Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews by Peter Longerich (booksvooks TXT) 📕

238,000 people in the context of the third short-term plan. But this plan was in fact destined to be

suspended as soon as 15 March after about 25,000 people had been transported

into the General Government: 19,226 people from the Warthegau who were ‘unfit

for work’ (including 2,140 Jews) and 5,000 Jews from Vienna (instead of the 10,000

that had been planned for the first phase). 156 No preparations had been made for the reception and support of these people who were being transported in the

depths of winter, just as had been the case with the Nisko Campaign and with the

transports from Schneidemühl and Stettin). 157

The third short-term plan was, however, not only the first step in the deport-

ation of a million people from the incorporated Eastern territories within the

space of a year; it was evidently connected to a much larger programme of

deportations that affected the whole area under German control. 158 This all-embracing programme of deportations can be reconstructed from two docu-

ments, a note by the Gestapo official responsible for ‘Jewish affairs’ in Paris,

Theodor Dannecker, to Eichmann dated 21 January, and a minute of remarks

by Eichmann made on 20 March. Dannecker wrote to Eichmann that it was ‘the

Führer’s will . . . that after the war the Jewish question within the areas ruled or

controlled by Germany be brought to a definitive solution’. To this end Heydrich

had ‘already received a commission to present a plan for the final solution from

the Führer via the RFSS [Himmler] and the Reichsmarschall [Goering]’. In

response a project had been worked out that was currently with Hitler and

Goering. The individual preparations that had to be made would have to ‘extend

not only to preliminary work aimed at the complete expulsion of the Jews but also

to the detailed planning of a resettlement programme in a territory yet to be

determined’. 159

From a statement made by Eichmann on 20 March 1941 at a meeting in the

Ministry of Propaganda we learn in addition ‘that Party Comrade Heydrich—who

has been charged by the Führer with the definitive evacuation of the Jews—made a

suggestion to the Führer 8–10 weeks ago that has not been put into practice for

the sole reason that the General Government is at the present moment not in a

position to accept a single Jew or Pole from the Old Reich’. 160 Regarding the Deportations

175

deportation of the Berlin Jews, Eichmann expressed himself extremely carefully,

making explicit reference to war production: it might be possible to deport 15,000

people as part of the deportation programme for Viennese Jews already approved

by Hitler. This was a perspective that had a sobering effect on Goebbels, who had

believed in the imminence of the total deportation of the Jews of Berlin, 161 as emerges from his diaries: ‘The Jews can’t be evacuated from Berlin, at least not in

large numbers, because 30,000 of them are working for armament production. ’162

Despite the resolution to postpone deportations, or at least those of any magni-

tude, the Gestapo decided officially to inform the Reich Association on 17 March

that they should now prepare themselves for deportations. 163

From this information it emerges that Heydrich had received an instruction

from Hitler (via Himmler and Goering) before January 1941 to draw up a first

draft of a ‘final solution plan’ that was to be put into effect after the war and which

aimed at the complete deportation of all Jews from Europe. When this project was

ready in January 1941, the original aim (as envisaged in the version Heydrich had

in December) to direct these deportations to Madagascar had been abandoned

without a new ‘destination territory’ having been identified. But Heydrich had

already announced large-scale deportations into the General Government on 8

January, which were in fact begun a short while later, but two months after that

Eichmann was talking of how the project could not be realized because of the

situation in the General Government, apart from the smaller-scale deportations

that were part of the third short-term plan completed on 15 March.

However, the General Government was not the territory for the ‘Final Solution’

that was ‘yet to be determined’; it was only an intermediate station. General

Governor Frank said in Cracow on 26 March that Hitler had just agreed that

the ‘General Government would be the first area to be made free of Jews’. But that

was only a long-term aim, as other remarks by Frank on the same day make clear:

he spoke of Hitler being determined ‘within the next 15 or 20 years to make the

General Government a purely German land’. He also stressed the importance of

the forced labour groups of Poles and Jews. 164 Moreover, at the start of April, Frank was busy with medium-term planning for the Warsaw ghetto. 165

But what was the long-term outlook for ‘Jewish policy’ at this time? Were the

deportations into the General Government part of plans for the subsequent

physical annihilation of people in this area? The question can be answered by

drawing upon a further document first identified by Götz Aly in the Moscow

‘special archive’. It is a note made by Heydrich on 26 March 1941 of a conversation

with Goering: ‘Regarding the solution of the Jewish question, I gave the Reich

Marshal [i.e. Goering] a brief report and submitted my proposal to him, which he

approved after making a change with respect to Rosenberg’s responsibilities and

he ordered its resubmission.’166

This note evidently refers to the draft of Goering’s well-known ‘authorization’

for Heydrich to ‘make organizational, functional and material plans for a complete

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The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941

solution to the Jewish question in the areas of Europe under German rule’, dated

31 July. 167 The change made to ‘Rosenberg’s jurisdiction’ in Heydrich’s note of 26

March will refer to the passage that in the July document is formulated thus: ‘in

so far as the jurisdiction of other central authorities is affected, these are to be

involved.’ The fact that in the draft of this fundamental division of responsibility

for preparing the ‘Final Solution’ Rosenberg’s jurisdiction was to be taken into

consideration as a ‘central authority’ allows us to conclude that the area of the

Soviet Union was being identified for these ‘final solution plans’ and that Rosen-

berg was already being considered as the Director of a ‘central authority’ (what

was later to be the Ministry