Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (88 page)

to Rome on 25
February117
and instructed the German ambassador, Eberhard von Mackensen, to pursue the matter further, the ‘Duce’ assured Mackensen on 17

March that he would instruct the Italian military not to get involved in the

matters of the French police.
118
However, he changed his mind a short time later.

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Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

Influenced by the ideas of Italian diplomats and military officers, he transferred

the solution of the ‘Jewish question’ in the Italian zone of occupation to the Italian

police, and appointed a ‘general inspector of the racial police’, whom he entrusted

with the task of evacuating the Jews from the coastal zone to the hinterland. By

doing this he had removed the supposed security risk that the Germans had

always presented as the reason for their demand to hand over the Jews.
119
Over the months that followed the Italians were to continue their obstructive policy

towards German Judenpolitik in a similarly effective way.
120

Unlike the commander of the Security Police, Knochen, who took into account

the overall political context, Heinz Röthke, the Gestapo Jewish expert in Paris,

took the hard line represented by Eichmann. On 6 March he wrote in a memo-

randum: ‘The transport of the Jews from France must not be allowed to stop

before the last Jew has left French soil, and that must happen before the end of the

war.’
121
To achieve this goal within a few months,
122
the Italians had ‘categorically to be led to abandon their hitherto adverse attitude’, while on the other hand the

circle of people due for deportation (a total of 49,000 Jews had been deported from

France so far, 12,000 of them from the southern zone) had to be widened. To this

end all Jews from the old occupied zone must be assembled in Paris; the French

government must hand over all foreign Jews who were ‘capable of deportation’

(i.e. no longer under the protection of their home countries); and a law must be

passed revoking French citizenship for Jews naturalized after 1927 or after 1933.

In this way, Röthke thought, he could implement the ‘mass transportation from

April 1943 (8,000–10,000 Jews each week)’.

These suggestions by Röthke reveal the continuity in the RSHA’s deportation

planning. After Eichmann had set out his plan, at the end of August 1942, to

deport all foreign Jews from France ‘by the end of June 1943’,
123
Röthke intended to achieve this goal by a radical acceleration of the deportations between April and

June; between 90,000 and 100,000 people were involved. Afterwards, he wanted to

begin the intended deportation of Jews of French citizenship.

But Röthke’s suggestions, which he renewed at the end of the month,
124

encountered resistance from BdS Knochen. In a letter to Eichmann
125
dated 29 March 1943, Knochen made it clear that no deportations were to occur in the

near future, as ‘measures against Jews of French citizenship can hardly be imple-

mented for political reasons because of the attitude of the Marshall [Petain]’ and,

because of the Italian position, no unified approach towards the ‘Jewish question’

in France was assured. On the other hand, Knochen did adopt one of Röthke’s

suggestions: the French citizenship laws, shortly to be introduced, meant that

some 100,000 Jews would lose their citizenship and be deported, a figure that

Knochen deliberately set too high in order to obtain Eichmann’s consent.
126

The positions of Eichmann and Röthke, on the one hand, and Knochen, on the

other, clearly represent the two fundamentally different approaches towards

Judenpolitik which became clear within the leadership of the German occupation:

Murders and Deportations, 1942–3

395

while Eichmann and Röthke wanted to speed up the deportations precisely

because of the military setbacks, and bring them to their conclusion before the

end of the war, and were ready to put the French government under pressure to

achieve this, Knochen argued that the deportations should be implemented only

on a limited scale and with French consent, and that they should thus be treated as

a significant element in collaboration policy.

In fact the Vichy government seemed prepared to revoke the citizenship of Jews

with French citizenship as demanded by the German security police. In April, the

chief of police, Reneé Bousquet, produced a draft law to denaturalize those Jews

who had entered the country since 1932. On the prompting of the Germans, the

entry date was altered to 1927, as already provided for in a draft presented by

Jewish Commissioner, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, in December 1942, but taken

no further.
127

Since the German Security Police now assumed that within a relatively short

space of time they would be able to deport a large number of Jews who had had

their citizenship revoked, in spring they reduced the number of arrests and the

deportations were suspended between 25 March and 23 June.
128

On 8 June 1943, however, Himmler urged the HSSPF in France, Carl-Albrecht

Oberg, to secure publication of the denaturalization law, which had already been

signed by Laval.
129
In Himmler’s view, the deportations to the Reich were to be concluded by 15 July 1943 since, as Himmler put it, referring to the military

situation, they had to ‘guard against all possible events’.

Immediately after this conversation the RSHA’s deportation specialist,

Alois Brunner, arrived in Paris at the head of a command unit and, along

with Röthke and Hagen, drew up a plan for the deportation of the Jews who

were to be denaturalized. The plan was to deport the families of this group

as well, both Jews and non-Jews. A raid was scheduled for 24 June; but the

date was repeatedly postponed, as the legal precondition, the denaturaliza-

tion law, did not exist.
130
In June, when Röthke requested 250 members of the Security Police from Gestapo chief Müller for the implementation of the

raid, Müller refused; given the shortage of available manpower on the

German side, the planned action could only be executed with the support

of the French police.

On 20 July 1943, however, Laval resolved to sign a new, harsher version of the

denaturalization law, which had been produced in the meantime by the head of

the French Office of Jewish Affairs, Darquier, and, in line with Brunner’s plans, to

revoke French citizenship from the family members of those denaturalized since

1927, thus creating the precondition for deportation.
131
However, on 25 July, the day of the fall of Mussolini, Laval decided to suspend publication of the denaturalization law.
132
On 7 August Laval told Oberg and Knochen that he planned to revert the law to the state of Bousquet’s draft.
133
On further prompting by the Germans Laval gave formal reasons for the decision: Pétain himself had to sign the

396

Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

law.
134
But on 24 August the French head of state declared himself unwilling to provide this signature.
135

By now, however, the Gestapo Jewish desk in Paris had developed an alternative

plan: in case the planned action against the French Jews who were to be denatur-

alized, as Röthke had said in July, brought in ‘only a meagre result’, ‘all traceable

Jews’ were to be rounded up ‘in a large-scale operation involving the forces of the

Security Police (SD) commando and Einsatzkommandos with the assistance of

German troops’. All Jews ‘were to be transported to the East out of the area

occupied by us in 1943, or taken back by the states still resisting this’.
136

Reservations Concerning Italy, Germany’s Chief Ally

Before September 1943, the Germans made no serious attempt to persuade the

Italian government to hand over the 40,000 or so Jews living in the country who

had been subjected to special racial legislation since 1938.
137
When Himmler discussed the persecution of the Jews of Eastern Europe with Mussolini in October

1942, his interlocutor avoided any further discussion of the subject with an evasive

turn of phrase.
138

The Italian policy of protecting the Jews against the German persecutory

measures in their occupied zones in Greece, France, and Croatia irritated the

Germans not least because their Italian ally was thus endangering the unified

nature of Judenpolitik throughout the whole of the German sphere of influence,

and thus encouraging other governments to deviate from their radical line.
139

Italy’s policy was, as Himmler pointed out to Ribbentrop in January

140

1943

‘for

many circles in France and throughout Europe the pretext for holding fire on the

Jewish question, because they point out that not even Italy, our Axis partner, goes

along with us on the Jewish question’.

In February Ribbentrop ‘urgently’ requested the Italians to be informed ‘that

the anti-Jewish measures of the Reich Security Head Office . . . must not be sabo-

taged any further. Our efforts with regard to the governments of Croatia,

Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia to deport the Jews resident in those countries

have also encountered great difficulties with those governments because of the

attitude of the Italian government.’
141

During his visit to Salzburg, at the beginning of April 1943, Mussolini may have

voiced the prospect of interning the Jews in his country; that at least was what

Ribbentrop assured the Hungarian Ambassador, Sztojay, when he tried to con-

vince him a short time later that Hungary should tighten up its Jewish policy.
142

Visiting Rome in the spring of 1943, the ‘Jewish expert’ at the German embassy

in Paris, Carltheo Zeitschel, concluded that the German embassy in Rome would

never ‘be able to crack such a hard nut as the Jewish question in Italy in the

interest of the Axis alliance’. The SD in turn was not able to act autonomously in

Italy.
143

Murders and Deportations, 1942–3

397

The German Policy for the Further Extension of the

Deportations after the Collapse of Italy

After Italy’s departure from the Axis alliance and the occupation of much of the

former ally’s territory and its zones of occupation by the Wehrmacht, the policy of

the systematic murder of the Jews was once again extended to a number of

territories. The application of the extermination policy to the former Italian-

occupied zone of southern France also led to the radicalization of the persecution

in the rest of France, where no distinction was now made between French

nationals and non-French people. The decision to deport the Danish Jews is

also closely related to the radicalization of German policy after the secession of

the Italian ally even if its history lies before these events. The German interven-

tions in Slovakia and above all in Hungary in 1944 were finally exploited by the

Nazi regime into a ruthless further intensification of mass murder, even in the face

of military defeat.

Former ‘allies’ now made way for merciless regimes of terror that were com-

pletely dependent on the ‘Third Reich’, and which were bound to their German

masters to the bitter end.

The ‘De-Judaization’ of Denmark as the Turning Point in

German Extermination Policy

Werner Best, appointed Reich Plenipotentiary in Denmark in November 1942,

continued the relatively restrained policy towards the Danish Jews. In a note of

January 1943, Best made it clear that an intensified Judenpolitik would inevitably

destroy the basis of the previous occupation policy, namely collaboration

with the Danish constitutional monarchy. No Danish government would pass

anti-Semitic legislation, and in the end the Germans would be forced to set up

their own occupying administration.
144
Best once again confirmed this position in April.
145
As the scenario outlined by Best was highly undesirable for the Germans at this point, Luther, Ribbentrop, and even Himmler agreed with

Best’s stance.
146

However, the acts of sabotage, strikes, and unrest that increased during the

summer of 1943 brought an end to the restrained occupation policy that they

recommended. Best now advocated a radical change of direction: he suggested

that the position of the Reich Plenipotentiary be strengthened. He should govern

the country in a kind of ‘personal rule’, based on the Danish administration (with

an ‘administrative committee’ or a cabinet of specialists at its head) as well as with

the help of increased powers in the sphere of internal security, namely his own

police units. This solution, which Best had presented as a negative scenario in

398

Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

January, now clearly struck him as a realistic alternative to the German policy of

occupation, which was by now losing its way.
147

For a time, Best’s plans were thwarted by Hitler’s decision, at the end of August,

to declare a military emergency in Denmark. A few days later, however, Hitler

once again gave Best full political responsibility for the German occupation in

Denmark.
148
Ribbentrop gave this mandate further concrete form by ordering the installation of a non-political cabinet of specialists.
149

However, this mandate proved barely possible to implement, as Best learned

from leading Danish figures a few days after his return to Copenhagen on

6 September. Danish politicians were no longer willing to compromise themselves

by collaborating further with the Germans at government level. However, the

head of the Danish administration was prepared to make himself available to the

Reich Plenipotentiary. This purely administrative solution did not correspond to

the mandate that he had received from Ribbentrop, but in the given situation it

struck Best as the only possible solution.
150

To be able to explain the failure of the formation of a government to Berlin, and

to provide a motive for a transition to a police regime under his leadership, Best

had to be interested in intensifying the existing crisis. Such a controlled radical-

ization, however, could be achieved most simply by activating the ‘Jewish ques-

tion’ in Denmark. The deportation of the Danish Jews was precisely the means

with which the change of policy from a policy of collaboration to a police regime

could be secured; on the other hand, the Germans assumed that such a measure

would affect a relatively small minority in Danish society, so that it might later be

possible to calm the situation.

On 8 September 1943, Best suggested to the Foreign Ministry that it use the state

of emergency to attempt a ‘solution of the Jewish question’ in the country. If one

waited until the lifting of the state of emergency, one would have far greater

difficulties with the hostile reaction on the part of the Danish population, which

was to be expected at any event. ‘If the measures were taken during the present

state of emergency,’ Best argued, ‘the possibility remains that a constitutional

government can no longer be formed, so that an administrative committee under

my direction would have to be formed and I would have to legislate by decree.’ By

this time, in fact, Best already knew that there was no longer any chance of

forming a constitutional government, and that he would be forced to take over

power in Denmark himself, with the help of the administrative committee. Best

also stressed that in order to implement the deportations he would need the police

units he had already requested. Thus the deportation of the Jews would also open

up the way for a transition to a police regime, and it would immediately provide

Best with the troops he needed.
151

Best’s proposal for the deportation of the Danish Jews—presented on the day of

the announcement of the Italian-Allied ceasefire—was approved by the German

leadership. Hitler’s decision that the Danish and Italian Jews be deported,

Murders and Deportations, 1942–3

399

conceived as a warning to two insubordinate nations, thus occurred more or less

simultaneously. However, it transpired relatively quickly that the preparations for

the deportation of the Danish Jews had not been kept secret, and that failure was

likely. Best thus decided, after unsuccessfully presenting his concerns to the

German leadership,
152
to let the date for the wave of arrests leak out. If this happened, a week-long ‘head-hunt’
153
would be obviated by the escape of the Jews, and further complications for the already difficult situation in Denmark

would be avoided. In the meantime, Best’s plans for the future form of occupation

rule (a strong Reichkommissar utilizing the Danish administration) had assumed

concrete form, leading him to envisage an imminent end to the state of emer-

gency.
154
In other words, if the ‘Final Solution’ in Denmark had seemed like the ideal instrument for the accomplishment of a radical change of course in occupation policy, it had now become counter-productive to the further operation of

the system of occupation. The will to accomplish the policy of extermination

reached its limits where Judenpolitik threatened to lose its function within the

system of occupation.

Thus, in the interest of the general occupation policy, Best was able to allow

the great majority of Jews living in Denmark to escape to Sweden as the result of

an unprecedented rescue action.
155
If we consider Judenpolitik in Denmark within this larger context, it can come as no surprise that early in October

Best, pre-emptively represented the flight of the Jews to the Foreign Ministry as

a success: ‘Since the objective goal of the Jewish action in Denmark was the

de-Judaization of the country and not the most successful head-hunt, it must be

recognized that the Jewish action achieved its goal. Denmark is free of Jews, as

no Jew who falls under the relevant regulations can legally live and work here

any longer.
’156

Compared with the situation in other countries with a greater collaborative

potential, in Denmark, a country largely free of anti-Semitism and one with very

little sympathy for the Nazi regime, the implementation of Judenpolitik did not

serve to integrate native forces into the German policy, but rather the opposite.

It had the function of excluding the Danish parties from the system of ‘supervised

administration’, and of consolidating its transformation into a police state.

Within the Judenpolitik that the Nazi regime pursued within its sphere of

influence, the action in Denmark in autumn 1943 represented a turning point.

Until now Judenpolitik had fulfilled an important integral function within the

German collaboration and alliance policy, by involving the respective ‘partner’ in

the German policy of a racist reorganization of the continent and making it an

accomplice in a crime on a massive scale. But this policy did not go entirely

smoothly. When the deportations were set in motion, the attitude of the allied or

collaborating government had to be taken into account, which meant that the

deportations happened slowly or not on the desired scale (Slovakia, France) or not

at all (Old Romania, Italian occupied territories).

400

Extermination of the European Jew, 1942–1945

After the turning point of the war in the winter of 1942/3 it became more and

more difficult to implement deportations in cooperation with allied or collabor-

ating governments (to a limited extent this ocurred in Bulgaria and France; efforts

with regard to Hungary and the Italian-occupied territories remained ineffective

at first). However, the Germans did not abandon their policy, since precisely in

view of the worsening military situation they saw the intensification of the

persecution of the Jews and the associated compromising of their ‘partners’ as

an important safeguard for the cohesion of the block under their rule. Attitudes

towards the ‘Jewish question’ became an important gauge for the German side, on

which they could read the loyalty of their partners.

Goebbels’s diaries document this way of thinking on the part of the German

leadership with regard to the allies Romania
157
, Italy,
158
and Bulgaria
159
: too ‘lax’ a treatment of the persecution of the Jews was seen as an indication of the weakness

and lack of loyalty of the allies. But that meant, according to the logic of German

Judenpolitik, that a radicalization of the persecution on the German model bound

the allies irreversibly to the German Reich.

‘Most of our contemporaries’, Goebbels wrote in March 1943, recording

remarks made to him by Hitler, ‘failed to realize that the wars of the twentieth

century were racial wars, and that in racial wars there has only ever been survival

or extermination, and that we must therefore understand that this war too will end

with just such a result.
’160

Three weeks previously he had noted of a conversation with Goering, ‘Goering

is completely clear about everything that would threaten us all if we were to

weaken in this war. He has no illusions about it. Particularly in the Jewish question

we are so locked in that there is no escape left for us. And that is as it should be.

From experience, a movement and a people that have broken the bridges behind

them, fight much more relentlessly than those who still have the possibility of

retreat.’
161

It should not be overlooked that it was the three states that successfully resisted

German Judenpolitik—Italy, Romania, and Bulgaria
162
—that succeeded in leaving their alliances with Germany with separate ceasefires between September 1943 and

1944. This stepping out of line on the part of—from the German perspective—the

‘pro-Jewish’ allies must have served as a confirmation of their policy that any kind

of compromise on Judenpolitik was to be avoided at all costs.

In other words: if Judenpolitik had originally (along with economic policy and

military security and cooperation) been one of the main axes of German occupa-

tion and alliance policy, it now threatened to undermine earlier forms of collab-

oration and alliance. In future, deportations, where they were not organized by the

German occupation apparatus itself, were only possible with the help of terror

regimes which were entirely under the control of the Nazi regime, had little

support from the local population, and were prepared to act with extreme

brutality against it.

Murders and Deportations, 1942–3

401

The Allied landing in North Africa, with the shift of power that it brought to the

whole of the Mediterranean area still under Axis control, had constituted the

starting point for an expansion of persecution: the Jews of Tunisia and southern

France had now fallen into the immediate clutches of their German persecutors,

while in early 1943 the RSHA was organizing mass deportations from Greece and

Bulgaria. The further military successes of the Western Allies, the rising prospect

of an Allied landing on the continent, and the advance of the Red Army, but above

all the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April/May 1943 led to a further burst of

radicalization in the spring/early summer, which we have already examined

with reference to the Holocaust in Poland and the occupied Soviet territories.

But this new radicalization was also evident in Western and South-Eastern

Europe. It was apparent in the deportation of thousands of children from the