This isn’t really true. Generally, the Nazis were running trains eastward with supplies for their troops in Russia. The trains filled with victims for the camps would have otherwise returned empty. The same logistical situation is why so many POWs captured by the Allies in Europe and North Africa were brought back to the United States for incarceration.
As far as the expense of the Holocaust was concerned, the death camp Treblinka is pretty instructive. Treblinka operated for a period of 18 months, during which approximately 900,000 people were killed by the exhaust from a single salvaged tank engine. The camp was staffed at any one time by about 25 German officers and soldiers and 100 local civilian workers. Treblinka was an utterly trivial fraction of Germany’s overall war effort, and yet it killed a million people.
The difference though is that the Allies could spare more resources, while the Axis can’t. German rail lines also keep getting sabotaged and the blockade and air bombing kept the resources to fix them being disrupted or destroyed. The Allies didn’t have such issues on their end. The German trains coming from the Eastern front could have loaded up more wounded but even so, I imagine they would have more limited available train freight because of destruction.
The anti-partisan action by the Axis also took up so much manpower that could have otherwise gone to the frontline. Not to mention that the very same people the Germans killed, could have been soldiers themselves on the side of the Axis. Many Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis as liberators and could have helped the Nazis against the Soviet Union, but of course, the Nazis had a different idea. Mussolini’s fascism was mild compared to the Nazis, and he was right that the Hitler’s obsession on race is a waste of time and resources.
The same logistical situation is why so many POWs captured by the Allies in Europe and North Africa were brought back to the United States
Well, that and the fact that it completely takes them out of the theater of war. They’re not going to be rescued and released from a camp in the middle of Montana.
And even if a few do escape, they’re a few days walk from anywhere, and will stick out like a sore thumb if they did encounter a local.
This isn’t really true. Generally, the Nazis were running trains eastward with supplies for their troops in Russia. The trains filled with victims for the camps would have otherwise returned empty. The same logistical situation is why so many POWs captured by the Allies in Europe and North Africa were brought back to the United States for incarceration.
As far as the expense of the Holocaust was concerned, the death camp Treblinka is pretty instructive. Treblinka operated for a period of 18 months, during which approximately 900,000 people were killed by the exhaust from a single salvaged tank engine. The camp was staffed at any one time by about 25 German officers and soldiers and 100 local civilian workers. Treblinka was an utterly trivial fraction of Germany’s overall war effort, and yet it killed a million people.
The difference though is that the Allies could spare more resources, while the Axis can’t. German rail lines also keep getting sabotaged and the blockade and air bombing kept the resources to fix them being disrupted or destroyed. The Allies didn’t have such issues on their end. The German trains coming from the Eastern front could have loaded up more wounded but even so, I imagine they would have more limited available train freight because of destruction.
The anti-partisan action by the Axis also took up so much manpower that could have otherwise gone to the frontline. Not to mention that the very same people the Germans killed, could have been soldiers themselves on the side of the Axis. Many Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis as liberators and could have helped the Nazis against the Soviet Union, but of course, the Nazis had a different idea. Mussolini’s fascism was mild compared to the Nazis, and he was right that the Hitler’s obsession on race is a waste of time and resources.
Well, that and the fact that it completely takes them out of the theater of war. They’re not going to be rescued and released from a camp in the middle of Montana.
And even if a few do escape, they’re a few days walk from anywhere, and will stick out like a sore thumb if they did encounter a local.