Posted on 07/22/2007 2:26:50 PM PDT by BGHater
The awful thing that we must bring back from this is that perhaps 95% of people are likely to be capable and apt to act in the same way as the Germans did under Hitler.
Of course the British and the Americans knew about the Holocaust. They knew about it and did everything within their power to put an end to it as soon as possible. There were lots of details they didn't know, but there was much they did know, and the truly remarkable efforts on the part of the Allies to save European Jewry should be better known and publicized.
What about the killing fields in Cambodia? Again, look at the American left during Vietnam and the voices of John Kerry’s buddies in the VVAW today. Make no mistake what radical Islam’s goal is for all of us non believers.
They knew full well what was going on and decided to keep it quiet. But, then they had all of this evidence of what they knew.. and decided to keep it secret for the next 60 years. This really stinks.
I rode a tank
Held a generals rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah
Sympathy for the Devil...Jagger Richards 1968
—Who would gain and — more importantly — who would lose if these recordings were disclosed sooner?—
Leftist apologists for totalitarian regimes would have lost for sure.
The same thing happened with the decrypted Venona Cables, which unmasked Alger Hiss and his ilk as CCCP spies or sympathizers (and were buried by the Treason Media at the time they were disclosed (early 1990s)). I usually paid attention to major news ervents but never heard of “Venona” till I read Ann Coulter’s “Treason”.
Not necessarily the Americans, but it is pretty sure the Brits passed on their intel to the top.
Still, so what? The allies were already fighting to destroy the Nazis. It isn’t like they were sitting around doing entirely nothing!
That's nonsense.
1. Of course the Allies knew of the Holocaust.
This has been well known for decades. The first reports of mass killings of Jews in the Soviet Union by Einsatzgruppen appeared in American newspapers as early as October and November, 1941 -- well before the start of this spying program (and before the Wansee Conference, which really started the Holocaust). While various reports of a more formalized extermination program filtered through, these were confirmed and passed on to the President on 24 November 1942. Again, this has been public knowledge (and many books have been written about this) for decades.
2. The conspiracy theory is invalid, because knowledge was irrelevant.
While the mechanisms of the Holocaust were for the most part poorly known by the Allies (not a single actionable specific appears in these transcripts), even if the Allies had known absolutely every last detail about the Holocaust, there's really nothing they could have done to stop it that they didn't do. In 1942, remember, the Nazis were sinking American ships within sight of New York -- all the knowledge in the world couldn't have saved a single Jew.
3. These "secret" transcripts aren't new.
Nor are they particularly significant. Note that this article celebrates the publication of a new translation of them into English, not their declassification. They have been declassified and available to scholars for decades -- in fact, this isn't even the first translation available in English (one was published in 1993).
I’d love to know why they didn’t realease this stuff after the war.
Irrelevant. These recordings were disclosed decades ago. This isn't a conspiracy as much as it is an attempt to hype a soon-to-be published translation. By all means, buy a copy of the book, but this isn't by any stretch a recent declassification.
That place would be Hell.
I agree that opponents of Hitler's in Germany were often afraid to speak up, and for understandable reasons. What I think is often overstated, however, is how many Germans actually were opposed to Hitler's policies.
Until late in the war, Hitler was enormously popular in Germany. Most Germans refused to do anything to stop him -- not because they were afraid of him, but because they agreed with him.
Absolutely shocking! And the average German had no idea what was going on either! (/sarcasm)
I believe that the Foreign Office can block the release of documents, but this case makes me sick. You are right. Sixty years to release this material is criminal! ironically, it only seems to highlight the underlying anti-semitism that is found in Britain itself and which has beoome more apparent in the past decade.
Ask yourself: if you were an unarmed parent of small children in an evil dictatorship, how would you respond? We all hope that we would show courage and resist, but would we rerally, knowing that our actions would lead to the deaths of our families?
Sobering questions. What you describe is life in a totalitarian state. To get an idea of how bad it can get, read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. Although Solzhenitsyn describes Stalinist Russia rather than Hitlerian Germany, the two were not greatly different in their methods. Nor are Cuba or North Korea so very different today.
You’d have a stronger case if this were the first time these documents had been made available. It isn’t. They’ve been declassified — and studied by scholars and even republished — for decades.
It is frightening to think about how fragile civilization really is.
“These recordings were disclosed decades ago.”
In did not know that.
Thanks for the informatian.
Many thousands of people resisted in one way or another, were caught and sent to concentration camps. They resisted because they knew the Nazi regime was evil. They may not have known all the details, but they knew enough to spur them to oppose the regime. By extrapolation, there must have been millions of people who knew enough but chose not to do anything. A lot of people were afraid and just kept their heads low. I want to judge them harshly, on the other hand I don't know how I would have acted. I think I can understand some civilian who hears horror stories and is terrified and keeps a low profile. These officers knew a lot more details, even witnessing things themselves. They were mostly disgusted but rather than revolt they had an attitude of "out of sight and out of mind." It is not a noble picture, to say the least.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.