18; Yehuda Bauer, A History of the Holocaust, New York etc., 1982, 214–15; Leni Yahil, The Holocaust. The Fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945, New York/Oxford, 1990, 365; Browning, Fateful Months, 29; Gerald Fleming, ‘The Auschwitz Archives in Moscow’, Jewish Quarterly (Autumn, 1991), 9–12, here 9. Jean–Claude Pressac, Les Crematoires d’Auschwitz. La Machinerie du Meurtre de Masse, Paris, 1993, 26ff., especially 34, 101 n.107, 113–14, dates the gassing of the Soviet prisoners to December, rather than 3 September, the date given by Czech and most other historians. See Longerich, Politik, 444–5, 457 and 704 n.114.
121. BDC, SS–HO, 1878: ‘… Es bestehe auf jeden Fall die Gefahr, dafi vor allem von Seiten der Wirtschaft in zahlreichen Fallen Juden als unentbehrliche Arbeitskrafte reklamiert wurden und da? sich niemand bemuhe, an Stelle der Juden andere Arbeitskrafte zu bekommen. Dies wurde aber den Plan einer totalen Aussiedlung der Juden aus den von uns besetzten Gebieten zunichte machen…’
122. Browning, Fateful Months, 30–31; Breitman, Architect, 200; Longerich, Politik, 455.
123. See Faschismus, 269–70.
124. See Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Bloomington/Indianapolis, 1987. There are different interpretations of the derivation (and spelling) of the name. It used to be presumed that the spelling was ‘Reinhard’, and referred to Reinhard Heydrich, which was the understanding of SS men involved in the ‘Action’. This interpretation was countered by the suggestion that the name was actually spelt ‘Reinhardt’ and was taken from the State Secretary in the Reich Finance Ministry, Fritz Reinhardt, hinting at the regime’s interest in the material outcome of the mass murder of around 1.75 million Jews (mainly from Poland). When account was rendered, money and valuables worth around 180 million Reich Marks were placed in the Deutsche Reichsbank for the future use of the SS (Benz, Graml, and Wei?, Enzyklopadie, 354–5). A thorough examination has, however, led to the conclusion that the attribution to Heydrich is after all the more plausible. The lack of clarity is partly a result of both spellings being used by contemporaries. See Hermann Wei?, ‘Offener Brief an Wolfgang Benz wegen Reinhard(t)’, in Hermann Graml, Angelika Konigseder, and Juliane Wetzel (eds.), Vorturteil und Rassenha?. Antisemitismus in den faschistischen Bewegungen Europas, Berlin, 2001, 443–50.
125. Faschismus, 374–7; Kommandant in Auschwitz, 157–8; Lang, Eichmann–Protokoll, 76–7; Browning, Fateful Months, 24; Breitman, Architect, 203.
126. Kershaw, ‘Improvised Genocide?’, 63, 65–6.
127. Faschismus, 278; Kershaw, ‘Improvised Genocide?’, 71, 73; Longerich, 451– 2.
128. BDC, Personalakte Arthur Greiser, Brandt to Koppe, 14 May 1942: ‘Der letzte Entscheid mu? ja in dieser Angelegenheit vom Fuhrer gefallt werden.’
129. BDC, Personalakte Arthur Greiser, Greiser to Himmler, 21 November 1942: ‘Ich fur meine Person glaube nicht, da? der Fuhrer in dieser Angelegenheit noch einmal befragt werden mu? umso mehr, als er mir bei der letzten Rucksprache erst bezuglich der Juden gesagt hat, ich mochte mit diesen nach eigenem Ermessen verfahren.’
130. Kershaw, ‘Improvised Genocide?’, 65ft, 70–74.
131. Hilberg, Destruction, 232; Longerich, Politik, 461– 5.
132. TBJG, II.2, 503 (14 December 1941). See Burrin, 124–5, and Ulrich Herbert, ‘Die deutsche Militarverwaltung in Paris und die Deportation der franzosischen Juden’, in Herbert, Vernichtungs-politik, 170–208, here 185–93, for the background to the deportation of the French Jews; and Leni Yahil, ‘Some Remarks about Hitler’s Impact on the Nazis’ Jewish Policy’, Yad Vashem Studies, 23 (1993), 281–93, here 288–9, for Hitler’s role in the moves leading to the deportation.
133. Krausnick/Wilhelm, 566–70 (Jeckeln testimony), quotation 566; Fleming, Hitler und die Endlosung, 87–104; Longerich, Politik, 464.
134. Gerlach, ‘Wannsee’, 7–44, here 17; Longerich, Politik, 463.
135. Gerlach, ‘Wannsee’, 12; Fleming, Hitler und die Endlosung, 88 and n.184, 103–4; Longerich, Politik, 464.
136. Longerich, Politik, 466.
137. A point emphasized by Eberhard Jackel in his hitherto unpublished paper on Heydrich’s role in the genesis of the ‘Final Solution’.
138. Longerich, Politik, 466.
139. IMG, xxix, 145, Doc. PS–1919.
140. Koeppen, 42 (6 October 1941).
141. Monologe, 99; Koeppen, 60–61 (21 October 1941).
142. Himmler visited FHO nineteen times — more frequently than any other guest — between July 1941 and January 1942 (Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, 800–801).
143. Koeppen, 71 (25 October 1941).
144. Monologe, 106. The translation of the passage in Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944, London, 1953, 87, is not wholly accurate, and includes a phrase — ‘Terror is a salutary thing’ — not found in the German text.
145. Himmler had spoken on 1 August about driving female Jews into the Pripet marshes. The SS had done this, but the swamps had proved too shallow for drowning (Burrin, 111–12; Browning, Path, 106).
146. It is difficult to see why Irving, HW, 331, infers from the comments that Hitler did not favour the extermination of the Jews.
147. Monologe, 130.
148. Monologe, 130–31; Koeppen, 78 (5 November 1941).
149. Domarus, 1772–3.
150. Monologe, 148; Picker, 152.
151. Kershaw, ‘Improvised Genocide?’, 66 n.71 for the conflicting evidence about the precise date of the commencement of the gassing; and for the extermination at Chelmno, see above all Adalbert Ruckerl (ed.), NS–Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse, Munich, 1977, Part 2.
152. TBJG, II.2, 498–9 (13 December 1941). Though Hitler’s extreme comments undoubtedly gave further impetus to the gathering momentum of genocide, Gerlach, ‘Wannsee’, 28, in my view goes too far in seeing his speech to the Gauleiter as the announcement of a ‘basic decision’ to murder all the Jews in Europe. See also Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, 2000, 126–30.
153. IMG, xxvii.270, Doc.PS–1517; and see Gerlach, ‘Wannsee’, 24.
154. DTB Frank, 457–8 (16 December 1941); trans., slightly amended, N & P, iii.1126–7, Doc.848.
155. IMG, xxxii.435–7, Docs. PS–3663, PS–3666 (quotation, 437).
156. Dienstkalender, 294. It is extremely unlikely that the entry can be equated in the way Gerlach, ‘Wannsee’, 22 interprets it, with a ‘basic decision’ to extend the extermination from Soviet Jewry to the rest of Europe, seeing European Jews in general as ‘imaginary partisans’. As far as is known, Hitler did not use the term ‘partisan’ in connection with Jews in the Reich or in western Europe. (See Longerich, Politik, 467 and 712 n.234.)
157. The following is taken from the minutes of the Conference: Longerich, Ermordung, 83–92; trans., N & P, iii.1127–34, Doc.849. See Eichmann’s comments on the minutes during his interrogation in Jerusalem in 1961 in Longerich, Ermordung, 92–4.
158. See Jeremy Noakes, ‘The Development of Nazi Policy towards the German–Jewish “Mischlinge” 1933– 1945’, LBYB, 34 (1989), 291–354, here 341ff.
159. Longerich, Ermordung, 93.
