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The Origins of the Final Solution

University of Nebraska Press

Contents

List of Illustrations.................................................................................................................ixPreface...............................................................................................................................xi1 Background..........................................................................................................................12 Poland, Laboratory of Racial Policy.................................................................................................12Abdication of the Army................................................................................................................15Racial Policy and Terror..............................................................................................................253 The Search for a Final Solution through Expulsion, 1939-1941........................................................................36Eichmann and the Nisko Plan...........................................................................................................36The Baltic Germans, the First Short-Range Plan, and the Warthegau Deportations........................................................43The Curbing of Nazi Deportation Plans, January-February 1940..........................................................................54The Intermediate Plan, the Stettin Deportations, and the Volhynian Action, February-July 1940.........................................63The Army, from Abdication to Complicity...............................................................................................72The Madagascar Plan...................................................................................................................81The Last Spasms of Expulsion Policy, Fall 1940-Spring 1941............................................................................894 The Polish Ghettos..................................................................................................................111Ghettoization.........................................................................................................................111Exploitation..........................................................................................................................138Production or Starvation, the Ghetto Managers' Dilemma................................................................................1515 Germany and Europe..................................................................................................................169Racial Persecution inside Germany, 1939-1941..........................................................................................169The Nazi Sphere of Influence..........................................................................................................1936 Preparing for the "War of Destruction"..............................................................................................213Military Preparations for the "War of Destruction"....................................................................................215Preparations of the SS................................................................................................................224Economic and Demographic Preparations for "Operation Barbarossa" (by Christopher R. Browning and Jrgen Matthus).....................2347 Operation Barbarossa and the Onset of the Holocaust, June-December 1941 By Jrgen Matthus..........................................244German Perceptions and Expectations Regarding "the East"..............................................................................245Early Anti-Jewish Measures and the Mid-July Turning Point.............................................................................253Pogroms and Collaboration.............................................................................................................268Toward the Final Solution, August-December 1941.......................................................................................277The Final Solution in the East........................................................................................................2948 From War of Destruction to the Final Solution.......................................................................................309Euphoria of Victory and Decision Making, July-October 1941............................................................................309Consternation and Anticipation........................................................................................................330Inventing the Extermination Camp......................................................................................................3529 The Final Solution from Conception to Implementation, October 1941-March 1942.......................................................374Deportations from Germany, the First and Second Waves.................................................................................375Integrating the Bureaucracy into the Final Solution...................................................................................398The Gassing Begins....................................................................................................................41610 Conclusion.........................................................................................................................424Hitler and the Decision-Making Process in Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942...............................................424Germans and the Final Solution........................................................................................................428Notes.................................................................................................................................435Bibliography..........................................................................................................................549Index.................................................................................................................................579

Chapter One

In a brief two years between the autumn of 1939 and the autumn of 1941, Nazi Jewish policy escalated rapidly from the prewar policy of forced emigration to the Final Solution as it is now understood-the systematic attempt to murder every last Jew within the German grasp. The mass murder of Soviet Jewry had already begun in the late summer of 1941, and only one-half year later the Nazi regime was ready to begin implementing this policy throughout the rest of its European empire and sphere of influence. The study of these 30 months-from September 1939 through March 1942-is crucial for understanding the genesis of the Final Solution and constitutes the core of this book. At this time the Nazi regime stood on the brink of a true watershed event in history. But why, after two millennia of Christian-Jewish antagonism and one millennium of a singular European anti-Semitism, did this watershed event occur in Germany in the middle of the 20th century?

Christians and Jews had lived in an adversarial relationship since the first century of the common era, when the early followers of Jesus failed to persuade significant numbers of their fellow Jews that he was the Messiah. They then gradually solidified their...