Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

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It would have been far easier for Nazis to shoot all "lesser" races too, yet they used to send people to concentration camps first. And yes, people used to be released from those from time to time too. The answer with Nazis was that after arrival at a concentration camp the weak were sent to immediate excution, the rest were kept for labour, and everyone was stripped off their possessions first - which was very convenient because people were told they would be relocated, so they brought valuables with them. That centralized the wealth gathering, execution and labour into a single package, which made a lot more sense than trying to do it on the spot everywhere they went.

But specifically in the case of Uighurs - you can eliminate a culture by erasing its identity, without killing the people. That seems to be what China is doing - they are not straight up killing them, just putting them in camps for "reeducation" so they behave and think like model Chinese citizens, with harsh punishments for following their original culture. That way, "Uighurs" as a group will be wiped out without necessarily killing them all.

The Nazis committed many mass shootings, predating the concentration camps in many cases.

Snyder’s Bloodlands is the definitive work on the subject. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlands

That just confirms the point. Shooting people wasn't economical.

It is more economical than building massive housing complexes and feeding entire populations for years on end

No it isn't, and it doesn't take much research to find out why. Any time the Nazis did it(like in Lvov) it took a huge amount of work to help with burrying/burning the bodies, Nazis didn't want to do it so they would conscript the local population, which was then likely to strike back as they knew exactly what would happen to them. If you told people you were "relocating" them they were far more likely to come peacefully, and concentration camps provided a very valuable source of labour to nearby areas. As for feeding them....it doesn't take much to find out that they were barely fed anything. Pretty much only the prisoners who received outside parcels with food survived more than a month or two, simply because the prisoners weren't fed, given proper clothing or any care whatsoever. The same with "massive housing complexes" - Auschwitz initially used existing military barracks and then built very simple huts for Birkenau. It's hard to call it housing.

Completely false. The transportation and logistical requirement alone would have outweighed the costs of a mass grave or pyre.

Are you like....just saying what feels right without any historical research or background whatsoever?

The cost of a mass grave is that now the entire city knows you're killing people and you're coming for them. It leads to formation of resistance forces, kills your soldiers, stops the occupation from progressing.

Transportation is free because you took over the railways. Building concentration camps is free because it's done by literal slaves who have no choice anyway, and is done with local materials taken from existing housing. It's not like Nazis were paying market prices for any of this.

Like, I have no idea why were even arguing about this. Go and visit Auschwitz, it's all explained in the museum there. Read some books about occupations of Lvov or Warsaw - Nazis very quickly stopped executing people en-masse because it was more trouble than it was worth. You can say you disagree, but that's just arguing with facts.

Is this some bizarre new form of holocaust denial? "Yes, it happened, but the Nazis _could_ have been so much worse!"

It's even more bizzare if you look at the original claim.

"China isn't committing a genocide like the Nazis, because they could just shoot everyone. But, the Nazis didn't do it either, so the Nazis weren't committing genocide like those damn Nazis either"

Bizzare argument.

That's why they built the extermination camp in Auschwitz. There were direct train tracks to Auschwitz via rail from pretty much anywhere back in the day.

Bodies are manpower, the backbone of most human endeavors. It's not efficient to use men to kill other men, en mass.

The logistical cost varied depending on how deliberate the action was. Some killings, like the famous one in Romania, took a lot of planning. Others were more ad hoc, mostly using squads that would have been operating anyway, or using groups of nationals that could not have been turned to a more “useful” purpose (forgive the cold language!) It’s a large topic.

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