The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

by William Shirer

  In principle, Hitler continued,

  we now have to face the task of cutting up the cake according to our needs in order to be able:

  first, to dominate it;

  second, to administer it;

  third, to exploit it.

  He did not mind, he said, that the Russians had ordered partisan warfare behind the German lines; “it enables us to eradicate everyone who opposes us.”

  In general, Hitler explained, Germany would dominate the Russian territory up to the Urals. None but Germans would be permitted to carry weapons in that vast space. Then Hitler went over specifically what would be done with various slices of the Russian cake.

  The entire Baltic country will have to be incorporated into Germany … The Crimea has to be evacuated by all foreigners and settled by Germans only, [becoming] Reich territory … The Kola Peninsula will be taken by Germany because of the large nickel mines there. The annexation of Finland as a federated state should be prepared with caution … The Fuehrer will raze Leningrad to the ground and then hand it over to the Finns.

  The Baku oil fields, Hitler ordered, would become a “German concession” and the German colonies on the Volga would be annexed outright. When it came to a discussion as to which Nazi leaders would administer the new territory a violent quarrel broke out.

  Rosenberg states he intends to use Captain von Petersdorff, owing to his special merits; general consternation; general rejections. The Fuehrer and the Reich Marshal [Goering] both emphasize there was no doubt that Von Petersdorff was insane.

  There was also an argument on the best methods of policing the conquered Russian people. Hitler suggested the German police be equipped with armored cars. Goering doubted that they would be necessary. His planes could “drop bombs in case of riots,” he said.

  Naturally [Goering added] this giant area would have to be pacified as quickly as possible. The best solution would be to shoot anybody who looked sideways.*

  Goering, as head of the Four-Year Plan, was also put in charge of the economic exploitation of Russia.† “Plunder” would be a better word, as Goering made clear in a speech to the Nazi commissioners for the occupied territories on August 6, 1942. “It used to be called plundering,” he said. “But today things have become more humane. In spite of that, I intend to plunder and to do it thoroughly.”8 On this, at least, he was as good as his word, not only in Russia but throughout Nazi-conquered Europe. It was all part of the New Order.

  THE NAZI PLUNDER OF EUROPE

  The total amount of loot will never be known; it has proved beyond man’s capacity to accurately compute. But some figures are available, many of them from the Germans themselves. They show with what Germanic thoroughness the instructions which Goering once gave to his subordinates were carried out.

  Whenever you come across anything that may be needed by the German people, you must be after it like a bloodhound. It must be taken out … and brought to Germany.9

  A great deal was taken out, not only in goods and services but in banknotes and gold. Whenever Hitler occupied a country, his financial agents seized the gold and foreign holdings of its national bank. That was a mere beginning. Staggering “occupation costs” were immediately assessed. By the end of February 1944, Count Schwerin von Krosigk, the Nazi Minister of Finance, put the total take from such payments at some 48 billion marks (roughly $12,000,000,000), of which France, which was milked heavier than any other conquered country, furnished more than half. By the end of the war, receipts from occupation assessments amounted to an estimated 60 billion marks ($15,000,000,000).

  France was forced to pay 31.5 billions of this total, its annual contributions of more than 7 billions coming to over four times the yearly sums which Germany had paid in reparations under the Dawes and Young plans after the first war—a tribute which had seemed such a heinous crime to Hitler. In addition the Bank of France was forced to grant “credits” to Germany totaling 4.5 billion marks and the French government to pay a further half billion in “fines.” At Nuremberg it was estimated that the Germans extracted in occupation costs and “credits” two thirds of Belgium’s national income and a similar percentage from the Netherlands. Altogether, according to a study by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Germany extracted in tribute from the conquered nations a total of 104 billion marks ($26,000,000,000).*

  But the goods seized and transported to the Reich without even the formality of payment can never possibly be estimated. Figures kept pouring in at Nuremberg until they overwhelmed one; but no expert, so far as I know, was ever able to straighten them out and compute totals. In France, for example, it was estimated that the Germans carted off (as “levies in kind”) 9 million tons of cereals, 75 per cent of the total production of oats, 80 per cent of oil, 74 per cent of steel, and so on, for a grand total of 184.5 billion francs.

  Russia, devastated by warfare and German savagery, proved harder to milk. Nazi documents are full of reports of Soviet “deliveries.” In 1943, for example, 9 million tons of cereals, 2 million tons of fodder, 3 million tons of potatoes, 662,000 tons of meat were listed by the Germans among the “deliveries,” to which the Soviet Committee of Investigation added—for the duration of the occupation—9 million cattle, 12 million pigs, 13 million sheep, to mention a few items. But Russian “deliveries” proved much less than expected; the Germans calculated them as worth a net of only some 4 billion marks ($1,000,000,000).*

  Everything possible was squeezed out of Poland by the greedy Nazi conquerors. “I shall endeavor,” said Dr. Frank, the Governor General, “to squeeze out of this province everything that is still possible to squeeze out.” This was at the end of 1942, and in the three years since the occupation he had already squeezed out, as he continually boasted, a great deal, especially in foodstuffs for hungry Germans in the Reich. He warned, however, that “if the new food scheme is carried out in 1943 a half-million people in Warsaw and its suburbs alone will be deprived of food.”10

  The nature of the New Order in Poland had been laid down as soon as the country was conquered. On October 3, 1939, Frank informed the Army of Hitler’s orders.

  Poland can only be administered by utilizing the country through means of ruthless exploitation, deportation of all supplies, raw materials, machines, factory installations, etc., which are important for the German war economy, availability of all workers for work within Germany, reduction of the entire Polish economy to absolute minimum necessary for bare existence of the population, closing of all educational institutions, especially technical schools and colleges in order to prevent the growth of the new Polish intelligentsia. Poland shall be treated as a colony. The Poles shall be the slaves of the Greater German Reich.11

  Rudolf Hess, the Nazi deputy Fuehrer, added that Hitler had decided that “Warsaw shall not be rebuilt, nor is it the intention of the Fuehrer to rebuild or reconstruct any industry in the Government General.”12

  By decree of Dr. Frank, all property in Poland belonging not only to Jews but to Poles was subject to confiscation without compensation. Hundreds of thousands of Polish-owned farms were simply grabbed and handed over to German settlers. By May 31, 1943, in the four Polish districts annexed to Germany (West Prussia, Posen, Zichenau, Silesia) some 700,000 estates comprising 15 million acres were “seized” and 9,500 estates totaling 6.5 million acres “confiscated.” The difference between “seizure” and “confiscation” is not explained in the elaborate table prepared by the German “Central Estate Office,”13 and to the dispossessed Poles it must not have mattered.

  Even the art treasures in the occupied lands were looted, and, as the captured Nazi documents later revealed, on the express orders of Hitler and Goering, who thereby greatly augmented their “private” collections. The corpulent Reich Marshal, according to his own estimate, brought his own collection up to a value of 50 million Reichsmarks. Indeed, Goering was the driving force in this particular field of looting. Immediately upon the conquest of Poland he issued orders for the seizure of art treasures the
re and within six months the special commissioner appointed to carry out his command could report that he had taken over “almost the entire art treasury of the country.”14

  But it was in France where the bulk of the great art treasures of Europe lay, and no sooner was this country added to the Nazi conquests than Hitler and Goering decreed their seizure. To carry out this particular plunder Hitler appointed Rosenberg, who set up an organization called Einsatzstab Rosenberg, and who was assisted not only by Goering but by General Keitel. Indeed one order by Keitel to the Army in France stated that Rosenberg “is entitled to transport to Germany cultural goods which appear valuable to him and to safeguard them there. The Fuehrer has reserved for himself the decision as to their use.”15

  An idea of Hitler’s decision “as to their use” is revealed in a secret order issued by Goering on November 5, 1940, specifying the distribution of art objects being collected at the Louvre in Paris. They were “to be disposed of in the following way”:

  1. Those art objects about which the Fuehrer has reserved for himself the decision as to their use.

  2. Those … which serve the completion of the Reich Marshal’s [i.e., Goering’s] collection …

  4. Those … that are suited to be sent to German museums …16

  The French government protested the looting of the country’s art treasures, declaring that it was a violation of the Hague convention, and when one German art expert on Rosenberg’s staff, a Herr Bunjes, dared to call this to the attention of Goering, the fat one replied:

  “My dear Bunjes, let me worry about that. I am the highest jurist in the state. It is my orders which are decisive and you will act accordingly.”

  And so according to a report of Bunjes—it is his only appearance in the history of the Third Reich, so far as the documents show—

  those art objects collected at the Jeu de Paume which are to go into the Fuehrer’s possession and those which the Reich Marshal claims for himself will be loaded into two railroad cars which will be attached to the Reich Marshal’s special train … to Berlin.17

  Many more carloads followed. According to a secret official German report some 137 freight cars loaded with 4,174 cases of art works comprising 21,903 objects, including 10,890 paintings, made the journey from the West to Germany up to July 1944.18 They included works of, among others, Rembrandt, Rubens, Hals, Vermeer, Velazquez, Murillo, Goya, Vecchio, Watteau, Fragonard, Reynolds and Gainsborough. As early as January 1941, Rosenberg estimated the art loot from France alone as worth a billion marks.19

  The plunder of raw materials, manufactured goods and food, though it reduced the occupied peoples to impoverishment, hunger and sometimes starvation and violated the Hague Convention on the conduct of war, might have been excused, if not justified, by the Germans as necessitated by the harsh exigencies of total war. But the stealing of art treasures did not help Hitler’s war machine. It was a case merely of avarice, of the personal greed of Hitler and Goering.

  All this plunder and spoliation the conquered populations could have endured—wars and enemy occupation had always brought privation in their wake. But this was only a part of the New Order—the mildest part. It was in the plunder not of material goods but of human lives that the mercifully short-lived New Order will be longest remembered. Here Nazi degradation sank to a level seldom experienced by man in all his time on earth. Millions of decent, innocent men and women were driven into forced labor, millions more tortured and tormented in the concentration camps and millions more still, of whom there were four and a half million Jews alone, were massacred in cold blood or deliberately starved to death and their remains—in order to remove the traces—burned.

  This incredible story of horror would be unbelievable were it not fully documented and testified to by the perpetrators themselves. What follows here—a mere summary, which must because of limitations of space leave out a thousand shocking details—is based on that incontrovertible evidence, with occasional corroboration from the eyewitness accounts of the few survivors.

  SLAVE LABOR IN THE NEW ORDER

  By the end of September 1944, some seven and a half million civilian foreigners were toiling for the Third Reich. Nearly all of them had been rounded up by force, deported to Germany in boxcars, usually without food or water or any sanitary facilities, and there put to work in the factories, fields and mines. They were not only put to work but degraded, beaten and starved and often left to die for lack of food, clothing and shelter.

  In addition, two million prisoners of war were added to the foreign labor force, at least a half a million of whom were made to work in the armaments and munitions industries in flagrant violation of the Hague and Geneva conventions, which stipulated that no war prisoners could be employed in such tasks.* This figure did not include the hundreds of thousands of other POWs who were impressed into the building of fortifications and in carrying ammunition to the front lines and even in manning antiaircraft guns in further disregard of the international conventions which Germany had signed.†

  In the massive deportations of slave labor to the Reich, wives were torn away from their husbands, and children from their parents, and assigned to widely separated parts of Germany. The young, if they were old enough to work at all, were not spared. Even top generals of the Army co-operated in the kidnaping of children, who were carted off to the homeland to perform slave labor. A memorandum from Rosenberg’s files of June 12, 1944, reveals this practice in occupied Russia.

  Army Group Center intends to apprehend forty to fifty thousand youths from the age of 10 to 14…. and transport them to the Reich. The measure was originally proposed by the Ninth Army … It is intended to allot these juveniles primarily to the German trades as apprentices…. This action is being greatly welcomed by the German trade since it represents a decisive measure for the alleviation of the shortage of apprentices.

  This action is not only aimed at preventing a direct reinforcement of the enemy’s strength but also as a reduction of his biological potentialities.

  The kidnaping operation had a code name: “Hay Action.” It was also being carried out, the memorandum added, by Field Marshal Model’s Army Group Ukraine-North.22

  Increasing terrorization was used to round up the victims. At first, comparatively mild methods were used. Persons coming out of church or the movies were nabbed. In the West especially, S.S. units merely blocked off a section of a town and seized all able-bodied men and women. Villages were surrounded and searched for the same purposes. In the East, when there was resistance to the forced-labor order, villages were simply burned down and their inhabitants carted off. Rosenberg’s captured files are replete with German reports of such happenings. In Poland, at least one German official thought things were going a little too far.

  The wild and ruthless man hunt [he wrote to Governor Frank], as exercised everywhere in towns and country, in streets, squares, stations, even in churches, at night in homes, has badly shaken the feeling of security of the inhabitants. Everybody is exposed to the danger of being seized anywhere and at any time by the police, suddenly and unexpectedly, and of being sent to an assembly camp. None of his relatives knows what has happened to him.23

  But rounding up the slave workers was only the first step.* The condition of their transport to Germany left something to be desired. A certain Dr. Gutkelch described one instance in a report to Rosenberg’s ministry on September 30, 1942. Recounting how a train packed with returning worked-out Eastern laborers met a train at a siding near Brest Litovsk full of “newly recruited” Russian workers bound for Germany, he wrote:

  Because of the corpses in the trainload of returning laborers a catastrophe might have occurred … In this train women gave birth to babies who were thrown out of the windows during the journey. Persons having tuberculosis and venereal diseases rode in the same car. Dying people lay in freight cars without straw, and one of the dead was thrown on the railway embankment. The same must have occurred in other returning transports.25

  Thi
s was not a very promising introduction to the Third Reich for the Ostarbeiter, but at least it prepared them somewhat for the ordeal that lay ahead. Hunger lay ahead and beatings and disease and exposure to the cold, in unheated quarters and in their thin rags. Long hours of labor lay ahead that were limited only by their ability to stand on their feet.

  The great Krupp works, makers of Germany’s guns and tanks and ammunition, was a typical place of employment. Krupp employed a large number of slave laborers, including Russian prisoners of war. At one point during the war, six hundred Jewish women from the Buchenwald concentration camp were brought in to work at Krupp’s, being “housed” in a bombed-out work camp from which the previous inmates, Italian POWs, had been removed. Dr. Wilhelm Jaeger, the “senior doctor” for Krupp’s slaves, described in an affidavit at Nuremberg what he found there when he took over.