[R_G]

Which has variations with otehr plans, including a British plan to send Jews to Kenya.

Do you believe this would have ever occured? The Germans required British Navy to be able to go through with the mass exportation. Since they did not win the Battle of Britain this plan was abandoned and jews continued to be expelled into Poland where they were killed.

I take the functionalist approach to explaining the Holocaust and I just finished writting a 20 page essay on the subject.

I read a lot of Hans Mommsen works and I agree with pretty much all of it. Hitler was a lazy leader who I beleive was never all that intelligent, he wanted to go to art's school for God's sake.

It was pretty much lwoer generals who as we know a lot of were simply fucked in the head and undertook these extermination programs by their own accord, Adolf Eichmann stole war funds to pay for his trains.

I personally think the madagascar plan would have been pretty good in comparison to what actually happened.

Imagine a Nazi controleld Europe and the Jews have their own country in Madagascar, although the question about the citizens of Madagascar should be noted. There could have been a civil war.

[Diligent]

I wish they would have set up the Jewish homeland in Arizona or someplace else other than the Middle East.

[pugsville]

No. As it was all too hard to organize. You would have to have (a) a german regeime that had some scruples which just wasnt to going to happen under the Nazis, (b) the rest of the world being rather more caring about what would happen to the jews than they were.

I think you're letting Hitler off the hook there, there is no doubt about his deep and intense anti-semtism just read some of mein kamp (the abosolute dribble that it is). He was the major moving force, and those follow travellers who he put in a position to do just what they did. From the instant it had the power to do so the Hitler-Nazi regeime was murderous and totally barbaric. even of the whole war things had gone totally their way, I am certain that that murders would have been more wholesale, more widespread and encomposed more groups of "enimies". The Delay into moving into vast mass wholesale murder was just about resources and oppoturnty. The increased militarism of the war, the mobilization of resources, the avilabilty of time to do it was only really available as the war progressed.

Actually read this functionalist approachm stuff, oK it makes some sense off the bat. There are many different shapes a German right-wing government after the wiemar republic could have taken. Anti-Semitism didnt have to be so extreme without Hitler and his group.

[R_G]

The point is anti-semitism was quite high in Europe at the time and even in the United States.

The functionalist argument and what a lot of Jews also point to is that if there was a decent public outcry for what was happening to the Jews, the holocaust might not have happened.

Deporting all jews to a distant African island would be as productive as killing them in my sense, except you don't have the ethical scar on your actions.

[Tailz]

Is there really anywhere on the planet, a community that large could be sent to, and create a productive state without creating a dispossed minority?

I don't think so.

[Smilin' Dave]

Deporting all jews to a distant African island would be as productive as killing them in my sense, except you don't have the ethical scar on your actions.

Given the attraction of Madagascar for many Nazis was it was so inhospitable, the plan would have been treated in the same way most ethnic cleansing schemes have in history so there's your ethical scars. Never mind it would bear strong comparison to the Armenian genocide, in that the majority of deaths resulted from the deportations.

The idea that this would be equally productive seems particularly idiotic. The Madagascar Plan would have required investment of resources far beyond what was actually done (it's not like Germany has a train that went there already, is it?). Consider also the loss of slave labour, since you can't make people work if they are not there.

Even if we accept a totally functionalist interpretation (saying there was no intentionalist element seems far fetched), the Madagascar plan would not have forstalled the Holocaust any more than the European system of deportation did. There would still have been a problem of too many people to move elsewhere, and if we assume an the Nazis would continue to be an expansionist/aggressive power (which would fit their ideological imperative if nothing else) after winning in Europe (as you propose... I've still yet to see an explanation as to how this could realistically be done) then the problem of running into former deportees later on remains. This leads to our genocidiers come to the 'logical' solution yet again.

I can't decide if your nonsense here is prompted by lack of knowledge/understanding or some desire to live a Nazi fantasy world. Perhaps one leads to the other.

[QatzelOk]

This woman is Malgache. This is the group of people who would have been ethnic-cleansed by Jewish settlers, rather than the poor Palestinians.

The point is anti-semitism was quite high in Europe at the time and even in the United States.

Europeans were tired of the damage that Jewish nepotism (which had central banks and organized crime elements) had wrought on their societies, and they naively thought that they could simply put all the eurojews on a boat to some country full of people who couldn't defend themselves, and then there'd be peace.

[Smilin' Dave]

Europeans were tired of the damage that Jewish nepotism (which had central banks and organized crime elements) had wrought on their societies, and they naively thought that they could simply put all the eurojews on a boat to some country full of people who couldn't defend themselves, and then there'd be peace.

So why did those poor victimised Nazis go to such extraordinary lengths to deport (in the true sense and the subsequent genocidal sense) more Jews than they could get their hands on? We find Nazi Germany invading countries with Jewish populations far larger than their own. It wasn't like Poland was a Jewish dominated state, before you chip in some empty-headed conspiracy on that front. Even in areas not directly under the control of the Nazis, like the Scandinavian countries or parts of Eastern Europe, we find the Nazis pushing their allies to deport their own Jewish population. This doesn't look like a European action at all, it looks like a minority party pushing others into action by any means necessary.

If we buy your explanation, how would deportation remove the threat? They would still be bankers etc. and would still be able to undermine your supposedly maligned Nazis. Once again you are found to be logically deficient.

If the target was bankers and organised crime, why did the Nazis go after some of the most oppressed and disempowered Jews in all the world? How do we account for oppression against the Poles, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roma and Sinti who were not big bankers and clearly not a threat to the Nazi state. Perhaps the Jehovah's Witnesses were too frightening for the poor old Nazis, being pacifists.

Maybe you could live in R_G's fantasy world. Oh wait, I forgot the Nazis weren't too keen on gays either.

[R_G]

You get too technical Dave on the Nazis winning the war.

An argument of how they could have is for another topic, in short, we assume the United STates does not get involved, that is pretty much the realistic scenario in the Nazis winning the war, and by not get involved I mean the Americans don't provide material aid to the Soviet Union either.

There are Nazi officials who thought blatantly killing the Jews was heinous, and that deporting them to a far away harsh land, much like the British did with convicts to Australia was a fair secondary solution.

[Smilin' Dave]

You get too technical Dave on the Nazis winning the war.

Yes, demonstrated facts really get in the way of hypothetical scenarios. Is this hypothetical really aimed at exploring history, or was it driven by fantasy?

Even if we assume the Nazis win the war, the Madagascar plan would have been terrifically expensive (consider the logistics problems experienced by smaller scale 'voluntary' deportation attempted by the Nazis), and I assume would have to be undertaken by a Nazi state depleted by war and no doubt continued insurgent activity.

There are Nazi officials who thought blatantly killing the Jews was heinous, and that deporting them to a far away harsh land, much like the British did with convicts to Australia was a fair secondary solution.

The colonisation of Australia isn't really a good comparison. I think for a start you will find Madagascar is more inhospitable then the original colonies of Australia. A colony gets ongoing support from the home country. Colonies even when founded by convicts, indentured workers or minorities are generally expected to attract 'regular' citizens as migrants at some stage. Colonies are often expected to pay off in some way, to offset their cost of creation. the Madagascar plan had none of these things.

[R_G]

I understand the costs.

It pretty much boils down to the Nazis not needing to slaughter the Jews to retreat whatever funds they could for the war.

It all goes back to the reasons for the Holocaust.

One being that the Nazis needed more funds and so killed Jews and funneled their assets to the war machine.

[QatzelOk]

There are Nazi officials who thought blatantly killing the Jews was heinous, and that deporting them to a far away harsh land, much like the British did with convicts to Australia was a fair secondary solution.

The idea of "deporting Jews to a faraway place" sounds like what Lord Rothschild and the Zionistas wanted to do as well. But they'd never leave Europe voluntarily. They had it too good there.

Hmmm... How in the world can Lord Rothschild and the Zionistas get their dream to come true?

[Smilin' Dave]

One being that the Nazis needed more funds and so killed Jews and funneled their assets to the war machine.

Was finance even discussed at the Wannsee conference, where the fate of the Jews was ultimately decided?

I think this was the first official Nazi German proposal for a Madagascar 'solution'
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... ascar.html
- Note that this creates Madagascar as an effective prison/police state run by Germany.
- See the suggestion that Jews on the island would be held as a sort of insurance against Jews in the US.
- Also note that Rademacher sees this as a propaganda coup.