One Hundred Nazi Extermination Remarks, 1939-1944 (Part Three: 31-51)

Part 1

Part 2

31) Staatssekretäre meeting, 2.5.41: "There is no doubt that as a result many millions of people will be starved to death if we take out of the country the things necessary for us” [Aktennotiz über Ergebnis der heutigen. Besprechung mit den Staatssekretären über Barbarossa, 2.5.41, 2718-PS, IMT XXXI, pp.84-85, English translation in NCA V, p.378; cf. Alex J. Kay, ‘Germany's Staatssekretäre, Mass Starvation and the Meeting of 2 May 1941’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41/4, October 2006, pp.685-700].

32) Backe, 23.5.41: "This will inevitably result in an extinction of industry as well as of a large part of the people...” [Wirtschaftspolitische Richtlinien für die Wirtschaftsorganisation Ost vom 23.5.1941, erarbeitet von der Gruppe Landwirtschaft, 23.5.41, EC-126, IMT XXXVI, pp.135-57. English translation in NCA, VII, pp.295-306, here p.305].

33) Heydrich 17.7.41: "Above all, the following must be discovered: all important functionaries of State and Party, especially professional revolutionaries . . . all People’s Commissars in the Red Army, leading personalities of the State . . . leading personalities of the business world, members of the Soviet Russian Intelligence, all Jews, all persons who are found to be agitators or fanatical Communists. Executions are not to be held in the camp or in the immediate vicinity of the camp . . . The prisoners are to be taken for special treatment if possible into the former Soviet Russian territory [502-PS; scan of German text]."

34) Goebbels 20.7.41: "Just as the fist of an awakened Germany has struck this racial filth, the fist of an awakened Europe will surely follow. Mimicry will not help the Jews then. They will have to face their accusers. The court of the nations will judge their oppressor.

Without pity or forgiveness, the blow will strike. The world enemy will fall, and Europe will have peace" [source and source].

35) Himmler, 1.8.41: "Explicit order from the R[eichs]F[ührer-]SS: All Jews must be shot, drive Jewish women into the swamps" [source, p.138].

36) EM 101, 2.10.41: "Sonderkommando 4a in collaboration with Einsatzgruppe HQ and two Kommandos of police regiment South, executed 33,771 Jews in Kiev on September 29 and 30, 1941"

37) Reichenau, 10.10.41: "Therefore the soldier must have full understanding for the necessity of a severe but just revenge on subhuman Jewry. The Army has to aim at another purpose, i.e. the annihilation of revolts in hinterland, which, as experience proves, have always been caused by Jews [source and source]."

38) Alnor, 11.10.41: "Especially the shooting of women and children, who sometimes had to be taken to the execution site screaming, has been the source of general horror. The rather compliant mayor of Libau […] appeared personally before me and pointed out the agitation throughout the city. Also officers asked me if this cruel manner of executing even children was necessary. In any cultured state and even in the Middle Ages it was not allowed to kill pregnant women. Here even that was not taken into consideration.[…] I am of the opinion that this will one day turn out to be a serious mistake. Unless one also liquidates thereafter all elements participating therein. (Es sei denn, dass man alle dabei mitwirkenden Elemente auch anschlieβend liquidiert)[Bericht des Gebietskommissars Libau, gez. Alnor, an den Generalkommissar Lettland, Drechsler, 11.10.1941, VEJ 7, pp.556-57 (Dok. 200), translation by Roberto Muehlenkamp here].

39) Richter file memo, Bucharest, 17.10.41 (enclosed in 3319-PS): "According to information today from director General Lecca, 110,000 Jews are being evacuated from Bukovina and Bessarabia into two forests in the Bug River Area. As far as he could learn, this action is based upon an order issued by Marshal Antonescu. Purpose of the action is the liquidation of these Jews."

40) Wagner, 13.11.41: "non-working prisoners of war in the prison camps are to starve" [Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, p.801, citing AOK 18 Chef des Stabes, Merkpunkte aus der Chefbesprechung in Orscha am 13.11.41, NOKW-1535].

41) Goebbels 16.11.41: "The Jews are receiving a penalty that is certainly hard, but more than deserved. World Jewry erred in adding up the forces available to it for this war, and now is gradually experiencing the destructon that it planned for us, and would have carried out without a second thought if it had possessed the ability. It is perishing according its own law: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”" [source and source].

42) Goering, 11.41: "This year, 20 to 30 million people will die of hunger in Russia. Perhaps it is a good thing that this is happening, because certain peoples must be decimated" [source].

43) Jaeger report, 1.12.41: "I am of the view that the sterilization program of the male worker Jews should be started immediately so that reproduction is prevented. If despite sterilization a Jewess becomes pregnant she will be liquidated [source]."

44) Lohse, 2.12.41: "I request most emphatically that the liquidation of Jews employed as skilled workers in armament plants and repair workshops of the Wehrmacht who cannot be replaced at present by local personnel be prevented [source]."

45) Seraphim, 2.12.41:

Scooping off the agricultural surplus in the Ukraine for the purpose of feeding the Reich is therefore only feasible if traffic in the interior of the Ukraine is diminished to a minimum. The attempt will be made to achieve this

1. by annihilation of superfluous eaters (Jews, population of the Ukrainian big cities, which like Kiev do not receive any supplies at all);

2. by extreme reduction of the rations. allocated to the Ukrainians in the remaining cities;

3. by decrease of the food of the farming population [Bericht Prof. Seraphim mit Anschreiben der Rüstungsinspektion Ukraine, 2.12.41, 3257-PS. IMT vol. XXXII, 71-75, here p.74; translation in NCA, vol. 5, p.996].

46) Mueller 18.2.42: "'where you cut wood, that is where the chips fall,' and the Jewish enemy will always try to exaggerate as much as possible the measures being taken against him in the hope of arousing pity and to achieve the cancellation of these steps. Since they began taking action against this enemy, he has been trying by means of anonymous letters to avoid the destiny that is appropriate to him [source and source]."

47) Rosenberg, 28.2.42: "Anyhow, with a certain amount of understanding for goals aimed at by German politics, dying and deterioration could have been avoided in the extent described. For instance, according to in- formation on hand, the native population within the Soviet Union are absolutely willing to put food at, the disposal of the prisoners of war. Several understanding camp commanders have success- fully chosen this course. However in the majority of the cases, the camp commanders have forbidden the civilian population to put food at the disposal of the prisoners, and they have rather let them starve to death." [Rosenberg an Keitel. Betr.:Kriegsgefangene, 28.2.42. 081-PS, IMT XXV, pp.156-161, here p.157. English translation NMT, III, pp.126-130, here 127].

48) Besprechungsniederschrift der Besprechung über die Endlösung der Judenfrage, 27.10.1942, p.2: "Having regard to this, it was agreed that the proposal to sterilize all half-Jews of the first degree should be approved [source and source]."

49) Decree 24.7.42: "Pregnancies and births in the ghetto are prohibited; pregnancies have to be terminated; pregnant women will be shot." [YVA 048 B12/4 cited in USHMM, Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto, p. 22; Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust. The Kovno Ghetto Diary, entry for July 24, 1942, New York, 2011; Wolfram Wette, Karl Jäger. Mörder der litauischen Juden, Frankfurt am Main 2011, p.139

50) Goebbels 9.5.43: "None of the Führer’s prophetic words has come so inevitably true as his prediction that if Jewry succeeded in provoking a second world war, the result would be not the destruction of the Aryan race, but rather the wiping out of the Jewish race

[...]

The Jews laughed in Germany too when they first saw us. They are not laughing any longer. They chose to wage war against us. But that war is turning against them. When they planned a war to totally destroy the German nation, they signed their own death warrant" [source and source].

51) Tauebner judgment 24.5.43: "The accused shall not be punished because of the actions against the Jews as such. The Jews have to be exterminated and none of the Jews that were killed is any great loss. Although the accused should have recognized that the extermination of the Jews was the duty of Kommandos which were set up especially for this purpose, he should be excused for considering himself to have the authority to take part in the extermination of Jewry himself. Real hatred of the Jews was the driving motivation for the accused. In the process he let himself be drawn into committing cruel actions in Alexandriya which are unworthy of a German man and an SS-officer. These excesses cannot be justified, either, as the accused would like to, as retaliation for the pain that the Jews have caused the German people. It is not the German way to apply Bolshevic methods during the necessary extermination of the worst enemy of our people. In so doing the conduct of the accused gives rise to considerable concern. The accused allowed his men to act with such vicious brutality that they conducted themselves under his command like a savage horde [source]."