A History of the Final Solution

An enquiry into the stages that led to the extermination of European Jews

Daniel Rafecas

• Publisher: Siglo XXI Editores
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9789878011257
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Holocauste

This book explores the complex causes that led to the perpetration of the most significant genocidal crime in modern history: the Holocaust. The origin of this enquiry lies at the point where the utopia of the civilizing process failed to deliver: how could Auschwitz-Birkenau be possible?Daniel Rafecas builds a concise but explanatory narration supported by a strong, not obvious hypothesis —the Holocaust was not arrived at as the result of the willingness of a handful of anti-Semitic fanatics led by Adolf Hitler, but through the overcoming of successive stages across which the criminal decisions regarding the Jewish question were radicalized. Such decisions were gradually processed and rationalized by dozens of thousands of officials involved in the destruction process.This thorough chronicle of the relevant events covers the world war conflict (particularly, the dramatic circumstances that characterized the invasion of the Soviet Union), as well as the key role played by the state bureaucracy in charge of implementing anti-Jewish policies (the SS of Heinrich Himmler). And it sheds light over the path travelled by the Nazi regime towards the consummation of the Final Solution, a process that could only be possible as a result of the progressive trampling of basic human rights, which is typical of authoritarian states.With an austere but didactic style, Daniel Rafecas offers a historical synthesis that is essential to those English-speaking readers who, coming from any area of knowledge, approach this subject, worried by what Rafecas defines as the great black hole of Modernity.

1. Stage One

The Eradication of Jewish Influence

From the moment Hitler came to power in 1933, the regime’s new measures aimed to substitute the prevailing democratic model for an authoritarian State through a combination of allegedly legal initiatives and the imposition of more open and unadorned state and parastate violence. Upon achieving this goal–and having dealt with Communists and other “political enemies”–the regime took measures intended to eliminate the alleged influence of Jews, who in 1935 lost their status as full citizens, one of a set of markedly discriminatory measures which exerted an increasing official pressure on the Jewry to emigrate. The pogrom perpetrated in November 1938 constituted the quintessential embodiment of such a process.

The First Anti-Jewish Measures

The Regime’s Initial Restrictions

The coming to power of Adolf Hitler on January 30, 1933, in the representative democracy established in post-war Germany known as the Weimar Republic, signaled the beginning of the process we are examining, aimed at the systematic persecution of Jews in Germany. By then, the new German Chancellor was still restricted by the authority of the conservative President Paul von Hindenburg and by a ministerial cabinet with only two posts occupied by his followers. Germany, in turn, was still suffering the economic and political impact of the dishonorable conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, signed at the end of World War I.[8]

The National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP), led by Hitler, held a large share of the national electorate: in fact, on July 31, 1932, the Nazis had won almost 14,000,000 votes, whereas the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party combined had obtained scarcely more than 13,000,000. Given these results, in which he held 37.3% of the vote, Hitler had nominated himself for the position of Chancellor. However, he was still far from having a majority in the Parliament (Reichstag); thus, in order to maintain his power, his followers were forced to negotiate and establish alliances with other nationalist forces.

On the other hand, the conservative coalition that then ruled Germany eased Hitler’s path to the Chancellorship, believing that this would prevent the Social Democrats –or even worse, the Communists– from achieving power in the Weimar Republic.

And in fact, it did. First the Communists and then the Social Democrats fell victim to the violent practices of the new order established on January 30, 1933, which called itself the National Socialist Revolution. It was in those sectors of the national political arena that Hitler saw the most serious threat to the authoritarian regime he planned to establish in Germany. And it was on them that he prioritarily focused his and his followers’ attention.

In the face of Hitler’s increasing hostility towards members of the Communist Party –on February 5, 1933, an important number of Communist Party offices were attacked and ransacked, and their libraries burned–, on February 21, 1933, the Party leaders urged their followers, who belonged to the German proletariat, to disarm Nazi task forces. A few days later, the leadership of the German Communist Party issued a statement justifying the use of violence (Toland, 2009: 445). In this context of open confrontation with the Nazis throughout Germany, Marinus van der Lubbe, a 23-year-old Dutch communist who had arrived in Berlin a week earlier, gave Hitler the perfect excuse to intensify anti-Communist repression by setting fire to the Parliament building on February 27, 1933.

The next day, raising the specter of an impending Communist revolution and taking advantage of the fact that the Parliament had been dissolved due to the upcoming March 5 elections, a newly appointed Chancellor Hitler had President Von Hindenburg and the rest of the Cabinet pass a decree “for the Protection of the People and the State” instituting a sort of state of siege, invoking Article 48 of the 1919 German Constitution (this decree, renewed in 1937 and 1939, would later become permanent due to a subsequent decree passed in 1943; it stood in force until 1945).

Under this decree, civil liberties were suspended and “protective custody” of “conspirators” and “enemies” of the Reich was authorized. Even though the application of this decree was limited to “Communist acts of violence threatening State security”, the Gestapo, the German Secret State Police, was not restricted in its field of action; its acts were finally validated by the courts. On March 23, 1933, the rule of law was completely abolished with the enactment by the Reichstag of a delegation of power act known as the Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich, which bestowed upon Hitler full legislative and executive powers.

During the first months of the new regime, state and parastate forces, together with the propaganda apparatus, difamated, persecuted, apprehended, forced to emigrate, and, in many cases, murdered or made to disappear leaders and members of the German Communist Party, with whom Nazis had been competing in the streets and the ballot boxes long before coming to power. According to estimations of the German Communist Party leadership, the total number of Communists imprisoned during the first years of Nazi rule was more than 100,000, whereas the number of members murdered was approximately 2,500.

Thus, intended to hold political enemies, the first concentration camp was officially opened on April 1, 1933 outside Munich in Dachau. Its sponsor was the ambitious Chief of Police of the state of Bavaria, Heinrich Himmler, who had held since 1929 –that is, at 29-years-old– the post of Reichsführer of the SS, an elite corps created in 1925 as a personal “protection corps” for Hitler. A few days before the opening of Dachau, the Nazi press had reported that this Lager (facility) was intended for the imprisonment –under the figure of “preventive detention”– of “all Communist and, where necessary, Reichsbanner [shock force loyal to the Republic of Weimar] and Social Democratic functionaries” (Evans, 2005: 385).

Once the Communist Party had been suppressed, and pursuant to a strategy of eliminating every vestige of political opposition, it was now the most important center-left force’s turn. On June 22, 1933, under the Reichstag Fire Decree, Hitler officially banned the Social Democratic Party of Germany, accusing it of being “hostile to Nation and State”. By then, the Chancellor had added five more members to his Cabinet, so that on July 14, 1933, with no opposition raised, Hitler successfully enacted a law establishing the NSDAP as the only legal political party in Germany. During those days, Social Democratic deputies were expelled from Parliament, and several thousand leaders and party members suffered the same fate as their predecessors: imprisonment, torture, and exile. It is estimated that 3,000 Social Democratic functionaries were incarcerated.

Trade unions and other workers’ organizations also fell victim to the National Socialist Revolution at this stage– their leaders were arrested, and their organizations banned. A bylaw passed on December 7, 1933 ordered the dissolution of all trade organizations. In anticipation of this move, the Attorney General of Berlin had, seven months before, on May 12, seized trade unions’ assets, and occupied their headquarters later in June. A decree passed on October 24, 1934 replaced trade unions with a single organization representing German workers, the German Labor Front, led by a Nazi Party officer, Robert Ley.

By mid-1934, with the intention of winning the support of the reluctant Armed Forces for the National Socialist cause, Hitler decided to do away with his most radicalized wing– the Storm Troopers (SA), led by Ernst Röhm, who by Februar,y 1934 counted 4 million men.[9] Thus, the regime undertook a deep violent purge of some of its most unpredictable components (that reached its peak with the “Night of the Long Knives”,[10] on June 30, 1934), which led to the beheading of the SA, and the incorporation of its men into other Nazi organizations.

Due to this decision to neutralize, first, left wing sectors but also internal sources of conflict as a way of adapting to its newly acquired power position, the Nazi relegated the Jewish question to a secondary position, but this did not mean its exclusion from the Nazi agenda during this period. On the contrary, the identification of Jews and Communism, so frequent in European far-right discourse, placed German Jews, albeit indirectly, in the crosshairs of those who feared a permanent Bolshevik conspiracy aimed at destabilizing the bourgeoisie State, the new face of which was the Hitlerian regime, to compound contradiction.

But the truth is that during these first two years, the internal and external political, economic, and social limitations bearing on the Hitlerian regime, together with the government decision to target left-wing sectors –long-standing rivals of the Nazi– reduced state policies aimed at the Jewish minority to a series of legal measures tending to “eradicate the influence” of this group on different spheres of German life. In fact, “anti-Jewish policy occupied a relatively limited place in their prevailing interests. Their efforts were essentially aimed at regaining freedom of action in Europe and recovering their military force” (Burrin, 1990: 58).

The Precept of the Early Years

Eradicating Jewish influence was a precept not only articulated in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, but also widely propagated in German Nationalist circles. While Hitler was in power, it became a pervading policy, referred to in many of his public and private speeches and conversations. After an obscure reference to Jewish influence on finances, the press, the industry, and the arts, appropriate measures tending to counter such influence would be urged. In this sense, and “even though it may seem quite marginal in hindsight, cultural life was the first area from where the Jews and ‘left-wingers’ were massively expelled. […] they had turned against the most conspicuous representatives of the ‘Jewish spirit’, which would subsequently be eradicated” (Friedländer, 2009: 29).

Changes brought about by Hitler’s appointment to the position of Chancellor on January 30, 1933 made a number of German people, Jews and non-Jews feel that the time to leave the country had come (in fact, during 1933, approximately 37,000 Jews emigrated). Among the Jews, the physicist Albert Einstein[11] may be mentioned; among non-Jews, author Thomas Mann. However, the majority of the half-million Jews living in Germany (less than 1% of the population) largely “believed that they would be able to weather the storm” (Friedländer, 2009: 95). By the end of 1933, “dozens of millions of people, inside and outside of Germany, were aware of the systematic segregation and persecution policy that the new German regime had put into effect against Jewish citizens. However […] it is possible that neither Jews nor non-Jews may have been able to discern clearly the objectives and scope of such policy. There was anxiety, but no apparent sense of panic or urgency among German Jews” (2009: 103).

According to Friedländer, “the Jewish community, however, had gained visibility by gradually concentrating in the larger cities, keeping to certain professions, and absorbing an increasing number of easily identifiable East European Jews” (2009: 114). This author points that Jews were prominent in the areas of business and finance (at the beginning of the 20^th century, 30 out of 52 Berlin banks belonged to Jewish bankers), journalism and cultural activities, medicine, and law, as well as their involvement in liberal and left-wing politics. “Economic success and growing visibility without political power produced, in part at least, their own nemesis”, as they became a target for anti-Semitic agitation (2009: 119).

The first noticeable development, revealing a new state of affairs, occurred on April 1, 1933, when Nazi shock forces organized a boycott against Jewish businesses. The event achieved high national and international visibility thanks to the coverage afforded by official propaganda and was favored by police tolerance.

Bishop Otto Dibelius, the main Protestant authority in Germany, justified the actions of the new regime in an address for United States radio delivered on April 4:

My dear Brethren: We all not only understand but are fully sympathetic to the recent new motivations out of which the völkisch movement has emerged […]. I have always considered myself an anti-Semite. One cannot ignore that Jewry has played a leading role in all the destructive manifestations of modern civilization (in Friedländer, 2009: 68-69).

Hardly a week after the boycott, when the impact of the move was still present, Hitler issued the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, drafted by the Ministry of the Interior, under which a relentless purge aimed at two million federal, provincial, and municipal public servants was set in motion. The purpose was to identify and expel Jewish, but also Communist, civil servants, including judges and attorneys, university lecturers, teachers, and even students holding grants. Since the emancipation of the Jews in 1871, not a single discriminatory law had been passed in Germany.[12] Paragraph 3 of the law (known as the “Aryan paragraph”) read: “I. Officials of non-Aryan origin should be forced to retire”.

Although in its second article the law initially established some exceptions, these came to be gradually eliminated in the course of the following years so that the law finally encompassed all Jews, creating significant social and economic consequences. On April 11, the first supplementary ordinance defined a “non-Aryan” individual as “anyone descendent from non-Aryan parents or grandparents, particularly Jews. It is enough that one parent or grandparent be non-Aryan”. This definition was intended to be as wide and all-encompassing as possible, a cons...