The Holocaust: A New History

by Laurence Rees

  36 Barbara Distel and Ruth Jakusch (eds.), Concentration Camp, Dachau 1933–1945, Comité International de Dachau, 16th edn, 1978, p. 40.

  37 E. F. M. Durbin and John Bowlby, Personal Aggressiveness and War, Routledge, 2007, p. 134.

  38 Matthäus and Roseman (eds.), Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 1, Kurt Rosenberg, diary entry for 20 and 31 August 1933, document 2-2 LBINY AR 25279, pp. 37–8.

  39 Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Little, Brown, 2015, p. 30.

  40 Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, 13 March 1933, quoted in Peter Longerich, Himmler, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 150.

  41 See here.

  42 Distel and Jakusch (eds.), Dachau, p. 48, document on the release of Johann Deller, 12 October 1934.

  43 Göring testimony, 18 March 1946, 84th day Nuremberg trials, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/Goering1.html.

  44 Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, Phoenix Press, 2001, p. 71.

  45 Tom Segev, Soldiers of Evil: The Commandants of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Diamond Books, 2000, p. 28.

  46 Christopher Dillon, Dachau and the SS: A Schooling in Violence, Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 37.

  47 Previously unpublished testimony and Rees, Nazis, p. 51.

  48 Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, 13 March 1933, quoted in Longerich, Himmler, p. 150.

  49 Max Abraham, Juda verrecke. Ein Rabbiner im Konzentrationslager (Death to Juda: A Rabbi in a Concentration Camp), reprinted in Irene A. Diekmann and Klaus Wettig (eds.), Konzentrationslager Oranienburg. Augenzeugenberichte aus dem Jahre 1933, Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 2003, pp. 117–67, here p. 128.

  50 Max Abraham, Juda verrecke. Ein Rabbiner im Konzentrationslager, Druck- und Verlagsanstalt Teplitz-Schönau, 1934, p. 154.

  51 Landesamt für Bürger- und Ordnungsangelegenheiten Berlin, Reg. No. 50909, Entschädigungsakte Max Abraham.

  52 Manchester Guardian, 1 January 1934, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/01/dachau-nazi-germany-second-world-war.

  53 Hans Beimler, Im Möderlager Dachau, available online (in German) at https://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/germanica/Chronologie/20Jh/Beimler/bei_da00.html.

  54 Amper-Bote, 7 September 1933, in Dillon, Dachau, p. 228.

  55 Previously unpublished testimony.

  56 Previously unpublished testimony.

  57 Previously unpublished testimony.

  58 Previously unpublished testimony. He expands on this belief in Rees, Nazis (1997 edn), p. 53.

  59 Previously unpublished testimony.

  60 Dillon, Dachau, p. 44.

  61 Franciszek Piper, Auschwitz 1940–1945: Central Issues in the History of the Camp, vol. 3: Mass Murder, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2000, p. 71.

  62 Ibid.

  63 Dillon, Dachau, p. 52.

  64 Ibid.

  65 Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’, BBC Books, 2005, p. 25. Also see Danuta Czech, ‘The Auschwitz Prisoner Administration’, in Yisreal Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (eds.), The Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Indiana University Press, 1998, p. 364.

  66 Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, p. 78.

  67 Ibid., pp. 65–6.

  68 Als sozialdemokratischer Arbeiter im Konzentrationslager Papenburg, Verlagsgenossenschaft ausländischer Arbeiter in der UdSSR, 1935, p. 20. (See note 70.)

  69 Wolfgang Langhoff, Die Moorsoldaten. 13 Monate Konzentrationslager, Aufbau-Verlag, 1947, pp. 251–2.

  70 Als sozialdemokratischer Arbeiter im Konzentrationslager Papenburg was written by a former prisoner of Börgermoor and was credited only as ‘anonymous’ in order to protect his family. The preface of the book, vouching for its accuracy, was written by Willi Bredel, another concentration camp inmate.

  71 Als sozialdemokratischer Arbeiter, p. 35.

  72 Rudolf Diels, Lucifer ante Portas … es spricht der erste Chef der Gestapo …, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1950, pp. 260–62.

  73 Langhoff, Moorsoldaten, pp. 251–2.

  74 Als sozialdemokratischer Arbeiter, p. 51.

  75 Langhoff, Moorsoldaten, pp. 251–2.

  76 Report by Max Hempel, quoted in Hans-Peter Klausch, Tätergeschichten. Die SS-Kommandanten der frühen Konzentrationslager im Emsland, Edition Temmen, 2005, p. 231.

  77 In English in J. Noakes and G. Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919–1945, vol. 1: The Rise to Power 1919–1934, University of Exeter Press, 1991, p. 175.

  78 Dillon, Dachau, p. 88.

  79 Wachsmann, KL, p. 83.

  Chapter 5: The Nuremberg Laws

  1 Previously unpublished testimony.

  2 Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Little, Brown, 2015, p. 90.

  3 Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi–Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945, Yale University Press, 1994, p. 9.

  4 Aaron Berman, Nazism, the Jews, and American Zionism, 1933–1948, Wayne State University Press, 1990, p. 39.

  5 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Houghton Mifflin, 1971, p. 325; also see Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War Two and the Holocaust, Belknap Press, 2006, p. 75.

  6 See here.

  7 Previously unpublished testimony.

  8 Laurence Rees, The Nazis: A Warning from History, BBC Books, 1997, p. 75, together with previously unpublished testimony.

  9 Herbert Michaelis et al. (eds.), Ursachen und Folgen. Vom Deutschen Zusammenbruch 1918 und 1945 bis zur staatlichen Neuordnung Deutschlands in der Gegenwart, vol. IX, Wendler, 1964, p. 397. In English in J. Noakes and G. Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919–1945, vol. 2: State, Economy and Society 1933–1939, Exeter University Press, 1991, p. 530.

  10 Noakes and Pridham (eds.), Nazism, vol. 2, pp. 531–2.

  11 Max Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932–1945, vol. 2: 1935–1938, Bolchazy-Carducci, 1992, p. 706, Hitler speech, 15 September 1935.

  12 Jewish Post, Indiana, 13 September 1935, https://newspapers.library.in.gov/cgi-bin/indiana?a=d&d=JPOST19350913-01.1.1.

  13 Domarus, Hitler (English edn), vol. 2, p. 707, Göring speech, 15 September 1935.

  14 Hans Mommsen, ‘The Realization of the Unthinkable: “The Final Solution of the Jewish Question” in the Third Reich’, in Michael R. Marrus (ed.), The Nazi Holocaust, vol. 3: The ‘Final Solution’: The Implementation of Mass Murder, Meckler, 1989, pp. 224–53, here p. 223.

  15 This interpretation is suggested not by Mommsen but by the present author.

  16 Reinhard-M. Strecker, Dr. Hans Globke. Aktenauszüge, Dokumente, Rütten & Loening, 1961, p. 115, quoted in Noakes and Pridham (eds.), Nazism, vol. 2, p. 541.

  17 Supplementary Decree of the Reich Citizenship Law, 14 November 1935. Noakes and Pridham (eds.), Nazism, vol. 2, pp. 538–9.

  18 Quoted in Max Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945. Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, vol. 1: Triumph, R. Löwit, 1973, p. 538, Hitler speech, Reichstag, 15 September 1935. Also in Domarus, Hitler (English edn), vol. 2, p. 707.

  19 Völkischer Beobachter, 16 September 1935.

  20 Previously unpublished testimony.

  21 In the words of the parents of Lucille Eichengreen.

  22 Laurence Rees, Their Darkest Hour, Ebury Press, 2007, pp. 191–2, together with previously unpublished testimony.

  23 Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, Penguin, 2007, p. 65.

  24 Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936, Hubris, Penguin, 2001, p. 558.

  Chapter 6: Education and Empire-Building

  1 There are many different English translations of völkische in this context – ‘people’s’, ‘racist’, ‘ethnic’, ‘folkish’ are just some of the attempts at conveying what the word meant at this time. ‘Ethnic’ is probably the nearest to the original meaning.

  2 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Houghton Mifflin, 1971, p. 404.

  3 Deutschland-Berichte der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Sopade) 1934–1940. Zweiter Jahrgang, 1935, Verlag Pet
ra Nettelbeck/Zweitausendeins, 1980, p. 1043.

  4 Martin Broszat et al. (eds.), Bayern in der NS-Zeit, Oldenbourg, 1977, vol. 1, pp. 466–7. Also see J. Noakes and G. Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919–1945, vol. 2: State, Economy and Society 1933–1939, Exeter University Press, 1983, p. 546.

  5 Max Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932–1945, vol. 2: 1935–1938, Bolchazy-Carducci, 1992, pp. 700–701, Hitler speech, 14 September 1935.

  6 Previously unpublished testimony.

  7 Previously unpublished testimony.

  8 Laurence Rees, Their Darkest Hour, Ebury Press, 2007, p. 193, together with previously unpublished testimony.

  9 Previously unpublished testimony.

  10 Gregory Wegner, Anti-Semitism and Schooling under the Third Reich, Routledge, 2002, Kindle edition, location 4325–31.

  11 Ernst Hiemer, Der Giftpilz, Stürmerverlag, 1938.

  12 Fritz Fink, The Jewish Question in Education, 1937, at http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/fink.htm. Also see Wegner, Anti-Semitism, location 1618–43.

  13 Previously unpublished testimony. Boehm-Tettelbach’s assertion that lawyers in Berlin were ‘mostly’ Jews is false – German Jewish lawyers were never a majority.

  14 David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 122. Also see Helga Grebing, Der Nationalsozialismus: Ursprung und Wesen, Isar Verlag, 1959, p. 65.

  15 Völkischer Beobachter, Bayernausgabe, 7 August 1929, p. 1.

  16 Previously unpublished testimony.

  17 Welch, Propaganda, p. 123.

  18 Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History, Pan, 2001, p. 381.

  19 Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, University of North Carolina Press, 1995, p. 62.

  20 Figures from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, http://www.ushmm.org/learn/students/learning-materials-and-resources/mentally-and-physically-handicapped-victims-of-the-nazi-era/forced-sterilization.

  21 Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, Basic Books, 2000, p. 29.

  22 Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience, Harvard University Press, 2003, p. 105. Also see Boaz Neumann, ‘The Phenomenology of the German People’s Body (Volkskörper) and the Extermination of the Jewish Body’, New German Critique, vol. 36, no. 1, 2009, pp. 149–81.

  23 Ian Kershaw, The ‘Hitler Myth’: Image and Reality in the Third Reich, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 78.

  24 Rees, Darkest Hour, p. 192.

  25 Laurence Rees, The Nazis: A Warning from History, BBC Books, 1997, p. 74.

  26 Previously unpublished testimony.

  27 Daily Express, 17 September 1936.

  28 In his article, Lloyd George asserted that ‘the German temperament takes no more delight in persecution than the British’, and expressed the hope that in future ‘Goebbels’ ranting speeches will not provoke another anti-Jewish manifestation’.

  29 Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate, Little, Brown, 2014, p. 33.

  30 Previously unpublished testimony.

  31 Previously unpublished testimony.

  32 Sunday Express, 19 June 1938, quoted in article by Edie Friedman, ‘Britain as Refuge: The Real Story’, 23 October 2008, https://www.thejc.com/britain-as-refuge-the-real-story-1.5676.

  33 Segev, One Palestine, pp. 37-9.

  34 Domarus, Hitler (English edn), vol. 2, p. 938, Hitler speech, 13 September 1937.

  35 Hildegard von Kotze and Helmut Krausnick (eds.), Es spricht der Führer. 7 exemplarische Hitler-Reden, Mohn, 1966, pp. 123–77, Rede Hitlers vor Kreisleitern auf der Ordensburg Vogelsang am 29. April 1937.

  36 Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, vol. 4, K. G. Saur, 2000, pp. 429–30, entry for 30 November 1937.

  37 Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series C, vol. V, no. 490.

  38 Nuremberg Trial Document 46-EC.

  39 Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, vol. 3/2, K. G. Saur, 2001, pp. 251–2, entry for 15 November 1936.

  40 J. Noakes and G. Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919–1945, vol. 3: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination, Exeter University Press, 2006, pp. 72–9.

  41 Joachim Fest, Hitler, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974, p. 42.

  42 Richard S. Geehr, Karl Lueger: Mayor of Fin de Siècle Vienna, Wayne State University Press, 1990, p. 181.

  43 Ibid., p. 200.

  44 Kurt von Schuschnigg, Austrian Requiem, Victor Gollancz, 1947, pp. 21, 23.

  45 Previously unpublished testimony and Rees, Nazis, p. 107.

  46 Max Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945. Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, vol. 1: Triumph, R. Löwit, 1973, p. 803, Hitler speech, Reichstag, 20 February 1938.

  47 Völkischer Beobachter, Norddeutsche Ausgabe, 26 February 1938, p. 2.

  48 Previously unpublished testimony.

  49 Previously unpublished testimony.

  50 Previously unpublished testimony.

  51 Previously unpublished testimony.

  52 Rees, Nazis, p. 114.

  53 Ibid., p. 112.

  54 Ibid., p. 114.

  55 William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, pp. 110–11.

  56 Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Little, Brown, 2015, p. 140.

  57 Ibid., p. 177.

  58 Ibid.

  59 Jürgen Matthäus and Mark Roseman (eds.), Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 1: 1933–1938, AltaMira Press/US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2010, Report to the Jewish Telegraph Agency in Paris on persecution in Austria in June 1938, document 10-7, pp. 283–4.

  60 Shirer, Berlin Diary, p. 109, entry for 19 March 1938.

  61 Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, vol. 5, K. G. Saur, 2000, p. 225, entry for 23 March 1938.

  62 David Cesarani, Eichmann: His Life and Crimes, Vintage, 2005, p. 61.

  63 Ibid., p. 65.

  64 Ibid., p. 67.

  65 Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 106.

  Chapter 7: Radicalization

  1 Max Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945. Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, vol. 1: Triumph, R. Löwit, 1973, pp. 845–6, Hitler speech, 6 April 1938.

  2 Ibid., p. 845, Hitler speech, Klagenfurt Festival Hall, 4 April 1938.

  3 Ibid., p. 844, Hitler speech, Graz, 3 April 1938.

  4 See here.

  5 Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944, Phoenix Press, 2002, pp. 142–5, here p. 144, 13 December 1941.

  6 Ibid., p. 145.

  7 Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen, vol. 1, p. 606, Hitler speech, 14 March 1936.

  8 Ibid., p. 848, Hitler speech, 9 April 1938.

  9 Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 92.

  10 Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Little, Brown, 2015, p. 177.

  11 Y. Arad, Y. Gutman and A. Margaliot (eds.), Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland and the Soviet Union, Bison Books, 1999, pp. 98–9.

  12 Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon and Chana Schütz (eds.), Jews in Nazi Berlin: From Kristallnacht to Liberation, University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 25.

  13 To be faithful to both the history and the different sensitivities of today, in this book the word ‘Gypsy’ will be used when discussing Nazi policy and ‘Sinti and Roma’ when referring more generally to the individuals concerned.

  14 Guenter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 2–3.

  15 Aristotle Kallis, Genocide and Fascism: The Eliminationist Drive in Fascist Europe, Routledge, 2009, p. 55, words of Albert Krantzius, at the st
art of the sixteenth century.

  16 Ibid.

  17 Cesare Lombroso, Die Ursachen und Bekämpfung des Verbrechens, Bermühler, 1902.

  18 Lewy, Nazi Persecution, p. 7.

  19 Previously unpublished testimony.

  20 Previously unpublished testimony.

  21 Lewy, Nazi Persecution, p. 42.

  22 Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945, Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 120–21. Also see Lewy, Nazi Persecution, pp. 135–8.

  23 Permanent exhibition at Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial.

  24 Christian Goeschel and Nikolaus Wachsmann (eds.), The Nazi Concentration Camps, 1933–1939: A Documentary History, University of Nebraska Press, 2012, pp. 204–5.

  25 Report from the police post of St Johann, Austria, 12 January 1939, quoted in Lewy, Nazi Persecution, pp. 61–2.

  26 M. James Penton, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Third Reich, University of Toronto Press, 2004, pp. 275–84.

  27 Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’, BBC Books, 2005, p. 210, together with previously unpublished testimony.

  28 Michel Reynaud and Sylvie Graffard, The Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Nazis: Persecution, Deportation, and Murder, 1933–1945, Cooper Square Press, 2001, p. 21.

  29 Wachsmann, KL, p. 126.

  30 Reynaud and Graffard, Jehovah’s Witnesses, pp. 89–90.

  31 Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, Phoenix Press, 2001, pp. 88–9.

  32 Ibid., p. 89.

  33 Ibid., p. 91.

  34 Reynaud and Graffard, Jehovah’s Witnesses, p. 31.

  35 Previously unpublished testimony.

  36 Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson (eds.), Heinrich Himmler. Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Ansprachen, Propyläen Verlag, 1974, pp. 93–4, 96–7, speech to SS group leaders on 18 February 1937.

  37 Völkischer Beobachter, Bayernausgabe, 2 August 1930 (182. Ausgabe, 43. Jg.), p. 1.

  38 Testimony of Wolfgang Teubert and Emil Klein, quoted in Laurence Rees, The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler, Ebury Press, 2012, pp. 127–8.

  39 Völkischer Beobachter, 1 July 1934, and Rees, Charisma, p. 127.

  40 Wachsmann, KL, pp. 127–8.