It is one of the many harebrained postulates with which fascist apologists and holocaust deniers throughout the years have attempted to use to retroactively weasel parts of the Reich out of responsibility for the murder of several million people, or usually just Hitler in particular.
The logic is obviously completely spurious, but the argument generally goes along the lines of, “Hitler told his subordinates to ‘get rid of’ the Jews and he probably just meant deporting them or something, but instead his underlings decided to murder everybody instead. Besides, even if he said ‘kill em all,’ Hitler has no blood on his hands since everyone else did all the dirty work for him!!!”
And he did say kill 'em all, repeatedly. I’ll leave you with a quote from the asshole himself, spoken to journalist Joseph Hell (what a name) in 1922 (i.e. well before the war):
Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows — at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example — as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews.
I mean, with how explicit that is, it’s pretty damn tough to dodge responsibility.
Furthermore, there is a sliding scale of increasingly insane claims from holocaust deniers ranging from, “Hitler only meant to deport the Jews and his subordinates decided to kill them all instead,” to, “The Final Solution was dreamed up by Goebbels/Himmler/Eichmann/whoever without Hitler’s explicit approval and he had no knowledge of the true scope and nature of it,” all the way down to, “He was whacked out of his gourd on amphetamines by the end of the war and gibbering nonsense, so it was actually the responsibility of his generals and staff to ignore all of it, but they didn’t.” All of which is all quite demonstrably bullshit (see above).
Sure, Hitler only gave the orders to exterminate millions. That’s totally different…
“I didn’t shoot that guy, I ‘only’ pulled the trigger! The hammer, firing pin, primer, gunpowder, and bullet all acted on their own.”
I’ve heard of just following orders before, but just issuing orders is a new one.
It is one of the many harebrained postulates with which fascist apologists and holocaust deniers throughout the years have attempted to use to retroactively weasel parts of the Reich out of responsibility for the murder of several million people, or usually just Hitler in particular.
The logic is obviously completely spurious, but the argument generally goes along the lines of, “Hitler told his subordinates to ‘get rid of’ the Jews and he probably just meant deporting them or something, but instead his underlings decided to murder everybody instead. Besides, even if he said ‘kill em all,’ Hitler has no blood on his hands since everyone else did all the dirty work for him!!!”
And he did say kill 'em all, repeatedly. I’ll leave you with a quote from the asshole himself, spoken to journalist Joseph Hell (what a name) in 1922 (i.e. well before the war):
I mean, with how explicit that is, it’s pretty damn tough to dodge responsibility.
Furthermore, there is a sliding scale of increasingly insane claims from holocaust deniers ranging from, “Hitler only meant to deport the Jews and his subordinates decided to kill them all instead,” to, “The Final Solution was dreamed up by Goebbels/Himmler/Eichmann/whoever without Hitler’s explicit approval and he had no knowledge of the true scope and nature of it,” all the way down to, “He was whacked out of his gourd on amphetamines by the end of the war and gibbering nonsense, so it was actually the responsibility of his generals and staff to ignore all of it, but they didn’t.” All of which is all quite demonstrably bullshit (see above).