The Nuremberg Interviews (82 page)

  
1.
For his recently translated autobiography, see Rudolf Hoess,
Death Dealer: The Memories of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz
, edited by Steven Paskuly (New York, 1996). The editor provides numerous corrections to the autobiography and especially on technical details in the construction and operation of Auschwitz.

  
2.
The exact number killed has been much disputed. According to the standard work in the field, Hilberg,
Destruction of the European Jews
, 3:894, approximately 1 million Jews lost their lives at Auschwitz. He estimates that another 250,000 people, mostly Poles, also died there, as well as many Gypsies. There is
general agreement in Piper, “Auschwitz,” who estimates about 1 million Jews lost their lives in the camp; 140,000 to 150,000 Poles; 20,000 Gypsies; 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war; and between 10,000 and 25,000 people of other nationalities.

  
3.
Recent historians have concluded that the meeting with Himmler took place in June 1942. See Karin Orth, “Rudolf Hoess und die ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’: Drei Argumente gegen deren Datierung auf den Sommer 1941,” in
Werkstatt-Geschichte
(1997), 45–57.

  
4.
For the complex history of attempts of Nazi leaders to hold Jews in Europe for ransom, see Yehuda Bauer,
Jews for Sale?
(New Haven, 1994).

  
5.
Ernst Heinrich Schmauser (born 1890) was Higher SS and police leader of Upper Silesia from May 1, 1941, to 1945. Auschwitz was in his jurisdiction. For brief remarks see Hilberg,
Destruction of the European Jews
, 2:524.

  
6.
Josef Kramer (1907–1945) was an infamous
Kommandant
of Auschwitz-Birkenau and later the horror that was Bergen-Belsen. He was tried and executed by a British military court in 1945. For a good overview of Kramer and other camp leaders, see Tom Segev,
Soldiers of Evil: The Commandants of the Nazi Concentration Camps
(New York, 1987).

  
1.
The place of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in the general context of the attempt to overthrow Hitler is told in Hoffmann,
History of the German Resistance
.

  
2.
For a recent account, including of specific atrocities committed against civilians in Italy and elsewhere, see Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann, eds.,
War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II, 1941–1944
(New York, 2000).

  
3.
German military discipline was brutal in the Second World War. In those years, military courts sentenced more than 30,000 German soldiers to death, and about 15,000 of the verdicts were carried out. See Wolfram Wette,
Die Wehrmacht
(Frankfurt am Main, 2002), p. 165.

  
4.
For discussion of the looting of the Abbey of Monte Cassino, including Kesselring’s part in it, see Lynn H. Nicholas,
The Rape of Europa
(New York, 1994), 238 ff.

  
5.
Karl Wolff (born 1900), key SS leader and from 1933 to 1943 Himmler’s adjutant, played an important role in Italy as Mussolini’s power declined from 1943 onward.

  
6.
For a readable and reliable account of these events and of the military history of the Second World War, see Gerhard L. Weinberg,
A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II
(Cambridge, 1994).

  
1.
For the revolution, see Craig,
Germany
, 396–433.

  
2.
Karl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) was a world-famous Prussian soldier and writer of the treatise
On War
(1833).

  
3.
The decision to hold back the attack of the tanks at Dunkirk on May 24, 1940, was taken by Hitler, but expressly on the advice of Rundstedt. According to Ian
Kershaw, there was a military mistake, but it was Rundstedt’s and not Hitler’s. The latter did not to wish to let the British save face, and so the decision to hold back the tanks and let the British escape was not taken because of Hitler’s magnanimity. On the contrary, Hitler wanted to deliver a “knockout blow” and thus force the British to accept peace terms, but he listened to Rundstedt, his trusted general. See Kershaw,
Hitler
, 2:295–96.

  
4.
For a complete account, see Ernest R. May,
Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France
(New York, 2001).

  
5.
The laws proclaimed at the Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg in September 1935 were infamous in that they essentially created an apartheid system for all Jews in Germany, and represented an important step in their persecution. For an account, see Gellately,
Gestapo and German Society
.

  
6.
Higher SS and police leaders like Gerret Korsemann (1895–1958) can be studied in Ruth Bettina Birn,
Die Höheren SS- und Polizeiführer: Himmlers Vertreter im Reich und in den besetzten Gebieten
(Düsseldorf, 1986).

  
1.
A recent estimate puts the total loss of the Axis armies at Stalingrad, including Manstein’s failed attempt at rescue, at “over half a million” lives. For the harrowing story, see Antony Beevor,
Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943
(New York, 1999), 398.

  
1.
For an account of extensive and generally supportive public knowledge of the concentration camps in Nazi Germany at the time, see Gellately,
Backing Hitler
, 51–69.

  
1.
According to Mildner’s own testimony at Nuremberg, he worked for the Gestapo for ten years. He arrived in Denmark to serve as head of the “Security Police and SD” (from September 20, 1943) just as an “action” was planned to deport the Danish Jews. He regarded the plan as impossible on technical grounds, as did Reich plenipotentiary in Denmark Werner Best. At the same time, Ribbentrop felt the action might cause domestic “unrest” in Denmark. Nevertheless, Hitler expressly insisted on the deportations. However, Best and others made it obvious that the deportations were about to take place. The Jews grew alarmed and tried to flee; they were helped by some Danes and thus were saved.

  
2.
In February 1934 there was civil unrest by the socialists (not the Nazis) against Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. The Nazis did attempt to seize power in Vienna in July 1934, shot Dollfuss, but failed in their attempt to take over. See Bukey,
Hitler’s Austria
, 14.

  
3.
Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg succeeded Dollfuss, but was soon isolated and pushed aside when Hitler moved to take over Austria in March 1938.

  
4.
It is likely that this refers to another Austrian member of the SS, Dr. Humbert Achamer-Pifrader (1900–1945), a man who later became one of the leaders of Einsatzgruppe A. He was killed in action in 1945. For a complete history, see Helmut Krausnick and Hans Heinrich Wilhelm,
Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges: Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, 1938–1942
(Stuttgart, 1981).

  
5.
Franz Josef Huber (born 1902) was a career policeman in the Weimar Republic, like Heinrich Mueller, and also like Mueller stayed on to serve in the new Gestapo and rose in the ranks. Huber eventually became the head of the Gestapo in Vienna. For a brief account, see Gellately,
Gestapo and German Society
, 56–57.

  
6.
Werner Best had the conflict with Heydrich in early summer 1939, mainly because Heydrich did not agree with Best’s ideas on personnel and organizational questions inside the SD. Contrary to what is often supposed, when Heydrich essentially fired Best, he did not thereby get rid of the “last hindrances” to policies of “mass destruction” of the Jews, for Best was far from such an obstacle; indeed he not only agreed with such policies, but formulated many of them and justified them ideologically. See Ulrich Herbert,
Best: Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft 1903–1989
(Berlin, 1996), 228–29.

  
7.
It should be noted that the Germans in charge in Denmark, particularly Werner Best, did not have a “change of heart,” but had been and remained true to their idea to remove all the Jews from Europe, either through mass murder or deportation. When they recognized in September 1943 that Hitler’s order to deport the Jews from Denmark was not feasible, they contented themselves with making the upcoming action obvious, in the expectation that the Jews would rush to leave and Danes would willingly help. The net effect, from the Nazi point of view, was that Denmark was “free of Jews.” Best was not the slightest bit interested in “rescuing” the Jews as such, but took the only politically workable approach open to him at that moment. For a convincing account of the rescue of approximately 7,900 people, including the Jews and several hundred of their non-Jewish relatives, see Herbert,
Best
, 366–73.

  
8.
Ernst Heinrich Schmauser (born 1890) was an SS leader, and from May 1, 1941, to 1945 he was the Higher SS and police leader in Breslau. Auschwitz camp was in his jurisdiction.

  
1.
Alfred Hugenberg (1865–1951) was a press tycoon, head of the German National People’s Party (DNVP), and Hitler’s coalition partner after the March 1933 elections. Hugenberg was quickly pushed aside, with his party dissolved by June 1933.

  
2.
The event was the pogrom of November 9, 1938.

  
3.
Uman was in Ohlendorf’s area of operation. An estimated 24,000 were murdered there.

  
4.
Reference here is to the Austrian scientist, philosopher, and educator Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), founder of a spiritual movement called anthroposophy.

  
1.
On the economic side of the concentration camps and for literature in the field, see the recent study of Michael Thad Allen,
The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps
(Chapel Hill, 2002).

  
2.
For the extensive publicity surrounding the concentration camps in Germany, see Gellately,
Backing Hitler
.

  
3.
For a brief account of the SS, see especially George H. Stein,
The Waffen SS: Hitler’s Elite Guard at War
(Ithaca, 1966).

  
4.
For the story of this gold and its role in the war, including especially the successful recent attempt to gain compensation from the German government, see the remarkable account of Stuart E. Eizenstat,
Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II
(New York, 2003).

  
5.
For an overview of the camp system in the war years and the development of many hundreds of camps inside Nazi Germany, see Gellately,
Backing Hitler
, 204–23.

  
6.
Theodor Eicke (1892–1943) is known in history for his key role in the creation of the Nazi concentration camp system from the moment he was made
Kommandant
at Dachau in 1933. He rose to be the inspector of concentration camps. For an account of the internal functioning of the camps and Eicke’s role, see Eugen Kogon,
The Theory and Practice of Hell
(numerous editions; originally published in German in 1945).

  
7.
Allen,
Business of Genocide
, deals at length with Kammler and these programs.

  
8.
August Frank (1898–1984) became head of the administrative office of the SS in 1939. By 1942 he was one of the leaders of the armed SS WVHA. He served eventually as Oswald Pohl’s deputy in the WVHA, but is mentioned only briefly in the Nuremberg documents. At one of the follow-up trials in Nuremberg (case four), however, he was given a life term, but that was changed to fifteen years in 1951. He was released from prison in 1954.

  
9.
For the exact figures on the number of Jews killed, see my introduction to this volume and the most important literature, as cited above in the chapter on Fritzsche, note 1.

10.
Allen,
Business of Genocide
, and Gellately,
Backing Hitler
, show in detail that Pohl’s claim was a complete lie.

  
1.
For an office chart of the RSHA in 1944, with its ten branches, see Black,
Kaltenbrunner
, 297–99. Schellenberg was in charge of Office VI, foreign intelligence or SD-Ausland, as well as military intelligence, or Office Military.

  
2.
For reactions and background to the sterilization program, introduced in 1933 and eventually leading to the compulsory sterilization of 400,000 people, see Gellately,
Backing Hitler
, 93.

  
3.
Much useful information on Himmler can be found in Richard Breitman,
The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution
(Hanover, 1991).

  
4.
Otto Skorzeny (1908–1975) worked for Office VI of the RSHA (under Schellenberg) and was in charge of Department S, or sabotage. Among other things, Skorzeny became almost a folk hero in Germany for leading the daring and successful raid to rescue captured Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in September 1943. During the Ardennes offensive in 1944, Skorzeny led a brigade of 2,000 troops disguised as American soldiers, and helped to sow chaos behind the lines. He was acquitted of charges brought by a postwar American court in 1947. See Black,
Kaltenbrunner
, 210–11.

  
5.
On Schellenberg’s peace efforts, see Black,
Kaltenbrunner
, 220–21.

  
6.
Abraham Steven Hewitt was an OSS agent in Stockholm, and had contact with various people around Himmler, including Schellenberg. The latter seemed to believe that Hewitt was on special assignment from President Roosevelt. Schellenberg somewhat cautiously invited Hewitt — who informed OSS chief Gen. William J. Donovan of these peace feelers — to visit Germany, but nothing came of the whole thing. Hewitt made wide-ranging demands for what the Germans would have to do in order to win U.S. support for peace, and these never would have been accepted. For a detailed account see Yehuda Bauer,
Jews for Sale?: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945
(New Haven, Conn., 1994), 104–5. See also Wildt,
Generation des Unbedingten
, 718–19.

  
7.
Schellenberg apparently arranged a meeting between Himmler and Jean-Marie Musy, who is described by a historian of this event as a “Swiss conservative statesman.” See Black,
Kaltenbrunner
, 228–29.

  
8.
Musy met with Himmler on November 3, 1944, and January 1, 1945, and tried to negotiate a ransom, whereby the Germans would be paid so much for each individual Jew or shipment of Jews who were released from the camps. Musy (former Swiss president and former Nazi sympathizer) agreed to pay $1,000 for each of 1,200 Jews who were released, but Himmler hinted that many more could be rescued. The release of these 1,200 Jews was reported in the press. Kaltenbrunner did not agree with this deal, and to stop it, he presented information about it to Hitler in early 1945. Hitler ordered the program halted. See Black,
Kaltenbrunner
, 229–30, and Bauer,
Jews for Sale
, 225–30.

  
9.
Count Folke Bernadotte was a Swedish Red Cross official who, among other things, tried to rescue some Jews from the camps by negotiating with Schellenberg, Kaltenbrunner, and Himmler from late 1944 into 1945. The Swedish Red Cross did manage to rescue about 7,500 women from Ravensbrück, including some from France, Sweden, and Poland. See Bauer,
Jews for Sale
, 246–47.

10.
The raid on Dresden in February 1945 has been the subject of much controversy. Around 50,000 people lost their lives as a result of the Allied bombing.

11.
The order to evacuate all camps and prisons, and/or to kill those prisoners who could not travel, led to mass murder. For an introduction and the literature, see Gellately,
Backing Hitler
, 242–52.