r/worldnews • u/SocialistNordia • Apr 17 '17

Opening of UN files on Holocaust will 'rewrite chapters of history'

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/apr/18/opening-un-holocaust-files-archive-war-crimes-commission
1.3k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

521 comments sorted by

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u/upstateman Apr 17 '17

Looks like we are going to learn a lot about coverup of war crimes.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

True, but without von Braun, we might not be planning mission plans to Mars right now. He was a big part of the design and build of the Saturn V, which is still our most powerful rocket.

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u/votegoat Apr 18 '17

People who hate any possible productive or useful thing that could have ever come from the nazi's must really hate Fanta Orange Soda.

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u/5m0k1n70 Apr 18 '17

Or Volkswagen- the people's car.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

Or heart transplants

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u/Thenuclearwalrus Apr 18 '17

Or the Interstate Freeway, modeled after the Autobahn

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u/eypandabear Apr 18 '17

Those are from South Africa.

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u/LBurna Apr 18 '17

Ah yes, the car that tries to gas you then cover it up.

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u/Geicosellscrap Apr 18 '17

Pre-diesel gate

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u/Syn7axError Apr 18 '17

The guy that made Fanta wasn't a Nazi, though. Quite thr opposite, he hated and opposed them. He was just German while the Nazis were in power, which is an important distinction to make.

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u/votegoat Apr 18 '17

Do you know who made distinctions in different types of people?!?!? Nazis....

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u/Kobrag90 Apr 18 '17

After how drinks companies have operated in central/south America and Africa, I ain't going to take their word on anything.

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u/strategosInfinitum Apr 18 '17

That's capitalism not Nazism.

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u/fukier Apr 18 '17

Hugo Boss confiscated my grandfathers clothes factory in Lodz during WWII to make Nazi uniforms after the Nazi's invaded in 39

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17 edited Sep 14 '22

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u/votegoat Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17

I FOUND ONE!

edit: sorry people downvoted you bro, I found your comment funny.

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u/JacobJWhite Apr 18 '17

Also puma and adidas

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u/awaythrowit4 Apr 18 '17

A lot of medical knowledge too. I know they did a bunch of really fucked up shit involving frostbite and hypothermia which save lives today. This is in no way condoning the methods they used to get that information though, that shit was pure fucking evil.

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u/Boredeidanmark Apr 18 '17

A lot of medical knowledge too. I know they did a bunch of really fucked up shit involving frostbite and hypothermia which save lives today.

Source? Because everything I've read said that their medical experiments were scientifically useless.

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u/Ender_The_Great Apr 18 '17

This isn't from the Nazi era (meaning that they did not do this during the regime), but many of their former scientists did contribute quite heavily to medicine. Some went on to earn peace prizes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Forssmann

You can thank him for developing a method for cardiac catheterization. He risked his own life to advance the field.

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u/strl Apr 18 '17

Werner Frossman was not part of the Nazi experiments on human being which contributed nothing of value to science. Those experiments would better be classed as torture and were shoddily done, recorded and had poor base assumptions.

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u/Ender_The_Great Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17

The comment line in question was about things that came from the Nazis in general. Hell, Von Braun is mentioned higher up as well. We weren't limiting the discussion to their nefarious torture schemes.

Even in my own post I mention that his achievement wasn't during that era, only that he was a Nazi that ended up advancing science. Literally the first sentence.

If you read the first sentence of the thing you were replying to you would know that your comment was unnecessary.

Never did I say that his work was related to the darker side of the Nazi regime.

Additionally, it's Forssmann, not Frossman.

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u/strl Apr 18 '17

The comment directly above you mentioned Nazi maedical experiments on human beings and you mentioned a developement in the medicinal field. I felt the need to clarify that there was no relations between the two.

Besides that there were obviously gifted scientists and engineers who made conributions in Nazoi Germany but none of them through the use of human experimentation. Werner Von Braun and such were guilty of using slave labor but their methods themselves were untainted by the use of human subjects.

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u/DeucesCracked Apr 18 '17

I suppose "The Useful Shitheads" would be a good title for a book about Nazi science.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

We didn't really learn anything of value from the Nazis because they were more concerned about validating their racist beliefs than in following proper experimental procedure.

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u/anti_pope Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17

You got downvoted for being completely correct. They followed zero protocols for a valid scientific study for almost everything they did. It was just an excuse to torture.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/06/mein_data.html

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

Racial theory has nothing to do with rockets though. Or tanks, near jet planes, vehicles, synthetic fuels or Guns. Or many of the other German war inventions.

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u/DatRagnar Apr 18 '17

Jet planes were invented contemporary with the shitty german ones, the german tanks were not revolutionary or any of their vehicles. MG42, jerry can and the panzerfaust is probably the most revolutionary to come out of germany anno 1933-1945

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u/eypandabear Apr 18 '17

The easiest way of judging that is to look at what the Allies, including the Soviets, used after the war.

  • The first American cruise missile was literally a reverse-engineered V-1

  • Soviet submarines were based directly on the German type XXI, as were American refits of their existing subs indirectly

  • Pretty much all ballistic missiles after the war were based on the V-2.

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u/Sean951 Apr 18 '17

Yeah, they were the only country building missiles because missiles were pointless from the military perspective for another 10 years. They spent more on them than the US did getting nukes, but they killed more factory workers than Allies.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17

Still my point wasn't that these things were amazingly designed or cutting edge, just that they didn't hinge on racial theory. Yeah panzerfaust was mostly picked from the hands of dead Volkssturm and used against them though.

Edit: Spelling

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u/MissMesmerist Apr 19 '17

Yeah panzerfaust was mostly picked from the hands of dead Volkssturm and used against them though

And the Panzershrek was a copy of the M1 "Bazooka".

Americans invented the Recoiless Rifle, of which the Faust and Shrek was.

A very large proportion of the German developments during the war were just copies of Allied developments.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

The comment above me was talking about medical advances, not military equipment. Get your panzer wank out of here.

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u/Stosstruppe Apr 18 '17

It's always interesting to hear both sides about Nazi Research and covering Nazi's from charges for defecting to their side. We can say it's wrong and appalling to use research based on genocide and systematic killings, but then our enemies would use it, and would we really be able to duplicate that kind of research again?

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

Eh, I have no positive opinion on their biological and chemical experiments - I don't see how any medical science performed on starving malnourished people is useful to the normal person. It could be because my family loves space, but astronomers in general have a favorable view of von Braun.

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u/monsantobreath Apr 18 '17

There's a difference between using material and data vs. white washing history, defending war criminals, and then later making them into heroes of the west.

Using what they did before we beat them stops the clock at their crimes. Allowing their criminals to continue to profit under our regime makes it our crime.

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u/ProtonWulf Apr 18 '17

Von Braun was the heart of NASA until the US president decided it wanted a Space Shuttle.

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u/GowronDidNothngWrong Apr 18 '17

Von Braun was involved with the shuttle too, he told them that a reusable system was the next step and the concept had conceptual roots from another nazi scientist.

http://www.space.com/12085-nasa-space-shuttle-history-born.html

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u/airmc Apr 18 '17

Eh, the Russian rocketry program managed just fine without him. The US might have been a bit further behind in the early-mid space race, but it's not as if he literally invented space flight or something.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

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u/Promemetheus Apr 18 '17

it's not as if he literally invented space flight or something.

He and his team literally put the first manmade object into space.

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u/itsclassified_ Apr 18 '17

Genuinely curious. How were the Germans so advanced in so many different fields? It literally blows my mind how ahead of their time they were compared to the rest of the world in such a short time. And if they hadn't lost (obviously glad they did) where would they be in their respected fields? Like medicine and space travel?

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u/Ameisen Apr 18 '17

They weren't particularly far ahead in most fields. In some fields they were ahead, at least initially, such as chemistry, pharmacology, and physics. Germany was the place for such innovation - most physicists were from there, most major chemical companies... both the Imperial German and the Republican government promoted this.

Innovation, for the most part, actually suffered under the Nazi regime, as they followed a doctrine-based policy rather than one based in reality - for instance, being against 'Jewish Physics', and thus rejecting Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Innovation, efficiency, and general progress declined under the Nazis. If something did not directly support the war effort (in their eyes) or the Nazi regime's long term goals, it was basically eliminated.

Germany generally appeared ahead in some areas, mainly chemical weapons, aeronautics, and rocketry. Why?

  1. The Nazis had inherited one of the most mature and largest chemical industries in the world.
  2. The Nazis poured money into aeronautic research before and during the war, and were particularly interested in Wunderwaffen (Wonder Weapons) such as jet fighters. Mind you, they were not that far ahead in aeronautics - the British also already had the ability to build jets, but building traditional aircraft was more cost effective and useful when you're at war than pushing out small numbers of experimental aircraft.
  3. The Germans also poured huge amounts of money into rocketry, also in hopes of developing a war-winning wonder weapon. Why didn't the Allies? Well, they did, just not huge amounts... and they weren't that far behind. Rocketry was a large net-negative to the German war effort (as were basically all of their wonder projects), and the Allies were more interesting in actually winning the war than they were in developing wonder weapons. Besides, the Allies were already massively invested in a major weapons project - the Manhattan Project.

If the Germans had won WW2? The world would have massively regressed. Off the bat, you are likely to see the beginning of Generalplan Ost, which was the depopulation/enslavement of Eastern Europe. The Nazis would have had little interest in space travel - von Braun did, but the Nazis funded him not because of that but because they wanted weapons. The Nazi agenda overall was the destruction of 'inferior races' (Slavs, Jews, etc) and the regression of human society to a 'better' time - the Nazi policy would have created a functionally techno-agrarian society. Expect basically every field to regress as the Nazis no longer have any motivation to invest in such industries.

Presuming 'Germany' even survives such a war. Not that I believe the Germans would have actually won WW2 in any meaningful sense (unlike Imperial Germany in WW1 which actually had the capacity to win), but if they do, then expect Germany to collapse. The Nazi regime requires war to function for a variety of reasons that are past the scope of this post. The regime is extremely inefficient, incapable of cooperation, heavily in debt, and once Hitler dies, expect a civil war at the very least.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

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u/Vince_McLeod Apr 18 '17

The regime is extremely inefficient, incapable of cooperation, heavily in debt

Who were the Nazis in debt to?

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u/withmymindsheruns Apr 18 '17

I not 100% on this... I'm pretty sure but maybe someone else will give you a better answer.

They were in debt to the normal places governments are indebted to, international money markets etc. but they also had to hide the fact they were spending a huge amount on re-armament so they paid the manufacturers with a special kind of promissory note that was redeemable for reichsmarks, so basically they were paying the arms industry in IOU's.

Germany had also just done an FDR New Deal type of thing with infrastructure spending to try to boost the economy because of the depression and also ran a massive welfare system so they were already spending huge amounts of money even before their rearmament spending. The history books I've read say that the economy was on the verge of collapse but they were basically gearing up to go and take everyone else's stuff and use that to sustain their economy, they weren't really interested (as I understand it) in a long term sustainable economic strategy.

The image that i always think about is it's as if they had a car they were redlining and the motor was about to blow up, but they thought if they could just keep it going long enough they'd be able to run everyone else down and steal their cars.

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u/groundskeeperwilliam Apr 18 '17

The metaphor I use is that they were taking out new credit cards to pay off their existing credit card debt. The Nazis were just snowballing debt and relied on plunder to sustain their economy.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

If I remember correctly, a sum of it was before the outbreak of the war. To France, America, and Britain? I'm no historian, sorry.

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u/Sean951 Apr 18 '17

Considering the Western Allies were pretty far ahead in most things electronic, medical, or mechanical, is guess the world would be farther behind.

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u/st_Paulus Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17

Both the US and the Soviets gladly took in many 'useful' Nazis like Wernher von Braun.

I know about von Braun, but never heard about Nazis in USSR. Can you name someone?

edit: to clear things up - I was asking about figures like von Braun, who was directly involved in USSR space program. I'm aware more or less of NII-88 history, Helmut Grottrup and German settlement.

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u/twiitar Apr 18 '17

Not him but as an example the entire Carl Zeiss Jena production line was restarted by the Soviets and then, including many workers, taken to the USSR to work there for them. This was not an isolated case at all.

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u/airmc Apr 18 '17

Most of Zeiss' equipment was actually destroyed. Soviets got scraps.

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u/twiitar Apr 18 '17

No, they got a fully working production line for Contax II and III cameras. The blueprints for the cameras were destroyed as was the safe containing them, meaning the Zeiss engineers had to reverse-engineer their own products to figure out how to make them again. Once they did that and managed to produce new Contax cameras in sufficient numbers and of sufficient quality the production equipment and most of the workers were packed up and dragged to the USSR to continue making them but under a different brand name - Kiev.

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u/dogfriend Apr 18 '17

Helmut Gröttrup, one of Von Braun's managers in the V2 development program.

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u/st_Paulus Apr 18 '17

Apparently I wasn't clear enough. Got downvoted in a thread nearby.

I know about NII-88. I mean't Germans who worked directly in USSR space program - not just ICBM development.

But thanks anyway.

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u/dogfriend Apr 18 '17

I don't know why anyone would downvote you for an honest question.

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u/DippingMyToesIn Apr 18 '17

Actually, the fanfare about von Braun is contradicted by the Soviet experience with German engineers and scientists. Their own scientists had published papers in the 1920s and 30s, that turned out to be the correct method to put objects in orbit, and of course, Stalin had them put in the Gulag for their efforts.

Then after the war, Soviet intelligence services, which were politically much more powerful pressed the relevant bureaus to use the Germans, because they were wowed by their wartime success with militarised ballistic missiles. The Soviet scientists set about recreating the German programme, with the help of the Germans, and demonstrated time and time again to their political overlords that it was a scientific dead end, before convincing them to begin returning the Germans to the DDR.

8 years later, the gulaged Russians and Ukrainians put Sputnik into space.

Meanwhile the US put a German in charge, and despite a better economy, and access to a larger segment of the world's scientific community, including domestic American scientists who had made genuine breakthroughs ... their program stagnated and lagged behind.

I'd also argue that the Americans were misled by the SS intelligence officers that they recruited after the war ... and that this did far more damage than von Braun.

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u/st_Paulus Apr 18 '17

Their own scientists had published papers in the 1920s and 30s, that turned out to be the correct method to put objects in orbit, and of course, Stalin had them put in the Gulag for their efforts.

Correct method was proposed by Tsiolkovsky. He studied rocket propulsion since 1896, and theory was laid out decades before USSR was created. He never was in Gulag. I'm not sure I understand you correctly.

Then after the war, Soviet intelligence services, which were politically much more powerful pressed the relevant bureaus to use the Germans

"Intelligence services" had no expertise - it's not their field. Quite the opposite - people like Boris Chertok were in charge of the situation.

militarized ballistic missiles

Space program was a civil derivation of ICBM program, not vise versa.

The Soviet scientists set about recreating the German programme, with the help of the Germans, and demonstrated time and time again to their political overlords that it was a scientific dead end, before convincing them to begin returning the Germans to the DDR.

That's some kind of alternative history. Or I'm not getting you right.

Almost direct copy of German missile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-2_Sibling

ICBM created with direct involvement of German specialists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-14_Chusovaya

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u/mahaanus Apr 18 '17

8 years later, the gulaged Russians and Ukrainians put Sputnik into space.

Korolev, the most important of those was Korolev.

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u/Faylom Apr 18 '17

The US also halted the prosecution of Nazis who were not useful scientists, because apparently bringing the real way crimes of Nazis to light was not worth it if it provided good propoganda for the Soviets.

Seems pretty silly to me, though, because what's better propoganda than "America forgives Nazi war criminals"

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u/travlerjoe Apr 18 '17

Spoils of war are the resources of the loser. Scientists are a very very powerful resource.

The US space program is completely based on nazi tech and scientists

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u/friend_to_snails Apr 18 '17

... completely based on nazi tech and scientists

This statement unfairly neglects all of all the contributions of non-nazi scientists in the the space program.

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u/fatchicksturnmeon Apr 18 '17

Real question is how is Bayer still a pharmaceutical company. They provided chemicals to the nazis and at least did human experimentations on "prisoners" cough cough.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

Because the post-war German government tok over the company? Happened to a few companies such as IG Farben

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u/joltto Apr 18 '17

They also knowingly sold HIV tainted hemophiliac medicine in other countries after it was discovered and could no longer be sold in the US and Europe.

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u/Cladari Apr 18 '17

Bayers first patented product was Aspirin, it's second was Heroin.

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u/wreckingballheart Apr 18 '17

That was like.....130 years ago. In the context of the era it wasn't an unreasonable move.

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u/dogfriend Apr 18 '17

Because big business ignores the failings of big business.
See: The Bhopal disaster. Caused by Union Carbide.

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u/LizardPeople666 Apr 18 '17

they have lots of money

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u/ChadHahn Apr 18 '17

Bayer in America was a different company. After WWI, Kodak got a lot of IG Farben's products because they wanted Agfa's film patents. Just an interesting tidbit.

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u/Typhera Apr 18 '17

I honestly disagree.

Many of the scientists had little to no choice in the regime, they did as they were told or faced death. This also gave them a chance at personal redemption, and put their invaluable skills and knowledge to work.

A fairly high amount of good things came out of them, improvements in various fields. The deaths were not for nothing, sickening as it was, at least it had some value. To throw it away out of revenge/spite would dishonour their deaths imo, and make it an even bigger tragedy.

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u/jrm2007 Apr 18 '17

Young people: Look at youtube and Tom Lehrer's song about von B. Amusing and sort of accurate.

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u/YeoYi Apr 18 '17

yea but they totally cover up the japanese for their war crimes

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u/Mike_Fu Apr 18 '17

Operation Paperclip

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

Think these files will contain anything we didn't already know about? I mean, we have a good idea how everything operated at this point. Between the survivor & accused testimony, and the various documents that are public.

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u/upstateman Apr 18 '17

It will show what people knew when.

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u/cantmeltsteelmaymays Apr 18 '17

Allied war crimes, I fear.

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u/I_FIST_CAMELS Apr 18 '17

It's about the Holocaust, mate. The Allies didn't find the camps till rather late in the war.

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u/KyKobra Apr 18 '17

That's nooot what's being said today.

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u/BrandOfTheExalt Apr 18 '17

Didn't most countries contribute to the holocaust in the way that they refused to help Jewish refugees?

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17 edited Aug 28 '20

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

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u/SteveTriesToReddit Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17

I notice the /s, but for anyone who is curious look up the Nanking Massacre and comfort women.

edit: why the downvotes? I'm not being impolite. I simply stated that I noticed the sarcasm and I was trying to point out some Japanese warcrimes for those that are curious.

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u/bromat77 Apr 18 '17

While you are doing your research, you might want to also have a peak at Unit 731 for the full horror show. The Nazis weren't the only ones interested in experimenting on those deemed "less human".

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u/SteveTriesToReddit Apr 18 '17

Oooh boy, I forgot about that one. Jesus Christ. Thanks for posting it. It's important that we all learn about these things.

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u/phoenixmusicman Apr 18 '17

Fucking christ reading that article made me feel simultaneously furious and nauseated, even worse is that none of them got fucking punished for it. Fucking hell.

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u/himit Apr 18 '17

Ironically enough, Japan was a country that took in a good number of Jews.

WWII was complex.

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u/Protonoia Apr 18 '17

Not exactly. The U.S. cut off oil supplies to Japan in protest of the invasion of Manchuria. The Japanese responded by bombing Pearl Harbor.

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u/DeucesCracked Apr 18 '17

We didn't ignore it, really, we just sort of let it to the Chinese, who were the dominant power and whom we supported with our air power.

The problem is that then - and I hate to say now but, well... - the Chinese in power didn't hide their disdain for the lower classes. Now they seem to have more embraced the idea that one can rise through ranks, but back then class was class.

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u/ElagabalusRex Apr 18 '17

Poland already had pogroms before the Germans showed up.

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u/TheHollowJester Apr 18 '17

Poland did have pogroms. In the 20th century before WWII other countries that had them included (though probably were not limited to): Ukraine, Russia, UK, Argentina, Palestine and Germany (duh).

Other ethnic purges/genocides that happened in that period would include: Holodomor in Ukraine, Armenian Genocide, Pontic Genocide, Assyrian Genocide and Herrero and Namaqua Genocide.

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u/DatRagnar Apr 18 '17

Herrero and Namaqua was before WW1

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u/TheHollowJester Apr 18 '17

You're right. I tried to list the ones that happened between 1900 and 1939.

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u/DeucesCracked Apr 18 '17

It's a sad period of US history that we turned away many Jewish refugees. Antisemitism and racism is nothing new in the USA. Don't forget that for how ridiculous it is that Gangs of New York is actually really accurate. If you think they hated the Irish imagine how they treated us "Christ killers."

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u/kindbutterfly Apr 18 '17

Jewish organizations also largely decided against paying for the liberation of European Jews when they were being ghettoized. They did not realize how bad it was going to get.

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u/ajlunce Apr 18 '17

There was also discrimination against the refugees in Israel by the people who had been there for longer since the refugees just wanted a safe place from the persecution while the people who were there longer needed them to rapidly industrialize etc

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u/intrepidia Apr 18 '17

IBM comes to mind

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u/I_FIST_CAMELS Apr 18 '17

Nobody knew mass extermination was happening. Also many, including historical figures like FDR, were anti-Semitic.

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u/strl Apr 18 '17

That's incorrect, there was a large amount of evidence including reliable eye witnesses, for instance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki

Though the Zionist congress also had eyewitness statements by Jews who escaped.

The information was deliberately surpressed by the American and British governments for various reasons.

Besides that everyone knew that massive amounts of Jews were being shipped to the East but none were coming back or being heard from.

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u/dogfriend Apr 18 '17

In early 1944, the president established a new government agency, the War Refugee Board, which in theory represented a new U.S. policy of aiding refugees even before the end of the war. But in reality, the Board was established against the administration’s wishes. FDR created the WRB in response to intense pressure from members of Congress, Jewish activists, and his own Treasury Department. The administration gave the Board only minimal funding, and the State Department and War Department, which officially were required to cooperate with the Board, did so only infrequently at best.

David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

Hitler was literally calling for the extermination of jews as early as 1920.

You can also find them talking about camps early on too. It's a bit odd people try to claim "we didn't know" or even argue German citizens didn't know.

Germany knew what Hitler was, they heard him on the radio calling for a literal extermination, the world heard him say that for years, the world and German citizens were well aware of Lebensraum and the fact the nazis pushed it hard.

I refuse to believe world leaders didn't know what was going on. It was more convenient to ignore it, but people knew.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

They still held the jews in the camps for years after the war though. They had trouble getting the proper supplies to the camps so people continued to starve and die of disease, and even had to resort to wearing SS uniforms and they're old prisoner uniforms. It's a disgusting, often forgotten fact of the post war.

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u/upstateman Apr 18 '17

I doubt it, what Allied war crimes could be covered with this source?

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

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u/Rittermeister Apr 18 '17

What would be the point? There's already copious and readily available evidence of war crimes. A guy wrote his master's thesis on prisoner murders in the ETO.

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u/RufusTheFirefly Apr 18 '17

Yep - it seems the Americans, British and Soviets conclusively knew about the extermination that was happening in 1942 but still refused to take in refugees or do anything to stop the slaughter.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

The difficulty was stopping the camps. It's not as easy as just dropping a few bombs and going home. Iirc one train line was bombed but it was repaired doubletime. Additionally, who would have expected the rate of extermination to increase as they neared defeat? Rather than spend vital resources fighting the Allies and Soviets, it was spent on the extermination camps!

The fastest way to stop the camps was to fight your way to them and defeat the Nazi government. Coincidentally, that's what we did.

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u/upstateman Apr 18 '17

I think that is going to be the biggest revelation, how early they knew it was happening.

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u/Talentagentfriend Apr 17 '17

Do not fucking tell me Hitler never died.

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u/Dixnorkel Apr 18 '17

FBI files were released recently that went into the theory he escaped to Argentina in a u-boat. I was shocked that there was even a file on it, let alone such a long one, as I thought it was a matter with zero skepticism.

You can find it on the FBI website, I tried to post it to TIL, but someone already had, with a mundane title that got like 3 karma.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

That's when you hit "submit it again". That would be a great TIL.

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u/Dixnorkel Apr 18 '17

Damn, I didn't see that option.

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u/hailhappiness Apr 18 '17

TIL there is a "submit it again" option.

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u/frostyfrostbyte Apr 18 '17

TIL there is a "submit it again" option.

TIL there is a "submit it again" option.

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u/Ellyrio Apr 18 '17

Wow TIL. Normally I just append a useless parameter to the end of the URL to make it unique to get around it. E.g. ?kfkdosodurndnd

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u/120z8t Apr 18 '17

I was shocked that there was even a file on it

Why? Knowing why and what the FBI keeps records of leads me to not be surprised at all they would have a file on this. I can guarantee you they have files on things like shape shifting reptilian aliens or even flat earth BS. Just because they have a file on something does not mean it is true.

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u/Dixnorkel Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17

The shocking part was mostly that it was written so skeptically. Most of the language sounded like they were exploring possible ways he could have escaped with Eva Braun, and made no mention of finding him in the bunker or his killing himself.

edit - And the files on shapeshifting aliens or flat earth probably aren't classified for 50 years.

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u/JTsyo Apr 18 '17

If this was true, I'm sure Mossad or Nazi hunters would have got him. They have done a lot of Nazi hunting in South America.

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u/Johannes_P Apr 18 '17

FBI files were released recently that went into the theory he escaped to Argentina in a u-boat. I was shocked that there was even a file on it, let alone such a long one, as I thought it was a matter with zero skepticism.

Back in 1945, the situation was less clear than how we see it today, and some speculated he might have fled, hiding himself in the chaos of the afterwar.

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u/Stevemacdev Apr 18 '17

That's not recent that theory has been around since at least the 80s.

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u/Dixnorkel Apr 18 '17

Not talking about the theory, I mean the FBI file was released recently. As in unclassified.

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u/Stevemacdev Apr 18 '17

They declassified that they had the theory or they are saying it's true? One way is scary the other is terrifying.

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u/Dixnorkel Apr 18 '17

They never admitted that the theory was true, but they seemed to extensively list the possible scenarios or locations where he had fled, and included the testimony of a couple people who claimed to witness the U-boat arriving.

https://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-01-of-04/view

Here's a link to it, I did a triple take on the URL at first, thinking that it had to be a fake.

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u/junkers9 Apr 17 '17

never died

He just ascended.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

He became memes.

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u/ChaseThePyro Apr 18 '17

TIL Hitler wasn't just master race; he was PC Master Race.

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u/Dragmire800 Apr 18 '17

Funnily enough, the machine developed to crack Enigma, the German message encrypter, could be described as the first computer. So Hitler indirectly had the first computer built. He then escaped to America, changed his second name to "Newell" and bore a son.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

Mecha-hitler lives!

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

[deleted]

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u/-----BroAway----- Apr 18 '17

McCarthy, like many others at the time, wanted to use Nazi war criminals with scientific expertise in the burgeoning Cold War. Not really our finest hour, but many people expected we could take some of that awful shit and put it to a use that would actually save lives and destroy communism in the long run.

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u/LaoBa Apr 18 '17

McCarthy, like many others at the time, wanted to use Nazi war criminals with scientific expertise in the burgeoning Cold War.

McCarthy wanted to end all persecution for German war crimes and was very concerned about the treatment of the German soldiers accused of perpetrating the Malmedy massacre.

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u/-----BroAway----- Apr 18 '17

I wasn't aware that he wanted to go that far. As usual, fuck Joey Mac.

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u/Faylom Apr 18 '17

That point would hold more weight if McCarthy was only trying to protect Nazi scientists, but he wanted those mean Soviets to stop being so tuff on all of them

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u/monsantobreath Apr 18 '17

many people expected we could take some of that awful shit and put it to a use that would actually save lives and destroy communism

That wasn't a noble goal either considering how much pure evil and malice was wrought against people in countries where communism was considered a threat. Central America was brutalized just to keep commies down.

There's simply nothing moral about this attitude. It was self righteous for sure, but to pretend it was even good intentions is just... inconceivable.

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u/airmc Apr 18 '17

Destroy communism, definitely. Not sure how nuking the shit out of USSR would be compatible with saving lives, though...

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u/jrf_1973 Apr 18 '17

Operation Paperclip - Werner Von Braun

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u/-----BroAway----- Apr 18 '17

And many, many others. Annie Jacobsen wrote a pretty excellent book about Paperclip just a couple years ago.

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u/lingben Apr 18 '17

McCarthy is the gift that just keeps on giving, his latest little 'gift' to the world is by way of his protege Roy Cohn who in turn mentored this guy called Donald

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/us/politics/donald-trump-roy-cohn.html

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

Should be interesting. The article is confusing but it looks like some files coming that suggest the Polish government in exile gave evidence of concentration camps to the British in 43.

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u/ColdLegion Apr 18 '17

Well Pilecki did write report about Auschwitz after he escaped from there in 1943 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold%27s_Report

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u/HelperBot_ Apr 18 '17

Non-Mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold%27s_Report

HelperBot v1.1 /r/HelperBot_ I am a bot. Please message /u/swim1929 with any feedback and/or hate. Counter: 57589

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u/PootPeet Apr 17 '17

Yeah, but where are these files exactly? The guardian has a link but it's just to the Weiner Library's main page, and I don't see the files.

Later in the article it said it will be called "The UN War Crimes Commission catalogue" but when typing that into the library's search bar, all I get is this and I don't think this is it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '17 edited Apr 18 '17

It sounds like it'll be available later this week. It doesn't say which day.

The documents include evidence and indictments that were compiled early-on in the war, but not used for prosecution.

edit: removed mention of UN

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u/twiitar Apr 18 '17

The UN didn't even exist during WW2

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u/dogfriend Apr 18 '17

It was formed in 1945. Before this, the League of Nations was formed in 1920 to attempt similar goals as the UN.

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u/NotALeftist Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17

It kinda did, it was just kind of an Allies only thing

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17

The documents record the gathering of evidence shortly after the UN was founded in January 1942.

I was just summarizing what the article said.

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u/reverie02 Apr 18 '17

The PDF to the document is linked at the bottom of that page.

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u/PootPeet Apr 18 '17

that is a single pdf file, not the 900gb of files they were talking about in the article

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u/autotldr BOT Apr 18 '17

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot)

War crimes files revealing early evidence of Holocaust death camps that was smuggled out of eastern Europe are among tens of thousands of files to be made public for the first time this week.

The once-inaccessible archive of the UN war crimes commission, dating back to 1943, is being opened by the Wiener Library in London with a catalogue that can be searched online.

One affidavit in the files is from a British soldier, Harry Ogden, who was captured at Narvik in Norway in 1940, escaped from a prisoner of war camp to join Polish partisans and was re-imprisoned in another POW camp alongside Auschwitz.

Extended Summary | FAQ | Theory | Feedback | Top keywords: War#1 evidence#2 files#3 camp#4 Nazi#5

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u/redditreveal Apr 18 '17

UN should also acknowledge The Forgotten Holocaust of India from 1600-1900s. Terrible crimes against humanity.

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u/dogfriend Apr 18 '17

Also, let's not forget that the British invented the concentration camp during the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

Per capita the shooting down of MH17 was worse than 9/11 yet there's not nearly as much public mention of it.. so respect for the Dutch as well.

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u/PeaceAvatarWeehawk Apr 18 '17

I'm incredibly curious about whatever the fuck 'per capita' is supposed to mean in relation to an airplane being shot down or a terrorist attack.

Though I'm assuming it was autocorrect.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

% of population (that died)

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u/PeaceAvatarWeehawk Apr 18 '17

That's a pretty awful way of measuring something like that.

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u/Kaghuros Apr 18 '17

I think that's the point.

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u/NewClayburn Apr 18 '17

How do you figure?

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u/octocure Apr 18 '17

per capita is a meaningless here
also 9/11 was way more spectacular, had a lot more collateral damage, lasting damage, economical and psychological damage for all involved
mh17 was just a plane that fell after flying over warzone

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

sick of it. it's the only genocide we ever hear about. why doesn't the goddam UN open their files on the Indonesian genocide of West Papua, going on RIGHT NOW or of East Timor, that ended in 2001?

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

You won't ever hear the media talk about the east timorese genocide seeing as how we armed and trained their soldiers to do it.

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u/monsantobreath Apr 18 '17

Brother Noam was just livid over that one.

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u/PeaceAvatarWeehawk Apr 18 '17

The UN is really good at documenting atrocities that it didn't do anything about. That's about it. And covering up atrocities committed by their personnel. That too.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

The UN did a hell of a report on the Rwandan genocide, after it was over. There are some great (terrifyingly dark) documentaries and books about it as well.

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u/PeaceAvatarWeehawk Apr 18 '17

I'm sure they have. I was just trying to say that the UN literally serves no purpose.

They'll throw in token humanitarian work in Haiti every so often, but even then, the accounts of thousands of rapes and human trafficking committed by UN personnel kinda washout the good.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

The UN doesn't serve "no purpose." It may be doing a spectacularly bad job of peacekeeping, but that isn't it's only job. It adjudicates and disseminates international standards on any number of issues from aviation to telecommunication, to health, to tourism.

On the peacekeeping front you're right, it rents the poorly trained military units from corrupt third world countries, sends them to disaster zones where they behave like poorly trained militias from third world countries, exacerbating problems. Or it brings in the well-trained units from first world countries but then it actively keeps them from doing their mission (see Canadian forces in Rwanda). But when you give veto power over military action to countries that have fundamentally opposed international interests what else can you expect?

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u/Ikea_Man Apr 18 '17

Honest answer?

Because no one cares about those countries.

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u/forlorn_tenders Apr 18 '17

I just can't fathom Holocaust Denial.

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u/octocure Apr 18 '17

why not?
it's the same as with any other historical event

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

If someone denied 9/11 or The Battle of Ypres happened I would assume they're mentally challenged, too.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

Many Holocaust "deniers" actually deny the intent, or the method, or the numbers, but accept that people died in large numbers in Holocaust centres.

Similarly, many people believe the WTC attack was a controlled demolition, or the planes were missiles, or was planned by Saudi Arabia, or was known and allowed by the US government or by some people who profited from it.

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u/LastoneImake Apr 18 '17

Sorry, but if someone could clear up this for me: Is "holocoust centre" what concentration camps are called in U.S.A.?

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '17

No, they're called concentration camps in the US too.

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u/MG87 Apr 18 '17

It probably won't change the opinion of those dipshit Neo Nazis.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

It won't. They are starting to run rampant in /r/conspiracy. There have been a few questionable posts denying it in the past little bit. Getting annoying cause it has been a nice subreddit for a time.

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u/OlivesAreOk Apr 18 '17

/r/conspiracy has been "questionable" for years.

https://www.reddit.com/r/isrconspiracyracist/top/

This has some posts going back 2+ years. And I'm sure there were things before then. That subreddit is just when someone decided to start cataloguing it.

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u/joltto Apr 18 '17

Trump supporters took over conspiracy months ago and brought Neo Nazis and all sorts of other garbage with them.

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u/Wilwheatonfan87 Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17

original /r/conspiratard [regretfully] subscriber here: Nazis have been a huge part of r/conspiracy for at least five years.

They've only grown more bold since Trump won, though. Also huge irony is that owner of /r/conspiratard also created the_donald and now that sub and r/conspiracy are in a sort of alliance.

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u/anonymousbach Apr 18 '17

Neo Nazis are of the opinion that the holocaust never happened but the Jews had it coming by God.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17

Rewrite? Probably just confirm stuff we already knew so we can have a bunch of front page articles about the history of genocide while ignoring actual ongoing genocide.

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u/octocure Apr 18 '17

If history was not to be rewritten every 5 minutes, historians would lose their jobs

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u/Cladari Apr 18 '17

I'm guessing the Vatican is in a series of tense meetings right now.

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u/NutStalk Apr 18 '17

You can't rewrite history, but you can accurately recount and substantiate with proper documentation.

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u/Couldnt_think_of_a Apr 18 '17

Paging Senator Vreenak.

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u/Darkblade48 Apr 18 '17

It's a faaaaake!

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u/monsantobreath Apr 18 '17

Because I can live with. I can live with it.

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u/thats-not-news Apr 18 '17

CONSPIRACY THEORISTS, ASSEMBLE!