next on american history tv, a panel of holocaust scholars talk about recent scholarship trends as well as new findings. they focus on the brutality of the nazi regime and the relationship of the holocaust to world war ii. this event was part of the national world war ii museums annual conference in new orleans. the theme was the month of june, 1944. >> ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. when we go from a dark topic to

probably the darkest of all topics. but it also is led by some of the world's leading scholars, period. it is of course the holocaust. for this session we have asked dr. alexander richie who served as the convenor of our presidential counselors to lead dr. gerhardt and geoffrey p. megargee, he's been involved in our museum since his first appearance in the 2014 conference. in those five years we've kept him quite busy. many meetings, committees, and leaving a lot of our educational tours. she has a deep and personal connection to the holocaust as her father in law who i am sure she is going to explain more about was himself in auschwitz during world war ii. so to hear the latest in holocaust scholarship and look

at what was going on in june 19th, 1944, it is my pleasure to ask dr. done alexandra richie to come up. >> thank you so much. this is indeed a topic very, very close to my heart. as most of you know i live in warsaw, poland. as you just heard my father in law was in auschwitz when -- became the founding member of a organization to try and see eve jews from the get-go, aided the warsaw uprising. it was immediately put into stalinesque prison for his pains. -- was in solidarity, and the wall collapsed. but his great passion in life was talking about what had happened. not just in poland but in germany, and in central europe. to make sure that the history wasn't just remembered, but it was understood.

it was constantly scrutinized and that new research was always listened to, and scholarship was always encouraged. now holocaust research has constantly been changing since the war began with the horrors of the revelations of the camps. and that nuremburg trials revealed a great deal of the extent of the nazi crimes. the member of the american prosecution team, rafael, coined the term genocide. our initiative is to remember the creation of the warsaw ghetto memorial. the rediscovery of the legal archives, and many other things right after the war. but public interest tended to wane, and public intellectual interest as well until the trial and 1860, one and scholarly research in the holocaust has been excluded since the 19 eighties. now there are many, many new

directions, first of all examining the sheer scale and complexity of the holocaust, which i know that jeff will be talking about. jeff's work which points to the tens of thousands of camps, and killing sites in the holocaust. and there is new focus, everything from looking more at perpetrators and collaboration at the genesis of antisemitism, geography, and many other things which we will hear a bit about today from our two magnificent speakers. i am deeply honored and very pleased indeed to have been asked to introduce these two magnificent speakers. geoffrey p. megargee, senior applied research scholar in the mandel center for advanced holocaust studies in the united states holocaust memorial museum where he served since 2011 as project director and museum editor in chief of the seven volume encyclopedia of the camps and ghettos between

1933 and 1945. the first volume appeared in june 2009 and received national jewish book award and reference award amongst other distinctions. jeff received his doctorate in military history in 1988 from ohio state university. he's the recipient of the william full bright grant for research in germany, work upon which he based his work inside hitler's high command, which was also the winner of the society for military histories 2001 distinguished book award. he's also the author of war of annihilation, combat and genocide on the eastern front. i'm also deeply, deeply honored to have gerhard l. weindberg, who here at the national world war ii museum, we considered to be the dean of historians, internationally recognized authority on nazi germany and origins in courses world war ii. he's professor americas of

history at the university of north carolina chapel hill. he's the editor of so many books and articles, it's almost impossible to start to list them all. i just wanted to say that i use his work when i started out as a historian and i have well thumbed copies of most of his works on my bookshelf. just plucking one out of the blue, a world at arms, is so extraordinary and really encapsulates gerhard's work, because it's not only scholarly and discusses the war and so on, but it brings his incredible life experience. born in hamburg, working in japan after the war, and really being to understanding, learning about the entire world, and so the history world war ii is seen from a military perspective, political, social, economic, many perspectives, and he manages to weave all of these things into this extraordinary international, global perspective.

it's extremely rare. so it is with great gratitude and honor that i welcome gerhard first to the stand. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. can you hear me? that's a big help. for some time, there was a scholarly debate that attracted a good deal of attention between those who call themselves or were called intentional lists and functional lists. the former argued that the

systematic killing of jews was planned and organized from the top. the latter held that the process was one of the city radicalization, pushed forward overtime by those involved, as they engaged in ever more radical procedures, culminating at some point in systematic mass killing. the careful attention to local detail and initiatives that characterize the world of those who called and consider themselves functional assists, has certainly contri$(lc@&h greatly to our ability torí2p> follow the technical developments of mass murder. and the extent to which individual police, military and

administrative personnel could and did exercise their own judgment about the procedures to be followed. whatever the prior developments in the making of local decisions, a stated formal decision from the very top, even some of those writing about the hurricane still prefer to ignore the relevant evidence and continue to advocate something of a functional list interpretation. we know from the remaining record that was determined to be accurate by the german official who checked it at the time, that when adolf hitler met romanian dictator until next to in munich on june 12th, 1941. he asked hitler, was to be done

about the jews in the soviet territory that their armies were about to invade? an important issue for him since the area that would be seized initially was known to contain a very large number of jews. hitler told him that they were all to be killed. an instruction that the evidence indicates he had earlier or early given to him mueller. -- to himmler. we also now have a clear confirmation of the meeting before the invasion, at which a high ss official pulled the command of the group, the murder commandoes, that were to

follow the german armies into the soviet union, that a major part of their assignment was to kill all the jews. i will come back to the source for this resolution of a subject that was once quite controversial. when i get to it at another point. all of the evidence we now have leaves no doubt that the commanders of the battalions of the police, units with members more than ten times as numerous as -- were similarly instructed before the invasion of june 1941 -- hitler's own telling, the minister of war of croatia in late july 1941, that all jews

in europe work to be killed. and his telling the grin leader of jerusalem in november of 41 that all jews in the middle east and in the rest of the world were also to be killed. they are both recorded in the german document published decades ago, although these clear and explicit records are still ignored by many scholars. a trimmed in the literature that has not moved this far and widely as this speaker thinks is needed, is that of the very close interrelationship of the war as a fight between germany and those it attacked, on the one hand, and the holocaust on

the other. . it's only quite recently that those riding other than myself included any references to the holocaust at all. and similarly, those who write on the holocaust pay very much too little attention to the realities of the fighting. let me illustrate this issue with some examples. the murder commandoes in many cases killed men, not whole families, in the first weeks of the german invasion of the soviet union. this is occasionally induced as evidence for a first step that would be followed by

radicalization subsequently but is. missing here is any reference to the reality of the early fighting on the eastern front. the german assault surprised the red army that stolen had held back as he disregarded all warnings from his own intelligence service, and from the british and american governments. the german forces under the circumstances advanced very rapidly. and the german army's chief of staff was sure on july 3rd, 1941, that the campaign had succeeded, and that the rapid advance of some trumpet force had showed that a quick victory

was certain. this meant as a practical manner that a murder commander that had to follow a advancing military unit through some of the most densely to us settled part of europe at the rate of about 30 miles a day. they were simply not in a position to do anything else. the members of the unit, when the front slowed down, to kill the women and children. the unit members did with it could turn the circumstances of the moment, and they had no need either for new owners or the personal supervision of high like hinder who as we know repeatedly went to the east in the summer of 41 to watch the

progress of his new program. justice subsequently, you would visit auschwitz and the summer of 1942 to observe the killing procedure implemented there. neither hitler nor -- cared, whether the jews were killed by shooting, gas, or other means. the most critical point about the fighting, namely that the allies contained and then ended the holocaust. also rarely receives the attention that it deserves. please don't be offended if i suggest that if the germans had

one, in obtained control of the 47 of the then 48 states of the usa, but the japanese were willing for them to have, there would surely have been in any american groups, some who themselves, their parents or grand parents would have been killed because their jewish. some in this audience would have been killed. some non-jews would have been killed because of some handicap. and some would have contracted polio. and either died as a result, or have been crippled and then killed because the two doctors, whose discovery conquered that disease in the 19 fifties would both have been killed, because they happened to be jewish. on the other side of the relationship between the course

of the fighting and the holocaust, those who had written endlessly about -- and his campaigns in north africa generally ignore a critical part of his assignment. it was indeed originally sent there in april of 1941 to salvage the colony of libya -- when that colony was lost to british forces. a point that was a major worry for hitler. but why push the africa corps as it was called in to egypt in the middle east? in 1942. and do this at a time when the primary military theater for germany must eastern front,

where things had obviously not gone the way that hitler and his generals had confidently anticipated. the germans intended to have italy in the middle east for its oil, while germany would get its oil from the caucuses. in spite of these realities and plans, and in spite of the necessity for a renewed summer offensive against the soviet union, the moment in the summer of 1942, it looked as if the africa court might get cairo and beyond, a special murder command was attached to it. this wasn't done because hitler

wanted the meant to get a good tan, or hitler expected them to dismantle one of the pyramid so it could be reerect it next to the altar in berlin. the whole point was all the jews in the middle east, about 1 million at the time were to be killed before the area was turned over to italy, because hitler and handler for good reasons prior experience didn't trust the italians to do so, but it did -- to direct the murder commander to do what hitler had personally asked of jerusalem a little more than a year earlier. w,-

had been significant and positive developments in the study of the holocaust as a result of several trends. and a especially important trend has been the declassification of the important relevant records. the agreement of the british government in 1996 to the opening of their interception and the coating of the reports of the german border police has transformed our understanding of the early stages of the early holocaust in 1941. it is now clear that these

police battalions included not only about ten times as many men as the murder commandoes, over 25,001 compared to close to 3000. but also undoubtedly killed for more jews than the commando reports because of their far earlier availability for research had been essential piece of evidence and all prior studies of the subject, and remain of great importance. the recent publication by the german city, under participation in the holocaust of two police battalions from that city, both supplement what

we already knew about such units and also provides vivid details about their participation in such specific operations as the notorious september, 1941 mass murder of over 30,000 jews in the ukraine, as well as their guarding of transports from the camp in netherlands, auschwitz, beginning in the summer of 1942. perhaps other german cities will follow the example of remit and facilitate first research on, and then the publication of the activities of police battalions that originated then.

additional important information has come to light with the d classification that came out of the 1998 nazi war crimes exposure and imperial japanese act passed by the american congress. a major feature of that law was that it lifted the automatic exclusion from declassification review, and from the implementation of freedom of information requests from two categories of american records. those relating to intelligence sources and methods, and those called foreign government information. a general name utilized by u.s. government for material

provided to the united states by a foreign government, that had a security classification at the time it was given to our government. while-3! permission to declassify in the latter category, it turned out that the british were unusually

cooperative. as chair of the historical advisory panel, advising the inter agency working group that had been established to implement the new law, i was told by several of those at the working end of the declassification process that this rather dramatic raid with all of their prior experience and dealing with a british on declassification records was most likely due to the widely known personal interest a than president clinton in that general topic. if there was a holdup reported to him, he might telephone his friend. british prime minister tony blair at ten downing street. and those in the relevant

offices in and near london didn't want the telegram from downing street. the records in question where at least half a century old. a highly unusual rapidity entry to declassify was unlikely to cause any real problems for british security. a important by product of the declassification of american intelligence records was the publication of books by richard bright and others about the post war american recruitment of nazis. some with exceedingly dubious records, by american intelligence agencies. one significant product of the dot classification of foreign

government information with the consent of the british government is the collection of summaries of british interrogations of murder commando leader will indoor and the summer of 1945 before he was turned over to the americans in december of that year, which hillary role could therefore utilize for her book on the nuremburg trial of the commando leaders. it is reasonable to expect that in the coming years, other researchers will find important information in the material that the british allowed the american government to open up. obviously, the american government can ask for declassification of only those british documents of which

copies had been given two at the time. that left open the question of british records especially their intelligence services of which no copies were to be found in american archives. that process also has been moving forward slowly, but steadily in recent years. and scholars like stephen, have been making good use of these newly-open records. we can expect important publication based on these classified records in the coming years. there is also now a clearer perspective on to quite different facets of the event. a way in which some tried to profit from the murder of their former neighbors.

this illustrated quite dramatically by the 2012 book of ge and gross. golden harvest. events at the periphery of the holocaust, which offers insight into the digging up of both the dead and related materials for profit by substantial numbers. on the other side, the way a few jews try to protect themselves and their families, by eating nazis is described by peter's 1992 book, which recount the activities of the notorious jewish women who assisted the nazis in catching, choose trying to survive with false identities, or in hiding in wartime berlin.

if the descendants of the woman who betrayed choose to the nazis have problems engaging their situation with this ancestry it is worth considering those of jennifer, the woman who as a adult makes the discovery that her mother was the daughter of the murderer who is shown shooting choose as a form of entertainment in the famous movie, similar celeste. she not unreasonably the

general mental distance from it, and the war in which was a essential part on the other. another significant development in the field of holocaust studies has been its incursion with other genocide in centers, programs, and courses. this is a development that in this authors opinion shouldn't

be opposed. it's essential however that in the proçf$ere not be any gliding o9g[gm/v distinctive features of the holocaust that haven't been -- of any of the horrors we call genocide. . i'm not suggesting that the holocaust worse than any other genocides but there are significant differences between it and the other genocides the causes and programs engage. the most obvious of these features and fundamental differences i would suggest as the geographic one. all other genocides i had a specific geographic focus. those who kill others invariably did so to remove a heated population element from a specific area. the armenian genocide was a

terrible event in the ottoman empire. those who ordered, and those who perpetrated it weren't not interested in armenians who settled in the united states. latin america, or anywhere else in the ottoman empire. the -- who were busy murdering eastern orthodox christians in the state of croatia, were not killing two -- in chicago or who lived anywhere else in europe. the holocaust was a project to keep all jews on the go, regardless of location. the allies were successful in containing it. and thereby saving approximately two thirds of the intending victims. but that was certainly a disappointment to those who initiated and implemented that

particular genocide. another difference between the holocaust and other genocides is the return iced preparation of it, and it's written iced implementation by vast numbers of officials, soldiers, and others over a period of four years before they were halted. this development in holocaust studies makes even more important than the special concern of historians and other scholars. the major issue of access to records on the one hand, and that preservation of records on the other. the american records relating to the holocaust have been

systematically declassified. relevant german records in germany, and any still held indebted states, britain, and france are also, as far as we know accessible, or in the process of being open. the germans have been working hard to observe permission to microphone german records that were captured by the advancing red army, and are scattered in archives all over the russian federation in exchange for giving the russians a set of the films. the extent to which these provide additional information on the holocaust is largely unknown at this time, but suggest a production of material that could be realized

in future investigations. as i mentioned earlier, the british have been to classifying their holdings filings in world war ii and it is reasonable to expect that before too long that process will be completed. in other european countries, the process differs from state to state. a complete survey of that issue remains to be prepared, and publicized. the situation leads to consideration, the two major types of relevant records of the existence of which we know, but are not as of yet fully accessible for research. these are some of the files of the presidential archive of the soviet union.

and the world war ii intelligence files of the soviet union. both held and kept closed by the current regime, of moscow. as no one needs to be reminded, the soviet union dissolved over to decades ago. at first, there was after a very substantial opening of access to records. but over the years, there has been in the russian federation something of a reversal. ironically precisely as it is in other countries there has been a increasing willingness to open records up. certainly there has been more access both to russian scholars than those in other countries that was true in the former soviet union. but the reality remains that the access has been for some

years, and is currently behind that all major world war ii allies. i will point in the next portion of the top, the current restrictive policy is extremely liked even those who insist on walking a parts of the record from ever being able to benefit from reading at themselves. the issue of access is very closely related to the issue of preservation. in world war ii, all religions deliberately utilized paper in order to use the resources for more important things. that paper is in the process of

disintegration. and some of it is already no longer readable. this is going to be permanently inaccessible to its guardians as well as interested scholars. this is a aspect of the still closed records that has not received the attention that both in my judgment and in my experience it deserves and desperately needs. closely related to the issue of deteriorating paper, the only rarely mentioned, is the issue, and accessible electronic records. no one wants to hear this, but it happens to be a case. in a american government advisory committee and the late 90s, members were informed that

our government can no longer access very substantial portions of its own records of the vietnam war. this is certain to be a continuing problem. people refused to engage the reality of ideological change. digitization is fine as long as well involved recognize that this is a format that facilitates access from widely scattered and distant locations, but only for a short time. perhaps 15 years at the most. 15. the point that i want to stress is this issue of technological

change and deteriorating paper mean that unless records are micro filmed, and those micro films are reproduced, a great deal is simply going to disappear from access. and we need to remember that in our libraries, there are risks of bucks, manuscript questions and journals, also deteriorating overtime, and being subject to technological changes, that will affect not only obviously it and particular the subject of the holocaust, but the history of the recent past.

thank you. [applause] good afternoon everyone. thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon. we all know now how pivotal the month of june, 1944 was in the european theater. with the success of overlord and -- the ultimate fate was clear. unfortunately, the german didn't read the memo. they would fight on for a mix of ideological, fewer, and coercion. every day that the germans

fought on, millions of prisoners suffered and died and the context of camps but still functioned militarily and the germans control. for nearly 20 years, i've been the project director and general editor of the mid states holocaust memorial. the project has focused primarily on the individual camps where the prisoners -- the conditions and so on. but there is always a sense that there is something bigger at work. but the whole was more than the sum of its parts. after 20 years we are beginning to see the big picture that is what i want to discuss with you today. we all know the nazis ran camps. and we have images of them in our minds. but what do we really know about these places. we using this word camps as shorthand, i will be talking about a lot of different kinds of facilities. let's start with a basic point.

if you think of all the different camps that you know about. concentration camps, p.o.w. camps, forcibly were camps, whatever, how many do think there were? w goingbrñçó to cover about 45,000 individuals say it's. i will give you a moment to think about that. and i will tell you that pillow figure. that is less than half of what's really existed, a lot of documentation. some categories are too big for us to put into the encyclopedia. the numbers themselves are significant, but the key point of the camps is how central they worked the whole nazi program. the nazi regime head for overlapping goals. ensuring the dominance of the

so-called aryan race. creating a peoples community where folks could mineshaft which also had a racial component. conquering living space to guarantee germany's self sufficiency. and defeating chimneys enemies,. internal and external. the camps are a set of practical tools with which the nazis try to achieve those goals. this is how we can make sense of a collection of so many different kinds of camps with different kinds of prisoners under different conditions run by different agencies. really the camp for a system. not like a computer or a car, designed and produced as a unit. but as a group of organizations that acted independently to achieve related goals. so i want to examine the purposes the camps served, and talk about how they contributed to the larger nazi aims. the way we can get a sense of how the system worked.

we will start with the tension. control of prisoners space and time is the most fundamental goal for every site. but detention was never a purpose in and of itself. it makes no sense to love people up for no reason. but detention facilitated other purposes. for example, there were internment camps for foreign nationals, especially westerners, these were people who weren't on the wrong side of the border with a war broke out. they weren't being punished. they don't have to work. they weren't targeted for elimination. but there was a connection to the war effort. they were potential spies or saboteurs, and they had to be detained and observed. this is community every country that took part in the war. in other cases, other scenes became more prominent very quickly. we could talk about the

ghettos. 150 ghettos. could it initially on a ad hoc basis to detain jews but eventually they were and extermination became part of their purpose. the inmates came to work and they were denied food and medicine. by june of 1944, the ghettos were pretty much aligned. there was also true for the forced labor camps for jews of which there were 1900. these were linked with the ghettos very often. people were taken out of the ghettos and put into these camps. worked until they were too weak >> [interpreter] to work anymore. then phone back to the ghetto. prisoner of war camps. you don't want enemy soldiers wandering around the neighborhood. but labor soon became very important. the germans wanted to put these people to work. and tens of thousands of sub camps sprung up at labor sites

all over germany. some p.o.w. camps were also de facto killing sites. soviet p.o.w.'s were condemned for reasons of race and politics, they suffered eight 58% death rate. that's about 3.3 million soviet soldiers died interment captivity through, shooting, disease exposure, and work. you can compare that to a two to 3% death rate for most other p.o.w.. you can see how detention worked. you can see how the purpose is overlap as we talk about more of them. we just talked about ghettos in p.o.w. worksites, we are going to focus on it as a main purpose for the camps. frankly, it's hard to find a camp that didn't use labor. bieber fulfilled two overlapping objectives. productive and punitive.

the productive objective was making up for a labor shortage, and producing military supplies and performing other functions at minimal cost. after, all most young german men were fighting in a war, so the germans had to pull other people and to perform labor. in fact the largest category of camps were at the camps for non jews. there were more than 36,000 of these camps. how many more? we don't know. we are way to be counting them up for years to come. the prisoners who were in them or they're simply to work in every conceivable sector of the economy. agriculture, mining, retail, manufacturing, even social services. individual firms and factors have their own camps. when there was demand for a small numbers of workers and many sites, say in a small farming community, the germans

often put together community camps, where the prisoners would sleep at night, and then during the day they would go out into's and threes, and half dozens to perform work on many sites. the punitive objective was to establish punishment and control. the nature and the piece of work could be adjusted to exhaust, humiliate, oppress, and sometimes even to kill. the work itself could kill. and prisoners who became too weak to work were often murdered. this was done in concentration camps. there were 24 mean concentration camps, and about 900 sub camps at work sites. there were penal units in camps for vermont soldiers. there were justice ministry and the stuff of prisons, and many other sites that used punitive labor. this could be a tool for reform

for the very small number of prisoners whom that nazis wanted to reform and release. really, it was a matter of establishing so much harsh work for them that you broke their spirit, and they would never give you any trouble again. there were also camps called [inaudible] , these were work education camps. there were two to 35 of these. it interesting case because they show you the links between some of the types of camps. if you were a forced laborer, and you refused to work or you weren't working hard enough, or you broke some regulation, you could be sent to one of these places for up to eight weeks and it would be forced to work under very harsh circumstances. and after eight weeks if your attitude had improved you could go back to your first labor camp which seemed like a garden party in comparison. if it was judged that your attitude and not improved you

would be sent on to a concentration camp, which was going to be considerably worse. not that there was a huge gray area between productive and punitive labor. concentration camp prisoners and jewish camp laborers were supposed to be performing productive work much of the time. even when they were work to death. mr. laborers from europe who theoretically war being punished were being starved and beaten and tens of thousands of them died. this gives us our segue to punishment. this was central to many parts of the -- universe. it was 8 am to control, and it turned to people outside. the germans knew that if they misbehave that people occupied europe as well of course. if they misbehave they would end up in some place that was going to be extremely unpleasant. a punishment could take many

forms. we talked about libra already. the tension was another form of punishment, obviously. and every normal part of camp life could be adapted for punishment. the food, the housing, the clothing, at close confinement, beating, torture, and execution. much of this occurred without cause or justification. there were excesses even the brutality was supposed to be officially regulated, they were supposed to be rules for such things. but there was plenty of room for gratuitous cruelty. to the nazis, some people just deserve to be punished because of who they were, or how they behaved. these included jews, roma and cities, also of gypsies, career criminals, homosexuals, the chronically unemployed, drunks, swabs, members of certain religious acts, -- who detected from the fighting strength of the army and anyone hostile to the regime.

these people were a danger to the peoples community. their treatment could be whatever the authorities decided upon. next we're going to talk about enforcing racial policy. nazism was based on the idea that there are races. that receives compete for resources the way that animals compete in a darwinian sense. and that some races are better than others and deserve to take with a need. lesser races can be enslaved or eliminated. this ideology created real world consequences for people in the camps. those eastern forced laborers who were beaten and starved. the russian p.o.w. who died by the millions. these were among the victims whose camp experiences were harsher and even fatal because of who they were. then there were facilities who served racial goals directly. there are places that we term german -- facilities. mostly in german medical

facilities. these where places were children from russia or poland or czechoslovakia appeared to have valuable racial characteristics, lent, hair blue, i they would be put in one of those facilities, they would be evaluated, if found violent they would be given to german couples to be raced as germans. then there were the euthanasia centers. now we are very careful how we talk about this phrase. this isn't euthanasia as we debate it today. this was how the germans dealt with people in germany, children and adults, who had disabilities and congenital diseases. there were about 100, 70 and actually we suspect many more euthanasia centers. these were the first places where the germans used poison gas on human beings. and they killed up to three to thousand people in these

places. then of course, there were the extermination camps that weren't outgrowth from the euthanasia centers. we can't five of them. they were the ultimate expression of nazi racial theory and the sites that plays the nazi regime at least in my estimation most firmly apart from any other. about 2.7 million victims mostly choose died on or oncr route to these extermination camps. noww[.fsj$ju$e extermination camps had shut down, and had been eliminated by june of 44. but auschwitz was still in operation, murdering the jews of hungry. racial theory was also central to the nazi plan to reorder the map of northern europe, so as to provide germany with the resources that went with it. those resources would be useful in the short term, fighting the, war and in the long term for supporting the aryan race. and to that and, the germans

created camps for polls, to hold pulls who were being expelled from their homes and their businesses, so that ethnic germans from further east could take over. the poll longer war such harsh places that the became de facto death camps. and then finally, there is fighting a total war. i have often heard it asked, why did the germans with so much effort and resources to imprison and kill people when they had a war to fight. the short answer is this was not a waste. the camp served essential purpose as part of the war effort, labor camps, ghettos, and other sites contributed to the war effort to production. and the destruction of the jews was certainly not a distraction, not a waste, this was a war aim. this was one of the reasons why they were fighting to begin with. to read the world of the jewish

race. and a lesser sense, so were other efforts to strengthen the mine shaft, a total were required to control or elimination of everyone who we can society or threatened the nation's ability to fight. the