Page 217 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

204 Conclusion

to the point that they would see no alternative but to eliminate the Jews
altogether. it is well known that in his speech of January 31, 1939, Hitler
actually warned that if war broke out he would “annihilate the Jewish race
in europe.” even more specific and detailed was an article that appeared in
the weekly newspaper of the ss, Das Schwarze Korps, in November 1938;
it predicted that the Nazi government would initiate a series of actions
that would lead to the “actual and definite end of Jewry in Germany and
its complete extermination.” this paper was printed in runs ranging from
500,000 to 750,000.
these various references to the physical extermination of the Jews are of
special interest because they touch on a long-standing controversy among
scholars on the origins of the Holocaust. two major interpretations have
emerged, although it should be kept in mind that different shadings are
found within each. On the one hand, the so-called intentionalists insist
that Hitler planned all along to implement what the Nazis called the “final
solution” of the Jewish question. On the other hand, the “functionalists”
argue that the origins of the mass murder are to be sought not in any ideo-
logical predispositions of Hitler or other leading Nazis but in the “cumula-
tive radicalization” that resulted from bureaucratic chaos during the early
months of the invasion of the soviet Union, which was launched on June
22, 1941. Until 1940, the functionalists point out, the Hitler government
sought a “territorial” solution to the Jewish problem, that is, the settlement
of the Jews somewhere outside europe; Madagascar was a favored place.
But when it became clear by 1941 that such a transfer of population was
infeasible, local bureaucrats in eastern europe faced severe problems for
which there were no easy solutions. they had to find housing for Germans
moving east and they needed provisions for a population whose economy
had stagnated. according to some estimates at the time, the economy of
Poland could be revived only if the population were reduced by 25 percent.
5
then, when the campaign in russia began to falter late in 1941 and early
in 1942, Nazi fury at the Jews reached a high pitch. in their anger, Nazis
sought revenge by slaughtering Jews. 6
Without doubt, until 1941–42 no concrete plan for the implementation
of the final solution had been devised. at the same time, it hardly seems
credible that the eight years of anti-semitic effusions had no effect in pre-
paring the way for the Holocaust. Nor does it seem plausible that in a re-
gime where the Führer was virtually deified, a decision so important as
the one to carry out the mass murder of millions could have been made
without his approval. Browning, who considers himself a “moderate func-