Re: Forwarded from John Edmundson (on Holocaust analogies)

["Johannes Schneider" <Johannes.Schneider@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect wrote:
>
> What explains the turn toward extermination?
>
> Mayer convincingly makes the case that a kind of psychosis developed after
> the failure of the campaign against the USSR. When military defeat seemed
> in the offing, it became necessary to find a scapegoat. Also, there were
> clear signs that the sense of impending doom gave the Nazis carte blanche
> to murder the Jews, especially since the Eastern campaign had made mass
> murder of civilians almost routine.
>

I have not read Arno Mayer's book so I can only comment on the argument
here, which does not look very convincingly, if we look at the chronology.

The Einsatzgruppen terror started right after the German invasion in the
Soviet Union. In January 1942 the extermination of European Jewry was
decided at the Wannsee conference, whereas the German army still made huge
avances in the summer of 1942. The battle of Stalingrad is commonly regarded
as the turning point of the war, it ended in the January of 1943, one year
after the Wannsee conference.

Johannes