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Adolf Eichmann (19 March 1906 – 1 June 1962), SS Obersturmbannführer, was head of Sub-Department IV D4 of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (wartime Germany’s Department of Homeland Security) from 19 December 1939, charged with overseeing Jewish affairs and evacuation/deportation of the Jews. As such, he was responsible for the deportation of several million Jews to the various…
Point 4 of the program of the National-Socialist Party states: “[German] Citizen can only be who is a member of the people. A member of the people is who is of German blood, with no regard to the confession. No Jew can therefore be a member of the people.” When Hitler’s party came to power…
Hans Frank (23 May 1900 – 16 Oct. 1946) was governor of occupied Poland (called General Government) during the war. Four of the so-called extermination camps – Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibór and Treblinka – were on the territory he governed. (The territories where Auschwitz and Chełmno were located had been annexed by the Third Reich). Therefore,…
Odilo Globocnik (21 April 1904 – 31 May 1945), SS Gruppenführer, during the war SS and Police Leader of the General Government (occupied Poland), and in charge of implementing the Aktion Reinhardt. After the war, he was arrested by a British unit, who interrogated him, possibly with the help of their customary torture, after which…
Richard Glücks (22 April 1889 – 10 May 1945), SS Gruppenführer, head of Office Group D of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungs-Hauptamt), and as such head inspector of the concentration camps. Glücks’s office was responsible for organizing the German concentration camps and making sure that they were optimized to deliver…
Joseph Goebbels (29 Oct. 1897 – 1 May 1945) was the National-Socialist leader of the Berlin district as well as the Third Reich’s Minister of Propaganda from its very beginning to the bitter end, when he committed suicide. Goebbels was meticulous in keeping a diary with almost daily entries. In addition, his list of speeches…
Hermann Göring (12 Jan. 1893 – 15 Oct. 1946), Reichsmarschall, was the second-most powerful man in the Third Reich after Adolf Hitler. During World War One, he was a decorated war pilot, becoming something of a national hero. During the Second World War, his main responsibilities lay in organizing Germany’s economy and its air force….
Reinhardt Heydrich (7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942), SS Obergruppenführer, has been the head of the National-Socialist Party’s Security Services (Sicherheitsdienst) since its inception in 1931. As Heinrich Himmler’s deputy, he was head of the Security Police and the Security Services, which were merged in 1939 into Germany’s equivalent of the Department of Homeland…
Heinrich Himmler (7 Oct. 1900 – 23 May 1945) was Reichsführer SS, meaning national leader of the SS, and head of the German police. As such, he gave the orders to his subordinates as to what to do with the Jews within Germany’s reach: He ordered the police to arrest them; to deport them; to…
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) is the central figure in the Holocaust narrative. Considering the monolithic nature of Hitler’s dictatorship, his decisions, orders and decrees are what should have caused, started and shaped the progress of the Holocaust. Yet when we look at the historical records, all we have are some…
Rudolf Höss (25 Nov. 1901 – 16 April 1947), SS Obersturmbannführer, served at the Dachau Concentration Camp from December 1934 until 1938, then at the Sachsenhausen Camp until May 1940, when he was charged with setting up the new Auschwitz Camp, where he became commandant in October of that year. As head of Office Group…
In the context of the Holocaust, intentionality refers to leading National-Socialist functionaries having had intentions to physically annihilate the Jews within their reach, plans they devised to that effect, and orders they issued to make it happen. Intentions can be gleaned from public and private statements of leading National-Socialist politicians. See in this regard the…
Ernst Kaltenbrunner (4 Oct. 1903 – 16 Oct. 1946) was Higher SS and Police Leader in Austria from 1938 until early 1943. On 30 January 1943, after Reinhardt Heydrich had been assassinated the previous summer, Kaltenbrunner replaced him as chief of Germany’s Department for Homeland Security (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA). However, all matters concerning the SS and…
Madagascar is a large island (almost 600,000 sq km) located off the coast of southeast Africa. Currently it is an independent nation of some 28 million people, but from 1897 through World War Two, it was a colony of France. For at least two centuries prior to the war, German critics of the Jews had…
As soon as Germany had defeated Poland in late September 1939, Reinhardt Heydrich, head of Germany’s Department of Homeland Security (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA), issued directives on how to handle the “Jewish question” in the occupied territories. One of these directives was the so-called Nisko Plan, which foresaw the creation of a Jewish reservation in southeastern Poland…
Any plan allegedly contrived aiming at the extermination of Europe’s Jews is necessarily linked to a Hitler order to initiate such an extermination. Since there is no trace of such an order (see the entry on the Hitler Order), it is unsurprising that no documental trace of any plan has ever been found either. The…
Oswald Pohl (30 June 1892 – 7 June 1951), SS Obergruppenführer, headed the SS offices that, in early 1942, were consolidated as the SS’s Economic and Administrative Main Office (Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt). This office was directly subordinate to Heinrich Himmler as the Reichsführer SS. It handled all financial and administrative matters concerning the SS and…
Resettlement in Documents National-Socialist Germany wanted its Jews to leave the country. Great efforts were made both to put Jews under all kinds of social, legal and economic pressure, making life miserable for them in Germany, and to give them incentives in case they emigrated. But when the war broke out, there were less and…
During the year 1941, it became clear to Germany’s top officials that there would be no peace in the West. Therefore, any plans to force Jews out of Europe to some overseas region, as was suggested with the so-called Madagascar Plan, became increasingly unlikely. On the other hand, Germany’s initial successes during its invasion of…
Several scholars have raised doubts about the authenticity of the so-called Wannsee Protocol. This document is alleged to have been written by Adolf Eichmann after the so-called Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942. For a discussion of the contents of the Wannsee Conference as laid out in its protocol, see the previous entry. The point…
Karl Wolff (13 May 1900 – 17 July 1984), SS Obergruppenführer, was Heinrich Himmler’s chief of staff and his liaison officer to Adolf Hitler. As such, he had access to all the material crossing Himmler’s desk. Toward the end of the war, on Himmler’s initiative, Wolff negotiated an early surrender of the German forces in…
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