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"War in the East and the Extermination of the Jews, Andreas Hillgruber
(Excerpts appear below. To read the complete document with footnotes, please click here).
"Jewish Bolshevism": Hitler's Racial-Ideological Dogma: Special units of the SS commenced the systematic extermination of the Jews in the occupied Soviet territories as soon as the attack on the Soviet Union was launched, on June 22, 1941. In order to arrive at an adequate historical explanation, we must start with the racial doctrine of radical, universal anti-Semitism as the "activating, dynamic motive." But there is no argument about the fact that the agitation of Hitler as a politician was determined by this extraordinary anti-Semitism after 1919.
In his book, Hitler repeatedly describes the Jew, with biological crudeness, as a "parasite," "sponger" and "vampire," using Bolshevik Russia as evidence:
The most frightful example of this kind is offered by Russia, where he killed or starved about thirty million people with positively fanatical savagery, in part amid inhuman tortures, in order to give a gang of Jewish journalists and stock exchange bandits domination over a great people. The end is not only the end of the freedom of the peoples oppressed by the Jew, but also the end of this parasite upon the nations. After the death of his victim, the vampire sooner or later dies too.
However - and not contradictory in Hitler's view - the aim of "Jewish rule" over Russia was different: "We must regard Russian Bolshevism as Jewry's attempt to achieve world rule in the twentieth century."
During this period, Hitler retained the formula "Jewish Bolshevism" in his speeches. For example, in his Reichstag speech of January 30, 1937, he called Bolshevism "a pestilence which we had to bloodily oppose in Germany," when "Jewish-international Moscow Bolshevism sought to enter Germany."
He had avoided "every close contact with the carriers of these poisonous bacilli." On February 20, 1938 he told the Reichstag: "More than ever, we regard Bolshevism as the incarnation of the human destructive impulse."
Hitler viewed his decision to invade the Soviet Union from the aspect of his anti-Semitic world struggle, which he had expected since the mid-1920s, and for which he had "prepared" in the broadest sense of that word. "Now the hour has come, in which it is necessary to confront this plot of the Jewish Anglo-Saxon warmongers, and the equally Jewish rulers of the Bolshevik center in Moscow."
National-Socialist propaganda had thus regained its traditional racist-ideological "foe-image" of "Jewish Bolshevism," which remained the central axiom throughout the war, until 1945. Now these core-theories of National-Socialist doctrine were also communicated to the three million German soldiers of the Eastern Army which attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Directly before the assault, they had been issued 'Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia' by their High Command (OKW):
Bolshevism is the deadly enemy of the National-Socialist German people. Germany's struggle is against this disintegrative ideology and its carriers. This struggle demands ruthless and energetic action against Bolshevik agitators, partisans, saboteurs, Jews - and the radical elimination of all active and passive resistance.
In a speech to some 200-250 leading military commanders on March 30, 1941, Hitler became more specific. Nevertheless, the key words noted by the Chief of the General Staff, Generaloberst Franz Halder, contain no mention of Jews. The soldiers, however, had long been familiar with the catch phrase "Jewish Bolshevism," against which war was now to commence. Halder's notes read:
Struggle between two ideologies. Scathing evaluation of Bolshevism equals antisocial criminality. Communism immense future danger....This is a fight to the finish. If we do not accept this, we shall beat the enemy, but in thirty years we shall again confront the Communist foe.
We don't make war to preserve the enemy....Struggle against Russia: Extermination of Bolshevik Commissars and of the Communist intelligentsia.... Commissars and GPU personnel are criminals and must be treated as such The struggle will differ greatly from that in the west. In the east harshness now means mildness for the future.
Negotiations between Heydrich and Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner established the spheres of joint or separate action for the Army and the SS Einsatzgruppen in the fulfillment of their "special tasks." This resulted in an order issued by the Army's Commander-in-Chief, General Field marshal von Brauchitsch, on April 28, 1941.
Concerning the action against the Jews, practical cooperation between the Army and the Einsatzgruppen led to an order by the Army Commanders, which called for the identification and registration of Jews in their domiciles directly after the troops had occupied any area. This was effected by large posters, which simplified the task of the Security Police and SD units. Unless, of course, individuals or groups of Jews fled into the forests or went "underground" - after learning of their imminent fate.
Four Einsatzgruppen were raised for the prospective campaign against the Soviet Union, each consisting of 500 to 990 men, a total of some 3,000 drawn from the Gestapo, the detective force, the constabulary, foreign auxiliary police and the Waffen-SS. They were subdivided into Einsatz- and Sonderkommandos.
At the latest from March 1941, the racist-ideological extermination of "Jewish Bolshevism" formed an integral component of the war on the Eastern Front. The mass killings of the Jews arose directly from the extreme, anti Semitic race doctrine of Hitler and of National Socialism.
And in his festive proclamation on "Party-Founding Day," February 24, 1943, he repeated: "This struggle will not end ... as intended, with the extermination of Aryan mankind, but with the extirpation of Jewry in Europe."
Given a most benign interpretation, these public statements could, of course, be regarded as a "mere" expression of demagogic "determination" of racial anti-Semitism "to carry out ruthless 'revenge' against the Jews," without indicating their actual extermination.
However, in view of our knowledge of the events occurring simultaneously in the east, this would hardly be possible. Such an interpretation is excluded when one reads Hitler's remarks in his "table talk."
He often reverted to his old "biological" axioms. For instance, on July 10, 1941 he said: "I feel like Robert Koch in politics. He discovered the bacillus, and led medical science into new paths. I discovered the Jew as the bacillus and the ferment in social decomposition." Goebbels recorded in his diary the gist of his talks with Hitler at his "Wolfsschanze" H.Q. in East Prussia (entry for August 18, 1941):
The Fuhrer is convinced that his former conviction expressed in the Reichstag is being confirmed. Namely, that if Jewry were to succeed in once again provoking a war, this would end with the extermination of the Jews. This is being confirmed with well-nigh uncanny certainty in these weeks and months. In the east, the Jews must pay the bill....
In a "table talk" on October 25, 1941, in the presence of Himmler and Heydrich, Hitler expressed his thoughts with special cynicism:
From the rostrum of the Reichstag I prophesied to Jewry that, in the event of war's proving inevitable, the Jew would disappear from Europe. That race of criminals has on its conscience the two million dead of the First World War, and now already hundreds of thousands more.
Let nobody tell me that all the same we can't park them in the marshy parts of Russia! Who's worrying about our troops? It's not a bad idea, by the way, that public rumor attributes to us a plan to exterminate the Jews. Terror is a salutary thing. The attempt to create a Jewish State will be a failure.
After a visit to the ghetto of Vilna on November 1, 1941, Goebbels recorded the following 'impressions':
The picture becomes dreadful after a short trip through the ghetto. The Jews are squatting on each other, horrible figures, not to be seen, let alone to be touched horrible figures starve in the streets, whom I would not like to meet at night. The Jews are like the lice of civilized mankind. Somehow they must be exterminated, or they will invariably resume their tormentive and molesting role.
In the presence of Himmler and Lammers on January 25, 1942, Hitler declared in one of his "table talks":
It must be done quickly; it is worse if I allow a tooth to be extracted gradually, a few centimeters every three months. Once pulled, the pain is gone. The Jew must get out of Europe. Otherwise we shall never have a European understanding I simply say, he must go. I can't help it if he is smashed in the process. I see one thing only: absolute extermination, if they don't leave of their own will.
Two days later (January 27, 1942) he added:
The Jew must leave Europe! It's best they go to Russia. I have no mercy for the Jews. They will always remain an element which incites the nations against each other.
All this was said after the notorious Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, at which Heydrich informed all the representatives of the German authorities involved about the organized "Final Solution" throughout German-ruled Europe. Hitler openly discussed the extermination of European Jewry with certain foreign statesmen and diplomats, since he was interested in including the Jews of all European countries. On July 21, 1941 he told the Croatian Minister of Defense, Kvaternik:
...If a single state would suffer, for whatever er reasons, one Jewish family, this would become a focus of bacilli for a new decomposition. If there were no more Jews in Europe, the unity of the European nations would no longer be disturbed.
On the next day, in a conversation in the forenoon, Horthy reverted to the question "what he should do with the Jews, after he had more or less deprived them of all means of livelihood - he could by no means kill them." Ribbentrop answered "that the Jews must either be exterminated or sent to concentration camps. There is no other possibility." Hitler added:
that contrary to all fears which ... had also been voiced to him repeatedly in Germany, everything continued, even without Jews. Wherever the Jews were left to themselves, as, for example, in Poland, the most cruel misery and depravity prevailed. They are simply pure parasites. This situation has been drastically remedied in Poland.
There, if the Jews refuse to work they are shot. If they cannot work they must perish. They must be treated like tuberculosis germs, which can infect a healthy body. That is by no means cruel, when one considers that even innocent creatures like hares and deer must be killed to prevent damage. Why should we show more consideration for these beasts who wished to bring us Bolshevism? Nations who do not defend themselves against the Jews perish.
When talking to the Hungarian Prime Minister, Sztojay, on June 7, 1944, Hitler again reverted to his Reichstag declaration of January 30, 1939. He recalled that he "had declared in his Reichstag speech, that if the Jews began the war, not we, but the Jews will be exterminated If the Jewish race were to be victorious, at least 20 million Germans would be exterminated, and several millions would starve."
Non-public Statements of Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels Concerning the Mass-Murder of the Jews
Himmler and Hitler did not mince words when talking to leaders of the Party and SS, and also top military men - and certainly not among themselves. In a speech to the SS-Korpsfiihrer on April 24, 1943, Himmler declared:
We were the first to really answer the race problem by action, by the race problem we naturally did not mean anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is exactly like delousing. The removal of lice is not an ideological question, but a matter of hygiene. Thus anti-Semitism is not an ideological issue, but a matter of hygiene, which will soon be behind us. We are almost deloused, we have only some 20,000 lice left, and then it will be ended in all of Germany.
Two days later, on May 26, 1944, he (Himmler) addressed the same subject when speaking to high-ranking officers:
I have thrust Jewry out of its positions ruthlessly I have thus deprived the broad masses of their last catalyst. By removing the Jew, I have prevented the possible formation of any revolutionary core or focus of bacilli in Germany. One can, of course, ask me: Yes, but could you not have solved this in a simpler way - or rather not simpler - but in a more humane fashion?
In his last conversation recorded by Martin Bormann on April 2, 1945, Hitler said:
In a world ever more morally polluted by Jewish poison, a nation immune to this poison must finally gain the upper hand. Seen thus, National Socialism will earn eternal gratitude for exterminating the Jews in Germany and Central Europe.
One day before his suicide, on April 29, 1945, a week before the surrender of the Third Reich, Hitler ended his "political testament" with a demand:
Above all I oblige the leadership of the nation and their adherents to scrupulously observe the racial laws, and offer merciless resistance to the world poisoner of all peoples, International Jewry.
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