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Phillip Burrin- Interpretation 3 - Coggle Diagram

Phillip Burrin- Interpretation 3

Planning?

Goerings order of 1941 contains nothing that makes it the 'smoking gun'

The hour of death for the Jews could have come, but nothing could be less certain.

Identifies that the time had come to extend the scope of Heydrich’s mandate to the whole of Europe.

Other departments should be consulted and invited to ‘participate’.

Solutions envisaged were, strictly, emigration and evacuation.

Before he did anything, Heydrich was to consult Goering. Things still at the stage of proposals.

- - - - If Hitler had wanted to entrust the extermination of the Jews to Heydrich, he would not have issued an order via Goering.

None of the evidence from Sumer 41 indicates that the extermination had been decided on

Evidence

Final solution remained the deportation of Jews to reservations. \

Heydrich’s request to the ministry of Justice- that martial law should apply to Poles and Jews- shows that he did not think that the FS was imminent.

“Expect that in the future” is a vague and non-specific phrase.

Goering’s plans for the Jews to be moved into to work camps- Jews condemned to death to be hanged- shows that they were intended to leave Nazi Europe.

If extermination had been decided on, he would not have needed to express himself about the hanging of them.

Eichmann's meeting on the 13th of August about 'half caste' Jews

Elaboration

At stake was the deportation of vast numbers of persons.

Eichmann recived support for an interdepartmental task force that would give a European-wide definition of ‘the Jew’.

Concerns about modifying the (too generous) definition of the Jew given at Nuremberg in 1935.

In the minds of the party experts and Eichmann, mid-August the deportation of Jews was the official policy.

July and August 1941, Death preparations made by Himmler's department for Soviet soliders- not Jews.

Process development

Sachsenhausen, August 41. A fast method was needed for killing 18,000 soviet prisoners due to arrive there.

Shot via an evil ‘measuring device’ contraption. 6,500 murdered.

September at Auschwitz, Zyklon B used to kill soviets.

Deportation to the east ordered in September.

Both decisions came from Hitler himself.

In December 1941, local jews of Posen were gassed in the facilities built for the mentally ill.

In January, the inactive Jews of the Lodz ghetto took their turn.

Greiser made some kind of deal with Himmler? I’ll take your jews if I can kill my useless ones.

However, extermination of the jews did not begin locally and become a wider movement, for in the Lublin area prep to exterminate their jews was also underway.

All was orchestrated from September to October 1941.

Wannsee only recorded a solution already reached.

Role of Hitler

Hitler's orders

Deportation to the east ordered in September.

Both decisions came from Hitler himself.

These orders meant that the hour of extermination had arrived

‘But this would reduce to naught the plan for a total resettlement of the Jews out of the territories occupied by us’.

Shows that they were at the start of a vast project- which it was feared would face challenges.

Project involved all territories under the control of the Reich.

‘Resettlement’ could mean nothing more than extermination as the Jews in the east- where it was proposed to send the evacuated Jews- were facing extinction at the hands of the Einsatzgruppen.

badges

Goebbels persuaded him that the badges were needed.

Would eliminate Jewish ‘bellyachers’ and ‘defeatists’ from going unrecognised throughout Germany.

Linked to the war, Goebbels knew that talk of Jewish ‘defeatists’ would convince Hitler.

Measure not adopted in view of an impending deportation.

evacuation

Goebbels asked to deport the Berlin Jews.

Hitler stated that he would be able to send them to the east immediately after the end of the eastern campaign.

Beginning of September, Germans in Serbia sought to deport 8,000 Jewish men from the region to spread partisan activity. Eichmann refused.

18th September, Hitler wished the Reich and the protectorate to be liberated from the Jews. Himmler asked Greiser to send them to Lodz ghetto for the winter before their being sent further east.

Bouhler's crew were in charge in Lublin

24th August 41, Hitler ordered the Euthanasia action to end.

Hitler does not seem to have had another idea in mind for the Euthanasia crews.

Many dismissed after the end of the action.

However, others distributed across the ‘space’ that would develop into the Final Solution.

There does seem to have been a central decision dated to the end of September/beginning of October.

On Hitler's authority that Himmler ordered Einsatzgruppen to exterminate women and children in the USSR.

Hitler who decided that Reich jews should wear a yellow star.

Hitler who decided that they should be deported east.

No reason to doubt that he gave the order for genocide.

The way Hitler reacted to the Russian campaign may give us some idea as to why he chose to take these steps.

Focus on Hitler’s perception of things at the time is key. Documentation sufficient to illuminate the context in which the shift to genocide took place.

Croatian meeting

Hitler urged his Croat counterpart to use the most brutal measures to achieve purification.

‘Asocials and criminals must be exterminated; when a country sends its best to risk their lives at the front, it need not spare the scum’.

Hitler expressed his wish to get them out of Europe, he was ‘indifferent’ as to their specific destination.

Hitler reaffirmed his intention to concentrate the Jews into a specific territory.

Significance of Barbarossa in changing Hitler's mindset

His attitude towards the Jews began to harden.

8th or 10th of August, he spoke of population evacuations.

18th of August, Hitler reiterated to Goebbels his desire to expel the Jews from the Reich (also agreed to an insignia). He referred to their deportation east after the war and stated that the harsh climate would teach them how to live.

The idea of extermination was taking shape in proportion to the difficulties encountered in the war in the east, but the final verdict had not yet been reached.

Hitler began to ponder more and more on 1918

Hitler began to ponder more and more on the Great war, and its conclusion.

He told Himmler that, in the event of internal troubles, all concentration camp prisoners should be killed so that no leader would appear to incite masses.

Deportation

Hitler’s deportation order shows that he did not believe victory to be close.

He sent them there, in a reversal of his previous decision, to die.

Hitler’s use of ‘from now on’ in a speech on the 3rd of October 1941 in reference to the Jews appears to show that a decision had recently been made.

Significance of Barbarossa

August '41, the Final solution began to change from a possibility to a reality

Conceivable to suggest that all soviet jews were, from this point on, condemned to die.

Conceivable to suggest that the SS has an open-ended extermination order- the nature of which would develop over time.

August 41

Prospects became ever darker for the Germans.

Keitel spelled out how bad things were.

Hitler began to foresee a prolongation of the war.

Began to use the word ‘hope’ more and more when speaking of the war.

Hiter had a growing certainty that the war was bogging down.

Hitler dreamed of a miraculous peace to save him from the trap he had drawn around him.

Was the decision to kill Soviet Jews the result of the decision to kill all Jews under Nazi control?

If genocide has been decreed in Summer ’41, then the policy towards Jews in the Reich should have made that apparent.

Two major turning points of anti-Jewish policy

Massacre of Jews in the USSR assumed the characteristics of a genocide.

Decision to deport Jews from the Reich to the east- accompanied by preparations indicating that all Jews under Nazi control would be marked for death.

Russian campaign planned in an atmosphere of unprecedented confidence.

Germans believed that they would make short work of a poorly equipped, poorly led enemy.

German army would surround soviet troops and crush them before they had time to retreat which would lead to the collapse of the Soviet regime.

Expected to take a few weeks to a few months.

Hitler was determined for fast success and a definitive defeat of Bolshevism. ‘We must have early successes. There must be no reversals.’

Hitler knew, however, that the campaign was a risk. He still has confidence in the army generally and the OKW more specifically.

Many things dependent on the success of Barbarossa

Japan’s being freed from Soviet pressure.

First weeks of the campaign in Russia

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Fulfilled Hitler’s hopes.
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14th July approved the armament programme that was to begin at the end of Barbarossa.

Showed that the campaign had lived up to his expectation.

Did have some doubts, for instance he had underestimated the Soviet troops’ morale.

15th of July, he told Oshima (Japanese ambassador to Germany) of the serious surprises he had faced in the USSR. ‘Russians could fight like wild animals

By the beginning of July, the German generals viewed the battle as as good as won.

Hitler gave free reign to dreams of colonisation, declaring that Moscow and Leningrad would be ‘pulverised’.

Hitler'a antisemitism during the campaign

Hitler’s antisemitism never left during the campaign.

He had fears for the troops headed for Kyiv’s safety as 35% of Kyiv was Jewish.

Yet the concept of massacre far from his mind.

Hitler believed that the worst blow he had dealt the jews at this point was to show that countries could- and should- live without them.

The Change

By the end of July, anxiety was taking on crisis proportions.

Brauchitsch: ‘The length of the war wore at the nerves’.

Hitler became obsessed by the time it was taking to win in the USSR.

Goebbels: 26th July ‘The people must know that Germany is fighting for her life and that we must choose between the total annihilation of the German nation and domination of the world.

Barbarossa leads to genocide

On the 22nd of July, Hitler directed the commanders of the rear echelons to employ the harshest methods to impose order on the population.

The enemy taken in battle were to be killed.

In the event of opposition. From the population, collective reprisals must be used.

Suspicious elements to be turned over to the Einsatzgruppen.

Acts of the SS increasingly mirrored the brutality of the campaign.

Due to the connection between the Jews and Soviet partisans, the work of the SS Einsatzgruppen would ‘know no bounds’.

- - - - Extermination now on the agenda