by Ian Kershaw
At the end of the month, in his new capacity as Reich Commissar for the Consolidation of Germandom, Himmler ordered all Jews to be cleared out of the incorporated territories. The deportation of around 550,000 Jews was envisaged. On top of that came several hundred thousand of the ‘especially hostile Polish population’, making a figure of about a million persons in all.209 From the largest of the areas designated for deportations and the resettlement of ethnic Germans, the Warthegau, it proved impossible to match the numbers initially charted for deportation, or the speed at which their removal had been foreseen. Even so, 128,011 Poles and Jews were forcibly deported under horrifying conditions by spring 1940.210 Sadistic SS men would arrive at night, clear entire tenement blocks, and load up the inhabitants – subjected to every form of bestial humilation – on to open lorries, despite the intense cold, to be taken to holding camps, from where they were herded into unheated and massively overcrowded cattle-trucks and sent south, without possessions and often without food or water. Deaths were frequent on the journeys. Those who survived often suffered from frostbite or other legacies of their terrible ordeal.211 The deportees were sent to the General Government, seen in the annexed territories as a type of dumping-ground for undesirables. But the Governor General, Hans Frank, was no keener on having Jews in his area than were the Gauleiter of the incorporated regions. He envisaged them rotting in a reservation, but outside his own territory. In November 1939 Frank had plainly laid down the intentions for his own province. It was a pleasure, he stated, finally to be able physically to tackle the Jewish race: ‘The more who die, the better… The Jews should see that we have arrived. We want to have a half to three-quarters of all Jews put east of the Vistula. We’ll suppress these Jews everywhere we can. The whole business is at stake here. The Jews out of the Reich, Vienna, from everywhere. We’ve no use for Jews in the Reich.’212 Around the same time that Frank was voicing such sentiments, the Reich Governor of the Wartheland, Arthur Greiser, speaking of encountering in Lodz ‘figures who can scarcely be credited with the designation “person” (Gestalten… denen man kaum noch den Namen “Mensch” zubilligen kann)’, was letting it be known that the ‘Jewish Question’ was as good as solved.213 However, by early 1940, his hopes (and those of Wilhelm Koppe, police chief of the Warthegau) of the quick expulsion of the Jews into the General Government were already proving vain ones, Hans Frank and his subordinates were starting to raise objections at the numbers of Jews they were being forced to take in, without any clear planning for what was to become of them, and with their own hopes of sending them on further to a reservation – an idea meanwhile abandoned – now vanished.214 Frank was able to win the support of Göring, whose own interest was in preventing the loss of manpower useful for the war effort. Göring’s strong criticism of the ‘wild resettlement’ at a meeting on 12 February ran counter to Himmler’s demands for room for hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans, already moved from their original homes. The very next day, Jews from Stettin were deported to the Lublin area to make way for Baltic Germans ‘with sea-faring jobs’.215 The police chief of the Lublin district, Odilo Globocnik, suggested that if the Jews coming to the General Government could not feed themselves, or be fed by other Jews, they should be left to starve.216 On 24 March, at Frank’s bidding, Göring felt compelled to ban all ‘evacuation’ into the General Government ‘until further notice’.217 Greiser was told that his request to deport the Warthegau’s Jews would have to be deferred until August.218 From 1 May 1940 the huge ghetto at Lodz, containing 163,177 persons, initially established only as a temporary measure until the War-thegau’s Jews could be pushed over the border into the General Government, was sealed off from the rest of the city.219 Mortalities from disease and starvation started to rocket during the summer.220 At a meeting in Cracow on 31 July, Greiser was told by Frank in no uncertain terms of Himmler’s assurance, under instructions by Hitler, that no more Jews were to be deported to the General Government.221 And on 6 November 1940 Frank informed Greiser by telegram that there were to be no further deportations into the General Government before the end of the war. Himmler was aware of this. Any transports would be turned back.222 The solution which to Greiser had seemed so close to hand a year earlier was indefinitely blocked.
As one door closed, another opened – or, for a brief moment, appeared to open. At the meeting in Cracow at the end of July, Greiser mentioned a new possibility that had emerged. He had heard personally from Himmler, he reported, ‘that the intention now exists to shove the Jews overseas into specific areas’. He wanted early clarification.223
Already in 1937, as we noted in an earlier chapter, the SD had toyed with the idea of resettling Jews in an inhospitable part of the world. The barren stretches of Ecuador were one of the possibilities mentioned.224 In the years 1938–40 the island of Madagascar, a French colony off the African coast, came to be talked of as a likely venue – an idea apparently first mooted by the orientalist scholar and antisémite Paul de Lagarde in 1885 and popularized in racist circles in the 1920s by Henry Hamilton Beamish, son of a British rear-admiral of Irish descent and founder in 1919 of an antisemitic organization entitled ‘The Britons’.225 Streicher, Göring, Rosenberg, Ribbentrop, and even Hjalmar Schacht had referred to this eventuality.226 Streicher had aired the idea on occasion in the Stürmer. He was able to pick up on known pre-war discussions of the Polish authorities with the British and French about the possible transportation of large numbers of Jews to Madagascar.227 Hitler himself had approved of the idea of a Jewish reservation in Madagascar in conversation with Göring in November 1938.228 With the prospect looming larger in the spring of 1940 of regaining colonial territories in the near future (and acquiring some which had not previously belonged to Germany), Madagascar now began to be evoked as a distinct policy option rather than a distant vision.229
It seems to have been Himmler, perhaps testing the waters, who at this point first broached in the highest circles the idea of deporting the Jews to an African colony, though he did not refer specifically to Madagascar. In the middle of May, after a visit to Poland, the Reichsführer-SS produced a six-page memorandum entitled ‘Some Thoughts on the Treatment of the Alien Population in the East’, detailing brutal plans for racial selection in Poland, involving the removal of children of good racial stock to Germany and the suppression of ethnic identity among the rest through deprivation of all but the most elementary training in reading and writing to educate them to serve the German ruling class. ‘As horrible and tragic as every individual case might be,’ Himmler wrote, ‘if the Bolshevik method of the physical eradication (Ausrottung) of a people is rejected from inner conviction as un-German and impossible, this is still the mildest and best method.’230 The ‘Polish’ not ‘Jewish Question’ was the subject of the memorandum (which Hitler read and explicitly approved on 25 May, during the lull in the western campaign while the tanks were halted just outside Dunkirk, with instructions that it be circulated only to key individuals).231 Only in one brief passage did Himmler mention what he envisaged would happen to the Jews. ‘The term “Jew”,’ he wrote, ‘I hope to see completely extinguished through the possibility of a large-scale emigration of all Jews to Africa or to some other colony.’232
Sensing what was in the wind, the newly appointed, highly ambitious head of the Foreign Ministry’s ‘Jewish Desk’ (Judenreferat), Franz Rademacher, prepared a lengthy internal memorandum on 3 June putting forward, as a war aim, three options: removing all Jews from Europe; deporting western European Jews, for example, to Madagascar while leaving eastern Jews in the Lublin district as hostages to keep America paralysed in its fight against Germany (presuming the influence of American Jewry would in these circumstances deter the USA from entering the war); or establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine – a solution he did not favour.233 This was the first time that Madagascar had been explicitly mentioned in a policy document as a possible ‘solution to the Jewish Question’.234 It was a product of Rademacher’s initiative, rather th
an a result of instructions from above.235 With the backing of Ribbentrop (who had probably himself gained the approval of Hitler and Himmler), Rademacher set to work to put detail on his proposal to resettle all Europe’s Jews on the island of Madagascar, seeing them as under German mandate but Jewish administration.236 Heydrich, presumably alerted by Himmler at the first opportunity, was, however, not prepared to concede control over such a vital issue to the Foreign Ministry. On 24 June he made plain to Ribbentrop that responsibility for handling the ‘Jewish Question’ was his, under the commission given to him by Göring in January 1939. Emigration was no longer the answer. ‘A territorial final solution (territoriale Endlösung) will therefore be necessary.’ He sought inclusion in all discussions ‘which concern themselves with the final solution (Endlösung) of the Jewish question’ – the first time, it seems, the precise words ‘final solution’ were used, and at this point plainly in the context of territorial resettlement.237 By mid-August Eichmann and his right-hand man Theo Dannecker had devised in some detail – their memorandum was fourteen pages long – plans to put 4 million Jews on Madagascar. The SD’s plan envisaged no semblance of Jewish autonomous administration. The Jews would exist under strict SS control.238
Soon after Rademacher had submitted his original proposal, in early June, the Madagascar idea had evidently been taken to Hitler, presumably by Ribbentrop. According to Paul Schmidt, Hitler had said to Mussolini during the meeting in Munich just following the French announcement of their readiness for an armistice that ‘an Israelite state could be erected on Madagascar’.239 Ribbentrop had told Ciano at the same time ‘that it is the Führer’s intention to create a free Jewish state in Madagascar to which he will compulsorily send the many millions of Jews who live on the territory of the old Reich as well as on the territories recently conquered’.240 Two days after his meeting with Mussolini, Hitler again mentioned Madagascar to Grand Admiral Raeder.241 On 8 July he returned to the topic during discussions with Hans Frank about the situation in the General Government. Frank told his colleagues on 12 July of the important decision of the Führer, supporting his own proposal, that no further Jewish transports should be sent to the General Government. ‘In general political terms I would like to add,’ remarked Frank, ‘that it is planned within the shortest time imaginable following the conclusion of peace to transport the entire Jewish tribe (Juden-sippschaft) in the German Reich, in the General Government, and in the Protectorate to an African or American colony. One is thinking of Madagascar…’ Since he had managed to have the General Government included in the plans, it would amount ‘here too to a colossal relief in the foreseeable future’.242 At the beginning of August, Hitler mentioned to the German Ambassador Otto Abetz in Paris ‘that he intended to evacuate all the Jews from Europe after the war’, which, of course, he thought would soon be over.243 And in the middle of August, reporting on a conversation with Hitler, Goebbels noted: ‘We want later to transport the Jews to Madagascar.’244
Already by this time the Madagascar plan had had its brief heyday. Putting it into effect would have depended not only on forcing the French to hand over their colony – a relatively simple matter – but on attaining control over the seas through the defeat of the British navy. With the continuation of the war the plan fell by the end of the year into abeyance and was never resurrected. But through the summer, for three months or so, the idea was taken seriously by all the top Nazi leadership, including Hitler himself.
Hitler’s rapid endorsement of such an ill-thought-out and impracticable scheme reflected his superficial involvement in anti-Jewish policy during 1940. His main interests that year were plainly elsewhere, in the direction of war strategy. For the time being at least, the ‘Jewish Question’ was a secondary matter for him. His comments on the Jews usually followed promptings by others – such as Himmler, Frank, Ribbentrop, or Goebbels, all with direct interests in anti-Jewish policy. Similarly, his decisions, as with the blocking of the transport of Jews to the General Government, were largely reactive and, as in this case, giving the highest approval to a policy that had already been introduced. Hitler’s visceral detestation of the Jews was undiminished. His keen intervention in the shaping of Goebbels’s horrific ‘documentary’ The Eternal Jew was one indicator of this.245 His central belief that the war would bring the solution to the ‘problem’ was, of course, unaltered. Goebbels reported the menacing remark after a discussion with Hitler at the beginning of June that ‘we’ll quickly be finished with the Jews after the war’.246 But at the time there are no indications that Hitler had anything other than the vague Madagascar notion in mind.
However, the broad mandate to ‘solve the Jewish Question’ associated with Hitler’s ‘mission’, coupled with the blockages in doing so in occupied Poland, sufficed. Others were more active than Hitler himself. To Goebbels, Hitler gave merely the assurance that the Jews were earmarked to leave Berlin, without approving any immediate action.247 Some had more luck with their demands. As in the east, the Gauleiter given responsibilities in the newly occupied areas in the west were keen to exploit their position to get rid of the Jews from their Gaue. In July Robert Wagner, Gauleiter of Baden and now in charge of Alsace, and Josef Bürckel, Gauleiter of the Saar-Palatinate and Chief of the Civil Administration in Lorraine, both pressed Hitler to allow the expulsion westwards into Vichy France of the Jews from their domains. Hitler gave his approval. Some 3,000 Jews were deported that month from Alsace into the unoccupied zone of France.248 In October, following a further meeting with the two Gauleiter, a total of 6,504 Jews were sent to France in nine trainloads, without any prior consultation with the French authorities. Bureaucrats gave meticulous detail to the police who were to round up the Jews, reminding them to turn off water and gas in the homes, hand over pets (against a receipt) to local government or Party officials, and label the keys to the apartments being vacated. Jews were allowed to take a suitcase of clothes, food for a few days, and 100 Reich Marks per person with them. Their property was confiscated. They had to be ready to leave within two hours. Some were forced out within quarter of an hour. A number committed suicide. Jews who were bedridden were loaded on to the trains on stretchers. The oldest Jew deported was a ninety-seven-year-old man from Karlsruhe. The police accompanied the transports, which were carried out in agreement with the Wehrmacht (even down to Wehrmacht vehicles being used to carry Jews from outlying districts to the ‘collecting places’). After a horrifying journey lasting several days, the Jews were herded into camps in southern France at the foot of the Pyrenees. Neither food nor provisions were minimally adequate for the largely elderly deportees. The French authorities, the report on the deportations concluded, appeared to have in mind their further deportation to Madagascar as soon as the sea-passage was secure.249
Above all, the running in radicalizing anti-Jewish policy was made by the SS and Security Police leadership. While Hitler at this time paid relatively little attention to the ‘Jewish Question’ when not faced with a particular issue that one of his underlings had raised, Himmler and Heydrich were heavily engaged in planning the ‘new order’, especially in eastern Europe. By the autumn the Madagascar Plan was a dead letter – even though Eichmann was still waiting for a decision from Heydrich as late as December.250 But by then Hitler’s decision, taken under the impact of the failure to end the war in the West, to prepare for the invasion of the Soviet Union opened up new prospects again in the East for a ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish Question’. Once more, policy in the General Government was reversed. Hans Frank, who had been expecting in the summer to have the Jews from his area shipped to Madagascar, was now told that they had to stay. Emigration from the General Government was banned.251 The brutal forced-labour conditions and ghettoization were already highly attritional. Jews were in practice often being worked to death.252 An overtly genocidal mentality was already evident. Heydrich suggested starting an epidemic in the newly sealed Warsaw ghetto in autumn 1940 in order to exterminate the Jews there through such means.251
It was into an area in which this mentality prevailed that Frank, so Hitler told him in December, had to be prepared to take more Jews.254
With Hitler playing little active role, but providing blanket approval, conditions and mentalities had been created in the occupied territories of former Poland in which full-scale genocide was only one step away. Anti-Jewish policy had not followed a clear or straight line throughout 1940. But, particularly within the SS and Security Police leadership, the thinking and planning had moved in an implicitly genocidal direction. Hitler had responded to the vagaries of policy rather than providing clear direction. But his broad remit to ‘remove’ the Jews, and his ‘prophecy’ that the war would bring a solution to the ‘Jewish Question’, were enough. Paradoxically, the turn to preparations for war in the East had not emanated directly out of Hitler’s twenty-year-old ideological obsession with ‘Jewish-Bolshevism’, but from the strategic consideration of forcing Britain to yield to German demands. But once the preparations for invading the USSR began to take concrete shape, in the spring of 1941, the ideological essence of the coming showdown with ‘Jewish-Bolshevism’ became central. By a circuitous route, rather than following a straight line, Hitler was returning to the core of his Weltanschauung – now no longer just verbiage, but taking the form of concrete policy steps that would take Germany into all-out genocide.
V
Before Hitler signed the directive in December 1940 to prepare what would rapidly be shaped into a ‘war of annihilation’ against the Soviet Union, there was a hiatus in which the immediate future direction of the war remained uncertain. Hitler was ready, during this phase that stretched from September to December 1940, to explore different possibilities of prising Britain out of the conflict before the Americans could enter it. Out of the failure of the ‘peripheral strategy’, a term hinted at by Jodl at the end of July,255 which at no stage gained Hitler’s full enthusiasm, the hardening of the intention to invade the Soviet Union, first mooted in July, emerged until, on 18 December, it was embodied in a war directive.