Sealion, Anglo-German Alliance

[lord of the mark]

Socialist opposition - the total left electorate in Germany in the from 1928 to 1933 was something like 40%. If they had all joined the resistance, that resistance would have been quite powerful, and made Germany virtually ungovernable. As it was there was no significant threat to Nazi power in Germany from the Reichstag fire through 1939, apart from the German army. I dont have cites on that, but youre the one asserting that Britain would be ungovernable under German occupation. Your basis is that Britain had substantial numbers of leftists. yet this did not make Germany ungovernable. You mention that Britain had racial minorities, but provide no comparative numbers between Germany and Britain. Germany in 1933 had about 500,000 Jews, who proved no significant barrier to Nazi rule. I dont have the population for Roma handy, but my understanding is that it was quite significant, as was the population of slavs. I doubt very much that the population on non-Aryans was higher in Britain than in Germany, and if it was, it was not by an order of magnitude.


Now naturally Britain would have reasons based in nationalism to oppose an occupation, but IIRC we were discussing Hitlers viewpoint, and he certainly beleived that for "Aryan" britons alliance with Germany made the most sense. Was this a fundamental misunderstanding of British political culture? Id say it was, and that applies to both the British left, and to most of the British right as well. But it wasnt due to the number of trade unionists, or the number of non-aryans, neither of which set Britain significantly apart from Germany.

[lord of the mark]

BTW, per a source cited by the US holocaust museum, there were about 30,000 Roma living in Germany in 1936.

[lord of the mark]

"The United Kingdom had welcomed quite a few Slavs- many Poles and Russians:

quote:
By 1901, 42 032 Russians and Poles were resident in Stepney- a figure exceeded by only five towns in Poland itself.


'London: A Social History' by Roy Porter"

wasnt Stepney a heavily Jewish area? werent many of those poles and Russians also Jewish? Not to deny them their russian or polish identities, but merely to avoid double counting.

In regard to Germany, my impression is there was a very substantial population of slavs, mainly Poles, quite apart from the 500,000 Jews, many of whom were of Polish or Russian birth.

[lord of the mark]

Poles in Germany

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Poles_in_Germany

apparently about 1.5 million. Add to that 500,000 Jews, and 30,000 Roma, for about 2 million slavs and non-aryans. Leaving aside any blacks in Germany (there were at least a handful, but not many, AFAIK)

[lord of the mark]

http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/1672/Black_history_in_Nazi_Germany_a_brief_story

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

I dont have cites on that,

Then why make the claim ?

but youre the one asserting that Britain would be ungovernable under German occupation.

Oh. Where would that be ? Direct quote, please.

Your basis is that Britain had substantial numbers of leftists.

Not just 'leftists', but people who weren't attracted to Fascism or Nazism and who were repelled by Hitler and antisemitism.

You mention that Britain had racial minorities, but provide no comparative numbers between Germany and Britain.

Well excuse me!

YOU brought up Germany's non-Aryan minorities, and you made these claims:

In terms of 'non-aryans" were brits in 1940 really more "mongrels" than Germans were?

More blacks and asians maybe (though not many) but fewer Jews and Roma and slavs.

Sans the relevant statistics.

So, lords and ladies first....

I dont have the population for Roma handy, but my understanding is that it was quite significant

My understanding is it wasn't. We could play this game all day.

as was the population of slavs.

The population of Slavs in Wilhelmine Germany had been reduced by official expulsions of those who did not want to be Germanized or could not speak German (pre the conquests during 1914-1918).

I await your figures for weimar Germany's Slav population in 1933. Bearing in mind too, that some proper Germans were actually Germanized acculturated Slavs...

I doubt very much that the population on non-Aryans was higher in Britain than in Germany, and if it was, it was not by an order of magnitude.

Doubt all you like- makes no difference to me.

Given the shaky foundations of Aryan science, I wouldn't even venture into deciding what or who would eventually qualify as 'Aryan' in a Nazi-occupied United Kingdom.

Now naturally Britain would have reasons based in nationalism to oppose an occupation

Uh huh.

we were discussing Hitlers viewpoint, and he certainly beleived that for "Aryan" britons alliance with Germany made the most sense.

Was Hitler even telling the truth ?

Could you actually quote his opinion on what 'Aryan' Britons were meant to think ?

Otherwise we're just going round in circles of conjecture.

Was this a fundamental misunderstanding of British political culture?

Based on my readings of Hitler's correspondence, 'Mein Kampf', the minutes of meetings with German armed forces' leaders and fellow Nazis, Hitler didn't have a clue about British politics.

wasnt Stepney a heavily Jewish area?

As were Whitechapel, Bow, Mile End, Poplar, Isle of Dogs...

werent many of those poles and Russians also Jewish?

He also refers to the separate Jewish community in the East End elsewhere in the book.

In regard to Germany, my impression is there was a very substantial population of slavs, mainly Poles, quite apart from the 500,000 Jews, many of whom were of Polish or Russian birth.

Impressions make for very nice pictures in my experience....

You referred first to a date of 1940 (see your quote, above).

By then, the Jewish population of Nazi Germany had declined (as I pointed out) by at least half, to 250 000 or thereabouts.

The Jewish population of the United Kingdom had swollen to at least 350 000*.

There were also refugee non-Jewish Czechs, Poles, Germans, Austrians, French et cetera, none of whom would have been enamoured of Nazi invaders.

Leaving aside any blacks in Germany (there were at least a handful, but not many, AFAIK)

It doesn't get any more precise, no matter how many times you repeat it, you know.


*Figure from Lucy Dawidowicz's 'The War Against The Jews' and 'Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred' by Robert S. Wistrich, and an essay on the Kindertransport in an edition of 'History Today'.

[lord of the mark]

Pardon. Reveiwing post 10, 12, and 19, I see you did NOT assert what I thought you did. You introduced the racial makeup of Britain to respond to Frozzys claim about who in Britian Hitler was opposed to, and not to make an assertion about the difficulty of ruling Britain. In my 19 I made an incorrect assumption about your point. It seems I introduced the issue of governability, and so you are correct, the burden of evidence is on me.

You were correct in 12, Hitler had issues with substantially more Britons than the govt.

I dont know if you want to pursue the matter of whether the comparative population make ups alone would have made Britain more difficult for the Nazis to control than Germany was. Suffice it to say, I have now presented numbers on Jews, Roma, and Poles in Germany - 500,000, 30,000 and 1.5 million, respectively. I think 1933 for Germany would be the relevant comparison to 1940 for britain, as the question (which, I know realize, I raised, not you) is the relative difficulty to establishing control.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Pardon. Reveiwing post 10, 12, and 19, I see you did NOT assert what I thought you did.

I thought this might be the case. Do you have a kind of mental hair-trigger whenever you see my name next to a post ?


I'm only curious, because I recall you getting completely the wrong end of the stick in one of my threads before...

I dont know if you want to pursue the matter of whether the comparative population make ups alone would have made Britain more difficult for the Nazis to control than Germany was.

It certainly goes some way to showing how much of a 'mongrel' nation the United Kingdom actually was; I have bad news for you though: the British Census in the 19th and early 20th Centuries did not automatically record race or ethnicity.

Since the 18th Century onwards, the number of obviously black resident Britons had been 'diluted' because of the willingness of white women to marry or have sexual relations with the mainly male black British population.

However, in the 19th Century, immigrant African, West Indian and Arab and Chinese and Indian/Lascar* numbers had been increasing.

This 'mongrel' aspect of the nations' population is not solely what I would rely on for organised opposition to a Nazi invasion; even British troops had had to be used in labour disputes against British trade unionists.

Between 1900 and 1914 for instance, trade union membership had increased from 2 022 000 to 4 145 000.

Not only this, but the Labour Party had the overwhelming number of Jewish members of Parliament and the Communist Party of Great Britain also drew on Jewish support.

Now to address your figures for Jews in Nazi Germany- as I've pointed out, the figure for Jews resident in Germany had at least halved by 1940- the date for a German invasion of the United Kingdom.

So a figure of 250 000 (or fewer) would be correct. As I've indicated, there were at least 350 000 Jews in the United Kingdom by then.

As for the Roma, the figure I have is 22 000 (Roma arrested and deported from Nazi Germany on March 1st 1943) nearly all of whom were sent to Auschwitz.

This is from C. Tyrnauer's 'Gypsies and the Holocaust: A Bibliography and Introductory Essay'.

Given the difference between the treatment of Roma in Continental Europe and the United Kingdom (from the 18th Century onwards), I would suggest that we round down from today's estimate of 70 000- 110 000, but not by much, for a guesstimate of Roma in the U.K. in 1940.

*Lascar also included Burmese, Andaman Islanders, Malays, et cetera.

Oops. Forgot about the Polish population figure for Weimar/Nazi Germany.

I'd like confirmation for that from a less iffy source than Wiki, really.

As regards Social Democrat opposition to the Nazis:

For the first time, an intense dissatisfaction with their leadership was discernible in the ranks of the Social Democrats.

September 1930

Julius Leber, Social Democratic deputy and leader in Lubeck. A young activist/pragmatist in the S.D.P. , he was imprisoned from 1933-1937, active in the Resistance, arrested in connection with the Gernerals' Plot of 1944, and executed.

In February of 1931, the 'Defence Formations' or Schutzformationen , 'a militant elite troop of the officially suprapartisan and democratic Reichsbanner' were formed.

By November, S.P.D. delegates and members of free trade unions and of the workers' sporting clubs were forming the 'Iron Front', which was led by Karl Holtermann, president of the Reichsbannerbund.

This was in direct opposition to the Right's Harzburg Front.

There is an excellent essay in 'Republic To Reich: The Making Of The Nazi Revolution' edited by Hajo Holborn on the opposition both parliamentary and extraparliamentary to the Nazi regime by the S.D.P. and the banned S.D.P. inside and outside Germany.

[lord of the mark]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by molly bloom

I thought this might be the case. Do you have a kind of mental hair-trigger whenever you see my name next to a post ?


I'm only curious, because I recall you getting completely the wrong end of the stick in one of my threads before...

Id rather not discuss personalities, or even posting styles that might account for us misunderstanding each other. I personally doubt that would lead to better understanding.

Now to address your figures for Jews in Nazi Germany- as I've pointed out, the figure for Jews resident in Germany had at least halved by 1940- the date for a German invasion of the United Kingdom.

Again, since I thought this was about how governable the UK was, from Hitlers POV, that halving would not be relevant. The time when Hitler had to establish control over Germany was in 1933-34, not in 1940. By that time the Jewish population was not only halved (BTW, I had a girlfriend in college whose father was a Jew who'd left Germany with his mother in 1939, so Im quite familiar with that flight, aside from having read Hilberg and others) it was economically and politically powerless, and socially isolated. The relevant comparison is UK 1940 to Germany 1933. Ergo, there were more Jews in Germany when Hitler took power there, then there were in the UK at the time of the hypothetical Sealion. AFAICT their social influence was at least comparable to that of British Jews. Nonetheless it failed to be a significant obstacle to Nazi power.

As for the Roma, the figure I have is 22 000 (Roma arrested and deported from Nazi Germany on March 1st 1943) nearly all of whom were sent to Auschwitz.

This is from C. Tyrnauer's 'Gypsies and the Holocaust: A Bibliography and Introductory Essay'.

Given the difference between the treatment of Roma in Continental Europe and the United Kingdom (from the 18th Century onwards), I would suggest that we round down from today's estimate of 70 000- 110 000, but not by much, for a guesstimate of Roma in the U.K. in 1940.

Im not sure how to reconcile the 30,000 roma on the Holocaust museum website, with the 22,000 in your source. Perhaps some had fled or been killed by 1943?

Was there no post war migration of Roma to the UK? Id be surprised if there wasnt.

I'd like confirmation for that from a less iffy source than Wiki, really.

When I have time.

As regards Social Democrat opposition to the Nazis:



September 1930

Julius Leber, Social Democratic deputy and leader in Lubeck. A young activist/pragmatist in the S.D.P. , he was imprisoned from 1933-1937, active in the Resistance, arrested in connection with the Gernerals' Plot of 1944, and executed.

In February of 1931, the 'Defence Formations' or Schutzformationen , 'a militant elite troop of the officially suprapartisan and democratic Reichsbanner' were formed.

By November, S.P.D. delegates and members of free trade unions and of the workers' sporting clubs were forming the 'Iron Front', which was led by Karl Holtermann, president of the Reichsbannerbund.

This was in direct opposition to the Right's Harzburg Front.

There is an excellent essay in 'Republic To Reich: The Making Of The Nazi Revolution' edited by Hajo Holborn on the opposition both parliamentary and extraparliamentary to the Nazi regime by the S.D.P. and the banned S.D.P. inside and outside Germany.

Well, does it explain why SD opposition failed to prevent the establishment of Nazi power in Germany in 1933-34, and how this would compare to the situation in Britain?

[lord of the mark]

I doubt I will be able to find good numbers on Poles in Germany, as there was apparently a sustained campaign of Germanization beginning under Wilhelmine rule, and continuing after 1918, and the Nazis determined to count these people as Germans, not Poles, for "racial" purposes.

The following is from a pro-Polish site, and Im not holding it as quantitative evidence, but merely to indicate some of the issues floating around.


" East Prussia: A plebiscite was held in the majority Polish speaking south in July 1920. This was a bad time for Poland because the Red Army was advancing on Warsaw, which was expected to fall.

Furthermore, the Poles of E.Prussia had been separated from Poland for centuries and most were Lutherans, while most Poles in Poland were Catholic.
The German authorities promised East Prussian Poles (Masurians)their own schools, newspapers, and of course old age pensions, if they voted for Germany.

As in Upper Sileisa, German "outvoters" were brought in to vote from Germany. (The Versailles Treaty stipulated that people born in a plebiscite region but no longer living there, could return to vote; they were called "outvoters"). The combination of various factors, religion, fear of Soviet invasion, German schools, led to a majority vote for Germany. Despite German promises, the Poles’ cultural rights were not respected, and most of them continued to be germanized. [On the Polish Masurians and their German allegiance, see Richard Blanke, Polish-Speaking Germans? Language and National Identity among the Masurians since 1871, Cologne, 2001].

C. Upper Silesia: Silesia had belonged to Poland in early medieval times, but passed to the Kings of Bohemia in the 14th century, then to the Austrian Habsburgs. Frederick the Great of Prussia seized Upper Silesia from Maria Theresa of Austria in 1740, after which it was part of Prussia.

The area East of the Oder river was preponderantly Polish-speaking, but most Poles were either peasants or workmen. Many spoke a dialect akin to Polish; some felt they were Poles, and some felt they were Silesians.


At the same time, the vast majority of the landowners, businessmen, factory owners, local government, police and Catholic clergy were German. However, almost all the higher German officials were Protestant while the vast majority of Silesians were Catholic.

The German census of 1900 recorded 65% of the population as Polish speaking, but the census of 1910 recorded 57%. This was due to the introduction of the category of "bilingual" inhabitants, which reduced the official number of Polish-speaking Silesians, though some of the latter spoke both German and Polish while the Germans spoke only German. In fact, according to a language map drawn up by German Professor Paul Weber, in most Upper Silesian districts east of the Oder river Polish-speaking Silesians made up over 70% of the population in 1910. [See also census figures in Blanke, above]. "

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

Id rather not discuss personalities,

Well me neither, but I occasionally feel there's some kind of Pavlovian response when you see my pseudonym next to a post....

Again, since I thought this was about how governable the UK was, from Hitlers POV, that halving would not be relevant.

Well, I think it might. Certainly having seen what Hitler did in Germany and what his allies did in Slovakia and Austria and the Bohemian Protectorate, with no way out except to neutral Ireland, what would refugee Jews do ?

AFAICT their social influence was at least comparable to that of British Jews.

The difference being the strong Catholic and Lutheran antisemitic traditions in pre-Nazi Germany. This served to stigmatise even the most assimilated of Jews, such as Rathenau and Ballin and Haber.

You also have to factor in the constant campaign of antisemitism and anti-Left and anti-democrat propaganda- from 1918 onwards, the Jews and liberals, democrats and leftists were the 'November Criminals', responsible for the war's loss and the 'illegal' Republic.

No such stigma attached to the Jewish community in the United Kingdom or to the Left or democratic/liberal traditions.

Ergo, there were more Jews in Germany when Hitler took power there, then there were in the UK at the time of the hypothetical Sealion.

I haven't denied this; however, don't you think the state of mind of the German Jewish refugees in the United Kingdom had changed by 1940 ?

Certainly reading the accounts of refugees and the reactions of the children on the Kindertransport, the sense of palpable relief and ability to show defiance once the German border had been crossed, is overwhelming.

Perhaps some had fled or been killed by 1943?

Perhaps the other figure included Roma from Austria and the Bohemian Protectorate, or other areas assimilated into the Reich by 1943.

Was there no post war migration of Roma to the UK? Id be surprised if there wasnt.

So would I.

Well, does it explain why SD opposition failed to prevent the establishment of Nazi power in Germany in 1933-34,

Little things like Goering being head of the police in Prussia, Himmler being head of the political police in Bavaria, a Nazi friendly local government in Bavaria, Nazi friendly judges, and a long tradition of official and ethical opposition in parliament by the S.D.P. leadership.

The Nazi Party and the other Rightists and the Freikorps on the other hand, had been street fighters and terrorists since the end of the First World War in Weimar Germany.

It was a complicated affair, but the essay I mentioned by Erich Matthias, called 'The Downfall Of The Old Social Democratic Party' is well worth reading. It's 53 pages long, so a little awkward for me to properly precis...

There's also another essay in 'Fascism: A Reader's Guide' edited by Walter Laqueur, written by Hans Mommsen, called 'National Socialism: Continuity And Change' which sets out the ideological and social background for the triumph of the N.S.D.A.P. in the 1933 Parliament.

and how this would compare to the situation in Britain?

The differences between the Left parties are many and certainly outside the scope of the essays, but I believe I've outlined some of them earlier in the post.

With Rightist control of police forces and, for instance, the Nazi-sympathetic Bavarian State government and the native tradition of faith based antisemitism, you have potent anti-Democratic, anti-Left and anti-Jewish forces already in power, which have been circumventing central Weimar governmental control and fomenting dissent, aimed at identifying the democratic and liberal forces with foreign and Jewish influences.