I don’t know if Mike “The Gun Guy” Weisser is Jewish. But I am. And the possibility of MTGGW being a member of the tribes got me thinking: why would ANY Jew support gun control? Everytown backer Michael Bloomberg and Senators Feinstein and Schumer aren’t full-on Holocaust deniers, but how can they not understand that disarming civilians paves the way for mass murder? Well, here’s how the pros do it [via forward.com]:
Jewish gun backers also turn to Jewish history for support. “I wish there had been more armed Jews when Hitler came to power,” [Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan] Gottlieb said. “I think the government should not have a monopoly on owning firearms.” Others argue that had the Jewish community been armed, Nazi SS units would have suffered losses that would have led Hitler to reconsider his plan to exterminate Europe’s Jews.
Michael Berenbaum, an internationally recognized scholar of the Holocaust, labeled this idea “preposterous.”
“The Germans conquered half the Soviet Union, and France and Poland, and the rest of Europe, against massive armies with huge weapons,” said Berenbaum, who was project director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. “Look at what it took to defeat the Germans.”
According to Berenbaum, “The huge disproportion of power held by the Nazis, and their readiness to use their power for total destruction” would not have been changed had Jewish civilians had guns. “The most you could say is, it might have caused the Nazis to have greater casualties, as it did in the Warsaw Ghetto. It would have exacted a cost. But the idea that Jews with guns would have stopped the Holocaust is not in the realm of the conceivable.”
What about it? Could a well-armed Jewish population using guerrilla resistance tactics have prevented the Holocaust? It’s a question that speaks to the heart of our Second Amendment. Or does it?
No, but at least they wouldn’t have been led to the gas chambers like sheep.
It is more a question of would it have happened in the first place if there was the culture in place that paralleled our Second Amendment intents. Jumping into the end of the story and swapping in the presence of guns leaves out the real question.
So would the nazis gained the traction they did as fast as they did? Well that depends on how guns affects the collective mentality and response when faced with oppression.
This guy is basically trying to claim the fradulent “You must have ICBMs to get anything accomplished by force” stance.
Experience in Afghanistan and Iraq have reminded the US military that winning against determined enemies who don’t wait for an airstrike in lines isn’t as easy as it was supposed to be (since apparently no one remembered Vietnam.
Those wars were fought far away from domestic industrial centers where the supplies and money came from, and it still wasn’t enough.
It does require a spine to front a convincing resistance though, and not all demographics have that. What are your chances against a military if you only have small arms?
The late Mike Vanderbough attempted to answer this question in his article What Good Is a Handgun Against An Army?
https://whitelocust.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/a-handgun-against-an-army-ten-years-after/
It is an excellent read and fun as well.
– Could outmatched Afghans fight off the heavily armed Russians?
– Did the “rifle behind every blade of grass” prevent the invasion of the US mainland?
– Did the armed Koreans on the rooftops protect their businesses from the rioting masses?
Can’t prove a “what if” but there’s enough examples to show they might have had a chance if the Jews were armed, determined, and Hitler knew it. I bet there are at least a number of the Jews that would have survived if they had been armed, and any individual should have the opportunity to try to be one of them.
And there you have it. Unarmed, the Jews in Europe had ZERO chance of survival. Armed, even if only with small arms, they had a non-zero chance of survival. Would they have suffered heavy losses? Quite possible … probably even likely. The real question is how many losses the Nazis would have to suffer before they quit. No one knows the precise answer to that question.
They wouldn’t have quit. The collapsing reich still diverted resources to exterminating the jews even as the walls crumbled. They put down a major insurection in Warsaw with heavy losses even with Russians within easy striking distance. The Nazi’s didn’t care.
Comparing our counterinsergency operations to those of the germans is a slap in the face to our soldiers. The germans (like the romans) created a wasteland and called it peace. SOE agents spent most of their time stopping insurections because german reprisals were so disproptionate that there wouldn’t be nation of people to save/fight if the insurections continued.
That IS an excellent read, and one I haven’t enjoyed in a few years…
It doesn’t have much to do with the subject at hand, though. An armed populace would/could not have withstood the onslaught of antisemitism that took hold in Germany at the time. The people were cowed after decades of economic failure and the political unrest that followed. Armed Jews would have killed swaths of murderors, but their fate was sealed a generation or more earlier.
Secondly, and more to the point, the article you link is fantastic right up until it gets to the long and failed premise of the wolf/sheepdog/sheep nonsense. That metric borders on the Neanderthal in its valuation of social structure. There are no sheepdogs, wolves, or sheep… Our social structure is far more complex than any simple two or three way system. If you disagree, look at the left/right political spectrum used to define American politics. We are people. Some are quicker to bite than others, and most are willing to go for the throat when they sense weakness (damn… I used wolf analogies) but at the end of the day our “pack” is far too large to codify, let alone in a handful of paragraphs.
I wish we POTG would forget the wolf/sheepdog paradigm ever existed
Robert, you should read “The Bravest Battle” by Dan Kurzman. It describes the armed Ghetto uprising in Poland, where the Jews fought fervently against the Nazis with every smuggled firearm they could find. They put up one hell of a fight. Highly recommend.
Also, there might have been a Lew Harvey Oswaldovitch among them that might have been able to decapitate the head with an old Mauser hunting rifle and scope.
Funny that you made that comment as I’m re reading “The Third Bullet” right now.
90 comments and no mention that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on April 19th, 1943. Mordecai Aielowitz, may you sit at the right hand of G_D. I am calling you out on this one Robert Farago.
Sorry I’m late with that. 8>) As Passover falls around the 19th, I always mention the uprising at my Seder.
As circumstances have it, I’m writing from Israel where the observance of the Holocaust (Yom HaShoah) is next week.
I just saw two IDF lads who not only had empty magazine wells, but also had orange empty chamber flags. How ready are they?
And I’ve learned in Israel that carrying Israeli style (empty chamber) is to be unprepared.
The Nazis didn’t just go killing Jews right away. The Holocaust was a slow creeping process of eroding Jewish rights and freedoms over an entire decade.
They started by passing anti-Jewish ordinances which slowly eroded Jewish businesses and infringed on their freedoms. Later, the Nazis herded Jews into ghettos where they could be cordoned off from the rest of the population and policed as a group. They recruited Jews within the community (Kapos) to serve as intermediaries, thus giving the Jews some illusion of self-government. At that time, nobody in the Jewish communities thought they would be massacred. They just thought that life was going to be tougher for a while, and they went with the flow.
Once those ghettos were consolidated, it was pretty easy to round up everybody inside them and ship them off to camps, not just because the Jews were mostly all co-located, but also because they were accustomed to being herded by then, and didn’t protest much when they were put on rail cars. The few ghettos that resisted, such as the Warsaw ghetto, were rounded up in due course anyway.
It’s difficult to resist this sort of creeping oppression with a spontaneous armed uprising early in the process. Your best bet is to accumulate money (or other liquid assets such as gold or diamonds) long before this sort of thing happens. Once it starts, you have to realize very early in the process that it will only get worse, not better. You can then use the money to get the hell out. Many Jews with money escaped the Holocaust by bribing their way into other countries, even though most countries did not officially accept Jewish immigration. And of course, having enough money for a ticket out helps too.
Take a look at Israel now, they are heavily armed and willing to engage. It would have at least gave them a punchers chance and that’s better than nothing.
And note that Israeli citizens are as well-armed (or better) than any other citizens in the world.
Unfortunately, that’s not true. There are still serious obstacles for non-security civilians to carry. The Swiss are probably the most highly armed population in the world, by government policy.
The Swiss are trained and every home of a trained person has a government issued weapon and ammunition as well as other associated gear. Essentially, they have what we are supposed to have… a citizen armed force, trained and ready to respond when called upon when the armed forces are otherwise engaged and the National Guard is stretched to the limit. This civilian force could be deputized and, under the direction of trained personnel, deploy to protect national resources.
The Swiss system is also used in Scandinavia.
I agree. The mentality in Israel is that only the Army and the security forces can be armed. In fact, the socialist mentality is so pervasive that the Israelis believe that only the Army and the security forces have a right to self-defense of any kind. If you are attacked, by any means, and you defend yourself, you are just a liable to be arrested as the attacker. If your attacker is a minor, he goes free, while the adult defensing himself is arrested. This is not just involving guns or weapons, but even fists. The authority of the State is absolute; the individual is irrelevant. This is the socialist mentality that has plagued the Jewish people for thousands of years. It seems that the answer to attacks and exterminations is, in their view, a higher birthrate. Although this strategy works well for rabbits, I have reservations applying it to people.
They also have a nuclear deterrent, very active special operations/intelligence branches, a battle hardened population, the backing of the USA, and a national mentality of “never again”…. pre 1948 the Haganah (sp?) may have been the insurectionist (under the British mandate), today the state of isreal represents the counter-insurectionists.
They probably couldn’t have eliminated the attempt but they could have caused significant losses on the Aryan side while minimizing the loses on the Semitic side.
this right here ^
the logistics would have been a nightmare, going house to house and as soon as the alarm was raised you would be getting pot shotted at. every door you kick in you knew you had to face someone armed who knew they were going to die anyway if you caught them?
close quarters combat is always dangerous no matter gear and training.
“…on the Aryan side”
Well, “Governor”, since you specify the “Aryan side”, keep in mind that just about EVERYTHING you benefit from in American society started with the “Aryan side” well before your great-great granddaddy was even born. You’re welcome.
Would you please elaborate?
He appears to think that northern Europeans in America somehow mitigate the Holocaust. As if the Nazis weren’t all that bad because of what their distant cousins accomplished here. His reasoning is beyond me as to how the two are in any way connected.
Are you high? This is the dumbest post on the internet.
@Gov lol I just found out what your name means . . .
It’s even better when you know about the original Le Petomane. – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_P%C3%A9tomane
It probably would have saved quite a few lives. 13 million served in the German Army in WWII. If every Jew killed in the Holocaust had killed half a soldier, then that 13 million army would have lost 3 million soldiers. Germany was using child soldiers towards the end. It would have made a massive difference even if the Jews only killed one German soldier for every ten of them, and if it saved just one life, wouldn’t it be worth it?
Considering a healthy number of those jews killed were the elderly, infirm, children, babies, women (who disproportionately dont engage in violent life and death struggles), and man-sheep who compose ~95% of any given male population that “half a german” per victim ratio is asking a lot.
I’m guessing the Roma would have probably joined that fight considering 3 million of them died in the concentration camps, along with 2 million other people. People seem to forget that 11 million died in the Holocaust not just the 6 million Jews.
Thanks, Gov, for mentioning the “other” undesirables that the Nazi machine thought needed to be “cleansed”. Almost every Jew I know only mentions the six million. While I get that Jews were the biggest group, they weren’t the only group.
Yes, we ignore 45% of the Holocaust. Practically pretend it didn’t even happen. Another similar situation is the ‘Armenian Genocide’ under the Ottoman Empire. The Turks killed about 1.5 million Armenians, ~500,000 Chaldean Christians and ~250,000 Greek Christians. It’s surprising how few people even know about the Armenian genocide, since Adolph Hitler used it as a model for the Holocaust, but almost nobody knows about the other 1/3 of the Christian genocide.
The word “genocide” originated from the extermination of Armenians by the Turks. Educated people know that, while the Turks pretend it never happened, just like the Japanese pretend that they smelled like roses in WWII. Since the Muslims don’t acknowledge the Armenian genocide, the American Progressives are happy to play along, while self-identifying as “intellectuals.”
It doesn’t matter. The argument that you shouldn’t try since it won’t work is the same as saying you have to just suck it up and die like sheep. No one has the right to say that. Succeed or not, you have the right to try to defend yourself, and, by extension, the right to own weapons to make that possible.
+1 Send as many of them through the gates of hell as you can… At the end of the “day” I know where I’m going…
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
John 15:13
Make your Lamps ready!!! God Bless…
I doubt it. But it isn’t a question of who would win. It is a question of whether it’s better to die on your feet fighting or on your knees begging for mercy.
Zapata approves. We’re all going to go at least dictate your own terms when the enemy is closing in. One of the many reasons I’m proud of my mexican heritage, we might speak Spanish but at least we don’t speak french.
“Prefiero morir de pie que vivir de rodillas.” “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”
– Emiliano Zapata
They are going to kill you anyway, so why not take a few of the scum with you?
Well yes and no. if it was just a few people with guns here and there then no. However if the entirety of Europe was more like America in terms of arms ownership and everyone in Europe kept their arms then the Nazi’s would never have been able to move as fast as they could have. I can’t say how much of an affect, but if there was enough of a critical mass of small arms then you would have noticed serious delays and even defeats earlier in WW2.
What would have prevented the holocaust would be if they all came out against communism and turned over their family members who were.
And your evidence that 6 million Jews were all communists is…? Where?
Or perhaps it would have turned into a true extermination program with no survivors. Also this doesn’t take into count that it would have given the nazis legal justification due to the people being killed being partisans who have no protections under the laws of war.
Expect it would have transferred the casualties from the camps to the streets. Possibly slowed things down a bit as more forces would’ve been needed that would have detracted from the fighting fronts for however long it took. Hitler wasn’t the sort to back off. Probably would’ve been incensed that the so-called untermensch dared to resist.
Oh no, don’t resist genocide !
They might kill you if you resist !
Wait…
Do you make a habit of putting words into people` mouths?
If Islam does not support terrorism why do they “peaceful” majority not stop them? Its because they dont want to.
Same basic idea with communism. If those groups that claim not to support it or value it really do not do so, why will they not help root out communism?
Why didn’t peaceful white Christians stop the church murderer in Charleston and others like him? Because we tacitly approve of his actions? Sure….
You sound like a Stalinist, Henry. He used to shoot people for the thought crime and shoot people that knew about the thought crime being committed and didn’t report it.
It’s not my job to root out communism cause you think it should be.
I don’t know if they could have prevented the holocaust, but I’m sure that they could have protected themselves from evil longer. That, given the law of large numbers, that additional time would have allowed many more of them to escape the country. And that, even if they went down fighting, that would at least save them from the whims of Mengele and his ilk.
Those are good enough reasons for me, personally.
Berenbaum is clearly a schmuck. He’s never heard of the Jewish resistance groups throughout Europe? Has he heard of the Bielski partisans? How about Armée Juivee? Yeah, they didn’t have tanks and other heavy armor, but they saved thousands from the gas chambers. Besides, who’s to say they couldn’t get vehicles and armor during a raid. But to categorically deny the usefulness of small arms for some form of self-defense and resistance is not only intellectually dishonest, it’s defeatist.
Better to die fighting than to die in the many horrible ways the Nazis killed so many.
It may or may not have prevented the hulacust but two it would have done three things.
1. It would have increased nazi casualtys significantly.
2. It would have forced the nazis to divert forces from the front to deal with an armed force fighting them from within and
3. It would have allowed far far more Jews to escape.
It comes back to, if the people fear the gov. Then you have tyranny if the gov. Fears the people you have liberty.
+1
Killing 6 million people fighting block by block and town by town would have wasted countless German resources in terms of munitions gasoline and food. Much more devastating than the Nazis only problem being how do I exterminate them more efficiently.
I don’t think they would have been able to completely stop it, but at least they would have died fighting instead of slaughtered.
Better to have a chance than not.
So if you’re not guaranteed a win you should just lay down and die?
Sounds about right for a petty tyrannical cuck suckling the teat of .gov.
Very likely not, but it would have imposed a cost on the Nazis, and it would have diverted resources from other fronts, possibly shortening the war.
No…doubtful they could have stopped the Nazi war machine. However it is not fair to look at this as a pound for pound comparison. The fact is that armed people (be they citizens, soldiers or partisans) did defeat the Nazis. They probably would not have prevented millions from dying, but at least they would have had a chance to defend themselves. Nevermind what resistance movements and partisans did to be a pain in the Wehrmacht and SS ass.
Great point. Many women in Russia learned their way around a mosin when push came to shove.
This is something I’ve often thought about. I first read about the Holocaust in my little Andrew Carnegie library when was about 12 years old. As anyone would be, I was deeply affected by that history. Since I was a red-neck kid, I immediately asked myself why the Jews didn’t fight back. As I read further, I understood why. Since I grew up in a household that had guns, had relatives who were hunters and war veterans, had been shooting myself for several years, it was inconceivable that a government could take away people’s guns. Inconceivable until I read that history.
“. . . But the idea that Jews with guns would have stopped the Holocaust is not in the realm of the conceivable.”
This guy completely misses the point. We’ll never know whether or not the German and European Jews could have stopped the Holocaust had they been armed but, if we look at our own revolutionary history, we can see how an armed populace can exactly preempt the kind of tyranny that leads to a Holocaust. Basically, that’s the philosophy behind the 2nd amendment. It’s designed to keep the tyrants from taking over.
So what if the Jews had been armed.organized themselves and other, and decided fight back? The German Jewish population was not without resources. A significant number of of German Jews were WWI combant veterans with considerable military experience and knew how to fight. It’s speculative history, of course, but well armed German Jews and their anti-Nazi allies might well have stopped a disaster by preventing the political changes needed to facilitate it from happening.
But, whether something like that happened or not, the real reason for the 2nd amendment and the private possession of guns is brutally simple: it gives us a fighting chance. The first thing the Nazis did was make sure the Jews didn’t have that chance. Paradoxically, that pernicious trick is still as popular among among today’s fans of authoritarian governments (are you listening American progressives and socialists?) as it ever was with the Nazis. For Jews and, one hopes the rest of us, Never Again means Never Again. Gun up.
“…had been shooting myself for several years…”
the .9mm strikes again.
LOL
Depends at what point and to what level the Jews were willing to fight back. If a majority of jews had been well armed and ready before Kristallnacht they very well could have staved off a significant portion of the violence against them. It may have made some of the bloodthirsty mobs there think twice about their actions. Long term I believe the die had already been cast, but it would have given the Jews some breathing room to GTFO of dodge while they still had time and money to do so.
It could have done something. Insurgencies don’t need full parity with the occupying force to be effective. Look at what the French and especially Russian partisans were able to accomplish with captured supplies. I believe some of the Russians were even Jewish.
I do not believe that the Jews of Europe could have prevented the Holocaust in that Nazi anti-Semitism ran so deeply in their culture that toward the end of the war trains needed to move war materiel to the fronts were instead diverted to take Jews to the death camps. However, had European Jews been armed and capable of conducting guerrilla warfare, the Germans would have had to deal with it, thus expending men and materiel away from the front lines. The ant-partisan activities were a large drain on the Wehrmacht, particularly on the Eastern Front. The suppression of armed Jews would have been such a strain on Germany’s war0making assets that it would have likely shortened the war by a considerable amount of time, thus saving the lives of the Jews who were exterminated in the closing months of the war.
With the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as an example, a small group of heavily motivated fighters held off on of the most elite units for a month. The Germans had to bring in reinforcements to finally end it. Men and women who refused to be led like sheep to the slaughter fought back.
Does Mr. Berenbaum believe it would have been more honorable to be led into a gas chamber? Were those people any less dead in the end? What if it were his family whose lives were in danger? Would his response really be, “Well hon I can’t stop them so, it sucks to be you. Catch you in the next life.” His wife ought to just go ahead and kick him in the nuts now and go find a real husband that honors their marriage and their lives.
I came to the comments to mention Warsaw, I see somebody beat me to it.
Those in the Uprising were:
1. Few,
2. Poorly armed,
3. Unskilled with firearms, and
4. Highly motivated.
When you truly decide to fight as if your life depends on it, motivation and strength of will can make up for a lot of shortcomings.
Eh the German units they held off may have had fancy uniforms but they were hardly elite. Most of their ‘battle’ experience was killing unarmed civilians.
NO…but it would have slowed it down. Look what happened when partisans killed many Nazis. Soldiers had to be diverted from their slaughter. Or when Jews rose up in the Warsaw ghetto.I am half ethnic German and realize Hitler and his henchman had lots of help from ethnic Germans scattered throughout Europa. It took America and the Commie Soviet hoards to stop Adolf(coincidentally (?)Adolphs birthday today). I doubt he’s celebrating in hell…hey I don’t get the Jewish OR black animosity toward guns either.
I get the black animosity. I don’t agree with it.
Blacks are raised to believe that Democrats are for them and Republicans are racists, and everything the Republicans do is because they are racist. There is a lot of gang violence in the inner city where a lot of blacks live. The gangs use guns and the law abiding blacks are often prevented from owning guns because of onerous laws. The media constantly portrays guns negatively. The only experience these poor inner city people have with guns is negative.
Blacks are predisposed to believe the lies. They only here the lies. That’s why efforts like Maj Toure’s Black Guns Matter are so important. http://officialblackgunsmatter.com/. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if blacks vote against gun control, gun control is over.
Hrmmm.
Stop, I’d rate the chances of that as being near 0%, but that’s what ifing a historical question as an absolute. Kind of like saying that if the Maginot Line extended to the sea the Germans wouldn’t have attacked France.
Truth be told, if a fairly modern (at least in respect to the population) state enjoys significant majority support and turns the full force of it’s abilities against you, you’re probably fucked. Germany wasn’t some shithole weak state like Syria today or Spain back in the 30’s. It had a modern and quite capable military that followed orders and was willing and able to oppress people within Germany pretty much with impunity due to the public support the policy enjoyed.
So would arms have “stopped” or prevented the Holocaust? Almost certainly not, at least not in a forceful way. What armed Jews would have done is cause a hell of a lot more German casualties which might have swung public opinion against the Nazi party and/or caused a significant disturbance within the enlisted ranks of the SS who didn’t really want to get shot kicking down doors in their own county.
Would it have changed Hitler’s calculations? Prolly not, but he’d likely have had a civil war at home to deal with before he opened up another front. That would have been hellishly costly for him.
Guns in private hands don’t act as a guarantee against tyranny or oppression, they merely provide the populace options. One of those options is to fight a rear-guard action at home that buys time for politics to change. If they don’t, over a long enough time period and against a “modern” or “strong” state the resistance will likely lose.
But hey, sometimes the best you do is take as many motherfuckers with you as you can. At least you’ll have something to be proud of in Valhalla.
Couldn’t the same argument have been made for why the colonists would never be able to fend off the greatest Empire of the 18th Century? Yet, the sun did indeed set on Britannia in 1776.
And even if the odds were insurmountable, I would much rather die trying. No Nazi deserved an easy win. Ever. If you can’t crush them, at least make it cost them.
The Battle Of King’s Mountain, 1780
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/battle-of-kings-mountain
Major Ferguson’s Tory force, made up mostly of American Loyalists from South Carolina and elsewhere, was the western wing of General Lord Cornwallis’ North Carolina invasion force. One thousand American frontiersmen under Colonel Campbell of Virginia gathered in the backcountry to resist Ferguson’s advance. Pursued by the Patriots, Ferguson positioned his Tory force in defense of a rocky, treeless ridge named King’s Mountain. The Patriots charged the hillside multiple times, demonstrating lethal marksmanship against the surrounded Loyalists.
Unwilling to surrender to a “band of banditti,” Ferguson led a suicidal charge down the mountain and was cut down in a hail of bullets. After his death, some of his men tried to surrender, but they were slaughtered in cold blood by the frontiersmen, who were bitter over British excesses in the Carolinas. The Tories suffered 157 killed, 163 wounded, and 698 captured. Colonel Campbell’s force suffered just 28 killed and 60 wounded.
The better question is if you prefer to die on your feet or on your knees. In that situation, I’d choose my feet, and if I could take one or two of the bastards with me, so much the better.
One or two!?
I’d expect loftier goals from you when it comes to killing the oppressive minions of tyrants.
The outcome to this question depends entirely on precisely when the Jews would have armed themselves en masse. The chances of them preventing or ceasing the holocaust outright diminish significantly in five year blocks from 1920-1945. That’s not to belittle the bravery of the Warsaw ghetto fighters, who knew full well reinforcements weren’t coming, but decided to die on their feet and take as many axis troops down as they could. It’s simple realism. The earlier that Jews would have started slinging lead at SA and SS men in the streets, the less likely it is that they would have been persecuted so thoroughly. I would say that the Nazi Party might not have even won the popular vote at all with armed Jews everywhere, but that might be pushing it.
I was fortunate to have heard a survivor speak to a room of just under 50 people in college. He said one of the greatest dangers to the Jewish people weren’t the SA thugs in the streets, but those Jews who doubted anything bad would happen to them, which allowed political violence to grow exponentially. “The brownshirts are just the usual bullying rabble that accompanies every hot new movement in Europe, they’ll calm down by the year’s end,” turned into “I fought at Verdun alongside Christians as a respected war hero, they won’t touch me,” which turned into “I’m sewing this star onto my coat because every good German must follow the law.”
They might have been able to kill some Nazis, but I seriously doubt they could have stopped it.
I guess this Holocaust “scholar” does not include military history in the scope of his studies. Partisan resistance bled the Nazis heavily in France,Yugoslavia and Russia. The idea that armed resistance would not have had some effect is not as preposterous as he believes.
The great scholar should also brush up on geography. And fractions. Half of Soviet Union?
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_War_II_alliances_animated_map.gif#mw-jump-to-license
“Could a well-armed Jewish population using guerrilla resistance tactics have prevented the Holocaust?”
Could several thousand well armed Jews have held off the nazis and crippled Hitler’s ambitions? Why not, after all a few hundred-thousand Finns held off the Soviet Union while being outnumbered nearly 5:1 and massively out gunned. These same soviets in turn were responsible for halting Hitler’s advance into the Eastern front.
The only question is if most of the Jews had the same resolve as those Finns.
Why is it never “Could armed Christians stopped the Holodomor” or “Could armed Russians Whites stopped the Reds”.
The question of the day should really be “Does anyone really care about the holocaust anymore besides neocons and anglo-zionists?
*facepalm*
You’ll slap yourself to death reading stony man comments.
He’s the pride of his trailer park.
Stormfront is a trailer park! Whadda’ ya’ know?
Well, let’s see…did being armed help the French Resistance?
Stopped? No. Slowed down? Sure.
Could they have stopped it? Maybe not, but they certainly would have made it costly. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asked the same question:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
Not in the realm of the conceivable? Bullshit. It’s easily conceivable.
Conceivable and likely are not synonyms. You can debate the likely effect, but the idea that civilian gun ownership could have made a big difference is obviously conceivable, because we’re talking about it right now.
I think this guy is one of those who assume that ordinary people can’t stop criminals, madmen, and despots, and that therefore no ordinary people should be allowed to try. A chance to *try* defending me and mine is all I ask. Far too many people throughout history never had that chance.
Stop, no probably not. Greatly hinder and hamper and perhaps lessen the devastation to the Jewish community? Absolutely.
Never forget that partisans (insurgents) in the Balkans held up a total of 30 Wehrmacht and SS divisions at the height of their activities.
Yes 30.
Divisions.
And that’s not a completely organized resistance. Much like today, that area is and was a mish-mash of competing and hostile politics and ethnicities. They fought each other just as much as the invading German forces and they still achieved that much nuisance.
I would say no but it would help put a dent in the Nazi army.
The Germans would have had to divert divisions away from the front to deal with the armed citizens. This would have made it easier for the Allies to make gains and likely shortened the war.
Most of the answers seem to start with an already powerful war machine.
Would the Nazi war machine have gained as much power from the start if the Jewish people had been able to put up some resistance from the very beginning?
Would the Nazi propaganda machine have been as successful in recruiting the masses if there were more fear of reprisal from the start?
I think the rise to power would have at least been slowed, the number of soldiers decreased and the entire row of dominoes weakened from start to finish.
I can only imagine that the Nazi habit of looking down on the Jewish people as “lesser” people would have been much more difficult IF they had the readily available means to fight back or end your life.
Berenbaum seems to assume infinite resources on the Nazi side. In WWII, the resources were balanced on a knife’s edge, with the slightest perturbation able to create massive dislocations. This is one of the primary considerations behind partisan resistance movements.
Yes, the Nazis could have crushed any Jewish resistance movements. Or French partisans. Or any of the many resistance movements that arose. But they ultimately couldn’t crush any of the resistance movements that did exist because it would have required a diversion of resources they couldn’t afford.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising tied up more than two German battalions for more than two weeks. Granted that tens of thousands of Jews were killed – but would likely have been exterminated anyway. A hundred movements like this could have played havoc with Nazi logistics.
The question needs to consider the lead up to the holocaust. It did not happen overnight. A bad situation kept getting worse. Armed citizens can make a difference long before the disaster is so wide spread. Even after the war started, would anyone argue that the French resistance was futile? Did it end the war by itself? No. Did it help? Yes.
Small arms might have a made a difference. SS Einsatzgruppen or Order Police units were able to murder from 1,000 to 3,000 Jewish people in a day in many small towns in Eastern Europe, often using less than 50 members equipped only with small arms. Old photographs often show the killers using the K98k bolt action carbine and no automatic weapons. A relatively small, lightly armed unit could kill all of the civilians in a small town. More armed civilians could have made such mass killings more difficult, and leveled the playing field. Small arms might have given more individuals an opportunity to resist and flee, with a greater potential for long term survival. It should be noted that Soviet ruled areas had experienced confiscation of small arms prior to the arrival of the Nazis.
Since Hitler was quite determined, more regular troops would have been deployed. As other commenters have noted, this would have diverted troops from other tasks.
I like Eulalia and Waffensammler98 the best. Oh yeah, and Berenbaum is an idiot, even though I suspect it couldn’t have been stopped in its entirety. Arms would have made a huge difference.
The Waffens…. comment reminds me of the Rawandan holocaust. The Tutsi simply couldn’t believe that such a thing was possible in a modern world. Everyone remembered the Nazis didn’t they?? Then again, we had a Dem in Whitehouse holding the moral low ground.
Having a gun is one thing. Having the balls to use it is another. The European Jews who had guns and balls had a chance to survive, and many of them did; those who had one, the other or neither did not.
Would armed Jews have stopped the slaughter? Not altogether, no. But if there had been enough of them, they would have made it far more difficult and placed a high price tag on every Jewish life.
Both of my German-Jewish great-grandfathers must have known at least basic shooting technique, as they both served in the Kaiser’s Army in WW I. One of them was able to leave Germany in the 1930s. The other was killed in the Holocaust (though he managed to get his daughter, my grandmother, out).
That said, back in those days it was not unusual for civilian populations to be detained, interned or even re-located. Jews certainly had a history of that. So at least at the start, Jews didn’t know that they were being taken to extermination camps. Almost anyone will fight to the death in the face of, well, certain death. But what if you think that you and your family are “just” being relocated to the Ukraine? Would you put your children’s’ lives at risk to make a hopeless last stand against relocation?
During the initial “resettlements,” the deported Jews may have been ignorant. But that bliss didn’t last for long. The roundups took time, and the result was obvious.
Tens of thousands had already died in the ghettos of Lodz, Warsaw etc. before anyone from those cities ever boarded a train. Over a million were shot dead by the Einsatzgruppen and dumped into ditches. This was well known at the time.
It’s not like Hitler didn’t warn them. And it’s not like genocide hadn’t happened before. Those victims who were surprised by what the Nazis were doing were deluding themselves.
I want to add two things to the pile.
1. Succeed or fail, an armed Jewish resistance could certainly have tried. And, in all deference to Yoda, trying in not nothing. Sometimes it’s everything.
2. A nations ability to wage conventional war and it’s ability to conduct COIN operations, especially within its own borders, are not the same thing.
With that said, I think an Armed Jewish insurgency could have been remarkably effective inside the German border.
The Jews probably wouldn’t have stopped it, but they’d put a big dent in the German war machine.
And the Krauts never came close to conquering half the Soviet union……more like a third….
Doubtful, but since the Germans ended up intent on destroying all of them anyway, it would be worth a shot. If nothing else it would have diverted resources away from more important fronts.
Of course one has to wonder if the Germans would have attempted to wipe out a well-armed population.
Poorly armed Polish Christians, with a late start (and first to encounter the Blitzkrieg) slowed them down a bit.
Anyone ever see “The Pianist” ?
As Hillary once said “what does it matter” if they ‘could have’.
Never Again, right? Anyone? Merkel?
A lot of the comments make me wonder when the time for resistance begins. There is active resistance and passive resistance. The time for active resistance is later than the time for passive resistance. I think gun registration is the time for passive resistance to begin. “Register your guns.” “Ok, I only have the one.” “Our records show you’ve purchased many firearms.” “Wife made me sell a gun every time I wanted a new one, so just the one.”
Too late for that in CT.
Since EVERY transfer is supposed to be registered now.
Had the Jewish people of Europe been well armed before Kristallnacht, at the least they wouldn’t have been lead like sheep to the slaughter. Had they organized a resistance, the track of the war would have been far different!
“Could a well-armed Jewish population using guerrilla resistance tactics have prevented the Holocaust?”
that is a good question.
Initially, I would say that a well-armed Jewish population would not have stopped the Holocaust.
To do that they would have had to do what the combined armies of Allies had to do.
However, their real mission would have been not to stop the holocaust directly,
but kill Hitler and the heads of the Nazi Army, Navy, and Air Force.
There were several attempts to kill Hitler.
All failed.
I don’t think all of the Jews knew what was really happening in the death camps.
By the time they did find out, it was too late.
If they all had known from the beginning, none of them would have hesitated to go on suicide missions
until Hitler was dead.
The sacrifice of a few hundred or thousand lives the sake of 5 million Jews and the early eventual outcome of the war?
I think the potential extermination of your whole race would have been motivation enough.
I wonder if they did not give a greater defense since they might have believed they were still THE chosen nation of God.
Maybe they thought God was going to fight for them.
Maybe the holocaust was the message from God that they were no longer the chosen nation of God.
I am not judging the Jews for not fighting back when they could have.
But I definitely hold great distain for Jews today who would rather disarm themselves.
If you don’t arm and prepare for the future you don’t deserve to have one.
I agree that most Jews would not imagine (would not, not could not) what was planned for them. But that is because the Jewish mentality is a mentality of unarmed sheep. Had they had a mentality of the Jews of the Massada resistance, or that of the Swiss, or that of the Americans of 50 or 100 years ago, then the outcome would have been very different. Arming sheep does not make them wolves; they have to be raised as such. Accepting personal weapons within the society is a big step in that direction.
What a silly argument to try to diminish firearms ownership and use.
The more important question for this hypothetical is: if given the choice, would you rather be armed when the Nazis invade or not?
I think most people would rather be armed, especially if they knew the consequences of being captured.
Firearms afford people the opportunity to defend themselves against immediate threats. End of story.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
–Margaret Mead
Armed Jews and political opponents before the nazis took power could have stopped them getting power in the first place…..their tactic of beating and killing political opponents without consequence silenced opposition…..it is hard to stand up to thugs when the police don’t protect you.
Also…imagine if the countries of Europe had armed populations…..like Switzerland…and every country they invaded had a country side with hundreds of thousands of armed citizens…the Germans would not have been able to control those countries..they simply would not have had the resources…….
Switzerland was not invaded..they had 435,000 armed citizens ready to fight an invasion….so the German military ignored them and went after all the other European countries……..
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
Very powerful.
Thnx for that.
This is a good question. I wish they were well armed, certainly. I definitely think it would have saved many lives, but I still believe the Nazis would have been able to kill millions of Jews – just maybe 4 or 5 million instead of 6 million. That’s obviously still a lot of lost lives, but 1 or 2 million additional survivors is also a lot more survivors thanks to being armed. I believe many of those Jewish lives would have been saved in the early stages of the holocaust, when an armed resistance may have afforded many Jews to flee at that time, while the fighters stayed behind to resist. Eventually, Germany probably would have taken to simply blowing up Jewish blocks or Jewish homes killing everyone nearby (collateral damage be damned), rather than continue to try to round them up with soldiers and get pummeled by armed resistance.
The other part of me wonders, if the soldiers knew there was a chance they would be attacked or killed trying to round up the Jews, maybe less men would have considered participating in the roundup. That aspect would also account for many of the additional Jewish survivors. Simply put, there may have been less Nazis to round up, transport, and partake in the extermination of millions of Jews, thus, more would have survived.
The Nazis – such a horrible time in history. Responsible for the extermination of at least 11 million civilians. These were the Jews, gypsies, gay people, mentally slow people, disabled folks, etc. Horrible.
I have suggested just the same on this site back about a year ago. Plenty of opinions tried to convince everyone that small arms in the hands of mostly untrained civilians would have been useless against the Wehrmacht. This is also the typical opinion of most of the Jewish community, inside and outside of Israel. This “opinion,” I believe, is fabricated in order to rationalize the Jewish aversion to guns and individual resistance (with some notable exceptions, of course). One aspect that this “opinion” ignores is that civilians with arms, and an independent mindset, would not have been trust fighting tanks – they would have been fighting the Brownshirts in the city streets, and their forces would have been equal. Moreover, the Brownshirts, being typical bullies, may very well have retreated, just as most bullies do when faced with forced. The second important distinction is that historically, an army suffers about 10% casualties in a typical heavy battle (killed and wounded). That is termed “decimation.” A higher casualty rate is rarely accepted by a force without retreat. The Jewish population, in the process of extermination, would have accepted a much higher casualty rate without retreat, as the Warsaw Ghetto battle proved, and the battles in Afghanistan, against the Russians and the Americans have proved as well. So the disparagement of forces may not have been so great as the appearance of a rifle against a tank may suggest. But, there are many entities in the world that prefer their narrative to the facts.
It probably would have been ineffective against the Wehrmacht, but that’s the wrong comparison; the questions is how they would have done against the other armed goons of the state — and that’s totally different question. The thing about goons is that when opposed, they don’t know what to do, and that element of confusion would have made it possible to hit them hard, harder, and harder still before they understood what was actually happening.
That said, I think one element of the equation is being left out: the Jews’ armed neighbors. There were Germans willing to ignore the bans on buying from Jews, so there certainly would have been Germans willing to stand by the Jews. If every Jewish family had just had one armed friend willing to stand with them, Hitler would have had to deal with ten million armed people saying “NO!” — and even poorly organized, ten million people would have been a serious boulder in the trail for Nazi plans.
The issue is one that still exists. The Nazi military was organized, they had the confidence that they were X-million strong and every one of them was undertaking this operation, so even if someone had resisted, there would be ten more soldiers along and the mission would be completed at some point, while the civilians had no certainty that anyone else was on their side, even though they could have overpowered the military by sheer numbers if they had known how badly they outnumbered the Nazis. To me, this is always a concern when we talk about the purpose of the Second Amendment, yes it’s to prevent tyranny, but if the military came to confiscate all the guns in this country and managed to search every house, would we manage to organize? Would we see the odds and would it give us the positive hope we needed to fight? It looks like we may strengthen our rights this time around so we won’t need to worry about this, but it’s a legitimate concern in any culture. Hopefully never one we would need to worry about, though.
This is why I advocate mandatory military training, and mandatory membership in an organized local militia. The National Guard shouldn’t be the only organized militia, especially when it’s at the beck and call of state governors.
The Weimar Government (pre NSDAP) had huge support from the Jewish community in Germany at the time, one need only look at the entertainment industry in Weimar Germany to see the demographics were like Hollywood. The point is Weimar Germany had gun laws in place that criminalized possession of firearms by almost anyone. Contrary to popular narrative, Hitler significantly relaxed the gun laws when he became Chancellor. He also instituted a permitting process for carry of handguns. Interestingly the ’68 US Gun Control Act, is very very similar to the wording of the law the National Socialists put in place, including the list of “prohibited persons”.
This is another half truth that folks that know better like to tell. He relaxed gun laws for folks he approved of.
Sort of like saying that cause feinstein had a permit in San Francisco everybody could get one.
The German army was NOT the all powerful force Hollywood would have us believe. Some German units were well equipped with Tiger and Panther tanks, MG34’s and 42s, and 88mm AT guns. The rest were armed with captured French rifles, Renault FT-17 WW1 tanks, and even British trucks that were salvaged at Dunkirk. Much of the German artillery was horse drawn even at the end of the war. German anti partisan units were poor troops at the bottom of the supply chain.
Could an armed Jewish resistance movement have defeated the Germans? Probably not, but I think they would have done much better than most people who are awed by King Tigers and MP-40s would assume. If the Germans pulled well equipped SS or Wehrmacht units out of the line to chase partisans, that’s one less division to fight the Russians or Western Allies and the Germans were running out of warm bodies and everything else by the winter of 44-45.
In our modern cynical world I still believe in honor and heroism. There are times when you must fight even though you know that you can’t win. Make the enemy pay for what they are doing – and die with honor. Dylan Thomas said “Do not go gentle….”
There isn’t a clear cut answer. Yes, we would like to think that Jews and Germans against the National Socialist Party could have fought for control over their country.
No one really takes into consideration the context of the question. Guns were verboten at the end of WWI as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. No one mentions the fact that Germany, just prior to WW2, had been under sanctions from the loss of WW1, only 20 years earlier. Hitler violated numerous articles of the treaty, so it’s not like what they were planning was a huge surprise. It’s just that no one wanted to fight a war, again (in the US, at least).
While the Nazi gov’t allowed guns, they only kept records of “non-desirables” (i.e., Nazi members were exempt from the paperwork), among various other laws.
I think at best, an armed German population would have sparked a civil war; I don’t know enough of German history to guess at a victor.
At worst, I believe an armed resistance would have been so troublesome and costly that Hitler would have destroyed the ghettos. There would still be concentration camps, but fewer in them, as many would have been killed before the trains. This violent genocide probably would have brought a quicker reaction by Allied forces, including bringing America into the ET sooner.
No one seems to notice the “notice” factor. A public resistance denies the plausible denial of “they’re only being relocated”. The Nazis could/would have been forced to show their hand much more publicly, blatantly, and quickly, thereby drawing more domestic and international attention. This is the overlooked argument for armed resistance; you can’t be oppressed silently or with subterfuge, people will know what is happening.
You have posed a question that only asked one part of a military equation. The quality of an opponent and is armament is one thing, but the logistic and supply problem posed by the terrain in which the campaign is to be conducted is equally important. In the case of Switzerland, the armed populace was a factor, but the mountainous terrain was a greater issue. The best minds in the Oberkommand looked into it, and Hitler was persuaded to leave the Swiss alone.
By contrast, the open plains leading into Poland were a Blitzkrieg dream, making the defeat and conquest of Poland a simple affair, especially shared by Stalin’s Russian forces to the East. Without the cover of mountains to prevent the overwhelming force of the Wehrmacht from being fully applied en masse, there would have been no chance for an armed Jewish resistance. By the time of the uprising, the Polish people had been thoroughly cowed, and in any case, they were always hostile to the Jewish residents. Sorry, the British and French were correct in their estimation of the chances of Poland’s survival in 1939, though they were hypocritical in the extreme to sign a treaty with the Poles. If you want to survive a genocidal dictator, you’d best have some physical barrier such as the English Channel or the Swiss Alps to hide behind.
Michael Berenbaum is making a BS argument. Essentially, he is saying if the Jews were some how able to rise up from the dead or escape the concentration camps, they would not have been able to beat the Nazi’s during the time the Nazi’s fields its strongest military force. Step back a few years, and it is much different. If the Jews were sufficiently armed prior to a barely known lunatic political party called the National-Socialist Party rising up in Germany, the existence of the Nazi’s would have only been some footnote in an old German history book. Seriously, the Jews were fairly successful and often wealthy before the Nazi’s came to power. The National-Socialist Party, however, was mostly a party of impoverished losers.
I think it depends when the resistance would have begun.
After being rounded up into ghettoes? Tough to say. The Germans would have used artillery or fire, but the Jews could have broken out. A rampaging horde behind enemy lines.
Before being rounded up or marked with arm bands? Possible. An armed insurgency with a rifle behind many blades of grass. The Germans would have had to tip their hand earlier.
Disarmament precedes genocide and mass murder. Really at issue is not so much could the Jews prevent, but would the Nazis dare?
I am surprised that no-one has mentioned the armed resistance of the Native Americans in the US. I have no idea of the ratio of Native fighters to US troops, and of course many Natives did go to reservations, but it took decades for the last of their resistance to be ended. This was after many had been killed generations earlier in epidemics brought on by European diseases, without any support by foreign governments, with just their own bows, arrows and rifles, and the other small arms they took from the troops or settlers that they ambushed. Had Jews (and other civilians) been armed early enough, they could have at least slowed down the Nazis, whose foot soldiers and thugs, lest we forget, had no body armor, unlike the police and military today.
No. This will actually leads to lawful extermination of (male) jews in combat-jail system and lawful transfering of all jews in concentration camps (for “more safety”).
And yes, in fact even SA actually won streetfighting war against millions of armed and usually violent communists and left-wingers during 20’s and 30’s (and yes, there was a lot of jews here).
So neither resistance can sucessfully stand against army and security forces especially when government is not limited by “rules of warfare” and willing to relocate-replace or exterminate resisting population. And this is much more true when resisting population has different ethnicity-race-religion and was part of former elite of state, cause this leads to race war and very high motivation of security forces and they willingness to commit “atrocities” (which will be not viewed by them that way) or extract information by any avaiable means.
All even partially sucessful resistance was possible was only when 1)frontline troops strained in combat (i.e. resistance in Germany is not possible before 1940) 2)size of security forces are limited by political means (like soviets in Afganistan with maximum troop level not more than 150K of people) 3) security forces not willing to large scale “vietnamization” of war (i.e. armed jewish resistance after invasion to Poland wasnt possible because poles had same reasons to hate jews as germans, so if jews was viewed not as victims with some number of communists, but as large-scale armed resistance forces of communists, easy for mr. Goebbels, it will made conscriptions of poles in Nazi army much more effective, and pleasing for nazis, so this can change history of WW2 dramatically.)
And yeah, you are forgets that a lot of armed resistance movements was very badly defeated during and after WW2. Resistance of spanish republicans was badly defeated by Franco regime in Spain. Resistance of Volga germans was defeated by population displacement by Stalin. Resistance of japanese americans was defeated by concentration camps by FDR. Resistance of crimean muslims was defeated by population displacement by Stalin. Resistance of chechens (fierce mountain fighters) was defeated by population displacement by Stalin. Resistance of greek communists for badly defeated by nationalist forces after WW2. Etc, etc…
Some notes about soviets in Afganistan. In fact only 2 soviet SF brigades at they arrival in A’stan in 1984(?) turned situation dramatically and almost drained supply of resistance. So imagine that it was not two, but six SF brigades i(soviets has enough of them) instead. Moreover, soviets had only one air-assault brigade and one airborne-division in A’stan, and was able to conduct large-scale and very effective airborne-assault operations (in scale of 101 ABN). So with with air-assault forces equal to three airborne divisions and three air-assault brigades (soviets had enough both of them too) situation for resistance will be very bad.
Moreover, lets do some interesting math. Soviets had about 150K troops in A’stan. 75% of this forces served as guard forces and only 25% as mobile forces. So if you raise this number by 3 times to 500K of troops, size of mobile forces will be raised not by 3, but by 9(!!!) times cause size of guard force was largely enough. And this is living hell for resistance, cause 385K of soldiers with 40-50K air-assault_SF component is very serious forces, especially in forestless terrain of A’stan.
All this believes of effectiveness of militias and resistance against modern army are actually wrong. Concentration camps (i.e. FEMA camps), SOCOM and air-assault forces, heavy forces, air forces and army aviation, national guard and paramilitary police forces can end any resistance very fast with very bad results for resisting population.
Well, most of the Jews in Germany and throughout Europe did not resist their incarceration and death. There are pictures of whole trains full of Jewish people guarded by two or three armed men. Apparently, the leftists in that time were even more effective than the leftist today in convincing people that armed resistance is futile. However, it occurs to me that many of their motives might be similar.
Most killers a really a bit chicken shits, that being said there is also the crazys. German army not crazy, but a guy can knock off a lot of them and that would creat a problem amongst themselves, just saying.
It is interesting speculation. Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1944 was too little too late and was crushed in a couple of weeks but they didn’t die like sheep! Suppose though that this scenario had played out at every round up!
As for the Jewish people in our government they remind me more of the Sanhedrin and Pharisees of yore,subverting their oaths of office in favor of personnel geed and or self aggrandizement! while enriching themselves from the coffer’s of the people they wish to subjugate by removal of Constitutional protections!
Since you brought up history, might as well make it accurate, since Jesus was, officially, a Pharisee rabbi.
This question assumes the narrative is 100% true, which it is not, so it’s fun to discuss “what ifs” but pointless, since the objective of destroying Germany and expanded rule by Jews was fulfilled. The numbers are wrong, the motivation is wrong and the demonizing of an entire country and it’s mostly good people is wrong. The “Jewish Question” remains. But to discuss it objectively is to cut ones own throat. That is the extent of their control and indoctrination. Regardless, we are all sinners in need of a savior. Until they admit Jesus Christ is that savior, they are lost.
It seems that you’ve missed your calling as an Obersturmführer. Maybe next time…
A ridiculous question but the Far Right forever lives in a fantasy world when it comes to armed resistance. Look at what happened when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. The partisans had plenty of weapons but were powerless to stop German atrocities against civilians. It might have taken the Germans a few hours more to annihilate the Jews but that would have been the max time it would have slowed them down.
It would be of much value to this blog if people who have no knowledge of history (or of any particular subject at hand) were to abstain from comments that add no value to the reader.
quote————————-It would be of much value to this blog if people who have no knowledge of history (or of any particular subject at hand) were to abstain from comments that add no value to the reader.—————-quote
That would certainly disqualify you from posting as you just proved you know nothing of the “War on the Eastern Front” or how useless it is to stop a well trained, well equipped army with handguns or even rifles. Ever heard of the German “pak gun”. Lets see you try and stop a crew with that gun with a handgun or rifle.
http://albumwar2.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/00448.jpg
I have though about this and concluded that the primary problem with massive Jewish resistance is that the Holocaust was inconceivable until it happened. There were three reasons for this, historically most of the medieval disabilities inflicted on European Jewish community were either in the name of economic exploitation or were in the name of claiming christian superiority. The discrimination was never on a racial basis. Secondly, given the liberalization of the last century plus and that most of them had been born or came of age during the belle époque (1871-1914) when this sort of ugly ethnonationalism was largely confined to Serbs and Russians. I had a Great-Great Uncle who believed that Asia started on the eastern border of the Dual Monarchy (Austria-Hungary).
Third, Germany was a wealthy modern sophisticated country and attempts to murder an entire religion is something the Russians or Turks would do, not Germans. It was simply not conceivable to them.
The last really good time to turn off was when the Royalists though that they could support Hitler and then turn him into their puppet. The first really good time to turn off from this path is that the Imperial Government surveyed the troops and determined that German Jews disproportionately served and those who did were disproportionately volunteers. Of which, they were disproportionately serving in direct combat roles. Unfortunately this report was not released and would have nicely pulled the rug out from under the anti-semites. This matches the stories I heard from my family growing up. One of my Grandfather’s best friends died during the war and had, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” on his grave stone.
The real problem was that not the physical side but the mental one of recognizing that their government was bent on genocide. My grandfather ran a business in Hamburg with his brother and in 1929 they concluded that the Communists would take over. The wound up the business, his brother went back to Zurich and Grandpa came to New York. He met my Grandmother there and my Father was born in 1941.
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