ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by Wordsmith

I've been to Dachau concentration camp - which I found an extremely sobering experience. I think it was mainly for Germans - and they killed about 2,000 of their own there in the gas chambers.

I visited it while over in Germany on business. When we were in the gas chambers, my colleague looked about and remarked "efficient people movement". When I thought through what he meant, the implications were staggering - someone had sat down and designed those gas chambers so that you could undress people, gas them and create their bodies with the least possible effort. What the hell kind of person could do that?

They also bring German school children round on tour - not to rake over old history but to show them what would happen if they ever lost control of the democratic process. I have never seen 16 year olds so somber and silent.

Wordsmith

Gas chambers in Dachau? Odd that as the place was never an extermination camp and I always thought it never had any gas chambers.

Are these a new additon to show the whole sort of gestalt of the KZ idea or something?


Edit to add - just looked it up. Everyday is a school day.

Originally Posted by Steven

Gas chambers in Dachau? Odd that as the place was never an extermination camp and I always thought it never had any gas chambers.

They're original. They were small and not much used - but 2,000 odd people is still a lot of deaths.

Its rumoured those executed in the Nuremberg trials were cremated in the ovens - which were fired up for one last time. The ashes were then scattered in the nearby river so there were no physical remains for neo-nazi's to worship.

The WW2 veteran I mentioned in an earlier post was taken to see the camp a week or two after its liberation - there was a policy of taking British army units to show them what the Nazi's were capable of. Apparently it was a hell of a sight even then.

Wordsmith

Originally Posted by Steven

Gas chambers in Dachau? Odd that as the place was never an extermination camp and I always thought it never had any gas chambers.

Are these a new additon to show the whole sort of gestalt of the KZ idea or something?


Edit to add - just looked it up. Everyday is a school day.

The gas chamber in Natzwiller was only used rarely, maybe only a dozen times. The bodies were used for medical student training.
Pistol head shots in a tiled room next to the oven accounted for 30000 victims. One guard did 45 in an hour once.
Groups were shot in a quarry at the top of the camp, others hung on meat hooks in the oven room, others were operated on until dead, another 30000 in total.

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Originally Posted by Wordsmith

The WW2 veteran I mentioned in an earlier post was taken to see the camp a week or two after its liberation - there was a policy of taking British army units to show them what the Nazi's were capable of. Apparently it was a hell of a sight even then.

Wordsmith

Allied soldiers were also given small photographs of victims, the full propaganda plan behind this is not documented.

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I think it is vital to remember what happened; however even the tiniest new-born on the day the unconditional surrender was signed has just celebrated its 67th birthday. So, I also think it's time to draw a line (I thought we'd done that about 40 years ago). Describing the war as a fight against Nazi Germany and totalitarianism seems a reasonably politic title.

Originally Posted by Brotherton Lad

Blimey, did I need to use a smilie? I'd imagined 'lizards' was an indicator.

You probably should have used the pro-word "space-lizards"...

Originally Posted by Steven

maybe I missed the Jew recognition classes ?

You've never been to Hatton Garden? Or Stamford Hill ?


Er.....you don't need to be a Nasa employee...

About as tough as ID-ing Muslimiacs in Regent's Park or New Bond Street.

Originally Posted by rgjbloke

There's an awful lot more could be said about this point of view but it pretty much sums it up in a brief way. Once Hitler and his murderous cronies took power, and they did so in a legal fashion although some of that was of quite dubious legality, they still did so in a way that was not disputed by the rest of the world. It took a very brave person to try and stand up to them.

Many did try in various ways and the majority of them ended up either in the concentration camps or dead. I think it's difficult to realise in this day and age just how brutal the regime was against it's own citizens before they got around to taking on the rest of the world.

That doesn't mean that the average German citizen of that time shouldn't perhaps share some of the responsibility that such a bunch of murderous thugs managed to take over Germany but the only thing that would have stopped the nazis once they got control of the country would have been a revolution of some description, not individuals or even groups of people.

Onkel Adolf was very careful to defend the petty privileges of the middle classes - he knew that he needed them on his side. If they got hacked off, he'd likely be off his perch as quick as he was put on it. He'd seen what happened in Germany in the aftermath of WW1, and you shouldn't under-estimate his awareness that he could be laid low as easy as he was raised up. That's one of the reasons he had slaves (rather than German women) in his factories - he'd pretty much promised a maidservant for every household, and wanted to keep his people at home all fat dumb and happy in that cosy little place as long as he could.

He managed the WIIFM factor - "What's In It For Me" - pretty dam' well for along time, before he had to give in to reality and take the war economy out of the hands of the fat, dilettante, homosexual, paedophile, junkie, thief Goering and hand it to the extremely competent but curiously (and curiously plausible) self-deluding engineer Speer.

In Adolf's tender care, the Hermans had gone from hyper-inflation to prosperity - from being gutter-dwellers to demi-gods - in a matter of a few years, and they weren't about to let those perks go in ahurry. That only a minority were active Nazi Party members is by-the-by. A sizeable chunk of the remainder had become - for want of a better term - enthusiastic, determined, and enduring fellow-travellers.