2
GERMAN
POLICY TOWARD THE JEWS AFTER THE OUTBREAK OF
WAR
With the coming of the
war, the situation regarding the Jews altered
drastically. It is not widely known that world
Jewry declared itself to be a belligerent party
in the Second World War, and there was therefore
ample basis under international law for the
Germans to intern the Jewish population as a
hostile force. On September 5, 1939 Chaim
Weizmann, the principle Zionist leader, had
declared war against Germany on behalf of the
world's Jews, stating that "the Jews stand by
Great Britain and will fight on the side of the
democracies . . . The Jewish Agency is ready to
enter into immediate arrangements for utilizing
Jewish manpower, technical ability, resources
etc . . ." (Jewish Chronicle, September 8,
1939).
DETENTION OF
ENEMY ALIENS
All Jews had thus been
declared agents willing to prosecute a war
against the German Reich, and as a consequence,
Himmler and Heydrich were eventually to begin
the policy of internment. It is worth noting
that the United States and Canada had already
interned all Japanese aliens and citizens of
Japanese descent in detention camps before the
Germans applied the same security measures
against the Jews of Europe. Moreover, there had
been no such evidence or declaration of
disloyalty by these Japanese Americans as had
been given by Weizmann. The British, too, during
the Boer War, interned all the women and
children of the population, and thousands had
died as a result, yet in no sense could the
British be charged with wanting to exterminate
the Boers. The detention of Jews in the occupied
territories of Europe served two essential
purposes from the German viewpoint. The first
was to prevent unrest and subversion; Himmler
had informed Mussolini on October 11th, 1942,
that German policy towards the Jews had altered
during wartime entirely for reasons of military
security. He complained that thousands of Jews
in the occupied regions were conducting partisan
warfare, sabotage and espionage, a view
confirmed by official Soviet information given
to Raymond Arthur Davis diat no less than 35,000
European Jews were waging partisan war under
Tito in Yugoslavia. As a result, Jews were to be
transported to restricted areas and detention
camps, both in Germany, and especially after
March 1942, in the Government- General of
Poland. As the war proceeded, the policy
developed of using Jewish detainees for labour
in the war-effort. The question of labour is
fundamental when considering the alleged plan of
genocide against the Jews, for on grounds of
logic alone the latter would entail the most
senseless waste of manpower, time and energy
while prosecuting a war of survival on two
fronts. Certainly after the attack on Russia,
the idea of compulsory labour had taken
precedence over German plans for Jewisb
emigation. The protocol of a conversation
between Hitler and the Hungarian regent Horthy
on April 17th, 1943, reveals that the German
leader personally requested Horthy to release
100,000 Hungarian Jews for work in the
"pursuit-plane programme" of the Luftwaffe at a
time when the aerial bombardment of Germany was
increasing (Reitlinger, Die Endlösung,
Berlin, 1956, p. 478). This took place at a time
when, supposedly, the Germans were already
seeking to exterminate the Jews, but Hitler's
request clearly demonstrates the priority aim of
expanding his labour force. In harmony with this
programme, concentration camps became, in fact,
industrial complexes. At every camp where Jews
and other nationalities were detained, there
were.large industrial plants and factories
supplying material for the German war-effort -
the Buna rubber factory at Bergen-Belsen, for
example, Buna and I. G. Farben Industrie at
Auschwitz and the electrical firm of Siemens at
Ravensbruck. In many cases, special
concentration camp money notes were issued as
payment for labour, enabling prisoners to buy
extra rations from camp shops. The Germans were
determined to obtain the maximum economic return
from the concentration camp system, an object
wholly at variance with any plan to exterminate
millions of people in them. It was the function
of the S.S. Economy and Administration Office,
headed by Oswald Pohl, to see that the
concentration camps became major industrial
producers.
EMIGRATION
STILL FAVOURED
It is a remarkable
fact, however, that well into the war period,
the Germans continued to implement the policy of
Jewish emigration. The fall of France in 1940
enabled the German Government to open serious
negotiations with the French for the transfer of
European Jews to Madagascar. A memorandum of
August, 1942 from Luther, Secretary-of-State in
the German Foreign Office, reveals that he had
conducted these negotiations between July and
December 1940, when they were terminated by the
French. A circular from Luther's department
dated August 15th, 1940 shows that the details
of the German plan had been worked out by
Eichmann, for it is signed by his assistant,
Dannecker. Eichmann had in fact been
commissioned in August to draw up a detailed
Madagascar Plan, and Dannecker was employed in
research on Madagascar at the French Colonial
Office (Reitlinger, The Final ,Solution, p. 77).
The proposals of August 15th were that an
inter-European bank was to finance the
emigration of four million Jews throughout a
phased programme. Luther's 1942 memorandum shows
that Heydrich had obtained Himmler's approval of
this plan before the end of August and had also
submitted it to Goering. It certainly met with
Hitler's approval, for as early as June 17th his
interpreter, Schmidt, recalls Hitler observing
to Mussolini that "One could found a State of
Israel in Madagascar" (Schmidt, Hitler's
lnterpreter, London,1951, p.178). Although the
French terminated the Madagascar negotiations in
December, 1940, Poliakov, the director of the
Centre of Jewish Documentation in Paris, admits
that the Germans nevertheless pursued the
scheme, and that Eichmann was still busy with it
throughout 1941. Eventually, however, it was
rendered impractical by the progress of the war,
in particular by the situation after the
invasion of Russia, and on February 10th, 1942,
the Foreign Office was informed that the plan
had been temporarily shelved. This ruling, sent
to the Foreign Office by Luther's assistant,
Rademacher, is of great importance, because it
demonstrates conclusively that the term "Final
Solution" meant only the emigration of Jews, and
also that transportation to the eastern ghettos
and concentration camps such as Auschwitz
constituted nothing but an alternative plan of
evacuation. The directive reads: "The war with
the Soviet Union has in the meantime created the
possibility of disposing of other territories
for the Final Solution. In consequence the
Führer has decided that the Jews should be
evacuated not to Madagascar but to the East.
Madagascar need no longer therefore be
considered in connection with the Final
Solution" (Reitlinger, ibid. p. 79). The details
of this evacuation had been discussed a month
earlier at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin,
which we shall examine below. Reitlinger and
Poliakov both make the entirely unfounded
supposition that because the Madagascar Plan had
been shelved, the Germans must necessarily have
been thinking of "extermination". Only a month
later, however, on March 7th, 1942, Goebbels
wrote a memorandum in favour of the Madagascar
Plan as a "final solution" of the Jewish
question (Manvell and Frankl, Dr. Goebbels,
London, 1960, p. 165). In the meantime he
approved of the Jews being "concentrated in the
East". Later Goebbels memoranda also stress
deportation to the East (i.e. the
Government-General of Poland) and lay emphasis
on the need for compulsory labour there; once
the policy of evacuation to the East had been
inaugurated, the use of Jewish labour became a
fundamental part of the operation. It is
perfecdy clear from the foregoing that the term
"Final Solution" was applied both to Madagascar
and to the Eastern territories, and that
therefore it meant only the deportation of the
Jews. Even as late as May 1944, the Germans were
prepared to allow the emigration of one million
European Jews from Europe. An account of this
proposal is given by Alexander Weissberg, a
prominent Soviet Jewish scientist deported
during the Stalin purges, in his book Die
Geschichte von Joel Brand (Cologne, 1956).
Weissberg, who spent the war in Cracow though he
expected the Germans to intern him in a
concentration camp, explains that on the
personal authorisation of Himmler, Eichmann had
sent the Budapest Jewish leader Joel Brand to
Istanbul with an offer to the Allies to permit
the transfer of one million European Jews in the
midst of the war. (If the 'extermination'
writers are to be believed, there were scarcely
one million Jews left by May, 1944). The Gestapo
admitted that the transportation involved would
greatly inconvenience the German war-effort, but
were prepared to allow it in exchange for 10,000
trucks to be used exclusively on the Russian
front. Unfortunately, the plan came to nothing;
the British concluded that Brand must be a
dangerous Nazi agent and immediately imprisoned
him in Cairo, while the Press denounced the
offer as a Nazi trick. Winston Churchill, though
orating to the effect that the treatment of the
Hungarian Jews was probably "the biggest and
most horrible crime ever committed in the whole
history of the world", never- theless told Chaim
Weizmann that acceptance of the Brand offer was
impossible, since it would be a betrayal of his
Russian Allies. Although the plan was fruitless,
it well illustrates that no one allegedly
carrying out "thorough" extermination would
permit the emigration of a million Jews, and it
demonstrates, too, the prime importance placed
by the Germans on the war-effort.
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