Hitler and the Aktion Reinhard(t)

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Sergey Romanov
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#16

Post by Sergey Romanov » 11 Mar 2006, 16:27

What is sad about Mills' posting about Reinhardt spelling, is that the point which alf makes has been made numerous times here, and yet Mills just repeats the argument.

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#17

Post by robota » 12 Mar 2006, 01:10

So it appears that the correct spelling is Aktion Reinhardt (after there is hardly going to be spelling mistake on a stamp), but occasionaly this might through error be shortened to the more common spelling of Reinhard.

There doesn't seem to be any particular information that suggests it was named after anything, anymore than beach Omaha was named after anything in particular.

Although obviously the possibility it was named after Heydrich can't be discounted. It appears that his first name was occasionally (or habitually???) spelled Reinhardt.


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#18

Post by michael mills » 12 Mar 2006, 09:09

Although obviously the possibility it was named after Heydrich can't be discounted. It appears that his first name was occasionally (or habitually???) spelled Reinhardt.
Robota,

Heydrich himself never spelled his given name as "Reinhardt", but always as "Reinhard".

That spelling appearing in two documents was a misspelling by some semi-literate clerk.

The newborn Reinhard Heydrich was named after a character reinhard in the opera "Amen", composed by his father Bruno Heydrich. There is absolutely no doubt that the name of that character was spelled "Reinhard", since that spelling appears on printed scores of that opera, and also on extant printed scores of the best-known aria from that opera, "Reinhards verbrechen" (an ominously apt title). Hence there is absolutely no doubt that Heydrich's given name was correctly spelled "Reinhard".

But the essential point is that no-one has produced any documentary proof that "Aktion Reinhardt" was named after Heydrich, eg a document specifically stating that the operation was named in honour of Heydrich.

Alf claims that the name "Aktion Reinhardt" appeared in print well before Fritz Reinhardt came on the scene. However, he does not give any date for that "coming on scene". The fact is that Fritz Reinhardt was the manager of the sequestration of the property of deported Jews right from the beginning of the deportations from Germany.

State Secretary Fritz Reinhardt was involved in the process of sequestrating the property of deported Jews at least since late November 1941, when he was the signatory representing the Reich Ministry of Finance to the Eleventh Supplementary Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law, which provided the legal authority for that sequestration.

So Reinhardt's ministry was involved in the process of seizing Jewish property from the outset, well before the code-name "Aktion Reinhardt" first appears in documents.

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#19

Post by Sergey Romanov » 12 Mar 2006, 10:49

That spelling appearing in two documents was a misspelling by some semi-literate clerk.
Two documents?

http://www.deathcamps.org/reinhard/acti ... nhard.html lists:

1) "Thus a scholarly "Report and List of Ancestors" on "the racial origin of Naval First Lieutenant Reinhardt Heydrich" was added to Heydrich's personnel files..."

2) " Every official Dienstaltersliste der Schutzstaffel der NSDAP published by the SS Personnel Main Office between 1934 and 1942 also has Reinhardt as his first name." Was it published yearly? That's a whole pile of documents.

3) http://www.deathcamps.org/reinhard/pic/bigswear.jpg

4) http://www.deathcamps.org/reinhard/pic/bigdeathcard.jpg

5) "Heinrich Himmler himself told his audience how he first met Reinhardt Heydrich in 1930, and specifically mentioned the unusual spelling: "Heydrich had his first name written with a dt."

So the name "Reinhardt" was very often spelled with "dt". Therefore Mills' assertion that the " alternative hypothesis, that "Aktion Reinhardt" received its designation from a misspelling of the first name of Heydrich, Reinhard, has no documentary foundation" is patently false. And he must have known it to be false when he made it, because the evidence has been presented to him many times.

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#20

Post by Boby » 12 Mar 2006, 12:04

Hello all

According to various web-pages, the term "Aktion Reinhardt" was first refers to Fritz Reinhardt, and after the death on June of Heydrich, was reinterpreted, and named in his honour.

E.j

http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/wk2/holocau ... index.html

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?la ... oduleId=52

http://www.shoa.de/component/option,com ... Itemid,42/

http://www.nadir.org/nadir/aktuell/2002 ... 12000.html

Regards

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#21

Post by Sergey Romanov » 12 Mar 2006, 12:20

I sure don't see them citing any evidence.

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#22

Post by Boby » 12 Mar 2006, 12:35

Browning opinion of the term AR

"
The deportation of Jews to and the gassing of Jews in these camps was the central purpose of Operation Reinhard, and every effort was made to erase all physical traces of the three camps. The exploitation of Jewish labor and property were collateral aspects of Operation Reinhard, and the Finance Ministry was only one of a number of recipients of Jewish property. Staatssekretär Fritz Reinhardt of the Finance Ministry is not mentioned in any of the documents, and the spelling of Operation Reinhardt with a "t" as in his name begins only in late 1943. The notion that Operation Reinhard was a program for collecting and exploiting Jewish property and was named after the state secretary of the Finance Ministry, Fritz Reinhardt, is farfetched and finds no support in the surviving documents. Nothing in the surviving documents, however, explicitly indicates that Operation Reinhard was named for the assassinated Reinhard Heydrich
"

http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/browning5.htm

If was not named after Fritz Reinhardt, and Reinhard(t) Heydrich, what was this misterious Reinhard(t)?? Perhaps, a simple code-name for the operation?

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#23

Post by Boby » 12 Mar 2006, 13:00

and the opinion of Peter Witte (in German)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion ... _Reinhardt

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#24

Post by Sergey Romanov » 12 Mar 2006, 13:12

what was this misterious Reinhard(t)??
Reinhardt Heydrich, of course.

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#25

Post by Sergey Romanov » 12 Mar 2006, 13:55

As Browning points out, it is improbable that AR was named after Fritz if only because it was often spelled as "Reinhard". Heydrich was called both Reinhard and Reinhardt. Fritz Reinhardt was called only Reinhardt.

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Hitler & Aktion Reinhard(t)

#26

Post by Fritz the Rat » 12 Mar 2006, 18:19

Boby,

thanks for these links although one may have copied the info from the other. The amount of (copied)
sources surely isn't an evidence (mostly).
In this case I think the DHM wouldn't have shown this without a reliable source (which one?).

Anyway, all these discussions are very time-consuming because deniers never would admit having been convinced.
People should spend their time to search archives, e.g. for a photo or document which proves the involvement of that
state secretary in Aktion Reinhard(t) looting and exterminations.

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#27

Post by michael mills » 13 Mar 2006, 04:37

People should spend their time to search archives, e.g. for a photo or document which proves the involvement of that
state secretary in Aktion Reinhard(t) looting and exterminations.
There is already documentary evidence for State Secreatry Fritz Reinhardt's involvement in the sequestration of the property of deported Jews.

He signed the Eleventh Supplementary Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law of November 1941 as representative of the Ministry of Finance.

The Eleventh Supplementary Ordinance provided that deported German Jews lost their citizenship and their property was forfeited to the Reich. The interest of the Ministry of Finance, represented by State Secretary Reinhardt, was of course in the forfeited property.

The Eleventh Siupplementary Ordinance also applied to Jews formerly of Polish citizenship, since that citzenship had been declared abolished and all former Polish citizens were now "Wards of the Reich" (Schutzangehörige des deutschen Reiches) according to German law, and subject to the laws concerning German citizenship.

The ordinance also applies to Jewish citizens of other countries who lost their citizenship and became stateless after their deportation, by agreement between Germany and the states concerned.

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#28

Post by robota » 13 Mar 2006, 07:26

There seems to be two issues.

What is the correct spelling
Who was it named after, if anybody.

There appears to be no doubt that the correct spelling was Reinhardt. By far the greater number of documents and stamps contain that spelling (and as I said, one very rarely sees a misspelt stamp). It is quite plausible that the few spellings of Aktion Reinhard are mistakes - particularly as they are often found in transcriptions by Allied soldiers of war crimes documents or of intelligence decrypts, it easy to see how in such a situation spelling errors would creep in.

It is also far easier to see how Reinhardt would be mistakenly spelt Reinhard. Than it is to see Reinhard becoming Reinhardt.

Hence there appears little doubt is to the correct spelling at the time, however one may wish to spell it now.

Whether or not it was named after anyone in particularly is not something I have seen any real evidence presented on.

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#29

Post by Sergey Romanov » 13 Mar 2006, 17:45

There is already documentary evidence for State Secreatry Fritz Reinhardt's involvement in the sequestration of the property of deported Jews.
Is there any evidence of his involvement specifically in AR? Even if one supposes that he was involved, there still was no reason whatsoever to call what was primarily a murderous action by his name.

And even if it were primarily economic action, there would still be no reason to call it by his name, unless he was involved in the action proper.

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#30

Post by michael mills » 14 Mar 2006, 04:18

If the choice of a code-name for an extra-legal action to deport and kill the major part of the Jewish population of the Generalgouvernement were to be determined by an individual's level of involvement in it, then one would expect a designation such as Aktion Globocnik, or Aktion Odilo.

As SSPF for the Lublin District, Globocnik was directly responsible to Himmler, through the HSSPF for the Generalgouvernement, Krüger. He did not report to Heydrich as head of the RSHA, nor did Heydrich have any control over him.

The line of command for the extermination camps in Lublin District, and the transport of Jews to them, was Himmler-Globocnik. Heydrich did not play a direct role in that line of command, so there was no reason for naming the operation controlled by the Himmler-Globocnik line of command after him.

If on the other hand direct involvement in an operation was not a criterion for the choice of an individual's name as the code-word for that operation, then there is no reason why State Secretary Fritz Reinhardt should not have lent his name to a program of seizing and processing the property of deported Jews. The German Ministry of Finance bore the ultimate responsibility for the utilisation of confiscated Jewish property, and Reinhardt was the senior official of the Ministry for the discharge of that responsibility.

Whether "Aktion Reinhardt", which Hoess in his post-war interrogations defined as a program for processing the property seized from the destroyed transports of Jews, was indeed named after State Secretary Fritz Reinhardt, is purely a hypothesis, as is the claim that it was named after Reinhard Heydrich. We simply do not know which is true.

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