Hektor wrote: ↑Sat May 24, 2025 1:06 pm
Archie wrote: ↑Sun May 11, 2025 5:04 pm
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When Hitler referred to the "vernichtung" of Jewry in January 1939, was he, in your opinion, referring to a plan to murder them?
If so, why were they still discussing the Madagascar plan in 1940?
If "vernichtung" does NOT mean killing in that speech, what implications might this have?
It pretty obviously wasn't referring to 'killing'. More in the sense of destruction of their presence in Europe. And that was even conditional.
In military or political German vernichten had a different meaning than in post-war colloquial German.
In a military sense, annihilation has to do with rendering something or someone powerless. Hitler spoke of annihilating France, but this in no way refers to the extermination of the French people or even the end of the French state, but rather to rendering it geopolitically powerless.
As for the Jews, he clearly saw them as an element of “bad fermentation”. They did not have the same ethos as the people they lived among and, as they had international connections, encouraged disunity, so only by removing them from Europe could peace be possible.
I do not see what the reason would be for killing them and what benefit this would have for them. If they did not want to reproduce, it would have been enough to sterilize them.