I'm not sure what you're referring to, but much has been MIS-attributed to Germany, and, in fact, there is more propaganda than truth. I don't think it would be accurate to refer to Germany during that period as "xenophobic."
I did not say Germany, I was referring to totalitarian ideology. So, I was thinking in terms of Desmet's thesis, and the definition of genocide according to the UN charter - that is: 'othering' is the beginning of a slippery slope that ends in the killing of innocents. it's not even really about Nazis at that point. I agree that there is more propaganda than truth. One of those myths is that the West somehow had a hand in freeing the prisoners in question. It was the Soviets. If anything, the West placed punitive sanctions on Germany that cut off all food supplies.
So everyone starved in Germany. My best friends mother WALKED from Hamburg to Rotterdam and got on a boat to England to excape the hunger. AND she had never heard of what was unfolding in the East. So there were plenty of German innocents. In rural Holland, my grandmother smuggled milk, butter and eggs in her stockings to get past German checkpoints, to feed her toddlers. (She also plucked woollen shreds from barbed wire, to spin it and knit it into baby-jumpers, because Germans took all the wool) The Germans there, were insanely hungry.
The starvation was bad, especially for those prisoners in that camp, because they were on the outskirts of the 'great realm' that Germany sought to build - far from any ports or major centres, and anyway there was no food to send. It was a logistics failure - but very much aggravated by the sanctions. We see the skin-and-bones pictures of the freed prisoners. And that's the end as far as I am concerned regarding proof. Any stories of torture, skin lamp-shades, soap, burning bodies with a can of petrol etc. to 'get rid of the evidence' are all bunkum in my opinion. Yes, they were camps. Yes, people died in there. Yes they had communal showers - wtih wooden doors. Get off the grass. My pragmatic solution is that Sanctions are a weapon of War, and should be abolished. Go after the cheating fat-cats by all means - they are breaking laws. But don't starve civilians.
Germany WAS mentioned by the RT article, because the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps were administered by Germans. As it stands, I don't know who to blame for the failure to feed those prisoners in what was labelled as a work-camp - yes the pictures. But I do know that the ideology of cleansing the land of those who speak other languages, or forcing children to learn in a language that is not their mother-tongue, and coming down hard on those who 'don't belong' because gypsies, homos, Ruskis, or Cloth-heads, even though they were born there - is the beginning of something worse.
We are watching that in real time in Ukraine, and in Gaza. I am praying for Trump to stop sanctions and stop sending weapons. Hopefully he keeps the 'Bomb Iran' bunch at bay.
Just wanted to add one note to what you wrote. The "starving prisoners" photographs following their release was due to the Allied bombing of Germany completely obliterating the supply lines to the camps. As a matter of fact, many of the starving people in the photos were the guards themselves, who had been stripped of their uniforms.
Also, another aspect of history that receives no attention was the genocide of German soldiers and civilians alike following the war. Upwards of 12 million were starved and/or murdered...largely due to Eisenhower's orders.
Yes. And it was not always a bombing of industrial or military logistics centres, unless you count Dresden an industrial centre, because they made fine crockery.
I'm not sure what you're referring to, but much has been MIS-attributed to Germany, and, in fact, there is more propaganda than truth. I don't think it would be accurate to refer to Germany during that period as "xenophobic."
I did not say Germany, I was referring to totalitarian ideology. So, I was thinking in terms of Desmet's thesis, and the definition of genocide according to the UN charter - that is: 'othering' is the beginning of a slippery slope that ends in the killing of innocents. it's not even really about Nazis at that point. I agree that there is more propaganda than truth. One of those myths is that the West somehow had a hand in freeing the prisoners in question. It was the Soviets. If anything, the West placed punitive sanctions on Germany that cut off all food supplies.
So everyone starved in Germany. My best friends mother WALKED from Hamburg to Rotterdam and got on a boat to England to excape the hunger. AND she had never heard of what was unfolding in the East. So there were plenty of German innocents. In rural Holland, my grandmother smuggled milk, butter and eggs in her stockings to get past German checkpoints, to feed her toddlers. (She also plucked woollen shreds from barbed wire, to spin it and knit it into baby-jumpers, because Germans took all the wool) The Germans there, were insanely hungry.
The starvation was bad, especially for those prisoners in that camp, because they were on the outskirts of the 'great realm' that Germany sought to build - far from any ports or major centres, and anyway there was no food to send. It was a logistics failure - but very much aggravated by the sanctions. We see the skin-and-bones pictures of the freed prisoners. And that's the end as far as I am concerned regarding proof. Any stories of torture, skin lamp-shades, soap, burning bodies with a can of petrol etc. to 'get rid of the evidence' are all bunkum in my opinion. Yes, they were camps. Yes, people died in there. Yes they had communal showers - wtih wooden doors. Get off the grass. My pragmatic solution is that Sanctions are a weapon of War, and should be abolished. Go after the cheating fat-cats by all means - they are breaking laws. But don't starve civilians.
Germany WAS mentioned by the RT article, because the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps were administered by Germans. As it stands, I don't know who to blame for the failure to feed those prisoners in what was labelled as a work-camp - yes the pictures. But I do know that the ideology of cleansing the land of those who speak other languages, or forcing children to learn in a language that is not their mother-tongue, and coming down hard on those who 'don't belong' because gypsies, homos, Ruskis, or Cloth-heads, even though they were born there - is the beginning of something worse.
We are watching that in real time in Ukraine, and in Gaza. I am praying for Trump to stop sanctions and stop sending weapons. Hopefully he keeps the 'Bomb Iran' bunch at bay.
Just wanted to add one note to what you wrote. The "starving prisoners" photographs following their release was due to the Allied bombing of Germany completely obliterating the supply lines to the camps. As a matter of fact, many of the starving people in the photos were the guards themselves, who had been stripped of their uniforms.
Also, another aspect of history that receives no attention was the genocide of German soldiers and civilians alike following the war. Upwards of 12 million were starved and/or murdered...largely due to Eisenhower's orders.
Yes. And it was not always a bombing of industrial or military logistics centres, unless you count Dresden an industrial centre, because they made fine crockery.
Only half mocking: ... Are we the baddies?