authorities interned them. 142 It seems that the Gauleiters themselves were responsible for the initiative for these deportations, which were explicitly approved by
Hitler. 143
In parallel to these deportations to southern France preparations were being
made in October 1940 for further transports to the General Government. In this
context statements made by Hitler in early October on the capacity of the General
Government to receive more people are of interest. When Gauleiters Baldur von
Schirach and Erich Koch asked General Governor Frank in the course of an
informal conversation in Hitler’s apartments on 2 October to take 50,000 Jews
from Vienna or a larger number of Poles and Jews from the area of Zichenau (now
part of East Prussia), Frank refused; Hitler’s view, however, was that ‘it is irrele-
vant how large the population in the General Government is’, although he did not
give a firm opinion on further deportations of Jews. 144
Frank could also no longer reckon on ‘relief’ through Jewish emigration: on 25
October 1940 the RSHA placed a ban on Jews leaving the General Government in
order not to impair opportunities for Jews to emigrate from the area of the
Reich. 145 However, in November Frank succeeded in putting a stop to further movements of Jews from the Warthegau by appealing to the preparations that
were already in place for the Eastern military deployment. 146 They were only to be resumed at the beginning of 1941 in the context of the so-called ‘third short-term
plan’.
At the beginning of November, however, Hitler took the concrete decision to
create more space in the annexed Polish territories for more ethnic Germans
coming from Romania and the Soviet Union: before the end of the war he wanted
some ‘150,000 to 160,000 Poles and Jews [amongst others] from the recovered
areas’ to settle in the General Government. 147
On the same day Gauleiters Erich Koch from East Prussia and Albert Forster
from Danzig-West-Prussia began to argue about the quotas for deportations,
with the result that Hitler had to ‘make peace, laughing’ between the two of
Deportations
173
them, as Goebbels’s diaries record. On the same occasion the ‘Führer’ confirmed
that ‘we will shove the Jews out of this area, too, when the time is right’. 148
By the end of the year more than 48,000 former Polish citizens, Jews and
non-Jews, were deported into the General Government from the district of
Zichenau, which was under the authority of the East Prussian Gauleiter, from
Gau Danzig-West-Prussia and from Upper Silesia. 149
Deportations Phase IV: A Successor to
the Madagascar Project
Between November 1940 and January 1941 the German leadership finally aban-
doned the Madagascar Plan having had to accept that a separate peace with
Great Britain was not possible. Within the context of the preparations for
‘Barbarossa’, 150 they began to develop a new project, a ‘Post-Madagascar Plan’. 151
When the Madagascar Project proved to be pie in the sky at the end of 1940 the
deportations into the General Government for which individual Gauleiters had
been pressing ever more firmly were resumed. The head of the Reich Chancellery,
Hans-Heinrich Lammers, informed Schirach in early December that his request
of two months earlier to transport the Jews of Vienna had been approved by
Hitler. A first step towards the transportation of a total of 60,000 people that he
had in mind was the deportation of 5,000 Jews from Vienna into the General
Government in February and March. 152
Further information about what the RSHA envisaged as a ‘solution’ for the
‘Jewish question’ is provided by the elaboration of some ideas that Eichmann
prepared for Himmler on 4 December in order to provide him with figures for a
speech to Gauleiters and Reichsleiters. 153 Eichmann drew a distinction between two phases, first the ‘initial solution to the Jewish question by means of emigration’ and then the future ‘final solution to the Jewish question’, by which he
understood ‘the resettlement of the Jews from the German people’s European
economic area into territories yet to be determined’—which was a clear reference
to the recent abandonment of the Madagascar Plan. In his notes for Himmler
Eichmann wrote that this project would encompass ‘a total of some 5.8 million
Jews’, 154 which is considerably more than the four million that the RSHA reckoned with when preparing the Madagascar Project. Planning had evidently been
extended in the meantime to include German allies and satellites in Eastern
Europe and the Jews in the French colonies.
In the speech that Himmler made on 10 December he identified ‘Jewish
emigration’ from the General Government as a key future task that would ‘create
more space for Poles’. The Reichsführer did not identify a destination for this
emigration.
174
The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941
Various indications from January 1941 show that ‘resettlements’ were planned
on a huge scale even during the preparation of the third short-term plan. Influ-
enced by the waves of ethnic German ‘resettlers’ streaming into the area of the
Reich from Romania and the Soviet Union, comprehensive plans were being
drawn up for expelling more Poles and Jews from the incorporated Eastern
territories into the General Government.
At a meeting in the RSHA on 8 January 1941 Heydrich gave the figure of 831,000
to indicate the number of people to be resettled by the end of the year, which
included the 60,000 Viennese Jews. Another 200,000 people were to be expelled
from the General Government in order to be able to establish huge sites for
military exercises. 155 Initially it was proposed to deport 238,000 people in the context of the third short-term plan. But this plan was in fact destined to be
suspended as soon as 15 March after about 25,000 people had been transported
into the General Government: 19,226 people from the Warthegau who were ‘unfit
for work’ (including 2,140 Jews) and 5,000 Jews from Vienna (instead of the 10,000
that had been planned for the first phase). 156 No preparations had been made for the reception and support of these people who were being transported in the
depths of winter, just as had been the case with the Nisko Campaign and with the
transports from Schneidemühl and Stettin). 157
The third short-term plan was, however, not only the first step in the deport-
ation of a million people from the incorporated Eastern territories within the
space of a year; it was evidently connected to a much larger programme of
deportations that affected the whole area under German control. 158 This all-embracing programme of deportations can be reconstructed from two docu-
ments, a note by the Gestapo official responsible for ‘Jewish affairs’ in Paris,
Theodor Dannecker, to Eichmann dated 21 January, and a minute of remarks
by Eichmann made on 20 March. Dannecker wrote to Eichmann that it was ‘the
Führer’s will . . . that after the war the Jewish question within the areas ruled or
controlled by Germany be brought to a definitive solution’. To this end Heydrich
had ‘already received a commission to present a plan for the final solution from
the Führer via
the RFSS [Himmler] and the Reichsmarschall [Goering]’. In
response a project had been worked out that was currently with Hitler and
Goering. The individual preparations that had to be made would have to ‘extend
not only to preliminary work aimed at the complete expulsion of the Jews but also
to the detailed planning of a resettlement programme in a territory yet to be
determined’. 159
From a statement made by Eichmann on 20 March 1941 at a meeting in the
Ministry of Propaganda we learn in addition ‘that Party Comrade Heydrich—who
has been charged by the Führer with the definitive evacuation of the Jews—made a
suggestion to the Führer 8–10 weeks ago that has not been put into practice for
the sole reason that the General Government is at the present moment not in a
position to accept a single Jew or Pole from the Old Reich’. 160 Regarding the Deportations
175
deportation of the Berlin Jews, Eichmann expressed himself extremely carefully,
making explicit reference to war production: it might be possible to deport 15,000
people as part of the deportation programme for Viennese Jews already approved
by Hitler. This was a perspective that had a sobering effect on Goebbels, who had
believed in the imminence of the total deportation of the Jews of Berlin, 161 as emerges from his diaries: ‘The Jews can’t be evacuated from Berlin, at least not in
large numbers, because 30,000 of them are working for armament production. ’162
Despite the resolution to postpone deportations, or at least those of any magni-
tude, the Gestapo decided officially to inform the Reich Association on 17 March
that they should now prepare themselves for deportations. 163
From this information it emerges that Heydrich had received an instruction
from Hitler (via Himmler and Goering) before January 1941 to draw up a first
draft of a ‘final solution plan’ that was to be put into effect after the war and which
aimed at the complete deportation of all Jews from Europe. When this project was
ready in January 1941, the original aim (as envisaged in the version Heydrich had
in December) to direct these deportations to Madagascar had been abandoned
without a new ‘destination territory’ having been identified. But Heydrich had
already announced large-scale deportations into the General Government on 8
January, which were in fact begun a short while later, but two months after that
Eichmann was talking of how the project could not be realized because of the
situation in the General Government, apart from the smaller-scale deportations
that were part of the third short-term plan completed on 15 March.
However, the General Government was not the territory for the ‘Final Solution’
that was ‘yet to be determined’; it was only an intermediate station. General
Governor Frank said in Cracow on 26 March that Hitler had just agreed that
the ‘General Government would be the first area to be made free of Jews’. But that
was only a long-term aim, as other remarks by Frank on the same day make clear:
he spoke of Hitler being determined ‘within the next 15 or 20 years to make the
General Government a purely German land’. He also stressed the importance of
the forced labour groups of Poles and Jews. 164 Moreover, at the start of April, Frank was busy with medium-term planning for the Warsaw ghetto. 165
But what was the long-term outlook for ‘Jewish policy’ at this time? Were the
deportations into the General Government part of plans for the subsequent
physical annihilation of people in this area? The question can be answered by
drawing upon a further document first identified by Götz Aly in the Moscow
‘special archive’. It is a note made by Heydrich on 26 March 1941 of a conversation
with Goering: ‘Regarding the solution of the Jewish question, I gave the Reich
Marshal [i.e. Goering] a brief report and submitted my proposal to him, which he
approved after making a change with respect to Rosenberg’s responsibilities and
he ordered its resubmission.’166
This note evidently refers to the draft of Goering’s well-known ‘authorization’
for Heydrich to ‘make organizational, functional and material plans for a complete
176
The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941
solution to the Jewish question in the areas of Europe under German rule’, dated
31 July. 167 The change made to ‘Rosenberg’s jurisdiction’ in Heydrich’s note of 26
March will refer to the passage that in the July document is formulated thus: ‘in
so far as the jurisdiction of other central authorities is affected, these are to be
involved.’ The fact that in the draft of this fundamental division of responsibility
for preparing the ‘Final Solution’ Rosenberg’s jurisdiction was to be taken into
consideration as a ‘central authority’ allows us to conclude that the area of the
Soviet Union was being identified for these ‘final solution plans’ and that Rosen-
berg was already being considered as the Director of a ‘central authority’ (what
was later to be the Ministry for the East) for the occupied Eastern territories.
What those involved understood at this point by the ‘Final Solution’ within the
Soviet Union, which was yet to be occupied, is not clear. There were no concrete
plans made either for a reservation or for mass murder. Early in 1941 Himmler was
temporarily concerned with the possibility of a mass sterilization of Jews and
asked Victor Brack, who was based in the Chancellery of the Führer and respon-
sible for overseeing ‘euthanasia’, to develop an appropriate plan. When this was
ready at the end of March 1941 he did not pursue the project any further. 168 It seems that the answer to the question of what was to happen to the people to be
deported to the ‘East’ was being postponed to a time after the planned conquest of
the Soviet Union had been achieved. The indifference to the fate of those trans-
ported that this suggests was characteristic of the early deportations into the
General Government and was commensurate with the leadership style of the
National Socialists: at the appropriate time those responsible and actually ‘on
site’ would find some ‘solution’ or other to the new problems that they were faced
with. There are concrete indications from the months before ‘Barbarossa’ that
elements within the National Socialist leadership were arriving at the conclusion
that there would be large-scale deportations ‘to the East’.
Immediately before the attack on the Soviet Union General Governor Frank
explained to Goebbels that he was preparing for the removal of the Jews, as Goebbels
noted in his diary, glossing Frank thus: ‘in the General Government they are already
looking forward to being able to get rid of the Jews. The Jews in Poland are gradually
declining. This is a just punishment for having stirred the population up and for
provoking the war. The Führer has predicted this to the Jews.’169 Remarks that he made to his colleagues on 17 July clarify the source of Frank’s confidence: according
to an assurance given to him by Hitler on 19 June, the Jews would be removed from
the General Government in the foreseeable future which would turn into ‘transit
camps’. 170 Moreover, when the Romanian Head of State, Antonescu, complained to Hit
ler on 16 August 1941 that German troops had turned back the Bessarabian
Jews that Romanian soldiers had just driven into the Ukraine, he reminded Hitler
that this practice was in stark contrast to ‘the guidelines about the treatment of the
Eastern Jews that the Führer had given him in Munich’. 171 This referred to the meeting of the two leaders in Munich on 13 June 1941.
PART III
MASS EXECUTIONS OF JEWS IN
THE OCCUPIED SOVIET ZONES, 1941
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chapter 10
LAYING THE GROUND FOR A WAR
OF RACIAL ANNIHILATION
From the outset the war against the Soviet Union was conceived as a campaign of
racial domination and annihilation. 1 Victory over the Soviet Union was expected to be rapid, both bringing about a turning point in the progress of the war and at
the same time establishing in Eastern Europe an imperium of living space, or
Lebensraum, for the peoples of the Reich, to be run along lines dictated by racial
ideology.
The long-term aims of the war against the Soviet Union may be summarized in
the following mutually interdependent clusters. First, for the National Socialist
regime, the conquest of the Soviet territories represented the fulfilment of the
Lebensraum programme that had originally been developed in Mein Kampf. It was
the realization of a large-scale ‘eastern settlement’ that had formed part of the
programmatic demands of the right for decades previously. The creation of
settlement space for millions of people was supposed to establish a ‘healthy’
relationship between the land at Germany’s disposal and the number of people
that needed to be accommodated; it was intended to counteract the tendency
towards deracination that Germans had suffered since industrialization and
thereby inaugurate a higher degree of social harmonization. However, the con-
quest of Lebensraum did not merely serve to alleviate the Germans’ alleged urgent
need for territory; on the contrary, it was also intended to form the basis for
180
Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941
further biological expansion of the ‘Aryan race’ and in that manner to provide the
‘human resources’ for future wars of conquest. 2
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