Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. In Mein Kampf, Hitler said that Germany was determined to carve out Lebensraum for
itself in the vast Slavic hinterland of Eastern Europe.
a. Few Allied statesmen took his declaration seriously until March 1939
i. Germans marched into Prague and took over Czechoslovakia
ii. Then he went to Poland
1. England and France declared war on Germany because they had to
balance out the power
2. But England and France could not receive support from the West
and Poland was taken over in less than a month
2. Over the next half year until the late 1939s, Germany lulled the Allies into a false sense
of security as it consolidated its gains, and surveyed Allied positions
3. But even after being free from the Treaty of Versailles, large gains in Europe, Nazi
attacked in April of 1940 to break the French and British armies.
4. In less than 90 days, fast moving German armies overran Norway, Denmark, Holland,
Luxembourg, and Belgium.
a. French Maginot line was flanked, and the French army was encircled and trapped
and the British Expeditionary Force was drive off of Europe
b. On June 22, stunned by the Nazi blitzkrieg, France surrendered to Germany
i. Only England remained but it was not a major threat
5. With little resistance, Hitler now felt free to concentrate his efforts on “Operation
Barbarossa” (the invasion of Russia) and the expansion of the “Aryan” race
a. To Hitler, Slavic people were subhumans. Only a bit higher than Jews. They were
both expendable.
6. One year after Nazi victory in Western Europe, Hitler tore up Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
of 1939 and used blitzkrieg against Russia without warning
a. The Wehrmacht (German army) covered ⅔ of distance to Moscow within 26 days
and seized Ukraine, mineral wealth of Donets basin, rich oil fields of Bessarabia
b. Russian capital and the Red Army held out over the winter but with spring thaw
of 1942, Hitler began his 2nd overwhelming drive pushing on across the Crimea
into the Don Basin.
i. Middle of August 1942, German armored columns crashed into outskirts
of Stalingrad while Russian northern and southern armies were separated.
ii. At this time, German army was at its peak and extended over more of
Europe than any other domain since Julius Caesar
7. Hitler’s “Final Solution”
a. Hitler’s Pan-Germanism extended to the rest of Europe
b. Hitler now had an opportunity to put his “Aryan Blood Theory” into practice. On
the eve of Russian invasion, he ordered his General Staff to conduct war in east
with utmost ruthlessness and forget all outward notions of military chivalry
c. Victory at all costs wasn’t confined to Schrecklichkeit (terror) on the battlefield
i. Logistics required seizure of all enemy supplies, foodstuffs and equipment
ii. Tens of millions of non-Germans died of starvation
iii. Germans had a system where prison-armies of Russians, Poles, Yugoslavs,
Frenchmen, and Dutchmen were transported to Germany to work and
eventually die as slave workers.
8. Physical extermination of Slavs and Germany’s neighbors by forced transplantation,
hunger, forced labor, and sterilization.
a. Less pretense to compassion
b. Himmler made this very clear in a speech to SS group-leaders: “What happens to
a Russian or a Czech does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can
offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary, by
kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in
prosperity or starve to death interests me only insofar as we need them as slaves
for our Kultur: otherwise it is of no interest to me...It is a crime against our own
blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and
grandson to have a more difficult time with them.”
9. 15M Russians, 2M Poles, 2M Greeks and Yugoslas, 200K Gypsies perished of hunger
and disease and a couple million died of hunger and disease under guise of anti partisan
warfare.
10. “Jewish question” was handled by Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, the political police
a. SS was most powerful institution in Nazi state
b. Heinrich Himmler, chief of SS, worshipped Hitler.
c. Himmler turned many matters about Jewish people to his subordinate, Reinhard
Heydrich, chief of the Gestapo and the Reich Main Security Office who was an
unashamed sadist specialized in bloody purges and the Grynszpan pogrom of
Nov. 1938
11. 1939: Heydrich opens in Berlin in Reich Main Security Office the Bureau IVA or RSHA
and placed in charge of a relatively unknown SS major Adolf Eichmann, in charch of
RSHA bureau for Jewish extermination.
a. This was the nerve center of Jewish extermination
12. Nazis started with mass deportations. Many Jews dumped at ports or thrown in ships with
fake visas to Latin America or Palestine.
a. Others left to roam the high seas
b. Nazi considered deporting people to Madagascar
13. March 1941: Rumors of Hitler trusting Heydrich with the Final Solution (extermination
of Jewry was always referred as this).
a. French and Belgian Jews denied permission to emigrate from German territory.
b. July 30, 1941: Goering orders Heydrich to prepare for final solution of Jewish
question in European territories and January 20, 1942: Heydrich reveals solution
to top staff members in International Criminal Police Commission office said only
solution was extermination.
c. Einsatzgruppen: The SS force who executed Jews
i. Heydrich’s men slaughtered as many Russian Jews as they could lay their
hands on.
14. Final solution developed from east to west.
a. Grossen Wannsee Conference represented a watershed dividing military from
civilian extermination
i. It ensured that all German dept would work together for the Final Solution
15. Einsatzgruppen got a list of Jews and rounded them up to transport them to burial pits.
a. Most of the Einsatzgruppen units received help from Lithuanians and Ukrainians
b. They were machine-gunned to death.
16. Two-thirds of Russian Jews escaped to the interior with Red Army but about 1M Jews
trapped in German zone of occupation.
a. Jews died in Minsk, Kiev, Babi Yar, Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Kharkov, Odessa,
Simferopol, Latvia, Lithuania.
b. They were mass buried
c. They were killed very systematically
17. Few officers of Wehrmacht protested, watched calmly. Dirty business was outside
professional duties and let subordinates take orders from SS officers who they regarded
as beneath the rank of soldiers.
a. But Wehrmacht was still influenced by Nazi propaganda and believed Jews were
subhuman
18. But all this was a prelude to the Final Solution in Poland
a. Heydrich ordered that all rural and small-town Jews in Poland be transported into
the larger Polish cities under the newly established General Government of
Poland. They would be kept under surveillance.
19. Nazis stopped Jews from trading. More starvation. More manageable group.
a. Starvation and disease wiped out middle class
i. Large population of white-collar workers could not go on.
b. Only 800 calories a day. Food rations were potatoes and ersatz fat.
i. Penalties for smuggling was severe (death by firing squad)
1. Children would still use tunnels to smuggle small amounts of food.
20. SS conducted tours of these ghettos for journalists.
21. By 1941, each day streets were lined up with new corpses (sometimes cannibalized).
22. Jewish Council (Judenrat) to maintain supervision over Jewish community.
a. Jewish president (Judenalteste) were intermediaries through whom the Nazis
issued decrees and from whom they obtained their victims.
b. They were Nazi puppets but these officials may have hoped to alleviate Jewish
suffering through personal intervention
i. Some such as Dr. Adam Czerniakow of Warsaw Judenrat and Dr. Rotfeld
of Lwow Judenrat committed suicide rather than being associated with the
Final Solution
ii. Even those who pledged loyalty such as Dr. Chaim Rumkowski of the
Lodz Judenrat was given a lot of power by SS but then when SS evacuated
the Lodz ghetto, he was treated like any other Jew
23. Jewish policemen (there were often people who used to be the dregs of Jewish society)
used to keep order on inform on their fellow jews. Many of these policed killed by Jewish
underground or Nazis.
24. Jewish suicides declined and intellectual and artistic activity increased between 1941 and
1942.
a. New interest in history and religion.
25. Nazis sensed this will to survive. Starvation and disease became not enough. Still 2M
Polish Jews alive.
a. Even after the Einsatzgruppen massacres in the former Russian sector of Poland,
there were still 2M Jews alive
26. Spring of 1942- Himmler and Heydrich decided to use systematic extermination.
a. They delegated this to Austro-Croatian underling, Odilo “Globus” Globocnik (SS
police leader for Lubin Province)
b. Globus set up death camps with a sadistic enthusiasm. 6k to 10k Jews sent daily.
27. Hitler was gassed in WWI, he wanted to have Jews taste gas too.
a. He sent Germany’s euthanasia expert Philip Bouhler to Poland with orders to
work closely with Globus and plan a system of gas chambers
28. Original design was simple boxes with pipes to asphyxiate Jews.
29. 1943, Lieutenant General Heinz Kammler, the Wehrmacht engineer who designed rocket
bases on French coast, sent to Poland to make this more efficient. New plan of gas
bunkers. Furnaces on upper levels to cremate corpses. Lower levels were fake showers
that gassed Jews. Ground floor was a garden.
30. Jews were marched into these showers naked and waited for the shower to start.
a. They were very unsuspecting. When people noticed, they huddled to the door and
tried to get out, forming a pyramid shape.
b. After the gassing, pumps removed the poisoned air, SS men entered with gas
masked, hosed the blood, and checked for valuables. Hair was cut off as range
finders for German naval artillery.
31. May 1942- Heydrich attacked and died from a grenade. Operation Heydrich, kill all the
Jews remaining.
a. Jews sent on trains to death camps
b. Germans tricked Jews into thinking they were going to survive.
i. Fake letters from survivors, work certificates, pictures of good life.
ii. Many months Jews believed this. They allowed themselves to be rounded
up.
iii. Average 7k killings a day. End of 1942- 1,274,000 Jews killed.
1. Gassing was too slow so Germans resorted to Soviet style
pit-shootings
iv. Autumn and winter months Jews realized that they were being killed.
v. Yiddish poet, Mordecai Gebirtig said that his ghetto suddenly got very
quiet
vi. Nazi systematically reduced the remaining ghettos: Lodz, Bialystok,
Vilna, Riga in Spring and Autumn
c. Had Jews of Warsaw resisted when there were still 300K left, they could have
delayed exterminations
32. October 4, 1943: Heinrich Himmler informed a gathering of SS officials that the Final
Solution was reaching a climax
a. But Germany had to hurry up because tide of battle was turning against the Nazis
i. Russians were moving closer to Poland and there were still 500K Jews
left.
ii. It was essential no witnesses were left behind
b. February 1944: last 80K Jews in working camps of Lodz sent to Auschwitz for
gassing
c. By the time the Russians bored their way into Poland, almost no more Jews left.
33. Heydrich put Adolf Eichmann in charge of Western European Jewry.
a. He studied Hebrew and Yiddish and traveled to learn more about Zionism and
culture.
b. He left the Russian jews to killed by Einsatzgruppen and Polish jews to
Globocnik.
c. The Western jews were cultured and cultivated. They could not be identified as
subhuman.
d. Eichmann sent 100K jews to Poland to be gassed and did not want to exterminate
Jews on Reich soil.
e. Outside of Germany, extermination was quick
i. 110k out of 140k Dutch jews were deported to Auschwitz.
ii. August 1942, Himmler decided on Auschwitz as final extermination
center.
1. It was camouflaged and was well supplied with housing.
2. It could hold 140k prisoners at a time and had crematoria which
could burn 10k bodies a day.
34. Auschwitz supervised by ex-convict Rudolf Hoess. His aides were smart scientists.
35. Majority of executions was in spring and summer because they wanted the Jews to freeze
during the cold months.
36. Inmates did bricklaying work. They were given watery turnip soup and became living
corpses.
37. More prisoners died of starvation, exhaustion, and disease in Auschwitz than in gas
chambers. Total 2M Jews died in Auschwitz.
38. Number would have been larger if Hitlers allies had not been squeamish.
39. Pierre Laval gave 65k out of 300k French Jews.
40. Mussolini refused to be part of it. He protected Italian Jews and gave sanctuary to Jews of
Greece, Croatia, and southern France. Less than 10k Italian Jews fell into Nazi hands.
41. Bulgaria also refused
42. Hungarian government didn’t give any Jews.
43. Slovakia gave 56k Jews until the anti-semitic Father Tiso realized that he was sending
them to death.
a. Nazis occupied Slovakia and finished the job.
44. Only Romania was willing to help the Final Solution.
a. General Ion Antonescu made Jews go into freight cars and deported them into
Russian territories where they were taken by Germans.
45. When tides turned against Axis, Romanians curried flavor to the Allies.
a. Deportation stopped and 500k Romanian Jews survived but with disabilities.
46. 150k Transylvanian Jews from Hungary were turned over to Nazis by Admiral Horthby
and killed in 1944.