Hitler's Holocaust Railway with Chris Tarrant

[jjb1970]

I think trying to answer the "why" is much, much more difficult than the "what" in history. Looking at what happened can be ascertained from archives and documentary evidence, archaeology etc. However, there are plenty of events for which it is quite straightforward to say what happened but for which trying to explain why is very difficult. The holocaust is a case in point. Explaining anti-Semitism and why a people might be targeted for extermination is something that sort of defies explanation. There is a rather odd circular argument along the lines of - Hitler was an anti-Semite because there was a tradition of anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria, and the German people became anti-Semitic because Hitler made them so. The most convincing studies I've found on the subject are the two seminal books by Gavin Langmuir, but even those studies don't really provide a real answer. Raul Hilberg's book "The Destruction of the European Jews" is masterly and IMO remains the definitive work, yet while he charted the "what" brilliantly he never really managed to explain "why".

[Edwardian]

The problem with explanations which explain everything is that they also explain nothing. The point about national rivalry is well taken, but Anti-Semitism has roots which go back to the dark ages in Europe with no rational reason for it, as until 1948 they were a religious people without a nation and were a threat to nobody. Similarly, prejudices against gypsies have very deep roots in Europe. Multi-national states can force people to co-exist peacefully (the Habsburg empire being a good example) but it doesn't really remove nationalism and everything that goes with it. The most savage acts of destruction tend to stem from essentially internecine rather than from international conflict (examples abound, in the former USSR, China, Rwanda, Indonesia etc). Then again, once labels are attached to things they become important.

 

Ostensibly at least, there was a logic to anti-semitism in the Middle Ages, though I don't doubt it was little more than a convenient sophistry employed to justify baser instincts.  In those days your anti-semite Daily Grail editorial could point to the Jews as "Christ Killers" and then get all Biblical about visiting the sins of the fathers, thus conveniently establishing inherited collective guilt.  

 

Religion was rather by the by for the Nazis.  It seems for them it was a deep racial lothing.  Their Daily Heil editorial would have focussed on supposed racial characteristics that it was said showed their inferiority and moral degeneracy. 

 

I'd like to think we've moved on as a species, but, I suspect we have not moved quite so far as many of us had fondly imagined was the case.  

[jjb1970]

WW2 didn’t start because of Jews, they were ostracised, but the invasion of Poland, annexation of Austria, Recovery of Czech Sudetenland and demands of Alsace and Lorraine had nothing to do with European Jewry.

Similarly Hitler didn’t invade Russia or France to rid it of Jews.

 

The Jewish people were collateral in a war of conquest and desire to build empire.

The Jews were persecuted as a result of obedience to that empire in order to survive themselves. There were people who both supported and opposed that, in all countries.

 

Quite, but the point is that even without national rivalries history shows that the human race has a good track record of self destruction, and that it is this other type of self destruction which is the most vicious. I don't think the Jewish people were collateral damage, I think that hatred of the Jews was probably the one deeply held and sincere belief Hitler had and that he saw making Germany (and then Europe, maybe the world later) as his great mission.

[adb968008]

. Raul Hilberg's book "The Destruction of the European Jews" is masterly and IMO remains the definitive work, yet while he charted the "what" brilliantly he never really managed to explain "why".

Your looking in the wrong book.

Try Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species.

 

Life is a competition to survive, which requires adapting to change, resisting or to perish.

Once the label is attached, it becomes a threat to your own survival, unless it’s eliminated.

People are ultimately animals, seeking to survive, with 3 basic instincts once a target is identified...

1. Can it eat me

2. Can I eat it

3. Can I co-exist with it

Edited December 6, 2018 by adb968008

[brack]

I agree we have little cultural experience of invasion, nor of changing borders - the fluidity of borders on continental Europe (not just polish/German, but all over) is something we don't have, ironically because our borders are literally fluid - a big expanse of sea is a very clear and permanent demarcation (and yes, having spent 2 years living in Ireland north and south I'm aware of the exception).

 

Having said that, the British 'betrayal' of Poland at the end of WW2 (effectively in exchange for Greece) was purely a realpolitik. Russia was rolling across from the east to Germany, and Churchill could forsee that Stalin was only an ally until Germany was out of the war. There was no feasible way that the red army would be removed from the countries they occupied (hence the race to the Elbe). Sadly, having entered the war to protect Poland from occupation, we had to sign it away to the Soviets. Theres no way Stalin would've agreed to a free Poland isolating east Germany and turning Czechoslovakia into a communist peninsula with huge borders between westernised democracies. They tried hard to hold on to Austria,

which was jointly occupied for 10 years after the war and surprised the west when the Soviets agreed to pull out. If the Austrian communists had ever got more than a few % of votes maybe there may have been partition like east and west Germany.

 

So im afraid there was little we could do for Poland other than offer full asylum and settlement to those poles not wishing to go back or who could get out.

[jjb1970]

Your looking in the wrong book.

Try Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species.

 

Life is a competition to survive, which requires adapting to change, resisting or to perish.

Once the label is attached, it becomes a threat to your own survival, unless it’s eliminated.

People are ultimately animals, seeking to survive.

 

Social Darwinism tends to be a way to try and rationalise hatred more than a cause I think. The theory of evolution has been deeply corrupted and abused by trying to apply it to social attitudes and geopolitics.

[Edwardian]

Your looking in the wrong book.

Try Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species.

 

Life is a competition to survive, which requires adapting to change, resisting or to perish.

Once the label is attached, it becomes a threat to your own survival, unless it’s eliminated.

People are ultimately animals, seeking to survive, with 3 basic instincts once a target is identified...

1. Can it eat me

2. Can I eat it

3. Can I co-exist with it

 

A comforting thought, though, I hope, not an insight into your family mealtimes. 

[jjb1970]

History is full of examples of communities co-existing peacefully for generations only for one group to turn on the other and try to eradicate them.

[adb968008]

A comforting thought, though, I hope, not an insight into your family mealtimes.

 

3. Was actually an adaption of the phrase I was once told, the original point 3 was more akin to procreation.

 

We have no neighbours, any more.

Edited December 6, 2018 by adb968008

[adb968008]

History is full of examples of communities co-existing peacefully for generations only for one group to turn on the other and try to eradicate them.

..

Usually as a result of a perceived threat, and adapting to it.

The threat is also basic.. the need for food, water (survival), fitness and territory... any threat, boils down to one of these, and the response is a mitigation of that threat... Run, Fight or die.

 

It’s in our DNA, our bodies identify invading Bacteria or Viruses and react to it often after decades of co-existence.. why shouldn’t our Brains do the same ?

 

This very thread is personification of the behaviour...

 

The discussion is about making for / aft points of view that are a challenge (threat) to our own, except Edwardians of course, he is point 3... so not someones lunch, yet.

 

I'd like to think we've moved on as a species, but, I suspect we have not moved quite so far as many of us had fondly imagined was the case.

 

Any herd can only move as fast as the slowest in that herd.

 

This is how the Nazi machine vilified the Jews..

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/defining-the-enemy

Edited December 6, 2018 by adb968008

[DCB]

I really don't expect to have this sort of discussion on a model railway forum, especially as I don't seem to agree with anyone who has written here.  I simply don't understand how the holocaust could have happened, It sure as hell did but it required vast numbers of people to believe there was nothing they could do to stop the process which could actually have been severely disrupted by  the actions of relatively small groups of people.  The Rich profiteers rhetoric prevalent after WW1 with visions of the Rich growing fat and wealthy while the poor died in the trenches or starved was as prevalent on the allied side as it was on the German, The British crippled their own industry with excess profits tax which wiped out our aeronautical and shipbuilding lead over other nations and the allies crippled the germans industry, however the Nazi's channelled this "Rich Profiteers" profile onto the one ethnic group for their political aims.   I don't think they could actually have envisaged a program capable of murdering in excess of 2 million souls per annum back in the late 1920s, Hitler wasn't that bright and the rest appeared to be even dimmer. 

When the appropriation of the victims property gained momentum the Nazis found sales of the appropriated goods to the public provided much needed funds to fuel rearmament as at the time Germany was rapidly running out of money, Plan B steal other countries assets also helped balance the books a bit but by 1940/1 peace was not an affordable option for Germany.  At that time the final solution was very much a long term thing. Obviously someone had the portfolio but I don't think it can have been much of a priority to Hitler and the top decision makers as they planned to invade the UK, and Russia  . Sadly within their government departments  there were professional managers, much like the ones who infest multi nationals today, who treat human beings like cans of beans and when the leaderships pipe dream of a final solution was aired so these faceless chinless wonders set to and evolved a system not unlike that used by car scrap yards to recover re usable components and dispose of the rest. Chinless wonders treat cars beans and people alike, and with or without prompting they set to and implemented the scheme.  Bit like a house of cards. If the railways had refused to carry the traffic then the ralway folk would have been shot, fi the camp guards had refused to do their duty they would have been shot, if the victims had refused to enter the camps and been shot on the platforms or rushed the guards, if  the camp trustees had refused to assist in the killing of their own countrymen and refused to move or empty the ovens of dead victims they would have been shot and the system would have collapsed.  It wasn't a few evil ###### who cause the problem but millions of spineless ######s both on the perpetrators side and the victims side trying to save their own skin or even just survive a few more days, where decent people would would have stood shoulder to shoulder and been prepared to die rather than let the injustice continue, to have called their superiors bluff in the case of the guards like the conscientious objectors did when refusing to fight.  Its all very sad and reflects well on no one and is probably best forgotten. Or is it. When we look at the High Speed trains inspired by or developed from the Nazis 1930s Flying Hamburger, the Motorways which follow the lead of the Auttobahnen, the rockets which went to the moon and put our mobile phone satellites in orbit in a direct continuation of the Nazis rocket program, the jet planes, Germans flew the first jet,  the renowned quality of German engineering, the united Europe ruled from Berlin then perhaps we should remember what ruthless evil ###### these were or else we could end up with Hitlers picture on our 50 euro bank notes and April 20th his birthday  as a Bank holiday.

Edited December 7, 2018 by DavidCBroad

[adb968008]

People generally fall into one of two groups, hunters or farmers.

Not many can do both.

 

Hunters kill.

Farmers grow.

There are far fewer hunters than farmers.

 

Farmers survive by intelligence, because if they dont, they become prey.

Hunters survive by killing before they get killed, beyond that instinct there isnt much intelligence.

 

You can see it in animals, you see herds of Deer, but low quantities of Lions. Deer generally dont attack lions, instead they survive by being close to the herd. Deer that separates from the herd becomes prey.

 

You can call famers spineless, but unless they fight like a hunter, the best way to survive is to keep quiet and carry on farming with every other farmer, unless intelligence suggests it overwhelmingly increases their survival chances to attack.

 

Our society we become wealthier by farming and the hunters role becomes defender.

Edited December 7, 2018 by adb968008

[Chris116]

Just over fifteen years ago I got chatting to an American family on preserved railway. Husband and wife were very talkative, with an elderly man who was with them being very quiet. The husband eventually told me that his father was rather ill and the trip from USA was to visit places in Europe that his father had not seen since the end of WW2. I jumped to the conclusion that father had served in the US Army during the war. The old man finally started to speak and informed me that he had been born in Nuremburg in 1920 and had done some very foolish things in his youth. I tried to defuse what I thought could be an awkward situation by saying that if he meant that he had fought for his country then I accepted that was what people of all nations do. The old man smiled and said if only that was true, he then went on to say he had been stupid and joined Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler. He had been lucky and taken POW by the US Army and eventually allowed to stay in USA where his son had been born and was now married to his wonderful daughter in law. He said his daughter in law reminded him every day of how wrong he had been in his youth. The daughter in law told the old man to stop upsetting himself and told me the reason for the comments, she was Jewish and loved her father in law in spite of his past.

 

The whole incident left me thinking exactly how any of us would have acted in the old man's position, it is very easy to take the moral high ground but in the mid 30's in Germany joining the SS was a good career move with good pay and status in the community. If a country is being ruled by a Hitler or Stalin type it would be very hard not to go with the status quo, while lying on my bed in the UK aged 64 I have never been put in that sort of position so cannot say what I would have done which I find a very worrying thought.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Chris116

[TonyA]

The whole incident left me thinking exactly how any of us would have acted in the old man's position, it is very easy to take the moral high ground but in the mid 30's in Germany joining the SS was a good career move with good pay and status in the community. If a country is being ruled by a Hitler or Stalin type it would be very hard not to go with the status quo while lying on my bed in the UK aged 64 I have never been put in that sort of position so cannot say what I would have done which I find a very worrying thought.

 

When I worked in Nürnberg, I talked to someone whose brother had refused to join the Nazi party in his late teens. Although he qualified at the top of his class in the post office exams, he was unable to get any job because he was not a party member. The need to earn a living is a very strong motive for toeing the line.

 

Tony

[Vistisen]

People generally fall into one of two groups, hunters or farmers.

Not many can do both.

 

Hunters kill.

Farmers grow.

There are far fewer hunters than farmers.

 

Farmers survive by intelligence, because if they dont, they become prey.

Hunters survive by killing before they get killed, beyond that instinct there isnt much intelligence.

 

You can see it in animals, you see herds of Deer, but low quantities of Lions. Deer generally dont attack lions, instead they survive by being close to the herd. Deer that separates from the herd becomes prey.

 

You can call famers spineless, but unless they fight like a hunter, the best way to survive is to keep quiet and carry on farming with every other farmer, unless intelligence suggests it overwhelmingly increases their survival chances to attack.

 

Our society we become wealthier by farming and the hunters role becomes defender.

But every now and then:

 

 

or even more amazing : 

Edited December 7, 2018 by Vistisen

[StevieD71]

Probably not the most sensitive choice for a prototype, could be controversial at an exhibition.

Don't even go there!

 

I visited Aushwitz-Birkenau during the summer and put some photos of the cattle truck and sidings of the Judenramp on the British railway modelling Facebook page. I asked if anyone would ever consider making a model of that line which resulted in a short, but intense debate. It culminated in the thread being deleted before my bus was even half way back to Krakow, so it is obviously a very touchy subject.

 

I did find it quite emotional to stand on that spot by the gate of death, knowing what had happened there. No television programme (and I thought this one was quite well done) can prepare you for the sheer scale of the Birkenau death camp. Aushwitz 1 is by comparison quite small and neat, having been a Polish Army camp prior to occupation. Walking into the gas chamber there was extremely unsettling.

[Edwardian]

Don't even go there!

 

I visited Aushwitz-Birkenau during the summer and put some photos of the cattle truck and sidings of the Judenramp on the British railway modelling Facebook page. I asked if anyone would ever consider making a model of that line which resulted in a short, but intense debate. It culminated in the thread being deleted before my bus was even half way back to Krakow, so it is obviously a very touchy subject.

 

I did find it quite emotional to stand on that spot by the gate of death, knowing what had happened there. No television programme (and I thought this one was quite well done) can prepare you for the sheer scale of the Birkenau death camp. Aushwitz 1 is by comparison quite small and neat, having been a Polish Army camp prior to occupation. Walking into the gas chamber there was extremely unsettling.

 

The model of the railway interface of a death camp in the Imperial War Museum Holocaust Gallery is monochrome white.  Somehow, to model it in colour would not have seemed right.  Seeing it all laid out illustrates the sort of production line processing in a way that offers an effective perspective. Another way to try to comprehend the incomprehensible. Chilling, needless to say. 

[jjb1970]

I can guarantee there will be people who'd see it as a perfectly reasonable subject for a model railway layout. There is no shortage of people with an obsessive interest in Nazi memorabilia etc. I'm a sometime military modeller and toy soldier collector, so maybe I'm a complete hypocrite but although I have made lots of models of German tanks, aircraft and ships over the years sometimes I see subjects which are slightly disturbing modelled. Similarly with books, there is a whole holocaust industry basically catering to almost voyeuristic emotions and which add nothing to understanding or the history of the era.

[phil-b259]

History is full of examples of communities co-existing peacefully for generations only for one group to turn on the other and try to eradicate them.

 

However it is not usually hard to find the triggers for this. In a lot of cases it comes down to the removal of a 3rd party everyone else hates - much of the strife in the middle east and Africa is precisely because the colonial powers (i.e. us Brits, the French, etc) drew up borders deliberately straddling clan, religious or tribal groupings and by favouring minority groups. This was fine and dandy while foreign powers or local strongmen (e.g. Gadaffi, Saddam Hussin, etc) remained in power but once such figureheads were gone and there was nobody to collectively rally said tribes rapidly replaced said leaders / powers with hatred towards their erstwhile neighbours leading to an the sorts nastiness occurring.

[Ozexpatriate]

History is full of examples of communities co-existing peacefully for generations only for one group to turn on the other and try to eradicate them.

However it is not usually hard to find the triggers for this. In a lot of cases it comes down to the removal of a 3rd party everyone else hates - 

A more recent and representative example is the Bosnian genocide by Bosnian Serbs after the collapse of Yugoslavia. It's not quite your colonial example, but it does illustrate the complete loss of empathy for people who were compatriots, along religious and ethnic lines.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Ozexpatriate

[jjb1970]

In 1998 neighbours of my wife and her family and their friends who'd lived along each other and been family friends and neighbours for decades just turned against them as they joined mobs attacking ethnic Chinese. In a sense you can date some of the underlying issues back to the Dutch colonial era, but at the same time you can't really explain people turning against long standing friends and neighbours quite literally overnight, just on a colonial legacy which had ended 50 years earlier. It is deeply disturbing. Another aspect of such mob violence is that it indicates that although in some cases it is true that people turn against a group but can differentiate individuals from their feelings about that group that it isn't necessarily the case.

 

A side story from that era is that a friend of mine in Jakarta at that time (believe it or not in the context of this thread of all threads, he was German) was crowing that he wanted to see a riot as it'd be exciting. I told him it was just about the most asinine and downright stupid thing I'd ever heard, however when all **** broke lose he messed his pants and was at the door of the Germany embassy crying to be flown home. I couldn't help reminding him that he was the one who had wanted to see a riot.

[jjb1970]

When I worked in Nürnberg, I talked to someone whose brother had refused to join the Nazi party in his late teens. Although he qualified at the top of his class in the post office exams, he was unable to get any job because he was not a party member. The need to earn a living is a very strong motive for toeing the line.

 

Tony

 

In the mid 30's applying for membership was made difficult (probably to keep the riff raff out, they did have standards to maintain, by the end of the war membership was less than 10% of the German population, a proportion which had doubled over the course of the war. Which would indicate that securing a job of some sort was not contingent on party membership. Party membership was quite low in many of the Police units which perpetrated much of the holocaust. These were units formed from cadres of career Police officers and who were able to continue their Police careers without having to join the party. Germany was something like Communist USSR and China in that party membership was seen as some sort of mark of distinction.

[adb968008]

The model of the railway interface of a death camp in the Imperial War Museum Holocaust Gallery is monochrome white. Somehow, to model it in colour would not have seemed right. Seeing it all laid out illustrates the sort of production line processing in a way that offers an effective perspective. Another way to try to comprehend the incomprehensible. Chilling, needless to say.

 

The problem with this model is the lack of depth....

 

Those huts were several rows wider / deeper... its the sheer scale of the site that is shocking.

 

in otherwords... the site was massive, indeed It wasnt even fully built to its actual planned potential.

 

When you walkaround the barracks, there is displayed evidence... piles of shoes, glasses, false teeth, even artificial limbs.

When you look today, to someone born 30 years after the war 70 years ago, it looks from a different age, the shock is muted by the museum feel.

 

I think theres an artistic oppourtunity to press the message home to todays generation...If there was a stack of mobile phones, credit cards, car keys and todays modern clothes it could hit home harder as people would stop and think in a modern context.. rather than a older historical one... as those who perished were not musuem pieces, they were “modern” people of a modern age, rounded up and killed through no fault of their own, time has moved on, but their memory has not. Unfortunately the site is about tourism, complete with a gift shop, and less of education shocking as that may sound.

 

Heres an aerial view of the camp, consider this is the second site, that was never fully constructed.

https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/through-the-lens/auschwitz-aerial-photos.asp

The model shows just 1 side with 2 rows of huts.

Edited December 8, 2018 by adb968008

[EddieB]

A more recent and representative example is the Bosnian genocide by Bosnian Serbs after the collapse of Yugoslavia. It's not quite your colonial example, but it does illustrate the complete loss of empathy for people who were compatriots, along religious and ethnic lines.

It goes a lot deeper than that.  Yugoslavia brought together peoples that had been at enmity with each other for hundreds of years.

 

By no means to excuse the modern atrocities, but to be made aware of the awful crimes committed against the Serbs - particularly their children - during WW2, is to begin to understand that their modern portrayal as initiators of genocide ignores a swathe of history.  Google "Jasenovac" for more information.

 

[pete_mcfarlane]

I can guarantee there will be people who'd see it as a perfectly reasonable subject for a model railway layout. There is no shortage of people with an obsessive interest in Nazi memorabilia etc. I'm a sometime military modeller and toy soldier collector, so maybe I'm a complete hypocrite but although I have made lots of models of German tanks, aircraft and ships over the years sometimes I see subjects which are slightly disturbing modelled. Similarly with books, there is a whole holocaust industry basically catering to almost voyeuristic emotions and which add nothing to understanding or the history of the era.

 

In the mid-1990s I was in Malcesine, or Lake Garda in Italy. There's a model shop there specialising in (expensive) Diecast cars. On display in the window was a 6 wheeled Mercedes open top limo, with figures of Hitler and (IIRC) Goring in the back. The lake is frequented mainly by British and German holiday makers. Make of that what you will.