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

against Jews carried out in

autumn 1941, but that from 1942 it was increasingly Ukrainians who were targeted. See

Boll and Safrian, ‘Way’, 286 ff., on the ‘indiscriminate terror inflicted on the whole of the civilian population’ (p. 289) from the end of 1941.

202. NO 3414, published in Jacobsen, ‘Kommissarbefehl’, 200 ff. For details on the issue of orders with respect to Soviet prisoners of war, see Alfred Streim, Die Behandlung

sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener im ‘Fall Barbarossa’ (Kaarlsruhe, 1981), 52 ff.; and Chris-

tian Streit, Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen

1941–1945 (Stuttgart, 1978), 87 ff.

203. Ibid. The original of the order has not been preserved. Its content corresponds to section III of the Instructions for the Treatment of Soviet Prisoners of War issued on 8 Sept. 1941.

204. Streit, Keine Kameraden, 109.

205. BAB, R 58/272 and NO 3422, published in Jacobsen, ‘Kommmissarbefehl’, 205 ff. and 220–1.

206. Streim, Behandlung, 127–8; Streit, Keine Kameraden, 100 ff.

207. Streim, Behandlung, 97 ff.; Streit, Keine Kameraden, 94.

208. Streim, Behandlung, 127.

209. Ibid., 129 ff.; Streit, Keine Kameraden, 94 ff.

210. Ibid., 96 ff.

211. Streim, Behandlung, 244.

212. Streit, Keine Kameraden, 105, also does not give a definite figure. On the basis of

deployment orders 8 and 9 Reinhard Otto, Wehrmacht, Gestapo and sowjetische

Kriegsgefangene im deutschen Reichsgebiet 1941/42 (Munich, 1998), estimates the total

number of prisoners murdered in concentration camps in the area of the Reich at

38,000; those who were murdered in the occupied Soviet areas and the General

Government need to be added.

213. State Archive, Moscow, 7021-148-101 (also Central Office, Documentation 301, General Order of 23 Sept. 1941).

214. Streit, Keine Kameraden, 106 ff.

215. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 774 ff., gives various examples of this.

216. Ortwin Buchbender, Das tönende Erz. Die Propaganda gegen die Rote Armee im

Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1978), 104.

217. Streit, Keine Kameraden, 137 ff.

218. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 796 ff.

219. IMT xxxvi. 107–8.

220. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 799.

Notes to pages 249–259

521

221. NOKW 1535.

222. Elke Fröhlich, ed. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil II: Band 2: Oktober-

Dezember 1941. Bearbeitet von Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1996), 23 Oct. 1941, 161–2.

223. On the transportation and accommodation of prisoners, see Streit, Keine Kameraden,

162 ff. and Streim, Die Behandlung.

224. Instructions for the Treatment of Soviet Prisoners of 8 Sept. 1941 (NO 3417, published in Jacobsen, ‘Kommissarbefehl’, 217 ff.).

225. Streit, Keine Kameraden, 211.

226. Ibid. 136.

227. Ibid. 244 ff.

228. Einsatzgruppe A, overall report up to 15 Oct. 1941, report of 15 Oct. 1941, 180-L, IMT

xxxvii. 670 ff.; in addition there were 5,500 Jews murdered by Einsatzkommando Tilsit

and Jews murdered in ‘pogroms’: overall report by Einsatzgruppe A from 10 Oct. 1941

to 31 Jan. 1942, Ifz, Fb 101/35.

229. EM 133 and OS, 500-1-770, activity and situation report by Einsatzgruppe B for the

period between 16 and 28 Feb. 1942. The numbers of the victims of this Einsatzgruppe

are calculated in Christian Gerlach, ‘Einsatzgruppe B’, in Peter V. Lein, ed., Die

Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjet unions 194/42. Die Tätigkeits- und Lageberichte

des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD (Berlin, 1997), 62.

230. EM 128 (3 Nov. 1941).

231. EM 145 and EM 190.

14.

Plans for a Europe-Wide Deportation Programme after the Start of

Barbarossa

1. According to Richard Breitman, The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final

Solution (London, 1991) 145, a fundamental decision had already been made in the first

months of 1941; Himmler had then made the decisions for its execution in the summer

of 1941 (ibid. 167 ff.). An early decision by Hitler, which he only imparted gradually to his subordinates, is also accepted by Helmut Krausnick, ‘The Persecution of the Jews’,

in Hans Buchheim et al., Anatomy of the SS State (London, 1968), 17–139; Hermann

Graml, Reichskristallnacht. Antisemitismus und Judenverfolgung im Dritten Reich

(Munich, 1988), 207; Wolfgang Benz, The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines

the Holocaust (New York, 1999), 61 ff.

2. Raul Hilberg, ‘Die Aktion Reinhard’, in Eberhard Jäckel and Jürgen Rohwer, eds, Der

Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1985), 125–36.

3. Philippe Burrin, Hitler and the Jews: The Genesis of the Holocaust (London, 1989),

154 ff.; Uwe Dietrich Adam, Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich (Düsseldorf, 1972), 312; on

Browning’s position see below, p. 522, n. 8.

4. Christian Gerlach, ‘The Wannsee Conference, the Fate of the German Jews, and

Hitler’s Decision in Principle to Exterminate All European Jews’, Journal of Modern

History 70 (1998), 759–812; L. J. Hartog, Der Befehl zum Judenmord. Hitler, Amerika

und die Juden (Bodenheim, 1997).

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