NEMO
2011-12-09 00:21:16 UTC
NAZI GENOCIDE AND MASS MURDER
20,946,000 Victims:
Nazi Germany
1933 To 1945*
By R.J. Rummel
Hitler told Himmler that it was not enough for the Jews simply to die;
they must die in agony. What was the best way to prolong their agony?
Himmler turned the problem over to his advisers, who concluded that a
slow, agonizing death could be brought about by placing Jewish
prisoners in freight cars in which the floors were coated
with...quicklime...which produced excruciating burns. The advisers
estimated that it would take four days for the prisoners to die, and
for that whole time the freight cars could be left standing on some
forgotten siding.... Finally it was decided that the freight cars
should be used in addition to the extermination camps.
----Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler
By genocide, the murder of hostages, reprisal raids, forced labor,
"euthanasia," starvation, exposure, medical experiments, and terror
bombing, and in the concentration and death camps, the Nazis murdered
from 15,003,000 to 31,595,000 people, most likely 20,946,000 men,
women, handicapped, aged, sick, prisoners of war, forced laborers,
camp inmates, critics, homosexuals, Jews, Slavs, Serbs, Germans,
Czechs, Italians, Poles, French, Ukrainians, and many others. Among
them 1,000,000 were children under eighteen years of age.1 And none of
these monstrous figures even include civilian and military combat or
war-deaths.
Figure 1.1 presents the range in this democide--genocide and mass
murder--and the most probable figure; table 1.1 subdivides the
democide in various ways, sorts them, and compares this democide to
the war-dead for
Germany and other European nations. The table first lists the various
major genocides carried out by the Nazis and the numbers likely
murdered: 16,315,000 victims overall. Then is shown the 11,283,000
people the Nazis killed through institutional practices, such as
forced "euthanasia," forced labor, and the processing of prisoners of
war; or in Nazi institutions, particularly prisoner of war and
concentration or death camps. Much of this institutionalized killing
was pursuant to one Nazi democide program or another, and the totals
therefore overlap with those for genocide. Finally, the table lists
those occupied nations that suffered democide. Clearly the Soviet
Union and then Poland endured the most.
Shown at the bottom of the table is the number of civilians and
military killed in the war, presumably exclusive of democide.2 In
total, the war killed 28,736,000 Europeans, a fantastic number. But
the democide of Hitler alone adds 20,946,000 more. Were Stalin's
democide during the war of 13,053,000 people3 to be included, the
number of people murdered by just the Nazis and Soviets alone would
exceed the total European war-dead.
When we think of Nazi killing, genocide immediately comes to mind,
particularly that of "6,000,00 Jews." But they also murdered for
reasons other than race or religion. For one, the Nazis slew those who
opposed or hindered them, whether actually or potentially. This was
why Hitler assassinated hundreds of top Nazi SA's (Sturmabteilung)4 in
June and July 1934, who under Ernst Rohm were becoming a strong
competitor to the SS (Schutzstaffel); or executed perhaps 5,000
Germans after the 1944 plot on his life and attempted coup d'etat.
Indeed, it is why critics, pacifists, conscientious objectors, campus
rebels, dissidents, and others throughout the twelve-year history of
the regime in Germany, were executed, disappeared, or slowly died in
concentration camps. The Nazis thus killed some 288,000 Germans, not
counting Jews, homosexuals, and those forcibly "euthanized." If these
are included, then the Nazis murdered at least 498,000 Germans,
probably 762,000. As shown in table 1.2, this was one out of every
hundred Germans.
If one includes the 5,200,000 German civilian and military war-dead,
the average German's likelihood of dying from the regime was slightly
better than one out of eleven--extremely low odds for a life.
As high as this human cost of the Nazis was for the Germans, it was
higher for the countries they invaded and occupied, particularly in
the East. Not only did the Nazis eliminate actual critics and
opponents as a matter of course, but they also prevented any serious
potential opposition by simply exterminating the top leadership,
intellectuals, and professionals. Besides Jews, the Germans murdered
near 2,400,000 Poles, 3,000,000 Ukrainians, 1,593,000 Russians, and
1,400,000 Byelorussians, many of these among the best and the
brightest men and women. The Nazis killed in cold blood nearly one out
of every six Polish or Soviet citizens, including Jews, under their
rule.
Moreover, the Nazis murdered as an administrative device. They used
terror and mass reprisals to maintain their control, prevent sabotage,
and safeguard their soldiers. For the partisans or underground to kill
a German soldier could mean that the Nazis would round up and execute
all the men in a nearby village, burn the village to the ground, and
send all the women and children off to concentration camps. In
retaliation for sabotage, they would shoot dozens and even hundreds of
hostages.
In some occupied areas in which the Nazis had to contend with well
organized and active guerrilla units, they applied a simple rule: they
would massacre one hundred nearby civilians for every German soldier
killed; fifty for every one wounded. Often this was a minimum that
might be doubled or tripled. They thus killed vast numbers of innocent
peasants and townsfolk, possibly as many as 8,000 in Kraguyevats,5
1,755 in Kraljevo,6 and overall 80,000 in Jajinci,7 to name just in a
few places in Yugoslavia alone. Most executions were small in number,
but day by day they added up. From an official German war diary: 16
December 1942, "In Belgrade, 8 arrests, 60 Mihailovich [the guerrilla
Chetnik leader] supporters shot;" 27 December, "In Belgrade, 11
arrests, 250 Mihailovich supporters shot as retaliation."8 A German
placard from Belgrade announced that the Nazis shot fifty hostages in
retaliation for the dynamiting of a bridge. On 25 May 1943 the Nazis
shot 150 hostages in Kraljevo; in October they shot 150 hostages in
Belgrade;9 fifty hostages in Belgrade in August 1943;10 150 Serbs at
Cacak in October;11 and so on. In Greece, as another example, the
Nazis may have burned and destroyed as many as 1,600 villages each
with populations of 500 to 1,000 people,12 no doubt massacring many of
the inhabitants beforehand. Overall, the Nazis thus slaughtered
hundreds of thousands in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Greece, and
France; and millions overall in Poland and the Soviet Union.
But many other regimes have also killed opponents and critics, or used
reprisals to maintain power. What distinguished the Nazis above
virtually all others was their staggering genocide: people were
machine gunned in batches, shot in the head at the edge of trenches,
burned alive while crowded into churches, gassed in vans or fake
shower rooms, starved or frozen to death, worked to death in camps, or
beaten or tortured to death simply because of their race, religion,
handicap, or sexual preference.
Most Nazis were absolute racists, especially among the top echelon;
they believed utterly in the superiority of the "Aryan" race. They had
no doubt that they were the pinnacle of racial evolution, that
eugenically they were the best. So science proved, as many German and
non-German scientists told them. And therefore they could not allow
inferior groups to pollute their racial strain. Inferior races were
like diseased appendixes that had to be surgically removed for the
health of the body. Therefore they must exterminate the Jew and Gypsy.
So also must they liquidate the homosexual and handicapped. So
eventually they must also eliminate the Slavs, after exploiting their
slave labor. Slavs were not only biologically inferior, but also
inhabited territory that Germany needed for the superior race to
expand and grow.
But then the Nazi program ran into the problem of numbers.
Exterminating millions of Jews would be hard enough. But the Slavs
numbered in the tens of millions. Therefore they envisioned a two-part
approach: reduce their number through execution, starvation, and
disease. And then after the war that the Nazis would of course win,
deport the remaining 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 Slavs to Siberia.
These genocides cost the lives of probably 16,315,000 people. Most
likely the Nazis wiped out 5,291,000 Jews, 258,000 Gypsies, 10,547,000
Slavs, and 220,000 homosexuals. They also "euthanized" 173,500
handicapped Germans. Then in repression, terrorism, reprisals, and
other cold-blooded killings done to impose and maintain their rule
throughout Europe, the Nazis murdered more millions including French,
Dutch, Serbs, Slovenes, Czechs, and others. In total, they likely
annihilated 20,946,000 human beings.
Annually, as shown in table 1.2, the Nazis killed six to seven people
out of every hundred in occupied Europe. The odds of a European dying
under Nazi occupation were about one in fifteen.13 As table 1.2 points
out, this is twice the odds of an American dying from one of the nine
worst diseases, specifically stroke, heart disease, diabetes, chronic
obstructive lung disease, lung cancer, breast cancer, cervical cancer,
colorectal cancer, and liver disease.14
Moreover, even though the Nazis hardly matched the democide of the
Soviets and Communist Chinese as shown in table 1.3 , they
proportionally killed more. Figure 1.2 illustrates this. The annual
odds of being killed by the Nazis during their occupation were almost
two-and-a-half times that of Soviet citizens being slain by their
government since1917; over nine times that for Chinese living in
Communist China after 1949. In competition for who can murder
proportionally the most human beings, the Japanese militarists come
closest. The annual odds of being killed by the Japanese during their
occupation of China, Korea, Indonesia, Burma, Indochina, and elsewhere
in Asia was one in 101. Given the years and population available to
this gang of megamurderers, the Nazis have been the most lethal
murderers; and Japanese militarists next deadliest.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES
* From Chapter 1 in R.J. Rummel, Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass
Murder, 1993. For full reference this book, the list of its contents,
and the text of its preface, click book.
1. Feig (1990, p. 174).
2. According to the source, the civilian component of World War II
deaths given in table 1.1 resulted "directly from the war . . . and
war-borne epidemics" (Wright, 1965, p. 1543).
3. Rummel (1990, Chapter 7).
4. This was a private, quasi-military organization of storm troopers
that Hitler began to organize as his private army in 1921, long before
he came to power.
5. Seton-Watson (1961, pp. 120-21).
6. Browning (1990, p. 70).
7. Martin (1978, p. 48).
8. Quoted in ibid., p. 47.
9. Ibid., pp. 47-48.
10. Ibid., p. 70.
11. Ibid., p. 78.
12. Macksey (1975, p. 158).
13. I am trying to express these odds in the most understandable way.
Technically, since the probability of a European dying from Nazi
occupation is .065 and that of surviving is .935, then the odds of
dying are 65 to 935, or 1 to 14.38; the odds of surviving are 14.38 to
1. The 1 in 15 shown in the table is simply determined from the
finding that 6.5 people died out of every 100, or 1 in 15.38.
14. As reported in a study by the national Centers for Disease
Control, 427 Americans out of every 100,000 died from these nine
diseases in 1986 (Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 28 November 1990, p. 1).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For citations see the Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder
REFERENCES
20,946,000 Victims:
Nazi Germany
1933 To 1945*
By R.J. Rummel
Hitler told Himmler that it was not enough for the Jews simply to die;
they must die in agony. What was the best way to prolong their agony?
Himmler turned the problem over to his advisers, who concluded that a
slow, agonizing death could be brought about by placing Jewish
prisoners in freight cars in which the floors were coated
with...quicklime...which produced excruciating burns. The advisers
estimated that it would take four days for the prisoners to die, and
for that whole time the freight cars could be left standing on some
forgotten siding.... Finally it was decided that the freight cars
should be used in addition to the extermination camps.
----Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler
By genocide, the murder of hostages, reprisal raids, forced labor,
"euthanasia," starvation, exposure, medical experiments, and terror
bombing, and in the concentration and death camps, the Nazis murdered
from 15,003,000 to 31,595,000 people, most likely 20,946,000 men,
women, handicapped, aged, sick, prisoners of war, forced laborers,
camp inmates, critics, homosexuals, Jews, Slavs, Serbs, Germans,
Czechs, Italians, Poles, French, Ukrainians, and many others. Among
them 1,000,000 were children under eighteen years of age.1 And none of
these monstrous figures even include civilian and military combat or
war-deaths.
Figure 1.1 presents the range in this democide--genocide and mass
murder--and the most probable figure; table 1.1 subdivides the
democide in various ways, sorts them, and compares this democide to
the war-dead for
Germany and other European nations. The table first lists the various
major genocides carried out by the Nazis and the numbers likely
murdered: 16,315,000 victims overall. Then is shown the 11,283,000
people the Nazis killed through institutional practices, such as
forced "euthanasia," forced labor, and the processing of prisoners of
war; or in Nazi institutions, particularly prisoner of war and
concentration or death camps. Much of this institutionalized killing
was pursuant to one Nazi democide program or another, and the totals
therefore overlap with those for genocide. Finally, the table lists
those occupied nations that suffered democide. Clearly the Soviet
Union and then Poland endured the most.
Shown at the bottom of the table is the number of civilians and
military killed in the war, presumably exclusive of democide.2 In
total, the war killed 28,736,000 Europeans, a fantastic number. But
the democide of Hitler alone adds 20,946,000 more. Were Stalin's
democide during the war of 13,053,000 people3 to be included, the
number of people murdered by just the Nazis and Soviets alone would
exceed the total European war-dead.
When we think of Nazi killing, genocide immediately comes to mind,
particularly that of "6,000,00 Jews." But they also murdered for
reasons other than race or religion. For one, the Nazis slew those who
opposed or hindered them, whether actually or potentially. This was
why Hitler assassinated hundreds of top Nazi SA's (Sturmabteilung)4 in
June and July 1934, who under Ernst Rohm were becoming a strong
competitor to the SS (Schutzstaffel); or executed perhaps 5,000
Germans after the 1944 plot on his life and attempted coup d'etat.
Indeed, it is why critics, pacifists, conscientious objectors, campus
rebels, dissidents, and others throughout the twelve-year history of
the regime in Germany, were executed, disappeared, or slowly died in
concentration camps. The Nazis thus killed some 288,000 Germans, not
counting Jews, homosexuals, and those forcibly "euthanized." If these
are included, then the Nazis murdered at least 498,000 Germans,
probably 762,000. As shown in table 1.2, this was one out of every
hundred Germans.
If one includes the 5,200,000 German civilian and military war-dead,
the average German's likelihood of dying from the regime was slightly
better than one out of eleven--extremely low odds for a life.
As high as this human cost of the Nazis was for the Germans, it was
higher for the countries they invaded and occupied, particularly in
the East. Not only did the Nazis eliminate actual critics and
opponents as a matter of course, but they also prevented any serious
potential opposition by simply exterminating the top leadership,
intellectuals, and professionals. Besides Jews, the Germans murdered
near 2,400,000 Poles, 3,000,000 Ukrainians, 1,593,000 Russians, and
1,400,000 Byelorussians, many of these among the best and the
brightest men and women. The Nazis killed in cold blood nearly one out
of every six Polish or Soviet citizens, including Jews, under their
rule.
Moreover, the Nazis murdered as an administrative device. They used
terror and mass reprisals to maintain their control, prevent sabotage,
and safeguard their soldiers. For the partisans or underground to kill
a German soldier could mean that the Nazis would round up and execute
all the men in a nearby village, burn the village to the ground, and
send all the women and children off to concentration camps. In
retaliation for sabotage, they would shoot dozens and even hundreds of
hostages.
In some occupied areas in which the Nazis had to contend with well
organized and active guerrilla units, they applied a simple rule: they
would massacre one hundred nearby civilians for every German soldier
killed; fifty for every one wounded. Often this was a minimum that
might be doubled or tripled. They thus killed vast numbers of innocent
peasants and townsfolk, possibly as many as 8,000 in Kraguyevats,5
1,755 in Kraljevo,6 and overall 80,000 in Jajinci,7 to name just in a
few places in Yugoslavia alone. Most executions were small in number,
but day by day they added up. From an official German war diary: 16
December 1942, "In Belgrade, 8 arrests, 60 Mihailovich [the guerrilla
Chetnik leader] supporters shot;" 27 December, "In Belgrade, 11
arrests, 250 Mihailovich supporters shot as retaliation."8 A German
placard from Belgrade announced that the Nazis shot fifty hostages in
retaliation for the dynamiting of a bridge. On 25 May 1943 the Nazis
shot 150 hostages in Kraljevo; in October they shot 150 hostages in
Belgrade;9 fifty hostages in Belgrade in August 1943;10 150 Serbs at
Cacak in October;11 and so on. In Greece, as another example, the
Nazis may have burned and destroyed as many as 1,600 villages each
with populations of 500 to 1,000 people,12 no doubt massacring many of
the inhabitants beforehand. Overall, the Nazis thus slaughtered
hundreds of thousands in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Greece, and
France; and millions overall in Poland and the Soviet Union.
But many other regimes have also killed opponents and critics, or used
reprisals to maintain power. What distinguished the Nazis above
virtually all others was their staggering genocide: people were
machine gunned in batches, shot in the head at the edge of trenches,
burned alive while crowded into churches, gassed in vans or fake
shower rooms, starved or frozen to death, worked to death in camps, or
beaten or tortured to death simply because of their race, religion,
handicap, or sexual preference.
Most Nazis were absolute racists, especially among the top echelon;
they believed utterly in the superiority of the "Aryan" race. They had
no doubt that they were the pinnacle of racial evolution, that
eugenically they were the best. So science proved, as many German and
non-German scientists told them. And therefore they could not allow
inferior groups to pollute their racial strain. Inferior races were
like diseased appendixes that had to be surgically removed for the
health of the body. Therefore they must exterminate the Jew and Gypsy.
So also must they liquidate the homosexual and handicapped. So
eventually they must also eliminate the Slavs, after exploiting their
slave labor. Slavs were not only biologically inferior, but also
inhabited territory that Germany needed for the superior race to
expand and grow.
But then the Nazi program ran into the problem of numbers.
Exterminating millions of Jews would be hard enough. But the Slavs
numbered in the tens of millions. Therefore they envisioned a two-part
approach: reduce their number through execution, starvation, and
disease. And then after the war that the Nazis would of course win,
deport the remaining 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 Slavs to Siberia.
These genocides cost the lives of probably 16,315,000 people. Most
likely the Nazis wiped out 5,291,000 Jews, 258,000 Gypsies, 10,547,000
Slavs, and 220,000 homosexuals. They also "euthanized" 173,500
handicapped Germans. Then in repression, terrorism, reprisals, and
other cold-blooded killings done to impose and maintain their rule
throughout Europe, the Nazis murdered more millions including French,
Dutch, Serbs, Slovenes, Czechs, and others. In total, they likely
annihilated 20,946,000 human beings.
Annually, as shown in table 1.2, the Nazis killed six to seven people
out of every hundred in occupied Europe. The odds of a European dying
under Nazi occupation were about one in fifteen.13 As table 1.2 points
out, this is twice the odds of an American dying from one of the nine
worst diseases, specifically stroke, heart disease, diabetes, chronic
obstructive lung disease, lung cancer, breast cancer, cervical cancer,
colorectal cancer, and liver disease.14
Moreover, even though the Nazis hardly matched the democide of the
Soviets and Communist Chinese as shown in table 1.3 , they
proportionally killed more. Figure 1.2 illustrates this. The annual
odds of being killed by the Nazis during their occupation were almost
two-and-a-half times that of Soviet citizens being slain by their
government since1917; over nine times that for Chinese living in
Communist China after 1949. In competition for who can murder
proportionally the most human beings, the Japanese militarists come
closest. The annual odds of being killed by the Japanese during their
occupation of China, Korea, Indonesia, Burma, Indochina, and elsewhere
in Asia was one in 101. Given the years and population available to
this gang of megamurderers, the Nazis have been the most lethal
murderers; and Japanese militarists next deadliest.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES
* From Chapter 1 in R.J. Rummel, Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass
Murder, 1993. For full reference this book, the list of its contents,
and the text of its preface, click book.
1. Feig (1990, p. 174).
2. According to the source, the civilian component of World War II
deaths given in table 1.1 resulted "directly from the war . . . and
war-borne epidemics" (Wright, 1965, p. 1543).
3. Rummel (1990, Chapter 7).
4. This was a private, quasi-military organization of storm troopers
that Hitler began to organize as his private army in 1921, long before
he came to power.
5. Seton-Watson (1961, pp. 120-21).
6. Browning (1990, p. 70).
7. Martin (1978, p. 48).
8. Quoted in ibid., p. 47.
9. Ibid., pp. 47-48.
10. Ibid., p. 70.
11. Ibid., p. 78.
12. Macksey (1975, p. 158).
13. I am trying to express these odds in the most understandable way.
Technically, since the probability of a European dying from Nazi
occupation is .065 and that of surviving is .935, then the odds of
dying are 65 to 935, or 1 to 14.38; the odds of surviving are 14.38 to
1. The 1 in 15 shown in the table is simply determined from the
finding that 6.5 people died out of every 100, or 1 in 15.38.
14. As reported in a study by the national Centers for Disease
Control, 427 Americans out of every 100,000 died from these nine
diseases in 1986 (Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 28 November 1990, p. 1).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For citations see the Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder
REFERENCES