The “Final Solution” of the Jewish Question
Germar Rudolf: Lectures on the Holocaust. Controversial Issues Cross-Examined, pp. 163-173
https://holocausthandbooks.com/index.php?page_id=15
(L=listener, R=Rudolf)
R: First of all, let me define the framework of our subject by briefly mentioning what I will not cover here, namely the entire history of the National Socialist camp system as such. From the various categories of prisoners in those camps, we clearly see the original purpose of the NS camps: to neutralize and re-educate political opponents.
L: Re-education by extermination?
R:I am referring to the early period of the camps, following the abolition of the Communist Party in early 1933. No one has claimed that systematic murder of prisoners took place at that time. In those years, attempts were made to convert those political prisoners to National Socialism. However, people who oppose a government on political grounds are usually well-educated and intellectual, whereas the SS men serving in those camps and who tried to instruct the prisoners were usually not the smartest people in town. It can therefore not surprise that these early attempts at political indoctrination were hardly successful. The German government’s economic and foreign-policy achievements did more to sway oppositional sections of the population than any repressive measures in the camps, which often produced the opposite result from what was intended. Later on, the camps were also used to segregate criminal and asocial elements that were deemed to be incorrigible. Homosexuals were included in the former and Gypsies in the latter category. Following the so-called “Crystal Night” of Nov. 9, 1938, Jews first began arriving in the camps simply because they were Jews. However, nearly all of these were released after a short time. The changeover to the so-called “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” and mass deportation to the camps did not occur until the beginning of the Russian campaign in summer 1941.
L: Then you are admitting the irrefutable: there was a “Final Solution!”
R:Of course there was, and that’s the real subject of our lecture. The National Socialists spoke quite specifically about the “Final Solution.” It is well known that from the outset they favored the removal of Jews from Germany.106 All historians agree that until shortly before the invasion of Russia, the Jewish policy of the Third Reich was not directed toward extermination at all. Rather, it was to encourage as many Jews as possible to emigrate from the German sphere of influence.107 To accomplish this, Hermann Göring commissioned Reinhard Heydrich to organize the Reichszentrale für jüdische Auswanderung (Central Reich Office for Jewish Emigration) with the goal of “encouraging Jewish emigration by all means available.” 108 However, Germany’s enormous territorial conquests beginning in the early summer of 1940 drastically changed the situation. Huge numbers of Jews in Poland, France and other countries now came under German jurisdiction, while the war made emigration much more difficult. For this reason, Heydrich informed the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop on June 24, 1940, that it was now necessary to subject the overall problem to a “territorial solution” (T-173). In response to this directive, the Foreign Ministry developed the so-called Madagascar Plan, which provided for deportation to Madagascar of all Jews living in the German sphere of influence.109
L: But why Madagascar? That sounds so exotic, even fantastic.
R:Madagascar was a French colony and therefore, following the defeat of France, an “object for negotiation.” Palestine, in contrast, was under British control; and besides, the National Socialists were not particularly interested in alienating their potential Arab allies by creating Israel. It is a fact that these plans were seriously considered and not completely abandoned until early 1942, when they were overridden by decisions in the context of the notorious Wannsee Conference (Xanten 1997). The so-called “Final Solution” was introduced by a directive written by Hermann Göring dated July 31, 1941, when Germany was expecting the momentary collapse of the Soviet Union following colossal early successes of the Wehrmacht in the east:110 “As supplement to the directive already given to you by the edict of Jan. 14, 1939, to solve the Jewish question through emigration or evacuation in a most favorable way according to the prevailing conditions, I hereby instruct you to make all necessary organizational and material preparations for an overall solution to the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe. Insofar as the responsibilities of other authorities are affected, they are to be involved. I further instruct you to promptly provide me with an overall conceptual plan regarding the organizational and material requirements for carrying out the desired final solution to the Jewish question.”
L: Well, there is no mention of murder.
R:To the contrary: Governmental policy from Jan. 14, 1939, until the summer of 1941 was in fact directed towards emigration and deportation. Heydrich’s original mission was not superseded by his new directive but rather “supplemented,” that is to say, expanded territorially. In 1939 his activities had been limited to the Reich, but after the summer of 1941 they were extended to nearly all of Europe. This is exactly what the Göring directive prescribes: develop an expanded plan that provides for emigration and evacuation of all the Jews from the German sphere of influence in Europe.
L: And did Göring still have Madagascar in mind as destination, or was he already thinking about Russia?
R:The document does not say anything about that. From Goebbels’s diary we do know that as early as August 19, 1941, Hitler was talking about deporting the Jews to the east (Dalton 2010a; see also Broszat 1977, p. 750). After that, references to Russia as a destination appear more and more frequently.111 As a matter of fact, suggestions to deport “undesired elements” to Russia had been made even earlier than that by other government officials. On April 2, 1941, for example, Reichsminister Alfred Rosenberg suggested “to make extensive use of Muscovite Russia as an area for undesirable elements of the population” (1017-PS, IMT, Vol. 26, p. 549). Not even a month after the invasion of the Soviet Union, the German Governor General of occupied Poland, Hans Frank, entered into his diary on July 17, 1941, “that the Jews will soon be removed from the General Government, with the latter becoming, as it were, a mere transit camp,” which implies that they will be deported further east (Broszat 1977, pp. 748f.). One of the reasons why it was eventually decided to deport the Jews to Russia may be the decision of the Soviets from August 28, 1941, to deport the three million ethnic Germans – who had settled along the lower course of the Volga river during the 17th and 18th century – as members of an enemy nation to Siberia. This mass deportation was indeed implemented with the greatest brutality imaginable during subsequent months. It may be assumed that a great many of those Germans died during this process (Fleischhauer 1983). The reaction of the German government to this ethnic cleansing can be seen from the directives given to German radio stations, in which the National Socialist German government threatened the carriers of “Jewish Bolshevism” with retaliation (Fleischhauer 1982, p. 315): “In case the actions against the Volga Germans are implemented as announced by the Bolsheviks, the Jews of central Europe will also be deported to the eastern most parts of the areas controlled by the German administration… If the crime against the Volga Germans becomes reality, Jewry will have to pay for this crime many times.”
L: So the German government viewed the final solution as a kind of retaliation?
R:That is at least what German radio propaganda claimed. Fact is, however, that the German government had planned the forced resettlement of the Jews already earlier, even though not necessarily to Russia, just as Stalin had planned and started the deportation of the Volga Germans already before August 28, 1941. In early 1940, almost 1½ years before the outbreak of hostilities between them, German officials even proposed to their then Soviet ally to have the German and Polish Jews deported to western Ukraine and/or to the “Autonomous Jewish Region Birobidzhan,” a Jewish homeland located in eastern Siberia close to Vladivostok which the Soviet Union had created in 1933 (Altman/Ingerflom 2002; cf. Boisdefeu 2009, pp. 75-78). The Soviets weren’t to keen on that plan, though.
L: Which proves that at this point in time the German government had obviously no plans yet to physically eliminate the Jews.
R:That has to be assumed indeed. At any rate, in 1941 the terror apparatus controlled by Stalin could no longer be called “Jewish,” because the dominant role of Jews in the Soviet government had been broken by Stalin in 1938 by the most-violent purges (see p. 39). As such, the central European Jews were the wrong target for this announced retaliation, not just because collective guilt is not permissible anyway, but also because Jews no longer predominated in the Soviet Union. The Madagascar plan was apparently abandoned after the Wannsee Conference, in February 1942, 112 even though Goebbels continued to see it as a viable option into March – see his diary entry for March 7. And as late as mid-1942, Hitler still spoke of deportations to either central Africa (Goebbels diary, May 30) or Madagascar (Picker 1963, p. 456). However, a preliminary decision to deport Jews to the east must have been made earlier, since Himmler on Oct. 23, 1941 had ordered “that effective immediately, the emigration of Jews has to be prevented.” 113 On the very next day, Oct. 24, 1941, police chief Kurt Daluege gave a directive for the evacuation of Jews according to which “Jews shall be evacuated to the east in the district around Riga and Minsk” (3921-PS; IMT, Vol. 33, p. 535). In a discussion in the Führer headquarters on the following day, Oct. 25, 1941, Hitler referred to his speech before the Reichstag of Jan. 30, 1939, in which he had predicted the extermination of European Jewry in case of war.114 He mentioned the more drastic policy, now going into effect, of deporting the European Jews to the swampy regions of Russia.115
L: Well it certainly looks as though Hitler’s order for the change in the final solution was given in October 1941.
R:That could well be. The succession of documents indicating a territorial solution continues without interruption. On Nov. 6, 1941, Heydrich mentioned his directive to prepare for “the final solution” which he had received in January 1939 and which he had characterized as “emigration or evacuation” (1624-PS) The new goal of a “territorial final solution” was discussed during the Wannsee Conference. In its important passages, the protocol reads as follows (NG-2586-G): “Another possible solution of the problem has now taken the place of emigration, i.e. the evacuation of the Jews to the east, provided that the Fuehrer gives the appropriate approval in advance. These actions are, however, only to be considered provisional, but practical experience is already being collected which is of the greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish question.”
L: According to that, what happened during the war was not the Final Solution, but merely a provisional measure.
R:That is certainly true as far as the protocol is concerned, and it agrees with what is found in numerous other documents of that period. Here are some more examples:116
– On Aug. 15, 1940, Hitler mentioned that the Jews of Europe were to be evacuated following the end of the War.117
– On Oct. 17, 1941, Martin Luther, the head of the Germany department in the Foreign Office, composed a document which discusses “comprehensive measures relating to a Final Solution of the Jewish Question after the end of the War.” 118
– On Jan. 25, 1942, five days after the Wannsee Conference, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler wrote the following to Richard Glücks, Concentration Camp Inspector (500-NO): “You will make preparations to receive 100,000 Jews and up to 50,000 Jewesses in the concentration camps in the coming weeks. Large scale economic tasks will be assigned to the concentration camps in the coming weeks.”
– In the spring of 1942 the chief of the German chancellery, Hans Heinrich Lammers, mentions in a document that Hitler wanted to “postpone the final solution of the Jewish question until the end of the War” (4025-PS).
– On Apr. 30, 1942, Oswald Pohl, chief of the SS economic administrative main office, reported (R-129; IMT vol. 38, pp. 363ff.): “1. The war has brought about a visible structural change in the concentration camps and their tasks regarding the employment of inmates. The increase in number of prisoners detained solely on account of security, re-education, or preventive reason is no longer in the foreground. The primary emphasis has shifted to the economic side. The total mobilization of inmate labor, first for wartime tasks (increase of armaments) and then for peacetime tasks, is moving ever more to the forefront. 2. From this realization arise necessary measures which require a gradual transformation of the concentration camp from its original, exclusively political form into one commensurate with its economic tasks.”
– On June 24, 1942, Hitler announced at his headquarters that after the war he would “rigorously defend his position that he would hammer on one city after another until the Jews came out and emigrated to Madagascar or some other national state for the Jews” (Picker 1963, p. 456).
– On Aug. 21, 1942, Martin Luther produced a summary of the Jewish policy of National Socialism (NG-2586-J). In it, he referred to the Wannsee Conference as being preparation for “evacuation of the Jews” to the “occupied eastern regions” and observed that the number of transported Jews would be inadequate to cover the shortage of labor. The German government therefore asked the Slovakian government to supply 20,000 young, strong Slovakian Jews for labor in the east (NG-2586).
– September 1942: In the so-called “Green Map” for the “Administration of the Economy in the Occupied Eastern Regions,” it is stated that “After the War, the Jewish question will be solved overall throughout Europe,” which is why until then everything would merely be “partial measures.” It admonished that “thuggish measures” against Jews would be “unworthy of Germans and must be avoided by all means.” 119
– On Sept. 5, 1942, Horst Ahnert of the Paris security police wrote that in conjunction with the “final solution to the Jewish question” the “deportation of Jews for purpose of labor” was about to begin (CDJC, vol. XXVI-61).
– On Sept. 16, 1942, one day after his meeting with Armaments Minister Albert Speer, Oswald Pohl reported in writing to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler that all prisoners of the Reich were to be conscripted for armaments production:120 “The Jews destined for eastern migration therefore will have to interrupt their journey and work at armaments production.”
– On Dec. 14, 1942, ministerial adviser Walter Maedel summarized the Jewish policy of National Socialism as “the gradual freeing of the Reich from Jews by deporting them to the east” (NG-4583).
– On Jan. 20, 1943, Concentration Camp Inspector Richard Glücks gave the following instructions to the commanders of 19 camps (1523-NO): “The head camp physicians have to ensure, by all means at their disposal, that the death rates in the individual camps decrease significantly. […] More than heretofore, the camp physicians have to oversee nutrition of the prisoners and in accordance with the directors, make recommendations for improvement to the camp commandants. Furthermore these recommendations are not to remain on paper, they are to be effectively carried out by the camp physicians. […] The Reichsführer SS has ordered that the death rate must unconditionally decrease.”
– On Oct. 26, 1943, Oswald Pohl wrote the following to all concentration camp commandants:121 “In the context of armaments production, the concentration camps […] are of vital significance to the war. […] In the context of reeducation, it might have been insignificant in previous years whether a prisoner performed productive labor or not. Now, however, prison labor is very significant. It is vitally important that all measures be taken by the commandants, leaders of V-Dienst (Information Services) and physicians to ensure the maintenance of health and the capacity of prisoners to work. Not from mere sentimentality, but because we need them with their sound bodies, because they must contribute to the great victory of the German nation: therefore we must insure the welfare of the prisoners. I am setting as a goal: A maximum of 10% of all prisoners may be incapable of work on account of illness. Through common endeavor, all responsible persons must achieve this goal. To achieve it, the following is necessary: 1. A proper diet appropriate to the prisoner’s task. 2. Proper clothing appropriate to the prisoner’s task. 3. Application of all natural measures for health and hygiene. 4. Avoidance of all unnecessary exertions which are not directly required by the prisoner’s task. 5. Performance rewards. […] I shall personally monitor compliance with the measures reiterated in this message.”
R:On May 11, 1944, Adolf Hitler ordered the deployment of 200,000 Jews in the construction of fighter airplanes to improve Germany’s air defense against the devastating Allied bombing raids (5689-NO). To summarize this long list of documents, I have listed some of them in Table 8 in the right column. The left column contains what orthodox historiography claims to have happened at the same time, which is based, however, only on undocumented assumptions (for this see e.g. Gutman 1990). As you can see from this: the contra-dictions between orthodox claims and documented facts could hardly be greater.
L: Assuming the correctness of your statements, how do you explain the various remarks by National Socialist officials made before or during the war, in which they speak of the extermination of Jews?
R:Aside from remarks by Hitler made in his confidential circles, which never mention extermination, I quote here only high-level bureaucratic documents. These never mention physical extermination. The situation is a bit different when we come to diaries, speeches, or postwar memoirs, and also some low-level documents. The first three items mentioned are basically written testimonies of party witnesses, which I will discuss in detail in the next lecture, where I deal with confessions made by accused persons.
L: But what if the official documents are lying, if “evacuation” and “deportation” were code words for murder? That was posited by Kogon et al. (1983 & 1993), who even have an introductory chapter called “A Code Language” (1993, pp. 5- 12). They list a number of documents which clarify that “resettlement” or “expulsion” in fact meant execution or shooting (pp. 11f.).
R:These are documents of the low-level bureaucracy which I just mentioned. Kogon and colleagues quote a report of Einsatzkommando 3 of Dec 1, 1941 as well as three reports by local commanders near the eastern front, also from December 1941.
L: Kogon also quotes an order by the commander of the Security Police and SD of Ruthenia of Feb 5, 1943, and that is not exactly “low-level bureaucray”.
R:It may be mid-level, but certainly is not from an authority defining German policies. All these sources, especially those from the first months after the start of Germany’s invasion of Russia, belong in the context of the activities of the so-called Einsatzgruppen behind the eastern front. That topic is vast and will be covered separately in Chapter 3.13. Fact is that there are no documents from the high-level bureaucracy of the NS government from which we could glean that, from a certain point in time onward, words like “emigration”, “evacuation”, “resettlement” or “deportation” had a different, sinister, malicious meaning. If one were to claim this, a logical problem would result from it. If there is no disagreement that, until the middle of 1941, the terms “emigration,” “evacuation,” “transfers,” and “deportation” meant what they say, then how could it have been made clear to the recipients of official orders after mid-1941 that these same terms had suddenly become code words meaning something altogether different from what they say, namely mass murder? We must keep in mind that during the Third Reich, government officials are considered to have been obedient and subservient. They were expected to carry out orders literally and unquestioningly. Whether that was really the case is a different matter. It is a fact that disobedient conduct was severely punished. This would have been all the more true if the orders had been to resettle people or to deploy them in vital wartime production, and the recipients of these orders had murdered them instead. The point is: how could the people giving orders have made it clear to those receiving orders that they suddenly, at a specific instant, had to reinterpret their orders and do something entirely different from what the orders instructed? Furthermore, how could those giving orders have hindered those receiving them from re-interpreting them when they were not meant to be re-interpreted?
L: They would have had to be given entirely different orders everywhere!
R:Exactly. The problem is quite simply that in connection with the “Final Solution,” there are no documents stipulating definition and “re-interpretation” of presumed code words. Such orders would have undermined secrecy, and secrecy was the claimed reason for the alleged use of coded language in the first place.
L: The murderers would have been completely stupid if they had put all that down in writing. They would have abandoned their code language. Such orders would have to be given orally and passed on down the chain of command.
R:Wouldn’t this have meant that the thousands of people who were involved in the Final Solution actually participated in mass murder without asking questions, simply because some superior gave an oral order that was diametrically opposed to the written orders?
L: Yes.
R:Well, what if you received a written note from the head of your company instructing you to move your company’s computer system to another building, but your section chief tells you the boss secretly told him that you were supposed to smash it to bits. Would you take an axe and go to the computer room and make kindling out of everything?
L: Aaargh!
R:And consider this: in those days, the punishment for unauthorized killings, like the punishment for sabotaging the war effort, was always death. In view of the extremely harsh penalties exacted during the Third Reich, one could only have expected that such offenses would be severely punished.
L: Allow me to butt in here and to object. There are in fact a number of documents from the highest government positions of the Third Reich – from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the Reich’s Security Main Office (RSHA), from Heydrich and Himmler – in which harmless terms are evidently used as euphemisms for executions or murder. That is especially true for the term “special treatment” (“Sonderbehandlung”). Some of these documents were even introduced during the International Military Tribunal (NO-905, 1944-PS, 3040-PS).
R:Although this is true, the documents mentioned by you, which Kogon and colleagues mentioned as well (1993, pp. 5f.), have nothing to do with the Jewish question. With Document 3040-PS, for instance, Himmler ordered on Feb. 20, 1942 that, as punishment for serious crimes, special treatment is to be carried out “with the noose” (IMT, Vol., 31, pp. 500-512, here pp. 505-507). In other cases, however, the expression “special treatment” refers to something entirely favorable. For instance exempting minorities friendly to the Germans from resettlement (660- PS); preferential treatment of Ukrainian women to be employed as household helpers in Germany and who can be Germanized (025-PS); the more gentle treatment of eastern populations in contrast to a tough military attitude (1024-PS); release from imprisonment (1193-PS); or better food supplies for Baltic and Ruthenian people (EC-126). The concentration-camp regulations stipulated that “inmates of honor” had to be “treated specially,” meaning they were privileged (GARF, NTN, 131, p. 183). This matches the testimony of the last chief of the RSHA, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, according to which “special treatment” for captured dignitaries of hostile countries meant lodging in luxury hotels with regal service (IMT, Vol. 11, pp. 338f.).
L: A few pages before that, however, Kaltenbrunner stated that the term “special treatment” usually referred to “a death sentence, not imposed by a public court but by an order of Himmler’s” (ibid., p. 336).
R:Which raises the interesting question whether each single case of such special treatment required a decision by Himmler or an office charged by him. Document 3040-PS states in this regard that special treatment needs to be applied for with the RSHA specifying the personal data of the offender (IMT, Vol. 31, p. 505). Document NO-905, a file memo of Sept. 26, 1939 about a meeting within the RSHA, discusses responsibilities when deciding such applications. 123 We can glean from this that cases of special treatment were evidently seen as exceptions requiring special attention, which is of course what the term special suggests.
L: Then there is the huge topic of euthanasia in the concentration camps, which during the Third Reich had the bureaucratic acronym “special treatment 14 f 13.” These killings did not require a decision by the RSHA, but merely of the physician in charge of the camp. Furthermore, according to the prevailing notion, this kind of murder of “life unworthy of living” was exactly the starting point for the murder of camp inmates unfit for labor, and later the wholesale murder of the European Jews. 124
R:Euthanasia is a broad subject which we cannot thoroughly cover during these lectures. It is true, however, that during the war inmates permanently unfit for labor were subjected to special treatment by euthanasia. But an order to all camp commanders of March 26, 1942 specified that “every inmate worker must be maintained for the camp” (1151-PS), so that temporarily unfit inmates were not covered by this. A little more than a year later, on April 27, 1943, Himmler issued an order stipulating that frailness and physical infirmity can no longer be reasons for such a special treatment (NO-1007): “ The Reichsführer SS and Head of the German Police has decided in principle that in the future only mentally ill prisoners may be processed by the medical boards created for Program 14 f 13. All other prisoners unfit for work […] are in principle exempt from this program. Bedridden prisoners should be assigned work that they can perform in bed.”
R:I will discuss in more detail the special treatment of inmates in the concentration camps, which is actually rather complex, when analyzing documentary evidence for the Auschwitz Camp (Subchapter 3.4.9). We will then recognize that the term “special treatment” did not necessarily mean murder there either. The term “special treatment” itself is, after all, a very generic term that can be applied to anything outside the norm. Such expressions are very common in the vernacular, where they just mean that something does not conform to prevailing norms, however defined. After all, when someone gets “special privileges,” that doesn’t mean he is murdered. During wartime, however, “special treatment” may indeed be connected with killings most times, as this is the nature of wars. But we have to watch out not to walk right into the next trap: even though it is correct that the term “special treatment” in those wartime documents frequently referred to killings, it does not automatically follow from this that this was always the case. In each individual case it depends on the context; or to put it differently: although every execution or murder was without a doubt a special treatment, it does not follow automatically that every special treatment was a murder or an execution. Just as it would be wrong to conclude in reverse from the fact that all squares are rectangles that all rectangles are squares. It’s impermissible to argue this way. During this lecture I will repeatedly discuss documents containing terms with the German prefix “special” (“Sonder-”) that have nothing to do with murderous events. This will illustrate what I have explained here.
Table 8:The Final Solution: Facts and Fiction
| FICTION | FACT |
|---|---|
| Jan. 20, 1942: The total extermination of all Jews in the German sphere of influence is organized at the Wannsee Conference. | Jan. 25, 1942: Himmler writes to Glücks that the camps must prepare to accommodate up to 150,000 Jews; large-scale economic tasks would be assigned to them. |
| Feb. 1942: Beginning of mass gassings at Auschwitz-Birkenau. March 1942: Beginning of mass gassings at Belzec. May 1942: Beginning of mass gassings at Sobibór. | April 30, 1942: Pohl writes to Himmler that the main purpose of all camps would now be the use of inmate labor. |
| July 23, 1942: Beginning of mass gassings at Treblinka. August 1942: Beginning of gassings at Majdanek. | Aug. 21, 1942: Luther writes that the number of transported Jews would be inadequate to cover the shortage of labor, so that the German government asked the Slovakian government to supply 20,000 Slovakian Jews for labor. |
| End of 1942: Six extermination camps are active. | Dec. 28, 1942: Glücks writes to all camp commanders that Himmler has ordered to reduce death rates in all camps by all means. The inmates have to receive better food. |
| Nov. 3, 1943: Some 42,000 Jewish factory workers are shot in Majdanekand several of its satellite camps. | Dec. 26, 1943: Circular letter by Pohl to all camp commanders: All measures of the commanders have to focus on the health and productivity of the inmates. |
| May 16, 1944: Beginning of mass murder of several hundred thousand Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau | May 11, 1944: Hitler orders the deployment of 200,000 Jews in the construction of fighter airplanes. |
