Why was the holocaust supposed to be a secret ....

[FanOfGermanMilitaryMight]

The answer is simple. If Hitler had told the people of Germany what he was up to, the people would've thrown him out before you could count to one. But don't tell anyone that, because the official propaganda line of the west is that 99.9% of all Germans voted in a democratic referendum to murder all Jews on the planet. At least that's what the Allies say ....

[oleg]

could you be so kind and point to some "allied" source that actually says that?

[FanOfGermanMilitaryMight]

Hyperbole is exaggeration used to illustrate a point.

[Liam]

Well since considerable numbers of Germans such as SS, Police and Army personnel either took part in or observed 'actions', it wasn't exactly the world's best-kept secret, anyway. The Holocaust didn't really get into its stride until 1942 when Germany was embroiled in the small matter of a world war. Somehow, I can't imagine the citizens of a totalitarian state engaged in a life-or-death struggle with their enemies rising up and throwing their leader out 'before you could count to one' - even if they could, which they couldn't.

[oleg]

Hyperbole is exaggeration used to illustrate a point.

that was hardly an exaggeration - it was a deliberate lie and an attempt at flame. You know you would make so much better impression of yourself if you actually directed your seemingly inexhaustible energy to do research and consequent postings the proper way. -that is showing sources and such.

[FanOfGermanMilitaryMight]

Since clearly 99.9 % of the Allies are hardly going to openly state that Germans voted for the Holocaust. Especially since the holocaust was never voted on in the first place. So, if you can't interpret that sort of hyperbole as anything other than a lie, then that's your problem, not mine ....

[Reb]

Part of the reason the secret was as well kept as it was comes down to Hitlers General Order #1 - that no one should be informed of things outside their area of influence.

cheers
Reb

[greenhorn]

You could equally say that if the German population knew, would they have kicked him out? I believe there wasn't a lot of anti Kristallnacht reporting in German..... flimsy evidence, but perhaps more substantial than MM's.

[Beppo Schmidt]

Being in the middle of the war was probably utmost in their minds at the time, and besides if they did know, what exactly was there to do about it? Ask Hitler to stop?

[Enrico Cernuschi]

Hello Gentlemen,

just some points.

a) Fanof maybe sometimes a little crude but the basic is sound. The general idea induced by movies like Schindler's List or soap operas like the old Holocaust TV series of the late Seventies is that Germans begin to slaughter Jews since the beginning of the regime in 1933, which is wrong.
Anyway when someone objects on an historical basis that the most common dayly newspaper extermination versions are not accurate in some details he is shot by the sudden accuse of revisionism.
I think that this is an huge mistake as the strenous defence of the most popoular old date versions as absolute truth by some lobbies will compromise the hard (and true) facts in the long run allowing someone to believe (wrongly) that nothing really happened starting from the inconsistency of the first reports, later crystalized as untouchable versions.

b) The German public opinion had ways to act by people demonstration with good results.
Think at the protest made by the Catholic church in 1940 and 1941 in front of the "secret" euthanasia project which induced him to order, on 24 Aug. 1941, to shut down immediately the entire program (the SS did not obey in a total way but we know that anarchy was the rule in Nazi Germany) or at the not jew wife protest of Feb. 1943 in berlin which saved their men from the deportation.
If this debate will go on and will not be closed by authority it would be possible to quote more examples.

Bye EC

[Beppo Schmidt]

The general idea induced by movies like Schindler's List or soap operas like the old Holocaust TV series of the late Seventies is that Germans begin to slaughter Jews since the beginning of the regime in 1933, which is wrong.

Schindler's List starts in 1939 and it does not portray Jews being killed immediately.