Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 2: The Years of Extermination
Page 12
On June 11, 1940, the French cardinal Eugène Tisserant sent a letter from the Vatican, where he was residing, to his Paris colleague, Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard. Although the letter should be read in its 1940 context, as France was collapsing and the day after Mussolini’s joining the war, it had an uncannily wider significance: “Our governments [the democracies] refuse to understand the true nature of the conflict and persist in imagining that this is a war like the wars of times gone by. But Fascist ideology and Hitlerism have transformed the consciences of the young, and those under thirty-five are willing to commit any crime for any purpose ordered by their leader. Since the beginning of November, I have persistently requested the Holy See to issue an encyclical on the duty of the individual to obey the dictates of conscience, because this is the vital point of Christianity…. I fear that history may have reason to reproach the Holy See with having pursued a policy of convenience to itself and very little else. This is sad in the extreme, particularly when one has lived under Pius XI.”22
II
German occupation differed from country to country. While Denmark kept a semblance of freedom until the summer of 1943, Norway and Holland—although countries of “related racial stock”—were governed by Nazi Party appointees, Reichskommissare, who were both satraps and ideological envoys. Belgium and northern France (north of the Loire River and along the Atlantic coast) remained under the authority of the Wehrmacht, and two French departments along the Belgian border were put under the authority of the military command in Brussels. The central and southern parts of France, on the other hand, were granted a measure of autonomy under Marshal Pétain’s leadership, becoming “Vichy France.” Germany de facto annexed Luxembourg and the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. A southeastern part of France was occupied by the Italian army, as a reward for Mussolini.
Occupied Europe was dominated by a whole array of German agencies and appointees, independent of one another but fully subservient to the single central authority of the Führer. In a maze of institutional power attributions, no agency was solely in charge of the Jewish question either in 1940 or later. And, as in all domains since early 1938, state agencies were increasingly shunted aside to subordinate positions by the party and its organizations. The dominance of party old-timers (from Germany or former Austria) in all matters related to occupation or anti-Jewish policies was all-pervasive. Only the military, by dint of wartime circumstances, kept a somewhat undefined position. Whereas in Poland, as we saw, the Wehrmacht had been divested of its control over civilian matters soon after the end of the campaign, it nonetheless remained the dominant authority for imposing anti-Jewish measures in several occupied Western European countries. It would also actively participate in the oppression and mass killings in the occupied Soviet Union and the Balkans.
Otherwise, in territorial as well as in functional terms, the party and its organizations had almost all power in its hands. Hans Frank held sway in the General Government; Arthur Greiser in the Warthegau; Arthur Seyss-Inquart in Holland; Konstantin von Neurath (the only initial exception), then Reinhard Heydrich, and finally Hermann Frank in the Protectorate; Josef Terboven in Norway; later Hinrich Lohse in the “Ostland,” and Erich Koch in the Ukraine. All of them were party stalwarts. In functional terms Hermann Göring oversaw economic exploitation and expropriation, Fritz Sauckel and Albert Speer would handle foreign labor; Alfred Rosenberg looted art and cultural assets (he later would be in charge of the civilian administration of the “occupied eastern territories”); Joseph Goebbels, of course, orchestrated propaganda and its multiple ramifications; Joachim von Ribbentrop dealt with foreign governments, while Heinrich Himmler and his minions controlled population transfers and “colonization” as well as arrests, executions, deportations, and extermination.23
Throughout the Continent German domination could rely on a collaboration that was in part determined by “rational” calculations but often was also a willing or even an enthusiastic embrace of Germany’s supremacy on assorted ideological and power-political grounds. Such a collaboration involved national and regional agencies and institutions, auxiliaries of all hues, political support groups, and independent agents, ranging from politicians to civil servants, from intellectuals to police forces and railway administrations, from journalists to industrialists; from youth movements to peasant leagues, from clergy to universities, from organized to spontaneous killer gangs. And, as the war became fiercer and resistance movements more active, the dyed-in-the-wool collaborators turned more savage in their hunting down of Germany’s enemies and of Germany’s victims.
At the time of Hitler’s triumph in the West, the Nazi terror system controlled directly (or with the assistance of its satellites) around 250,000 to 280,000 Jews remaining in the Greater Reich, 90,000 in the Protectorate, 90,000 in Slovakia, 2.2 million in the German-occupied or -annexed parts of ex-Poland, 140,000 in Holland, 65,000 in Belgium, about 330,000 in both French zones, between 7,000 and 8,000 in Denmark, and 1,700 in Norway. Thus, at the beginning of the summer of 1940, a total population of almost 3,200,000 Jews was, to all intents and purposes, already caught in Hitler’s clutches.24
Among the Jews of Europe, Hitler’s new victories triggered a wave of fear. “On the Eiffel Tower, the swastika,” the Romanian Jewish writer Mihail Sebastian noted in his diary two days after the fall of Paris. “At Versailles, German sentries. At the Arc de Triomphe, the ‘Unknown Soldier’ with a German ‘guard of honor.’ But the terrible things are not the trophies or the acts of provocation: they could even arouse and maintain a will to survive among the French population. What scares me more is the ‘harmony’ operation that is about to follow. There will be newspapers, declarations and political parties that present Hitler as a friend and sincere protector of France. When that time comes, all the panic and all the resentments will find release in one long pogrom. Where can Poldy [Sebastian’s brother, who lived in Paris] be? What will he do? What will become of him? And what of us here?”25
In 1940 the thirty-three-year-old Sebastian was already a well-known novelist and playwright on the Romanian literary scene. He lived in Bucharest, in close touch with the local intellectual elite—some of whose members, such as E. M. Cioran and Mircea Eliade, were to achieve world fame in the postwar years—an elite massively drawn to fascism in a Romanian garb and to the most vulgar and violent anti-Semitism. Yet Sebastian, strangely enough, tried to find excuses and rationalizations for the behavior and insulting spewings of his former friends and, in fact, ongoing acquaintances. Whatever the peculiarity of Sebastian’s forgiveness, his diary offers a faithful portrait of a regime that was to impose Nazi-like measures and participate in mass murder, and of a society widely supporting it.26
In Warsaw, Czerniaków noted the rapidly changing situation without adding comments.27 While Ringelblum and Sierakowiak did not leave any notes for those months, Kaplan moved from wrath to despair and from despair to very short-lived hope. Wrath at Mussolini’s move, on June 11: “The second hooligan has dared, as well! Whether voluntarily or by compulsion it is difficult to say, but the fact remains that Benito Mussolini, the classic traitor, the Führer’s minion, the monkey-leader of the Italian nation, has gone to war against England and France.” The illusions about France were quickly waning, as the same entry indicated: “The French are fighting like lions with the last of their strength. But there is a limit to acts of valor, too. It is dubious that the military strength still remaining to France will suffice to resist the Nazi military might.”28 Then came the dreadful news of Paris’s fall and of the French demand for armistice: “Even the most extreme pessimists,” Kaplan noted on June 17, “among whom I include myself, never expected such terrible tidings.” The unavoidable question followed: “Will England keep fighting?”29 Kaplan was doubtful at first, then again, three days later, filled with intense hope: “The war is not over yet! England is continuing to fight, and even France will henceforth carry on her battle from the soil of her empire, her colonies in all parts of t
he world.” Thereupon Kaplan added an astute insight: “The Germans are, of course, the heroes of the war, but they require a short war; as they say in their language, a Blitzkrieg. They could not survive a long war. Time is their greatest enemy.”30
Once again, as it had during the previous months, catastrophe bred messianic dreams. “Some people see mystical proof of the imminent coming of salvation,” Kaplan noted on June 28, 1940: “This year is Tav-Shin [5700 in the Hebrew calendar]. It is known that the redemption of Israel will come at the end of the sixth millennium. Thus, according to this calculation, three hundred years are lacking. But that can be explained! Some of those who calculate the date of the Messianic age have already been disappointed. But this will not prevent people from finding more proofs, nor other people from believing them. They want the Messiah, and someone will yet come forth who will bring him.”31
After alluding to the despondence among Jews and the certainty of final victory “before the end of the summer” among the German populace, Klemperer noted an incident on July 7 that possibly showed the complex individual feelings of many a German toward the persecuted Jews in their midst: “Yesterday Frau Haeselbarth came to see us in the late morning, in black: her husband fallen near St. Quentin…. She brought me socks and shirts and briefs. ‘You need it, it’s of no use to me anymore.’ We really did accept the things. Sympathy? Very great…(but) limited to the woman. The husband whom I had not known, had first been a lawyer on his own account, and then for the Regional Farmers’ Association, in direct service of the Party therefore.”32
As with Jews everywhere, Klemperer’s mood switched from hope to despair and from despair to hope again with every bit of news, every rumor, even every chance remark. After England’s rejection of Hitler’s “peace offer,” there was widespread belief among Germans—and among many Jews—that England was doomed: “In the Jews’ House,” Klemperer noted on July 24, “I always play the role of the optimist. But I am not quite sure of my position at all. The language of the charlatan certainly [a reference to Hitler’s July 19 Reichstag speech], but so far every charlatanlike announcement has been realized. Even Natscheff [a friend] is now in very low spirits and says: ‘I cannot imagine how he can succeed—but so far he has succeeded with everything.’”33
In the same July 24 entry, Klemperer went on, significantly: “Peculiarity of the Jews’ House that each one of us wants to fathom the mood of the people and is dependent on the last remark picked from the barber or butcher, etc. (I am too!) Yesterday a philosophical piano tuner was here doing his job: It will last a long time, England is a world empire—even if there were to be a landing…immediately my heart felt lighter.”34
The most unexpected reaction to Hitler’s victories came from the Kleppers: They welcomed them: “We tell ourselves,” Jochen Klepper noted on July 4, 1940 (alluding to the opinion he shared with his wife, Hanni), “that for us, in our special situation, nothing could have been as dangerous, in fact as awful, as a lost war the outbreak of which was attributed to world Jewry. We would have had to pay for it. It may well be that we also won’t escape paying for a victorious war, but not so terribly.”35
III
Throughout 1940 the Nazi leader maintained the public restraint regarding the Jews that had already been noticeable since the beginning of the war. Although during the victory speech of July 19, 1940, the Jews were mentioned, it was only in terms of standard Nazi rhetoric: “Jewish capitalists” and “international Jewish world poison” were lumped together with the Freemasons, the armaments industrialists, the war profiteers, and the like.36 The same almost haphazard mention of the Jews among Germany’s enemies surfaced in the September 4 speech for the launching of the annual winter relief campaign, public collections for the poor at the onset of winter.37 And on December 10, in a speech to the workers of a Berlin munitions factory, Hitler again listed the enemies of the Reich, yet this time the Jews were nothing more than “this people which always believes that it can exterminate nations with the trumpets of Jericho.”38 In other words, at the height of his victory euphoria, in his repeated addresses to the German nation and to the world, Hitler put but minimal emphasis on the Jewish issue. The issue, however, was not forgotten.
On April 13 Hitler declared to Wiljam Hagelin, the Norwegian minister of commerce in the collaborationist government of Vidkun Quisling, that in Sweden the Jews were “taking a large part” in anti-German propaganda.39 On July 26 the Nazi leader tried to assuage Romanian fears about a collapse of their economy if the Jews were eliminated too rapidly by declaring to the newly appointed prime minister, Ion Gigurta, that “on the basis of numerous examples from the evolution in Germany, despite all talk to the contrary the Jews were proved to be absolutely dispensable.”40
Of course Hitler’s exhortations were not restricted to the sharing of theoretical insights about the role of Jews in the economy. On July 28 he and his foreign minister, Ribbentrop, met with the Slovaks in Salzburg. On the same day Ribbentrop imposed a reorganization of the Slovak government on President Jozef Tiso: Ferdinand Durčansky, who had been both minister of the interior and of foreign affairs, was replaced by two fanatically pro-Nazi politicians, Alexander Mach at the Interior Ministry and Vojtech Tuka at Foreign Affairs. Simultaneously a former SA leader, Manfred von Killinger, was appointed minister to Bratislava. Finally, SS Hauptsturmführer Dieter Wisliceny, one of Eichmann’s men at section IVB4 (and, earlier, in charge of the Jewish desk at the SD) became, on September 1, 1940, “the adviser on Jewish affairs” to the Slovak government.41
The conversation between Hitler, Tiso, Tuka, and Mach was most urbane: The Nazi leader recommended to his Slovak guests that they align their internal policies with those of the Reich; he explained that Germany was intent on building an economic bloc that would be “independent of international Jewish swindle.” Later Hitler imparted to the Slovaks that there were forces in Europe that would try to prevent the cooperation between their two countries (Jews, Freemasons, and similar elements), to which Tiso agreed, adding his own comments about Jews, Magyars, and Czechs.42
During these same months the Nazi leader prohibited the use of individual Jews as laborers in German territories or even among German workers.43 At the same time, though, as Himmler was busying himself with resettlement plans, Hitler acquiesced to his henchman’s memorandum of May 27, 1940, “Some Thoughts on the Treatment of the Alien Populations in the East.” The “ethnic mush” under German control would be deported to the General Government and the Jews—worse in Himmler’s eyes than just “ethnic mush”—would be shipped off to some colony “in Africa or elsewhere.” According to the SS Reichsführer, physical extermination, a “Bolshevik method,” would be “un-German.”44
Thus, on the face of it, Hitler accepted Himmler’s ideas, and in several meetings during the second half of June, he backed the project to ship the Jews of Europe to some African colony. To his own ambassador to Paris, Otto Abetz, he disclosed, on August 3, “that he intended to evacuate all Jews from Europe after the war.”45 The island of Madagascar, which belonged to defeated France, seemed an obvious destination; such a deportation had for decades been a pet plan of anti-Semites of all hues.46
Mussolini had apparently received the happy tidings from the master of the Reich himself during their discussion of the armistice with France.47 A few months later, on November 20, the Hungarian prime minister shared the same privilege;48 this somewhat belated announcement—and even some later ones—show that Hitler used the Madagascar idea as a vague metaphor for the expulsion of the Jews of Europe from the Continent.
For a short while preparations moved into high gear both at the Wilhelmstrasse and at the RSHA, at least on paper.49 One of the main “planners” at “Department Germany” (Abteilung Deutschland) was the fanatical anti-Semite Franz Rademacher, second-in-command to Martin Luther (in charge of Jewish affairs). One sentence in Rademacher’s lengthy memorandum of July 3 should be kept in mind: “The Jews [in Madagascar] will remain in German hands as
a pledge for the future good conduct of the members of their race in America.”50
At the beginning of July, Eichmann informed delegates of the Reichsvereinigung and of the Vienna and Prague Jewish communities that the transfer of some four million Jews to an unspecified country was envisioned.51 In Warsaw it was Gestapo sergeant Gerhard Mende who passed on the good news to Czerniaków: “Mende,” Czerniaków noted in his diary on July 1, “declared that the war would be over in a month and that we would all leave for Madagascar. In this way the Zionist dream is to come true.”52
On July 12 Frank had conveyed the news to the heads of his administration: The entire “Jewish tribe” would soon be on its way to Madagascar.53 A few days later, in an address in Lublin, the governor-general even showed some unexpected talents as an entertainer when he described how the Jews would be transported “piece by piece, man by man, woman by woman, girl by girl.” The audience roared with laughter.54 And as the governor also had a practical side, he ordered all ghetto construction in his kingdom to be stopped.55 Greiser had been skeptical from the outset: He doubted that the Jews could be evacuated before the onset of the winter, and for him their transfer from the Warthegau to the General Government was the only immediate and concrete option.56 Greiser and Frank met in Kraków at the end of July to find a compromise, but to no avail.57