58: Crossing the Rubicon

Colonel-General Johannes Blaskowitz wrote the most forthright and courageous denunciations of the horrendous outrages of the SS in Poland. In reports to Colonel-General Walther von Brauchitcsh, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Blaskowitz detailed the "criminal atrocities, maltreatment, and plundering carried out by the SS, police, and administration. He castigated the "animal and pathological instincts" of the SS which had brought the slaughter of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles. Blaskowitz feared "immeasurable brutalization and moral debasement" if the SS could not be brought under control, but this appeared to be increasingly impossible within Poland "since they can well believe themselves officially authorized and justified in committing any act of cruelty."

The response by Brauchitsch was weak-kneed and, effectively, a justification for the policy authorized by Hitler, and it was fateful. The general compromised the position of the army, and made way for the accommodation between the army and the SS on the genocidal actions to be taken later in the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa. Brauchitsch spoke about "regrettable mistakes" in the "difficult solution" of the "ethnic-political tasks." After lengthy discussions with the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, Brauchitsch was confident that the future would bring a change. Criticism of the SS could endanger the "unity and fighting power of the troops" and, thusly, had to be prohibited.

"The solution of ethnic-political tasks, necessary for securing German living space and ordered by the Führer, had necessarily to lead to otherwise unusual, harsh measures against the Polish population of the occupied area," said Brauchitsch. "The necessarily accelerated execution of these tasks, caused by the imminently decisive struggle of the German people, naturally brought about a further intensification of these measures." 

Brauchitsch, likely anticipating the inevitable criticism regarding the inadequacies of the army, did not even deliver Blaskowitz's reports to Hitler, but he did pass on at least the first report to Hitler's army adjutant Gerhard Engel. The expected denunciation of the "childish attitudes" in the army leadership soon followed. "You can't wage war with Salvation Army methods," raged Hitler.

Army complaints had led Himmler to order inquiries, which predictably concluded that it was only a matter of "trivialities. Still, the Reichsführer-SS was angered by the criticism, and so, in March 1940, he sought an opportunity to address army leaders. He began by accepting responsibility for what had happened in Poland, though he again played down the reports. Himmler accounted for the reports of serious atrocities by attributing them to rumor.

According to General Freiherr Maximillian von Weichs, who was present, Himmler said that "he was prepared, in matters that seemed perhaps incomprehensible, to take on responsibility before the people and the world, since the person of the Führer could not be connected with these things."

General Ulex, also present, recalled Himmler saying, "I do nothing that the the Führer does not know about."

Ian Kershaw argues that by sanctioning the liquidation program which was at the core of the the barbaric "ethnic cleansing" drive in Poland, Hitler had crossed the Rubicon:

"This was no longer a display of outright brutality at home that shocked -- as had the massacre of the SA leadership in 1934, or even more so the November Pogrom against the Jews in 1938 -- precisely because the structures and traditions of legality in the Reich, whatever the inroads made into them, had not been totally undermined. In what had once been Poland, the violence was unconstrained, systematic, and on a scale never witnessed within the Reich itself. Law, however draconian, counted for nothing. The police were given a free hand. Even the incorporated areas were treated for policing terms as outside the Reich. What was taking place in the conquered territories fell, to be sure, still far short of the all-out genocide that was to emerge during the Russian campaign in the summer of 1941. But it had near-genocidal traits. It was the training ground for what was to follow."

In remarks to Alfred Rosenberg and Joseph Goebbels, Hitler illustrated how his own impressions of the Poles provided the self-justification for the drastic methods he had approved. His own attitudes had doubtlessly been strengthened by Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. Even Goebbels played to Hitler's prejudices when ventilating his own. The propaganda minister had told the Führer in mid-October of the preliminary work on what would become the antisemitic "documentary" Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), and Hitler listened with great interest.

What Goebbels said to Hitler might be inferred from his own reactions when he saw the first pictures from what he called the "ghetto film." The appearance of the degraded, downtrodden Jews, crushed under the Nazi yoke, had come to resemble the caricature that Goebbels's own propaganda had produced.

"Description so terrible and brutal in detail that your blood clots in your veins," said the Führer. "You shrink back at the sight of such brutishness. This Jewry must be annihilated."

A fortnight later, Goebbels showed him the horrible ritual-slaughter scenes from the film, and reported on his own impressions from his visit to the Lodz ghetto: "It's indescribable. Those are no longer human beings. They are animals. So it's not a humanitarian but a surgical task. Otherwise Europe will perish through the Jewish disease."

As Kershaw writes, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, and other leading Nazis were "working towards the Führer," whose authority allowed the realization of their own fantasies. "The same was true," adds Kershaw, "of countless lesser figures in the racial experiment under way in the occupied territories. Academics -- historians at the forefront -- excelled themselves in justifying German hegemony in the east. Racial 'experts' in the party set to work to construct the 'scientific' basis for the inferiority of the Poles. Armies of planners, moved to the east, started to let their imagination run riot in devising megalomaniac schemes for ethnic resettlement and social restructuring. Hitler had to do no more than provide the general license for barbarism. There was no shortage of ready hands to put it into practice."

It began with the head of the civil administration in occupied Poland. "Forster in Danzig-West Prussia, Greiser in the Warthegau, and Frank in the General Government were trusted 'Old Fighters,' handpicked for the task by Hitler. They knew what was expected of them. Regular and precise directives were not necessary."

Source:

Kershaw, I. (2008). Hitler: A Biography. London: W. W. Norton and Company.