British intelligence recordings of conversations between captured Wehrmacht generals during World War II indicate that they were antisemites and fully aware of Nazi atrocities against the Jewish people.
In an interview with Haaretz, Avner Gershony, a doctoral student at the University of Haifa, spoke of his dissertation, which deals with the taped conversations of nine top Wehrmacht generals during the last 18 months of World War II.
The British housed 84 German generals and numerous officers at comfortable estates to encourage them to speak to each other and taped their conversations.
According to Gershony, the conversations were peppered with antisemitism such as claims that “the problem with them [Jews] is that they come in masses,” that “the Jews are the ones who pull the strings,” that “The kaiser’s mother had a bit of Jewish blood, and that contaminated our officer corps [in World War I],” and that “The Jews are good at entering every place and seizing control over everyone.”
“The war crimes were talked about, and we can glean from their conversations that they were fully aware of what was happening on the ground,” Gershony said. “They speak openly about the annihilation of Jews, about the murder of local populations in the East, about systematic killing of Russian POWs… They knew everything. Some of them were even responsible for it.”
Gershony mentions a conversation in which one general, an amateur photographer, said that when he was invited to view executions of Jews, he was told, “Listen, we usually shoot them in the morning, but if you come, we’ll do it around noon.”
Another general who oversaw the murders described how children were shot in the back of the neck.
“The more I pore over the material, I can say to you unequivocally that even though they claimed [after the war] they didn’t know anything, what these documents show is that they knew everything,” Gershony said. “Nothing escaped them.”
Gershony maintains that it would have been easier to obtain convictions against them in the Nuremberg Trials if the tapes had been available, “because in these conversations, they described war crimes that occurred in areas under their control and under their responsibility.”
After the war, “the ranking army personnel — not only the POWs — claimed that they had been in control of only a narrow strip in which the fighting had taken place, whereas what happened in the rear was under exclusive SS control,” Gershony said.
“When a general is responsible for a certain region, he… knows exactly what is going on,” Gershony continued. “That arises clearly from these conversations. The more so, because there was no rivalry between the SS and the Wehrmacht, but harmonious and fruitful cooperation.”
No remorse is expressed in the conversations, Gershony said.
“The closest thing to that is that they see the war crimes as something that are a blot on German supremacy, to the effect that: We are supposed to bring the message of civilization to the world, and this is how we behave. We will not be able to claim that we are civilized if this is what we do to people.”
Asked what his most significant insight was, Gershony responds, “That they were human monsters. Period. I have no ability to look at it through other eyes, or from the perspective of military necessity. The hatred of Jews was a searing hatred that burned in them, and that is also why the Germans went on fighting to the last minute, and with horrific cruelty… There is hardly any reference in their conversations to the loss of human life. Not only of the Jews, the Slavs and so forth, but also of the Germans, their own people, the soldiers who were under their command.”
{Matzav.com}
The evil Zionists knew about this, too, and could have helped and also could have not hurt Jews (for example, the Zionists lobbied governments against allowing Jews into their countries because they wanted the useful ones in then-Palestine). But the Zionists also didn’t care because Zionism, not Jewish lives, is the top priority in the Zionist faith.
Can you source up your claim that the Zionists lobbied governments against allowing Jews into their countries?
This is from an Amazon reader’s review of the book – Zionism During the Holocaust: The weaponisation of memory in the service of state and nation Hardcover – October 28, 2022
by Tony Greenstein (Author)
The basic indictment is that Zionism was happy to sup with the devil if it furthered the goal of a Jewish state. The two movements also shared a basic aspiration in the form of a racially pure state from which undesirable elements were to be removed – in Germany that meant the disabled, gypsies and Jews, and in Palestine the majority native Arab population. For the Zionist movement everywhere the welfare of European Jews was never a priority and efforts to let Jews flee to safety to any destination but Palestine were always opposed. The heroes in this squalid saga are individuals like Marek Edelman, a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto resistance, and Rudolph Vrba, who broke out of Auschwitz bringing first-hand information about the industrial scale of the extermination. Their hostility to Zionism meant that both men were largely written out of history. The villains are Zionist leaders like Rudolf Kasztner, Stephen Wise and David Ben-Gurion.
How did I know your source would either be a Satmar publication or a Jewish anti-Semite like Tony Greenstein. It always amazed me how the Satmar crowd fights so hard against “Zionists” who are tinokos shnisbu but have no problem partnering with OTD Jewish antisemites like Tony Greenstein (whose father was a rav) when they are looking to spread anti-Zionist propaganda.
Anyway even Greenstien does not claim that the Zionists lobbied governments against allowing Jews into their countries during the holocaust.
You are wrong anonymous on two counts.
First I am not an anti-Semite. On the contrary I have fought all my life against all forms of racism, be it Zionism or anti-Semitism. Zionism always had most in common with anti-Semitism and today the most ardent supporters of Zionism, from Evangelical Christians who dream of Armageddon to Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi who organised the Charlottesville rally (a ‘White Zionist’) are also anti-Semites. Thus it always was. Balfour, the Zionist hero, was an anti-Semite.
Secondly I do argue that the Zionists did their best to lobby governments and oppose the efforts of others to rescue Jews during the holocaust.. E.g. the Zionists opposed the Kindertransport, when the British government agreed to take in 10,000 Jewish children after Kristallnacht.
As Ben Gurion told Mapai’s central committee on 9.12.38:
‘If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel. ‘
This can be found in, amongst others, the official biography of Ben Gurion by Shabtai Teveth ‘The Burning Ground 1886-1948’.
Zionists of course accuse their opponents of ‘antisemitism’ like Anon does but that’s because they find defending Israeli apartheid difficult these days. But when Zionism first began at the end of the 19th century, most Jews saw it as a form of Jewish antisemitism. After all if someone tells me I don’t belong in Britain they must either be an anti-Semite or a Zionist or both.
Nuremberg Trials coming for the modern day monsters with modern day genocide weapons. History repeating itself. It started against the Jews and the whole world kept quiet. Now they’re feeling it on their own backs.
Very deep insight, yasher koach
I second what anonymous said, verbatim
News flash!!!
Other than John Rabe and Oskar Schindler, what other good Nazis were there?
there were corrupt nazis, a lot of them. Also those who realized that power can quickly change hands.
Would not call them good, but still.
Donald Trump.
The Zionist policy during the holocaust to Jewish refugees was laid down by Ben Gurion in a memo to the Zionist Executive on 17.12.38. It was to ensure that whenever any rescue plan was being put into operation, the Zionists would shout ‘what about Palestine’. The result was usually that the plan went no further. Ben Gurion wrote:
‘If the Jews are faced with a choice between the refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps on the one hand, and aid for the national museum in Palestine on the other, the Jewish sense of pity will prevail and our people’s entire strength will be directed at aid for the refugees in the various countries. Zionism will vanish from the agenda and indeed not only world public opinion in England and America but also from Jewish public opinion. We are risking Zionism’s very existence if we allow the refugee problem to be separated from the Palestine problem. ‘