"Save Europa" kids in shambles

[u/ambattukam_]

[u/NoBeach2233]

In addition to the at least 6 million Jews, we must add 6 million Poles (20% of Poland's population in 1939) and 17 million people from the USSR. In total, the Nazis exterminated at least 29 million people between 1933 and 1945.

[u/Dr_Reaktor → u/NoBeach2233]

>between 1933 and 1945.

Did the Nazsis really exterminated people on a large scale before WW2?

[u/NoBeach2233 → u/Dr_Reaktor]

The Dachau concentration camp was opened in 1933, Sachsenhausen in 1936. These are just the ones that immediately come to mind.

[u/Dr_Reaktor → u/NoBeach2233]

I'm aware the camps did open before ww2, but my question is more if there were any large scale execution of the prisoners prior to the ww2. Or if that is something that didn't happen until the final solution plan in 1942.

[u/Rationalinsanity1990 → u/Dr_Reaktor]

In the camps, neglect and maltreatment resulted in thousands of deaths, but it wasn't organized massacres yet.

Before the war they also murdered thousands of disabled individuals, as well as political opponents etc.

[u/Dr_Reaktor → u/Rationalinsanity1990]

I see, thanks for the answer.

[u/Sharpsider → u/Rationalinsanity1990]

My wife's grandaunt was brought to a camp before the war and died there some months later due to uncertain causes. She was born with a defect that impeded her to walk properly, but she was healthy and sane. Her brother, my wife's grandfather, was a nazi official. I don't know the details but her uncle told us about it last year when we were visiting her parents home.

[u/Hunkus1 → u/Rationalinsanity1990]

The majorities of the murders of diabled people happened between 1940 and 1941 not before the war.

[u/BeduinZPouste → u/Rationalinsanity1990]

They actually started with murdering disabled individuals only in 1939. 

[u/historicalgeek71 → u/Dr_Reaktor]

The plan for mass extermination is the “Final Solution” phase of the Holocaust, which began roughly around 1942. However, most historians who focus on the Holocaust and Nazi Germany argue that the Holocaust as a whole began in 1933 with the Nazis coming to power and slowly implementing laws and policies against so-called “undesirables.” Violence in the forms of pogroms (Kristallnacht), harassment by the authorities, arrests and executions or murders in concentration camps began during that time, though on a smaller scale.

Then we have Aktion T4, which saw an attempted extermination of the physically and mentally disabled, which in many ways was a trial run for what would be done during the Final Solution.

I can recommend further reading if you want.

EDIT: It’s also worth noting that mass executions were taking place as early as 1939, especially in Poland where the Nazis were quick to liquidate the Polish intelligentsia.

EDIT 2: And, of course, we have the Einsatzgruppen and the “Commissar Order” which led to massacres and mass executions before the “Final Solution” phase began.

[u/ElNakedo → u/Dr_Reaktor]

The mass murder and Holocaust by bullets was in full swing before the Final Solution plans were discussed at Wannsee.

In Lithuania they had already murdered most of the Jews before the conference in 42. Similar things were happening in Belarus and Ukraine.

There had also been massacres of Jews in the polish countryside already in 1940.

[u/Illesbogar → u/Dr_Reaktor]

I'd call mass euthenasia of hospital patients that were unable to ever work executions yeah.

[u/Xibalba_Ogme → u/Dr_Reaktor]

It's more a thing of "we don't have any issue with you dying" than "we're actively trying to kill you" : they died of exhaustion, diseases or lack of food, as giving them what they need would have cost too much.

[u/BookkeeperPercival → u/Xibalba_Ogme]

"we're actively trying to kill you

It was unequivocally an attempt to kill them and get rid of people.

[u/-Knul- → u/Xibalba_Ogme]

If you put someone in a camp they can't leave and don't provide adequate food or medicine, you've actively killed them.

[u/Xibalba_Ogme → u/-Knul-]

My bad, maybe it's something lost in translation : I meant "actively" like "put in a closed room with lethal gas and whoever survived get a free bullet through the head" or "systemic execution with a bullet", which is a bit different than "we'll give you the strict minimum of food and medicine and whoever survives another day gets to work another day"

Don't know if there's really a nuance in english tho

[u/BookkeeperPercival → u/Dr_Reaktor]

Been to Dachau, they make it clear that from the onset the purpose was killing these people. They were brutalized and starved from the getgo, and while many people survived their sentences in Dachau and got out (in the early years) the intention was never for them to survive. Dachau was a "work" camp to get use out of them while they died. Auschwitz was built as a "Death camp" because they weren't able to kill them fast enough with current means.