Roberto: What exactly did the Führer "yell out" on 30 January 1942?
Me: "Annihilation" is not a difficult word to comprehend and as "denial" of the popular interpretation of "die Endlösung der Judenfrage" is forbidden, we may only conclude that Hitler was actually very frank to the German people and the world about the plans of a certain project, well known to us all.
Roberto: The exact German wording would be appreciated. One thing is the threatening rhetorical rambling of a demagogue, another is a
statement about measures already accomplished or in the process of being accomplished.
- I agree that the German text would be preferrable but why don’t you rather ask “Sowjet” about it? After all it was his post. As for the “rhetorical rambling of a demagogue”, we both seem to agree that such emotional outbursts don't necessarily explain very much.
Roberto: "And what "inner circle" was around him in the evening of 27.1.1942? Only Goebbels, Himmler, Frank and other insiders, or also guests not so familiar with what was to happen?"
- No reference is made to guests present in said tabletalk, but it's interesting that you happen to mention Hans Frank, governor of "Holocaustia" (that is Poland), as a given member of the entourage.
Frank at Nuremberg, according to Mark Weber:
Hans Frank, the wartime governor of German-ruled Poland, testified that during the war he had heard only rumors and foreign reports of mass killings of Jews. He asked other officials, including Hitler, about these stories and was repeatedly assured that they were false.
Frank's testimony is particularly noteworthy because if millions of Jews had actually been exterminated in Germanoccupied Poland, as alleged, hardly anyone would have been in a better position to know about it. During the course of the trial, Frank was overcome by a deep sense of Christian repentance. His psychological state was such that if he had known about an extermination program, he would have said so.
At one point during the proceedings, Frank was asked by his attorney, "Did you ever take part in any way in the annihilation of Jews?" His reply reflects his emotional state at the time:
“I say yes, and the reason why I say yes is because, under the impression of these five months of the proceedings, and especially under the impression of the testimony of the witness [former Auschwitz commandant] Höss, I cannot answer to my conscience to shift the responsibility for this solely on these low-level people. I never built a Jewish extermination camp or helped to bring one into existence. But if Adolf Hitler personally shifted this terrible responsibility onto his people, than it also applies to me. After all, we carried on this struggle against Jewry for years ... And therefore I have the duty to answer your question in this sense and in this context with yes. A thousand years will pass and this guilt of Germany will not be erased.”
http://vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/12/2/Weber167-213.html
Looks like the holocaust was no less news to Frank (and others) at Nuremberg than it seems to have been to Hitler in
May/June 1942. For references used by Weber, see link; quoted is the section “Extermination Denied”.
The real problem with the Gerlach thesis of a late order (December 1941), start and a somewhat ambigious "final solution" is of course that not only is it difficult to harmonize with several utterences of Adolf Hitler (although measures are thereby being made!), but to an even larger extent does it contradict the (under the pretext of being) unrelated witness statements of Rudolf Höss and Adolf Eichmann. Both who claimed to have been issued the führer order in the summer of 1941 and who stated that the "final solution" meant only one thing, the physical extermination of the Jewish people.
I’ll present excerpts from
I.) “Autobiografische Aufzeichnungen” by Rudolf Höss;
II.) Höss’s April 5th 1946 affidavit (Nuremberg document NO 3868-PS); and
III.) District Court Sessions, Session 10, 19/4 1961 of the Eichmann trial.
Please let me apologize for the endless paste but context is important here and by the way, wasn’t the thread was meant for “holocaust documents” in the first place?
I.) Rudolf Höss, "Kommandant in Auschwitz, Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen":
1. Die "Endloesung der Judenfrage" im KL Auschwitz
Im Sommer 1941, den genauen Zeitpunkt vermag ich z. Zt. nicht
anzugeben, wurde ich ploetzlich zum Reichsfuehrer SS nach Berlin
befohlen, und zwar direkt durch seine Adjutantur. Entgegen seiner
sonstiger Gepflogenheit eroeffnete er mir, ohne Beisein eines
Adjutanten, dem Sinne nach folgendes: Der Fuehrer hat die Endloesung
der Judenfrage befohlen, wir - die SS - haben diesen Befehl
durchzufuehren. Die bestehenden Vernichtungsstellen im Osten sind
nicht in der Lage, die beabsichtigten grossen Aktionen durchzufuehren. Ich habe daherAuschwitz dafuer bestimm, einmal wegen der guenstigen
Verkehrstechnischen Lage und zweitens laesst sich das dafuer dort zu
bestimmende Gebiet leicht absperren und tarnen. Ich hatte erst einen
hoeheren SS-Fuehrer fuer diese Aufgabe ausgesucht; um aber
Kompetenzschwierigheiten von vornherein zu begegnen, unterbleibt das,
und Sie haben nun diese Aufgabe durchzufuehren. Es ist eine harte
und schwere Arbeit, die den Einsatz der ganzen Person erfordert,
ohne Ruecksicht auf etwa entstehende Schwierigkeiten. Naehere
Einzelheiten erfahren Sie durch Sturmbannfuehrer Eichmann vom
RSHA, der in naechster Zeit zu Ihnen kommt. Die beteiligten
Dienststellen werden von mir zu gegebener Zeit benachrichtigt. Sie
haben ueber diesen Befehl strengstes Stillschweigen, selbst Ihren
Vorgesetzten gegenueber, zu bewahren. Nach der Unterredung mit
Eichmann schicken Sie mir sofort die Plaene der beabsichtigten Anlage
zu. - Die Juden sind die ewige Feinde des deutschen Volkes und muessen
ausgerottet werden. Alle fuer uns erreichbaren Juden sind jetzt
waehrend des Krieges ohne Ausnahme zu vernichten. Gelingt es uns
jetzt nicht, die biologischen Grundlagen des Judentums zu zerstoeren,
so werden einst die Juden das deutsche Volk vernichten.
Nach Erhalt dieses schwerwiegenden Befehles fuhr ich sofort nach
Auschwitz zurueck, ohne mich bei meiner vorgesetzten Dienststelle
in Oranienburg gemeldet zu haben. Kurze Zeit danach kam Eichmann
zu mir nach Auschwitz. Er weihte mich in die Plaene der Aktionen in
den einzelnen Laendern ein. Die Reihenfoge vermag ich nicht mehr
genau anzugeben.
Zuerst sollte fuer Auschwitz Ostoberschlesien und die daran
angrenzenden Teile des General-Gouvernements in Frage kommen.
Gleichzeitig, und dann je nach Lage fortgesetzt, die Juden aus
Deutschland und der Tschechoslowakei. Anschliessend der Westen:
Frankreich, Belgien, Holland. Er nannte mir auch ungefaehre Zahlen
der zu erwartenden Transporte, die ich aber nicht mehr nennen kann.
Wir besprachen weiter die Durchfuehrung der Vernichtung. Es kaeme
nur Gas in Frage, denn durch Erschiessen die zu erwartenden Massen
zu beseitigen, waere schlechterdings unmoeglich und auch eine zu
grosse Belastung fuer die SS-Maenner, die dies durchfuehren muessten
im Hinblick auf die Frauen und Kinder.
Rudolf Hoess: Kommandant in Auschwitz. Autobiographische
Aufzeichnungen. Eingeleitet und kommentiert von Martin Broszat.
Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1958. Pp. 153-154.
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/h/ ... himmler.01
II. Rudolf Höss, NO 3868-PS (affidavit in English, April 5, 1946):
Mass executions by gassing commenced during the summer of 1941 and
continued until fall 1944. I personally supervised executions at Auschwitz
until the first of December 1943 and know by reason of my continued duties
...that these mass executions continued as stated above.
The "final solution" of the Jewish question meant the complete extermination
of all Jews in Europe. I was ordered to establish extermination facilities
at Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time, there were already in the general
government three other extermination camps; Belzek, Treblinka, and Wolzek.
...[W]hen I set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Cyclon B,
which was a crystallized prussic acid [prussic acid is simply HCN, hydrogen
cyanide. -Ed R.] which we dropped into the death chamber from a small
opening. It took 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people in the death chamber....
We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped.
[More deleted for brevity]
"I understand English as it is written above. The above statements are
true; this declaration is made by me voluntarily and without compulsion;
after reading over the statements, I have signed and executed the same
at Nuremberg, Germany, on the fifth day of April 1946.
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess"
Taken as reproduced in Aspects of Western Civilization (sic), edited by
Perry M. Rogers, pp.385-387.
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/h/ ... //hoess.03
(Note: There is a German version of the same text at Nizkor, translated by Harry Mazal, but the English version is actually the original. Turns out that Höss never wrote the affidavit himself, but merely signed it. Look at Höss’s affirmation above: “I understand English as written above…”!)
III.) Adolf Eichmann, Eichmann trial, Session 10, 19 April 1961:
Eichmann: May I now relate in short, Captain, what I know, from what I remember, of the things that happened since the beginning of the German-Russian War. In June, I think, the war began, June or July, let us say the beginning of the war was in July. And I suppose two months later, possibly it was three months, at any rate it was towards the end of summer... I shall tell you presently why I know this - that it was towards the end of summer - at the time when Heydrich ordered me to come to him, I presented myself and he said to me: "The Fuehrer..." for this was a matter of emigration etc. etc., accompanied by a short introductory speech..."the Fuerer has given orders for the physical destruction of the Jews."
He uttered this sentence to me and it was as if he wanted to test the effect of his words. In definite contradiction to his manner - he made a long pause. To this day I remember it. At first I did not grasp the trend of his thoughts. Seeing that he was so meticulous in his choice of words, I subsequently understood and I didn't say a word in reply, for I had nothing to add to this. For concerning these matters, such a brutal solution had never occurred to me. Here everything would be taken from me. All my work, all my efforts, all the interest that I had in the matter, it was as if the air had been taken out of me. And then he said to me: "Eichmann, go to Globocnik in Lublin." I knew he had been in Lublin before the Sudeten occupation.
Less: To whom?
Eichmann: Globocnik, I shall shortly come to more specific details, Captain, Sir. "Go to Globocnik, the Reichsfuehrer has already given appropriate instructions, and see how far he has progressed in his objective. He uses, so I believe, Russian tank trenches for the extermination of the Jews."
(---)
"Globocnik had a senior rank of SS-Gruppen...Brigade Fuehrer or Gruppenfuehrer. Then Globocnik called in a certain Sturmbannfuehrer Hoefle, obviously from his headquarters. I did not know this man, I had never seen this man Hoefle, and later on we travelled from Lublin. I no longer recall what was the name of that place. I am confusing this, for I am unable to say whether it was called Treblinka or otherwise. Truly I no longer have an idea where I was taken to then. This I don't know any more. But this could have been established, I imagine, since there are other testimonies on this subject, and through them it would certainly be possible to check this. For I am not the only person to know of these matters. I reached this place and there was something in the form of a forest.
L. Yes...
E. Things resembling a forest. A road passed through there, a Polish carriage road. Now I still remember, on the right of the road there was an ordinary house, a hostel in which men who were working there lived. A certain Captain of the Security Police, that is to say of the Order Police greeted us. There was also a number of workers there. The captain of the Order Police - this surprised me considerably - was without his uniform coat, and his sleeves were rolled up, and it seemed that he was somehow participating actively in the work. This I still remember. And they were erecting wooden huts, possibly two, perhaps three, this I no longer know exactly. The size - a sort of house with two or three rooms, I would say of that size , not large; and apparently - but I do not know this any more - Hoefle had given instructions to this Police Captain that he should explain this installation to me.
And then he began. He was a man with a voice, let us say ordinary, uncultured - perhaps he was accustomed to drinking, I do not know - with a gruff voice. He spoke the dialect of the south-western region of Germany, and he told me how he had made everything here hermetically sealed, that everything had been sealed, since an engine of a Russian submarine was going to operate here...
Presiding Judge: Please stop now. We shall have a two minutes' silence in memory of those who fell in our wars.
...and the gases of this engine were going to be directed inside and the Jews would be poisoned. This was terrible for me. I do not have such a steadfast nature for something of this kind...of this kind to pass over me without reaction.
(---)
L. So after this you had to [go to] Auschwitz?
E. I returned and received the orders. I was forced also to visit Auschwitz...because...not in order to see this there, first and foremost...but also on that, incidentally, he obliged me to report. I told him that I would see it because they were building extensions there - I did not know at all that there were other buildings - I had to report to him on this as well...yes, furthermore, I must also say this, Captain...these people, when you came to them, made a special amusement for themselves of the whole matter, to give a man who had come to them directly from an office desk the most horrifying description and to intimate the whole thing in as abrupt a fashion as possible and they rejoiced, obviously, from time to time, if here, from the point of view of his nerves...the person could not retain his composure as they were accustomed to call it, in the way they did, is that not so?
Hoess once said...I think that I was there three times, two or three times in Auschwitz. Three times, I was there once because of Storfer...he had said to me, Hoess said to me that Himmler was there and took everything in, he watched everything exactly and that even his knees shook, Hoess said to me.
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eic ... 10-02.html
(Note: During his interrogation Eichmann actually told about a visit to the extermination camp of Chelmno (Kulmhof) before retelling the trip to Minsk, but as he on this particular detail was uncertain whether it had taken place in 1941 or 1942 and the operation carried out was on Jews from the Lodz ghetto, mainly cleared between January and May 1942 according to the canonical holocaust, I have omitted this reference.)
Firstly, one has to acknowledge that the above testimony are independent, given by two individuals some fifteen years apart, or considering the alternative, that Eichmann would have drawn so heavily on Höss would only result in making his own testimony virtually worthless. Not that it would be a liable escape route for holocaust defenders/followers of Gerlach in the first place, because Eichmann tells mainly of self experienced events.
Secondly, both sources (Höss and Eichmann) put the change of policy in regard to the Jewish question (the “führer order”) within the same time span. Höss claims to have been called to Berlin and told by Himmler during the summer of 1941 and Eichmann says he was informed on the issue by Heydrich (head of the SD) two or three months after the invasion of the Soviet Union, i.e at the end of August or September 1941. About the significance of the "final solution" nobody was in doubt.
It could have been that either Eichmann or Höss was mistaken, for instance assigning events that took place in the summer of 1942 to 1941, but both should not have made the same mistake.
Thirdly, it is evident from both sources that the planning and actual carrying out of the "final solution" was closely linked in time and intention to the führer order itself – i.e Summer-Autumn 1941 and that contrary to Gerlach, any possible early instructions not only referred to mass shootings by Einstatzgruppen, but that mass gassings were used from the very start - “Es käme nur Gas in Frage”.
Höss claims that he was ordered to put up extermination facilities at Auschwitz already in June 1941 with inaugeration being made that same summer. A time at which there existed in addition “three other extermination camps: Belzek, Treblinka, and Wolzek”. The last part is bound to be a brow raiser, because no Operation Reinhard camps are normally considered to have been in operation until 1942. The important thing is not however, whether Höss got the years mixed up or not, but that he is again corroborated in this regard - in his ‘error’ so to speak - by Eichmann, who in response to his conference with Heydrich was immediately ordered to take a tour among some of the existing extermination sites. Even during his initial talk with Heydrich (Aug/Sep 1941), he is in fact told to go and see Globocnik “in Lublin”. He arrives in a wooded area where “huts” are in the process of being erected, no doubt to be used for gassing by carbon monoxide (hence the big submarine engine). His uncertainty recollecting whether the location actually corresponds to Treblinka is secondary, because he manages to meet both Globocnik, who of course is none other than Odilo Globocnik, SS-Polizei Führer in the Lublin District and Commander of Operation Reinhard, as well as Hans Höfle, Globocnik’s Chief of Operations, in charge of organization and manpower. That is, we are still in some sort of Operation Reinhard extermination site.
Fourthly, both sources corroborate each other in yet another regard, that is they tell of a meeting in Auschwitz between Eichmann and Höss in 1941. Höss state that Eichmann – the Reichsführer had already briefed him about his coming visit – came to visit him shortly after the gassings had went into operation (summer 1941). Eichmann however say that he was sent to Auschwitz by Müller (head of the Gestapo and Eichmann’s closest superior) only on his third inspection trip after he had been first been to Globocnik, then to Bialystok-Minsk-Lvov in order to report on the mass executions carried out there, implying that the visit to Auschwitz was probably made sometime in September - October 1941.
Albeit there may exist a small time discrepency in other words, I find it just big enough to lend it substantial credibility, as far as verbal recollection is concerned.
According to Höss, they discussed the pace of sending the Jews of several European countries, including France, Belgium and Holland to their deaths and regarding the murder weapon itself it was agreed upon that “nur Gas käme in Frage” (“only gas came into question”), the method being motivated by the ‘traditional’ holocaust argument of higher efficiency and lesser strain on the personell under authority. (Of course any gassing carried out in Auschwitz and elsewhere would have amounted to just the opposite – harder labour and greater psychological strain – as any brief investigation of the physical evidence reveals).
The context implies in other words a full blown program of destruction of the Jews of Europe already in early Autumn of 1941 at the latest, including deportation of Jews from the France and the Benelux as well as extermination camps already in operation.
Now, how does Christian Gerlach treat these sources (and others like it)? Has he assessed them at all, even read them?
Because if taken into account, I have great difficulties seeing the significance of Belzec being erected only for a localized killing operation in November and indeed why Gerlach thinks Hitler issued the order in December when both Eichmann and Höss testifies to this event having taken place the previous summer.
That is of course provided any value could be alloted to Höss and the Eichmann trial and Gerlach (or Roberto for that matter) doesn’t simply need the Gerlach thesis in order to blur out huge discrepancies in the holocaust timeline, related to the Wannsee Conference for instance as well statements made by Hitler well into 1942.
