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

in France during World War II (Hanover and London, 2001).

82. Dannecker to Zeitschel, 20 Oct. 1941, NG 3261. There were also several thousand Jewish prisoners of war.

83. Zuccotti, Holocaust, 53–4.

84. On their situation see, in particular, ibid. 65 ff.

85. CDJC, XXIV-1, Note, from Best, 19 Aug. 1940, in Klarsfeld, Vichy, 356.

86. CDJC, V 63, Note, 28 Jan. 1941, in Klarsfeld, Vichy, 363–4.

87. This is revealed by a ‘plan drawn up for a meeting’ that the leader of the administrative staff of the military administration, Werner Best, previously a department head in the

Reich Security Head Office, drew up in early April in preparation for a meeting of

the military commander with the Vichy Commissioner for the Jews, Vallat: CDJC,

XXIV-15a, in Klarsfeld, Vichy, 366–7.

88. Klarsfeld, Vichy, 25 und 28 ff.

Notes to pages 273–275

529

89. Herbert, ‘German Military Command’, 140.

90. Ibid. 150.

91. For the deportation of the French Jews, the same cynical ‘argument’ was used as had

previously been deployed by the head of the administrative staff of the military

commander in Serbia, Harald Turner, in a letter to SS-Gruppenführer Hildebrandt:

it was ‘actually wrong’ to shoot Jews for Germans killed by Serbs, but ‘we happened to

have them in the camp’ (see below, p. 300).

92. On these reflections see Herbert, ‘German Military Command’, 153 ff.

93. CDJC, V-8, 21 Aug. 1941, in Klarsfeld, Vichy, 367. Zeitschel was prompted to draw up

this plan by Theodor N. Kaufman’s book, which suggested the sterilization of all

Germans (see above, p. 266).

94. CDJC, V-15, in Klarsfeld, Vichy, 367–8. Zeitschel was absolutely certain, as a

further note on 14 September about the internment of Spanish Jews reveals

(CDJC, VI 126), that ‘in the end after the war all Jews are to be expelled from all

European states’, and hence no consideration was to be given ‘to any Jews of so-

called other nationality’.

95. Dienstkalender ed. Witte et al., 211–12. Zeitschel informed Dannecker, the Gesta-

po’s Jewish expert in Paris, about the content of the meeting on 8 October, CDJC,

V-16.

96. ADAP, series D, vol. 13,2. No. 327, 16 Sept. 1941.

97. See p. 269.

98. Dienstkalender, ed. Witte et al., 20 Oct. 1941, p. 241. For details see pp. 295 f.

99. CDJC, I-28, previously published in: Klarsfeld, Vichy, 369–70. Burrin, Hitler and the Jews, 145, interprets this memo as an authentic reflection of the ‘Führer’s order’ to

implement the final solution; the ‘deportation order’ was ‘also an annihilation

order’. In the interpretation of this memo, however, we must bear in mind that

the reason that Heydrich assumed responsibility for the attack and at the same time

invoked Hitler’s authority was because he wanted above all to protect the organizer

of the attack, the commander of the Security Police in France, Knochen, against

serious accusations from the military commander. On the synagogue attacks see also

Claudia Steuer, Theodor Dannecker. Ein Funktionär der Endlösung (Essen, 1997),

59 ff.

100. BAB, NS 19/1734; this statement was connected to Heydrich’s demand that there

should in future be no experts on Jewish questions working within the Eastern

Ministry.

101. PAA, Inland II g/194, 28 Oct. 1941, in: ADAP, series D, vol. 13, 570 ff.

102. IfZ, ED 53, the so called ‘Engel diary’, actually handwritten notes by Engel from the post-war period, presumably on the basis of contemporary notes, 2 Nov. 1941. In the

Engel edition, Hildegard von Kotze, ed., Heeresadjutant bei Hitler 1938–1943. Aufzeich-

nungen des Majors Engel (Stuttgart, 1974), 111, wrongly dated (2 Oct. 1941). A meeting

between Himmler and Hitler on 2 November 1941 is confirmed by the entry in

Himmler’s official diary. On the attacks in Salonica see Klein, ‘Rolle der Vernichtung-

slager’, 473.

103. Browning, Origins, 579. The original is in the Rijksinstitut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie in The Hague.

530

Notes to pages 277–278

15.

Autumn 1941: The Beginning of the Deportations and Regional

Mass Murders

1. There are various indications that the euthanasia action in summer 1941 occurred

under pressure of protests and according to plan, after the originally cited quota of

around 70,000 patients to be killed had been reached. The planned number, by now

raised to 130,000–150,000, then lowered again to around 100,000 victims (IMT xxxv.

906-D, pp. 681 ff., note from Sellmer about Blankenburg visit, 1 Oct. 1940) would

probably have been reached in quantitative terms if a similarly high percentage of

patients from mental institutions had been murdered throughout the whole of the T4

action as had occurred in the first few months of the systematic murders of patients in

south-west Germany, around Berlin, or in Austria. In fact, however, the number of

murdered patients fell the more the action spread into the regions. This was particu-

larly true of the provinces of Hanover, Rhineland, and Westphalia, which were only

involved in summer 1941. See Heinz Faulstich, Hungersterben in der Psychiatrie. 1914–

1949; mit einer Topographie der NS-Psychiatrie (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1998), 260 ff.

There is evidence to suggest that protests on the part of church circles increasingly

served to curb the euthanasia programme in 1941, and led the organizers to bring their

planned numbers back down to the original figure of 70,000 victims. Thus, for example

the governor (Landeshauptmann) of Westphalia, Karl Kolbow, in a note dated 31 July

1941, remarked that ‘the action in Westphalia is progressing briskly, and will be over in 2 to 3 weeks’ (facsimile in Karl Teppe, Massenmord auf dem Dienstweg. Hitlers

‘Euthansie’. Erlass und seine Durchführung in den Westfälischen Provinizalanstalten

(Münster, 1989), 21). (I am grateful to Peter Witte for important references in this

field.)

2. On the development of the euthanasia programme pp. 136–42; on the planned figures,

see IMT xxxv. 906-D, 681 ff., note from Sellmer about Blankenburg visit, 1 Oct. 1940;

Fröhlich, ed., Tagebücher Goebbels, I, x, 30 Jan. 1941. On the suspension of the euthanasia programme see Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: ‘Euthanasia’ in Germany

1900–1945 (Cambridge, 1994), 176 ff.; Henry Friedländer, The Origins of Nazi Genucide:

From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995) 111 ff.

3. Faulstich, Hungersterben, 260 ff., gives a clear picture of how the murder quotas rose in the individual regions and then fell again.

4. Note from 31 July 1941; facsimile in Teppe, Massenmord 21.

5. Fröhlich, Die Tagebücher, Teil II, Diktate 1941–1945, vol. i (Munich, 1996), 23 Aug. 1941, p. 299.

6. Walter Grode, Die ‘Sonderbehandlung 14f13’ in den Konzentrationslagern des Dritten

Reichs (Frankfurt a. M., 1997), 82–3; Ernst Klee, ‘Euthanasie’ im NS-Staat. Die