This masterpiece of German logic was preached throughout the length and breadth of Germany from the moment of Hitler’s accession to power. The Jews were to be regarded as foreigners and have no rights of German citizenship. It was used by the Nazis as one of the means of implementing their master-race policy.
The first organized act was the boycott of Jewish enterprises in April 1933, and thereafter a series of laws was passed which in effect removed Jews from every department of public life, from the civil service, from the professions, from education, and from the services.
The spearhead of this anti-semitic attack was ‘Jew-baiter Number One’, as Julius Streicher styled himself, whose duty it was to fan the Germans’ post-war dislike of Jews into a burning hatred and to incite them to the persecution and extermination of the Jewish race. Having due regard to the statistics available Streicher may truthfully be said to have aided and abetted more than 5,000,000 murders.
He was an obvious choice for the post for he had been Jew-baiting since before 1922 when he first published Der Stürmer,1 a weekly anti-Semitic journal. In 1933 he founded a daily paper with the same policy, the Fränkische Tageszeilung. In those early days he had said: ‘We know that Germany will be free when the Jew has been excluded from the life of the German people.’
The lengths to which Streicher went to put this propaganda over must be seen to be believed and here are a few specimens.
‘The Chosen People of the Criminals’, was an article in his own paper.
The history book of the Jews, which is usually called the Holy Scriptures, impresses us as a horrible criminal romance which makes the shilling shockers of the British Jew, Edgar Wallace, grow pale with envy. The ‘holy’ book abounds in murder, incest, fraud, theft and indecency.
In June 1937 when the airship Hindenburg caught fire, Streicher published a photograph of the burning hull with the following caption:
The first radio picture from the United States of America shows quite clearly that a Jew stands behind the explosion of our airship Hindenburg. Nature has depicted quite clearly and correctly that devil in human guise.2
There was also that fantastic nonsense about what the Germans called ‘race pollution’.
It is established for all time: ‘alien albumen’ is the sperm of a man of alien race. The male sperm in cohabitation is partially or completely absorbed by the female and thus enters her bloodstream. One single cohabitation of a Jew with an Aryan woman is sufficient to poison her blood forever. Together with the ‘alien albumen’ she has absorbed the alien soul. Never again will she be able to bear purely Aryan children … they will all be bastards…. Now we know why the Jew uses every artifice of seduction in order to ravish German girls at as early an age as possible, why the Jewish doctor rapes his female patients while they are under anæsthetics.
It is hard to credit the fact that the above appeared in a semi-medical journal called German People’s Health, but less difficult when it is known that Streicher was its editor.
Contemporaneously there appeared in Der Stürmer a picture depicting the upper part of a girl’s body being strangled by the arms of a man, with his hands around her neck, and the shadow of the man’s face is shown against the background with obviously Jewish features. The caption of the picture was: ‘Castration for Race Polluters. Only heavy penalties will preserve our womenfolk from a tighter grip from loathsome Jewish claws.’
Even the young were fed with these dangerous doctrines. These are extracts from a short story which appeared in a book for children called ‘Poisonous Fingers’:
Inge sits in the reception room of the Jewish doctor. She has to wait a long time … she glances through the papers on the table but is too nervous to read: she remembers what her mother has told her and again and again her mind reflects on the warnings of her leader of the League of German Girls. A German girl must not consult a Jew doctor. Many a girl who went to a Jewish doctor to be cured has met with disease and disgrace. Inge has now been waiting for over an hour. Again she picks up the papers in an endeavour to read. Then the door opens. The Jew appears. She screams. In terror she drops the paper. Horrified she jumps up. Her eyes stare into the face of the doctor, and his face is the face of the Devil. In the middle of the Devil’s face is a huge crooked nose. Behind the spectacles gleam two criminal eyes. Around the thick lips plays a grin that means, ‘Now I have you at last, you little German Girl!’
And then the Jew approaches her. His fat fingers clutch at her. But now Inge has got hold of herself. Before the Jew can grab her she smacks his fat face with her hand. One jump to the door. Breathlessly she runs down the stairs and escapes from the Jew’s house.
Poisonous fingers? Poisonous fiddlesticks! It may indeed be wondered how anyone could even read such absurdities, but they did: and the poison spread, as it was meant to, throughout the whole nation until they were willing and ready to support their leaders in the policy of mass extermination upon which they had embarked.
By 1938 pogroms were commonplace, synagogues were burned down, Jewish shops looted. Collective fines were levied, Jewish assets seized by the State and even the movement of Jews subjected to regulations. Ghettos were reestablished and Jews forced to wear the yellow star on their clothing.
And a few months before the outbreak of war this menacing German Foreign Office circular must have clearly pointed out the course of future events to all but those who did not wish to see it.
It is certainly no coincidence that the fateful year of 1938 has brought nearer the solution of the Jewish question simultaneously with the realization of the idea of Greater Germany…. The advance made by Jewish influence and the destructive Jewish spirit in politics, economy and culture; paralysed the power and the will of the German people to rise again. The healing of this sickness among the people was therefore certainly one of the most important requirements for exerting the force which, in the year 1938, resulted in the joining together of Greater Germany in defiance of the world.
The persecution of Jews in the countries invaded by Germany far transcended anything that had come before, for the Nazi plan of Jewish extermination was not to be confined to the Reich. Its only boundary was the limit of opportunity, and as the flood of German conquest rushed ever forward into other lands, so more and more Jews became engulfed in its cruel waters.
The persecution and murder of Jews throughout the conquered territories of Europe from 1939 onwards clearly violated Article 46 of the Regulations of the Hague Convention of 1907 to which Germany was a signatory: ‘Family honour and rights, the lives of persons, private property, as well as religious convictions and practices must be respected.’
Steps were taken immediately the Germans had successfully completed the invasion of a foreign country, or had occupied a considerable part of it, to put into force the requirements and restrictions which were already applicable to Jews in the Reich. By January 1941 the registration of Jews had been enforced by decree in Poland, France, and Holland
The next manoeuvre was to segregate all Jews into ghettos. Rosenberg’s suggestions for handling the Jewish question in the Eastern territories stated that all rights of freedom for Jews would be withdrawn and they would be placed in ghettos and separated according to sexes. Every care was also taken to ensure that there should be no further intermingling of the blood of Jews with that of other people.
The official organ of the SS which was called Das Schwarze Korps1 wrote in 1940: Just as the Jewish question will be solved in Germany only when the last Jew has gone: so the rest of Europe must realize that the German peace which awaits it must be a peace without Jews.’
The question brooked no delay and was regarded by all Gauleiters as of the utmost priority. Indeed Hans Frank, then Governor-General of Poland made this apologetic note in his diary: ‘I could not, of course, eliminate all lice nor all Jews in only a year, but in the course of time this end will be attained.’
One of the largest ghettos was in Warsaw. It was inhabited by 400,000 Jews. An
idea of the conditions in which these Jews lived can be gathered from the fact that at least six lived in every room.
In April 1943 the liquidation of this ghetto was begun and SS Major-General Stroop was able to report to his superiors on 16th May that the Warsaw ghetto was no more. On the title page of his report of this ‘Grossaktion’, or major operation, was inscribed in decorative Gothic lettering, the words, ‘There are no more Jewish dwellings in Warsaw.’
Stroop’s report was a fine example of the bookbinders’ art, ornately bound in leather and typed on superior superfine paper. Was not its theme worthy of so luxurious a presentation: the extermination of several thousand defenceless Jewish men, women, and children and the destruction of their homes?
Some seventy-five pages in length, the report gives a day-to-day account of the action. The following are extracts from it.
The resistance put up by the Jews could be broken only by the relentless and energetic use of our shock troops by day and night…. I therefore decided to destroy the entire Jewish residential area by setting every block on fire…. The Jews then emerged from their hiding places and dugouts. Not infrequently the Jews stayed in the burning buildings until finally, through the heat and fear of being burned alive, they preferred to jump down from the upper stories after having thrown mattresses and other upholstered articles into the street. With their bones broken they still tried to crawl across the street into buildings which were not yet alight…. They even took to the sewers, but after the first week their stay there ceased to be pleasant. Men of the Waffen-SS or the Wehrmacht Engineers courageously climbed down the manholes to bring out the Jews… it was always necessary to use smoke candles to drive them out. A great number of Jews who could not be counted were exterminated by blowing up sewers and dugouts.
The longer the resistance lasted the tougher the Waffen-SS, Police and Wehrmacht became. They fulfilled their duty indefatigably in faithful comradeship and stood together as models and examples of soldiers … only through the continuous and untiring efforts of all involved did we succeed in catching a total of 56,065 Jews whose extermination can be proved. To these should be added those who lost their lives in explosions or fires but whose numbers cannot be ascertained.
Summing up the results of the operation on page 45 of the report, Stroop writes: ‘Of the 56,065 caught, about 7,000 were destroyed in the former Jewish residential area during large-scale operations; 6,929 Jews were destroyed by transporting them to T.II.1 The sum total of Jews destroyed is therefore 13,929. An estimated number of 6,000 Jews were destroyed by being blown up or by perishing in the flames.’
SS Brigadeführer, Major-General Stroop appears to have been well satisfied with the result of his ‘Grossaktion’. In order that there should be a permanent record of his gallantry on that occasion which he could show to his relatives and friends and pass round the table after the annual dinner of the ‘Stahlhelm’, he inserted in his photograph album a number of snapshots taken in Warsaw during the great ‘battle’. These were found in his possession when he was arrested by the United States Military Police.2
A different method of getting rid of the Jews was adopted in the Baltic States where they were not placed in ghettos before being eliminated. A document found in Himmler’s private files after the war contains a report of ‘Action Group A’, in which over 130,000 Jews were murdered in 1941 in Lithuania and Latvia. A series of pogroms was initiated by a partisan leader at the instigation of the Germans in such a way that they did not appear openly in any way to be connected with it. During the first pogrom more than 1,500 Jews were killed, several synagogues destroyed and many homes burned in one night, and on the following two nights, 2,300 more Jews were murdered.
Sometimes, but not often and certainly not often enough, higher authority did not approve of the methods used by their subordinates. Such scruples might well cause surprise were it not for the fact that the criticisms were generally made upon the grounds of expediency and not for humanitarian reasons.
The following extract is from a letter to the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories:
The fact that Jews receive special treatment requires no further discussion. Nevertheless it appears hardly credible that this was done in the way described by the General Commissioner in his report of 1st June 1943. What is Katyn against that? What if such occurrences should become known to the other side and be exploited by them? To lock men and women and children into barns and to set fire to them does not appear to be a suitable method for combating bands, even if it is desired to exterminate the population. This method is not worthy of the German cause and hurts our reputation severely.
It will be remembered that when at Oradour-sur-Glâne the SS Reich Panzer Division about a year later locked the male inhabitants into barns and the women and children into the church and burned them all, no German protest was heard. Nor should it be forgotten that this same ‘German cause’ involved amongst other things the ‘final solution’ of the Jewish question.
Between September 1941 and February 1943 the Special Action Group (Einsatzgruppe D) which consisted of SS, SD, Gestapo, and other police units and was attached to forces under the command of von Manstein in Russia, was responsible for the mass extermination of many thousands of Jews by shooting, hanging, gassing, and drowning. The units of which this Einsatzgruppe was composed were under the command of Otto Ohlendorf. This young man who in 1941 was only thirty-three years old joined the SA at the age of eighteen and the SD a year later.
Some months before the invasion of Russia began, arrangements were made for the separate use of SIPO units in the operational areas. These were called Einsatzgruppe and were sub-divided into Einsatzkommandos. The arrangement was between OKH and OKW on the one hand and RSHA on the other. A representative of the Chief of SIPO and the SD was to be assigned to each Army Group and Army and he would have at his disposal mobile troops of the SIPO and SD. This agreement created a new situation, because formerly an Army had on its own responsibility and with its own resources performed the duties which would in future be the sole responsibility of SIPO.
Henceforward the Einsatzgruppe would be attached to a specific Army Group and move with it. Its operational area would therefore be that of the Army Group. The Army Group representative of the SIPO and SD was entitled to issue instructions to units with regard to their duties but the Army Group could also issue orders if the operational situation made it necessary.
Four Einsatzgruppen were formed and Einsatzgruppe D under Ohlendorf was directly attached to the Eleventh Army then under command of von Manstein and operating in the Ukraine. It was given orders that in its operational area the Jews were to be ‘liquidated’. These orders were repeated personally by Himmler when he visited the Einsatzgruppe at Nikolaiev in September 1941. He assembled the leaders and men of the Einsatzkommandos and told them that they bore no personal responsibility for executing this order which was Hitler’s.
The existence of these orders and their execution were known to the Army Commander. An order was issued by the Eleventh Army that no liquidation must take place within 200 kilometres of headquarters.
Furthermore, at Simferopol, where 10,000 Jews were killed in a mass execution, the Army command asked Ohlendorf to push on with the liquidations because of the threat of famine and the acute shortage of houses. The following description of a mass execution was given by Ohlendorf himself who was present at a number of them.
The local Einsatzkommando attempted to collect all the Jews in its area by registering. The registration was performed by the Jews themselves. This was made possible by telling them that its object was that they were to be resettled.
After the registration they were collected and transported to the place of execution which was usually an anti-tank ditch. The shooting was carried out in a military manner by firing squads.
On Ohlendorf’s suggestion, only as many Jews as could be executed immediately were taken at one time to the place of execution. This was done in order t
o reduce to a minimum the length of time between the moment the victims knew of their fate to their actual execution.
The victims were shot standing or kneeling along the edge of the trench into which they then fell. Before their bodies were finally buried the firing squad commanders had orders to make sure that all were dead and themselves to finish off any who were not.
All the victims’ valuables had been confiscated when the Jews were rounded up and these were forwarded to the Finance Ministry. Occasional exceptions were made to this rule.
Until the spring of 1942 all Jewish exterminations in the Ukraine were carried out in this manner. Orders were then received, however, that in future women and children were not to be shot, but must be put to death in gas vans. Previously they had been killed in the same way as the men—by shooting. The gas vans, a new instrument of murder, were so constructed that their real purpose was not visible from the exterior. They looked like plain vans but were so contrived that at the start of a motor, gas was inducted into the van, causing death in ten to fifteen minutes. The ingenious inventor was a Dr. Becker who also held the rank of SS Untersturmführer, and he was in charge of those on the vehicle establishment of Ohlendorf’s Einsatzgruppe.
The Nazis were experts in the use of euphemism and when it came to killing never called a spade a spade. Special treatment, extermination, liquidation, elimination, resettlement, and final solution were all synonyms for murder and it would not be without interest to speculate by what innocent description these vans were listed in the SS vocabulary of stores.
A full description of them and their operation is contained in a top-secret document which the inventor sent to SS Obersturmbannführer Rauff, a senior SS staff officer at RSHA, reporting their final tests and overhaul.
Becker reported that the tests of both types of vans ‘Series I’ and ‘Series IF had been completed and adjustments and modifications made. Series I could be operated in most weathers. Series II were useless after even a little rain and could only be used in absolutely dry weather. It was a matter for consideration whether the vans should only be used when stationary at the place of execution. Many difficulties were experienced. First of all the vans had to be driven there and the place usually selected for the execution was some ten miles off the main road and inaccessible in wet weather. If the victims were marched all that way they at once became suspicious and restless. This was ‘undesirable’. The only solution recommended by Becker was to ‘load’ them on to the vehicles (he wrote as though they were goods) and drive them to the spot.
The Scourge of the Swastika Page 25
