14: Adolf Hitler, the Author of the Final Solution
Until now he had scrupulously integrated his own general policy with that of Germany, since both led in the same general direction. The resurgence of German honor and military might, the seizure of lost Germanic territories, and even Lebensraum in the East were approved heartily by most of his countrymen. But at last had come the crossroads where Hitler must take his personal detour and solve, once and for all, the Jewish question. While many Germans were willing to join this racist crusade, the great majority merely wanted a continuation of the limited Jewish persecution which had already received the tacit approval of millions of Westerners.
It was Hitler's intent to start eliminating the Jews secretly before leaking out the truth a little at a time to his own people. Eventually the time would be ripe for revelations that would tie all Germans to his own fate; his destiny would become Germany's. Complicity in his crusade to cleanse Europe of Jewry would make it a national mission and rouse the people to greater efforts and sacrifices. It would also burn all bridges behind the hesitant and weak-hearted.
Until now all this was kept secret from Hitler's innermost circle -- the secretaries, adjutants, servants and personal staff. But in the autumn of 1941, the Fuehrer began making overt remarks during his table conversations, perhaps as an experiment in revelation. In mid-October, after lecturing on the necessity of bringing decency into civil life, he said, "But the first thing, above all, is to get rid of the Jews. Without that, it will be useless to clean the Augean stables."
Two days later he was more explicit. "From the rostrum of the Reichstag, I prophesied to Jewry that, in the event of war's proving inevitable, the Jew would disappear from Europe. That race of criminals has on its conscience the two million dead of the First World War, and now already hundreds and thousands more. Let nobody tell me that all the same we can't park them in the marshy parts of Russia! Who's worrying about our troops? It's not a bad idea, by the way, that public rumor attributes to us a plan to exterminate the Jews. Terror is a salutary thing."
He predicted that the attempt to create a Jewish state would be a failure. "I have numerous accounts to settle, about which I cannot think today. But that doesn't mean I forget them. I write them down. The time will come to bring out the big book! Even with regard to the Jews, I've found myself remaining inactive. There's no sense in adding uselessly to the difficulties of the moment. One acts shrewdly when one bides his time."
One reason Hitler had delayed implementing the Final Solution was hope that his implied threat to exterminate the Jews would keep America out of the war. But Pearl Harbor ended this faint expectation and Hitler's hope turned to bitterness, with extermination becoming a form of international reprisal.
The decision taken, the Fuehrer made it known to those entrusted with the Final Solution that the killings should be done as humanely as possible. This was in line with his conviction that he was observing God's injunction to cleanse the world of vermin. Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of God. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of God -- so long as it was done impersonally, without cruelty.
Himmler was pleased to murder with mercy. He ordered technical experts to devise gas chambers which would eliminate masses of Jews efficiently and "humanely," then crowded the victims into boxcars and sent them east to stay in ghettos until the killing centers in Poland were completed.
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The preparations for the Final Solution were maturing and Himmler's Einsatzgruppen had begun another deadly sweep. While this second roundup of Jews, commissars and partisans was carried out in a coordinated manner in the military areas, progress in civilian territories proceeded less smoothly. Even so, the death toll was massive and Alfred Rosenberg's East Ministry staff begged him once more to urge Hitler to treat the peoples of the occupied areas as allies, not enemies. Rosenberg's aides warmly supported his relatively liberal concept of setting up separate states with varying degrees of self-government, but this is not what the Fuehrer had in mind.
In any case, Rosenberg's liaison officer at the Wolf's Lair, Werner Koeppen, was finding it increasingly difficult to convey to Hitler the true story of what was going on in the East. Martin Bormann was insisting on acting as go-between with the excuse that the Fuehrer was too busy with military matters. And so, concluded Koeppen, Hitler only saw the problem of the occupied East through the eyes of his right-hand man.
While it is true that Hitler had little time for internal matters, it was more likely that Bormann always followed his personal instructions; and there was no doubt that Hitler always took time to oversee the Final Solution. In this matter he neither needed nor took advice. He made this clear in his message on the anniversary of the promulgation of the party program in late February 1942.
"My prophecy," he said, "shall be fulfilled that this war will not destroy Aryan humanity but it will exterminate the Jew. Whatever the battle may bring in its course or however long it may last, that will be its final course."
The elimination of Jewry overrode victory itself.
Despite such hints, few had yet been initiated into the secret. Joseph Goebbels himself still did not realize the enormity of the measures being prepared. Only in March did he learn the exact meaning of Final Solution. Then Hitler told him flatly that Europe must be cleansed of all Jews, "if necessary by applying the most brutal methods."
The Fuehrer was so explicit that Goebbels could now write in his diary:
". . . A judgement is being visited upon the Jews that, while barbaric, is fully deserved. . . . One must not be sentimental in these matters. If we did not fight the Jews, they would destroy us. It's a life-and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus. No other government and no other regime would have the strength for such a global solution of this question."
By spring the six killing centers had been set up in Poland. Four of the camps gassed the Jews by engine-exhaust fumes, but Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, thought this too "inefficient" and introduced to his camp a more lethal gas, hydrogen cyanide, marketed commercially under the name of Zyklon B.
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