by Ian Kershaw
76. Seraphim, Rosenberg-Tagebuch, 98–9. Unlike Heydrich, Hitler evidently envisaged the eastern fortifications beyond the General Government, but excluding the area of Jewish settlement. Heydrich depicted it as running along the line of the German provinces.
77. TBJG, I/7, 147 (10 October 1939). Hitler’s contempt for the Poles was, as he told Mussolini several months later, bolstered by his impressions of Poland during the campaign (Andreas Hillgruber (ed.), Staatsmanner und Diplomaten bei Hitler. Vertrauliche Aufzeichnungen 1939–1941, Munich, 1969 (= Staatsmänner I) 46–7 (18 March 1940)).
78. Domarus, 1283; Broszat, Polenpolitik, 23.
79. The meeting was apparently occasioned by a complaint by Hans Frank about his military superiors (Krausnick/Wilhelm, Truppe, 85).
80. General Governor Frank later, on 30 May 1940, justified the liquidation of a Polish ruling stratum in the notorious ‘AB-Aktion’ – the ‘Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion’ (‘Extraordinary Pacification Action’), camouflage for the liquidation of mainly political opponents and criminals in the General Government between May and July 1940 – by recourse to a directive from Hitler (Krausnick, Morde, 203; Müller, Heer, 453).
81. IMG, xxvi.378–9 (quotation, 379), Doc.864-PS; Documenta Occupationis, vol.vi, ed. Instytut Zachodni, Poznan, 1958, 27–30; Broszat, Polenpolitik, 25.
82. IMG, xxvi.381, Doc.864-PS; Documenta Occupationis, vi.29; Krausnick/Wilhelm, Truppe, 86.
83. Though doubts are implied in Irving, HW, 12.
84. Krausnick, Morde, 206–7.
85. Groscurth, 358; Müller, Heer, 428. Brauchitsch’s wishes, outlined to Heydrich on 22 September, for ‘no over-hasty elimination of the Jews’, to back the Führer’s order of priority for economic matters, and for ‘ethnic-political movements’ only after the end of military operations, also indicate his broad knowledge of the ‘ethnic-cleansing’ programme. Heydrich told him explicitly on this occasion that, as far as economic concerns went, no consideration could be made for nobility, clergy, teachers, and legionaries: ‘But those weren’t many – a few thousand,’ he said (Groscurth, 361).
86. Documenta Occupationis, vol.v, ed. Instytut Zachodni, Poznan, 1952, 40.
87. Krausnick/Wilhelm, Truppe, 76–7; Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army. Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich, New York/Oxford, 1991, 62–7. Marcel Reich-Ranicki, the German literary critic, of Polish-Jewish descent, described the plundering and sadistic behaviour of German soldiers in Warsaw in autumn 1939, which he witnessed at first hand, as ‘the pleasure of the hunt’. Freed of any constraints they might have felt at home, they were subject to no control, and could simply ‘let rip’ (Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Mein Leben, Stuttgart, 1999, 178ff., especially 183–4).
88. Krausnick/Wilhelm, Truppe, 77–8 (quotation from the amnesty decree, 82).
89. Krausnick/Wilhelm, Truppe, 80.
90. Krausnick/Wilhelm, Truppe, 84; Broszat, Polenpolitik, 34 (for the complaint by Gauleiter Forster).
91. TBJG, I/7, 153 (14 October 1939).
92. Krausnick/Wilhelm, Truppe, 87.
93. Broszat, Polenpolitik, 34–5.
94. See Müller, Heer, 437–50, for the complaints of Blaskowitz and Ulex.
95. Krausnick/Wilhelm, Truppe, 97–8, 102–3; Ernst Klee, Willi Dreßen, and Volker Rieß (eds.), ‘Schöne Zeiten’. Judenmord aus der Sicht der Täter und Gaffer, Frankfurt am Main, 1988, 14–15; Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, 1939–1945, Der Zweite Weltkrieg in Chronik und Dokumenten, 5th edn, Darmstadt, 1961, 606–8; Müller, Heer, 448–9.
96. See Müller, Heer, 428ff.
97. IfZ, MA 1564/24, Nuremberg Documents, NOKW-1799; text printed in Krausnick/Wilhelm, Truppe, 103–4 and n.425; Brauchitsch’s comments came a day after Blaskowitz’s final report, and five days after the complaint of Ulex.
98. Engel, 68; Krausnick, Morde, 204, n.42.
99. Krausnick/Wilhelm, Truppe, 103.
100. Müller, Heer, 451, n.152.
101. Cit. Krausnick/Wilhelm, Truppe, 106; Klaus-Jurgen Müller, ‘Zu Vorgeschichte und Inhalt der Rede Himmlers vor der höheren Generalität am 13.März 1940 in Koblenz’, VfZ, 18 (1970), 95–120, here 108. See Albert Zoller, Hitler privat. Erlebnisbericht seiner Geheimsekretärin, Düsseldorf, 1949, 195, for Himmler’s comments, evidently in the same context: ‘The person of the Führer must on no account be brought into connection with [the atrocities in Poland]. I accept full responsibility.’
102. IfZ, ZS 627, (Gen. Wilhelm Ulex) Fol.124: ‘Ich tue nichts, was der Führer nicht weiß.’ See also Krausnick/Wilhelm, Truppe, 105; Krausnick, Morde, 205; Müller, Heer, 451. Irving, HW, 13n, casts doubt on the veracity of Ulex’s recollection, on the grounds that no one else present on the occasion subsequently referred to these words.
103. Broszat, Polenpolitik, 41.
104. TBJG, I/7, 157 (17 October 1939). For the production and content of the film, see the detailed study of Stig Hornshøh-Møller, ‘Der ewige Jude’. Quellenkritische Analyse eines antisemitischen Propagandafilms, Institut fürden Wissenschaftlichen Film, Göttingen, 1995.
105. TBJG, I/7, 173 (29 October 1939); quotation, 177 (2 November 1939). Hitler took a direct interest in the film. He had suggestions to make when Goebbels spoke to him again about the development of the film in mid-November (TBJG, I/7, 201 (19 November 1939). Fritz Hippler, head of the film department in the Propaganda Ministry and producer of the film, claimed in his memoirs long after the war that Goebbels had told him when commissioning film of the Polish ghettos that the Führer wanted all the Jews resettled in Madagascar or elsewhere, and that the film was required for archival purposes (Hornshøh-Møller, ‘Der ewige Jude’ 16; Fritz Hippler, Die Verstrickung, Düsseldorf, 1981, 187). Goebbels’s language on the Poles resembled that of Hitler: ‘Drive over Polish roads. That’s already Asia. We’ll have a lot to do to germanize this area’ (TBJG, I/7, 177 (2 November 1939)).
106. Michael Burleigh, Germany turns Eastwards. A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich, Cambridge, 1988, especially ch.4.
107. Documenta Occupationis, v.2–28; Broszat, Polenpolitik, 26–7.
108. See Götz Aly and Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung. Auschwitz und die deutschen Plane für eine neue europäische Ordnung, Frankfurt am Main, 1993.
109. For a brief sketch of Greiser’s personality and career, see Ian Kershaw, ‘Arthur Greiser – Ein Motor der “Endlösung” ’, in Ronald M. Smelser, Enrico Syring, and Rainer Zitelmann (eds.), Die Braune Elite II, Darmstadt, 1993, 116–27. Greiser’s motor-boat licence from 1930 is in his file in NA, IRR, Box 69, XE 000933, NND 871063, Folder 3. By then he had already joined the Party, because, he was said to have stated (letter in the file to Greiser from Rolf-Heinz Höppner, 22 November 1943), ‘that this was the only thing that could still save him’ (‘dass dies das einzige sei, was ihn noch retten könne’). His political enemies later claimed that he was engaged at the time in currency smuggling.
110. Cit. Kershaw, ‘Greiser’, 118.
111. Burckhardt, 78.
112. Burckhardt, 79.
113. Cit. Kershaw, ‘Greiser’, 125.
114. Rebentisch, 163–88, here especially 183.
115. Cit. Kershaw, ‘Greiser’, 125.
116. Cit. Kershaw, ‘Greiser’, 123.
117. Archiwum Panstowe Poznan, Best. Schutzpolizei Posen, Bd.7, S.1, Dienstabt. Jarotschin, 15 October 1939, Dienstbefehl Nr.i.
118. Dienstbefehl, Nr. 5, 20 March 1940.
119. Information kindly provided by Stanislaw Nawrocki, Director of the Archiwum Panstowe Poznan, 25 September 1993. The figures relate to the situation in 1942–3.
120. Cit. Krausnick/Wilhelm, Truppe, 626–7, cit. BA R43 II/1549, Bormann to Lammers, 20 November 1940.
121. See Broszat, Polenpolitik, 200, n.45.
122. Broszat, Polenpolitik, ch.5.
123. See Ian Kershaw, ‘Improvised Genocide? The Emergence of the “Final Solution” in the “Warthegau” ’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th Ser., 2 (1992), 51–78. It was no accident that the
first extermination unit, Chelmno, to begin operations, at the beginning of December 1941, was situated in the ‘Warthegau’.
124. Ernst Klee (ed.), Dokumente zur ‘Euthanasie’, Frankfurt am Main, 1985, 85; Ernst Klee, ‘Euthanasie’ im NS-Staat. Die ‘Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens’, Frankfurt am Main, 1983, 100; facsimile in Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State. Germany, 1933–1945, Cambridge, 1991, 143. Philipp Bouhler was Head of the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP, responsible for dealing with the voluminous correspondence addressed to Hitler as Party Leader. Dr Rudolf Brandt had since 1934 been Hitler’s personal doctor. (Benz, Graml, and Weiß, Enzyklopädie, 51–2, 54–5.)
125. Lothar Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie und Justiz im Dritten Reich’, VfZ, 20 (1972), 235–79, here 241; Lothar Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich 1933–1940. Anpassung und Unterwerfung in der Ara Gürtner, Munich, 1990, 502, and 497–534 for the reactions of the judicial authorities to the ‘euthanasia action’; Burleigh and Wippermann, 143; Jeremy Noakes, ‘Philipp Bouhler und die Kanzlei des Führers der NSDAP: Beispiel einer Sonderverwaltung im Dritten Reich’, in Dieter Rebentisch and Karl Teppe (eds.), Verwaltung contra Menschenführung im Staat Hitlers. Studien zum politisch-administrativen System, Göttingen, 1986, 208–36, here 229.
126. Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 241, 254.
127. Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 247–50; Klee, Dokumente, 86–7.
128. Klee, Dokumente, 86–7; Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 241–2.
129. Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 242.
130. Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 254.
131. Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 255; Gruchmann, Justiz, 511–13; Susanne Willems, Lothar Kreyssig. Vom eigenen verantwortlichen Handeln. Eine biographische Studie zum Protest gegen die Euthanasi-everhrechen in Nazi-Deutschland, Göttingen, n.d. (1996), 137–61.
132. The background of ‘racial hygiene’ and eugenics ideas, and their transportation into the Third Reich, is thoroughly dealt with by Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie. Von der Verhütung zur Vernichtung ‘lebensunwerten Lebens’, 1890–1945, Göttingen, 1987; Robert N. Proctor, Racial Hygiene. Medicine under the Nazis, Cambridge, Mass., 1988; and Paul Weindling, Health, Race, and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945, Cambridge, 1989.
133. Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 19–28; Schmuhl, 115–25; Burleigh, Death, 15ff.; Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 235–6; Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors. Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, New York, 1986, ch. 2.
134. Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance. ‘Euthanasia’ in Germany, c.1900–1945, Cambridge, 1994, ch.1, especially 24, 33, 38–9; and 53–4. See also Hans Ludwig Siemen, ‘Reform und Radikalisi-erung. Veränderungen der Psychiatrie in der Weltwirtschaftskrise’, in Norbert Frei (ed.), Medizin und Gesundheitspolitik in der NS-Zeit, Munich, 1991, 191–200; Michael Burleigh, ‘Psychiatry, German Society, and the Nazi “Euthanasia” Programme’, in Michael Burleigh, Ethics and Extermination. Reflections on Nazi Genocide, Cambridge, 1997, 113–29; Schmuhl, 121, 147, 192–3; and Hilde Steppe, ’ “Mit Tränen in den Augen haben wir dann diese Spritzen aufgezogen”. Die Beteiligung von Krankenschwestern und Krankenpflegern an den Verbrechen gegen die Menschlich-keit’, in Hilde Steppe (ed.), Krankenpflege im Nationalsozialismus, 7th edn, Frankfurt am Main, 1993, 137–74, especially 146ff. The sharp caesura of 1933, discernible in the shift towards pro-euthanasia views that followed, is well brought out in Michael Schwarz, ’ “Euthanasie”-Debatten in Deutschland (1895–1945)’, VfZ, 46 (1998), 617–65, especially 621–2, 643ff. The bureaucratic administration of the ‘euthanasia action’ is thoroughly examined by Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide. From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, Chapel Hill/London, 1995.
135. Kurt Nowak, ‘Widerstand, Zustimmung, Hinnahme. Das Verhalten der Bevölkerung zur “Euthanasie” ’, in Frei, Medizin und Gesundheitspolitik, 235–51; Schwarz, 639–43, 647–9.
136. MK, 279–80; transl. MK Watt, 232.
137. RSA, III.2, 347.
138. RSA, III.2, 348.
139. Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 46–7.
140. Burleigh, Death, 97.
141. Cit. Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 235.
142. Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 236. See also Cardinal Faulhaber’s public warnings in 1934 of the dangers in possible moves towards euthanasia (Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 53).
143. Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 236–7.
144. Cit. Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 238; IfZ, 2719/61, Fols.28–9: ‘Aktenvermerk zu dem Erm-ittlungsverfahren gegen Professor Dr Werner Heyde und Rechtsanwalt Dr Gerhard Bohne (Stand vom 1.1.1961)’. Hitler had already indicated to Wagner the previous year his readiness to override the law in preventing the prosecution of any doctor accused of carrying about terminating a pregnancy where one of the partners suffered from hereditary illness (Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 239–40).
145. Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 53.
146. Burleigh, Death, 187.
147. Burleigh, Death, 184, 188.
148. Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 66ff.
149. Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 63; Burleigh, Death, ch.2.
150. Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 62.
151. Cit. Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 63.
152. Noakes, ‘Bouhler’, 210–11.
153. Noakes, ‘Bouhler’, 221.
154. Albert Krebs, Tendenzen und Gestalten der NSDAP. Erinnerungen an die Frühzeit der Partei, Stuttgart, 1959, 142, 197; Orlow, 59.
155. For biographical sketches, see Hans-Walter Schmuhl, ‘Philipp Bouhler – Ein Vorreiter des Massenmordes’, in Smelser, Syring, and Zitelmann (eds.), Die braune Elite II, 39–50; Robert Wistrich, Wer war wer in Dritten Reich, Munich, 1983, 29; Werß, Biographisches Lexikon, 51–2.
156. Noakes, ‘Bouhler’, 211–12, 234.
157. Noakes, ‘Bouhler’, 223–4.
158. Noakes, ‘Bouhler’, 223.
159. Noakes, ‘Bouhler’, 226.
160. Noakes, ‘Bouhler’, 225–7.
161. Burleigh, Death, 94–5.
162. Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness. An Examination of Conscience, Pan Books edn, London, 1977, 65; Burleigh, Death, 93.
163. Noakes, ‘Bouhler’, 227; Burleigh, Death, 98; Udo Benzenhöfer, Der gute Tod? Euthanasie und Sterbehilfe in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Munich, 1999, 114–18. Udo Benzenhöfer, ‘Der Fall “Kind Knauer” ’, Deutsches Ärzteblatt, 95, Heft 19, 8 May 1998, 54–5, was able to identify the child concerned, which was born on 20 February and died on 25 July 1939. See also Ulf Schmidt, ‘Reassessing the Beginning of the “Euthanasia” Programme’, German History, 17 (1999), 543–50.
164. Noakes, ‘Bouhler’, 227; Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 240. Hitler’s doctor, Theo Morell, prepared a memorandum during the summer of 1939 on the need for a ‘euthanasia’ law, and spoke to Hitler, probably on the basis of this memorandum about it, though at what precise date is unclear (Burleigh, Death, 98).
165. Sereny, Into that Darkness, 64ff., here 68; Klee, Dokumente, 40–46, 146–51; Udo Benzenhöfer and Karin Finsterbuch, Moraltheologie pro ‘NS-Euthanasie’. Studien zu einem ‘Gutachten (1940) von Prof. Joseph Mayer mit Edition des Textes, Hannover, 1998.
166. Noakes, ‘Bouhler’, 227–8.
167. Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 241.
168. Noakes, ‘Bouhler’, 228.
169. Bert Honolka, Die Kreuzelschreiber. Ärzte ohne Gewissen: Euthanasie im Dritten Reich, Hamburg, 1961, 35. Broszat, Staat, 399, suggests only about fifty doctors and technicians knew the full extent of the ‘action’. The German names for the dummy-organizations involved were, respectively: ‘Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft der Heil- und Pflegeanstalten’; ‘Gemeinnützige Kranken-transportgesellschaft’; and ‘Gemeinnützige Stiftung für Anstaltspflege’.
170. Honolka, 37.
171. Honolka, 33.
172. Burleigh/Wippermann, The Racial State, 148.
173. Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 95–8, 112–15,192–3; Schmuhl, 240–42; Götz Aly, ‘
Endlösung’. Völkerver-schiebung und der Mord an den europäischen Juden, Frankfurt am Main, 1995, 114–26; Benzenhöfer, Der gute Tod?, 118–19.
174. Gruchmann, ‘Euthanasie’, 244 and n.33; Burleigh/Wippermann, The Racial State, 153.
175. Including the killings which continued in asylums despite the ‘stop decree’, the thousands more later killed in the so-called ‘wild’ euthanasia and the ‘14f13’ programme that continued down to the end of the war, the thousands of ‘euthanasia’ victims who were killed in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied territories, and the children murdered in the ‘Child Euthanasia’ programme (which was not halted by the ‘stop decree’), it is possible to reach estimates as high as a further 90,000 to add to the 70,000 or more of the T4 ‘action’. (Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 345ff.; Burleigh/Wippermann, The Racial State, 144, 148; Benzenhöfer, Der gute Tod?, 129.)
176. Above based on Deutsch, 42–67, 81–91, 105–7, Ch.VI; and see Gisevius, To the Bitter End, 419–29.
177. Mommsen, ‘Widerstand’, 9, speaks of ‘a resistance of state servants’ (‘einen Widerstand der Staatsdiener’).
178. Deutsch, 188–9.
179. Gisevius, To the Bitter End, 376–402; Kordt, 359–77; Deutsch, 189–253, and Ch.VII; Müller, Heer, Ch.XI.
180. See Peter Hoffmann, ‘Maurice Bavaud’s Attempt to Assassinate Hitler in 1938’, in George L. Mosse, Police Forces in History, Beverly Hills, 1975, 173–204, for the hare-brained schemes of the Swiss student Maurice Bavaud. For Hitler’s security, see Hoffmann, ‘Hitler’s Personal Security’, in the same volume, 151–71, and Peter Hoffmann, Hitler’s Personal Security, London, 1979. Left-wing resistance groups had by this time inevitably dwindled greatly in size since the early years of the regime, when tens of thousands of people had been involved in various forms of illegal activity. A minute fraction of the working class was now involved. Networks of friends and trusted contacts frequently formed the base. (See Detlev J. K. Peukert, ‘Working-Class Resistance: Problems and Options’, in David Clay Large (ed.), Contending with Hitler. Varieties of German Resistance in the Third Reich, Cambridge, 1991, 35–48, here 41–2; and Martin Broszat, ‘A Social and Historical Typology of the German Opposition to Hitler’, in the same volume, 25–33, here 27–9.) Secretly maintaining such networks of like-minded opponents of the regime, exchanging views, and keeping up morale was often an end in itself for Social Democrats. (William Sheridan Allen, ‘Die sozialdemo-kratische Untergrundbewegung: Zur Kontinuität der subkulturellen Werte’, in Schmädeke and Steinbach, 849–66, especially 857ff.) For the Communists, a difficult phase, with much disillusionment and disarray at the grass-roots of the underground resistance-movement, had begun with the conclusion of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August. (Detlev Peukert, Die KPD im Widerstand. Verfolgung und Untergrundarbeit an Rhein und Ruhr 1933 bis 1945, Wuppertal, 1980, 329ff.)