How much detail Hitler asked for, or was given, cannot be known. But, one indication at the very least, that he was aware of the slaughter of huge numbers of Jews, is provided by a report which Himmler had drawn up for him at the end of 1942 providing statistics on Jews ‘executed’ in southern Russia on account of alleged connection with ‘bandit’ activity. Having ordered in mid-December that partisan ‘bands’ were to be combated ‘by the most brutal means
Four months after this, in April 1943, Himmler would have an abbreviated statistical report on ‘the Final Solution of the Jewish Question’ sent to Hitler. Aware of the taboo in Hitler’s entourage on explicit reference to the mass killing of the Jews, Himmler had the statistical report presented in camouflage language. The fiction had to be maintained. Himmler ordered the term ‘Special Treatment’ (itself a euphemism for killing) deleted from the shortened version to be sent to Hitler. His statistician, Dr Richard Korherr, was ordered simply to refer to the ‘transport of Jews’. There was reference to Jews being ‘sluiced through’ unnamed camps. The camouflage-language was there to serve a specific purpose. Hitler would understand what it meant, and recognize the Reichsführer-SS’s ‘achievement’.146
When he spoke at lunchtime on 29 May 1942 to Goebbels and to his other guests at his meal-table about his preference for the ‘evacuation’ of the Jews to Central Africa, Hitler was sustaining the fiction which had to be upheld even in his ‘court circle’ that the Jews were being resettled and put to work in the east.147 Goebbels himself, in his diary entry, went along with the fiction, though he knew only too well — as an earlier explicit entry in his diary indicates — what was happening to the Jews in Poland.148 Hitler, as we noted in the previous chapter, had spoken in early 1941 of deporting the Jews to the east. The Madagascar Plan, if he had ever taken it seriously, had by then been abandoned for some time. In September 1941 he had authorized the deportation of the Jews to the east. Speaking now of sending the Jews to central Africa, when only a fortnight earlier he had once more indicated how little interest he had in overseas colonies and when, at this juncture, there was no prospect of attaining territory there, amounted to no more than a fig-leaf to cover what he knew was actually happening.149 Hitler had by now internalized his authorization of the killing of the Jews. It was typical of his way of dealing with the ‘Final Solution’ that he spoke of it either by repeating what he knew had long since ceased to be the case; or by alluding to the removal of Jews from Europe (often in the context of his ‘prophecy’) at some distant point in the future.
Hitler’s preoccupation with secrecy remained intense. Nowhere is there an explicit indication, even in discussions with adjutants or secretaries, of his knowledge of the extermination of the Jews.150 The subject was probably mentioned, if at all, only privately to Himmler and in general terms (as in their discussion on 18 December 1941), and otherwise darkly hinted at in camouflaged remarks, whose meanings were perfectly well understood by those aware of what was happening. Himmler adopted the same strategy.151
