 | | Monday, September 8, 2008 at 5:19 AM | | | |
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| | THE FINAL SOLUTION [ 1941 - 1945 ] - PART 1 | | | | Sunday, November 23, 2008 (6:08 AM) | |
[ t h e f i n a l s o l u t i o n ]
[ 1 9 4 1 - 4 5 ]
On 22 June 1941 Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa - the attack on the USSR. He was now fighting the war he had always wanted. Victory, as well as giving him control of all Europe, would provide the opportunity to destroy 'Jewish Bolshevism' and win lebensraum for the German master race. Defeat, on the other hand, would mean disaster. Given the colossal stakes involved, the war against the USSR was to be different in kind from the war in the west: it was to be a brutal and uncompromising war to the death. At first everything went well for Hitler. His forces won a series of major battles, capturing millions of prisoners and occupying huge swathes of land. As German troops penetrated deeper into Russia, special units of police and SS waged an unprecedented campaign of murder against Communist officials and Jews. This was the prelude to the Holocaust - the systematic extermination of all European Jews. A great deal of controversy surrounds this 'Final Solution', not least the question of when, but also the process by which, the genocide decision was made.
Operation Barbarossa
American historian Richard Breitman has recently claimed that Hitler made the fateful decision to exterminate all European Jews not later than January 1941, as the planning for Operation Barbarossa went ahead: the Final Solution thereafter just became a matter of 'time and timing'. However, Breitman has provided little but circumstantial evidence to support his case. Given the lack of hard evidence, most Holocaust historians think that the genocide decision came later. Yet there is absolutely no doubt that Hitler was determined to defeat and destroy 'Jewish-Bolshevists'.
On 3 March 1941 he issued a secret directive to his army high command insisting that 'the Bolshevik/Jewish intelligentsia' in the USSR 'must be eliminated', in the same way that the Polish elite had been annihilated. While some army leaders had opposed the massacre of Polish civilians, all seem to have accepted Hitler's call for unprecedented brutality in the USSR. In part, this reflected the army's increased faith in Hitler after the military successes of 1939-41. In part, it reflected the fact that most German officers shared Hitler's hatred of Bolshevism and Judaism (which they saw as one and the same) and his belief that the demonised enemy had to be beaten, whatever the cost. In early March the army high command accepted that the SS should be entrusted with 'special tasks' in the conquered areas of the USSR, and that Himmler should have special independent powers. Army directives, issued on 19 May, proclaimed that the war against the USSR would require 'ruthless and energetic action against Bolshevik agitators, guerrillas, saboteurs, and Jews, and the total elimination of all active or passive resistance'. On 6 June 1941, army leaders ordered that political commissars (Communist Party officials), 'the initiators of barbaric, asiatic methods of combat', were to be shot after being taken prisoner.
Army leaders, while accepting the need for brutal measures, were happy to leave implementation of most of the dirty work to the SS and to the Einsatzgruppen. In June 1941 there were four Einsatzgruppen - A to D - attached to the four army groups that would invade the USSR. Each Einsatzgruppen, roughly 1,000 men strong, was divided into smaller units called Einsatzkommandos. Most men in the Einsatzgruppen were ordinary policemen, hurriedly seconded from various police departments. The officers, on the other hand, were carefully selected. Well-educated, ambitious, and successful, they were committed Nazis. Otto Ohlendorf, commander of Einsatzgruppen D, was typical. A tall, handsome 34-year-old lawyer, he held degrees in both economics and law.
Although the commanders had been briefed by Heydrich in Berlin (on 17 June 1941) and knew in general terms what was expected of them, the precise content of their orders is a matter of controversy. After 1945 surviving Einsatzgruppen leaders gave conflicting evidence about the orders they had received. At the Nuremberg trials, Ohlendorf and several other Einsatzkommando leaders, testified that an order to kill all the Jews had been given shortly before the start of the campaign by Bruno Streckenbach, chief of the personnel for the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), on instructions from Himmler. However, other Einsatzgruppen leaders later testified that they had received no such order until some time in August or September 1941. Furthermore Streckenbach, who was thought to be dead in 1945, emerged from a Soviet prison camp in the mid-1950s and denied having given the order. Three of the Nuremberg defendants then retracted their statements, saying that they had been made in an attempt to save Ohlendorf from the gallows.
To further complicate matters, it seems that different Einsatzgruppen did slightly different things at slightly different times in the summer of 1941. Generally, after entering Russian towns, they rounded up and shot Communist leaders and Jews. In some areas, especially the Baltic States and the Ukraine, where anti-Semitism was deep-rooted and where Jews were seen as representatives of the USSR, the Einsatzgruppen were helped by the local populace who enthusiastically joined in pogrom-style killings. After a year under Soviet rule, many people in the Baltic States had their own scores to settle. Some Ukrainians had the scores of many years to settle.
The Einsatzgruppen leaders had certainly been given the task of liquidating potential enemies. However, by no means all Jewish men and relatively few Jewish women and children were killed in June/July. This very much suggests that there was no pre-invasion genocide order. Swiss historian Philippe Burrin has also pointed out that 4,000 policemen, not specially trained in mass killing techniques, were hardly likely to be thought sufficient to kill five million Russian Jews. While most historians accept that the extensive shootings of Jews in June/July marked a 'quantum leap' in the direction of genocide, there is a world of difference between savage violence and cold-blooded, systematic genocide. In the first weeks of Operation Barbarossa, Soviet commissars were more likely to be shot than ordinary Jews. Moreover some of the first (and worst) outrages against Jews were committed not by the Einsatzgruppen but by local people.
On 2 July Heydrich (pictured) issued written instructions to the Einsatzgruppen commanders. Leading Communist officials, 'Jews in the service of the Party or the State' and other extremist elements were to be executed and pogroms by local people should be 'encouraged'. On 17 July Heydrich issued an order that all Jews among Russian prisoners of war were to be executed by the SS. While neither of these directives is proof of the existence of a genocide order, both show that Nazi attitudes were hardening. Nevertheless, Alfred Rosenberg, head of the occupied Soviet territory (the Eastern Territories), was still not preparing for genocide. For Rosenberg, the final solution was still the resettlement of the Jews in indeterminate territory somewhere in the east. If an extermination programme for Soviet Jewry existed, he seems to have known nothing about it. It seems unlikely that Hitler would not have informed Rosenberg of a decision of such magnitude and of such vital concern to him. There is also evidence that not even Himmler was preparing for genocide. A July 1941 plan suggests that, while he expected a brief period of killing, he then envisaged massive population movement. Over a 30-year period, some 31 million people from the Eastern Territories were to be expelled to Siberia and replaced by 4.5 million Germans. The deportees would include Soviet Jews. This does not suggest that the Holocaust had yet been planned. The final evidence is statistical. Up until mid-August 1941, about 50,000 Soviet Jews are thought to have been killed: this was a modest figure given that 500,000 were to be killed in the next four months.
Browning thinks that an elated Hitler, confident that victory over the USSR was at hand, gave signals to carry out 'racial cleansing' in mid-July 1941. Apparently master of all of Europe, he no longer had to worry about world opinion. Interestingly, both Himmler and Heydrich were in close proximity to his headquarters from 15-20 July. Here was an opportunity for Hitler to have confided new orders. Certainly events now began to gather momentum. In late July Hitler committed two SS brigades (over 11,000 men) to assist the overburdened Einsatzgruppen. This was only the start of the build-up. By the end of 1941 there were some 60,000 men in Einsatzgruppen or police battalions on Soviet territory - sufficient manpower to kill on a massive scale.
In August 1941 Himmler (pictured) travelled through much of the Eastern Territories and was thus in a position to confirm the new policy. The fact that he issued personal instructions probably explains why different Einsatzgruppen leaders learned of the new turn in policy at different times. Whatever the precise time-scale, there is no doubt that by late August the killing of Jews was on a different scale. Jewish women and children were now routinely massacred. In June/July most of the victims were shot individually by firing squad. By August, however, hundreds at a time were forced to lie in or kneel at the edge of a trench (which they had often dug themselves) before being shot in the back of the head.
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| | THE FINAL SOLUTION [ 1941 - 1945 ] - PART 2 | | | | Sunday, November 23, 2008 (5:31 AM) | |
[ t h e f i n a l solution part 2 ]
The Final Solution: the Decision
By September 1941 the mass slaughter of Russian Jews was well underway. However, what Hitler had in store for Jews in other parts of Europe remains unclear. Browning is convinced that Hitler was considering killing all Jews in July 1941 and asked Himmler and Heydrich to come up with a genocide 'feasibility study': after all, it was illogical to kill Russian Jews and then transport Polish Jews into the vacuum thus created. In Browning's view, the mass murder of Jews was the first use to which German victory was going to be put: 'in the euphoria of seeming victory [in July 1941] Hitler solicited a plan to extend the killing process already underway in Russia to the rest of Europe's Jews'.
On 31 July Goering sent the following document to Heydrich:
I hereby charge you with making all necessary preparations with regard to organisational, technical and material matters for bringing about a complete solution of the Jewish question within the German sphere of influence in Europe. ... I request you further to send me, in the near future, an overall plan covering the organisational, technical and material measures necessary for the accomplishment of the final solution of the Jewish question which we desire.
Goering (pictured) did not initiate but only signed this authorisation, which was actually prepared by Heydrich's office. (Heydrich was thus essentially giving orders to himself) Nevertheless, historian Raul Hilberg regards the Goering document as a critical 'turning point'. Browning agrees. Given that the SS already had far-reaching authority, Heydrich did not need Goering's authorisation to continue expulsion/extermination activities. The 31 July document thus suggests that Heydrich now knew he faced a new and awesome task that dwarfed even the Einsatzgruppen massacres.
However, other historians are not convinced. Some think the 31 July document simply represented an extension of Heydrich's responsibility for the Jewish question beyond Germany's borders. They point out that neither Heydrich nor Goering, in fact, behaved in the days following 31 July as if the decision to kill all Europe's Jews had been taken. There are no signs in August of frenzied activity to organise a genocide programme.
Historians like Burrin and Kershaw are not convinced that the surge of killings in the USSR meant that Hitler had yet decided to kill all of Europe's Jews. They think that Hitler's decision came later - - either in September or October 1941 - and had little to do with the euphoria of victory. 'Everything seems to suggest that there was a decision-making process lasting several weeks before the fatal verdict was handed down in September', thinks Burrin. Kershaw stresses that 'unequivocal signs of actual planning of systematic genocide in Poland, the key area, are not to be found before October'. Burrin and Kershaw believe that Hitler finally decided on genocide more out of a sense of desperation than of elation. By September 1941 Operation Barbarossa was not going to plan. The campaign, which the Germans had anticipated would last no more than four months, was far from over. By August, Hitler was increasingly anxious. The longer the USSR kept up the fight, the greater the danger of guerrilla war. Thus there was a need for even harsher methods to keep the occupied areas under control. Moreover, German casualties continued to mount. According to Burrin, Hitler decided that the Jews would have to foot the bill for the spilling of so much German blood. The central decision in late September or early October, claims Burrin, 'had arisen from a murderous rage increasingly exacerbated by the ordeal of the failure of his campaign in Russia'. By killing his archetypal enemies, he was demonstrating his will to fight to the end.
It is, of course, possible that Hitler gave two extermination orders: one concerning Russian Jews in July 1941 and another later in 1941 affecting the rest of European Jewry. This is Browning's view. Having ordered the killing of Russian Jews and the setting up of a feasibility study, Browning believes that Hitler vacillated between July and September - his mood fluctuating as the fortunes of war in the USSR fluctuated. From mid-September 1941 until mid-October 1941, however, the fighting suddenly swung in Germany's favour. At some stage in September/October 1941, with the second peak of German military success, Browning thinks Hitler unleashed the second great intensification of the Holocaust.
Given that documentation is scarce and that most of the chief people responsible for the Holocaust died before the end of the war, the debate about the precise timing of the Final Solution looks set to continue. But most Holocaust historians now accept Burrin's view that the pieces of the Holocaust fell into place between 18 September and 18 October 1941. The vast majority also believe that it was Hitler who initiated the Holocaust. Nothing so radical could have begun without his approval. Admittedly the factors which led to his decision remain speculative, but events do seem to have been propelling him towards a violent solution to the Jewish problem. The slaughter of Soviet Jews would enable Hitler to break out of the vicious circle in which military success brought millions more Jews under German control. Once he resolved to kill all Russian Jews it was but a small step to decide to kill all Jews. Just as with the euthanasia programme, Hitler seems to have been anxious to avoid associating himself too closely with the Holocaust. Thus he probably left it to Goering and Himmler to sort matters out between themselves, having given them the go-ahead in general terms. It is possible that Hitler authorised Himmler to produce a solution to the Jewish question without enquiring too closely into what would be involved. But since any genocide solution required the involvement of numerous state agencies, some form of authorisation from Hitler was necessary. At no stage were local officials acting on their own initiative. They were obeying orders from Himmler, who in turn was obeying Hitler's orders. Himmler later said: 'I do nothing that the Fuhrer does not know.
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| | THE FINAL SOLUTION [ 1941 - 1945 ] - PART 3 | | | | Sunday, November 23, 2008 (5:39 AM) | |
[ t h e f i n a l s o l u t i o n ]
[ 1 9 4 1 - 4 5 ]
The Final Solution in the USSR
By mid-August 1941 all the Einsatzgruppen interpreted their task as the extermination of all Soviet Jews. Karl Jager, head of Einsatzkommando 3 of Einsatzgruppen A, kept extensive execution records. In July 1941, the kommando killed 4,293 Jews, of whom only 135 were women. In September 1941, by contrast, the kommando killed 56,459 Jews - 15,104 men, 26,243 women and 15,112 children. By 25 November Jager reported the following number of deaths: 1,064 Communists, 56 partisans, 653 mentally ill, 44 Poles, 28 Russian prisoners, 5 Gypsies, 1 Armenian, and 136,421 Jews. The situation was the same elsewhere. Perhaps the most notorious killing took place outside Kiev (the USSR's third largest city) in September 1941. A few days after the capture of the town on 19 September 1941 a huge explosion killed many German soldiers in the Continental Hotel, the German army headquarters. In reprisal, 33,771 Jews were shot, over a three-day period, at the Babi Yar ravine on the outskirts of Kiev.
Not only the Einsatzgruppen carried out the killings. Auxiliary forces, recruited from people of the Baltic States and the Ukraine, were also willing executioners. So were ordinary German soldiers. The mass shootings of Jews had the support of the army authorities. The following order was issued by Field-Marshal von Reichenau on 10 October 1941:
The main aim of the campaign against the Jewish-Bolshevist system is the complete destruction of its forces and the extermination of the asiatic influence on the sphere of European culture. As a result, the troops have to take on tasks which go beyond the conventional purely military ones. In the eastern sphere the soldier is not simply a fighter according to the rules of war, but the supporter of a ruthless racial ideology and the avenger of all the bestialities which have been inflicted on the German nation and those ethnic groups related to it. For this reason soldiers must show full understanding for the necessity for the severe but just atonement required of the Jewish subhumans. It also has the further purpose of nipping in the bud uprisings in the rear of the Wehrmacht which experience shows are invariably instigated by Jews.
On 28 October, after Hitler described Reichenau's order as excellent, the army high command instructed all its field commanders to issue orders along the same lines.
After 1945 the Wehrmacht tried to hide the fact that it was involved in the Holocaust. However, there is now little doubt about its complicity in the USSR killings - at every level. Army leaders gave the commands and ordinary soldiers willingly carried them out. Indeed they sometimes undertook brutal 'cleansing' operations on their own initiative. The 'primeval' fighting on the eastern front in the Second World War seems to have had a particularly brutalising effect on German troops. The nature of the war - the terrible climatic conditions, the horrendous losses (the Germans suffered some six million casualties in the USSR), the cultural differences between the invaders and the occupied - resulted in German soldiers becoming indifferent to death and suffering. The murder of tens of thousands of Jews was viewed by many as an unavoidable by-product of the battle for survival: probably few had serious misgivings about it. The German army was thus a crucial part of the genocidal machinery in the USSR.
The following description of a killing in the Ukraine in 1942 was given by Hermann Graebe, a German engineer, to a Nuremberg tribunal in 1945.
The people who had got off the lorries - men, women, and children of all ages - had to undress on the orders of an SS man who was carrying a riding or dog whip in his hand. ... Without weeping or crying out these people undressed and stood together in family groups, embracing each other and saying good-bye while waiting for a sign from another SS man who stood on the edge of the ditch and who also had a whip. During the 15 minutes which I stood near the ditch, I did not hear a single complaint or a plea for mercy. I watched a family of about eight, a man and a woman, both about fifty years old with their children of about one, eight, and ten, as well as two grown-up daughters of about twenty and twenty-four. An old woman with snow-white hair held a one-year-old child in her arms singing to it and tickling it. The child squeaked with delight.The married couple looked on with tears in their eyes. The father held the ten-year-old boy by the hand speaking softly to him.The boy was struggling to hold back the tears.The father pointed a finger to the sky and stroked his head and seemed to be explaining something to him. At this moment, the SS man near the ditch called out something to his comrade. The latter counted off about twenty people, and ordered them behind the mound. The family of which I have just spoken was among them. ... I walked round the mound and stood in front of the huge grave. The bodies were lying so tightly packed together that only their heads showed, from almost all of which blood ran down over their shoulders. Some were still moving. Others raised their hands and turned their heads to show they were still alive. The ditch was already three quarters full. I estimate that it already held about a thousand bodies. I turned my eyes towards the man doing the shooting. He was an SS man; he sat, legs swinging, on the edge of the ditch. He had an automatic rifle resting on his knees and was smoking a cigarette. The people, completely naked, climbed down steps which had been cut into the clay wall of the ditch, stumbled over the heads of those lying there and stopped at the spot indicated by the SS man. They lay down on top of the dead or wounded; some stroking those still living and spoke quietly to them. Then I heard a series of rifle shots. I looked into the ditch and saw the bodies contorting or, the heads already inert, sinking on the corpses beneath."
The following extract was written in January 1942 by Dr Rudolf Lange, responsible for Einsatzgruppen operations in Latvia:
The aim of Einsaztkommando 2 from the start was a radical solution of the Jewish problem through the execution of all Jews. For this purpose comprehensive purges were carried out in the whole area of our operations by special teams with the help of selected forces from the Latvian auxiliary police (mainly relatives of Latvians who had been abducted or murdered by the Bolsheviks). In early October, the number of Jews executed in the kommando's sphere of operations was about 30,000. In addition, a few thousand Jews have been eliminated by Latvian self-defence formations off their own bat after they had been given suitable encouragement....
It was impossible to achieve the complete elimination of Jews from Latvia in view of the economic factors and, in particular, the demands of the army.
As the above source makes clear, economic concerns resulted in some Jews escaping immediate death. This issue produced considerable friction between civilian authorities and the army on the one hand, and the SS on the other. Orders from Berlin in December 1941 made it clear that 'economic considerations are to be regarded as fundamentally irrelevant in the settlement of the problem'. However, in practice, a compromise was struck between the SS and the army and economic agencies, whereby a few Jews were given a stay of execution for labour purposes. Nevertheless, over the next two years the Russian ghettos were progressively liquidated, first through piecemeal selections of those no longer capable of work, and then, more comprehensively, during the so-called 'second sweep' starting in the summer of 1942.
The numbers of Jews killed in the course of the Einsatzgruppen operations in the USSR can only be estimated. During the first sweep from June 1941 to April 1942 some 750,000 were probably murdered. A further 1.5 million may have been killed in the second sweep of 1942-3. Most of the victims were shot - sometimes by machine gun. A number died in special gas vans, used from December 1941. Others died in labour camps where they were worked to death or succumbed to disease brought about by malnutrition.
It was not just Jews who suffered. The fate of the non-Jewish peoples in the occupied zones depended essentially on the Nazis' conception of where they came on the racial scale. The Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, who were considered partially German, were treated reasonably well. Other peoples were not so fortunate. The 40 million Ukrainians, whose hatred for Soviet oppression was so intense that most welcomed the Germans at first, were soon in the grip of a terror similar to that in Poland. Disobedience of the most trivial kind resulted in summary execution. Tens of thousands of able-bodied Ukrainians were transported to Germany as slave labourers.
The Fate of the German Jews
From August 1941 it became illegal for German Jews to emigrate voluntarily. On 1 September all Jews were forced to wear the yellow star of David sewn on their clothing, a move which facilitated the implementation of further anti-Semitic measures. Later that month Hitler declared that the Reich should be liberated of Jews 'as rapidly as possible'. In October Eichmann began transporting German Jews eastwards. Given the situation in Germany, it was not too difficult to find volunteers. Those Jews who were to be 'resettled' in the east were allowed to take with them some money, a case or two of luggage and food for the journey. (The rest of their property was confiscated by the state.) Whatever feelings of optimism the 20,000 Jews who were deported to Lodz in October 1941 had ended as soon as they reached their destination. Some of those deemed incapable of working were killed on arrival. The rest were dumped in the over-crowded ghetto, where many died from starvation and disease. Protests from the authorities in Warthegau about their inability to absorb more Jews led to a temporary end of the transportations to Lodz on 4 November. By then there were other - worse - destinations.
In November and December 1941 some 25,000 Reich Jews were deported to Riga, Minsk and Kovno, towns in the Ostland - a territory in which the Einsatzgruppen operated. (See map) Events in Ostland suggest that, if the ultimate fate of Jews was not in doubt, the actual timing and form of killing was largely improvised, with members of each transport having different experiences depending on where and when they arrived. Some Jews were spared to eke out a survival in the ghettos or nearby labour camps. But in late November 1941, five transports of Jews were massacred at Kovno soon after their arrival and without prior screening to select those fit for labour. The same thing happened in Riga on 30 November 1941. 14,000 Jews from Riga itself were massacred, as well as l,000 Jews who had arrived from Berlin the night before. On 8 December another 13,000 were massacred on the outskirts of Riga. After the war the Ostland SS police leader claimed that Himmler had told him (in November) that 'all Jews in the Ostland must be exterminated right down to the very last one'. Even so, it seems to have been presumed that there would be a Jewish presence for some time in both Riga and Minsk. Trains of Jewish deportees continued to arrive in both towns until the spring of 1942.
The Start of Gassing
Until the winter of 1941-2 the main method of eliminating Jews was mass shootings. While effective in terms of the number killed, this method had some disadvantages, not least the fact that such massacres were hard to conceal, as well as occasionally producing psychological stress among the killers. In August 1941 Himmler commissioned his SS technical advisers to test different ways of killing and recommend those which were more efficient and more 'humane'. Tests with explosives proved to be a gruesome failure. Not surprisingly the SS soon hit upon the idea of gas, which had proved to be a highly effective method in the euthanasia programme. Added to this was the fact that Hitler's Chancellery was eager to redeploy the T-4 personnel.
The initial gassing experiment occurred in the Warthegau. By the autumn of 1941 conditions in the Lodz ghetto were appalling and thousands more Jews were still expected. In October Wilhelm Koppe, the area's police chief, aware of the thinking in Berlin, appointed Herbert Lange to find a suitable place for the killing of Warthegau's Jews. (Koppe had already used a special unit commanded by Lange in 1940 to kill some 1,500 mental patients.) In early November Lange recommended Chelmno, some 40 miles north-west of Lodz. An SS team set about converting an old mansion into a barracks where Jews would arrive and undress. A forest clearing, some three miles from the village, was chosen as the site for a mass grave. The first victims in December 1941 were killed in gas vans, the exhaust fumes from which were taken by pipes into the sealed rear. By January 1942 a permanent gas chamber was in use. Chelmno was a pure killing centre: it had no labour camp. By the time it was destroyed in March 1943, some 140,000 Jews (and a few thousand Gypsies, Poles and Russians) are thought to have died there.
Himmler selected Odilo Globocnik, the Lublin police chief, to oversee the killing of Jews in the General Government. Dozens of SS and ex-T-4 men were assigned to him in the autumn of 1941. His task was to construct and run a number of death camps in the Lublin region. Work at Belzec, the first of three sites, began in November 1941. Meanwhile, at Auschwitz (in Upper Silesia), the first gassing experiments on Russian prisoners of war took place in September 1941. ...
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| | THE FINAL SOLUTION [ 1941 - 1945 ] - AUSCHWITZ - THE WANNSEE CONFERERENCE | | | | Sunday, November 23, 2008 (4:13 AM) | |
[ t h e f i n a l s o l u t i o n ]
[ 1 9 4 1 - 4 5 ]
The Wannsee Conference
Having launched the deportation process in Germany in October 1941, the RSHA soon found itself facing a number of practical problems. Careful co-ordination of various agencies - police, finance, and railway departments - both within Germany and in the occupied countries, was required if thousands of Jews were to be transported to Poland. Accordingly in November 1941 Heydrich invited senior officials from several agencies to discuss logistical and other matters. The Wannsee Conference, initially planned for December 1941, was finally held on 20 January 1942. Most of the representatives were top civil servants: 7 of the 15 participants held doctoral degrees. The meeting, chaired by Heydrich and lasting only 90 minutes, formulated common procedures whereby all of Europe's 11 million Jews were to be rounded up and 'resettled' in the east. The Conference also established the principle that those who were considered fit should be given temporary reprieve and set to work (effectively to death) in labour gangs. The fate of the unfit was not discussed directly, but the implication was clear: they were to be massacred straight away. The Conference minutes, prepared by Eichmann and edited by Heydrich, had a relatively wide circulation and did not therefore spell out extermination: instead they used terms like 'legalised removal' and 'resettlement'. However, those attending the Conference certainly realised that 'resettlement' meant extermination, one way or another. At his trial in 1960, Eichmann was rather franker about the Conference than he was in the minutes: 'the gentlemen ... talked about the matter without mincing their words. ... The talk was of killing, elimination and liquidation.'
The significance of the Wannsee Conference was not that it was the starting point of the Final Solution: that was already underway. It was, however, the moment when it was endorsed by a broad segment of the German government (and not just the SS). The Conference also helped dot the 'i's and cross the 't's of procedures, ensuring that by the spring of 1942 the extermination programme was turned into a quasi-industrial process for the efficient destruction of human beings.
Interestingly the Wannsee Conference (and further conferences on this matter) failed to agree on the status and treatment of the Mischlinge (the half-Jews), with the result that most Mischlinge were not deported. Hitler probably did not think pursuing the matter was worth the discontent it would cause among the Aryan relatives of those involved.
Operation Reinhard
The mass gassing of the Jews in the General Government (which gathered momentum in 1942) is usually known as Operation Reinhard - after Reinhard Heydrich (who was assassinated by Czech partisans in May 1942). Belzec was the first functional Operation Reinhard camp. The camp commandant, Christian Wirth, and several of his staff had previous T-4 experience. Constructed in a remote forest, Belzec was linked by a railway line to the Jewish ghetto at Lublin, 75 miles to the north. The 162-acre camp, enclosed by barbed wire, was divided into two parts. Camp 1 contained a reception area with two barracks - one for undressing and the other for storing clothes and luggage. Camp 2 contained the three small gas chambers, all in one building. A path - known as the 'tube' - 2 metres wide and 57 metres long, bordered on both sides by a wire fence, linked the two camps. Wirth tested his equipment successfully in February 1942 on several hundred Jews, and Belzec opened officially in March. Sobibor, a 100 miles to the north and an enlarged version of Belzec, started operations in May 1942. Franz Stangl (pictured in a Düsseldorf prison where he was serving a life sentence. The picture was taken shortly before his death in 1971), who had served at the Hartheim euthanasia centre, was appointed camp commandant. In July 1942 Stangl moved on to command the even larger camp at Treblinka, 75 miles north-east of Warsaw. Each camp had a guard contingent of about 100 Ukrainians. But the main staff consisted of about 30 SS men, most of whom were T-4 veterans.
While responsibility for clearing the ghettos and for organising the transportation to the death camps lay with the SS, the Jewish councils had the job of finding people for 're-settlement'. (Warsaw had to supply 10,000 a day from July 1942.) At first many Polish Jews, accepting the German promise of a better life in the Ukraine, were reasonably happy to be transported. But once rumours of the fate that awaited the deportees filtered back to Warsaw and elsewhere, securing volunteers became much harder. Nevertheless, thousands of Jews were daily rounded up (mainly by Jewish police) for transportation. The transportation experience was horrific. Families were usually separated and as many as 150 people crammed into closed freight cars, without food, water or toilet facilities. Sometimes hundreds died en route - suffocated, dehydrated or trampled to death. Anyone trying to escape from the trains was shot. On a typical day, transports carrying as many as 25,000 Jews made their way to the death camps.
Once the transports arrived at Belzec, Sobibor or Treblinka (pictured: plan of the camp as prisoner Samuel Willenberg remembered it; click here to enlarge), the camp authorities aimed to kill all but a few of the deportees within two hours. As soon as the trains stopped, the deportees were hurried out by shouting guards. The deportees, save a few selected to serve as work-Jews, were then quickly marched to Camp 1. Here they were usually given a welcoming speech, reassuring them that they had arrived at a transit camp, from which they would be sent to the Ukraine. Males and females were then separated and herded into barracks to undress. Women and girls had their hair shorn, supposedly to stop the spread of head lice. (In reality, the hair was used for several purposes, including making socks for U-boat crews.) Then, the victims (usually the men first) were forced to run down the 'tube', urged on by guards wielding whips and clubs, to the building signed 'Baths and Inhalation Rooms'. (The entrance to the 'bathhouse' at Treblinka was flanked by pots of geraniums.) The victims were now pushed into tiled chambers with fake shower nozzles. At Treblinka each chamber measured about 3.6 by 8.2 metres and could hold more than 400 victims. Once the room was full, the heavy door was closed and a diesel engine pumped in carbon monoxide gas. After 30 minutes, the engine was switched off, the doors opened, and the Jewish 'death brigade' (or Sonderkommando) had the job of clearing the chambers.
Initially, the bodies were dumped in enormous burial ditches. However, the burial process soon proved inadequate. At Treblinka, for example, between 23 July 1942 and 28 August 1942 some 268,000 Jews are thought to have been gassed. (Stangl testified after the war that the camp could kill 1,000 people per hour and often worked a 12-hour day.) In consequence, corpses were soon stacked everywhere. At Sobibor and Belzec, difficulties developed after burial. Swollen by heat and putrefaction, the bodies in the mass graves heaved so violently that they split the ground, creating a terrible stench. Eventually the camp authorities found that cremation was a much more efficient method of disposing of the dead. At Treblinka bodies were placed on steel girders over enormous open fires which were kept burning permanently.
While most of the victims of Operation Reinhard were Polish Jews, Jews from Germany and western Europe were sometimes transported to the three death camps. The systematic round up of Jews began all over the German empire in the spring of 1942. Told they were to be resettled in the east, Jews from western and central Europe were allowed to take some of their personal belongings with them and often travelled in proper railway cars. (Their journey, while longer, was thus less harrowing than that of Polish Jews.) At Treblinka the authorities created a fake train station to maintain the fiction that the place was merely a transit camp. Large signs indicated such non-existent amenities as a restaurant and ticket office.
Although the Operation Reinhard camps were simply death camps, a semi-permanent Jewish work force of as many as 1,000 inmates was employed in the various stages of the killing process. There were teams of specialist hair cutters, extractors of gold from teeth, and burial/cremation units. Most work-Jews found that their reprieve from death seldom exceeded a few months. Poorly fed and frequently flogged, they suffered from dysentery and typhus. Anyone showing signs of sickness or weakness was likely to be sent to the gas chambers. Stangl, first the Sobibor and then the Treblinka commandant, was a devoted family man and a devout Catholic, yet seems to have felt little sympathy for the victims. 'That was my profession', he said after the war. 'I enjoyed it. It fulfilled me.' Stangl's second in command at Treblinka, Kurt Franz, was described by (the very few) survivors as a sadist. A veteran of Buchenwald concentration camp and the T-4 programme, he trained his dog Barry to attack the genitals of his victims.
By the end of 1942 Himmler's goal of exterminating all the Polish Jews had been largely achieved. In December 1942 Belzec closed its gas chambers and the pace of killing at the other death camps slowed. The gas chambers at Auschwitz were now adequate to kill the rest of Europe's Jews. Globocnik's appointment to the post of SS leader in Istria in August 1943 marked the effective end of Operation Reinhard. By the end of November 1943, all the Operation Reinhard camps had been dismantled and the remaining work-Jews shot. Painstaking efforts were taken to obliterate every trace of the camps: the buildings were razed, the ground ploughed and pine trees planted. By the autumn of 1943, some 500,000 Jews are thought to have died at Belzec; 150,000-200,000 at Sobibor; and 900,000-1,200,000 at Treblinka. In November 1943 Himmler wrote to Globocnik as follows: 'I would like to express to you my thanks and appreciation for the great and unique service which you have performed for the whole German people by carrying out Operation Reinhard.'
Economic Considerations
The Operation Reinhard killings had a serious impact on Germany's war effort. The transportation of Jews to the death camps added extra pressure to Germany's railway system and hindered military transportation. More importantly, the killing affected Germany's potential labour pool. By 1942, the German empire was suffering from a desperate shortage of labour. German authorities in the General Government, as well as some Nazi ministers, realised that the killing of Jews was damaging Germany's industrial production, and argued in favour of retaining at least those Jews essential in terms of the war effort.
Some SS officials shared the economic concern. This was partly because the SS itself owned factories in the General Government and was a large employer of Jewish labour. By hiring out Jewish workers to firms on a daily basis, the SS also acquired a huge income. As a result of protests by the army, industry, civilian authorities and the SS, there were phases during which the extermination programme was slowed to permit the exploitation of Jewish labour, in line with the policy agreed at Wannsee. Hitler, however, usually discounted economic factors. In the autumn of 1942 he ordered the evacuation of even those Jews, in reserved occupations, who played a vital role in the war effort. Nevertheless, in 1941-2 two camps - Majdanek and Auschwitz - began to serve a dual purpose. On the one hand they were extermination centres: on the other they were labour camps in which Jews received a temporary stay of execution.
Primarily a labour camp for Poles and Russian prisoners, Majdanek (near Lublin) also contained at various times a large number of Jews. Some 60,000 of the 200,000 people who died at Majdanek were Jewish. In general, Jews were treated far worse than other prisoners. Inflicting cruelty on Jews was a semi-official policy of the camp and working the Jews to death seems to have been a more important aim than economic productivity. Jews were often ordered to perform useless tasks calculated to exhaust and shatter the health of even the strongest. The death rate for Jews was thus much higher than for non-Jews. In November 1943, the surviving Jews in Majdanek were shot as part of an operation code-named 'Harvest festival'. ...
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| | THE FINAL SOLUTION [ 1941 - 1945 ] - AUSCHWITZ - BIRKENAU CONCENTRATION CAMP | | | | Sunday, November 23, 2008 (4:00 AM) | |
[ t h e f i n a l s o l u t i o n | a u s c h w i t z birkenau concentration camp ]
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Auschwitz
Auschwitz-Birkenau was originally created as a camp for Polish prisoners in 1940. By the end of 1941 it had expanded into an enormous labour camp, mainly for the utilisation of Soviet prisoners. In the late summer of 1941 Rudolf Hoess, the camp commandant, was told by Himmler that Auschwitz was to be a principal centre for killing Jews. Hoess had no moral qualms. A fanatical nationalist and member of the SS from 1934, he had worked his way up the career ladder in Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. Proud to have been singled out by Himmler, he was determined to carry out his orders to the best of his ability. Fretting about the practical mechanics of mass extermination, he hit upon the idea of using Zyklon B, consisting of small pellets of prussic acid crystals, as the gassing agent. First tested on Soviet prisoners, it proved deadly poisonous, killing in half the time required by carbon monoxide.
Given that the Auschwitz site was somewhat exposed, Hoess determined to shift the gassing to a new, more secluded camp, some three kilometres from the main site. This camp, known as Birkenau, was built around two old cottages. The windows of these were blocked up and airtight walls and doors added. Bunker 1 (the first cottage) began operations in early 1942. With good railway connections, Auschwitz-Birkenau was a convenient place to send Jews from most of Europe and quickly grew into the largest of the Nazi labour/extermination camps. It consisted ultimately of three main compounds: Auschwitz I, the original camp: Auschwitz II at Birkenau, the extermination camp; and Auschwitz III, the industrial centre at Monowitz. There were also dozens of satellite camps sprawling over a huge area.
The process of killing was slick and stream-lined. The transports arrived at a rail platform, located half way between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II. (In April 1944 a direct rail spur was built to Birkenau.) An SS doctor, with a simple wave of the hand, decided who was fit and unfit. The fit were sentenced to hard labour in Auschwitz I or III. The unfit - the old, sick, children and mothers with young children - were condemned to immediate death in the gas chambers. The numbers of fit and unfit fluctuated,'depending more on labour requirements than on physical health. But on average only about 30 per cent of each transport was seen as fit for work.
The victims were marched, or taken by truck, to Birkenau. The killing apparatus at Birkenau changed somewhat over time. The two gas chambers in Bunker I could accommodate 800 people at one go. Bunker 2, which contained three gas chambers holding 1,200 people, began operations in the summer of 1942. That summer Himmler also gave Hoess permission to build a new complex with four killing centres, containing a total of six gas chambers and 14 ovens, for cremating up to 8,000 corpses a day.
On reaching Birkenau, the victims were usually addressed in a friendly way and asked to undress quickly so they could take a bath. After undressing, they were herded into a gas chamber into which gas pellets were emptied through vents in the ceiling. The young and old usually died first as the gas saturated the lower part of the chamber. Stronger victims often struggled upward to better air, climbing over layers of bodies. But within 20 minutes all were dead. The SS doctor (who watched events through a peephole in the steel door) then gave the signal to switch on the ventilators that pumped the gas from the chamber and the Sonderkommando went in to clear the bodies.
Those prisoners pronounced fit for work were taken to Auschwitz I or III. While Jews formed a significant percentage of the population, the majority of the labour camps' inmates were non-Jews. By 1944 there were some 40 branch camps to which Jews might be sent. These camps supplied labour for some of the most famous German firms, including Krupp and Siemens-Schuckert. The largest industrial plant was a synthetic fuel and rubber complex, established by I.G.Farben, the petro-chemical combine, at Monowitz. Other work camps were run directly by profit-making SS agencies. For purposes of identification, prisoners (as in all other camps) were forced to display markings of different colours on their uniforms. This consisted of a number and a coloured triangle. A red triangle denoted a political prisoner, green a criminal, purple a Jehovah's Witness, black a 'shiftless element', pink a homosexual, and brown a Gypsy. Jews displayed a Star of David.
As in labour/concentration camps throughout German-occupied Europe, inmates of Auschwitz and its associated camps were stripped of their individuality and shorn of self-respect. Fed on watery soup and an ounce or two of bread, they endured primitive sanitary facilities and had practically no medicines, despite epidemics of typhus and other diseases. Prisoners were awakened at dawn and had to report for a roll call which might last for hours. They were then marched out to work. Most had to do hard manual labour at a murderous tempo and were subject to brutal punishment for the slightest breach of regulations or simply at the whim of the guards. Most of the managers of the German firms adopted SS methods and mentality. Given the conditions, few prisoners survived for more than a few months.
Some Auschwitz inmates were selected to serve as human guinea pigs for medical experiments. In 1942 Himmler, eager to find a method of mass sterilisation, sent Dr Carl Clauberg, a leading gynaecologist, to direct a research programme at Auschwitz. Clauberg's experiments involved injecting various chemicals into the ovaries of Jewish women. Other doctors subjected both men and women to massive doses of radiation which produced burns and effective sterilisation. Research papers, detailing the experiments which inflicted maiming or death on hundreds of prisoners, were then presented at medical meetings in Germany. The most infamous Auschwitz doctor was Josef Mengele - the 'Angel of Death'. Mengele was aged 32 when he arrived at the camp in 1943. He volunteered for duty at Auschwitz in order to pursue his research interest - the biology of racial differences. Selecting for study about 1,500 sets of identical twins, he used one of the twins for control while the other was used for experimen- tation purposes - as a laboratory researcher might use rats. Fewer than 200 twins survived his 'research'. (Similar experiments were conducted in other concentration camps. At Dachau, for example, prisoners were dumped into icy water, some naked and others dressed, to observe how their bodies would react and to see what might be done to revive them.)
The End of Auschwitz
By 1944 most Jews in German-occupied Europe had been killed. Only the Hungarian Jews had so far escaped the Holocaust. However, in the spring of 1944 Eichmann and his staff arrived in Budapest and mass deportations to Auschwitz began in May 1944. In less than a month some 289,000 Hungarian Jews were transported. Most (up to 12,000 a day) were killed immediately on arrival. In these circumstances, there were soon problems with the disposal of the corpses and the maintenance of secrecy. Hoess recalled:
In bad weather or a strong wind the smell of burning spread over several kilometres and caused the whole population of the surrounding area to start talking about the burning of Jews.... Furthermore, the air defence authorities complained about the fire at night, which could clearly be seen from the air. However, we had to keep cremating at night in order not to have to halt the incoming transports.
In the summer and autumn of 1944, Himmler, working under the threat of imminent defeat, intensified German efforts to make Europe Jew-free. He combed some of the districts and camps previously overlooked, including Theresienstadt, the model concentration camp near Prague, which housed some 140,000 'privileged' Jews, among whom were prominent artists, intellectuals, and First World War veterans. By 1945 only 17,320 Jews remained at Theresienstadt: the rest had been sent to Auschwitz. Throughout October 1944 some 1,000 died each day in Auschwitz's gas chambers. Then on 2 November Himmler issued an order forbidding the further annihilation of Jews. Exactly why this order was issued remains uncertain. It may be that Germany was so short of labour that even Jewish workers were needed. Although the gassings stopped, the dying continued as the Germans squeezed the last ounce of productivity from the camp inmates. Meanwhile the Nazis tried to hide all traces of the killings, blowing up the gas chambers in the process.
On 17 January 1945 the last roll call at Auschwitz was held. The Germans counted 67,012 prisoners - less than half the total in August 1944. With the Russian army closing in, the Germans ordered the evacuation of all but about 6,000 inmates who were too young or infirm to move. The journey west for most of the 60,000 or so evacuees was dreadful. Those on foot received little food and were shot by the guards if unable to keep up. One march lasted 16 weeks and claimed the lives of all but 280 of the 3,000 who began it. Hundreds of those left behind in Auschwitz - without food or fuel - also died. When the Russians finally entered the camp on 27 January 1945 only 2,800 people remained alive. Many were so emaciated they died soon after liberation.
After the war, Hoess estimated the numbers of Jews killed at Auschwitz as follows: from Upper Silesia and the General Government - 250,000; from Germany - 100,000; from Holland - 95,000; from Belgium - 20,000; from France - 110,000; from Greece - 65,000; from Hungary - 400,000; and from Slovakia - 90,000.
Other Deaths
The Jews were by no means the only group to suffer at the hands of the Germans. The Nazis planned to rid Germany and the occupied territories of all racial undesirables. In December 1942 Himmler signed an order by which all German Gypsies were to be deported to Auschwitz. Here they had their own special camp which soon had a population of over 10,000. The Gypsies initially fared better than the Jews. Few were immediately gassed and families were allowed to live together. However, in 1944 thousands of Gypsies were sent as labourers to other camps. In August 1944 the remaining 3,000 Gypsies at Auschwitz were gassed. Altogether some 200,000 Gypsies across Europe are thought to have been murdered during the war.
6,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, regarded as agents of a foreign power, were killed. So were large numbers of habitual criminals who were seen as being genetically preconditioned to a life of crime. (As many as 40,000 'criminals' may have been killed between 1939 and 1945.) The Nazis were also responsible for the deaths of colossal numbers of ordinary Poles and Russians. At least 10 million non-Jewish Russian civilians (and possibly as many as 25 million) died. Some of these deaths resulted from bombing and other military operations. But many died as a direct result of German occupation, reprisal and deportation policies. Of the 5.7 million Soviet prisoners captured in the war some 3.3 million died in German custody. ...
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| | THE FINAL SOLUTION [ 1941 - 1945 ] - FORCED LABOUR IN GERMANY | | | | Sunday, November 23, 2008 (4:00 AM) | |
[ t h e f i n a l s o l u t i o n ]
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Forced Labour in Germany
By 1944 there were an astonishing eight million foreign workers in Germany - 25 per cent of the workforce. While some of these workers came voluntarily from countries which were Germany's allies, most came involuntarily from occupied countries. Foreign workers' treatment was largely determined by their racial origins. The 600,000 French workers, for example, were treated better than the 1.7 million Poles who, in turn, suffered less than the 2.8 million Russians. Many Poles and Russians worked in forced labour camps. Discipline in these camps was harsh, food and medical provision in short supply, and the tempo of work murderous.
Some Poles and Russians were hired out to private industry. Others were employed in agriculture and as domestic servants. (Half the Polish and Russian workers were women.) Working conditions depended on the type of job. Those employed in mining were far more likely to die than those working on farms. Some Germans treated their workers better than others. Most, it should be said, treated them savagely. Foreign workers stood a much greater chance of survival in country areas than in towns, where there was the constant threat of a bombing raid. Eastern workers were not allowed to enter public air raid shelters. Indeed, as far as possible the 'sub- human' Russians and Poles were isolated from Germans.
Such was the labour shortage by 1944 that Hitler even agreed to allow 100,000 Hungarian Jews to be brought to Germany to build huge underground bunkers in the Harz Mountains in which rockets and other important armaments were produced. The mortality rate among the Hungarian Jews was very high. The slogan of SS Dr Kammier was: 'Don't worry about the victims. The work must proceed ahead in the shortest time possible'.
The Situation in 1945
As the Soviet army advanced, the Germans were forced to abandon their labour camps in the east and move the inmates to camps further west. At least a third of the 700,000 inmates recorded in January 1945 probably lost their lives on these marches. About half the victims were Jews. The evacuees perished from cold, hunger, disease and periodic shootings. Some of the suffering may be explained by the chaos of the last days of the Third Reich. The destruction of road and rail links meant that it proved difficult to feed the prisoners. But the German guards, women as well as men, remained faithful to Nazi ideology, and, although not given orders to murder Jews, were quite happy to do so.
By 1944-5 Dachau and other German concentration camps, hitherto used primarily for non-Jewish prisoners and not equipped to kill large numbers of people, were used to house Jews evacuated from the east. While not systematically murdered, many Jews perished from starvation and disease. Conditions in the camps deteriorated considerably in the last weeks of the war as Germany collapsed. Allied soldiers who liberated the camps in west Germany (some of which contained few, if any, Jewish inmates) were appalled at what they found. American correspondent Edward Murrow delivered a famous radio broadcast describing conditions at Buchenwald in April 1945 on the day of its liberation.
There were 1,200 men in it [the barracks], five to a bunk. The stink was beyond all description. ...I asked how many men had died in the building during the last month.They called the doctor. We inspected his records. ... 242 out of 1,200, in one month ... We went to the hospital. It was full. The doctor told me that 200 had died the day before. I asked the cause'of death. He shrugged and said: 'TB, starvation, fatigue, and there are many who have no desire to live.' ... [Another man] showed me the daily ration: one piece of brown bread about as thick as your thumb, on top of it a piece of margarine as big as three sticks of chewing gum. That, and a little stew, was what they received every 24 hours.
A British reporter, Patrick Gordon Walker, reported similarly on Belsen camp which was also liberated in April 1945:
Corpses in every state of decay were lying around, piled up on top of each other in heaps.... People were falling dead all around, people who were walking skeletons.... About 35,000 corpses were reckoned, more actually than the living. ... There was no food at all in the camp, a few piles of roots - amidst the piles of dead bodies.
Conclusion
The exact number of Jews who died in the Holocaust will never be known. There are no precise figures for those who were gassed, let alone for those who were massacred in the USSR or who died from malnutrition, disease or maltreatment. Gilbert's estimates are probably as good as any. Most of the killing was in 1942. In mid-March 1942 some 75 per cent of all the eventual victims of the Holocaust were still alive: 25 per cent had already died. Less than a year later the situation was exactly reversed. Under 25 per cent still clung to a precarious existence. 'This is a page of glory in our history that has never been written and that is never to be written', Himmler told a group of SS officers in October 1943. In April 1945 Hitler declared that the killing of Europe's Jews was the most significant work he bequeathed to the German people. The fact that Hitler (who ordered the Holocaust) did not own up to it until the last days of the Third Reich, and Himmler (who ensured that Hitler's orders were carried out) said that details of it were 'never to be written', may simply be proof that both men were uncertain about the reaction of the German people. Or it may be that Hitler and Himmier, despite their intense anti-Semitic convictions, felt some unease about the morality of their actions. Whether their intense convictions lessen their guilt is a debate which is likely to continue as long as there are people on this planet. ...
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| | LIFE OF ADOLF HITLER | | | | Sunday, November 23, 2008 (3:33 AM) | |
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Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau, Austria, a small town across the Inn River from Germany. Soon after Hitler's birth, his father, Alois Hitler, moved the family to Linz, Austria. Hitler attended school in Linz and at first was a good student, but in high school he was a very poor student. Hitler's academic abilities angered his father because his father hoped that Hitler would study to become a government worker as he had been. Hitler, however, wanted to become an artist.
In 1907, Hitler went to Vienna Austria. in an attempt to fulfill his dream of becoming an artist. This attempt ended when he failed the entrance exam to the Academy of Fine Arts. When Hitler's mother died in 1907, he decided to remain in Vienna. He took the entrance exam a year later and failed again. He did not have steady work in Vienna, but, instead, took a variety of odd jobs. He lived in cheap rooming houses or slept on park benches and he often had to get meals from charity kitchens. During his time in Vienna Hitler learned to hate non-Germans. Hitler was a German-speaking Austrian and considered himself German. He ridiculed the Austrian government for recognizing eight languages as official and believed that no government could last if it treated ethnic groups equally.
In 1913, Hitler went to Munich, Germany and when World War I began in 1914, he volunteered for service in the German army. Hitler was twice decorated for bravery, but only rose to the rank of corporal. When World War I ended. Hitler was in a hospital recovering from temporary blindness possibly caused by a poison gas attack. The Versailles Treaty that ended the war stripped Germany of much of its territory, forced the country to disarm, and ordered Germany to pay huge reparations. When the army returned to Germany. the country was in despair. The country was bankrupt and millions of people were unemployed.
In 1920, Hitler joined the National Socialist German Workers Party known as the Nazis. The Nazis called for all Germans, even those in other countries, to unite into one nation; they called for a strong central government; and they called for the cancellation of the Versailles Treaty. Hitler became leader of the Nazi party and built up membership quickly, mostly because of his powerful speaking ability. Hitler organized an army for the Nazi party called the Storm Troopers ("Brown Shirts") who were called upon to fight groups seeking to disband the Nazi rallies.
On November 9, 1923, Hitler led more than 2,000 Storm Troopers on a march to seize the Bavarian government. The attempt failed and Hitler was arrested and sentenced to prison for five years for treason. While in prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle). In this book. he stated his beliefs and plans for Germany's future. Hitler only served nine months in prison and when he was released, he began to rebuild the party again. He set up a private battle-ready elite guard known as the "Schutzstaffel" (SS). By 1929, the Nazis had become an important minor political party.
In 1930, a worldwide depression hit Germany, yet Germany also had the debt of paying for the damage it had caused in World War I. Hitler protested against paying the debt and said that the Jews and Communists were the cause for Germany's defeat in World War I. He promised to rid Germany of Jews and Communists and to reunite the German speaking part of Europe.
In July, 1932, the Nazis received about 40% of the vote and became the strongest party in Germany. On January 30,1933, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor of Germany. Once in this position, Hitler moved quickly toward attaining a dictatorship. When von Hindenburg died in 1934, Hitler already had control of Germany and he gave himself the title "Fuehrer" (leader).
Under Hitler's government, called the Third Reich, there was no place for freedom. The government controlled every part of one's life. Hitler used extensive propaganda to brainwash the nation into believing his theory about creating the perfect Aryan or nordic race. Therefore, it was Hitler's plan to rid the nation and eventually the world of Jews, Gypsies, Negroes, handicapped, and mentally ill persons. This plan was called the "Final Solution."
World War II began in 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland to begin his unification of all German-speaking peoples. By this time extermination camps were being established throughout Germany, Poland, and Russia.
Before Hitler was stopped in 1945 by the Allied countries, he had caused the extermination over 12 million people. Hitler committed suicide in his bunker on April 30,1945 and seven days later, Germany surrendered.
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| | The Rise to Power of Winston Churchill | | | | Friday, November 21, 2008 (11:44 AM) | | The Rise to Power of Winston Churchill
May 10, 1940
Churchill arrives at Buckingham Palace [from ILN 1940/05/11, p.619]
"But whether it be peace or war... we must strive to frame some system of human relations in the
future which will put an end to this prolonged hideous uncertainty, which will let the working and
creative forces of the world get on with their job, and which will no longer leave the whole life of
mankind dependent upon the virtues, the caprice, or the wickedness of a single man."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No one wanted to fight another world war. The First World War was to be the last. And many people wanted to ensure this was true in spite of contemporary realities. This existing mood in popular opinion gave license to men, such as Neville Chamberlain, to seek out a policy in which British interest are accomplished as much as possible without English entanglement in war. The inability to be forceful in Munich, or to at least utilize a multilateral and comprehensive settlement of the Czechoslovakia crisis created an environment in which strange bed fellows would emerge. Through all of this, the political mastery and historical insight of Winston Churchill laid the foundation for his (Churchill's) eventual rise to power in Britain.
1930's -- Churchill's Isolation
William Manchester, in his book titled The Last Lion: Alone (1939-1940), presents a very detailed account of an out-of-power minister of parliament and his trials to become the embodyment of the allied struggle against Hitler. The peace movement of Europe in the 1930's contributed to Mr. Churchill's political isolation. Most British subjects wanted to avoid confrontation and therefore, chose to ignore Hitler's rise to power. Churchill was less willing. Manchester shows evidence of Churchill's weariness of Hitler as early as October of 1930.(p.83) Churchill is quoted as stating that, if Hitler were to come to power in Germany, England's eventual response must be -- "If a dog makes a dash for my trousers, I shoot him down before he can bite." (p.84) Manchester goes on to describe the endless uphill struggle endured by Churchill to be heard on his warnings of Europes impending doom.
1938 -- The Beginning of Churchill's Rise to Power
The world, as it existed in 1938, showed little comfort for Neville Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement. The Anschluss of Austria was a direct challenge to the British sense of national integrity. Manchester gives a glimpse of Churchill's own hope that Hitler, like a boa constrictor which has swollowed an animal whole, would find Austria more than he can handle.(pp. 323-24) Winston Churchill, always ready to take political advantage and ever staunch supporter of firm resolve, was ready with a stark criticism of every move Chamberlain made.(p.285) To Churchill, realities made things very clear. Hitler had Austria and was now poised to take the Sudentenland, if not all of Czechoslovakia. The British economy was struggling to recover from the Depression and popular support for another conflict was non-existent.
The Munich Agreement of 1938
Chamberlain in Munich [from FDRL]
Chamberlain set out on two missions to meet with Hitler: One at Berchtesgaden and another at Godesberg. Chamberlain's background was in business and he felt as though Hitler could be handled like any other negotiation. The key to success was to determine his opponents bottom line; and, if possible, give it to him. Once Hitler is satiated, he will cease to be a problem. When Hitler revealed that the Sudentenland was his final territorial request, Chamberlain came to believe it was a small, if unseemly, price to pay for the prevention of a continental war. It never occurred to Chamberlain, as was feared by Churchill, that Hitler was lying. He asked for the bottom line and got it. What Churchill would have taken with an enormous grain of salt, Chamberlain gladly swallowed without issue. By the time the four powers (Britain, France, Italy, and Germany) met at Munich, Czechoslovakia's fate was already sealed. The Munich Conference was about how to give Hitler his prize rather than whether or not he deserved it.
Chamberlain's return from Munich is well known. In seeing the popular roar of exhilaration, Chamberlain began to believe that his bargain with Hitler would secure his political fortunes. The public was relieved war was averted, the House was relatively content with the status quo, and the remaining voice of dissention in the cabinet, Duff Cooper (First Lord of the Admiralty), gave his resignation. Churchill's response was to be expected: "How Could honourable men with wide experience and fine records in the Great War condone a policy so cowardly? It was sordid, Squalid, sub-human, and suicidal ....The sequel to the sacrifice of honour." (p.355) When reviewing the Munich Agreement, Churchill told the House of Commons, "There can never be absolute certainty that there will be a fight if one side is determined that it will give way completely."(p.369)
The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact -- August 1939
Molotov and Ribbontrop sign the Pact August 23 [from National Archives, Patch HS, 242-JRPE-44]
The Munich Conference did little to dispel Stalin's long-held feeling that the western powers were conspiring against him. Stalin was looking for a political and military agreement between the Soviet Union and Britain and France. The time was coming when Stalin's patience with the western powers would end. Stalin was seeing his neighborhood shrink before his very eyes and the idea of having Nazi Germany knocking at his front door was simply unacceptable. Munich was the final blow to any possible alliance. "I think we may take it that M. Molotov will not volunteer any new proposals in the near future," cabled Ambassador Seeds. The Soviet attitude to western powers and their ability to deal affectively with international crises can be summed up by Litvinov's last speech to the League of Nations on September 21, 1938: "A fire brigade was set up in the innocent hope that, by some lucky chance, there would be no fires. ... every State must define its role and its responsibility before its contemporaries and before history. That is why I must plainly declare here that the Soviet Government bears noresponsibility whatsoever for the events now taking place, and for the fatal consequences which may inexorably ensue."
And ensue they did. After Litvinov was replaced by Molotov the German diplomatic corps was quickly put into action. Hitler, as well as Britain and France, had achieved a major goal of his foreign policy in Munich by isolating the Soviet Union from the international diplomatic scene. As an even better position, this isolation was gained with Britain and France seen as the ones responsible. This created a feeling that a non-aggression treaty with the Nazis would be the only protection for Stalin. Ribbontrop was prepared to put his personal efforts to bear on the Soviet leader and with his enthusiasm convince Stalin of the possibilities of a treaty with Nazi Germany. He was a success; and in August of 1939 the Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed.
Churchill had begged the Chamberlain government to make every attempt to form an alliance with the Soviet Union and France to deter a German repproachment. Manchester suggests it was Churchill who had proposed a "Grand Alliance" resembling that one which won the Great War. He was certain that a unified and resolute front could cause Hitler to back down. Churchill even held some belief that such a show of force might cause a defection within the German Army when confronted with the possibility of war with such an alliance.
The Invasion of Poland -- September 1939
German troops march in Warsaw Sept. 1939 [PK photo by Hugo Jager, from National Archives, Patch HS, 200-SFF-52]
The Germans, with their eastern front pacified, entered Poland on September 1, 1939. Churchill recognizes the government's commitment to Poland must be kept and war is declared on September 3, 1939. Churchill gives a speech to the House of Commons which is cause for a packed House. (p.539)
Churchill Appointed First Lord of the Admiralty -- Sept. 1939
German Invasion of The Low Countries -- May 1940
Churchill Chosen as Prime Minister -- May 10, 1940
When the time came to confront the Nazi threat to Europe the people of Britain turned to Winston Churchill. He had been the lone voice in the wilderness urging decisive action when Hitler's evil works were but small bidings. Churchill's determination and his consistent stance against appeasement gave him credibility with the British people when eventually he was to be Prime Minister. Churchill had no reason to hate Chamberlain and didn't. He felt convinced that Chamberlain was wrongly advised of certain facts that would have led Chamberlain to a better plan of action.(p.355)
Prime Minister Churchill with the King and Queen [from ILN 1940/09/21, p.358]
When the time came for Churchill to take power he was fully aware that he was a man of his time. Although a relic of a past British Empire struggling to remain alive, it was an image that the people of Great Britain seemed most comfortable with. It was his ability to rouse the public spirit and his staunch belief in the British resolve that led him to tackle the impossible war that raged on in 1939. Churchill knew the realities and was able to communicate the dire consequences: "But if we fail, then the whole world --- Will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand year, Men will still say: 'This was their finest hour. | | | | 51 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
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| | SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL | | | | Friday, November 21, 2008 (11:29 AM) | | Winston Churchill, the son of Randolph Churchill, a Conservative politician, was born in Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, on 30th November, 1874. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of Leonard Jerome, a New York businessman.
After being educated at Harrow he went to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Churchill joined the Fourth Hussars in 1895 and saw action on the Indian north-west frontier and in the Sudan where he took part in the Battle of Omdurman (1898).
While in the army Churchill supplied military reports for the Daily Telegraph and wrote books such as The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898) and The River War (1899).
After leaving the British Army in 1899, Churchill worked as a war correspondent for the Morning Post. While reporting the Boer War in South Africa he was taken prisoner by the Boers but made headline news when he escaped. On returning to England he wrote about his experiences in the book, London to Ladysmith (1900).
In the 1900 General Election Churchill was elected as the Conservative MP for Oldham. As a result of reading, Poverty, A Study of Town Life by Seebohm Rowntree he became a supporter of social reform. In 1904, unconvinced by his party leaders desire for change, Churchill decided to join the Liberal Party.
In the 1906 General Election Churchill won North West Manchester and immediately became a member of the new Liberal government as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. When Herbert Asquith replaced Henry Campbell-Bannerman as Prime Minister in 1908 he promoted Churchill to his cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. While in this post he carried through important social legislation including the establishment of employment exchanges.
On 12th September 1908 Churchill married Clementine Ogilvy Spencer and the following year published a book on his political philosophy, Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909).
Following the 1910 General Election Churchill became Home Secretary. Churchill introduced several reforms to the prison system, including the provision of lecturers and concerts for prisoners and the setting up of special after-care associations to help convicts after they had served their sentence. However, Churchill was severely criticized for using troops to maintain order during a Welsh miners's strike.
Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty in October 1911 where he helped modernize the navy. Churchill was one of the first people to grasp the military potential of aircraft and in 1912 he set up the Royal Naval Air Service. He also established an Air Department at the Admiralty so as to make full use of this new technology. Churchill was so enthusiastic about these new developments that he took flying lessons.
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| | SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL | | | | Friday, November 21, 2008 (11:25 AM) | | On the outbreak of war in 1914, Churchill joined the War Council. However, he was blamed for the failure at the Dardanelles Campaign in 1915 and was moved to the post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Unhappy about not having any power to influence the Government's war policy, he rejoined the British Army and commanded a battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front.
When David Lloyd George replaced Herbert Asquith as Prime Minister, he brought Churchill back into the government as Minister of Munitions and for the final year of the war, Churchill was in charge of the production of tanks, aeroplanes, guns and shells.
Churchill also served under David Lloyd George as Minister of War and Air (1919-20) and Colonial Secretary (1921-22). Churchill created great controversy over his policies in Iraq. It was estimated that around 25,000 British and 80,000 Indian troops would be needed to control the country. However, he argued that if Britain relied on air power, you could cut these numbers to 4,000 (British) and 10,000 (Indian). The government was convinced by this argument and it was decided to send the recently formed Royal Air Force to Iraq.
An uprising of more than 100,000 armed tribesmen took place in 1920. Over the next few months the RAF dropped 97 tons of bombs killing 9,000 Iraqis. This failed to end the resistance and Arab and Kurdish uprisings continued to pose a threat to British rule. Churchill suggested that chemical weapons should be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment." He added "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes to spread a lively terror" in Iraq.
The divisions in the Liberal Party led to Churchill being defeated by E. D. Morel at Dundee in the 1922 General Election. Churchill now rejoined the Conservative Party and was successfully elected to represent Epping in the 1924 General Election.
Stanley Baldwin, the leader of the new Conservative administration, appointed Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1925 Churchill controversially returned Britain the the Gold Standard and the following year took a strong line against the General Strike. Churchill edited the Government's newspaper, the British Gazette, during the dispute where he argued that "either the country will break the General Strike, or the General Strike will break the country."
With the defeat of the Conservative government in 1929, Churchill lost office. When Ramsay MacDonald formed the National Government in 1931 Churchill, who was now seen as a right-wing extremist, was not invited to join the Cabinet. He spent the next few years concentrating on his writing, including the publication of the History of the English Speaking Peoples.
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