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

the

Reich Interior Ministry official responsible for ‘Jewish affairs’, Bernhard Lösener,

about the ‘plans that the Reich Security Office had for the conclusive solution of the

Jewish question in the German Reich’. They included the intention ‘to transport the

Jews from the whole area of Europe under German rule to Madagascar after the war,

within the context of a four- or five-year plan’. This plan embraced six million

people. (Note by Lösener with Eichmann: BAB, R 18/3746, quoted by Bernhard

Lösener, ‘Als Rassereferent im Reichsministerium des Innern’, VfZ 9/3 (1961),

296–7.)

155. According to Krüger’s report on 15 January in Cracow: Diensttagebuch, ed. Präg and

Jacobmeyer, 327 ff. On 11 January Frank had told Krüger that Hitler had described

accepting 800,000 Jews and Poles into the General Government as unavoidable (ibid.,

11 Jan. 1941, pp. 318 ff.).

156. For details see Aly, ‘Final Solution’, 141. On the deportations from Vienna, see Safrian, Eichmann-Männer, 97–8 and Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 147 ff.

157. Relevant documents in YV, JM 10454 (¼ Lublin Archive, Gouvern. Distr. Lubl., Sign.

892), and various reports in Else R. Behrend-Rosenfeld, ed., Lebenszeichen Piaski.

Briefe deportierte aus dem Distrikt Lublin 1940–1943 (Munich, 1968), 165 ff.

158. Cf. Aly, ‘Final Solution’, 127–8.

159. CDJC, V-59, published in Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auchwitz. Die Zusammenarbeit der

deutschen und französischen Behörden bei der ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’ in Frankreich

(Nördlingen, 1989), 361 ff.

160. Published in Adler, Verwaltete Mensch, 152.

161. Goebbels had left lunch with Hitler on 17 March under the impression that Vienna

would very soon be ‘free of Jews’ and Berlin would soon ‘have its turn’ but had

‘evidently made a wrong estimation of the timescale’. ‘I will discuss that with the

Führer and Dr Franck [sic]. He will set the Jews to work and they are pretty compliant.

Later they will have to get out of Europe completely’; Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, Band 9: Dezember 1940–März

1941, bearbeitet von Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1998), 18 Mar. 1941, p. 193.

162. Ibid. Entry for 22 Mar. 1940, p. 199. This matches a remark of the former League of

Nations High Commissioner for Danzig, Carl J. Burkhardt, found by Breitmann

(Architekt, 152) to the effect that two absolutely trustworthy civil servants from the

Notes to pages 175–181

493

Ministry of War and the Foreign Ministry had seen a written order by Hitler giving

instructions for the area of the Reich to be made ‘free of Jews’ by the end of 1942.

163. BAB, 75 C Re 1, no. 45, summons of 17 Mar. 1941.

164. Diensttagebuch, ed. Präg and Jacobmeyer, 26 Mar. 1941, pp. 338–9.

165. Ibid., 3 Apr. 1941, pp. 343 ff.

166. Aly, ‘Final Solution’, 172, citing ZASM 500-3-795.

167. 710-PS in IMT xxvi. 266.

168. ND NO-203, Brack to Himmler, 28 Mar. 1941. According to a statement made by Brack

in May 1947, Himmler had given him this task in January 1941 because he feared the

miscegenation of Polish and Western European Jews (Trial of the War Criminals

before the International Military Tribunal (Washington, DC, 1947–9), i. 732).

169. Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen

1923–1941, Band 9, bearbeitet von Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1998), entry for 20 June

1941, p. 390.

170. Diensttagebuch, ed. Präg and Jacobmeyer, 17 July 1941, p. 386.

171. ADAP, series D, vol. 13, no. 207.

10.

Laying the Ground for a War of Racial Annihilation

1. Studies of the attack on the Soviet Union include Horst Boog et al., Germany and the

Second World War, vol. iv: The Attack on the Soviet Union (Oxford, 1999); Peter Jahn

and Reinhard Rürup, eds, Erobern und Vernichten. Der Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion

(Berlin, 1991); Andreas Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie. Politik und Kriegführung 1940–

1941 (Frankfurt a. M., 1965); Gerd R. Ueberschär and Wolfram Wette, eds, ‘Unterneh-

men Barbarossa’. Der deutsche Überfall auf die Sowjetunion 1941 (Paderborn, 1984);

Christian Hartmann, Johannes Hürter, and Ulrike Jureit, eds, Verbrechen der Wehr-

macht. Bilanz einer Debatte (Munich, 2005); Bernd Wegner, ed., Zwei Wege nach

Moskau. Vom Hitler-Stalin-Pakt zum ‘Unternehmen Barbarossa’ (Munich, 1991).

2. Gerd Ueberschär, ‘ “Russland ist unser Indien”. Das “Unternehmen Barbarossa” als

Lebensraumkrieg’, in Hans Heinrich Nolte, ed., Der Mensch gegen den Menschen.

Überlegungen und Forschungen. Zum deutschen Überfall auf die Sowjetunion 1941

(Hanover, 1992), 66–77.

3. Rolf-Dieter Müller, ‘Von der Wirtschaftsallianz zum kolonialen Ausbeutungskrieg’, in

Boog et al., Attack 98–189 (here p. 157). On the economic aspects of the war see in

particular Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde. Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Ver-

nichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 1941 bis 1944 (Hamburg, 1999), 59 ff.

4. Andreas Hillgruber, ‘Der Ostkrieg und die Judenvernichtung’, in Ueberschär and

Wette, eds, ‘Unternehmen Barbarossa’, 219–36.

5. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (London, 1969), 604–5.

6. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 66 ff. On planning for food-supply policies, see Gerlach,

‘German Economic Interests, Occupation Policy, and the Murder of the Jews in

Belorussia 1941–1943’, in Ulrich Herbert, ed., National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York, 2000); Götz Aly

and Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung. Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne

für eine neue europäische Ordnung (Hamburg, 1991), 366–7, and Rolf-Dieter Müller,

494

Notes to pages 181–183

‘From Economic Alliance to a War of Colonial Exploitation’, in Boog et al., eds,

Germany and the Second World War, vol. iv: Attack, 118–224.

7. The Economic Organization for the East was directed by the Head of the War

Economy and Armaments Department, General Georg Thomas, who received com-

prehensive authority for the economic exploitation of the Soviet Union from Goering,

who was formally responsible for this.

8. IMT iv. 535–6. Bach-Zelewski dates the meeting in Nuremberg at January 1941 but it

must have taken place between 12 and 15 June of that year (see note 76); Peter Witte

et al., Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42 (Hamburg, 1999), 172.

9. Goering to Ciano on 15 Nov. 1941: ‘20–30 million people will starve in Russia this year.

Perhaps that is for the best, since there are peoples that need to be decimated.’ Czeslaw Madajczyk, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939–1945 (Cologne,

1988), 92.

10. 2718-PS, IMT xxxi. 84 ff.

11. EC 126, IMT xxxvi. 135 ff., 145.

12. NG 1409.

13. By March 1942 there were thirteen Army Rear Areas.

14. Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, ‘Kommissarbefehl und Massenexekutionen sowjetischer Kriegs-

gefangener’, in Hans Buchheim et al., Anatomie des SS-Staates (Munich, 1979) doc. 1.

15. Percy Ernst Schramm, ed., Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht

1940–1945 (KTB), i. 341.

16. Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv (BAM), RW 4/v, 522 (¼ IMT xxvi. 53 ff., 447-PS).

17. On 26 March Wagner was able to present a first draft of