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France Under Nazi Occupation


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Earlier today, a curious thing occurred.

Ian Phillips took a free kick in my direction, indulging in a little gratuitous name-calling at my expense. Happily (and not at my behest) he promptly edited his post to remove the offending paragraph .

Thanks Ian, for your apparent retraction :lol:

Thanks also for drawing my attention to this thread once again. I had left Len Colby's fact-free assault on my earlier post unanswered. My apologies to Len for the delay.

Your dot points first, Len:

... I'll point out that:

-alleging that the gas chambers were indeed 'delousing showers,'

-claiming that deaths in the concentration camps were due to disease rather murder,

-calling concentration camp deaths 'the tragic consequences of war',

-comparing the conditions in concentration camps to those of Allied detention camps and

-suggesting that Hitler was forced into WWII ["Iraq never declared war on its occupiers (unlike France)"]

are all common tactics of Holocaust 'revisionists'.

Len

1/ -alleging that the gas chambers were indeed 'delousing showers,'

I didn't mention "gas chambers". My only reference to delousing was: "Typhus was known to be rife in some of the German concentration camps - hence the considerable effort expended on delousing."

Perhaps you need lessons in English comprehension, Len?

Incidentally, do you 'deny' the existence of "delousing chambers" in these camps? If so, I think you may be at odds with almnost every authority on the subject - mainstream or not.

2/ -claiming that deaths in the concentration camps were due to disease rather murder,

What I actually said was: "(Irène Némirovsky) died of typhus according to this reference".

Again, may I suggest comprehension lessons?

Again, do you deny what I actually wrote? I have no special axe to grind on the topic and would hate to purvey false information. If you do, please provide a reference.

3/ -calling concentration camp deaths 'the tragic consequences of war',

Once again, I didn't actually say that Len. Apart from anything else, I wouldn't say anything so naff. What I did say was "... in no way am I seeking to diminish the tragedy of this author's death. But war is replete with tragedies of all kinds."

Which of these propositions do you find offensive Len. Which do you deny?

4/ -comparing the conditions in concentration camps to those of Allied detention camps

Blow me. Once again, I'm unable to match my text to your point. Please show me where I made such a comparison Len.

Let's discuss it anyway.

I have no doubt that that prisoners in German and Japanese camps suffered terribly, especially towards the end of the war when supply lines were breaking down and disease was rife.

I do hope the Allied concentration camps were humane during the Second World War.

In its aftermath, many of them did not meet basic standards of decency, as the courageous Jewish journalist John Sack revealed in his extraordinary expose An Eye for an Eye.

A source I doubt you would repudiate explains:

According to the Red Cross statistics, 99% of the American Prisoners of War in the German POW camps returned home after the war, due largely to the packages containing food and typhus vaccine which were delivered from America by the Red Cross right up to the end of the war. The Soviet Union did not allow the Red Cross in any of their camps during the war because they had not signed the 1929 Geneva convention and they were not required to open their gulags (concentration camps) or Prisoner of War camps for inspection. After the war, General Dwight Eisenhower signed a one-sentence order on August 4, 1945 which read "Effective immediately all members of the German forces held in US custody in the American zone of occupation in GERMANY will be considered as disarmed enemy forces and not as having the status of prisoner of war." The DEF status meant that the German soldiers who had surrendered would not be entitled to protection under the Geneva convention: no Red Cross inspections were allowed in the US prison camps after the war and Red Cross parcels for the defeated Germans were banned by the US War Department.

How's about approaching the topic of concentration camps with a little more humility and even-handedness? It's doubtless convenient for victors to allege near-perfect behaviour on their own part against an enemy that behaved with unmitigated evil, but it ain't history.

What's more, the notion of irrefutable Allied virtue helps justify civil rights abuses on a monstrous scale in our own times (the Axis powers were defeated in 1945, but the 'Allies' keep rolling on...)

5/ -suggesting that Hitler was forced into WWII ["Iraq never declared war on its occupiers (unlike France)"]

Thank you Len. For once, you actually quote me correctly (after misrepresenting my words once again, it must be said)

Here are a couple of facts you should know. In 1939, France initiated a state of war with Germany. Not the other way round. In 2003, the USA invaded Iraq. Not the other way round.

If a country is invaded, some people in the population are likely to become collaborators – for ideological, economic and other reasons. We know this from history in almost every case I can think of - unless the entire population of the invaded society was decimated or enslaved

My point was that collaborators with the Nazis in France at least had the moral argument that they were collaborating with occupiers who had invaded their land in a war their own nation had declared first - then lost. Collaborators with the current occupiers in Iraq have no such claim to fall back on.

Regarding the broader question of whether Hitler was 'forced' into the Second World War... sorry Len, I just wouldn't make such a silly claim.

People are forced to do things in places like this and this – prison camps that are disgraceful stains on contemporary life, yet in all your self-righteous verbal froth, you never seem to find time to complain bitterly about them.

No-one 'forced' Adolf Hitler into war. He could, after all, have resigned, capitulated - or chosen a different career in the first place.

Whether he was manipulated into a larger war, far more dreadful than he imagined would ensue from his own actions up to September 3rd 1939, is an interesting question - and one that, in my view, merits discussion.

There is certainly a lively debate about whether Roosevelt sacrificed a couple of thousand American sailors at Pearl Harbor to kick start America's involvement in World War Two - a war until then deeply unpopular with most Americans.

You conclude your dot points, Len, by saying that all the above are “common tactics of Holocaust 'revisionists'.”

Really?

I think, in response to that bit of nonsense, I’ll make up a category and put you in it, whether you like it or not. I’ll call you a ‘Factual Revisionist’.

In my experience, Len, incessantly misquoting opponents, attempting to vilify and exclude them from mainstream discourse, the repeated use of ad hominem attacks and many other forms of spurious reasoning are all common tactics of ‘Factual Revisionists’.

The good news for you, Len, is that I support your freedom of speech and I’d never seek to have you imprisoned for expressing your ‘Factual Revisionist’ views.

Turning now to the rest of your post…

Some of your sentences ain't English, but I think I get your drift.

You appear to believe it's murder to send someone to a place where they are likely to experience inhuman conditions - in the event that they actually do die and irrespective of the manner of death.

Very harsh that, Len. You'll doubtless advocate locking up a lot of Israelis for a very long time on that basis if you applied such a strict policy... anyone connected with Facility 1391, in fact - and that's just for starters...

What's more, I doubt many senior politicians or members of the worldwide prison industrial complex would escape the stigma of 'murderer' under your harsh regime.

You then seem to claim it’s first degree murder in "this" case, because death was foreseeable.

I assume you mean the death of Irène Némirovsky was foreseeable by her captors when she was incarcerated.

Could you share your evidence for that?

Finally, Len, you wrote:

I never heard it alleged before even by "revisionist" "historians" that the Germans didn't intend to invade Britain once the USSR had been defeated.

My remarks referred to plans, not intentions (the former being rather more concrete and likely to be clearly documented). Nevertheless, Len, where is your evidence that the German leadership even 'intended' to invade Britain, before or after the USSR was defeated? I'd be grateful if you could supply it. I may have missed something you know about - after all, this part of history does seem to be your obsession.

Len concluded:

And not that I'm a fan of Bush or the invasion of Iraq but his apparent belief that America and Britain's occupation is a greater crime that was the Nazi's occupation of France is perhaps indicative of his overall biases.

I didn’t make such a comparison Len. I was comparing the legitimacy of collaboration in both cases.

However, I will make a couple of points.

First, if countries do not want to risk invasion, they are unwise to declare war. Not declaring war may not save them either – but a declaration of war invites attack and invasion. It is bizarre to imply the Nazi occupation of France was ipso facto a ‘crime’. Crimes may well have been committed during that occupation – but that’s a different matter. By contrast, the illegal invasion of Iraq by the USA and Britain was and is a war crime per se.

Second, I suspect the occupied people of France during World War Two – as a whole – were not nearly as miserable as Iraqis as a whole in 2006. Iraqi civilians appear to be dying at a higher rate than French civilian deaths during World War Two (do correct me if I'm wrong about this, citing an appropriate reference).

Overseeing the immiseration of the Iraqi people, despoiling their land and polluting it permanently with depleted uranium – these are current war crimes. They are happening right now in our world. We can't change what happened 60+ years ago, but we can at least try to change what's happening now.

You obsess about whether people such as me have a view about World War Two that accords with your own – and I imagine you are quite pleased that numerous historians and other dissidents are locked up for holding unorthodox views about ‘The Holocaust’.

I say there’s a holocaust happening right now – in several places in the middle east. You don’t seem to care much about that – except to minimize its significance.

A recent article entitled Israel Beyond Comparison by the eloquent Israeli philosopher and jazz musician Atzmon Gilad explores some of these issues, with specific reference to the Zionist State.

I think you should read it, Len, if you wish to continue this debate. Read how the Zionist State treats its dissidents in these very days we are living through - see Israeli Army Cause Serious Head Injury to Israeli Lawyer at Demonstration. Read also about collaboration between Zionists and Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s to better appreciate the inter-relationship between these two movements and ideologies.

The past is important, I agree, but most importantly we need to fix the world we live in – for ALL our sakes and for those who come after us.

Insofar a historical narrative preferred by Zionists and the Anglo-American establishment helps underpin the crimes of the present, it isn’t just chutzpah to demand acquiesence and/or silence.

It’s an outrage!

Edited by Sid Walker
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As a history teacher in an English University I am always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. my reasons for editing the post were based on reading Sid Walker's biography: a Friends of the Earth activist, not a historian, I thought that my suggestion that the way he was using evidence was typical of the tactics used by holocaust deniers was perhaps a little harsh. Perhaps he was just a little misguided, a little naive I thought.

Having read the threads in the political conspiracies area I realise I do need to rein in my liberal and charitable nature.

Andy Walker's assessment of Sid Walker, is probably, and regrettably very accurate.

It is also a pointless exercise trying to reason, debate or argue with such people as their failure, or inability to understand concepts like evidence and historical methododology mean their minds are closed.

In one of my favourite books Focauld's Pendulum by Umberto Eco there is a marvellous line which goes something like:

'When someone mentions the Templars you know they are the real lunatics'

I think there would be general agreement amongst all rational people that today you could do a search and replace and substitute Holcaust Deniers and conspiracy theorists for the Templars.

The only good thing about the internet and bulletin boards which have conspiracy theory discussion threads is that it is the electronic equivalent of a good old fashioned 19th Lunatic Asylum and you know the inmates are securely locked up on the top of the moors.

Hopefully I'm not being too arrogant if I claim that some replies might simply confirm some of the assertions made in this post

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Andy Walker's assessment of Sid Walker, is probably, and regrettably very accurate.

It is also a pointless exercise trying to reason, debate or argue with such people as their failure, or inability to understand concepts like evidence and historical methododology mean their minds are closed.

Accurate on both points I regret to say.

Whilst I can just about cope with this noble project (the Education Forum) being taken over by assorted Bedlamites banging on in a random why about conspiracy theories, I have to draw the line at Holocaust denial.

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I had left Len Colby's fact-free assault on my earlier post unanswered. My apologies to Len for the delay.

Your dot points first, Len:

... I'll point out that:

-alleging that the gas chambers were indeed 'delousing showers,'

-claiming that deaths in the concentration camps were due to disease rather murder,

-calling concentration camp deaths 'the tragic consequences of war',

-comparing the conditions in concentration camps to those of Allied detention camps and

-suggesting that Hitler was forced into WWII ["Iraq never declared war on its occupiers (unlike France)"]

are all common tactics of Holocaust 'revisionists'.

Len

1/ -alleging that the gas chambers were indeed 'delousing showers,'

I didn't mention "gas chambers". My only reference to delousing was: "Typhus was known to be rife in some of the German concentration camps - hence the considerable effort expended on delousing."

Perhaps you need lessons in English comprehension, Len?

Incidentally, do you 'deny' the existence of "delousing chambers" in these camps? If so, I think you may be at odds with almnost every authority on the subject - mainstream or not.

Perhaps YOU are the one who needs to improve your reading comprehension, on the Jewish Conspiratol networks thread (where I said I'd reply to you at greater length) I wrote the following

"As I mentioned on the other thread this kind of talk is straight out of Holocaust revisionism. The Nazi's did indeed install 'delousing showers' in many (most / all ?) concentration camps. By all accounts I've seen they were extremely ineffective (if effective at all). Their main function probably was to fool victims who were sent to near identical gas chambers.

Perhaps Walker can cite a recognized historian who backs his claim that the Nazis "expended" "considerable effort … on delousing" in order to combat typhus ."

And indeed it's true that Holocaust revisionists claim that there were no gas chambers only delousing chambers in the camps as you well know because you have cited such garbage yourself.

2/ -claiming that deaths in the concentration camps were due to disease rather murder,

What I actually said was: "(Irène Némirovsky) died of typhus according to this reference".

Again, may I suggest reading comprehension lessons?

I wrote:

"-Némirovsky died in a camp set up with specific intent to commit murder, indeed the extermination of her race, I have seen no credible evidence that the Allies set up camps with the intent to kill anyone (except convicted war criminals).

-The Nazi's of course were responsible for crating the subhuman conditions in the camps which led to the prevalence of typhus and similar diseases;"

And indeed it's true that Holocaust revisionists claim that deaths in the concentration camps were due to disease rather murder, you even echoed the idea again later in your reply (see below).

I have no special axe to grind on the topic

LOL

3/ -calling concentration camp deaths 'the tragic consequences of war',

Once again, I didn't actually say that Len. Apart from anything else, I wouldn't say anything so naff. What I did say was "... in no way am I seeking to diminish the tragedy of this author's death. But war is replete with tragedies of all kinds."

OK so you didn't say six you said half a dozen, the two statements were essentially the same. Obviously "war is replete with tragedies of all kinds." But just as obviously Némirovsky death was more than that it was part of an act of genocide.

4/ -comparing the conditions in concentration camps to those of Allied detention camps

Blow me.

Funny this from the guy who complains about and feigns objection to "odd sexual innuendo" and "smutty language" like "pimping" and "intellectual masturbations" http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...ost&p=71510

Once again, I'm unable to match my text to your point. Please show me where I made such a comparison Len.

You're not nearly as smart as you think you are you wrote "One could argue that by deporting her from France and sending her to a camp, she was ''effectively' murdered - but on that basis any of the 'enemy aliens' detained by the allies were also ''murdered', if they died while in custody."

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The quote function has gone haywire again. (Andy why does this happen?) Sid's comments in bold

I have no doubt that that prisoners in German and Japanese camps suffered terribly, especially towards the end of the war when supply lines were breaking down and disease was rife.

There you go again using Holocaust revisionist rhetoric. That's a big revisionist line 'victims at concentration camps only started dying towards the end the war when supplies became scarce', you forgot the part about blaming the Allies for bombing German supply lines. Prisoners in German concentration camps long before the end of the war. My father's father died after he was forced to sleep outside in the winter of 1938 in Dachau, I guess by your logic the Nazis didn't kill him the cold did and his death was just another "tragedy" of the war.

I do hope the Allied concentration camps were humane during the Second World War.

In its aftermath, many of them did not meet basic standards of decency, as the courageous Jewish journalist John Sack revealed in his extraordinary expose An Eye for an Eye.

LOL to refute the charge that you are a Holocaust revisionist you cite something from the IHR perhaps the world's most infamous revisionist site, though ironically the author was Jewish. From what I understand most of what he wrote is accurate. Congratulation you may have found one of the few case where conditions at Allied camps approached those of Nazi ones. Can you cite any examples of such camps run by the Western Allies? I think most people would agree that the behavior of the guards and directors of those camps was criminal but that their status as recently freed concentration camp survivors qualifies as extenuating circumstances.

A source I doubt you would repudiate explains:
According to the Red Cross statistics, 99% of the American Prisoners of War in the German POW camps returned home after the war, due largely to the packages containing food and typhus vaccine which were delivered from America by the Red Cross right up to the end of the war. The Soviet Union did not allow the Red Cross in any of their camps during the war because they had not signed the 1929 Geneva convention and they were not required to open their gulags (concentration camps) or Prisoner of War camps for inspection. After the war, General Dwight Eisenhower signed a one-sentence order on August 4, 1945 which read "Effective immediately all members of the German forces held in US custody in the American zone of occupation in GERMANY will be considered as disarmed enemy forces and not as having the status of prisoner of war." The DEF status meant that the German soldiers who had surrendered would not be entitled to protection under the Geneva convention: no Red Cross inspections were allowed in the US prison camps after the war and Red Cross parcels for the defeated Germans were banned by the US War Department.

Nothing in the authors claims indicate actual mistreatment of Axis prisoners and he (she?) failed to back his (her?) claims. Also note the date Aug. 4 was three months after the end of hostilities in Europe.

How's about approaching the topic of concentration camps with a little more humility and even-handedness? It's doubtless convenient for victors to allege near-perfect behavior on their own part against an enemy that behaved with unmitigated evil, but it ain't history.

Yeah, your right don't want to give Nazi's a bad name they did make great cars after all. I don't know Sid the more you try to explain your position the worse you sound. When have I ever indicated that the Allies behavior was "near-perfect"? "Unmitigated evil" however is pretty good description of the Nazi concentration camp / genocide program

What's more, the notion of irrefutable Allied virtue helps justify civil rights abuses on a monstrous scale in our own times (the Axis powers were defeated in 1945, but the 'Allies' keep rolling on...)

??????

5/ -suggesting that Hitler was forced into WWII ["Iraq never declared war on its occupiers (unlike France)"]

Thank you Len. For once, you actually quote me correctly (after misrepresenting my words once again, it must be said)

Here are a couple of facts you should know. In 1939, France initiated a state of war with Germany. Not the other way round.

Back to your history books Sid. Hitler had made his expansionist goals including taking over France, Eastern Europe and finally the USSR back in Mein Kampf. His illegal build up of the Germany military and take overs of Austria and Czechoslovakia showed that he meant business. Britain and France signed mutual defense treaties with Poland, Hitler and the whole world knew what the consequences of his unprovoked attack of Poland would be. Let's not also forget that except for a few small skirmishes in 1939 actually hostilities were initiated by the Nazi's not the French. An act of war doesn't necessarily justify invasion and occupation of the offending country. One of the reasons for the Six-Day War was Egypt's closure of the Strait of Tiran to Israeli ships. Israeli's critics say that country should only have used sufficient force to reopen the Strait, Britain did not invade Argentina after it invaded the Falklands.

In 2003, the USA invaded Iraq. Not the other way round.

True but Iraq violated the treaty it had signed at the end of the 1st Gulf War (not that this justified the invasion)

If a country is invaded, some people in the population are likely to become collaborators – for ideological, economic and other reasons. We know this from history in almost every case I can think of - unless the entire population of the invaded society was decimated or enslaved

My point was that collaborators with the Nazis in France at least had the moral argument that they were collaborating with occupiers who had invaded their land in a war their own nation had declared first - then lost.

I think very few people would share you twisted take on that or even did back then. Can you cite any French collaborators who used that as their rationale?

Collaborators with the current occupiers in Iraq have no such claim to fall back on
.

How about that the regime that preceded the occupation brutally oppressed them, if they are Shiites or Kurds or members of other ethnic groups? How about that the occupiers are trying at least to replace a brutal dictatorship with a democracy? How about that the preceding regime was at least partially responsible for the invasion by refusing to fully cooperate with the UN inspectors? Damn you got me talking like a Bush supporter now.

Regarding the broader question of whether Hitler was 'forced' into the Second World War... sorry Len, I just wouldn't make such a silly claim.

People are forced to do things in places like this and this – prison camps that are disgraceful stains on contemporary life, yet in all your self-righteous verbal froth, you never seem to find time to complain bitterly about them.

I agree Guantanamo and 1391, if what is said about it is true, are blights, if you start such threads I might even weigh in on the same side as you.

No-one 'forced' Adolf Hitler into war. He could, after all, have resigned, capitulated - or chosen a different career in the first place.

Or chosen not to invade his neighbors, odd that you failed to include that option.

Whether he was manipulated into a larger war, far more dreadful than he imagined would ensue from his own actions up to September 3rd 1939, is an interesting question - and one that, in my view, merits discussion.

Oh, please remember what I said about "the more you try to explain your position the worse you sound" this is another example. Perhaps you should start a new thread with that as its thesis. I guess making "such a silly claim" is not really beyond you.

You conclude your dot points, Len, by saying that all the above are "common tactics of Holocaust 'revisionists'."

Really?

Yes as you should well know since you are such a big fan of Holocaust revisionism.

I think, in response to that bit of nonsense, I'll make up a category and put you in it, whether you like it or not. I'll call you a 'Factual Revisionist'.

In my experience, Len, incessantly misquoting opponents, attempting to vilify and exclude them from mainstream discourse, the repeated use of ad hominem attacks and many other forms of spurious reasoning are all common tactics of 'Factual Revisionists'.

I don't think I ever misquoted you or anybody else nor intentionally misrepresented your or anybody else's views. Nor have I tried to exclude you or anybody else "from mainstream discourse", I after all defended M.C. Piper's right to join this forum. But just as you have a right to express your odious views I have a right to object to them.

The good news for you, Len, is that I support your freedom of speech and I'd never seek to have you imprisoned for expressing your 'Factual Revisionist' views.

How generous of you!

You appear to believe it's murder to send someone to a place where they are likely to experience inhuman conditions - in the event that they actually do die and irrespective of the manner of death.

Very harsh that, Len. You'll doubtless advocate locking up a lot of Israelis for a very long time on that basis if you applied such a strict policy... anyone connected with Facility 1391, in fact - and that's just for starters...

What's more, I doubt many senior politicians or members of the worldwide prison industrial complex would escape the stigma of 'murderer' under your harsh regime.

You then seem to claim it's first degree murder in "this" case, because death was foreseeable.

I assume you mean the death of Irène Némirovsky was foreseeable by her captors when she was incarcerated.

Could you share your evidence for that?

Sid, get off your friggin high horse, 1391 isn't a death camp nor are most prisons worldwide. Némirovsky's death was more than foreseeable because she was sent to a death camp.

Finally, Len, you wrote:

I never heard it alleged before even by "revisionist" "historians" that the Germans didn't intend to invade Britain once the USSR had been defeated.

My remarks referred to plans, not intentions (the former being rather more concrete and likely to be clearly documented). Nevertheless, Len, where is your evidence that the German leadership even 'intended' to invade Britain, before or after the USSR was defeated? I'd be grateful if you could supply it. I may have missed something you know about - after all, this part of history does seem to be your obsession.

Have you really never heard of 'Operation Sea Lion' http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/operation_sealion.htm

You obsess about whether people such as me have a view about World War Two that accords with your own – and I imagine you are quite pleased that numerous historians and other dissidents are locked up for holding unorthodox views about 'The Holocaust'

No Sid you seem rather obsessed with revisionism, before Piper and you showed I rarely broached the subject. I do think it's a mistake to imprison people for stating their beliefs no matter how odious. But I find your use of the word historians (plural) rather curious because as far as I know the only revisionist (imprisoned or not) who can at all lay claim to such a title is David Irving. Since he has no degrees or any other formal training in the subject and has never been in any way associated with a college or university history department many debate whether he deserves such a title. You try to make it sound like there are actual legitimate doubts among historians about what happened during the Holocaust (regarding the claims made by revisionist) but that just ain't the case.

Insofar a historical narrative preferred by Zionists and the Anglo-American establishment helps underpin the crimes of the present, it isn't just chutzpah to demand acquiesence and/or silence.

It's an outrage!

I agree with you the Holocaust doesn't justify Israel's slaughter of Lebanese and Palestinians but I haven't seen it cited by the Israeli government. Again by your choice of words "a historical narrative preferred by Zionists and the Anglo-American establishment" makes it sound like there is serious debate about whether or not 10 – 12 million civilians including 5 – 6 million Jews were intentionally murdered in death camps and mass shootings by the Nazi's, there it i

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