Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts

by Daniel Siemens

  42.See esp. Tatjana Tönsmeyer, Das Dritte Reich und die Slowakei 1939–1945: Politischer Alltag zwischen Kooperation und Eigensinn (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003), pp. 335–9.

  43.Dean, Robbing the Jews, pp. 317–22.

  44.Nižňanský, ‘The Discussions of Nazi Germany on the Deportation of Jews in 1942’, p. 112.

  45.See esp. Browning, Die ‘Endlösung’ und das Auswärtige Amt, pp. 143–74.

  46.Jozef Tiso, Die Wahrheit über die Slowakei: Verteidigungsrede gehalten am 17. und 18. März 1947 vor dem ‘National’-Gericht in Bratislava, ed. by Jon Sekera (published ‘in exile’, 1948), p. 48.

  47.Lotte Weiss, Meine zwei Leben: Erinnerungen einer Holocaust-Überlebenden (Münster: Lit, 2010), pp. 176–7.

  48.Tiso, Die Wahrheit über die Slowakei, p. 167.

  49.Dean, Robbing the Jews, pp. 319–20.

  50.StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 1, pp. 52–6, here p. 54: Testimony made under oath by Aron Grünhut, 13 January 1960; Oskar Neumann, Im Schatten des Todes: Vom Schicksalskampf des slowakischen Judentums (Tel Aviv: Olamenu, 1956), p. 53.

  51.Cable of Ludin to the German Foreign Office, 4 December 1941, in Nižňanský (ed.), Holokaust na Slovensku, vol. 4, pp. 111–12.

  52.Neumann, Im Schatten des Todes, pp. 67, 96–8. In August 1944 the FS was integrated into the Heimatschutz Slowakei; StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 4, p. 780: Testimony of Walter Postl, 23 June 1967.

  53.StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 21808, pp. 103–5: Testimony of Ferdinand Durcansky, 28 February 1964; StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 1, p. 86: Verbal note from the Deutsche Gesandtschaft Bratislava to the Slovakian Ministry of the Interior, 1 May 1942.

  54.Cable from Ludin to the German Foreign Office, 6 April 1942, in Nižňanský (ed.), Holokaust na Slovensku, vol. 4, p. 127.

  55.Nižňanský, ‘The Discussions of Nazi Germany on the Deportation of Jews in 1942’, p. 119.

  56.Ibid., p. 120.

  57.StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 21808, pp. 34–6: Letter from Franz Karmasin to Heinrich Himmler, 29 July 1942.

  58.Ibid., p. 135: Notation of the Staatsanwaltschaft München, 10 July 1964. Wisliceny’s counterpart in Slovakia was the ‘Jew king’ Anton Vosek, head of Department XIV of the Slovak Ministry of the Interior; Neumann, Im Schatten des Todes, p. 65. On the role of the SS advisors in Slovakia – but without any reference to Ludin – see Tatjana Tönsmeyer, ‘The German Advisors in Slovakia, 1939–1945: Conflict of Co-operation?’, in Mark Cornwall and R. J. W. Evans (eds), Czechoslovakia in a Nationalist and Fascist Europe 1918–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 169–84.

  59.PAAA, Personalakten, no. 9246, p. 40: Cable from the Foreign Office to Ludin, 26 July 1944. It is not clear when precisely this meeting took place.

  60.Dean, Robbing the Jews, p. 324; StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften München, no. 34835, vol. 2, pp. 257–8: Notation of the Bavarian Landeskriminalamt München, 8 January 1965.

  61.In October 1938 the party changed its name to Deutsche Partei.

  62.After 1945, Karmasin took refuge in the American sector of occupied Germany, initially living under a false name. The Bratislava People’s Court sentenced him to death (in absentia) on 22 June 1948. However, the German authorities did not hand him over, and in the West, Karmasin made a second career as a journalist and a functionary of the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, an expellee organization of the Slovakian Germans. Rumours in post-war Germany claimed that he had received substantial help from former SA-Obersturmbannführer Hans Gmelin, Ludin’s adjutant at the German Embassy in Bratislava between 1941 and 1945 and from 1954 to 1974 the elected mayor of Tübingen. Karmasin, who was also a member of the revanchist Witikobund, escaped punishment and died a free man on 25 June 1970. For details on his life, see Lubomir Lipták, Franz Karmasin opät na scene (Bratislava: Vyd-vo Polit. Lit., 1962), as well as the extensive files of the Munich prosecutor in StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vols 1–33.

  63.Wagner, Sudeten SA in Polen.

  64.StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 21808, pp. 12–19: BDC-Documents of Franz Karmasin.

  65.In this respect, see also StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 1, pp. 52–6: Testimony made under oath by Aron Grünhut, 13 January 1960.

  66.StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 21808, pp. 34–6: Letter from Franz Karmasin to Heinrich Himmler, 29 July 1942.

  67.Such an interpretation is in line with Ludin’s defence strategy after the war; see StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 3, p. 560: Testimony of Norbert Münz, 14 October 1965. For Karmasin’s view, see StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 5, pp. 1,215–16: Testimony of Franz Karmasin, 28 October 1969.

  68.StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 1, p. 86: Verbal note from the Deutsche Gesandtschaft Bratislava to the Slovakian Ministry of the Interior, 1 May 1942.

  69.Ibid., vol. 6, p. 1,290: Testimony of Josef Hotovy, 14 November 1969. Contrary to my findings, Ludin’s proxy Hans Gmelin in 1970 claimed that Ludin had threatened to resign and volunteer for service at the front lines once Tiso had informed him about the systematic killing of the Jews in 1942. See StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 6, p. 1,454: Testimony of Hans Gmelin, 5 March 1970.

  70.Korb, Im Schatten des Weltkriegs, pp. 111–12. For a contrary judgement, see Conze et al., Das Amt und die Vergangenheit, p. 280.

  71.Conze et al., Das Amt und die Vergangenheit, p. 280. Such literary comparisons were not limited to Kasche, however. Rudolf Rahn in Italy, for example, was known as the ‘Karl May of the diplomats’; see Lutz Klinkhammer, Zwischen Bündnis und Besatzung: Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland und die Republik von Salò 1943–1945 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993), p. 142. For Hitler’s and Kasche’s views on Croatian politics, views that slowly drifted apart in 1943 and 1944, see in particular Kasche’s memos on his meetings with Hitler on 29 October 1943, 30 March 1944, and 16 September 1944, in PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, vol. 23, pp. 5–17.

  72.Conze et al., Das Amt und die Vergangenheit, pp. 280–1; Korb, Im Schatten des Weltkriegs, pp. 195–6. For a detailed discussion of the nature of the Ustaša regime’s antisemitism, see ibid., pp. 136–46.

  73.A detailed discussion of the Ustaša regime’s atrocities and Kasche’s benevolence toward the Croatian position is beyond the reach of this study. See the excellent analysis by Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001); Ivo Goldstein, The Holocaust in Croatia (Pittsburgh, PA: The University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016); and Korb, Im Schatten des Weltkriegs, as well as the more partisan account of Lazo M. Kostich, The Holocaust in the ‘Independent State of Croatia’: An Account Based on German, Italian and Other Sources (Chicago, IL: Liberty, 1981), pp. 6–7, 43–6, 145–6.

  74.For Kasche’s perspective on this meeting, see his telegram to the Foreign Office of 4 June 1941, in Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik 1918–1945, Series D, vol. XII: 1937–1941 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), pp. 796–8.

  75.Korb, Im Schatten des Weltkriegs, p. 204, with further references.

  76.Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office, p. 93.

  77.Münz, Die Verantwortlichkeit für die Judenverfolgungen im Ausland, p. 209.

  78.Korb, Im Schatten des Weltkriegs, p. 413.

  79.Ibid., p. 419.

  80.Conze et al., Das Amt und die Vergangenheit, pp. 280–1.

  81.For a detailed discussion (with slightly lower figures for those deported and killed in Auschwitz), see Tomislav Dulić, ‘Mass Killing in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945: A Case for Comparative Research’, Journal of Genocide Research 8:3 (2006), pp. 255–81.

  82.Gerhard Köpernik, Faschisten im KZ: Rumäniens Eiserne Garde und das Dritte Reich (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2014), pp. 97–103; Andrej Angrick, ‘Rumänien, die SS und die Vernichtun
g der Juden’, in Mariana Hausleitner, Brigitte Mihok, and Juliane Wetzel (eds), Rumänien und der Holocaust: Zu den Massenverbrechen in Transnistrien 1941–1944 (Berlin: Metropol, 2001), pp. 113–38, here p. 122; Michael Kroner, ‘Ahnungslosigkeit oder Hochverrat? Manfred von Killinger in Bukarest 1941–1944’, Südostdeutsche Vierteljahresblätter: Zeitschrift für Literatur und Kunst, Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte 43 (1994), pp. 123–32.

  83.Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik 1918–1945, Series D, vol. XII: 1937–1941, pp. 11, 18–20, 140–4. See also Antonescu’s letter to von Killinger from 25 February 1941, in IfZ Archiv, Bestand Reichsführer-SS, MA 325, vol. 1, pp. 9,017–19.

  84.Wawrzinek, Manfred von Killinger, p. 210.

  85.Ion Georghe, Rumäniens Weg zum Satellitenstaat (Heidelberg: Vowinckel, 1952), pp. 124–8; Kroner, ‘Ahnungslosigkeit oder Hochverrat?’, p. 124.

  86.Based on, among other things, the diary entries of Romanian politicians, the German-Romanian historian Michael Kroner has suggested that von Killinger might have been involved in negotiations between the Romanian government and the Allies, and therefore may have deliberately misinformed the Foreign Office. However, this thesis seems largely based on unsubstantiated speculation. See Kroner, ‘Ahnungslosigkeit oder Hochverrat?’, pp. 124–8.

  87.Münz, Die Verantwortlichkeit für die Judenverfolgungen im Ausland, p. 144.

  88.On Richter, Lecca, and their relationship, see Dennis Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania, 1940–1944 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006), pp. 113, 121–2.

  89.Münz, Die Verantwortlichkeit für die Judenverfolgungen im Ausland, p. 164.

  90.Wolfgang Benz, ‘Der “vergessene Holocaust”: Der Sonderfall Rumänien: Okkupation und Verfolgung von Minderheiten im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in Hausleitner, Mihok, and Wetzel, Rumänien und der Holocaust, pp. 9–13.

  91.Jews were not the only victims of this policy of forced homogenization. Up to 30,000 Romani people were also deported to Transnistria, the majority of whom did not survive. See Brigitte Mihok, ‘Die Verfolgung der Roma: Ein verdrängtes Kapitel der rumänischen Geschichte’, in Hausleitner, Mihok, and Wetzel, Rumänien und der Holocaust, pp. 25–31.

  92.Mariana Hausleitner, ‘Großverbrechen im rumänischen Transnistrien 1941–1944’, in Hausleitner, Mihok, and Wetzel, Rumänien und der Holocaust, pp. 15–24; Dalia Ofer, ‘The Holocaust in Transnistria: A Special Case of Genocide’, in Lucjan Dobroszycki and Jeffrey S. Gurock (eds), The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941–1945 (New York: Sharpe, 1993), pp. 133–54. Ofer also discusses the fate of the local Jews of Transnistria, the vast majority of whom were killed by German Einsatzgruppen in the first days of the occupation.

  93.Münz, Die Verantwortlichkeit für die Judenverfolgungen im Ausland, p. 165.

  94.Browning, Die ‘Endlösung’ und das Auswärtige Amt, pp. 163–4; Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally, pp. 205–29.

  95.Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally, pp. 213–14.

  96.Richter had used this term as early as April 1942 in an article in the Bukarester Tageblatt; see Lya Benjamin, ‘Die “Judenfrage” in Rumänien im Spiegel des “Bukarester Tageblatts”’, in Hausleitner, Mihok, and Wetzel (eds), Rumänien und der Holocaust, pp. 139–52, here p. 141.

  97.As quoted in Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally, pp. 210–11.

  98.However, in the spring of 1943, von Killinger intervened on behalf of the Reich to prevent the emigration of Jewish children from Romania; see Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally, p. 216.

  99.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, p. 156 (entry from 19 February 1942).

  100.IfZ Archiv, Bestand Befehlshaber Serbien, MA 512, pp. 917–18: Cable from Beckerle to the Foreign Office, 27 July 1941.

  101.Frederick B. Chary, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), p. 48.

  102.Stefan Troebst, ‘Rettung, Überleben oder Vernichtung? Geschichtspolitische Kontroversen über Bulgarien und den Holocaust’, Südosteuropa: Zeitschrift für Politik und Gesellschaft 59:1 (2011), pp. 97–127, here pp. 104–5; Browning, Die ‘Endlösung’ und das Auswärtige Amt, p. 172.

  103.Dean, Robbing the Jews, pp. 335–7.

  104.Chary, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, pp. 51 and 69.

  105.Browning, Die ‘Endlösung’ und das Auswärtige Amt, pp. 172–3; Chary, The bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, pp. 72–3.

  106.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, p. 313 (entry from 16 February 1943).

  107.Dean, Robbing the Jews, p. 339.

  108.Beckerle’s diary entry from 3 March 1943, in which he summarizes a talk with Dannecker, makes it plain that he had been informed about these deportation plans and approved of them: ‘Starting on 15 March, eight trains shall leave, deporting 20,000 Jews (2,500 per train). As it will not completely work out, 2,000 Jews from Sofia shall be included. It is thought best to deport the most influential Jews who always create trouble when it comes to Aryanizations. I disapprove of resorting to Sofia, as this will make a lot of noise and endangers the whole action for the future. First, away with the other Jews, and afterwards, [we deport] all Jews from Sofia together!’; PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/3, p. 7 (entry from 3 March 1943).

  109.Todorov Tzvetan, The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria’s Jews Survived the Holocaust (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001), pp. 8–11.

  110.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/3, p. 48 (entry from 10 May 1943).

  111.Todorov, The Fragility of Goodness, p. 13; PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/3, p. 80 (entry from 21 July 1943).

  112.Christian Neef, ‘Die schlimmste Stunde’, Der Spiegel, 24 October 2011, http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-81136856.html.

  113.‘Streiflichter aus Litzmannstadt’, in Rudolf von Elmayer-Veestenbrugg (ed.), SA-Männer im feldgrauen Rock: Taten und Erlebnisse von SA-Männern in den Kriegsjahren 1939–1940 (Leipzig: v. Hase & Koehler, 1941), pp. 30–4, here pp. 31–2. Beckerle’s obsession with ‘Jewish dirt’ did not prevent him from moving into an ‘Aryanized’ villa in Frankfurt by the end of the 1930s; see Meinl, ‘Adolf Heinz Beckerle’.

  114.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, pp. 150 and 217 (entries from 4 February and 20 August 1942).

  115.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/3, p. 67 (entry from 19 June 1943).

  116.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, pp. 86 and 235 (entries from 26 October 1941 and 15 September 1942). According to his diaries, Beckerle often slept late and spent whole days sunbathing on his terrace.

  117.PAAA, Personalakten, no. 647, pp. 27–9: SD-Report to the Foreign Office on the flight of the Germans from Bulgaria, 18 December 1944.

  118.On von Jagow’s biography, see the very well-informed article by Hachmann, ‘Der “Degen”’, pp. 267–87.

  119.Even in wartime, life as a German diplomat in Hungary between 1941 and early 1944 was not unpleasant. In late August 1941 von Jagow demanded additional funds to buy ‘greater amounts of food, drinks and tobacco’ from one of the free ports of Hamburg, Lisbon, or Trieste, as luxury goods of sufficient quality were not available in Hungary; PAAA, Personalakten, no. 6681, p. 15: Letter from von Jagow to the Foreign Office, 30 August 1941.

  120.Hachmann, ‘Der “Degen”’, p. 284.

  121.The German deliberations on this matter also included financial considerations. A partial deportation – in which all ‘illegal’ Jews in Hungary were deported – would require as many resources as a total deportation, Eichmann argued. See Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung, p. 524.

  122.Münz, Die Verantwortlichkeit für die Judenverfolgungen im Ausland, pp. 180–95. See also Veesenmayer’s memorandum from April 1943, in Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik 1918–1945, Series E, vol. XI: 1941–1945, pp. 78–80.

  123.There were important exceptions, however, as Hungary deported Jews who did not hold Hungarian citizenship as early as 1941. Best-known in this regard is t
he Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre of late August 1941, in which German Einsatzgruppen and SS forces in Ukraine murdered more than 20,000 Jews previously deported from Hungary. See Andrej Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord: Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion 1941–1943 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2003), pp. 196–206; Randolph L. Braham, ‘The Kamenets Podolsk and Délvidék Massacres: Prelude to the Holocaust in Hungary’, Yad Vashem Studies 9 (1973), pp. 133–56.

  124.Margit Szöllösi-Janze, Die Pfeilkreuzlerbewegung in Ungarn: Historischer Kontext, Entwicklung und Herrschaft (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), pp. 426 and 432.

  125.Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung, p. 530; Randolph L. Braham, The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry: A Documentary Account (New York: Pro Arte, 1963), p. 160. This was a consequence of von Ribbentrop’s demand that diplomatic efforts to start the deportation of all Jews from Hungary, Bulgaria, and Denmark be intensified; see the note from Luther to Weizäcker from 24 September 1942, in ibid., p. 133.

  126.Ibid., pp. 165–71; Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung, p. 530.

  127.See the information provided in Veesenmayer’s personnel file at the Foreign Office in PAAA, Personalakten, no. 15789. When paying his first official visit to the king, Veesenmayer expressed the expectation that the Hungarians would fight side by side with the Germans and, after the ‘elimination of all subversive elements that threatened the people of Hungary and its state’ (nach Ausschaltung aller staats- und volkszersetzender Elemente), a phrase referring to the Jews, would ultimately win the war. See ibid., p. 30.