58 Streim, Behandlung, 102-106.
59 For an estimate at the low end, see Streim, Behandlung, 244: minimum 2.4 million. For estimates of 3-3.3 million, see Pohl, Herrschaft, 210; Overmans, “Kriegsgefangenpolitik,” 811, 825; Dugas, Sovetskie Voennoplennye, 185; and Hartmann, “Massenvernichtung,” 97. For an estimate at the high end, see Sokolov, “How to Calculate,” 452: 3.9 million. On morale, see Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, 204.
60 On 7 November 1941, see Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 817. Compare Gerlach and Werth, “State Violence,” 164. See also Streim, Behandlung, 99-102, 234. On the four hundred thousand total deaths among those released, see Pohl, Herrschaft, 215. Quotation (Johannes Gutschmidt): Hartmann, “Massenvernichtung,” 158; a similar estimation by Rosenberg is in Klee, “Gott mit uns,” 142.
61 Belgium: Kay, Exploitation, 121.
62 On Goebbels, see Evans, Third Reich at War, 248. Compare Kay, Exploitation, 109; Longerich, Unwritten Order, 55, 60; Browning, Origins; Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 747; Gerlach, Krieg, 178; Arad, Reinhard, 14; and Aly, Architects, 160.
63 On the asphyxiation experiments, see Overmans, “Kriegsgefangenpolitik,” 814; Longerich, Unwritten Order, 82; Longerich, Himmler, 567; Datner, Zbrodnie, 208, 428; Verbrechen, 281; Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 383; Browning, Origins, 357; and Klee, “Gott mit uns,” 136.
64 On the number of prisoners recruited, see Pohl, Herrschaft, 181. See also Black, “Handlanger,” 313-317; and Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 207-208.
CHAPTER 6: FINAL SOLUTION
1 Browning and Gerlach have debated whether Hitler’s decision came in summer/autumn or in December 1941. In this chapter I am arguing that shooting Jews was the fifth version of the Final Solution, and the first one to show promise. The idea that the Jews could be removed from Europe by killing them must have been in the minds of Himmler and Hitler no later than August. It is quite possible that the two of them discussed this explicitly, although they need not have done so. Reinhard Koselleck (Futures Past, 222) cites Hitler, who is himself citing (unknowingly, I assume) Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment: one need not admit to having plans, even to oneself, in order to have them. For my purposes, December 1941 is the more important date, since that was the time when other associates of Hitler grasped that the Final Solution meant the total mass murder of Jews rather than the murder of some and the deportation of others.
2 See however the important revisions of Speer’s role in Tooze, Wages of Destruction. The problem was posed in its classical form by Milward, German Economy, 6-7 and passim. Quotation: Longerich, Himmler, 561. The massive debate over “institutionalism” and “functionalism” cannot be presented here. This discussion began before the centrality of the eastern front to the Holocaust was understood. Like several other scholars, I am arguing that the thinkability and the possibility of a Final Solution by mass murder emerged from a combination of signals from above (for example, Hitler to Himmler, Himmler to Bach) and from below (for example, Einsatzgruppe A to Himmler, Himmler to Hitler) or indeed in both directions (the relationship between Jeckeln and Himmler). The place where murder emerged as the method of the Final Solution was the eastern front, where the main technique was shooting.
3 Quotation: Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 368. On Wannsee, see Gerlach, “Wannsee”; and Longerich, Unwritten Order, 95. See also, generally, Roseman, Villa. The connection between Hitler and Rosenberg’s civilian administration is made in Lower, “Nazi Civilian Rulers,” 222-223.
4 Einsatzgruppe A, B, C, D respectively: 990 men, 655 men, 700 men, 600 men. See MacLean, Field Men, 13. On “numbers . . . too small,” see Browning, “Nazi Decision,” 473. On the importance of the Order Police, see Pohl, “Schauplatz,” 152. The death count is from Brandon, “First Wave.” At least 457,436 Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen by the end of 1941.
5 This is not explicitly argued in these terms in Longerich, Himmler, but I believe that the interpretation squares with the arguments presented there. Compare Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 115; and Lück, “Partisanbekämpfung,” 229.
6 Quotation: Wasser, “Raumplannung,” 51. See also Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 378 and passim; and Steinberg, “Civil Administration,” 647.
7 The Romanian lands taken by Stalin were invaded by the Romanian army, not the German. They were followed by Einsatzgruppe D; see Angrick, Besatzungspolitik.
8 See Snyder, Reconstruction.
9 The deportation figures are in Angrick, Riga, 46. If conscription is included, the total rises to 34,000.
10 MacQueen, “White Terror,” 97; Angrick, Riga, 59. Among the two hundred thousand I include Jews in Vilnius and surrounding areas annexed to Lithuania.
11 Arad, Soviet Union, 144, 147; MacQueen, “White Terror,” 99-100; Angrick, Riga, 60.
12 Tomkiewicz, Ponary, 191-197.
13 Ibid., 203.
14 Angrick, Riga, 66-76. See also Arad, Soviet Union, 148.
15 Weiss-Wendt, Estonians, 39, 40, 45, 90, 94-105.
16 The 9,817 count in Verbrechen is at 93. See also Wnuk, Za pierwszego Sowieta, 371 (11,000-12,000); and Hryciuk, “Victims,” 183 (9,400).
17 On interwar anti-Jewish politics, see, generally, Polonsky, Politics; and Mendelsohn, Jews.
18 On Białystok, see Matthäus, “Controlled Escalation,” 223; and Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, 593. Spektor (in “Żýdzi wołyńscy,” 575) counts thirty-eight pogroms in Volhynia; and the authors and editors of Wokół Jedwabnego, about thirty in the Białystok region.
19 On the total number of Jews killed (19,655), see Brandon, “First Wave.” For the “Hundreds of Jews . . . running down the street,” see Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, 99. On the nationality of the prisoners, see Himka, “Ethnicity,” 8.
20 The idea of double collaboration as biographical self-cleansing is advanced in Gross, Neighbors. For examples from Estonia, Ukraine, and Belarus of double collaboration, see Weiss-Wendt, Estonians, 115-119; Dubno: sefer zikaron, 698-701; Rein, “Local Collaborators,” 394; Brakel, Unter Rotem Stern, 304; Musial, Mythos, 266; and Mironowicz, Białoruś, 160. See also Snyder, “West Volhynian Jews.” A systematic study of double collaboration would be worthwhile.
21 This is the closest that I would come to an Arendtian argument about alienation. Arendt’s follower Jan Gross makes a similar argument about the privatization of violence in his study of the first Soviet occupation, Revolution from Abroad. But then in his studies of the consequences of two occupations, Neighbors and Fear, he shifts away from sociology and toward ethics, as if Poles should have remembered themselves when German occupation was added to Soviet, or Soviet to German. In my view the logical move would have been to press forward with the Arendtian argument, but claiming that the overlap of both “totalitarian” powers plays the historical role that Arendt assigned to modernity. This is not quite what Gross claims (although he makes gestures in this direction in Upiorna dekada and in a few passages in both Neighbors and Fear). But I do think it follows from his occupation studies as a whole, if they are read as studies of human behavior (rather than of Polish ethics). This line of argument is pursued in the Conclusion.
22 Westermann, “Ideological Soldiers,” 46 (30% and 66%).
23 Compare Gerlach, “Nazi Decision,” 476.
24 Longerich, Himmler, 551; Kay, Exploitation, 106. On Uman, see USHMM-SBU 4/1747/19-20.
25 Matthäus, “Controlled Escalation,” 225; Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 555; Kershaw, Fateful Choices, 456, 458. Cüppers, in Wegbereiter, develops the argument about the crucial early role of the Waffen-SS.
26 Kay, Exploitation, 107; Browning, “Nazi Decision,” 474. Pohl notes that the reinforcements came first to Ukraine; see Herrschaft, 152. He specifies early August as the time when Einsatzgruppe C understood that women and children were to be killed; see “Schauplatz,” 140.
27 Mallmann, Einsatzgruppen, 97.
28 Pohl, “Schauplatz,” 142; Kruglov, “Jewish Losses,” 274-275; Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, 135.
29 Kruglov, “Jewish Losses,” 275.
30 Ruß, “Massaker,” 494, 503, 505; Berkhoff, “Records,” 294; Pohl, “Schauplatz,” 147.
31 Berkhoff, Harvest, 65-67, at 65; FVA 3267.
32 Darmstadt testimony, 29 April 1968, IfZ(M), Gd 01.54/78/1762.
33 Ruß, “Massaker,” 486; Berkhoff, Harvest, 68. On Sara, see Ehrenburg, Black Book, Borodyansky-Knysh testimony. On the valuables, see Dean, “Jewish Property,” 86. On the people “already bloody,” see “Stenogramma,” 24 April 1946, TsDAVO, 166/3/245/118. On the bones and ash and sand, see Klee, Gott mit uns, 136.
34 Darmstadt testimony, 29 April 1968, IfZ(M), Gd 01.54/78/1764-1765; Berkhoff, “Records,” 304.
35 Prusin, “SiPo/SD,” 7-9; Rubenstein, Unknown, 57. Romanowsky makes the point about the rotation of official enemies in “Nazi Occupation,” 240.
36 Rubenstein, Unknown, 54, 57, 61; Prusin, “SiPo/SD,” 7-9.
37 On Kharkiv, see Pohl, “Schauplatz,” 148; and Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, 179. On Kiev, see Prusin, “SiPo/SD,” 10.
38 Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 544, 567. Nebe was a member of the resistance to Hitler in 1944.
39 Megargee, Annihilation, 99.
40 Quotation and figures are from Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 588, 585; see also Ingrao, “Violence,” 231.
41 For the “sea of blood,” see Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 182. For “thus must be destroyed,” see Verbrechen, 138.
42 This was an argument of the previous chapter.
43 The Soviet rationale was a classic one. First, the NKVD “established” that Germany had hundreds of spies among the Volga Germans. Then, the NKVD argued that the entire population was guilty, since none of the Volga Germans had reported all of this espionage to the proper authorities. In a particularly refined move, the NKVD used the presence of swastikas in German households as evidence of Nazi collaboration. In fact, the Soviets had themselves distributed those swastikas, in 1939, when Moscow and Berlin were allies, and a friendly visit from Hitler was expected. By the end of 1942, the Soviets had resettled some nine hundred thousand Germans, the vast majority of the German population in the Soviet Union. The Soviets deported some eighty-nine thousand Finns, most of them to Siberia. On Stalin, see Polian, Against Their Will, 134. On Hitler, see Longerich, Unwritten Order, 75; Gerlach, Krieg, 96; Gerlach, “Wannsee,” 763; Pinkus, “Deportation,” 456-458; Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 370; and Friedlander, Extermination, 239, 263-264.
44 Quotation: Lukacs, Last European War, 154; see also Friedlander, Extermination , 268.
45 Angrick, Riga, 133-150.
46 Chełmno is discussed in Chapter 8. The connection is made by Kershaw, Fateful Choices, 462; see also Kershaw, Hitler, 66. Mazower emphasizes the centrality of the Wartheland in Hitler’s Empire, for example at 191. I am excluding in this judgment Jews killed in the “euthanasia” program.
47 Himmler and Globocnik will be discussed at greater length in Chapter 8.
48 Megargee, Annihilation, 115.
49 Arguing from the periphery, from Belarus and Ukraine to Berlin, Gerlach and Pohl each make a case for the importance of food supplies in the extermination of the Jews. Aly and Heim, arguing forward from the logic of prewar planning, present a kind of negative explanation for the Holocaust: the Jews were already regarded as harmful in future designs and as useless consumers of present necessities. Hitler certainly undertook the war against the Soviet Union on the understanding that food supplies could thereby be secured during the war and for future wars. It is certainly true that the Hunger Plan, real supply difficulties for the Wehrmacht, and the perceived need to satisfy German civilians mattered a great deal on the eastern front generally. The concern for food made it easier for officers to endorse killing Jews. As the war continued, the economic argument about Jewish labor would be countered by the economic argument about the food Jews would eat. I agree that food played a much greater role in the process than it might appear from English-language literature on the Holocaust. But I do not believe that food (or any other economic consideration) can explain the timing or the precise content of Hitler’s policy as conveyed in December 1941. It was an ideological expression and political resolution of pressing problems arising from a failed colonial war. It was also a choice.
50 Quotation: Edele, “States,” 374.
51 On the 3 January meeting of Hitler with the Japanese ambassador, see Hauner, Axis Strategy, 384. See also Lukacs, Last European War, 143.
52 Krebs, “Japan,” 547-554.
53 German propaganda was making the case explicitly; see Herf, Jewish Enemy, 100, 128. Compare Gerlach, “Wannsee.” The recent scholarly emphasis upon Himmler and December has much to do with Gerlach’s work and with the publication of Witte, Dienstkalendar, and Longerich, Himmler. Himmler was the crucial executor of a policy for which Hitler was responsible.
54 Quoted and discussed, for example, in Longerich, Unwritten Order, 95; Gerlach, Krieg, 123; Gerlach, “Wannsee,” 783, 790; Kershaw, Fateful Choices, 466; Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 504; and Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 376 (for the Frank quotation as well). As Friedländer points out in a persuasive passage, this was one of a cluster of such statements; see Extermination, 281.
55 On Hitler (“common front”), see Herf, Jewish Enemy, 132. On Goebbels, see Pohl, Verfolgung, 82.
56 Madajczyk, “Generalplan Ost,” 17; Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 198.
57 Compare Browning, “Nazi Decision”; and Gerlach, “Wannsee.” See also Kershaw, Fateful Choices, 433.
58 See Kroener, “Frozen Blitzkrieg,” 140, 148.
59 See Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 582, for quotation and interpretation.
60 On Serbia, see Manoschek, Serbien, 79, 107, 186-197; and Evans, Third Reich at War, 237, 259. The blame for the death of the Jews, in this conception, did not rest on the Germans. If the United States was a Jewish state, went the Nazi reasoning, its leaders must have understood that Hitler was keeping alive the Jews of Europe as hostages. If the United States entered the war, it followed, Washington was responsible for the death of these hostages. Of course, no one in the United States actually reasoned in this way, and the American entry into the war had little if anything to do with European or American Jews. See Longerich, Unwritten Order, 55; Friedländer, Extermination , 265, 281; Arad, Soviet Union, 139; and Gerlach, “Wannsee.”
61 That such camouflage was felt to be necessary is a telling sign, since it reveals the Nazis’ supposition that someone else might read their documents, which would happen only if they lost the war. Stalinists and Stalin himself had no such difficulties writing, signing, and filing direct orders to kill large numbers of people.
62 Birn, “Anti-Partisan Warfare,” 289.
63 For the count, see Brandon, “The First Wave.”
64 Deletant, “Transnistria,” 157-165; Pohl, Verfolgung, 78-79; Hilberg, Destruction (vol. I), 810.
65 Deletant, “Transnistria,” 172; Pohl, Verfolgung, 79. See also Case, Between States.
66 Pohl, “Schauplatz,” 153, 162. The gas chambers are the subject of Chapter 8.
67 Pohl counts thirty-seven thousand auxiliary policemen active in July 1942 in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine; see “Hilfskräfte,” 210.
68 These Volhynian communities are treated in greater detail in Spector, Volhynian Jews, and Snyder, “West Volhynian Jews,” 77-84. The fate of Galician Jews, discussed in Chapter 8, was different; see Pohl, Ostgalizien, and Sandkühler, Galizien.
69 Arad, in Soviet Union at 521 and 524, counts 1,561,000-1,628,000 murdered Jews in the lands annexed by the USSR, as well as 946,000-996,000 Jews of the prewar Soviet Union. See also Snyder, “West Volhynian Jews,” 85-89.
70 Grynberg, Życie, 602; Spektor, “Żydzi wołyńscy,” 477; Snyder, “West Volhynian Jews,” 91-96; Pohl, “Schauplatz,” 158-162.
71 For the Judenrat negotiations, see letters of 8 and 10 May 1942, DAR 22/1/10=USHMM RG-31.017M-2. See also Grynberg, Życie, 588; Spektor, “Żydzi wołyńscy,” 477; and Snyder, “West Volhynian Jews,” 91-96.
72 ŻIH 301/1982; ŻIH 301/5657; Sefer Lutsk, “Calendar of Pain, Resistance and Destruction”; Grynberg, Życie, 584-586, quotation at 586.
73 Spektor, “Żydzi wołyńscy,” 477; Snyder, “West Volhynian Jews,” 91-96. For “useless eaters,” see Grynberg, Życie, 577. Regarding the Great Synagogue in Kovel and for the quotations in the next paragraph, see ŻIH/1644. The inscriptions were noted by Hanoch Hammer. The Soviets used the synagogue to store grain.
CHAPTER 7: HOLOCAUST AND REVENGE
1 Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 374; Szybieka, Historia, 337. Compare Edele, “States,” 348, 361. On the 19 July ghetto order, see Verbrechen, 80.
2 On the first killing actions, see Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 506, 549, 639; Matthäus, “Reibungslos,” 260; Longerich, Vernichtung, 370 (women); Epstein, Minsk, 81; and Ehrenburg, Black Book, 116. On the 7-9 November killings, see Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 506, 509, 624; Smolar, Ghetto, 41; Ehrenburg, Black Book, 118; and Rubenstein, Unknown, 237-238, 245, 251. Other symbolic murders: the Germans carried out an action on 23 February 1942 (Red Army Day) and shot Jewish women on 8 March 1942 (International Women’s Day).
3 On the promised parade, see Braithwaite, Moscow, 252.
4 Smilovitsky, “Antisemitism,” 207-208; Braithwaite, Moscow, 262.
5 See Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 118-119.
6 Quotation: Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 119.
7 Quotation: Projektgruppe, “Existiert,” 90.
8 On the boots taken from dead or captured soldiers, see Ich werde es nie vergessen, 66, 188; and Merridale, Ivan’s War, 138.
9 Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 768; Epstein, Minsk, 22; Smolar, Ghetto, 15; Projektgruppe, “Existiert,” 221.
10 On the humiliations reserved for Jews, see Rubenstein, Unknown, 256; also Ehrenburg, Black Book, 125. On Eberl, see Grabher, Eberl, 66. On the film, see Longerich, Himmler, 552.
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