Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Peter Longerich (grave mercy .TXT) 📖

Owinska (pp. 70–1). It is also important to note the other purposes that psychiatric

institutions were put to, as detailed by Rieß; Schwede explicitly justified the deport-

ations from his Gau in this manner (citing the construction of an SS barracks in the

hospital at Stralsund). The most important factor that argues against Aly’s interpret-

ation is the fact that mass murders in the occupied zones were only an anticipatory

measure in advance of the ‘euthanasia’ programmes being planned at the same time

across the whole of the Reich and were directly linked to the eruption of violence

against other civilian groups in the newly conquered areas. In this context the links to

the resettlement of ethnic Germans are of secondary importance, one factor only in the

acceleration of the mass murder of the inmates of psychiatric institutions. In the same

way Aly’s examples of South German institutions being filled with ethnic German

emigrants in the second half of 1940 (pp. 120–2) do not constitute sufficient evidence

for his thesis that ‘the self-created pressure to accommodate ethnic German settlers in

camps now also began to accelerate the murder of German psychiatric patients in the

southern part of the Reich as well’ (p. 120). Aly again distorts his argument when he

identifies a secondary phenomenon (the use of ‘freed-up’ institutions) as the main

cause of the murder of the sick and debilitated. Statistics published by Klee (‘Eutha-

nasie’, 340–1) suggest that of the 93,521 institutional beds ‘freed up’ by the end of 1941

(a figure which includes both the more than 70,000 people murdered in the gas

chambers and those who died or were killed in the institutions themselves), only

8,577 were used for ethnic German settlers, whilst more than half served army or SS

purposes, especially as reserve military hospitals.

45. On the organization of T4 see Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 109 ff.; Friedlander, Origins, 68 ff.; Burleigh, Death, 133 ff.

46. See in particular the information in Heinz Faulstich, Hungersterben in der Psychiatrie, 1914–1949 (Freiburg, 1998), 260 ff., which is complemented by detailed studies on

individual institutions and regions as follows: Hermann J. Pretsch, ed., ‘Euthanasie’.

Krankenmorde in Südwestdeutschland. Die nationalsozialistische ‘Aktion T4’ in

Württemberg 1940 bis 1945 (Zwiefalten, 1996); Christina Vanja and Martin Vogt, eds,

Euthanasie in Hadamar. Die nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik in hessischen

Anstalten (Kassel, 1991); Heinz Faulstich, Von der Irrenfürsorge zur ‘Euthanasie’.

Geschichte der badischen Psychiatrie bis 1945 (Freiburg, 1993); Ludwig Hermeler, Die

Euthanasie und die späte Unschuld der Psychiater. Massenmord, Bedburg-Hau und das

Geheimnis rheinischer Widerstandslegenden (Essen, 2002); Uwe Kaminsky, Zwangs-

478

Notes to pages 140–143

sterilisation und ‘Euthanasie’ im Rheinland. Evangelische Erziehungsanstalten sowie

Heil- und Pflegeanstalten 1933–1945 (Cologne, 1995); Boris Böhm and Thomas Oel-

schläger, eds, Der sächsische Sonderweg bei der NS-‘Euthanasie’ (Ulm, 2001); Thomas

Schilter, Unmenschliches Ermessen. Die nationalsozialistische ‘Euthanasie’-Tötungsan-

stalt Pirna-Sonnenstein 1940/41 (Leipzig, 1999); Dietmar Schulze, ‘Euthanasie’ in Bern-

burg. Die Landes-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Bernburg/Anhaltinische Nervenklinik in der

Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Essen, 1999); Thomas Stöckle, Grafeneck 1940. Die

Euthanasie-Verbrechen in Südwestdeutschland (Tübingen, 2002); Thorsten Sueße and

Heinrich Meyer, Abtransport der ‘Lebensunwerten’. Die Konfrontation niedersäch-

sischer Anstalten mit der NS-‘Euthanasie’ (Hanover, 1998); Bernd Walter, Psychiatrie

und Gesellschaft in der Moderne. Geisteskrankenfürsorge in der Provinz Westfalen

zwischen Kaiserreich und NS-Regime (Paderborn, 1996); Michael von Cranach and

Hans-Ludwig Siemen eds, Psychiatrie im Nationalsozialismus. Die Bayerischen Heil-

und Pflegeanstalten zwischen 1933 und 1945 (Munich, 1999).

47. International Military Tribunal (IMT), xxxv. 681 ff., 906-D, a note from Sellmer (from the staff of the Führer’s Deputy) on a visit by Werner Blankenburg from the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP (Brack’s deputy), 1 Oct. 1940: ‘30,000 done, a further

100,000–120,000 waiting’.

48. Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen 1923–

1941 Dezember 1940–Juli 1941, bearbeitet von Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1998). Entry for 31

Jan. 1941, p. 119 (on a conversation with Bouhler): ‘40,000 are gone, 60,000 still have to go.’

49. In the planning stages, for example, Brack considered that secrecy could not be taken as read if there were to be, as was proposed at that point, some 60,000 victims (according

to a witness statement by his colleague Hefelmann, quoted in Aly, Final Solution, 28).

On the imperfect secrecy surrounding euthanasia, see Winfried Süß, Der Volkskörper

im Krieg. Gesundheitspolitik, Gesundheitsverhältnisse und Krankenmord im national-

sozialistischen Deutschland 1939–1945 (Munich, 2003), 129–30.

50. For examples of ‘Euthanasia’ propaganda see Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 76–7 and 176–7.

51. Friedlander, Origins, 263 ff.

8.

German Occupation and the Persecution of the Jews in Poland,

1939–1940/1941: The First Variant of a ‘Territorial Solution’

1. On the war against Poland and the first phase of occupation, see Dieter Pohl, Von der

‘Judenpolitik’ zum ‘Judenmord’. Der Distrikt Lublin des Generalgouvernments 1939–1944

(Frankfurt a. M., 1993); Christian Jansen and Arno Weckbecker, Der ‘Volksdeutsche

Selbstschutz’ in Polen 1939–40 (Munich, 1992); Horst Rohde, ‘Hitlers erste “Blitzkrieg”

und seine Auswirkung auf nordostEuropa’, in Klaus A. Maier et al., Die Errichtung der

Hegemonie auf dem europäischen Kontinent (Stuttgart, 1979), 79–156; Czeslaw Madajcz-

kyk, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939–1945 (Cologne, 1988);

Helmut Krausnick, ‘Die Einsatzgruppen vom Anschluss Österreichs bis zum Feldzug

gegen die Sowjetunion. Entwicklung und Verhältnis zur Wehrmacht’, in Helmut

Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges. Die

Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizeil und des SD, 1938–1942 (Stuttgart, 1982), 32 ff.

Notes to pages 143–146

479

2. IMT, xxxvii. 546 ff., O79–L.

3. ADAP, series D, vol. 7, no. 193; Winfried Baumgart, ‘Zur Ansprache Hitlers vor den

Führern der Wehrmacht am 22. August 1939. Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung’, VfZ

2 (1968), 120–49.

4. IMT, xxxix. 425 ff., 172-USSR, statement by Hitler, 2 Oct. 1939.

5. BAB, R 58/825, 8 Sept. 1941 and 16 Oct. 1941.

6. Jansen and Weckbecker, Selbstschutz, 27 ff.; Wlodzimierz Jastrzebski, Der Bromberger

Blutsonntag. Legende und Wirklichkeit (Poznan, 1990).

7. Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 33 ff. A detailed account of the leadership can be found in Alexander B. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity (Lawrence, Kan., 2003), 29 ff.

8. Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 107.

9. Dorothee Weitbrecht, ‘Die Ermächtigung zur Vernichtung. Die Einsatzgruppen in

Polen im Herbst 1939’, in Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Bogdan Musial, eds, Genesis

des Genozids. Polen 1939–1941 (Darmstadt, 2004), 57; Dan Michman, ‘Why did Hey-

drich write the Schnellbrief? A Remark on the Reason and on its Significance’, YVS 32

(2004), 439–40.

10. Weitbrecht, ‘Ermächtigung’, 59 ff.

11. Jansen and Weckbecker, ‘Selbstschutz’, 82 ff.

12. The role of the Selbstschutz has been exhaustively examined in Jansen and Weckbecker, ibid. 111 ff. On the participation of the army in the murders see Joachim Böhler,

‘Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg. Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939’ (Frankfurt a. M.,

2006). On the Einsatzgruppen see