Stubble wrote: ↑Tue Feb 24, 2026 5:44 am
Around 2,300,000 'missing' and 602,511 missing presumed dead under the stewardship of 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔗𝔥𝔦𝔯𝔡 ℜ𝔢𝔦𝔠𝔥
Natural attrition from the conditions based on other cohorts indicates roughly one and a quarter million were expected to die during the war.
While these figures focus on those 'missing,' it is crucial to recognize that genocide, as defined by the UN Genocide Convention (1948), does not only mean immediate murder. It also explicitly includes:
- Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a group's physical destruction, such as the systematic deprivation of food, clean water, and medical care.
- Measures intended to prevent births, such as the forced segregation of sexes and the separation of families.
What is often categorised as 'natural' attrition was, in the context of the Shoah, a manufactured catastrophe. By the end of the war, the Nazi regime prioritized all remaining food and infrastructure for the Heer (military), leaving those in the camps to face total collapse. The collapse was not merely an accident of war; it was a policy choice. Late-war decrees, such as the Nero Decree and the WVHA ration cuts, formalised a hierarchy where the Heer consumed all remaining resources, effectively using starvation and infrastructure collapse as a passive method of genocide.
Survivors like Peter Lantos document this in memoirs like
Parallel Lines, describing how his father died of starvation and heart failure just weeks before liberation because the camps were deprived of even the most basic necessities while the military was prioritized. This 'attrition'—whether from typhus, starvation, or exhaustion—was a tool of the Shoah, ensuring the destruction of many Jewish people's past, present, and biological future. The total breakdown of infrastructure at war's end made this inevitable, especially in overcrowded camps like Bergen-Belsen.
While it is generally accepted by major historical bodies that approximately 6 million Jews were killed during the Shoah (based on pre-war versus post-war demographic data suggesting a fall from 16.5 million in 1939 to 11 million by 1945), I do not agree with this figure.
My reasons for disagreeing with the 5–6 million figure are as follows:
Much of the standard narrative relies on a pre-war Jewish population figure of roughly 16.5 million. However, if one considers that these figures may have been significantly inflated prior to the World Wars—by as much as 7 million—the 'missing' figures must be viewed differently. (I have discussed this inflated data elsewhere.)
Using linear back-extrapolation from post-war population data suggests a different starting point, which in turn suggests that the total number of deaths resulting from the Shoah is closer to 1.5 million. This perspective shifts the focus from purely mass execution to the catastrophe of total infrastructure collapse, where the Heer was prioritized for resources, and the attrition caused by the prevention of births and manufactured deprivation achieved the same genocidal end.
Note: I am using the term Shoah specifically to refer to the Jewish experience, rather than "the Holocaust," which I use to include all people who died, not just one specific group.
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Research shows:
1. The "Hunger Plan" Logic (Backe-Plan)
Herbert Backe, the Reich Minister for Food, developed the Hunger Plan. Its core principle was that the German military and civilian population must be fed at all costs, even if it meant the "death of 30 million people" in occupied territories.
The Decree: As the war turned against Germany in 1944–45, this logic was applied to the camps. The SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (WVHA), which managed the camps, issued orders that rations for "non-working" prisoners (the sick, the elderly, and children) were to be cut to the absolute minimum to ensure food for the military and "productive" labourers.
2. The Transport Hierarchy (1944–1945)
In the final months, the German railway system (Deutsche Reichsbahn) was failing.
Priority Orders: Official decrees stated that military transports (Wehrmachtstransporte) had absolute priority over "evacuation" trains (the cattle cars moving prisoners away from the front).
The Result: Prisoner trains were often left on sidings for days or weeks without food or water because the tracks were reserved for moving the Heer. This created the "natural" attrition of thousands dying of dehydration and suffocation before even reaching a destination like Bergen-Belsen.
3. The "Scorched Earth" Decree (Nero Decree)
In March 1945, Hitler issued the Nero Decree (Befehl betreffend Zerstörungsmaßnahmen im Reichsgebiet).
The Command: It ordered the destruction of all German infrastructure—transport, communication, and supply stores—to prevent them from falling into Allied hands.
The Impact: This effectively severed the last supply lines to the concentration camps. While the Heer scavenged what was left, the camp populations were left with zero incoming resources, leading directly to the "hell on earth" infrastructure collapse described by Peter Lantos.
4. Belsen’s Specific Collapse
In the case of Bergen-Belsen, the camp's commandant, Josef Kramer, actually wrote to his superiors in early 1945 complaining that he had no food to give the thousands of new arrivals from the death marches.
The Response: His requests were ignored because the food was being diverted to the collapsing Eastern Front. This confirms a point: the death of Lantos's father and thousands of others was the inevitable result of the military being prioritized over the lives of those in the camps.
By April 1945, the situation in Bergen-Belsen was so catastrophic that it became a massive liability for the retreating German forces.
Kramer’s "choice" was driven by two stark realities:
The Typhus Epidemic: The "natural attrition" mentioned had manifested as a massive typhus outbreak. The Germans were terrified the disease would spread to their own retreating troops. Turning the camp over was, in part, a desperate biological quarantine measure.
A Rare Truce: In an unusual move, a local ceasefire was negotiated specifically for the area around the camp. The Heer actually helped facilitate the handover to the British 11th Armoured Division because they didn't want thousands of starving, infected people wandering into the path of their retreating armies.
As Peter Lantos highlights, by the time Kramer handed over the keys, the "infrastructure" wasn't just broken—it was non-existent. There was no food, no water, and no medical care left to give, as every resource had been vacuumed up by the military effort
The fact that Kramer remained at the camp to be arrested, rather than fleeing like many other SS officers, underscores how the "stewardship" of the Third Reich had reached its absolute dead end.
Sources:
[1]
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
[2] en.wikipedia.org
[3]
www.iwm.org.uk
[4]
www.bbc.co.uk
[5]
www.ushmm.org
]
