Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 2: The Years of Extermination

by Saul Friedlander

  Molotov’s adamant stand reflected Stalin’s belief in the possibility of a German attack and thus in the necessity of a westward expansion of Soviet strategic defenses, particularly after the unforeseen collapse of France. Soviet determination could but confirm Hitler in his own decision to eliminate the Eastern colossus. On December 18, 1940, the Nazi leader signed directive no. 21 and changed the previous code name of the attack on the Soviet Union from Fritz to Barbarossa. The assault was to start on May 15, 1941.

  There was, in Berlin, another reason for acting rapidly. In November Roosevelt had been reelected for a third term. On December 14, in a press conference, the president used the garden hose metaphor: If a neighbor’s house is on fire, the man who owns a hose does not say: “My garden hose costs fifteen dollars and you must pay me this sum before you can have it.” He simply lends his hose, helps to put out the fire, and then takes the hose back. America, Roosevelt said, would in the future lend some nations the equipment they needed for defending their lives and their freedom.5 On December 17, on the eve of signing directive no. 21, Hitler told Gen. Alfred Jodl, deputy chief of staff of the OKW, that Germany should solve all continental problems in 1941, “because in 1942 the United States will be ready to intervene.”6 And, more than ever, in the Nazi leader’s view, the policy of the American president was dictated by the Jews.

  Unexpected events modified the schedule set for the eastern campaign. On March 27, 1941, two days after Yugoslavia had adhered to the Tripartite Pact, a military coup unseated the pro-German government in Belgrade. Hitler ordered immediate retaliation: Belgrade was bombed to rubble, and the Wehrmacht rolled south. Yugoslavia and Greece were occupied, Bulgaria joined the Axis, and the British forces that had landed in Greece were driven from the Continent and from the island of Crete. However, the attack against the Soviet Union had to be postponed by several weeks. The date now set was June 22, the longest day of the year.

  Murderous steps were planned against the Jews on Soviet territory during the preparatory stage of the campaign, yet these steps appear at first as additional ways of destroying Soviet resistance and accelerating the collapse of the Soviet system as a whole, in line with the Nazi identification of Bolshevism, its elites, and its structures with the omnipresence of Jews in power positions. Otherwise Hitler’s public declarations during the first half of 1941 do not indicate that the anti-Jewish dimension of the campaign was a goal in itself.

  In his annual Reichstag speech of January 30, 1941, the Nazi leader had returned to his dire prophecy of January 1939 regarding the ultimate fate of the Jews of Europe. But this time—whether the change of vocabulary was intentional or not—instead of explicitly mentioning extermination, he prophesied that the war would “put an end to Jewry’s role in Europe.”7 His words could have meant complete segregation, deportation—or indeed total extermination. In Hitler’s meetings with foreign statesmen or in speeches made throughout the last months of 1940 and during the military buildup period preceding June 22, 1941, his allusions to the Jews appeared to be rather perfunctory and generally remained very brief.

  Nonetheless, on March 3, 1941, Hitler sent back a first draft of the campaign guidelines prepared by the OKW, adding, among other points, that “the Jewish Bolshevik intelligentsia, as the oppressor of the past, had to be liquidated.”8 The gist of the Nazi leader’s notorious speech to his most senior generals, on March 30, was basically identical, but the Jews were not mentioned as such. “Struggle of two worldviews” [emphasis in original], Halder, the chief of staff of the army, summed up: “Devastating judgment about Bolshevism: Nothing else but asocial criminality. Communism, enormous danger for the future. We have to abandon the notion of soldiery camaraderie. The Communist is no comrade before [the battle] and no comrade afterward. This is a war of extermination. If we don’t consider it as such, we will achieve victory over the enemy now, but in thirty years the Communist enemy will again stand against us. We do not wage the war to spare the enemy…. The Bolshevik commissars and the Bolshevik intelligentsia have to be exterminated…. The struggle must be aimed at the poison of disintegration. It is not a matter for military courts. The officers must know what is at stake…. The soldiers must defend themselves with the means utilized to attack them…. The fighting will be very different from that in the West.”9

  Hitler’s address demonstrated to anyone who had been fooled by the 1939 treaty with the Soviet Union that his anti-Bolshevik fervor remained uncompromising. In its scale and ruthlessness, the forthcoming “war of extermination” represented, above and beyond its strategic goals, an ideological crusade and a “Volkstumskampf,” unprecedented in the annals of modern Europe. Moreover, for Hitler the destruction of Soviet power could not but mean the destruction of Jewish power; the struggle was one and the same.

  In 1923 Dietrich Eckart, Hitler’s ideological mentor in many ways, had stressed the inherent link between Bolshevism (in its various guises) and the Jews in a pamphlet titled “Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin: A Dialogue Between Hitler and Myself.”10 In Mein Kampf, in his “Second Book” (an untitled Hitler manuscript, written in the late 1920s and published only after the war), and in countless speeches, Hitler had rehashed the same theme: The Slav populations of the Soviet Union were an inferior mass that, before the revolution, had been led by a Germanic elite; Jewish Bolsheviks exterminated this traditional ruling class and became the masters of the huge country as a first stage on the road to world revolution and domination.11 For the Nazi leader the murder of the “Soviet intelligentsia” and of the political commissars meant the extermination of this Jewish ruling elite; without its grip the Soviet system would unravel and collapse.12

  Hitler’s anti-Bolshevik creed quite naturally merged, let us recall, with a no less cardinal theme inherited from pan-Germanism: the need for the Volk to control as vast an eastern Lebensraum (vital space) as racially and strategically necessary, possibly all the way to the Urals. The conquered space would be open to Germanic colonization and would supply the Reich with all the raw materials and food it needed. As for native populations, they would be enslaved, partly decimated, or deported into Siberia (this was the Volkstumskampf part of the campaign). With victory over the Soviet Union, huge eastern colonization projects could be launched.

  Hitler, as we saw, decided to change the code name of the campaign from Fritz (presumably referring to the king of Prussia, Frederick the Great) to Barbarossa (the common appellation of the twelfth-century Emperor Frederick I of the Hohenstaufen dynasty); the Nazi leader probably wished to evoke Barbarossa’s history and legend.13 The Hohenstaufen emperor had embarked on a crusade in the East against the infidels; and, over time, the Germans had turned Barbarossa into a mythic figure: He was the secret savior, asleep in the Kyffhäuser mountain range in Thuringia, who would arise at the time of his people’s greatest need and lead them to victory and redemption.

  Thus, the change of code name pointed to the quasi-mythic dimension of the forthcoming campaign in Hitler’s mind, and to his own saviorlike role at this dramatic juncture in the history of Germany. Why Hitler chose the name of an emperor whose crusade failed when he drowned in the Saleph River in Asia Minor is as mysterious as his predilection for Wagner’s opera Rienzi, telling the story of a late-medieval Roman tribune whose rebellion in the name of the people was crushed and who died a violent death in a fire set to his palace.

  On March 26, 1941, at Hitler’s command, Heydrich and the quartermaster general of the armed forces, Gen. Eduard Wagner, drafted an agreement (issued as an order by Keitel on April 28), granting the SS full autonomy for maintaining the security behind the front, in the newly occupied territories.14 On May 13 Keitel signed the order limiting the jurisdiction of military courts over means used by the troops in their fight against the enemy. The execution of suspects thereafter depended on decisions taken by units in the field.15 On May 19 the OKW chief issued guidelines regarding the behavior of the troops in Russia [sic] that ordered officers and soldiers to take “ruthless act
ion” against the carriers of Judeo-Bolshevik ideology.16 The Jews were twice mentioned in the guidelines as political targets of these “ruthless” measures; the instructions were distributed to divisional level on June 4 and to all units as the attack started.17 Finally, on June 6, “the guidelines for the treatment of political commissars” (the “commissar order”) were issued under the signature of General Alfred Jodl, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the OKW: The commissars were to be shot.18

  To these guidelines the army added high doses of propaganda that left nothing to the soldiers’ imagination. In the June 1941 issue of Mitteilungen für die Truppe (Information for the Troops), for example, the soldiers were told: “What the Bolsheviks are must be clear to anybody who ever set sight upon the face of a Red Commissar. Here no theoretical explanations are necessary anymore. To call beastly the traits of these people, a high percentage of whom are Jews, would be an insult to animals…. In these Commissars we see the uprising of subhumans against noble blood.”19 These Mitteilungen were produced by the propaganda section of the OKW; they were part of standard troop indoctrination in preparation for the war of extermination.20

  All the terror operations and the ideologically dictated tasks would be in the hands of Hitler’s chief party henchmen: Himmler, Göring, and, to a certain degree, Rosenberg. By granting the responsibility for the security of the occupied Soviet territories behind the front to the SS Reichsführer, Hitler was putting him in charge of the complete subjugation of the local populations, the struggle against ideological and partisanlike enemies, and the implementation of whatever decisions would be taken in regard to the Jews. But, as already indicated, not much is recorded about what Hitler may have eventually mentioned concerning specific anti-Jewish measures.

  The orders regarding the Jews that we know of were issued by Heydrich to the Einsatzgruppen during these same weeks, on two different occasions: at a meeting in Berlin with the unit commanders, probably on June 17, and at another meeting, shortly thereafter, in the small town of Pretzsch, the staging area of the Einsatzgruppen. Here again we do not know exactly what was said. For a long time it remained unclear whether Heydrich had given the order to exterminate the Jewish population of the USSR or whether the initial orders were more restrictive. As we shall see in the next chapter, Heydrich himself summed up the orders he had given to the Einsatzgruppen in a message of July 2 to the Höhere SS und Polizeiführer (Higher SS and Police leaders); further orders were directly conveyed to the SS units on July 17. These various instructions indeed seem to have targeted only specific categories of Jewish men, but they were also open-ended enough in their formulation to have allowed for a rapid expansion of the murder campaign.21

  Simultaneously, as preparations for the attack went ahead full force, a new “territorial plan” regarding the Jews surfaced as a potential outcome. In his address to the Gauleiter and Reichsleiter on December 10, 1940 (alluded to in the previous chapter), Himmler had remained vague about the final destination of the two million Jews who, according to him, would be evacuated from the General Government.22 In the meantime, however, Nazi plans in this regard had become more concrete. On March 26, 1941, Heydrich met with Göring (immediately after signing the agreement with Wagner): “In regard to the solution of the Jewish Question,” Heydrich noted on that same day, “I briefly reported to the Reichsmarschall [Göring] and submitted my proposal to him; he agreed after making a change regarding Rosenberg’s responsibilities and ordered its [the proposal’s] resubmission.”23

  By the end of March 1941 Rosenberg had already been chosen as “special adviser” for the occupied territories in the East. Thus, in view of Göring’s mention of Rosenberg, the RSHA chief ’s proposal was clearly related to Russia and meant the deportation of the Jews of Europe to the conquered Soviet territories, probably to the Russian Far North, instead of Madagascar. Rosenberg himself mentioned as much in a speech on March 28, in which he alluded to the deportation of the Jews of Europe “under police surveillance” to a territory outside Europe “that could not be mentioned for the time being.”24

  On June 20, two days before the attack, an entry in Goebbels’s diary confirmed these plans in a somewhat cryptic way. The propaganda minister reported a meeting with Hitler regarding the coming campaign, also attended by Hans Frank: “Dr. Franck [sic] tells about the General Government. One already rejoices there that the Jews will be packed off. Polish Jewry will gradually disintegrate [Das Judentum in Polen verkommt allmählich].” For Goebbels it was a just punishment for Jewish warmongering; the Führer had prophesied that this would be Jewry’s fate.25

  After the beginning of the campaign, Hitler repeatedly mentioned the new territorial plan.26 Yet beforehand, on June 2, 1941, during a meeting with Mussolini at the Brenner Pass, the Nazi leader, after excluding the possibility of a Lublin reservation (“they [the Jews] could not remain there for hygienic reasons, as, due to their dirtiness, they became a source of disease”) again mentioned Madagascar as a concrete option.27 It appears almost certain that Hitler was awaiting the completion of the eastern campaign before making a final decision. In the meantime emigration of Jews from the Reich was still allowed, but, on May 20, 1941, the RSHA, following an order from Göring, forbade any such emigration from Belgium and France “in view of the undoubtedly forthcoming final solution of the Jewish question.”28

  Rosenberg was Hitler’s candidate for heading the civilian administration of the newly conquered areas. In April and May the Reichsleiter produced a series of “plans” regarding the future of the eastern territories. In the latest of these outlines, on May 7, 1941, the chief ideologue stated that “after the customary removal of Jews from all public offices, the Jewish question will have to undergo a decisive solution through the institution of ghettos or labor battalions. Forced labor is to be introduced.”29

  The future minister for the occupied eastern territories may have believed for a while that as Hitler had decisively taken up the anti-Bolshevik policy he, Rosenberg, had preached from the earliest days of the party, he would now come into his own. However, the chief ideologue was underestimating Hitler’s craftiness or overestimating the Führer’s assessment of his own (Rosenberg’s) ability. In a letter to Martin Bormann, dated May 25, 1941, Himmler informed the Reichsleiter that before departing for his headquarters, Hitler had confirmed to him that, regarding his tasks, he would not be subordinated to Rosenberg. The SS chief added: “Working with or under Rosenberg was certainly the most difficult thing there was in the NSDAP.”30

  Himmler’s sarcastic comment to Bormann points to the tacit alliance between two masters of intrigue (who were both highly capable organizers) in their quest for ever greater power. Bormann had just been appointed head of the party chancellery, following Rudolf Hess’s flight to Scotland, and a Himmler-Bormann front could withstand any possible interference from state agencies or from the military. Both Himmler and Bormann were subservient only to one higher authority, that of Adolf Hitler.

  Apart from the authority of the military commanders over the future combat zones and the millions of men who would soon be moving eastward, that of the SS Reichsführer over his own SS and police units (including local auxiliary forces), and that of Rosenberg’s civilian administration, a fourth agency would come to play an essential role in the intricate and increasingly chaotic system established to dominate the conquered territories: Economic Staff East. Although subject to Göring’s supreme authority, the Economic Staff East was de facto headed by Gen. Georg Thomas, chief of the War Economy and Armaments Bureau (Wehrwirtschafts-und Rüstungsamt, or WiRüAmt), whose function would be the seizure and exploitation of Soviet war industries and raw materials. Strongly supported by Hitler, whose own strategic conception did put particular emphasis on the control of economic resources, Thomas planned his economic exploitation and looting campaign in cooperation with Quartermaster General Wagner and State Secretary Herbert Backe, the strongman in the Ministry for Food Supply.31 It was Backe who added the final touch to economic
planning of Barbarossa: the “hunger plans.”

  The hunger plans (drafted by Backe), intended to facilitate the food supply for the Ostheer (Eastern Army) and even for the German population, had been endorsed by Hitler and Göring as early as January 1941; they were then elaborated by the Wehrmacht from February 1941 on. These plans envisioned the possibility of starving the urban population of the western Soviet Union and the Ukraine, including first and foremost the Jews.32

  The mass starvation idea was also leisurely discussed among Himmler and his top lieutenants during the Reichsführer’s stay at his castle in Saxony, the Wewelsburg, between June 12 and 15.33 On this occasion Himmler hosted SS lieutenant generals Kurt Daluege, Bach (Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski), Karl Wolff, Heydrich, Rudolf Brandt, Werner Lorenz, Friedrich Jeckeln, Hans Adolf Prützmann, and probably also the writer Hanns Johst. In the evenings, they sat by the fireside (am Kamin gesessen) and, according to Bach’s Nuremberg testimony, the Reichsführer held forth about his vision of the future. The Russian campaign would determine Germany’s fate: a great power for all time or annihilation. A leader of Hitler’s stature appeared in history only once in a thousand years; the challenge had to be met by this generation. After the conquest of the European part of the Soviet Union, all the Jews of the Continent would be in German hands: They would be removed from Europe. As for the Slav population, it would have to be reduced by some twenty to thirty million people.34

  II

  While at the center of the regime, long-range anti-Jewish plans had not yet been finalized in the spring of 1941, more limited initiatives kept swirling. In January 1941 Heydrich again took up formerly stalled projects and informed Hans Frank that about one million Poles and Jews would have to be moved from the annexed territories into the General Government, in order to resettle ethnic Germans and vacate training areas for the Wehrmacht.35