"Aktion Reinhardt" -- What did it denote?

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Sergey Romanov
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Re: "Aktion Reinhardt" -- What did it denote?

#121

Post by Sergey Romanov » 02 May 2020, 11:41

Note that the Holocaust denier PR has simply posted pseudoevidence and lies that got destroyed elsewhere.

Aktion Reinhardt, a deportation and plunder operation, obviously couldn't have been named after a man who didn't have anything to do with deportation and the ministry where he worked only had to do with AR since August, long after the operation started.

Reinhardt fund was simply some money from the Aktion Reinhardt, thus it also wasn't and couldn't have been named after Fritz Reinhardt, who had nothing to do with this account. It wasn't an account of the finance ministry - it was an account created on the order of Funk by the Golddiskontbank, which could be used by the WVHA to finance the SS-run factories/businesses. Neither was the Max Heiliger account a part of the Reinhardt fund, not did it have formally bureaucratically anything to do with it.

All the non-evidence PR has posted was addressed before, it's nothing but demonstrable speculation (in the best case) by people with demonstrably limited knowledge and with an interest to deny the murderous connection.

PR simply ignores the testimonies that say otherwise, like Möckel's, who was directly involved in AR in Auschwitz and was told by his predecessor that the operation was named after Heydrich (note how PR directly lies by omission on this point).

The complete explanation is here:

https://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic. ... 16#p766016

PS: and of course our "researcher" did not bother to go to the original transcript, which has "appropriately enough" and not "approximately enough" (which hardly makes sense). But that's par for the course for him.

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Re: "Aktion Reinhardt" -- What did it denote?

#122

Post by PrudentRegret » 12 Oct 2020, 18:32

Image

Reinhardt-Fonds were named after Fritz Reinhardt- not Reinhard Heydrich

Sergey has claimed that the "Reinhardt Funds" referred to Account 1288, and that this account was created by the Gold Discount Bank on the order of Funk:
Sergey_Romano wrote: 4. 1288 aka Reinhardt-Fonds was an account created on the order of Funk by the Golddiskontbank, which could be used by the WVHA to finance the SS-run factories/businesses.
Sergey_Romanov wrote: Reinhardt fund was simply some money from the Aktion Reinhardt, thus it also wasn't and couldn't have been named after Fritz Reinhardt, who had nothing to do with this account. It wasn't an account of the finance ministry - it was an account created on the order of Funk by the Golddiskontbank, which could be used by the WVHA to finance the SS-run factories/businesses. Neither was the Max Heiliger account a part of the Reinhardt fund, not did it have formally bureaucratically anything to do with it.
The only evidence Sergey provides for these assertions are "see Puhl". Fortunately, the text Self-financing Genocide (2004) by Kadar & Vagi elaborates on Sergey's claim (pp 118-119):
According to the testimony of Emil Puhl, the Reinhard Funds were established by the Gold Discount Bank upon order of the Reichsbank President Funk and with the approval of Minister of Finance Von Krosigk in order to provide the SS-WVHA with the means to finance the operation of SS companies... It is certain, however, that the Reinhard Funds were refilled again and again from the consideration received for the loot of the SS-WVHA gathered from Jews... Usually 10-12 million marks...
In the testimony and affidavits of Emil Puhl, he does state that a revolving fund was set up by the Gold Discount Bank, at the direction of Funk, for use by the WVHA. In an affidavit on May 3rd, 1946 he states in Paragraph 7 (PS-3944):
7. The Golddisconte Bank, at the direction of FUNK, also established a revolving fund which finally reached 10 to 12 million reichmarks for the use of the Economic Section of the SS to finance production of materials by concentration camp labor in factories operated by the SS.
The problem is that there is nothing here in Paragraph 7 to indicate that this revolving fund established by the Golddiskontbank Bank had anything to do with the proceeds of Aktion Reinhardt, as Sergey & Kadar & Vagi claimed. The preceding paragraphs in the affidavit do describe Puhl's knowledge of Aktion Reinhardt, but there is no connection made in the affidavit between the revolving fund established by the Golddisonte Bank and the proceeds of Aktion Reinhardt.

Ideally we would have clarification from Puhl regarding whether this revolving fund established by the Golddisconte Banke had anything to do with the proceeds of Aktion Reinhardt, in order to evaluate Kadar & Vagi's claims.

It turns out, we do.

In a subsequent affidavit written on July 26th, 1947 Emil Puhl clarifies this issue directly (4862):
1.) The two credits granted by the German Golddiskontbank to the DEST .. in 1939 and 1941 refer to a credit allowance of the former Reich Bank President and Chairman of the Aufsichtsrat of the Golddiskontbank, Walter Funk, to the Reichfuehrer SS Himmler. Both credits to the DEST were given by the Golddiskontbank out of the liquid funds of the bank as can be proved by the books of the bank at any time.The fund mentioned in my affidavit of 3 May, 1946, 3944-PS, Exh. 470, sub paragraph 7) is identical with these credits. These credits have nothing to do with the deliveries of gold and valuables mentioned in paragraphs 2 to 5 of the same affidavit, which took place after the credits were given to the DEST.
It is bizarre that the witness Sergey, Kadar & Vagi relied on for their suppositions about the origin of the "Reinhardt Fund" flatly and directly denied their characterization of the credit extended by the Golddiskontbank, and the relation of this credit to Aktion Reinhardt in any capacity. I cannot find any citations of this affidavit in their text.

In order to understand the implications of Sergey's and Kadar & Vagi's error in historical analysis, it will help to take a step back and describe the various accounts and terms that have been mentioned in this discussion:


Image
Working links for table sources

With these terms and accounts defined, this is a summary of the way these accounts related to each other:

The Jewish property seized via Aktion Reinhardt was processed according August Frank's instructions:

Cash funds in Reichsmarks were to be deposited into Account 1488, which was an account of the WVHA. The exception to this is that cash acquired through AR could be used to cover expenditures that were "basically connected with the execution of the Aktion" (Pohl NO-725). This would include the cost of transports. Globocnik covered these expenditures with what was referred to as the "Reinhardt Account by the WVHA and "Reinhard 1" by Himmler. This was an account in Lublin, and was a source of controversy for Globocnik on suspicion of embezzlement. The rest of the cash in RM would have been deposited into Account 1488, and Globocnik reports that the "by far greater part" of the Reichsmark amounts were delivered to the WVHA as instructed.

Foreign currency, rare metals, jewelry, pearls, and gold were ordered to be delivered to WVHA headquarters in Berlin. Bruno Melmer was responsible for delivering these valuables from the WVHA headquarters to the Reichsbank, which is known as the Melmer Deliveries. This was not a deposit of the SS. The Reichsbank took control of the assets and stored them in the vault.

According to Karl Sommer, deputy chief of the WVHA, Melmer understood that Aktion Reinhardt was named after State Secretary Fritz Reinhardt of the Reich Ministry of Finance:
Q. Therefore, I assume from your answer that from the type of watches which were being repaired here one could not draw the conclusion that these watches had been taken away from inmates who had been killed?

A. No, that assumption could not be drawn. I myself tried on one occasion to see an order according to which these watches had been confiscated. As far as I can recall, I talked to Melmer about that on one or two occasions. As far as I remember, it was Melmer told me at that time that these watches had been confiscated by virtue of a decree which the State Secretary Reinhardt in the Reich Ministry of Finance had issued, and that was the reason why this action had been given the name of Action Reinhardt.
http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/transc ... +Reinhardt

The Reichsbank liquidated these assets and credited the account of Max Heiliger, which was an account of the Reich Ministry of Finance. Funds from Account 1488 were also credited to Max Heiliger in increments of 500,000 RM.

Max Heiliger was an account of the Reich Ministry of Finance, where Fritz Reinhardt was State Secretary. The WVHA was not able to utilize the funds in this account.

As a separate matter, August Frank describes the circumstances that required a loan from the Reich Treasury. These are the loans which are described in some documents as the Reinhardt Fund:
In June 1943, I had conferences with Pohl about it and I asked him to correct this mistake because it did not appear correct to me that such an association should possibly be charged with such a credit. Pohl told me at the time, "Frank, I cannot possibly remove this credit from my W-Industries. It is part of the capital of the industry. If you want to do that, you have to give me eight millions from the Treasury of the Reich." And it was on that occasion that Pohl furthermore told me that he urgently needed additional funds for the execution of the Reich armament tasks.

That was the reason for the thirty million credit which developed out of this matter. It was a Reich credit.
http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/transc ... +credit%22

Frank further clarifies that these loans were not from the proceeds of Aktion Reinhardt, they were from the general treasury:
THE PRESIDENT: Will you please explain again what went into Account 1288? You said confiscated funds. Will you explain what you mean by that?

WITNESS: I mean the cash funds which were taken away from prisoners who had been turned over to the concentration camps and all these funds were credited to this account. These were funds in Reichsmarks.

THE PRESIDENT: But that all came from inmates of concentration camps?

WITNESS: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: And not money that had been seized in the East and sent in to the WVHA?

WITNESS: No funds were seized in the East and turned over to the WVHA.

Q. Did the WVHA have any benefits from this entire action?

A. No.

Q. And the Economic Enterprises?

A. They would not have any benefits either. Are you perhaps referring to the fact that credit was granted, which was granted to the W-plants?

Q. Yes, that's what I am referring to.

A. A credit had been given to the W-plants which were the German Economic Enterprises. This credit was a credit which had been given by the Reich to the DWB.
http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/transc ... 324&q=East

Sergey incorrectly interprets the testimony of August Frank in his description of Account 1288. Sergey states:
Sergey_Romanov wrote:
03 May 2020, 19:21
Moreover, we know from August Frank's testimony that the Reinhardt-Fonds was named so due to the fact that the first money in it appeared from the account of Aktion Reinhardt (which Frank specified as 1288):
Q. How was it then that this credit received the name "Reinhardt Fund"?

A. Because as I already stated, the first two installment payments were withdrawn from account 1288.
This explanation by a person with the direct knowledge refutes speculations by a person without it. The Reinhardt-Fonds was not so named on the occasion of it having been provided by Fritz Reinhardt, but because the initial money came from the Aktion Reinhardt account.
Account 1288 was not the "Reinhardt Account." See the table above. Sergey has misinterpreted this statement. Frank was asked why the credit from Account 1288 was referred to as an installment of the Reinhardt Funds. Frank was not stating that the account was called "Reinhardt Funds", he was stating that the credit from Account 1288 was referred to as "Reinhardt Funds" since it represented the first two installments of the Reinhardt loans. Frank further specifies that this account had become "Reich Funds" at this point, and so this was an appropriate credit to that account since the Reinhardt Funds were Reich capital:
Why at the time I removed part of the credit from the special account 1288, which had also become Reich money by that time, I do not even know today.
Frank (6)

Kadar & Vagi erroneously conflated the Reinhardt Funds & Gold Discount Bank Loans, despite the fact that the witness they used in their citation (Puhl) clarified that there was no connection between the two in a later affidavit. Sergey compounded this error by conflating Reinhardt Funds & Gold Discount Bank Loans & Account 1288 as referring to the same thing, which they did not.

As a result of these corrections to Sergey and Kadar & Vagi's claims, the documentary and testimonial evidence establishes:
  • There is no evidence to establish that the decision to make the Reinhardt Funds available the WVHA had anything to do with the proceeds of Aktion Reinhardt. Frank described the precipitating discussions that caused the WVHA to reach out to the Reich Ministry of Finance, and they were unrelated to Aktion Reinhardt (see above).
  • There is no evidence to establish that the structure of the Reinhardt loans at all correlated with the Melmer Deliveries or deposits into Max Heiliger. Kadar & Vagi claimed "It is certain, however, that the Reinhard Funds were refilled again and again from the consideration received for the loot of the SS-WVHA... funds that were automatically refilled through the seizure of Jewish private and community properties." However, there is no indication that the installments of the Reinhardt loans were refilled in this way. Those loans came from the Reich Treasury. There is no reason at all that the installments would be scheduled according to the balance of Max Heiliger, that is purely a supposition without evidence. Max Heiliger would represent an extremely small portion of the Reich Treasury, and the loans to DWB were at no point credited from Max Heiliger. On a separate note, it is dishonest for Kadar & Vagi to use the spelling "Reinhard Fund" rather than the proper spelling "Reinhardt Fund" that appears in documents. This demonstrates that Kadar & Vagi have an agenda to keep the "Heydrich" legend regarding the code-name origin alive and provides an explanation for all these false conclusions from Puhl's testimony and their suppositions that are not supported by evidence.
  • The accounts which were used to credit the Reinhardt Funds did not receive assets from Aktion Reinhardt. Sergey himself (and August Frank also establishes) that the Reinhardt Funds were not withdrawn from Max Heiliger and were an entirely separate bureaucratic entity from that account. Neither were they withdrawn from the "Reinhardt Account" in Lublin nor Account 1488, which were other accounts that directly pertained to Aktion Reinhardt.
The prosecution latched onto the interpretation that these business loans pertained to Aktion Reinhardt because they were unaware that Fritz Reinhardt was a high-profile economist who had many other economic initiatives named after him, and they were trying to prove that the WVHA was beneficiary to the proceeds of AR.

Since the "Reinhardt Funds" were not credited from any accounts related to "Aktion Reinhardt" and were not requested due to any reasons related to the Aktion, why would this extension of credit from the Reich to the DWB via the WVHA have the name "Reinhardt" at all associated with it? That's an easy question.

Leo Volk, who was personal adviser to Pohl and head of Legal in Pohl's division in WVHA attempted to explain to the prosecution the origin and naming of the Reinhardt Funds. Volk was party to earlier, failed negotiations to acquire a loan for the DWB so he would have been intimately familiar with this initiative:
Q. What did you think the Reinhardt Fund was?

A. The Reinhardt Fund I understood or thought to understand that the state secretary Reinhardt from the Reich Finance Ministry, who was an exponent of the Part and who was a friend of Schwerin von Krusiqk, who was Reich Finance Minister, had placed those funds at the disposal of the DWB. Reinhardt was also known to me from his work and his activity during peacetime for the very simple reason that he introduced in Germany communal administration in the big Reinhardt Reform which was the real taxation reform. He also established the Reinhardt Interest Bonuses. He compiled and wrote several books about taxation laws. Apart from that, all new taxes and finance reforms were actually taken care of by Reinhardt according to both the press and the propaganda. Furthermore, Reinhardt was written with "dt" at the end in this letter and as far as I know today Reinhard is spelled with a "d" at the end rather than a "dt". Apart from that, Herr Pohl once called me to his office, in Frank's presence, and told me that the Reich Finance Ministry wanted to give a credit to the DWB, if this would be possible.

All I could understand from this was that this was actually a fund which was placed at the disposal of the DWB by the second highest official in the Reich Finance Ministry.


BY JUDGE MUSMANNO:

Q. May I ask a question, please?

Is it customary for the name of the Minister to be attached to a purely governmental function?

A. I'm afraid the translation didn't quite get through, Your Honor.

Q. I'll put the question very specifically. The Reinhardt of whom you speak was Assistant Minister of the Treasury? Is that what I understand? Ministry of Finance, yes?

A. Yes, that's right. Graf Schwerin von Krossigk was the Minister. The State Secretary was Reinhardt. Schwerin von Krossigk was the professional man and was Reich Minister even prior to 1933, and state secretary Reinhardt was SA Obergruppenfuehrer.

Q. Anything coming out of the Ministry of Finance wouldn't bear the name of the Minister as such, would it, being a purely governmental operation?

A. Yes, but as I have stated before, the real taxation reform was also called the Reinhardt real tax reform. I have to understand from that if this fund is called "the Reinhardt Fund" that the Reich Finance Ministry placed certain monies at the disposal of the DWB.

Q. I can understand how, in the newspapers, the name could be attached to the operation, but, within the government itself, if it is a governmental action, I cannot understand why the name Reinhardt would be used.

A. Yes, Mr. Federal Judge, such names in particular were chosen. You see, series of actions received the names of leading personalities. The reason why this was done was that the Fuehrer principle was to be shown more clearly by doing that.

In Germany, even in governmental circles, one never spoke of a cabinet or a government, one always spoke of the man.

BY DR. GAWLIK:

Q. Witness, perhaps you can answer the following question.

Would you please explain to the Tribunal, witness, the personality of the Finance Minister Schwerin Krossigk and the personality of Reinhardt. Tell us which of the two was the most important person and why it was not at all difficult to understand that fund wasn't called according to the name Schwerin von Krossigk but rather according to the State Secretary? what part did von Krossigk play in social life and what was the role of Mr. Reinhardt in public life?

A. Mr. Defense Counsel, if I, as a rather young person, have to give you a judgment or my opinion on these two personalities I have to say that von Krossigk was the most important one of the two because he was a sensible, professionally very skilled man who, step by step, actually worked his way up to the position of Minister. Even in the democratic regime, Herr Reinhardt, up to 1933, was nothing but a simple teacher in a business school. It was only through the help of the Party that he became a SA-Gruppenfuehrer and SA Obergruppenfuehrer. It was he then who was placed a bit higher as an exponent of the Party, and all these things which von Krossigk had done to the German Reich while working hard, the financing, etc, all this, during the war, was said to have been done by Reinhardt. You could read in the paper: "Herr Reinhardt, and Reinhardt again." Reinhardt held speeches at every conference. The people in the Finance Ministry knew that the real man behind it all was von Krossigk. Others knew that, but we all knew that Reinhardt would be the one credited with everything. That was the reason that I didn't have a single doubt that Reinhardt was the man who had given the fund.
http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/transc ... inistry%22

It would be completely absurd for the Reich to name a business loan after the top-secret codename of their genocide of the Jews. It makes perfect sense for them to name this loan after Fritz Reinhardt given the large number of other economic initiatives that were named after Fritz Reinhardt:
  • First & Second Reinhardt Program
  • Reinhardt Taxes
  • Reinhardt Interest Bonuses
  • Aktion Reinhardt
Sergey would have you believe that the Reinhardt Interest Bonuses were named after the economist at the Reich Ministry of Finance, but the Reinhardt Funds negotiated by the Reich Ministry of Finance were named after Heydrich and the top-secret codename to genocide the Jews. That is nonsense.

In summary, based on the evidence only two connections can be made for certain between the Reinhardt Funds and Aktion Reinhardt:
  1. Proceeds from AR were credited to the Reich Treasury, and the Reinhardt Funds were Reich capital. So it can be said that AR was used to finance the Reinhardt Funds in the same way that every single other investment and expenditure from the Reich was financed by AR as well. In the same way I can claim that "my tax dollars" went to a $500k PPP loan for the Holocaust Memorial Center. But I cannot claim that the PPP loan was requested or granted because of my tax payment, or that the PPP loan was delivered based on receipt of my taxes. That is a much stronger claim that I would need to provide evidence for.
  2. Like many other economic initiatives, the Reinhardt Funds were named after State Secretary Reinhardt of the Reich Ministry of Finance, which negotiated the loan with August Frank.
Aktion Reinhardt and the Reinhardt Funds were named after State Secretary Fritz Reinhardt of the Reich Ministry of Finance.


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Re: "Aktion Reinhardt" -- What did it denote?

#123

Post by stryder » 13 Oct 2020, 23:19

The original name of AR may have been "Catholic Action." The building were the stolen loot was taken to in Lublin, housed a charitable organization before the war call Catholic Action.

When Gitty Sereny was interviewing Franz Stangl for her book "Into that Darkness," she asked him what was the reason for the extermination of the Jews. He replied, "They wanted their money." Also remember, the SS did not have the budget to carry out the order to exterminate the Jews. They needed the money to build the camps, pay the salary of the camp personnel, and pay the Reichsbahn, who charged the SS per person per mile to transport Jews and Gypsies.

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Re: "Aktion Reinhardt" -- What did it denote?

#124

Post by Sergey Romanov » 31 Oct 2020, 01:55

Oh gee, this guy has left his droppings here too.

I've responded elsewhere, so I'll repost here.

PR> Sergey has claimed that the "Reinhardt Funds" referred to Account 1288

Sergey then changed his mind, which fact PR found expedient to suppress.

https://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic. ... 05#p768405

But PR's dishonesty and lies are hardly a secret on this forum, so we will not dwell on this. Especially as he does, finally, make a useful and important point:

PR> In a subsequent affidavit written on July 26th, 1947 Emil Puhl clarifies this issue directly

Now, in my interpretation of the paragraph 7 of Puhl's initial affidavit I relied on the fact that the sum mentioned for the Golddiskontbank loans (10-12m) is the same as the one usually mentioned as the sum of the loan from the Reinhardt-Fonds, the fact, that it was used for the same general goal, the fact that Puhl mentioned it in the context of the Melmer deliveries and did not provide any other details (like the dates) and the fact that it has been so interpreted by numerous jurists (including prosecutors at the trial - which is why Puhl had to make an additional affidavit in the first place) and historians (by many more than PR cares to name). It was nevertheless wrong, but the correction also helps to solve the problem elucidated at the link above, namely, that account, called by August Frank 1288, was in the Reichsbank, not in the Golddiskontbank. Now that this matter has been resolved, I return back to the one remaining obvious conclusion: the account called 1288 by August Frank was indeed the Reinhardt-Fonds.

(A side note: it is not entirely clear that the account indeed had that number.
It was an account for German cash accruing through Aktion Reinhardt (incl. the three proper Reinhardt camps as well as Lublin and Majdanek), but the account named in two WVHA orders was actually 1488, which suggests a mistaken recollection on Frank's part:
https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/docum ... -officials
https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/docum ... -senior-ss
Frank also did not mention the account 1488 and spoke of only two accounts - "Max Heiliger" and 1288. Against this interpretation may be the fact that Bruno Melmer mentioned that the German cash account had to be cleared in steps of 500,000. Though maybe there's an explanation for this apparent contradiction.
Whatever the case, it is not necessary to solve this riddle for the following discussion, where, for simplicity's sake, the account will be simply named "1288".)

This is clear from Frank's testimony:
http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/transc ... e?seq=2322
Q. From this account of the Reich Ministry of Finance, was credit also given to the German Economic Enterprises?
A. No, that came from account 1288 of the Reichsbank in BerlinSchoeneberg.
Q. Can you still remember this number so exactly?
A. Yes; I looked at this document very closely in the document book because this account, 1288, at Berlin Schoeneberg, was an account over which the WVHA could dispose.
Q. And this account was not the same as this account which was called Max Heiliger?
A. No. We must make a strict differentiation between the two accounts. In order to explain this matter to the Tribunal, may I again point out that the account 1288 was the account where the confiscated cash funds were transferred. These were amounts in the German Reichsmark. Undoubtedly it is true that from this account it could be seen just how much money arrived and was placed into the account. However, these amounts reached a figure which did not allow for the conclusion that this was the property of hundreds of thousands of persons.
...
THE PRESIDENT: Will you please explain again what went into Account 1288? You said confiscated funds. Will you explain what you mean by that?
WITNESS: I mean the cash funds which were taken away from prisoners who had been turned over to the concentration camps and all these funds were credited to this account. These were funds in Reichsmarks.
THE PRESIDENT: But that all came from inmates of concentration camps?
WITNESS: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: And not money that had been seized in the East and sent in to the WVHA?
WITNESS: No funds were seized in the East and turned over to the WVHA.
...
Q. I shall refer to this credit later on. Witness, did you have anything to do at all with the conclusion of the Action Reinhardt?
A. No, as I have already explained, through my resignation on the 31st of August, 1943, I did not have anything further to do with this entire matter and I did not have any more contact with all these matters.
Q. And after that, you did not have any conception about the extent on the whole about the valuables as they are shown later on by the report of Globocnik?
A. No, I must except here only the cash funds, that is, the cash funds in Reichsmarks which were entered on this account 1288, I knew of these sums. These funds amounted, as far as I can recall, in the summer of 1943 to about 12,000,000 Marks. However, it could not be seen clearly just how much of this came from the Action Reinhardt, because in this Account 1288 all the funds in Reichsmarks were entered. They were entered there from all the concentration camps. All this money came from what the persons who had died left behind and who did not have any heirs to claim this money.
http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/transc ... e?seq=2340
Q. Witness, about this 30 million credit to the DWB, is it correct that the DWB in the summer of 1943 received a Reich credit of 30 million marks?
A. That is correct.
Q. Part of that credit, was that credit removed from account No. 1288?
A. Yes, 12 millions according to my recollection.
Q. In Document Book No. 18, on Page 148 of the German and 141 of the English text, we have Exhibit No. 448 of Document 554. That is also in Document Book No. 17, on Page 33 of the German. This document deals with the credit to the Schutzstaffel, or protective squads of the SS. According to that, the first part was used in order to pay back a debt, a Red Cross debt, is that correct? Do you have the document book before you?
A. Yes, I have to go into details about this document because my name is mentioned there. I do not want to bore this Tribunal with this matter, however. It deals with a loan of 8 million marks which the Red Cross, as far as I can recall had granted to the SS in 1939. At the time I had nothing to do with this transaction. Why that credit was granted to the SS and why this credit took such a detour through the savings account of the SS, I could not tell you today. The SS Savings Association was an institution which had been established by the Reichsfuehrer where all the SS units, which were a part of the main office, had to pay part of their salaries to that particular Treasury. When I became chief of Amtsgruppe A, this saving association was included in my field of tasks, and there I found this credit which, came from the Red Cross, and I found that they had gone through the saving group association accounts and from these particular saving group association accounts it was turned over to the DWB.
In June 1943, I had conferences with Pohl about it and I asked him to correct this mistake because it did not appear correct to me that such an association should possibly be charged with such a credit. Pohl told me at the time, "Frank, I cannot possibly remove this credit from my W-Industries. It is part of the capital of the industry. If you want to do that, you have to give me eight millions from the Treasury of the Reich." And it was on that occasion that Pohl furthermore told me that he urgently needed additional funds for the execution of the Reich armament tasks.
That was the reason for the thirty million credit which developed out of this matter. It was a Reich credit. There was no doubt about the fact that it had to be paid back sometime to the Reich and we always had to pay interest for it. Why at the time I removed part of the credit from the special account 1288, which had also become Reich money by that time, I do not even know today. However, as far as I can recall, shortly before I resigned from my position in the main office, I had this money transferred to account 1288 by transferring it from one account to the other.
Q. About those eight millions which came out of this Document No-554, were they used to pay the credit for the Red Cross?
A. Yes, that can be seen from the document clearly.
Q. How was it then that this credit received the name "Reinhardt Fund"?
A. Because as I already stated, the first two installment payments were withdrawn from account 1288.
Q. Then the eight million marks out of the thirty million credit were no longer withdrawn from the Reinhardt account?
A. No, they were taken out of the current budget funds of the Reich.
Q. Then the first twelve million could have been taken from the current budget, couldn't they?
A. Yes, that is correct. I already told you that I don't know why this 12 million were withdrawn from that account.
Q. However, there must have been some sort of a reason why the original money was withdrawn from the funds which had been placed aside and not from the current Reich funds?
A. Well, to make it a short story, around the same time representatives of the O STI appeared in my office, and they asked me if they could possibly receive a credit of two and one-half million marks in order to take care of certain armament matters. Originally, these two and one-half were also to be withdrawn from account 1288. I looked at the special requisition slips at the Osti and I saw that those were purely armament matters, not for the SS but for the Army itself. There upon, I visited an expert of the Army administration and I asked him if he could not possible put two and one-half million marks at the disposal of the people who come to see me from his own treasury. He did not exactly refuse to do so, but he was surprised because he said, "Why don't you?" And that was the reason why I gave the money. When I later on became Chief of the Army Administration, I told myself that the Army was giving hundreds of millions of credits to armament firms. In Department for Rearmament in the Army, over one billion was spent for armament industry.
Q. You say that this particular sum of twelve million consisted of Reich funds. I mean those twelve million which came from Jewish property. However, I can't help thinking that these twelve million, practically speaking, were to be credited to the account of the SS economy.
A You mean they were embezzled actually, is that what you mean?
Q Yes.
A No, that could not have been the case, because then the whole thing would have been started in a very stupid manner. If we had merely wanted to embezzle that and transfer the money to the economy, then we would have started in some other way. However, in this way these amounts went entirely through the cash books, and they went through the books of the economists. They were subjected to the inspection of the auditing court, and there was no doubt that all these funds were purely Reich funds. That the origin of the money is based upon the property of the Jews, I will admit openly. However, this does not change anything in the fact that at that particular moment when the money was taken into the Reich Treasury it became Reich property.
Q I shall now come back to Account 1288, the so-called Reinhardt Fund. You said that the funds became Reich property, the moment they were taken into the Reich Treasury. However, these confiscated funds of the inmates somehow represented an enrichment for the SS budget and therefore the SS had more funds, or do I understand you wrong?
A For the layman that is precisely the way it looks. In this connection I would like to mention also the pay, the wages for the inmates. By that I mean those particular funds which the Reich received from the industries for supplies for the inmates, that is to say, lodging, clothing, and for their food. Those funds, just like all the other funds which came into the Reich Treasury were no profits for the Waffen-SS or for the SS generally speaking.
From this we learn that the 12m part of the DWB loan (which, to remind, was 30m in all) came from the account 1288: 1) which is identified by the questioner as the Reinhardt Fund at least twice (once as "Reinhardt account", but it is clear what is being referred to), without Frank contradicting this; 2) the answer to the question "How was it then that this credit received the name "Reinhardt Fund"?" (to which we will come back shortly) was "Because as I already stated, the first two installment payments were withdrawn from account 1288."; 3) Frank mentions a 2,5m RM credit to Osti which was originally to come from the account 1288. Discussing this episode he further identifies the account 1288 with the Reinhardt-Fonds:
https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/trans ... e?seq=2346
Q Now, how did this credit come about?
A I have already stated that these credits were based on a request by the OSTI with me, and they were given by me. First of all they were to be withdrawn from Account 1288. However, they were taken out of the normal Reich funds later on. I believe that can be proved, because in Exhibit 483 - forgive me, I mean in Document 1271, that is the balance of the OSTI, dated the 29th of February, 1944.
Q That is Exhibit 491, isn't it?
A Yes, 491.
Q In Document Book No. 19.
A On page 28 of the German, paragraph 15 it explicitly refers to the Account Reich is mentioned there, not Reinhardt and from this same paragraph 15 it can be seen that the credits were already repaid by the 20th of May, 1944, up to half, in other words, at the time when I was no longer in the WVHA.
Q How is it then that in Exhibit 483 in the file note of 26 June 1943 the context is mentioned, "Loan from the Reinhardt funds"?
https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/docum ... e-finances
A Because as I already said it was to be withdrawn from the Reinhardt funds originally. However, I refused that. In other words, I had nothing else to do with the OSTI, than to help here for those particular credits which we thought necessary for the execution of the armament tasks.
Pohl also confirms the identity of an account in which the Reinhardt money was collected with the Reinhardt-Fonds:
http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/transc ... e?seq=1593
Q Who was it that gave orders for the use of Reichmarks and foreign currency for the camps needs of the camps and in what connection is the credit of 13,000,000 to the German Economic Enterprises GMBH? Did you approve this fund?
[Note: "13m" is obviously a hearing mistake for "30m".]
A As long as these valuables remained in Lublin, Globocnik could do anything he wanted to with it, but I used these amounts from the Standortverwaltung Lublin. I was not asked. With reference to the credit of 13,000,000, to the German Economic Enterprises, the matter was the following: Due to strong orders for armament which started coming in after 1943 to the armament enterprises there was a lack of capital. Therefore, I made up my mind to write to the Reichs Finance Ministry in order to ask for a large credit, because the orders which came to the W-Enterprises, that is the Armament Enterprises, came exclusively from the Minister of Armament and War Production and from the Reich Air Ministry, which financed them, and in the last resort, from the Reich Ministry of Finance.
Therefore, I detailed Defendant Frank on the occasion of the report on the funds of Action Reinhardt, which had already been transferred to the WVHA to discuss this loan with the Reich Finance Ministry. Frank reported to me at the time that the Reich Ministry of Finance had nothing against a loan, although interest would have to be paid on it, also had nothing against using registered moneys of the Reinhardt fund. Then these last funds amounting to approximately 10,000,000 to 12,000,000 marks were used for the loan and the amount of approximately 18,000,000, I then took from the current Reich fund. As far as the total of 30,000,000 is concerned, it was a loan contract with the Reich.
He specifically brings the loan into the connection with the report about the Aktion Reinhardt funds, and mentions the Reinhardt-Fonds in the same breath, mentioning the size of the "funds" (whether of the Reinhardt-Fonds or of the Aktion Reinhardt funds transferred to the WVHA) as 10-12m, which were separate from the loan as they were its source, i. e. he is talking about an account.

If anyone would try and claim that the DWB loan was called "Reinhardt-Fonds", they would obviously be wrong. Such a notion could stem from this exchange with Frank, already quoted above:
Q. How was it then that this credit received the name "Reinhardt Fund"?
A. Because as I already stated, the first two installment payments were withdrawn from account 1288.
The credit referred to is the whole 30m DWB credit. Most probably it's either a translation mistake (if the question was asked directly in German), a typist mistake, or a questioner's interpretation mistake. We can be sure of that because no document whatsoever names the DWB loan "Reinhardt-Fonds", hence there was no basis for such a question.

The documents that we have are explicit in that the loan was to come *from* the Reinhardt-Fonds, i. e. that it was the source of the loan, not the loan itself.
http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/docume ... -the-chief

Frank also explained, as noted above, that also enterprises like Osti could get separate loans from the same source (Osti was, technically, a part of the DWB but the matter of the loan to Osti was handled independently of the DWB loan).

Elsewhere Frank was also explicit:
https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/docum ... franks#p.6
It is true that the Action Reinhart and the Reinhart Fund are identical.
However you interpret this, this excludes the notion that for Frank the Reinhardt-Fonds was the name of the DWB loan.

Indeed, for Frank the matters of the DWB credit and the Reinhardt-Fonds were separate:
http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/transc ... e?seq=2411
Q. Can you still recall whether and to what extent you told Dr. Wenner and Dr. Hohberg about the source of the money of the Reichardt Fund?
A. Whether in the course of this conversation we discussed the matter at all, if we discussed the Reinhardt Fund at all -- I don't believe so, because the conversation dealt only with the question of the credit. Where the loan was to come from, that was rather without any particular interest for Hohberg. He was interested only in obtaining the loan.
Pohl was also explicit in that only a part (up to 12m RM) of the DWB loan was from the Reinhardt-Fonds, it thus could not be identical to the whole loan.
This also follows from this statement by Frank:
http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/transc ... e?seq=2418
I can recall that Baier came to see me at the time. He told me then, "Gruppenfuehrer, the agreement about the thirty million has already been fixed, but it has not as yet been signed and ratified. I have found a note here by Hohberg according to which this agreement has as yet to be signed." He already had this agreement with him. He asked me just what it meant, what had happened, why the words "Reinhardt Fund" had been used in this note? I told him then that this already had been surpassed, and this was only a question of the first two back payments, that, however, there was no reason at all to use the words "Reinhardt Fund" in the agreement or to use the words "Action Reinhardt" at all in the agreement. In the agreement which was signed by me in this conversation the word "Reinhardt" was not mentioned at all. I assume that the Prosecution has this document in their hands and that this can be checked. I signed this agreement on behalf of the Reich. Pohl signed it for the economy. That is what brought it about.
Confirmed by Baier:
http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/transc ... e?seq=4832
I asked Frank whether the term "Reinhardt Fund" should be named in the contract, and Frank answered in the negative. He said the name should not be contained in the contract, that the word had nothing to do with the contract.
The non-identity of the Reinhardt-Fonds and the loan is further confirmed by Hohberg, who, when asked about the RF understood by it only the pre-existing source of the loan, not the loan itself (notably, he recalls a conversation with Pohl according to which the fund was managed by him and Schwerin-Krosigk; also notably, Fritz Reinhardt's actually witnessed (as opposed to assumed or rumored) activities related to the DWB loan or to the Reinhardt-Fonds are not mentioned by any source known to me).
hohberg1.jpg
hohberg1.jpg (138.18 KiB) Viewed 759 times
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So: the Reinhardt-Fonds was the account 1288 (whatever its real name). The Reinhardt-Fonds was not the name of the DWB loan. The Reinhardt-Fonds aka account 1288 was the money stolen from the Jews during the exterminatory Aktion Reinhardt (just like with the Aktion names - like Aktion Bernhard - it was possible for Fonds to be first-name-based, cf. the Oswald-Fonds; but in this case the origin of the name was the name of the action where the funds originated from).

During the trial it was important for the accused to distance themselves from the Aktion Reinhardt and knowledge about it as much as possible, so we see August Frank trying to water down the connection as follows:
Q. And after that, you did not have any conception about the extent on the whole about the valuables as they are shown later on by the report of Globocnik?
A. No, I must except here only the cash funds, that is, the cash funds in Reichsmarks which were entered on this account 1288, I knew of these sums. These funds amounted, as far as I can recall, in the summer of 1943 to about 12,000,000 Marks. However, it could not be seen clearly just how much of this came from the Action Reinhardt, because in this Account 1288 all the funds in Reichsmarks were entered. They were entered there from all the concentration camps. All this money came from what the persons who had died left behind and who did not have any heirs to claim this money.
So he admits that the Reinhardt money was a part of the account but tries to relativize his knowledge of AR by trying to dissolve this AR money among the money that allegedly also came from all the concentration camp inmates. However, this is untrue, since there is no reason why the non-Reinhardt money (such as the money of the non-Jewish prisoners) would flow into a Reinhardt account, the WVHA orders pertained very specifically to the Jewish property, were - among the concentration camps - limited solely to Auschwitz and Lublin, and Frank himself couldn't hold the charade long enough, since after that he admitted:
That the origin of the money is based upon the property of the Jews, I will admit openly.
None of this, of course, undermines the well-established fact that the exterminatory Aktion Reinhardt was named after Reinhardt Heydrich.

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Sergey Romanov
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Re: "Aktion Reinhardt" -- What did it denote?

#125

Post by Sergey Romanov » 31 Oct 2020, 01:57

Slightly updated

What do we know about what Aktion Reinhard(t) was about purely from documents?

It was defined by Globocnik to consist of 4 parts:
The whole Aktion Reinhardt is composed of 4 areas:

A) the expulsion itself
B) the exploitation of labor force
C) the exploitation of property
D) seizure of hidden goods and immovable property
This definition appears in a report to Himmler and thus Globocnik would not have lied about such a crucial matter as such a lie would have had serious consequences for him.

We thus know for a (brute) fact that the AR contained a huge non-economic element: the expulsion of the Jews.

It thus would not have been named after Fritz Reinhardt, a state secretary from the ministry of finance.

Period.

The rest are just details.

This is further confirmed by the following points.

1. The chronology of Globocnik's reports excludes the possibility that AR was a purely economic operation.

The documents:

Slightly updated

What do we know about what Aktion Reinhard(t) was about purely from documents?

It was defined by Globocnik to consist of 4 parts:
The whole Aktion Reinhardt is composed of 4 areas:

A) the expulsion itself
B) the exploitation of labor force
C) the exploitation of property
D) seizure of hidden goods and immovable property
This definition appears in a report to Himmler and thus Globocnik would not have lied about such a crucial matter as such a lie would have had serious consequences for him.

We thus know for a (brute) fact that the AR contained a huge non-economic element: the expulsion of the Jews.

It thus would not have been named after Fritz Reinhardt, a state secretary from the ministry of finance.

Period.

The rest are just details.

This is further confirmed by the following points.

1. The chronology of Globocnik's reports excludes the possibility that AR was a purely economic operation.

The documents:

a) Himmler to Globocnik and Pohl, 22.9.43 (NO-3034): instructs Globocnik to settle and balance the account "Reinhardt 1" up to 31.12.43, so that the account can be taken over by Pohl.

b) Globocnik to Himmler, 4.11.43 (NO-56): AR finished, as a final presentation (Abschlußdarstellung) about the operation Globus presents to Himmler a portfolio (the exact content of which is not known, but we know for certain it wasn't purely economic stuff: among the materials there is a report of some sources of danger in the Lublin district). It is not clear any of the attachments survived. It is probable that the portfolio contained the information about the expulsion/extermination part.

c) Himmler to Globocnik, 30.11.43 (NO-58): Himmler thanks Globus for this letter and for the announcement of the conclusion of AR, as well as for the portfiolio. He expresses gratitude for the great and unique merits Globus had earned by conducting AR for the entire German nation.

d) Globocnik to Himmler, 5.1.44 (NO-64): Globocnik refers to the 22.9.43 letter, feels that he must present an economic account of AR, so that Himmler sees that also on this part everything is all right. The attachments survived and speak of the economic part of the AR (in the intro to one of the attachments AR is defined and includes deportations).

e) Himmler to Pohl, 21.1.44, requests Pohl to relieve Globus of his economic responsibility, referring to his economic report.

f) Pohl to Globocnik (16.2.44), relieves him for the period of 23.10.1942 to 31.3.1943, rest to follow.

Globocnik final presentation about Aktion Reinhard thus was attached to his 4.11.43 letter to Himmler about the conclusion of AR.

Globocnik's 1944 report on the economic part of AR is thus additional and was only delivered optionally (Globocnik explained that he felt the need to do so to show that everything was alright *also* on the economic part of the AR, contrary to his reputation on that score, as he writes) and not in the first 1943 portfolio. Moreover, the 1944 letter refers to Himmler's 22.9.43 letter about the need to settle the account "Reinhardt 1". It is in response to this economic order by Himmler that Globocnik presented his economic report of 1944, whereas his 1943 message about the completion of AR does not refer to Himmler's economic order.

Had the AR in the Generalgouvernement been only about economy, the final presentation of 4.11.43 would have been about economy and a separate, additional, optional report of 1944 about economy would not have been necessary.

Thus we can exclude that the AR in the GG was solely about the economy (plunder).


2. An attachment to Globocnik's 1944 report is entitled "Economic part of Aktion Reinhardt". A "part" requires a "whole". The whole could not have been purely economic since if all parts were economic, it would not have made sense to write about "the economic part". Ergo, there was a non-economic part of AR.

3. In Globocnik's 1944 cover letter we read:
I am taking the liberty of submitting to you in the enclosure a report on the economic management of the Action Reinhardt, since you, Reichsführer, ordered in your letter of 22.09.1943 that I should have it [i.e. AR] completed and handed over by 31.12.1943. However also the recognition given to me for the Action impels me to give you, Reichsführer, an account of the economic side, so that you, Reichsführer, thereby see that also on this side the work was in order.
So there was an economic side to the AR, and there was some other side too, since he writes "that *also* on this side the work was in order" which makes no sense, unless there was some other side.

4. In the report about the administrative aspects of the economic part, attached to the 1944 letter, we read:
Sums of Reichsmarks and Zloty. The entire operating expenses [Sachausgaben], transport costs, fees [Gebührnisse], etc. resulting from this Action were covered from these receipts.
This refers to a related attached document, the "Provisional balance sheet of the Action "Reinhardt" till", 16.12.1943, where we see:
Expenses:

Personal fees [persönliche Gebührnisse], title 21/7a RM 96,207.28
Operating expenses [Sachausgaben] (of which about 40% for J-Transports title 21/7b) RM 11,765,552.62
Counterfeit money (Zloty notes) RM 28,062.64
Total RM 11,889,822.54
So the costs for the Jewish transports were a part of the AR balance. Moreover, in the administrative report we see that these operating expenses for the Jewish transports indeed "resulted from this Action".

Therefore, once again, Aktion Reinhard officially included the Jewish transports, i. e. the deportation part, just as Globocnik wrote.

(In this regard it should also be noted that Globocnik's economic data was checked by the WVHA, and as already mentioned, WVHA relieved Globocnik of the economic responsiblity for a certain time period during which also Jewish transports took place. Had Globocnik had no right to include the transport costs in his financial account, WVHA would have noted this and would not have relieved him of responsibility. Moreover, Globocnik would have likely been punished for deception. Also note that a reference to Pohl's instructions on handling the Reinhardt property, which mention that expenses can only occur if they are fundamentally connected to the implementation of the operation, does nothing to dispose of this fact, since if the transports were not a part of Globocnik's operation, they would have had their own budget and thus it would not have been permissible for Globocnik to fund them.)

This is further confirmed by the numerous documents connecting Einsatz Reinhard(t) (also translated as "operation Reinhard(t)") - which was either a reference to the Lublin HQ for implementing the AR in the GG, or both to this HQ and the operation itself in the GG - because even if one assumes it only referred to the AR staff, the deportation processing itself was at least as significant a task as property plunder, not some secondary function that could be taken over by such a team without further ado.

The office was called Einsatz Reinhard(t) specifically because it had to implement AR, and had there been a separate enormous task of deportation that was not a part of AR, a separate bureaucratic unit devoted specifically to that enormous task (whether consisting of the same people or not) would be expected, a unit which wouldn't bear the name of a finance state secretary in the first place. Moreover, in the documents the ER and the AR in the GG are used basically interchangeably, the ER people were awarded for implementing the AR - not for implementing the AR *and* the "separate" deportations, which once again implies the deportations being a part of AR.

For example, we know that Hermann Höfle, who headed the Hauptabteilung Einsatz Reinhardt in Lublin, also bore the title "Der Beauftragte für die Umsiedlung" (tasked with the resettlement), and this wasn't a parallel post but rather his official duty in the framework of Einsatz Reinhardt (as we can see from his 9.9.42 letter with the ER stamp). Höfle and his Einsatz Reinhard staff also were an official source for the AR deportation statistics for Berlin (as shown by the Höfle telegrams).

We thus know that Einsatz Reinhard officially had to do with deportations and murder, a huge task in itself. It is unnatural to expect that it would be named after a much smaller sub-task of plundering Jewish property. Therefore we must conclude that Aktion Reinhard itself was about implementing Jewish expulsions.

And in any case, we know that Einsatz Reinhardt was responsible for deportations and thus would not have been named after an economics guy.

Aside from documents we have important testimonial evidence. It will suffice to quote Georg Wippern who was responsible for the economic part of the Aktion Reinhard in Lublin, who, of all people, would have a prima facie interest to claim that it was a pure plunder action, yet he testified (06.12.1962 interrogation):
When asked, I answer that I knew the term 'Aktion Reinhard'. It was a general description for the 'Resettlement of Jews'.
(Note that in general, the Nazi "resettlement" obviously included plunder, i. e. Wippern's part of AR.)

There are certainly numerous testimonies about AR as a plunder action, usually coming from WVHA people away from the Generalgouvernement, for whom it was either genuine ignorance or a defense strategy.

Those are not difficult to explain. Plunder was an important part of AR, after all, but murder in the framework of the operation was limited to the GG, so many a WVHA functionary would have seen the term "Aktion Reinhardt" in the documents dealing only with stolen goods and often without knowing the story behind them.

One example would be Rudolf Höß, the Auschwitz commandant.

He wrote in his essay on the Final Solution that AR was an operation for plundering the property of deported and murdered Jews. This was true for Auschwitz, where the plunder part came under the economic part of AR, but not the deportation or extermination of Jews. The most reasonable explanation for this taking into account all the facts (since obviously AR included deportations, as per Globus' report cited in the beginning) is as follows. Initially AR was a local GG operation. WVHA was co-responsible for the economic part of this operation in the GG but not for the deportation/extermination part.

Thus, due to taking part in the GG AR, WVHA was perforce using the term "Aktion Reinhardt" for the economic part. It became an official bureaucratic "slot" for plunder in the GG inside the WVHA. It was then no big leap to extend this already existing bureaucratic WVHA term also to the economic operation (i. e. plunder) in Auschwitz for a measure of centralization in the plundering business for which the WVHA itself was responsible. But as WVHA was not responsible for the deportation/extermination part in the GG, and apparently did not internally use the term "Aktion Reinhardt" to refer to deportations and exterminations in the GG (which was not their responsibility, and thus there was no need for such internal references), it would not be natural for them to apply the term Globocnik used for his expulsion and murder part of the GG operation to a similar operation in an unrelated camp (plus they were not responsible for the expulsion part in Auschwitz). This made no big sense, and they were not obliged to do it. So they did not.

So Höß knew about how the term was used in Auschwitz, but wouldn't have necessarily known how it was used by Globocnik et al., i. e. his knowledge was fragmentary. His and similar statements cannot be used to prove that the whole Aktion Reinhard was *only* a plunder operation.

The same applies to the WVHA functionaries' statements during the Pohl trial. We can show that if they were not lying, they were certainly speculating.

Hohberg, the principal certified public accountant at DWB and one of its leading figures, on the Reinhardt-Fonds:
May it please your Honors, while looking through those documents you will see that the word "Reinhardt" is mostly written with "dt" at the end. Staatssekretaer Reinhardt was practically speaking the deputy of the Reichs Finance Ministry. We thought that that was the reason for the name of that fund.

Q. Where was it the name actually came from?

A. Well, here in Nurnberg I must assume that it means Reinhardt Heydrich, and Reinhardt stands for the first name of Heydrich.
It is explicit that this is speculation and not knowledge. "We thought", and now "I must assume".

These are not the words of someone who knew.

(DWB was, in this case, the receiver of the funds and Hohberg, as a representative of the receiving side and having no other proven connection to the Aktion Reinhardt, had no necessary knowledge about the source of the funds, hence speculated about them merely based on the name of the Reinhardt-Fonds. Such speculations are of zero evidential value.)

Sommer:
As far as I can recall, I talked to Melmer about that on one or two occasions. As far as I remember, it was Melmer told me at that time that these watches had been confiscated by virtue of a decree which the State Secretary Reinhardt in the Reich Ministry of Finance had issued, and that was the reason why this action had been given the name of Action Reinhardt.
The watches came from occupied Poland, from Aktion Reinhardt, which was not legally based on any decrees of Fritz Reinhardt, which is why this is at best speculation by Melmer (if he ever said it in the first place), not knowledge.

Baier:
In the notice which was left behind, it said there was a contract between DWB and the Reich to be fixed, and the heading said "Reinhardt Fund". I thereupon reflected what this could be about, and I came across the name of State Secretary Reinhardt, whom I knew very well. He was my superior in the Reich Ministry of Finance.
Here we see the very process of how such conclusions arose. Baier did not know what the name referred to so latched onto a familiar name of Fritz. Pure, explicit speculation.

Later he said:
I do not know to this day whether the name of Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhardt Heydrich, whom I did not know personally, is connected with this or not, and where the money came from eventually I am unable to say today.
Note that had he known that AR came from FR, he would have known for certain that it had nothing to do with Heydrich's name.

He also said:
Q But perhaps you would answer the question now whether you insisted upon having the term "Reinhardt" interpreted to you.

A No, I did not, for two reasons. One, Frank and I at that time were not on very good terms because I had been called away from the school, and the whole conversation between us was held in a brief, military tone. Second, I was not particularly interested in the term after Frank had told me that.
This is another admission that he did not know the origin of the term. A person in the know would have said: "No, I did not, because I already knew it meant Fritz Reinhardt" or something similar.

Volk, a Prokurist at DWB:
The Reinhardt Fund I understood or thought to understand that the state secretary Reinhardt from the Reich Finance Ministry, who was an exponent of the Part and who was a friend of Schwerin von Krusiqk, who was Reich Finance Minister, had placed those funds at the disposal of the DWB. Reinhardt was also known to me from his work and his activity during peacetime for the very simple reason that he introduced in Germany communal administration in the big Reinhardt Reform which was the real taxation reform. He also established the Reinhardt Interest Bonuses. He compiled and wrote several books about taxation laws. Apart from that, all new taxes and finance reforms were actually taken care of by Reinhardt according to both the press and the propaganda. Furthermore, Reinhardt was written with "dt" at the end in this letter and as far as I know today Reinhard is spelled with a "d" at the end rather than a "dt". Apart from that, Herr Pohl once called me to his office, in Frank's presence, and told me that the Reich Finance Ministry wanted to give a credit to the DWB, if this would be possible.
All I could understand from this was that this was actually a fund which was placed at the disposal of the DWB by the second highest official in the Reich Finance Ministry.

[...] The people in the Finance Ministry knew that the real man behind it all was von Krossigk. Others knew that, but we all knew that Reinhardt would be the one credited with everything. That was the reason that I didn't have a single doubt that Reinhardt was the man who had given the fund.
"Thought to understand" makes it clear that this was an "understanding" based on speculation, not direct knowledge of the matter (and not having a single doubt is not equal to knowing either).

Note that nowhere does he indicate that he had inside knowledge on this particular matter. He does not say: "I knew". Rather, he explains his reasoning for arriving at this conclusion using speculative arguments (like spelling and Fritz Reinhardt's programs), meaning that it's not direct knowledge (he is explicit that these observations are how he came to the conclusion: "All I could understand from this..." - i.e. from the aforementioned arguments). He mentions a wish by the finance ministry to give a credit, but does not claim Fritz Reinhardt's name was specifically mentioned - something he would have mentioned had it been.

(Same as with Hohberg, Volk, as a representative of the DWB and having no other proven connection to the Aktion Reinhardt, had no necessary knowledge about the source of the funds, hence, at best, speculated about them merely based on the name of the Reinhardt-Fonds. Such speculations are of zero evidential value.)

Moreover, we know from August Frank's testimony that the Reinhardt-Fonds consisted of the funds from Aktion Reinhardt:
... and it is also true that this credit of eight million Reichsmarks was contained in the Document NO-554 shown to me, from which the WVHA got the credits which had been made available to them by the Reich's Bank under the code name Reinhart-Action. It is true that the Action Reinhart and the Reinhart Fund are identical.
The Reinhardt-Fonds was thus not so named on the occasion of it having been provided by Fritz Reinhardt, but because the money came from Aktion Reinhardt.

Aside from the WVHA statements being explicit speculation or hearsay that cannot be excluded to be based on speculation, there are also the following points to be considered.

1. Denials of knowledge about Aktion Reinhard/true nature of Aktion Reinhard on the part of several WVHA functionaries during the WVHA trial are not prima facie credible or strong evidence about the true nature of Aktion Reinhard.

It was a trial, accused people often lie defensively during their trials, it was in the defendants' interest to claim that it wasn't an extermination action or that they did not know about its true nature (e. g. Pohl denied knowing about the Aktion until June 1943, which is a brazen lie; he also claimed to have learned about it for the first time from Vogt's report, yet Vogt insisted that he only knew of "Aktion R", and not of "Aktion Reinhardt"), thus the claims about the origin of the name could easily have been a part of the defense strategy. Tying the Reinhardt Fund or the Aktion Reinhard to Fritz Reinhardt's name and denying as much knowledge of both as possible was minimizing the risk of being accused of knowingly having taken part in a mass murder program.

It should be noted here that the man at one time responsible for Aktion Reinhard in Auschwitz, Wilhelm Burger, told the next AR official in Auschwitz, Möckel, that the Aktion Reinhard was named after Heydrich. It could also be speculation (and thus is not proffered here as evidence, only as a counterpoint), but at least Möckel's claim cannot be a part of any defense strategy.

2. But it should also be taken into account, that while the higher-ups' denials on that score are the least credible of all (it's unlikely that Pohl did not know beginning from 1942), the lower ranks' knowledge of AR or what it entailed is not a given in the first place. The typical low-level bureaucrats had to deal with accounts and documents, you can deal e. g. with an account called "Reinhardt" or with the even more removed "Reinhardt Fund" without having the first idea about the origin of the name, you can even strongly believe that the name comes from some economic dude - because all *you* have to do with is some account or credit fund and you have no idea what's behind that. And even when you are that exceptional person who puts some golden teeth into the account, you are still dealing with the economic part of the operation and don't necessarily know what the whole operation includes.

Relying on such perceptions is like relying on a judgment of blind man who feels an elephant's trunk and concludes that he is dealing with a snake. You can't blame the blind man, but you should know better.

So what can we say about the origin of the name "Aktion Reinhard(t)"?

We can exclude that it was named after Fritz Reinhardt.

1. Even if one assumed that it was a purely economic action, since there is no evidence that Fritz Reinhardt was in any way involved in the creation of specifically AR and the Finance Ministry only got involved in the operation a considerable time after it began.

1a. The code-word "Reinhardt"'s first known appearance is on June 6, 1942.

1b. Melmer remembered that in May of 1942 he received an order from Pohl to deliver the Jewish valuables from Lublin and Auschwitz to the Reichsbank, which would sell them and deliver the money to the Reichshauptkasse. The first delivery was in May 1942.

However the records of Melmer's deliveries show that the first delivery was on 26.08.1942, so Melmer misremembered the date.

1c. The date is further confirmed by Albert Thoms, who correctly remembered the date of Melmer's first delivery (26.08.1942) and stated that his talk with Puhl, who explained Reichsbank's new involvement in transferring the valuables from the WVHA to the Finance Ministry, took place about 2 weeks before that, i. e. around 12.08.1942.

That means that the Finance Ministry (to whose account in the Reichshauptkasse the money was only now to be transferred) only got involved in the Aktion Reinhard (as the recipient of the money) about more than 2 months after the first known mention of the code-word "Reinhardt".

The notion that a law co-signed by FR served as the inspiration for the name is ridiculous, since the ordinance Fritz co-signed was just a part of the ever-expanding plunder initiative which did not start with the ordinance and did not end with it, so there would be no point at all in cherrypicking 1 out of 4 signees, hardly the most important one or the one playing a special role, who cannot be shown to have been involved in the creation of specifically AR, especially considering that the AR did not use the ordinance in question as legal basis in the first place.

Most importantly, the ordinance Fritz co-signed was not even applicable to the huge majority of the Jews the AR dealt with (it applied solely to German citizens who left the Reich; most AR victims in the GG were not German citizens; the ordinance did not apply to Auschwitz, which was inside the Reich).

2.Since the official spelling of Aktion/Einsatz Reinhard/Reinhardt varied (both versions were used by Globocnik, Himmler and Pohl), as did the official spelling of Heydrich's name (the spelling "Reinhardt" appeared in numerous official Nazi documents about Heydrich, including ancestry research and SS lists (which cannot be explained away as typos, given the special care employed in creating such documents and the spelling's consistent appearance in them), and was even remarked upon by Himmler in one of the speeches), but the official spelling of Fritz Reinhardt's name did not vary, it is simply much more probable that the action was named after Heydrich rather than Fritz.

3. Finally, and most importantly, there was no reason at all to call this large-scale anti-Jewish deportation, murder and plunder operation after a mere finance state secretary; whereas it was logical to name it in honor of the person who officially headed the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" especially after an attempt on his life (the first known appearance of "Reinhardt" in reference to the Chopinstrasse plunder operation, initially called "katholische Aktion", appears 2 days after Heydrich's death) with or without any Jewish involvement in the attempt, but of course all the more so since the Nazi thinking saw Jews everywhere, so Goebbels, for one, connected the assassination to the Jews ("As a result of the attempt on Heydrich, a whole series of incriminated Jews were shot in Sachsenhausen. The more of this filthy garbage is removed, the better for the security of the Reich", also mentioning the rumors going around that the Jews were directly responsible for the assassination).
a) Himmler to Globocnik and Pohl, 22.9.43 (NO-3034): instructs Globocnik to settle and balance the account "Reinhardt 1" up to 31.12.43, so that the account can be taken over by Pohl.

b) Globocnik to Himmler, 4.11.43 (NO-56): AR finished, as a final presentation (Abschlußdarstellung) about the operation Globus presents to Himmler a portfolio (the exact content of which is not known, but we know for certain it wasn't purely economic stuff: among the materials there is a report of some sources of danger in the Lublin district). It is not clear any of the attachments survived. It is probable that the portfolio contained the information about the expulsion/extermination part.

c) Himmler to Globocnik, 30.11.43 (NO-58): Himmler thanks Globus for this letter and for the announcement of the conclusion of AR, as well as for the portfiolio. He expresses gratitude for the great and unique merits Globus had earned by conducting AR for the entire German nation.

d) Globocnik to Himmler, 5.1.44 (NO-64): Globocnik refers to the 22.9.43 letter, feels that he must present an economic account of AR, so that Himmler sees that also on this part everything is all right. The attachments survived and speak of the economic part of the AR (in the intro to one of the attachments AR is defined and includes deportations).

e) Himmler to Pohl, 21.1.44, requests Pohl to relieve Globus of his economic responsibility, referring to his economic report.

f) Pohl to Globocnik (16.2.44), relieves him for the period of 23.10.1942 to 31.3.1943, rest to follow.

Globocnik final presentation about Aktion Reinhard thus was attached to his 4.11.43 letter to Himmler about the conclusion of AR.

Globocnik's 1944 report on the economic part of AR is thus additional and was only delivered optionally (Globocnik explained that he felt the need to do so to show that everything was alright *also* on the economic part of the AR, contrary to his reputation on that score, as he writes) and not in the first 1943 portfolio. Moreover, the 1944 letter refers to Himmler's 22.9.43 letter about the need to settle the account "Reinhardt 1". It is in response to this economic order by Himmler that Globocnik presented his economic report of 1944, whereas his 1943 message about the completion of AR does not refer to Himmler's economic order.

Had the AR in the Generalgouvernement been only about economy, the final presentation of 4.11.43 would have been about economy and a separate, additional, optional report of 1944 about economy would not have been necessary.

Thus we can exclude that the AR in the GG was solely about the economy (plunder).


2. An attachment to Globocnik's 1944 report is entitled "Economic part of Aktion Reinhardt". A "part" requires a "whole". The whole could not have been purely economic since if all parts were economic, it would not have made sense to write about "the economic part". Ergo, there was a non-economic part of AR.

3. In Globocnik's 1944 cover letter we read:
I am taking the liberty of submitting to you in the enclosure a report on the economic management of the Action Reinhardt, since you, Reichsführer, ordered in your letter of 22.09.1943 that I should have it [i.e. AR] completed and handed over by 31.12.1943. However also the recognition given to me for the Action impels me to give you, Reichsführer, an account of the economic side, so that you, Reichsführer, thereby see that also on this side the work was in order.
So there was an economic side to the AR, and there was some other side too, since he writes "that *also* on this side the work was in order" which makes no sense, unless there was some other side.

4. In the report about the administrative aspects of the economic part, attached to the 1944 letter, we read:
Sums of Reichsmarks and Zloty. The entire operating expenses [Sachausgaben], transport costs, fees [Gebührnisse], etc. resulting from this Action were covered from these receipts.
This refers to a related attached document, the "Provisional balance sheet of the Action "Reinhardt" till", 16.12.1943, where we see:
Expenses:

Personal fees [persönliche Gebührnisse], title 21/7a RM 96,207.28
Operating expenses [Sachausgaben] (of which about 40% for J-Transports title 21/7b) RM 11,765,552.62
Counterfeit money (Zloty notes) RM 28,062.64
Total RM 11,889,822.54
So the costs for the Jewish transports were a part of the AR balance. Moreover, in the administrative report we see that these operating expenses for the Jewish transports indeed "resulted from this Action".

Therefore, once again, Aktion Reinhard officially included the Jewish transports, i. e. the deportation part, just as Globocnik wrote.

(In this regard it should also be noted that Globocnik's economic data was checked by the WVHA, and as already mentioned, WVHA relieved Globocnik of the economic responsiblity for a certain time period during which also Jewish transports took place. Had Globocnik had no right to include the transport costs in his financial account, WVHA would have noted this and would not have relieved him of responsibility. Moreover, Globocnik would have likely been punished for deception. Also note that a reference to Pohl's instructions on handling the Reinhardt property, which mention that expenses can only occur if they are fundamentally connected to the implementation of the operation, does nothing to dispose of this fact, since if the transports were not a part of Globocnik's operation, they would have had their own budget and thus it would not have been permissible for Globocnik to fund them.)

This is further confirmed by the numerous documents connecting Einsatz Reinhard(t) (also translated as "operation Reinhard(t)") - which was either a reference to the Lublin HQ for implementing the AR in the GG, or both to this HQ and the operation itself in the GG - because even if one assumes it only referred to the AR staff, the deportation processing itself was at least as significant a task as property plunder, not some secondary function that could be taken over by such a team without further ado.

The office was called Einsatz Reinhard(t) specifically because it had to implement AR, and had there been a separate enormous task of deportation that was not a part of AR, a separate bureaucratic unit devoted specifically to that enormous task (whether consisting of the same people or not) would be expected, a unit which wouldn't bear the name of a finance state secretary in the first place. Moreover, in the documents the ER and the AR in the GG are used basically interchangeably, the ER people were awarded for implementing the AR - not for implementing the AR *and* the "separate" deportations, which once again implies the deportations being a part of AR.

For example, we know that Hermann Höfle, who headed the Hauptabteilung Einsatz Reinhardt in Lublin, also bore the title "Der Beauftragte für die Umsiedlung" (tasked with the resettlement), and this wasn't a parallel post but rather his official duty in the framework of Einsatz Reinhardt (as we can see from his 9.9.42 letter with the ER stamp). Höfle and his Einsatz Reinhard staff also were an official source for the AR deportation statistics for Berlin (as shown by the Höfle telegrams).

We thus know that Einsatz Reinhard officially had to do with deportations and murder, a huge task in itself. It is unnatural to expect that it would be named after a much smaller sub-task of plundering Jewish property. Therefore we must conclude that Aktion Reinhard itself was about implementing Jewish expulsions.

And in any case, we know that Einsatz Reinhardt was responsible for deportations and thus would not have been named after an economics guy.

Aside from documents we have important testimonial evidence. It will suffice to quote Georg Wippern who was responsible for the economic part of the Aktion Reinhard in Lublin, who, of all people, would have a prima facie interest to claim that it was a pure plunder action, yet he testified (06.12.1962 interrogation):
When asked, I answer that I knew the term 'Aktion Reinhard'. It was a general description for the 'Resettlement of Jews'.
(Note that in general, the Nazi "resettlement" obviously included plunder, i. e. Wippern's part of AR.)

There are certainly numerous testimonies about AR as a plunder action, usually coming from WVHA people away from the Generalgouvernement, for whom it was either genuine ignorance or a defense strategy.

Those are not difficult to explain. Plunder was an important part of AR, after all, but murder in the framework of the operation was limited to the GG, so many a WVHA functionary would have seen the term "Aktion Reinhardt" in the documents dealing only with stolen goods and often without knowing the story behind them.

One example would be Rudolf Höß, the Auschwitz commandant.

He wrote in his essay on the Final Solution that AR was an operation for plundering the property of deported and murdered Jews. This was true for Auschwitz, where the plunder part came under the economic part of AR, but not the deportation or extermination of Jews. The most reasonable explanation for this taking into account all the facts (since obviously AR included deportations, as per Globus' report cited in the beginning) is as follows. Initially AR was a local GG operation. WVHA was co-responsible for the economic part of this operation in the GG but not for the deportation/extermination part.

Thus, due to taking part in the GG AR, WVHA was perforce using the term "Aktion Reinhardt" for the economic part. It became an official bureaucratic "slot" for plunder in the GG inside the WVHA. It was then no big leap to extend this already existing bureaucratic WVHA term also to the economic operation (i. e. plunder) in Auschwitz for a measure of centralization in the plundering business for which the WVHA itself was responsible. But as WVHA was not responsible for the deportation/extermination part in the GG, and apparently did not internally use the term "Aktion Reinhardt" to refer to deportations and exterminations in the GG (which was not their responsibility, and thus there was no need for such internal references), it would not be natural for them to apply the term Globocnik used for his expulsion and murder part of the GG operation to a similar operation in an unrelated camp (plus they were not responsible for the expulsion part in Auschwitz). This made no big sense, and they were not obliged to do it. So they did not.

So Höß knew about how the term was used in Auschwitz, but wouldn't have necessarily known how it was used by Globocnik et al., i. e. his knowledge was fragmentary. His and similar statements cannot be used to prove that the whole Aktion Reinhard was *only* a plunder operation.

The same applies to the WVHA functionaries' statements during the Pohl trial. We can show that if they were not lying, they were certainly speculating.

Hohberg, the principal certified public accountant at DWB and one of its leading figures, on the Reinhardt-Fonds:
May it please your Honors, while looking through those documents you will see that the word "Reinhardt" is mostly written with "dt" at the end. Staatssekretaer Reinhardt was practically speaking the deputy of the Reichs Finance Ministry. We thought that that was the reason for the name of that fund.

Q. Where was it the name actually came from?

A. Well, here in Nurnberg I must assume that it means Reinhardt Heydrich, and Reinhardt stands for the first name of Heydrich.
It is explicit that this is speculation and not knowledge. "We thought", and now "I must assume".

These are not the words of someone who knew.

(DWB was, in this case, the receiver of the funds and Hohberg, as a representative of the receiving side and having no other proven connection to the Aktion Reinhardt, had no necessary knowledge about the source of the funds, hence speculated about them merely based on the name of the Reinhardt-Fonds. Such speculations are of zero evidential value.)

Sommer:
As far as I can recall, I talked to Melmer about that on one or two occasions. As far as I remember, it was Melmer told me at that time that these watches had been confiscated by virtue of a decree which the State Secretary Reinhardt in the Reich Ministry of Finance had issued, and that was the reason why this action had been given the name of Action Reinhardt.
The watches came from occupied Poland, from Aktion Reinhardt, which was not legally based on any decrees of Fritz Reinhardt, which is why this is at best speculation by Melmer (if he ever said it in the first place), not knowledge.

Baier:
In the notice which was left behind, it said there was a contract between DWB and the Reich to be fixed, and the heading said "Reinhardt Fund". I thereupon reflected what this could be about, and I came across the name of State Secretary Reinhardt, whom I knew very well. He was my superior in the Reich Ministry of Finance.
Here we see the very process of how such conclusions arose. Baier did not know what the name referred to so latched onto a familiar name of Fritz. Pure, explicit speculation.

Later he said:
I do not know to this day whether the name of Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhardt Heydrich, whom I did not know personally, is connected with this or not, and where the money came from eventually I am unable to say today.
Note that had he known that AR came from FR, he would have known for certain that it had nothing to do with Heydrich's name.

He also said:
Q But perhaps you would answer the question now whether you insisted upon having the term "Reinhardt" interpreted to you.

A No, I did not, for two reasons. One, Frank and I at that time were not on very good terms because I had been called away from the school, and the whole conversation between us was held in a brief, military tone. Second, I was not particularly interested in the term after Frank had told me that.
This is another admission that he did not know the origin of the term. A person in the know would have said: "No, I did not, because I already knew it meant Fritz Reinhardt" or something similar.

Volk, a Prokurist at DWB:
The Reinhardt Fund I understood or thought to understand that the state secretary Reinhardt from the Reich Finance Ministry, who was an exponent of the Part and who was a friend of Schwerin von Krusiqk, who was Reich Finance Minister, had placed those funds at the disposal of the DWB. Reinhardt was also known to me from his work and his activity during peacetime for the very simple reason that he introduced in Germany communal administration in the big Reinhardt Reform which was the real taxation reform. He also established the Reinhardt Interest Bonuses. He compiled and wrote several books about taxation laws. Apart from that, all new taxes and finance reforms were actually taken care of by Reinhardt according to both the press and the propaganda. Furthermore, Reinhardt was written with "dt" at the end in this letter and as far as I know today Reinhard is spelled with a "d" at the end rather than a "dt". Apart from that, Herr Pohl once called me to his office, in Frank's presence, and told me that the Reich Finance Ministry wanted to give a credit to the DWB, if this would be possible.
All I could understand from this was that this was actually a fund which was placed at the disposal of the DWB by the second highest official in the Reich Finance Ministry.

[...] The people in the Finance Ministry knew that the real man behind it all was von Krossigk. Others knew that, but we all knew that Reinhardt would be the one credited with everything. That was the reason that I didn't have a single doubt that Reinhardt was the man who had given the fund.
"Thought to understand" makes it clear that this was an "understanding" based on speculation, not direct knowledge of the matter (and not having a single doubt is not equal to knowing either).

Note that nowhere does he indicate that he had inside knowledge on this particular matter. He does not say: "I knew". Rather, he explains his reasoning for arriving at this conclusion using speculative arguments (like spelling and Fritz Reinhardt's programs), meaning that it's not direct knowledge (he is explicit that these observations are how he came to the conclusion: "All I could understand from this..." - i.e. from the aforementioned arguments). He mentions a wish by the finance ministry to give a credit, but does not claim Fritz Reinhardt's name was specifically mentioned - something he would have mentioned had it been.

(Same as with Hohberg, Volk, as a representative of the DWB and having no other proven connection to the Aktion Reinhardt, had no necessary knowledge about the source of the funds, hence, at best, speculated about them merely based on the name of the Reinhardt-Fonds. Such speculations are of zero evidential value.)

Moreover, we know from August Frank's testimony that the Reinhardt-Fonds consisted of the funds from Aktion Reinhardt:
... and it is also true that this credit of eight million Reichsmarks was contained in the Document NO-554 shown to me, from which the WVHA got the credits which had been made available to them by the Reich's Bank under the code name Reinhart-Action. It is true that the Action Reinhart and the Reinhart Fund are identical.
The Reinhardt-Fonds was thus not so named on the occasion of it having been provided by Fritz Reinhardt, but because the money came from Aktion Reinhardt.

Aside from the WVHA statements being explicit speculation or hearsay that cannot be excluded to be based on speculation, there are also the following points to be considered.

1. Denials of knowledge about Aktion Reinhard/true nature of Aktion Reinhard on the part of several WVHA functionaries during the WVHA trial are not prima facie credible or strong evidence about the true nature of Aktion Reinhard.

It was a trial, accused people often lie defensively during their trials, it was in the defendants' interest to claim that it wasn't an extermination action or that they did not know about its true nature (e. g. Pohl denied knowing about the Aktion until June 1943, which is a brazen lie; he also claimed to have learned about it for the first time from Vogt's report, yet Vogt insisted that he only knew of "Aktion R", and not of "Aktion Reinhardt"), thus the claims about the origin of the name could easily have been a part of the defense strategy. Tying the Reinhardt Fund or the Aktion Reinhard to Fritz Reinhardt's name and denying as much knowledge of both as possible was minimizing the risk of being accused of knowingly having taken part in a mass murder program.

It should be noted here that the man at one time responsible for Aktion Reinhard in Auschwitz, Wilhelm Burger, told the next AR official in Auschwitz, Möckel, that the Aktion Reinhard was named after Heydrich. It could also be speculation (and thus is not proffered here as evidence, only as a counterpoint), but at least Möckel's claim cannot be a part of any defense strategy.

2. But it should also be taken into account, that while the higher-ups' denials on that score are the least credible of all (it's unlikely that Pohl did not know beginning from 1942), the lower ranks' knowledge of AR or what it entailed is not a given in the first place. The typical low-level bureaucrats had to deal with accounts and documents, you can deal e. g. with an account called "Reinhardt" or with the even more removed "Reinhardt Fund" without having the first idea about the origin of the name, you can even strongly believe that the name comes from some economic dude - because all *you* have to do with is some account or credit fund and you have no idea what's behind that. And even when you are that exceptional person who puts some golden teeth into the account, you are still dealing with the economic part of the operation and don't necessarily know what the whole operation includes.

Relying on such perceptions is like relying on a judgment of blind man who feels an elephant's trunk and concludes that he is dealing with a snake. You can't blame the blind man, but you should know better.

So what can we say about the origin of the name "Aktion Reinhard(t)"?

We can exclude that it was named after Fritz Reinhardt.

1. Even if one assumed that it was a purely economic action, since there is no evidence that Fritz Reinhardt was in any way involved in the creation of specifically AR and the Finance Ministry only got involved in the operation a considerable time after it began.

1a. The code-word "Reinhardt"'s first known appearance is on June 6, 1942.

1b. Melmer remembered that in May of 1942 he received an order from Pohl to deliver the Jewish valuables from Lublin and Auschwitz to the Reichsbank, which would sell them and deliver the money to the Reichshauptkasse. The first delivery was in May 1942.

However the records of Melmer's deliveries show that the first delivery was on 26.08.1942, so Melmer misremembered the date.

1c. The date is further confirmed by Albert Thoms, who correctly remembered the date of Melmer's first delivery (26.08.1942) and stated that his talk with Puhl, who explained Reichsbank's new involvement in transferring the valuables from the WVHA to the Finance Ministry, took place about 2 weeks before that, i. e. around 12.08.1942.

That means that the Finance Ministry (to whose account in the Reichshauptkasse the money was only now to be transferred) only got involved in the Aktion Reinhard (as the recipient of the money) about more than 2 months after the first known mention of the code-word "Reinhardt".

The notion that a law co-signed by FR served as the inspiration for the name is ridiculous, since the ordinance Fritz co-signed was just a part of the ever-expanding plunder initiative which did not start with the ordinance and did not end with it, so there would be no point at all in cherrypicking 1 out of 4 signees, hardly the most important one or the one playing a special role, who cannot be shown to have been involved in the creation of specifically AR, especially considering that the AR did not use the ordinance in question as legal basis in the first place.

Most importantly, the ordinance Fritz co-signed was not even applicable to the huge majority of the Jews the AR dealt with (it applied solely to German citizens who left the Reich; most AR victims in the GG were not German citizens; the ordinance did not apply to Auschwitz, which was inside the Reich).

2.Since the official spelling of Aktion/Einsatz Reinhard/Reinhardt varied (both versions were used by Globocnik, Himmler and Pohl), as did the official spelling of Heydrich's name (the spelling "Reinhardt" appeared in numerous official Nazi documents about Heydrich, including ancestry research and SS lists (which cannot be explained away as typos, given the special care employed in creating such documents and the spelling's consistent appearance in them), and was even remarked upon by Himmler in one of the speeches), but the official spelling of Fritz Reinhardt's name did not vary, it is simply much more probable that the action was named after Heydrich rather than Fritz.

3. Finally, and most importantly, there was no reason at all to call this large-scale anti-Jewish deportation, murder and plunder operation after a mere finance state secretary; whereas it was logical to name it in honor of the person who officially headed the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" especially after an attempt on his life (the first known appearance of "Reinhardt" in reference to the Chopinstrasse plunder operation, initially called "katholische Aktion", appears 2 days after Heydrich's death) with or without any Jewish involvement in the attempt, but of course all the more so since the Nazi thinking saw Jews everywhere, so Goebbels, for one, connected the assassination to the Jews ("As a result of the attempt on Heydrich, a whole series of incriminated Jews were shot in Sachsenhausen. The more of this filthy garbage is removed, the better for the security of the Reich", also mentioning the rumors going around that the Jews were directly responsible for the assassination).

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Re: "Aktion Reinhardt" -- What did it denote?

#126

Post by history1 » 31 Oct 2020, 10:56

stryder wrote:
13 Oct 2020, 23:19
[...] They needed the money to build the camps, pay the salary of the camp personnel, and pay the Reichsbahn, who charged the SS per person per mile to transport Jews and Gypsies.
1. In which country do you live that you´re using this term for the latter? In modern educated nations it is replaced by "Roma & Sinti" nowadays and using it here in my country would bring you a lot of troubles as it´s considered rassistic and violates actual laws protecting this minority.
2. You need to learn that not only the groups you mentioned were deported to and murdered in concentration camps. The first Nazi victims were political opponents and every person speaking out against their dictatorship & terror. In my country many people got also beheaded for listening only foreign radio broadcasts what was not allowed under Nazi law.

Apart from that is your statement correct, worth to add only that they were also brought by common passenger wagons to those places and not only by fright cars as in later years.

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Re: "Aktion Reinhardt" -- What did it denote?

#127

Post by Sergey Romanov » 31 Oct 2020, 11:34

Sinti are a subset of Roma, so there's no need for a repetition.

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Re: "Aktion Reinhardt" -- What did it denote?

#128

Post by PrudentRegret » 04 Dec 2020, 18:52

Account 1288

To provide context, Sergey is desperately trying to claim that the Reinhardt-Fonds negotiated between the WVHA and Reich Ministry of Finance were named after Heydrich. He is forced into this corner because acknowledging that this was a named reference to State Secretary Reinhardt of the Reich Ministry of Finance greatly hurts his case on the naming origin of Aktion Reinhardt itself.

So here we are with Sergey now claiming that Account 1288 was called "Reinhardt-Fonds" and that Account 1288 received money from AR.

But Sergey's position on Account 1288 has changed with each post:
  • Sergey's position #1 on Account 1288:
    1288 aka Reinhardt-Fonds was an account created on the order of Funk by the Golddiskontbank, which could be used by the WVHA to finance the SS-run factories/businesses.
  • Sergey's position #2 on Account 1288:
    I think my earlier assumption that the account 1288 was the Reinhardt-Fonds is incorrect.

    1. The Reinhardt-Fonds itself was created in the Golddiskontbank, as we know from Puhl's testimony. It had to do only with the credits to the SS industries. (The term itself appears in the documents only in this context.)

    2. The account that Frank called 1288 was in the Reichsbank proper.
  • Now that I have disproven Sergey's claim that the Reinhardt-Fonds was created in the Golddiskontbank he has migrated to position #3 and gone back to saying Account 1288 was Reinhardt-Fonds:
    Sergey Romanov wrote:
    31 Oct 2020, 01:55
    So: the Reinhardt-Fonds was the account 1288 (whatever its real name). The Reinhardt-Fonds was not the name of the DWB loan. The Reinhardt-Fonds aka account 1288 was the money stolen from the Jews during the exterminatory Aktion Reinhardt (just like with the Aktion names - like Aktion Bernhard - it was possible for Fonds to be first-name-based, cf. the Oswald-Fonds; but in this case the origin of the name was the name of the action where the funds originated from).

You rely on August Frank, but you ignore August Frank's statements that:
  • The funds in Account 1288 came from "all concentration camps" from prisoners who died without heirs. That could not be Account 1488 which received RM from the Melmer deliveries. Account 1288 received funds from WVHA camps, not Globocnik's camps.
  • According to Frank, no funds "seized East" were used by the WVHA. Frank specifically said that the DWB loan was not from the "funds seized East" but was "Reich credit". That also rules out any conclusion that he meant Account 1488 in his statements.
  • Frank retracted his affidavit due to the fact that he did not have documents in front of him and was working from memory. With the documents available to him, he was able to make the distinction between Melmer deliveries and Reinhardt-fonds. For example, in his affidavit he said that Max Heiliger was an account over which the WVHA could dispose, which he retracted on the stand.
Furthermore, Frank himself never calls Account 1288 "Reinhardt-Fonds", it is only the prosecutor that refers to this account by that name in questioning. Frank probably doesn't doesn't "correct him" because Reinhardt-Fonds was itself the line of questioning, so the significance of the prosecutor's wording was lost in translation. There is no way this was a transcription error because Account 1288 was specified at least a dozen times and it was never transcribed as Account 1488- not even once.

We also know that Account 1288 could not have been the account that received Reichsmarks from the Melmer deliveries because:
  • Both NO-724 (authored by Frank himself) and NO-725 (authored by Pohl) specify the AR money was to go to Account 1488. Neither mention Account 1288.
  • Melmer testified that the amounts in Account 1488 were automatically credited to Max Heiliger when the balance reached 500,000 RM, so it could not have reached the balance of 12 million RM as it did in Account 1288.
Sergey's position #3 on Account 1288 is just as wrong as his positions #1 & #2. He meanders from error to error because he cannot acknowledge that which is acknowledged by Leo Volk, who was personal advisor to Pohl and participated in the initiative to secure a loan for DWB:
You could read in the paper: "Herr Reinhardt, and Reinhardt again." Reinhardt held speeches at every conference. The people in the Finance Ministry knew that the real man behind it all was von Krossigk. Others knew that, but we all knew that Reinhardt would be the one credited with everything. That was the reason that I didn't have a single doubt that Reinhardt was the man who had given the fund.
Reinhardt-Fonds

Sergey has conceded that his interpretation of Puhl's affidavit regarding the origin of Reinhardt-Fonds was wrong. But he has not addressed the other major part of the argument: there is no evidence that Reinhardt-Fonds were consideration or quid pro quo for Melmer delivers or the balance of Max Heiliger or AR as a whole.

Available documents and witness testimony explained the precipitating events that caused the WVHA to negotiate with the Reich Ministry of Finance, and they were not related to Aktion Reinhardt. Nor is there any evidence that the Reich Ministry of Finance granted the DWB loans due to the WVHA's Melmer deliveries. Nor is there any evidence that Melmer deliveries were consideration for the installments of the Reinhardt-Fonds. Nor is there evidence establishing that the installments of the DWB loan were paid from any accounts related to AR ('Reinhardt Account' in Lublin, Max Heiliger, Account 1488). Nor is there any logical reason a business loan would be related to these matters. Desperately claiming that Account 1288 was a Reinhardt account is Sergey's only way to try to connect these Reinhardt DWB loans to AR itself.

If the installments of the DWB loans were consideration for the WVHA's Melmer deliveries or the balance of Max Heiliger, that would have been specified in the contract signed by Frank representing the Reich and and by Pohl representing the DWB. But it was not, so the conclusion that the Melmer deliveries were consideration for the loan is immediately refuted by the contract itself.

"Reinhardt-Fonds" was a loan negotiated by the Reich Ministry of Finance, and insofar as the name "Reinhardt" was associated with those loans it could only have referred to State Secretary Reinhardt who also had many other economic initiatives used his name:
  • First & Second Reinhardt Program
  • Reinhardt Taxes
  • Reinhardt Interest Bonuses
  • Aktion Reinhardt
Perhaps it was not August Frank, Sommer, Baier, Volk, Hohberg, and Höss who were mistaken on the meaning of Aktion Reinhardt, the Reinhardt-Fonds, and their association with Reinhardt. Perhaps it is Sergey_Romanov who is mistaken in his bizarre insistence that the WVHA named a DWB loan, which was negotiated with State Secretary Reinhardt's Minstry of Finance, after a misspelling of Heydrich's first name.

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Sergey Romanov
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Re: "Aktion Reinhardt" -- What did it denote?

#129

Post by Sergey Romanov » 06 Dec 2020, 17:56

> You rely on August Frank, but you ignore August Frank's statements that:
> The funds in Account 1288 came from "all concentration camps" from prisoners who died without heirs.

Not sure why you would want to lie about me "ignoring" this, when anyone can simply scroll up and see me... not ignoring this:
During the trial it was important for the accused to distance themselves from the Aktion Reinhardt and knowledge about it as much as possible, so we see August Frank trying to water down the connection as follows:
Q. And after that, you did not have any conception about the extent on the whole about the valuables as they are shown later on by the report of Globocnik?
A. No, I must except here only the cash funds, that is, the cash funds in Reichsmarks which were entered on this account 1288, I knew of these sums. These funds amounted, as far as I can recall, in the summer of 1943 to about 12,000,000 Marks. However, it could not be seen clearly just how much of this came from the Action Reinhardt, because in this Account 1288 all the funds in Reichsmarks were entered. They were entered there from all the concentration camps. All this money came from what the persons who had died left behind and who did not have any heirs to claim this money.
So he admits that the Reinhardt money was a part of the account but tries to relativize his knowledge of AR by trying to dissolve this AR money among the money that allegedly also came from all the concentration camp inmates. However, this is untrue, since there is no reason why the non-Reinhardt money (such as the money of the non-Jewish prisoners) would flow into a Reinhardt account, the WVHA orders pertained very specifically to the Jewish property, were - among the concentration camps - limited solely to Auschwitz and Lublin, and Frank himself couldn't hold the charade long enough, since after that he admitted:
That the origin of the money is based upon the property of the Jews, I will admit openly.
None of this, of course, undermines the well-established fact that the exterminatory Aktion Reinhardt was named after Reinhardt Heydrich.
> According to Frank, no funds "seized East" were used by the WVHA. Frank specifically said that the DWB loan was not from the "funds seized East" but was "Reich credit". That also rules out any conclusion that he meant Account 1488 in his statements.

What he actually said was "No funds were seized in the East and *turned over* to the WVHA." That is, he is not talking about the loan in particular, but denying that WVHA ever got any "funds" from "the East".

Since obviously property and money seized in the occupied Poland were turned over to the WVHA he obviously cannot be denying *this fact*. So whatever he means (and it's anyone's guess), he means something else, and it is irrelevant to the question of the loan and doesn't weaken his other claims about the accounts.

(What he *may* mean was not confiscation of inmate/deportee money, which obvi happened, but rather confiscation operations of accounts in banks etc. - which various Treuhandstellen would be busy with, not the WVHA.)

> Frank retracted his affidavit

[citation needed]

> due to the fact that he did not have documents in front of him and was working from memory

Which is irrelevant, since obviously, while one can mix up some details, someone on the level of Frank can no more mix up a DWB loan with Aktion Reinhardt than one does Himmler with Hitler.

> With the documents available to him, he was able to make the distinction between Melmer deliveries and Reinhardt-fonds

With the documents in hand he also identified acc. 1288 as the Reinhardt-Fonds during the trial, as shown above.

> Furthermore, Frank himself never calls Account 1288 "Reinhardt-Fonds",

A lie.
Q Now, how did this credit come about?
A I have already stated that these credits were based on a request by the OSTI with me, and they were given by me. First of all they were to be withdrawn from Account 1288. However, they were taken out of the normal Reich funds later on. I believe that can be proved, because in Exhibit 483 - forgive me, I mean in Document 1271, that is the balance of the OSTI, dated the 29th of February, 1944.
Q That is Exhibit 491, isn't it?
A Yes, 491.
Q In Document Book No. 19.
A On page 28 of the German, paragraph 15 it explicitly refers to the Account Reich is mentioned there, not Reinhardt and from this same paragraph 15 it can be seen that the credits were already repaid by the 20th of May, 1944, up to half, in other words, at the time when I was no longer in the WVHA.
Q How is it then that in Exhibit 483 in the file note of 26 June 1943 the context is mentioned, "Loan from the Reinhardt funds"?
A Because as I already said it was to be withdrawn from the Reinhardt funds originally. However, I refused that. In other words, I had nothing else to do with the OSTI, than to help here for those particular credits which we thought necessary for the execution of the armament tasks.
> , it is only the prosecutor that refers to this account by that name in questioning. Frank probably doesn't doesn't "correct him" because Reinhardt-Fonds was itself the line of questioning, so the significance of the prosecutor's wording was lost in translation.

By the same token, Frank also doesn't identify the credit as RF, only the questioner does.
If it wasn't a transcription/translation error, but rather an understanding error, maybe he didn't bother to correct the questioner.
OTOH the answer about the withdrawal doesn't make sense if the acc. 1288 wasn't called Reinhardt-something.

> There is no way this was a transcription error because Account 1288 was specified at least a dozen times and it was never transcribed as Account 1488- not even once.

If only had anyone claimed otherwise LOL. The exchange I actually quoted (which has nothing to do with 1288 possibly being a mistaken recollection for 1488), on the other hand, could very well be a transcription error.

So, to repeat:
"The credit referred to is the whole 30m DWB credit. Most probably it's either a translation mistake (if the question was asked directly in German), a typist mistake, or a questioner's interpretation mistake. We can be sure of that because no document whatsoever names the DWB loan "Reinhardt-Fonds", hence there was no basis for such a question."
> Both NO-724 (authored by Frank himself) and NO-725 (authored by Pohl) specify the AR money was to go to Account 1488. Neither mention Account 1288.

Which is why it could simply be a recollection mistake by Frank, to repeat:
"(A side note: it is not entirely clear that the account indeed had that number.
It was an account for German cash accruing through Aktion Reinhardt (incl. the three proper Reinhardt camps as well as Lublin and Majdanek), but the account named in two WVHA orders was actually 1488, which suggests a mistaken recollection on Frank's part:
https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/docum ... -officials
https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/docum ... -senior-ss
Frank also did not mention the account 1488 and spoke of only two accounts - "Max Heiliger" and 1288. Against this interpretation may be the fact that Bruno Melmer mentioned that the German cash account had to be cleared in steps of 500,000. Though maybe there's an explanation for this apparent contradiction.
Whatever the case, it is not necessary to solve this riddle for the following discussion, where, for simplicity's sake, the account will be simply named "1288".)"
> Sergey's position #3 on Account 1288 is just as wrong

It is obviously correct, fully proven here: viewtopic.php?p=2299699#p2299699
To which you've noticeably been unable to fully respond so far.

> because he cannot acknowledge that which is acknowledged by Leo Volk, who was personal advisor to Pohl and participated in the initiative to secure a loan for DWB:

Not "acknowledged" but speculated.

To repeat:
""Thought to understand" makes it clear that this was an "understanding" based on speculation, not direct knowledge of the matter (and not having a single doubt is not equal to knowing either).

Note that nowhere does he indicate that he had inside knowledge on this particular matter. He does not say: "I knew". Rather, he explains his reasoning for arriving at this conclusion using speculative arguments (like spelling and Fritz Reinhardt's programs), meaning that it's not direct knowledge (he is explicit that these observations are how he came to the conclusion: "All I could understand from this..." - i.e. from the aforementioned arguments). He mentions a wish by the finance ministry to give a credit, but does not claim Fritz Reinhardt's name was specifically mentioned - something he would have mentioned had it been.

(Same as with Hohberg, Volk, as a representative of the DWB and having no other proven connection to the Aktion Reinhardt, had no necessary knowledge about the source of the funds, hence, at best, speculated about them merely based on the name of the Reinhardt-Fonds. Such speculations are of zero evidential value.)"
> But he has not addressed the other major part of the argument: there is no evidence that Reinhardt-Fonds were consideration or quid pro quo for Melmer delivers or the balance of Max Heiliger or AR as a whole.

Reinhardtfonds were the Aktion Reinhardt money, as shown here: viewtopic.php?p=2299699#p2299699

> Nor is there any evidence that the Reich Ministry of Finance granted the DWB loans due to the WVHA's Melmer deliveries

The loan was granted for economic/political reasons, what does Melmer have to do with this LOL?

> Nor is there any logical reason a business loan would be related to these matters

Look up "strawman". You have set up some wild idiotic fantasy only to try and knock it down ROTFL.

Loan = money. There was some money that went towards a loan. That is all. It could have come from anywhere, it just happened to come from the Aktion Reinhardt funds aka Reinhardtfonds.

> Desperately claiming that Account 1288 was a Reinhardt account

You mean, calmly stating the objective fact?

> If the installments of the DWB loans were consideration for the WVHA's Melmer deliveries

What is this nonsense?

> so the conclusion that the Melmer deliveries were consideration for the loan

What is this nonsense?

> "Reinhardt-Fonds" was a loan

Reinhardt-Fonds was not a loan, as extensively demonstrated here:

viewtopic.php?p=2299699#p2299699

No response on most points so far, the attempted response on a couple of points already having failed above.

> could only have referred to State Secretary Reinhardt

But we already know that Aktion Reinhardt (and thus also its funds) was named after Heydrich.

viewtopic.php?p=2299701#p2299701

> Perhaps it was not August Frank,

August Frank, to repeat:
"It is true that the Action Reinhart and the Reinhart Fund are identical."
"First of all they were to be withdrawn from Account 1288. ... as I already said it was to be withdrawn from the Reinhardt funds originally."
> Sommer,

On Sommer, to repeat:
"The watches came from occupied Poland, from Aktion Reinhardt, which was not legally based on any decrees of Fritz Reinhardt, which is why this is at best speculation by Melmer (if he ever said it in the first place), not knowledge."
> Baier,

On Baier, to repeat:
"'...I thereupon reflected what this could be about, and I came across the name of State Secretary Reinhardt, whom I knew very well. He was my superior in the Reich Ministry of Finance.'

Here we see the very process of how such conclusions arose. Baier did not know what the name referred to so latched onto a familiar name of Fritz. Pure, explicit speculation.

Later he said:
'I do not know to this day whether the name of Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhardt Heydrich, whom I did not know personally, is connected with this or not, and where the money came from eventually I am unable to say today.'

Note that had he known that AR came from FR, he would have known for certain that it had nothing to do with Heydrich's name.

He also said:

'Q But perhaps you would answer the question now whether you insisted upon having the term "Reinhardt" interpreted to you.

A No, I did not, for two reasons. One, Frank and I at that time were not on very good terms because I had been called away from the school, and the whole conversation between us was held in a brief, military tone. Second, I was not particularly interested in the term after Frank had told me that.'

This is another admission that he did not know the origin of the term. A person in the know would have said: "No, I did not, because I already knew it meant Fritz Reinhardt" or something similar."
> Volk,

Already addressed above.

> Hohberg,

On Hohberg, to repeat:
"It is explicit that this is speculation and not knowledge. "We thought", and now "I must assume".

These are not the words of someone who knew.

(DWB was, in this case, the receiver of the funds and Hohberg, as a representative of the receiving side and having no other proven connection to the Aktion Reinhardt, had no necessary knowledge about the source of the funds, hence speculated about them merely based on the name of the Reinhardt-Fonds. Such speculations are of zero evidential value.)"
> and Höss

Not an AR man, only knew the economic part conducted in his camp. And funny how you omit mentioning Möckel, who ran AR in Auschwitz and testified of having been told by his predecessor that AR was named after Heydrich. This testimony is at the very least not worse than anything you have.

> who were mistaken on the meaning of Aktion Reinhardt, the Reinhardt-Fonds, and their association with Reinhardt. Perhaps it is Sergey_Romanov who is mistaken in his bizarre insistence that the WVHA named a DWB loan, which was negotiated with State Secretary Reinhardt's Minstry of Finance, after a misspelling of Heydrich's first name.

Actually, you are lying again, as I obviously would never have claimed that Reinhardtfonds was a DWB loan, as I debunked this low-IQ claim at length here and got no response on most points so far (and no effective response on any points): viewtopic.php?p=2299699#p2299699

And obviously, Reinhardt wasn't a misspelling but an alternative spelling.

As for what Aktion Reinhardt was, let's quote some of its leaders:

Globocnik: "The whole Aktion Reinhardt is composed of 4 areas: A) the expulsion itself..."

Wippern: "Under Aktion Reinhardt I understand first of all the resettlement of the Jews, however later it came out, that this resettlement was not a resettlement in the true sense but rather was focused on the extermination of the Jews.".

Perhaps people who ran the Aktion know more about it than a random intellectually challenged Holocaust denier?

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