60. Pätzold, Verfolgung, 295–6.
61. Eichmann confirmed after the war that the document had been drawn up in the RSHA and merely signed by Göring (Rudolf Aschenauer (ed.), Ich, Adolf Eichmann, Leoni, 1980,479). Göring’s desk diary indicates that he had an appointment to see Heydrich on 31 July between 6.15 and 7.15p.m. (Hermann Weiß’, ‘Die Aufzeichnungen Hermann Görings im Institut für Zeitgeschichte’, VfZ, 31 (1983), 365–8, here 366–7).
62. IMG, xxvi, 266–7, Doc. 710-PS; Longerich, Ermordung, 78.
63. Aly, 270–71, 307.
64. Aly, 271; Burrin, 116.
65. The only evidence linking the document with Hitler is tenuous. Over a year later, the Foreign Office expert on anti-Jewish policy, Martin Luther, claimed to have heard Heydrich mention at the Wannsee Conference, on 20 January 1942, that he had received the commission from Göring on Hitler’s instructions (Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution, Oxford, 1986, 46n.13). There is no supporting evidence, either from the minutes or from others attending the Conference, for Heydrich’s alleged remark. (See Burrin, 116; Breitman (who accepts Luther’s comment), 193 and 296 n.27.) Eberhard Jäckel, in an as yet unpublished paper on Heydrich’s role in the development of extermination policy which he kindly allowed me to see, presumes it to be ‘very unlikely that Göring gave his signature without instruction from or at least approval by Hitler’. Since the ‘mandate’ was essentially confirming powers which Heydrich already possessed — if (which was its purpose) now establishing more plainly for others his primacy in planning a ‘final solution of the Jewish Question’ — it remains unclear why Hitler’s explicit involvement was necessary.
66. See Burrin, 116ff.; Aly, 271–3, 307; Mommsen, ‘Realisierung’, 409.
67. Aly, 307.
68. NA, T175, Roll 577, Frame 366337, Report of SD-Hauptaußenstelle Bielefeld, 5 August 1941.1 am most grateful to Prof. Otto Dov Kulka (Jerusalem) for referring me to this report.
69. TBJG, II/2, 218 (12 August 1941).
70. ‘Das Reichsministerium des Innern und die Judengesetzgebung. Aufzeichnungen von Dr. Bern-hard Losener’, VfZ, 9 (1961), 262–311, here 303.
71. ‘Das Reichsministerium des Innern und die Judengesetzgebung’, 302–3. There is no doubt that this was an accurate reflection of Goebbels’s own views. On 7 August, he had written in his diary, in the context of reports of typhus in the Warsaw ghetto: ‘The Jews have always been carriers of infectious diseases. They should be either packed into (zusammenpferchen) a ghetto and left to themselves, or liquidated’ (TBJG, II/1, 189 (7 August 1941)).
72. ‘Das Reichsministerium des Innern und die Judengesetzgebung’, 303.
73. ‘Das Reichsministerium des Innern und die Judengesetzgebung’, 303–4.
74. TBJG, II/1, 258–9, 261 (19 August 1941).
75. TBJG, II/1, 265–6, 269 (19 August 1941). Tobias Jersak, ‘Die Interaktion von Kriegsverlauf und Judenvernichtung’, HZ, 268 (1999), 311–49, here 349–52, argues that Hitler had already, when meeting Goebbels, taken the fundamental decision that the Jews of Europe were to be physically destroyed. But the evidence that Hitler dramatically changed policy towards the Jews, taking a fundamental decision for their destruction at this point, while suffering a nervous breakdown, under the impact of the realization that his strategic plan for rapidly defeating the Soviet Union had failed, and recognizing that following the signing of the Atlantic Charter by Roosevelt and Churchill he would inevitably be soon fighting the USA, is not persuasive. Hitler’s view of the Atlantic Charter (as expressed to Goebbels) was, moreover, predictably dismissive (TBJG, II/1, 263 (19 August I941)).
76. TBJG, II/1, 278 (20 August 1941).
77. Fleming, Hitler und die Endlösung, 79.
78. NA, T175, Roll 577, reports of SD-Außenstelle Höxter, 25 September 1941, SD-HauptauEenstelle Bielefeld, 30 September 1941; MadR, ix.3245–8; Steinert, 239–40; Ian Kershaw, ‘German Popular Opinion and the “Jewish Question”, 1939–1943: Some Further Reflections’, in Arnold Paucker (ed.), Die Juden im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, Tübingen, 1986, 366–86, here 373; Bankier, 134.
79. Andreas-Friedrich, 53 (entry for 19 September 1941, the day the decree on the wearing of the Yellow Star came into effect).
80. Klemperer, i.671 (20 September 1941), 673 (25 September 1941).
81. Inge Deutschkron, Ich trug den gelben Stern, (1978), 4th edn, Cologne, 1983, 87.
82. Bankier, 124–30.
83. Bankier, 127.
84. Faschismus, 250–52; Aly, 336–7; Fox, ‘Abetz’, 198–201.
85. Aly, 335–6, 338; see also Burrin, 118–19.
