pp. 287–8.
65. Of the five cities affected by the first wave of deportations, only for Hamburg can a simultaneous intensification of air attacks be demonstrated: between 15 and 30 September 1941 a series of attacks left a total of 138 dead: Hans Brunswig, Feuersturm über
Hamburg (Stuttgart, 1978), 452. In August and September Berlin had again suffered a
series of attacks without—in comparison with the previous year—the situation becom-
ing a great deal more dramatic. In August 1941 only 537 dwellings had been left
uninhabitable (Speer-Chronik, IfZ, ED 99, vol. 1). No bombs fell on Munich in 1941
see Hans-Günter Richardi, Bomber über München. Der Luftkrieg von 1939 bis 1945,
Notes to pages 269–270
527
dargestellt am Beispiel der ‘Hauptstadt der Bewegung’, (Munich, 1992), 67 ff.; in
Frankfurt a. M., Cologne, and Düsseldorf bombing raids were recorded, but little
damage was done; see Die geheimen Tagesberichte der Deutschen Wehrmachtführung
im Zweiten Weltkrieg, 1939–1945, ed. Kurt Mehner, vol. iii (Osnabrück, 1992).
66. The records of the office of the Inspector General for the Reich capital reveal that
in August 1941 Speer had ‘started a further action to clear some 5,000 Jewish
dwellings’, after a first action had been launched early in 1941 and another in
May 1941 to liberate ‘Jewish dwellings’. See Susanne Willems, Der entsiedelte Jude.
Albert Speers Wohnungsmarktpolitik für den Berliner Haupstadtbau (Berlin, 2002),
27 ff., 195 ff., and 258 ff. In September 1941 the Jews in Hanover were forced at short
notice to move into sixteen houses on the basis of an initiative from the Gau
headquarters, which had been pursuing this plan since March; it was planned to
resettle them in barrack accommodation; see Marlis Buchholz, Die hannoverschen
Judenhäuser. Zur Situation der Juden in der Zeit der Ghettoisierung und Verfolgung
1941 bis 1945 (Hildesheim, 1987), 28 ff.; see also report in the New York Times, 9
Sept. 1941. In May 1941 the Jews of Cologne were ordered at short notice to leave a
row of ‘Jewish’ houses in the desirable neighbourhoods, although the plan to
accommodate them in barracks did not come about; see Horst Matzerath, ‘Der
Weg der Kölner Juden in den Holocaust. Versuch einer Rekonstruktion’, in Gab-
riele Rogmann and Horst Matzerath, eds, Die jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozia-
lismus aus Köln. Gedenkbuch (Cologne, 1995), 534. On the deportation of the Jews
of Breslau to Tomersdorf near Görlitz see Willy Cohn, Als Jude in Breslau, 1941.
Aus den Tagebüchern von Studienrat a. D. Dr. Willy Cohn (Jerusalem, 1975), 8, 9, 15,
23 August, 11 September 1941.
67. See for example Witte, ‘Decisions’, 323–4, who provides evidence of the considerable
initiative on the part of the Hamburg Gauleiter in getting the deportations from
Hamburg under way. Browning, Origins, 386, quotes a statement from a post-war
trial before Cologne district court, according to which the Gauleiter of Cologne sent a
delegation to Hitler to demand the deportation of the Cologne Jews.
68. Walter Manoschek, ‘Serbien ist judenfrei’. Militärische Besatzungspolitik und Judenvernichtung in Serbien 1941/42 (Munich, 1993), 43 ff.
69. Ahlrich Meyer, ‘ “ . . . dass französische Verhältnisse anders sind als polnische”. Die Bekämpfung des Widerstands durch die deutsche Militärverwaltung in Frankreich
1941’, in Guus Meershoeck et al., eds, Repression und Kriegsverbrechen. Die Bekämpfung
von Widerstands- und Partisanenbewegungen gegen die deutsche Besatzung in West-
und Südosteuropa (Berlin, 1997), 43–91; Wolfram Weber, Die Innere Sicherheit im
besetzten Belgien und Nordfrankreich, 1940–1944. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Besat-
zungsverwaltungen (Düsseldorf, 1978), 59 ff.; Fritz Petrick, ed., Die Okkupationspolitik
des deutschen Faschismus in Dänemark und Norwegen (1940–1945). Dokumentenaus-
wahl (Berlin and Heidelberg, 1992), 33.
70. Detlev Brandes, Die Tschechen unter deutschem Protektorat. Besatzungspolitik, Kolla-
boration und Widerstand im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren bis Heydrichs Tod, vol. i
(Munich, 1969), 207 ff.
71. Peter Klein, ‘Die Rolle der Vernichtungslager Kulmhof (Chelmno), Belzec und Auschwitz-Birkenau in den frühen Deportationsvorbereitungen’, in Dittmar Dahlmann and Gerhard
528
Notes to pages 270–273
Hirschfeld, eds, Lager, Zwangsarbeit, Vertreibung und Deportation. Dimensionenen
der Massenvebrechen in der Sowjetunion und in Deutschland 1933–1945 (Essen, 1999), 473.
72. On 28 September Keitel modified the order to the effect that, depending on the
situation, hostages from nationalist and democratic bourgeois circles were also to be
shot. See Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht (Wehrmachtführungs-
stab), ed. Percy Ernst Schramm, led by Helmuth Greiner and Percy Ernst Schramm,
vol. i: 1940/41, document no. 101, 16 Sept. 1941 (Frankfurt a. M., 1961) and IMT xxvii.
PS-1590, S.373–4).
73. Ibid., 11 Oct. 1941 and Himmler’s negative reply, 22 Oct. 1941
74. BAB, NS 19/2655, Uebelhör to Himmler, 4 Oct. 1941 and 9 Oct. 1941, Heydrich to
Himmler, 8 Oct. 1941, Himmler to Uebelhör and Greiser, 10 and 11 Oct. 1941; further
material in the same dossier.
75. Ibid., 4 Oct. 1941.
76. BAB, 19/2655, Heydrich to Himmler, 8 Oct. 1941.
77. BAB, R 6/34 a, reports of Werner Koeppen, Rosenberg’s permanent representative to
Hitler; See Martin Vogt, ‘Selbstbespiegelungen in Erwartung des Sieges. Bemerkungen
zu den Tagesgespräche Hitlers im Herbst 1941’, in Wolfgang Michalka, ed., Der Zweite
Weltkrieg. Analysen, Grundzüge, Forschungsbilanz (Munich, 1989), 649.
78. SUA, 114-2-56 (also YVA, M 58/23).
79. Heydrich may have meant camps for civilian prisoners, like the ones that existed in
Minsk and Mogilev. See Christian Gerlach, ‘Plans for an SS Extermination Camp in
Mogilev Belorussia’, HGS 7/1 (1997), 62.
80. For literature concerning the preliminary phase of the deportations from France, see: Serge Klarsfeld, Die Endlösung der Judenfrage in Frankreich. Deutsche Dokumete 1941–
1944 (Paris, 1977); Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz. Die Zusammenarbeit der deutschen und
französischen Bechörden bei der ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’ in Frankreich, vol. i (Nord-
lingen, 1989), 17 ff.; Ulrich Herbert, ‘The German Military Command in Paris and the
Deportation of the French Jews’, in Herbert, National Socialist Extermination Policies:
Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York, 2000) 148 ff.; Susan
Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French and the Jews (Lincoln, Nebr., 1999), 641 ff.
81. On the persecution of the Jews, on the history of the Jews in France and their situation in 1940/1 see in particular Zuccotti, Holocaust, 7 ff. and Renée Poznanski, Jews in France during World War II (Hanover and London, 2001).
82. Dannecker to Zeitschel, 20 Oct. 1941, NG 3261. There were also several thousand Jewish prisoners of war.
83. Zuccotti, Holocaust, 53–4.
84. On their situation see, in particular, ibid. 65 ff.
85. CDJC, XXIV-1, Note, from Best, 19 Aug. 1940, in Klarsfeld, Vichy, 356.
86. CDJC, V 63, Note, 28 Jan. 1941, in Klarsfeld, Vichy, 363–4.
87. This is revealed by a ‘plan drawn up for a meeting’ that the leader of the administrative staff of the military administration, Werner Best, previously a department head i
n the
Reich Security Head Office, drew up in early April in preparation for a meeting of
the military commander with the Vichy Commissioner for the Jews, Vallat: CDJC,
XXIV-15a, in Klarsfeld, Vichy, 366–7.
88. Klarsfeld, Vichy, 25 und 28 ff.
Notes to pages 273–275
529
89. Herbert, ‘German Military Command’, 140.
90. Ibid. 150.
91. For the deportation of the French Jews, the same cynical ‘argument’ was used as had
previously been deployed by the head of the administrative staff of the military
commander in Serbia, Harald Turner, in a letter to SS-Gruppenführer Hildebrandt:
it was ‘actually wrong’ to shoot Jews for Germans killed by Serbs, but ‘we happened to
have them in the camp’ (see below, p. 300).
92. On these reflections see Herbert, ‘German Military Command’, 153 ff.
93. CDJC, V-8, 21 Aug. 1941, in Klarsfeld, Vichy, 367. Zeitschel was prompted to draw up
this plan by Theodor N. Kaufman’s book, which suggested the sterilization of all
Germans (see above, p. 266).
94. CDJC, V-15, in Klarsfeld, Vichy, 367–8. Zeitschel was absolutely certain, as a
further note on 14 September about the internment of Spanish Jews reveals
(CDJC, VI 126), that ‘in the end after the war all Jews are to be expelled from all
European states’, and hence no consideration was to be given ‘to any Jews of so-
called other nationality’.
95. Dienstkalender ed. Witte et al., 211–12. Zeitschel informed Dannecker, the Gesta-
po’s Jewish expert in Paris, about the content of the meeting on 8 October, CDJC,
V-16.
96. ADAP, series D, vol. 13,2. No. 327, 16 Sept. 1941.
97. See p. 269.
98. Dienstkalender, ed. Witte et al., 20 Oct. 1941, p. 241. For details see pp. 295 f.
99. CDJC, I-28, previously published in: Klarsfeld, Vichy, 369–70. Burrin, Hitler and the Jews, 145, interprets this memo as an authentic reflection of the ‘Führer’s order’ to
implement the final solution; the ‘deportation order’ was ‘also an annihilation
order’. In the interpretation of this memo, however, we must bear in mind that
the reason that Heydrich assumed responsibility for the attack and at the same time
invoked Hitler’s authority was because he wanted above all to protect the organizer
of the attack, the commander of the Security Police in France, Knochen, against
serious accusations from the military commander. On the synagogue attacks see also
Claudia Steuer, Theodor Dannecker. Ein Funktionär der Endlösung (Essen, 1997),
59 ff.
100. BAB, NS 19/1734; this statement was connected to Heydrich’s demand that there
should in future be no experts on Jewish questions working within the Eastern
Ministry.
101. PAA, Inland II g/194, 28 Oct. 1941, in: ADAP, series D, vol. 13, 570 ff.
102. IfZ, ED 53, the so called ‘Engel diary’, actually handwritten notes by Engel from the post-war period, presumably on the basis of contemporary notes, 2 Nov. 1941. In the
Engel edition, Hildegard von Kotze, ed., Heeresadjutant bei Hitler 1938–1943. Aufzeich-
nungen des Majors Engel (Stuttgart, 1974), 111, wrongly dated (2 Oct. 1941). A meeting
between Himmler and Hitler on 2 November 1941 is confirmed by the entry in
Himmler’s official diary. On the attacks in Salonica see Klein, ‘Rolle der Vernichtung-
slager’, 473.
103. Browning, Origins, 579. The original is in the Rijksinstitut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie in The Hague.
530
Notes to pages 277–278
15.
Autumn 1941: The Beginning of the Deportations and Regional
Mass Murders
1. There are various indications that the euthanasia action in summer 1941 occurred
under pressure of protests and according to plan, after the originally cited quota of
around 70,000 patients to be killed had been reached. The planned number, by now
raised to 130,000–150,000, then lowered again to around 100,000 victims (IMT xxxv.
906-D, pp. 681 ff., note from Sellmer about Blankenburg visit, 1 Oct. 1940) would
probably have been reached in quantitative terms if a similarly high percentage of
patients from mental institutions had been murdered throughout the whole of the T4
action as had occurred in the first few months of the systematic murders of patients in
south-west Germany, around Berlin, or in Austria. In fact, however, the number of
murdered patients fell the more the action spread into the regions. This was particu-
larly true of the provinces of Hanover, Rhineland, and Westphalia, which were only
involved in summer 1941. See Heinz Faulstich, Hungersterben in der Psychiatrie. 1914–
1949; mit einer Topographie der NS-Psychiatrie (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1998), 260 ff.
There is evidence to suggest that protests on the part of church circles increasingly
served to curb the euthanasia programme in 1941, and led the organizers to bring their
planned numbers back down to the original figure of 70,000 victims. Thus, for example
the governor (Landeshauptmann) of Westphalia, Karl Kolbow, in a note dated 31 July
1941, remarked that ‘the action in Westphalia is progressing briskly, and will be over in 2 to 3 weeks’ (facsimile in Karl Teppe, Massenmord auf dem Dienstweg. Hitlers
‘Euthansie’. Erlass und seine Durchführung in den Westfälischen Provinizalanstalten
(Münster, 1989), 21). (I am grateful to Peter Witte for important references in this
field.)
2. On the development of the euthanasia programme pp. 136–42; on the planned figures,
see IMT xxxv. 906-D, 681 ff., note from Sellmer about Blankenburg visit, 1 Oct. 1940;
Fröhlich, ed., Tagebücher Goebbels, I, x, 30 Jan. 1941. On the suspension of the euthanasia programme see Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: ‘Euthanasia’ in Germany
1900–1945 (Cambridge, 1994), 176 ff.; Henry Friedländer, The Origins of Nazi Genucide:
From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995) 111 ff.
3. Faulstich, Hungersterben, 260 ff., gives a clear picture of how the murder quotas rose in the individual regions and then fell again.
4. Note from 31 July 1941; facsimile in Teppe, Massenmord 21.
5. Fröhlich, Die Tagebücher, Teil II, Diktate 1941–1945, vol. i (Munich, 1996), 23 Aug. 1941, p. 299.
6. Walter Grode, Die ‘Sonderbehandlung 14f13’ in den Konzentrationslagern des Dritten
Reichs (Frankfurt a. M., 1997), 82–3; Ernst Klee, ‘Euthanasie’ im NS-Staat. Die Vernich-
tung lebensunwerten Lebens (Frankfurt a. M., 1985), 345.
7. Grode, ‘Sonderbehandlung’, 84 ff.
8. Ibid. 113 ff., also Friedlander, Origins, 143 ff.
9. Patricia Heberer, ‘Eine Kontinuität der Tötungsoperationen. T4-Täter und die “Aktion
Reinhard” ’, in Bogdan Musial, ed., ‘Aktion Reinhard’. Der Völkermord an den Juden un
Generalgouvernement 1941–1944 (Osnubrück, 2004), 285–308, 292, suggests that this may
Notes to pages 278–280
531
have concerned the killing of German soldiers who had suffered very serious and
irreversible injuries.
10. See Longerich, Davon, 159 ff.
11. This process was reconstructed from eyewitness accounts: Matthias Beer, ‘Die
Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden’, VfZ 35 (1987), 407; Staatsan-
waltschaft Munich, case against Karl Wolff (ZSt, ASA 137), 140 ff.; Dienstkalender,
ed. Witte et al., 15 Aug. 1941, p. 195. Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde. Die
deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 1941 bis 1944 (Ham-
burg, 1999), 647–8, presents some admittedly rather weak evidence to suggest that
preparations for the construction of the gas vans had already begun at the end of
July 1941.
12. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 648; PRO HW 16/32, 16 August and 18 August 1941.
13. Beer, ‘Entwicklung’, 408: A. Ebbinghaus and G. Preisler, ‘Die Ermordung psychisch
kranker Menschen in der Sowjetunion. Dokumentation’, in Götz Aly et al., eds,
Aussonderung und Tod. Die klinische Hinrichtung der Unbrauchbaren (Berlin, 1985),
83 ff. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 648, points out that the assignment given to Nebe may
not have come directly from Himmler, as Bach-Zelewski had claimed in a post-war
statement, but from himself.
14. Beer, ‘Entwicklung’, 408; Ebbinghaus and Preissler, ‘Die Ermordung’, 88 ff.; statement fromWidmann, 11 Jan. 1960, ZSt, 202 ARZ 152/159, 33 ff. Also statement from Georg
Frentzel, 27 Aug. 1970, and Alexander N. Stepanow (chief doctor at the psychiatric
institution in Mogilev), 20 July 1944, both in StA Munich, Zentraler Untersuchungs-
vorgang 9 (Ermittlungsakten des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit der DDR).
15. Beer, ‘Entwicklung’, 409 ff.; Aussage Widmann in ZSt, 202 AR-Z 152/59, pp. 33 ff., 11 Jan. 1960.
16. Beer, ‘Entwicklung’, 411.
17. Even before Christmas 1941 further vehicles were driven from Berlin to Einsatzgruppe A in Riga: Beer, ‘Entwickling’, 413. For SK 4a (Einsatzgruppe C) Beer, ‘Entwickling’, 412.
For EK 8 (Einsatzgruppe B): statement from Otto Matonoga, 8 June/9 June 1945 to
Soviet investigators (StA Munich, Zentraler Untersuchungsvorgang 9). In Einsatz-
gruppe D, according to a witness, a gas van was used at the end of 1941. Beer,
‘Entwickling’, 413; LG Munich, 119 c Js 1/69, Urteil; statement by Jeckeln of 21 Dec.
1945 in Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, ‘Die Einsatzgruppe A der Sicherheitspolizei und des
SD—Eine exemplarische Studie’, in Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm,
eds, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges. Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei
und des SD 1938–1942 (Stuttgart, 1981), 548.
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