Holocaust implementation in N.Africa

[steve248]

After the meeting in Tobruk on 20 July 1942, Rauff had his "Truppe" of 7 SS-officers and 17 NCOs and other ranks transfer to Athens in readiness for travelling to north Africa. "...sie sollten zunächst in Ägypten und nach dessen Eroberung im angrenzenden Pälastina zum Einsatz kommen und dort zweifellos in erster Linie beim Massenmord an der jüdischen Bevölkerung aktiv werden."
source for this quoted as Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS 19/3395 (Dt.Gen.b.HQu.It.Wehrm. an OKW/WFSt/Qu.1, 14 Sept 1942.

Rauff and Israeli Intelligence: came from declassified BND papers
Rauff in Tunisia: captured German documents of EK Tunis (under Rauff) available at Imperial War Museum, London; also postwar British interrogations of SS-Stubaf Franz Hoth (EK Tunis), not available in UK archives, available at US NARA.

[Boby]

Of course the above mentioned document said nothing about mass murders. It is only the interpretation of Mallmann and Cüppers "dort zweifellos in erster Linie", isn't it?

[steve248]

Indeed. Unfortunately the defeat of the Afrika Korps at El Alamein in November 1942 put paid to the mission of EK Ägypten - instead it became EK Tunis and had very small Teilkommandos outside Tunis in places like Hammamet and Sfax. Some of the Teilkommandos investigated local Jewish populations and occasional supervision of Jews doing forced labour. This information comes from the interrogation of Franz Hoth who also said the TKs did counter-espionage activities. But they did not carry out mass executions. EK Tunis did control the "Kasbah Prison" but no information on who was held there; one British POW did attempt an escape from this prison and shot and wounded when the guards raised the alarm.

[Gorque]

Hi Steve:

I'm a little confused (What else is new). Is the quoted text ...sie sollten zunächst in Ägypten und nach dessen Eroberung im angrenzenden Pälastina zum Einsatz kommen und dort zweifellos in erster Linie beim Massenmord an der jüdischen Bevölkerung aktiv werden. an actual order or the authors interpretation of what the EK was supposed to accomplish?

[steve248]

The authors interpretation of the tasks EK Ägypten would have had, if Rommel had been successful, based on what tasks previous Einsatzgruppen had had since the attack on Russia in June 1941.

[Gorque]

Hi Steve:

Thanks for the clarification.

Was Egypt/Palestine supposed to be under Italian administration or German? The reason I ask, is the Germans treaded somewhat lightly at times in imposing the racial will upon their allies. A good example of this would be Sonderkommando R in Transnistria, where their differences of opinion with the Romanians sometimes resulted in violence.

[michael mills]

Was Egypt/Palestine supposed to be under Italian administration or German? The reason I ask, is the Germans treaded somewhat lightly at times in imposing the racial will upon their allies. A good example of this would be Sonderkommando R in Transnistria, where their differences of opinion with the Romanians sometimes resulted in violence.

Gorque, you have hit the nail on the head! This is precisely the point I have been making all along.

Hitler and Mussolini had agreed that North Africa and the Middle East would be an Italian sphere of influence, due to the fact that Italy already had colonies in the region, in Libya and Eritrea, and had conquered Abyssinia. Germany would have no political role in the region, only the military one of providing support to the Italian forces.

Although Rommel was the supreme military commander of the German and Italian forces in North Africa, politically he was subject to the authority of Mussolini, and took direction from him. That is clearly shown by the genesis of Unternehmen Aida, Rommel's invasion of Egypt in July 1942, after the surrender of the British garrison in Tobruk in June.

The invasion of Egypt had not been the original Axis objective, but rather the conquest of Malta, in order to eliminate it as the Allied base that was hampering the line of communication between Italy and North Africa. Hitler and Mussolini had agreed in April of that year that after the expulsion of the British forces from Libya, the next step should be the capture of Malta, to which the codename Unternehmen Herkules was given. Accordingly, Rommel was ordered to advance no further east than Tobruk, and after its capture to make the forces under his command available for theamphibious assault on Malta, to be led by him.

However, after the capture of Tobruk, Rommel though it preferable to pursue the retreating British forces into Egypt, in order to destroy them there; he considered that would be a more feasible operation than the planned assault on Malta.

Accordingly, he applied to Mussolini for permission to lead the combined German and Italian forces under his command into Egypt, for the purpose of destroying the British forces and capturing the Suez Canal. The reason he made that application to Mussolini was that the latter had the political authority to determine the course of operations in North Africa. Mussolini granted Rommel freedom of manoeuvre to pursue the retreating British Eighth Army into Egypt, which led to the Battle of Mersa Matruh and the resulting panic that Egypt was about to fall to the Axis.

So Gorque, the answer to your question is that Palestine would have been under Italian political administration, in the unlikely event that the Italo-German forces had advanced into and captured it after occupying Egypt. However, it should be noted that Unternehmen Aida envisaged only the capture of Egypt and the Suez Canal; it did not include a further advance into Palestine. Thus, it cannot be taken for granted that if Unternehmen Aida had been successful and the British forces driven out of Egypt, there would have been an Axis advance into Palestine and Syria; in fact, it is unlikely that there would have been, since the main Axis objective of seizing the Suez Canal and denying it to the British would have been achieved.

The fact that any territory conquered by Axis forces in the Middle East would have been under Italian political control, with Hitler's agreement, is crucial for answering the question of whether such an Axis conquest would have led to the mass killing of the Jews living in those territories. As is well known, Mussolini did not permit any killing of Jews living in territories under Italian occupation, eg in the Italian occupation zones in France, Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece. In fact, the Italian occupation zones became places of refuge for Jews fleeing from the murderous German measures, and remarkably the German authorities never tried to compel the Italian occupation administrations to hand over the Jewish refugees.

The logical conclusion is that even if there had been an Axis conquest of the whole Middle East, including Palestine, there would have been no huge massacre of the Jews living there, since Mussolini would not have permitted it, just as he did not permit the killing of Jews in other regions under Italian occupation. Since Hitler admired Mussolini as his political mentor, he never disputed the latter's policies and actions in regions under Italian political control.

Even if a piddling SS-Police unit consisting of a mere 7 officers and 17 NCOs and other ranks had actually arrived in Axis-occupied Egypt, it could never have engaged in perpetrating massacres of Jews, since it would have been subject to Italian political control. That is what happened with the Einsatzkommando commanded by Rauff that actually did operate in Axis-occupied Tunisia between December 1942 and May 1943; since political authority in Tunisia was exercised by the French Protectorate administration, the only anti-Jewish actions that the Rauff Einsatzkommando was permitted to carry out were those authorised by the French "Statut des Juifs", ie conscription of Jews for forced labour and confiscation of Jewish property, but not killings.

In my opinion, Mallmann and Cueppers failed in their duty as historians by ignoring the historical reality of the political situation in Axis-controlled North Africa, ie Italian not German administration, so as to be able to propagate their claim of a wartime conspiracy between Muslims and German National Socialists to physically exterminate the Jews of North Africa and the Middle East. Essentially they were acting as propagandists rather than as unbiased historians, in relation to this particular question.

[michael mills]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rom ... ian_forces

According to historian Haim Saadon, Director of the Center of Research on North African Jewry in WWII, there was no extermination plan: Rauff's documents show that his foremost concern was helping the Wehrmacht to win, and he came up with idea of forced labour camps in the process.[455][456]

455: Benishay, Guitel (4 May 2016). "Le journal de bord du chef SS en Tunisie découvert". Création Bereshit Agency. LPH info - Création Bereshit Agency. Retrieved 18 July 2017.

456: Cohen, Nir (17 April 2015). "Inside the diary of SS officer known as gas chamber 'mastermind'". Yedioth Internet. Ynetnews. Retrieved 18 July 2017.

The views of those Jewish authors should bear some weight.

[michael mills]

According to Mallmann and Cüppers, on 20 July, Walther Rauff, who was responsible for the unit, was sent to Tobruk to report to Rommel, however Rommel was 500 km away from Tobruk conducting the First El Alamein, so Mallmann and Cüppers found that the chance for a meeting between Rommel and Rauff (in which Rommel reportedly was disgusted after learning about the plan from Rauff and sent Rauff on his way), as described by a post-war CIA report, was hardly possible.[452]

452: Mallmann, Klaus-Michael; Cüppers, Martin; Smith, Krista. Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine. ISBN 978-1-929631-93-3.

So it would appear that when Rauff flew to Tobruk on 20 July 1942, he did not actually have any meeting with Rommel

Accordingly, contrary to the claim by Stephen Tyas, Rommel could not have given Rauff any instructions in relation to the treatment of Jews in North Africa and the Middle East, nor could Rauff have informed Rommel about any alleged plans for actions against those Jews.

[michael mills]

source for this quoted as Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS 19/3395 (Dt.Gen.b.HQu.It.Wehrm. an OKW/WFSt/Qu.1, 14 Sept 1942.

Does "Dt.Gen.b.HQu.It.Wehrm" stand for "German general at the headquarters of the Italian armed forces"?

If so, it is consistent with my understanding of the political situation in the Axis-occupied parts of North Africa, namely that it was the Italian Government that was the ruling body in those parts, and the German forces operating there were subject to Italian authority.

That means that if the Axis forces under Rommel's command had succeeded in defeated the British 8th Army and occupying Egypt, the EK Aegypten under Rauff's command could only have operated as authorised by the Italian authorities, and as is well known the Italian Government headed by Mussolini did not permit any killings of Jews in territories under its control. We can be fairly certain that the Italian authorities in an Axis-occupied Egypt would not have allowed Rauff's men to engage in the mass killing of Jews.

[Gorque]

I found this pdf of Rauff's declassified CIA file, dated 8 July 1977.

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom ... R_0110.pdf

Somehow, someway he had a connection with the assassination Chilean Ambassador to the U.S. Orlando Atelier and his U.S. aide, Ronnie Moffit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassina ... o_Letelier

Another CIA document on Walther Rauff, dated 1 June 1945:

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom ... R_0025.pdf

[Gorque]

Here is the link to the Cohen article mention in the wikipedia article on Rommel:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 58,00.html