Could a Nazi victory in the east mean that there is no Holocaust?

[El_Presidente]

What I've read about the Wansee Conference indicates me that the decision to "handle" the "Jewish Problem" (I'm not comfortable handling these terms) by killing them all was made due to thinking that the war could not be decisively won (at least it would take some time) and, expelling them to the East not being a solution the decision was made to kill them all.
So, if the Germans somehow managed to "win" in the east in 1941 (win meaning here that the Soviets are pushed to the Volga and are not able to expell the Germans, not that there is a definitive peace treaty), how would they "handle" the jews? Would they still kill them all, even though they are not pressured by time? Would they deport them to the east or to Palestine?

 

[Mackus]

They'd deport them all, but they wouldn't lose any sleep over any of them dying from terrible conditions of their transfer.

 

[NoMommsen]

As the "jewish problem" (I'm as uncomfortable with this term as you) was seen by THE TOP MAN Adolf H. as a global racial issue :
No.
Holocaust on the jews (and some others) would still happen. If by gas, shooting or death by work, that would rather be a question of ... "economics" also in a for the Nazis more favorable course of the war.

 

[FillyofDelphi]

What I've read about the Wansee Conference indicates me that the decision to "handle" the "Jewish Problem" (I'm not comfortable handling these terms) by killing them all was made due to thinking that the war could not be decisively won (at least it would take some time) and, expelling them to the East not being a solution the decision was made to kill them all.
So, if the Germans somehow managed to "win" in the east in 1941 (win meaning here that the Soviets are pushed to the Volga and are not able to expell the Germans, not that there is a definitive peace treaty), how would they "handle" the jews? Would they still kill them all, even though they are not pressured by time? Would they deport them to the east or to Palestine?

The Nazi hierarchy saw the Jewish people as vermin... in a more literal sense than many realize. The feeling towards them was more one of absolute disgust (particularly by Hitler himself... read Hitler's Table Talks, it's a really insight-inducing book) than fear/hatred which might have been paused if "Judo-Bolshevism" was considered neutralized. I actually imagine the Holocaust might be worse/more streamlined as the gassing system is streamlined and rendered more efficient and the need for their emergency labor/economic canibalization to fuel the war economy falls away.

 

[vortiger]

no.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

What I've read about the Wansee Conference indicates me that the decision to "handle" the "Jewish Problem" (I'm not comfortable handling these terms) by killing them all was made due to thinking that the war could not be decisively won (at least it would take some time) and, expelling them to the East not being a solution the decision was made to kill them all.
So, if the Germans somehow managed to "win" in the east in 1941 (win meaning here that the Soviets are pushed to the Volga and are not able to expell the Germans, not that there is a definitive peace treaty), how would they "handle" the jews? Would they still kill them all, even though they are not pressured by time? Would they deport them to the east or to Palestine?

Presuming that OTL Wannsee Conference and it's resulting plans were a function of the extended campaign, which I don't really buy, there is still the Hunger Plan and Generalplan Ost:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost

 

[The Red]

It’s important to remember that the Einsatzgruppen were already perpetrating a campaign of orchestrated mass murder of Jews throughout the occupied Soviet Union as soon as Barbarossa began and there was no sign of any plans to restrict this in the wake of some sort of Soviet collapse. I have a lot of time for the functionalist school of thought but by the Summer of 1941 it was clear that genocide had already become the prevailing consensus. The Wansee Conference would have almost certainly had its OTL result even if conditions had been more favourable for the Nazis. It’s inportant to note that Heyrdich had emphasised at the conference that the plans were predicated on a Soviet collapse in the near future and as such the question of whether this had already happened was largely irrelevant in Nazi motivations.

 

[Roches]

About the terminology, die Judenfrage means both "Jewish question" and "Jewish problem", but only in the sense of "math problem," not "Houston, we have a problem."

I agree that the Einsatzgruppen demonstrate that orchestrated mass murder began, at the latest, immediately at the beginning of Barbarossa. However, I don't think the speed of the operations was dictated by a Nazi fear of losing the war. Rather, they viewed the genocide as a necessary step in pacifying the occupied territories. The Commissar Order served the same purpose. A hint at this attitude is found in Himmler's December 1941 note: "Judenfrage ... als Partisaner auszurotten," ("Jewish question ... to be rooted out [or exterminated, killed off, eradicated...] as partisans"). Referring to them as partisans suggests that they were seen not merely as a long-term threat but as a direct and immediate threat to the occupying forces.

 

[markus meecham]

lmao not at all
read the generalplan ost.
if anything the killing will be orders of magnitude bigger.

 

[IntellectuallyHonestRhino]

Yeah no. Only difference is that nine million Jews will die instead of six million Jews, as well as another 100 million Slavs.


This is why I believe that Nazi Germany was more evil than the Soviet Union. It is for this reason (the mass genocides).

 

[Garrison]

lmao not at all
read the generalplan ost.
if anything the killing will be orders of magnitude bigger.

Yeah no. Only difference is that nine million Jews will die instead of six million Jews, as well as another 100 million Slavs.

As above. The Jews will still be liquidated, the Poles, Ukrainians and Russians will be worked to death as slave labour to create the infrastructure of the new German empire in the east.​

 

[sloreck]

The idea was to make all of the territory the Nazis directly or indirectly ruled Judenfrei. Early on deportation was tried and things like the Madagascar Plan floated. The Wannsee Conference was about how to solve this problem, and find an Endlosung (final solution). Bottom line deportation did not work, Jews were felt to be irredeemable as laborers (unlike Slavs who could in reduced numbers make useful serfs). The logical "solution" - extermination. When the war ended, any territory that was directly rules by Germany would see all Jews exterminated, countries under German supervision would either deport Jews to German control for "disposition" or handle them internally.

 

[Greg Grant]

I don't understand the OP question and am baffled by the implication. The Nazis were going to kill Jews. The Nazis killed Jews. Timetables could delay it or make it even worse. But the idea that it would be stopped... No way. They were murderers, they murdered.

 

[CalBear]

Only in the sense that the massacre of 85% of ALL Poles and 75-80% of the rest of Europe's Slavic population being liquidated directly or "shipped East" in conditions that would ensure the overwhelming majority died en route would entail so many deaths of so many ethnic groups that the Horrors of the Holocaust are seen by history as only one piece of Hell itself visited on Eurasia.

A victorious Reich would have killed every Jew, every Roma, every "educated" Slav, and anyone else who look at them crooked, in a campaign that would have seemed excessive to Scipio Aemilianus.

 

[jerseyguy]

I don't think a Nazi victory in the east would have saved eastern Europe's Jews. The nazi higher-ups briefly considered some kind of "reservation" in the General Government, then quickly changed plans to genocide once it was apparent that there was insufficient resources to feed everyone in the occupied territories. Timothy Snyder's book Black Earth: the Holocaust as History and Warning analyzes the hunger plan, the holocaust, and general plan east as the result of a twisted, malthusian reasoning based on resource scarcity.

It's ASB for the nazis not to carry out the holocaust. Even the "Madagascar plan" that hitler briefly considered still would've been a death camp in the tropics.

 

[sloreck]

The Nazis considered the Jews, and some others, as literally an infection on humanity. While limited numbers of other inferiors could be useful as slave laborers, Jews were not only considered incapable of useful labor but literally represented a disease element that if allowed to exist, would burst forth again as an active infection. The more territory the Nazis controlled, directly or through proxies, the more Jews to be killed. Period.