by Ian Kershaw
This cryptic comment (assuming that Engels’s account is an accurate representation of what Hitler had said) was, it can reasonably be speculated, a hint that the defeat of the Soviet Union, anticipated to take only a few months, would open up the prospect of wholesale deportation of the Jews to the newly conquered lands in the east – and forced labour under barbarous conditions in the Pripet marshlands (stretching towards White Russia in what were formerly eastern parts of Poland) and in the frozen, arctic wastes in the north of the Soviet Union. Such ideas were being given their first airing around this time by Himmler, Heydrich, and Eichmann.45 They would not have hesitated in putting their ideas to Hitler. The thinking was now moving way beyond what had been contemplated under the Madagascar Plan, inhumane though that itself had been. In such an inhospitable climate as that now envisaged, the fate of the Jews would be sealed. Within a few years most of them would starve, freeze, or be worked to death.46 The idea of a comprehensive territorial solution to the ‘Jewish problem’ had by now become effectively synonymous with genocide.
Hitler had been under continued pressure from Nazi leaders to deport the Jews from their own territories, with, now as before, the General Government seen as the favoured ‘dumping ground’. Among the most persistent was the Gauleiter of Vienna, and former Hitler Youth Leader, Baldur von Schirach, who had been pressing hard since the previous summer to relieve the chronic housing problems of Vienna by ‘evacuating’ the city’s 60,000 Jews to the General Government. Hitler had finally agreed to this in December 1940. The plans were fully prepared by the beginning of February 1941.47 Fresh from his visit to Vienna in March, on the third anniversary of the Anschluß, Hitler discussed with Hans Frank and Goebbels the imminent removal of the Jews from Vienna. Goebbels, anxious to be rid of the Jews from Berlin, was placated with an indication that the Reich capital would be next. ‘Later, they must sometime get out of Europe altogether,’ the Propaganda Minister added.48
Despite the problems which had arisen in 1940 about the transfer of Jews and Poles into the General Government, Heydrich (partly under pressure from the Wehrmacht, which needed land for troop exercises) had approved in January 1941 a new plan to expel 771,000 Poles together with the 60,000 Jews from Vienna (bowing to the demands for deportation from Schirach, backed by Hitler) into Hans Frank’s domain to make room for the settlement of ethnic Germans.49 A major driving-force behind the urgency of the ambitious new resettlement programme was the need to accommodate (and incorporate in the work-force) ethnic Germans who had been brought to Poland from Lithuania, Bessarabia, Bukovina and elsewhere in eastern Europe and since then miserably housed in transit camps. Frank’s subordinates were dismayed at having to cope with a massive new influx of ‘undesirables’.50 In the event, however, inevitable logistical complications of the new plan soon revealed it as a grandiose exercise in inhumane lunacy. By mid-March the programme had ground to a halt. Only around 25,000 people had been deported into the General Government. And only some 5,000, mainly elderly, Jews had been removed from Vienna.51 There was still no prospect, within the confines of the territory currently under German control, of attaining either the comprehensive resettlement programme that Himmler was striving for, or, within that programme, solving what seemed to be becoming a more and more intractable problem: removing the Jews.
From comments made by Eichmann’s associate, Theodor Dannecker, and, subsequently, by Eichmann himself, it was around the turn of the year 1940–41 that Heydrich gained approval from Hitler – whether through the intercession of Göring or of Himmler is not clear – for his proposal for the ‘final evacuation’ of German Jews to the General Government.52 On 21 January Dannecker noted: ‘In accordance with the will of the Führer, the Jewish question within the part of Europe ruled or controlled by Germany is after the war to be subjected to a final solution (einer endgültigen Lösung).’ To this end, Heydrich had obtained from Hitler, via Himmler or Göring, the ‘commission to put forward a final solution project (Endlösungsprojektes)’.53 Plainly, at this stage, this was still envisaged as a territorial solution – a replacement for the aborted Madagascar Plan. Eichmann had in mind a figure of around 5.8 million persons.54
Two months later, Eichmann told representatives of the Propaganda Ministry that Heydrich ‘had been commissioned with the final evacuation of the Jews (endgültigen Judenevakuierung)’ and had put forward a proposal to that effect some eight to ten weeks earlier. The proposal had, however, not been accepted ‘because the General Government was not in a position at that time to absorb a single Jew or a Pole’.55 When, on 17 March, Hans Frank visited Berlin to speak privately with Hitler about the General Government – presumably raising the difficulties he was encountering with Heydrich’s new deportation scheme – he was reassured, in what amounted to a reversal of previous policy, that the General Government would be the first territory to be made free of Jews.56 But only three days after this meeting, Eichmann was still talking of Heydrich presiding over the ‘final evacuation of the Jews’ into the General Government.57 Evidently (at least that was the line that Eichmann was holding to), Heydrich still at this point had his sights set on the General Government as offering the basis for a territorial solution. Frank was refusing to contemplate this. And Hitler had now opened up to him the prospect of his territory being the first to be rid of its Jews. Perhaps this was said simply to placate Frank. But in the light of the ideas already taking shape for a comprehensive new territorial solution in the lands soon to be conquered (it was presumed) of the Soviet Union, it was almost certainly a further indicator that Hitler was now envisaging a new option for a radical solution to the ‘Jewish problem’ once the war was over by mass deportation to the East.
Heydrich and his boss Himmler were certainly anxious to press home the opportunity to expand their own power-base on a grand scale by exploiting the new potential about to open up in the East. Himmler had lost no time in acquainting himself with Hitler’s thinking and, no doubt, taking the chance to advance his own suggestions. On the very evening of the signing of the military directive for ‘Operation Barbarossa’ on 18 December, he had made his way to the Reich Chancellery for a meeting with Hitler. No record of what was discussed survives. But it is hard to imagine that Himmler did not raise the issue of new tasks for the SS which would be necessary in the coming showdown with ‘Jewish-Bolshevism’.58 It was a matter of no more at this point than obtaining Hitler’s broad authority for plans still to be worked out.
Himmler and Heydrich were to be kept busy over the next weeks in plotting their new empire. Himmler informed a select group of SS leaders in January that there would have to be a reduction of some 30 million in the Slav population in the East.59 The Reich Security Head Office commissioned the same month preparations for extensive police action.60 By early February Heydrich had already carried out preliminary negotiations with Brauchitsch about using units of the Security Police alongside the army for ‘special tasks’. No major difficulties were envisaged.61
IV
What such ‘special tasks’ might imply became increasingly clear to a wider circle of those initiated into the thinking for ‘Barbarossa’ during February and March. On 26 February General Georg Thomas, the Wehrmacht’s economics expert, learned from Göring that an early objective during the occupation of the Soviet Union was ‘quickly to finish off (erledigen) the Bolshevik leaders’.62 A week later, on 3 March, Jodl’s comments on the draft of operational directions for ‘Barbarossa ‘which had been routinely sent to him made this explicit: ‘all Bolshevist leaders or commissars must be liquidated forthwith’. Jodl had altered the draft somewhat before showing it to Hitler.63 He now summarized Hitler’s directions for the ‘final version’. These made plain that ‘the forthcoming campaign is more than just an armed conflict; it will lead, too, to a showdown between two different ideologies… The socialist ideal can no longer be wiped out in the Russia of today. From the internal point of view the formation of new states and governments must inevitably be based on this p
rinciple. The Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia, as the “oppressor” of the people up to now, must be eliminated.’ The task involved, the directions went on, was ‘so difficult that it cannot be entrusted to the army’.64 Jodl had the draft retyped in double-spacing to allow Hitler to make further alterations. When the redrafted version was finally signed by Keitel on 13 March, it specified that ‘the Reichsführer-SS has been given by the Führer certain special tasks within the operations zone of the army’, though there was now no direct mention of the liquidation of the ‘Bolshevik-Jewish intelligentsia’ or the ‘Bolshevik leaders and commissars’.65
Even so, the troops were to be directly instructed about the need to deal mercilessly with the political commissars and Jews they encountered. When he met Göring on 26 March, to deal with a number of issues related to the activities of the police in the eastern campaign, Heydrich was told that the army ought to have a three- to four-page set of directions ‘about the danger of the GPU-Organization, the political commissars, Jews etc., so that they would know whom in practice they had to put up against the wall’.66 Göing went on to emphasize to Heydrich that the powers of the Wehrmacht would be limited in the east, and that Himmler would be left a great deal of independent authority. Heydrich laid before Göring his draft proposals for the ‘solution of the Jewish Question’, which the Reich Marshal approved with minor amendments. These evidently foresaw the territorial solution, which had been conceived around the turn of the year, and already been approved by Himmler and Hitler, of deportation of all the European Jews into the wastelands of the Soviet Union, where they would perish.67
During the first three months of 1941, then, the ideological objectives of the attack on the Soviet Union had come sharply into prominence, and had largely been clarified. Most active in pressing forward the initiative had been Reinhard Heydrich, alongside his nominal boss Himmler.68 Göring, the heads of the Four-Year Plan Organization, and the High Command of the Wehrmacht had also been deeply implicated. Hitler had authorized more than initiated. His precise role, as so often, is hidden in the shadows. But he had little need to move into the foreground. His radical views on ‘Jewish-Bolshevism’ were known to all. The different policy-objectives of the varying – and usually competing – power-groups in the regime’s leadership could be reconciled by accepting the most radical proposals, from Heydrich and Himmler, on the treatment of the arch-enemy in the East. This, in any case, complied with Hitler’s own ideological impulses. He set the tone once more, therefore, for the barbarism while others preoccupied themselves with its mechanics. And, in the context of the imminent showdown, the barbarism was now adopting forms and dimensions never previously encountered, even in the experimental training-ground of occupied Poland.
By mid-March, discussions between the Security Police and army leadership about the treatment of political commissars were, as we have already noted, well advanced. Here, too, in the fateful advance into the regime’s planned murderous policy in the Soviet Union, the army leaders were complicitous. On 17 March, Halder noted comments made that day by Hitler: ‘The intelligentsia put in by Stalin must be exterminated. The controlling machinery of the Russian Empire must be smashed. In Great Russia force must be used in its most brutal form.’69 Hitler said nothing here of any wider policy of ‘ethnic cleansing’. But the army leadership had two years earlier accepted the policy of annihilating the Polish ruling class. Given the depth of its prevalent anti-Bolshevism, it would have no difficulty in accepting the need for the liquidation of the Bolshevik intelligentsia.70 By 26 March, a secret army order laid down, if in bland terms, the basis of the agreement with the Security Police authorizing ‘executive measures affecting the civilian population’.71 The following day, the Commander-in-Chief of the army, Field-Marshal von Brauchitsch, announced to his commanders of the eastern army: ‘The troops must be clear that the struggle will be carried out from race to race (von Rasse zu Rasse), and proceed with necessary severity.’72
The army was, therefore, already in good measure supportive of the strategic aim and the ideological objective of ruthlessly uprooting and destroying the ‘jewish-Bolshevik’ base of the Soviet regime when, on 30 March, in a speech in the Reich Chancellery to over 200 senior officers lasting almost two and a half hours, Hitler stated with unmistakable clarity his views of the coming war with the Bolshevik arch-foe, and what he expected of his army. This was not the time for talk of strategy and tactics. It was to outline to generals in whom he still had little confidence the nature of the conflict that they were entering. He rehearsed once more his familiar arguments. England’s hopes had been placed in the United States and Russia. The Russian problem had to be settled without delay. This was the key to Germany’s accomplishment of its other tasks. Manpower and matériel would then be at her disposal. In Russia, the aim had to be to crush the armed forces and break up the state. Hitler repeated his disparaging comments about Russian armaments – numerically superior but in quality poor. His confidence was undimmed. The Russians, he stated, would collapse under the combined onslaught of German tanks and planes. Once the military tasks had been achieved, no more than about sixty divisions would be needed in the east, releasing the rest for action elsewhere.
He went on to the most striking part of his speech – the ideological aims of the war. He was forthright: ‘Clash of two ideologies. Crushing denunciation of Bolshevism, identified with a social criminality. Communism is an enormous danger for our future. We must forget the concept of comradeship between soldiers. A Communist is no comrade before or after the battle. This is a war of annihilation. If we do not grasp this, we shall still beat the enemy, but thirty years later we shall again have to fight the Communist foe. We do not wage war to preserve the enemy.’ He went on to stipulate the ‘extermination of the Bolshevist commissars and of the Communist intelligentsia’. ‘We must fight against the poison of disintegration,’ he continued. ‘This is no job for military courts. The individual troop commanders must know the issues at stake. They must be the leaders in this fight’… ‘Commissars and GPU men,’ he declared, ‘are criminals and must be dealt with as such.’ The war would be very different to that in the West. ‘In the East, harshness today means lenience in the future.’ Commanders had to overcome any personal scruples.73
Brauchitsch claimed after the war that he had been surrounded by outraged generals when Hitler had finished speaking.74 Had this been the case, it would merely have prompted the question why they (or Brauchitsch on their behalf) did not express their outrage to Hitler. However, General Warlimont, who was present, recalled ‘that none of those present availed themselves of the opportunity even to mention the demands made by Hitler during the morning’.75 When serving as a witness in a trial sixteen years after the end of the war, Warlimont, explaining the silence of the generals, declared that some had been persuaded by Hitler that Soviet Commissars were not soldiers but ‘criminal villains (kriminelle Verbrecher)’. Others – himself included – had, he claimed, followed the officers’ traditional view that as Head of State and Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht Hitler ‘could do nothing unlawful’.76
The day after Hitler’s speech to the generals, 31 March 1941, the order was given to prepare, in accordance with the intended conduct of the coming campaign, as he had outlined it, guidelines for the ‘treatment of political functionaries (Hoheitsträger)’. Exactly how this order was given, and by whom, is unclear. Halder presumed, when questioned after the war, that it came from Keitel.
‘When one has seen how, dozens of times, Hitler’s most casual observation would bring the over-zealous Field Marshal running to the telephone to let loose all hell, one can easily imagine how a random remark of the dictator’s would worry Keitel into believing that it was his duty on this occasion to give factual expression to the will of the Führer even before the beginning of hostilities. Then he or one of his subordinates would have telephoned OKH and asked how matters stood. If OKH had in fact been asked such a question, they would naturally have regarded it
as a prod in the rear and would have got moving at once.’77 Whether there had been a direct command by Hitler, or whether – as Halder presumed – Keitel had once more been ‘working towards the Führer’, the guidelines initiated at the end of March found their way by 12 May into a formal edict.78 For the first time, they laid down in writing explicit orders for the liquidation of functionaries of the Soviet system. The reasoning given was that ‘political functionaries and leaders (commissars)’ represented a danger since they ‘had clearly proved through their previous subversive and seditious work that they reject all European culture, civilization, constitution, and order. They are therefore to be eliminated.’79
This formed part of a set of orders for the conduct of the war in the East (following from the framework for the war which Hitler had defined in his speech of 30 March) that were given out by the High Commands of the Army and Wehrmacht in May and June. Their inspiration was Hitler. That is beyond question. But they were put into operative form by leading officers (and their legal advisers), all avidly striving to implement his wishes,80
The first draft of Hitler’s decree of 13 May 1941, the so-called ‘Barbarossa-Decree’, defining the application of military law in the arena of Operation Barbarossa, was formulated by the legal branch of the Wehrmacht High Command.81 The order removed punishable acts committed by enemy civilians from the jurisdiction of military courts. Guerrilla fighters were to be peremptorily shot. Collective reprisals against whole village communities were ordered in cases where individual perpetrators could not be rapidly identified. Actions by members of the Wehrmacht against civilians would not be automatically subject to disciplinary measures, even if normally coming under the heading of a crime.82