Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Peter Longerich [essential books to read TXT] 📗

Assocation for Citizens of the Jewish Faith)

x

Abbreviations

DAF

Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labour Front)

DAZ

Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung

DG

Durchgangsstrasse

DHR

German University Circle

DHV

German National Association of Commercial Employees

DGFP

Documents on German Foreign Policy

DiM

Dokumenty i Materialy

DNVP

German National[ist] People’s Party

DVFP

German Völkish Freedom Party

EK

Einsatzkommando (Task Force Commando)

EM

Ereignismeldung (Action Report USSR)

EWZ

Einwandererzentrale (Immigration Centre)

FRUS

Foreign Relations of the United States

FZ

Frankfurter Zeitung

Gestapa

Geheime Staatspolizeiamt (Secret State Police Office)

Gestapo

Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)

GFP

Geheime Feldpolizei (Secret Military Police)

GG

General Government

GSR

German Studies Review

GStaA

Geheime Staatsarchiv Berlin-Dahlem

HGS

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

HSSPF

Higher SS and Police Commander

1a

Senior Ranking General Staff Officer

1c

Third Ranking General Staff Officer (Intelligence)

IfZ

Institut für Zeitgeschichte

IKG

Israelitische Kultusgemeinde

IMT

International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg)

JA

Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung

JDC

Joint Distribution Committee

JR

Jüdische Rundschau

KdO

Commander of the Order Police

KdS

Commander of the Security Police

KL

Konzentrationslager (Concentration Camp)

KPD

German Communist Party

Abbreviations

xi

Kripo

Criminal Police

KTB

Kriegstagebuch (War Diary)

KZ

Concentration Camp

LAF

Lithuanian Activist Front

LBIY

Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook

LG

Landgericht (Provincial Court)

LV

Provincial Association

MBliV

Ministerialblatt fur die innere Verwaltung

MGM

Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen

NA

National Archives, Washington DC

NKVD

Soviet People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs

NS, ns

National Socialist

NSDAP

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist

German Workers’ Party)

NS-Hago

Nationalsozialistische Handels-, Handwerks-und

Gewerbeorganisation (National Socialist Association for Commerce,

Crafts, and Trade)

NYT

New York Times

NZZ

Neue Züricher Zeitung

ObdH

Commander-in-Chief of the Army

OKH

Oberkommando des Heeres (Army High Command)

OKW

Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High

Command)

OS

Osabi Archive (Moscow)

OT

Organisation Todt

OUN

Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists

PAA

Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes

Pol.Abt.

Political department

RAF

Royal Air Force

Reg.Bez.

Regierungsbezirk (Government District)

RFSS

Reichsführer SS

RGBl

Reichsgesetzblatt

RKF

Reichskommisar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums

(Reich Commissioner for Settlement)

RMBliV

Reichsministerialblatt für die innere Verwaltung

xii

Abbreviations

RSHA

Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Head Office)

RVJD

Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland

RWM

Reichswirtschaftsministerium (Reich Ministry of Economics)

SA

Sturmabteilung (Storm Troop)

SD

Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service)

Sipo

Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police)

SK

Sonderkommando

Sopade

Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (German Social

Democratic Party)

SS

Schutzstaffel (Protection Squads)

SSPF

SS and Police Commander

StA

Staatsarchiv

STA

Staatsanwaltschaft

StdF

Stellvertreter des Führers (Führer’s Deputy)

StS

State Secretary

SWCA

Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual

TSD

Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente

USHM

United States Holocaust Museum

VB

Völkischer Beobachter

VfZ

Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte

VO

Decree

VOGG

Verordnungsblatt für das Generalgouvernement

Vomi

Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Ethnic German Agency)

VZ

Vossische Zeitung

WL

Wiener Library

WVHA

SS Business and Administration Head Office

YIVO

Yiddischer Vissenschaftlikher Institut

YV

Yad Vashem

YVS

Yad Vashem Studies

ZAA

Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie

ZASM

Zentrum zur Aufbewahrung historisch-dokumentarischer

Sammlungen Moskau

z.b.V

zur besonderer Verwendung (for special purposes)

ZfG

Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft

Abbreviations

xiii

ZGO

Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins

ZOB

Zydowsk Organizacja Bojowa (Jewish combat organization)

ZSt

Zentralstelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen zur Aufklärung

nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen

ZUV

Zentraler Untersuchungsvorgang

ZZW

Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowy (Jewish Military Association)

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INTRODUCTION

Current State of Research, Methodology

When the German edition of this book appeared twelve years ago in 1998

research on the situation of the murder of the European Jews was in a

transitional state because of the opening of the Eastern European archives at

the beginning of the 1990s. An intensive phase of research had begun using a

large number of documents that had hitherto been inaccessible and asking new

questions of more familiar material. Holocaust research had become a steadily

developing field and now, at the point when this English edition is being

prepared, this process of development has by no means ceased. If it seemed

extremely ambitious in the late 1990s to undertake a comprehensive account of

the persecution and murder of the European Jews from the perspective of the

perpetrators, it is no less so now.

The original aim of this book was to make a contribution to the lively debate

amongst Holocaust researchers about when the Nazi leadership took the decision

to implement a ‘final solution’ (Endlösung) to what they called the ‘Jewish question’

(Judenfrage). Via an analysis of the processes of decision-making, the book hoped

to offer an explanation of the causes of the terrible events that constituted the

Holocaust. When I began preparing this book in the mid-1990s, the state of

so-called ‘perpetrator research’ was defined by two opposing schools of thought:

on the one side were the ‘intentionalists’, 1 who made the focus of their analysis the intentions and objectives of Hitler and other leading Nazis, and on the other were

the ‘structuralists’, who emphasized the importance of the bureaucratic apparatus

put in place by the Nazis and the ultimately uncontrollable process of what Hans

Mommsen termed ‘cumulative radicalization’. The debate between the two schools

of thought had at that point moved through all the usual phases of academic

debates—hypotheses had been developed, the different sides had confronted each

other, arguments had been improved and intensified, positions had become

entrenched, and the discussion had become increasingly polarized. Research on

the decision to implement a ‘final solution’ had become deeply embedded within

2

Introduction

this debate and followed the basic pattern that intentionalist scholars assumed the

decision had been reached at an early point—in the context of the attack on the

Soviet Union or even in the period preceding this2—whilst functionalists either assumed, like Christopher Browning, that the decision had been taken in the

autumn of 1941, 3 and took the form of a step-by-step process, 4 or took the view that the mass murder of the Jews was the result of developments within the Nazis’

apparatus of power that ultimately tended towards a ‘final solution’ without there

being any need for an explicit decision to be taken. 5 Saul Friedländer and Raul Hilberg took a position midway between the two by opting for ‘Summer 1941’. 6 In 1997 the debate was revived once more by a suggestion made by Christian Gerlach

to the effect that a decision on the ‘Final Solution’ was made in December 1941 as a

direct reaction to the entry of the United States into the war. 7

The fact that such divergent interpretations were possible is partly explicable by

the context of the heated debate between intentionalists and functionalists and

their apparently irreconcilable, even mutually antagonistic positions. The style in

which this debate was conducted—in the particularly dogmatic manner typical of

controversies between German historians—strongly affected the overall character

of research on the history of Holocaust perpetrators. Even after the intentionalist-

functionalist debate died down, research on the perpetrators in recent years has

continued to be dominated by strong dichotomies.

This needs to be explained in more detail. Far from receding, in the last ten

years the flood of new work on the Holocaust has swollen. This is particularly true

of research into the perpetrators, the so-called Täterforschung, a facet of Holocaust

research that is overwhelmingly though not exclusively the province of German

scholars. Within the field of Täterforschung there are clearly three areas in which

work has been concentrated: first, the study of the apparatus and membership of

the SS and Police, in which the principal focus has been on the Security Police

(Sicherheitspolizei) and the SD (Sicherheitsdienst), 8 concentration camps, 9 the bodies responsible for deportations, 10 and the Einsatzgruppen or other murder squads; 11 second, regional research so that we now have almost complete coverage of the implementation of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe; 12 third, attempts to find new thematic approaches to the topic of the Holocaust such as ways of

establishing a connection between the