Poorly worded, but i have a friend who says only 400,000 jews maximum have been exterminated. What can i say to that? Im not that educated but see a general consensus that its in the millions
Edit: thanks for your guys' comments.. ill be spending a while reading them
Hi! As this question pertains to basic, underlying facts of the Holocaust, I hope you can appreciate that it can be a fraught subject to deal with. While we want people to get the answers they are looking for, we also remain very conscious that threads of this nature can attract the very wrong kind of response. As such, this message is not intended to provide you with all of the answers, but simply to address some of the basic facts, as well as Holocaust Denial, and provide a short list of introductory reading. There is always more than can be said, but we hope this is a good starting point for you.
##What Was the Holocaust?
The Holocaust refers the genocidal deaths of 5-6 million European Jews carried out systematically by Nazi Germany as part of targeted policies of persecution and extermination during World War II. Some historians will also include the deaths of the Roma, Communists, Mentally Disabled, and other groups targeted by Nazi policies, which brings the total number of deaths to 11-17 million. Debates about whether or not the Holocaust includes these deaths or not is a matter of definitions, but in no way a reflection on dispute that they occurred.
##But This Guy Says Otherwise!
Unfortunately, there is a small, but at times vocal, minority of persons who fall into the category of Holocaust Denial, attempting to minimize the deaths by orders of magnitude, impugn well proven facts, or even claim that the Holocaust is entirely a fabrication and never happened. Although they often self-style themselves as "Revisionists", they are not correctly described by the title. While revisionism is not inherently a dirty word, actual revision, to quote Michael Shermer, "entails refinement of detailed knowledge about events, rarely complete denial of the events themselves, and certainly not denial of the cumulation of events known as the Holocaust."
It is absolutely true that were you to read a book written in 1950 or so, you would find information which any decent scholar today might reject, and that is the result of good revisionism. But these changes, which even can be quite large, such as the reassessment of deaths at Auschwitz from ~4 million to ~1 million, are done within the bounds of respected, academic study, and reflect decades of work that builds upon the work of previous scholars, and certainly does not willfully disregard documented evidence and recollections. There are still plenty of questions within Holocaust Studies that are debated by scholars, and there may still be more out there for us to discover, and revise, but when it comes to the basic facts, there is simply no valid argument against them.
##So What Are the Basics?
Beginning with their rise to power in the 1930s, the Nazi Party, headed by Adolf Hitler, implemented a series of anti-Jewish policies within Germany, marginalizing Jews within society more and more, stripping them of their wealth, livelihoods, and their dignity. With the invasion of Poland in 1939, the number of Jews under Nazi control reached into the millions, and this number would again increase with the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Shortly after the invasion of Poland, the Germans started to confine the Jewish population into squalid ghettos. After several plans on how to rid Europe of the Jews that all proved unfeasible, by the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, ideological (Antisemitism) and pragmatic (Resources) considerations lead to mass-killings becoming the only viable option in the minds of the Nazi leadership. First only practiced in the USSR, it was influential groups such as the SS and the administration of the General Government that pushed to expand the killing operations to all of Europe and sometime at the end of 1941 met with Hitler’s approval.
The early killings were carried out foremost by the Einsatzgruppen, paramilitary groups organized under the aegis of the SS and tasked with carrying out the mass killings of Jews, Communists, and other 'undesirable elements' in the wake of the German military's advance. In what is often termed the 'Holocaust by Bullet', the Einsatzgruppen, with the assistance of the Wehrmacht, the SD, the Security Police, as well as local collaborators, would kill roughly two million persons, over half of them Jews. Most killings were carried out with mass shootings, but other methods such as gas vans - intended to spare the killers the trauma of shooting so many persons day after day - were utilized too.
By early 1942, the "Final Solution" to the so-called "Jewish Question" was essentially finalized at the Wannsee Conference under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, where the plan to eliminate the Jewish population of Europe using a series of extermination camps set up in occupied Poland was presented and met with approval.
Construction of extermination camps had already begun the previous fall, and mass extermination, mostly as part of 'Operation Reinhard', had began operation by spring of 1942. Roughly 2 million persons, nearly all Jewish men, women, and children, were immediately gassed upon arrival at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka over the next two years, when these "Reinhard" camps were closed and razed. More victims would meet their fate in additional extermination camps such as Chełmno, but most infamously at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where slightly over 1 million persons, mostly Jews, died. Under the plan set forth at Wannsee, exterminations were hardly limited to the Jews of Poland, but rather Jews from all over Europe were rounded up and sent east by rail like cattle to the slaughter. Although the victims of the Reinhard Camps were originally buried, they would later be exhumed and cremated, and cremation of the victims was normal procedure at later camps such as Auschwitz.
##The Camps
There were two main types of camps run by Nazi Germany, which is sometimes a source of confusion. Concentration Camps were well known means of extrajudicial control implemented by the Nazis shortly after taking power, beginning with the construction of Dachau in 1933. Political opponents of all type, not just Jews, could find themselves imprisoned in these camps during the pre-war years, and while conditions were often brutal and squalid, and numerous deaths did occur from mistreatment, they were not usually a death sentence and the population fluctuated greatly. Although Concentration Camps were later made part of the 'Final Solution', their purpose was not as immediate extermination centers. Some were 'way stations', and others were work camps, where Germany intended to eke out every last bit of productivity from them through what was known as "extermination through labor". Jews and other undesirable elements, if deemed healthy enough to work, could find themselves spared for a time and "allowed" to toil away like slaves until their usefulness was at an end.
Although some Concentration Camps, such as Mauthausen, did include small gas chambers, mass gassing was not the primary purpose of the camp. Many camps, becoming extremely overcrowded, nevertheless resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of inhabitants due to the outbreak of diseases such as typhus, or starvation, all of which the camp administrations did little to prevent. Bergen-Belsen, which was not a work camp but rather served as something of a way station for prisoners of the camp systems being moved about, is perhaps one of the most infamous of camps on this count, saw some 50,000 deaths caused by the conditions. Often located in the Reich, camps liberated by the Western forces were exclusively Concentration Camps, and many survivor testimonies come from these camps.
The Concentration Camps are contrasted with the Extermination Camps, which were purpose built for mass killing, with large gas chambers and later on, crematoria, but little or no facilities for inmates. Often they were disguised with false facades to lull the new arrivals into a false sense of security, even though rumors were of course rife for the fate that awaited the deportees. Almost all arrivals were killed upon arrival at these camps, and in many cases the number of survivors numbered in the single digits, such as at Bełżec, where only seven Jews, forced to assist in operation of the camp, were alive after the war.
Several camps, however, were 'Hybrids' of both types, the most famous being Auschwitz, which was a vast complex of subcamps. The infamous 'selection' of prisoners, conducted by SS doctors upon arrival, meant life or death, with those deemed unsuited for labor immediately gassed and the more healthy and robust given at least temporary reprieve. The death count at Auschwitz numbered around 1 million, but it is also the source of many survivor testimonies.
##How Do We Know?
Running through the evidence piece by piece would take more space than we have here, but suffice to say, there is a lot of evidence, and not just the (mountains of) survivor testimony. We have testimonies and writings from many who participated, as well German documentation of the programs. This site catalogs some of the evidence we have for mass extermination as it relates to Auschwitz. I'll end this with a short list of excellent works that should help to introduce you to various aspects of Holocaust study.
##Further Reading
All right, so this could be a difficult issue to navigate. Firstly, it is not your job to prove anything to this person. They are making a claim against commonly accepted historical fact. History is a social science, with its execution following the scientific method of inquiry and investigation. Therefore it is the responsibility of those who make a claim to present their evidence, their forms of methodology, and the details of their synthesis and interpretation. Not only is there an overwhelming amount of evidence that demonstrates the number of people murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators in the camps, Jews being the primary target but also millions of Roma people, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Slavs, political prisoners, etc. Such evidence comes in the form of photographs, testimony of Allied servicemen and survivors, not to mention all of the documentation from the Nazi bureaucracy itself. But, most importantly, there’s what many people call the “argument of silence” demonstrated by demographers like Sergio Della Pergola in that the global population of Jews and the other targeted undesirables dropped by a degree of millions during the period. So, that’s the evidence that we have, and now it’s the responsibility of the deniers to somehow try to counter the current historiography, which I don’t see them doing to any degree of success at any time with the amount of available evidence and their current forms of argumentation. Holocaust denial comes from many places, one of the most despicable being using the craft of history to mask personal feelings of anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism. Now, some may have good intentions in trying to alter the course of the current historiographical debate, but anyone who has a basic understanding of how history as a discipline is done will understand that the only conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence at hand is that there was in fact a genocide that resulted in the extermination of 11 million people, 6 million of them being Jewish. In short, it is not your job to disprove his claims, rather it is his job to try to disprove what is accepted historical fact.
I hope this isn't too editorializing for r/AskHistorians.
EDIT: maybe better to just read this part of the FAQ, from u/commiespaceinvader: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/57w1hh/monday_methods_holocaust_denial_and_how_to_combat/
Others have given better answers than I could to your question on the historical facts taken at face value. The only thing that I think needs to be added to them is the idea that I might discourage you from trying to "disprove" the claims of Holocaust deniers. You can *fight* them, but I'm not sure "disproving" is a sensible or even attainable goal.
In my view, Holocaust denial -- indeed most [thing] denial -- comes from one of two places, though there is heavy overlap between them:
People who Question the Sources are those who accept things like scientific and historical method as valid tools and methodologies, but who disbelieve the sources of the information we currently have about [some thing]. See also: (modern) Flat Earthers, or, to a lesser extent, climate denialists. Or any conspiracy theorist really. There's a kernel of the philosophy of science in here in that assertions popularly acknowledged as "true" generally rest on other assumptions and assertions. There's a sort of chain of custody of the truth, and you have to believe in the whole chain.
People who Question the Sources acknowledge there is a wealth of information out there that contradicts their worldview, but their position is that this is fundamentally not to be trusted. So "disproving" is an unattainable goal, because they don't believe in the very sources of information you're using. The assumptions you are basing your argument on -- that the books and newspapers and academics you've read are sources of truth, that the practice of history is a process of truth -- are not assumptions that the other person shares.
Now, if you scratch the surface of many of these Question the Sources conspiracy theories, staggeringly often the ultimate master of the conspiracy turns out to be "Jews" as a people or -- just coincidentally! -- mostly people who happen to be Jewish (eg George Soros), or "No, not Jews! I like Jews! I'm talking about _International Jewry!_" It may not be the part of the conspiracy theory above the water that is visible, but asking people a series of why they believe X, and then why they believe _that_, often rolls up into "Jews control the media". Or similar. "Flat Earth" doesn't on the surface seem like an anti-semitic conspiracy theory, but there's a definite, prominent thread of anti-semitism there. And this is definitely true of Holocaust denialism as well.
And fascists are, well, fascists.
For this category, they are not arguing the facts in good faith. Indeed, they are taking advantage of the fact that *you are*. Their fundamental position is that Truth is What I Say It Is. (Fascism as a belief system can reductively be simmered down to "I believe whatever facts are useful to win / attain power".)
The goal of the fascist in this case is to attack the very notion of truth, and to performatively communicate that the existence of the Holocaust is an idea - like any in the marketplace of ideas! - that is Up For Debate. It is a provocation intended to get you to treat their contemptible ideas as ones that merit discussion and engagement. *Especially* in a public space (including online forums), where your willing participation in the debate, if it can be called that, 1) confers a sort of legitimacy on their position, 2) acts as a broadcast of these ideas to the other observers in that space.
The ideas that we should unhesitatingly debate or debunk Bad Ideas, and the Best Ideas Will Win, and Truth Will Win, are cherished ones in our society. But this is gasoline on the fire to fascism. These ideas require different responses.
This Twitter thread is one I think about very often, and I think encapsulates nicely the essential dynamic here: