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While the Wehrmacht struggled forward, Heydrich completed his plan for a “final solution” to the Jewish problem. On November 29, 1941, he sent invitations to a small group of party, state, and police officials to a secret conference on December 9 to discuss matters related to Jewish policy. It was at this conference in Berlin that he would lay out his plan and assert the SS’s absolute authority over it. But the meeting could not be held on December 9. It was postponed, overtaken by events that profoundly changed the dynamics of the war. On December 5, the Soviets, buoyed by reinforcements from Siberia and the Far East, launched a massive counteroffensive before Moscow that caught the decimated Germans flat-footed. With the Soviet capital in their sights, the surprised Germans fell back in a frantic retreat as the Red Army pushed the overextended Wehrmacht back over one hundred miles. With little in the way of reserves available, the situation was desperate. Hitler issued a stand-firm order, and after giving ground, the Germans were able to establish strong defensive positions; by early January the lines stabilized and held. Moscow—and the Soviet Union—were saved.
But it was events all the way across the world and apparently unrelated to developments in Europe that transformed what had been two separate conflicts—the Sino-Japanese War and Hitler’s war in Europe—into a breathtakingly colossal global war. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7 brought the United States at last into the war, and four days later, Hitler, to the surprise of many and the dismay of his army commanders, chose to honor Germany’s obligations to its Axis ally and declared war on the United States. Far from being worried, Hitler exulted, “We can’t lose the war at all; we now have an ally which has never been conquered in 3,000 years.” Nazi naval commanders were delighted—the U.S., they argued, had been engaged in an undeclared war against the Reich for almost two years, and American aid to Britain had been Churchill’s best hope for winning the war. Now at last German submarines could be turned loose to ravage British and American shipping.
Hitler expected that America’s attention would be focused on the war in the Pacific, and it seemed doubtful that the Americans could fight two wars on fronts thousands of miles apart. Besides it would take at least another year before America could fully mobilize its economy. The decision to declare war also had profound implications for Jewish policy. Roosevelt, Hitler was convinced, was controlled by a clique of Wall Street Jews, and Hitler had hoped to use the Jews as hostages to keep America out of the war. But that consideration was no longer relevant; there was no longer any reason for restraint, and so the full fury of the Nazi state could be turned on the Jews of Europe.
The German defeat before Moscow brought the Blitzkrieg phase of the war to an end. A speedy victory over the Soviet Union, which Hitler had promised, had proven elusive, and Germany was now confronted by a war with the two largest economic powers in the world. Many, even within the military, were coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that in the end Barbarossa had tried to do too much. While the Wehrmacht was still capable of winning battles, sometimes with spectacular results, it was not capable of winning a war that was now global in scale. The life-and-death struggle Hitler had proclaimed in the run-up to Barbarossa was now upon the German people, and for them, as well as the Jews of Europe, Armageddon beckoned.
16
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HOLOCAUST AND TOTAL WAR
In the bitter winter of 1941–42 two exhausted armies faced one another across a frozen landscape of snow and ice. The Soviet winter offensive gained ground in December and January but staggered to a halt in February; for the duration of the long dark winter, the Eastern Front saw no significant action. Both armies were recuperating, replenishing their supplies, waiting for spring and the return of good campaigning weather. In North Africa General Erwin Rommel, with his underequipped and undermanned Afrika Korps, drove across the desert into Egypt, almost reaching Alexandria before being driven back, while in the North Atlantic, German U-boats were sinking Allied shipping at an alarming rate. For German submariners it was “the second happy time,” the first having come in the first months of war in 1939–40, when the U-boats sank almost a million and a half tons of Allied shipping. But for Hitler, North Africa remained a side show and although he followed the Battle of the Atlantic with satisfaction, the real war remained in the East, where the fate of the Third Reich hung in the balance. And while an uneasy lull hovered over military operations there, Hitler’s war against the Jews escalated dramatically, entering a new, even more monstrous phase.
On January 20, 1942, light snow falling from a bleak overcast sky, fifteen men—officials of the Nazi party and state—began arriving at an imposing lakefront villa in the elegant Berlin suburb of Wannsee. They were there at the invitation of Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, to discuss developments in Nazi Jewish policy. In October, Hitler had appointed Heydrich as the Reich protector of Bohemia and Moravia. The Protectorate occupied a particularly important role in Nazi plans for the East; unlike the other conquered territories, the protectorate, with its highly developed munitions industry and supply of skilled workers, was to be incorporated in the Greater German Reich at war’s end. Heydrich’s appointment signaled a radicalization of Nazi policy. Heydrich was determined to crush any hint of resistance and strictly enforce Nazi racial policies. The Protectorate would be cleansed of racial undesirables before its entry into the Greater German Reich, and Hitler believed Heydrich was the man to do it.
Among those present at noon, chatting, lunching at the buffet, were Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo; Josef Bühler, state secretary to Hans Frank in the General Government; Wilhelm Stuckart, coauthor of the Nuremberg Laws and state secretary in the Interior Ministry; Roland Freisler, of the Justice Ministry; Erwin Neumann, of the Four Year Plan; Martin Luther, of the Foreign Office; SS Sturmbahnführer Rudolf Lange, commander of the Security Police and SD in Latvia; and several other SS officials and party functionaries. Neither Hitler nor Himmler was present. This was Heydrich’s show, and he presided over the meeting, dominating the proceedings. His deputy, Adolf Eichmann, from the Jewish section of the Reich Security Main Office, made the arrangements and kept the minutes.
From the beginning it was clear that the meeting had two purposes. As the first order of business, Heydrich would unveil for the first time his plan for the “final solution” to the “Jewish question,” and, second, he would assert his ultimate authority over it. The plan was to be executed by the SS, and the various party and state agencies represented there were to pledge their readiness to cooperate in full with its demands. Some of those present were surprised at the thrust of Heydrich’s remarks, but others were not. Josef Bühler arrived at Wannsee knowing full well what to expect. He had been briefed in December and had reported to Hans Frank, whose General Government had become, in Frank’s words, an overcrowded dumping ground for unwanted Jews. Something had to be done. On December 16, Frank explained to a group of senior officials in the General Government. “As for the Jews,” he said,
I will be quite open with you—they will have to be finished off one way or the other. . . . I know that many of the measures now being taken against the Jews in the Reich are criticized. It is clear from the reports on popular opinion that there are accusations of cruelty and harshness. . . . As an old National Socialist, I must state that if the Jewish clan were to survive the war in Europe, while we had sacrificed our best blood in the defense of Europe, then this war would only represent a partial success. With respect to the Jews, therefore, I will only operate on the assumption that they will disappear. They must go. . . . But what will happen to the Jews? Do you imagine that they will actually be settled in the Ostland in villages? . . . I must ask you to arm yourselves against any feelings of compassion. We must exterminate the Jews wherever we find them.
That would occur through methods beyond the framework of the legal process. “One cannot apply views held up to now to such gigantic and unique events.” There were currently 3
.5 million Jews in the General Government, and Frank was anxious to be rid of them. It was clear, he said, “that we cannot shoot these 3.5 million Jews; we cannot poison them, but we must be able to intervene in a way which somehow achieves a successful extermination.” The General Government “must be just as free of Jews as the Reich is.”
Heydrich opened the meeting by emphasizing to the participants in no uncertain terms that Reich Marshal Göring, with the Führer’s approval, had commissioned him to direct the conduct of the regime’s Jewish policy. Establishing the RSHA’s authority over all potential challengers was the second message of the meeting. The different agencies that would be called upon to participate were expected to recognize their subordination to the SS and to pledge their cooperation. Order would now be brought to the hitherto haphazard Jewish policy of the regime; local initiative would give way to a centrally directed plan with an apparatus to execute it.
Although there was some grousing around the table and mild assertions of bureaucratic preeminence in some aspect of Jewish policy, those voices were quickly silenced by Heydrich’s smooth but intimidating demeanor. He then proceeded to outline the “final solution” he had developed. There would be no more talk about emigration; instead the Jews of Europe would be “evacuated to the East”—a solution taken “with the prior permission of the Führer”—not only the Jews currently under German control but in all Europe, from Britain to Switzerland to Sweden to Spain, eleven million in total. Europe would be combed through from west to east, and the Jews would initially be moved in stages to transit ghettos before being transported farther east. The Foreign Ministry, working with the Security Police and the SD, would deal with the appropriate local authorities. Although bureaucratic euphemisms dominated the formal minutes, “evacuation,” his listeners clearly understood, meant “extermination.” The Nuremberg Laws would be the basis for the selection process, but the definition of who was a Jew would be significantly broadened. Due to the severe labor shortage in the Reich, able-bodied Jews would be assigned to hard labor, building roads in the East, which, Heydrich estimated, would greatly reduce their number. He did not elaborate on the fate of the others, the vast majority, but that was hardly necessary. Jews over sixty-five or Jews with military decorations would be evacuated to the newly constructed “old people’s ghetto” at Theresienstadt in Bohemia, which would be shown to the outside world as a model concentration camp. A number of those present, apparently uneasy with Heydrich’s cold-blooded plan for mass murder, spoke up instead for mass sterilization of the Jews, but their suggestions were cast aside.
The gigantic scale of Heydrich’s evacuation plan clearly assumed a German military victory, which in the winter of 1941–42 was anything but certain. The full realization of the “final solution” would have to wait until war’s end. Bühler, however, insisted that conditions in the General Government made immediate action imperative, and argued that steps could be taken there now since transportation would be no problem. Three million Jews were already there, concentrated in teeming, overcrowded ghettos, and could be easily transported. Heydrich did not disagree. With that the conference was concluded. No notes were permitted; only Eichmann’s minutes. Afterward the participants stood or sat in small groups, servants passed cognac; cigars appeared, and a relieved atmosphere of conviviality prevailed. The fate of Europe’s Jews had been settled in only ninety minutes.
The mass murder of the Jews in the General Government got under way almost immediately. The SS had already taken action on this front in late 1941, with mass shootings, deportations to extermination camps, and forced labor. The Belzec extermination camp had been under construction since November 1941, and the gates swung open for the first time on March 17, 1942, when a transport of between forty and sixty railcars arrived bearing Jews from the Lublin area. The camp was the first of the extermination camps to go into operation and in many ways served as a model for the others. Belzec was situated about five hundred meters from a train station, which was outfitted to look like an ordinary small-town station, with timetables and travel notices posted around the site. The camp was divided into two parts: on one side was a reception area with two barracks—one for undressing and where the women had their hair shorn and the other for storing clothes and luggage. It was called “the cloak room.” Camp II contained the gas chambers and mass graves and two barracks for Jewish work details, one as living quarters and one containing a kitchen. The gas chambers were surrounded by birch trees and had camouflage nets on the roof. A narrow path some seventy-five meters in length, known as “the tube,” connected the two. The Jews were herded along this path from the undressing barracks in Camp I to the gas chambers in Camp II. A powerful diesel tank engine was installed outside the chambers and its exhaust fumes were fed into the chambers. A sign on the entrance read: “To the inhalation and bath rooms.” In front of the building cheerful red geraniums had been planted. As a cruel joke, a Star of David had been installed on the roof.
A witness to the killing procedure described what happened when a shipment of Jews arrived at the camp. Forty-five cattle cars carrying 6,700 people, 1,450 of whom had died in transit, arrived at the station. Ukrainian guards armed with leather whips slid open the doors, and the human cargo spilled out onto the ramp. A large loudspeaker barked instructions. The prisoners were to undress completely, including artificial limbs and spectacles. Shoes were to be tied together before they were tossed into the twenty-five-meter-high pile of shoes. Then the women and girls had their hair shorn; the fallen clumps were stuffed into potato sacks to be used as insulation on submarines. From there, the procession of men, women, and children, cripples and the aged, were marched down “the tube.” The SS man in charge tried to calm their nerves. He explained soothingly that “well, naturally, the men will have to work, build houses and roads, but the women won’t need to work. Only if they want to, they can do housework or help in the kitchen.” But the smell, the sinister darkness of the low building, and the Ukrainian guards caused the Jews to hold back. They hesitated but entered the death chambers, driven by the others behind them or by the leather whips of the SS, the majority without saying a word. “One Jewess of about forty, eyes blazing, curses the murderers. She receives five or six lashes with the riding whip from Captain Wirth [commander of the operation] personally and then disappears into the chamber. Many people pray.”
The chambers were packed tight, one person per square foot, seven to eight hundred pressed so close together they could not move, fall, or lean over. The large steel door slammed shut, and the diesel engine ground into gear. Outside the thick walls one could hear sobbing, prayers. Through a peephole the SS could watch the death throes. In twenty-five minutes the chamber was at last silent. The doors were thrown open and a special prison work detail (a Sonderkommando composed of Jewish prisoners) entered to empty the tomb. “The dead stand like basalt pillars . . . and even in death one can tell which are the families. They are holding hands in death and it is difficult to tear them apart in order to empty the chambers for the next batch.” From the gas chamber the corpses are carried on wooden stretchers only a few meters to the ditches, which are 100 x 20 x 12 meters in size. “After a few days, the corpses swell up and then collapse so that one can throw another layer on top of this one. Then ten centimeters of sand are strewn on the top so that only the occasional head or arms stick out.”
Mass exterminations using carbon monoxide gas began in the other camps in the late spring. The camp at Sobibor opened in March, Chelmno in April, and Treblinka, which would emerge as the most deadly, in July. By the end of the year, 1,274,256 had been murdered in Aktion Reinhard camps, 713,555 in Treblinka, another 434,598 in Belzec, 101,370 in Sobibor, and 24,733 in Majdanek, an associated camp near Warsaw. Of the original 2.3 million Jews in the General Government at the outset of the program, only 298,000 remained. Another hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Galicia in the summer and fall of 1941, and it is estimated that 1.5 million Polish Jews died in actions to clear g
hettos in 1942, making Aktion Reinhard the largest murder campaign of the Holocaust.
Hitler never committed himself to paper on Heydrich’s plan, nor was it to be discussed in his presence. But it is evident from private conversations Hitler had with Himmler in the days immediately following the Wannsee Conference and on into February that he was fully briefed. At lunch on January 23, just three days after the Wannsee meeting, the Führer, in conversation with Himmler, defended the measures taken. “One must act radically. . . . The Jew must clear out of Europe. . . . For my part, I restrict myself to telling them they must go away. . . . But if they refuse to go voluntarily, I see no other solution but extermination. . . . Where the Jews are concerned, I’m devoid of all sense of pity. They’ll always be the ferment that moves peoples one against the other. They sow discord everywhere, as much between individuals as between peoples.” The extermination could not be restricted to Germany, he continued. “It’s entirely natural that we should concern ourselves with the question on the European level. It’s clearly not enough to expel them from Germany. We cannot allow them to retain bases of withdrawal at our doors. We want to be out of danger of all kinds of infiltration.” A month later, again with Himmler as his guest, Hitler dilated on the danger posed by the Jews. “The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that have taken place in the world,” he averred. “The battle in which we are engaged today is of the same sort as the battle waged, during the last century, by Pasteur and Koch. How many diseases have their origin in the Jewish virus! . . . We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jews.”
The Third Reich Page 64