WI: No Holocaust

What if in a alternate timeline, the Nazis decide to continue pinning Jews into ghettos and postpone any plans for a genocide of the Jews until after their victory and commit all of their resources and manpower to the war effort, rather than wasting said resources on such an insane project as the Final Solution?
 
Nazism as ideoogy wouldn't be so badly tainted altough there might still be prohibition of Nazi symbols in Germany and Austria.

And in Israel would be bigger Jewish population.
 
Ghettos = mass starvation even without the death camps. Over 100,000 died of starvation in Warsaw alone.

Once you start talking about those kind of numbers then I don't really see what the moral difference is, after the war, between deliberate starvation and death camps.
 
A lot of Jews and others would still be killed in the labour camps having been worked to death.

Isreal Wank

Not all would go to Israel, and you'd keep the anti-Zionist faction of Jews much stronger since the vast majority of their leaders wouldn't be killed as in OTL. The communists could use them well.

Ghettos = mass starvation even without the death camps. Over 100,000 died of starvation in Warsaw alone.

Once you start talking about those kind of numbers then I don't really see what the moral difference is, after the war, between deliberate starvation and death camps.

It certainly isn't a good thing, and Nazism would still be regarded as the most evil ideology ever (barring World War III), but only a Holocaust only 20% as bad makes a huge difference.
 
It certainly isn't a good thing, and Nazism would still be regarded as the most evil ideology ever (barring World War III), but only a Holocaust only 20% as bad makes a huge difference.

It really doesn't. You have to consider the scenario where the death camps are not in existence - the systematic starvation of over a million people of a specific religion just because they are of that religion is something that would still be almost unique in world history.
 
It really doesn't. You have to consider the scenario where the death camps are not in existence - the systematic starvation of over a million people of a specific religion just because they are of that religion is something that would still be almost unique in world history.

But concentration camps would still be in existance. If you are a Jew TTL, you still will probably go to either the ghetto, or you will go to a labour camp. Sure, the death camps aren't in existance, but there is still a program of oppression based on religion/race which will kill 1-2 million easily through people being worked until they die. Jews will be the main people sent to these camps, as in OTL. And a hell of lot people will still starve since food will be slated for the military first, and then for Aryans second, and the Nazis will use the harvest of occupied nations for this goal.
 
But that is my precise point - it won't make a difference that in OTL the Nazi's kill 6 million and this "isn't as bad as that". No one will know (or care) how bad it could be only how bad 1-2 million was.
 
It certainly isn't a good thing, and Nazism would still be regarded as the most evil ideology ever (barring World War III), but only a Holocaust only 20% as bad makes a huge difference.

It would be more like 70-80% as bad. OTL, "only" half of Jews died in death camps; without them, you'd also have more people being worked to death.

Honestly, I do wonder what the results would be. We're looking at 2-3x at many survivors, probably, which might be enough to force people to do something about them (i.e. repatriate them) rather than just keeping them in camps for 3 years until they all go to Israel (the massive Jewish immigration to Israel after WWII was not entirely voluntary, inasmuch as most of the victims of the Holocaust found themselves stripped of citizenship, with their home countries refusing to allow them to return).

The implications of that many more people in Israel are interesting, of course. They probably wouldn't arrive in time to change the demographics before partition (if only because the British wouldn't let them), but it would have serious implications to the results of '48. On the other hand, OTL Israel had a lot of trouble feeding everyone; I can only imagine how much worse it would be with a population twice as large or more. Israel would also run into problems keeping itself fed in the longer run; Israel is already one of the more densely populated countries; doubling or tripling population without increasing area "much" (say Israel gets all of Mandatory Palestine, for example, but it would be hard to push out much further) and we get to Bangladesh levels...and then you remember that Israel is half desert and pretty hilly in the north, while Bangladesh lies entirely on land that might well be the most productive agricultural land in the world.
 
I don't think the supposed waste of resources has been touched on yet. It's my opinion that the resources used in the Holocaust did not affect the German war effort to a significant extent. For example, sometimes the use of railway resources is mentioned. But a single train could carry as many as 7,500 people (50 cattle cars packed with 150 people each). The trains received the lowest priority on the network, often with tragic results as journeys that ordinarily could be completed in a matter of hours stretched out to days. The required manpower was also very small in terms of SS-men permanently assigned to genocidal duties. The Einsatzgruppen were very small units, for example, that 'borrowed' local resources such as police units to carry out some of their tasks. And the SS staff at the camps was just a small part of the total, with a lot of 'Trawniki-men' and the like. It's often quite shocking how few guards and SS were required in the death camps.

As has been mentioned here, there will still be ghettos and concentration camps, so the manpower demand will be similar to OTL. The smallest scale of ghettoization I can imagine would be limited to urban centers; there is no way the Nazis would permit Jewish people to carry on living as they had before in front of them. Concentration camps could appear on an even larger scale if there'd been more of a drive to exploit the Jewish population for labor.

As for the post-war stigma visited on the Nazis, as has also been mentioned, upwards of a million people still die. Now, what about the Nazis' post-war plans for large-scale genocide? They would have done some planning for that during the war, and shreds of evidence might well have survived. We might even imagine Nazis accusing each other of planning a post-war Holocaust in order to try to save themselves from all the other war crimes charges.
 
Honestly I think a interesting perspective is a East Europe which deal with a massive Jewish minority. As example Poland will still be 10% Jewish. Will the Polish Jews be the loyal guard for communism (saving them from the Nazi)? Alternative will Stalin with such a large Jewish population try to create a New Jewish homeland in Europe, as example in East Prussia, but he could just as well set up Jews in Hinter Pomerania and Neumark. What will happen to Yiddish, will the Jews drop it for the local language?

In fact could we see in Communist Poland see the Jews pretty much function in similar manners to the Alawite of Syria?

Also another aspect is that the Orthodox Jews had a large birth rate (it may be lower without the trauma of the Holocaust), we could see in a society where they're banned from emigrating rise significant as percent of the population. How will Poland, Belarus and Lithuania look if they each have a 20%, 15% and 15% Jewish population, especially if they stay Yiddish speaking?
 
As for the post-war stigma visited on the Nazis, as has also been mentioned, upwards of a million people still die. Now, what about the Nazis' post-war plans for large-scale genocide? They would have done some planning for that during the war, and shreds of evidence might well have survived. We might even imagine Nazis accusing each other of planning a post-war Holocaust in order to try to save themselves from all the other war crimes charges.

Even without a formal Final Solution, I imagine that things like the Einsatzgruppen and the occasional Death March will still occur. Whether or not that's enough to make believe that the Nazis actually planned to eliminate all Jews is an interesting question though. OTL, even some serious historians are skeptical about the extent to which the Nazis would have tried/would have been able to implement Generalplan Ost. It's very possible that the idea of an extermination campaign would been dismissed as another insane Nazi fantasy - after all, how stupid would you have to be to waste resources killing people when you could just work them to death? (though IIRC the death camps did offset their costs through e.g. taking of gold teeth and hair for wigs, though there are of course the notorious experiments with skin lampshades and the like to increase profits).

Honestly I think a interesting perspective is a East Europe which deal with a massive Jewish minority. As example Poland will still be 10% Jewish. Will the Polish Jews be the loyal guard for communism (saving them from the Nazi)? Alternative will Stalin with such a large Jewish population try to create a New Jewish homeland in Europe, as example in East Prussia, but he could just as well set up Jews in Hinter Pomerania and Neumark. What will happen to Yiddish, will the Jews drop it for the local language?

In fact could we see in Communist Poland see the Jews pretty much function in similar manners to the Alawite of Syria?

Also another aspect is that the Orthodox Jews had a large birth rate (it may be lower without the trauma of the Holocaust), we could see in a society where they're banned from emigrating rise significant as percent of the population. How will Poland, Belarus and Lithuania look if they each have a 20%, 15% and 15% Jewish population, especially if they stay Yiddish speaking?

So, as I alluded to in my post, OTL there were quite a few Jews left in Europe after the Holocaust - probably more than a good half million, though good statistics are understandably hard to come by. These Jews were citizens of all over Europe...and most of Eastern Europe refused to repatriate them. Even when Jews were willing to return to Communist countries, those countries often didn't want them - even if no one was committing genocide, there weren't a lot of countries that were too broken up about losing their Jews. Having more DPs may or may not change this circumstance.

Stalin wouldn't set up a new Jewish homeland in Europe, though - that would imply that his previous Jewish homeland in the ass-end of the Far East was a mistake. Though I could see him trying to forcibly populate it.

And even if Poland somehow did embrace the Jews and the Jews somehow did become loyal Communists (which is fairly unlikely - the majority of Polish Jews would have been fairly apolitical shtetl-dwellers), there'd still be plenty of natives.

As for your population estimates - don't forget that even a reduced Holocaust will still kill a lot of people. And don't forget that Communism drastically reduced fertility rates in all of the Warsaw Pact.
 
Even without a formal Final Solution, I imagine that things like the Einsatzgruppen and the occasional Death March will still occur. Whether or not that's enough to make believe that the Nazis actually planned to eliminate all Jews is an interesting question though. OTL, even some serious historians are skeptical about the extent to which the Nazis would have tried/would have been able to implement Generalplan Ost. It's very possible that the idea of an extermination campaign would been dismissed as another insane Nazi fantasy - after all, how stupid would you have to be to waste resources killing people when you could just work them to death? (though IIRC the death camps did offset their costs through e.g. taking of gold teeth and hair for wigs, though there are of course the notorious experiments with skin lampshades and the like to increase profits).



So, as I alluded to in my post, OTL there were quite a few Jews left in Europe after the Holocaust - probably more than a good half million, though good statistics are understandably hard to come by. These Jews were citizens of all over Europe...and most of Eastern Europe refused to repatriate them. Even when Jews were willing to return to Communist countries, those countries often didn't want them - even if no one was committing genocide, there weren't a lot of countries that were too broken up about losing their Jews. Having more DPs may or may not change this circumstance.

Without the Holocaust even with large scale killing of Jews, we have to remember a few things. They wouldn't have been moved, they would be in Poland and unless the Poles expelled them, they would stay there. In OTL with the Holocaust the Jewish population fell from 10% to less than 1% of the population. A Post-War Poland, where Jews still make up 7-8% of the population will be quite different from OTL.

Stalin wouldn't set up a new Jewish homeland in Europe, though - that would imply that his previous Jewish homeland in the ass-end of the Far East was a mistake. Though I could see him trying to forcibly populate it.

I agree to some extent.

And even if Poland somehow did embrace the Jews and the Jews somehow did become loyal Communists (which is fairly unlikely - the majority of Polish Jews would have been fairly apolitical shtetl-dwellers), there'd still be plenty of natives.

A loyalist minority group make a big difference, it gives you a group to recruit the loyalist guard among and which can be used against the majority.

As for your population estimates - don't forget that even a reduced Holocaust will still kill a lot of people. And don't forget that Communism drastically reduced fertility rates in all of the Warsaw Pact.

I'm sure it would reduce fertility over time, but there was different fertility among different groups. As example the East Germans had a much lower early fertility than the Poles, the Czech had a lower fertility than the Slovaks etc.

I suspect that the Jewish fertility rate will be split in two. A low one among the elite group and a higher among the larger more conservative group. The former group will likely recruit among the former. In fact I think the Alawite are a interesting model for this. The Alawite are split between two group a urban secular coastal middle class group with a low birth rate and a dirt poor conservative rural group with a high one, from which the regime recruit soldiers and industrial workers. I could see the same model in Poland, a secular Jewish elite, which have good position in the party or academia, and a larger more religious and poorer one, among which the army and security force is really the only way of social and economic advancement.
 
It would be more like 70-80% as bad. OTL, "only" half of Jews died in death camps; without them, you'd also have more people being worked to death.

Honestly, I do wonder what the results would be. We're looking at 2-3x at many survivors, probably, which might be enough to force people to do something about them (i.e. repatriate them) rather than just keeping them in camps for 3 years until they all go to Israel (the massive Jewish immigration to Israel after WWII was not entirely voluntary, inasmuch as most of the victims of the Holocaust found themselves stripped of citizenship, with their home countries refusing to allow them to return).

Could you give me a source please ? I'm interested.
 

Deleted member 1487

So OP is proposing a Gulag style situation? Given the death rates of the OTL Ghettos, Gulags, and labor concentration camps we're going to see just about ever horror of the Holocaust except for gas chambers and Einsatzgruppen murder squads. Of course given Nazi anti-semitic and -communist ideology COIN type operations will probably still result in many many Yugoslav type massacres. Nazism will be viewed as probably just as evil, as the gas chamber aspect and Einsatzgruppen trials aren't known about ITTL, but the horrific nature of the regime and mass starvation and extermination through labor aspects would still happen. At a certain point the horror of the Nazis overloads the sense of outrage, so I don't think TTL Allied world would be any less horrified/outraged by what they find. There would just be more Jews left alive at the end, both within the USSR and within Europe as a whole to be then able to emigrate to either the US or Israel. I guess the question is where all the extra survivors end up ITTL and if the Nazis put as much effort into rounding up Jews in their area of control without a planned genocide. More Jews if not deported from say France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, and Hungary among others could well stay in their home country and just live their lives without the disruption of being rounded up and mass murdered. I'd say there is a chance for Jewish life within Europe to continue IF Jews aren't hunted down and deported from all over Europe, including zones outside their control. Romania for instance conducted it's own separate Holocaust, but then stopped (or at least slowed it down) from 1942 on, so without the Nazis demanding Romania turn over their Jews in 1944, their Jewish population could be much larger and potentially stay in place once the iron curtain falls on them.
 
If the Jewish population of Eastern Europe embraces the Communists as liberators from the Nazis, might we see anti-Semitism rise alongside anti-Communism in America (with the most extreme adherents possibly adopting the Nazi idea of Judeo-Bolshevism)?
 

Deleted member 1487

If the Jewish population of Eastern Europe embraces the Communists as liberators from the Nazis, might we see anti-Semitism rise alongside anti-Communism in America (with the most extreme adherents possibly adopting the Nazi idea of Judeo-Bolshevism)?
Anti-semitism was actually still quite connected to anti-communism in the 1950s US. Remember the Rosenbergs? A substantial reason for not letting Jewish Holocaust survivors into the US after WW2 (until about 1948 IIRC) was the general anti-semitic feeling in the country. Pre-WW2 the linking of Jewish people to communism was cited as a reason not to take Jews fleeing the Nazis in Europe. Its just kind of hard to see the OTL anti-semitism due to anti-communist sentiments getting worse, especially as there were Pogroms against Jews in communist dominated areas after WW2 and Stalin was pretty anti-semitic himself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin_and_antisemitism
 
So OP is proposing a Gulag style situation? Given the death rates of the OTL Ghettos, Gulags, and labor concentration camps we're going to see just about ever horror of the Holocaust except for gas chambers and Einsatzgruppen murder squads. Of course given Nazi anti-semitic and -communist ideology COIN type operations will probably still result in many many Yugoslav type massacres. Nazism will be viewed as probably just as evil, as the gas chamber aspect and Einsatzgruppen trials aren't known about ITTL, but the horrific nature of the regime and mass starvation and extermination through labor aspects would still happen. At a certain point the horror of the Nazis overloads the sense of outrage, so I don't think TTL Allied world would be any less horrified/outraged by what they find. There would just be more Jews left alive at the end, both within the USSR and within Europe as a whole to be then able to emigrate to either the US or Israel. I guess the question is where all the extra survivors end up ITTL and if the Nazis put as much effort into rounding up Jews in their area of control without a planned genocide. More Jews if not deported from say France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, and Hungary among others could well stay in their home country and just live their lives without the disruption of being rounded up and mass murdered. I'd say there is a chance for Jewish life within Europe to continue IF Jews aren't hunted down and deported from all over Europe, including zones outside their control. Romania for instance conducted it's own separate Holocaust, but then stopped (or at least slowed it down) from 1942 on, so without the Nazis demanding Romania turn over their Jews in 1944, their Jewish population could be much larger and potentially stay in place once the iron curtain falls on them.

I agree with most of the above, especially the first part about the Nazis still being entitled to the n. 1 public enemy of all times position.

However, there would be some bleak accounting to do come 1944. The Germans have not murdered several hundreds of thousands, if not a million, of people who were old men and women, children, the ill and the disabled of their undesirables. People who could not produce much food if sent to the farms, assuming the Nazis don't keep them in urban, non-food-producing ghettoes.
As we all remember 1944 is the year when in OTL even the Germans, in addition to all the Europeans in occupied Europe, started eating poorly. Come 1945, very poorly.
 
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