Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

Hitler’s remarks to Rosenberg and Goebbels illustrated how his own impressions of the Poles provided for him the self-justification for the drastic methods he had approved. He had unquestionably been strengthened in these attitudes by Himmler and Heydrich. Goebbels, too, played to Hitler’s prejudices in ventilating his own. In mid-October Goebbels told him of the preliminary work carried out on what was to become the nauseating antisemitic ‘documentary’ film Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew). Hitler listened with great interest. What Goebbels said to Hitler might be implied from his own reactions when he viewed the first pictures from what he called the ‘ghetto film’. The appearance of the degraded and downtrodden Jews, crushed under the Nazi yoke, had come to resemble the caricature that Goebbels’s own propaganda had produced. ‘Descriptions so terrible and brutal in detail that your blood clots in your veins,’ he commented. ‘You shrink back at the sight of such brutishness (Roheit). This Jewry must be annihilated (vernicbtet).’¹⁰⁴ A fortnight or so later Goebbels showed Hitler the horrible ritual-slaughter scenes from the film, and reported on his own impressions — already pointing plainly in a genocidal direction — gleaned during 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.’¹⁰⁵

In a most literal sense, 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 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.¹⁰⁶ Racial ‘experts’ in the Party set to work to construct the ‘scientific’ basis for the inferiority of the Poles.¹⁰⁷ Armies of planners, moved to the east, started to let their imagination run riot in devising megalomaniac schemes for ethnic resettlement and social restructuring.¹⁰⁸ Hitler had to do no more than provide the general licence for barbarism. There was no shortage of ready hands to put it into practice.

This began with the heads 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’, hand-picked for the task by Hitler. They knew what was expected of them. Regular and precise directives were not necessary.

The Warthegau provides clear illustration of the ways ‘working towards the Führer’ — anticipating Hitler’s presumed wishes and intentions — translated into ever more radical actions. Hitler’s man in Posen, head of the civil administration in ‘Reichsgau Wartheland’ (as it was officially known from January 1940 onwards), was Arthur Greiser. For Greiser, a native of the Posen area, the way to Hitler had been the classical one. As with Hitler himself, the war had been a formative experience. He identified completely with the ‘front-soldier’ mentality. Defeat and the loss of his home province left a searing mark on him. Service in the Freikorps was followed by years where he scraped by, earning a living as best he could, including running boat-rides round Danzig harbour.¹⁰⁹ His resentment at his parlous financial situation doubtless helped drive him further into the völkisch camp, then on into the Nazi Party. He was apparently unemployed when, in 1929, he was attracted to what he later called ‘the solution of the great social question’ — unquestionably synonymous in his mind with the ‘ethnic question’ in the former Prussian provinces. He believed that ‘in the chaos of party politics, only Hitler was capable of this solution’.¹¹⁰

Greiser was clever and ambitious enough to work his way through the intrigues of the Danzig Party to become Forster’s deputy and President of the Senate in the Free City, surviving scandals about financial corruption, his membership of a Freemasons’ Lodge in the 1920s, and the stormy break-up of his first marriage. Greiser’s survival owed not a little to his good connections with Himmler. He was also already prepared to do anything to retain favour with Hitler. ‘For this favour,’ recalled Carl Burck-hardt, ‘no price was too high. A wish expressed by Hitler counted for even more than an order.’¹¹¹ When appointed by Hitler Reich Governor and Gauleiter of the Warthegau, Greiser’s ‘gratitude knew no bounds’, according to one contemporary.¹¹² He lost no opportunity to emphasize ‘that he was persona gratissima with the Führer’, and also had the ear of the Reichsführer-SS.¹¹³ He saw his task as working to put into practice the Führer’s ‘heroic vision’ for the Germanization of the Warthegau, to turn it into the ‘model Gau’ of the ‘New Order’. He was given full scope to do so.