Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews

by Peter Longerich

  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

  This page intentionally left blank

  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