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

dated 8 Apr. 1940.

74. AGK, Bühler-Prozess, 94, General Governor to the district heads, 25 May 1940. On

Cracow see also ed. Diensttagebuch, eds, Präg and Jakobmayer, entries for 12 Apr. 1940,

22 May 1940, 10 June 1940, 15 July 1940, and 2 Aug. 1940, and Golczewski, ‘Polen’, 433 ff.

75. Regulation of the Governor of the district of Cracow, Otto Wächter, on the establish-

ment of a ghetto in Cracow, 3 Mar. 1941 (Faschismus, ed. Berenstein et al., 118 ff.).

76. Regulation on the establishment of Jewish Councils, 28 Nov. 1939 (VOGG, 72).

77. The role of the Jewish councils as the agents of the German occupying powers, especially in the context of managing the ghettos, is the subject of intense historiographical debate, which cannot be explored in detail here. For an introduction to this topic see Gustavo

Corni, Hitlers Ghettos: Voices from a Beleaguered Society 1939–1944 (New York, 2002),

62 ff. and for further secondary literature on the ghettos see below, n. 129.

78. See Browning, Origins, 151 ff.

79. See Pohl, ‘Lublin’, 55 ff.

80. Majer, Fremdvölkische, 507; Pohl, ‘Lublin’, 65–6.

81. On the Madagascar Project see Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 69 ff.; Magnus Brechtken,

‘Madagaskar für die Juden’: Antisemitische Idee und politische Praxis (Munich, 1997)

(which also has a comprehensive summary of the older literature); Christopher Brown-

ing, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office (New York and London, 1978),

35–43; Hans Jansen, Madagaskar-Plan. Die beabsichtigte Deportation der europäische

Juden nach Madagaskar (Munich 1997), esp. 320 ff.; Leoni Yahil, ‘Madascar- Phantom

of a Solution for the Jewish Question’, in Bela Vago and George Mosse, eds, Jews and

Non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918–1945 (New York, 1974).

82. By Streicher, Goering, and Rosenberg, for example; cf. the references in Brechtken,

‘Madagaskar’, 61.

83. Brechtken, ‘Madagaskar’, 81 ff.

84. Published in VfZ 5 (1957), 194–8 (with a short introduction by Krausnick). English

translation in J. Noakes and G. Pridham, Nazism 1919–1945, vol. iii (Exeter, 1988), 324–6.

In this memorandum Himmler went on to suggest that ‘racially valuable’ children

should be taken away from their Polish parents; true, this was ‘cruel’ and ‘tragic’, but

preferable to ‘extermination’; the note on Hitler’s reaction was made on 28 May 1940.

85. According to Himmler’s handwritten note (28 May 1940) on the memorandum, Hitler

had judged it ‘very good and correct’; he was to ‘deal with it . . . in complete secrecy’ and show it to Frank, ‘to tell him that the Führer thinks this is right’.

86. PAA, Inland IIg 177, a short overview of the new and most urgent tasks, Dept. D III.

The long version of the same day’s document that is preserved in Inland A/B 347/3 has

the title ‘Thoughts on the Tasks and Duties of Dept. D III’.

87. PAA, Inland IIg 177, Überblick, handschriftlich Notiz Rademachers v. 2 Aug. 1940.

88. Ciano’s Diary 1939–1943, ed. Malcolm Muggeridge (London, 1947), 267; Paul Schmidt,

Statist auf diplomatischer Bühne, 1923–1945. Erlebnisse des Chefdolmetchers im Auswär-

tigen Amt mit den Staatsmännern Europas (Bonn, 1953), 494–5.

Notes to pages 162–165

487

89. Gerhard Wagner, ed., Lagevorträge des Oberbefehlshabers der Kriegsmarine vor Hitler

1939–1945 (Munich, 1972), 106 ff.

90. See below p. 165.

91. PAA, Inland IIg/177, note by Luther dated 15 Aug. 1940; published in ADAP, series D,

vol. 10, no. 345.

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

1941 Band 8. April–November 1940, bearbeitet von Jana Richter, 17 Aug. 1940, p. 276.

(On a conversation with Hitler on the previous day): ‘Some time in the future we want

to ship the Jews out to Madagascar. There they too can set up their own state.’ What is

important here is that the sentence is part of a paragraph from a monologue in which

Hitler pursues his vision of a large-scale ‘cleansing’ after the end of the war: criminals would have to be ‘deported to an island’, whilst ‘asocial elements’ would have to be

‘extirpated’.

93. Akten der Reichsvereinigung, YV M 51/45, meeting on 25 June 1940; Adam Czerniaków, Im Warschauer Ghetto. Das Tagebuch von Adam Czerniaków 1939–1942 (Munich, 1986), 88.

94. PAA, Inland IIg 177.

95. ‘The Jewish Question in the Peace Treaties’ (PAA, Inland II g 177, published in ADAP, series D, vol. 10, 92 ff.).

96. PAA, Inland IIg 177.

97. Material in PAA, Inland IIg 177.

98. BAB, R 113/1645, Results of the space planning survey of Madagascar, 21 Aug. 1940; see Brechtken, ‘Madagaskar’, 254 ff.

99. In PAA, Inland IIg 177.

100. Incorrectly referred to as ‘Oberbefehlsleiter Brake’.

101. Which is Reitlinger’s ‘smoke-screen’ thesis. See Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solu-

tion: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe (London and New York, 1961),

77 ff., according to which the Foreign Ministry was concerned above all with finding

arguments against emigration from the axis powers; Richard Breitman in The

Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (London, 1991), 138 f. argues

that the RSHA saw the Madagascar Plan as a more or less fantastic means of

achieving their aim of gaining planning responsibility for a comprehensive deport-

ation of all the Jews under German rule. Adam (Judenpolitik, 307 ff.), Browning

(Resettlement, 19), Brechtken, and Jansen take the plan more or less seriously. Leni

Yahil (Madagascar, 696) identifies the key problems of the Madagascar Plan when

she calls it a ‘phantom’: it was a project that the National Socialists persisted with

but without regard to the non-existent settlement possibilities on the island of

Madagascar.

102. See Peter Longerich, The Unwritten Order: Hitler’s Role in the Final Solution

(Brunscombe Port, 2003), 185.

103. See Brechtken, ‘Madagaskar’, 270 ff., which has full details and references; Henry

Picker Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier (Stuttgart, 1976), 29 May 1942,

p. 340 and 24 July 1942, p. 456; PAA, Inland IIg 177, Rademacher to Bielfeld, 10 Feb.

1942 (on the end of the Project).

104. It was originally planned to resume large-scale deportations on 5 May or 1 August; the officer responsible for Jewish matters in the Department of Interior Administration in

the General Government, Heinrich Gottong, informed the District Governors on 6

488

Notes to pages 165–167

Apr. 1940 that a plan was being worked on according to which 400,000 Jews would be

taken to the General Government after 1 May 1940, with ‘the whole of the Jewish

population [being] collected in one area’ later (Sign. 891, published in Faschismus, ed.

Berenstein et al., 55). On 5 Apr. 1940 (Diensttagebuch, ed. Präg and Jakobmeyer, 158)

Frank referred his colleagues to the need ‘to