r/AskHistorians • u/dmob • Feb 03 '16
Why did the holocaust occur simultaneously with WWII?
Both were major undertakings for the Nazis. Why would they waste so many resources and personnel killing the Jews when they were fighting (and losing) a war? Wouldn't it have made more sense to focus on one thing at a time?
18
Feb 03 '16 edited Feb 04 '16
Commiespaceinvader basically summed it up really well, but I'd like to add one point.
By November of 1941, as per Lukacs, Adolf Hitler had realized that he could no longer decisively "win" the war in his way, contrary to common historical memory. He might not have shouted it from the top of the Berghof, but he knew it, given his interactions with Todt and others at this time. Hitler was a consummate actor: how he behaved always depended on his intentions around the person, and that shows with the public face of optimism contrasting with more revealing private recollections. Jodl at Nuremberg, among others, testified that it was wishful thinking to say that somebody should have told Hitler that the war was "lost" given that he knew it before anybody, and I agree.
(What he did after 1941 was shift to a Frederick the Great style strategy of trying to outlast his opponents and hoping that the unnatural coalition between capitalists and Communists would break up if he fought long and hard enough. That eventually occurred, but he fundamentally underestimated the will of the enemy to see him gone before that time, particularly in the West. Such a strategy thankfully went against his personal strengths, which largely were contingent on him being on the offensive and taking the initiative-he was completely at a loss for defensive warfare. Among other things, this caused his increasingly poor decisions from late 1942 onward.)
Even since Barbarossa started, the Einsatzgruppen had been killing Jews by the thousands in wild mass shootings, but the plan for European Jews was to cart them off eventually and have them labor for the Reich. That was no longer feasible with the prospects of a rapid military victory of the Soviet Union all but gone by that time.
I think it is not a coincidence that it was around this time that the official Final Solution came about. The Wannsee Conference gets more attention, but the true evidence of the Final Solution lies in the December meeting at the Reich Chancellery in central Berlin, which came right after Pearl Harbor. That meeting involved Hitler and the bigwigs rather than the bureaucrats who would implement the plans, and Goebbels and Frank made it quite clear what Hitler had in mind in broad terms for the Jews given the new character of the war. The original plan to expel the Jews into the wilds of Russia was not going to occur, they no longer had any value as hostages and were taking up precious food resources. And as the war went on and things got more and more grim, Hitler saw it as a personal war he could "win". It had a very twisted internal "logic" to it. If you believed the stab in the back myth, then as per Himmler at Posen in late 1943, it was thanks to the Jews being gone that there was no grumbling on the home front like there was in 1917.
The Fuhrer was not an irrational madman, or at least not in 1941 yet. He was a cold, calculating, sociopathic mass murderer, following logic. His own twisted logic, but logic nonetheless. That's a very important distinction when it comes to understanding why what happened happened.
5
u/commiespaceinvader Moderator | Holocaust | Nazi Germany | Wehrmacht War Crimes Feb 03 '16
By November of 1941, as per Lukacs, Adolf Hitler had realized that he could no longer decisively "win" the war in his way, contrary to common historical memory.
Browning and others argue the opposite in the sense that it was rather the euphoria over the coming victory in October 1941 that lead to the program of systematic murder being extended to the Jews of all of Europe.
I think it is not a coincidence that it was around this time that the official Final Solution came about. The Wannsee Conference gets more attention, but the true evidence of the Final Solution lies in the December meeting at the Reich Chancellor in central Berlin, which came right after Pearl Harbor.
Gerlach does argue that point (in my opinion convincingly) but Kershaw and Browning would disagree with that particular timing citing the construction for Belzec and Chelmno in November/October 41 with Chelmno starting operations in December. While I think Gerlach does make a convincing argument, I also think the exact dating is near to impossible.
7
Feb 03 '16 edited Feb 03 '16
I'm no credentialed historian, as a disclaimer, and I fully admit I could be wrong. That being said, October to November 1941 is a very crucial time in Hitler's thinking, in my opinion. The Germans planned for a very quick conquest, in the area of 4 to 6 months-both Hitler AND his generals grossly underestimated the Soviet Union. This was based mostly off of the endemic contempt for Slavs and Bolshevism throughout all of the German government-although granted, the purges followed by the pathetic performance of the Soviets (against the "more Teutonic looking than the Teutons" Finns, to boot) in the Winter War didn't help. Many Western observers agreed with them.
October 22nd marked the four month time marker. Hitler couldn't have not noticed. The German Army was becoming increasingly worn out at the time and were already running into logistics issues by October. I think Hitler realized that taking Moscow, in a Russian winter without proper supplies, was going to be unlikely at best at this point. The conversation with Todt (a technical expert, not a general or a staff member) is pretty indicative, in my opinion. Hitler's behavior with Todt in that converation was rather uncommon for him. He didn't launch into monologues or get bored, he sat there quietly and paid rapt attention before asking him how to end the war, without disputing the idea that a military solution was infeasible. That's the kind of authentic unconditional candidness that is rather uncommon in any dictator, let alone the notoriously protean Hitler. I place more importance on that conversation than Kershaw, perhaps. Just because Hitler didn't pursue a political solution, deeming it hardly feasible at that point, didn't mean he was unaware that he wasn't going to knock out the Soviet Union decisively.
I think before November 1941, the plan was to transfer them to the occupied Soviet Union and generally work them to death. In practice, the same result, but it wasn't death camps and an organized plan for short-term mass murder until it became clear that it would be a longer, harder war. It's worth keeping in mind that among those gassed at the early death camps were Soviet POWs and Poles: Jews were among them too, but it wasn't specifically for just them during the first couple of months. I don't know if they continued to do that or not, so if they did, maybe I'm wrong.
You are right. It's probably never going to be known definitely.
6
u/commiespaceinvader Moderator | Holocaust | Nazi Germany | Wehrmacht War Crimes Feb 03 '16
Those are some excellent points.
An additional one that can be made is that when Friedrich Jeckeln, HSSPF in Latvia, ordered the massacre of 1000 deported German Jews together with 24.000 Lithuanian Jews on December 8 Himmler reprimanded him for killing the German Jews. So, either, there was no decision to kill German Jews at this point or it really was only made at the meeting you mentioned.
As I said, personally I find the December decision theory to be convincing, I merely wanted to point out that there are competing narratives.
6
Feb 03 '16 edited Feb 03 '16
Yes, the vast differences between Ostjuden and German Jews, and the consequences for the average German's thinking, isn't given near the attention it deserves. No accident that the brutal mass murders started in 1939 when many soldiers encountered them for the first time in Poland, speaking Yiddish, looking like they are out of a Goebbels film or a German anti-Semitic children's tale, de facto living in a separate society from the Poles. It's even seen in Hitler during his earlier years.
As are yours.
3
u/WARitter Moderator | European Armour and Weapons 1250-1600 Feb 04 '16
This is something that comes up both in Stangl's interviews and in 'Ordinary Men' - the difficulty Germans experienced in killing Jews that seemed less 'other'. Not that these difficulties stopped them.
2
Feb 04 '16
I remember one Einsatzgruppen member mentioning that the first couple of times were really, really hard, and he felt like he would have a mental breakdown-he got drunk a lot to deal with it at night. But eventually, he got used to it, convinced himself that it was a defensive measure, and before too long, the Jews were just seen as no different than trees you needed to shoot down. It became a smooth, emotionless process, and even a preferable one to going out against the Red Army.
1
u/commiespaceinvader Moderator | Holocaust | Nazi Germany | Wehrmacht War Crimes Feb 04 '16
Reading Sereny's interviews with Stangl is really interesting and I'd recommend it to any one interested in the perpetrators but only with critical additional material such as Sara Berger's Experten der Vernichtung.
1
u/WARitter Moderator | European Armour and Weapons 1250-1600 Feb 04 '16
I tried to keep in mind that Stangl was radically dishonest, but since I haven't read Berger is there anything I should keep in mind other than that this was a man trying to evade as much culpability as he could?
2
u/commiespaceinvader Moderator | Holocaust | Nazi Germany | Wehrmacht War Crimes Feb 04 '16
Mostly that his role was much larger and especially much more involved than he makes it out in the interview. With Sereny he talks about basically never being present for the killing actions in Sobibor while both Berger and Arad stress his personally involvement.
Also, he misrepresents his relationship to Wirth claiming they didn't get along when there is no evidence corroborating this.
2
u/commiespaceinvader Moderator | Holocaust | Nazi Germany | Wehrmacht War Crimes Feb 03 '16
Dan Mitchman has written about the "Ostjuden" topic extensively in Angst vor den „Ostjuden“: Die Entstehung der Ghettos während des Holocaust, Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2011. (translated from The Emergence of Jewish Ghettos during the Holocaust (New York: Cambridge UP, 2011) I believe).
3
u/mytimeoutside Feb 03 '16
Browning and others argue the opposite in the sense that it was rather the euphoria over the coming victory in October 1941 that lead to the program of systematic murder being extended to the Jews of all of Europe.
Don't other historians note that the first victims of mass extermination in purposely built death camps and gas chambers were Soviet POW's? Even the first death camps built Oct-Dec 1941, like Majdanek and Maly Trostinets, often didn't begin to receive their first shipments of foreign Jews for extermination until Spring of 1942. And did Belzec and Chlemno also only begin to exterminate Jews in 1942?
1
u/commiespaceinvader Moderator | Holocaust | Nazi Germany | Wehrmacht War Crimes Feb 04 '16
Don't other historians note that the first victims of mass extermination in purposely built death camps and gas chambers were Soviet POW's? Even the first death camps built Oct-Dec 1941, like Majdanek and Maly Trostinets, often didn't begin to receive their first shipments of foreign Jews for extermination until Spring of 1942. And did Belzec and Chlemno also only begin to exterminate Jews in 1942?
It is true that often the first deaths in these facilities were Soviet POWs but it is also established that many of the purposely built facilities were part of the anti-Jewish policies. While e.g. at Chelmno the first gassiing victims were indeed Soviet POWs, the orders for the Sonderkommando Lange in charge of establishing the camp show that it was indeed intended to kill the Jews unable to work in the Warthegau. The same goes for Maly Trostinez where the intention was to clear out the Minsk Ghetto of local Jews to make space for the arriving German Jews. Evidence shows that there were plans for this as early as July 1942 (orders for crematoria ovens).
The problem with the Soviet POWs is that by November 41, the Reich was introducing new policy regarding putting them to work rather than starve them to death or look for ways to get rid of them. They excperimented with them concering a new method of mass killing around that time but en large, the plans were to use them for forced labor around this time.
6
u/HippopotamicLandMass Feb 03 '16 edited Feb 03 '16
In addition to the excellent comments here, I'd like to add a point Timothy Snyder has argued: The war was a necessary condition for carrying out mass extermination.
The SS destroyed governments in Eastern Europe, including the Baltic States, Poland, Belarus/BSSR, and UkraineSSR. ~1% of Jews survived in those regions.
"Where states were destroyed, Jews were murdered; where the state remained intact, Jews could find some protection in bureaucracies and passports. It was in the stateless regions of Eastern Europe where the Nazis were able to experiment with and calibrate the Final Solution, which they then tried to export back west." (Edward Delman reviewing Snyder)
"In Nazi-occupied but technically sovereign Denmark, 99 percent of Jews survived, whereas in Greece and the Netherlands—where a puppet government ruled and where the SS took over domestic policy, respectively—three-quarters of Jews were deported to extermination camps. Only through the production of statelessness external to Germany could Adolf Hitler’s “biological anarchist” worldview find expression.
"Critics may object that it was precisely a powerful German state that created these stateless zones, but German Jews were still far more likely to survive than Jews in zones of statelessness. Further, the chief murdering institution—the SS—was a Nazi Party organization whose ability to destroy states multiplied once it left the borders of the Reich." (Timothy Nunan reviewing Snyder)
5
u/commiespaceinvader Moderator | Holocaust | Nazi Germany | Wehrmacht War Crimes Feb 03 '16
I am not going to lie, I am no fan of Snyder, especially his lukewarm theory of totalitarianism.
While the argument concerning the state does make a certain sense, the reliance on the Denmark example is not entirely useful just for the fact that even if a country like, let's say Hungary, wanted to evacuate its Jews like Denmark did, where would they send them? Actually, the take-over of Best in Denmark indicated that a move similar to Greece or France was planned if not for the evacuation of a Jewish population that was comparatively small to begin with.
135
u/commiespaceinvader Moderator | Holocaust | Nazi Germany | Wehrmacht War Crimes Feb 03 '16
It is important to emphasize that the war was necessary for the Holocaust, essential even.
The Holocaust in the form that it occurred was not planned that way in 1933 and not even in 1939. For the Nazis the so-called Final Solution to the Jewish Question took several forms depending on when you ask. In the 1930s the preferred and conducted policy was forcible emigration from Germany to basically every country willing to accept German Jews.
Accepting the ideological delusion that the Nazis were fighting a war with the Jews, it was actually their own success in the war that placed them under Zugzwang. For the Nazis Jews were a security concern and every Jew under their rule was an additional security risk. Therefore, occupying Poland with its approx. 3 million Jews really put the pressure on the Nazi leadership to find a solution to this purported problem. The Madagascar plan is a perfect example for this.
Additionally, the war was important for the acceptance of murder as a policy. With the progression of the war, the Nazis saw a chance to have a united German populace against an external enemy in order to deal with "internal enemies". Thus, with the start of the war, the euthanasia program is initiated. That was an important step towards more murderous policy because it proved to the Nazi leadership that it is indeed possible to just kill people.
The most important step probably is the attack on the Soviet Union. The war against the Soviets was from its very inception in the minds of the Nazis a war of ideological annihilation aimed at complete destruction of the "Judeo-Bolsheviks". Therefore, when the attack on the Soviet Union begins, the Kommissarorder and other similar orders aim at murdering the Jews of the Soviet Union because they are for the Nazis the same as a member of the Communist Party. And out of this decision grows the policy of murdering all Jews of Europe.
In fact, it is likely that the intial good outlook and then especially the not-so-good outlook in how the war went, was an important factor in speeding up the killing process. In the minds of the Nazis, the weaker they were, the greater the risk from the Jews. And so, to them, it was necessary to kill them even faster.
You mustn't see the effort put in the Holocaust and the war effort as something separate or contrary. For the Nazis, this was the same war they were fighting and the effort for one had the same priority as the other.
Sources:
Richard Evan's Third Reich Triology
Raul Hilberg: The Destruction of the European Jews, 2003.
Christopher Browning: Fateful Months.
Ian Kershaw: Hitler.
Ian Kershaw: The Nazi Dictatorship. Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, (London, 1985, 4th ed., 2000).