Did Albert Speer know about the Holocaust

[JasonDebenah89]

The former architect of Nazi Germany for Hitler and his munitions and armaments minister during the war...claimed he didn't know about the Holocaust and got off with a 20-year sentence at Nurnberg.

Did he know about it?

[Lumine]

Yes. Gitta Sereny has what I think is the most comprehensive biography of Speer (which she wrote by speaking with him across several years), and while Speer was always elusive about the subject her conclusion was that he did know. She does note that Speer probably repressed the knowledge and possibly wanted to believe he did not know, but the evidence points he was there in least on occasion in which the matter was discussed during the war.

Important (due to the collective admission of guilt) and "brilliant" as his defence was in Nuremberg (escaping death while his subordinate Sauckel was sentenced to death), he knew about it.

[Lincoln Republican]

Absolutely he knew what was going on, no doubt about that.

All major Nazi officials knew full well what was going on.

So did the German citizenry for the most part know what was going on.

How could they not know, seeing millions loaded into trains and never returning.

[Kingpoleon]

To some extent, certainly. He was a weak man, too weak to help Rommel and others overthrow Hitler.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Yes, as backed by several sources.

Anyway, if not for anything else, Speer had to know if only because people he wanted to use as slave labour were being liquidated instead. It is possible, though, he did know the full scope of the Holocaust, as the "final solution" enforcement was a jealously guarded secret by the SS.

Sauckel was a small potato compared to Speer. Don't take me wrong, Sauckel deserved his fate, but Speer should've been sentenced to death as well in the name of consistency. However, he was a smart fellow who played the "I'm sorry, I take responsibility, Nazism was bad" card expertly. It was what the Court and the prosecution needed. Sauckel stuck to "I was following orders" stuff, which understandably did not work.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

So did the German citizenry for the most part know what was going on.

How could they not know, seeing millions loaded into trains and never returning.

It's not that simple. It was always clear to them the Jews were never to return, with the official line being resettlement to the west (and, before 1938, forced immigration). The final solution as we knew it materialized only when the war was underway and Jews were already deported to ghettos. The Holocaust was never a public policy. In fact SS was very sensitive about keeping as much secrecy as possible.

While it became apparent something else was going on, I'm pretty sure most of Germans were shocked to see the full picture come 1945.

[bore]

So did the German citizenry for the most part know what was going on.

How could they not know, seeing millions loaded into trains and never returning.

It's not that simple. It was always clear to them the Jews were never to return, with the official line being resettlement to the west (and, before 1938, forced immigration). The final solution as we knew it materialized only when the war was underway and Jews were already deported to ghettos. The Holocaust was never a public policy. In fact SS was very sensitive about keeping as much secrecy as possible.

While it became apparent something else was going on, I'm pretty sure most of Germans were shocked to see the full picture come 1945.

Nah Winfield is right.

There is a tendency to see the Holocaust through the prism of the camps, and particularly the concentration camps, where there was at least a slim chance of surviving, and not the Einsatzgruppen and the death camps, where there was not. But just as many jews died by bullets as  by gas, which, inevitably, means there are a tens of, if not hundreds of thousands of accomplices, not just from the SS but from the Wehrmacht as well. That's not counting all the people who knew from working on the trains, or dealt with jewish belongings. It's absurd to think that mass murder of that scale could be kept quiet. And, of course, it wasn't. To take an example from Richard Evans book on the Reich at war, as early as March 1942 the SD (who were very good at this sort of thing) reported back that "soldiers returning from Poland were talking openly about how Jews were being killed in large numbers there". By October 1942 Anthony Eden publicly reported that 2 million Jews had been murdered in the house of commons. And straight after that the British flooded Germany, through the BBC and through the RAF, with details on the camps, which Goebbels did not deny. Evans summarises that at the latest everyone knew by 1942, and I think that's a reasonable suggestion.

As for the idea that the SS were very concerned with the secrecy, that's true and it isn't. On the one hand, yes, Goebbels never outright announced that "Today we have murdered 5000 Jews, tomorrow we will do the same, and the day after....", and certainly talk about it by members of the public was discouraged. On the other hand, pretty much all political discussion was discouraged, and they didn't really make it too difficult to piece things together (which, to be fair, they couldn't have done if they wanted to). One of the most chilling lines in all of history is "if world Jewry launches another war in order to destroy the Aryan nations of Europe, it will not be the Aryan nations that will be destroyed, but the Jews.", which Hitler said to the Reichstag, and thus all of Germany, in January 1939, and repeated again in 1941 to the Reichstag and in 1942 on the radio.

[Higgins]

A lot of people, including FDR, knew about the Holocaust and did little to nothing about it. You can either damn every single person who lived in the 1940s and didn't do anything about it, or accept that knowledge and not being in a position to stop it doesn't mean support.

Let's say Speer shot and killed Hitler in 1942. That doesn't mean the Nazi Regime dies with him. Hitler would be a martyr and Speer would be killed right after, and the Holocaust would still continue anyway.

The only way you could stop the Holocaust would have been to kill every member of the German High Command in one fell swoop and destroy every single Camp by force.

The only ones who can blamed for the Holocaust are those who were directly responsible for it (IE Hitler, the other planners, those supplying the gas, guards who could've secreted Jews out of the Camps). To assign guilt or complicity to everyone in Germany who lived during the 1930s/1940s, or anyone of prominence who associated with Hitler isn't quite fair. The people who perpetuated it and the ones who sympathized with it are to blame.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

So did the German citizenry for the most part know what was going on.

How could they not know, seeing millions loaded into trains and never returning.

It's not that simple. It was always clear to them the Jews were never to return, with the official line being resettlement to the west (and, before 1938, forced immigration). The final solution as we knew it materialized only when the war was underway and Jews were already deported to ghettos. The Holocaust was never a public policy. In fact SS was very sensitive about keeping as much secrecy as possible.

While it became apparent something else was going on, I'm pretty sure most of Germans were shocked to see the full picture come 1945.

Nah Winfield is right.

There is a tendency to see the Holocaust through the prism of the camps, and particularly the concentration camps, where there was at least a slim chance of surviving, and not the Einsatzgruppen and the death camps, where there was not. But just as many jews died by bullets as  by gas, which, inevitably, means there are a tens of, if not hundreds of thousands of accomplices, not just from the SS but from the Wehrmacht as well. That's not counting all the people who knew from working on the trains, or dealt with jewish belongings. It's absurd to think that mass murder of that scale could be kept quiet. And, of course, it wasn't. To take an example from Richard Evans book on the Reich at war, as early as March 1942 the SD (who were very good at this sort of thing) reported back that "soldiers returning from Poland were talking openly about how Jews were being killed in large numbers there". By October 1942 Anthony Eden publicly reported that 2 million Jews had been murdered in the house of commons. And straight after that the British flooded Germany, through the BBC and through the RAF, with details on the camps, which Goebbels did not deny. Evans summarises that at the latest everyone knew by 1942, and I think that's a reasonable suggestion.

As for the idea that the SS were very concerned with the secrecy, that's true and it isn't. On the one hand, yes, Goebbels never outright announced that "Today we have murdered 5000 Jews, tomorrow we will do the same, and the day after....", and certainly talk about it by members of the public was discouraged. On the other hand, pretty much all political discussion was discouraged, and they didn't really make it too difficult to piece things together (which, to be fair, they couldn't have done if they wanted to). One of the most chilling lines in all of history is "if world Jewry launches another war in order to destroy the Aryan nations of Europe, it will not be the Aryan nations that will be destroyed, but the Jews.", which Hitler said to the Reichstag, and thus all of Germany, in January 1939, and repeated again in 1941 to the Reichstag and in 1942 on the radio.

I probably didn't make myself clear. Of course there was common knowledge about Jews being killed in thousands, but the whole scope of the Holocaust, including death camps and Einsatzgruppen, were not clearly revealed until after the war. SS was as meticiolous as possible not to leave traces, as best represented by Paul Bloebel, formerly in charge of Babi Jar massacre, being later put in command of excavation and burning the corpses.

The truth was just so, so horrible that I'm pretty sure a lot of people didn't suspect the scale or refused to believe the rumors. I mean, let's face it, it was just unprecedented.

[Lincoln Republican]

Kalwejt, my friend, please quit making excuses for the German people, and for their complicity and culpability in the holocaust.

It was the German people who elected Hitler. 

It was the German people who knew at least as early as 1933, that Hitler wanted nothing less than the elimination and destruction of Jewry. 

[Spark]

Sure did. Had to be living under a rock not to know that.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Kalwejt, my friend, please quit making excuses for the German people, and for their complicity and culpability in the holocaust.

You basically keep saying millions of Germans were almost active participants in the Holocaust from before day one. Sorry, but this just doesn't compute.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Hitler was not "elected", he was being let to power via back doors, as instigated by idiots like von Papen, who thought they can control and contain him. Yes, the Nazis had sizeable public support, but not enough to win all. And still, Hitler would never be able to seize total power if not for von Papen's coup in Prussia back in 1932.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Many people did not take seriously Hitler's ramblings in "Mein Kampf" way until it was too late. And while I can totally believe Hitler always wanted to exterminate the Jews, "forced immigration" was long an official policy. Whether it was considered a temporary step to hide true intent or not, it's absurd to assume millions of Germans back in, let's sat 1937, were completely aware of what would eventually come.

[Helsinkian]

Himmler directly addresses Speer in the Posen speeches when talking about the Holocaust. Speer later claimed that he left early but that was probably a lie.

[Lincoln Republican]

Kalwejt, my friend, please quit making excuses for the German people, and for their complicity and culpability in the holocaust.

You basically keep saying millions of Germans were almost active participants in the Holocaust from before day one. Sorry, but this just doesn't compute.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Hitler was not "elected", he was being let to power via back doors, as instigated by idiots like von Papen, who thought they can control and contain him. Yes, the Nazis had sizeable public support, but not enough to win all. And still, Hitler would never be able to seize total power if not for von Papen's coup in Prussia back in 1932.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Many people did not take seriously Hitler's ramblings in "Mein Kampf" way until it was too late. And while I can totally believe Hitler always wanted to exterminate the Jews, "forced immigration" was long an official policy. Whether it was considered a temporary step to hide true intent or not, it's absurd to assume millions of Germans back in, let's sat 1937, were completely aware of what would eventually come.

In the 1932 German Presidential elections, enough Germans voted for Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP), for President, to give him enough influence and power in order that Hindenburg was  forced to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933. 

Two successive federal elections left the Nazis as the largest party in the Reichstag.  This was because of the votes cast by the German people.  Therefore, it was the votes of the German people made the Nazi Party the largest party in the Reichstag.

These votes cast by a significant part of the German people were, in point of fact, what led to Hitler becoming Chancellor, and dictator of Germany.

Millions upon millions of German people knew what Hitler stood for, including his vow to eliminate Jews, and yet they voted for Hitler anyway.

So yes, millions upon millions of Germans were complicit in Hitler's mad plans.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Kalwejt, my friend, please quit making excuses for the German people, and for their complicity and culpability in the holocaust.

You basically keep saying millions of Germans were almost active participants in the Holocaust from before day one. Sorry, but this just doesn't compute.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Hitler was not "elected", he was being let to power via back doors, as instigated by idiots like von Papen, who thought they can control and contain him. Yes, the Nazis had sizeable public support, but not enough to win all. And still, Hitler would never be able to seize total power if not for von Papen's coup in Prussia back in 1932.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Many people did not take seriously Hitler's ramblings in "Mein Kampf" way until it was too late. And while I can totally believe Hitler always wanted to exterminate the Jews, "forced immigration" was long an official policy. Whether it was considered a temporary step to hide true intent or not, it's absurd to assume millions of Germans back in, let's sat 1937, were completely aware of what would eventually come.

In the 1932 German Presidential elections, enough Germans voted for Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP), for President, to give him enough influence and power in order that Hindenburg was  forced to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933. 

Two successive federal elections left the Nazis as the largest party in the Reichstag.  This was because of the votes cast by the German people.  Therefore, it was the votes of the German people made the Nazi Party the largest party in the Reichstag.

These votes cast by a significant part of the German people were, in point of fact, what led to Hitler becoming Chancellor, and dictator of Germany.

Millions upon millions of German people knew what Hitler stood for, including his vow to eliminate Jews, and yet they voted for Hitler anyway.

So yes, millions upon millions of Germans were complicit in Hitler's mad plans.

Largest, does not equal a majority. Hitler won a plurality of the votes both times. But was made Chancellor because of the other parties viewed each other as more of threat than Hitler.

And it required the votes of several of those parties who leaned to the right, to pass the Enabling Act, which allowed for the formation of the dictatorship.

That being said, I would certainly argue that Hitler had majority support at various points, this was never expressed in an election though as they no longer were conducted by that point.

[Lincoln Republican]

No matter how  anyone tries to spin it, there were millions upon millions of the German people  who voted for Hitler and the Nazis, in various elections, paving his path to dictatorship.

These people also knew that Hitler and the Nazis advocated the elimination of the Jews.

 

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

In the 1932 German Presidential elections, enough Germans voted for Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP), for President, to give him enough influence and power in order that Hindenburg was  forced to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933.  

Two successive federal elections left the Nazis as the largest party in the Reichstag.  

This was because of the votes cast by the German people.  Therefore, it was the votes of the German people made the Nazi Party the largest party in the Reichstag.

These votes cast by a significant part of the German people were, in point of fact, what led to Hitler becoming Chancellor, and dictator of Germany.

The Nazis were not in position to force Hitler's appointment. Since 1930 Weimar Germany were being ruled by presidential governments, so it didn't matter who's got most seats in the Reichstag. In fact, during the last election the Nazis saw their support drop and with starting internal rifts, they were possibly on course to break up. Hitler was literally saved by von Papen's intrigues.

Remember the whole plan was to make Hitler an impotent chancellor of government controlled by von Papen and his allies, supported by Hindenburg and the army. To contain him, break the Nazi as major force and then throw him away. Von Papen made a critical mistake by agreeing to Goering's appointment as Prussian Interior Minister, which gave him effective control over powerful Prussian administration and police force, because, as it was said "he who rules Prussia rules the Reich." Until 1932 Prussia was being a stronghold for Weimar Democracy with SDP-led government, which had to be removed by a coup.

Even in March 1933, last semi-free election, Hitler failed to win a majority. The next election, with all opposition banned, was a sham and can't be considered as representative.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Nobody's denying Hitler had millions of supporters, and that there was antisemitism in Germany. However, it is foolish to assume these millions thought like "well, he'll exterminate the Jews, cool." Millions, from ordinary voters to von Papen's conservatives, the army, ending with the western democracies political leadership, considered his Mein Kampf program as demagogic ramblings, which can't be done anyway. This is the mindblowing factor: millions helped Hitler win power, but to consider them conscious accomplices simply doesn't represent the reality.

Members of my family suffered a lot from the hands of the Nazi regime, but my grandparents, who lived through this hell, disagreed with this generalization of guilt when we talked about the war.

[Lincoln Republican]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard

A quote from the article

The Guardian February 17, 2001

Germans knew of Holocaust horror about death camps

Details of deaths of Jews and other groups in concentration camps were well publicized

The mass of ordinary Germans did know about the evolving terror of Hitler's Holocaust, according to a new research study. They knew concentration camps were full of Jewish people who were stigmatized as sub-human and race-defilers. They knew that these, like other groups and minorities, were being killed out of hand.

They knew that Adolf Hitler had repeatedly forecast the extermination of every Jew on German soil. They knew these details because they had read about them. They knew because the camps and the measures which led up to them had been prominently and proudly reported step by step in thousands of officially-inspired German media articles and posters according to the study, which is due to be published simultaneously in Britain and the US early next month and which was described as ground-breaking by Oxford University Press yesterday and already hailed by other historians.

The reports, in newspapers and magazines all over the country were phases in a public process of "desensitisation" which worked all too well, culminating in the killing of 6m Jews, says Robert Gellately. His book, Backing Hitler, is based on the first systematic analysis by a historian of surviving German newspaper and magazine archives since 1933, the year Hitler became chancellor. The survey took hundreds of hours and yielded dozens of folders of photocopies, many of them from the 24 main newspapers and magazines of the period.


Millions of Germans knew the situation with the Jews.  Obviously, I am not saying all Germans knew, but millions did know the facts about the holocaust.

Quit trying to defend the German populace that did know.

[Higgins]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard

A quote from the article

The Guardian February 17, 2001

Germans knew of Holocaust horror about death camps

Details of deaths of Jews and other groups in concentration camps were well publicized

The mass of ordinary Germans did know about the evolving terror of Hitler's Holocaust, according to a new research study. They knew concentration camps were full of Jewish people who were stigmatized as sub-human and race-defilers. They knew that these, like other groups and minorities, were being killed out of hand.

They knew that Adolf Hitler had repeatedly forecast the extermination of every Jew on German soil. They knew these details because they had read about them. They knew because the camps and the measures which led up to them had been prominently and proudly reported step by step in thousands of officially-inspired German media articles and posters according to the study, which is due to be published simultaneously in Britain and the US early next month and which was described as ground-breaking by Oxford University Press yesterday and already hailed by other historians.

The reports, in newspapers and magazines all over the country were phases in a public process of "desensitisation" which worked all too well, culminating in the killing of 6m Jews, says Robert Gellately. His book, Backing Hitler, is based on the first systematic analysis by a historian of surviving German newspaper and magazine archives since 1933, the year Hitler became chancellor. The survey took hundreds of hours and yielded dozens of folders of photocopies, many of them from the 24 main newspapers and magazines of the period.


Millions of Germans knew the situation with the Jews.  Obviously, I am not saying all Germans knew, but millions did know the facts about the holocaust.

Quit trying to defend the German populace that did know.

Every German is evil. Happy?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

It's not about "excuses". It's naive to assume millions of Germans, when they gave their full or semi-convinced backing to Hitler, had in mind what was to come, it's just far stretched. One of the most morbid things about the Holocaust was it's being so unimaginable.

I have hard time buying that by, let's say 1935, ordinary Germans were fully aware of the whole picture, while leaders of Western democracies and public opinion considered it a phase. I'm reminded of Aaron Jastrow's character in Herman Wouk's Winds of War. He was like "oh well, antisemitic phases happens periodically, we'll just adjust," until very late.

We can argue whether Germans who first voted Hitler, or then accepted his regime, were unknowing enablers of all the consequences, but let's dispel with this collective, fully informed and willing responsibility crap.

[Lincoln Republican]

We will agree to disagree.

[Lincoln Republican]

I have been able to find some more very interesting information on the holocaust and what the German population in general knew about it.

These are wide ranging and very respected academic research studies, and cannot be  dismissed out of hand.

They are well worth taking into serious consideration.

In order to be fair, I have quoted results from both sides of this issue.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_for_the_Holocaust

Debate continues on how much average Germans knew about the Holocaust. Robert Gellately, a historian at Oxford University, conducted a widely respected survey of the German media before and during the war and concluded that there was substantial participation and consent from large numbers of ordinary Germans in various aspects of the Holocaust, that German civilians frequently saw columns of slave laborers, and that the basics of the concentration camps, if not the extermination camps, were widely known. The German scholar, Peter Longerich, in a study looking at what Germans knew about the mass murders concluded that: "General information concerning the mass murder of Jews was widespread in the German population."

The British Historian, Nicholas Stargardt, presents evidence of widespread knowledge, agreement and collusion in the destruction of European Jewry, as well of the insane, feeble, disabled, Poles, Roma and other nationals. His evidence includes speeches by Nazi leaders, which were broadcast or heard by a wide audience that included mention or inferences concerning the plans to destroy the Jews, along with letters written between soldiers and their families describing the slaughter. Historian Claudia Koonz relates how reports of the SD described public opinion as favorable where it concerned the killing of Jews; one must take into consideration the possible extent to which SD reports were evaluated and/or manipulated by the Nazi propaganda machine.

In their aptly named book, What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany, historians Eric Johnson and Karl-Heiz Reuband conducted an extensive set of interviews (over 3,000 Germans and 500 German Jews) for an unprecedented firsthand look at daily life in the Third Reich and analyzed it accordingly. They carefully selected interviews out of the samples, which they believed best represented their overall findings. From the Jewish questionnaires, the authors found that German society was not nearly as rife with anti-Semitism as one might otherwise have believed, but this changed dramatically with Hitler's ascension to power. German Jews claimed that they knew of the Holocaust from a wide range of sources, which included radio broadcasts from Italy and what they heard from friends or acquaintances, but they did not know these details until 1943. Responses from non-Jewish Germans indicate that "the majority of Germans identified with the Nazi regime." Contrary to many other accounts and/or historical interpretations, which portray rule under the Nazis as terrifying for German citizens, most of the German respondents who participated in the interviews stated that they never really feared arrest from the Gestapo. Concerning the mass murder of the Jews, the survey results were contingent to some degree on geography, but roughly 27–29% of Germans had information about the Holocaust at some point before the war's end, and another 10–13% suspected something terrible was happening all along. Based on this information, Johnson and Reuband surmise that one-in-three Germans either heard or knew that the Holocaust was taking place before the end of the war from sources which included family members, friends, neighbors or professional colleagues. Johnson suggests (in disagreement with his co-author) that it is more likely that about 50% of the German population were aware of the atrocities being committed against the Jewish people and other enemies identified by the Nazi regime.

During the years 1945 through 1949, polls indicated that a majority of Germans felt that Nazism was a "good idea, badly applied". In a poll conducted in the American German occupation zone, 37% replied that 'the extermination of the Jews and Poles and other non-Aryans was necessary for the security of Germans' Sarah Ann Gordon in Hitler, Germans, and the Jewish Question notes that the surveys are very difficult to draw conclusions from as respondents were given only three options from which to choose: (1) Hitler was right in his treatment of the Jews, to which 0% agreed; (2) Hitler went too far in his treatment of the Jews, but something had to be done to keep them in bounds - 19% agreed; and (3) The actions against the Jews were in no way justified - 77% agreed. She also noted that another revealing example emerges from the question whether an Aryan who marries a Jew should be condemned, a question to which 91% of the respondents answered "No". To the question: "All those who ordered the murder of civilians or participated in the murders should be made to stand trial", 94% responded "Yes". Historian Tony Judt highlights how denazification and the subsequent fear of retribution from the Allies likely obscured justice due to some of the perpetrators and camouflaged underlying societal truths.

[The Mikado]

No matter how  anyone tries to spin it, there were millions upon millions of the German people  who voted for Hitler and the Nazis, in various elections, paving his path to dictatorship.

These people also knew that Hitler and the Nazis advocated the elimination of the Jews.

 

Before the war, no one was thinking in terms of physical extermination of the Jews. They were thinking of return of Germany's pre-war territories, the annexation of Austria and other German-speaking lands, and the expulsion and confiscation of property of all Jews residing in that territory. The mass-murder of Jews did not begin until the war, and it needed the war as a cover for what was happening. The idea that people in 1933 somehow expected the extermination of all of European Jewry to be a natural consequence of Hitler rising to power is insane.

I'm specifically talking about the pre-war Nazi regime here, though one could even extend this to the Nazi regime up until the invasion of the USSR in the summer of 1941. The goal of the Nazi regime was the removal of all Jews on the Reich's territory, and it's not until the invasion of the USSR that the process of removing all Jews on the Reich's territory becomes "slaughter all of them."