Were tens of thousands of Jews, Soviets and Polish POW worked to death on one of Britain’s channel islands during World War II? Did the Holocaust extend to British territory? John Weigold.. is a figure shrouded in mystery—a self-proclaimed recluse at the center of what has been a coordinated, and often unruly, effort to rewrite the history of the place he calls home. When he first visited the English Channel island of Alderney as a child, on vacation with his parents from Essex, he sensed what he remembered as a “dark energy.”
Also, I couldn't read "difficulty of grasping the gigantism and networked complexity of modernity" without thinking of today's Republican party. In any modern, affluent country government is enormous, cost enormous sums and is involved in every aspect of the economy and society, and this simple fact is driving them mad.
It is fascinating to chart the structure of power, the ways in which millions of lives are shaped by complex structures of decision-making with stunning implications for the world.
I think though, that one can spend so much time analysing the "how" that you forget the "why". Germany became a nihilistic death-state for a reason. The drivers of this were a complex and multi-faceted series of factors. If we can understand this better we can stop it from happening again.
Understanding the "how" is often a more administrative task which is the delight of the historian who is motivated by the challenge of precisely recreating the past. Which is a different job.
While this piece of history writing is no doubt an important addition to the studies on the Holocaust, writing it at a time when acts of genocide are taking place in Gaza, seems to be either wilful blindness or deliberate diversion. I am sorely disappointed the Mr. Tooze does not have a single comment on the death and destruction of thousands in Gaza.
Savage Continent, Keith Lowe's history of Europe in the immediate post-war period (roughly 1945-1949) does a good job of chronicling not only the horror, but the complexity and scope of the Nazi machine. In the early days of the liberation of Germany, the scale of the crimes committed against the Jews were not clear to many Allied military officials, simply because all of Germany was a slave-labor camp with hundreds of facilities where the death rates were staggering. With the discovery of the first extermination camps what we now know as the Holocaust became clearer, but even then Jews were not singled out by the Allied authorities for any special treatment or protection or recompense, they were just seen as part of a mass of millions of Displaced Persons, or DP's, all victims of the Nazis.
Hello Professor Tooze, I read your article with amusement, I am the man you seek to discredit, John Weigold. I am not an amateur historian, I am a former Army Officer with 17 years military experience, my conclusions derive from my military knowledge not an o level in history. The Harpers article you quote is demonstrably based on a false narrative and is libellous. Your arguments although impressive are somewhat irrelevant as they are based on the SS concentration camp system not the extermination by labour program run by the OT during the 3 year OT construction project. As you say, the SS didn’t arrive on the island until early 1943 by which time the project was almost complete. During the 3 year project the OT employed a workforce of at least 6000 slave labourers. Most were subjected to the E by L program by which they were forced to work 12/7 at hard labour on a diet of 2 litres of watery soup a day. Under the program the slave workers were deliberately worked to death, a process expected to take no more than 3 months. This means that a majority of the workforce would have died and been replaced every 3 months for 3 years. You can do the maths yourself or you can disprove the E by L program and its consequences happened. I challenge you to do that. You dispute the total number of forced and slave labourers who died throughout Europe which I said was 5 to 7 million. This estimate is based on named historical references, a list of which I gave to Panovka and which she passed on to you. Are you saying all those references are wrong? Did you do your own research to disprove them in order to reach your stated figure of 2 to 2.5 million? As you have discredited me I would like to take this discussion further, directly if you would care to contact me otherwise you will hear from me indirectly in the coming months. Many thanks. Regards, JW.
I think this a fascinating article. The only thing I want to comment on , is the mentioning of Germans and Eastern Europeans collaborators but not the Western European collaborators, mainly the French Vichy government.. Of course this collaboration was generally not on the same level that happened in Eastern Europe but it must not be forgotten.
Applause for Adam Tooze’s call for serious history of horrifying events.
great to read careful history vs sloppy journalism
Also, I couldn't read "difficulty of grasping the gigantism and networked complexity of modernity" without thinking of today's Republican party. In any modern, affluent country government is enormous, cost enormous sums and is involved in every aspect of the economy and society, and this simple fact is driving them mad.
It is fascinating to chart the structure of power, the ways in which millions of lives are shaped by complex structures of decision-making with stunning implications for the world.
I think though, that one can spend so much time analysing the "how" that you forget the "why". Germany became a nihilistic death-state for a reason. The drivers of this were a complex and multi-faceted series of factors. If we can understand this better we can stop it from happening again.
Understanding the "how" is often a more administrative task which is the delight of the historian who is motivated by the challenge of precisely recreating the past. Which is a different job.
While this piece of history writing is no doubt an important addition to the studies on the Holocaust, writing it at a time when acts of genocide are taking place in Gaza, seems to be either wilful blindness or deliberate diversion. I am sorely disappointed the Mr. Tooze does not have a single comment on the death and destruction of thousands in Gaza.
Savage Continent, Keith Lowe's history of Europe in the immediate post-war period (roughly 1945-1949) does a good job of chronicling not only the horror, but the complexity and scope of the Nazi machine. In the early days of the liberation of Germany, the scale of the crimes committed against the Jews were not clear to many Allied military officials, simply because all of Germany was a slave-labor camp with hundreds of facilities where the death rates were staggering. With the discovery of the first extermination camps what we now know as the Holocaust became clearer, but even then Jews were not singled out by the Allied authorities for any special treatment or protection or recompense, they were just seen as part of a mass of millions of Displaced Persons, or DP's, all victims of the Nazis.
Touche'.
Hello Professor Tooze, I read your article with amusement, I am the man you seek to discredit, John Weigold. I am not an amateur historian, I am a former Army Officer with 17 years military experience, my conclusions derive from my military knowledge not an o level in history. The Harpers article you quote is demonstrably based on a false narrative and is libellous. Your arguments although impressive are somewhat irrelevant as they are based on the SS concentration camp system not the extermination by labour program run by the OT during the 3 year OT construction project. As you say, the SS didn’t arrive on the island until early 1943 by which time the project was almost complete. During the 3 year project the OT employed a workforce of at least 6000 slave labourers. Most were subjected to the E by L program by which they were forced to work 12/7 at hard labour on a diet of 2 litres of watery soup a day. Under the program the slave workers were deliberately worked to death, a process expected to take no more than 3 months. This means that a majority of the workforce would have died and been replaced every 3 months for 3 years. You can do the maths yourself or you can disprove the E by L program and its consequences happened. I challenge you to do that. You dispute the total number of forced and slave labourers who died throughout Europe which I said was 5 to 7 million. This estimate is based on named historical references, a list of which I gave to Panovka and which she passed on to you. Are you saying all those references are wrong? Did you do your own research to disprove them in order to reach your stated figure of 2 to 2.5 million? As you have discredited me I would like to take this discussion further, directly if you would care to contact me otherwise you will hear from me indirectly in the coming months. Many thanks. Regards, JW.
I think this a fascinating article. The only thing I want to comment on , is the mentioning of Germans and Eastern Europeans collaborators but not the Western European collaborators, mainly the French Vichy government.. Of course this collaboration was generally not on the same level that happened in Eastern Europe but it must not be forgotten.