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

Virtual History: What Could Have Been, by Niall Ferguson (ed.) 1997. Fall River Press, New York

Nazis Rule Earth. Was the Third Reich Out to Conquer the Whole World–Much Less to Kill All the Jews on This Planet?

Holocaust Supremacists have argued that Hitler had a singular goal of killing every single Jew on Earth. This is supposed to elevate the Holocaust over all the other genocides. But was this even potentially possible? Note that a Holocaust supremacist argument, especially when used to justify the almost-exclusive teaching of the Shoah in the Western world, must be based on a virtual certainty, not a possibility.

NAZIS RULE EARTH: A POSSIBILITY, NOT A FACT. THE SCOPE OF HITLER’S PLANNED CONQUESTS

Michael Burleigh writes, “Historians have long debated whether Hitler’s final goal was simply the conquest of ‘living space’ in Eastern Europe or whether this was ‘merely’ the prerequisite for world domination (implying an ultimate conflict with Britain and America). Some historians, notably Hugh Trevor-Roper and Eberhard Jaeckel, insist that Hitler was a ‘continentalist’, with his final objective consisting of the acquisition of Lebensraum in the East and the resolution of the ‘Jewish Question’. Others, notably Guenther Moltmann, Milan Hauner and Meier Michaelis, have insisted that Hitler’s ambitions were ‘globalist’. In fact, the two positions are not mutually exclusive, but rather reflect different emphases. The continentalists point to the frequency with which Hitler dilated upon the East, relegating his more expansive remarks to the world of fantasy; the globalists piece together his more random utterances about colonies of a war with America and take them seriously.”  (p. 340).

THE ULTIMATE FATE OF THE JEWS: NO HYPOTHETICAL GLOBAL EXTERMINATION

Of course, domination is not the same as direct rule, and it does not follow that, were Nazi Germany to achieve hegemony over the whole world, this would be the same as directly ruling over the whole world. Still less does it necessarily mean that the Third Reich would be in a position to kill every single Jew on Earth, had it set out to do so. Note that the conduct of Nazi-allies Hungary and Italy does not bode well for the premise that alliance with Nazi Germany necessarily implies a desire to exterminate all the local Jews.

As a matter of fact, Hitler discussed with Goebbels the possibility of exterminating the world’s Jews–if he in a position to do so. It was a possibility, not a definitive objective, even given direct Nazi German rule over the whole Earth. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/holocaust-exceptional-all-jews-die-a-myth-goebbels/

Finally, even after Wannsee, Hitler envisioned the world’s Jews still existing on Earth even 300 years in the future:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/holocaust-exceptional-all-jews-die-nazis-rule-world-a-myth-hitler/