Sid Guttridge wrote: ↑13 Aug 2020, 14:221) The question does not mention the so-called "Holocaust at all.
Not true. The Holocaust was ordered in December 1941 by Hitler. Do you know any historian contesting that fact?Sid Guttridge wrote: ↑13 Aug 2020, 14:222) Unlike the Grouse Season, the "Holocaust" had no official opening date. It was a rising series of pressures and killings that culminated in the death camps.
On December 12, 1941, Hitler hosted the Reichsleiter and Gauleiter, that is the top echelons of the Nazi Party, for a gathering in his private apartment in Berlin. Goebbels recorded the gist of Hitler's lengthy remarks in his diary, including brief comments on the Jews:
"Concerning the Jewish question, the Fuhrer is determined to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that if they were once again to cause a world war, the result would be their own destruction. That was no figure of speech. The world war is here, the destruction of the Jews must be the inevitable consequence. This question is to be viewed without sentimentality. It is our duty to have sympathy not for the Jews but only for our own German people. If the German people have now again sacrificed 160,000 dead on the eastern front, then the authors of this bloody conflict must pay for it with their lives. "
Four days after Rosenberg's meeting with Hitler, an inquiry from the Reichskommissariat Ostland as to whether all Jews should be liquidated regardless of age, sex, and economic interest was answered from Berlin:
"In the meantime clarity on the Jewish question has been achieved through oral discussion: economic interests are to be disregarded on principle in the settlement of this problem."
Moreover, Hitler's statement resolved a possible ambiguity about the timetable for the Final Solution.
In the fall of 1941, the anticipated timetable had been expressed in two ways—"after the war" and "next spring." In October these were two ways of expressing the same notion.
In December, however, after the Red Army counteroffensive and the American entry into the war, "after the war" and "next spring" were no longer two different expressions for the same timetable, and the conflict between the two had to be resolved. Hitler's remarks made it clear that the Final Solution would go forward "next spring" and would not be delayed until "after the war."
The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942 by Christopher R. Browning