PETER LONGERICH

Table of Contents

Part 1
I. The genesis of the 'final solution' and historical research
II. The elements of the policy of annihilation

Part 2
III. Stages in the Nazi persecution of the Jews prior to the summer of 1941
IV. The transition to the policy of 'ethnic cleansing' in the summer of 1941

Part 3
V. Escalation in the autumn of 1941 and the start of the deportation of the German Jews
VI. Preparation for and postponement of the Wannsee Conference

Part 4
VII. The minutes of the Wannsee Conference
VIII. The escalation of the annihilation policy immediately after the Wannsee Conference

Part 5
IX. Outlines of a pan-European deportation programme
X. Expansion of the deportations and the move to indiscriminate murder

Part 6
XI. Review of developments between the autumn of 1941 and the summer of 1942
XII. The Wannsee minutes as snapshot of a moment in a transition stage

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If we now review the development of the policy of annihilation between the autumn of 1941 and the spring-summer of 1942, between the third and fourth escalation stages, a picture emerges. In the autumn of 1941, when the extensive deportation programme did actually get under way, the foremost motive was as a threat to the United States. As such – in the spirit of Hitler’s January 1939 'prophecy' – it was intended to make clear what fate awaited the German Jews should the war expand into a world war. At the same time, these over-hasty deportations into overcrowded ghettos or camps that were still not ready were used as a lever to demand more radical solutions on site from those responsible, i.e. to apply the familiar strategy of 'Jew-free areas' used in the Soviet Union to occupied Poland (the Warthegau and Lublin and Galicia). The murder of the Jewish men of Serbia is an important parallel in the radicalization of annihilation policy, which in this case was carried-out by the Wehrmacht in the form of repressive measures.

The USA’s entry into the war drastically altered the situation of the 'Third Reich'. It now faced a long-term war on two or three fronts. The war would be conducted as an alliance war and involved controlling a large occupation area – and under the simultaneous pressure of full mobilization of all internal resources. In this situation, the annihilation policy acquired a completely new status, which can only be briefly described hereafter. To that end, it must be borne in mind that the 'Third Reich' could not reveal or specify its actual war aims – the racial reordering of Europe – as this would have begged the question of the status of the other (non-Jewish) ethnic groups within the 'New Europe' (80). Further, the Reich was not in a position to introduce the planned 'new order' with 'constructive' measures during the war, for there were insufficient resources for more extensive settlement and other projects. Just as the 'racial policy' of the regime in Germany between 1933 and 1939 had been restricted to exclusion and eradication, the policy of a European racial reordering during the war was fully occupied with the persecution and elimination of unwanted ethnic groups. From the Nazi viewpoint, the deportation and murder of the European Jews during the war was the only possible route into the 'new order'. And as the Nazi leadership was resolved not to give up its 'revolutionary' vision at any price, further radicalization of the persecution of the Jews (which formed the main plank of 'racial policy' even prior to 1939) was unavoidable, even to the extent of a policy of systematic annihilation.

With the beginning of the deportations from the various occupied and allied states during 1942, the 'living space policy' previously focused on the east was re-stylized as a 'new order' policy encompassing the whole of Europe. As a result, the allied states and collaborating forces in the occupied areas were subjected to the hegemony of racism; they became the tools and accomplices of a criminal policy and were thus inextricably linked with the German leadership. At the same time, the expansion of the deportations resulted in an increase in radical powers within the German occupation authorities and thus a general shift in emphasis in favor of the Party and the SS within the periphery of the area under German rule. In this way, the policy of annihilation shackled the German occupation and alliance policy.

The policy of annihilation was also an instrument of internal radicalization in Germany. As a result of the deportations that were not concealed from the public, of the tangible rumors and information on the mass executions in the east which assumed the form of a 'public secret', and of the widespread emergent fear and revenge propaganda about an international Jewish conspiracy since the change in the tide of war in 1942-43, it was made clear to the German population that it also had allowed itself to become inescapably entangled with Nazi anti-Jewish policy. This subliminal threat to the German population, which provides a subtle insight into the latter's complicity with the regime, seems to me to be the real issue behind the question of the Germans' awareness or unawareness of the Holocaust.

The regime reacted to the criticism of the murder of the Jewish workforce – which contradicted the war effort – by separating the policy of annihilation from any connection with the deportation programme, and placing it conceptually within the context of a work power exploitation programme. In this way, the people destined to be murdered were still being used 'sensibly'. In the long term, it was believed that the work-power problem could be solved by recruiting millions of non-Jewish 'foreign workers'.

Examined within this context, it becomes clear that from 1942 onwards the annihilation policy took on key functions in the regime’s war policy. It served as a substitute for more creative initiatives towards the 'new order', as a shackle on German occupation and alliance policy, as a spur to internal radicalization and a lever for the complicit involvement of the German people with the mission of the regime, and finally as a programme of the tireless exploiting and exhausting of Jewish manpower. These functions of the annihilation policy explain why the prolongation of the war at the end of 1941 resulted in a wider radicalization of the killing.

The systematic murder of the European Jews cannot be fully explained as the result of the individual decisions of the dictator, nor was it primarily the result of any acquisition of independence by an irrational ideology which was blind to reality, nor can it be solely traced to the activity of an overheating, cumulatively self-radicalizing bureaucracy. It was instead the result of a consistently pursued policy of the Nazi leadership that was adapted to external circumstances in the various phases of the 'Third Reich'. Only if the annihilation policy is seen as an integral part of National Socialist war policy, as a major factor alongside strategic, military-economic and alliance policy considerations, can its role within the history of the Nazi regime be assessed. These changes in the context of the annihilation policy bring us back to the interpretation of the Wannsee minutes.

The Wannsee Conference marked a watershed. On one hand, the total deportation and annihilation in camps in the occupied Soviet areas ('road-building' being synonymous with forced labor under inadequate living conditions) were still being adhered to as originally intended and as already initiated in some places. On the other hand, it was already obvious that an early victory as a prerequisite for implementation of the plan could no longer be expected in the short term.

The Wannsee minutes, therefore, represent a snapshot of a moment in a process in which the senior ranks of the SS underwent a change of perspective far removed from the idea of a 'final solution' after the end of the war. The new intention was to be able to carry out larger and larger sections of the 'final solution' during the war (i.e. 'to anticipate' it). Initially, this new perspective still included the period after the end of the war, but in the critical period we have examined, deportation to the east became more and more of a fiction, and, correspondingly, mass murder in the Generalgouvernement became more of a reality. In the most serious crisis of the war thus far, the participants at the conference were given the impression that the RSHA was planning to have the mass murders started in the various occupied areas, leading to a 'total solution' ('Gesamtlösung') that was to be developed over the long term.

This twin perspective is evinced in the minutes. On the one hand, Heydrich spoke of the 'coming final solution', i.e. the deportation programme to be completed after the end of the war, involving 11 million Jews, including those in Great Britain, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and Turkey – all countries that would only be under German control after a victorious conclusion of the war. Heydrich made a distinction between ad hoc measures and this 'coming' solution when he described the evacuation of the Jews to the east as a 'further potential solution conditional upon the relevant prior consent of the Fuehrer'. He said these 'actions' (i.e. the deportations already started) were simply 'alternatives' by means of which 'practical experience would be gathered' which would be 'of great significance in the coming final solution of the Jewish question'. Besides, the fact that Heydrich made particular reference to the prior 'consent of the Fuehrer' for these deportations indicates that the relevant permission for the implementation of the 'coming final solution' had not by then been given.

The 'coming final solution' was also referred to in the proposal for a gigantic labor exploitation programme in the east. Heydrich also highlighted the fact that the 'individual major evacuation campaigns should be largely independent of any military developments', that is, they could not be carried out until the end of the winter at least. He went on to say that the entire area under German rule was to be 'combed through' from west to east 'as part of the practical implementation of the final solution'. In this process, developments in the Reich area, including the Protectorate, would have to be 'anticipated'. This sentence highlights two levels being dealt with: the large, 'coming' solution, and the ad hoc measures already introduced. When Heydrich went on to say that the 'evacuated Jews' would be 'gradually taken to so-called transit ghettos, from which they [will] be transported further east', he then openly described an interim 'solution' for this group of people during the period leading up to the 'final solution'.

It can also be seen from the Wannsee minutes that the murder of the Jews living in the Generalgouvernement and in the occupied Soviet areas had already been derived from the larger 'final solution'. While Generalgouvernement State Secretary Bühler conveyed to the conference his government’s desire to start 'with the final solution… in the General-gouvernement' because 'the transport problem [did] not play a major role' and because 'any manpower exploitation grounds would not delay the course of this action' (given that few Jews there were 'fit for work'), he nevertheless expressed the view that any Jews 'unfit for work' should be murdered on the spot, just as they had been in the USSR and in the Warthegau. Gauleiter Meyer of the Eastern Ministry took the same view: namely that 'certain preparatory work in the course of the final solution could be carried out at the same time in the areas affected themselves'. ('Kill them yourselves', as Frank had so aptly characterized the answer from Berlin). However, the time schedule for these annihilation measures remained an open matter.

According to the wording of the minutes and our analysis of the events in the spring and summer of 1942, it is clear that the 'coming final solution' did not begin until May 1942, i.e. about four months after the Wannsee Conference. Moreover, it did not get into top gear until July 1942 because of the interruption of the transport hold-up. The 'preparatory' measures in the Generalgouvernement began in March with the murder of most of the Jews from Lublin and Galicia, and were resumed in June and stepped up in July when the systematic annihilation of the Jews of the Generalgouvernement started. The murder of Jews in the Soviet Union, which had started in the summer of 1941, seems to have escalated again in the summer of 1942 (81).

It seems perfectly possible that the final aim of the deportations within the framework of the 'coming final solution' was still undetermined at the time of the Wannsee Conference. Thus it is also possible that only gradually during the ensuing months would there be acceptance of the idea of diverting the deportations originally destined for the occupied territories of the Soviet Union to the extermination centers being constructed in occupied Poland. For Heydrich, two things mattered above all others on 20 January 1942: first, the deportations had to be accepted by the decision-making authorities of the Reich (everything that happened after the deportations was a matter internal to the SS and did not have to be agreed with the other offices). Secondly, the range of those to be deported had to be decided on, thus the status of the 'Mischlinge' and of those who had married non-Jews had to be clarified (82).

The second half of the Wannsee Conference was devoted to the latter purpose. Heydrich proposed that so-called first degree Mischlinge should, with certain exceptions, be deported. Similarly, any Jews or 'first degree Mischlinge' who had married 'Aryans' should as a rule be expelled from the Reich area or be sent to an 'old-age ghetto'. The absurdly complicated classification of 'Mischlinge' under the Nazi race laws, as was made perfectly clear in Heydrich’s speech, would have made large numbers of individual case decisions necessary. In order to avoid 'endless administrative work' resulting there from, the State Secretary for Internal Affairs, Stuckart, proposed that 'forced sterilization be proceeded with'. This topic could not be fully discussed at the conference and therefore had to be dealt with in several follow-up discussions – which did not, however, yield any conclusive results either.

As a direct result of the detailed discussion of problems with 'Mischlinge' and 'mixed marriages', the representatives of the ministerial bureaucracy were made accessories to, and co-responsible for, the 'final solution'. It was precisely because of the reservations raised among their ranks about including certain peripheral groups in the deportations that the ministerial officials let it be known that they had no reservations about the principle of deporting Jews. That was the decisive result of the meeting and was the main reason that Heydrich arranged for the guidelines of the future annihilation policy to be recorded in detail in the minutes.


Notes
80   On the failure of German propaganda concerning Europe and the ‘New Order’, see Peter Longerich, Propagandisten im Krieg. Die Presseabteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes unter Ribbentrop, (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1987), p85ff.
81   The genocide in the occupied Soviet territories has not yet been completely researched. A series of studies show a renewed escalation of murder in May and summer 1942: Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, p683ff; Shmuel Spector, The Holocaust of Volhynian Jews, 1941-1944, (Jerusalem: Achva Press, 1990); Martin Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941-44, (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).
82   See particularly Jeremy Noakes, ‘Nazi Policy towards German-Jewish "Mischlinge"’, in: Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, vol. 34 (1989), 291-354.