I've really never understood why the Germans didn't try and utilize the hatred that most Eastern Europeans had for the Soviets. It seems like a no-brainer to recruit the natives to fight the oppressive government that you were also fighting against. Why would you alienate the population that greeted you as holy saviours? Was it only hatred of Slavs, or would fielding an army of Slavs(even only as partisans) have been unfeasible for some reason?
>>431292
The wonders of racial ideologies, my friend.
>>431292
Why would you go into places like Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Croatia and recruit their citizens for war when their governments willingly became your ally? I mean between Hungary and Romania you have nearly 1.5 million troops fighting on the Eastern front.
Or do you think the Nazis should have deposed leadership of said countries and would have been better at recruitment?
>>431308
>The wonders of racial ideologies, my friend.
Is that the only reason though? It seems like such a short-sighted waste.
>>431317
I should have clarified, I meant in countries like Ukraine or the Balts. Lots of burning hatred for the Soviets in those countries, and a huge pool of potential soldiers(at least on paper).
>>431328
>Is that the only reason though? It seems like such a short-sighted waste.
I dunno really a lot of Nazi decisions are fucking weird t-b-h.
>Look at all these people who support us. Lets alienate them.
>We are fighting a fuck expensive two front war. Come, let us wast tonnes of resources to exterminate this people that we don't like.
>>431347
I'm not being a holocaust denier, but it probably didn't require a lot of resources to kill several million people
>>431292
They did though. The Germans set up puppet governments in Romania and Hungary, and used Romanian and Hungarian troops on the Eastern Front. The Czechs and Croats had already been annexed, and so they were also certainly used, though not as their own units. They would've been recruited like anyone else.
>>431352
Think of all the trains shipping Jews to the camps. Think of all the supplies sent to keep the guards well-equipped. Think of how much zyklon-B they must've gone through.
The Holocaust was very expensive. It was partially paid for by confiscating the victim's property, and by using prisoners as slave labor. But there's no way that would cover the cost.
>>431328
>ukraine or balts
Ukrainians and Balts were amongst the strongest supporters of antisemitism, Ukrainians who would work in the death squads with the Einsatzgruppen were known as 'Hiwis' and German military police reported them having absolutely 0 problem with gunning down Jewish people in occupied territory.
I'm assuming they were fine helping out everywhere else too, so yes, they did use Slavs.
>>431367
>so yes, they did use Slavs.
I guess I should clarify, it's my understanding that they lost a lot of goodwill by being dickheads right after liberating those countries. I can easily imagine them going the other way and actively portraying themselves as liberators and raising an army to help topple Moscow. I feel like in the summer of 1941, even the whispers of a large volunteer army marching on Moscow would have been enough to cause the Soviets to lose their heads and surrender.
>>431399
When you conquer a country whether as a liberator or otherwise, you're only going to get a limited number of collaborators. The Russians would not have surrendered on the basis of rumours of a 'large army' when they fielded probably the absolute largest army of any power at the time.
The Germans did recruit from POWs and did field foreign regiments, they did everything fine in that respect, but it doesn't mean it was enough.
>>431365
Playing devils advocate here, but I think their stated reason was to remove what they saw as potential saboteurs and back-stabbers, who may cause more expensive havoc than the cost of putting them in camps would.
>Think of all the supplies sent to keep the guards well-equipped.
I don't think they were particularly well equipped, most guards were recouping from the battle field or reserves IIRC.
>Think of how much zyklon-B they must've gone through.
Apparently you didn't need much, and they used more of it to make sure that diseases didn't spread than they did to kill people.
>But there's no way that would cover the cost.
I'd disagree, I think that would probably cover the cost of food and transport pretty easily. Slave labor is very cheap, no?
>>431421
The trains carrying supplies and prisoners to the camp would have been better used carrying supplies to the front. German supply lines were terrible as it was, let alone needing to set aside a bunch of trucks and trains to move prisoners and concentration camp supplies around.
It's not just the cost of the camps, but also the opportunity cost. Every reichsmark that went into killing Jews was a reichsmark that didn't go into killing Soviets.
>>431403
>When you conquer a country whether as a liberator or otherwise, you're only going to get a limited number of collaborators.
So are you saying that they probably got as many collaborators with vinegar as they would have gotten with honey, and that they simply reached the limit of what they would have been able to recruit? The Soviets shrewdly used defense of their homeland as a way to recruit soldiers, I don't see why the Third Reich couldn't do the same.
>The Russians would not have surrendered on the basis of rumours of a 'large army' when they fielded probably the absolute largest army of any power at the time.
The Soviets were in shambles in 1941, and Stalin apparently fled to his Dacha and thought he was going to be killed for sure when his advisors came for him. I don't think it's impossible that a very weakened and demoralized army would desert or fall apart, it's happened only 24 years earlier.
>>431442
>The trains carrying supplies and prisoners to the camp would have been better used carrying supplies to the front.
How many trains was that really though? Also, you needed those camps for slave labor for war supplies, so it's not a complete waste of money, in fact, I think the slave labor might put your endeavor into the black.
>Every reichsmark that went into killing Jews was a reichsmark that didn't go into killing Soviets.
Once again, how expensive was that really when local collaborators did lots of the work and you got to confiscate property and goods?
>>431292
>hatered
Well, the ukranian nationalist movement was based on the "middle class" people from ex-austrian territory and ex-soldiers of austrian army. Definitely that wasn't a big group of people.
Ukraine has went through korenizatsiya politics of 1920s, so the support base of nationalists was even more shortened.
Belarus never had the separatist tendency, not during Civil War, not during WW2.
Russian collaborators were either "victims of the regime" (fled White army officers, ex-kulaks) or those who wanted to eat more than a usual prisoner. Many POW were collaborating with nazis, sometimes only to betray them and flee to the partisans/surrender to the soviets after parachute landing.
That's about eastern slavic collaborationism.
>>431292
Because Hitler was retarded and high on morphine?
He thought Slavs were literally inhuman.
>>431558
>He thought Slavs were literally inhuman.
Where does he say that exactly? I'm halfway through Mein Kampf and I haven't come across that yet.
>>431562
Didn't you read about the "drang nach Osten" thing?
>>431582
I'm familiar with the concept, but I'm reading the primary source material and I haven't come across it yet, can you tell me where it is in Mein Kampf? I'm curious if you've read this or if your knowledge is simply secondhand.
>>431642
He's probably referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untermensch
But as far as I know, Hitler himself never thought of slavs as inhuman.
Most Nazi race theories have been muddled beyond recognition anyways, so it's hard to tell all the individual views of the Nazi bigwigs apart.
Christopher Browning. Ordinary Men.
Imagine, for a moment, that you're Chris Browning, and your dream in life has been to do a unit level history of German soldiers in WWII.
One of your students raises her hand, and smirks at you, quite Jewishly.
"Professor, if your theories weren't completely discredited, why is Daniel Goldhagen teaching at a university like Harvard, and you're teaching a course at a backwater Lutheran school?"
Browning turned to that student and asked, "If German culpability for anti-Jewish genocide was in the blood of the nation, then how come the largest victims of German state and social terrorisation were Slavic?"
The student was stunned, and fell back in her seat, weeping those nationalist whig tears we know all too well from eisegesisists. She clutched her copy of "Hitler's willing executioners" to her chest and ran out of the room shouting "Intentionalism Intentionalism."
The Einsatzgruppen A archives fly into the room and perch upon a copy of the Soviet and Yugoslav evidence to nuremburg, shedding a single aktion.
All the students in the room got up and shouted "Research from primary sources trumps Geist and fantasy every time" and were converted into functionalists who actually read sources.
WIE ES EIGENTLICH GEWESEN
p.s.: Half the Police Battalions were made up of Social Democratic workers.
>>431796
Have you read Soviet evidence to Nuremberg?
>>431764
Wish I could upvote this post.
>>431951
/Pol/ please
nazis considering slavs subhumans got to be the biggest meme on pol/his.
>>431399
>I guess I should clarify, it's my understanding that they lost a lot of goodwill by being dickheads right after liberating those countries.
They weren't dickheads at all, they were all buddy buddy with the local populations until Soviet partisan operations started. After that, they went full My Lai.
>>432331
>They weren't dickheads at all
Commissar order was active from day 1, and Einsatzgruppen were organised with anti-civilian operations long prior to day 1.
>>431704
Slavs were never designed as untermenschen by the nazi regime. Not in the Nuremberg laws, not anywhere.
>>431292
Because the Nazis saw them as racially inferior sub-humans fit only for slave labor and of which more than half of them needed to die.
Duh.
>>431764
MFW reading this
>>432391
>Commissar order
Why would locals be angry that the Soviet fuck heads that had been killing and terrorizing them for decades were being executed? (btw, the Soviets had a clear, but unofficial policy of execution for any members of the SS. It was a two-way street, don't be naive)
>Einsatzgruppen were organised with anti-civilian operations
>anti-civilian operations
Once again, lets be clear who they were targeting, Jews and Commie-sympathisers(partisans). Why would locals be angry about this again?
>>431704
>Most Nazi race theories have been muddled beyond recognition anyways, so it's hard to tell all the individual views of the Nazi bigwigs apart.
So fucking accurate. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if the Axis had won and what weird misconceptions Nazi school children would be reading about the politicians of those defeated democratic countries.
>>432780
>>Commissar order
>Why would locals be angry that the Soviet fuck heads that had been killing and terrorizing them for decades were being executed? (btw, the Soviets had a clear, but unofficial policy of execution for any members of the SS. It was a two-way street, don't be naive)
Read some Einsatzgruppen A on how "broadly" the category of "commissar" covered. Your understanding of anti-communism in the West of the Soviet Union is really naïve, exactly as bad as pretending everyone in the soviet-style societies were pro-communist.
>Once again, lets be clear who they were targeting
Yes, let's. Jews. People once accused of being Jews. The next village over with the land dispute. Non-Balts generally. While the early days of Einsatzgruppen operations brought in genuine Hiwis, the lack of discrimination, the rapid turning on slavs, and the economic dislocation were not appreciated.
For fucks sake, it is as if you're telling stories you invented in your head. Back to the documents. FFS.
>>432872
>Read some Einsatzgruppen A
Ok, do you have a preferred source? When I googled "Einsatzgruppen A" the primary sources only mention Jews being killed. Where are you getting your info?
>>432939
Nuremberg plus an Einsatzgruppen monograph I read about 16 years ago now. I am not going to have sources from my undergraduate to hand.
This: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/situationreport8.html claims to be accurate translations from US archives, and has every appearance (the boringness) of being true.,
>>433020
I appreciate the source, reading through it now.
>Nuremberg plus an Einsatzgruppen monograph I read about 16 years ago now.
Well, I mean, that's nice, but you're asking me to rely on your recollections of something that you read ages ago. Did people use the chaos of the time to settle old scores? Undoubtedly. To use another example from nearly the same time period, the liberation of France saw similar phenomena from the other side of the fence. It's just natural and an unfortunate part of human nature. Does it however, refute the broad truth of my statements? No. Frankly, I think that you are nit-picking, and just skimming the first few reports that you've provided hasn't given any indication of what you are claiming and only backs up my position(thus far up to no.17) more than yours. I'm open to being wrong, but I still think what you are claiming is less common than my claim.
> has every appearance (the boringness) of being true.
Lol, agreed.
I'll go ahead and disagree - especially regarding Eastern Slavs.
The Germans managed to form a single SS division out of Ukrainians - because they started the process after ignoring the nationalist movement, jailing its leaders and denying any hope for self-determination. Even if you think they would not have gone much further with sugar than winegar - a single disivion out of a nation of tens of millions? Clearly they did something wrong.
The Balts I don't think they could have gotten more out of - nearly 120 000 Latvians served (two divisions of the SS, five depressingly ill-equipped border guard regiments and, various division-sized training units, 3 construction regiments, 38 police batallions). Most were conscripted, yet turned up anyway.
>>433096
Well, I'm a functionalist, so "settling old scores" doesn't trouble me. It isn't like I think germans are especial.
>>431549
>Well, the ukranian nationalist movement was based on the "middle class" people from ex-austrian territory and ex-soldiers of austrian army. Definitely that wasn't a big group of people.
While many ideologists indeed came from Sich Riflemen and Galician region, Ukrainian Insurgent Army, for instance, was mostly consisting of peasants and some workers. Sure, its operational territories did not cover whole of Ukraine but it stretched out to the West of Kyiv region. The willingness to fight very much was there, but they decided to fight everyone because everyone was a fuckface.
>Ukraine has went through korenizatsiya politics of 1920s, so the support base of nationalists was even more shortened.
Then it went through Stalinist terror and famine, with Ukrainian elites actually willing to cooperate with Russia being exterminated by Russians themselves. Mind you, there was a lot of peasant resistance in Eastern Ukraine prior to 1933 too.
The problem with Nazis and Ukraine was mostly due to the fact that Germans did not want to recognize Ukrainian right for independence which was fundamental for them, up to the point where a lot of Ukrainian nationalists infiltrating occupation administrations were executed.
>>433212
Let alone dealing with the class issue in the Ukraine.
>>431365
You have to remember in many camps interns were used as labor force, which was integral in keeping the economy and the war effort running.
>>433204
>Well, I'm a functionalist
I think we agree more than we disagree anon.
>>431457
>How many trains was that really though? Also, you needed those camps for slave labor for war supplies, so it's not a complete waste of money, in fact, I think the slave labor might put your endeavor into the black.
It's not just one trip by train for what you're talking about.
trip 1: Ship jews and undesirables to the secluded camps (which I imagine needed their own spur lines constructed to reach)
trip 2: to utilize slave labor, they need materials and machinery (which is a bad idea, they can only do the simplest tasks, anything complex requires heavy equipment to be shipped and gives them access to things they should not be able to get)
trip 3: Send any war material back to a staging yard to send it to the front.
That's at least three trips to utilize the labor, and that discludes sabotage efforts, which were numerous.
>Once again, how expensive was that really when local collaborators did lots of the work and you got to confiscate property and goods?
What valuable goods were confiscated? Gold? Who is going to trade for that when you're at war mostly surrounded by the enemy? The real material they needed was steel and fuel. And they had to rely primarily on whatever they had of that in their borders by the beginning of 1945 because by then the soviets had pushed them from Romania, and the U.S. and U.K. had pushed them from the Saarland.
>>434709
>that discludes sabotage efforts, which were numerous
Yeah, I really don't know what the Germans were thinking with that one.
>Okay, here's what we do. We take the people who we hate..
>Ja?
>We take them from their homes and families and all their worldly possessions...
>Ja?
>We stick them in camps with inhumane living conditions that are worse than prison,,,
>Ja?
>And we make them build the things our troops need to win the war.
>Fucking BRILLIANT, Hans. I see no possible way this could end badly for us.
>>434782
I'm totally being an armchair historian, but if Hitler/Nazi party had promoted German Nationalism instead of alienating its citizenry by personal/ethnic identifiers they would have had
>More manpower
>More scientists
>Less workload
Which could mean the war was very different. And then provided these changes allowed them to win the war, then they could be like "no really we kristallnacht now."
But I suppose one thing led to another. Without the alienation and eugenic efforts, there might not have been a war. At least not of German aggression.
That's the thing about alt history. It's pretty much a mad-lib.
>>434782
This post and your pic gave me inoperable cancer. I want reddit to go and stay go.
>>436341
>everything I don't like is Reddit
>>436837
>cringe
>disney reaction image
>middle school level understanding of history
What's not reddit about this?
But yeah, reddit sums up shit I hate pretty well, you're right.
>>436899
>complaining about reaction images
>use a Simpsons reaction image in your own OP
Regardless, it was a fucking retarded idea. If you're going to use slave labor, don't use it in essential wartime production. You would think this would be obvious to you considering how fucking often German material failed due to manufacturing sabotage. For fuck's sake, half of the Panther's problems could be traced to sabotage on the assembly line.
How could the Germans not seen that coming? Did they just think the untermenschen would be cowed by their Aryan Superiority and not fuck with the things they were making?
>>436912
>unironically using disney images
>using an image of an obnoxious know it all cartoon character to represent the spirit of a post
Totally the same guis! Boom, roasted!
>You would think this would be obvious to you considering how fucking often German material failed due to manufacturing sabotage.
How often was it anon? Please enlighten me.
>>437028
You're right, foolish me. I should have used 4chanApproved reaction images like Le Scatological Psycopath Frog.
>how often was it?
Very often. Late war German tank reliability was abysmal. Panzer divisions rarely operated above 50% strength after Kursk because of how often their tanks were breaking down, in particular the Panther.
>>437071
Also, here's an AHF link with more sources and accounts of the sabotage. From the sound of it, low-level sabotage was routine amongst all the slave laborers.
>http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=176454
>>437071
>You're right, foolish me.
I was saying that you didn't understand my intentions and conflated two different instances/usages of reaction images in your zeal to score a point. Are you sure you're not from reddit?
Good points about the tanks though, it is weird that they would leave their armaments in the hands of their enemies, but I guess in a war where most of your working age men are fighting and you don't want to put your women to work in factories like the Allies did you have to use slave labor for armament production.
>>431292
Germans are efficient but retarded.
>>437099
No, I'm just fucking confused you care about a reaction image. It's a fucking reaction image. It doesn't mean anything beyond the reaction it's conveying. This one I'm using now does not mean I'm a Swedish Monarchist.
Well that's the thing. That "choice" was a fucking stupid one. Anyone with half a brain could see just how much trouble would come about because of slave labor; it's why nobody else used it. Even the Japanese kept their POW slaves in mines or building railroads instead of putting them to work in the factories. Whatever production you gain is not worth the risk of sabotage.
>>431421
>Slave labor is very cheap, no?
Not really, actually, which is largely why it died out. Slaves don't work very hard (around 1/3 of a free worker) but they still cost at least 1/2 the amount to feed, clothe and shelter them. So you're almost always better off hiring a free worker and making him pay for his own food etc out of his wages.
Ofc this changes somewhat when you have a situation like the holocaust where killing the "slaves" was part of the plan. But in general, slavery is a weak economic system.
>>437147
>No, I'm just fucking confused you care about a reaction image.
I thought that it and your green text were corny as fuck so I was busting your balls. Welcome to 4chan, I hope you enjoy your visit.
As to slave labor, it was an ideological choice. The Nazis(correctly) thought that it would upset gender norms if women worked in factories while men were off fighting. If you think that they were wrong, just look at how "Rosie the Riveter" was a rallying image for allowing more women into the workplace in the USA long after WW2 ended. Did it cost them in wartime production? Yeah, it seems like it did. Would allowing women into the workplace probably undermine the traditionalist society that you are trying to create? Also yes. I'm not saying that it wasn't short sighted, but they had their reasons and I don't think they were completely wrong from their standpoint.
>>437245
>The Nazis(correctly) thought that it would upset gender norms if women worked in factories while men were off fighting.
I've never heard this claim before. The Nazis waited until 1942 to enter a wartime economy, and German women DID work in factories during the war.
In addition, the Nazis were not stupid enough to use their slaves to make bombs, they used them to dig ditches build walls. The reason they enslaved the Slavs instead of recruiting them is simply ideology. For all that white nationalists love Hitler, they seem to forget that no-one has ever killed as many white people as Uncle Adolph.
>>437323
As I recall slavs were used in rocketry in massive underground caves. But yes, most of the sabotage of munitions was by free workers in states incorporated into the Reich.
>>431308
They tried too actually, the problem was most Eastern Europeans save for the Baltics saw how the Nazis were treating them was just as bad as the Soviets, and so there weren't many volunteers. The soldiers the Nazis did get however were usually from the more oppressed minorities from the USSR, with hardly any Russians. There was the Vlasov movement and other minor collaborationist efforts with Russians, but those were mired in bureaucratic red-tape often due to the Nazi High Command's racial policies.
Good books on the topic:
The Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and Hitler's Foreign Soldiers.
The Illusion: Soviet Soldiers in Hitler's Armies.
And a great primary source I used on my recent thesis paper on the Vlasov movement, Against Stalin and Hitler: Memoir of the Russian Liberation Movement by Strik-Strikfeldt.
>>437717
lso to add to this post, I recommend reading an article in the Kritika journal called 'The Great Patriotic War and Soviet Society
Defeatism, 1941–42." It provides an interesting look at the domestic sphere of the USSR prior to Barbarossa, and how many people in rural communities actually anticipated and welcomed a German invasion before the results of it came to them. Some choice quotes:
>In the first days of the war, the People’s Commissariat for State Security (NKGB) and NKVD in Moscow and Moscow oblast recorded, alongside numerous patriotic utterances, “negative, and in several cases even defeatist, attitudes.” Significantly, all the accounts reported by agents attribute the possibility of defeat (or at least of serious difficulties) not to German might but to internal problems in the USSR—particularly the unwillingness of the people, especially those from the peasantry, to fight for the Soviet regime. The following remarks by a certain Doctor Grebenshchikov from the railroad hospital in Stalinskii raion are fairly typical: “Right now, half of the people in the USSR are bitterly opposed to the Soviet regime. Many people are locked up in prison, and the mood among the peasants is so bad that it would be very difficult to conduct a war...”
>The Nazis had no intention of freeing Russia or dissolving the collective farms, and reports of their atrocities in the Soviet press, even if sometimes exaggerated, on the whole unwittingly understated the level of their violence. The real turning point in public opinion occurred when the Nazis revealed their true colors. It quickly became clear that the very existence of Russia—both the physical existence of its inhabitants and its collective sense of self-respect—was at stake. At the end of December 1941, it became clear, in the words of Prishvin, that “with the help of the frost, we had thoroughly thrashed the Germans outside Moscow [and] that, in all probability, the ‘atrocities’ of the Germans were quite real."
>>437711
"Free" workers. They might not have let concentration camp prisoners make bombs, but I wouldn't call the laborers they arrested from local populations and forced to work in Germany "free".
>>437743
And one more quote that is sure to get some amusement:
>The inhabitants of Tula oblast, shortly after it was liberated from German occupation, told stories of the outrages committed by German soldiers. Their coarse behavior especially angered the peasants: “German conduct is rude, cruel, simple banditry. They enter residences without shame or reservation. They just walk in, take off their shirts, and begin hunting for lice. We are simple people with a rural, third-grade education, yet we never allow such things. At the table, where they sit and eat sandwiches, there they hunt for lice. This is how the soldiers behave, and the German officers are even worse. One officer walks along whacking chickens. His face looks civilized, but he behaves like a hooligan.” Lisin, the director of a local school, said: “The behavior of the Germans is coarse. I’ve never read of even savages behaving this way. They strip naked and swat insects. They are dirty. I thought the Germans were cultured. . . . They defecate without leaving the huts, even sitting in front of the window. Whether there are men or women around, it makes no difference. One goes about with his trousers undone and says, ‘fasten my pants, mum.’
wtf is this about Australian's being in the Nazi's?
>>437744
I'm talking about Czech workers working in former Czech lands for example.
I see you're aware of the "free" and "unfree" labour debate in studies of work. Did the cigarette economy of Auschwitz amount to wage labour?
>>431328
>thinking ukrainians are not nazi scum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_collaborationism_with_the_Axis_powers
>>431447
>The Soviets were in shambles in 1941, and Stalin apparently fled to his Dacha and thought he was going to be killed for sure when his advisors came for him. I don't think it's impossible that a very weakened and demoralized army would desert or fall apart, it's happened only 24 years earlier.
citation needed
>>437997
Timothy Snyder pls stay
>>437999
Sure thing, I screen-shot the relevant paragraph, but you can find it here:
https://books.google.com/books?id=ThI0gAdDjRwC&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq=stalin+fled+to+his+dacha&source=bl&ots=8lImGv6JXs&sig=qK9Z609DvTdu_i3oQ_NfdA_nVRY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjPw96--erJAhXH2T4KHRE1A9AQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=stalin%20fled%20to%20his%20dacha&f=false
If you don't like this source, there were plenty others.
>>437997
Most of Ukrainian soldiers were partisans / Red Army. So they were communist scum.
