Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis (Allen Lane History)

by Ian Kershaw

  393. William Carr, Hitler. A Study in Personality and Politics, London, 1978, 96.

  394. TBJG, II/3, 501, 509, 512 (20 March 1942).

  395. Hitler had said on 27 November to the Danish Foreign Minister, Erik Scavenius, that if the German people was not strong enough, then it deserved to be destroyed ‘by another, stronger power’. It was the first of a number of occasions on which he would use such characteristic social-Darwinist phraseology, offering to his own mind justification for a German defeat. (See Staatsmänner I, 329 and n.7.)

  396. Monologe, 179 (5 January 1942).

  397. Monologe, 183–4 (7 January 1942).

  398. Monologe, 193 (10 January 1942).

  399. Indeed, it has been suggested that ‘no rational man in early 1942 would have guessed at the eventual outcome of the war’ (Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, London, 1995, 15).

  400. See Klaus Reinhardt, ‘Moscow 1941. The Turning-Point’, in John Erikson and David Dilks (eds.), Barbarossa. The Axis and the Allies, Edinburgh, 1994, 207–24.

  401. See Churchill, iii.341–2; Weinberg III, 284–5.

  402. See Monologe, 184 (7 January 1942) for Hitler’s expression of contempt.

  CHAPTER 10: FULFILLING THE ‘PROPHECY’

  1. See also the remarks in Mommsen, ‘Realisierung’, 417–18.

  2. Klee, Dreßen, and Rieß, ‘Schöne Zeiten’, 148, cit. a letter of Gendarmerie-Meister Fritz Jacob, 29 October 1941, on his keenness to be sent to the east.

  3. DTB Frank, 386 (entry for 17 July 1941, referring to a statement by Hitler of 19 June).

  4. TBJG, iv.705 (20 June 1941).

  5. See Philippe Burrin, Hitler and the Jews. The Genesis of the Holocaust, (1989), London, 1994, 98–100, for evidence that a ‘territorial solution’ was what was envisaged at this time.

  6. Müller, 96. See Heiber, ‘Der Generalplan Ost’, 297–324, especially 299–301, 307–9; Czeslaw Madajczyk, ‘Generalplan Ost’, Polish Western Affairs, 3 (1962), 3–54, here especially 3. In his lengthy memorandum of 27 April 1942, assessing the plan that had been drawn up in autumn 1941 in the RSHA, Dr Erhard Wetzel, head (Dezernent) of the department of racial policy in the Ostministerium, thought the figure of 31 million too low, and reckoned that 46–51 million would have to be removed. Himmler had initially wanted the ‘construction of the east (Ostaufbau)’ completed in twenty years (Heiber, 298 n.16). For the date of the commissioning of the Plan (24 June 1941), see the letter of 15 July 1941 from Prof. Dr Konrad Meyer, SS-Standartenführer and head of the planning department of the Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom, to Himmler in Dietrich Eichholtz, ‘Der “Generalplan Ost”. Über eine Ausgeburt imperialistischer Denkart und Politik (mit Dokumenten)’, Jahrbuch für Geschichte, 26 (1982), 217–74, here 256. See also Robert L. Koehl, RKFDV: German Resettlement and Population Policy 1939–1945. A History of the Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom, Cambridge, Mass., 1957, 147–51.

  7. Warlimont, 150.

  8. Longerich, Ermordung 116–18; Krausnick/Wilhelm, 164.

  9. Alfred Streim, Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener im ‘Fall Barbarossa’, Heidelberg/Karlsruhe, 1981, 89 n.333.

  10. Krausnick/Wilhelm, 163; Klee, Dreßen, and Rieß, ‘Schöne Zeiten’, 52.

  11. Osobyi Arkhiv, Moscow, 500–1–25, Fols.119–20: ‘Gesamtaufstellung der im Bereich des EK.3 bis zum 1.Dez.1941 durchgeführten Exekutionen’. Of the total of 138,272 persons ‘executed’ by the same Einsatzkommando (including 55,556 women, and 34,464 children), registered by the same Einsatzkommando in a handwritten summary (in the same file, Fol.128) of 9 February 1942, no fewer than 136, 421 were Jews.

  12. See Krausnick/Wilhelm, 627; Streim, 88–9.

  13. Burrin, 106–7.

  14. Krausnick/Wilhelm, 196.

  15. Christoph Dieckmann, ‘Der Krieg und die Ermordung der litauischen Juden’, in Ulrich Herbert (ed.), Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik 1939–1945. Neue Forschungen und Kontroversen, Frankfurt am Main, 1998, 292–329, here 292–3, and 295–306. See also Dina Porat, ‘The Holocaust in Lithuania. Some Unique Aspects’, in David Cesarani (ed.), The Final Solution. Origins and Implementation, London, 1996, 159–74.

  16. The encouragement of ‘self-cleansing efforts of anti-Communist and anti-Jewish circles (Selbstreinigungsbestrebungen antikommunistischer oder antijüdischer Kreise)’ had been verbally stipulated by Heydrich in his briefing in Berlin on 17 June, then laid down in writing in written orders to the chiefs of the four Einsatzgruppen on 29 June, and incorporated in the instructions to the Higher SS and Police Leaders on 2 July. (Osobyi Arkhiv, Moscow, 500–1–25, Fols.387, 391, 393.)

  17. Klee, Dreßen, and Rieß, ‘Schöne Zeiten’, 32–41. And see Laurence Rees, The Nazis. A Warning from History, London, 1997, 179–81. At the end of August, instructions went to the chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen to prevent gatherings of spectators, including Wehrmacht officers, to view the ‘executions’. (Osobyi Arkhiv, Moscow, 500–1–25, Fol.424 (RSHA IV – Müller – to Einsatzgruppen A-D, 30 August 1941).)

  18. Klee, Dreßen, and Rieß, ‘Schöne Zeiten’, 36, 38.

  19. Gerald Fleming, Hitler und die Endlösung. ‘Es ist des Führers Wunsch…’, Wiesbaden/Munich, 1982, 86. For the reporting system of the Einsatzgruppen, using Enigma codes, see Richard Breitman, Official Secrets. What the Nazis Planned. What the British and Americans Knew, London, 1998, Ch.4.

  20. TBJG, II/1, 213 (11 August 1941).

  21. TBJG, II/2, 221–2 (2 November 1941).

  22. Klee and Dreßen, ‘Gott mit uns’, 101 ff.

  23. See Krausnick/Wilhelm, Ch.IVB, 205–78, especially 223–43; DRZW, iv.1044ft; Streit, 109–27; and see Omer Bartov, ‘Operation Barbarossa and the Origins of the Final Solution’, in Cesarani, Final Solution, 119–36.

  24. Klee and Dreßen, ‘Gott mit uns’, 102–3.

  25. Klee and Dreßen, ‘Gott mit uns’, 106.

  26. IMG, xxxv.85–6, D0C.411-D; Klee and Dreßen, ‘Gott mit uns’, 39–40. And see DRZW, iv. 1050–2; Krausnick/Wilhelm, 258–61 and Gerd Ueberschär and Wolfgang Wette (eds.), ‘Unterneh-men Barbarossa’. Der deutsche Überfall auf die Sowjetunion, Paderborn, 1984, 373–4.

  27. DRZW, iv.1052–3.

  28. IMG, xxxiv.129–32 (quotation, 130–31), D0C.4064-PS; Klee and Dreßen, ‘Gott mit uns’, 41–2.

  29. Heer, ‘Killing Fields’, 87–90; Richter, 844–6; and see Theo J. Schulte, The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia, Oxford/New York/Munich, 1989, esp. ch.6,9.

  30. Stalin had called for partisan warfare in his speech of 3 July (Volkogonov, 413). But organized partisan units did not take shape before autumn 1941. The ruthless German attempts to combat the spread of partisan warfare intensified from then on.

  31. DRZW, iv.1044 (and see 1041–4).

  32. See DRZW, iv.1054.

  33. DRZW, iv.1047.

  34. DRZW, iv.1048.

  35. See Bartov, Hitler’s Army, ch.4; Bartov, Barbarisation, ch.3–4; Bartov, ‘Operation Barbarossa’, 124–31.

  36. Buchbender and Sterz, 73, letter 101; Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 153.

  37. Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 155. German text in Omer Bartov, Hitlers Wehrmacht. Soldaten, Fanatismus und die Brutalisierung des Krieges, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1995, 232: ‘Jeder hier, selbst der Zweifler, weiβ heute, daβ der Kampf gegen diese Untermenschen, die von den Juden bis zur Raserei aufgehetzt wurden, nicht nur notwendig war, sondern auch gerade zum rechten Zeitpunkt kam. Unser Führer hat Europa vor dem sicheren Untergang bewahrt.’

  38. Bartov, Barbarisation, 1 2off.

  39. Burrin, 110.

  40. Osobyi Arkhiv, Moscow, 500–1–25, Fol.94: ‘Tätigkeits – und Lagebericht Nr.6 der Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD in der UdSSR (Berichtszeit vom 1.–31 October 1941)’: ‘Als Vergeltungsmaβnahme für die Brandstiftungen in Kiew wurden sämtliche Juden verhaftete und am 29. und 30.9 insgesamt 33 771 Juden exekutiert.’

  41. Klee, Dreßen, and Rieß, ‘Schöne Zeiten’ 66–
70; Klee and Dreßen, ‘Gott mit uns’ 117–36; Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?, 267–8.

  42. Burrin, 104–5, 110–13; Christopher Browning, ‘Hitler and the Euphoria of Victory. The Path to the Final Solution’, in Cesarani, Final Solution, 137–47, here 140–43. The instructions were interpreted differently by the leaders of the various killing squads. Plainly they did not amount to a blanket order to kill all Jews without discrimination. (Christian Gerlach, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord. Forschungen zur deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Hamburg, 1998, 63ff., 261.)

  43. Burrin, 110.

  44. Burrin, 113. For the extension of the killing, see Peter Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung. Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung, Munich/Zurich, 1998, 352–410.

  45. Burrin, 104.

  46. Krausnick/Wilhelm, 160; Streim, 74–80.

  47. See Burrin, 102ff.; Streim, 83–4; Longerich, Politik, 310–51.

  48. Browning, Path, 106. For the composition of the Einsatzgruppen, see Krausnick/Wilhelm, 141–50, 281–93; Longerich, Politik, 302–10. A good proportion of the leaders were SS men with university backgrounds, some with doctorates in law (Krausnick-Wilhelm, 282–3). The members of the battalions of the Ordnungspolizei, an organization whose leadership, like that of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police), was dominated by the SS, were in the main young career-policemen, and ideologically trained. (See Longerich, Politik, 305–10 (with criticism of Goldhagen, Ch.6, for the latter’s emphasis on randomly selected, non-ideologically trained, recruits who were ‘ordinary Germans’; and indicating, too, that they were less ‘ordinary men’ than Browning, Ordinary Men, 45–8 and ch.18, claimed).)

  49. Browning, Path, 106: by June 1942 there were 165,000 members of the units, and by January 1943 the number had risen to a staggering 300,000. See also Browning, ‘Hitler and the Euphoria of Victory’, 138ff.; and, especially, Yehoshua Büchler, ‘Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS: Himmler’s Personal Murder Brigades in 1941’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, I/1 (1986), 11–26.

  50. Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42, ed. Peter Witte et al., Hamburg, 1999, 195 and n.14; Justiz und NS-Verbrechen. Sammlung deutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischer Tötungsverbrechen 1945–1966, vol.20, Amsterdam, 1979, 435–6, No.580 a-51–2 (trial of Karl Wolff); Burrin, 105.

  51. Browning, ‘Hitler and the Euphoria of Victory’, 140–41; and see Longerich, Politik, 362–9.

  52. Dienstkalender, 184–5; Browning, Path, 105.

  53. IMG, xxxviii, 86–94, D0C.221-L; Klee and Dreßen, ‘Gott mit uns’, 23.

  54. Moll, ‘Führer-Erlasse’, 188–9; Longerich, Politik, 362–3; Breitman, Architect, 183–4.

  55. Browning, ‘Hitler and the Euphoria of Victory’, 140.

  56. IfZ, EW 100, Tagebuch Walther Hewel 1941, 10 July 1941; and see Irving, HW, 291: ‘Ich fühle mich wie Robert Koch in der Politik. Der fand den Bazillus [der Tuberkulose – these two words crossed out by Hewel] und wies damit der ärztlichen Wissenschaft neue Wege. Ich entdeckte den Juden als den Bazillus und das Ferment aller [menschl. – crossed out by Hewel] gesellschaftlichen Dekomposition. Ihr Ferment. Und eines habe ich bewiesen, daβ ein Staat ohne Juden leben kann. Daβ Wirtschaft, Kultur, Kunst etc etc ohne Juden bestehen kann und zwar besser. Das ist der schlimmste Schlag, den ich den Juden versetzt habe.’

  57. Staatsmänner I, 304 and n.2, 295.

  58. Staatsmänner I, 306–7.

  59. Staatsmänner I, 309–10.

  60. Pätzold, Verfolgung, 295–6.

  61. Eichmann confirmed after the war that the document had been drawn up in the RSHA and merely signed by Göring (Rudolf Aschenauer (ed.), Ich, Adolf Eichmann, Leoni, 1980,479). Göring’s desk diary indicates that he had an appointment to see Heydrich on 31 July between 6.15 and 7.15p.m. (Hermann Weiß’, ‘Die Aufzeichnungen Hermann Görings im Institut für Zeitgeschichte’, VfZ, 31 (1983), 365–8, here 366–7).

  62. IMG, xxvi, 266–7, Doc. 710-PS; Longerich, Ermordung, 78.

  63. Aly, 270–71, 307.

  64. Aly, 271; Burrin, 116.

  65. The only evidence linking the document with Hitler is tenuous. Over a year later, the Foreign Office expert on anti-Jewish policy, Martin Luther, claimed to have heard Heydrich mention at the Wannsee Conference, on 20 January 1942, that he had received the commission from Göring on Hitler’s instructions (Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution, Oxford, 1986, 46n.13). There is no supporting evidence, either from the minutes or from others attending the Conference, for Heydrich’s alleged remark. (See Burrin, 116; Breitman (who accepts Luther’s comment), 193 and 296 n.27.) Eberhard Jäckel, in an as yet unpublished paper on Heydrich’s role in the development of extermination policy which he kindly allowed me to see, presumes it to be ‘very unlikely that Göring gave his signature without instruction from or at least approval by Hitler’. Since the ‘mandate’ was essentially confirming powers which Heydrich already possessed – if (which was its purpose) now establishing more plainly for others his primacy in planning a ‘final solution of the Jewish Question’ – it remains unclear why Hitler’s explicit involvement was necessary.

  66. See Burrin, 116ff.; Aly, 271–3, 307; Mommsen, ‘Realisierung’, 409.

  67. Aly, 307.

  68. NA, T175, Roll 577, Frame 366337, Report of SD-Hauptaußenstelle Bielefeld, 5 August 1941.1 am most grateful to Prof. Otto Dov Kulka (Jerusalem) for referring me to this report.

  69. TBJG, II/2, 218 (12 August 1941).

  70. ‘Das Reichsministerium des Innern und die Judengesetzgebung. Aufzeichnungen von Dr. Bern-hard Losener’, VfZ, 9 (1961), 262–311, here 303.

  71. ‘Das Reichsministerium des Innern und die Judengesetzgebung’, 302–3. There is no doubt that this was an accurate reflection of Goebbels’s own views. On 7 August, he had written in his diary, in the context of reports of typhus in the Warsaw ghetto: ‘The Jews have always been carriers of infectious diseases. They should be either packed into (zusammenpferchen) a ghetto and left to themselves, or liquidated’ (TBJG, II/1, 189 (7 August 1941)).

  72. ‘Das Reichsministerium des Innern und die Judengesetzgebung’, 303.

  73. ‘Das Reichsministerium des Innern und die Judengesetzgebung’, 303–4.

  74. TBJG, II/1, 258–9, 261 (19 August 1941).

  75. TBJG, II/1, 265–6, 269 (19 August 1941). Tobias Jersak, ‘Die Interaktion von Kriegsverlauf und Judenvernichtung’, HZ, 268 (1999), 311–49, here 349–52, argues that Hitler had already, when meeting Goebbels, taken the fundamental decision that the Jews of Europe were to be physically destroyed. But the evidence that Hitler dramatically changed policy towards the Jews, taking a fundamental decision for their destruction at this point, while suffering a nervous breakdown, under the impact of the realization that his strategic plan for rapidly defeating the Soviet Union had failed, and recognizing that following the signing of the Atlantic Charter by Roosevelt and Churchill he would inevitably be soon fighting the USA, is not persuasive. Hitler’s view of the Atlantic Charter (as expressed to Goebbels) was, moreover, predictably dismissive (TBJG, II/1, 263 (19 August I941)).

  76. TBJG, II/1, 278 (20 August 1941).

  77. Fleming, Hitler und die Endlösung, 79.

  78. NA, T175, Roll 577, reports of SD-Außenstelle Höxter, 25 September 1941, SD-HauptauEenstelle Bielefeld, 30 September 1941; MadR, ix.3245–8; Steinert, 239–40; Ian Kershaw, ‘German Popular Opinion and the “Jewish Question”, 1939–1943: Some Further Reflections’, in Arnold Paucker (ed.), Die Juden im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, Tübingen, 1986, 366–86, here 373; Bankier, 134.

  79. Andreas-Friedrich, 53 (entry for 19 September 1941, the day the decree on the wearing of the Yellow Star came into effect).

  80. Klemperer, i.671 (20 September 1941), 673 (25 September 1941).

  81. Inge Deutschkron, Ich trug den gelben Stern, (1978), 4th edn, Cologne, 1983, 87.

  82. Bankier, 124–30.

  83. Bankier, 127.

  84. Faschi
smus, 250–52; Aly, 336–7; Fox, ‘Abetz’, 198–201.

  85. Aly, 335–6, 338; see also Burrin, 118–19.

  86. Christopher R. Browning, Fateful Months. Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution, New York/London, 1985, 26; Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office, 58.

  87. An inference of Aly, 306.

  88. Overy, Russia’s War, 232–3; Robert Service, A History of Twentieth-Century Russia, London, 1998, 276–7; Robert Conquest, The Nation Killers. The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities, London, 1970, 59–66, 107–9.

  89. Longerich, Politik, 429.

  90. TBJG, II/2, 385 (9 September 1941).

  91. H.D. Heilmann, ‘Aus dem Kriegstagebuch des Diplomaten Otto Brautigam’, in Biedermann und Schreibtischtäter. Materialien zur deutschen Täter-Biographie, ed. Götz Aly, Berlin, 2nd edn, 1989, 123–87, here 144–5 (entry for 14 September 1941); Adler, 176–7; Peter Witte, ‘Two Decisions concerning the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”: Deportations to Lodz and Mass Murder in Chelmno’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 9 (1995), 293–317, here 330; see also Burrin, 122; Longerich, Politik, 429–30.

  92. Adler, 176–7; Witte, ‘Two Decisions’, 330; Eberhard Jäckel, Hitlers Herrschaft. Vollzug einer Weltanschauung, (1986), Stuttgart, 1988, 116; Burrin, 122; Longerich, Politik, 430 and 699 n.45.

  93. Koeppen, Fol.21 (Bericht Nr.34, Blatt 2–3, 20 September 1941). Koeppen was almost certainly uninformed at this point of the steps which had by then already been taken two days earlier. His entry probably, therefore, reflects his understanding of Hitler’s stance several days earlier. (See Longerich, Politik, 431.)