World War I & II topic

Serbia wasn't a Nazi client state. The Nazis established two puppet governments, both of which were rejected by the people of Serbia.
 
Alright, alright, that cannot be denied.

In Yugoslavia the picture was complicated.

But 60 percent of the 1.7 million deaths were caused by Yugoslav fighting Yugoslav. I just cannot see well how people would care for others out there.
 
Forostar said:
But 60 percent of the 1.7 million deaths were caused by Yugoslav fighting Yugoslav. I just cannot see well how people would care for others out there.
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Yes, because of the way the Nazis exacerbated the cultural differences between the two, empowering horrid groups like the Ustase to repress the people who wouldn't fall in line. But when it comes to the Holocaust in Yugoslavia - there were only about 20,000 Jews, and the Einsatzrgruppen killed most of them personally, during broader purges. There was no chance to protest - because when the Nazis came for the Jews, they came for anyone who would opposed them and put them all to the sword.
 
You can eject Yugoslavia out of the discussion and use Czech Republic, Poland or Soviet Union as an example too.
 
Actually, Bulgaria organized pro-Jew protests, and succeeded in blocking the deportation of most of its Jews. So there's that.
 
Not something you are not aware of I reckon.

www.humanityinaction.org

Sofia: Double-Faced Bulgaria - Humanity in Action

Published by Humanity in Action in 2013, Civil Society and the Holocaust: International Perspectives on Resistance and Rescue examines the different ways that European countries and the United States responded to the Holocaust. This anthology was created as part of “Civil Society: Reactions to...
www.humanityinaction.org www.humanityinaction.org
 
LooseCannon said:
Yes, because of the way the Nazis exacerbated the cultural differences between the two, empowering horrid groups like the Ustase to repress the people who wouldn't fall in line. But when it comes to the Holocaust in Yugoslavia - there were only about 20,000 Jews, and the Einsatzrgruppen killed most of them personally, during broader purges. There was no chance to protest - because when the Nazis came for the Jews, they came for anyone who would opposed them and put them all to the sword.
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I think that there is no general grasp on the dimension of terror the Germans inflicted in the east. People tend to think of the Holocaust in terms of Auschwitz, people being killed behind barbed wires and watchtowers, and of the war as something detached from that that happened between tanks on a large plain, with Stalingrad as the exception.
But what really happened was that the Wehrmacht, the SS and the Gestapo, i.e. the entirety of Germany's military forces, went into every single village. Rounded up people. Killed whoever put up resistance. Killed whoever they thought was a Jew. Killed whoever thought was hiding or protecting Jews. Burned down villages. Shot masses of people in broad daylight on streets in the middle of large cities. Over two million Jews were murdered by the Germans in the Soviet Union by bullets. Not in gas chambers. Not in concentration camps. In the cities, in the villages, in the countrysides. More than 15 million Soviet civilians died in the war. Those weren't casualties in bombing raids or collateral damage in artillery fire. Those were people the Germans rounded up and murdered for everyone to see, people who starved to death because the Germans confiscated or spoiled their crop, people who froze to death because the Germans burned down their houses. More than 3 million Soviet POWs died in German camps under the most horrible circumstances imaginable. All this was known. To everyone. Death was everywhere and people were powerless against it. Anyone who would raise their voice or shoot a German would become the next corpse in a growing count of millions.
There were horrible massacres and crimes the Germans committed in other countries, but I'm just going to be bold and say that this dimension and omnipresence of death and terror and the pure knowledge that you can be next and there's nothing you can do about it was something not experienced by anyone in countries of western Europe.
 
Forostar said:
Not something you are not aware of I reckon.

www.humanityinaction.org

Sofia: Double-Faced Bulgaria - Humanity in Action

Published by Humanity in Action in 2013, Civil Society and the Holocaust: International Perspectives on Resistance and Rescue examines the different ways that European countries and the United States responded to the Holocaust. This anthology was created as part of “Civil Society: Reactions to...
www.humanityinaction.org www.humanityinaction.org
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Ah, I see. I did say "most of its Jews". For a small country that was part of the Axis, I think that was way better than one could hope for.
 
Agreed, none of that takes away from the lives that were saved. It's like saying Oskar Schindler didn't do enough.
 
When I see Yugoslavia mentioned in a WW2 topic I can't help but think how horrible Yugoslav POWs were exploited by the Nazis. In fact, out of all who died in Norway during WW2, Yugoslav POWs who died while being used as slave labor by the Nazis amounted to a higher number than Norwegian military casualties.

Speaking of deportation of the Jews - there's been a new round of debate about this in Norway lately. Two years ago a book was published, claiming that the Home Front could've been able to help many more Jews escape prior to the deportation of 700+ in November 1942, but that they were neglected or not given priority. As well-known members of the Home Front were mentioned by name in that book, there's been arguing about whether it was fair to claim these individuals either neglected the threat agains the Norwegian Jews, or profited from assisting those who did escape. Another book was published last year, refuting some of the claims in the former.

Regardless, it remains a difficult question how Denmark were able to help so many of their Jewish population escape to Sweden, while more than 1 in 3 Norwegian Jews were deported to Auschwitz. There might have been anti-Semitism involved, but considering the marginal support of the Nasjonal Samling party (Quisling's party) I doubt this was such a great factor in Norway compared to other countries. I wonder if the "lenient vs strict occupation" can have contributed as well, although I'm not sure how lenient the occupation in Denmark was in 1942? I know it was definitely stricter in Norway than it was in 1940-41.
 
My grandma spent her years 17 to 22 in WW2. She was working in Italian tobacco factory, happily, until cops arrested her on false pretenses, put her in Karmerlengo fortress for a month, and put out cigarettes over her tits. As soon as she was releases she joined the war.From 1941 to 1945, foot soldier of the 2nd Dalmatian assault brigade.

I imagine someone coming to her and asking : wHY didNt YoU gUYs prOtEST aGaInst Hitler
 
Forostar said:
I do not agree with the sole reason of having bad conditions to protest.
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I do not agree with protesting as opposed to fighting, it makes you look like a p**sy in the eyes of your enemy/adversary.
 
I'm not aware of the Netherlands ever being called a client or puppet state (a type of client state) during WWII.
I'm searching now but cannot really find good support for this. As opposed to Serbia/Croatia.

There sure was collaboration in the Netherlands, and yes, there were people who served in German Army and Waffen-SS, forced or voluntarily.

I found this here https://ww2db.com/country/netherlands:

There were Dutch who supported the German occupation. Largely registered members of the NSB, which was about 3% of the adult Dutch population at the start of the war but grew during the occupation, they held many civilian posts in the occupation government, searched for Jews for bounty, and several thousand joined the German military. In regards to the latter, between 20,000 and 25,000 Dutch served in the German Army and the Waffen-SS, most of whom were assigned to the 4th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Brigade Nederland which saw action against the Soviet Union and the SS Volunteer Grenadier Brigade Landstorm Nederland which fought in the Low Countries.
 
Forostar said:
As opposed to Serbia/Croatia.
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This finding of yours isn't based in reality, because nobody in Yugoslavia voted Nazi puppets in or supported them en masse.

If you're not aware, in April 1941 Axis attacked and invaded Yugoslavia which experienced a total, massive defeat. The victors were setting up the environment, as for the Nazis they always preferred having someone that's "legitimate" as puppet. As far as I'm concerned, this happened in neither Serbia or Croatia. The peasant party refused Hitler. All normal parties refused. Hitler had no other choice than to put Musollini trained Ustashe movement on the top, noone else wanted.

Ultimately, you were liberated by Allies, we liberated ourselves.

Prior to south Italy landings only swats of allied territory in mainland europe ware rural pieces of Yugoslavia under Tito's control. Allied missions used to paradrop in. What kind of a client state has several hundred thousand strong rebel army in the woods and mountains?

Definitions are very lazy. Here we have a client state but it's sucessfully fighting the occupant and over there we don't have a client state, they march against the oppressors and in the end they need an external fighting force to even start with liberating territories.

I'm not saying Dutch are less brave, it's all about the historical events, terrain and the vicinity of the enemy. 200k Dutch couldn't hide in the middle of their country like Yugoslavs did, and it was less complicated for Germans to control a near low land. You did what you could do in the given moment, so did we. I don't see what's all this discussion about.

Also if you're wondering why people didn't protest you presume they went on about their lives and chose to not protest. Which puts a bad rep to everyone that just tried to keep their head down in WW2 so someone doesn't come raping women and burning villages.
 
I mean, it's just different strokes for different folks - literally. The ideology of the Nazis is at the core of how they occupied each area, and that is what motivated different types of resistance, from protest to the violent guerilla war that was undertaken in the hills of the former Yugoslavia. If the Nazis had gone into Belgrade and used the "velvet glove" approach, maybe things would be different. But they didn't, because Slavs of all sorts were sub-human, so they just started fucking killing them from day one. There was no honeymoon period like there was in western countries.

Each country has national sins when it comes to the Holocaust, from collaborators who told the SS where Jewish people were hiding for money, to local authorities who were kept in power and looked the other way, to volunteers who joined the SS and actively fought for the Nazi regime. This is as true for the countries who were not occupied as those who were. It's not worth getting into a pissing contest over - there's nothing less useful than arguing about which country did better than others. To crib from @Perun: nationalism and definition of the other is the thing that started the Holocaust. It can't supplant it, and nobody should be overly proud of their performance.
 
LooseCannon said:
But they didn't, because Slavs of all sorts were sub-human
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Sort of but then again devil in the details; those that were on the path of lebensraum were declared subhuman so it is easier to take away their land.

The lands of the south slavs were quite uninteresting for the reich, apart from making sure that the enemy does not get them. That's why they attacked Yugoslavia in 1941 in the first place. I'm not sure about Serbs but regarding Slovenes, Croats and Bosnian Muslims (seen as Croat Muslims at the time of WW2 in hopes for getting them to fight for NDH), Hitler had no extermination or enslavement plans.
 
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