Hitler's Hangman by Gerwarth Robert

Author:Gerwarth, Robert. [Gerwarth, Robert.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300115758
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

AT W A R W I T H T H E W O R L D

211

whether the Jewish question should be treated as a ‘policing issue’, thus

fal ing into Heydrich’s area of responsibility, or a political issue, thus

remaining within Rosenberg’s jurisdiction, remained highly contested. In the

winter of 1941, Rosenberg had repeatedly tried to impose tighter control

over SS representatives in the former Soviet Union, causing Heydrich to

insist in a letter to him of 10 January 1942 that Nazi Jewish policies in the

East were a policing matter outside Rosenberg’s jurisdiction.161

Heydrich’s words were also aimed at Bühler, Hans Frank’s deputy,

whose relationship with Heydrich had been overshadowed by a conflict

over executive competences in the General Government ever since the

autumn of 1939.162 In the months and weeks before the Wannsee

Conference, Himmler and Heydrich had repeatedly clashed with civilian

agencies in Poland over issues of competence in relation to Jewish

matters.163 In late November 1941, for example, Himmler’s representative

in the General Government complained to Heydrich that Frank wished

to take control of the ‘handling of the Jewish problem’ in the General

Government himself. Shortly after this meeting, Bühler was added to the

list of invitees, presumably to settle the matter of competences over Jewish

policies once and for all.164

After reasserting his unquestionable authority in all matters concerning

the Jewish question, Heydrich recapitulated the previous stages and past

achievements in the Nazis’ struggle against Jewry. The principal aim since

1933 had been to remove the Jews from all sectors of German society and

then from German soil. The only solution available at that time had been

to accelerate Jewish emigration, a policy that had led to the creation of the

Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration. The disadvantages of the

policy of emigration were clear to all those involved, but in the absence of

alternatives the policy was tolerated, at least initially. With pride, Heydrich

recalled that between January 1933 and 31 October 1941, a total of

537,000 Jews had been ‘induced to emigrate’ from Germany, Austria and

the Protectorate.

Since the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union, however, the situation

had changed entirely. Emigration from Germany was no longer an option

and had indeed been forbidden altogether by Himmler in the autumn of

1941. Instead, Heydrich suggested, ‘new possibilities in the East’ offered ‘a

further possible solution’ which had recently been approved by Hitler: ‘the

evacuation of the Jews to the East’. The small-scale deportations from the

Reich and the Protectorate to Łódź, Minsk and Riga that had commenced

in October 1941 had provided important ‘practical experiences’, which

would be ‘of great significance for the coming final solution to the Jewish

question’. Unfortunately, he continued, regional discrepancies in the treat-

ment of Jews persisted. Inconsistencies regarding the destination of the

212

HITLER’S HANGMAN

transports and the fate of the deportees made it clear that the central

agencies involved were struggling to adopt a coherent approach regarding

the Jews to be deported from the Reich. These were the persisting

problems that Heydrich hoped to resolve at the Wannsee Conference.165

Following his brief general introduction, Heydrich outlined the scale

of the task that lay ahead of them. Roughly 11 million Jews – including

those living under German occupation, the Jews of neutral European

states such

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