Did Nazi Germany's obsession with genocide have a strong impact on their ability to fight the allies (by diverting resources)?

by MoistDemand

*beat the allies

Obviously resources that went toward killing Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, political adversaries, etc. could not be put toward fighting the war.

How much of an impact did this diversion of money, man power, weapons, and supplies have? If they had no desire to carry out genocide could those extra resources have changed the outcome of the war? Did the obsession with "purifying" Europe come back to bite them?

PeculiarLeah

Possibly, it is actually rather hard to know because the documentation of where money was spent during the Holocaust. The German budget did not include money set aside for the death camps, most likely because these camps paid for themselves. Though on the surface one would assume that diverting manpower, supplies, weapons, building material etc. would be a terrible idea for a country fighting a war. However when you take into account the amount of spoils taken from victims of the Holocaust, it starts to make more sense. Even in extremely rural, poor areas, victims were often forced to bring their valuables with them. Once they were (in rural areas in the East mostly through shooting) the Nazis would distribute these valuables. Things that weren't valuable, like ragged clothing were given to those non-Jews who assisted the Nazis in carrying out the killing such as the Lithuanian Shaulists. Better clothing, any valuables, and even gold teeth were sent back to Germany. Considering that well over a million people were shot in this way, even taking only this into account that is a huge amount of money. Beyond this, once Jews were killed their homes were looted, and in Germany their houses were redistributed among Nazis, and their bank accounts diverted to the state. And even beyond this, as much as the concentration and death camp systems were costly in men, building materials, etc. they were also enormously lucrative for the Reich. Auschwitz, the largest death camp complex had a number of factories, where slave laborers created wealth for the Nazis until they were too sick to work and either died or were murdered. IG Farben had an enormous factory near the Monowitz subcamp of Auschwitz. Every industry benefited from slave labor. They didn't have to pay for this labor, and they didn't pay for a normal amount of food for those workers so the wealth created was much higher than normal. On top of the goods of every one of the 6 million Jews, and the goods of at least a few million others was diverted to the Reich. In the death camps of Birkenau, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno, and Treblinka, sheds were created, often known as Kanada by the few prisoners left alive, to divert everything taken from the dead to be sent to Germany. The Germans made sure that people were likely to bring valuables with them at deportation to maximize their spoils. Sonderkommando, those prisoners forced to handle the dead were even forced to mutilate the bodies to make sure any gold teeth or valuables hidden inside bodies (swollowed or hidden in mouths etc) were handed over. With these various methods of wealth exploitation the Nazis probably considered the Holocaust more of an economic win than we would expect. Many of the Nazis were somewhat concerned by the diverting of transportation, men, and bullets, but they didn't worry about it economically. Even those who worried about this were not really paid attention to because the Holocaust was seen as an integral part of having won the war. If they won the war without killing their 'enemies' it would not have been seen by many as really having been won.