Wired This Day In Tech ,Jan. 20, 1942: Final Decision Is High-Tech Killing

[Weyland]

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/...-solution/



1942: A malignant but unfocused policy of persecution turns into one of outright mass extermination at the Wannsee Conference. In a meeting lasting a little over six hours at a villa in the fashionable Berlin suburb of Wannsee, Nazi bureaucrats agree on a plan to implement the “final solution to the Jewish question.”

No formal plan for dealing with the Jews existed prior to the Wannsee Conference, and many Nazis favored the deportation or forced emigration of those they considered racial enemies. But with Germany’s conquest of Poland and western Russia, the Nazis found themselves with 11 million Jews to deal with. Deportation, they decided, was no longer practical.

There had already been mass killings of Jews, with mobile killing units — the Einsatzgruppen — shooting most of the victims. Shooting was deemed inefficient, however, because the number of people killed was relatively small while the men who did the shooting often suffered from depression or shattered nerves.

After the Wannsee Conference the method of killing was refined and expanded with assembly-line precision as the Nazis began employing both engine exhaust and Zyklon B, a commercial pesticide, to gas the Jews in their thousands. It was mass murder on an unprecedented scale, carried out in camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor.

These camps, run by the SS under Heinrich Himmler, employed the most efficient technology available for accomplishing their task. Camps were situated near key railheads to facilitate the transportation of large numbers of people.

At the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex in southern Poland, gas chambers capable of processing up to 5,000 people per hour were built. After gassing, which could take as long as 15 minutes to complete, gold fillings were extracted from victims’ teeth, their body cavities searched for hidden valuables and the corpses incinerated in ovens.

Between 5 and 6 million Jews are estimated to have died in what is now known as the Holocaust. Another 1 million people — including German opponents of the Nazi regime — were killed as well.

Read More http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/...z0dCE4vwZZ

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I can't believe the einstazgrüppe were physically able to slaughter the amount of people daily attributed to their carnage - not least as their activity was very frequently on the actual battle front with the soviets.

The only surviving document supporting that theirs was a coordinated plan within the NSDAP to annihilate European Jewry in it's entirety.

The speculation that it is NKVD propaganda due to the German it is written in being not at all concurrent with that of a native speaker's standards seems sound enough to at least investigsate why on earth would the NSDAP high staff have someone with low competence in written German to take the minutes from the conference? makes no sense.

[Weyland]

(01-21-2010 08:06 AM)nik Wrote:  I can't believe the einstazgrüppe were physically able to slaughter the amount of people daily attributed to their carnage - not least as their activity was very frequently on the actual battle front with the soviets.

The only surviving document supporting that theirs was a coordinated plan within the NSDAP to annihilate European Jewry in it's entirety.

The speculation that it is NKVD propaganda due to the German it is written in being not at all concurrent with that of a native speaker's standards seems sound enough to at least investigsate why on earth would the NSDAP high staff have someone with low competence in written German to take the minutes from the conference? makes no sense.

"the Einsatzgruppen — shooting most of the victims. Shooting was deemed inefficient" ?????

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as the figure given on the Birkenau plaque has decreased by the millions the amount of murders committed by the Einsatzgrüppen in the statistics has risen in inverse proportion.

[Weyland]

(01-21-2010 02:58 PM)nik Wrote:  as the figure given on the Birkenau plaque has decreased by the millions the amount of murders committed by the Einsatzgrüppen in the statistics has risen in inverse proportion.

I totally understand the whole Holocaust denial thing but whats the point? I think people died right?

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(01-22-2010 01:40 AM)Weyland Wrote:  

(01-21-2010 02:58 PM)nik Wrote:  as the figure given on the Birkenau plaque has decreased by the millions the amount of murders committed by the Einsatzgrüppen in the statistics has risen in inverse proportion.

I totally understand the whole Holocaust denial thing but whats the point? I think people died right?

yeah yeah for sure Weyland - I am not underplaying the horrific nature of the Nazi regime... I am just putting in the appropriate counterpoints to the claims of the article... My 4 year is scheduled to be programmed with life long guilt about this very episode in history, yeah? that's kinda one of the more personalised mercenary points, I guess

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seriously - i can walk like 5-10 minutes from my flat and be at the ruins of what used to be a MAJOR SS barracks cpmplex- i get that people died, i really do.