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... he faced the problem of controlling the Werhmarct the main German army. This army had great respect from the people and still had the most power of any entity in the country. But, they refused to accept Hitler while he had his own private army, the Brown Shirts. On the 'Night of the Long of the Long Knives' the SS, on Hitler's orders, went to the headquarters of the SA and executed the commander (General Room) and his officer hierarchy. That effectively disbanded the SA.
And, made way for the proliferation of the SS and Himmler. Himmler, with Hitler's blessing developed and forged the SS into the most powerful force in Germany. It was divided into different branches. Basically, it split into the Waffen SS and the SD.
The Waffen SS was a formidable and dreaded fighting force. The SD was a political branch and was responsible for internal control. A part of the SD was the Gestapo, which operated in Germany and other countries. But, the major part of the SD was in charge of the occupied countries. They set up the governments and ran the prison and extermination camps. It was this part of the SS that Hendrick was in charge of and ran extremely efficiently.
He was the actual architect of the Holocaust. I believe that all the extermination camps were outside of Germany proper. The big ones were Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka and Buchenwald. There other minor ones. The Germans still maintained other concentration camps in occupied countries and Germany proper. The SS organized a highly sophisticated transportation and "processing" procedure.
The most famous of the captured hierarchy was Adolf Eiechman. He was captured in Argentina by the Mossad (Israeli intelligence) and tried and executed in Israel. He was the mastermind behind the transportation and scheduling. He organized round-up of the Jews, the marshalling of transportation assets and the scheduling and timing of delivery.
It was a highly efficient system and without him and that system it would have been difficult to dispose of 6 million Jews. The Germans developed the use of "Zyclon B." That was the poisonous gas used to kill the prisoners. When the trains arrived at the camps. The people would be separated as to whether they could be useful as labor or not.
The ones that were not were led to the "showers" where they would be gassed. It would take about 15 minutes to be sure that all the occupants of the chamber were dead. A tablet of Zyclon B would be dropped into the chamber through the ceiling. Trustees (Jew that were spared so that they could work) would take the bodies out with grappling hooks and load them on to carts and deliver them to the ovens. This process went on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The camps were run by the SS SD.
The commandant and high ranking officers were usually German. The lower rank and file were made up of SS inductees from the occupied countries. The actual running of the camps was done by the inmates. Jews, that brutally carried out the commands to run the camp. The camps were so efficient that they utilized everything. Hair was used to make mattresses, jewelery, gold from tooth fillings was processed and converted for the war effort.
All clothes were used and sent the Russian front for the soldiers fighting there. It was war. Killing in war is considered by the Church to be amoral. The Jews were considered the enemy. They were used as slave labor and then disposed of. The German offical's were basically at a loss of what to do with the millions of Jews that they were rounding up and confining.
Disease was rampant and out of control. There was a real possibility of it spreading and becoming a plague and moving into the general population. The decision was made to take the most expedient way out and that was to kill and burn the population. And, to take advantage of the resources that was provided. Germany was at war for it's national survival.
It was all or nothing. The Allies had demanded "unconditional surrender." They were losing millions of soldiers on the Eastern Front and they were losing the war. For the Germans, it was the practical thing to do. The Jews were considered subversive and enemies and the Germans felt that their extermination was necessary if they (the Germans as a race) were to survive. Himmler and others knew that he and others would go down in history as monsters for the heinous acts that they had committed.
But, he also accepted that. He felt that it had to be done to win the war and rid the world of Jews. People that he considered the 'vermin of the world' and people that were responsible for the war (communists) and all other evils. The annihilation of the Jew once and for all was good for all mankind and necessary to survive. The Final Solution was part of the war and once started it had to be finished. Just like the war.
There was no surrender. It is easy for us to separate The Final Solution from the actual fighting in the war. But, at the time, it was interwoven with the war effort and once it started, it had to finished. If war CAN be considered amoral then it can be rationalized, the Holocaust can be considered amoral also.
Think of what the Germans were facing. The Jews in this country put forth a plan that was considered by President Roosevelt to be enacted after the war. It was to castrate all German males and dismantle all German industry and ship it out of the country and reduce Germany to an agrarian economy. When the German Propaganda Minister heard about it, he used it to press the people to fight even harder. It cost countless lives.
The Germans knew what they were facing if they lost. Another little known fact is that at the end of the war there was about 1 million German prisoners that were starved to death in camps. The justification was that food was needed to feed the liberated Europeans or they would starve to death. Who do you feed the soldiers of the enemy or the people who had been conquered? Who do you feed the Jewish pariah or the German soldiers fighting on the front?
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