Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

starve, freeze, or be worked to death.⁴⁶ The idea of a comprehensive territorial solution to the ‘Jewish problem’ had by now become effectively synonymous with genocide.

Hitler had been under continued pressure from Nazi leaders to deport the Jews from their own territories, with, now as before, the General Government seen as the favoured ‘dumping ground’. Among the most persistent was the Gauleiter of Vienna, and former Hitler Youth Leader, Baldur von Schirach, who had been pressing hard since the previous summer to relieve the chronic housing problems of Vienna by ‘evacuating’ the city’s 60,000 Jews to the General Government. Hitler had finally agreed to this in December 1940. The plans were fully prepared by the beginning of February 1941.⁴⁷ Fresh from his visit to Vienna in March, on the third anniversary of the Anschlu?, Hitler discussed with Hans Frank and Goebbels the imminent removal of the Jews from Vienna. Goebbels, anxious to be rid of the Jews from Berlin, was placated with an indication that the Reich capital would be next. ‘Later, they must sometime get out of Europe altogether,’ the Propaganda Minister added.⁴⁸

Despite the problems which had arisen in 1940 about the transfer of Jews and Poles into the General Government, Heydrich (partly under pressure from the Wehrmacht, which needed land for troop exercises) had approved in January 1941 a new plan to expel 771,000 Poles together with the 60,000 Jews from Vienna (bowing to the demands for deportation from Schirach, backed by Hitler) into Hans Frank’s domain to make room for the settlement of ethnic Germans.⁴⁹ A major driving-force behind the urgency of the ambitious new resettlement programme was the need to accommodate (and incorporate in the work-force) ethnic Germans who had been brought to Poland from Lithuania, Bessarabia, Bukovina and elsewhere in eastern Europe and since then miserably housed in transit camps. Frank’s subordinates were dismayed at having to cope with a massive new influx of ‘undesirables’.⁵⁰ In the event, however, inevitable logistical complications of the new plan soon revealed it as a grandiose exercise in inhumane lunacy. By mid-March the programme had ground to a halt. Only around 25,000 people had been deported into the General Government. And only some 5,000, mainly elderly, Jews had been removed from Vienna.⁵¹ There was still no prospect, within the confines of the territory currently under German control, of attaining either the comprehensive resettlement programme that Himmler was striving for, or, within that programme, solving what seemed to be becoming a more and more intractable problem: removing the Jews.

From comments made by Eichmann’s associate, Theodor Dannecker, and, subsequently, by Eichmann himself, it was around the turn of the year 1940–41 that Heydrich gained approval from Hitler — whether through the intercession of Goring or of Himmler is not clear — for his proposal for the ‘final evacuation’ of German Jews to the General Government.⁵² On 21 January Dannecker noted: ‘In accordance with the will of the Fuhrer, the Jewish question within the part of Europe ruled or controlled by Germany is after the war to be subjected to a final solution (einer endgultigen Losung).’ To this end, Heydrich had obtained from Hitler, via Himmler or Goring, the ‘commission to put forward a final solution project (Endlosungsprojektes)’.⁵³ Plainly, at this stage, this was still envisaged as a territorial solution — a replacement for the aborted Madagascar Plan. Eichmann had in mind a figure of around 5.8 million persons.⁵⁴

Two months later, Eichmann told representatives of the Propaganda Ministry that Heydrich ‘had been commissioned with the final evacuation of the Jews (endgultigen Judenevakuierung)’ and had put forward a proposal to that effect some eight to ten weeks earlier. The proposal had, however, not been accepted ‘because the General Government was not in a position at that time to absorb a single Jew or a Pole’.⁵⁵ When, on 17 March, Hans Frank visited Berlin to speak privately with Hitler about the General Government — presumably raising the difficulties he was encountering with Heydrich’s new deportation scheme — he was reassured, in what amounted to a reversal of previous policy, that the General Government would be the first territory to be made free of Jews.⁵⁶ But only three days after this meeting, Eichmann was still talking of Heydrich presiding over the ‘final evacuation of the Jews’ into the General Government.⁵⁷ Evidently (at least that was the line that Eichmann was holding to), Heydrich still at this point had his sights set on the General Government as offering the basis for a territorial solution. Frank was refusing to contemplate this. And Hitler had now opened up to him the prospect of his territory being the first to be rid of its Jews. Perhaps this was said simply to placate Frank. But in the light of the ideas already taking shape for a comprehensive new territorial solution in the lands soon to be conquered (it was presumed) of the Soviet Union, it was almost certainly a further indicator that Hitler was now envisaging a new option for a radical solution to the ‘Jewish problem’ once the war was over by mass deportation to the East.

Heydrich and his boss Himmler were certainly anxious to press home the opportunity to expand their own power-base on a grand scale by exploiting the new potential about to open up in the East. Himmler had lost no time in acquainting himself with Hitler’s thinking and, no doubt, taking the chance to advance his own suggestions. On the very evening of the signing of the military directive for ‘Operation Barbarossa’ on 18 December, he had made his way to the Reich Chancellery for a meeting with Hitler. No record of what was discussed survives. But it is hard to imagine that Himmler did not raise the issue of new tasks for the SS which would be necessary in the coming showdown with ‘Jewish-Bolshevism’.⁵⁸ It was a matter of no more at this point than obtaining Hitler’s broad authority for plans still to be worked out.

Himmler and Heydrich were to be kept busy over the next weeks in plotting their new empire. Himmler informed a select group of SS leaders in January that there would have to be a reduction of some 30 million in the Slav population in the East.⁵⁹ The Reich Security Head Office commissioned the same month preparations for extensive police action.⁶⁰ By early February Heydrich had already carried out preliminary negotiations with Brauchitsch about using units of the Security Police alongside the army for ‘special tasks’. No major difficulties were envisaged.⁶¹

IV

What such ‘special tasks’ might imply became increasingly clear to a wider circle of those initiated into the thinking for ‘Barbarossa’ during February and March. On 26 February General Georg Thomas, the Wehrmacht’s economics expert, learned from Goring that an early objective during the occupation of the Soviet Union was ‘quickly to finish off (erledigen) the Bolshevik leaders’.⁶² A week later, on 3 March, Jodl’s comments on the draft of operational directions for ‘Barbarossa ‘which had been routinely sent to him made this explicit: ‘all Bolshevist leaders or commissars must be liquidated forthwith’. Jodl had altered the draft somewhat before showing it to Hitler.⁶³ He now summarized Hitler’s directions for the ‘final version’. These made plain that ‘the forthcoming campaign is more than just an armed conflict; it will lead, too, to a showdown between two different ideologies… The socialist ideal can no longer be wiped out in the Russia of today. From the internal point of view the formation of new states and governments must inevitably be based on this principle. The Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia, as the “oppressor” of the people up to now, must be eliminated.’ The task involved, the directions went on, was ‘so difficult that it cannot be entrusted to the army’.⁶⁴ Jodl had the draft retyped in double-spacing to allow Hitler to make further alterations. When the redrafted version was finally signed by Keitel on 13 March, it specified that ‘the Reichsfuhrer-SS has been given by the Fuhrer certain special tasks within the operations zone of the army’, though there was now no direct mention of the liquidation of the ‘Bolshevik-Jewish intelligentsia’ or the ‘Bolshevik leaders and commissars’.⁶⁵

Even so, the troops were to be directly instructed about the need to deal mercilessly with the political commissars and Jews they encountered. When he met Goring on 26 March, to deal with a number of issues related to the activities of the police in the eastern campaign, Heydrich was told that the army ought to have a three- to four-page set of directions ‘about the danger of the GPU-Organization, the political commissars, Jews etc., so that they would know whom in practice they had to put up against the wall’.⁶⁶ Going went on to emphasize to Heydrich that the powers of the Wehrmacht would be limited in the east, and that Himmler would be left a great deal of independent authority. Heydrich laid before Goring his draft proposals for the ‘solution of the Jewish Question’, which the Reich Marshal approved with minor amendments. These evidently foresaw the territorial solution, which had been conceived around the turn of the year, and already been approved by Himmler and Hitler, of deportation of all the European Jews into the wastelands of the Soviet Union, where they would perish.⁶⁷

During the first three months of 1941, then, the ideological objectives of the attack on the Soviet Union had