How is the holocaust related to the war on the eastern front?

Question

I am studying WWII on the eastern front...

Answer 1

~Given that most European Jews in the '30s and '40s lived in Poland, Russia and the Ukraine, much more fodder for the showers and ovens was gleaned from the Eastern front. Given that forgotten non-Jewish victims of the holocaust: the Poles, the Serbs, the Slavs, the Roma, the Ukraines and the Russians all lived east of the Oder, opening the Eastern front (beyond Poland) so overtaxed the German transportation system, depleted troop reserves and so wasted the labor force and fuel reserves that any glimmer of hope that the Nazis may have had of defeating Stalin and the Soviets was extinguished. The Germans were so out-manned and out-gunned by the superior troops, tactics and weapons of the Soviets (not to mention the difficulty in maintaining untenable supply lines) that continuing the Final Solution and the other genocide campaigns did not alter the outcome of the war.

The "racial purification" programs of the Nazis had nothing to do with the launching of Operation Barbarossa. Hitler knew he would have to do battle with Stalin someday. He attacked when he and his general staff believed the time was right. His generals gave him some bad advice as to the Soviet will and ability to fight, but the invasion of the Soviet Union was a logical and, from a military standpoint, correct move. The attack should have come after Great Britain was defeated, but, by delaying, the Germans would have faced an even more formidable foe than they did. (There is no "correct" time to attack Russia given the logistics involved.) Since Hitler knew he would have to fight a war with Stalin eventually, 1941 was the optimum time to do it. It was purely a military decision. Holocaust issues - Jewish and non-Jewish alike - arose only after areas were conquered.

Surely you jest when you say you are "studying" WWII and you come to this site for information. Have you heard of research? Or do you simply mean you have been placed in the position of having to regurgitate someone else's information on the topic? That, my friend, is hardly "studying" or "learning".

Answer 2

If you take a broad view of the term 'holocaust' (and this was the only view until about 1970 when it started to become a Jewish-only thing), then Germany's move East was the genesis of the holocaust. The attacks on the West, France etc, had been political wars, but Hitler intended a war of annihilation in the East. This was to be Germany's colonial expansion, with the Slavs no more 'equal' than the other Europeans considered the Africans. The slavs were to be removed or enslaved, because social Darwinism required Germans to assert their ethnic superiority.

Hence, no provision was made to feed the Red Army prisoners, Leningrad was not to be captured but starved into annihilation, and Einsatzgruppen roved around behind the front line looking for 'untermenschen' to exterminate.

As said above, the vast bulk of those exterminated in death camps were from the territories east of Germany. The Eastern Front was a war fought with very different 'rules' to the fighting against the British, Americans and others, a clash of races, of political ideologies. The holocaust was almost a natural extension of the whole mindset employed.

As said above, military considerations were primary in the thinking behind the attack, but the ideals that attached to the Nazi regime took on a logic of their own in some quarters. You also have to consider that in the German mindset is a fear of the Slavic hordes to the East, the legacy of their geography and history. But there is a tendency in modern times to make the holocaust an utter obsession, when in fact it was carried out quite separately to the fighting. To study the military aspects of the campaign you can almost ignore the holocaust, as in the calculated genocide of races.

Answer 3

It is less complicated now to sit down and say how the warfare might have ended previous. What we need to do is positioned ourselves in that point and position to determine all of it out. The US was once now not in a position to totally fund a warfare attempt while WWII broke out in 1939, that is why we by no means despatched any troops over. The nation was once nonetheless in the course of the Great Depression with thousands out of labor. Sure we might of went to warfare immediately and drafted all the ones out of labor, however how had been we going to pay them. I personaly think that the warfare in Europe ended as early because it might have, for the realistic reeason that the Axis powers had been more difficult than anticipated. The Germans had been entrenched deep into the Italian nation-state and in France too. They had greater tanks than we did so the struggle for North Africa was once a bit hard for a at the same time. As for the warfare within the Pacific, that one could have went on for a long time. The Japanese army fought til the final guy. The nation was once inclined to battle and die for Emperor Hirohito. An invasion of the principal land could had been exact dying for numerous US servicemen, even after the heavy bomb raids. The most effective manner I see the warfare within the Pacific finishing previous is the atomic bomb being invented previous. But with the technological know-how they'd and the army working in 2 theaters of warfare, I think that the warfare could now not have ended previous.

Answer 4

Some would argue that the eastern fornt was opened up for the sole purpose of conqering slavic lands and destroying the populations therein; jew and slav alike. It was also a calculated risk taken by Hitler who seems to have been retaking the old Holy Roman Empire, minus Italy.

Answer 5

It brought millions of jews under Nazi control and gave the Nazis a good place to build their extermination camps as the Polish people were very anti-semitic and the Nazis knew that there would be little local opposition to their plans