Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Execution of Nazi Einsatzgruppe commander who organized massacre of 33,771 people at Babi Yar" video.
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It is believed that somewhere between 8 and 14 million people died in the holocaust. And while I have a great deal of respect for this channel and the research done and the quality video images... I do here disagree with one statement. And that is that most people died in gas chambers and fewer died from bullets. In reality things are the other way around (I use the book of Artur Szulc as my source here).
Most people were killed in mass shootings like that at Babij jar. And many people were also killed inside gas vans that the Einsatsgruppen brought with them to Eastern Europe. Most people died this way, but it was not an effective killing method from the nazis perspective. The men got psychological problems from seeing their victims they were killing and felt horrible about it. And driving around and kill people did cost fuel and ammunition.
So therefore was it decided that the victims would be transported by rail to top secret places where they could be killed with no eye witnesses around the place to see. And the killers did not have to see women and children in the face when they killed them. And no bullets had to be wasted, but instead could extremely cheap poison gas be used to kill people.
In 1942 did the nazi-state supported mass murder reach its peak. When the year was over had about 80% of all jews that the nazis would kill during the war died. Most of them had died in mass shootings. But many were also killed at Germany's six death camps: Sobibor, Majdanek, Treblinka, Belzec and Chelmno.
The last camp Auschwitz were still under construction so it was not used that much at this point of time.
But by 1944 it had become the largest factory of death in world history, and capable of killing more people than all the 5 other camps combined in a single day. It could kill 6000 people inside its gas chambers all at once. While the other camps could "only" kill 500.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was nazi-Germany's perfection of all the lessons learned in how to kill people. But this monster only really came to be used at a very late stage in the holocaust. And by then had most jews in Poland already been murdered so there was no need to keep all other death camps, so they were closed down while Auschwitz was large enough to replace all those other camps for the remaining goals that the nazis had, such as murdering Hungary's jewish population - which could be done in record time at Auschwitz.
So could the holocaust have been stopped?
- I don't think so. There was no allied bombers with the range to reach all nazi death camps that were located in Poland and far away from any allied airbases in England. And flying without fighter escort would have anyhow been suicidal in 1942 when the German airforce still was strong and powerful.
And finding the targets would have been difficult, and hitting the targets would have been almost impossible.
And even if say a railway track leading to a death camp would have been destroyed, it would likely have been repaired within 2 weeks. And meanwhile could the nazis just transport their victims to some other death camps or sent out an einsatzgruppen to kill off the jews that the allied bombs had saved.
Since 80% of all victims had died by the start of 1943, I don't see how much could have changed. Even if allied leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt could have been conviced that a genocide was going on and that it was super-important to stop it immidietly, I don't think they would have had the power to do so in 1942.
Especially not when the Einsatzgruppen made most of the killings.
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