103. Burrin, 123–4, sees it as such. Eichmann, whose testimony while in Israeli custody many years later was shaky on chronology, claimed to have been told by Heydrich two to three months after the beginning of the Russian campaign of the Führer’s order for the physical extermination of the Jews. (Lang, Eichmann-Protokoll, 69; see Browning, Fateful Months, 23–6.) Höß?, the Commandant of Auschwitz, recalled being told by Himmler in summer 1941 of Hitler’s decision. But his memory was as at least as fallible as Eichmann’s on detail and much, if not all, of what he said appears better to fit 1942 than 1941. {Kommandant in Auschwitz. Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen des Rudolf Höß, (1963), Munich, 4th edn, 1978, 157. And see Browning, Fateful Months, 22–3; Burrin, 170 n.15.) Breitman, Architect, 189–90, accepts the testimony for the timing of Hitler’s decision, as does Graml, Reichskristallnacht, 228–9. The view that Höß’s testimony referred to 1941 is, however, convincingly rejected by Karin Orth, ‘Rudolf Höß? und die “Endlösung der Judenfrage”. Drei Argumente gegen deren Datierung auf den Sommer 1941’, Werkstattgeschichte, 18 (1997), 45–57.
104. Longerich, Politik, 475.
105. John L. Heinemann, Hitler’s First Foreign Minister. Constantin Freiherr von Neurath, Diplomat and Statesman, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 1979, 209–11.
106. TBJG, II.i.480–81 (24 September 1941).
107. TBJG, II.i.485 (24 September 1941).
108. TBJG, II.ii.169 (24 October 1941). It was the first of nine batches of deportation from Berlin before a temporary halt at the end of January 1942 because of transport problems (Tb Reuth, 1710, n.209).
109. TBJG, II.ii. 194–5 (28 October 1941).
110. TBJG, II.ii.309 (18 November 1941).
111. Das Reich, 16 Nov. 1941: ‘Die Juden sind schuld!’: ‘… Es bewahrheitet sich an ihnen [den Juden] auch die Prophezeihung, die der Führer am 30. Januar 1939 im Deutschen Reichstag aussprach… Wir erleben eben den Vollzug dieser Prophezeihung, und es erfüllt sich damit am Judentum ein Schicksal, das zwar hart, aber mehr als verdient ist. Mitleid oder Bedauern ist da gänzlich unangebracht…’ A lengthy extract from the article, including this passage, is printed in Hans–Heinrich Wilhelm, ‘Wie geheim war die “Endlösung”’, in Benz, Miscellanea, 131–48, here 137–8 (136 for Das Reich’s circulation figures); and see Reuth, Goebbels, 491. As the passage indicates, Goebbels, unlike Hitler, dated the ‘prophecy’ of 1939 correctly.
112. Irving, Goebbels, 379.
113. MadR, viii.3007 (20 November 1941).
114. TBJG, II/2, 352 (23 November 1941).
115. TBJG, II/2, 340–1 (22 November 1941). Hitler also recommended — obviously responding to a point close to the Propaganda Minister’s heart — Goebbels to tread carefully with regard to Jewish ‘mixed-marriages’, especially in artistic circles. He was of the opinion that such marriages were dying out anyway with the passage of time, and that it was not necessary to lose any sleep about them. Fifteen months later, Goebbels would ignore such a recommendation. But a week-long protest of hundreds of wives would eventually halt the planned deportation of their Jewish husbands. (See Nathan Stoltzfus, Resistance of the Heart, New York/London, 1996.)
116. See Martin Broszat, ‘Hitler und die Genesis der “Endlösung”. Aus Anlaß der Thesen von David Irving’, VfZ, 25 (1977), 739–75, here especially 752–3, 755–6.
117. Raul Hilberg, ‘Die Aktion Reinhard’, in Eberhard Jäckel and Jürgen Rohwer (eds.), Der Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Entschlußbildung und Verwirklichung, Stuttgart, 1985, 125–36, here 126; Longerich, Politik, 457; Aly, 342–7; Christian Gerlach, ‘Failure of Plans for an SS Extermination Camp in Mogilev, Belorussia’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 11 (1997), 60–78.
