Masters of Death (44 page)

On 13 and 14 December 1941 Hitler met with key leaders of his occupation and killing operations: Philipp Bouhler, who headed the Führer Chancellery and thus the stalled euthanasia murder program; Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s minister for the occupied Eastern territories; and at the second of the two meetings, Himmler. Rosenberg had drafted a speech earlier in December, before news of Pearl Harbor, that accused “New York Jews” of promoting “worldwide agitation against Germany” and threatened “corresponding measures against the Jews living in the East.” In the Eastern territories, Rosenberg had proposed to say, “currently under the control of German armed forces, there are more than six million Jewish inhabitants. For more than a hundred years, eastern Jewry has been the source and spring of Jewish power throughout the world.” In the draft speech he then threatened to “destroy . . . the springs from which the New York Jews had drawn their powers,” promising “a negative elimination of these parasitic elements.”

At the 14 December meeting Rosenberg gave Hitler a copy of the draft. Hitler “remarked that the text had been prepared before the Japanese declaration of war,” the Ostminister noted afterward, “in circumstances that had now altered. With regard to the Jewish question, I said that my remarks about the New York Jews would perhaps have to be changed now,
after the decision.
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My position was that the extermination of the Jews should not be mentioned. The Führer agreed. He said they had brought the war down on us, they had started all the destruction, so it should come as no surprise if they became the first victims.” Gerlach comments:

By “the decision” Rosenberg could not have meant the entry of the United States into the war, for there is no logical connection between that event and the cessation of public threats against the Jews. Hitler’s reaction indicates this as well, for he reiterates the justification for his decision to exterminate the Jews. Rosenberg certainly would have been informed immediately about such a decision, so this discussion on December 14 about the need to alter a speech that Rosenberg had written before December 7 indicates that the decision to “exterminate the Jews in Europe” must have been made after December 7 and before December 14, 1941.

Gerlach finds further evidence of a second Hitler decision on the Final Solution, this one for the European Jews, in the record of a speech Hans Frank made to his subordinates in Krakow on 16 December 1941; the speech echoes Hitler’s speech to his Reichsleiters and Gauleiters on 12 December, a meeting that Frank attended:

As for the Jews, well, I can tell you quite frankly that one way or another we have to put an end to them. The Führer once put it this way: if the combined forces of Judaism should again succeed in unleashing a world war, that would mean the end of the Jews in Europe. . . . I urge you: stand together with me . . . on this idea at least: Save your sympathy for the German people alone. Don’t waste it on anyone else in the world. . . . As a veteran National Socialist I also have to say this: if the Jews in Europe should survive this war . . . then the war would be only a partial success. As far as the Jews are concerned, I would therefore be guided by the basic expectation that they are going to disappear. They have to be gotten rid of. At present I am involved in discussions aimed at having them moved away to the east. In January there is going to be an important meeting in Berlin to discuss this question [i.e., Heydrich’s delayed conference]. . . . Whatever its outcome, a great Jewish emigration will commence.

But what is going to happen to these Jews? Do you imagine there will be settlement villages for them in the Ostland? In Berlin we were told: Why are you making all this trouble for us? There is nothing we can do with them here in the Ostland or in the Reich Commissariat. Liquidate them yourselves! . . . For us too the Jews are incredibly destructive eaters. . . .Here are 3.5 million Jews that we can’t shoot, we can’t poison. But there are some things we can do, and one way or another these measures will successfully lead to a liquidation. They are related to the measures under discussion with the Reich. . . . When and how this will all take place will be a matter for offices that we will have to establish and operate here.

Himmler met with Hitler at Wolfschanze on the afternoon of 18 December 1941. The “Jewish question” was the first subject on their agenda. Himmler had written the phrase in his notebook to remind himself to bring the subject up; during the meeting he made a note of the conclusion, which was an order from the Führer: “Jewish question / to be exterminated as partisans.” Since most of the Soviet Jews within reach of the Einsatzgruppen had already been “exterminated as partisans,” Gerlach argues that this December order must refer to the European Jews:

The war situation . . . created . . . a kind of European fortress mentality among the Germans. The new prospect of a second front, combined with the military defeat in the Battle of Moscow, had created a rather serious situation for the German leaders. Within this more threatening context, Hitler viewed the Jews as opponents, revolutionaries, saboteurs, spies, “partisans” in his own backyard—an area that now, in light of the expected United States attack, included all of Europe.

The delusion and paranoia implicit in Hitler’s assumptions have become so familiar, and led to such monumentally horrific results, that hardly anyone any longer remarks on their lunacy. They emphasize once again how much Nazism had in common with religious cults where conversion to belief, transforming the personal identities of followers, requires incorporating the interpretive framework of the leader, however objectively bizarre. The difference with Nazism was that it parasitically commandeered the full resources of a modern nation-state. A similar ideological parasitism in the Soviet Union, Soviet Communism, led to a greater number of deaths, but they were spread across a longer period of time. So also in Communist China, with even more deaths there. Parasitic infestations of ideological fanaticism, it seems, caused most of the man-made deaths of the twentieth century.

Gerlach estimates that the first large group of euthanasia murder personnel from the Führer Chancellery left for Belzec around mid-December 1941. Gas vans at Chelmno, near Lodz, had begun exterminating Polish Jews on 8 December 1941.

Heydrich soon let Eichmann in on the secret, Eichmann told his interrogator Avner Less in Israel in 1960:

[At the turn of the year 1941/42] Heydrich sent for me. I reported. He said to me: “The Führer, well, emigration is . . .” He began with a little speech. And then: “The Führer has ordered the physical extermination of the Jews.” These were his words. And as though wanting to test their effect on me, he made a long pause, which was not at all his way. I can still remember that. In the first moment, I didn’t grasp the implications, because he chose his words so carefully. But then I understood. I didn’t say anything, what could I say? Because I’d never thought of a . . . of such a thing, of that sort of violent solution. And then he said to me: “Eichmann, go and see Globocnik in Lublin, the Führer has already given him instructions. Take a look and see how he’s getting on with his program. I believe he’s using Russian anti-tank trenches for exterminating the Jews.” As ordered, I went to Lublin, located the headquarters of SS and Police Commander Globocnik, and reported. . . .Globocnik sent for a certain
Sturmbannführer
Höfle, who must have been a member of his staff. We went from Lublin to, I don’t remember what the place was called, I get them mixed up, I couldn’t say if it was Treblinka or some other place.
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There were patches of woods, sort of, and the road passed through—a Polish highway. On the right side of the road there was an ordinary house, that’s where the men who worked there lived. A captain of the regular [Order] police welcomed us. A few workmen were still there. The captain, which surprised me, had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, somehow he seemed to have joined in the work. They were building little wooden shacks, two, maybe three of them; they looked like two- or three-room cottages. Höfle told the police captain to explain the installation to me. And then he started in. He had a, well, let’s say, a vulgar, uncultivated voice. Maybe he drank. He spoke some dialect from the southwestern corner of Germany, and he told me how he had made everything airtight. It seems they were going to hook up a Russian submarine engine and pipe the exhaust into the houses and the Jews inside would be poisoned.

I was horrified. My nerves aren’t strong enough . . . I can’t listen to such things . . . such things, without their affecting me. Even today, if I see someone with a deep cut, I have to look away. I could never have been a doctor. I still remember how I visualized the scene and began to tremble, as if I’d been through something, some terrible experience. The kind of thing that happens sometimes and afterward you start to shake. Then I went to Berlin and reported to . . . [Gestapo head Heinrich] Müller. . . .

Then I was sent on to Kulm [Chelmno, west of Warsaw] in the Warthegau. I received orders from Müller to go to Litzmannstadt [Lodz] and report back to him on what was going on there. He didn’t put it the same way as Heydrich . . . not as crassly. “An action against the Jews is under way there, Eichmann. Go take a look. And then report to me.” I went to Gestapo headquarters in . . . Lodz . . . and there I was told. It was a special team, put in by the
Reichsführer.
And they told me exactly where this Kulm is situated. I saw the following: a room, perhaps, if I remember right, about five times as big as this one here. There were Jews in it. They had to undress, and then a sealed truck drove up. The doors were opened, it drove up to a kind of ramp. The naked Jews had to get in. Then the doors were closed and the truck drove off. . . . I don’t know exactly [how many people the truck held]. The whole time it was there, I didn’t look inside. I couldn’t. Couldn’t! What I saw and heard was enough. The screaming and . . . I was much too shaken and so on. I told Müller that in my report. He didn’t get much out of it. I drove after the truck . . . and there I saw the most horrible sight I had seen in all my life. It drove up to a fairly long trench. The doors were opened and corpses were thrown out. The limbs were as supple as if they’d been alive. Just thrown in. I can still see a civilian with pliers pulling out teeth. And then I beat it. I got into my car and drove off. I didn’t say another word. I sat there for hours without saying a word to my driver. I’d had enough. I was through. The only other thing I remember is that a doctor in a white smock wanted me to look through a peephole and watch the people inside the truck. I refused. I couldn’t, I couldn’t say another word, I had to get out of there. In Berlin I reported to
Gruppenführer
Müller. I told him the same as I’ve told you now. Terrible, an inferno. I can’t. It’s . . . I can’t do it . . . I told him. . . . Müller never said anything. Never! Not about these things and not about other things.

Eichmann’s descriptions document the developing transition from mobile to stationary gas chambers, which the transfer of T4 personnel to the East would accelerate. Mobile systems (killing squads or gas vans) facilitated killing victims whose communities the killers had invaded; stationary systems would facilitate killing victims shipped from large urban areas in Poland and from western Europe.

Heydrich convened the conference to discuss “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question” on 20 January 1942 at a columned official residence set amid gardens on the Wannsee, a popular public lake outside Berlin. Present, Gerlach says, summarizing, “were five representatives from the Security Police and the SD, eight politicians and functionaries from the civil administration, and two representatives from the party, one from the party chancellery and one from the Race and Resettlement Office of the SS.” Eichmann and Müller, now fully informed, were among them. “We called it the Conference of State Secretaries,” Eichmann told Avner Less. It has come to be known as the Wannsee Conference.

Eichmann had organized the conference in the first place; he worked with a team of stenographers to summarize its proceedings in a protocol that survived the war. His Israeli interrogator sought his interpretation of that document’s doubletalk:

LESS: I’m going to quote from your record of Heydrich’s speech: “Emigration has now, with the Führer’s approval, been replaced by another solution, the evacuation of the Jews to the East. The present actions, however, must be viewed as mere expedients, but they offer a source of practical experience of the utmost importance with a view to the Final Solution to come.” What does all this mean?

EICHMANN: Since emigration was prohibited, they were to be deported to the East. This was the new—er—conception in behalf of which the conference of state secretaries was called. . . .

LESS: What is meant by “practical experience”?

EICHMANN: . . . Two months later, I was sent to see Globocnik. It is quite possible that the killing there had already begun.

LESS: I see. So you think “practical experience” refers to the killing of the Jews, which had already begun? It’s true that action teams [i.e., Einsatzgruppen] were already at work at the time.

EICHMANN: They started in . . . Of course there was killing.

Eichmann was more candid about the Wannsee Conference discussions at his trial:

EICHMANN: What I know is that the gentlemen convened their session, and then in very plain terms—not in the language that I had to use in the minutes, but in absolutely blunt terms—they addressed the issue, with no mincing of words. And my memory of all of this would be doubtful, were it not for the fact that I distinctly recall saying to myself at the time: look, just look at Stuckart [Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart, State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior], the perpetual law-abiding bureaucrat, always punctilious and fussy, and now what a different tone. The language was anything but in conformity with the legal protocol of clause and paragraph. . . . The discussion covered killing, elimination and annihilation.