Effort Commenter Part Two

Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Today I will continue to address the effort post of “‘Herbert Williams.” To do so, we need to dive deeper into the claims of the Hunger Plan.

In part one, I lamented that Wikipedia made the following claim: “The premise behind the Hunger Plan was that Germany was not self-sufficient in food supplies; to sustain the war and keep up domestic morale, it needed food from conquered lands at any cost. The plan created a famine as an act of policy, killing millions of people.^[1]“ Wikipedia’s citation references about 20 pages from Adam Tooze’s book, The Wages of Destruction.

Fortunately for me, a user from the CoDoh forum, Otium, has read Tooze’s book and given a report. The following passages are some of the pages that Wikipedia referenced:

About the above passages Otium says:

“You could say that it’s harsh or cruel or whatever, but it is pure economic pragmatism, not intentional Genocide, no matter how much these historians wish that was the case. If you’re fighting a war you must ensure your people survive first and foremost. I would say that the Soviets would’ve done the same thing, but they wouldn’t have considering Stalin had no respect for any of his Russian subjects, as Tolstoy makes quite plain. These considerations on the supply of food, to me, appears rational and simply as a worst case possibility on the basis of statistics.”

After considering other sources, such as Bloodlands, by Timothy D. Snyder, Otium goes on to conclude:

“The ‘Hunger Plan’ was nothing more than the German attempt to secure the resources necessary for their own people to be comfortable, and so their soldiers could fight on. Of course, this totally precludes the idea that there was a consciously conceived plan to exterminate any ethnic groups, which of course the so-called historians try to twist into reality via the same poisonous tactics as they have the mythology of the Holocaust.”

Holocaust affirmers want you to judge the actions of the Nazis in a vacuum and not take into account it was engaged in the largest, bloodiest war in the history of humanity. Holocaust affirmers will also be the last to tell you about the Allied blockade of Germany which caused starvation for German civilians and Jews alike.

Yes, Holocaust affirmers will condemn the German army for their pragmatism as they gloss over the fact that bombing German civilians was a matter of Allied policy. And unlike with claims made about alleged German atrocities, there is supporting documental evidence that doesn’t require motivated reasoning in order to conclude they happened.

In October 1943, Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, Commander in Chief of the RAF, wrote a letter to Winston Churchill urging him to be publicly honest about the goals of the Combined Bomber Offensive, which was an Allied offensive of strategic bombing during World War II in Europe, where he said:

“…the aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive…should be unambiguously and publicly stated. That aim is the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany.

It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.”

Let’s look at another passage from Tooze’s book. Here Tooze brings up the Final Solution and Generalplan Ost and calls them two programs of mass murder. I have already written about how there are no Nazi documents defining the Final Solution as anything other that a plan for deportation. Similarly, there are no Nazi documents outlining the Generalplan Ost as a genocidal program.

Tooze goes on to say that the Hunger plan was no secret given that official instructions were issued to thousands of subordinates and that there was no effort made to hide the individual acts of brutality that the program required. What is being hidden, however, are the sources of Tooze’s assertions, as no citations are given. If there were incriminating documents that outlined how the Nazis were intentionally causing famine as a means to commit genocide, they would be plastered all over Holocaust-affirming publications and websites. But they are nowhere to be found. So why should I believe what Tooze is claiming?

The rabbit hole doesn’t end here. Continue to part three where I talk about how the illegitimate Nuremberg trials shaped the Hunger Plan narrative.