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Shofar FTP Archive File: people/r/raven.greg//raven-quote-doctoring.01


The following analysis comes to us from Mike Stein
(mstein@access.digex.net).




   From: greg.ihr@kaiwan.com (Greg Raven)
   Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
   Subject: The other Himmler
   Followup-To: alt.revisionism
   Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 07:25:38 -0800
   Organization: Institute for Historical Review
   Message-ID: 

   May 1940 memo to Hitler: "I hope to see the complete elimination of the
   concept of the Jew through the possibility of a large-scale emigration of
   all Jews to Africa or otherwise in a colony;" "out of inner conviction"
   the idea of "physical elimination of a people [must be rejected] as 
   un-Germanic and impossible."

    We asked Greg for a source, and he never provided one.  I'm going to 
give a more complete version of this passage now.




   In mid-May, after German tanks broke through the Ardennes and began 
   their race to the Atlantic coast, the prospect of victory prompted 
   Himmler to draft a memorandum outlining his thoughts "about the treatment 
   of foreign peoples of the east."  As part of a wide-ranging discussion of 
   the enslavement of Ukrainians, White Russians, and Poles, Himmler 
   recorded his hope "to see the concept Jew totally extinguished [in 
   Europe] by virtue of the possibility of a great migration of all the Jews 
   to Africa or to some other colony."  He stressed that "no matter how 
   cruel and tragic" such a course would be "for the individuals involved,"
   it would be "the mildest and the best _if_ out of inner conviction one 
   ruled out as both un-Germanic and impossible the Bolshevik method of 
   the physical extermination [Ausrottung] of a people." [emphasis mine]


 
   Source: Mayer, Arno J.: "Why Did the Heavens Not Darken" (Pantheon, 1990) 
   pp. 195-196. 


    So we see that the quote as Raven presented it has been, as Pressac
might put it, >>slightly<< reworked from one where Himmler unequivocally
rejected extermination to one where he was somewhat less definite.

    Greg, once again - what was your source?  You didn't dishonestly cut out 
the "if" yourself, did you?

    As a special bonus, we see once again our old friend "Ausrottung" used 
in a context where it is hard to interpret it as anything other than 
killing (but not impossible; see pp. 111-112 of Richard Breitman's 
"Architect of Genocide" for the possiblity that it might mean elimination 
through interbreeding).  It definitely cannot mean what Tim McCarthy said, 
(i.e., uprooting) since deportation is the *alternative* to "Ausrottung."  
I wonder how David Irving would explain this one? 

    However, Greg Raven isn't the only guilty party here.  Arno Mayer 
himself has done a little >>reworking<<.  This is made clear by referring to 
Richard Breitman's treatment of this same memorandum.



   Sometime before May 22 Himmler gave Hitler a position paper he had 
   written on the treatment of foreign peoples in the East[....]

   On May 25 ... Himmler apparently gave Hitler another copy of the six-
   page memo [which Hitler had not yet read].  Hitler seems to have read it 
   on the spot and announced that he was very much in agreement.  He wanted 
   the memo to remain confidential, with a limited number of copies 
   distributed to key individuals.

   Probably written after Himmler's trip into Poland in early May ... 
   Himmler's position paper was harsher than the 1939 analysis from the Nazi 
   Party's Office of Racial Politics.  [...] Himmler's basic notion was to 
   carry out a racial selection in the East to salvage and assimilate the 
   racially valuable inhabitants and to inhibit the growth of national 
   consciousness among Poles and various minorities in the Government 
   General.  Their sense of ethnic identity would have to disappear.  
   Virtual elimination of education would help ensure German domination in 
   the East.  Non-German children would have no need for any but the 
   simplest primary education - they could be taught to count to five 
   hundred (at the most), to write their names, and, above all, to obey 
   Germans as a divine command.  Children of good racial stock might apply 
   for further education, but German authorities would approve only if the 
   parents allowed those children to be sent permanently to Germany.  "As 
   inhuman and tragic as each individual case might be," Himmler wrote at 
   the end of this section, "this was nonetheless the mildest and best 
   method if one rejected the Bolshevist method of the physical destruction 
   of a people on grounds of conscience as un-German and impossible."  The 
   mere mention of the destruction of an entire people as a possibility 
   showed that Himmler was operating in a different universe from Wetzel and 
   Hecht.  He derived his conception not only from extreme racist doctrines 
   but also from his sense of what Hitler was likely to consider and accept.

   Himmler's use of the term "Bolshevist method" to describe extermination 
   suggests that he was trying to discourage Hitler from pursuing this 
   course with the Poles....

   Surprisingly, Jews are almost absent from Himmler's memo.  In one 
   section, he wrote that the concept of a Kashubian people would entirely 
   disappear within four to five years; the other nationalities would take 
   longer.  In the midst of these musings, Himmler expressed his hope that 
   the concept of Jews would be extinguished through "the possibility of a 
   great emigration of all Jews to Africa or elsewhere in a colony."  Wetzel 
   and Hecht had discussed at considerable length the economic productivity 
   of the Eastern Jews and recommended granting them a favored position with 
   respect to the Poles; Himmler grasped for a way to make them disappear 
   from European territory and consciousness.

   His reference to Jewish emigration to Africa represented something of a 
   departure.  Previous plans for dealing with German and Polish Jews had 
   depended upon prior deportation of Jews to a reservation in the far 
   corner of the Government General, where adult males were to be put in 
   labor camps and the remainder of the Jews decimated.  But Nazi opponents 
   as diverse as Go"ring, [Governor-General of Poland Hans] Frank, and the 
   military authorities had resisted the deportations to Lublin.

   It was not that Frank opposed all killing.  In a speech to police 
   officials in the Government General on May 30, he observed that atrocity 
   propaganda, perhaps stirred up by the Americans, the French, the Jews, or 
   the Pope, had caused problems within Germany.

      ... it was terrible in these [past] months to have to listen to 
      the voices from the Propaganda Ministry, from the Foreign Ministry,
      from the Interior Ministry, yes, even from the Wehrmacht, that this
      was a regime of murder, that we had to stop these atrocities, and
      so forth.  Of course it was clear that we also had to state that we
      would not do it any longer.  And it was just as clear that, while
      the world spotlight was on this area, we could not accomplish any-
      thing substantial of the sort.  But now, with the 10th of May, the
      world has become fully indifferent to this atrocity propaganda.  Now
      we must use the moment that is available to us. [...]



   Source: Breitman, Richard: "Architect of Genocide" (Knopf, 1991), pp. 
117-120.

   In a footnote on p. 121, Breitman notes "The sentence about the Jews 
comes well before the statement about rejecting Bolshevist methods; the 
latter follows the section on educating non-Germans.  In any case, Himmler 
would not have discussed in written form, intended for distribution to some 
rivals, an actual policy of exterminating Jews."

   The important point is that in this memo, the "Ausrottung" which has 
been rejected seems to refer to the *Poles*, not the Jews, as one would 
assume even when reading Mayer's presentation of the quote.

   But the Frank quote (which, it must be noted, also deals with the
Poles, not the Jews) is also interesting.... 


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