You may wish to deny it as much as you want, but it is true that in the mid 30s, there was no plan for the gas chambers.
I don't deny that at all. I agree completely. What I am arguing is that Hitler started wholesale ethnic cleansing and genocide of Poland and other Eastern European countries in 1939, commencing with the invasion of Poland.
Initially, the murders were carried out by bullets to the brain. This was messy, nasty work and very few Germans were able to do it without great psychological pain.
They then tried using carbon monoxide in mobile "killing units", trucks and vans which were sealed up and left running with people inside.
There was a great deal of ad hoc tinkering as they went along. The sheer numbers of people to be murdered was unprecedented in history, before or since.
Gas chambers were the epitome of engineering skill, and were quite late in the events.
The more I read, the more I learn. Today I learned that there was a lot of unforeseen pressure in Poland in 1941 to get rid of Jews because the Germans needed a staging area to attack Russia.
German Jews were treated differently than Eastern European Jews because Hitler had a mystical, irrational attachment to Germany as a physical place. The fact that they were German Jews made them somehow superior to Eastern European Jews. Also, his base of support was not as eager to kill Jews, and he had to maintain his support.
He was frustrated, and taken aback, by the refusal of German Jews to immigrate after the way they were treated. |
