Revisionist objections to claims of genocide in USSR

[bombsaway]

Revisionists believe there was no systematic campaign to kill most of the Jews in occupied USSR

In this thread I showed planning documents for a specific operation to kill some three hundred thousand Jews, and then documents showing that killing operation was carried out. Revisionists made two claims in the thread, one that this was a resettlement operation, and one that the topic was an "open question". They did not respond to any of the evidence that I presented or provide rebuttals to my arguments. Instead they provided a separate list of objections for me to answer.

viewtopic.php?t=897

This is what revisionists do. Instead of confronting uncomfortable arguments and evidence, they divert with tangential objections. These tactics are a big reason why this belief system is able to perpetuate itself (I'm not saying the tactics are intentional btw)

In this thread, I will do exactly what I contend revisionists cannot do: answer directly to arguments posed. If they ask me a question, I'll respond to it. If something is unknowable I will provide justification for it.

I'll probably re-use these arguments in my forthcoming essay, since I don't want it to feel like I'm saying things that revisionists won't have gotten a chance to respond to. And their answer to the question of what happened in Wolhynien, or lack thereof, is obviously relevant.

I'll go through the points in order, and address them thoroughly, one by one, so as not to make my post here very long. I will also ground most of my answers here in terms of what happened in Wolhynien. The case for the Holocaust is so strong that I don't need to cherry pick across different regions and time frames to respond to revisionist objections.

Now onto the first objection:

1. The killings not being rolled out instantaneously or in a uniform way means there was no overarching plan

I am accused of black and white thinking here, though in this statement I acknowledge a few facts about the campaign.

Basically we can say that the intensity of the killings evolved from targeting of Jewish males of "fighting age" to the entire population. This evolution took a few months. I believe all historians agree with me about this in the broad sense.

We can also say that certain populations lasted longer, with the Jews in Wolhynien being a notable case of this. By mid-1942, a substantial Jewish population still survived there.

HC: Demographics and Killing in Volhynia-Podolia, Part 2

The argument by revisionists is that if there was a systematic campaign it would have necessarily been non-evolving and uniform.

This idea of non-evolving is just a weird argument that I would ask for more clarification about. To say that genocide intensified over time is simply very possible, and most genocides have happened this way.

The requirement of total uniformity is also strange. We know that in the real world, there are obstacles, bottlenecks preventing operations from running smoothly. Yet it is absolutely wrong to say that the killing campaign in the east was substantially non-uniform.

Documents show, across different regions, the intensification of the killings from primarily men to women and children as well over the same general period. I would only modify "uniformly" to "in a broadly parallel way": the dates were not identical everywhere.

In the Pripyat campaign, Himmler's instruction had escalated by early August to:

All Jews must be shot. Drive Jewish women into the swamps. No male Jew stays alive, no residual family in the villages.

HC: Debunking the Partisan Meme — Contents of Shooting Reports

The same change is explicit in Lithuania. The Jäger Report records operations against:

Jews, Jewesses and Jewish children

and Jäger himself described:

The decision to systematically make every district free of Jews necessitated an exhaustive preparation of each individual operation.

HC: The Jäger Report (3)

In Belorussia, the reporting likewise reached the explicit category:

Jews of both sexes and all ages

HC White Paper: Extermination of Soviet Jews, June 1941-March 1942

So again: I am not arguing that every unit changed policy on the same date. I am saying that across separate regions we see the same basic escalation from killings concentrated heavily on Jewish men toward killings encompassing women and children.

There were also obstacles to uniform mass killing ops across the whole of the USSR.

Do you know that many Germans, civilian, army, and even SS fought to preserve Jewish labor and thus stymied (for a time at least) efforts to affect widespread killing?

This is particularly clear in Wolhynien itself, which had a high degree of autonomy through 1942 as HC blog writes here

HC: Volhynia-Podolia, 1942 — Extermination Decisions

The KdS was subordinate to the HSSPF Russia South, Prützmann, who in turn reported directly to Himmler. However, the KdS had a high degree of personal authority and also worked closely with the civil administration, which had legal oversight over Jewish affairs in such matters as food policy, which became crucial in deciding the timing of killing Aktions. The HSSPF, it should be noted, had control over labour programs, most notably the DG IV road-building project that ran through Ukraine, from west to east, starting in Lvov.

And when things turned in August they resisted:

On August 17, Hermann Ling intervened to obtain Jewish workers for the DG IV road project and reported:

without my intervention these Jews would have been executed; for example, executions in Dunaivtsi County and Bar had already been prepared.

He then asked that Jews fit for work be turned over to DG IV rather than executed.


At Brest, local officials likewise protested because they needed Jewish labor. Gebietskommissar Franz Burat argued:

from the standpoint of labor mobilization, I must plead unconditionally for leaving the most needed artisans and manpower.

These appeals failed. The same source documents the subsequent removal of the Jewish workers and the collapse or severe reduction of production in affected factories.

HC: Demographics and Killing in Volhynia-Podolia, Part 2

And the lack of perfect simultaneity was itself discussed by the perpetrators. The SS and police leader for Wolhynien wrote that:

the actions are carried out in such a way that the resettlements in the district capitals and the rayons are as simultaneous as possible

while acknowledging that incidents were unavoidable in operations of that scale. At the same Lutsk meetings, the regional leadership demanded a comprehensive or "100%" clean-up.

HC: Holocaust Denial and Himmler's Report to Hitler, Part II

One of the main claims by revisionists was that widespread killing of Jews was due to immediate military necessity of doing so. The above quotes put this all into question, because why would so many people be protecting them?

This doesn't mean no German official ever invoked security or partisan warfare. It means the claim of immediate military necessity cannot by itself explain the policy. In Wolhynien, German officials explicitly regarded many Jews as useful workers, tried to keep them alive, and were overruled.

The fact that the Germans had internal conflicts and bottlenecks that prevented uniform killing across the USSR can clearly exist simultaneously along with the existence of a killing program operating at higher levels — which eventually prevailed. In Wolhynien, almost all the Jews were killed.

HC: Demographics and Killing in Volhynia-Podolia, Part 2

A final objection by Archie is that whatever I'm saying is contradicted by orthodox historians. Below find an AI analysis, grounded in evidence, about whether this is true.

AI analysis

AI analysis

The mainstream historiography summarized in the Holocaust Controversies White Paper explicitly describes the decision-making behind the Final Solution as:

an incremental process, with a number of acceleratory spurts, between summer 1941 and summer 1942

The important point here is that the historians being cited are not disputing whether a generalized extermination program developed. They disagree primarily about when it reached particular stages, how decisions were made, and how quickly it expanded from Soviet Jewry to European Jewry generally.

Christopher Browning

Browning places the decisive expansion against Soviet Jews in the second half of July 1941. His description is explicit:

the turning point from selective mass murder to the onset of the Final Solution for Soviet Jewry, with the goal of killing all Soviet Jews

Browning therefore does not interpret the widening shootings as an accumulation of unrelated local security actions. He sees a transition from selective killing to a policy whose target was Soviet Jewry as a whole. He differs from other historians mainly over when this generalized killing policy was extended to the rest of European Jewry.

Christian Gerlach

Gerlach famously dates the decisive Europe-wide development later than Browning. But what he argues happened is equally explicit. He describes the Wannsee process as closely connected with:

Hitler’s fundamental decision to proceed with the liquidation of all Jews living in Europe

Gerlach's disagreement is therefore chronological, not over the existence of a generalized exterminatory policy. Indeed, his article is entitled The Wannsee Conference, the Fate of German Jews, and Hitler's Decision in Principle to Exterminate All European Jews. He argues that the decision was a decision “in principle,” leaving the precise implementation, organization and tempo to the relevant authorities.

Ian Kershaw

Kershaw likewise rejects the idea that there must have been one instantaneous order. Discussing the culmination of the process, he writes that it is:

perhaps more plausible, however, to see it as the last major escalatory push in establishing a Europe-wide killing program.

That is important for the objection being made here. Kershaw's interpretation is specifically of an expanding process that eventually established a Europe-wide killing program. Variation and escalation are components of his explanation, not evidence against the existence of the program.

Peter Longerich

Longerich places still greater emphasis on gradual development. But his description of what that development produced could hardly be clearer:

What had begun as general, long-term considerations about ensuring that the Jews die out was developed into a comprehensive program of mass murder

Longerich describes several stages of escalation. He does not argue that the absence of a single moment when every region adopted identical practices means there was no extermination program. His argument is precisely that an increasingly radical policy developed into a comprehensive program.

So there is a real historical debate here, but it is not the debate revisionists seem to be implying.

Browning argues that by late July 1941 the killing policy in the Soviet Union had crossed from selective mass murder into a program aimed at Soviet Jews generally. Gerlach emphasizes a later decision in principle encompassing European Jews. Kershaw describes an expanding process culminating in a Europe-wide killing program. Longerich describes an escalating policy developing into a comprehensive program of mass murder.

They disagree about chronology and decision-making. They do not disagree that a generalized extermination program developed.

This is almost the opposite of an argument that uneven implementation disproves an overarching program. In the mainstream historiography, unevenness and gradual escalation are part of the explanation of how the program developed.

There are real historiographical disputes over exactly when decisions were made, how policy radicalized, and how much initiative came from the center versus regional authorities. None of that contradicts what I am saying here: that killing policy evolved, that implementation varied, that labor needs created temporary obstacles, and that systematic killing operations nevertheless existed.

In fact, that is the point. "Systematic" does not mean instantaneous, perfectly uniform, or free of internal resistance.

And in Wolhynien we do not have to infer the later policy from general statements about the Holocaust. We have the regional planning documents, the disputes over preserving Jewish labor, directives to accelerate the actions, and the subsequent evidence of what happened to the population.

[Archie]

In this thread I showed planning documents for a specific operation to kill some three hundred thousand Jews,

You didn't show anything. You reposted the work of Hans/HC.

This is what revisionists do. Instead of confronting uncomfortable arguments and evidence, they divert with tangential objections.

You're posting on a revisionist website dedicated to discussing these topics. Your side in contrast ...

If you really thought our points weren't substantive you wouldn't feel the need to spin off this Einsatzgruppen thread from yet another Einsatzgruppen thread which itself was spun off from yet another thread of yours which you yourself derailed into an Einsatzgruppen thread. In none of these threads have you even tried to address the question of physical evidence. Pointing out that these enormous body counts, if real, would have resulted in mass graves and that these mass graves have never been demonstrated is not a "tangential" objection.

Now onto the first objection:

1. The killings not being rolled out instantaneously or in a uniform way means there was no overarching plan

Re instantaneous and uniform, I was paraphrasing Browning.

In short, Krausnick and Streim focused their debate too narrowly on a specific and explicit order for the murder of all Russian Jews and thereby missed the wider question of when the Einsatzgruppen commanders were generally aware fo the task before them. In a literal sense Streim is probably right that the lower-echelon Einsatzgruppen personnel received instructions to intensify the anti-Jewish measures incrementally and that the murder campaign did not take a definitive and comprehensive form until mid-summer. But in a larger sense Krausnick is right. Most--though not all--of the Einsatzgruppen officers were concious of the impending genocide before the invasion. The fact that implementation would be neither instantaneous nor uniform in no way disproves this. (Fateful Months, pg. 20)

Note that he's arguing here not against revisionists but other mainstream historians. This is why I described his position as a blend of certain functionalist and intentionalist concepts. He acknowledges that the implementation was not instantaneous or uniform. I was bringing this up in light of your comments which reflected very binary thinking.

Note also that Browning must argue for a sort of two stage extermination decision. He says a page later "Thus the preparations for the murderous assault upon the Russian Jews did not have immediate repercussions on Nazi Jewish policy elsewhere. The emergence of the Final Solution for European Jews was a separate process resulting from a separate though certainly not unrelated decision."

The "AI analysis" you shared discusses Browning, Gerlach, Kershaw, and Longerich. These are all recent historians. All of their positions are a departure from the original intentionalist narrative. My point was that the mainstream historians have had to abandon the original story because it wasn't viable. They were forced to come up with something more "nuanced." And that has implications for the Einsatzgruppen.

[bombsaway]

In this thread I showed planning documents for a specific operation to kill some three hundred thousand Jews,

You didn't show anything. You reposted the work of Hans/HC.

No, here are distinct arguments I made, not responded to

"we see killing documents which mention that unfit Jews are being killed, that 420 / 425 Jews from a given village were killed - this does not fit with partial resettlement"

"we see the quote " Jews fit for work...shall no longer be executed" meaning that even Jews fit for work were previously being executed."

"If what happened in Generalbezierk Wolhynien was a true resettlement we wouldn't see populations like this (the entire ghetto) being summarily executed."

"it was not a reprisal because they took the Jews to a remote location to do it."

"it was not anti-partisan in nature because these were interned Jews, not partisans living out in the wilderness, and if they were really being resettled they would pose no further threat, so no reason to kill them"

If you really thought our points weren't substantive you wouldn't feel the need to spin off this Einsatzgruppen thread from yet another Einsatzgruppen thread which itself was spun off from yet another thread of yours which you yourself derailed into an Einsatzgruppen thread. In none of these threads have you even tried to address the question of physical evidence. Pointing out that these enormous body counts, if real, would have resulted in mass graves and that these mass graves have never been demonstrated is not a "tangential" objection.

the points in your rebuttal are not substantive. there are other reasons to respond ie showing you that I can for the purposes of my essay, the general challenge of getting people to see the obvious

"physical evidence" (or I should say assertions that it doesn't exist) is all you have. the documentary and witness evidence is decisively not in your favor, and it' what I have access to, so that's what I concentrate on.

if you had made a physical evidence argument about graves in Wolhynien, I would actually look at that, but I don't think there has been any revisionist treatment of these graves. You extrapolate from places like Babi Yar, which shows the vacuousness of your world view. You assume that the same thing is true everywhere across the USSR without even seeing any evidence. your views on the Holocaust don't come from an evidentiary basis but are purely reflexive. in your mind there is no way it happened, so the evidence isn't really important. orthodoxy doesn't have this problem, views that are held are drawn from the evidence

but you aren't going to respond my points about the evidence, and now it will be obvious because that thread will just stop

"All of their positions are a departure from the original intentionalist narrative. My point was that the mainstream historians have had to abandon the original story because it wasn't viable. They were forced to come up with something more "nuanced." And that has implications for the Einsatzgruppen.

this is an utterly vacuous point which betrays your whole worldview, for anyone paying attention. mainstream history is constantly doing exactly this. for example w Barbarossa, initially historical views treated this campaign as a great victory for the Nazis with a stunning defeat inflicted in battle of Moscow, recent historical analysis has shown this to be backwards, based on what commanders were actually saying.

The functionalist interpretation is actually just what is evidenced sorry.

You can see it in Greiser's statement here "I personally don't think that we have to consult the Führer again in this matter, all the more since he told me at the last interview concerning the Jews that I should act according to my own judgment."

but the first serious history about the Holocaust was not even intentionalist in the strong sense https://chatgpt.com/share/6aac0cda-2414 ... aa255d9590. I pasted in the full contents of his book btw

Btw most functionalist interpretations (like Brownings) are a sort of middle ground between the extremes (Hitler ordered the whole thing and planned it from the 1920s or whatever / Hitler had no idea any of this was happening - Irvings view). I don't think Reitlinger and Browning are that far from one another and AI agrees

Reitlinger looks remarkably like an early precursor to the later synthesis that Browning represents, rather than simply “closer to intentionalism.” The major thing Browning would reject is Reitlinger's relatively neat concept of the 1941 Führer Order, not his overall evolutionary narrative.

[Archie]

the points in your rebuttal are not substantive. there are other reasons to respond ie showing you that I can for the purposes of my essay, the general challenge of getting people to see the obvious

"physical evidence" (or I should say assertions that it doesn't exist) is all you have. the documentary and witness evidence is decisively not in your favor, and it' what I have access to, so that's what I concentrate on.

if you had made a physical evidence argument about graves in Wolhynien, I would actually look at that, but I don't think there has been any revisionist treatment of these graves. You extrapolate from places like Babi Yar, which shows the vacuousness of your world view. You assume that the same thing is true everywhere across the USSR without even seeing any evidence. your views on the Holocaust don't come from an evidentiary basis but are purely reflexive. in your mind there is no way it happened, so the evidence isn't really important. orthodoxy doesn't have this problem, views that are held are drawn from the evidence

but you aren't going to respond my points about the evidence, and now it will be obvious because that thread will just stop

I mentioned but did not belabor the point about mass graves in the other threads because I was being generous and was offering to engage you strictly on the documentary evidence which I did want to discuss. To be clear, I think the lack of physical evidence is a huge point, but I don't like to overrely on it since it can be tedious (looking at you, Keen) and can stall discussion on other points. As a courtesy, I am often willing to set aside the mass grave problem to further the discussion. But if you're going to come on here all cocky saying we have zero arguments other than "tangential" points etc then you're asking for it and I'm going to call you out on the lack of mass graves.

As far me "assuming" no mass graves - Lol, I "assume" that if these graves existed someone would have found them by now. If they could show them, they would. They haven't because they can't.

The mainstream narrative effectively concedes that these graves don't exist (at least not to the extent we would expect). The story is that many of the graves were dug up and the bodies were burned to destroy the evidence.

"if you had made a physical evidence argument about graves in Wolhynien, I would actually look at that," - Again, I was being nice. It goes without saying that you need to show the graves. I did not offer that as a rebuttal to Hans's post because it would not have directly addressed his documentary and statistical arguments.

this is an utterly vacuous point which betrays your whole worldview, for anyone paying attention. mainstream history is constantly doing exactly this.

You don't know what you're talking about. Hint: try reading some actual books, not just asking AI. You are downplaying the amount of disagreement and the extent to which the narrative has been revised. Your original selection of four recent historians to show supposed close agreement was deliberately misleading. And your expansion to Reitlinger was also cherry-picked (and wrong).

Reitlinger thought there had been an extermination order in the spring of 1941, prior to Barbarossa. He interpreted the Goering decree as referring to extermination and remarked that it was "surprisingly late." Browning himself has essays debunking that sort of position. And Broszat and others go even further in the functionalism direction than Browning. Reitlinger is also not very representative of the traditional view since he was more critical/revisionist than is typical (his rejection of the six million, for example). Same for Hilberg. The traditional story was that extermination had been ordered and that the Einsatzgruppen had extermination of the Jews as a primary mission from the beginning.

"Btw most functionalist interpretations (like Brownings) are a sort of middle ground between the extremes" I like how you are repeating things I told you back to me and pretending like you're informing me of something.

Christopher Browning has argued for a complicated, compromise position, distinguishing the policies for Jews in different regions. He assumes there was some sort of plan but readily concedes that it was not rolled out in an instantaneous or uniform manner.

You were clearly not familiar with Browning's work and expressed annoyance at the prospect of having to familiarize yourself with his position.

then there's the point that historians don't think it reflects a genocidal policy. i think that's wrong but I guess I have to go through Browning to refute this?

[bombsaway]

Who cares about the date of the order? both Reitlinger and Browning both agree that genocide was occurring by 1942. It has nothing to do with what I was asking you about w Wolhynien. This is what I mean by tangential. functionalism is a little bit more relevant because you can see the decision making taking place and the arguments and conflicts within, about policy in that area.

As far me "assuming" no mass graves - Lol, I "assume" that if these graves existed someone would have found them by now.

This assumption is really interesting to me, can you elaborate on it?

Like people within orthodoxy will say - resettlement of millions of people couldn't have occurred because it would have generated at least a tiny amount of evidence, and there is none

would you say there's some similarities here?

[Callafangers]

bombsaway introduces the current thread with:

In this [previous] thread I showed planning documents for a specific operation to kill some three hundred thousand Jews [...]

But what he actually says in that previous thread is:

An exterminate all Jews EG planning document has not surfaced. What exists are regional plans, like the "the general resettlement of the Jews",[...]

So, "planning documents for a specific operation to kill" admittedly "has not surfaced", yet you also claim to have shown these same documents (which don't exist).

What does exist are regional plans explicitly for "resettlement".

These are your own words.

[bombsaway]

why did you cut off my quote?

What exists are regional plans, like the "the general resettlement of the Jews" in Generalbezirk Wolhynien, which slated over 300,000 for destruction, which was then carried out in planned systematic fashion.

me being part of orthodoxy i think you know what i mean by destruction. or are you gonna say I meant something else when I used that word?

what I did state hasn't appeared is an "exterminate all Jews" document, like something sent out to every commander from Berlin - to be applied to shootings across the occupied USSR

[Callafangers]

why did you cut off my quote?

What exists are regional plans, like the "the general resettlement of the Jews" in Generalbezirk Wolhynien, which slated over 300,000 for destruction, which was then carried out in planned systematic fashion.

me being part of orthodoxy i think you know what i mean by destruction. or are you gonna say I meant something else when I used that word?

what I did state hasn't appeared is an "exterminate all Jews" document, like something sent out to every commander from Berlin - to be applied to shootings across the occupied USSR

bombsaway, your writing has devolved into a third grade level. Please stop writing like a child.

Carrying out destruction of Jewry does not necessitate gassing Jews, nor even 'exterminating' them, which is why the documents say neither of these things. Ransacking and repossessing Jewish homes and all property, then shipping them off to who-cares-where (anywhere but here) -- while conducting shootings without hesitation of groups or even villages suspected of partisanship -- is the full, documented scope of destruction Germany intended for Jews, as had more or less been the intent all along. You (and orthodoxy; which you are not, you're a dweeb on a forum) are required to assume some secret shift had happened, one which you do not evidence with any official (or veritable) contemporary reports.

I have pointed this out, and it's quite embarrassing for you, which is likely why you have starting writing like a teenage girl text messaging her boyfriend.

[bombsaway]

It's fair for you criticize my spelling capitalization etc.

But I am clearly saying I thought the Jews were killed in my quote

your brain is mush

[Callafangers]

It's fair for you criticize my spelling capitalization etc.

But I am clearly saying I thought the Jews were killed in my quote

your brain is mush

It's clear what you are saying. That's not what the documents say.

[bombsaway]

The documents don't say the they were "destroyed". This one for Pinsk says they were executed in assembly points or in the ghetto if they were too sick or too young.

On 9 November 1942, the leader of 10th company of SS-Polizeiregiment 15, Helmut Saur, reported that the men were employed for "guarding at the assembly point, securing the individual transports to the execution site, which was about 4 km outside Pinsk". He goes on that "10,000 people were executed. On 30 October, the ghetto was searched through for second time, on 31 October for the third time and on 1 November for the fourth time. A total of about 15,000 Jews were brought to the assembly point. Sick Jews and some children left in the houses were immediately executed in the ghetto in the courtyard. In the ghetto, about 1,200 Jews were executed." (VEJ 8, document 219).

if you think this literally happened, maybe you can explain this action to me in this thread.

viewtopic.php?t=897

maybe you think they were exaggerating the numbers 5x or something, but that's speculative. my reading of the document as evidence of being part of larger killing campaign is sensible.

if you think it happened as described or close to that, why would they do something like this? I'm genuinely interested, and that applies to you too Archie.

[Callafangers]

The documents don't say the they were "destroyed". This one for Pinsk says they were executed in assembly points or in the ghetto if they were too sick or too young.

On 9 November 1942, the leader of 10th company of SS-Polizeiregiment 15, Helmut Saur, reported that the men were employed for "guarding at the assembly point, securing the individual transports to the execution site, which was about 4 km outside Pinsk". He goes on that "10,000 people were executed. On 30 October, the ghetto was searched through for second time, on 31 October for the third time and on 1 November for the fourth time. A total of about 15,000 Jews were brought to the assembly point. Sick Jews and some children left in the houses were immediately executed in the ghetto in the courtyard. In the ghetto, about 1,200 Jews were executed." (VEJ 8, document 219).

if you think this literally happened, maybe you can explain this action to me in this thread.

viewtopic.php?t=897

maybe you think they were exaggerating the numbers 5x or something, but that's speculative. my reading of the document as evidence of being part of larger killing campaign is sensible.

if you think it happened as described or close to that, why would they do something like this? I'm genuinely interested, and that applies to you too Archie.

Absolutely, I have been procrastinating even a casual read of this thread but after a quick reading now, it's important that I respond. See you there.

[Archie]

Jewish historian Arno Mayer from his 1988 book Why Did The Heavens Not Darken?

Even so, and notwithstanding the unparalleled magnitude of the Jewish suffering, the extermination of eastern Jewry never became the chief objective of Barbarossa. The fight for Lebensraum and against bolshevism was neither a pretext nor an expedient for the killing of Jews. Nor was it a mere smoke screen to disguise the Jewish massacres as reprisals against partisans. The assault on the Jews was unquestionably intertwined with the assault on bolshevism from the very outset. But this is not to say that it was the dominant strand in the hybrid ‘Judeobolshevism’ that Barbarossa targeted for destruction. In fact, the war against the Jews was a graft onto or a parasite upon the eastern campaign, which always remained its host, even or especially once it became mired deep in Russia.

When they set forth on their mission, Einsatzgruppen and the RSHA were not given the extermination of Jews as their principal, let alone their only, assignment.

Mayer was a bit of a commie and his views were controversial. But I'm sharing here to document the variance in opinion.

[bombsaway]

Mayer was a bit of a commie and his views were controversial. But I'm sharing here to document the variance in opinion.

Mayer says "When they set forth on their mission," meaning he is talking about an initial disposition.

I don't know how controversial that is but he's in line with orthodoxy about what the EG developed into by 1942:

It is impossible to give an accurate count of the total number of victims of the SS during the first six to seven months of Barbarossa, down to the early winter of 1941-42-to the debacle of Moscow and the Wannsee Conference. To date, all estimates are based, essentially, on the daily and monthly reports to higher headquarters from the field offices of the mobile Einsatzgruppen and of the back-up and rearguard security forces. No doubt these reports contain inaccuracies of time, place, and numbers. But whatever their deficiencies and defects, the general magnitude of the slayings is beyond dispute. The mobile action units took about 500,000 lives. At least nine-tenths of these victims are estimated to have been Jewish, with, over time, a rising proportion of women, children, and the aged among them. Close to half of the victims were murdered by the commandos of Einsatzgruppe A in the Baltic countries and Belorussia; between 45,000 and 60,000 by the commandos of Einsatzgruppe B in the center; about 95,000 by the commandos of Einsatzgruppe C in the Ukraine; and between 55 ,000 and 80,000 by commandos of Einsatzgruppe D in the far south. In addition, about 200,000 Jews were killed by "regular" security forces and in pogroms.

[Wahrheitssucher]

Jewish historian Arno Mayer from his 1988 book Why did the heavens not darken?

…The fight for Lebensraum and against bolshevism was neither a pretext nor an expedient for the killing of Jews. Nor was it a mere smoke screen to disguise the Jewish massacres as reprisals against partisans.

…[the] Einsatzgruppen and the RSHA were not given the extermination of Jews as their principal, let alone their only, assignment.

…he's in line with orthodoxy about what the EG developed into by 1942.

1. Thanks for this fascinating quote of Mayer’s viewpoint from his quasi-religious, joo-obsessed ‘history’ book.
2. The above response shows BA is not only incorrect yet again but it shows he is a person in deep, deeeep denial.