Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (58 page)

the ‘Jewish question’; on the other hand there is a tendency to stress more strongly

the idea that decisions were made as part of an ongoing process, that no concrete

individual decision by Hitler can be assumed,
5
and that there was a series of individual decisions by the dictator that led to an escalation of the persecution of

the Jews.
6

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Final Solution on a European Scale, 1941

Having already rejected the thesis of a decision to implement the ‘Final Solution’

early in 1941 or in the spring of that year,
7
we should like now to deal primarily with arguments that may be introduced to support the theory that a decision to

murder all European Jews was made some time in the summer of 1941. This thesis

still seemed plausible even into the 1970s and 1980s; until that point there were

good reasons for holding the view that Hitler had ordered the murder of Jews

living in the Soviet Union in the spring or summer of 1941. Both decisions—the

one to murder the Soviet Jews and the other to murder the European Jews—

seemed inseparably connected or at least closely related in temporal sequence. As

we have already seen in the previous chapter, however, the thesis of an early order

from the Führer to murder the Soviet Jews is no longer tenable, but must make

way for the idea of a gradual and progressive radicalization process that lasted

from spring until autumn 1941.

From this sophisticated perspective, Christopher Browning above all has devel-

oped a theory based on the idea that the fate of the European Jews was only

decided as part of a lengthier decision-making process: Browning proceeds on the

assumption that in mid-July 1941, in a state of euphoria about his imminent

victory, along with the decision to escalate the extermination policy in the Soviet

Union, Hitler set in motion the decision-making process that led to the extension

of the ‘Final Solution’ to the Jews in the rest of Europe. Then, in mid-September

1941, along with the decision in principle to deport the German Jews, but still with

reservations, he had agreed to the murder of the deportees, and in October, once

again filled with the euphoria of victory, a start had been made on putting this

decision into action. Thus, for Browning, the events of the summer and the late

summer are of the greatest importance.
8

In my view, however, there is no convincing documentary evidence for the

thesis of one or indeed of several decisions by the Führer in the spring and/or

summer of 1941. Thus Heydrich’s ‘authorization’ issued by Goering on 31 July 1941

is certainly not, as some authors assume,
9
the crucial authorization of the head of the RSHA to carry out an order already issued by Hitler to murder the European

Jews. In the letter Heydrich was not given the task of implementing the ‘Final

Solution’; in fact, Heydrich asked Goering, who had had formal responsibility for

the ‘Jewish question’ since 1938, and had put Heydrich in charge of emigration in

January 1939, to sign a declaration drafted by him.
10
This authorized him ‘to make all necessary preparations from an organizational, functional, and material point

of view for a total solution of the Jewish question within the German sphere of

influence in Europe’ and he received the task of presenting an ‘overall draft’ for the

corresponding ‘preparatory measures’.
11

The formulation contained in this authorization, that where ‘the competencies

of other central authorities are affected by these matters, they are to be involved’,

must have referred in particular to Rosenberg’s Eastern Ministry. For, once before,

in late March 1941, it had proved impossible to implement Goering’s authorization

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261

because the competencies of Rosenberg, already designated as Eastern Minister,

had not been clarified.
12
But now a formula had been found that took Rosenberg’s responsibilities into consideration.

This makes it clear that the preparations for the ‘total solution’ entrusted to

Heydrich were to take in the occupied Soviet territories, and hence at first the

planned mass deportation of the European Jews to the East.
13

In fact Heydrich was not to make use of his authorization until November 1941,

when he issued invitations to the Wannsee Conference and included a copy of the

letter signed by Goering in the invitation. Heydrich’s ‘empowerment’ was thus

primarily a formal ‘legitimation designed for third parties
’14
and not the commission to implement the ‘Final Solution’.

Neither is there any evidence to sustain Richard Breitman’s thesis that in late

August, a few weeks after Heydrich’s ‘authorization’ by Goering, a fully elaborated

‘plan’ by Heydrich to murder the European Jews with gas had been authorized by

Himmler. The entry for 26 August 1941 in the diary kept by Himmler’s adviser, on

which Breitman relies, actually refers to the authorization of a ‘travel schedule’ for

Heydrich. The head of the Security Police intended to fly to Norway.
15
Likewise, Tobias Jersak’s thesis that Hitler had made a decision in mid-August to murder all

European Jews in direct response to the Atlantic Charter can be seen as specula-

tive and relatively easy to refute.
16

The statements of two major perpetrators, Adolf Eichmann and Rudolf Höß,

referring to a ‘decision by the Führer’ concerning the murder of the European

Jews in the summer of 1941, are also highly questionable. Höß made the following

statement on the subject in a memorandum he wrote in Cracow prison in

November 1946:
17
‘In the summer of 1941, I cannot at present give the precise moment, I suddenly received an order to see the Reichsführer-SS in Berlin, issued

by his adjutant’s office. Contrary to his usual custom, he revealed to me, without

the presence of an adjutant, in broad terms the following: the Führer had ordered

the Final Solution of the Jewish question, we—the SS—were to implement this

order. The existing extermination sites in the East are not capable of carrying out

the intended major actions. I have therefore selected Auschwitz for this purpose,

firstly because of its favourable location in terms of transport requirements,

secondly the area selected there is easy to close off and disguise. I had at first

sought a senior SS-Führer for this task; but in order to avoid difficulties of

competence from the outset, this won’t happen, and you will perform this task’

In fact the time mentioned, ‘summer 1941’ cannot be accurate, because the

‘existing extermination sites in the East’ did not yet exist at that point.
18

Höß’s further statements, that ‘shortly afterwards’ or, as he stated in April in

Nuremberg, ‘around 4 weeks later
’19
Eichmann visited him in Auschwitz, are plainly false. Some further particulars of that visit as described by Höß indicate the

spring of 1942; possibly Höß is also conflating memories of various visits by

Eichmann to Auschwitz. There are also indications that Höß is confusing the

262

Final Solution on a European Scale, 1941

summer of 1941 with events in the summer of the following year.
20
But if we must assume such confusion in Höß’s memory, he ceases to be a reliable witness for a

‘Führerbefehl’ issued in summer or autumn 1941.
21

Eichmann in turn said under questioning in Jerusalem: ‘In June, I think, it was

the start of the war, June or July, let’s say July, the start of the war. And it might

well have been two months later, it could also have been three months later. At

any rate it was late summer. I’ll tell you why I know it was late summer when

Heydrich summoned me to him. Called me, and he said to me: the Führer, all

those things about emigration and so on and so on, with a little speech before-

hand: “The Führer has ordered the physical extermination of the Jews.” . . . And

then he said to me, Eichmann, go and see Globocnik, Lublin . . . The Reichsführer

has already given Globocnik the relevant instructions, and take a look at how far

he has got with his plans. I think he’s using the Russian tank trenches here for the

extermination of the Jews.’
22

He had then, Eichmann continued, gone to Lublin and travelled on from there

with Globocnik’s Jewish expert, Hans Höfle, to look at the construction of an

extermination camp in wooded grounds, the name of which he was unable to

remember. The construction was explained to him by a captain in the Schutzpo-

lizei, who can be unambiguously identified as Christian Wirth, the first camp

commandant of Belzec and later inspector of ‘Aktion Reinhard’: they visited two

to three wooden cottages still under construction, and Wirth explained that the

plan was to kill people with exhaust fumes from a submarine engine. Eichmann

told this story over the course of the years in various and slightly differing

versions.
23

Christopher Browning above all has relied on this statement, which he sees as

confirmation that in mid-September 1941, along with the decision to deport the

German Jews, Hitler had given the order to murder the deportees in principle, but

still with reservations.

But for two reasons Eichmann’s statement does not usefully support the thesis

of an order from the Führer for the murder of the European Jews in the summer of

1941. For one thing, his chronology of events is incorrect. He reports that he had

seen the extermination camp under construction at a time when the trees ‘were

still in the full glory of their leaves’, which indicates a time no later than October;
24

we know, however, that the construction of the first extermination camp at Belzec

(in the district of Lublin) did not begin until 1 November, and most importantly

Wirth was only transferred to Globocnik in December.
25
The minutes of the interrogation show that Eichmann himself was unsure about the date and place

of the meeting. In the course of his questioning he concedes that it might have

been Treblinka, and later he is even certain of it. That would mean that the

journey did not take place until the spring of 1942 or, which is more likely, that he

was transferring impressions of a later journey to Treblinka to his visit to Lublin.
26

His description of the places in dense woodland also seems rather to indicate

Europe-Wide Deportation after Barbarossa

263

Treblinka. While in his interrogation he described the construction of wooden

barracks, he later remembered ‘cottages’ like the ones used in Auschwitz for the

first gas chambers.
27
He always described—also on another occasion—his meeting with Wirth in the context of other visits to other concentration camps and murder

centres, but was uncertain about the dating and sequence of those journeys. Thus

he remembered visiting Chelmno after his meeting with Wirth, saying it had been

cold but no longer winter. As the first murders in Chelmno took place in

December 1941, that visit cannot have been in 1941, but must have taken place in

the spring of 1942 at the earliest, as Eichmann himself concedes.
28
His subsequent visit to Minsk, where he witnessed a shooting, would then have occurred in the

spring of 1942, as Christian Gerlach has suggested.
29
His account of being sent to Auschwitz by Heydrich around four weeks after the issuing of the Führer command, where he visited the gas chambers in the so-called ‘bunkers’ (converted

farmhouses),
30
also shows how confused his memory of the chronology was.

These gas chambers were similarly only finished in the spring of 1942. His

memories of these journeys are thus not only unclear, but it is possible that he

has conflated various different journeys.

There is also a second argument for mistrusting Eichmann’s statements.

Eichmann had a fundamental reason for providing the earliest possible date for

the journey, and representing it as the consequence of an unambiguous decision

on the part of the Führer to murder all European Jews, but at the same time

making it appear purely a matter of information.

There is in fact much to suggest that Eichmann was sent to the extermination

sites, the destinations of the deportations that he had organized, in order to assess

the murder capacity of the camps and then to establish the pace and extent of the

deportation. It is also conceivable that the result of his inspection trips was itself

the precondition for the decision to begin the deportations on a European scale.

At any rate, after the war one would have been able to draw the conclusion from

his travels that he played a far more active part in the ‘Final Solution’ than he,

always presenting himself as a subordinate receiver of orders, was prepared to

admit. Thus, Eichmann placed great emphasis on representing his journeys as the

consequence of an order from the Führer that had already been made. He had to

make them appear to have taken place in 1941 and he had to stress that they were

not connected to any concrete commissions. But there is much to suggest that he

made these journeys predominantly at a later point in time, in the spring of 1942,

when the deportations were initiated on a larger scale.
31