Is there any evidence that Hitler ordered a mass
extermination of Jews?
26. Is there any evidence that Hitler ordered a mass extermination of
Jews?
The IHR says:
No.
Nizkor replies:
Of course there is. Himmler, Eichmann, Höss, and others have said
that the orders for the genocide came directly from Hitler.
Consider that
Hitler
received in December 1942 a report from
Himmler
stating that 363,211 Jews had been murdered in August-November 1942.
This was just one of many reports from the
Einsatzgruppen,
who had the job of exterminating the Jews and anti-Nazis behind the
eastern front. A
photograph
and the
text
of the report are available.
Or consider a
phone log
from Hitler to Himmler, in which Hitler ordered "no
liquidation" of a particular trainload of Jews, because they wanted
one suspected passenger questioned. If Hitler did not know of the
liquidation process, how could he have ordered it stopped in this one
instance? (Ironically,
David Irving
used part of this phone log out of context to indicate that Hitler was
trying to put a stop to the extermination program. Of course,
this was before Mr. Irving changed his mind and decided that there never
was any extermination program, much less that Hitler knew about it.)
From
Höss'
memoirs (Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, 1959, p. 205):
In the summer of 1941, I cannot remember the exact date, I was
suddenly summoned to the Reichsfuhrer-SS [Himmler], directly by
his adjutant's office. Contrary to his usual custom, Himmler received
me without his adjutant being present and said in effect:
"The Führer has ordered that the Jewish question be solved once and
for all and that we, the SS, are to implement that order....The Jews
are the sworn enemies of the German people and must be eradicated.
Every Jew that we can lay our hands on is to be destroyed now during
the war, without exception. If we cannot now obliterate the biological
basis of Jewry, the Jews will one day destroy us." (R. Hoess.
Commandant of Auschwitz. London: Phoenix Press. 2000 [1959]. Pg. 183)
Evidence presented at various war-crime trials
SS-Obersturtmbannführer Dr. Martin Sandberger, commander of EK 1a:
"I myself was present during the discussions in the palais Prinz
Albrecht in Berlin and during the speech by Streckenbach when the
well-known Führer order was announced."
"Streckenbach personally informed me about the Führer order, which said
that, in order to secure the Eastern territory permanently, all Jews,
Gypsies, and communist functionaries were to be eliminated, together
with all other elements who might endanger society."
According to Sandberger, the work of an EK commander consisted of four
elements:
[Establishing] a good relationship with the army as far as possible;
second a strict and energetic leadership of the commandos under his
command; third, as quick and thorough an execution of an order as
possible, in particular concerning the Jews; and fourth, as part of this
Führer order, a bitter fight against communism.
Q. What orders did [Brigadeführer Walter] Stahlecker give you before you
left Riga?
A. He gave me two orders particularly, the first order was to have as
good a relationship as possible with the army and, second, as i have
said, according to the Führerbefehl to have Estonian Jews eliminated.
(From the testimany delivered for the Einsatztruppen Case, 1947-1948,
vol. 6, pp. 2143-2176, quoted in Ezergailis op. cit., pps. 204 - 205,
with thanks to Eugene Holman, UseNet alt.revisionism et al, June 28,
2001, Message-ID: <280620011757058782%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>)
Captured German documents
SS-Brigadeführer Walter Stahlecker's Memorandum of August 6, 1941. This
memorandum was written in response to Heinrich Lohse's "Guidelines on
the treatment of Jews in Ostland" (July 27, 1941). Up until the
beginning of the war against the Soviet Union, policy towards Jews in
Nazi-occupied territory had primarily been to ghettoize them and
exploit them for labor. Hinrich Lohse, the civilian governor of the
Ostland, had recommended that the same policy be continued. In response
to this SS-Brigadeführer Walter Stahlecker, head of Einsatzgruppe A,
wrote:
"The projected measures concerning the settling of the Jewish problem
are not in harmony with those orders concerning Jews in the Ostland
given by Einsatzgruppe A of the Security Police and the SD. Nor does
the project take into consideration the new possibilities of cleaning
up the Jewish question in the Eastern regions.
"In the Generalgouvernement there was no serious danger to in leaving
the Jews in their living quarters and work places. But in the Ostland,
the resident Jews or those brought in by the Red powers became the
leading supporters of the Bolshevik idea. Numerous Jews are openly
communist activists. The experience so far allows us to expect that,
even a long time after the military occupation of the Ost territory,
disorders will arise. Sabotage and acts of terror can be expected not
only from communists not caught in previous actions, but precisely from
Jews who will use every possibility to create disorder. The pressing
need to pacify the Ost area quickly makes it necessary to eliminate all
likely sources of disorder.
"The project apparently does not foresee the resettlement of the Jews as
an immediate measure provided under paragraph V, but rather sees that
as a lower, later development.
"In closing, let me sum up by saying that the Jewish question shall be
solved by 1) a complete and 100 percent clearing of the Jews from the
Ost territory; 2) preventing the Jews from increasing their numbers; 3)
using the Jews to the fullest as a work force; 4) a considerable
facilitation for the later collective transport to a reservatrion
outside Europe.
"This definite measure can be carried out only by the forces of the
Security and the Order Police.
A post script to the letter reads:
"Consider it desirable, before issuing any basic statement, once more to
discuss these questions by word of mouth, especially since it is safer
that way, and since it concerns fundamental orders from higher authority
to the Security Police, ones that should not be discussed in writing"
(The full text of the memorandum is given in A. Ezergailis, The
Holocaust in Latvia: 1941 - 1944. Riga: The Historical Institute of
Latvia. 1996. Pgs. 378 - 380. with thanks to Eugene Holman, UseNet
alt.revisionism et al, June 28, 2001, Message-ID: <280620011757058782%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>))
According to Ezergailis, Stahlecker made three further rerefences to the
fundamental orders - on October 15, 1941, and on January 31, 1942.
Stahlecker's Consolidated Report, October 15, 1941:
"From the very beginning it was to be expected that pogroms alone would
not solve the Jewish problem in the Ostland. The goal of the cleansing
operation of the Sicherheitspolizei, in accordance with the fundamental
orders, was the most comprehensive elimination of the Jews possible."
The same report continues:
"It is appropriate to mention in this connection the considerable
resistance by officers of the Civil Administration against the
implementation of large-scale executions. This resistance was countered
in all cases by pointing out that the implementation of executions was
the result of a fundamental order."
Stahlecker's Consolidated Report, January 31, 1942:
"According to the orders of establishing basic principles to be
followed, the systematic purge operations in the Ostland, including the
elimination, as completely as possible of Jewry."
(Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia: 1941 - 1944. Riga: The Historical Institute of Latvia. 1996. pg. 232. with thanks to Eugene Holman, UseNet alt.revisionism et al, June 28, 2001, Message-ID: <280620011757058782%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>)
Eichmann's
final speech to the court, after being sentenced to death, included the
following statement:
These mass murders are solely the result of the Führer's policy.
This is as quoted by the revisionist Paul Rassinier, The Real
Eichmann Trial, 1979, p. 152.
Felix Kersten was Himmler's personal manual therapist. As he wrote
in his memoirs (Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, 1956, p. 162-3):
Today I had a very long talk about the Jews with Himmler. I said that
the world would no longer tolerate the extermination of the Jews; it
was high time that he put a stop to it. Himmler said that it was
beyond his power; he was not the Führer and Adolf Hitler had
expressly ordered it. I asked him whether he was aware that history
would one day point to him as one of the greatest murderers on record,
because of the way in which he had exterminated the Jews. He should
think of his reputation, not sully it with that reproach. Himmler
replied that he had done nothing wrong and only carried out Adolf
Hitler's orders.
... I told Himmler that he still had a chance to stand well with
history by showing humanity to the Jews and other victims of the
concentration camp -- if he really disagreed with Hitler's orders to
exterminate them. He could simply forget certain of the Führer's
orders and not carry them out.
"Perhaps you're right, Herr Kersten," Himmler responded,
but he also added that the Führer would never forgive him and
would immediately have him hanged.
Hitler met with the Mufti,
Haj Amin Husseini, on 28 November 1941.
Notes of the meeting
were taken by Dr. Paul Otto Schmidt (see Fleming, Hitler and the
Final Solution, 1984, pp. 101-104). At this meeting, Hitler promised
the Mufti that, after a certain objective was reached, "Germany's
only remaining objective in the region would be limited to the
annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab
lands."
Furthermore, don't discount Hitler's own public speeches, cited in
the reply to
question 1.
He stated his intentions to exterminate the Jews no fewer than three
times, in public.
"No evidence," indeed.
In the original version of the 66 Q&A, this question was
the same as
question 53, with different wording:
"Is there any evidence that Hitler knew of a mass extermination of
Jews?" (question 26, original);
"What evidence is there that Hitler knew of the ongoing Jewish
extermination?" (question 53, original and revised).
That gives an idea of how much careful thought was put into this
pamphlet.
Recommended reading: Fleming's Hitler
and the Final Solution
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