The National Socialists planned to exterminate the Jewish people....

The National Socialists planned to exterminate the Jewish people.

–A thread🧵

Some people argue that the Holocaust couldn't possibly have happened because there is simply no evidence that National Socialist leaders ever planned to mass murder European Jews. What they actually planned to do was deport them to a foreign land, like Madagascar. Furthermore, they argue, the historical evidence shows that Germans have always believed such an extermination would have been logistically impractical, and that, therefore, it couldn't have been carried out, even if they wanted to.
But is this true?

There initially was, indeed, a plan to resolve the "Jewish Question" by deporting Jews to the African island of Madagascar. The plan was first proposed by Himmler on May 25, 1940: Madagascar would have become a sort of "Jewish enclosure" controlled by the German SS where Jews were given a limited local administration but no automous State.

This plan, however, was predicated on the German victory over Britain (which, at the time, seemed probable) as it would have been impossible to ship big numbers of Jews to Africa without having the monopoly of the seaways and access to British ships. After losing the Battle of Britain, on October 31, 1940, the Madagascar Plan was discarded and never implemented. No Jew has ever been deported from Europe to Madagascar.

We will now see that there is actually plenty of evidence from high-ranking National Socialist officials, showing that the planned Final Solution [Endlösung] of the Jewish Question came to be nothing less than the extermination –that is, the mass murder– of the Jewish people.

The German words that were most commonly employed to refer to this extermination are: "Vernichtung", "Ausrottung" and "Ausmerzung". Later on, I will get into a semantic and etymological analysis of these words.

In a 1939 speech to the German Parliament, Adolf Hitler claimed that, were the Jews to start another war, such war would end with the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe [die Vernichtung der jüdischen Rasse in Europa]" (Collection of Speeches 1922-1945, pp. 543-544).

On November 18, 1941, Alfred Rosenberg stated that the only way the Jewish Question could be solved is with the "biological eradication [biologischen Ausmerzung]" of Jews from Europe.

On December 13, 1941, Goebbels wrote that, regarding the Jewish Question, the Fürher was resolved to "make a clean slate [reinen Tisch zu machen]". Had they started another war, the Jews would live to see their "annihilation [Vernichtung]"; "this", notes Goebbels, "is not a rhetorical figure [Das ist keine Phrase gewesen]". He states that the Jews will have to "pay with their lives [dafur mit ihrem Leben bezahlen müssen]".

In a speech of the same year, General Hans Frank stated that Germany must "finish off" the Jews. Recalling Hitler's Reichstag speech, he states that "were Jews to survive the war" the war would not be a success. He believes Germany must "liquidate them" and "destroy" them wherever they are.

On February 14, 1942 Goebbels mentioned in his Diary Hitler's determination to "pitilessly clean up [aufzuräumen]" Europe from the Jews. Such process must be free from any "sentimentalism" as the Jews deserve the "catastrophy [Katastrophe]" of their "destruction [Vernichtung]".

In speech dated February 24, 1942, Adolf Hitler candidly told his party members that the final goal of his struggle was to "exterminate the Jew", and "eliminate" those "parasites" (Collection of Speeches 1922-1945, p. 856).

On March 27, 1942, Goebbels wrote about the application of a "pretty barbaric procedure", by which "not much will remain of the Jews [von den Juden selbst bleibt nicht mehr viel übrig]": about 60% will have to be "liquidated [liquidiert]", while 40% will be used for forced labour.

In October 1943, Himmler delivered two speeches in the German-occupied city of Posen to his soldiers, which would come to be known as "Posen Speeches". In the first of this speech on October 4th –of which we have the recording– he informed the soldiers of a very difficult subject that was never to be mentioned in public: "the extermination [Ausrottung] of the Jewish people". He claimed that Germans had the "moral duty" to "kill [umzubringen] this people" who wanted to kill them. The Jews had to be exterminated [ausrotten] the same way a bacillus has to be exterminated [ausrotten] to prevent it from killing you.

In his October 6th Posen Speech, Himmler stated that he considered himself justified to kill, not only adult Jewish men, but the women and children too, as the children will one day grow up and try to avenge their fathers. He states that he had to make the difficult decision to have the Jewish people "disappear from the Earth [von der Erde verschwinden]". He concludes by saying that, for that reason, the Jewish Question will be over by the end of the year.

On May 13, 1943, Goebbels wrote that, while in nature the process of natural selection always "takes measures against the parasites", in the life of nations that is not always the case, since the parasitic Jews are still alive. For this reason, he argues, "there is no recourse left for the modern nations except to exterminate the Jews [Es bleibt also den modernen Völkern nichts anderes übrig, als die Juden auszurotten]". He adds that "there is no hope" to bring the Jews back into civilisation, because a Jew will always remain a Jew.

On April 6, 1944, German police stated that the ban on Jews leaving the country was still in force, "in view of the planned Final Solution [Im Hinblick auf die vorgesehene Endlösung]". Such a statement would make no sense if the Final Solution, at that stage, meant forcing Jews out of Germany; if anything, their emigration would have helped the government's solution.

On June 9th 1944, Hans Frank wrote in his diary that "since the extermination [Ausrottung] of the Jews in Poland", where the Jews had the most children, the Jewish future was "completely over, purely in terms of blood [rein blutsmaßig gesehen]".

In a speech to Wehrmacht Generals dated May 5, 1944 –of which we have the recording– Himmler reiterated that the reason he ordered to kill, not just the men, but the women and children too, was that he believed he was "not entitled" to "let the children grow up" just for them to become hate-filled avengers of their fathers. That, he says, would have been irresponsible, as it would have created a problem for the National Socialists' children and grandchildren.

In a speech dated June 21, 1944, Himmler states that he was given the order to "solve the Jewish Question". He then says, once again, that in order to solve it, he had to murder, not only the adult men, but the women and the children too. He reproaches those who objected against it by saying that "the children will one day grow up". He believes that he would have actually been "cowardly" to let the children live.

On March 14, 1945, Goebbels wrote that the Jews must be "killed off like rats [wie die Ratten totschlagen]" whenever one has the capacity to do so. He then gladly adds that, in Germany, this duty has already been "diligently taken care of [redlich besorgt]", and hopes that the rest of the world will eventually follow their example.

Some revisionists have claimed that, in the original German, terms like "Vernichtung" and "Ausrottung" have a much more figurative meaning, and don't usually translate to "extermination" as in "mass murder".

What those words actually mean is a figurative "uprooting" of a certain influence or political ideology. The Germans, they say, claimed they wanted to remove Jewish influence from Europe's public sphere. Those words actually have nothing to do with the physical murder of people, and, before the war, they were used only in a figurative sense.

Although I will offer one, such an argument about semantics needs no rebuttal as it doesn't stand on its own: in virtually all the instances we have seen, the words "Vernichtung" and "Aus-rottung" (a compound of "aus-", "out", and "-rottung", "to root") are associated with the physical death or killing of something. It is therefore their own context that qualifies their meaning as "mass murder":

• Hitler (1) said that the war could end in either the destruction of the Aryan race or the "Vernichtung" of the Jewish race and (2) compared the "extermination of the Jews" to the "elimination of parasites". The only way a parasite can be rooted out is by killing it (Collection of Speeches 1922-1945, pp. 543-544; 856)

• Goebbels wrote that:
(1) in their "Vernichtung" ("annihilation"), the Jews would have to "pay with their lives" (Tagebücher, Dec. 13, 1941)
(2) the Jews must cleaned up "pitilessly", with "no sentimentalism" and "cold ruthlesness" (Tagebücher, Feb. 14, 1942)
(3) "a barbaric procedure" was being carried out in 1942, for which "not much will remain of the Jews", as by the end of it 60% will be "liquidated" and 40% used for forced labour (Tagebücher, March 27, 1942)
(4) the Jews must be "auszurotten" ("exterminated") "like parasites", since natural selection can't "take care of them". The way natural selection takes care of parasites is by killing them (Tagebücher, May 13, 1943)
(5) the Jews must be "killed off like rats", and, in Germany, this has already been "diligently taken care of" (Tagebücher, March 14, 1945).

• Himmler stated that:
(1) in order to carry out the "Ausrottung" of the Jewish people, he had to kill not only the men but the women and the children too. He added that he had to do that in order to "resolve the Jewish Question" as a whole, not just some local uprising. He said this repeatedly (Posen Speeches on October 4 and 6, 1943; Speech in Sonthofen, May 5, 1944; Speech in Sonthofen, June 21, 1944)
(2) the Jews need to be "ausrotten" the same way a bacillus needs to be rooted out (that is, killed) (Posen Speech, October 4, 1943)
(3) in this "Ausrottung" the Jewish people had to "disappear from the Earth" (Posen Speech, October 6, 1943).

• Rosenberg wrote that the only way the Jewish Question could be solved is with the "biologischen Ausmerzung" ("biological extermination") of the Jews in Europe. The adjective "biological" excludes any possibility of a mass deportation, since that kind of "rooting out" is not a biological measure. German-speaking revisionist Wilhelm Stäglich has also conceded that, in its ordinary usage, the "biologischen Ausmerzung" refers to killing (BArch NS 8/71).

• Frank (1) stated that the Jews must be "finished", "killed off" and "liquidated" and (2) wrote that since the "Ausrottung" of the Jews in Poland, the Jewish future was completely over "purely in terms of blood", as Poland was the country where Jews had the most children (Speech, Dec. 16, 1941; Diary, June 9, 1944).

Furtheremore, we have several examples of contemporary uses of the words "Ausrottung" and "Vernichtung", employed to refer to the physical mass murder of people, instead of a simply figurative eradication:

This 1930 book by Melkon Krishchian titled "Deutschland und die Ausrottung der Armenier in der Türkei" is about the physical extermination of Armenians in Turkey, or what would later be called "the Armenian Genocide"

Chapter 8 of the 1920 book "Der weisse Terror in Ungarn" ("White terror in Hungary") is titled "Die Ausrottung der Arbeiterklasse": it describes the mass murder and disappearance of workers and union leaders, and mentions a mass grave of 6,000 corpses.

In 1943, American Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise warned about the plan to annihilate the Jews. When the German Foreign Office had to translate his statment into German, they translated the word "annihilate" with "auszurotten", the verb whose verbal-noun form is "Ausrottung".

Ironically, Himmler himself used that verb to refer to an extemination. In one of his anti-Christian tirades dated 1937, he praised the Roman Emperors who "ausrotteten" ("eradicated") the early Christians. Obviously, the "eradication" in question involved the mass murder of Christians.

Lastly, in a note from a 1921 medical book, German professor Dr. Stauffacher, talks about the "Ausrottung" ("eradication") of foot-and-moth diseases, referring obviously to the death of the diseases.

To summarise, in this thread we have proved that:

-The Madagascar Plan, the plan to deport European Jews to Madagascar, was never carried out since it became impossible in 1940.
- The National Socialists have not always thought that the physical extermination of the Jews would have been an impractical solution to the Jewish Question, on the contrary, they became convinced, and stated explicitly, that physicaly exterminating the Jews was the only way to solve the Jewish Question
- The Jewish Question was not seen as something to be eventually resolved after the war: because they believed the Jews started the war, they wanted the war to end with the extermination of the Jews, who "had to pay with their lives"
- The National Socialists did consider, call for, and eventually carry out, the physical extermination of European Jews.
- The National Socialists stated this extermination involved a "barbaric procedure" that was being carried out "with no sentimentalism" and "with cold ruthlessness"
- Murdering women and children was a Nazi policy, and it was deemed not only a licit action, but a duty as well.
- The German words that we would translate as "extermination" ("Vernichtung", "Ausrottung", "Ausmerzen" etc..) cannot refer to a "figurative eradication" of Jewish influence or Jewish power, because in virtually all cases, they were employed in a context that refers to the physical killings of people, or the death of something, such as bacteria.
- The German words "Vernichtung", "Ausrottung", "Ausmerzen" etc... did not change their meaning after the war. They were used, in that same period, to refer to the mass murder of people as well, including the Armenian genocide.

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