Six Million a true figure?

[Owen]

I started this thread with best intentions.
Please try to keep it cool.
Can we not discuss the Holocaust calmly?

Originally Posted by Za Rodinu

Holy Sheet, Owen, none of my business but what were you doing in a place like that!?
.

was Googling around the subject and came across that photo of plaque at Auschwitz being altered.
Just thought I'd ask.
Hoped we could be reasonable about it and calm too, I was wrong.

[spidge]

Originally Posted by BulgarianSoldier

PeterG i dont know how much you know about Balkans but you surely dont know a lot.Bulgaria was cut on two halfs after the liberation of Bulgaria, the reason was simple, the great powers didn't want such a big country on the Balkans.I wasn't speaking about ww1 we lose ww1 and we have paid a lot.

I feel Dani may be referring to the Treaty of San Stefano (1878) and the subsequent Treaty of Berlin in the same year.

The major powers would not ratify the first treaty for fear of a change in the balance of power in Europe with a large Balkans state influenced by Russia. The Russians had plans for an independent and Russophile "Greater Bulgaria".

The "Great Powers" and the signatories did not just include Britain and France as may have been inferred, but also Austria-Hungary, Germany, Italy, Russia and The Ottoman Empire.

The proposed borders of the new Bulgarian state were therefore scaled back.

[BulgarianSoldier]

Originally Posted by spidge

I feel Dani may be referring to the Treaty of San Stefano (1878) and the subsequent Treaty of Berlin in the same year.

The major powers would not ratify the first treaty for fear of a change in the balance of power in Europe with a large Balkans state influenced by Russia. The Russians had plans for an independent and Russophile "Greater Bulgaria".

The "Great Powers" and the signatories did not just include Britain and France as may have been inferred, but also Austria-Hungary, Germany, Italy, Russia and The Ottoman Empire.

The proposed borders of the new Bulgarian state were therefore scaled back.

Exactly spidge i was talking about San Stefano, at ww1 we lose territorys really fair we were left with 40 000 soldiers used on the borders and like a police,we lose more of our territorys,but our bigest pain was that we lose North Dobrudja it is a region in North-east of Bulgaria,however when the germans come on the borders of bulgaria, they promise us the region and if we had refuse to become there allys they would just have to crush us.
As i say befor Bulgaria didn't fight alongside the germans we declared war on England and USA but of course we even doesn't think to attack them.
At the begining of ww2 bulgaria was more neutral then a german ally.

[sapper]

No one realises the turmoil that war can bring better than me. The old order is quickly swept away, to be replaced by some very odd alliances.
At no time did I describe Bulgarian Soldier as a Nazi.

He would have to belong to the Nazi party to be one. But the Bulgarian nation did go to war as an ally of Hitlers invading armies...Nothing can change that.... no matter what is said.

I don't know if it is generally known ? but the SS had training camps for the young men of the Nations they conquered. They put up great big posters extolling the brave and heroic SS, used as a idol for the young men to want to join.

I was wounded the second time in Holland while were were conducting operations using a Former Dutch Youth SS training camp, North of Venraij.
The camp of wooden huts was badly shelled and damaged,

Sapper

[Paul Reed]

According to the sources I can find Bulgarian troops fought alongside the Germans in anti-Partisan operations in the Balkans 1941-44, and possibly a thousand or more served as volunteers in the Waffen SS in Waffen-Grenadierregiment der SS Nr 1.

That of course does not make the whole country 'Nazi' any more than Holland (or anywhere else occupied) because they had volunteers in the Waffen SS, but it is incorrect to state Bulgaria did not fight alongside the Germans. As an occupied ally, it would have had no choice.

There was also a sizeable partisan movement in the country which fought against the Germans and the Bulgarian government/army.

[Owen]

Shall we start a new thread?
Bulgaria in WW2
This is nothing to do with my original question.
I had locked the thread but have reopened it.

[PeterG]

Originally Posted by morse1001

...This discussion has gone way off track and therefore I ask you to return to the original topic. Otherwwise the thread will be closed down.

I would suggest that that if members wish to continue in the present vein, then please use PMs.

I am new to this site and will abide by your rules, but it seems to me that this thread is no more off track than many others I have looked at. Furthermore. I have no wish to receive PMs from anyone who doubts the veracity of the Holocaust. That is not because I have a closed mind, it is because it is a hopeless task. I do not 'debate' with Holocaust deniers, Creationists, and earth Geo-Centrists. The only reason I do so publicly is to rebut spurious claims that may be read by schoolchildren, young students, or those seeking facts about the Holocaust. Owen's title Six million a true figure? was also bound to attract sceptics like bees to honey.

I answered the question raised by Owen by pointing out that the figure of 2.5 million related only to Auschwitz being just a part of the estimated 6 million Jews killed in Europe. I thought that that ended the matter, but BS (BulgarianSoldier) rejected the Auschwitz figure. I shall set out BSs objections and points, in terms, as fairly as possible as I have understood them and hopefully show why I think they are relevant to this thread:

1. It was the Russians who built crematoria at Auschwitz for propaganda reasons to discredit the Germans.
2. Bodies will not burn, as the Russians claimed, because they are composed of 60/70% water.
3. Burning 600/700 bodies a day is a myth because it would require much valuable and scarce fuel.
4. Burning a human body does not destroy bones, so where is the skeletal evidence?
5. The crematoria were brick built and therefore could not possibly withstand a temperature of 1,000° C.
6. Bodies were buried at Auschwitz but not 2.5 million, such a number of rotting bodies would have contaminated the water table.

I rebutted all these points, but there was no indications that the truth was accepted. BS simply raised further objections:

1. Auschwitz was located near a swamp and many Jews simply died from mosquito borne illnesses.
2. The so-called gas chamber was located in front of the German hospital and had no holes in the door to insert gas.

Having refuted these two points BS dropped that approach completely and went off on a different tack, the familiar tu quoque argument:

1. History is written by the winners, especially the history of WW2.
2. German soldiers behaved no differently than Allied soldiers.
3. In 1943 the Allies bombed Sofia, destroying old churches, for no strategic reason.
4. The indiscriminate carpet bombing of Germany killed thousands of innocent civilians.
5. During the colonisation period, Britain enslaved many countries and British soldiers killed more than 60 million people.
6. It was the British who built the first concentration camp, in Africa.
7. It was the British who helped the Ottomans enslave the whole of the Balkans.
8. Britain and France were instrumental in cutting Bulgaria in half.
9. Bulgaria is just one of thousands of countries who suffered because of what Britain did.

All these accusations, distorted and wrong in my view, are not off-topic. They are meant to show that compared to Britain, Germany behaved relatively well. Combine this 'appalling' record with the 'fact' that the winners write history and you are well on the road to giving credibility to the likes of David Irving.

I will not repeat my point by point rebuttal of these distorted accusations other than to say that I have yet to understand point 8, the dividing of Bulgaria by Britain and France. After WW2 Bulgaria ended up with more territory than which they had in 1939 (in 1940 Germany put pressure on Roumania and they ceded Dobrudja to Bulgaria. At the 1947 Bulgarian peace treaty, Bulgaria, now very much in the Soviet sphere, was allowed to keep it), so I assumed that BS was referring to WW1 and the Treaty of Neuilly. BS now says he was referring to the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano, which, as Spidge points out, wasn't quite like BS believes it to be. At the risk of being told I am going off thread, I would point out that that treaty made Bulgaria an autonomous state under a elected prince, and was to include most of Macedonia.

Point 6 is very relevant to the thread. The British 'concentration camps' for Boer women and children were indeed a disgrace. The phrase 'concentration camp' was however coined by two British MPs and used it in the House of Commons to attack the government, taking it from the notorious reconcentrado camps set up by the Spanish in Cuba. The British concentration camps were tented enclosures free for both journalists, politicians, and others to visit. Indeed, it was Emily Hobhouse who visited them and was appalled at the high death-rate among women due to epidemics which had broken out and rapidly spread.

The camps were not set up by the British government, they were set up in misguided good faith by Kitchner, the military commander on the spot, and it was Lloyd George and several other MPs who brought the matter to the attention of the government and demanded an immediate investigation. They were closed down in 1902 when conditions had much improved, but by then the damage internationally was done.

This is relevant to this thread because the Nazis released a powerful propaganda film, titled Ohm Kruger in 1941 about this which was widely distributed during the war. The film, presented as a true story, was a skillful mixture of fact and fiction. I saw it in Italy and it made a deep impression on me because it included a very graphic hanging of a man in the concentration camp, he shouts 'England be damned!', at which the women rise in protest, at which point they are all mown down by machine gun fire by the brutal English camp guards. The scene fades with the hanged man swinging surrounded by a heap of women and children's corpses.

Could I end by saying that I am well aware of Bulgaria's fine record in protecting its Jewish ciizens and of Bulgaria's refusal to hand over any Jews to the Germans.

[PeterG]

Originally Posted by Paul Reed

it is incorrect to state Bulgaria did not fight alongside the Germans. As an occupied ally, it would have had no choice.

There was also a sizeable partisan movement in the country which fought against the Germans and the Bulgarian government/army.

The facts seem fairly set out to me here http://members.tripod.com/~marcin_w/index-bul.html

[spidge]

Well done Peter.

I prefer to see some "off line" threads carried through to fruition and not left with freyed ends.

Rebuttal is one half of debate!

[Ron Goldstein]

Peter and I go back quite a few years, having forged a friendship on the BBC WW2 site that was later to become a ‘sealed’ archive.

Without exception, I have never found him lacking in the ability to both expose faulty or badly founded logic and defend the rights of free speech.

His case against the Holocaust deniers is no exception and I recommend it to all who would search for the truth.

As a British soldier who just happened to be Jewish I was proud to take up arms against the evil forces who threatened my country and, not un-naturally I think, bridle every time I read the utterings of those who would deny the existence or the measure of the Holocaust.

I have chosen to make but one posting to this thread, solely because I knew that Peter would demolish the case for the deniers in a much more reasoned and concise manner than I could myself and for this I earnestly thank him.