WI: No Holocaust

Who would the nazis scapegoat for the WWI Dolchstoßlegende and other national ills?

Exactly the same people. It's not as if in this scenario, the Jews are treated like Aryans. They are simply killed more slowly, through slow starvation and forced-labor exhaustion, instead of by those and in gas chambers and mass shootings in Ukrainan forests.
 
In I Have Lived A Thousand Years, Livia Bitta-Jackson described being transferred to an airplane factory. While the conditions she experienced were definitely slave labor, they were positively luxurious compared to Auschwitz (including actual luxuries like perfumed soap). I could see a system like this implemented routinely, where the Jews are kept in conditions essentially identical to laborers, only with no personal freedom. There would be slave labor camps, but built with the goal of getting the work done rather than working the slaves to death. Housing and food would be basic but adequate (most of the time). Smarter overseers would make use of incentives for good behavior and productivity - alcohol, cigarettes, permitting religious activities, visits with families, maybe even supervised "field trips" to cities. Under such a system, the death toll for Jews might be only a little higher than that for your average Pole or Czech.

This would require the Nazis to be a little less antisemitic, perhaps treating them as just another bunch of Untermenschen. The result would be an effectively intact Jewish community in Eastern Europe. Many would still come to Israel after the war, but a much larger percentage would stay. Then again, with a lower death toll, the net result might be the same, although probably skewed towards the young. There's no telling how many of the children the Nazis murdered would have made aliyah on their own accord if they'd had the chance. But no Holocaust would probably mean less international support for Zionism, and probably no German reparations to Israel. If Israel does come to be, it would probably be poorer and a little smaller.
 
Warsaw ghetto - discuss.

No holocaust is not the outcome being suggested. A holocaust with fewer deaths is the premise.
 
In I Have Lived A Thousand Years, Livia Bitta-Jackson described being transferred to an airplane factory. While the conditions she experienced were definitely slave labor, they were positively luxurious compared to Auschwitz (including actual luxuries like perfumed soap). I could see a system like this implemented routinely, where the Jews are kept in conditions essentially identical to laborers, only with no personal freedom. There would be slave labor camps, but built with the goal of getting the work done rather than working the slaves to death.

You still run into the usual problems, some of which were at least hinted at upthread.

1. Your proposal would be fine for undesirables capable of working. What about the children, the old, the ailing, the disabled? Note, with this respect, that a Jewish doctor or a Gypsy marriage middleman might have been entirely able to work - if carrying on with their profession. But the Germans would want to use them, say, as an assembly-line worker and as a shovel-using miner - so they also fall in the category of the undesirables who are unable to work.

2. Food. I'm not sure you have the whole picture here. Compare these two situations:
2.1 The Germans pick up a Pole or an Italian in January 1944. The guy is not fat but he has survived on his own until then, probably integrating his occupied country's rations (which are ultimately run by the Germans) with whatever individual means possible: the black market, bartering, stealing, a second unofficial job etc. The Germans use him as a slave laborer, giving him not nearly enough food to survive. The Germans are thus exploiting the man's own body fat, which was accumulated not entirely at all through food sources that the Germans themselves were managing/supervising. The man quickly becomes a skeleton. By June 1944 he dies of starvation, exhaustion and/or some illness. The Germans however have captured another slave, and exploit him in the same way. Again, part of the body fat the second man is running on until he dies in December 1944 was not accumulated through German-run supplies. Repeat once again, and maybe the third slave is still alive in May 1945.
Or
2.2 The Germans capture a slave in January 1944. They put him to work and they feed him enough for him to survive until the end of the war. They don't need to replace him twice, which spares them some train traffic, coal, administration and "police" overhead, etc.; on the down side, those other two men that in case 2.1 later became slaves also are somewhere in German-occupied Europe... eating. And possibly not working for the German war effort.
In which situation are the Germans expending less food?
 
You still run into the usual problems, some of which were at least hinted at upthread.

1. Your proposal would be fine for undesirables capable of working. What about the children, the old, the ailing, the disabled? Note, with this respect, that a Jewish doctor or a Gypsy marriage middleman might have been entirely able to work - if carrying on with their profession. But the Germans would want to use them, say, as an assembly-line worker and as a shovel-using miner - so they also fall in the category of the undesirables who are unable to work.

Children could be used for some kinds of labor. The disabled the Nazis might kill regardless of race. As for the elderly, they could be left in ghettoes or worked to death.

2. Food. I'm not sure you have the whole picture here. Compare these two situations:
2.1 The Germans pick up a Pole or an Italian in January 1944. The guy is not fat but he has survived on his own until then, probably integrating his occupied country's rations (which are ultimately run by the Germans) with whatever individual means possible: the black market, bartering, stealing, a second unofficial job etc. The Germans use him as a slave laborer, giving him not nearly enough food to survive. The Germans are thus exploiting the man's own body fat, which was accumulated not entirely at all through food sources that the Germans themselves were managing/supervising. The man quickly becomes a skeleton. By June 1944 he dies of starvation, exhaustion and/or some illness. The Germans however have captured another slave, and exploit him in the same way. Again, part of the body fat the second man is running on until he dies in December 1944 was not accumulated through German-run supplies. Repeat once again, and maybe the third slave is still alive in May 1945.
Or
2.2 The Germans capture a slave in January 1944. They put him to work and they feed him enough for him to survive until the end of the war. They don't need to replace him twice, which spares them some train traffic, coal, administration and "police" overhead, etc.; on the down side, those other two men that in case 2.1 later became slaves also are somewhere in German-occupied Europe... eating. And possibly not working for the German war effort.
In which situation are the Germans expending less food?

I hadn't considered food. As the food situation became more critical, the Nazis would certainly reduce rations for their slaves. I suppose someone might see the problem coming and try using the slaves to solve the problem, having them work as farmers (and getting more slaves, up to and including sending the entire population of Poland into the fields), but there has to be a limit to what can be done by throwing bodies at the problem.
 
I hadn't considered food. As the food situation became more critical, the Nazis would certainly reduce rations for their slaves. I suppose someone might see the problem coming and try using the slaves to solve the problem, having them work as farmers (and getting more slaves, up to and including sending the entire population of Poland into the fields), but there has to be a limit to what can be done by throwing bodies at the problem.
While it was 1944 before food became a problem for Germans rations were short for Poles and Jews from the start.

At the time of Barbarossa the polish ration was less than 1,000 calories a day.

The best answer would be some sort of dig for victory scheme instituted before the start of the war. Not sure it's politically doable though.
 
Given that the Soviets were managing to get on with providing death camp level nutrition for the children and elderly working in the factories, I think the Germans can afford a bit of food to work the "undesireables." In fact, the Germans were generally overfed until around 1944.
 
Jewish culture in the Western World was Yiddish culture. It was a rich and vibrant culture, language and way of life built over centuries that was destroyed. The only fragments left are the descendants of Yiddish immigrants to other nations, such as the United States, and the survivors. But the parent heritage, the strength of the bedrock, was cut out and destroyed, and what still exists is passing away with time.

http://www.npr.org/2014/08/09/338975625/effort-to-preserve-yiddish-works-not-bupkes

 

BigBlueBox

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

According to Wikipedia, a massively disproportionately high amount of Jews were part of Poland's communist government in the Stalinist era. The Jews were eventually removed during de-Stalinization and the new Communists blamed them for the Stalinist excess. In this timeline there will be a massive backlash against Jews if and when communism falls or when de-Stalinization occurs and the new leaders need some scapegoats, and the West isn't going to care very much because the Holocaust never happened. So your scenario seems plausible.
 
...the West isn't going to care very much because the Holocaust never happened.

Er. What about reading the posts below?

A lot of Jews and others would still be killed in the labour camps having been worked to death.
...
Nazism would still be regarded as the most evil ideology ever (barring World War III),...

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.
 
Jewish culture in the Western World was Yiddish culture. It was a rich and vibrant culture, language and way of life built over centuries that was destroyed. The only fragments left are the descendants of Yiddish immigrants to other nations, such as the United States, and the survivors. But the parent heritage, the strength of the bedrock, was cut out and destroyed, and what still exists is passing away with time.

http://www.npr.org/2014/08/09/338975625/effort-to-preserve-yiddish-works-not-bupkes


The Holocaust killed 40% of Jews worldwide, but that meant 60% that didn't die, of whom a great deal were Ashkenazi. In the United States and USSR, especially, there were large and vibrant Jewish communities (and there still are in the US). Yiddish has been falling out of favor as Jews assimilate, but it seems likely that that would have happened in Poland or whatever as well, especially under a Communist government (particularly when you recall that Jews living in, for example, Ukraine and Belarus were culturally very similar to those in Poland proper - it was all the Pale, after all).
 

CaliGuy

Banned
The Holocaust killed 40% of Jews worldwide, but that meant 60% that didn't die, of whom a great deal were Ashkenazi. In the United States and USSR, especially, there were large and vibrant Jewish communities (and there still are in the US). Yiddish has been falling out of favor as Jews assimilate, but it seems likely that that would have happened in Poland or whatever as well, especially under a Communist government (particularly when you recall that Jews living in, for example, Ukraine and Belarus were culturally very similar to those in Poland proper - it was all the Pale, after all).
Slight nitpick, but the Holocaust killed 36%--not 40%--of World Jewry.

Much more importantly, though, do you think that we could see something of a revival of Yiddish in the future due to the growing Haredi Jewish population?
 
Slight nitpick, but the Holocaust killed 36%--not 40%--of World Jewry.

Much more importantly, though, do you think that we could see something of a revival of Yiddish in the future due to the growing Haredi Jewish population?

Unlikely; Yiddish literature (and other culture) is largely secular, since religious subjects would be discussed in Hebrew (or, occasionally, Aramaic). While there are some "hybrid" works, like epic poems in the style of other European nations, but about biblical characters (think Beowulf, but with David or Solomon or Joshua instead of Sigfried), mostly Yiddish was used for, you know, novels and plays and folk songs and stuff.

The Haredim that cling to Yiddish conduct themselves, in theory, with full devotion to God and the Talmud, and thus have little time for such "frivolities" (modern Haredi Judaism is probably much stricter than the Orthodox Judaism of the shtetl); this is severe enough, for example, that there's constant debate in many Haredi communities about the utility of newspapers as a tool for disseminating information versus their danger as a possible source of entertainment (as well as possible violation of prohibitions against gossip). Many Haredim also specifically oppose singing for secular purposes. Obviously, each Haredi community is different, but for the most part, those that cling to Yiddish and reject Hebrew and English are the hardest of the hard-liners - though you do get, for example, people who leave for more reasonable Jewish sects and take their Yiddish with them.

On the other hand, there seems to be a little Yiddish revival going on in the US right now, since the current generation is looking for some heritage and identity, and lack the anti-Yiddish stigma that our parents and grandparents often had. There's also one going on in Israel, which is a little bit more complicated (tl;dr a lot of Mizrahim recently have been trying to revive Mizrahi culture "which was suppressed by those damn Ashkenazim", and then a bunch of young Ashkenazim realized that traditional Ashkenazi culture was also largely suppressed by the Hebraist Zionists). The movements are quite small, and were originally not connected, but are growing and cross-polinating.

Consider, for example, the Brooklyn band Golem, consisting of a bunch of 30-something hipsters that play klezmer-rock with lyrics in English and Yiddish alike (and, frankly, more of the latter than the former).
 

Deleted member 1487

Given that the Soviets were managing to get on with providing death camp level nutrition for the children and elderly working in the factories, I think the Germans can afford a bit of food to work the "undesireables." In fact, the Germans were generally overfed until around 1944.
Millions of Soviet citizens died or suffered severe effects of malnutrition, some even after LL food shipments had reached high levels in 1944.
 
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