Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews
Page 86
began (see Gerhard Botz, Wohnungspolitik und Judendeportation in Wien 1938 bis
1945. Zur Funktion des Antisemitismus als Ersatz nationalsozialistischer Sozialpolitik
(Vienna, 1975), 57 ff. and 94). In September 1938 in Berlin Speer had masterminded the
confiscation of Jewish homes in his capacity as General Building Inspector for the Reich
Capital, and in January 1939 he began to systematize the utilization of homes that Jews
had been forced to leave as a result of a relaxation in the regulations governing notices to quit (see Susanne Willems, Der entsiedelte Jude. Albert Speers Wohnungspolitik für
den Berliner Hauptstadtbau (Berlin, 2000), 105 ff.). In summer 1939 Speer began to
create ‘Jew-free districts’ in the city and after January 1941 the Jews were driven out of their homes in organized ‘clearance operations’ (ibid. 134 ff. and 186 ff.). In Karlsruhe the majority of Jews still living in the city were accommodated in the ‘Jewish houses’ by the end of April 1939 (Werner, Hakenkreuz, 280). On 1 April 1940 the decision was
taken in Aachen to bring together the remaining Jews in ‘Jewish houses’ (Lepper,
Emanzipation, ii. 134). Between October and November 1939 a total of 47 ‘Jewish
houses’ were established in Leipzig, which initially received Jewish tenants from
municipal housing (Klemperer, Zeugnis, i. 503). In Minden/Ravensberg ‘Jewish houses’
were set up in the larger districts from 1939 but filling them took until autumn 1940
(Joachim Meynert, Was vor der ‘Endlösung’ geschah. Antisemitische Ausgrenzung in
Minden-Ravensberg 1933–1945 (Münster, 1988), 227–8). On ‘Jewish houses’ see Wolf
Gruner, Der geschlossene Arbeitseinsatz deutscher Juden. Zur Zwangsarbeit als Element
der Verfolgung, 1938–1943 (Berlin, 1997), 249 ff.
22. Wolf Gruner has identified 38 such camps: Arbeitseinsatz, 250.
23. For more detail on this see ibid. 107 ff.
24. Heinrich Himmler, Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Ansprachen, ed. Bradley
F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson (Frankfurt a. M., 1974), 115 ff.
476
Notes to pages 135–138
25. OS, 500-1-597.
26. OS, 503-1-324.
27. On euthanasia see Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: Euthanasia in Germany
1900–1945 (Cambridge, 1994); Ernst Klee, ‘Euthanasie’ im NS-Staat. Die ‘Vernichtung
lebensunwerten Lebens’ (Frankfurt a. M., 1983); Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi
Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995); Hans-Walther
Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie. Von der Verhütung zur
Vernichtung ‘lebensunwerten Lebens’, 1890–1945 (Göttingen, 1987).
28. On the ‘misery of psychiatry’ before the outbreak of the Second World War, see in
particular Dirk Blasius, ‘Einfache Seelenstörung’. Geschichte der deutschen Psychiatrie
1800–1945 (Frankfurt a. M., 1994), esp. 145 ff.; Burleigh, Death, 43 ff.; Ludwig Siemen,
Menschen blieben auf der Strecke. Psychiatrie zwischen Reform und Nationalsozialismus
(Gütersloh, 1987); Hans Walter Schmuhl, ‘Kontinuität oder Diskontinuität? Zum
epochalen Charakter der Psychiatrie im Nationalsozialismus’, in Franz-Werner Ker-
sting, Karl Teppe, and Bernd Walter, eds, Nach Hadamar. Zum Verhältnis von
Psychiatrie und Gesellschaft im 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn, 1993), 112–36.
29. On children’s ‘euthanasia’, see Friedlander, Origins, 84 ff.; Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 77 ff.; Burleigh, Death, 93 ff.; Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, 182.
30. Ulf Schmidt, ‘Reassessing the Beginning of the “Euthanasia” Programme’, German
History 17 (1999), 543–50, and Udo Benzendörfer, ‘Bemerkungen zur Planung bei der
NS-“Euthanasie” ’, in Boris Böhm and Thomas Oelschläger, eds, Der sächsische Son-
derweg bei der NS-‘Euthanasie’ (Ulm, 2001), 21–54.
31. On the organizational preparations for the T4 programme see Friedlander, Origins,
77 ff.; Burleigh, Death, 93 ff.; Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, 182.
32. Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 85–6; Instruction for Implementation of the Law concerning Pre-
vention of Children with Hereditary Illnesses and of the Marriage Health Law, 31 Aug.
1939 (RGBl, I, p. 1560). Sterilizations did nevertheless take place until the end of the war, albeit in limited numbers. ‘F-cases’ were those where the threat of ‘reproductive activity’
was great (fortpflanzungsgefahr).
33. Götz Aly, ‘Medizin gegen Unbrauchbare’, in Götz Aly et. al., Aussonderung und Tod.
Die klinische Hinrichtung der Unbrauchbaren (Berlin, 1985), 20 ff.
34. Nuremberg Document (ND) PS-630.
35. According to Rieß’s estimate, Volker Rieß, Die Anfänge der ‘lebensunwerten Lebens’ in den Reichsgauen Danzig-Westpreußen und Wartheland 1939/40 (Frankfurt a. M., 1995),
355.
36. See esp. ibid. 23 ff.
37. Ibid. 243 ff.
38. Ibid. 290 ff.
39. Ibid. 321 ff.; Matthias Beer, ‘Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden’,
VfZ 35 (1987), 404 ff.; Eugen Kogon et al., eds, Massentötungen durch Giftgas. Eine
Dokumentation (Frankfurt a. M., 1986), 62 ff.; Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 105 ff.
40. Ibid. 222 ff. See also esp. Heike Bernhardt, Anstaltspsychiatrie und ‘Euthanasie’ in
Pommern 1933 bis 1945. Die Krankenmorde an Kindern und Erwachsenen am Beispiel
der Landesheilanstalt Ueckermünde (Frankfurt a. M., 1994).
41. Ibid. 188 and 288 ff.
Notes to pages 138–140
477
42. See below pp. 290–1.
43. Rieß, Anfänge, 104 ff., 131, 135–6, 168, 256, and 334.
44. Götz Aly’s assertion that the murder of more than 10,000 mentally ill patients in the East was ‘causally linked to the “Heim-ins-Reich” [home into the Reich] movement of
60,000 Baltic Germans’ is therefore unconvincing (Aly, Final Solution: Nazi Population
Policy and the Murder of the European Jews (London, 1999), 70 ff.). Aly himself notes
(p. 116) that the murder of the inmates of the Kocborowo Mental Hospital began on 22
September, and thus before the Soviet–German Resettlement Agreement. Even the
request made on 23 October 1939 by Sandberger, Head of the Central Immigration
Office, for 5,000 beds to be cleared for ethnic German migrants came too late to explain
the murders that had already begun earlier in October in Neustadt, Schwetz, and
Owinska (pp. 70–1). It is also important to note the other purposes that psychiatric
institutions were put to, as detailed by Rieß; Schwede explicitly justified the deport-
ations from his Gau in this manner (citing the construction of an SS barracks in the
hospital at Stralsund). The most important factor that argues against Aly’s interpret-
ation is the fact that mass murders in the occupied zones were only an anticipatory
measure in advance of the ‘euthanasia’ programmes being planned at the same time
across the whole of the Reich and were directly linked to the eruption of violence
against other civilian groups in the newly conquered areas. In this context the links to
the resettlement of ethnic Germans are of secondary importance, one factor only in the
acceleration of the mass murder of the inmates of psychiatric institutions. In the same
way Aly’s examples of South German institutions being filled with ethnic German
emigrants in the second half of 1940 (pp. 120–2) do not constitute sufficient evidence
for his thesis that ‘the self-created pressure to ac
commodate ethnic German settlers in
camps now also began to accelerate the murder of German psychiatric patients in the
southern part of the Reich as well’ (p. 120). Aly again distorts his argument when he
identifies a secondary phenomenon (the use of ‘freed-up’ institutions) as the main
cause of the murder of the sick and debilitated. Statistics published by Klee (‘Eutha-
nasie’, 340–1) suggest that of the 93,521 institutional beds ‘freed up’ by the end of 1941
(a figure which includes both the more than 70,000 people murdered in the gas
chambers and those who died or were killed in the institutions themselves), only
8,577 were used for ethnic German settlers, whilst more than half served army or SS
purposes, especially as reserve military hospitals.
45. On the organization of T4 see Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 109 ff.; Friedlander, Origins, 68 ff.; Burleigh, Death, 133 ff.
46. See in particular the information in Heinz Faulstich, Hungersterben in der Psychiatrie, 1914–1949 (Freiburg, 1998), 260 ff., which is complemented by detailed studies on
individual institutions and regions as follows: Hermann J. Pretsch, ed., ‘Euthanasie’.
Krankenmorde in Südwestdeutschland. Die nationalsozialistische ‘Aktion T4’ in
Württemberg 1940 bis 1945 (Zwiefalten, 1996); Christina Vanja and Martin Vogt, eds,
Euthanasie in Hadamar. Die nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik in hessischen
Anstalten (Kassel, 1991); Heinz Faulstich, Von der Irrenfürsorge zur ‘Euthanasie’.
Geschichte der badischen Psychiatrie bis 1945 (Freiburg, 1993); Ludwig Hermeler, Die
Euthanasie und die späte Unschuld der Psychiater. Massenmord, Bedburg-Hau und das
Geheimnis rheinischer Widerstandslegenden (Essen, 2002); Uwe Kaminsky, Zwangs-
478
Notes to pages 140–143
sterilisation und ‘Euthanasie’ im Rheinland. Evangelische Erziehungsanstalten sowie
Heil- und Pflegeanstalten 1933–1945 (Cologne, 1995); Boris Böhm and Thomas Oel-
schläger, eds, Der sächsische Sonderweg bei der NS-‘Euthanasie’ (Ulm, 2001); Thomas
Schilter, Unmenschliches Ermessen. Die nationalsozialistische ‘Euthanasie’-Tötungsan-
stalt Pirna-Sonnenstein 1940/41 (Leipzig, 1999); Dietmar Schulze, ‘Euthanasie’ in Bern-
burg. Die Landes-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Bernburg/Anhaltinische Nervenklinik in der
Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Essen, 1999); Thomas Stöckle, Grafeneck 1940. Die
Euthanasie-Verbrechen in Südwestdeutschland (Tübingen, 2002); Thorsten Sueße and
Heinrich Meyer, Abtransport der ‘Lebensunwerten’. Die Konfrontation niedersäch-
sischer Anstalten mit der NS-‘Euthanasie’ (Hanover, 1998); Bernd Walter, Psychiatrie
und Gesellschaft in der Moderne. Geisteskrankenfürsorge in der Provinz Westfalen
zwischen Kaiserreich und NS-Regime (Paderborn, 1996); Michael von Cranach and
Hans-Ludwig Siemen eds, Psychiatrie im Nationalsozialismus. Die Bayerischen Heil-
und Pflegeanstalten zwischen 1933 und 1945 (Munich, 1999).
47. International Military Tribunal (IMT), xxxv. 681 ff., 906-D, a note from Sellmer (from the staff of the Führer’s Deputy) on a visit by Werner Blankenburg from the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP (Brack’s deputy), 1 Oct. 1940: ‘30,000 done, a further
100,000–120,000 waiting’.
48. Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen 1923–
1941 Dezember 1940–Juli 1941, bearbeitet von Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1998). Entry for 31
Jan. 1941, p. 119 (on a conversation with Bouhler): ‘40,000 are gone, 60,000 still have to go.’
49. In the planning stages, for example, Brack considered that secrecy could not be taken as read if there were to be, as was proposed at that point, some 60,000 victims (according
to a witness statement by his colleague Hefelmann, quoted in Aly, Final Solution, 28).
On the imperfect secrecy surrounding euthanasia, see Winfried Süß, Der Volkskörper
im Krieg. Gesundheitspolitik, Gesundheitsverhältnisse und Krankenmord im national-
sozialistischen Deutschland 1939–1945 (Munich, 2003), 129–30.
50. For examples of ‘Euthanasia’ propaganda see Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 76–7 and 176–7.
51. Friedlander, Origins, 263 ff.
8.
German Occupation and the Persecution of the Jews in Poland,
1939–1940/1941: The First Variant of a ‘Territorial Solution’
1. On the war against Poland and the first phase of occupation, see Dieter Pohl, Von der
‘Judenpolitik’ zum ‘Judenmord’. Der Distrikt Lublin des Generalgouvernments 1939–1944
(Frankfurt a. M., 1993); Christian Jansen and Arno Weckbecker, Der ‘Volksdeutsche
Selbstschutz’ in Polen 1939–40 (Munich, 1992); Horst Rohde, ‘Hitlers erste “Blitzkrieg”
und seine Auswirkung auf nordostEuropa’, in Klaus A. Maier et al., Die Errichtung der
Hegemonie auf dem europäischen Kontinent (Stuttgart, 1979), 79–156; Czeslaw Madajcz-
kyk, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939–1945 (Cologne, 1988);
Helmut Krausnick, ‘Die Einsatzgruppen vom Anschluss Österreichs bis zum Feldzug
gegen die Sowjetunion. Entwicklung und Verhältnis zur Wehrmacht’, in Helmut
Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges. Die
Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizeil und des SD, 1938–1942 (Stuttgart, 1982), 32 ff.
Notes to pages 143–146
479
2. IMT, xxxvii. 546 ff., O79–L.
3. ADAP, series D, vol. 7, no. 193; Winfried Baumgart, ‘Zur Ansprache Hitlers vor den
Führern der Wehrmacht am 22. August 1939. Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung’, VfZ
2 (1968), 120–49.
4. IMT, xxxix. 425 ff., 172-USSR, statement by Hitler, 2 Oct. 1939.
5. BAB, R 58/825, 8 Sept. 1941 and 16 Oct. 1941.
6. Jansen and Weckbecker, Selbstschutz, 27 ff.; Wlodzimierz Jastrzebski, Der Bromberger
Blutsonntag. Legende und Wirklichkeit (Poznan, 1990).
7. Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 33 ff. A detailed account of the leadership can be found in Alexander B. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity (Lawrence, Kan., 2003), 29 ff.
8. Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 107.
9. Dorothee Weitbrecht, ‘Die Ermächtigung zur Vernichtung. Die Einsatzgruppen in
Polen im Herbst 1939’, in Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Bogdan Musial, eds, Genesis
des Genozids. Polen 1939–1941 (Darmstadt, 2004), 57; Dan Michman, ‘Why did Hey-
drich write the Schnellbrief? A Remark on the Reason and on its Significance’, YVS 32
(2004), 439–40.
10. Weitbrecht, ‘Ermächtigung’, 59 ff.
11. Jansen and Weckbecker, ‘Selbstschutz’, 82 ff.
12. The role of the Selbstschutz has been exhaustively examined in Jansen and Weckbecker, ibid. 111 ff. On the participation of the army in the murders see Joachim Böhler,
‘Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg. Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939’ (Frankfurt a. M.,
2006). On the Einsatzgruppen see Rossino, Hitler, 88 ff. and his ‘Nazi Anti-Jewish
Policy during the Polish Campaign: The Case of the Einsatzgruppe von Woyrisch’,
GSR 24 (2001), 35–54 and Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Joachim Böhler, and Jürgen
Matthäus, eds, Einsatzgruppen in Polen. Darstellung und Dokumentation (Darmstadt,
2008).
13. Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik, 12.
14. For examples, see Rossino, Hitler, 90–1 and 99.
15. Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy September 1939 to March 1942 (L
ondon, 2004), 25 ff., 56–7; Böhler, ‘ “Tragische
Verstrickung” ’, 45 ff.
16. Jansen and Weckbecker, ‘Selbstschutz’, 154 ff.
17. Ibid. 96 ff. and 154.
18. Ibid. 96 ff.
19. On the role of uniformed police in these murders see Klaus-Michael Mallmann, ‘ “ . . .
Mißgeburten, die nicht auf diese Welt gehören”. Die deutsche Ordnungspolizei in
Polen 1939–1941’, in Mallmann and Musial, eds, Genesis, 71–89.
20. Martin Cüppers, ‘ “ . . . auf eine so saubere und anständige SS-mäßige Art”. Die WaffenSS in Polen 1939–1941’, in Mallmann and Musial, eds, Genesis, 90–110.
21. Jansen and Weckbecker, ‘Selbstschutz’, 168 ff.; Pohl, Judenpolitik, 22 ff.; Szymon Datner,
‘Crimes Committed by the Wehrmacht during the September Campaign and the
Period of Military Government’, Polish Western Affairs 3 (1962), esp. 322 ff.
22. Jansen and Weckbecker, ‘Selbstschutz’, 154 ff. and 212 ff.
23. Rieß, Anfänge, 173 ff.
480
Notes to pages 146–147
24. Jansen and Weckbecker, ‘Selbstschutz’, 156 and 224 ff.
25. Ibid. 156–7 and 228–9.
26. IfZ, Fb 52.
27. File note by Oberstleutnant Lahousen, published in Helmuth Groscurth, Tagebü-
cher eines Abwehroffiziers 1938–1940. Mit weiteren Dokumente zur Militäropposi-
tion gegen Hitler (Stuttgart, 1970), 357 ff. According to Lahousen’s (unverifiable)
testimony in Nuremberg (IMT, ii. 492 ff. and iii. 30), at this meeting Keitel told
Canaris to ‘raise a rebellion’ in Galician Ukraine ‘with the extirpation of the Jews
as its goal’; only when Canaris refused was this remark about the Einsatzgruppen
made (cf. Eberhard Jäckel, Hitlers Herrschaft. Vollzug einer Weltanschauung
(Stuttgart, 1986), 95 and 172).
28. On this resistance see Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 80 ff.
29. Quoted in Groscurth, Tagebücher, 409 ff.
30. Meeting of the Chief of the General Staff of the Army High Command in the new
Military District of Danzig with HSSPF Hildebrand and the Selbstschutz commander
responsible for the area of West Prussia von Alvensleben, 13 Oct. 1939, in Jansen and