The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (121 page)

98. To make sense of Eichmann’s story, Christopher Browning, who uses the testimony as an indication that Hitler gave the go-ahead for the “Final Solution” sometime in September, when the order to deport the Jews from Germany was issued, has to assume that the head of IVB4 was sent to Lublin before the construction of the camp, and that the use of existing huts was at first considered sufficient for gassing purposes. No documents indicate that this may have been the case. See Browning and Matthäus,
The Origins of the Final Solution
, pp. 362ff.

99. The limited gassing capacity of Belzec at this initial stage has been pointed out in Dieter Pohl,
Von der “Judenpolitik” zum Judenmord: Der District Lublin des Generalgouvernements, 1933–1941
, vol. 3 (Frankfurt am Main, 1993). For Greiser’s notorious letter to Himmler, see Tatiana Berenstein, ed.,
Faschismus, Getto, Massenmord: Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges
(East Berlin, 1961), p. 278.

100. For Heydrich’s response to the Spanish offer, see Bernd Rother, “Franco und die deutsche Judenverfolgung,”
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte
46, no. 2 (1998), pp. 189ff. and particularly p. 195. See also Bernd Rother,
Spanien und der Holocaust
(Tübingen, 2001).

101.
Trials of war criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals
, 15 vols., vol. 13,
U.S. v. von Weizsaecker: The Ministries Case
(Washington, DC: U.S. GPO, 1952), Nuremberg doc. NG-5095, p. 174 [emphasis added].

102. Quoted in full in Peter Longerich,
Politik der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung
(Munich, 1998), p. 443.

103. On December 12, as mentioned, Hitler told his old-time party companions that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated. On the sixteenth of that month, Hans Frank, having heard Hitler’s address, parroted his Führer in a speech to his top administrators in Kraków. Could not a comparison be made between Frank’s reaction to Hitler’s speech and a secret Rosenberg address to the German press, on November 18, after a lengthy meeting with Himmler three days beforehand?
      According to this interpretation, Rosenberg probably had been told by Himmler of the decision, and he echoed the newly acquired information in his speech to the press, as Frank was to echo Hitler a month later. “This Eastern territory,” Rosenberg declared, “is called upon to solve a question which is posed to the peoples of Europe; that is the Jewish Question. In the East, some 6 million Jews still live, and this question can only be solved in the biological eradication of the entire Jewry of Europe. The Jewish Question is only solved for Germany when the last Jew has left German territory, and for Europe when not a single Jew lives on the European continent up to the Urals. That is the task that fate had posed to us…. It is necessary to expel them over the Urals or eradicate them in some other way.” (Quoted in Browning and Matthäus,
The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, September 1939–March 1942
, p. 404.)
      Rosenberg’s meeting with Himmler was in fact primarily intended to establish some clear rules regarding the division of tasks in the occupied Eastern territories between SS and police leaders on the one hand, and Reich or
Gebietskommissare
on the other. It is in this context that the Jewish issue was discussed, and we do not know whether on that occasion Himmler imparted any further information—if any decision was to be imparted at all—to a rival whom he despised. On the next day, Himmler and Rosenberg were both Hitler’s guests at dinner. Were the Jews discussed on that occasion? We do not know either. (For the Himmler-Rosenberg meeting, see Himmler,
Der Dienstkalender
, p. 262, n. 46; for the dinner with Hitler, see Ibid., p. 264.) The “table-talk” records for that day indicate no allusion to the Jewish issue. (Hitler,
Monologe
, p. 140–42.)
      As for Rosenberg’s speech as such, it is ambiguous. It refers both to biological eradication and to expulsion over the Urals. It could be that Rosenberg meant eradication and not mere expulsion, as later, in the same speech, he stressed the urgency of the issue and the necessity for his generation of Germans to accomplish this historical task. (For the text of the speech see Browning and Matthäus, p. 404). But could not the same urgency apply to the expulsion of all the Jews beyond the Urals, leading eventually to their extinction (like all other territorial plans)?
      Other documents of these same November 1941 days are no less ambiguous than Rosenberg’s speech. Thus, on November 6, Goebbels recorded that, according to information from the General government, the Jews were setting all their hopes on a Soviet victory. “They don’t have much to lose anymore,” the minister went on. “In fact, one cannot hold it against them that they look for new glimmers of hope. It can even be of help to us, as it should allow us to deal with them in an even more decisive way in the general government as in the other occupied countries, and first of all also in the Reich.” (Joseph Goebbels,
Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels
, ed. Elke Fröhlich [Munich, 1995], part 2, vol. 2, p. 241.)
      On November 29, 1941, Heydrich sent invitations to a conference that was to take place on December 9 in Berlin, at the Interpol center on Am Kleinen Wannseestrasse 16. The invitation letter clearly defined the subject of the meeting: “On 31 July 1941 the Reich Marshal of the Greater German Reich commissioned me to make all necessary preparations in organizational, factual, and material respect for the total solution [
Gesamtlösung
] of the Jewish question in Europe with the participation of all central agencies and to present to him a master plan as soon as possible…. Considering the extraordinary importance which has to be conceded to these questions and in the interest of the achievement of the same viewpoint by the central agencies concerned with the remaining work connected with this final solution [
Endlösung
], I suggest to make these problems the subject of a combined conversation, especially since Jews are being evacuated in continuous transports from the Reich territory, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, to the East ever since 15 October 1941.” [Nuremberg doc. 709-PS,
The Ministries Case
, pp. 192–93.] The conference was postponed as a result of the Japanese attack on the United States and the planned German response (“Unfortunately,” Heydrich wrote on January 8, 1942, “I had to call off the conferencebecause of events which suddenly became known and of the engrossment with them of some of the invited gentlemen”). (Ibid.); it was reconvened for January 20, 1942.
      The way the initial invitation was formulated indicates that no preparations for a “general solution” of the Jewish question had been made since Göring’s instructions to Heydrich; had there been some significant overall decisions taken in October, for example, they would have been alluded to, at least indirectly. The only concrete developments mentioned were the deportations from Germany. This very fact, as well as the date on which Heydrich sent the letters, indicate that the “evacuation” from the Reich and the complaints it generated would be a major item on the discussion agenda. (This is Gerlach’s argument in Christian Gerlach, “
Die Wannsee-Konferenz, das Schicksal der deutschen Juden und Hitlers politische Grundsatzentscheidung, alle Juden Europas zu ermor-
den
,” in
Werkstatt Geschichte
18 (1997), p. 16. The invitation of Stuckart and Schlegelberger confirmed Heydrich’s intention. Whether this was to be the only topic of the December 9 conference cannot be determined.
      One could also argue, however, that the inclusion of Luther, the chief of “Division Germany” of the Wilhelmstrasse (dealing with Jewish matters throughout the continent) points to the discussion of plans extending beyond the deportations from the Reich (Hans-Jürgen Döscher,
Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich: Diplomatie im Schatten der “Endlösung”
[Berlin, 1987], p. 221). Rademacher, Luther’s second-in-command, prepared a list of issues to be dealt with, particularly the deportation of Jews from Serbia, of stateless Jews living in territories occupied by Germany, and of Jews of Croat, Slovak, or Romanian nationality living in the Reich. Moreover, Rademacher suggested to inform the governments of Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Hungary that Germany would be ready to deport their Jews to the East. Finally, the representative of the Wilhelmstrasse proposed to ask “all European governments” to introduce anti-Jewish legislation (Döscher, p. 223). Of course, these were suggestions of the Wilhelmstrasse; whether they would have been discussed, we do not know. Moreover, Rademacher’s agenda does not indicate anything beyond the deportation plans to the East. Significantly, the countries of western and northern Europe were not mentioned.
      On November 18, in a speech at the University of Berlin, Hans Frank unexpectedly praised the Jewish workers toiling in the General Government and forecast that they would be allowed to continue working for Germany in the future (Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds.,
Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union
[Jerusalem, 1981], pp. 246–47). Could it be, if extermination had already been decided in early October, that Frank, in his visit to Berlin in mid-November, would not have been told anything? As we saw, by December 16 the tone had changed, and Frank spoke of only one goal: extermination.
      The same change of tone is noticeable in the exchange between the Ostland Reichskommissar Lohse and Rosenberg’s chief acolyte, Bräutigam. On November 15, Lohse asked Bräutigam whether the ongoing liquidations in the Baltic countries should also include Jews employed in war production. Bräutigam replied on December 18: “In the Jewish question, recent oral discussions have in the meantime clarified the issue (
In der Judenfrage dürfte inzwischen durch mündliche Besprechungen Klarheit geschaffen sein
). In principle, economic considerations are not to be taken into account in the settlement of the problem” (Ibid., pp. 394–95).
      In other words, in mid-November, Rosenberg’s delegate to the area, which had been the scene of some of the largest local massacres, was not yet aware of a general policy of extermination. But, as in Frank’s case, by mid-December he was told of the guidelines, “recently clarified.” (On this specific exchange see also Christian Gerlach, “Die Wannsee-konferenz.”
      Finally, in a letter sent to Himmler a few months later, on June 23, 1942, Viktor Brack, referring to the extermination camps in the General Government, added: “At one time, you yourself, Reichsführer, indicated to me that for reasons of secrecy we ought to complete the work as quickly as possible.” It has been plausibly assumed that “at one time” referred to a personal meeting between Himmler and Brack. Such a meeting took place on December 14, 1941 (Ibid.).
      In more general terms, if the deportation of the Jews from Germany had been the starting signal for the “Final Solution,” why should the transports from the Reich have been directed to Lodz to begin with? No killing site was yet ready in or near Lodz, whereas choosing Riga, Kovno, or Minsk from the outset…would have befitted a killing plan—at least as a possibility. But the
Ostland
destinations were alternatives chosen to ease the burden imposed upon Lodz. The setting up of Chelmno, the building of Belzec, and plans for other camps also appear as “solutions” for the overcrowding of Lodz, of the Lublin district, and of the
Ostland
ghettos, in view of the new arrivals, not necessarily as the first steps of a general extermination plan.
      If it was in Hitler’s plan to turn the Jews of Germany into hostages, mainly in order to deter the United States from entering the war, murdering the hostages before December 1941 would have been contrary to the very aim of the operation; murdering them once America was at war was true to type.
      The Wannsee conference of January 20, 1942, will show, as the conference of December 9 would have shown, that no preparations had been made and that, except for general statements, Heydrich, the convener, had no concrete plans: there was no time schedule, no clear operational plan, no accepted definition of the categories of
Mischlinge
that were to be spared or deported and the like. Hitler probably finalized his decision in December; in January, Heydrich was barely starting to consider various possibilities, apart from the phased deportation to the East.

104. Joseph Walk, ed.,
Das Sonderrecht für die Juden im NS-Staat: Eine Sammlung der gesetzlichen Massnahmen und Richtlinien, Inhalt und Bedeutung.
(Heidelberg, 1981), p. 350.

105. Ibid.

106. Ibid., p. 351.

107. Ibid., p. 353.

108. Ibid., p. 355.

109. Uwe Dietrich Adam,
Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich
(Düsseldorf, 1972), p. 284. For an exhaustive discussion of this issue, see ibid., pp. 274ff.

110. Ibid., p. 291.

111. Götz Aly mentions the case of the Jewish laborer Ernst Samuel who worked at Daimler Benz, received a net weekly salary of twenty-eight reichsmarks, after an amount of twenty-four reichsmarks had been paid as income tax, benefits, and so on. Götz Aly,
Im Tunnel: Das kurze Leben der Marion Samuel 1931–1943
(Frankfurt am Main, 2004), p. 64.

112. For this complicated bureaucratic process see Dean, “The Development and Implementation of Nazi Denaturalization and Confiscation Policy,” pp. 217ff.

113. Adam,
Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich
, pp. 292ff and 299–301.

114. Avraham Barkai,
From Boycott to Annihilation: The Economic Struggle of German Jews, 1933–1943
(Hanover, NH, 1989), p. 176.

115. Ibid., pp. 179–80.

116. For the full text of the law see Kurt Pätzold, ed.,
Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung: Dokumente des faschistischen Antisemitismus 1933 bis 1942.
(Frankfurt am Main, 1984), pp. 320–321.