CODOH

Perspectives

98. What American term was applied to the camps in which Americans of Japanese ancestrv were interned?

The War Relocation Board was established in March 1942, and its camps were known as "relocation camps." The Germans missed an opportunity to learn a useful euphemism from the Americans in this instance. If they had made general use of a term like "Umsiedlungslager" instead of "Konzentrationslager" they would have avoided a term which had taken on a bad status even as early as the Boer War.

99. What important similarities and differences existed between the interning of Jews in Europe and the interning of Americans of Japanese ancestry?

There were a number of important parallels as well as important differences. Both groups were interned during war time as a result of a fear of acts against the war efforts of the respective powers, such as espionage, sabotage and partisan activity. Both groups suffered losses of liberty and property. In both instances at least some of the internees were guarded heavily in camps with barbed wire fences, guard towers, etc, and living conditions were difficult. However, the Germans were far slower about undertaking a massive, protracted internment of Jews. Within several months after the Japanese attack on PearlHarbor Americans of Japanese ancestry were rounded up and sent to camps far from their homes, while massive internment of Jews did not commence until well over two years after the beginning of the war. The massive internment of Hungarian Jews, in fact, did not take place until 1944, when the Red Army was pounding at the very gates of central Europe. The number of persons of Japanese ancestry who were interned amounted to only about 120,000, a far smaller number on both a relative and absolute basis. Another important difference lies in the fact that the Americans of Japanese ancestry committed no acts of espionage and sabotage, while Jews were heavily involved in partisan activity, especially behind the German lines in Russia, as we know from the boasts of the Jews themselves. Perhaps the most important difference of all lies in the fact that the Germans were up against the threat of a very brutal invasion and even genocide, the dimensions of which became especially apparent by the time of the Nemmersdorf (East Prussia) massacre in October 1944, if they had not been apparent enough even five years earlier during the massacres of Germans in the Polish Corridor. If Japanese forces had succeeded in invading the western coast of the United States, who knows what fate would have befallen persons of Japenese ancestry? After the war, Germans paid generous compensations to Jews, while compensations to Americans of Japanese ancestry for their losses are just now being suggested.

Reference: Journal of Historical Review, Vol. II, no. 1, pp45-58.

100. What was the fate of the populations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania during and after World War II?

Large-scale deportations of the populations of the Baltic states to Siberia took place during the Soviet occupation of 1940-1941, especially of the intelligentsia of these countries. A similar Soviet measure to deprive a conquered country of its leadership class is to be seen in the massacre of the captured Polish officers in 1940. Further deportations took place after the Soviet reoccupation of the Baltic states.

References: Statistical details on the deportations are given in the 1970 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica sub Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. For further background, see Donald Day, Onward Christian Soldiers , Torrance, 1982, (from a manuscript completed in 1942) and Historische Tatsachen Nr. 4, pp24 ff.

101. Why do we hear so little about the fate of these nations?

Although we are inundated on an almost daily basis with the wartime plight of the Jews of Europe, seldom is there any mention of the horrible things which happened to some of the Aryan nations of Europe. If their fates were better known through motion pictures and television serials, the suffering of the Jews would seem far less significant. For this reason the sufferings of the Aryan nations are a nearly taboo subject in these media. Who has ever seen a noble, suffering Latvian or East Prussian hero on American television?

102. What was the ethnic background of nearly all the Communist spies who stole the American secrets of atomic bomb production?

The atomic spies, two of whom were executed in 1953 for their crimes and nearly all of whom were Jewish, have no direct connection with the "Holocaust" question as such, but are mentioned here to exemplify the loyalty of many Jews to the Soviet Union before, during and after the Second World War. This circumstance was probably the chief reason for the massive interning of European Jews, which took place only some time after the beginning of hostilities between the USSR and Germany in June 1941.

103. What decision made by the Allies some 2-1/2 years before the end of the war caused the struggle to be especially bitter and destructive and created a situation which now threatens the very existence of the United States?

It is difficult to understand why Roosevelt announced the doctrine of unconditional surrender at the Casablanca Conference on 13 January 1943. It should have been obvious that such a policy would prolong the war, but the real motives for doing so are a mystery. In retrospect, this doctrine would seem to have been one of the most important diplomatic events of the war. It meant simultaneously that Germans who disliked Hitler and wanted to end his reign were put in a very weak position and that Hitler himself had no hopes in approaching the Allies for a peace settlement, as he had done a number of times previously. Were Roosevelt's pathological hatred of Germany and love of the power which war afforded him so intense that he remained blind to the results that such a policy was bound to have? Were the British convinced that such a policy, no matter what its cost, was necessary to end German commercial rivalry for once and all? Such a policy could also hardly avoid the extension of Communist influence deep into western Europe. Was Roosevelt's personality so perverse that he actually wanted this? Even if Roosevelt had little concern for the fates of hundreds of millions of Europeans and his own fighting men, it is astonishing that Henry Morgenthau and Roosevelt's other Jewish advisors advocated the policy, since it was bound to put the Jews of Europe likewise in a very difficult position in the resultant misery and chaos of the final phases of the war.

Reference: Anonymous, The Myth of the Six Million, Los Angeles, The Noontide Press, 1973 (second edition), pp38-45.

104. What was Franklin D. Roosevelt's reaction to the correct information about the Katyn massacre presented to him shortly before his death?

Roosevelt stubbornly refused to believe Soviet guilt in spite of reports available to him which demonstrated it. Furthermore, Roosevelt took active measures to suppress reports unfavorable to the USSR. George H. Earle, a former U.S. Minister to Bulgaria and Austria, saw Roosevelt personally about the matter, but Roosevelt admonished him not to publish anything detrimental. Earle was then transfered to Samoa. Although this incident is not directly related to the "Holocaust" question, it demonstrates how resolutely hostile Roosevelt was to anyone who made the suggestion that his Communist allies were anything but of a high moral order. It was on this basis that the war was conducted by the most powerful of the Allies. It also demonstrates the mood which was receptive to the wildest of atrocity stories about Germans at the end of the war.

Reference: L. FitzGibbon, Katyn, pp183-184.

105. Compare the mortality of German civilians resultant from the expulsions from Silesia, East Prussia, Bohemia, etc. and from the accompanying atrocities with the mortality of European Jews during World War II.

West German authorities have estimated that a total of 2,111,000 Germans died or were missing during the flight and expulsions from these areas. Even if we were to assume a Jewish mortality of one million, these German deaths, largely after the war, would be over twice as numerous.

References: Alfred de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam, London, 1977, pXXV. Historische Tatsache Nr. 4, where pictures of the massacre at Nemmersdorf (East Prussia) in October 1944, are given.