yankel > . Who said yehudim would have fared any better
but, of course, this is hindsight. At that moment, it was not clear what will follow. Similar to WW2 that many expected to go similar to WW1 …
So, we should not be looking down at the arguments that were made historically, but we should revisit them when new information becomes available instead of continuing repeating arguments that sounded good at the time…
When R Steinsaltz was asked about the reasonas behind Shoah (in the context of his lecture about Churban and other historical events in Gemorah), he responded that 50 years is too early to make a judgment, gemora took more time to make conclusions about the Churban.