Part 1: Cities Burn… The Holocaust from Warszawa, PL to Berlin, GE
|
Again the Polish rebelled in 1944, in a battle that is referred to as the Warsaw Uprising. With the Soviet army approaching Warszawa, the Polish Resistance Home Army planned the largest major European uprising against the Nazis during World War II. The Polish forces, outgunned, starved, and exhausted was anticipating support from the red army once they arrived. For 63 days the Polish resistance fought the Nazis, and for 63 days the Soviet army, with an airbase only a five minute flight away, refused to advance. The result was 40,000 Polish casualties, 27,000 Nazi casualties, ~200,000 civilian casualties, and 700,000 civilians fled or were expelled from the city- 25% of the city was levelled to the ground. The Nazis were victorious and the resistance movement ultimately failed.
|
For this effort, the order to completely destroy Warszawa, the capitol of Poland at the time, was issued by SS Chief Heinrich Himmler:
“The city must completely disappear from the surface of the Earth…No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation.”
“The city must completely disappear from the surface of the Earth…No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation.”
With this order, began the deliberate and systematic destruction of an entire city. Nazi forces moved from street to street, building to building, and blew up or burnt down every one they could get their hand on. By the end of the Nazi rampage, 85% of the city, or over 10,000 buildings, were completely destroyed. Overall, ~60% of the population was killed; most of the rest were deported. After the Nazis had finished demolishing the city, the Soviets advanced to reclaim the city. Those that survived had lived through winter with little food, shelter, or clothes. The remaining population was so few and the survivors so isolated, that many believed they were the only ones left alive in the city. Those that survived in these conditions would come to be known as the Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw.
For this reason, most of what is seen in modern day Warszawa is a city completely rebuilt by the Soviet Union between the 1950’s and 1980’s. This is why Warszawa, despite being an old city, is one of the youngest World Heritage sites (given this title in 1980). All of the buildings that are seen in old town are reconstructions based on old photographs, paintings, and personal accounts. Many of the buildings, upon being rebuilt, were modified to suit communist ideologies. Churches lack stained glass, statues of the Virgin Mary hold baskets instead of the baby Jesus, the ornate style of baroque found in most European cities is dumbed down or completely not present.
|
By 1945, the Americans and British were working together with the Soviets to bring an end to the Nazi regime. As a result, a decree for all-out war was issued by the United States. Most resources and manufacturing were converted or used for the war effort as a necessary means to thwart the Germans. Dresden, the capitol of the German state of Saxony was targeted. Targeting Dresden is perhaps one of the most controversial attacks by the allies during World War II. While the Nazis claim that the city contained mostly civilian targets, the allies maintain that the city was an essential shipping port and manufacturing community for the Nazi war effort. In 1945, from February 13-15, four air raids from the allied forces were conducted on the city of Dresden. Over 1,200 aircraft dropped over 3,900 tons of explosives- in three days the firebombing of Dresden demolished 1,600 acres of the city. Nazis originally claimed a death toll of 200,000, but independent investigation suggests the death toll closer to 25,000 people.
The flames from the ensuing fire were so hot that many buildings not directly struck by bombs still collapsed into rubble. The heat from the flames caused the bricks in the buildings to expand and as the bricks cooled, they contracted and the buildings collapsed in on themselves. Bricks that fell from buildings were inventoried. Those that could be salvaged were kept and put in their original location during the rebuilding process. Those that could not be salvaged were replaced by new bricks. The end result is buildings that have a patchwork of bricks- the old bricks, still black and charred from the flame.
|
Berlin was to house the capitol of the Nazi regime and contained the private bunker of Adolf Hitler and the main headquarters of the SS. During the war, Berlin was the target of over 360 bombing raids by the United States, the British, and the Soviets. As a result, the city’s population nearly halved over the course of World War II. Hitler, understanding that the Nazi war effort was all but defeated, became a recluse- confined to his bunker for much on 1945. In his final days, he
|
became paralyzed by fear and paranoia and he lost part of his vision. Understanding that his capture would likely result in his body being desecrated and dragged through town, he killed himself via cyanide and a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head on April 30, 1945 and ordered his body to be incinerated.
|
In total, the Holocaust took the lives of 11 million people- 6 million of these people were Jews. The remaining victims included: Polish, homosexuals, mentally and physically handicapped, the elderly, Slavs, Soviets, communists, Romanis, Freemasons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Now, a monument remains in the heart of Berlin, to remind people of the losses encountered during the Nazi reign of terror. Throughout the city, several monuments remain- reminding us all of this past and beseeching us to never let it happen again.
Holocaust Memorial for Murdered Jews in Berlin, Germany
The ultimate irony of the whole event is that very few Nazis, when you consider the number of those enrolled in the regime, were punished or received sentences for the roles they played in the holocaust. Every once in a while, we hear a news story about someelderly former Nazi being brought to trail and we all get to feel good and pretend that justice has been served. However, the allied powers were much more concerned with the spread of communism and the threat of the Soviets to really focus on punishment, trials, and ‘denazification’.
After WWII, Germany was split into two countries, East Germany (German Democratic Republic) controlled by the Soviet Union and West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) controlled by France, UK, and USA. Tensions escalated and eventually on August 13, 1961, construction of the Berlin Wall began; splitting Berlin in two. The wall was used as propaganda on both sides- the West claiming it was a ‘wall of shame’ manufactured by the communists that was meant to tear the city apart, and the East claiming it was a protectant from the Nazis located in the West. The West of course, claimed that the Nazi influence had perished since the liberation from the West. The East claimed that all of the civilians on their side were communists and thus could not be fascist Nazis. Refusing to accept that either side contained Nazis and insisting that one side was guiltier than another became a propaganda tactic for claiming superiority during the cold war. In the meantime, to operate the cities, many of the people that served as judges, scientists, investigators, teachers, police offers, etc… for the Nazi regime kept on doing the same work after the war that they had done for the Nazi regime during the war.
|
AlthoughGermany has paid over $61.8 billion in reparations, after the war they did not come to all who suffered. For example, victims were entitled to reparations only if they were victimized by the Nazi party for ‘political reasons.’ Jews could also receive reparations for their suffering. However, being targeted for homosexuality was not deemed worthy of reparations; homosexuality was not legal in either East or West Germany. For this reason, the actions of the Nazis against homosexuals were, in a sense, deemed justifiable, or at least not worthy of consideration for assistance to those which were mistreated or killed during the Nazi terror. One court even went as far as to rule that a man named Gunther Eggeling, attempting to claim reparations due to the Nazi’s treatment of him for homosexuality, was a “fake victim of Fascism” and as a result was sentenced to one year imprisonment for fraud as a deterrent for others trying to claim reparations for mistreatment due to their sexual orientation.
Perhaps the most troubling of all the issues discussed in this blog is the timeline in which all of this happened- people are alive that experienced these atrocities firsthand. These events occurred within a lifetime- the Belin Wall only came down (politically) in 1989. Although I’d like to leave us all with a nice little narrative saying that I think we’ve had the time to learn from our past and that something like this could never happen again- I’d prefer to leave us with a more cautious narrative than that. You see, some of our grandparents fought in the war, most of our parents lived through the cold war, and modern warfare only shows us that somewhere the lesson is getting lost. The War to End All Wars already had its over-the-top sequel and we’ve been producing low budget spin-offs ever since. Every day, it seems, the political rhetoric and fundamentalist undertones of the world grow more desperate and more extreme. To me, the greatest threat to humanity is not that we may destroy each other, it’s that we have so much knowledge at our disposal, so much knowledge that people alive today have already experienced firsthand, and yet we seem to be complacent leaving all of that on the table. It’s the idea that, not matter how much we analyze the data, we’ll never reach the right conclusions. That our fate is just that, fate, and that no amount of inquiry, logic, or observation can save us from it.
It’s not the threat that we extinguish ourselves, but rather the notion that we all know better and choose to extinguish ourselves anyway. And those responsible, like so many war criminals of the past, will never receive their day of reckoning.
2 Comments
Science /ˈsīəns/
verb
the act of partaking in, learning about, or teaching about the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
"We're gonna science the Hell outta this thing!"
Bradley Lusk, PhD
I have embarked on a mission to bridge cultures through science and human discovery. For this mission, I will be visiting innovators, entrepreneurs, and game changers around the world to bring you perspective on how logic and innovation unite our planet in a quest for knowledge.
Join me as we science
one individual,
one community,
one Earth at a time.
Archives
July 2018
June 2018
October 2017
April 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014