German Railroads Jewish Souls: The Reichsbahn, Bureaucracy, and the Final Solution, by Christopher R. Browning, Peter Hayes, and Raul Hilberg, eds. 2020. Berghahn Books, New York, Oxford
Holocaust Self-Punishment Myths: Germany Did Not Punish Herself By Conducting the Holocaust!
Holocaust supremacists keep alleging that the Holocaust was a burdensome act that Nazi Germany irrationally imposed upon itself, and that this presumably unique and Herculean Nazi undertaking somehow entitles the Holocaust to privileges not had by other genocides. Just the opposite!
HOLOCAUST SELF-PUNISHMENT MYTHS: HOLOCAUST NOT EVEN A CHALLENGING UNDERTAKING!
Historian Peter Hayes punctures this mystification of the Holocaust at several levels. He writes, “Scholars persistent misunderstandings about the deportation of Jews during the Holocaust result primarily from the mesmerizing effect of the huge death toll. Many historians reflexively suppose that massive results required a corresponding level of inputs. To kill 6 million people, half or slightly more of them after shipment to the death camps, must have entailed, so the presumption goes, enormous outlays of personnel, equipment, and expense. We now know that this is false in almost every relevant respect. The gases used (carbon monoxide and Zyklon) were cheap and in plentiful supply until after most of the killings had happened. Most of the death camps were ramshackle and jury-rigged, staffed by only twenty to thirty Germans supported by ninety to a hundred and thirty Eastern European auxiliaries…Even the shooting units in the east represented little diversion from the front lines, as the Einsatzgruppen had only about three thousand members, and the Order Police battalions would have been assigned to occupation duties in any case, often consisting of people considered ineligible for the army, and were replaced increasingly during 1942 and thereafter by non-German SCHUTZMANNSHAFTEN.” (pp. 122-123. Italics added).
Hayes concludes, “One of the most alarming aspects of the Holocaust is that its execution not only required tiny fractions of the Third Reich’s personnel and resources, but occurred in large part before these became stretched.” (p. 123).
It is easy to see that little manpower was needed to kill 6 million Jews. Moreover, had there been no local collaborators at all, it would have been easy for the Germans to replace them with freely-abundant German personnel.
HOLOCAUST SELF-PUNISHMENT MYTHS: ACTUAL MINIMAL RAILROAD BURDEN NEED
Historian Christopher Browning cites a German-language study (Patzold and Schwartz): “Even a considerable overestimate of ten Jewish transports per day would have claimed no more than 0.4% of German rolling stock…one simply had to accept the difficult insight than an unbelievable crime could be committed with minimal material and manpower.” (p. 113. Emphasis added). A comparable figure, of 0.3% to 0.5%, is arrived at by Hayes (pp. 126-127).
Nor did the picture change once Germany began decisively losing the war. During the summer of 1944, 437,000 Hungarian Jews were shipped (mostly to Auschwitz) in 55 days by a total of 147,000 trains, usually at 3 but no more than 6 trains per day, accounting for an infinitesimal 0.067 % of the functioning locomotives and 0.1% of the rolling stock under the jurisdiction of the German Arms Ministry at the time. (Hayes, p. 132).
Peter Hayes concludes, “…the Holocaust did not undercut the German war effort, mostly because it was not allowed to do so.” (p. 131. Emphasis added). So much for the Holocaust myth that Germany harmed herself militarily in order to achieve the Holocaust! See also:
https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/judenrat-collaboration-in-detail-silberklang/
HOLOCAUST SELF-PUNISHMENT MYTHS: MINIMIZING NEEDED JEW-TRANSPORTING RAILCARS FURTHER
The Germans saw to it that even fewer trains were required for the transport of the Jews to the death camps. Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg wrote, “To save locomotives and to reduce the total number of transports, the trains were lengthened and the cars loaded to the hilt. In the case of Jewish SONDERZUEGE, the norm of one thousand deportees per train could be pushed to two thousand, and for shorter hauls (in Poland) to five thousand…Meanwhile, circuitous routes were devised to avoid congestion…Troop trains had the right of way, prolonging trips still more.” (p. 36. Emphasis added).
Historian Peter Hayes adds, “Second, especially on recurrent routes such as Warsaw to Treblinka, the Reichsbahn set aside a limited, dedicated number of locomotives and cars so that one or more trains could shuttle back and forth repeatedly. Already in 1942, a single train traveling from the Galicia district to Belzec and back sufficed to deport 200,000 people.” (p. 129).
