Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (106 page)

Psychiatrie und Gesellschaft im 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn, 1993), 112–36.

29. On children’s ‘euthanasia’, see Friedlander, Origins, 84 ff.; Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 77 ff.; Burleigh, Death, 93 ff.; Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, 182.

30. Ulf Schmidt, ‘Reassessing the Beginning of the “Euthanasia” Programme’, German

History 17 (1999), 543–50, and Udo Benzendörfer, ‘Bemerkungen zur Planung bei der

NS-“Euthanasie” ’, in Boris Böhm and Thomas Oelschläger, eds, Der sächsische Son-

derweg bei der NS-‘Euthanasie’ (Ulm, 2001), 21–54.

31. On the organizational preparations for the T4 programme see Friedlander, Origins,

77 ff.; Burleigh, Death, 93 ff.; Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, 182.

32. Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 85–6; Instruction for Implementation of the Law concerning Pre-

vention of Children with Hereditary Illnesses and of the Marriage Health Law, 31 Aug.

1939 (RGBl, I, p. 1560). Sterilizations did nevertheless take place until the end of the war, albeit in limited numbers. ‘F-cases’ were those where the threat of ‘reproductive activity’

was great (fortpflanzungsgefahr).

33. Götz Aly, ‘Medizin gegen Unbrauchbare’, in Götz Aly et. al., Aussonderung und Tod.

Die klinische Hinrichtung der Unbrauchbaren (Berlin, 1985), 20 ff.

34. Nuremberg Document (ND) PS-630.

35. According to Rieß’s estimate, Volker Rieß, Die Anfänge der ‘lebensunwerten Lebens’ in den Reichsgauen Danzig-Westpreußen und Wartheland 1939/40 (Frankfurt a. M., 1995),

355.

36. See esp. ibid. 23 ff.

37. Ibid. 243 ff.

38. Ibid. 290 ff.

39. Ibid. 321 ff.; Matthias Beer, ‘Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden’,

VfZ 35 (1987), 404 ff.; Eugen Kogon et al., eds, Massentötungen durch Giftgas. Eine

Dokumentation (Frankfurt a. M., 1986), 62 ff.; Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 105 ff.

40. Ibid. 222 ff. See also esp. Heike Bernhardt, Anstaltspsychiatrie und ‘Euthanasie’ in

Pommern 1933 bis 1945. Die Krankenmorde an Kindern und Erwachsenen am Beispiel

der Landesheilanstalt Ueckermünde (Frankfurt a. M., 1994).

41. Ibid. 188 and 288 ff.

Notes to pages 138–140

477

42. See below pp. 290–1.

43. Rieß, Anfänge, 104 ff., 131, 135–6, 168, 256, and 334.

44. Götz Aly’s assertion that the murder of more than 10,000 mentally ill patients in the East was ‘causally linked to the “Heim-ins-Reich” [home into the Reich] movement of

60,000 Baltic Germans’ is therefore unconvincing (Aly, Final Solution: Nazi Population

Policy and the Murder of the European Jews (London, 1999), 70 ff.). Aly himself notes

(p. 116) that the murder of the inmates of the Kocborowo Mental Hospital began on 22

September, and thus before the Soviet–German Resettlement Agreement. Even the

request made on 23 October 1939 by Sandberger, Head of the Central Immigration

Office, for 5,000 beds to be cleared for ethnic German migrants came too late to explain

the murders that had already begun earlier in October in Neustadt, Schwetz, and

Owinska (pp. 70–1). It is also important to note the other purposes that psychiatric

institutions were put to, as detailed by Rieß; Schwede explicitly justified the deport-

ations from his Gau in this manner (citing the construction of an SS barracks in the

hospital at Stralsund). The most important factor that argues against Aly’s interpret-

ation is the fact that mass murders in the occupied zones were only an anticipatory

measure in advance of the ‘euthanasia’ programmes being planned at the same time

across the whole of the Reich and were directly linked to the eruption of violence

against other civilian groups in the newly conquered areas. In this context the links to

the resettlement of ethnic Germans are of secondary importance, one factor only in the

acceleration of the mass murder of the inmates of psychiatric institutions. In the same

way Aly’s examples of South German institutions being filled with ethnic German

emigrants in the second half of 1940 (pp. 120–2) do not constitute sufficient evidence

for his thesis that ‘the self-created pressure to accommodate ethnic German settlers in

camps now also began to accelerate the murder of German psychiatric patients in the

southern part of the Reich as well’ (p. 120). Aly again distorts his argument when he

identifies a secondary phenomenon (the use of ‘freed-up’ institutions) as the main

cause of the murder of the sick and debilitated. Statistics published by Klee (‘Eutha-

nasie’, 340–1) suggest that of the 93,521 institutional beds ‘freed up’ by the end of 1941

(a figure which includes both the more than 70,000 people murdered in the gas

chambers and those who died or were killed in the institutions themselves), only

8,577 were used for ethnic German settlers, whilst more than half served army or SS

purposes, especially as reserve military hospitals.

45. On the organization of T4 see Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 109 ff.; Friedlander, Origins, 68 ff.; Burleigh, Death, 133 ff.

46. See in particular the information in Heinz Faulstich, Hungersterben in der Psychiatrie, 1914–1949 (Freiburg, 1998), 260 ff., which is complemented by detailed studies on

individual institutions and regions as follows: Hermann J. Pretsch, ed., ‘Euthanasie’.

Krankenmorde in Südwestdeutschland. Die nationalsozialistische ‘Aktion T4’ in

Württemberg 1940 bis 1945 (Zwiefalten, 1996); Christina Vanja and Martin Vogt, eds,

Euthanasie in Hadamar. Die nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik in hessischen

Anstalten (Kassel, 1991); Heinz Faulstich, Von der Irrenfürsorge zur ‘Euthanasie’.

Geschichte der badischen Psychiatrie bis 1945 (Freiburg, 1993); Ludwig Hermeler, Die

Euthanasie und die späte Unschuld der Psychiater. Massenmord, Bedburg-Hau und das

Geheimnis rheinischer Widerstandslegenden (Essen, 2002); Uwe Kaminsky, Zwangs-

478

Notes to pages 140–143

sterilisation und ‘Euthanasie’ im Rheinland. Evangelische Erziehungsanstalten sowie

Heil- und Pflegeanstalten 1933–1945 (Cologne, 1995); Boris Böhm and Thomas Oel-

schläger, eds, Der sächsische Sonderweg bei der NS-‘Euthanasie’ (Ulm, 2001); Thomas

Schilter, Unmenschliches Ermessen. Die nationalsozialistische ‘Euthanasie’-Tötungsan-

stalt Pirna-Sonnenstein 1940/41 (Leipzig, 1999); Dietmar Schulze, ‘Euthanasie’ in Bern-

burg. Die Landes-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Bernburg/Anhaltinische Nervenklinik in der

Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Essen, 1999); Thomas Stöckle, Grafeneck 1940. Die

Euthanasie-Verbrechen in Südwestdeutschland (Tübingen, 2002); Thorsten Sueße and

Heinrich Meyer, Abtransport der ‘Lebensunwerten’. Die Konfrontation niedersäch-

sischer Anstalten mit der NS-‘Euthanasie’ (Hanover, 1998); Bernd Walter, Psychiatrie

und Gesellschaft in der Moderne. Geisteskrankenfürsorge in der Provinz Westfalen

zwischen Kaiserreich und NS-Regime (Paderborn, 1996); Michael von Cranach and

Hans-Ludwig Siemen eds, Psychiatrie im Nationalsozialismus. Die Bayerischen Heil-

und Pflegeanstalten zwischen 1933 und 1945 (Munich, 1999).

47. International Military Tribunal (IMT), xxxv. 681 ff., 906-D, a note from Sellmer (from the staff of the Führer’s Deputy) on a visit by Werner Blankenburg from the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP (Brack’s deputy), 1 Oct. 1940: ‘30,000 done, a further

100,000–120,000 waiting’.

48. Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen 1923–

1941 Dezember 1940–Juli 1941, bearbeitet von Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1998). Entry for 31

Jan. 1941, p. 119 (on a conversation with Bouhler): ‘40,000 are gone, 60,000 still have to go.’

49. In the planning stages, for example, Brack considered that secrecy could not be taken as read if there were to be, as was proposed at that point, some 60,000 victims (according

to a witness statement by his colleague Hefelmann, quoted in Aly, Final Solution, 28).

On the imperfect secrecy surrounding euthanasia, see Winfried Süß, Der Volkskörper

im Krieg. Gesundheitspolitik, Gesundheitsverhältnisse und Krankenmord im national-

sozialistischen Deutschland 1939–1945 (Munich, 2003), 129–30.

50. For examples of ‘Euthanasia’ propaganda see Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, 76–7 and 176–7.

51. Friedlander, Origins, 263 ff.

8.

German Occupation and the Persecution of the Jews in Poland,

1939–1940/1941: The First Variant of a ‘Territorial Solution’

1. On the war against Poland and the first phase of occupation, see Dieter Pohl, Von der

‘Judenpolitik’ zum ‘Judenmord’. Der Distrikt Lublin des Generalgouvernments 1939–1944

(Frankfurt a. M., 1993); Christian Jansen and Arno Weckbecker, Der ‘Volksdeutsche

Selbstschutz’ in Polen 1939–40 (Munich, 1992); Horst Rohde, ‘Hitlers erste “Blitzkrieg”

und seine Auswirkung auf nordostEuropa’, in Klaus A. Maier et al., Die Errichtung der

Hegemonie auf dem europäischen Kontinent (Stuttgart, 1979), 79–156; Czeslaw Madajcz-

kyk, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939–1945 (Cologne, 1988);

Helmut Krausnick, ‘Die Einsatzgruppen vom Anschluss Österreichs bis zum Feldzug

gegen die Sowjetunion. Entwicklung und Verhältnis zur Wehrmacht’, in Helmut

Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges. Die

Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizeil und des SD, 1938–1942 (Stuttgart, 1982), 32 ff.

Notes to pages 143–146

479

2. IMT, xxxvii. 546 ff., O79–L.

3. ADAP, series D, vol. 7, no. 193; Winfried Baumgart, ‘Zur Ansprache Hitlers vor den

Führern der Wehrmacht am 22. August 1939. Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung’, VfZ

2 (1968), 120–49.

4. IMT, xxxix. 425 ff., 172-USSR, statement by Hitler, 2 Oct. 1939.

5. BAB, R 58/825, 8 Sept. 1941 and 16 Oct. 1941.

6. Jansen and Weckbecker, Selbstschutz, 27 ff.; Wlodzimierz Jastrzebski, Der Bromberger

Blutsonntag. Legende und Wirklichkeit (Poznan, 1990).

7. Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 33 ff. A detailed account of the leadership can be found in Alexander B. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity (Lawrence, Kan., 2003), 29 ff.

8. Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 107.

9. Dorothee Weitbrecht, ‘Die Ermächtigung zur Vernichtung. Die Einsatzgruppen in

Polen im Herbst 1939’, in Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Bogdan Musial, eds, Genesis

des Genozids. Polen 1939–1941 (Darmstadt, 2004), 57; Dan Michman, ‘Why did Hey-

drich write the Schnellbrief? A Remark on the Reason and on its Significance’, YVS 32

(2004), 439–40.

10. Weitbrecht, ‘Ermächtigung’, 59 ff.

11. Jansen and Weckbecker, ‘Selbstschutz’, 82 ff.

12. The role of the Selbstschutz has been exhaustively examined in Jansen and Weckbecker, ibid. 111 ff. On the participation of the army in the murders see Joachim Böhler,

‘Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg. Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939’ (Frankfurt a. M.,

2006). On the Einsatzgruppen see Rossino, Hitler, 88 ff. and his ‘Nazi Anti-Jewish

Policy during the Polish Campaign: The Case of the Einsatzgruppe von Woyrisch’,

GSR 24 (2001), 35–54 and Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Joachim Böhler, and Jürgen

Matthäus, eds, Einsatzgruppen in Polen. Darstellung und Dokumentation (Darmstadt,

2008).

13. Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik, 12.

14. For examples, see Rossino, Hitler, 90–1 and 99.

15. Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy September 1939 to March 1942 (London, 2004), 25 ff., 56–7; Böhler, ‘ “Tragische

Verstrickung” ’, 45 ff.

16. Jansen and Weckbecker, ‘Selbstschutz’, 154 ff.

17. Ibid. 96 ff. and 154.

18. Ibid. 96 ff.

19. On the role of uniformed police in these murders see Klaus-Michael Mallmann, ‘ “ . . .

Mißgeburten, die nicht auf diese Welt gehören”. Die deutsche Ordnungspolizei in

Polen 1939–1941’, in Mallmann and Musial, eds, Genesis, 71–89.

20. Martin Cüppers, ‘ “ . . . auf eine so saubere und anständige SS-mäßige Art”. Die WaffenSS in Polen 1939–1941’, in Mallmann and Musial, eds, Genesis, 90–110.

21. Jansen and Weckbecker, ‘Selbstschutz’, 168 ff.; Pohl, Judenpolitik, 22 ff.; Szymon Datner,

‘Crimes Committed by the Wehrmacht during the September Campaign and the

Period of Military Government’, Polish Western Affairs 3 (1962), esp. 322 ff.

22. Jansen and Weckbecker, ‘Selbstschutz’, 154 ff. and 212 ff.

23. Rieß, Anfänge, 173 ff.

480

Notes to pages 146–147

24. Jansen and Weckbecker, ‘Selbstschutz’, 156 and 224 ff.

25. Ibid. 156–7 and 228–9.

26. IfZ, Fb 52.

27. File note by Oberstleutnant Lahousen, published in Helmuth Groscurth, Tagebü-

cher eines Abwehroffiziers 1938–1940. Mit weiteren Dokumente zur Militäropposi-

tion gegen Hitler (Stuttgart, 1970), 357 ff. According to Lahousen’s (unverifiable)

testimony in Nuremberg (IMT, ii. 492 ff. and iii. 30), at this meeting Keitel told

Canaris to ‘raise a rebellion’ in Galician Ukraine ‘with the extirpation of the Jews

as its goal’; only when Canaris refused was this remark about the Einsatzgruppen

made (cf. Eberhard Jäckel, Hitlers Herrschaft. Vollzug einer Weltanschauung

(Stuttgart, 1986), 95 and 172).

28. On this resistance see Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 80 ff.

29. Quoted in Groscurth, Tagebücher, 409 ff.

30. Meeting of the Chief of the General Staff of the Army High Command in the new

Military District of Danzig with HSSPF Hildebrand and the Selbstschutz commander

responsible for the area of West Prussia von Alvensleben, 13 Oct. 1939, in Jansen and

Weckbecker, ‘Selbstschutz’, 175.

31. Ibid. 193 ff.

32. Note made by Blaskowitz for a presentation to the ObdH, 6 Feb. 1940, in Ernst Klee,

Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess, eds, ‘Schöne Zeiten’. Judenmord aus der Sicht der Täter

und Gaffer (Frankfurt a. M., 1988), 14 ff.

33. Schmuel Krakowski, ‘The Fate of Jewish Prisoners of War in the September 1939

Campaign’, YVS, 12 (1977), 297–323.

34. On the establishment and replacement of the military administration see Hans

Umbreit, Deutsche Militärverwaltungen 1938/39. Die militärische Besetzung der Tsche-

choslowakei und Polens (Stuttgart, 1977), 85 ff., and Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik, 18 ff.

On the dismemberment of Poland, see Rohde, ‘Blitzkrieg’, 136 ff.

35. On the system of ‘ethnic inequality’ in Poland see especially Diemut Majer,

‘Fremdvölkische’ in Dritten Reich. Ein Beitrag zur nationalsozialistischen Rechtset-

zung und Rechtspraxis in Verwaltung und Justiz unter besonderer Berücksichtigung

der eingegliederten Ostgebiete und des Generalgouvernements (Boppard, 1981). From

the extensive literature on the German politics of occupation, the following deserve

special mention: Martin Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik (Stuttgart,

1961); Gerhard Eisenblätter, ‘Grundlinien der Politik des Reichs gegenüber der

Generalgouvernement’, diss. (Frankfurt a. M., 1969); Madajczyk, Okkupationspoli-

tik; Werner Röhr, ed., Die faschistische Okkupationspolitik in Polen (1939–1945)

(Bonn, 1969).

36. Hans-Christian Harten, De-Kulturation und Germanisierung. Die nationalsozialistische

Rassen- und Erziehungspolitik in Polen 1939–1945 (Frankfurt a. M., 1996).

37. Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik, 541 ff.

38. Wlodzimierz Borodziej, Terror und Politik. Die deutsche Polizei und die polnische

Widerstandsbewegung im Generalgouvernement 1939–1944 (Mainz, 1999). See also

Majer, Fremdvölkische, 864 ff. on the arbitrary penal system in the General

Government.

39. Ibid. 387 ff.

Notes to pages 148–151

481

40. Christopher Browning, ‘Nazi Resettlement Policy and the Search for a Solution to the

Jewish Question’, GSR 9/3 (1986), 8; reprinted in Browning, The Path to Genocide; and

Pohl, Lublin, 22.

41. BAB, R 58/825, 15 Sept. 1939.

42. BAB, R 58/825, Departmental Heads meeting, minute of 27 Sept. 1939. The ‘German

areas’ referred to in point 1 of the summary remarks clearly indicated the annexed

Polish territories, whilst ‘Jews out of the Reich’ (point 2) meant those in the rest of the Reich area, as is clear from the parallel intention (in point 3) to deport 30,000 Gypsies (i.e. almost all those living in the area of the Reich).

43. Faschismus—Ghetto—Massenmord. Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand

der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkriegs, ed. Tatiana Berenstein et al.

(Frankfurt a. M., 1962), 37 ff.; ND 3363-PS.

44. Note of the conversation between Heydrich and Brauchitsch, published in Groscurth,

Tagebücher, 361–2.

45. BAB, R 58/825, Departmental Heads meeting of 29 September, minute of 1 Oct. 1939.

Correspondingly the exceptional regulation for the area under Einsatzgruppe I

mentioned in the express letter of 21 September was lifted: YV, 053/87, Eichmann’s

note dated 29 Sept. 1939.

46. Hans-Günther Seraphim, ed., Das Politische Tagebuch Alfred Rosenbergs aus den

Jahren 1933/35 und 1939/40 (Göttingen, 1956), 81.

47. Andreas Hillgruber, ed., Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler. Vertrauliche Auf-

zeichnungen über Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslands, vol. i (Frankfurt a. M.,

1967), 29–30 (26 Sept. 1939).

48. ADAP, series D, vol. 7, no. 176, minute of 2 Oct. 1939.

49. Confidential Information (Communications of the Ministry for Propaganda), 9 Oct.

1941, in Jürgen Hagemann, Die Presselenkung im Dritten Reich (Bonn, 1970), 145; Jonny

Moser, ‘Nisko: The First Experiment in Deportation’, Simon Wiesenthal Center

Annual (SWCA) 2 (1985), 3, observes that the Belgrade paper Vreme had already

reported on the reservation plans on 19 Sept. 1941.

50. Verhandlungen des deutschen Reichstages, vol. 460, pp. 51 ff.

51. IMT xxvi. 255–6, 686-PS.

9.

Deportations

1. The note Eichmann made on 6 Oct. 1939 goes on to say that ‘this activity should serve in the first instance as a way of building up experience such that on this basis the

evacuation of larger masses of people could be facilitated’ (YV, 053/87, Gestapo Docu-

ments from Ostrava). On the autumn 1939 deportations see: Miroslav Kárny, ‘Nisko in

der Geschichte der Endlösung’, Judaica Bohemiae 23 (1987), 69–84; Seev Goshem,

‘Eichmann und die Nisko-Aktion im Oktober 1939. Eine Fallstudie zur NS-Judenpolitik

in der letzten Etappe vor der “Endlösung” ’, VfZ 27 (1981), 74–96; Moser, Nisko; Seev

Goshem, ‘Nisko—ein Ausnahmefall unter den Judenlagern der SS’, VfZ 40 (1992), 95–

106; Hans-Günther Adler, Der verwaltete Mensch. Studien zur deportation der Juden aus

Deutschland (Tübingen, 1974), 125 ff.; Browning, Resettlement; Hans Safrian, Die Eich-

mann-Männer (Vienna, 1993), 68 ff. There is more information in the volume of

482

Notes to pages 151–153

conference proceedings edited by Ludmila Cermáková-Nesládková, The Case of Nisko

in the History of the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Problem’ in Commemoration of the 55th Anniversary of the First Deportation of Jews in Europe (Ostrava, 1994).

2. On 13 September the Quartermaster General of the OKH had given the order for all Jews in the eastern part of Upper Silesia to be deported eastwards over the San and thus into the area that agreements with the Soviet Union had designated as the Soviet sphere of

influence. This occurred on a huge scale. See Alfred Konieczny, ‘Die Zwangsarbeit der

Juden in Schlesien im Rahmen der “Organisation Schmelt” ’, Beiträge zur Nationalsozia-

listische Gesundheitspolitik und Sozialpolitik: Sozialpolitik und Judenvernichtung. Gab es seine Ökonomie der Endlösung?, 5 (1983), 94. In addition, on 18 September a discussion led by Stahlecker, the Commander of the Security Police (BdS) in the Protectorate had

envisaged the deportation of 8,000 Jews from the area of Ostrava immediately bordering

on Silesia into Galicia: YV, 053/87, telex from the Stapostelle Brünn from 19 Sept. 1939.

3. Ibid., note dated 6 Oct. 1939.

4. Ibid., note by Günter dated 11 Oct. 1939.

5. Note by the Special Representative dated 10 Oct. 1939 (original not preserved; excerpt made later), quoted by Gerhard Botz, Wohnungspolitik und Judendeportation in Wien

1938 bis 1945. Zur Funktion des Antisemitismus als Ersatz nationalsozialistischer Sozial-

politik (Vienna, 1975), 105 (from the Austrian State Archive).

6. YV, 053/93, telegram from SD Danube to the SD Headquarters, 16 Oct. 1939.