BERLIN—Though emphasizing there is zero possibility such plans will be carried out now or any time in the future, as easy as it would be to implement them, German officials quietly admitted this week that they could probably pull off another Holocaust if they really wanted to.
Calling the systematic elimination of millions of individuals “a huge undertaking, though certainly quite doable,” both liberal and conservative members of Germany’s legislature privately conceded that, if push came to shove, they definitely have the infrastructure, technology, and manpower required to once again round up Jews, Poles, gays, and other targeted minority groups, transport them to concentration and forced-work camps, and execute them en masse.
“Now, I’m not saying that this is something anyone would like to do, but if the German government decided it wanted to carry out another Holocaust, we definitely have the ability,” said Bavarian representative Kaspar Harriger of the political consensus among all 631 elected members of the Bundestag, who unanimously agreed that the tools needed to undertake another genocide are “pretty much ready to go” if they want them. “Do we currently have plans to annihilate two-thirds of the Jewish population? No. Does every member of the government believe the Holocaust was a crime against humanity that should never be repeated? Of course.”
“But could we in fact sponsor and carry out the ethnic cleansing of millions of people to create a society fitting a eugenic ideal? Sure,” he continued. “We aren’t going to, and we don’t want to, but we could. No doubt about that.”
Members of the federal government agreed that though they have no intention whatsoever of creating a master Aryan race by purging the general populace of those deemed to be genetically inferior, they have everything in place to “get [a second Holocaust] going” relatively quickly if they felt like it. Additionally, German lawmakers stated that such a mass genocide would be far faster and more efficient than in the past, highlighting in particular the country’s advanced high-speed rail system, sophisticated engineering and construction sectors capable of rapidly erecting dozens of ultramodern extermination camps, and a world-leading chemical industry that could easily produce the compounds needed to eradicate millions swiftly and effectively.
Contrasting the methods for mass killing used during the original Holocaust with the highly developed capabilities of Germany’s heavy-industry- and technology-focused economy of today, legislators agreed Germany could “start wiping out entire villages tomorrow” if they ever felt like going through with another one.
“Between 1939 and 1945 the German government exterminated more than 6 million Jews and 11 million victims overall, and that was just with the genocide methods they had at the time,” Bundestag delegate Matthias Becker told reporters, noting that Germany’s cutting-edge telecommunications systems could be utilized to closely monitor, track, and capture every single targeted individual, thereby completely eliminating the problem of Jewish flight that was experienced in the 1930s. “With so much state-of-the-art technology at our disposal, we could reach that same death toll in half the time, easy. Not that we ever would. That’s something so horrible you don’t even want to think about it, but obviously we could if we wanted.”
“If we were to start up again tomorrow—and keep in mind this is purely hypothetical—I think we could knock out at least 20 million by the end of the year,” he added. “We most certainly will not do it, but that’s how far Germany has advanced since the 1940s.”
German officials further added that they have neither any political nor personal wishes for any mass murder to ever happen, even though they technically could pull it off and it would likely go pretty smoothly. In addition, authorities mentioned they theoretically wouldn’t even have to mass murder the same groups of people this time around, with several throwing out the possibility of eradicating the country’s sizable Turkish minority and immigrants from East Asia, before quickly noting that this is something that no one has any desire or intention to go through with.
Perhaps most important, lawmakers confirmed, is that they have the benefit of hindsight allowing them to avoid the mistakes German leaders made 60 years earlier in their initial attempt to rid the world of the Jewish race.
“Remember that the first time around, resources were overextended by the ongoing war, which is a problem we could definitely avoid if we ever did this again, which we won’t,” a high-level cabinet member explained of feasible, though entirely nonexistent, plans to kill millions upon millions of men, women, and children. “We have a pretty good idea now what brought an end to the horror and destruction that was the Holocaust, so if it happened again—and God forbid it does—I’m sure that today’s Germany, which is a far more advanced and prosperous nation, could do it a lot better.”
“I know we’re not going to do it, but it’s kind of neat knowing that if we wanted to, we could,” he added. “We definitely could.”