Soldaten полностью

216. At the end of his autobiographical writings, Höss took stock: “Today I can see that the extermination of Jews was fundamentally wrong. It was precisely in this act of genocide that Germany attracted the hatred of the entire world. It did not serve the cause of anti-Semitism. On the contrary, it helped Jewry take a step toward its final goal.” Martin Broszat, ed., Rudolf Höß: Kommandant in Auschwitz: Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen des Rudolf Höß (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1989), p. 153.

217. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen (Leipzig: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1986).

218. Christopher R. Browning, Ganz normale Männer: Das Reserve-Polizeibataillon 101 und die “Endlösung” in Polen (Reinbek: Rororo, 1996), p. 243.

219. Robert J. Lifton, Ärzte im Driten Reich (Stuttgart: Ullstein Tb. Auflag, 1999).

220. SRA 4604, 27 October 1943, TNA, WO 208/4131.

221. Arendt, Eichmann, p. 104.

222. SRA 4604, 27 October 1943, TNA, WO 208/4130.

223. See Welzer, Täter, p. 266; and “Internationaler Militärgerichtshof,” ed., in Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher, Vol. 29 (Nuremberg: International Military Tribunal, 1948), p. 145.

224. In Odessa, some 99,000 Jews were murdered, most of them by Romanian soldiers. Enzyklopädie des Holocaust, Vol. 2, p. 1058ff.

225. On the Night of Broken Glass in Vienna, see Siegwald Ganglmair and Regina Forstner-Karner, eds., Der Novemberpogrom 1938: Die Reichskristallnacht in Wien (Vienna: Museen der Stadt Wien, 1988); Herbert Rosenkranz, Reichskristallnacht: 9. November 1938 in Österreich (Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1968).

226. GRGG 281, 8 May–9 May 1945, TNA, WO 208/4177.

227. SRA 5444, 8 July 1944, TNA, WO 208/4134.

228. Room Conversation, Swoboda-Kahrad, 2 December 1944, NARA, RG 165, Entry 179, Box 552.

229. SRA 4820, 13 January 1944, TNA, WO 208/4132.

230. Lvov was home to the Janowska concentration camp, which did not, however, have gas chambers. Estimates of the number of people murdered there range from tens of thousands to 200,000. Enzyklopädie des Holocaust, Vol. 2, p. 657ff. The nearest gas chambers were located at the Belzec concentration camp, some seventy kilometers to the northwest. From mid-March to December 1942, as many as 600,000 Jews, “gypsies,” and Poles were murdered there. On the murders of Jews in Galicia, see Thomas Sandkühler, “Endlösung” in Galizien (Bonn: Dietz, 1996).

231. We can no longer reconstruct how much Ramcke knew about the Holocaust. The fact that he only fought for around four weeks, in February and March 1944, on the Eastern Front in Ukraine would suggest his knowledge was limited.

232. GRGG 272, 13 March–16 March 1945, TNA, WO 208/4177.

233. Welzer, Täter, p.158ff.

234. Kutno was conquered by German troops on 15 September 1939. In June 1940, the Jewish population was confined to a ghetto, where they lived under terrible conditions. In March and April 1942, the ghetto was dissolved, and its inhabitants killed at the Kulmhof extermination camp. Evidence has yet to emerge of any mass executions of Jews in Kutno.

235. GRGG 272, 13 March–16 March 1945, TNA, WO 208/4177.

236. Ibid.

237. In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt wrote of Eichmann’s complete inability to conceive of what he had done. It is possible, though, that her impression was mistaken, based as it was on Eichmann’s indolence and indifference during his trial. It’s more likely that the normative standards Eichmann followed in tirelessly carrying out his duties at the Main Office for Reich Security simply deviated from those that normally apply elsewhere. Eichmann was guided by National Socialist morality. Postwar conservative German politician Hans Karl Filbinger implicitly pointed to those standards as a justification for his own role as a navy judge in handing out death sentences, when he said: “What was just back then cannot be unjust today.”

238. SRM 33, 31 January 1942, TNA, WO 208/4136.

239. SRA 3313, 30 October 1942, TNA, WO 208/4128.

240. Taumberger is presumably talking here about the subterranean facility at Gusen, Austria, where the Messerschmitt 262 fighter jet was supposed to be produced.

241. SRA 5618, 24 September 1944, TNA, WO 208/4134.

242. Welzer, Moller, and Tschuggnall, Opa, p. 158.

243. Room Conversation, Müller–Reimbold, 22 March 1945, NARA, RG 165, Entry 179, Box 530.

244. William Ryan, Blaming the Victim (London: Pantheon, 1972).

245. Broszat, ed., Rudolf Höß, p. 130.