Issue H981 of 27 Jan. 1998

Who Gave the Order for the Holocaust ?

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Adolph HitlerHeinrich Himler
From jlockeno@nimbus.ocis.temple.edu Fri Jan 23 07:53:03 1998
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 14:49:35 -0500
From: H-German Editor Jay Lockenour 
Reply-To: H-NET List on German History 
To: Multiple recipients of list H-GERMAN 
Subject: Himmler's Office Diary and the Holocaust
Submitted by: Dan Rogers
drogers@jaguar1.usouthal.edu

This morning in my local newspaper (The Mobile Register), there appeared a wire story from AP correspondent Paul Geitner in Berlin. The AP story reports on the publication of an article in the latest edition of Werkstatt Geschichte by Christian Gerlach.

According to the news account, Gerlach found Heinrich Himmler's office diary in a Moscow archive while he was researching Nazi policies in occupied Belarus. The diary records a meeting between Himmler and Hitler on December 18, 1941, and Himmler is said to have made the notation "Jewish question -- to be wiped out as partisans." (German original unavailable). Much is apparently being made of the phase "Jewish question" in this diary entry, as a broadening of such previously used terminology as "Eastern Jews" or "Soviet Jews."

The AP article quotes historian Norbert Kampe as calling Gerlach's findings "interesting and well-researched," but Kampe supposedly also believes that Gerlach is "overinterpreting" Himmler's note. Kampe is quoted as saying "As long as other sources aren't found that support it, it remains a hypothesis."

Historian Peter Black of Washington, DC, is quoted as stating that Gerlach's find "certainly adds a new argument," but Black adds that he thinks "there's too much evidence that there was thought given to this and perhaps even a decision made on this before December 1941."

The AP article claims much has been made of Gerlach's find by German newspapers, where supposedly declarations are being made that the "Final Solution" has now been proven.


From jlockeno@nimbus.ocis.temple.edu Sun Jan 25 12:17:30 1998
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 12:41:09 -0500
From: H-German Editor Jay Lockenour 
Reply-To: H-NET List on German History 
To: Multiple recipients of list H-GERMAN 
Subject: Re: Himmler's Office Diary and the Holocaust
(There are 3 messages below - ed)
1.
Submitted by: Dan Rogers
drogers@jaguar1.usouthal.edu

To add a little further information to my note yesterday about Christian Gerlach's reported discovery in the Moscow archives, the New York Times reported at length on the subject in its January 21 issue. Historians Richard Breitman, Hans Mommsen, and Norbert Kampe are quoted.

The Times reports that "the documents supposedly establish that Hitler did, indeed, make a personal decision to put to death German and all other European Jews under Nazi occupation," and "announced his decision to a secret meeting of 50 Nazi Party loyalists on Dec. 12, 1941 -- a day after his declaration of war on the United States."

Richard Breitman of American University comments in the Times that "this is an important find and Gerlach and his colleagues are to be commended on their research and discovery....But the jury is still out on the exact interpretation of this meeting." The Times article concludes with the statement that Hans Mommsen of Bochum University "dismissed the meeting on Dec. 12, 1941, as a routine affair. 'Hitler gave one of his usual speeches....It was nothing special.'"

2.
Submitted by: Fabian Rueger
fabian@leland.stanford.edu

I remember at least the SPIEGEL and the Suddeutsche publishing an article on Gerlach's work. If I remember correctly his basic argument is that the Himmler-Hitler meeting at that date in the diary might explain the change of date of the Wannsee conference, and thus gives for the first time a close hint to a verbal command of Hitler to plan a "Final Solution".

3.
Submitted by: Herbert Mehrtens
h.mehrtens@tu-bs.de

Michael Gerlach's paper on the question of the Hitler decision about the extinction of the Jews is quite convincing, but certainly not a 'proof'. To my impression it presents a very good argument for a decisive meeting, where Hitler accepted and ordered (i.e. decided) that the extinction measures should be taken, following his own line and following those who had urged and started those actions. I find here a merger of intentionalist and structuralist interpretations - as one would expect - of Hitler being moved and moving at the same time. That is part of what makes the argument so convincing.

H.M.
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From jlockeno@nimbus.ocis.temple.edu Tue Jan 27 09:35:15 1998
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 15:22:13 -0500
From: H-German Editor Jay Lockenour 
Reply-To: H-NET List on German History 
To: Multiple recipients of list H-GERMAN 
Subject: Re: Himmler's Office Diary and the Holocaust

(There are 4 messages below - ed)
(For those interested, further coverage of the Gerlach "find" is published in Tagesspiegel (Jan 3, 1998) and Die Zeit (Jan 9, 1998) - ed)
1.
Submitted by: Jeffrey Vanke
jvanke@fas.harvard.edu

With the latest WerkstattGeschichte not yet available here, I can respond only to comments on H-German and in the press. Before Gerlach's article, many of us believed without documentary evidence that Hitler himself gave or approved the order(s) for the Final Solution. It seems we now have a document that confirms this. But just as we before believed what we could not prove, we must not now necessarily restrict ourselves to December 1941 (date of this document) as the earliest possible date. As Omer Bartov has demonstrated, the same rationale/excuse of partisan dangers on the Eastern front, as cited in this new document, served as the basis for mass executions from the first weeks of the Barbarossa operation. Even for those of us shy of pure intentionalism, the first crucial decisions could still fall much earlier than first Soviet counter-offensive or Pearl Harbor.

Jeffrey Vanke
PhD Candidate in History
2.
Submitted by: Gerhard Weinberg
gweinber@login2.isis.unc.edu

All these comments ignore the long since published conversations of Hitler in July and November 1941. In July he explained to the Croatian Minister of War that all European countries would be emptied of Jews one by one and that the Hungarians would be the last ones to surrender their Jews. In November he told the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem that all Jews living outside of Europe -- those living among non-European peoples as he put it -- would be killed. The word the interpreter attributed to Hitler is "Vernichtung." Why do people refuse to look at these documents which were published decades ago? That, of course, does not preclude Himmler asking Hitler about some specific group of Jews at a later date and getting Hitler's agreement to killing them. Gerhard L. Weinberg

3.
Submitted by: Michael Wildt
wildt@public.uni-hamburg.de

Further information regarding the new research results of Christian Gerlach concerning the _Final Solution_ and Hitler's decision of December 12th, 1941, published in WerkstattGeschichte, issue No. 18.

I would like to tell you and the subscribers of H-German the full bibliography of this essay so that everyone being interested in this article could be able to get it:

Christian Gerlach, "Die Wannsee-Konferenz, das Schicksal der deutschen Juden und Hitlers politische Grundsatzentscheidung, alle Juden Europas zu ermorden," in: WerkstattGeschichte 18, 6. Jahrgang, November 1997, S. 7-44, ISBN 3-87916-227-1.

WerkstattGeschichte is available via: Ergebnisse Verlag, Abendrothsweg 58, D- 20251 Hamburg, Germany, Tel. +49-40-4801027, Fax +49-40-4801592

An English translation is in preparation, but will not be published before 1999.

With best wishes
Michael Wildt
4.
Submitted by: Andrew Port
aiport@fas.harvard.edu

There was also a lengthy, full-page article on the Gerlach 'find' by the prolific German historian/journalist Goetz Aly in the Berliner Zeitung sometime in mid-December 1997.

Andrew Port
Center for European Studies
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA



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