Nazi Victory - How long is Holocaust hidden?

[SpanishSpy]

For whatever reason you want it to, WWII ends in a Fatherland-esque scenario. How easy is it for the Nazis to keep plausible deniability surrounding the Holocaust?

[John Farson]

They wouldn't keep it a secret. They'd be hailing it as a great achievement for humanity, like curing cholera and rabies.

[Meadow]

Originally Posted by John Farson

They wouldn't keep it a secret. They'd be hailing it as a great achievement for humanity, like curing cholera and rabies.

No, they would keep it a secret, just as they did in real life. The official story would have continued to be that the Jews were shipped out to the Eastern Lebensraum to prepare the land and build roads etc for the new German settlers, and many of them died or fled into the rump Soviet Union. How sad, etc.

Had they won the war, I think the plot of Fatherland is a relatively fair take on it (in an implausible scenario, you understand). There's always a paper trail, especially in Germany, and someone, somewhere would start to talk and a journalist or internal affairs officer would dig too much and evidence would get out to the 'West'. Probably within ten years of the Nazi victory. 11 million people can't just disappear. The Jews in the US would be demanding answers for years.

[Cook]

In conjunction with the extermination of the people, all records of their lives and physical evidence of their previous existence was being destroyed, Synagogues were burnt down and Jewish cemeteries were destroyed, their tombstones used as rubble to line roads. Ultimately all evidence of two thousand years of Jewish history in Europe would have been erased.

The meticulous record of deportations and exterminations were purely to ensure bureaucratic efficiency and ensure that no untermenschen escaped. It was not intended that they should ever become public; once the final solution was completed, the records would have been destroyed also.

The intention was that it would be a secret kept permanently hidden and known only to the most responsible senior members of the party and SS. There is a recording of a speech by Himmler to a gathering of senior SS where he tells them that with would be their burdensome responsibility to the Aryan race.

The Nazis took as their blueprint the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman regime during the First World War, but with a meticulous intention to secrecy from the start. Given that successive Turkish governments continue to deny that the Armenian genocide took place or even that large numbers of Armenians had inhabited the cities of western Anatolia and Thrace who subsequently disappeared, a victorious Nazi regime could be expected to be far more successful.

The other example would be the Katyn massacre, without the announcements made by the Nazis, and denied for forty years by the Soviets, they wouldn’t even be known as rumours.

[BlondieBC]

If you want to know how it would be remember, I suggest you look at the Congo from 1900 to 1920. Two different occasions where well into the million died due to Belgium actions. Not really a secret, but not really widely remember. It is probably the best comparison from OTL.

As to when it was know, we were sure no later than 1943 when we intercepted a status report with the number killed, seem like over 3 million in the message. So it would have always been known. As to the wider public, a lot will be how the war is won. If the UK and lesser extent the USA feel it is in the national interest to keep villifying the Nazi, it will be know as well as OTL outside of the Nazi and close allies. Too big to hide. If the Allies wish to forget the war and the loss, it will be suppressed TOP SECRET CODEWORD. But as I said before, by now, it would largely be forgotten outside of the remaining Jewish community, wherever that happens to be. It would be well know in academic historical circles.

[Cook]

Originally Posted by BlondieBC

As to when it was know, we were sure no later than 1943 when we intercepted a status report with the number killed, seem like over 3 million in the message. So it would have always been known.

IOTL anything connected to Bletchley Park was kept secret until the 1970s, thirty years after the regime they’d been listening to had ceased to exist; if the Nazi regime survived and dominated continental Europe, Bletchley Park would remain the best kept secret of the war for the duration of any subsequent anti-Nazi Cold War. Since nothing as to a source for reports of the Holocaust could be revealed without revealing Bletchley, it would either never be made public or it would be discounted by the public as baseless war propaganda. Prior to the film footage from Belsen been shown in cinemas at the end of the war, many people had thought the stories where merely propaganda.

[jmc247]

Originally Posted by John Farson

They wouldn't keep it a secret. They'd be hailing it as a great achievement for humanity, like curing cholera and rabies.

In 1942 Hitler told Himmler it was a secret that they would have to take to their grave. As late as the end of 1944 the SS was still making films for the German public about how great the conditions were for the Jews in the East.

The Nazis knew what international opinion would be on 'the Final Solution' and more importantly for them they knew what German opinion on their actions would be if they were to go public in a way that couldn't be dismissed as war time propaganda by the German people.

I have talked to Germans of that era and each and every one does believe if it went public in say 1943 in a way that couldn't be passed off as wartime propaganda which would have been very difficult if not impossible at the time that it would have caused a civil war within German society itself.

[sloreck]

Too many people were involved with the Endlosung for the secret to be really kept. Even if you discount the information smuggled out during the war, including photographs, by resistance and Jewish organizations, many German soldiers (Wehrmacht and SS) took photos, films etc in addition to official ones. Likewise diaries and so forth. Now, any leaks would be denied but over time enough evidence would build up, and you can't make all the Jews between the Atlantic and the Urals disappear, some will escape - and that's just too many people to say "they got sick", or "they died of overwork" or "they are mostly alive & well, but you can't visit them".

Having said that, because it would not come out in a rush, no Nuremburg trials, etc, the impact of this would be much smaller.

[jmc247]

Originally Posted by sloreck

Having said that, because it would not come out in a rush, no Nuremburg trials, etc, the impact of this would be much smaller.

I agree that information will come out, but slowly as the vestiges of a Totalitarian state will be still up sort of like how the world slowly learned about the Holodomor. It will come out faster if after Hitler is replaced its with a Khrushchev type willing to somewhat toss Hitler's legacy under the bus instead of say power going to Himmler after Hitler kicks it.

[Derek Jackson]

It would depend on the scale of what happened and when. The fact of the holocaust was reported in Western media in 1942, but of course with out the visuals we saw in otl

[jmc247]

Originally Posted by Derek Jackson

It would depend on the scale of what happened and when. The fact of the holocaust was reported in Western media in 1942, but of course with out the visuals we saw in otl

There were stories going around in the Western press, but far from an understanding even in those stories of the scale and the readership for the most part passed it off as the war time state controlled press spinning yarns of the Babies on Bayonets WW1 variety.

The press really didn't want to push the issue hard either because in 1941-44 the Western publics has been sold that they had to intervene to prevent what they saw as Hitler's grand goal of creating a world Empire and making them slaves. They didn't want to push the notion that hard its also a humanitarian intervention as doing so wasn't really needed and it potentally confused the core message that sold.