The Final Solution and the German Press: 2. Winter 1941-1942

Continued from Part 1.

On November 16, Goebbels wrote a piece for Das Reich which stated that "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 destruction 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."[1]

The Final Solution and the German Press: 1. September-October 1941

On September 10-12, 1941, several German language newspapers across Nazi-occupied Europe announced that Stalin was going to exterminate the Volga Germans after deporting them to Siberia. This announcement played an important role in making loyal Nazis more willing to contemplate a fatal deportation of Jews, especially when viewed as a justifiable form of vengeance and as a fulfillment of Hitler's Reichstag prophecy of January 30, 1939, that a world war would result in the extermination of Jews. The following article analyzes that process with links to primary sources.

Update: Goebbels Statements from 1941

Goebbels' diary [hereafter TB], January 31, 1941: "Discussed with Bouhler the discreet liquidation of the mentally ill. 40,000 have gone, 60,000 have still to go. It’s a tough but necessary job. And it has to be done. Bouhler is the right man to do it [Longerich, Peter. Goebbels: A Biography (Kindle Locations 21516-21520). Random House Publishing Group, 2015. Kindle Edition, 21519, n.62]."

Das Reich, July 20, 1941: "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]."

Goebbels: "Mauer reports massive shootings of Jews in the Ukraine"

I am grateful to Jason for spotting this quote, translated from this German text of 19.10.41, also noted in Herf.

Mauer reports massive shootings of Jews in the Ukraine.

He urgently requests explanatory material for the Ukrainian population because they don't understand the need for such severe measures against the Jews.

Bolshevism has weakened the anti-Semitic instinct in the people of the Soviet Union; in many ways we'll have to start from the beginning here.

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.

Dalton's Antisemitism

Dalton's misrepresentation of Goebbels' diaries has been discussed by Roberto here. I would like to highlight a revealing expression of Dalton's antisemitism that appears towards the end of this article. Dalton quotes this late remark by Goebbels:

Typically, having committed the most terrible crimes against mankind, the Jews would now like mankind to be forbidden even to think about them.

Dalton not only passes over the meaning of this Goebbels statement in relation to extermination (how would the Nazis have dealt with a people who they believed had "committed the most terrible crimes against mankind" except to kill them?), but he then comments that "Indeed, we are still forbidden to think of such things, even 65 years later." Dalton would like his readers to know that such thoughts are reasonable, in his opinion, whilst at the same time being blind to the historical relationship between such Nazi thoughts and their resultant actions. Of course, no government can, or should be allowed to, stop Dalton having stupid, hateful, antisemitic thoughts, but Dalton cannot be expected to be taken seriously when those thoughts cause him to lie about Goebbels and his diaries.