Was "Blitzkrieg" at least partly intended for trapping the Jews?
score:5
I think the case of the French campaign in may/june 1940 conclusively answers this question in the negative. Indeed, Blitzkieg tactics designed to entrap the opposing armies were used systematically, with great efficiency and with great success during the whole period. After the armistice, the Reich annexed Alsace and Moselle, where Jews could be find in large number, if only because thousands of them had emigrated from Germany an Central Europe in the 1930s. So here is a clear-cut empirical test: the Reich had used Blitzkrieg tactics and had as a result thousands of entrapped Jews under its jurisdiction. What did it do?
It expropriated and expelled them to the unoccupied zone, thereby (of course involuntarily) actually ensuring that they would escape the harshest anti-semitic policies of the occupied zone for two years. More generally, the military history of the French campaign seems completely disconnected from the history of Jews persecution, deportation and extermination, with the first ending in mid-1940 and the second really picking-up steam only in spring 1941.
Based on these facts, I think it can be reasonably concluded that maneuver warfare on the western front had nothing to do with Jews extermination.
By way of reference: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoire_des_Juifs_en_France#La_Seconde_Guerre_mondiale http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_policière_sous_le_régime_de_Vichy http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_contre_les_Juifs_et_les_étrangers_pendant_le_régime_de_Vichy
These links show that the occupied zone had a much harsher treatment of Jews than the unoccupied zone (English versions accessible from the page, usually).
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wagner_(Gauleiter)
details the expulsion of Jews from annexed Alsace.
Upvote:10
First, the general consensus among historians is that there was no "Blitzkrieg"; the Wehrmacht incorporated some new technologies and tactics into what was basically a conventional military doctrine not dissimilar from that of other European powers. "Blitzkrieg" was invented by the newspapers, and fleshed out with fabricated details by post-war German generals who wanted to burnish their military credentials.
If we replace "blitzkrieg" with "large-scale offensive manoeuvre warfare," we have an answerable question, and the answer is clearly "no." We can say this for three reasons:
- We already have a perfectly adequate explanation of why Germany preferred large-scale offensive manoeuvre warfare: it was the only possible way to win. At every stage of the war from conception to termination, the Germans were severely disadvantaged in manpower and industrial capacity. German strength relative to its opponents' peaked around 1940 and thereafter began an accelerating decline. By Hitler's lights, then, it was far better to try for risky victories than accept an inevitable, protracted defeat.
- Having more Jews on their hands was exactly the opposite of what the Nazis wanted. They came around to a policy of mass murder not because they saw killing Jews as a positive end in itself (I mean, they probably did see it that way, but that wasn't the deciding factor.) Rather, they realized that sustaining the whole population of their empire was incompatible with pursuing a total war. If they were going to make a maximum effort, somebody had to starve, and given their ideology it wasn't hard to determine who the first victims would be. But it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to starve people, unless you can actually herd them into a particular area, fence it off, and guard it (as was done with the Soviet POWs.) But once you've gone that far, the logical next step...
- Most simply and boringly, there's no positive documentary evidence that I'm aware of for this idea.
Upvote:12
Don't think so. At all times, Nazi party seen Jews as a problem to be solved; they've seen them as people that shouldn't be in Greater Germany. In 1941, they didn't know what to do with Jewish citizens they already had; this was the time of ghettos and concentration camps, but Germans didn't yet consider extermination camps (like Chełmno, Bełżec, ...), nobody envisaged the Holocaust. I guess last thing they wanted is to capture even more Jewish people in 1941.
In fact I would investigate the opposite cause-effect relation: maybe capturing large numbers of Jews in the East later indirectly provided argument for the complete extermination, as opposed for example to alternative variants of internment/enslavement/expulsion?
UPDATE: By the way it came to my mind to check the numbers. True Wehrmacht could expect some 150.000 Jewish civilians there, but would they worry about them? I think they were much more worried about some 500.000 Soviet troops, armed and dangerous, which they have just being encircling when closing two pincers in Minsk.
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