The attempt to rationalize the deed was two-pronged.
One line of contention was designed to show that all actions were
countermeasures, that in essence they were defensive. This kind of explanation,
furnished by an army of propagandists, was centered entirely on the Jews. The
other approach, which was internal, offered reassurances to those who performed
specific acts by virtue of their positions. Such were dealt only with the
perpetrator himself. Yet, taken together, the two strategies were complementary,
and each carried a set of exculpatory themes.
The open propaganda campaign was fashioned to portray
the Jew as evil, and that message was formulated for long-range effect. The
allegation was repeated often enough so that it could be stored in the mind and
drawn upon according to need. Thus the statement “The Jew is evil,” taken from
the storehouse, could be converted by a perpetrator into a complete
rationalization: “I kill the Jew because the Jew is evil.” To understand the
function of such formulations is to realize why they were being constructed
until the very end of the war. Propaganda was needed to combat doubts and guilt
feelings wherever they arose, whether inside or outside the bureaucracy, and
whenever they surfaced, before or after an event.
In fact, we find that in April 1943, after the deportations
of the Jews from the Reich had largely been completed, the press was ordered to
deal with the Jewish question continuously and without letup. (111) In order to
build up a storehouse, the propaganda had to be turned out on a large scale.
“Research institutes” were formed, (112) doctoral dissertations were written,
(113) and volumes of propaganda literature were printed by every conceivable
agency. Sometimes a scholarly investigation was conducted too assiduously. One
economic study, rich in the common jargon but uncommonly balanced in content,
appeared in Vienna with the notation “Not in the book trade.” The author had
discovered that the zenith of Jewish financial power had been reached in 1913.
(114) On the other hand, the publication of more suitable literature could even
lead to bureaucratic competition. Thus Unterstaatssekretär Luther of the
Foreign Office had to assure Obergruppenführer Berger of the SS Main Office
that the Foreign Office’s pamphlet Das
Russische Tor ist aufgestossen (The Russian Gate Is Thrown Open) in no way compared with Berger’s
masterpiece Der Untermensch (The Subhuman). (115)
What did all this propaganda accomplish? How was the
Jew portrayed in this unending flow of leaflets and pamphlets, books, and
speeches? How did the propaganda image of the Jews serve to justify the
destruction process?
First of all, the Germans drew a picture of an
international Jewry ruling the world and plotting the destruction of Germany
and German life. “If international-finance Jewry,” said Adolf Hitler in 1939,
“inside and outside of Europe should succeed in plunging the nations into
another world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth
and with it the victory of the Jews, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in
Europe.” (116) In 1944 Himmler said to his commanders. “This was the most
frightening order which an organization could receive, the order to solve the
Jewish question,” but if the Jews had still been in the rear, the front line
could not have been held, and if any of the commanders
were moved to pity, they had only to think of the bombing terror, “which after
all is organized in the last analysis by the Jews.” (117)
The theory of world Jewish rule and of the incessant
Jewish plot against the German people penetrated into all offices. It became
interwoven with foreign policy and sometimes led to preposterous results. Thus
the conviction grew that foreign statesmen who were not very friendly toward
Germany were Jews, part-Jews, married to Jews, or somehow dominated by Jews.
Streicher did not hesitate to state publicly (118) that he had it on good
Italian authority that the Pope had Jewish blood. Similarly, Staatssekretär
Weizsäcker of the Foreign Office once questioned the British chargé d’affaires
about the percentage of “Aryan” blood in Mr. Rublee, an American on a mission
in behalf of refugees. (119)
This type of reasoning was also applied in reverse.
If a power was friendly, it was believed to be free of Jewish rule. In March
1940, after Ribbentrop had succeeded in establishing friendly relations with
Russia, he assured Mussolini and Ciano that Stalin had given up the idea of
world revolution. The Soviet administration had been purged of Jews. Even
Kaganovich (the Jewish Politburo member) looked rather like a Georgian. (120)
The claim of Jewish world rule was to be established
irrefutably in a show trial. Toward the end of 1941 the Propaganda Ministry,
the Foreign Office, and the Justice Ministry laid plans for the trial of
Herschel Grynzpan, the man who had assassinated a German embassy official (vom
Rath) in Paris in 1938. (121) The trial was to prove that Grynzpan’s deed was
part of a “fundamental plan by international Jewry to drive the world into a
war with National Socialist Germany,” (122) but it was never held because the
Justice Ministry in its eagerness had made the fatal mistake of adding
homosexuality to the indictment. At the last moment it was feared that Grynzpan
might reveal “the alleged homosexual relations of Gesandtschaftsrat vom Rath.”
And so the whole scheme was dropped. (123)
When Germany began to lose the war in Stalingrad, the
propaganda machine sought to make up in sheer volume of endless repetition for
the “proof” it had failed to obtain in the ill-fated Grynzpan trial. The Jew
was now the principal foe, the creator of capitalism and communism, the
sinister force behind the entire Allied war effort, the organizer of the
“terror raids,” and, finally, the all-powerful enemy capable of wiping Germany
off the map. By February 5, 1943, the press had to be cautioned not to
“over-estimate the power of the Jews.” (124) On the same day, however, the
following instructions were issued:
Stress: If we lose this war, we do not fall into the
hands of some other states but will be annihilated by the world Jewry. Jewry
firmly decided [fest entschlossen] to
exterminate all Germans. International law and international custom will be no
protection against the Jewish will for total annihilation [totaler Vernichtungswille der Juden]. (125)
The idea of a Jewish conspiracy was also employed to
justify specific operations. Thus the Foreign Office pressed for deportations
from Axis countries on the ground that the Jews were a security risk. (126) The
jews were the spies, the enemy agents. They could not be permitted to stay in
coastal areas because, in the event of Allied landings, they would attack the
defending garrisons from the rear. The Jews were inciters of revolt; that was
why they had to be deported from Slovakia in 1944. The Jews were the organizers
of the partisan war, the “middlemen” between the Red Army and the partisan
field command; that was why they could not be permitted to remain alive in
partisan-threatened areas. The Jews were the saboteurs and assassins; that was
the army chose them as hostages in Russia, Serbia, and France. (127) The Jews
were plotting the destruction of Germany; and that was why they had to be
destroyed. In Himmler’s words: “We had the moral right vis-à-vis our people to
annihilate this people which wanted to annihilate us.” In the minds of the
perpetrators, therefore, this theory could turn the destruction process into a
kind of preventive war.
The Jews were portrayed not only as a world
conspiracy but also as a criminal people. This is the definition of the Jews as
furnished in instructions to the German press:
Stress: In the case of the Jews there are not merely
a few criminals (as in every other people), but all of Jewry rose from criminal
roots, and in its very nature it is criminal. The Jews are no people like other
people, but a pseudo-people welded together by hereditary criminality [eine zu einem Scheinvolk
zusammengeschlossene Erbkriminalität] .... The annihilation of Jewry is no
loss to humanity, but just as useful as capital punishment or protective
custody against other criminals. (128)
And this is what Streicher had to say: “Look at the
path which the Jewish people has traversed for millennia: Everywhere murder;
everywhere mass murder!” (129)
A Nazi researcher, Helmut Schramm, collected all the
legends of jewish ritual murder. (130) The book was an immediate success with
Himmler. “Of the book The Jewish Ritual
Murders,” he wrote to Kaltenbrunner, “I have ordered a large number. I am
distributing it down to Standartenführer [SS colonel]. I am sending you several
hundred copies so that you can distribute them to your Einsatzkommandos, and
above all to the men who are busy with the Jewish question.” (131) The Jewish Ritual Murders was a
collection of stories about alleged tortures of Christian children. Actually,
hundreds of thousands of Jewish children were being killed in the destruction
process. Perhaps that is why The Jewish
Ritual Murders became so important. In fact, Himmler was so enthusiastic
about the book that he ordered Kaltenbrunner to start investigations of “ritual
murders” in Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria. He also suggested that Security
Police people be put to work tracing British court records and police
descriptions of missing children, “so that we can report in our radio
broadcasts to England that in the town of XY a child is missing and that it is
probably another case of Jewish ritual murder.” (132)
How the notion of Jewish criminality was applied in
practice may be seen in the choice of some of the expressions in the reports of
the killing operations, such as the term execution (in German, hingerichtet, exekutiert, Vollzugstätigkeit).
In correspondence dealing with the administration of the personal belongings
taken from dead Jews, the SS used the cover designation “utilization of the
property of the Jewish thieves [Verwertung
des jüdischen Hehler und Diebesgutes].”
(133)
A striking example of how the theory invaded German
thinking is furnished in the format of portions of two reports by the army’s
Secret Field Police in occupied Russia: (134)
Punishable
offenses by members of the population
Espionage 1
Theft of ammunition 1
Suspected Jews (Judenverdacht)
3
Punishable
offenses by members of the population
Moving about with arms (Freischärlerei) 11
Theft 2
Jews 2
In the culmination of this theory, to be a Jew was a
punishable offense (strafbare Handlung). Thus it was the function of
the rationalization of criminality to turn the destruction process into a kind
of judicial proceeding.
A third rationalization that focused on the Jew was
the conception of Jewry as a lower form of life. Generalgouverneur Frank was
given to the use of such phrases as “Jews and lice.” In a speech delivered on
December 19, 1943, the chief of the Generalgouvernment Health Division reported
during a meeting that the typhus epidemic was subsiding. Frank remarked in this
connection that the “removal” (Beseitigung)
of the “Jewish element” had undoubtedly contributed to better health (Gesundung) in Europe. He meant this not
only in the literal sense but also politically: the reestablishment of sound
living conditions (Gesunder Lebensverhältnisse) on the European continent.
(136) In a similar vein, Foreign Office Press Chief Schmidt once declared
during a visit to Slovakia, “The Jewish question is no question of humanity,
and it is no question of religion; it is solely a question of political hygiene
[eine Frage der politischen Hygiene].” (137)
In the terminology of the killing operations, the
conception of Jew as vermin is again quite noticeable. Dr. Stahlecker, the
commander of Einsatzgruppe A, called the pogroms conducted by the Lithuanians
“self-cleansing actions” (Selbstreinigungsaktionen).
In another report we find the phrase “cleansing-of-Jews actions” (Judensäuberungsaktionen). Himmler spoke
of “extermination” (Ausrottung). Many
times the bureaucracy used the word Entjudung.
This expression, which was used not only in connection with killings but also
with reference to Aryanization of property, means to rid something of Jews. (138) One of the most frequently applied
terms in this vocabulary was judenrein,
which means clean of Jews. Finally, it should be noted that at the spur of the
moment a German fumigation company, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Schädlingsbekämpfung, was drawn into the killing operations by furnishing one
of its lethal products for the gassing of a million Jews. Thus the destruction
process was also turned into a “cleansing operation.”
In addition to the formulations that were used to
justify the whole undertaking as a war against “international Jewry,” as a
judicial proceeding against “Jewish criminality,” or simply as a “hygienic”
process against “Jewish vermin,” there were also rationalizations fashioned in
order to enable the individual bureaucrat to justify his individual task in the
destruction process. It must be kept in mind that most of the participants did
not fire rifles at Jewish children or pour gas into gas chambers. A good many,
of course, also had to perform these very “hard” tasks, but most of the administrators
and most of the clerks did not see the final, drastic link in these measures of
destruction.
Most bureaucrats composed memoranda, drew up
blueprints, signed correspondence, talked on the telephone, and participated in
conferences. They could destroy a whole people by sitting at their desks.
Except for inspection tours, which were not obligatory, they never had to see
“100 bodies lie there, or 500, or 1,000.” However, these men were not naïve.
They realized the connection between their paperwork and the heaps of corpses
in the East, and they also realized the shortcomings of arguments that placed
all evil on the Jew and all good on the German. That was why they were
compelled to defend their individual activities. Their justifications contain
the implicit admission that the paperwork was to go on regardless of the actual
plans of world Jewry and regardless of the actual behavior of the Jews who were
about to be killed. The rationalizations focused on the perpetrators can be
divided into five categories.
The oldest, the simplest, and therefore the most
effective device was the doctrine of superior orders. First and foremost there
was discipline. First and foremost there was duty. No matter what objections
there might be, orders were given to be obeyed. A clear order was like
absolution. Armed with such an order, a perpetrator felt that he could pass his
responsibility and his conscience upward. When Himmler addressed a killing
party in Minsk, he told his men that they need not worry. Their conscience was
in no way impaired, for they were soldiers who had to carry out every order
unconditionally. (139)
The reality was more complex. Even in the field it
was sometimes possible to refuse participation in a shooting without suffering
dire consequences, especially if the objection could be perceived as an
expression of a psychological inability rather than an undisguised challenge.
Once, when members of the 2d Lithuanian Schutzmannschaft Battalion who had just
arrived in Byelorussia were ordered to shoot Jews in the town of Rudensk, a
young man said that he could not kill the people. The Lithuanian company
commander then suggested that all those who could not shoot step back. Fifteen
or seventeen men accepted this offer and watched the shooting by their compatriots
from a distance of 20 to 30 yards. (140) In the Lublin District, the commander
of the 101st Reserve Police Battalion, Major Trapp, went further. Full of
qualms himself, he invited the older men who could not shoot women and children
to step out. (141) In both cases the choice had been given to men without
experience in such killing, and both of these units were involved in subsequent
shooting with less hesitation. (142)
As to those who occupied desks, flexibility was
greater. Opportunities for evading instructions almost always increase as one
ascends in the hierarchy. Even in Nazi Germany orders were disobeyed, and they
were disobeyed even in Jewish matters. We have mentioned the statement of
Reichsbankdirektor Wilhelm, who would not participate in the distribution of
“second-hand goods.” Nothing happened to him. A member of the Reich Security
Main Office, Sturmbannführer Hartl, simply refused to take over an Einsatzkommando
in Russia. Nothing happened to this man either. (143) Even Generalkommissar
Kube, who had actually frustrated a killing operation in Minsk and who had
otherwise expressed himself in strong language, was only warned.
The bureaucrat clung to his orders not so much
because he feared his superior (with whom he was often on good terms) but
because he shrank from his own conscience. The many requests for
“authorization,” whether for permission to mark Jews with a star or to kill
them, demonstrate the true nature of these orders. When they did not exist the
bureaucrats had to invent them.
The second rationalization was the administrator’s
insistence that he did not act out of personal vindictiveness. In the mind of
the bureaucrat, duty was an assigned path; it was his “fate.” The German
bureaucrat made a sharp distinction between duty and personal feelings. He
insisted that he did not “hate” Jews, and sometimes he even went out of his way
to perform “good deeds” for Jewish friends and acquaintances. When the trials
of war criminals started, there was hardly a defendant who could not produce
evidence that he had helped some half-Jewish physics professor, or that he had
used his influence to permit a Jewish symphony conductor to conduct a little
while longer, or that he had intervened on behalf of some couple in mixed
marriage in connection with an apartment. While these courtesies were petty in
comparison with the destructive conceptions that these men were implementing
concurrently, the “good deeds” performed an important psychological function.
They separated “duty” from personal feelings. They preserved a sense of
“decency.” The destroyer of the Jews was no “anti-Semite”.
Staatssekretär Keppler of the Office of the Four-Year
Plan was interrogated after the war as follows:
Question [by Dr. Kempner of the prosecuting staff]:
Tell me, Mr. Keppler, why were you so terribly against the Jews? Did you know
the Jews?
Answer: I had nothing against the Jews.
Question: I am asking for the reason. You were no friend
of the Jews?
Answer: Jews came to me. Warburg invited me. Later
Jews looked me up in the Reich Chancellery and asked me to join the board of
directors of the Deutsche Bank.
Question: When were you supposed to join the board of
directors?
Answer: I didn’t want to; it was in 1934, they wanted
to give me a written assurance that I would be a director in half a year. If I
had been such a hater of Jews, they would not have approached me.
Question: But you transferred capital from Jews into
Aryan hands.
Answer: Not often. I know the one case of
Simson-Suhl. Also the Skoda-Wetzler Works in Vienna. But it turned out that was
no Jewish enterprise.
Keppler was then asked whether he had not favored the
“disappearance” of the Jews from Germany. The Staatssekretär fell back on
Warburg, with whom he had once had an “interesting discussion.” The
interrogator broke in with the remark that “now we do not want to talk about
anti-Semitism but about the final solution of the Jewish question.” In that
connection, Keppler was asked whether he had heard of Lublin. The
Staatssekretär admitted hesitantly that he had heard of Lubin and offered the
explanation that he was “deeply troubled by this matter [dass mich das
furchtbar peinlich berührt].” What did Keppler do when he was touched like this?
“It was very unpleasant for me, but after all it was not even in my sphere of
jurisdiction.” (144)
Another defendant in a war crimes trial, the former
commander in Norway, Generaloberst von Falkenhorst, offered the following
explanations for his order to remove Jews from Soviet prisoner-of-war
battalions in his area. Von Falkenhorst pointed out that, to begin with, there
were no Jews among these prisoners, for the selection had already taken place
in Germany (i.e. the Jewish prisoners had already been shot as they were
shuttled through the Reich). The order was consequently “entirely superfluous
and might just as well not have been included. It was thoughtlessly included by
the officer of my staff who was working on it, from the instructions sent to
us, and I overlooked it.” The general then continued:
For the rest it may be inferred from this that the
Jewish question played as infamous a part in Norway as elsewhere, and that I
and the Army were supposed to have been particularly anti-Semitic.
Against this suspicion I can only adduct the
following: First, that in Scandinavian countries there are only very few Jews.
These few are hardly ever in evidence. The sum total in Norway was only about
350. {Actual figure, 2,000.] A negligible number among two or three million
Norwegians. These [Jews] were collected by [Reichskommissar] Terboven and
according to orders despatched to Germany by steamship. In this manner the
Jewish problem in Norway was practically solved [i.e., by deportation to Auschwitz].
As regards myself, I made at this time an application
to Terboven at the requests of the Swedish Consul, General Westring, in Oslo,
who did not much like visiting Terboven, for the release of a Jew of Swedish
nationality and of his family with permission to leave the country, gladly and,
as a matter of course, fulfilling the Consul’s wish to facilitate the return of
these people to Stockholm.
If I had been a rabid anti-Semite I could, without
further ado, have refused this request, for the matter did not concern me in
the slightest.
On the one hand, however, I wanted to help the
Swedish Consul, and, on the other hand, I have nothing against the Jews. I have
read and heard their writings and compositions with interest, and their
achievements in the field of science are worthy of the highest respect. I have
met many fine and honorable people among them. (145)
How widespread the practice of “good deeds” must have
been may be gauged from the following remark by Heinrich Himmler: “And then
they come, our 80,000,000 good Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. It is
clear, the others are swine [Schweine], but this one is a first-class Jew. Of
all those who speak thus, no one has seen it, no one has gone through it.”
(146) But even if Himmler regarded these interventions as expressions of
misplaced humanity, they were necessary tools in the attempt to crystallize one
of the important justifications for bureaucratic action – duty. Only after a
man had done “everything humanly possible” could he devote himself to his
destructive activity in peace.
The third justification was the rationalization that
one’s own activity was not criminal, that the next fellow’s action was the
criminal act. The Ministerialrat who was signing papers could console himself
with the thought that he did not do the shooting. But that was not enough. He
had to be sure if he were ordered to
shoot, he would not follow orders but would draw the line right then and there.
The following exchange took place during a war crime
trial. A Foreign Office official, Albrecht von Kessel, was asked by defense
counsel (Dr. Becker) to explain the meaning of “Final Solultion.”
ANSWER: This expression “final solution” was used
with various meanings. In 1936 “final solution” meant merely that all Jews
should leave Germany. And, of course, it was true that they were to be robbed;
that wasn’t very nice, but it wasn’t criminal.
JUDGE MAGUIRE: Was that an accurate translation?
DR. BECKER: I did not check on the translation.
Please repeat the sentence.
ANSWER: I said it was not criminal; it was not nice,
but it was not criminal. That is what I said. One didn’t want to take their
life; one merely wanted to take money away from them. That was all. (147)
The most important characteristic of this dividing
line was that it could be shifted
when the need arose. To illustrate: Once there was a Protestant pastor by the
name of Ernst Biberstein. After several years of ministering to his
congregation, he moved into the Church Ministry. From that agency he came to
another office which was also interested in church matters: the Reich Security
Main Office. That agency assigned him to head a local Gestapo office. Finally
he became the chief of Einsatzkommando 6 in southern Russia. As commander of
the Kommando, Biberstein killed two or three thousand persons. These people, in
his opinion, had forfeited the right to live under the rules of war. Asked if
there were Jews among the victims, he replied: “It is very difficult to
determine that. Also, I was told at that time that wherever there were
Armenians, there were not so many Jews.” (148) To Biberstein the moral dividing
line was like the receding horizon. He walked toward it, but he could never
reach it.
Among the participants in the destruction process
there were very few who did not shift the line when they had to cross the
threshold. One reason why the person of Generalkommissar Kube is so important
is that he had a firm line beyond which he could not pass. The line was
arbitrary, and very advanced. He sacrificed Russian Jews and fought desperately
only for the German Jews in his area. But the line was fixed. It was not
movable, it was not imaginary, it was not self-deceptive. The destruction
process was autonomous, in that it could not be stopped internally. The
adjustable moral standard was one of the principal tools in the maintenance of
this autonomy.
There was a fourth rationalization that implicitly
took cognizance of the fact that all shifting lines are unreal. It was built on
a simple premise: No man alone can build a bridge and no man alone can destroy
the Jews. The participant in the destruction process was always in company. Among
his superiors he could always find those who were doing more than he; among his
subordinates he could always find those who were ready to take his place. No
matter where he looked, he was one among thousands. His own importance was
diminished, and he felt that he was replaceable, perhaps even dispensable.
In such reflective moments, the perpetrator quieted
his conscience with the thought that he was part of a tide and that there was
very little a drop of water could do in such a wave. Ernst Göx,
who served in the Order Police and who rode the trains to Auschwitz, was one of
those who felt helpless. “I was always a socialist,” he said, “and my father belonged
to the Socialist Party for fifty years. When we talked with each other – which
was often – I always said that if there was still justice, things could not go
on like that much longer.” (149) When Werner von Tippelskirch, a Foreign Office
official, was interrogated after the war, he pointed out that he had never
protested against the killing of Jews in Russia because he had been
“powerless.” His superiors, Erdmannsdorff, Wörmann, and Weizsäcker, had
also been “powerless.” All of them had waited for a “change of regime.” Asked by Prosecutor
Kempner whether it was right to wait for a change of regime “and in the
meantime send thousands of people to their death,” von Tippelskirch replied, “A
difficult question.” (150) [[WoodyAllen.]] For Staatssekretär von
Weizsäcker himself the question of what he could have done was circular. If he
had had influence he would have stopped measures altogether. But the “if”
presupposed a fairlyland. In such a land he would not have had to use his
influence. (151)
The fifth rationalization was the most sophisticated
of all. It was also a last-ditch psychological defense, suited particularly to
those who saw through the self-deception of superior orders, impersonal duty,
the shifting moral standard, and the argument of powerlessness. It was a
conclusion also for those whose drastic activity or high position placed them
out of reach of orders, duty, moral dividing lines, and helplessness. It was
the jungle theory.
Oswald Spengler once explained this postulate in the
following words: “War is the primeval policy of all
living things, and this to the extent that in the deepest sense combat and life
are identical, for when the will to fight is extinguished, so is life itself.” (152)
Himmler remembered this idea when he addressed the mobile killing personnel at
Minsk. He told them to look at nature. Wherever they would look, they would
find combat. They would find it among animals and among plants. Whoever tired
of the fight went under. (153)
From this philosophy Hitler himself drew strength in
moments of meditation. Once, at the dinner table, when he thought about the destruction
of the Jews, he remarked with stark simplicity: “One must not have mercy with
people who are determined by fate to perish [Man dürfe kein Mitleid mit Leuten
haben, denen das Schicksal bestimmt habe, zugrunde zu gehen].” (154)
111.
Instructions by Reich Press Chief, April 29,
1943, NG-4705.
112.
Notably the Institut zut Erforschung der
Judenfrage in Frankfurt, under Dr. Klaus Schickert. Steengracht to Rosenberg,
January 22, 1944, NG-1689.
113.
Dr. Hans Praesent, “Neuere deutsche
Doktorarbeiten über das Judentum,” Die
Judenfrage, November 15, 1943, pp.
351-53.
114.
Wolfgang Höfler, Untersuchungen über die Machtstellung der Juden in der Weltwirtschaft.
Vol. 1, England und das Vornationalsozialistche Deutschland (Vienna, 1944)
115.
Luther to Berger, June 22, 1942, NG-3304.
116.
Hitler speech, January 30, 1939, German press.
117.
Himmler speech, June 21, 1944, NG-4977.
118.
Memorandum by Ribbentrop, November 18, 1939, on
the Italian protest in the Streicher affair. Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945, Ser. D, IV, 524-25.
The pontiff in question was the “temperamental Pope,” Pius XI, not the
“diplomatic Pope,” Pius XII.
119.
Weizsäcker to Wörmann, trade and legal
divisions, Referat Deutschland (Aschmann), November 7, 1938, NG-4686. The
British diplomat replied that he didn’t think Rublee had any Jewish blood.
120.
Summary of conference between Ribbentrop,
Mussolini, and Ciano, May 10, 1940, PS-2835.
121.
Ministerialrat Diewerge (Propaganda Ministry) to
Gesandter Dr. Krümmer (Foreign Office), December 22, 1941, NG-971. Krümmer to
Foreign Office press division, January 2, 1942, NG-971. Summary of international
conference, January 23, 1942, NG-973. Rintelen to Weizsäcker, April 5, 1942,
NG-179. Krümmer via Luther to Weizsäcker, April 7, 1942, NG-179. Schlegelberger
to Goebbels, April 10, 1942, NG-973. Memorandum by Diewerge, April 11, 1942,
NG-971.
122.
Rintelen to Weizsäcker, quoting Ribbentrop’s
views, April 2, 1942, NG-179.
123.
Summary of Grynzpan conference, January 23,
1942, NG-973. Louis P. Lochner, ed., The
Goebbels Diaries (Garden City, N.Y., 1948), entries for February 11 and
April 5, 1942, pp. 78, 161. Grynzpan was kept “on ice.” In 1957 he was reported
living quietly in Paris. Kurt R. Grossman, “Herschel Gruenspan lebt!” Aufbau (New York), May 10, 1957, pp. 1,
5-6. He was not found.
124.
Zeitschriften
Dienst (Propaganda Ministry),
February 5, 1943, NG-4715.
125.
Deutscher
Wochendienst, February 5, 1943,
NG-4714.
126.
Summary of Mussolini-Ribbentrop conference, held
on February 5, 1943, and dated February 27, 1943, D-734. Veesenmayer (German
Minister in Hungary) via Ambassador Ritter to Ribbentrop, July 6, 1944, NG-5684.
127.
Military Commander in Armyansk to Army Rear Area
Commander 533/Quartermaster, in Simferopol, November 30, 1941, NOKW-1532.
Staatsrat Turner (Serbia) to Higher SS and Police Leader in Danzig,
Hildebrandt, October 17, 1941, NO-5810. Military Commander in France (von
Stülpnagel) to High Command of the Army/Quartermaster General, December 5,
1941, NG-3571.
128.
Deutscher
Wochendienst, April 2, 1944, NG-4713.
129.
Speech by Streicher in Nuremberg, September
1939, M-4.
130.
Helmut Schramm, Der jüdische Ritualmord – Eine historische Untersuchung (Berlin,
1943).
131.
Himmler to Kaltenbrunner, May 19, 1943, NG-4589.
132.
Ibid.
133.
August Frank (WVHA) to Chief of
Standortvertwaltung Lublin and Chief of Administration Auschwitz, September 26,
1942, NO-724.
134.
Secret Field Police Group 722 to 207th Security
Division/Intelligence, February 23, 1943, NOKW-2210. Group 722 to 207th
Security Division/Intelligence, March 25, 1943, NOKW-2158. The division was
located in northern Russia and Estonia.
135.
Speech by Frank to men of guard battalion,
December 19, 1940, Frank Diary, PS-2233.
136.
Summary of Generalgouvernement health
conference, July 9, 1943, Frank Diary, PS-2233.
137.
Donauzeitung
(Belgrade), July 3, 1943, p. 3.
138.
Compare Entlausung
(ridding of lice) and Entwesung
(ridding of vermin, or fumigation).
139.
Von dem Bach in Aufbau (New York) August 23, 1946, pp. 1-2.
140.
Deposition of Martynus Kaciulis, August 16,
1982, in United States v. Jurgis, U.S. District Court in Tampa, C.A. No.
81-1013-CIV-T-H. The deponent was an eyewitness. The officer was 1st Lieutenant
Kristaponis, Commander of 2d Company. The battalion commander was Major
Impulevicius.
141.
Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men (New York,
1992), notably pp. 1-77, 191.
142.
For other examples of refusals, see David
Kitterman, “Those Who Said ‘No,’” German
Studies Review 11 (1988): 243-54.
143.
Affidavit by Albert Hartl, October 9, 1947,
NO-5384.
144.
Interrogation by Kempner of Keppler, August 20,
1947, NG-3041.
145.
Affidavit by von Falkenhorst, July 6, 1946, in Trial of Nikolaus von Falkenhorst
(London, 1949), p. 25.
146.
Speech by Himmler, October 4, 1943, PS-1919.
147.
Testimony by Albrecht von Kessel, Case No. 11,
tr. pp. 9514-15.
148.
Interrogation of Biberstein, June 29, 1947,
NO-4997.
149.
Statement by Göx, April 6, 1972. Landesgericht,
Vienna, Case Novak, file 1416/16, vol. 18, pp. 330-32.
150.
Interrogation of Tippelskirch by Kempner, August
29, 1947, NG-2801.
151.
Note by Ernst von Weizsäcker in his diary,
following May 23, 1948, in Leonidas E. Hill, Die Weizsäcker-Papiere 1933-1950 (Vienna and Frankfurt am Main,
1974), p. 425.
152.
Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Munich, 1923), vol. 1, pp. 545-46.
153.
Von dem Bach in Aufbau (New York) August 23, 1946, pp. 1-2.
154.
Henry Picker, ed., Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier 1941-1942 (Bonn,
1951), entry for April 2, 1942, p. 227. The entries are summaries by Picker of
“Hitler’s remarks at the dinner table.”
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