WW2 or WW2 analouge without Holocaust

But those acts weren't known until the end of the war. It was the Invasion of Poland that kicked everything off. Yes, Hitler and The Nazis were known for their anti-semitism, but they didn't know to what extent. When the Holocaust was first brought up, it was dismissed as propaganda.

I certainly agree, hell even in Germany information was hard to come by and often what you heard you didn't know if it was true, Allied propaganda or falsehoods spread by the secret police to 'test your loyalty'.

But, when I say changes to the timeline could mean there is a war, genocidal actions, but no Holocaust as we know it what I mean is you could have a World War 2 without Hitler and Himmler running Germany, or with them running Germany and doing much worse militarily then OTL so they have either been defeated by early 1942 when the Final Solution was enacted or focused far more at the armies at Germany's doorstep then on what to do with the Jews and others.

By the same token in a Germany victory [in the East] timeline. Hitler and Himmler could be so busy and focused on killing Slavs and getting the East set for future German colonization that they decide to use the Jews as slave labor and stick them in some hellhole in their vast Empire. In that case there would be an even bigger slaughter then our history books record, but it wouldn't look quite like the Holocaust as its known OTL.
 
But those acts weren't known until the end of the war. It was the Invasion of Poland that kicked everything off. Yes, Hitler and The Nazis were known for their anti-semitism, but they didn't know to what extent. When the Holocaust was first brought up, it was dismissed as propaganda.

A bit of a generous overstatement. At least some of them were known during the war. The first war crimes trial was held during the war, while news of the atrocities was leaking out from 1942 onward in terms of the Holocaust and earlier still in terms of the Terror-Regime in Poland and the rest of Europe. The decision to starve 3 million Soviet POWs to death had an impossible to overstate role in the fanaticism of the Red Army above and beyond the NKVD's preferred solutions to soldiers who didn't understand Soviet duty. The Soviet soldiers who liberated the ruins of the death camps certainly knew the Holocaust was not propaganda, and this did play more than a little role in their rampage in Germany itself. Not that what they did was justified, mind, or anything close to it.
 
I certainly agree, hell even in Germany information was hard to come by and often what you heard you didn't know if it was true, Allied propaganda or falsehoods spread by the secret police to 'test your loyalty'.

But, when I say changes to the timeline could mean there is a war, genocidal actions, but no Holocaust as we know it what I mean is you could have a World War 2 without Hitler and Himmler running Germany, or with them running Germany and doing much worse militarily then OTL so they have either been defeated by early 1942 when the Final Solution was enacted or focused far more at the armies at Germany's doorstep then on what to do with the Jews and others.

By the same token in a Germany victory [in the East] timeline. Hitler and Himmler could be so busy and focused on killing Slavs and getting the East set for future German colonization that they decide to use the Jews as slave labor and stick them in some hellhole in their vast Empire. In that case there would be an even bigger slaughter then our history books record, but it wouldn't look quite like the Holocaust as its known OTL.

Actually IOTL the Nazis preferred if they were running out of manpower altogether to yield on exterminating Slavs and bump up extermination of Jews. Whatever happens with the full-scale annihilation of Slavic civilization in the East in practice, the Jews of Europe are all dead without hesitation or anything close to it on the part of the Nazis.
 

Soundgarden

Banned
A bit of a generous overstatement. At least some of them were known during the war. The first war crimes trial was held during the war, while news of the atrocities was leaking out from 1942 onward in terms of the Holocaust and earlier still in terms of the Terror-Regime in Poland and the rest of Europe. The decision to starve 3 million Soviet POWs to death had an impossible to overstate role in the fanaticism of the Red Army above and beyond the NKVD's preferred solutions to soldiers who didn't understand Soviet duty. The Soviet soldiers who liberated the ruins of the death camps certainly knew the Holocaust was not propaganda, and this did play more than a little role in their rampage in Germany itself. Not that what they did was justified, mind, or anything close to it.

But if it was known even to that extent, why didn't any of the Allies step in and liberate the camps earlier BEFORE it became what it was? The US and UK certainly could've permitted Jews to emigrate to them.
 
But if it was known even to that extent, why didn't any of the Allies step in and liberate the camps earlier BEFORE it became what it was? The US and UK certainly could've permitted Jews to emigrate to them.

Because the Allied leaders were bigger dicks than their postwar propaganda made them out to be? I mean you've got a major problem in that the camps are right smack in the Soviet zone and logistics are going to limit immediate results by the WAllies.
 
Because the Allied leaders were bigger dicks than their postwar propaganda made them out to be? I mean you've got a major problem in that the camps are right smack in the Soviet zone and logistics are going to limit immediate results by the WAllies.

Quite. When the nazis came to power, many jews tried to flee, but we wouldnt let them in. We didnt want the germans to murder them all, but NIMBY was alive and well then, too.
 
Quite. When the nazis came to power, many jews tried to flee, but we wouldnt let them in. We didnt want the germans to murder them all, but NIMBY was alive and well then, too.

And of course the Soviets, while not officially anti-Semitic, had inherited enough of the prejudices of old Russia to be no different, and honestly, fleeing certain death in Nazi Germany for dystopian nightmares like the USSR is a sign of how few options there actually are. It's like the people who fled the North Korean regime to go to the PRC. :(:eek:
 
But if it was known even to that extent, why didn't any of the Allies step in and liberate the camps earlier BEFORE it became what it was? The US and UK certainly could've permitted Jews to emigrate to them.
Neither the UK or USA wanted to run the risk of the Germans slipping spies in amongst the masses of genuine Jewish refugees coming to their shores. Even before the USA entered the war Roosevelt pressured the Latin American countries to close their doors to immigration from Germany for fears of infiltration by German intelligence agents - which no doubt condemned thousands and possibly tens of thousands of Jews to death.

A number of Jews were actually sent abroad by the Abwehr but few of them actually did any intelligence work - these were just in the main wealthy Jews who managed to pull some strings and get out of Germany while the war was ongoing.

Sorry, that was a bit of a diversion from the main point of the thread but I do find the question of what happened to German Jews with friends in positions of power quite interesting.
 
Neither the UK or USA wanted to run the risk of the Germans slipping spies in amongst the masses of genuine Jewish refugees coming to their shores. Even before the USA entered the war Roosevelt pressured the Latin American countries to close their doors to immigration from Germany for fears of infiltration by German intelligence agents - which no doubt condemned thousands and possibly tens of thousands of Jews to death.

A number of Jews were actually sent abroad by the Abwehr but few of them actually did any intelligence work - these were just in the main wealthy Jews who managed to pull some strings and get out of Germany while the war was ongoing.

Sorry, that was a bit of a diversion from the main point of the thread but I do find the question of what happened to German Jews with friends in positions of power quite interesting.

This is an interesting angle I honestly never heard before. I've always heard the Allies didn't take in Jews either out of heartlessness or disbelief. The possibility that spies could pose as refugees never crossed my mind. Thanks for the education. Seriously.
 

Soundgarden

Banned
This is an interesting angle I honestly never heard before. I've always heard the Allies didn't take in Jews either out of heartlessness or disbelief. The possibility that spies could pose as refugees never crossed my mind. Thanks for the education. Seriously.

Well, it certainly takes off the sting of Roosevelt and Churchill being pricks. At the time, the idea of something extreme as genocide was hard to believe in a culture as advanced as Germany was.
 
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