated industrialized country doing it. The shock is apparent from the first-hand accounts I have read.

"Oh, and let's not forget that the Dachau concentration camp was opened in March of 1933, just a few months after Hitler came to power."

Yes, and at first, the guards were just mean, and they were work camps. It wasn't until almost 10 years later that they became brutal death camps. I have first hand accounts of that also.

Seems you're wrong about eugenics also.... The british started it.

Sir Francis Galton systematized these ideas and practices according to new knowledge about the evolution of man and animals provided by the theory of his cousin Charles Darwin during the 1860s and 1870s. After reading Darwin's Origin of Species, Galton built upon Darwin's ideas whereby the mechanisms of natural selection were potentially thwarted by human civilization. He reasoned that, since many human societies sought to protect the underprivileged and weak, those societies were at odds with the natural selection responsible for extinction of the weakest; and only by changing these social policies could society be saved from a "reversion towards mediocrity," a phrase he first coined in statistics and which later changed to the now common "regression towards the mean."<45>

Galton first used the word eugenic in his 1883 Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development,<48> a book in which he meant "to touch on various topics more or less connected with that of the cultivation of race, or, as we might call it, with 'eugenic' questions." He included a footnote to the word "eugenic" which read:

"What could we have done. Here are a few suggestions, first open our doors to Jewish refugees. As the thirties moved along we continued to shut the door on more and more Jewish refugees from Europe."

Every country was closing it's borders to immigrants due to the great depression. One boat went to multiple countries and finally ended up in Germany again. If every country in the world was acting the same way, why single out the United States, as if it was something special?

"Second, as soon as hostilities broke out in Europe we could have forced US corporations to halt all business with the German Reich."

Yes we could have, and some did. Bush's granddaddy had his funds seized under the trading with the enemy act.

The Trading with the Enemy Act, sometimes abbreviated as TWEA, is a United States federal law, 12 U.S.C. § 95a, enacted in 1917 to restrict trade with countries hostile to the United States. The law gives the President the power to oversee or restrict any and all trade between the U.S. and her enemies in times of war. In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt amended the act to extend the scope to hoarding of gold, which was passed by Congress, and then outlawed gold ownership with Executive Order 6102. These restrictions continued until January 1, 1975.

Did some slip by? Most definitely. But to say we didn't even try is dishonest.

"One last thing, Russia wasn't surprised, at least not about Germany's intentions."

No, but they didn't think it would be for 2 more years. More bad judgment for people who knew it was coming. The way you phrased it, it implies they would be ready and prepared to take it, the entire world for that matter. Why try so hard for 'Peace in our time' then?

[MadHound]

35. Excuse me, but it seems to me that you're taking this a bit too personally.

Why?

Why does my telling you this history piss you off? What, you want me to only tell you the bloody bits of history of other countries? I could, but at the time of writing my OP in this thread it didn't seem germane to the conversation. Now you're accusing me of singling out the US, like teaching this history is a bad thing. In your conflated mind it seems that telling the truth is tantamount to treason. I am simply imparting the information that I have on this subject. Well, I'm sorry that it isn't the typical propagandized version of history that you're so comfortable with and love dearly, but there it is.

What I state is fact, whether you wish it otherwise or not. The fact is that what was going on in Germany was well known early on in Hitler's reign. It was known here in the US, it was known in other countries as well, including Britain, France, Russia and elsewhere. You look at the headlines and disbelieve them, dismiss them, I'm simply giving you a very abbreviated bibliography, go read the articles and see for yourself. That is, after all, what being a historian is all about, research, seeing for one's self. I have spent years on this research, tracked down the primary documents, seen documents that few, if any people have read during the past sixty plus years. Let me ask you this, how many times have you visited the National Archive in D.C.? You want me to give you the pertinent shelf and box number so you can go look for yourself?

And yet you disparage all of that research because it doesn't match up with your precious documentaries:puke: Well, I'm sorry, I'm not the History Channel, I'm the real deal, and you sentimental, sanctimonious dismissal of the work that I've done is emblematic of what is, in part, wrong with this country. If the facts don't match up with the precious mythology/propaganda pabulum that was force fed to most Americans, well then by God it's got to be wrong, no matter all those pesky facts.

What is also fact is the role that US corporations played in aiding, financing, and inspiring Hitler. Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, back in the twenties Hitler was offering to send some of his shock troops over here to help get Ford elected president if he decided to run. The man kept a prominent portrait of Ford in his office and the most well read book in his collection was Ford's "My Life and Works", a book which repeated Ford's ongoing anti-Semitic screed. Ford responded to this by investing in Germany, and his company continued supplying Germany with engines and vehicles throughout WWII.

Do you know who the two Americans were that were awarded the Grand Cross of the Eagle, Germany's highest award for non-citizens? Henry Ford and Thomas Watson. At least Watson had the decency to send his back, though only because he realized that hanging on to it would only mean bad publicity here in the US.

But speaking of Watson, he was a big fan of fascism and Hitler too. But why shouldn't he have been, after all, counting and tabulating all of those prisoners in the camps was big business for him, right through the war. If it wasn't for those tabulating machines, as I've shown, the German war machine wouldn't have run as nearly as efficiently as they did. But hey, IBM made money right through the war, and when the American troops came in, well they made sure to treat all of those machines gently, and returned them back to IBM. They even had a special division for that, the Mobile Records Unit, also known as the IBM division because so many current and former IBM men were assigned to it.

Hell! The goddamn numbers on prisoners' arms were nothing more than number codes that were counted, sorted and tabulated by Hollerith machines!

If it wasn't for this sort of information age technology Germany would have had a much tougher time fighting the war. How did Germany get the trains to run on time? Hollerith machines. How did Germany keep track of arms and munitions from raw material all the way through to being used and discarded? Hollerith machines. How did they go about finding proper Aryan mates for their master race projects? Hollerith machines. Information in any war is vital, and with the help of Hollerith machines, made and supplied by IBM, Germany was king of the information age in Europe during the thirties and into WWII.

Geez, onto your other "points" before I re write my paper.

OK, Genocide. If I remember, your etymology of the word genocide is correct, that it came about in 1944. However just because the word itself only came into being sixty five years ago doesn't mean that the concept, mass murder of a particular group of people, wasn't well known long before then. After all, killing large groups of people is something that humans have done for a long while now. And while you may have only found out about the Armenian genocide ten years ago (which really throws your entire historical credibility into doubt for a number of reasons) doesn't mean that it wasn't well known by others, both during and after the event. After all, it isn't like the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, and others, didn't put on massive fundraising and relief drives to help out the victims of the Armenian genocide, they did. Again, common knowledge at the time, but something that has been smudged out of most standard sources of American history, textbooks and documentaries.

Next. Your claim that the Holocaust didn't happen until 1942 is absurd on the face of it. The only thing that the Wannsee Conference did was to speed of the pace of the killing. Jews and other prisoners were getting killed by the hundreds every day in the Reich before then. The only difference was that it wasn't on an industrial scale. The prisoners were worked to death, tortured, used for lethal medical experiments, taken out and shot, and other horrors, each and every day. Just because somebody didn't get killed by gas doesn't mean that they weren't a victim of the Holocaust. What, you're saying that those fifty plus people a day who were worked to death building Peenemunde weren't victims of Holocaust? Go talk to some of their relatives in Israel and tell them that one. I'd do it from a safe distance however.

As far as the origins of eugenics go, apparently your reading comprehension is just as faulty as your historical knowledge. From my post above: "Eugenics first came to prominence in England with Francis Galton, but soon jumped the pond to the US, where Charles Davenport took up the cause." I fully recognize the importance of Galton, but apparently you read right through that part and mistakenly thought that you had a "gotcha" moment. Thanks for coming and try again.

Now to immigration policy, have your really gone and examined the records? No, apparently you haven't because if you had you would have recognized the fact that we did indeed restrict the immigration of Jews, limiting the number who could come to this country while simultaneously keeping our other population quotas the same. Next time you're up in DC and want to check this one, let me know, I can direct you to where you need to go.

Funny you should mention Preston Bush, actually he didn't have his personal funds seized by the government, but rather the funds of the corporation he was working for, Brown Bros. Harriman. More specifically it was the funds of one of their shell companies, Silesian American Corporation. The matter was finally resolved in 1947, five years after the original charges were brought, and it was a slap on the wrist. Meanwhile, BBH and others did do brisk business before, during and after the war in Germany. You're right, relatively speaking it wasn't that many companies, but they were some dooziess, the likes of IBM, Ford, BBH, Standard Oil, nice fat companies whose business was of vital national security to this country, yet they saw fit to go and profit by playing both sides in the war. Probably helped that several of the men who headed up those companies were on a first name basis with prominent US politicians, up to and including the president.

Look, you're a history buff, I'm fine with that and respect it. But that's where the difference lies between you and me. You get your knowledge from secondary and tertiary sources. I'm a historian, I go out and research this stuff, spend my days among dusty piles of paper reading and analyzing the primary documents, the detritus of the time. Historians actually go out and write those books you read, contribute to those documentaries you watch, and much of what ordinary people consume about history is already out of date, especially anything concerning the twentieth century. Vast new swathes of archives are being released by the US government, much of it not seen by anybody since the day it was sealed up. This information puts a whole new light on what was happening at that time.

Or if it isn't discovering newly released material, it is going back and revisiting old material, stuff that was once swept under the rug in order to protect somebody or something. For instance let's take eugenics. Much of that material was swept away during and after WWII because it was embarrassing, understandably so. After all, no country wants to admit that they were involved in the forced sterilization of its own citizens. But these things have a way of coming back to the top again, and it is our job as historians to put it before the public. You may not like that, you may think that it is "singling out America", but the thing is, you simply can't argue with the facts. They are still there, in black and white, written on dusty papers, put in boxes and washed up on our shores like a bottle in the ocean.

Again, I don't know why you're taking this on such a personal level, but again, this is the difference between a history buff and a historian. You have some sort of preconceived view of history, one that you're personally invested in to the point where you will deny facts plain before your eyes. A historian doesn't have that luxury, we go where the facts lead us, consequences be damned. If you can't deal with that, then I suggest you stick to the pabulum of the History Channel. You apparently can't handle the truth.

[Confusious]

45. No, I can handle the truth

The entire point of my argument is this: To say that the United States was doing something out of the ordinary, while the rest of the world was doing the exact same thing, i.e. imigration, is what I have a problem with.

Other countries around the world denied jews entry, just as the United States did. Was it wrong, yes. But should the entire blame lie with the United States, no. The entire world has to share in that blame.

That is the honest thing to do.

As I said before,

do I disagree that people in the United States supported Hitler? Charles Lindbergh did. So obviously, no. But there were also British people who supported Hitler, Lord HawHaw comes to mind. It wasn't exclusively the United States which had traitors.

Do I disagree that corporations helped Hitler, no. But what I haven't heard is did any foreign corporations help Hitler? If no, then the United States was worse, if yes, then we we are back to a shared blame again.



"And yet you disparage all of that research because it doesn't match up with your precious documentaries. Well, I'm sorry, I'm not the History Channel, I'm the real deal, and you sentimental, sanctimonious dismissal of the work that I've done is emblematic of what is, in part, wrong with this country. If the facts don't match up with the precious mythology/propaganda pabulum that was force fed to most Americans, well then by God it's got to be wrong, no matter all those pesky facts."

And whose fault is that? Mine? Or the researchers who sit a look down on people who try to bring it to the masses, i.e. Carl Sagan.

"Next. Your claim that the Holocaust didn't happen until 1942 is absurd on the face of it."

Never said that. The "Final solution" was the start of the industrialized killing.

"And while you may have only found out about the Armenian genocide ten years ago (which really throws your entire historical credibility into doubt for a number of reasons) doesn't mean that it wasn't well known by others, both during and after the event"

And if I, as someone who enjoys and reads history only hears about it recently, how much does the general public know about it? Maybe a lot, if they are Armenian, but what if they are not? How much is the person you stop on the street going to know?

Maybe the point is, when I say well-known, I mean general public, not a small group of people sitting in government, or a group of researchers sitting around discussing the past.

You keep saying the history books are full of pablum. Well if they are and were, then something like this would be a shock to people. An completely unexpected, because there was no precedent for it in a rich, educated industrialized country.

As for the eugenics thing, a black mark on America? Yes, one among many, too many in fact. But we don't blame the gun for it's use, we hold the people to account. Science can be used for good or ill.

[MadHound]

47. So again, you are trying to make the argument that I'm somehow singling out the US

Or better put, picking on the US. I'm not, I'm simply educating you about US history. You seem to then that in order to do so I have to provide some sort of sign up stating that other countries were just as bad as the US.

Well, the facts of the matter are that some countries were as bad as the US in regards to Jewish immigration. Some countries were worse. But then again, other countries were better. Irregardless, that does not wipe out the fact that the US knew what was going on in Germany, at the time it was happening, and we refused to do anything about it. The US, as a country, had a moral failure on that area. Stating that other countries were just as bad is simply a child's excuse. If I came home with dirty ripped clothes and tried to tell my Mom that Billy's looked just as bad, if not worse, that still wouldn't absolve me of my guilt. Same thing applies with the US vis-a-vis the Holocaust.

As far as your arguments concerning the Final Solution not happening until 1942, they are likewise bunk. The Final Solution was simple, by whatever means possible the Nazis wanted to destroy the Jewish race. The pogroms directed at the Jewish people started long before 1942. Just because the method was that of the gun rather than the gas chamber doesn't make it any less systematic, any less planned, any less purposeful or any less horrible. It is simply a difference in means and efficiency. To say that the Final Solution only started in 1942 is foolish, you're trying to parse the Holocaust and it simply doesn't work that way.

As far as your point about the Armenian genocide, let me repeat, just because you didn't know about it until ten years ago doesn't mean that it wasn't well known by the general public. Hell, I learned about the Armenian genocide in high school, some thirty plus years ago. The fact that you only found out about it ten years ago is more a critique of your own reading and education than it is a comment on the general dispersal of historical knowledge. You have only yourself to blame for that lack of knowledge, not historians or the anybody else.

And frankly if your preconceived notions of history are upset by what I say, what the truth of the matter is, the only person's fault for that is yours. Because this shows that you haven't taken the time or the effort to genuinely go out and research history. You are, as you've said, a history buff, you consume history that is already predigested for you from documentaries to mass appeal books to TV shows to popular magazines. These are not the the places to truly learn history because as consumer outlets for mass media history they reflect the biases of their corporate backers and are designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator in their genre. To find real history you need to start reading peer reviewed articles and peer reviewed books. Better yet, be a real historian and go out and examine primary documents for yourself. I guarantee you, no matter what part of history you decide to pursue, these primary documents will tell an entirely different story than what you find in the mass media history that passes for fact these days.

Oh, one other thing, yes, other foreign corporations did invest in Nazi Germany, but nowhere in near the amount that certain US corporations did. Like I said earlier, between GM and Ford these two companies provided the Nazis with half their war machinery, half. No other foreign corporation comes close to this mark. Neither did any other foreign corporation help enable the Holocaust so much as IBM did, none. These are spectacular exceptions to what was going on at the time, which is why I bring them up and why I find them interesting. I don't do so to somehow bash the US, but rather so we can learn from what happened and apply it to the future.

Oh, and as far as the eugenics thing, where do you get the idea that I'm somehow trying blame science? I never mentioned anything close to that.

Again, I cannot stress this enough, if you want to learn real history, drop the documentaries and the mass market books. Go to your closest college or university library and read through peer reviewed journals, peer reviewed books, material that is designed to teach the facts, not material with a political or commercial agenda. That is, if you want to learn the facts.

[AuntPatsy]

36. wow just wow, I cannot believe the post above yours...if it is real, it is no wonder,

[MadHound]

44. It's real,

You can verify most of it yourself through books that are fairly readily available. The other information, well you'll have to travel to places like the National Archive to verify.

[justabob]

15. I have to disagree

I too have done considerable reading about the Nazis and the period. I can think of at least one book off the top of my head that shows that American companies (in this case IBM) had considerable knowledge about what was going on and where they were headed long before 1941, regardless of when it was made "official" at Wannsee. IBM was knowingly supplying machines for the purpose of oppression at the very least. You forget just how many Americans were sympathizers/collaborators.

From Wikipedia: IBM and the Holocaust

The book details how IBM's New York headquarters and CEO Thomas J. Watson acted through its overseas subsidiaries to provide the Third Reich with punch card machines that could help the Nazis track down the European Jewry (especially in newly conquered territory). The book quotes extensively from numerous IBM and government memos and letters that describe how New York-based IBM, its Geneva office and its German subsidiary, Dehomag, were intimately involved in supporting Nazi oppression. The book also includes IBM's internal reports that admit that these machines made the Nazi efforts much more efficient.

<snip>
An IBM customer site, the Hollerith Abteilung, operated in almost every concentration camp. It either ran machines, sorted cards or prepared documents for IBM processing. IBM serviced the machines on site. In addition, the infamous Auschwitz arm tattoo began as an IBM number.
<end snip>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

One other thing we talked about in the holocaust literature class I took. The owner/publisher of the NYT, can't think of his name right now, was well aware of what was going on, being a jew with access to that community. I admit I am not sure of the timeline, but he admited not running stories about the plight of the European Jews because he didn't want to be seen as biased, or pushing a Jewish agenda. Jews were not particularly popular here either back then.

As for what we could have done about it? Not so much after 1941, I agree, but there was almost a decade before that when we had plenty of newspeople et al on the ground in Berlin and elsewhere who saw what was going on.

[Confusious]

18. And what should we have done?

Preemptive war?

How many genocides of that scale happened before world war 2? How many people actually thought Hitler would come to power? Their popularity was waning, he won by one vote. How many times do you actually stop to listen to the guy screaming on the street corner? Maybe a preemptive strike on every loon on a street corner is in order? Are you going to take out stormfront.org? We know what would happen if they got into power.

Is it our business to take care of every other country on the planet?

so you agree with the invasion of Iraq? That was another preemptive war. That would be taking care of every other country on the planet.

Or are you just playing armchair general with the addition of hind site, second guessing those who were there?

[justabob]

25. wow, must have hit a nerve

Where did I say anything about preemptive war, or say anything about the actual conduct of war at all? I was only addressing your comment that in *your* reading no one knew what was going on or what was going to happen. I offered one title off the top of my head that would change that. That is all.

The only thing we COULD have done is to accept the thousands of immigrants who tried to flee starting in the 30's, or listened to the people who were there and saw what was going on and tried to spread the word. (See Howard K Smith - Last Train from Berlin published 1942 as one more title off the top of my head where someone in the media went to Oxford after being in Nazi Germany and tried to tell the folks there what was up and they basically laughed at him. I'll grant you that was UK not US, but he was talking to Americans too)

My disagreement was with your statement that no one knew. Nowhere did I say one word about how the war was conducted, or second guess the generals with my brilliant armchair quarterbacking.

[Confusious]

31. In 1942, the United States was in the war

We were at war with Germany. What more could we have done at the time?

How many people during that time would believe someone would commit genocide on such a large scale?

As an interesting point, the word "Genocide" is from 1944, before that, no one would have known what you were talking about.


With hind site, we known what happened and what he did. Alot of people at the time could not believe someone would be so inhuman.


My point is, you keep saying we could have done more. Do more in response to what? On the belief that he might do something?

[MicaelS]

19. Roosevelt and the Jews

Roosevelt knew about the camps and did nothing. Jewish leaders told him to bomb the camps and he refused.

ANGLE: One of the other interesting things about this was the failure of Roosevelt to really confront the issue of what was happening to the Jews in Germany.

BESCHLOSS: That disappointed me most of all. Beginning in '42, Roosevelt began learning a lot about the murder of the Jews by Hitler and Jewish leaders went to him and pleaded and said, "Please give a speech in public, tell the world what's going on," because Hitler was trying to keep it a secret. For 18 months, Roosevelt refused. People would beg him to help get Jewish refugees out of Europe, relax the immigration quotas. Roosevelt wouldn't do it. And I found that early in the war, Roosevelt had had lunch with Henry Morganthal, his treasury secretary, who was Jewish; and a Catholic official, Leo Crawley. And he said, "You Jews and Catholics have to understand that you Jews and Catholics are in America only under sufferance because this is a Protestant country. And, therefore, you have to go along with everything I ask you to." And Morganthal went back to his office and said, "What am I working 24 hours a day for if America is not for me?

ANGLE: One of the most difficult and most agonizing issues was a proposal that Auschwitz be bombed by Allied planes.

BESCHLOSS: And Roosevelt flatly refused. We had thought before my book that the decision did not even get up to Roosevelt. Turns out it did from research I found.
And you know, when you look at presidents, I mean, you study them for a living; you know, you always want to make sure that if a big decision comes up to a president he deals with it seriously, convenes his advisers even if in the end he doesn't make the right decision. This was one of the big decisions to face a president, which was if you bomb the death camps, is that going to save more Jews and others than it will kill? As it turns out, this went to Roosevelt and he dispensed with this almost like a fly on his lapel. He said, "I just don't want to do that. Next question."


more at link..... http://hnn.us/readcomment.php?id=5395

[Confusious]

20. Auschwitz is located deep in poland

We did not have the range for that target, and probably would have lost all the crews, and killed everyone there in the process.

And then you would be upset cause we killed all those people.


In December 1942, the western Allies released a declaration, publicized on the New York Times front page, that described how "Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe" was being carried out and which declared that they "condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination."<158><159>

18 months? begining in '42?

As for loosening the quotas AFTER the war had started, how's that going to work? You going to send a ship into enemy territory to get emigres?

"Just hold you fire for a minute while I pick up these jews" I'm SURE the NAZIs would have gone for that!

[Libertas1776]

22. I don't know where you're getting

that info from, but if anything, Jewish leaders approached Roosevelt and told him not to bomb the camps.

Jewish leaders and organizations, including David Ben-Gurion, the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress opposed the Allies’ bombing “places where there are Jews.

http://www.savingthejews.com/html/excerpts.htm

[Confusious]

23. Interesting

Fox News, special report with Brit Hume


We all know fox news is totally UNBIASED!

[AuntPatsy]

37. how old are you?

[MadHound]

43. Why? Does it matter?

Let's put it this way, I'm not quite fit for AARP, but certainly past my prime.

[EFerrari]

41. Yep. And when Golda tried to tell the Brits what was coming in

over the grapevine, they ridiculed her.

[PVnRT]

4. This makes no sense whatsoever

[quinnox]

12. Agreed

The main post is beyond confusing.

[villager]

6. that, or Hitler never would've gotten so far...

...since the Death Camps wouldn't have been nearly so easy to cover up...

[dustbunnie]

7. If more people had been privy to the insane rantings and plans of the Fuhrer...

he never would have succeeded. As it was, uneducated people were isolated in their little villages, crowded around the radio every Sunday afternoon getting snippets of reality and imagining the rest. A lot of trust was required for Hitler, et al to sustain the support they did. In the age of the internets and television, not so easy.

[Odin2005]

8. The Nazis would have never taken power if the internet had been around.

[laughingliberal]

21. I'm thinking the internet might have brought down the regime's propaganda machine

Then again, I'm not finding it's necessarily helping with ours here in the US. At least we are not left, solely, with whatever MSM decides they want us to know.

[Bucky]

28. I'm trying to think of dictatorships that have been taken down by the internet

Not Iran's obviously, but certainly it was a help with Ukraine's Orange Revolution. Of course if that scary mobbed up Evita wannabe gets elected their next president, they could go back to being a dictatorship, or at least a Russian-style bullying democracy. Can you think of any others where the web brought down a despot?

[laughingliberal]

32. Would we really know?

What I'm saying here is that if we see public unrest that grows to a level that topples a despotic regime and it is a country that has a relatively free internet, would we be able to quantify how much of the movement was due to the free flow of information over the internet? I'm not sure we would ever know but I do think anything that keeps the flow of unfiltered information about a government's activities going to the people is a good thing. We no longer have what I knew, growing up, as a free press and the internet has filled a void, there. Course the downside is the propagandists are able to more easily spread their message, too.

I'm sure without the internet most of us would never have been aware of 90% of the abuses which occurred in the 2000 election. The knowledge did not help us abort the theft but it did raise awareness. This, alone, may prove to be a help in that people's suspicions were raised and more people question the way we hold our elections now. Movements are often many years in the making. A few people now, a few more next year. Who knows at what point it may reach critical mass and the citizens will rise up and demand a verifiable method of counting our votes?

I'm still with Jefferson: "The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787. ME 6:57

The internet now must suffice as 'newspapers' and access to it as well as quality education needs to be available to the populace.

[Bucky]

27. We'd be speaking Iroquois today, if Fox News had been around in 1492

I really don't know what point I'm trying to make here. But then neither does the OP.

[foo_bar]

49. "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"

I think what the OP was trying to say is, things were better during the Third Reich than they would have been if Hitler tweeted. And the OP is basically right, Hitler would have had the worst twitter page on earth, "Going for walk with Goring. LOL"

[Cleita]

30. I think the internet saved us from speaking Doublespeak in 2000. If there

hadn't been alternative media, all we would have had would have been the mainstream media propaganda outlets to get our news that were being controlled by the Bush White House. However, during the Nazi era, enterprising Germans were able to get news via shortwave radio from other countries, so I suppose no matter how many Goebbles are around trying to propagandize the masses there are ways of getting the truth through and there will be always those who can make it happen.

[XemaSab]

38. I think the internet is good at turd-polishing

If I am a Sarah Palin fan, I can go find dozens of websites devoted to how great Sarah Palin is.

I can also easily dismiss the anti-Palin sites as being lies and wingnuttery.

I think if the internet was around back in the day we would have had many more rank-and-file Nazi sympathizers here in the US.

[Nye Bevan]

46. The Nazis were big on saying different things to different audiences

I can't help thinking that if someone had been following Hitler and Goebbels around with a camcorder and posting their rantings on YouTube, the Holocaust might have been avoided.

[Mari333]

48. pssst. this time "we" are the bad guys. unrec.