Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Documents on Nazism, by Jeremy Noakes. 1975

Nazi Germany DID Speak of a Final Solution To the Gypsies and Slavs, and Not Only the Jews. Ironic Nazi German Credit to Today’s Jewish- and Leftist-Maligned Polish “Heroic Narrative”

There are many documents, representing many different subjects, in this volume. Owing to space limitations, this review discusses only a few of them.

NAZI ATHEISM: GOD IS NOT REPUDIATED AS IN COMMUNISM. INSTEAD, “GOD” IS REDEFINED

In his TABLE TALK, Hitler made numerous derogatory comments about Christianity. In this volume, in a June 1941 document, Martin Bormann spoke thus against Christianity: “The concepts of National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable. The Christian churches build on people’s ignorance and attempt to preserve the ignorance of as wide a section of the population as possible. National Socialism, on the other hand, is based on scientific foundations…If we National Socialists speak of belief in God, we do not understand by God, as the naïve Christians and their spiritual camp followers do, a human-type being sitting around somewhere in space…The natural force by which all these innumerable planets move in the universe we call ‘the Almighty’ or ‘God'”. (p. 373). It is obvious that the Nazis were atheists. They had rejected the existence of a transcendental, personal God, and had merely retained the word “God” as a term of reference to natural forces.

NAZI GERMAN GENOCIDAL TERROR UNLEASHED IN 1939

Ulrich von Hassel, the German diplomat to Italy until 1937, is described as a conservative opponent of Nazism (p. 302). This helps refute the claim that Nazism was just extreme conservatism. In his diary, von Hassel acknowledges the fact that the German air war against Poland in 1939 had gone far beyond the hitting of military targets: “…the disgrace that has sullied the German name through the conduct of war in Poland, namely, the brutal use of air power and the shocking bestialities of the SS, especially towards the Jews. The cruelties of the Poles against the German minority are also a fact, but somehow psychologically excusable…Those who saw Warsaw, with its devastation and the many thousands of dead bodies around, came away appalled.” (p. 303). (And to think that, at this time, the western media was getting all excited about the few dozen Spanish civilians killed by the German bombing of Guernica and the several hundred Dutch civilians killed by the German bombing of Rotterdam!).

FAR FROM DELIGHTING IN JEWISH SUFFERING, POLES WERE AGHAST AT IT

One common Polonophobic Holocaust myth is that of Poles cheering the death of Jews. For instance, think of SCHINDLER’S LIST, seen by 120 million American viewers, in which a Polish girl gives a sarcastic farewell (Goodbye Jews!) to the doomed Jews, while other Poles are throwing mud at them. Let us unmask this scurrilous anti-Polish propaganda.

Colonel-General Blazkowitz, himself accused of atrocities against Poles, complained against the same, and pointed to the indomitable spirit of the Poles, as well as the newfound Polish sympathy for Jews,  “It is misguided to slaughter tens of thousands of Poles and Jews as is happening at present…The acts of violence against the Jews which occur in full view of the public inspire among the religious Poles not only deep disgust but also great pity for the Jewish population, to which up to now the Poles were more or less hostile…” (pp. 611-613).

IRONICALLY, A NAZI GERMAN GENERAL GIVES MORE CREDIT TO POLAND’S SO-DERIDED “HEROIC NARRATIVE” THAN DO SOME JEWS AND LEWAKS TODAY

Nazi enemy General Blazkowitz continues, “There is no doubt that the defenseless Polish population, who have to look on at these crimes and are driven to despair by them, will give fanatical support to any revolt or movement of vengeance…The idea that one can intimidate the Polish population by terrorism and rub their noses in the dirt will certainly prove to be false. This people’s capacity for enduring suffering is too great for that…” (p. 613).

NEITHER JEWS NOR POLES COULD REDEEM THEMSELVES IN THE EYES OF THE NAZIS

Not only was Nazism a radically new anti-Semitic movement, it was also a radically new anti-Slavic one. In a speech given May 17, 1933, Hitler said: “We therefore have no use for the idea of Germanization. The mentality of the past century which made people believe that they could make Germans out of Poles or Frenchmen is completely foreign to us…” (pp. 509-510). (Later, some Poles were Germanized. But these “Poles” were actually prewar Polish citizens of German descent. They were, in effect, re-Germanized).

NAZIS SAW JEWS AND POLES SIMILARLY

It is interesting to note the parallels between Nazi racism against Jews and that against Slavs. The Nuremberg Laws forbade intercourse between German gentiles and Jews (p. 464). In like manner, a document speaks of Polish forced laborers being compelled, on threat of punishment by death, to avoid intercourse with Germans (p. 649). Later Nazi laws forbade Jews from socializing with German gentiles (p. 477, 484). In like manner, Polish forced laborers were forbidden to socialize with Germans (p. 649). Both Jews (p. 478) and Polish forced laborers (p. 649) were forced to wear identification badges in Germany (the Star and the letter “P”, respectively). [Since there were tens of millions of Poles in German-occupied Poland, it was, of course, impractical to make them also wear the letter “P”. Nor were all Jews, living on territories ruled by the Third Reich, forced to wear the Star.]

HITLER HIMSELF OPENLY JUXTAPOSED POLES AND JEWS

Hitler made the equation of Poles and Jews even more explicit. He spoke of cleansing the territories annexed to the Reich, treating Jews and Poles in the same vein: “The fact that we are governing the territory should enable us to purify the Reich territory of both Jews and Polacks.” (p. 611).

YES VIRGINIA, THE NAZIS DID PLAN A “FINAL SOLUTION” FOR SLAVS AND GYPSIES, AND NOT ONLY JEWS

One of the canned arguments to justify Holocaust supremacism posits that, unlike the case of the Jews, the Nazis never spoke of a “Final Solution” in reference to either Gypsies (Sinti and Roma) or Poles. Even if that was true, it would not diminish the fact or the gravity of the Porajmos or the Polokaust by one iota. (How many genocides have taken place without the perpetrators ever formally labeling the targeted group a “problem” demanding a “final solution”?) As it turns out, Nazi German policy DID speak of the Gypsies and Slavs as problems that needed to be solved, as elaborated below.

The Nazis definitely thought of Slavs, no less than Jews, in the same genocidal light. A discussion between Otto Thierack and Heinrich Himmler focused on the treatment of prisoners and their consignment to the dreaded SS: “It is agreed that, IN VIEW OF THE PLANS OF THE GOVERNMENT FOR SETTLING THE EASTERN PROBLEMS, in future Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Russians and Ukrainians are no longer to be judged by the ordinary courts, so far as punishable offenses are concerned, but are to be dealt with by the Reichsfuhrer SS.” (p. 295; Emphasis added).

GERMAN EXPELLEES FROM THE RECOVERED TERRITORIES OF POST-WWII POLAND, PAINT THEMSELVES AS VICTIMS OF NAZISM. THEY WERE NOT

There is a section in the book that deals with the Nazis’ electoral successes. Germany had been divided into 35 voting districts. In the Reichstag elections of July 31, 1932, the German popular vote in favor of the Nazi Party (the NSDAP) was higher in northern than in southern Germany (p. 115). Interestingly, four of the five highest voting districts in which the Nazis had gotten the highest percentage of the popular vote, were situated east of the eventual-postwar Oder-Neisse (Odra-Nyssa) Polish-German boundary (p. 116). All of this refutes the claims of Alfred Maurice de Zayas, who had contended that the German expellees (Vertriebene) were among the least likely to have supported the Nazis. The exact opposite is true.