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

the radicalization process that

would of necessity occur within the ‘Third Reich’ as a consequence of an ideo-

logically motivated conflict conducted with the utmost brutality and thereby far

exceeding the bounds of conventional warfare. Such a process would inevitably

shift the balance of power once and for all in favour of the National Socialist

movement and at the expense of the conservative elites. This process was realized,

for example, in the fact that in the preparatory stages before the war began the

Wehrmacht appropriated for itself the ideological material of National Socialism

and translated it into basic instructions that directly exhorted an army of several

million conscripted men to implement radical ideological aims. As this process of

radicalization progressed, the Russian campaign offered further possibilities for

finding a ‘final solution’ to the Jewish question in Europe.

Laying the Ground for Racial Annihilation

181

It is obvious that long-term aims such as these, linked by the National Socialist

leadership with the conquest of the Soviet Union, would by definition entail the

death of huge numbers of people. Not only was it planned to liquidate the entire

local leadership, the ‘Jewish Bolsheviks’, but German plans for the ruthless

occupation of Lebensraum and for the economic exploitation of the countryside

would necessarily also deprive the native population of its basis for survival and

thereby bring about the deaths of many millions of people. This policy had to be

directed primarily, but by no means exclusively, at those who were at the bottom

of the Nazis’ racial hierarchy—Jews, Gypsies, and other ‘racially inferior groups’.

From the beginning of 1941 the Germans’ early thoughts on the exploitation of

the areas to be conquered for food-supply purposes were developed into a full-

scale systematic starvation policy, which would inevitably lead to the deaths of

millions of people. This policy formed the basis for economic planning in the

eastern territories under attack. 6 The initiative for its formulation lay principally with the State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Food, Herbert Backe, and its

execution was mostly the responsibility of the body concerned with the economic

exploitation of the Soviet Union, the Four-Year-Plan Organization, or its close

partner the Economic Organization for the East. 7

The figure of 30 million people—a number corresponding to the increase in

population in the areas to be conquered since 1914—was evidently a rough

estimate being used for the purposes of orientation. According to the Higher SS

and Police Commander, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, it was given by Himmler

at a meeting with senior SS officers in Wewelsburg Castle in January 1941; 8 the same figure was used by Goering with the Italian Foreign Minister Ciano, in

November 1941. 9 One of the outcomes of a meeting of State Secretaries on 2 May 1941 was the assertion that ‘without doubt x-million people will starve if we

remove what we need from the land they occupy’. 10

Reducing the population of the areas to be conquered by millions in this way

was seen as a necessary measure by the NS leadership—who remembered the

blockade imposed during the First World War—in order to secure Germany’s

‘food autonomy’. It was also seen as a measure designed to create the necessary

conditions for controlling the Lebensraum they viewed as essential.

In concrete terms what was envisaged was the removal of provisions from the

fertile ‘Black Earth Zone’ in the south of the Soviet Union on a massive scale and

the systematic under-provisioning of the nutrition deficiency area in the north

with its major industrial centres. In the economic guidelines for the future

Economic Organization East (Agricultural Group), issued on 21 May 1941, this

plan was formulated thus: ‘Many tens of millions of people in this area will

become surplus to requirements and will have to die or emigrate to Siberia.

Attempts to save the population there from starvation by fetching in surplus

provisions from the Black Earth Zone could only occur at the cost of under-

provisioning Europe. They will reduce Germany’s capacity to hold out during the

182

Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

war and damage the capability of Germany and Europe to resist blockade.’11 These principles formed part of the guidelines issued by Goering for the conduct of the

economy in the newly occupied Eastern zones, the so-called ‘Green Folder’. 12

It is against the background of economic policies such as these, policies that

factored in the death of millions of people, that the complex of orders and

guidelines issued in the months before ‘Barbarossa’ must be assessed. These

were instructions that were designed to prepare the Wehrmacht for a war of

annihilation based on the National Socialists’ racial ideology.

The orders that will be cited in the following paragraphs can only be under-

stood if the plans for structuring the regime of German occupation are also clearly

grasped. The basic assumption was that the swift advance of German formations

would lead to the rapid expansion of the occupied zones. The armies were initially

to set up nine Army Rear Areas to the west of the battle zone itself, 13 in order to pacify and control the districts just conquered. As the advance continued these

areas were to be handed over to the Rear Areas that were to be set up by the three

Army Groups. Gradually, these military authorities would be replaced by political

authorities whose precise structure and responsibilities would only be established

after the campaign had begun.

Orders and guidelines concerning the preparation of the war of annihilation were

then worked out in detail. The first of these, the ‘Guidelines for Special Areas relating to Instruction No. 21’, contains the following: ‘In the operational area of the army the

Reichsführer SS is to be given special responsibilities, according to orders from the

Führer, for the preparation of the political administration; these responsibilities are a consequence of the struggle between two opposing political systems that is finally to

be fought. ’14 What these special duties were hardly remained in doubt after Hitler had given General Jodl the following principle for drawing up the guidelines on 3

March: ‘the Jewish-Bolshevist intelligentsia, hitherto the “oppressor” of the people,

must be eliminated’, 15 and after Jodl himself had given the instruction, ‘all Bolshevist chiefs and commissars are to be neutralized immediately’. 16

As a result of this, the General Quartermaster of the Army, Eduard Wagner,

and the Head of the Security Police, Heydrich, were finally able to negotiate the

wording of a