Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews

by Peter Longerich

  5. This is the position represented by Martin Broszat in ‘Hitler und die Genesis

  der “Endlösung”. Aus Anlass der Thesen von David Irving’, VfZ 25/4 (1977),

  522

  Notes to pages 259–261

  739–75; and Hans Mommsen, ‘The Realization of the Unthinkable: The “Final

  Solution of the Jewish Question” in the Third Reich’ in Gerhard Hirschfeld, ed.,

  The Politics of Genocide: Jews and Soviet Prisoners of War in Nazi Germany

  (London, 1986), 93–144.

  6. Peter Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung. Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalso-

  zialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich, 1998); Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische

  Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944. Durchführung eines staatlichen Massenver-

  brechen (Munich, 1996), 139 ff.

  7. See pp. 173–6.

  8. Thus most recently in Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution: The

  Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy 1939–1942, 309 ff., recapitulated pp. 424 ff. On the

  development of his position cf. particularly the accounts in ‘The Decision Concerning

  the Final Solution’, in Christopher R. Browning, Fateful Months: Essays on the Emer-

  gence of the Final Solution (New York, 1985), 8–38; and ‘Beyond “Intentionalism” and

  “Functionalism”: The Decision for the Final Solution Reconsidered’, in Christopher

  R. Browning, The Path to Genocide Reconsidered: Essays on the Final Solution

  (Cambridge, 1992) 86–124.

  9. Graml, Reichskristallnacht, 222 ff.; Krausnick, in Jäckel and Rohwer, Mord, 201; Breitman, Architekt, 192–3; Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry 1932–1945

  (New York, 1990), 254–5. Browning, who initially interpreted the document as an

  authorization for mass murder (‘Decision’, 22), now holds the view (Origins, 353) that

  it was an assignment to prepare a ‘feasibility study’ for the extension of the systematic murder begun in the Soviet Union to the rest of occupied Europe. In my view

  Browning’s refutation of Aly’s reinterpretation of the document (ibid. 517, n. 36) is

  not appropriate: Browning wrongly assumes that in March 1941 Heydrich had already

  received Goering’s acceptance of his draft, which—and this is the crucial point in Aly’s

  convincing interpretation—was not the case. In fact Goering ordered ‘re-submission’,

  which Heydrich did in July.

  10. Rudolf Aschenhauer, ed., Ich, Adolf Eichmann. Ein historischer Zeugenbericht (Leoni am Starnberger See, 1980), 479) confirms that the memo was drafted in the RSHA; Goering’s

  official diary records a meeting with Heydrich on 31 July, 6.15 p.m. (IfZ, ED 180/5).

  11. IMT xxvi. 710-PS.

  12. See pp. 175–6.

  13. See Götz Aly, ‘Final Solution’: Nazi Population Policy and the murder of the European Jews (London, 1999), 172–3. (Frankfurt a. M., 1995). The discovery of this document

  confirms the view that has long been represented by authors like Adam (Judenpolitik,

  308–9), Burrin (Hitler, 134), and Broszat, (‘Genesis’, 747).

  14. See Jäckel, Introduction to Mord, 15.

  15. Breitman, Architect, 198; Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42, ed. Peter Witte et al. (Hamburg, 1999), 26 Aug. 1941, p. 198.

  16. Tobias Jersak, ‘Die Interaktion von Kriegsverlauf und Judenvernichtung. Ein Blick auf Hitlers Strategie im Spätsommer 1941’, Historische Zeitschrift 268 (1999), 311–74. Jersak puts forward the view that Hitler had seen the Atlantic declaration of 14 August 1941 as

  the definitive entry of the US into the anti-German alliance, and with this event in mind he had resolved in mid-August 1941 to suspend his policy aimed at world domination

  and introduce the murder of all European Jews, as he held ‘the Jews’ largely responsible

  Notes to pages 261–263

  523

  for Germany’s encirclement. Goebbels’s diaries clearly reveal, however, that Hitler

  agreed with Goebbels that the Atlantic Charter was a ‘propaganda bluff’. If Churchill,

  both men agreed, had actually pursued the intention of drawing the United States into

  the war, this tactic had totally failed. So it is not convincing to see the Atlantic Charter as the cause of a ‘change of strategy’ on Hitler’s part, and a related decision to implement the ‘Final Solution’, or even as the origin of the decision to implement the ‘Final Solution’

  (Elke Frölich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil II (Munich, 1966), 15.–21

  Aug. 1941, especially 19 Aug. 1941 concerning the conversation with Hitler), 263.

  17. Rudolf Höß, Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess (London,

  1959), 206 ff.; in agreement with this the statement made on 14 Apr. 1946, IMT xi. 438–66.

  18. Breitman’s attempt, to date the meeting of Höß and Himmler in Auschwitz to 13–15

  July 1941 (Breitman, Architekt, 250), is unconvincing for this and other reasons. See

  Longerich, Politik, 696 ff.

  19. IMT xi. 441.

  20. Burrin, Hitler, 197, on the other hand suggests that Höß might have been a year out in his calculations; likewise Jean-Claude Pressac, Die Krematorien von Auschwitz (Munich, 1994), 136, who dates the meeting as early June 1942; equally sceptical about the

  dating to summer 1941 are Hans Safrian, Die Eichmann-Männer (Vienna, 1993), 106,

  and Karin Orth, ‘Rudolf Höß und die “Endlösung der Judenfrage”. Drei Argumente

  gegen deren Datierung auf den Sommer 1941’, Werkstatt Geschichte 18 (1997), 45–57.

  There is one other statement that suggests that when Höß said 1941 he meant 1942 (IMT

  xxxiii. 275 ff., 3968-PS); but even if we impute this error to him, the chronology

  proposed by Höß cannot be made consistent with the known facts (Longerich, Politik,

  697).

  21. Thus in his latest work, Origins, Browning no longer uses Höß’s statement to support

  his thesis, as he still did in ‘Decision,’ 22–3, albeit with major reservations.

  22. The Trial of Eichmann, vii. 169–70; also the statement in the main trial, ibid. iv. 1559.

  23. In the so-called ‘Sassen interviews’, given before his abduction from Argentina, he

  stated that Heydrich had already informed him about the Führer’s order after the

  Wehrmacht’s first great military successes in Russia in the battles of Bialystok and

  Minsk (that was at the end of June). In his memoirs (Götzen, September 1961),

  Eichmann identifies Wirth as the police captain in question (p. 174). On the various

  versions of his statements on this subject see Christian Gerlach, ‘The Eichmann

  Interrogations in Holocaust Historiography’, HGS 15/3 (2001), 428–52; and David

  Cesarani, Eichmann: His Life and Crimes (New York, 2004), 143 ff.

  24. Trial of Eichmann, vii. 174. Eichmann gives this as his reason for giving the date as late summer or autumn. But he does not speak expressly of autumn. (Götzen: Note about

  foliage.)

  25. See p. 280.

  26. Trial of Eichmann, vii. 171 and 179. When describing a second trip to the Treblinka

  camp, which was by now completed, he becomes increasingly certain that this was the

  camp he saw under construction (ibid. 229); later he admits that it might have been

  Sobibor (ibid. 400).

  27. In the Götzen manuscript, p. 175, also under questioning, Trial of Eichmann, vii. 372–3.

  28. Ibid. vii. 174. In his statement to the court, after further acquainting himself with the subject from Reitlinger’s book on the history of Chelmno, he admitted that the visit

  524

  Notes to pages 263–265

  might
have taken place at the end of December 1941 or shortly afterwards (ibid.

  iv. 1560).

  29. Ibid. vii. 210 ff.; Gerlach, ‘Eichmann Interrogations’, 436.

  30. Trial of Eichmann vii. 378, 384.

  31. Browning, Origins, 523–4, now assumes that Eichmann met Wirth in September 1941,

  and not in Belzec but in a kind of experimental facility that Wirth had built before the

  construction of Belzec. Wirth could, Browning suggests, already have supervised the

  construction of this facility even before being definitively moved to Lublin. Apart from

  the fact that this claim is purely speculative, Browning’s proposed chronology seems

  too crowded. According to Browning, Hitler made the main decision concerning the

  murder of the Jews in mid-September and charged his Führer Chancellery with its

  implementation, whereupon Brack and Bouhler went to see Globocnik and Wirth went

  to Lublin to undertake his experiments and then present them to Eichmann—all in less

  than fourteen days. It seems much more plausible that the plans for Belzec extermin-

  ation camp only began in October 1941, just as Wetzel only offered Brack’s support to

  Hinrich Lohse, the Reichskommissar in Ostland (Baltic States), on 25 October. See

  p. 279. Browning’s assertion that Wirth had already spoken of an impending transfer to

  a euthanasia institution in the district of Lublin, is based solely on a post-war witness statement (NO 3010, Bodo Gorgaß); and Brack and Bouhler’s trip to Lublin, which

  Brack dates in his trial as ‘early September’, cannot yet have taken place at this time, as Burrin, Hitler, 199, has already shown. In early September Globocnik had not yet been

  informed about impending deportations from the Reich, which, according to Brack’s

  statement, he spoke about when the two men met (Trials of War Criminals, Case 1, trial

  transcript, 7502-3, 14 May 1947). But we know from Himmler’s official diary that Brack

  and Bouhler met Himmler on 14 December 1941, and that this was the only meeting

  throughout that whole period. The subject for discussion at the meeting with Brack is

  given as ‘euthanasia’, and in a later memo Brack reminds Himmler that in the context

  of the ‘Judenaktion’ he (Himmler) had ‘expressed the opinion to him that, for reasons

  of camouflage, work should get under way as soon as possible’ (BAB, NS 19/1583). In

  contrast to Browning’s account, this meeting matches the other dates that we have for

  the transfer of T4 staff to Poland (see p. 280).

  32. BAB, R 58/954; in Peter Longerich, ed., Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden

  (Munich, 1989), 74–5.

  33. Two notes from the RFSS, 21 July 1941 (Berlin Document Centre (BDC)-Akte

  Globocnik).

  34. On this complex, material in BDC files Globocnik.

  35. See above pp. 214–15.

  36. Das Diensttagebuch des deutscher Generalgouverneurs in Polen 1939–1945, ed. Werner

  Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Stuttgart, 1975), 17 July 1941, p. 386.

  37. BAB, R 6/21, in a memo to Lammers on 19 July 1941 Frank explained the planned

  extension by saying that ‘elements of the population (Jewish ones above all) were to be

  provided with a productive occupation that was useful to the Reich’. Frank returned to

  the subject of the planned annexation at a meeting on 22 July (IfZ, MA 120).

  38. IfZ, MA 120; in the published edition of the official diary only as a paraphrase. On 21

  July Frank had told Senior Medical Officer (Obermedizinalrat) Dr Jost Walbaum, the

  Notes to pages 265–267

  525

  ‘Health leader’ of the General Government, of his decision that in the impending

  removal of the Jews from the General Government ‘the dissolution of the Warsaw

  ghetto was the first thing to be got under way’ (ibid.).

  39. ADAP, series D, vol. 12, 2, 835 ff.

  40. See p. 174.

  41. Bernhard Lösener, ‘Als Rassereferent in Reichsministerium des Innern’, VfZ 9/3 (1961), 303, reproduction of a note for Frick.

  42. Fröhlich, ed., Tagebücher Goebbels, II, i, 19 August 1941, pp. 265–6.

  43. Ibid. 265.

  44. Plettenberg City Archive (¼YV, 051/202). See also Goebbels’s instruction which he

  submitted on the same day at his Ministry’s internal propaganda meeting: Special

  Archive, Moscow, 1363–3.

  45. Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (London, 1984), 79.

  46. Theodore N. Kaufman, Germany Must Perish (Newark, NJ, 1941), 104, published early

  1941. See also Wolfgang Benz, ‘Judenvernichtung aus Notwehr? Die Legende um

  Theodore N. Kaufman’, VfZ 29 (1981), 615–30. The polemic against the Kaufman

  pamphlet had been going for around four weeks, but was now intensified; Tagesparole

  der RPL, N. 732, 23 July 1941 (BAB, ZSg. 100/21); VB 24 July; Fröhlich, Tagebücher, Teil

  II, vol. i, 24 July 1941, pp. 116–17; Goebbels in VB, 17 August; Wolfgang Diewerge, a staff member of the Propaganda Ministry, published a pamphlet against Kaufman’s text,

  under the title ‘Das Kriegsziel der Weltplutokratie’, which was distributed on a large

  scale: Dokumentarische Veröffentlichung zu dem Buch des Präsidenten der amerika-

  nischen Friedensgsellschaft Theodor Nathan Kaufman ‘Deutschland muss sterben’,

  September 1941

  47. Jürgen Hagemann, Die Presselenkung im Dritten Reich (Bonn, 1970), 155.

  48. Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher, Teil II, vol. i, 20 Aug. 1941, p. 278.

  49. Decree of the Supreme Soviet, 28 August 1941, in Alfred Eisfeld and Victor Herdt, eds, Deportation, Sondersiedlung, Arbeitsarmee. Deutsche in der Sowjetunion 1941–1956

  (Cologne, 1996), 54–5.

  50. According to the notebooks of his contact man in the OKH, Otto Bräutigam; see H. D.

  Heilmann, ‘Aus dem Kriegstagebuch des Diplomaten Otto Bräutigam’, in Götz

  Aly et al., eds, Biedermann und Schreibtischtäter. Materialien zur deutschen Täter-

  Biographie. Institut für Sozialforschung Hamburg. Beiträge zur nationalsozialistischen

  Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik 4 (1987), 144.

  51. Details see below p. 274.

  52. Peter Witte, ‘Two Decisions Concerning the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”.

  Deportations to Lodz and Mass Murder in Chemno’, HGS 9 (1995), 330. According to

  Himmler’s official diary he telephoned the Foreign Office that evening. Further evi-

  dence for the date of the decision can be drawn from a marginal note by the Foreign

  Office’s Jewish expert, Rademacher, dated 13 September 1941, on a memo from Benzler

  (the Foreign Office’s Plenipotentiary in Belgrade) dated 12 September 1941, which

  reveals that Eichmann had not at this point been informed about the decision to

  resume the deportations (‘Eichmann schlägt Erschießen vor’, facsimile in Robert

  M. W. Kempner, Eichmann und Komplizen (Zurich, 1961), 291).

  53. BAB, NS 19/2655, published in Ermordung, ed. Longerich 157.

  526

  Notes to pages 267–269

  54. Wolf Gruner, points this out in ‘Von der Kollektivausweisung zur Deportation der

  Juden aus Deutschland 1938–1945’, in Birthe Kundrus and Beate Meyer, eds, Die

  Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland. Pläne—Praxis—Reaktionen (Gottinger,

  2004), 48. Individual documents: Dienstkalender, 2 and 4 Sept. 1941; some days later

  Eichmann informed Rademacher of the German Department of the Foreign Office that

  it was currently impossible to accommodate Jews from Serbia or the Reich in the<
br />
  General Government (handwritten note from Rademacher on telegram from Belgrade

  Embassy, 13 September 1941, printed as facsimile in Kempner, Eichmann und Kompli-

  zen, (291). Koppe’s memo of 10 Sept. 1941 has been lost, but it can be reconstructed from the Brieftagebuch (epistolary diary) of the personal staff of the RFSS (cf. commentary,

  Dienstkalender, ed, Witte et al., entry for 4 Sept. 1941, p. 205).

  55. Browning, Origins, 426.

  56. Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher, Teil II, vol. i. 480–1.

  57. BAB, R 6/34, Koeppen-Aufzeichnungen, 21 Sept. 1941.

  58. For the context see David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance

  1937–41: A Study in Competitive Co-operation (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981), 213 ff.

  59. See p. 164.

  60. Fröhlich, Die Tagebücher, Teil II, vol. ii: Oktober-Dezember 1941 (Munich, 1996), 24

  Oct. 1941, p. 169.

  61. Minutes of the propaganda conference, 23 Oct. 1941, NS 18 alt/622. Details in Peter

  Longerich, ‘Davon haben wir nichts gewusst’! Die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung

  1933–1945 (Munich, 2006), 182–3.

  62. See e.g. Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) of 20 Oct. 1941 (UPI-Meldung 18 October)

  concerning deportations from the Rhineland and from Berlin to Poland: ‘In the

  evening a large number of Jews from the Rhineland arrived in Berlin, before being

  transported along with a number of Berlin Jews to Poland or other Eastern European

  countries. According to reports, the number of these Jews is approaching 20,000. It has

  been reported that around 1,500 Jews left the capital yesterday. They are to be trans-

  ported to Litzmannstadt (formerly Lodz) and later possibly brought to the General

  Government.’ The New York Times carried this report as early as 18 October 1941 with

  further details concerning the situation of the Berlin Jews: on 22 October the NZZ

  reported, on the basis of a United Press International report of 20 October, that the

  deportations would continue, involving a total of 20,000 people.

  63. Longerich, ‘Davon haben wir nichts gewusst’! 183–4.

  64. It was not only the Jewish apartments that were in great demand; in many cities

  auctions of Jewish household goods took place from 1941 onwards. For details see