The Third Reich at War

by Richard J. Evans

  222 . Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 538-45. The importance of the food question was first highlighted in Christian Gerlach’s Krieg, Ern̈hrung, V̈lkermord: Forschungen zur deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburg, 1998).

  223 . Berenstein et al. (eds.), Faschismus, 303.

  224 . Longerich, Der ungeschriebene Befehl, 168.

  225 . Domarus (ed.), Hitler, IV. 1,920 (30 September 1942); on this occasion Hitler used the word Ausrottung rather than the usual Vernichtung.

  226 Cited in Friedl̈nder, The Years of Extermination, 403.

  227 . Quoted in Herf, The Jewish Enemy, 169.

  228 . Domarus (ed.), Hitler IV. 1,937 (8 November 1942).

  229 Helmut Heiber, Goebbels-Reden (2 vols., D̈sseldorf, 1971-2). The version quoted in Jeremy Noakes (ed.), Nazism 1919-1945, IV: The German Home Front in World War II: A Documentary Reader (Exeter, 1998), 490-91, from the BBC radio monitoring service records shouts of ‘Out with the Jews’ from the audience after the last sentence.

  230 . Domarus (ed.), Hitler, IV. 1,991 (24 February 1943) and 2,001 (21 March 1943).

  231 Frohlich (ed.), Die Tageb̈cher II/VIII. 287-90 (13 May 1943); see also Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London, 1967).

  232 . Quoted in Noakes (ed.), Nazism, IV. 497.

  233 Herf, The Jewish Enemy, 281-7.

  234 . This is the thesis of Herf, ibid. See also ibid., 183-230, for a survey of antisemitic propaganda in 1943.

  235 Quoted in Longerich, Der ungeschriebene Befehl, 181-2.

  236 Arad, Belzec, 14-16.

  237 Ibid., 16-22.

  238 Gilbert, The Holocaust, 817; Arad, Belzec, 23-9, 68-74.

  239 . Klukowski, Diary, 191 (8 April 1942); the reference to electricity was clearly based on false information.

  240 Ibid., 192 (12-13 April 1942).

  241 Ibid., 195-6 (8 May 1942).

  242 . Ibid., 197 (9 May 1942).

  243 . Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience (London, 1977 [1974]), 111-12.

  244 Ibid., 21-55.

  245 Arad, Belzec, 126-7.

  246 Ibid., 30-37, 75-80.

  247 Ibid., 30-36, 49-53, 75-80, 128-30, 171-3.

  248 Michael MacQueen, ‘The Conversion of Looted Jewish Assets to Run the German War Machine’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 18 (2004), 27-45; Bertrand Perz and Thomas Sandk̈hler, ‘Auschwitz und die “Aktion Reinhard” 1942-1945: Judenmord und Raubpraxis in neuer Sicht’, Zeitgeschichte, 26 (2000), 283-316.

  249 Friedl̈nder, The Years of Extermination, 498-9.

  250 Berenstein et al. (eds.), Faschismus, 412-21.

  251 Arad, Belzec, 165-9, 171, 306-41, 373-5.

  252 Ibid., 37-43.

  253 Ibid., 81-94; Sereny, Into that Darkness, 200-207.

  254 Ibid., 200-207, 358; Arad, Belzec, 89-99.

  255 Ibid., 196-7.

  256 . Ibid., 101.

  257 Ibid., 270-98; Sereny, Into that Darkness, 236-49.

  258 Sereny, Into that Darkness, 248-9.

  259 Arad, Belzec, 365-9.

  260 Ibid., 170-78, 372-6; Sereny, Into that Darkness, 249-50.

  261 Arad, Belzec, 379-80.

  262 . Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas, ‘A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during “Einsatz Reinhard” 1942’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 15 (2001), 468-86.

  263 Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (Oxford, 1986 [1982]), 135-9. According to Eichmann during his later interrogation, the abridged report, when returned to his office, bore a note from Himmler: ‘Leader has taken note, destroy, H.H.’.

  264 . Arad, Belzec, 379.

  265 . Sybille Steinbacher, Auschwitz: A History (London, 2005 [2004]), 5-27; Ḧss, Commandant of Auschwitz, 116-19; Nilli Keren, ‘The Family Camp’, in Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (eds.), Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp (Bloomington, Ind., 1994), 428-40. For a graphic memoir written by one of these prisoners, see Wieslaw Kielar, Anus Mundi: Five Years in Auschwitz (London, 1982 [1972]).

  266 . Ḧss, Commandant of Auschwitz, 231.

  267 . Ibid., 134-9; Steinbacher, Auschwitz, 89-91.

  268 . Tomasz Kranz, ‘Das KL Lublin zwischen Planung und Realisierung’, in Herbert et al. (eds.), Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, I. 363-89.

  269 Longerich, Der ungeschriebene Befehl, 124-5; Steinbacher, Auschwitz, 77.

  270 . Longerich, Politik, 444 (and 704 n. 114, for the disputed timing of these experiments).

  271 Friedl̈nder, The Years of Extermination, 236, 717 n. 147; Ḧss, Commandant of Auschwitz, 164.

  272 Longerich, Der ungeschriebene Befehl, 124; Steinbacher, Auschwitz, 87-9.

  273 Ḧss, Commandant of Auschwitz, 169.

  274 Ḧss, Commandant of Auschwitz, 169.

  275 Ibid., 166-7.

  276 . Longerich, Der ungeschriebene Befehl, 124-5; Jamie McCarthy et al., ‘The Ruins of the Gas Chambers: A Forensic Investigation of Crematoriums at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 18 (2004), 68-103. Michael Thad Allen, ‘Not Just a “Dating Game”: Origins of the Holocaust at Auschwitz in the Light of Witness Testimony’, German History, 25 (2007), 162-91, argues persuasively that Crematorium II was designed from the start as a gas chamber in accordance with directives from Himmler in Berlin, criticizing arguments that the crematoria were only converted to gas chambers at a later date: see Robert Jan Van Pelt, ‘A Site in Search of a Mission’, in Gutman and Berenbaum (eds.), Anatomy, 93-156; and Sybille Steinbacher, ‘Musterstadt’ Auschwitz: Germanisierungspolitik und Judenmord in Ostoberschlesien (Munich, 2000), 78.

  277 Steinbacher, Auschwitz, 96-105.

  278 Ibid., 119-21.

  279 Ibid., 105-7; Ḧss, Commandant of Auschwitz, 211, 235.

  280 . Steinbacher, Auschwitz, 107.

  281 Miroslav K’rny et al. (eds.), Theresienstadt in der ‘Endl̈sung der Judenfrage’ (Prague, 1992).

  282 Steinbacher, Auschwitz, 108-9; Friedl̈nder, The Years of Extermination, 354.

  283 . Ibid., 620; Steinbacher, Auschwitz, 108.

  284 Ibid., 40-44; eadem, ‘Musterstadt’ Auschwitz, 247.

  285 Steinbacher, Auschwitz, 132-5.

  286 Ḧss, Commandant of Auschwitz, 173.

  287 . Ibid., 172.

  288 . Ibid., 145.

  289 . Ibid., 172.

  290 . Ibid., 174.

  291 Ibid., 175-6.

  292 . Czerniakow, The Warsaw Diary, 300 (19 November 1941), 341 (8-10 April 1942), 355 (18 May 1942), 366 (14 June 1942), 376-7 (8 July 1942).

  293 . Ibid., 384-5 (21-3 July 1942); Kermish, ‘Introduction’, in ibid., 23-4. Czerniakow’s diary was preserved by unknown hands and came to light in 1959. There is an atmospheric account of the crucial meeting on 22 July 1942 in Marcel Reich-Ranicki, The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki (London, 2001 [1999]), 164-6. See also Wolfgang Scheffler, ‘The Forgotten Part of the “Final Solution”: The Liquidation of the Ghettos’, Simon Wiesenthal Centre Annual, 2 (1985), 31-51.

  294 . Hosenfeld, ‘Ich versuche’, 628 (letter to wife, 23 July 1942). Hosenfeld’s position in the military administration seems to have protected his letters from the attentions of the censor, though such an unqualified expression of criticism was still potentially very dangerous.

  295 . Ibid., 630 (diary, 25 July 1942).

  296 . Ibid., 642 (letter to son, 18 August 1942).

  297 . Klukowski, Diary, 208 (4 August 1942).

  298 . Kaplan, Scroll, Introduction and 271 (16 June 1942), 279-80 (25-6 June 1942); Gilbert, The Holocaust, 462; Corni, Hitler’s Ghettos, 279. See also Jerzy Lewinski, ‘The Death of Adam Czerniakow and Janusz Korcak’s Last Journey’, Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, 7 (1992), 224-53.

  299 Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 270-72.

  300 Ringelblum, Notes, 310-11, also quoted in Corni, Hitler’s Ghettos, 279.

  301 Ibid., 293-315, 320-21; Hosenfeld, ‘I
ch versuche’, 631 (diary, 25 July 1942).

  302 . Yisrael Gutman, Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Boston, Mass., 1994); Shmuel Krakowski, The War of the Doomed: Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland, 1942- 1944 (New York, 1984); Reuben Ainsztein, Revolte gegen die Vernichtung: Der Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto (Berlin, 1993).

  303 J̈rgen Stroop, The Stroop Report: The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw Is No More! (London, 1980 [1960]), 9.

  304 Corni, Hitler’s Ghettos, 315-21.

  305 . Hosenfeld, ‘Ich versuche’, 719 (diary, 16 June 1943).

  306 Reich-Ranicki, The Author of Himself, 176-92.

  307 . Joseph Kermish, ‘Introduction’, in Ringelblum, Polish-Jewish Relations, vii-xxxi, at xxiii-xvi, and Ringelblum, Notes, ix-xxvii.

  308 . Weiss, ‘Jewish Leadership’.

  309 Friedl̈nder, The Years of Extermination, 557.

  310 . Sierakowiak, The Diary, 77-90 (6 April-15 May 1941), 91-2 (16 May 1941), 133 (28 September 1941), 137-43 (4-23 October 1941).

  311 Corni, Hitler’s Ghettos, 280-81; Friedl̈nder, The Years of Extermination, 314-15, 387-9; Avraham Barkai, ‘Between East and West: Jews from Germany in the Lodz Ghetto’, in Michael R. Marrus (ed.), The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews (Westport, Conn., 1989), 378-439.

  312 . Dobroszycki (ed.), The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto, 163 - 5.

  313 Sierakowiak, The Diary, 173 (25 May 1942), 238 (11 December 1942), 267-8 (14- 15 April 1942); Corni, Hitler’s Ghettos, 282-3.

  314 Friedl̈nder, The Years of Extermination, 531.

  315 Ibid., 529-30; Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides (eds.), L’d’ Ghetto: Inside a Community under Siege (New York, 1989), 328-31; Bernhard Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front: Besatzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weissrussland 1941-1944 (D̈sseldorf, 1998).

  316 Corni, Hitler’s Ghettos, 309-10.

  317 . Yitzhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust (Jerusalem, 1980).

  318 . Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust (New York, 1980), 294-321.

  319 Corni, Hitler’s Ghettos, 283-4.

  320 . Antony Polonsky, ‘Beyond Condemnation, Apologetics and Apologies: On the Complexity of Polish Behaviour Towards the Jews during the Second World War’, in Roger Bullen, Hartmut Pogge Von Strandmann and Antony Polonsky (eds.), Ideas into Politics: Aspects of European History 1880 to 1950 (London, 1984), 123-43, at 194.

  321 Hosenfeld, ‘Ich versuche’, 657-8 (diary, 1 September 1942).

  322 . Wolfram Wette, ‘ “Rassenfeind”: Antisemitismus und Antislawismus in der Wehrmachtspropaganda’, in Manoschek (ed.), Die Wehrmacht im Rassenkrieg, 55-73.

  323 . Manoschek, ‘Es gibt nur eines’, 65 (Fw. E. E., 18 December 1942).

  324 Ibid., 57 (Am. D. S., 17 May 1942).

  325 Hans Safrian, ‘Komplizen des Genozids: Zum Anteil der Heeresgruppe S̈d an der Verfolgung und Ermordung der Juden in der Ukraine 1941’, in Manoschek (ed.), Die Wehrmacht im Rassenkrieg, 90-115; Andrej Angrick, ‘Zur Rolle der Miliẗrverwaltung bei der Ermordung der sowjetischen Juden’, in Babette Quinkert (ed.), ‘Wir sind die Herren dieses Landes’: Ursachen, Verlauf und Folgen des deutschen ̈berfalls auf die Sowjetunion (Hamburg, 2002), 104-23.

  326 Ḧrter, Hitlers Heerf̈hrer, 509-99, explores the mixture of utilitarian and ideological motives that led the senior army commanders on the Eastern Front to tolerate, encourage or lend logistical support to the mass murder of the Jewish population of the area.

  327 . Hosenfeld, ‘Ich versuche’, 719 (diary, 16 June 1943).

  Chapter 4. THE NEW ORDER

  1 . Richard Overy, ‘Rationalization and the “Production Miracle” in Germany during the Second World War’, in idem, War and Economy in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1994), 343-75 (quotes on 353-4).

  2 Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 271-9; Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 508-9.

  3 . Speer’s account corrected in Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (London, 1995), 274-83; Max M̈ller, ‘Der Tod des Reichsministers Dr Fritz Todt’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 18 (1967), 602-5; discussion in Kershaw, Hitler, II. 502-3.

  4 Karl-Heinz Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure im Dritten Reich (D̈sseldorf, 1974), 403-72, and M̈ller, ‘The Mobilization’, 453-85.

  5 Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 261-5, 275-7, 291; Sereny, Albert Speer, 291-2.

  6 M̈ller, ‘The Mobilization’, 773-86.

  7 Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 183-6; Alan S. Milward, The German Economy at War (London, 1985), 72-99.

  8 See Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 183-6.

  9 Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 262-3.

  10 Quoted in Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 506-7.

  11 . Halder, Kriegstagebuch, III. 309 (24 November 1941).

  12 . Budrass, Flugzeugindustrie, 724. A contributory factor may have been office intrigues against his position.

  13 Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 123-4, 508.

  14 Ibid., 587-9; Overy, ‘Rationalization’, 356, 343-9.

  15 . Walter Naasner, Neue Machtzentren in der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft 1942-1945 (Boppard, 1994), 471-2.

  16 . Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 280.

  17 Ibid., 282-5.

  18 . Paul B. Jaskot, The Architecture of Oppression: The SS, Forced Labor, and the Nazi Monumental Building Economy (London, 2000), 80-113.

  19 . Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 287-300 (quote on 295-6); Milward, The German Economy at War, 54-71 (for Todt’s achievements).

  20 Overy, War and Economy, 356-70.

  21 Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 568-74.

  22 Ibid., 578-84.

  23 Overy, War and Economy, 356-67.

  24 . Weinberg, A World at Arms, 538.

  25 Mark Harrison (ed.), The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison (Cambridge, 1998), 26.

  26 . Edward R. Zilbert, Albert Speer and the Nazi Ministry of Arms: Economic Institutions and Industrial Production in the German War Economy (London, 1981), esp. 184-257; Budrass, Flugzeugindustrie, 738-9, 891.

  27 Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 587-9; Mark Harrison, Accounting for War: Soviet Production, Employment and the Defence Burden, 1940-1945 (Cambridge, 1996); and John Barber and Mark Harrison, The Soviet Home Front, 1941-1945: A Social and Economic History of the USSR in World War II (London, 1991).

  28 Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 407; M̈ller, ‘The Mobilization’, 723; Boog, ‘The Strategic Air War’, 118.

  29 Rolf-Dieter M̈ller, ‘Albert Speer and Armaments Policy in Total War’, GSWW V/II, 293-832, at 805.

  30 . Harrison (ed.), The Economics of World War II, 20-21.

  31 . Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 383-5; Alan S. Milward, The New Order and the French Economy (Oxford, 1984), 81.

  32 . Many further examples in G̈tz Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State (New York, 2007 [2005]); also Elmsḧuser and Lokers (eds.), ‘Man muss hier nur hart sein’, 55, 62, 63, 68 etc.

  33 . Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919-1945, III: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination: A Documentary Reader (Exeter, 1988), 295; Alan S. Milward, War, Economy and Society 1939-1945 (London, 1987 [1977]), 137.

  34 . Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 386-8; Overy et al. (eds.), Die ‘Neuordnung’ Europas.

  35 Milward, War, Economy and Society, 139-41.

  36 . Milward, The New Order and the French Economy, 111.

  37 . Harrison (ed.), The Economics of World War II, 22.

  38 Milward, War, Economy and Society, 138-45.

  39 . Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 389-91; Noakes and Pridham (eds.), Nazism, III. 297-8.

  40 . Harald Wixforth, Die Expansion der Dresdner Bank in Europa (Munich, 2006), 871-902.

  41 Noakes and Pridham (eds.), Nazism, III. 274-80, at 280.

  42 . Alan Milward, The Fascist Economy in Norway (Oxford, 1972), 1, 3; idem, War, Economy and Society, 153-7; Ludo
lf Herbst, Der totale Krieg und die Ordnung der Wirtschaft: Die Kriegswirtschaft im Spannungfeld von Politik, Ideologie und Propaganda 1939-1945 (Stuttgart, 1982), 127-44.

  43 Noakes and Pridham (eds.), Nazism, III. 283-4.

  44 . Ibid., 286.

  45 Milward, The New Order and the French Economy, 23-8.

  46 Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 391-3.

  47 Milward, The New Order and the French Economy, 147-80.

  48 . Noakes and Pridham (eds.), Nazism, III. 290.

  49 . Ibid., 292.

  50 . Ibid., 292.

  51 . Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 409-10; Milward, The New Order and the French Economy, 293-4.

  52 Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 411-12.

  53 Ibid., 418-19; Noakes and Pridham (eds.), Nazism, III. 298.

  54 Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 412-18.

  55 Noakes and Pridham (eds.), Nazism, III. 304-9.

  56 . Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism 1933- 1944 (New York, 1944 [1942]), 293.

  57 . Harold James, The Deutsche Bank and the Nazi Economic War against the Jews: The Expropriation of Jewish-Owned Property (Cambridge, 2001), 213-14.

  58 Walter Naasner, SS-Wirtschaft und SS-Verwaltung (D̈sseldorf, 1998), 164-7; Michael Thad Allen, The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2002), 58-71, 107-12.

  59 . Naasner, Neue Machtzentren, 197-44; Georg Enno, Die wirtschaftlichen Unternehmungen der SS (Stuttgart, 1963), 70-71, 145.

  60 . Jan Erik Schulte, Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung: Das Wirtschaftsimperium der SS: Oswald Pohl und das SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt 1933-1945 (Paderborn, 2001), 440-41.

  61 . Berenice A. Carroll, Design for Total War: Arms and Economics in the Third Reich (The Hague, 1968), 233.

  62 . Paul Erker, Industrie-Eliten in der NS-Zeit: Anpassungsbereitschaft und Eigeninteresse von Unternehmen in der R̈stungs- und Kriegswirtschaft 1936-1945 (Passau, 1993), 73-5.

  63 . Johannes B̈hr, Die Dresdner Bank in der Wirtschaft des Dritten Reichs (Munich, 2006), 477-570.

  64 . Peter Hayes, From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich (Cambridge, 2004), 190-91.

  65 . See Jonathan Steinberg, The Deutsche Bank and its Gold Transactions during the Second World War (Munich, 1999).