Hitler’s rapid endorsement of such an ill-thought-out and impracticable scheme reflected his superficial involvement in anti-Jewish policy during 1940. His main interests that year were plainly elsewhere, in the direction of war strategy. For the time being at least, the ‘Jewish Question’ was a secondary matter for him. His comments on the Jews usually followed promptings by others — such as Himmler, Frank, Ribbentrop, or Goebbels, all with direct interests in anti-Jewish policy. Similarly, his decisions, as with the blocking of the transport of Jews to the General Government, were largely reactive and, as in this case, giving the highest approval to a policy that had already been introduced. Hitler’s visceral detestation of the Jews was undiminished. His keen intervention in the shaping of Goebbels’s horrific ‘documentary’ The Eternal Jew was one indicator of this.245 His central belief that the war would bring the solution to the ‘problem’ was, of course, unaltered. Goebbels reported the menacing remark after a discussion with Hitler at the beginning of June that ‘we’ll quickly be finished with the Jews after the war’.246 But at the time there are no indications that Hitler had anything other than the vague Madagascar notion in mind.
However, the broad mandate to ‘solve the Jewish Question’ associated with Hitler’s ‘mission’, coupled with the blockages in doing so in occupied Poland, sufficed. Others were more active than Hitler himself. To Goebbels, Hitler gave merely the assurance that the Jews were earmarked to leave Berlin, without approving any immediate action.247 Some had more luck with their demands. As in the east, the Gauleiter given responsibilities in the newly occupied areas in the west were keen to exploit their position to get rid of the Jews from their Gaue. In July Robert Wagner, Gauleiter of Baden and now in charge of Alsace, and Josef Bürckel, Gauleiter of the Saar-Palatinate and Chief of the Civil Administration in Lorraine, both pressed Hitler to allow the expulsion westwards into Vichy France of the Jews from their domains. Hitler gave his approval. Some 3,000 Jews were deported that month from Alsace into the unoccupied zone of France.248 In October, following a further meeting with the two Gauleiter, a total of 6,504 Jews were sent to France in nine trainloads, without any prior consultation with the French authorities. Bureaucrats gave meticulous detail to the police who were to round up the Jews, reminding them to turn off water and gas in the homes, hand over pets (against a receipt) to local government or Party officials, and label the keys to the apartments being vacated. Jews were allowed to take a suitcase of clothes, food for a few days, and 100 Reich Marks per person with them. Their property was confiscated. They had to be ready to leave within two hours. Some were forced out within quarter of an hour. A number committed suicide. Jews who were bedridden were loaded on to the trains on stretchers. The oldest Jew deported was a ninety-seven-year-old man from Karlsruhe. The police accompanied the transports, which were carried out in agreement with the Wehrmacht (even down to Wehrmacht vehicles being used to carry Jews from outlying districts to the ‘collecting places’). After a horrifying journey lasting several days, the Jews were herded into camps in southern France at the foot of the Pyrenees. Neither food nor provisions were minimally adequate for the largely elderly deportees. The French authorities, the report on the deportations concluded, appeared to have in mind their further deportation to Madagascar as soon as the sea-passage was secure.249
