Review of BBC documentary: Auschwitz: The Final Solution BBC

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Here is my review of the documentary Auschwitz: The Final Solution. I was hoping it would give me some facts about the holocaust but it was surprisingly sparse and didn’t even go to the full depths of the Auschwitz concentration camp, ending well before they got into the "6 million" death chamber facts.

I'll begin by saying that the voice over is done by Linda Hunt. I remember her most from the movie "If Looks Could Kill" she played an evil agent that strangled people with her whip-bracelet. Sort of a side issue but that's how I remember her.

Most of the documentary, like 99.9 percent of it, is a reenactment. While they could have used real film and photos, they instead decided to act out all the scenes. Imagine if an alternative documentary like Loose Change or Zeitgiest was 99 percent a reenactment? Would anyone believe the facts if Loose Change made a reenactment scene of Zbigniew Brzezinski talking with the taliban? They wouldn't need to, since there is actual footage of this, but if loose change was entirely a reenactment, what would the critics have to say? And yet this is a BBC "documentary" more like "mockumentary." Secondly, whenever the movie says "documents reveal,” or “documents indicate" they never show the documents. Using Loose Change as an example again, what would the critics say if whenever Loose Change mentioned a document or even a news source they didn't show the news source right there in your face? It just goes to show that there is a different standard among the "mainstream" and the alternative. Alternative or controversial documentaries have to go to the ends of the earth to make a claim, and even then it is called a "conspiracy theory" but when it comes to the holocaust you can have a fatso dress up in a SS guard outfit and that's perfectly fine so long as he spouts anti-semitic rhetoric.

Secondly, and this really surprised me, was how Hitler was barely even mentioned in the movie, and anything related to "death" or "execution" of Jews was entirely attributed to his underlings. Wasn't Hitler supposedly the absolute dictator? And yet the movie says

“Orders from atop and initiation(my emphasis added) from below set in motion a policy of destruction that would touch almost every European Nation.”

How could there be "initiation from below" if Hitler was the dictator?

The movie states that SS Officer Bischoff personally changes the number from 550 inmates in each barrack to 744. If Hitler was the dictator, this would not have been allowed except through direct orders I would think, rather than through the “initiative” of an underling.

The movie states that Karl Kaufmann dictated a letter to Hitler requesting authorization to have the Jews of Hamburg evacuated to the East Ghettos. So here again, an underling comes up with the plan to send Jews into the ghettos, not Hitler. The movie just says he was playing off of Hitler's "preferences"

SS Hans Frank was the Nazi ruler of East Poland (the documentary shows more reenactments). At the time, his words were not supposed to be made public, the documentary claims, but a copy of his speech survived the war. How, we are not told. In it he says that the Jews can not be all shot, and must be exterminated (again, why are underlings creating the plans to eliminate Jews when Hitler was the supposed dictator?)

The documentary states that the Jews were brought to Chelmno death camp and were told to undress, and then “pushed” down a corridor. Doors were then slammed behind them. They were locked into the back of a van, vans invented 2 years earlier to kill mentally handicapped individuals by trapping them in and gassing them with carbon monoxide. The documentary states that Lange and other Nazis used “their own initiatives” to adapt these killing methods to kill Jews. So again we have underlings using their own initiatives to kill Jews in what we can assume was not a direct order by Hitler. So what this documentary seems to be indicating so far is that the underlings of Hitler were the real inventors of the holocaust deaths and not even Hitler himself. They just merely played off of Hitler’s preferences. Even if true, it would contradict the notion of Hitler as an absolute dictator.

The documentary tries to clarify this by saying that an officer states (through reenactment) that the order came from Hitler and Himmler. This would seem to go against the statement of the documentary just moments prior that Officer Lange used his own initiative. And interestingly, Himmler is also mentioned as giving the order, not just Hitler. So who was really in power? Hitler or Himmler?

The documentary states that Hoess experimented with Zyklon-B on soviet prisoners (again, Hoess, an underling, not Hitler). Why is Hitler seen as the universal figurehead of evil when his underlings Himmler and Hoess seem to be even worse?

So what did the documentary say about Hitler?

The documentary states that Hitler believed in the delusion that the Jews cost Germany to lose in the first world war and there was an international conspiracy of Jews against them. And that from the moment the Nazis came to power, Hitler made sure the Jews of Germany were persecuted.

Hitler seemed to believe in an international Jewish conspiracy, yet IG Farben was financed by J.P. Morgan and the Warburgs.

www.theforbiddenknowledge.com...

And while the protocols of zion state that the conspiracy is led by "Jews" the protocols also state

“But it has paid us, though we have sacrificed many of our people (emphasis added). Each victim on our side is worth in the sight of God a thousand GOYIM.” “Protocol 2: Destructive Education” So if the “Jews” sacrificed “many of our people” (i.e. Jews), then not all Jews could be part of this international conspiracy.

So it's real simple, if Hitler believed in an international Jewish conspiracy, how many Jewish international bankers did he kill in his holocaust? Or attempt to? The answer is none, of course. I've never seen a holocaust documentary adequately address this topic. If Hitler thought the Jews controlled the world, he would have certainly heard of people like Rothschild and Rockefeller, yet, surprise surprise, he targets mostly poor Jews.

Finally, the documentary states "From the moment the Nazis came to power, Hitler made sure the Jews of Germany were persecuted. "

Then why were there Jews in the Nazi army?

www.kansaspress.ku.edu...

Finally, at the end of the documentary, after saying that Himmler found a way to exterminate thousands of Jews (Himmler, not Hitler) it wasn't enough to please his "masters" (who are the masters? Maybe Hitler was a master, but Masters plural?)

And then, the documentary ends, without even going into detail of how 6 million Jews died at Auschwitz. At most they talked about tens of thousands killed by Himmler in a "little red house"

In conclusion, I watched this documentary thinking they would give me some hard facts about the Nazi death camps and the millions killed at Auschwitz, but the documentary didn’t even go that far. The entire documentary was a reenactment or computerization, and if an alternative documentary like Loose Change did this it would be pointed out that reenactments are not trustworthy indications of a historical event. All I really learned from the documentary was that perhaps Hitler’s underlings were the real masterminds of the execution of Jews, and not Hitler. And while the documentary seems to indicate that tens of thousands of Jews were mistreated, murdered, and executed in horrifying ways, the documentary suspiciously ends well before the millions of Jews were killed. I’m not sure if there was a continuation that I missed, but for the documentary to end so prematurely was a disappointment.

Originally posted by filosophia
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Secondly, and this really surprised me, was how Hitler was barely even mentioned in the movie, and anything related to "death" or "execution" of Jews was entirely attributed to his underlings. Wasn't Hitler supposedly the absolute dictator? And yet the movie says

“Orders from atop and initiation(my emphasis added) from below set in motion a policy of destruction that would touch almost every European Nation.”

How could there be "initiation from below" if Hitler was the dictator?

One example of how the Nazi Heirarchy could be seen,from a historical perspective at least,to have had no discernible involvement in the "Jewish Question" can be seen by looking at the "Wannsee Conference"


The Wannsee Conference was held on 20 January 1942, in a villa owned by the SS-Nordhav Foundation in the attractive Berlin lakeside suburb of Wannsee. It was presided over by SS-Lieutenant General Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the Security Police and Security Service. Heydrich summoned fourteen men representing the governmental and military branches most involved in implementing the practical aspects of the Final Solution. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring had charged him with arranging all practical matters concerning the implementation of the Final Solution of the Jewish question. One of Heydrich's foremost intentions was to make sure that all these men understood perfectly what duties and responsibilities their office was expected to fulfill.

In the years leading up to World War II, the phrase "Final Solution of the Jewish Problem" had taken on a series of increasingly ominous meanings in the Nazi vocabulary. The various implications had included voluntary resettlement, confinement to ghettos in cities located along rail lines, forced removal to concentration camps, and finally, extermination. Heydrich wanted to be certain there was no confusion among the group that, now, the term referred specifically to the murder of all European Jews.

Heydrich's assistant, SS Lt-Colonel Adolf Eichmann told the court in testimony at his trial in 1961, that the meeting was relatively brief, lasting only an hour to an hour and a half, and that the atmosphere of the meeting was one of cooperation and agreement. These high-ranking members of the Nazi government met at mid-day over a buffet luncheon to discuss the annihilation of an entire people.

Those attending were:

Gauleiter Dr. Alfred Meyer and Reichamtsleiter (Chief Officer) Dr. Georg Leibrandt - Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories
State Secretary Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart - Reich Ministry of the Interior
State Secretary Dr. Erich Neumann - Office of the Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan
State Secretary Dr. Roland Freisler - Reich Justice Ministry
State Secretary Dr. Josef Bühler - Office of Governor General [Poland] representing Hans Frank
Under State Secretary Martin Luther - Foreign Office
SS Senior-Colonel Gerhard Klopfer - Party Chancellery representing Martin Bormann
Ministerial Director Friedrich Kritzinger - Reich Chancellery
SS Major-General Otto Hofmann - Race and Resettlement Main Office
SS Major-General Heinrich Müller - Reich Security Main Office
SS Lt-Colonel Adolf Eichmann - Reich Security Main Office
SS Senior-Colonel Dr. Eberhard Schöngarth - Commander of the Security Police and the SD in the General Government [Poland]
SS Major Dr. Rudolf Lange - Commander of Security Police and Security Service for General Commissariat Latvia, as Deputy of Commanding Officer of Security Police and Security Service for Reich Commissariat Ostland [Baltic States and White Russia] Security Police and Security Service.

Heydrich began the meeting by establishing the primacy of his authority. This authority transcended geographical boundaries. He briefly described the recent history of Nazi action against the Jews. The goals had been to remove Jews from different sectors of German society and then from German soil. The Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration had been established to facilitate and encourage Jewish emigration and through its offices, those who could afford it were allowed to leave the country. This process proved to be too slow and too limited in scope. At the time of this meeting, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had already stopped emigration.

The Führer had approved a new solution: the evacuation of the Jews to the East. The Protocol states, "These actions are nevertheless to be seen only as temporary relief but they are providing the practical experience that is of great significance for the coming final solution of the Jewish question."

Heydrich continues by enumerating the number of Jews in each country and observes, "Approximately eleven million Jews will be involved…" He further states , "In large, single-sex labour columns, Jews fit to work will work their way eastward constructing roads. Doubtless the large majority will be eliminated by natural causes. Any final remnant that survives will doubtless consist of the most resistant elements. They will have to be dealt with appropriately because otherwise, by natural selection, they would form the germ cell of a new Jewish revival." In other words, none would be allowed to survive.


Eichmann again during his tria tells that the first part of the meeting was more or less a monologue by Heydrich and the last part, a summary of several positions put forward by individuals at the table.

SS-Gruppenführer Hofmann was in favor of sterilization instead of "evacuation" for half Jews (Mischlinge). Heydrich replied that a decision should be made on a case-by-case basis. He also spoke of an old people's ghetto, possibly Theresienstadt, to ward off anticipated interventions over individual cases.
Stuckart of the Ministry of the Interior proposed compulsory divorce for Germans married to Jews.
Erich Neumann from the Four Year Plan organization said that Jews should not be removed from essential enterprises unless replacement labour could be provided. Heydrich agreed, pointing out that this was already the policy.
Josef Bühler from the General Gouvernment asked that the Final Solution begin in Poland, since there were no major transport or manpower problems. Bühler said the authorities from the General Government accepted Heydrich's primacy in all matters pertaining to the Jewish question and would support his work. He had only one request -- "that the Jewish question be solved as quickly as possible." A number of those gathered at the conference table had already been actively engaged in the extermination of Jews and Bolsheviks since the summer of 1941. Lange and Schöngarth commanded Einsatzgruppen activities in the Riga District and in Polish Galicia. Heydrich and Müller directed the killing operations of the Einsatzgruppen and Müller forwarded the Einsatz "Incident Reports" [Ereignismeldungen] to the Foreign Office. Eichmann routinely received "Incident Reports" from the Einsatz Units describing the daily tallies of their victims, and had himself witnessed a mass shooting near Minsk.

By the time of the Wannsee Conference, the Einsatzgruppen operating behind the army front lines, had murdered more than half a million people. Mass shootings were not suitable for European Jewry outside the war zone and were also demoralizing for the Nazi troops. This had prompted a search for a more impersonal way of killing large numbers of people. By January 1942, the death camps in Belzec and Chelmno, with their gassing facilities, were already under construction.

The Wannsee Conference was not called to decide the fate of European Jews but to clarify all points regarding their demise. In Eichmann's testimony after the war, he said that Heydrich also intended to implicate, that is, share the guilt with the ministries represented at the table. (The war in Russia had begun to turn against the Germans and for the first time, there was a question about whether or not Germany would win.)

A few days after the conference, each of the attendees received his own numbered copy of the Protocol prepared by Eichmann from shorthand notes. According to Eichmann, Heydrich proofread and polished the summary before he gave it his approval.

The interesting aspect of this conference is that nowhere are the names of Hitler,Goering or Himmler noted on the minutes of the meeting,although it is generally excepted that Hitler did indeed control all aspects of the "Jewish Question" (as attested to by Adof Eichmann during his trial by the Israelis)
To all intents and purposes,however,it could be logical to assume that the Nazi hierarchy had no involvement due to the absence of confirmation on official documents.

reply to post by nake13


Interesting, I was really surprised to pick up that information from a mainline holocaust documentary, but it appeared to me that the documentary made it seem like Hitler had less of a role in the Holocaust then previously assumed, although I do not think that was their intention.

reply to post by filosophia


I don't know what you watched, but it WAS NOT the BBC series, Auschwitz: The Final Solution.

Doesn't even sound remotely like it. No re-enactments for a start.

You have been misled. Or are misleading. Both?

My understanding is that Hitlers orders relating to Jews were verbal rather than written to give a semblance of deniability to the whole thing.

Finally, the 6 million figure was the total for all camps, not just Auschwitz.

a reply to: filosophia

I met a woman that turned 100 years old last year....

Survived the Holocaust/

My Grandfather told first hand as 101st glider infantry and pathfinder of the horrors.

Do not dismiss the facts millions were killed in genocide.

mg

a reply to: missed_gear


Call it 6 million and put that in perspective.

A staduim holds roughly 100k

60 statuims of dead folks....each had a name and loved

mg