Figure 1.--The mass killing phase of the Holocaust began with Barbarossa where the Einatzgruppen following in the wake of the Wehrmacht began shooting Jews where they found them (June 1941). Until this time, the NAZIs were content to profit by exploiting Jewish slave labor and allow the Jews like these boys to die by attrition through starvation and neglect in the Ghettoes created mostly in Poland. This was not fast enough for Hitler and Himmler. As Hitler spoke the Party leaders, industrial-scale killing had begun at Chemo and the construction of the dreadfull death camps was being rushed forward. Click on the image for a fuller discussion of what you see here.

Hitler announced the final decision to destroy the Jewish population of occupied Europe. Mass killing had begun with the Einsatzgruppen when the Wehrmacht entered the Soviet Union (June 1941). The Germans began killing Soviet Jews while millions of Jews were in their custody and while harshly treated, still alive. The Polish Jews had been ghettoized, but the Western European Jews were still not interned. Killing had begun at Chelmo in what was to be a dry run for the murder of Polish Jews (September 1941). Hitler finally ordered that killing be begun on a vast scale to eliminate Jews throughout NAZI occupied Europe, regardless of their potential value to the war effort. We are not sure just when Hitler decided this in his mind. We do know when he announced what we now know as the Holocaust to the NAZI hierarchy. Hitler called his Gaultiers and important NAZI Party officials to the Reich Chancellery the day after declaring war on America [Mawdsley] The Gauletiers had heard the declaration of war in America on the radio the day before. They were less aware, however, of the extent of the Red Army counter-offensive in the East. Virtually all the ranking NAZI Party officials attended the meeting. Hitler announced at the meeting that the Jewish people would be destroyed. In fact killing had begun on a vast scale months before. This was in fact that a 'warning' he had delivered before the War would now be realized. Hitler had told the Reichstag, "If the world of international financial Jewry, both in and outside of Europe, should succeed in plunging the Nations into another world war, the result will not be the Bolshevization of the world and thus a victory for Judaism. The result will be the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe." (January 30, 1939). Of course it was Hitler not world Jewry that launched the War, but this was Hitler's way of justifying one of the greatest crimes of history. The meeting in the Reich Chancellery took place in the afternoon and was held in the private rooms. This meant that there was no official record. Both Goebbels and Frank noted the meeting. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels noted what Hitler told the NAZI leaders, "Regarding the Jewish question, the Führer is determined to clear the table. He warned the Jews that if they were to cause another world war, it would lead to their own destruction. Those were not empty words. Now the world war has come. The destruction of the Jews must be its necessary consequence. This question is to be regarded without sentimentalism. We are not here to have sympathy with the Jews, but rather with our German people. If the German people have sacrificed 160,000 dead in the eastern campaign, so the authors of this bloody conflict will have to pay for it with their lives." Some authors argue that the Holocaust had not begin earlier because Hitler saw the Jews in occupied Europe as useful hostages to keep America out of the war. To what extent he really believed this we are not sure.

Sources

Mawdsley, Evan. December 1941: Twelve Days that Began a World War (2011).

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Created: 4:56 PM 9/25/2012
Last updated: 4:56 PM 9/25/2012