The Holocaust: A New History

41 See http://www.ushmm.org/learn/students/learning-materials-and-resources/homosexuals-victims-of-the-nazi-era/persecution-of-homosexuals. The museum estimates that 5,000–15,000 homosexuals were sent to concentration camps.

  42 Wachsmann, KL, p. 134.

  43 Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen, vol. 1, p. 870, Hitler order, 30 May 1938.

  44 Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, Penguin, 2007, p. 255.

  45 PRO FO 371/22530, 13 March 1938, quoted in Fiona Horne, ‘Explaining British Refugee Policy, March 1938–July 1940’, thesis, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, 2008, p. 5.

  46 Major Sir George Davies, Conservative MP for Yeovil, speaking in the House of Commons on 22 March 1938, PRO FO 372/3282.

  47 Martin Gilbert, Exile and Return, Lippincott, 1978, p. 203. Spoken in a Cabinet Committee on Refugees, 20 July 1938.

  48 David Clay Large, And the World Closed its Doors, Basic Books, 2004, p. 72.

  49 G. S. Messersmith, Berlin, to William Phillips, Undersecretary of State, Washington, 26 June 1933, George S. Messersmith Papers in the University of Delaware Library, http://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/6176.

  50 Joseph S. Nye Jr, Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era, Princeton University Press, 2013, p. 38.

  51 Clay Large, And the World Closed its Doors, p. 70.

  52 Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, entry for 29 March 1938, http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/politics-government/prime-ministers/william-lyon-mackenzie-king/Pages/item.aspx?IdNumber=18924&.

  53 Ibid., entry for 29 June 1937. After the Anschluss, King did remark in his diary that he could not ‘abide’ the Nazis’ ‘oppression of Jews’ but nonetheless felt that the world would still come to see Hitler as ‘a very great man-mystic’: see Mackenzie King diary, entry for 27 March 1938. After Kristallnacht, he wrote that he had ‘sympathy’ for the Jews ‘in their plight’: see Mackenzie King diary, entry for 23 November 1938.

  54 Ibid., entry for 30 June 1937.

  55 Jürgen Matthäus and Mark Roseman (eds.), Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 1: 1933–1938, AltaMira Press/US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2010, WJC Memorandum, July 1938, USHMMA RG 11.001 M.36, reel 106 (SAM 1190-1-257), document 11-3, pp. 314–18.

  56 Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews 1933–1946, W. W. Norton, 2009, p. 99, Roger Makins, Memorandum 25 March 1938, PRO FO 371/2231.

  57 Emanuel Melzer, No Way Out: The Politics of Polish Jewry, 1935–1939, Hebrew Union College Press, 1965, p. 90.

  58 David Cymet, History vs. Apologetics: The Holocaust, the Third Reich, and the Catholic Church, Lexington Books, 2010, p. 125.

  59 Golda Meir, My Life, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975, p. 127.

  60 Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, Transaction, 2013, p. 125.

  61 Winston Churchill speaking in a House of Commons debate, 23 May 1939, Hansard, vol. 347, col. 2178. See Daniel Todman, Britain’s War: Into Battle 1937–1941, Allen Lane, 2016, pp. 162–6.

  62 Cabinet Committee Minutes, PRO CAB 24/285, 20 April 1939; also see correspondence to Winston Churchill reporting that the British Minister in Bucharest was ‘strongly anti-Semite’, despite the ‘persecution’ of Jews there. Quoted in Gilbert, Exile and Return, p. 226.

  63 Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933–1938, L. & O. Dennys, 1982, p. 35.

  64 Ibid., p. 9, Blair letter dated 13 September 1938.

  65 William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, p. 120, entry for 7 July 1938.

  66 Völkischer Beobachter, 13 July 1938, and Rees, Charisma, p.189.

  67 Max Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932–1945, vol. 2: 1935–1938, Bolchazy-Carducci, 1992, p. 1153, Hitler speech, 12 September 1938.

  68 Joshua D. Zimmerman, The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945, Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 20.

  69 Leonidas E. Hill (ed.), Die Weizsäcker Papiere 1933–1950, Propyläen Verlag, 1974, p. 142.

  70 Longerich, Holocaust, pp. 106–7.

  71 Domarus, Hitler, vol. 2 (English edn), p. 1223, Hitler speech, 9 October 1938.

  72 Matthäus and Roseman (eds.), Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 1, letter from Josef Broniatowski, Częstochowa (Poland), no date (most likely early November 1938), document 12-2, pp. 345–7.

  73 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Penguin, 1997, p. 228.

  74 Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, vol. 6, K. G. Saur, 1998, p. 180, entry for 10 November 1938.

  75 This testimony is previously unpublished, but also see Laurence Rees, The Nazis: A Warning from History, BBC Books, 1997, pp. 75–6, and Rees, Charisma, pp. 191–2.

  76 Previously unpublished testimony.

  77 Ruth Levitt (ed.), Pogrom: November 1938. Testimonies from ‘Kristallnacht’, Souvenir Press/The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide, 2015, p. 33, report B12.

  78 Gendarmerie-Station Muggendorf Monthly Report, 26 November 1938, in Walter H. Pehle (ed.), November 1938: From Reichskristallnacht to Genocide, St Martin’s Press, 1991, p. 39. Quoted in ‘Reactions to Kristallnacht’ at www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.

  79 Levitt (ed.), Pogrom, pp. 86–7, report B66.

  80 Previously unpublished testimony.

  81 Levitt (ed.), Pogrom, pp. 28–9, report B8.

  82 ‘Juden, was nun?’, Das Schwarze Korps. Zeitung der Schutzstaffeln der NSDAP, Organ der Reichsführung SS, Berlin, 24 November 1938, issue no. 47, vol. 4, front page.

  83 ‘Dieses Pack ist schlimmer!’, Das Schwarze Korps. Zeitung der Schutzstaffeln der NSDAP, Organ der Reichsführung SS, Berlin, 17 November 1938, issue no. 46, vol. 4, front page.

  84 ‘Damit wir uns recht verstehen …’, Das Schwarze Korps. Zeitung der Schutzstaffeln der NSDAP, Organ der Reichsführung SS, Berlin, 1 December 1938, issue no. 48, vol. 4, p. 2.

  85 ‘Das genügt fürs erste!’, Das Schwarze Korps. Zeitung der Schutzstaffeln der NSDAP, Organ der Reichsführung SS, Berlin, 24 November 1938, issue no. 47, vol. 4, p. 14.

  86 ‘Juden, was nun?’, Das Schwarze Korps, 24 November 1938.

  87 David Cesarani, Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933–49, Macmillan, 2016, p. 214.

  88 Previously unpublished testimony.

  89 PRO CAB 27/624 32, 14 November 1938, quoted in Rees, Charisma, p. 221.

  90 Previously unpublished testimony.

  91 Source of English translation: Stenographic Report of the Meeting on ‘the Jewish Question’ under the Chairmanship of Field Marshal Goering in the Reichs Air Force Ministry, 12 November 1938, in United States Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. IV, United States Government Printing Office, 1946, Document 1816-PS, pp. 425–57.

  92 Longerich, Holocaust, p. 115.

  93 Max Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932–1945, vol. 3: 1939–1940, Bolchazy-Carducci, 1997, pp. 1447–9, Hitler speech, 30 January 1939.

  94 Conversation between Hitler and the Hungarian Foreign Minister Count Csáky on 16 January 1939, 5–6 p.m., Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik 1918–1945, Serie D, vol. V: Polen, Südosteuropa, Lateinamerika, Klein- und Mittelstaaten, Juni 1937–März 1939, Imprimerie Nationale, 1953, p. 305.

  95 Minutes of the meeting of the Czechoslovakian Foreign Minister Chvalkovský with Hitler on 21 January 1939, 5–6 p.m., Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik 1918–1945, Serie D, vol. IV: Die Nachwirkungen von München, Oktober 1938–März 1939, Imprimerie Nationale, 1951, pp. 170–71.

  96 James Mace Ward, Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia, Cornell University Press, 2013, p. 177.

  97 Ibid., p. 185.

  98 Previously unpublished testimony.

  99 Previously unpublished testimony.

  100 Dav
id Dilks (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, OM, 1938–1945, Cassell, 1971, p. 161, entry for 20 March 1939.

  101 American Presidency Project: 15 April 1939, press conference, www.presidency.ucsb.edu.

  102 Domarus, Hitler, vol. 3 (English edn), pp. 1585–92.

  103 Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series D, vol. VII, pp. 200–204, meeting of 22 August 1939. Also see J. Noakes and G. Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919–1945, vol. 3: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination, Exeter University Press, 1991, pp. 739–43.

  Chapter 8: The Start of Racial War

  1 Laurence Rees, World War II: Behind Closed Doors, BBC Books, 2008, p. 32.

  2 Jürgen Matthäus, Jochen Böhler and Klaus-Michael Mallmann (eds.), War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, 1939: The Einsatzgruppen in Poland, Documenting Life and Destruction: Holocaust Sources in Context, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, p. 44, document 5: Diary notes by SS Hauptsturmführer Erich Ehlers, Einsatzgruppe II, for 1 to 5 September 1939.

  3 Ibid., p. 54, document 12: Report by Helmuth Bischoff, leader of Einsatzkommando 1/IV, on his deployment in Bydgoszcz, 7 and 8 September 1939, undated (late 1939), IPNW, NTN 196/180.

  4 Laurence Rees, The Nazis: A Warning from History, BBC Books, 1997, pp. 127–8.

  5 Ibid., p. 130.

  6 Previously unpublished testimony.

  7 Tomasz Szarota, ‘Poland under German Occupation 1939–1945’, in Bernd Wegner (ed.), From Peace to War: Germany, Soviet Russia, and the World, 1939–1941, Berghahn Books, 1997, pp. 47–61, here p. 54.

  8 Laurence Rees, The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler, Ebury Press, 2012, p. 251.

  9 Matthäus, Böhler and Mallmann (eds.), War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, p. 29.

  10 Alexander B. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity, University Press of Kansas, 2003, p. 16.

  11 Ibid., pp. 66–7 and 129.

  12 Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, Heinemann, 2004, pp. 36–7. David Cesarani, Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933–49, Macmillan, 2016, p. 257.

  13 Previously unpublished testimony.

  14 Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 151–2.

  15 Christopher Browning, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 8, Hans Frank speech, 25 November 1939.

  16 Ibid., p. 6.

  17 Previously unpublished testimony.

  18 Rees, Nazis, p. 139.

  19 Browning, Origins, p. 57.

  20 Rees, Charisma, p. 294, Goebbels diary entry for 24 January 1940.

  21 Testimony of Fritz Arlt, published here for the first time. But see also Arlt’s testimony in Rees, Nazis, pp. 151–2, and Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’, BBC Books, 2005, p. 34.

  22 Rees, Nazis, p. 136.

  23 Previously unpublished testimony.

  24 Browning, Origins, p. 93.

  25 Himmler memo, 15 May 1940, ‘Some Thoughts on the Treatment of the Alien Population in the East’, J. Noakes and G. Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919–1945, vol. 3: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination, Exeter University Press, 1991, p. 934.

  26 See here.

  27 Tatiana Berenstein et al. (eds.), Faschismus – Getto – Massenmord. Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges, Röderberg-Verlag, 1960, pp. 78–81, here p. 81. Circular of the district president of Kalisz, Uebelhoer, 10 December 1939. Also printed in Dokumenty i materialy z czasów Okupacji Niemieckiej w Polsce, vol. 3: Getto Lódzkie, Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Centralnej Żydowskiej Komisji Historycznej, 1946, pp. 26–31.

  28 Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides (eds.), Łódź Ghetto: Inside a Community under Siege, Viking, 1989, p. 11, Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak.

  29 Previously unpublished testimony.

  30 Rees, Nazis, p. 153.

  31 Isaiah Trunk, Łódź Ghetto: A History, Indiana University Press, 2008, p. xxxiv.

  32 Ibid., p. 21.

  33 Yehuda Leib Gerst, From the Straits (Hebrew), Jerusalem: Safra Fund, 1949, p. 26, quoted in Michal Unger, Reassessment of the Image of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, Yad Vashem, 2004, p. 8.

  34 Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron and Josef Kermisz (eds.), The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow, Elephant, 1999, pp. 236–7, entry for 17 May 1941.

  35 Rees, Nazis, p. 154. Testimony of Egon Zielke.

  36 Previously unpublished testimony.

  37 Longerich, Holocaust, p. 136.

  38 See here.

  39 Previously unpublished testimony, but also see Rees, Nazis, p. 83.

  40 Browning, Origins, p. 186.

  41 Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, Basic Books, 1986, p. 280. Brack was a failed medical student.

  42 Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, University of North Carolina Press, 1995, p. 75.

  43 Ibid., p. 81.

  44 C. F. Rüter et al. (eds.), Justiz und NS-Verbrechen. Sammlung deutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischer Tötungsverbrechen 1945–1966, vol. XXVI, Amsterdam University Press/K. G. Saur, 2001, pp. 555–83, here pp. 558–9. Also quoted in Ernst Klee, Euthanasie im NS-Staat. Die ‘Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens’, S. Fischer Verlag, 1983, pp. 84–5.

  45 Klee, Euthanasie, p. 118.

  46 Karsten Linne (ed.), Der Nürnberger Ärzteprozeß 1946/47. Wortprotokolle, Anklage- und Verteidigungsmaterial, Quellen zum Umfeld, Mikrofiche-Edition/K. G. Saur, 1999, ff. 2687–8, transcript of Hans Heinrich Lammers’ testimony, Nuremberg Medical Case, 7 February 1947. Also note that preliminary experiments with carbon monoxide as a killing agent were made in the Warthegau in November 1939. Browning, Origins, p. 188.

  47 Lifton, Nazi Doctors, p. 72.

  48 See, for example, Józef Paczyński’s testimony, p. 255.

  49 Lifton, Nazi Doctors, p. 72.

  50 Figures from the Sonnenstein Museum.

  51 Michael Grabher, Irmfried Eberl. ‘Euthanasie’ Arzt und Kommandant von Treblinka, Peter Lang, 2006, p. 35. Original in Hearing of Aquilin Ullrich in Frankfurt, 10 October 1962, HHStAW 631a, no. 1726.

  52 Ute Hofmann and Dietmar Schulze, ‘… wird heute in eine andere Anstalt verlegt’. Nationalsozialistische Zwangssterilisation und ‘Euthanasie’ in der Landes-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Bernburg – eine Dokumentation, Regierungspräsidium Dessau, 1997, p. 111.

  53 Grabher, Eberl, p. 105. Original in Hearing of Heinrich Bunke in Frankfurt, 17 April 1962, HHStAW 631a, no. 1666.

  54 Hans-Walter Schmuhl, ‘Brain Research and the Murder of the Sick: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research, 1937–1945’, in Susanne Heim, Carola Sachse and Mark Walker (eds.), The Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 99–119, here p. 113.

  55 Quoted in http://chgs.umn.edu/histories/documentary/hadamar/ignorance.html, University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust Studies.

  56 Ernst Klee (ed.), Dokumente zur ‘Euthanasie’, S. Fischer Verlag, 1985, p. 125.

  57 Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder, Pimlico, 1995, p. 54.

  58 Longerich, Holocaust, p. 138.

  59 Browning, Origins, pp. 188–9.

  60 Ibid., pp. 191–2; but note that one Jewish hospital at Bendorf-Sayn was exempt from this – these patients were later killed as part of the Final Solution.

  61 Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Little, Brown, 2015, pp. 231–2.

  62 http://www.buchenwald.de/en/457/.

  63 Wachsmann, KL, pp. 221–5.

  64 Previously unpublished testimony.

  65 Previously unpublished testimony.

  66 Previously unpublished testimony.

  67 Previously unpublished testimony.

  68 Previously unpublished testimony.

  69 Noakes and Pridham (eds.), Nazism, vol. 3, pp. 932–4.

  70 Yi
tzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman and Abraham Margaliot (eds.), Documents on the Holocaust, University of Nebraska Press, 1999, pp. 216–18, Rademacher memo, 3 July 1940.

  71 Ibid., p. 218, Frank speech, 12 July 1940.

  72 Kurt Pätzold, Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung. Dokumente des faschistischen Antisemitismus, Reclam, 1991, pp. 269–70.

  73 Arad et al. (eds.), Documents, pp. 216–18, Rademacher memo, 3 July 1940.

  74 Longerich, Holocaust, pp. 162–4.

  75 Charles Burdick and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (eds.), The Halder War Diary, 1939–1942, Greenhill Books, 1988, p. 76, entry for 3 November 1939.

  76 Georg Mayer (ed.), Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb. Tagebuchaufzeichnungen und Lagebeurteilungen aus zwei Weltkriegen, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1976, pp. 187–8, entry for 9 October 1939.

  77 David Jablonsky, Churchill and Hitler: Essays on the Political–Military Direction of Total War, Frank Cass, 1994, p. 155; also see Alexander Pollak, Die Wehrmachtslegende in Österreich. Das Bild der Wehrmacht im Spiegel der österreichischen Presse nach 1945, Böhlau, 2002, p. 62.

  78 Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series D, vol. VII, pp. 200–204, Hitler speaking to his military commanders at Berchtesgaden, 22 August 1939. Also see Noakes and Pridham (eds.), Nazism, vol. 3, pp. 739–43.

  79 Max Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945. Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, vol. 2: Untergang, R. Löwit, 1973, pp. 1422, 1425–6, Hitler speech, 23 November 1939.

  80 Ibid., pp. 1553, 1558, Hitler speech, 19 July 1940.

  81 Burdick and Jacobsen (eds.), Halder War Diary, pp. 241–6, entry for 31 July 1940.

  Chapter 9: Persecution in the West

  1 The figure 4,500 is the total suggested by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (www.ushmm.org) – 3,500 citizens of the country and 1,000 refugees. Yad Vashem suggest a lower total of 3,500 (www.yadvashem.org). Yehuda Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee 1939–1945, Wayne State University Press, 1981, p. 53, suggests 3,500 in 1939 and 2,000 in 1940.

  2 Gustav Simon was head of the civil administration of Luxembourg and Gauleiter of neighbouring Moselland.

  3 Bauer, American Jewry pp. 53–5.