An Early Use of 'Ausrottung' - and a small deception by Jansson

On September 12, 1936, Julius Streicher used the word 'extirpated' [Ausrottung] in a clearly exterminatory sense in a speech reported by The Times, reproduced on September 16 in The Glasgow Herald, shown here. Jansson claims here that the quote was imputed falsely to Streicher by Jewish organizations, and credulously chooses to believe Streicher's defence at Nuremberg. However, Jansson's own source (pp.23-24) shows that the quote was published in The Times, which was not a Jewish organization, and the original author of the article was, according to his biography, Matthew Halton, a Canadian reporter.

Hans Frank Diaries: 2) "Extermination of the Jews in Poland"

The following translation of remarks made by Frank on June 9, 1944, was posted here by Roberto in 2015:

For fighting the Jews it was indispensable that we got Poland, for here in Poland lived the natural fertility of the Jewish people, it no longer existed anywhere else. Since the extermination of the Jews in Poland the Jewish future, seen purely under blood aspects, is completely over and out; for only here there were Jews who had children.

The German was extracted from the Diensttagebuch pp.868-869 here.

Correction Corner #6: Michael Shermer and Hans Frank's speech

In Michael Shermer's and Alex Grobman’s book Denying History (2009, expanded edn.) we see the following claim (p.186):

On October 7, 1940, in a speech to a Nazi assembly, Hans Frank, head of the Generalgouvernement (the governmental administration over Poland’s four districts of Krakow, Warsaw, Radom, and Lublin), summed up his first year:

“My dear Comrades! … I could not eliminate [ausrotten] all lice and Jews in only one year. But in the course of time, and if you help me, this end will be attained.”28

To those deniers who claim that by ausrotten Frank merely meant deportation, we counter: Did Frank, then, mean to “deport” all the lice? Only one translation makes sense here.

The endnote is:

28. N.D. 3363-PS, 891.

However, PS-3363 has nothing to do with Frank. The speech is from PS-2233, Frank’s official diary. The speech took place not on Oct. 7, but rather on Dec.19 (see IMT vol. 29, p. 415).

And contrary to Shermer and Grobman, Frank used beseitigen instead of ausrotten:

Freilich, in einem Jahre konnte ich weder sämtliche Läuse noch sämtliche Juden beseitigen (Heiterkeit). Aber im Laufe der Zeit und vor allem dann, wenn Ihr mir helft, wird sich das schon erreichen lassen. Es ist ja auch nicht notwendig, dass wir alles in einem Jahre und alles gleich tun, denn was hätten sonst diejenigen, die nach uns kommen, noch zu schaffen?

This claim was also made in Shermer’s book Why People Believe Weird Things and in the first edition of Denying History, and it seemingly first appeared in his article "Proving the Holocaust: The Refutation of Revisionism & the Restoration of History" in Skeptic, 1994, Vol. 2, No. 4.

That Hans Frank made this speech on Oct.7, 1940 was claimed by William Shirer in his classic tome Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich. He specified his source as “NCA, IV, p. 891 (N.D. 2233-C-PS)”. And indeed, when we go to the relevant volume of NCA, we do find the speech in the following form (pp. 890-1):

[Page 943, 4th-6th lines]
10/7/40
The Governor-General then addresses the assembly with the
following words :
My dear Comrades ! * * * * * * *
[Page 946, lines 1-3, 21-30]
10/7/40
* * * There are so few of us here that no one can actually
really conceal himself. Everybody has to fear that the spotlight
will now and then rest on him * * *
* * * It is clear that education will perhaps still be necessary
here and there; furthermore, it is clear that this openminded
comradeship, this common spirit of close contact finds its
counter-part in the unstinted observation of authority in inner
office relations. We cannot permit the offices to become 5 o’clock
tea rooms. But, of course, our position as Germans here must be
such that the lowest of us is still far above the highest Pole in
this room * * *
[Page 1158, 2nd par. to p. 1159 4th line]
* * * And another thing was told me by the Fuehrer in all
seriousness, a few days ago: that the old Japanese proverb:-
after the war tighten your helmet strap-should retain its validity.
Comrades, never again shall we be a weak Reich. The
Armed Forces will represent the crown of community education.
Just as the NSDAP is the crown of social, political and ideological
leadership, so the Armed Forces will be the essence of military
training, of the proud and immaculate bearing of our people.
And you can say: you took part in it as soldiers. I am very
happy about this hour of the Armed Forces, for it joins us all
together. Some of you left your mothers, your parents at home,
others their wives, their brides, their brothers, their children.
In all these weeks, they will be thinking of you, saying to themselves:
my God, there he sits in Poland where there are so many
lice and Jews, perhaps he is hungry and cold, perhaps he is
afraid to write. It would not be a bad idea then to send our dear
ones back home a picture, and tell them: well now, there are not
so many lice and Jews any more, and conditions here in the Government
General have changed and improved somewhat already.
Of course, I could not eliminate all lice and Jews in only one
year’s time.’ (public amused) But in the course of time, and
above all, if you help me, this end will be attained. After all, it is
not necessary for us to accomplish everything within a year and
right away for what would otherwise be left for those who follow
us to do?

Shirer erroneously assumed that the date “10/7/40” applies to all the paragraphs below. This cannot be, of course, since there are more than 200 pages separating the two excerpts! And if you look at the same speech in IMT, it is clearly dated Dec. 19.

So it was the NCA editors’ oversight in not assigning the date, Shirer’s sloppiness in not noticing the page count and not cross-checking with the IMT version. But at least Shirer gives the correct source.

Shermer clearly relied on Shirer. Here is Shirer:

Frank did not neglect the Jews, even if the Gestapo had filched the direct task of extermination away from him. His journal is full of his thoughts and accomplishments on the subject. On October 7, 1940, it records a speech he made that day to a Nazi assembly in Poland summing up his first year of effort.

My dear Comrades! … I could not eliminate all lice and Jews in only one year. [”Public amused,” he notes down at this point.] But in the course of time, and if you help me, this end will be attained.

Here’s Shermer:

On October 7, 1940, in a speech to a Nazi assembly, Hans Frank, head of the Generalgouvernement (the governmental administration over Poland’s four districts of Krakow, Warsaw, Radom, and Lublin), summed up his first year:

“My dear Comrades! … I could not eliminate [ausrotten] all lice and Jews in only one year. But in the course of time, and if you help me, this end will be attained.”

The phrasing is the same, and they quote basically the same parts (with “my dear comrades” actually belonging to another speech, which is skipped by both authors). Also note that the official English translation has "in only one year’s time" and "and above all, if you help me", whereas both Shirer and Shermer have "in only one year" and "and if you help me".

Let’s compare their endnotes again:

• Shirer: NCA, IV, p. 891 (N.D. 2233-C-PS)
• Shermer: N.D. 3363-PS, 891.

Page 891 is a page in the 4th NCA volume, not a page of the original document! It’s meaningless otherwise. Shermer’s endnote should have included the NCA reference. Moreover, as pointed out, Shermer gets the document number completely wrong. But interestingly enough, the same document (PS-3363) is referenced by Shirer in the same chapter (see e.g. note 37 here - and keep in mind that the Frank endnote is 41 - quite close).

This explains why Shermer misdated the Frank speech and possibly explains why he referenced a wrong document (if he was relying on Shirer - without checking the original sources - and somehow mixed up Shirer’s endnotes).

This still doesn’t explain the main error, namely, why Shermer claims that Frank used the word “ausrotten” though he used the word “beseitigen”. The meaning of “ausrotten” plays a big role in Shermer’s book so it’s not just a secondary detail.

PS: this error was also noted by Carlo Mattogno in his critique of Shermer and Grobman. However he wrongly assumed that they were quoting a speech from Dec. 20, which contains a similar passage (IMT vol. 29, p. 416):

Man kann natürlich in einem Jahre nicht sämtliche Läuse und Juden hinaustreiben; das wird im Laufe der Zeit geschehen müssen.

It is obvious though that Shermer quotes the Dec. 19 speech. 

Goebbels, Total War and Extermination, December 1942 to October 1943

Goebbels' rants about Jews in 1941 and 1942 are well-known, and can be found in my previous article here. In the article below, I focus on the less-explored period from late 1942 when Goebbels made numerous written and verbal remarks about the totality of the anti-Jewish struggle, whereby all bridges were being burned and there were no possibilities of half-measures. Although extermination decisions were made earlier than this period, the frenzy to include as much of Europe as possible in such measures reached a new momentum, and the language that Goebbels used to justify those actions took on a global scale that had not been present to the same degree previously.

Goebbels: "Rendered Harmless"

On October 7, 1939, Goebbels referred to Jews as "cold predators which will have too be rendered harmless (cited by Friedländer, p.17)." In his Sportpalast speech of June 5, 1943, Goebbels returned to the phrase, stating "Should an individual have such criminal intentions, he will be rendered harmless as soon as he is noticed." Just so nobody should think this did not mean "killed", we can also note that the transport report for Kolomea to Belzec states that "Nonetheless, it can be assumed that at least two-thirds of the escaping Jews were shot or rendered harmless in some other way." Similarly, Stahlecker's report for Einsatzgruppe A states, "During the first pogrom in the night from 25 June to 26 June the Lithuanian partisans did away with more than 1,500 Jews, setting fire to several synagogues or destroying them by other means and burning down a Jewish dwelling district consisting of about 60 houses. During the following nights about 2300 Jews were made harmless in a similar way."

Thus did another killing phrase become established in the Nazi lexicon of hate.

More Hitler Extermination Statements: 3.2.42 and 30.8.42

From his Table Talk:

3.2.42:

So the Jew smacks his thighs to see how his diabolic stratagem has succeeded. He bears in mind that if his victims suddenly became aware of these things, all Jews would be exterminated. But, this time, the Jews will disappear from Europe.

30.8.42:

It is here in Russia that Communism shows its true face. We must undertake a campaign of cleaning-up, square metre by square metre, and this will compel us to have recourse to summary justice. The struggle with the terrorists will be savage warfare in the real sense. In Estonia and Latvia these bands have all but ceased to be active ; but until Jewry, which is the bandits' Intelligence Service, is exterminated, we shall not have accomplished our task.

Yet another mention of six million Jews from 1942 …

… can be found in the Stellungnahme und Gedanken zum Generalplan Ost des Reichsführers SS ("Opinion and Ideas Regarding the General Plan for the East of the Reichsführer-SS"), dated April 27, 1942 and written by Dr. Erhard Wetzel, the director of the Central Advisory Office on Questions of Racial Policy at the National Socialist Party, which is mentioned here and here.

Readers may ask what Wetzel’s mention of a "5 to 6 million" order of magnitude is supposed to mean.

That would be a good question, and the answer would be: it means that, based on what was known to him, Wetzel assumed there were about 5 to 6 million Jews in the area he was referring to at the time of his writing.

Now ask this question to "Revisionists". In their conspiracy theories, mentions of the number "6 million" prior to the end of World War II apparently mean something more.

More Than One Hundred Nazi Extermination Remarks, 1939-1944 (Full Chronological List)

1) Wetzel and Hecht, 25.11.39: "We are indifferent to the hygienic fate of the Jews. Also for the Jews the basic principle is valid, that their propagation must be curtailed in every possible way." [Die Frage der Behandlung der Bevoelkerung der ehemaligen polnischen Gebiete nach rassenpolitischen Gesichtspunkten, 25.11.39, NO-3732].

2) Koppe, 18.10.40: "[The] so-called Sonderkommando Lange, assigned to me for special tasks, was detached to Soldau in East Prussia from 21 May to 8 June, 1940, as per agreement with the Reich Main Security Office [RSHA]. During this period, it successfully evacuated 1,558 mental patients from the Soldau transit camp" [source].

3) Goebbels 31.1.41: "Mit Bouhler Frage der stillschweigenden Liquidierung von Geisteskranken besprochen. 40000 sind weg, 60000 müssen noch weg. Das ist eine harte, aber auch notwendige Arbeit. Und sie muß jetzt getan werden. Bouhler ist der rechte Mann dazu" [source].

One Hundred Nazi Extermination Remarks, 1939-1944 (Chronological List: 1-65)

1) Wetzel and Hecht, 25.11.39: "We are indifferent to the hygienic fate of the Jews. Also for the Jews the basic principle is valid, that their propagation must be curtailed in every possible way." [Die Frage der Behandlung der Bevoelkerung der ehemaligen polnischen Gebiete nach rassenpolitischen Gesichtspunkten, 25.11.39, NO-3732].

2) Goebbels 31.1.41: "Mit Bouhler Frage der stillschweigenden Liquidierung von Geisteskranken besprochen. 40000 sind weg, 60000 müssen noch weg. Das ist eine harte, aber auch notwendige Arbeit. Und sie muß jetzt getan werden. Bouhler ist der rechte Mann dazu" [source].

One Hundred Nazi Extermination Remarks, 1939-1944 (Part Four: 52-65)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

52) Wetzel and Hecht, 25.11.39: "We are indifferent to the hygienic fate of the Jews. Also for the Jews the basic principle is valid, that their propagation must be curtailed in every possible way." [Die Frage der Behandlung der Bevoelkerung der ehemaligen polnischen Gebiete nach rassenpolitischen Gesichtspunkten, 25.11.39, NO-3732].

53) Hitler, 16.7.41: "Nobody shall be able to recognize that it initiates a final settlement. This need not prevent our taking all necessary measures - shooting, resettling, etc. - and we shall take them.

But we do not want to make any people into enemies prematurely and unnecessarily. Therefore we shall act as though we wanted to exercise a mandate only. At the same time we must know clearly that we shall never leave those countries" [Vermerk über die Besprechung am 16.7.1941, L-221, IMT XXXVIII, pp.86-94, here p.87; English translation NCA VII, pp.1086-1093, here pp.1086-1087].

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].

One Hundred Nazi Extermination Remarks, 1939-1944 (Part Two: 17-30)

Part One: 1-16

17) Goebbels 31.1.41: "Mit Bouhler Frage der stillschweigenden Liquidierung von Geisteskranken besprochen. 40000 sind weg, 60000 müssen noch weg. Das ist eine harte, aber auch notwendige Arbeit. Und sie muß jetzt getan werden. Bouhler ist der rechte Mann dazu" [source].

Ausrottung, Kaufman and Volga Germans: Postscript

This Nazi news item from 10.9.41 leaves no doubts. It puts"resettlement" to Siberia into context.

Meanwhile this piece of Goebbels-ordered propaganda (see print here) literally did claim that "To justify the murdering of 80 million people, Nathan Kaufman is forced to ascribe irremediable criminal tendencies to the German people"; hence Rosenberg was lying at Nuremberg when he said "On the other side this word [ausrottung] has been used with respect to the German people and we have also not believed that in consequence thereof 60 millions of Germans would be shot."

Jansson vents his frustration …

… in another dreary piece of hollering against Jonathan Harrison and me, regarding the familiar subject of what Ausrottung means or can mean in certain contexts.

Hitler Speech 30.1.42 Reprise

In response to Jansson's latest babbling, and again ignoring his ad hominem attacks, I will simply point out another sentence in the speech, which Roberto quoted here: "For once all the others will not bleed to death alone; for once the ancient Jewish law will come into play: an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth." This connects to another Hitler statement of the following year: "The Bolshevist monster, to which they want to deliver the European nations, will someday tear them and their people to pieces." According to Jansson, such statements do not refer to large-scale killing of the European population, even though Rosenberg had already, on Sept. 12 1941, referred to the "ausrottung" of a million Volga Germans as "mass murder." Of course, to rebut another lingering straw man in Jansson's position, one does not have to show an intent to kill every living being directly (by shooting or gassing) to achieve extermination, merely an intent to kill enough to remove the viability of the population's survival. Thus Hitler could have meant extermination in the sense of "kill most Europeans, leave the rest to die off." As to what Hitler meant by "Europeans", clearly he meant that the USSR would eventually massacre its allies after it had finished exterminating the Germans.

So we have to wonder again what Jansson's purpose here. As I will show in a future post, there are dozens of ausrottung-related statements (or statements deploying similar phrases) by Nazis that clearly relate to killing. Even if Jansson managed to find one Nazi who used ausrottung in an anomalous manner (which he has not managed to do), such an anomaly would be swamped by the overwhelming majority of killing uses, which can be connected to a timeline and a context (such as the Volga German deportation and Kaufman's "Germany Must Perish") which leave no doubt as to what "eye for an eye" meant.

Hitler Speech 30.1.42

German propaganda truly did claim that the allies were embarked on the physical extermination of the German people. Hitler's speech repeated that claim, and thus did use "ausrottung" in the sense of physical extermination. I discussed the sources that fed this propaganda here, and Hitler's subsequent use of the theme can be seen here.

Context of Rosenberg diary entry 9 Oct 1942

On September 14, 1942, Thierack wrote:

With regard to the destruction of asocial life, Dr Goebbels is of the opinion that the following groups should be exterminated: Jews and gypsies unconditionally, Poles who have to serve 3-4 -years of penal servitude, and Czechs and Germans who are sentenced to death or penal servitude for life or to security custody [Sicherungsvorwahrung] for life. The idea of exterminating them by labor is the best. For the rest however, except in the aforementioned cases, every case has to be dealt with individually. In this case, of course, Czechs and Germans have to be differently judged. There may be cases where a German sentenced to 15 years of penal servitude is not to be considered asocial, but in contrast to this a person sentenced to penal servitude up to 8 years may be.

Jansson Misreads Rosenberg's Diary

Jansson asks:

Rosenberg mentions a proposal that would have put Ukrainians on the same level as Jews and Gypsies.[74] According to the interpretations of holocaust controversies, this means that there was a German proposal to exterminate the Ukrainians. Does Harrison believe that such a proposal existed, and if not how does he explain this diary entry?  [9.10.42].

The proposal was that made by Himmler to Thierack that Ukrainians facing trial should have the same status as Gypsies and Jews. It was not concerned with exterminating racial or national groups, although it could be used as cover by the SS for mass killing. Rosenberg was firmly opposed to the policy [Vorschlag Himmler wird von mir abgelehnt], as he reiterated to Thierack on 27.10.42 [Über die Frage d. Rechtsstellung d. Ukrainer i. D. gebe ich ihm meine Meinung bekannt: dass man sie nicht m. Zigeunern auf eine Stufe stellen könne], presumably because he knew that giving the SS such powers would lead to some mass killing of Ukrainians (as later did occur), albeit not the total extermination that was inflicted on Ukrainian Jews (note that Jews in Ukraine at this point were largely dead so their inclusion on 9.10.42 is moot). 

Due to shortage of time and difficulty of accessing the blog at this time, I have asked Roberto to deal with my other notes, but I will finish for now by noting the diary entries "Stalin hätte doch die
führende Schicht ausgerottet" [29.9.39] and "Von den 2 ½ Millionen Volksdeutschen sind 1 Million sicher ausgerottet, von den 1 ½ Millionen Wolgadeutschen waren 400000 nach geblieben." [12.9.41]

Ausrottung Revisited

With apologies to Jansson, I am traveling for the next few weeks so cannot guarantee that I can reply speedily to everything he posts. For now I will defer to Longerich who says that 

6.2 Used with respect to a people, the term ausrotten does not necessarily have to mean that all members of this people are killed. The term could also be understood in the sense that the foundations for the existence of the people are destroyed, so that the nation ceases to exist as a nation. However, the term can also be understood as meaning that all members of a nation or the great majority of a nation are killed. The term is used in this second sense by Hitler and leading National Socialists during the Second World War and also in the years preceding the war. I have not yet found a single example of Hitler or Himmler using the term "ausrotten" during the Second World War with respect to human beings or a group of human beings other than in the sense of "to kill in large numbers or to kill all as far as possible".

With regard to ausmerzung, Rosenberg's use seems most likely to be indebted to its application in eugenics, to mean the biological elimination of the unfit, as in this title. We also have Staeglich's confirmation, as I showed in my last posting. Jansson and others would have to show that the overall pattern of usage by the Nazis of ausrottung and ausmerzung was compatible with a policy of keeping the Jews alive rather than imposing conditions that would eradicate them physically from the earth.

Jansson and the Luther Bible

Update, 16.06.2015

In his latest "Memo" blog, Jansson claims that

In the Luther Bible translation of Genesis 17.14, it is commanded that the uncircumcised be ausgerottet, with the meaning that they be removed from the people, or exiled.