The Nazis- Time Life World War II

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display of precision marching, a Naz Party band leads a regiment of Brownshirts into the city of Nuremberg during the 1 938 rally. The tent city seen in the background provided shelter for thousands of participants In a

throughout the one-week-long

Saluting

stiffly

festival.

his Mercedes touring columns of parading

from

car, Hitler reviews

Brownshirts during the Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg in 1938. In the foreground at left stand Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess and Victor Lutze, chief of staff of the Brownshirts. Units of Brownshirts wait their turn to join the procession through the banner-decked streets of

medieval Nuremberg. The storm

out with field packs, blanket black metal mess kits and canteens

troopers are fitted rolls,

•Mutta^-v

4

**

jeftj^Ms,^ Ltai

»

immense athletk members of the League of German Girls dance in celebration oi "faith and beauty" during the Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg in 1939. Th/s particular performance required long and meticulous Linking arms

field,

thousands

a< ross .in

oi

advance preparation: The women who participated had been selected from h>< a/ chapters months ahead of time and had spent almost every evening thereafter in rehearsal.

t >

*-*«„-

*\

CELEBRATING THE VIGOR OF GERMANY'S YOUTH



on the evening

Km h

of exultation for the

would month

o( July

an hour had proclaimed

19, 1940,

that Adoll Hitler

1,000 years. France had capitulated nearly a

List

pearance since

Compiegne.

"It

1

1

» *

*

seemed

whom

bert Speer,

was

be the uhrer's first public apsurrender ceremony in the forest of

before, and tins

to

I

to all of us," recalled architect Al-

Hitler

had ordered to draw

pi. ins for a

grandiose new Berlin, "that with every passing month

were almost arc lies oi

Now,

effortlessly

drawing nearer

Hitler

was

Just

and the the symbolic panoply

to speak before the Reichstag,

mind

the ceaselessly agile

among

to the reason for the

triumph and the avenues of ^lory."

occasion had been invested with that

we

all

of Dr. Joseph

Goebbels,

other things the Gauleiter of Berlin, could conjure.

yesterday, by his edict,

Berlin's schools,

all

shops and

had been closed, a million Nazi swastika flags had been distributed and church bells had chimed as German victroops marched through the city's Brandenburg Gate

offices

—

torious for the

first

time since

1

871

For Goebbels, the victory parade had very nearly ended in disaster:

A

cavalry horse, driven wild by the clash of cym-

and the blare of trumpets, had backed into the reviewing stand, lashed out with its hoofs and come within inches of ending the career of Nazi Germany's Minister of Popular bals

Enlightenment and Propaganda. But that incident

was almost completely forgotten by the

time the political and military leaders of the Third Reich be-

gan arriving

at

the Kroll

Opera House

to

hear Hitler's

speech. Searchlights crisscrossed the night sky on this mel-

A

victory parade

"May God

down "avenues of glory" if we lose this war"

help us

The Fuhrer

at his oratorical best

Nine productive months

in

prison

A miracle worker named Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht An appetite for power and morphine The making of

A

a

master propagandist

"Wandering Aryan" The man with the filing-cabinet mind

British gibe at the

"Strength through )oy" at the bockwurst festivals

A

surprise visit to the

Duke

of Hamilton

Martin Bormann to the rescue

low summer evening. Crowds lined the Unter den Linden boulevard. The throaty roar of motorcycle escorts, the pop and glare of flash bulbs and the roll of drums ushered in the sleek black Mercedes that disgorged Nazi dignitaries in

Some 600 Reichstag deputies them "Old Fighters" from the early struggles for control of Germany's streets and meeting halls. All owed their prominence to Hitler's appointment and all wore red, white and black swastika bands on their front of the

were

in

immense

attendance,

building.

many

of

arms as a sign of their allegiance. With the politicians came the triumphant German tary: admirals, their

mili-

shoulders glittering with gold braid, and

generals, their field-gray uniforms trimmed with crimson, their chests

ablaze with decorations. Then

THE NEW MEM OF POWER

came

the party

functionaries, their arms raised tered the building. to render that

One

The

by one, arms

stiffly

the Nazi salute as they en-

was required

salute

homage could

in

of Nazis; failure

bring heavy punishment.

outstretched, the nabobs of Na-

zism stalked into the opera house. Cheers rose from the multitude as Hitler's principal lieutenants arrived: Goebbels, a tiny (barely five feet tall)

foot; Reichstag President ring, of

man

with a crippled right

and Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goin girth and weigh-

average height but Gargan-tuan

300 pounds; Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribwanly handsome, head held high; Deputy Fuhrer bentrop, ing around

Rudolf Hess, eyes burning

in

deep, dark sockets; SS chief

They knew the consequence of defeat. "May God help us," Goring once said, "if we lose this war." Yet the stake was nothing less than world empire. Before they were done, the Nazis would carry conflict to the deserts of Africa, the shores of the Americas and the banks of the Volga all in pursuit of the German dream of Lebensraum. In their colossal wager the Nazis, through the organization of their National Socialist Party, would reach with repressive hands into every corner of German life, subverting justice and the rule of law. They had already replaced tradiscale.

—

collar paradise, brought into ideological thrall the flower of

Heinrich Himmler, looking perfectly harmless despite his cap with its skull-and-crossbones insignia; party ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, tall and dour, the "philosopher" of anti-

German youth from

Semitism; and, wobbling slightly

state

in his

chronic state of ine-

German Labor Front. somewhere in the shadows was

briation, Robert Ley, chief of the

Almost certainly lurking Martin Bormann, the

the assistant to

man who would soon

organization.

mann,

jotting

Wherever

down

take

Deputy Fuhrer Hess and

power over

the Nazi Party

went Borword on white

Hitler went, there too

the dictator's every

index cards, of which he carried an endless supply. Bor-

mann's presence on this particular occasion went unremarked. But then, nobody ever noticed Martin Bormann; as late as 1941 his name was virtually unknown in the Reich. These were the Nazis, Germany's new men of power, the

promise of a blue-

tional workers' rights with the spurious

cradle to the age of conscription, and

held absolute sway over the arts and the professions. Soul and sinew of the Nazi system

was

a state within a

— the black-uniformed Schutzstaffel, or SS, with

morseless devotion to the obliteration of

home

all

enemies,

its

re-

real or

Himmler, dozens would infiltrate the German Army with of divisions of fanatically politicized fighting men. He would create a bureaucracy of terror at the center of which was a network of concentration camps— and he would soon place genocide on an assembly-line basis. Indeed, for the Nazis genocide was the inevitable result of the ideal of Aryan supremacy, which provided the heartbeat of their ideology. Founded on the smoldering coals of a fancied, at

or abroad.

classical anti-Semitism,

Its

leader, Heinrich

fanned by the pseudo philosophies

of such

men

and masters of continental Europe from the Atlantic to the Baltic and from the North Cape to the Mediterranean. By

flame

the instinctive hatreds of Adolf Hitler, Nazi racism

normal standards, they were failures

human inhumanity. Hand in hand with

self-made leaders of the Third Reich

eccentric

in their

at their zenith, lords

in their

private lives,

actions and outlooks, and as unlikely a

lot

in

would lead

as Alfred Rosenberg,

to a

and bursting

holocaust unparalleled

in

into full

the long history of

the liquidation of Jews went the ruth-

human and

had ever been gathered together. Yet their personal shortcomings could have mattered to few in the

of subjugated lands. In the swathes cut by surging

throng outside the Kroll Opera House, cheering and even

armies, party leaders carved out baronies for themselves.

of individuals as

weeping

for joy in the

as a people, this

was

moment's emotion. For

to

Germans

the hour of redemption from nearly

two decades of national humiliation and deprivation. And these were the men who had brought it about. Inspired by a single charismatic figure, the Nazi leaders

were perhaps the boldest gamblers kind

—

brilliant in the play of

in

the history of

human-

power, bluffers on the grand

less exploitation of

both the

For the profit of the Greater

German

material resources

German

Reich, entire factories

would be dismantled and shipped to the fatherland, while untold millions would be forced into slave labor.

None of it, of course, could have transpired without the German Army, soon to be commanded personally by Hitler, at first

with intuitive genius and later

in

disastrous frenzy.

Beguiled by Hitler's appeals to patriotism and by to

redeem the shame

of Versailles, the

his

pledge

Wehrmacht

officer

19

irly

sun-

.ild

mal

assumption

in hi\

I

tor their

insult

from i

it'*'

limits ol

ommand

on

peril

i

Rarely

rhe generals

fecklessness

beyond i

powei

ol

In

obey

their lives to

orders thai ould only result In arnage foi theli own troops And when as the end inexorably neared German officers <

i

attempt to

.iki

.i-s.issm.it.- theii

f

uhrei fiing

•

.

doom

m

w.is instead

It

mu\ yellows and tor si

cm-

at

.in o(

rimsons

ot

<

and long

make

<

leai

iermany would

one

premonitions asion tor the pinks and whiles the lor a arra\s within the oplor

i

t

I

loftily

surveyed

swastika banners sweeping from ceil-

tor the roars ol

the

last

would be

tin- battlefield.

w.is not

the nrrat coppei eagle that

tor the vast

ing to tloor .is

i

1940

|ul\

to

.ts

Nazi

t

-ought not from w ithin but on

Hut tins night

the

the downfall

ui tor ,di. that

reprisal

r

S/eg

uhrer ot

he'll I

S»eg he/7/ Sieg

Germany

S

New

(

)rder

took his pla< e on the dais

During

his lifetime, -\dolt

taling ^n estimated

supreme orators bei

20

ome

\

">

litler

spoke before audien< es

to-

He was one of the main ot his hi el toliowers had no more than the happenstanc e of

ot histor\

his dist iples h\

I

million people.

dictate markable blueprint of Germany's future

Hi

>onths

from

ted

powei Said Cdring

We

shall merely

the people will

And many

make lamoi

i

\\

mists oi

*

S

i

* *

.

nation has brought forth in the thousand years of her histhe binding -ni h Himmlei viw in Hitler s orders isions

m

a

t

world

Germanu

the

transc

ending

pronouncements

race's Fuhrer,

on the true remained But rationing ol powei .is between Hitler and his immediate unVnone who knows how is with us," said Gongs knows that we each possess jusl so much power as ring, the uhrer w ishes to give." In that sense Hitler w as most generous. He himself found day-to-day administration a drudge, and he was more than w Ming to pan el out power. Hitler was delighted by the enit

F

suing

ill

i

it( (

ion

among

hed any

rtiorts

his lieutenants; indeed, said Speer, .it

rapproc hement with keen suspi-

as a possible threat to his

own

position.

Hitler did, ol course, retain for himself the role of su-

preme

sometimes stepping in to settle disputes of asiality. For example, in 939, after Ribbentrop treats relating to the German-Russian division of

arbiter

tounding tn\ ied a

1

ravaged Poland

|osel Stalin as a gesture of

good

will

gave to

the Nazi Foreign Minister a huge hunting preserve on the

new

of the

no bounds, was tended the land he

frontier.

be

a gift to the

insisted, the preserve

would

German

fall

under

knew

had surely

in-

state. In that case,

his

own

Master of the Hunt. Hitler decided reducing Ribbentrop to futile rage.

tion as Reich •r,

Goring, whose greed

furious, claiming that Stalin to

in

jurisdic-

Goring's

Thus, the Nazi state, which presented to the outside

world

a national

and everybody loathed Ribbentrop. Speer wrote of "that profligate Goring, that fornicator Goebbels, that drunkard I

e\

.

that vain loo

I

Ribbentrop." Himmler called Goebbels

repulsive Levantine."

(

herg as "Almost Rosenberg" because he had

become

a scholar, a

journalist, a politician

most." Said Goebbels

ol

ey and he swindled his Hitler ,\nd

knew

full

Ribbentrop:

way

"I

hand." He

— but

"He married

only his

monolith more massive than any hitherto

to al-

mon-

into offic e."

do not," he once

let his

human

"consider

said,

political leader to attempt to

or even to fuse together, the his

"managed

well that his minions were deeply flawed,

he was content.

be the task of a

a

ioebbels referred to Alfred Rosen-

it

to

improve upon,

material lying ready to

subordinates run

— and

run they did,

each of them wielding prodigious power according

tins on<

Goring to put his finger

tor

it

—

I

to indi-

vidual purpose and motive.

To Hermann Goring, aged 47 at the time of his opera house awards, power was the means to indulge a body abused and a soul embittered. Fat, seemingly jolly and able to laugh at himself, Goring was, next to Hitler, the most popular of the

German

"The people want to love," he explained, "and the Fuhrer was often too far from the broad masses. Then they clung to me." But though they liked him, Germans also enjoyed poking fun at his oddities, and they chortled with glee when word got out of the innocent remark of visiting Queen Rambi Barni of Siam. "He must be a very rich man," said the Queen after meeting Goring, "to be able to afford so much rice. Or is it potatoes?" But Goring was no joke. Under the layers of fat lay a fiercely combative spirit. The son of a retired provincial governor

leaders.

German Southwest

in

Goring became

Africa,

World War flying ace, accounting for winning the Pour le Merite, Germany's valor, and ending the conflict as the last Richthofen squadron the famed Flying

—

Postwar Germany paid

homage

a

22 enemy planes,

I

highest award for

commander

of the

Circus.

war heroes. Rootcommercial pilot. In that capacity he frequently traveled to Sweden, and there he met and married the wealthy Baroness Karin less

little

to

and disgruntled, Goring became an

itinerant

von Fock-Kantzow. Though her fortune was certainly no obstacle to Goring's affections, there is no question that he

Catholic working-class Rhineland family, he had excelled

loved her; she was probably the only person other than

in

himself for

mental

whom

memory

tate Karinhall

he

felt

the slightest tenderness.

In senti-

Goring would name his esthere with his second wife, the

after her death,

— and

celebrated actress

live

Emmy Sonnemann, whose marriage

Goring was the greatest social extravaganza

in

to

the history of

of curiosity,

Goring one evening

in

1

921 dropped

in

on the Munich beer cellar where Hitler was speaking and was entranced by the would-be Fiihrer's visions of power.

Some time

later,

when Goring volunteered

to

command

a

squad of Nazis, Hitler was equally enthusiastic. "Splenimagdid!" he cried. "A war ace with the Pour le Merite

—

ine It

in

it!

Excellent propaganda!"

was

in his

new

role that

Goring found himself marching

the front ranks of the Nazis during the Beer Hall Putsch.

To help the wounded Goring escape the retributive roundup that followed, friends bore him on a stretcher through the Alpine passes to Innsbruck, his wife trudging along behind. Frail at best

(she

had been

his studies,

clubbed

far

from kind

all

"My

was so weakened she contracted tuberculosis, and was an

was an

from the ordeal that

epileptic), Karin

enter the

in

the

his inner hurt

I

I

too

1

1

and out of Swedish asylums. Although he would rely upon morphine for the rest of his life, by the time he returned to Germany under an amnesty granted in 1927, he was sufficiently recovered from his mental turmoil to

valued Hitler lieutenant. And

resume

his

po-

when Germany

began to rearm, Goring was the obvious choice to build and command the Luftwaffe, which was so vital to Hitler's plans for conquest.

To Paul Joseph Goebbels, aged 42, power offered the opportunity to manipulate a humanity that had derided him. As he gratefully expressed it in a newspaper article, Hitler gave him the chance to "unleash volcanic passions, outbreaks of rage, to set masses of people on the march, to organize hatred and despair with ice-cold calculation."

I;

enlistment officers took

one look at his foot and his puny frame and laughed in his face. Goebbels went home, locked himself in his room, and wept for hours. By dint of his parents' scrimping and a series of Catholic scholarships, Goebbels attended not only one but eight universities, concentrating on philosophy, history, literature and art and virtually becoming a career student before he finally got his

Ph.D.

He wrote an

autobiographical novel,

He authored no producer would touch them. He tried his

Michael, which publishers rejected for years.

two plays; hand at journalism; the daily Berliner Tageblatt turned

down In

scores of his articles.

June 1922, Goebbels was one of Germany's angry,

at the

sition as a

his defor-

up

me badly. am conscious of my pleasure when meet peo-

Army during World War

much for Goring. To ease the agony of his infected wounds and his troubled mind, he sought refuge in morphine, became addicted, suffered mental breakdowns and spent much of the time from 924 to 926 shuttling in all

grotesquely

of us shot

— even while confiding

the time, and that spoils

loose-ends millions

was

wound — "Those

foot troubles

invalid until her death eight years later. It

his

to a piously

he would intimate that

foot. In later years

War," he would say it

Goebbels. Born

perhaps to compensate for

mity was a battle

to his diary:

to

ple." In fact, caught up by patriotic fervor, he had tried to

the Third Reich.

Out

Life

when he happened

Circus Krone

Goebbels,

"I

in

Munich. At

to

at-

hear Hitler speak

that

moment, wrote

was reborn." He nevertheless soon

fell

out

with Hitler, demanding that the party take a radical anticapitalist

approach and, when

it

refused,

denouncing

its

leader as "the petty bourgeois Adolf Hitler." But a short

while

later, Hitler,

obviously having spotted something he

needed within the little man, went out of his way to embrace Goebbels after a speech. That night Goebbels' diary entry read: "Adolf Hitler, love you." Goebbels was an astonishingly gifted propagandist, if only because he was utterly uninhibited by considerations of truth. The truly great man, he said, "contents himself with saying: It is so. And it is so." Within two months after he became Hitler's Propaganda Minister on March 13, 1933, Goebbels staged an event not seen in Western Europe since the Inquisition. After a torchlight parade on Berlin's Unter I

den Linden, thousands of students flung into flames the works of such "degenerate" authors as Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig, Jack London and H. G. Wells and Helen Kel-

27

la

peopir

i

end Freud

in again express

burning .1

era

tu-sr

i

rhe soul

Prousl

.»'u)

Itsell

ried

<

Goebbels

flames not only illuminate the

they also light

up the

German

o( the .it

t

h»-

final

hook

end

ol

THE SWASTIKA: A GOOD-LUCK SIGN THAT

nev«

hambei 1933 head was established not only todetei mine the nation i line >>> progress, mental and spiritual, bul sutu lumbers also to lead and organize the professions were set up to control the pu-ss music the theater, radio. literature and motion pictures. Ml practitioners in those Septembei 22

with Coebbels

tin-

k.-h h

ol

c

c

ulture,

at its

were required to |oin the SUb< h.imbers, whose direchost- suspected of "political untors had th»- status ot law rfh.ibiht\ and Coebbels of course, was the iudge fit-UK

1

—

i

ould be deprived

t

thru livelihood.

Goebbels was married, unhappily, to a handsome but rather stupid woman who gave him six children. "Thank God he said in a moment of candor, "they have her looks would be if it had turned and my brains Mow terrible it

way around." As "Protector

out the Other

German

of the

Film," Coebbels had access to scores of actresses, and he

entered into

a

tempestuous

affair

with a beautiful Czech,

was the sort of scandal Hitler could not tolerate. He ordered Goebbels to choose between Baarova and continued power in government. Goebbels chose power. And he would remain with Hitler until the day he met the fate predicted in his diary: "Such is life: many blossoms, many thorns, and a dark grave." Joachim von Ribbentrop became a Nazi rather late in the game. The son of a junior-grade Army career officer, Ribbentrop served as a lieutenant during World War I, and in 1918, thanks to a change in German law, took his title, I

ida Baarova. This

—

von," from a distant relative with noble credentials. After the War, he

hung on the

fringes of

what passed

in

Berlin for

cafe society, eventually marrying the daughter of a wealthy

w me merchant. The bride's parents were evidently less than pleased. "Odd," his mother-in-law later remarked, "that m\ most stupid son-in-law should have gone the furthest." But Ribbentrop did have a blotter-like facility for soaking up

languages, and his father-in-law set him to selling the family

product abroad,

a position that

Ribbentrop elevated to style

himself an "international businessman."

He met

time

August 1932, through the auspices of a wartime acquaintance turned Nazi. In JanHitler for the

first

in

ROMAN CROSS

(MUKCROSS

<

ROSS

When

Adolf Hitler, the frustrated artist, put in charge of propaganda for the fledgling National Socialist Party in 1920,

he realized that the party needed a vivid symbol to distinguish it from rival groups. Therefore he sought

a

design for a party

would attract the masses. Hitler was finally inspired hy a sketch from a dentist in Starnberg, whose flag, he later claimed, "was not bad at all and quite close to my own." The background of the flag was red, and Hitler insisted that flag that

"to win over the worker" the color must

be bolder than the red in the Communists' hammer-and-sickle banner. The Nazi Party emblem was to be the swastika. Hitler had a convenient but spurious reason for choosing the hooked cross. Like other crosses (above), it had been used as a sun symbol or good luck sign by many ancient peoples, including the Aryan nomads of India in the Second Millennium B.C. In Nazi theory, the Aryans were the Germans' ancestors, and Hitler concluded that the swastika had "been eternally antiSemitic," and would be the perfect symbol for "the victory of Aryan man." In spite

of

its

fanciful origin, the swastika

was a dramatic one, and did precisely what Hitler intended from the day in 1920 when it was first unfurled in public. Anti-Semites and unemployed workers ralflag

it

lied to the

banner, and even Nazi oppo-

nents were forced to acknowledge that the

swastika had a "hypnotic" effect. "The

hooked cross" wrote correspondent William Shirer, "seemed to beckon to action the insecure lower-middle classes which had been floundering in the uncertainty of the

28

first

chaotic postwar years."

BECAME AN ANTI-SEMITIC SYMBOL

Three huge banners, hung above the Nuremberg stadium

at the

1938 Nazi Party

rally,

show

the evolving llag with the swastika given a quarter turn.

29

his

I

i«m

ii

Hitlei

powei

of

hen

I

home

.it

negotiations thai led to

tin- m'i u't potiti< al

assumption

i

fashionable Berlin

pretensions

Ith

\%



t

in

1

H6, when

Court of

In

St.

Hitler des-

(ames's. But Rib-

London, he outraged court

Na/i salute

.1

l

the King of England,

at

and commuted home with such frequency that the humor magazine f'utu h labeled him the "Wandering Aryan." It

was

1

hara< (eristic of Adolf Hitler to view success with

Suspicion and to reward failure with preferment.

1938,

In

Ribbentrop was given his heart's desire. Once he was Foreign Minister, he infuriated Hitler's other satraps

named

most perfect toady of them

In pro\ ing himself the

all.

Tak-

ing over the former palace of the Reich President as his off i1

ial

I

How ed,

he met Hitler

Himmler was

He was

— but his part

affray

was so

down the entire Fuhrer's known Gothic

according to the

But though Ribbentrop

was the

crossing the enemy.

once boasted, myself.

I

"When

"I shall

shall put in

have it

all

the

War

first

one

is

I

shall

in

favor and power,

a finely

is

double-

over," Ribbentrop

carved chest

made

for

in

I

have broken during

the future." Chortling,

send you a second chest

when

full."

endin

in

the Nazi in that

Himmler was not even He went to work for the par-

that

in jail.

Landshut and

supplemented his meager salary as a part-time chicken farmer. To the helterskelter Nazis, Himmler's acknowledged administrative talents were welcome: In 1 925 he became deputy gauleiter of Upper Bavaria and Swabia, moving steadily up to deputy Reich propaganda chief. In 1929, Hitler appointed him Reichsfiihrer-SS, and seven years later he became the chief ty in

of

an office job

all German Somewhere

of

in

in

the chill crypts of his being,

a theory:

inferior

breeding of

a

later

police forces.

By

a process of systematic extermina-

peoples, accompanied by the scientific

Third Reich could,

in

exactly 120 years, develop a people

German

appearance," displaying the de-

in

sired physical characteristics

— the

Nordic ideal of the

blond, blue-eyed, fair-skinned master race.

ward

in

the history of Nazi

Himmler's mind was

a filing cabinet,

Moscow and

degree

then

Rosenberg's was a in Esto-

architecture at the University of

in

moved

own

Germany.

ragbag. The son of a shoemaker, Rosenberg grew up nia, received a

tall,

In his striving to-

that goal, Heinrich Himmler would write his

bloodstained pages If

Himmler had

master race of "sacred" Germanic blood, the

"authentically

the state agreements and other

period of office and shall break

"And

rebuilt

tastes.

a predilection for

contracts between governments that

Hitler replied:

and

target of vicious sniping

by the Nazi hierarchy, Hitler kept him perhaps because the two shared

edifice

insignificant

deemed worth throwing

tion

bentrop thereupon tore

I

an Army officer candidate, untested

still

ranks during the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch

to in-

Hitler

When World War

uncertain.

causing trouble throughout Germany.

came by

was nearly completed,

— and murmured a few words of dissatisfaction. Rib-

is

combat; during the next few years he was active with one or another of the "free corps" of demobilized soldiers then

developed

it

limmler was the personitu ation of the imperson-

clinical killer.

al,

When

spect

the

tidy desk,

residence, he ordered an expensive renovation.

the building

my

and the repressed sun ol an authoritarian headmaster. Grayblue eyes gazing lifelessly from behind a pince-nez, a tiny mustac he lu< ked between well-formed nose and colorless lips. p.ist\ p. ile, blue-veined hands resting before him on a

to

Munich

quented grubby cafes; one night Hitler listened enthralled until his guttural Baltic accents,

in

in

1918. There he

fre-

1919, the young Adolf

dawn while Rosenberg,

spewed

in

forth a pastiche of anti-

Heinrich Himmler, aged 39, and Alfred Rosenberg, 47,

Semitic notions.

were as dissimilar as two men could be. Yet each in his own way sought power in the pursuit of a vision of racial purity. Himmler was the grandson of a Bavarian police official

needed no encouragement in his hatred for was the visceral instinct of a have-not seeking a scapegoat. During his vagabond Vienna days, he recalled,

30

In fact, Hitler

lews: His

"wherever the

went,

I

I

began

to see Jews,

and the more

more sharply they became distinguished

from the

Was

humanity.

rest of

in

my

there any form of

profligacy, particularly in cultural

life,

without

I

saw,

Berlin, the

eyes

many were

filth

at least

or

—

ischer Beobachter, and during the next several years he

summed up

his racial

credo

in a

muddled tome

called The

while applauding

Mythos of the Twentieth Century. Hitler, Rosenberg's sentiments, seems to have found the book heavy going. He praised the magnum opus to Rosenberg's face as "a very intelligent book." But behind the man's back he dismissed

it

as "stuff

nobody can understand," written

by "a narrow-minded Baltic

German who

thinks in horribly

Robert Ley, aged 50, the alcoholic, stammering son of a

Rhineland peasant, enjoyed power boss

— which

he was.

in

the

manner

of a big-

A college-educated

air-

World War Ley was twice shot down, the second time ending up badly wounded behind French lines. And it was in a prisoner-of-war camp, organizing inforce pilot during

mate committees

I,

make demands

to

of their French captors,

that Ley discovered his true talent.

went home

Upon

his release,

he

Three weeks bargaining

later,

Hitler

decreed an end to collective

ed as trustees by Labor Front leader Ley would "regulate bor contracts" (with wages frozen

at

Depression

levels)

la-

and

"maintain labor peace." Robert Ley

now

political boss, "It

is

he

held labor still felt

a

more important," he

than their stomachs."

in his clutch, yet like

need

any good

to divert his constituency.

men

said, "to feed the souls of

the business of soul feeding, Ley

In

was sincere and tirelessly inventive. He set up a superagency called Kraft durch Freude ("Strength through Joy"), which sponsored bockwurst-and-beer socials, sent art exhibits to the hinterlands,

promised "people's cars"

to every

Volkswagen did not get off the proWar had ended) and operated a giant travel bureau that ran its own fleet of tourist liners and took German workers at cost to faraway places. In 1938 worker

(in

the event, the

alone,

some 10

Joy vacation

million citizens enjoyed Strength-through-

trips.

And then there was Rudolf Hess. Of all the Nazi leaders, only Hess was bitions. "Hitler

is

Germany," he had

sought from

political force.

would be branded

923 Putsch, Ley had yet to meet Hitler. But Nazi ruthlessness appealed to him, and after Hitler was freed from prison Ley brought his Cologne organization into the party. By 1933, he was the obvious choice to become 1

head of the newly formed German Labor Front, which was designed to replace the traditional labor unions and take

movement. The established union leaders were understandably

control of the workers'

picious of the

and pres-

Nazi Germany; henceforth, stooges appoint-

in

and within a few months he had turned the working classes of Cologne into a potent to the Rhineland,

At the time of the

as a clear

duction line until after the

complicated terms."

city political

camps

ent danger to the state.

one

Jew involved in it? If you cut even cautiously into such an abscess, you found, like a maggot in a rotting body, often dazzled by the sudden light a kike!" In 1923 Rosenberg's loyalty and commitment to Hitler won him the editorship of the Nazi Party newspaper, Volk-

union leaders themselves were arrested, and sent to concentration

new Nazi

ler."

Hess was born the son of a

labor organization. But Hitler and

to

seize union headquarters and appropriate union funds.

In

for the

traitor

"Germany

entity

was

all

Hit-

Hess

excess of his devotion he

man about whom

by the

his uni-

in

Alexandria, Egypt, on April 26, 1894,

German wholesale merchant. A morose boy, he morose man. During the Great War he was

became a wounded near Verdun, was hospitalized for a while, and was then sent to the Rumanian front, where he was shot through a lung. While convalescing, he became interested in

men were expert at disposing of such problems. May Day 1933 was declared a national holiday and labor leaders from all over Germany were flown to Berlin to celebrate the occasion. The Nazis used their absence from home to

And

life.

for this dual

is

verse revolved.

sus-

his

Power and might

am-

selfless in his

said.

aviation,

and shortly before the Armistice, he returned

combat as a flier him into disgrace.

Amid

—a

skill

that

would one day transport

the ashes of Germany's defeat, Hess

than ever

—

until,

one glorious day

in

Hitler speak. His wife, Use, later recalled into their

rooming house

in

the

town

of

was gloomier

1920,

he heard

how Hess

rushed

Schwabing near

31

In

Hitler

s

slave

andsbt

i

hing

Me/n Kampf Upon the n.i/i ption o( powei Hitlei designated Hess Deputy Fuhharge urst hi the lint' "' -ui ession and plat ed him in t make powei p.ifi\ him "the giving organization the isions In m\ name In .ill questions relating to the con

phei while his mastei

tated

di<

i

i

..I

man

and then accompanying Hltlei to prison where he served as stenogra

Hall Putsch

tl

the

Rudoll Hess was

day

n thai

h«'sn u.is responsible foi

ing such divei

is

Nazified

schools

art

a

t

he< k

But Urss w.is

He turned

9 departments, involv-

h»-

tin-

unemployment.

organization of

Germans

liv-

also responsible for cosigning

lew

S

and anyone opposed

to the

Through Hess, Hitler intended on other Na/i leaders. exceedingly peculiar and becoming more

the Fuhrer or

ep

t

He was

lous dec rees against state

1

as racial hygiene,

and

ing outside the Rei< h

leasl

.it

tin-

party

pseudo sciences He had astrologers

to the

iermany

that flourished

in

lay out his charts

vegetarian diets and

that affected

human

had been sent

to

behavior.

in

"terrestrial radiations"

He thought

that evil spirits

plague him by lews, but he concluded that

removed from his body by magnets. When Mess s >on was born in 1937, the happy father asked that each of Germany's gauleiters, or district leaders, send samples of dirt to be placed under the crib, thereby making the infant a true child of Germany. Before long, all this began to grate on Hitler. "With Hess," he complained, "every conversation becomes an unbearably tormenting strain." And slowly but surely, the man whom Hitler had once affectionately called "mein Rudi, mein Hesserl" was removed to the periphery of favor. thev could be

Kroll

segment of

"From

gray presence of his assistant, Martin Bormann, gathering

up the

strings of

power within

the Nazi Party organization.

had

now

said, "I

hear only a single

do not know whether these politicians already have a orrect idea of what the continuation of this struggle is true, declare that they will carry will be like. They do, on from Canada. can hardly believe that they mean by this am that the people of Britain are to go there. The people, I

(

it

I

I

have to remain "Believe me, gentlemen, of unscrupulous politician afraid, will

in Britain.

deep disgust for this type who wrecks whole nations. Mr. feel a

I

Churchill ought perhaps, for once, to believe

me when

I

—

prophesy that a great empire will be destroyed an empire that it was never my intention to destroy or even to harm."

And then

announced:

the hypnotic voice

"In this hour

I

feel

it

to

my

be

duty before

science to appeal to reason and Britain as to

make

much

this

as elsewhere.

appeal since

I

"I

can see no reason

why

my own

sense

consider myself

am

I

common

in

in a

con-

Great

position

not the vanquished begging

favors, but the victor speaking in the this

name

of reason.

War must go on."

was confirmed in an idea that several weeks to appeal to the

Listening raptly, Rudolf Hess

he had been harboring for British himself. in fact,

If

faithful follower,

sary to the

—

the British turned

they soon did),

why should

down

Hitler's offer (as,

not he, the Fuhrer's most

undertake an unofficial mission as emis-

enemy? Perhaps he could by personal diplomacy

win the British over to reason. Indeed, Hess had already mentioned such a notion to Hitler in vague terms and had received an equally vague reply. In the weeks that followed, the idea took shape. Night af-

—

sage from Mein

notch lower, could sense from below the silent

Hitler's

that speech, Hitler

Britain," Hitler

ter night

a

and regain

cry — not of the people but of the politicians — that the War

Hess now

Hitler

his faith

had intermingled pel sonal insult tow.ird Winston Churchill and other British leaders with an offer of peace toward England. In a

in command of the party apparaavoided him, rarely speaking to him except at party rallies and other formal occasions. In 1 938, Hermann Goring replaced Hess as next in the line of succession. And

Although Hess remained

tus,

demonstrate

sensed an opportunity.

by the Stars and he consulted \arious fortunetellers about his own fate and that ol his country. He believed in "bio-

dynamic'

to

and on the occasion ol Hitler's victory speech in the Opera House, the muddled mind of Rudolf Hess

favoj

must go on.

tin- |).irt\

ill

t

t

he wished only

manl

t-

But loyal Hess was \nd loyal he would remain. Indeed.

rhe manl

and ihouting

laughing hysterically

nich

about us Italy."

once for

He

his wife

Kampf

European

had in

retired,

which

allies,

Hess would reread a pas-

Hitler

had said:

"If

we

look

there remain only England and

read too the predictions of the 16th Century

Landsberg Fortre^^ prison for the 92 i Putsch, right) pose comfortably with three Nazi cronies for a photograph taken by Hess's girl friend. Becau-e the prison guards were Nazi sympathizers, they allowed Hitler to receive unlimited visitors, have flowers in his cell and eat specially prepared meals. The Fuhrer spent his time there reading, laying plans to seize power after his release and dictating his autobiography, Mein Kampf. Serving sentences

Hitler

in

and Rudolf Hess (second from

1

French seer Nostradamus, finding insights into the present struggle

between Germany and Great

time besieged

the Isles

in

/

Britain:

"Those

a long

Will take vigorous action against

enemies."

their

Could

mean

that the

War would

drag on indefi-

Reich would be unable to break the

Brit-

regarded chief of supply and procurement for the Luftwaffe,

and requested such

machine

purpose of "training Udet was polite in his reply but said that he must first receive permission from the Fuhrer. Hess decided not to force the issue, for Hitler had forbidden his top lieutenants to risk accident

ish will to fight?

By September, Hess had decided on

He

Ernst Udet, Gdring's highly

a

for the

flights."

all this

nitely, that the

He approached General

fighter.

his

course of action.

Like

many

by piloting their

own

planes.

disturbed persons with a driving sense of mis-

Hess could be cunning. He journeyed

good connection with the English aristocracy. He had met the Duke of Hamilton at the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936; the Duke had been gracious and Hess believed that he was friendly toward Germany. Hess had recently been told that the Duke had access to Churchill and the King. Acting on his own, so that if the mission failed Hitler would not be deemed responsible, Hess would fly to England in quest of the peace his Fuhrer seemed to

sion,

desire so greatly.

Kalundborg, Denmark; they would be

felt

that he

had

a

By the autumn of 1940, Hess was ready to take a

first

onetime World needed a plane preferably a twin-engined Messerschmitt-1 0, Germany's newest and fastest long-range step. In order to carry out his mission, the

War

I

—

flier

1

and there sought

a

to

Augsburg

plane from his old friend Professor Willy

Messerschmitt, the famous aircraft designer. The professor

was somehow persuaded

to give

Hess

his plane,

equipped

with auxiliary fuel tanks. of activity, Hess started to obtain weather reon North Sea conditions aloft. He practiced reading

In a flurry

ports

radio directional signals from the Luftwaffe transmitter

water

flight.

He posted

a

map

critical for

in

any over-

of northern Europe

on the

wall of his bedroom, and studied the checkpoints on a route

northwest from Augsburg.

During the winter, Rudolf Hess made about 20 training

33

lights

one nighl

in his study •.t

Important .mil

burg c

iptain Karlheim

i

•

fully

proficient,

Hess wrote the

1941

January l

rhen he |ourneyed

i «.-

he gave

copy

>

ti»

i«>

Augs

his adjutant,

with instru< tions that

to -vdoit Hitler n

it

Hess did nol return

to

10 taxied out to the runway and

w Ith

inon |ammed

foi

fevi

.>

dittu ulty

t

less

t

limbed into the sky.

hours

— but thru an

turned .iround and

ai<

re

turned to Augsburg where he landed safely. From the look

on

Pints* h

s fa<

«sKaiip|Mjlli\!liilioiial(ojiali(!i|iK'nS>

Z

.Dolfifdit

UnMMi

,

i'> (!oiiin*r.'tii\uil*l.iii.''

BwboAlcr", ftcrMSftfcer

HMf

cidtr

Bareheaded

in

the snow, Hitler

condemns

the

government

for

having accepted the Versailles Treaty.

41

Carrying a banner with the slogan "Death to Marxism." disi iplinedSA troopers parade past Hitler (circled) in Weimar in 926. 1

Hitler, flanked

preside,

42

by key party

offi( ials,

gathering with Na/i gauleiters the party's headquarter', in Munit

,i(

a

at h.

TWO YEARS OF SILENCE AND REORGANIZATION

The movement floundered,

this

"This wild beast is checked," boasted the Prime Minister of Bavaria after Hitler's release from prison in December 1 924. "We can loosen the chain." But while the Nazi Party ler

was again permitted

remained on

a leash,

to function, Hit-

enjoined against

addressing public meetings for two years.

in

part be-

cause improvement in economic conditions took the sting out of Nazi protest. At juncture Hitler charted his

new

route

—

through the electoral process, to power not armed coups. He used the years of silence to form a solid party apparatus. He tightened his hold over the large, unruly SA.

He gave

the gauleiters

new impor-

tance as political bosses and made them responsible for local indoctrination and

membership

drives.

He

recruited bureau-

crats to run party headquarters.

He obeyed

the ban on public speaking, but politicked

vigorously

at private gatherings.

By 1928, Hitler had transformed the Nazi image: What had once been viewed as a dangerous paramilitary association was behaving like a regular political party, albeit one backed by a corps of storm troopers. The Nazis were ready to compete

at

(Jinec

the polls.

allefa

son 2000 OTiOionen SRenfgen

bet Ctb« barf in Sxutfdjtanb

only

nirf>t

rrbcnl

A Nazi cartoon caption calls Hitler the man not allowed to speak in Germany.

Hitler confers with party chieftains over coffee at

an outdoor restaurant

When SA storm

their

in

brown

Munich.

shirts

were banned,

troopers demonstrated bare-chested.

43

The brown-shirted bloc oi newly elected Nazi deputies

44

fills

mo-t of two sections on the

left

side of Berlin's Reichstag after the party's stunning gains in the 1930

Hitler greets excited citizens while

campaigning

in

Nuremberg

in

1929.

A NEW WEAPON M FOR 00R STRUGGLE summer

By the

of 1930, the Nazis again

had the hard times they needed to make dramatic gains: Germany's economic recovery had been undone by the Great Depression.

Unemployment neared nation

million

as the

new

Reichstag.

a

three

prepared to elect

"Working Germany, awake!" screamed Goebbels' Der Angriff newspaper. But Hithad no intention of pitting class against class. Promising "bread and work for everyone," he launched into a frenzy of acshaking hands, kissing babies. He tivity gave 20 major speeches in six weeks; all ler

—

them contained free-swinging attacks on the Communists, the international financiers and the inept government. Thousands of local leaders canvassed their districts, wards and blocks to get out the vote. The election results surprised even the most optimistic Nazis. They had garnered more than six million votes, sending their delegate strength soaring from 12 to 107

of

608 in the Reichstag. The Nazis had now attained the balance of power and used it to paralyze the fragmented Reichstag, barring any Chancellor seats out of a total

from governing. "We are a parliamentary party by compulsion," said Hitler. "The victory we have just won is nothing but a

new weapon elections. Each

Nazi answered

roll call

with

a

for

our struggle."

ringing "Present; Heil Hitler."

45

THE POLITICS OF

TURMOIL AND MURDER chaotic early 1930s, Hitler played both sides ot the political street. While he announced that he was standing "hard as In the

granite

on the ground

of legality," his fol-

lowers practiced Nazi Realpolitik as denned by Joseph GoebbeK: He who can

conquer the masses he

can also conquer the has conquered the masses

street

who

has thereby conquered the state."

Even as the legally elected Nazi depu-

assumed

ties

SA

their seats in the Reichstag.

ruffians dressed in civilian clothes be-

gan vandalizing lewish shops, cafes and department stores. Hardly a day passed without Nazis and Communists engaging in hrawK and tit-tor-tat murdt

was the bloodiest battleground. one month alone, 99 men were killed,

Berlin In

another

1

The entire

125

wounded

in street

brawls.

wrote an American journalist lav under an epidemic of infectious fear." There were "whispers of midcity,

night arrests, of prisoners tortured in the

SA barracks, made ture,

to spit

swallow castor

In this

oil,

on Lenin's

pic-

eat old socks."

law less climate, democratic

insti-

The Weimar government was paralyzed. The people, exhausted, saw only one solution: to name Adolf tutions disintegrated.

Hitler Chancellor.

Shouting Nazi slogans.

46

German

university students fling "racially alien" books into a roaring bonfire in a

ierlin

square

in

May

1933. The Nazis went on to purge

German

libraries

and bookstores of unacceptable

writings by

Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann and

others.

47

Bert*

a

can

We demand peace and equal

•

fresh/)

pasted up

rights." reach the slogan

/>v

on

a

.1

Nazi slogan squad.

map

of

It

proclaims: "Hitler

Germany made by miners scorning

— Our

Last

Hope.

the League of Nati ons.

48 ,

ELECTIONS TO LEGALIZE

THE FIJHRER STATE Shortly after his appointment as Chancellor,

Hitler staged a series of carefully or-

By means of these he intended to conexercises, democratic chestrated plebiscites.

vince

Germans

that

democracy was super-

fluous, that they should legally dispense with it and trust in his personal rule. The first plebiscite was held on November 12, 1933, to ratify a move he had already made, withdrawing Germany from

the League of Nations.

Slumping

lor the

August

19,

The Nazis cam-

paigned vigorously, with Hitler in the forefront as usual. He argued that the Reich could achieve equality with other nations if all Germans held together "as one man." He offered himself as the rallying point. "Accept me as your Fuhrer. belong to no class or group. Only to you." In a resounding endorsement of his policies, more than 95 per cent of the people voted "ja." Swept on this wave of popular

only

I

sentiment, the Reich Cabinet immediately passed a law proposed by Hitler declaring the Nazi Party to be the official "representative

of the

many became

1934, plebiscite. Hitler urges

German a

state."

Thus Ger-

one-party nation.

Hamburg shipyard workers

to

Hitler sealed the Nazification of Ger19, 1934. Barely two weeks before, President Paul von Hindenburg had died, and now the German people were being asked to ratify a hastily prepared law combining Hindenburg's va-

many on August

cated presidency with Hitler's chancellorship. The Nazis persuaded Hindenburg's

son Oskar to address the nation by radio, urging all Germans "to vote in favor of handing my father's office to the Fuhrer."

The next day, 38 million Germans agreed. Adolf Hitler,

for

15 years the driving

force of the Nazi Party,

and soul of the German

was now the heart state.

endorse the law making him President and Chancellor of the Reich.

49

tier

I

nmissioner for Education ana Training :>

publish*

ti the ,nn Hid.

4

I

.

•lv

h»\.ir/

Supreme

Party

tal

(

urt

pholographei

part) treasurer

minister without portfolio Minister Bormjnn assistant to (he Deput)

fr.inl

» \f.irlin

ol the

/

uhrvr

German labor

Front Munich-Upper Bavaria hie!

1

inda \fmis(cr

i

of ihe/r Fuhrer, officials of the triumphant in the new Reich Chancellery to assemble above, identified Nazi Partv pay homage to Adolf Hitler on his 50th birthday. April 20. 1939. Berliners were treated to a pageant of Luftwaffe flyovers, marching bands

Under (he palerna/ gaze

and goose-stepping troops at

50

that lasted

midnight with

throughout the day and climaxed parade oi Nazi Party members.

a torchlight

51

Bormann had

Martin

h

written the scenario

foi

his rise to

ould hardly have onjured up better opportunities than those th.it ame his way unhidden

powei

the Nazi Party, he

in

i

i

(

w.is pure lu< k thai Deputy Fuhin May and |une ol 1941. rei Rudolf Mess had departed tor England and left vital reIt

Bormann took over

sponsibilities that (

hiel ot the

Na/i Party

(

ham

cilery, better

was increasingly engrossed invasion

I

a

was

h

still,

post as

Adoll Hitler

prep, nations lor the

final

in

Union, whi<

new

si

heduled

to be-

on |une 22.

gin

(

ot the Soviet

his

in

litler's

ham

prerx

<

upation with military affairs gave Bormann

e to play the leading role in the administration of the

Reich. Bormann's purpose was, as ever, to serve his Fuhrer efficiently. But to

well,

do

so,

he had

to serve his

own

interests as

establishing firm personal control over the

whole

apparatus of the party. For Bormann, duty and ambition

were synonymous. That Bormann had of the top

so high occurred to few

set his sights

Nazi leaders. They tended to take him

cause he had spent

his 14 years as a party

spicuous administrative posts, and

it

was

lightly be-

member

in

incon-

his style to

work

quietly behind the scenes. Yet this drab bureaucrat had a

mind of dazzling subtlety and boldness. Soon after the Nazis took power in Germany, Bormann

won

Hitler's

plan.

He convinced

had

gratitude with an

rights to a royalty for every

likeness.

ingenious money-raising

the head of the postal service that Hitler

postage stamp bearing his

The revenue on each stamp was a tiny amount, German stamps portrayed the Fuhrer, the

but since most

scheme

raised millions of reichsmarks for his private use.

Bormann's biggest coup had been Adolf Hitler-Spende,

mous cash contributions from German Finding a key in the Fuhrer's eccentricities

To the

office in bathing trunks

Coddling civilians

in a

wartime economy

The Cabinet that never met The "fairy tales" of a Nazi bookkeeper Broken promises catch up with a Reich Marshal Ignoring the call for "Total

War"

Victory in a gold-embossed Fuhrer message

his creation of the

fund

a private slush

made up

of enor-

industrialists

whose

companies had profited from Hitler's rearmament program, among them the G. Farben chemical cartel, the Krupp arms works and the Siemens electrical combine. Bormann used the fund for land purchases and lavish building programs to enlarge Hitler's retreat in the Bavarian Alps, the Berghof. In recognition of his general efficiency and all his personal services to Hitler, he was officially made a permaI.

nent

No

member

of Hitler's entourage in

937.

advancement was too small

possibility for personal

escape Bormann's notice.

1

One

99

ALL THE "LITTLE HITLERS

of

his

seemingly

to

trivial

make room assignments in the hotel where during the Nuremberg party rallies; Bormann

chores was to Hitler stayed

capitalized on the task by awarding suite to leaders from

zis

rooms near

he wanted a favor.

"Old Fighters" by

No

in writ-

ing," Dietrich explained. "Instead he impulsively issued

whoever happened to be standing near him." Visitors to Hitler would frequently extract some promise from him that they would then pass on independently as a Fuhrerbefel, or Fuhrer Order. Many a Fuhrer Order was diametrically opposed to another Fuhrer Order producing numerous disagreements that brought important functions

starting a

them

orally to

—

Bormann was a keen judge of judgment in ways just as unfathomable as the Fiihrer's. For example, Alfred Rosenberg, the party's chief ideologue, had incurred Bormann's enmity by less

another problem arose. "Hitler did not issue orders

Hitler's

coffers swelled with the extra receipts.

than Hitler himself,

men, and he used

the perambulating Fuhrer had reached a decision,

He pleased

compulsory aid plan Nazi veterans injured in the early struggles. Since all Nahad to subscribe, a huge surplus accrued, and the party

the party's for

whom

Once

his

to a

confused

halt.

Bormann's knack of explaining problems to the Fuhrer was matched by his uncanny ability to translate Hitler's

the

rambling reactions into clearly understandable Fuhrer Or-

days before the Soviet invasion, Bormann went about rec-

ders that could be released without fear of conflict with oth-

ommending Rosenberg

er orders. His proposals "are so exactly

attempting to take over the post vacated by Hess. Yet

in

appointment as the party's printhe territories to be conquered by the for

worked out,"

Hitler

German

once told an aide, "that only need to say 'yes' or 'no.' With him dispatch in ten minutes a pile of papers over which

get

other

cipal representative in

armies. Bormann's tactic was not a simple effort to Rosenberg out of his way; his schemes went deeper and further than that. He had long since pegged Rosenberg as a weak, ineffectual man, and he expected to manipulate him

with ease

in

the Soviet post,

which might otherwise

more formidable rival. Bormann's maneuvers were based on sally

recognized

in

fall

to a

was the source of all power. But Bormann alone planned monopolize that source of power to make Hitler so dependent on him that he could deny rivals access to the Fuhrer. Bormann was well on his way toward that goal even as ler

—

three million

German

along the Russian

soldiers

moved

into attack positions

front.

Bormann had found the key to his success in Hitler's ecwork habits. The Fuhrer never sat quietly at his desk

centric

and studied papers

in

order to arrive at a decision; as Reich

press chief Otto Dietrich put trate sitting

down and keeping

it,

"Hitler could not concen-

silent

I

men

take hours of

my

time."

Bormann was, in short, becoming Hitler's administrative alter ego. He basked in Hitler's growing trust, and in the lengthening periods they spent together he smoothly voiced the exact sentiments that the Fuhrer wanted to hear.

a principle univer-

the upper echelons of the party: that Hit-

to

I

— he had to be moving

they dined just two days before the

start of

When

the Soviet inva-

was nervous and fretful, haunted by last-minute doubts. But Bormann, Walter Schellenberg recalled, quickly put the Fiihrer's mind at rest. "You are burdened with great worries just now," he said with respectful sympathy. "The successful conclusion of this great campaign depends sion, Hitler

on you alone. Providence has appointed you as her

ment for deciding the knows better than do I

instru-

whole world. No one you have devoted the whole of

future of the that

yourself to this task, that you've studied every conceivable detail

of this

problem.

I

am convinced

that

you have

planned everything thoroughly, and that your great mission will surely

succeed."

about and talking." While the Fuhrer nervously paced to

someone would explain the problem to him, and increasingly that someone was Martin Bormann. "He had

As head of the Party Chancellery, Bormann was the chief

the ability," said Walter Schellenberg, the chief of the SS

power that went with the title, he had numerous key posts men who were personally loyal to him. This called for complicated maneuvers to shift existing jurisdictions and personnel. Bormann's immediate goal was to strengthen his con-

and

fro,

foreign-intelligence service, "to simplify complicated matters, to

present them concisely, and summarize the essential

points in a few clear sentences. So cleverly did he

even

his briefest reports

do

it

that

contained an implicit solution."

administrative officer of the party and

its

eight million

mem-

bers. But to wield the

to install in

53

uni

ira

|>i)in

making bod)

\

wisation (Political Organization)

which

irt

nu"

controlled eight official

in turn

rhe

organizations

affiliated

ss

the

regions called g.ius (Caue

t\u

II

i

<

(

19 19 the authority ol the n.i/i

in

bureaucrats had been enhanced i

to thf party could

worktime

or

Rosenberg held title as hie! oi the party's foreign-policy office and Ernst-Wilhelm Bohle headed the Foreign Organization of tlu> National s k ialisl Party, other ken h Ministers were Ministers in name only. In this unbut Alfred

tairs.

tirelessly and cleverly to use these provincial leaders for his purposes, flooding them with political assignments and directives.

among their

his

subordinates and the conflicts between them and

opposite numbers

hausting infighting

left

in

the state bureaucracy.

The ex-

Hitler's lieutenants with neither the

many's internal

politics. "I've totally lost sight of the organi-

zations of the party," Hitler told a group of dinner ions late in

1

941

.

"When

energy nor the inclination to mount any effective challenges

another of

own supreme authority as Fuhrer. The rivalries also had a constructive side. "Friction," Hitler once told an associate, "creates heat and heat is an excellent source of energy." With two or three subordinates competing in every important policy area, Hitler could be sure that his decisions were effectively, if not efficiently, executed. It was undeniably true, as Otto Dietrich said in ret-

that has developed.' "

to his

was

its

I

achievements,"

to a large

companone or

find myself confronted by I

say to myself: 'By God,

Whatever

that

how

development was,

it

degree the handiwork of the Fuhrer's new

deputy, Martin Bormann.

On May

15, 1941, only three

days

after his

appointment

rospect, that Hitler "systematically disorganized the higher

Bormann dispatched a confidential memo to all Reichsleiters and gauleiters. It was a typical Bormann communique, combining a reassurance that business would continue as usual with a self-serving recapitula-

departments of government so that he could push the au-

tion

thority of his it

was no

own

will to the point of despotic

an

less true, as

official of the Interior Ministry said,

that at the lower levels of the

eryone does

his

doesn't grab

it."

Hitler

was

work

tyranny." But

just to

combative bureaucracy, "evbe sure that some other office

perfectly satisfied by the administrative chaos

he had created. But military affairs

in

1941

his increasing

made him an absentee

involvement

landlord

in

in

Ger-

to the Party Chancellery,

of his

own accomplishments

working functionary

in

as

a

loyal

Hitler's entourage.

thinks otherwise," he advised, "should

tell

and hard-

"Anyone who the Fuhrer at

once who he thinks could do my job better than can." As was to be expected, a number of Bormann's fellow Reichsleiters thought themselves better suited to head the Party Chancellery. Robert Ley posed the most serious threat from his two power bases. Ley was Reich Organization Leader, in which capacity he I

57

had broad but vaguely defined responsibilities foi deploy mg the party i i>«>ii!u.ii workers and training promising young Nazis

lot

man

Laboi (rout and had

rat

.11

and

\

Ha was

leadership posts

|).iti\

his disposal

.it

almost unlimited sour* e

>«n

million members' dues

In

both

re<

the

large bu«

.<

ie\

had ample

ords and job assign-

promotions and the

to influence

t

funds from 25

oi

ol ins posts

opportunities to reshuffle personnel

ments and

also boss

political train-

ing oi future Nazi leaders

had no shortage ol eithei organizational ability or vaulting ambition Mis main handii dp was a pedantic mind To him political organization was an exacting sciRobert

ence

to

ey

i

be pursued with

order m\ rnd

in

German thoroughness,

with

itself,

regard

little

ley

made

tor the realities ot

wartime German politic 5. in his role as )rganization Leader, lor example, he codified every branch, office, rank, uniform and insignia ot the Nazi Party in a massive 600-page manual that became the bible of every aspiring political (

worker

I

even spec

e\

s

party leaders

Old as

party

Ley

s

f

known

guidelines

ified the

houses on the maps

members sneered

airy Tales.''

the manual's

as

The Organization Book,

color of the heads of pins used to denote

But

if

at

in local offices.

such pernickety directives

they had taken a close look

at

complex charts and job descriptions, they

might have realized that Ley was subtly shifting more and

more 1

responsibility to his

own

office of Reich Organization

eader and head of the Labor Front. Alfred Rosenberg

was one

of the earliest victims of Ley's

elaborate pettifoggery. As the party's theoretician, Rosen-

berg was responsible

tor the

ideological purity of

all

party

and materials. But in Ley's Organization Book, these responsibilities were transferred to his own oftraining courses

fice,

leaving Rosenberg high and dry as the publisher of a

monthly party magazine. Rosenberg awakened belatedly to find himself undone. In the meantime, Ley was busily expanding his system of dull

Nazi training establishments to every gau and kreis

many. Youngsters 12 Adolf Hitler Schools,

to at

in

Ger-

18 years old could attend

elite

which they combined the study

of

Nazi racial theories with intensive athletic activities; graduates of the Adolf Hitler Schools could receive

advanced po-

and ideological indoctrination in Ley's Ordensburgen. or Order Castles four-year finishing schools that took litical

—

Hitler appears in wartime uniform, wearing his

58

World War

I

medals.

UNIFORMS TO INSPIRE THE PARTY LOYALISTS In

1943,

the height of

at

Germany was

a nation in

World War

II,

uniform. All told,

about 12.5 million Germans, one out of

Most were and such members railway and postal the as organizations Millions gendarmery. services and local more proudly wore Nazi uniforms. As supreme soldier of the Reich as well as party chief, Adolf Hitler adopted a garb every

wore

six,

official dress.

of regular military units

that served

both functions: a Wehrmacht-

gray outfit with the Nazi eagle instead of an armband. Except for the Fuhrer's en-

who

tourage,

usually

forms similar to aries,

his,

such as the

wore

field-gray uni-

most party function-

district political

leader

brown uniforms with oak leaf-bedecked swastika armbands to show rank, and pistols at the waist. So striking was this dress that its wearers were known as "golden pheasants." Members of the two major paramilitary organizations within the party also wore uniforms that distinguished them from the ranks of the regular Army. The kepi and brown uniform of the Sturmabteilung, or SA, was derived from the dress worn by wore

at right,

trim

the early Brownshirt battalions

Party District Leader

SA Master Sergeant

SS Technical Sergeant

— Hitler's

street-fighting storm troops of the 1920s.

The grimly distinctive black regalia of the and its Death'ssymbolized its perfectly emblem head cap

elite Schutzstaffel, or SS,

mission of destroying the party's political

and racial enemies. The Waffen-SS— the full-fledged tary

arm

of the SS

— fought

Wehrmacht and dressed

in

mili-

alongside the the standard

uniform of the Army. But the 600,000 members of the Waffen-SS could be distinguished from their comrades-in-

field-gray

arms by field

their

Death's-head-emblazoned

cap, their SS rune insignia that resem-

bled flashes of lightning and

their

belt

buckle boldly inscribed with the slogan "Loyalty

Is

My

Honor."

Even the nation's children were outfitted

members. and 18 in the

for their roles as aspiring party

Boys between Hitler

the ages of 10

Youth wore

a short-pants version of

SA uniform. And

girls between the and 21 in the League of German Girls wore the navy skirt and white blouse that marked them as the future mothers of

the

ages of

* %

1

the Greater

German

Reich.

Waffen-SS Corporal

Hitler Youth

Member

League of German

G/'r/s

Member

59

A GARISH PROFUSION OF NAZI rhc

t\

nbers with

showered .1

Its

eight million

profusion ol

Insignia designed

i

medals and

enhance

theii

sell

the ss

Ami when the uniformed men changed into mufti, they had

-i>cc ial

pin to denote their status.

(

.1

100,000 members ol the In* pres I'.iru urn- honored \\ ith here were tigious Golden Party Badge pin ol organizations each with nom the Students' league of it- own lion,

the

!"'•>!

1

t

the

orate su< h

<

ol .1

commem ( i

sented with medal, .is were loyal civilian p.irts workers. Mothers were honored

Fliers

m w

.1

gold

ith

.1

ith

eight or

(

ross tor presenting the Roic h

more

children.

al

The Nation-

and Scienc e was awarded ientists as autobahn Todt and aircraft designer

Prize foi Art

to SU< h artists

builder Fritz

,\nt\ S(

Willy Messersc hmilt. Naturally,

))i p.irty

rally in Braunschweig and such mile stones .1- the 1923 Munich Beer Hall Puts< h, rhey also recognized service of every sort. Veterans ol the SS were pre-

.1

I

and the Women's League

orps

rhe Nazis struck medals to elebrations as the

ni authority

rhe commonest category simply iden titled the wearei as party man r mem .it one "i In .nidi its many organs

EMBLEMS AND DECORATIONS

the

the

Na/i

supreme decorations

Perhaps the ultimate re.u

leaders

hed

after

the

in

of France,

when

Grand Cross

of the

fall

Hitler reinstated the

Iron Cross for Luftwaffe chief

(.ming (

— and

gave

to

it

reserved

themselves. ostentation was for

him

Hermann

in a

leather

ase studded with a small fortune

in to-

pazes and diamonds.

nSrSmucnfriioft

Pjft>

(.!>.'(<

Insignii

National Socialist Fliers Corps Insignia

German

University

Student league Pin

Golden Party Badge

German National for Art

Prize

and Science

SS Civilian Dress Insignia

Beer Hall Putsch

Braunschweig Rally

Commemorative Badge

Commemorative Badge

m Twelve-Year SS Service Medal

Ten-Year Party Service Medal

Cold Honor Cross lor the German Mother

60

their

name from

the medieval fortresses of the order of

Teutonic Knights. But Ley's gains turned out to be empty ones. There was little

demand

for his

crop of political soldiers; most of his

Ordensjunkers, or Order Castle graduates, were so inept that

no party leaders would employ them. The young gradu-

"knew nothing about

ates, said Albert Speer,

practical

life,

while on the other hand their arrogance and conceit about their

own

abilities

was boundless." Ultimately, most Or-

densjunkers were either drafted into the Wehrmacht or off to serve in the occupied Eastern territories. With Bormann's appointment to the Party Chancellery, Ley saw a new opportunity for gain. The Chancellery ran its own indoctrination program for political leaders, and Ley, seeing Bormann as a new and insecure leader, sought to

shipped

some

transfer

however, Ley had made the mistake of un-

derestimating his opponent. ing proposal

own

of the Chancellery's functions to his

office. This time,

Bormann

told Ley that his train-

sounded fine, but that there was one procewould first have to have his curriculum

dural matter: Ley

approved by Rosenberg, the party ideologue. Naturally, Ley refused to submit to his longtime enemy, Rosenberg. In that

Bormann proposed, he would

case,

act as mediator

and

approve the plans himself. Ley gladly accepted this facesaving compromise, and Bormann at his leisure proceeded to strangle Ley's proposal in miles of red tape.

This

was only one

skillfully

emulated

of

many occasions when Bormann

Hitler's

rivalries of party officials.

technique of exploiting the

He encouraged

bitter

a long-running

three-cornered dispute between Rosenberg, Goebbels and

Ley over National Socialist festivals

— the

pseudoreligious

Nazi gatherings that paralleled traditional Christian holi-

He periodically threw fuel on the fiery feuds between Rosenberg and Ribbentrop over foreign policy. He assiduously exacerbated the disputes between Ribbentrop and days.

Goebbels over propaganda in foreign countries. In time, Ley rebounded from his first defeat at Bormann's hands and attacked from another direction. On this occasion, Ley used his position as keeper of the party's

ship

files

in

member-

a transparent attempt to take control of the

Chancellery's political organization. Since Hitler had assigned him the task of maintaining statistical information on political personnel, Ley

Citation Case

and Grand Cross of the

wrote

to

Bormann, the analysis

of

Iron Cross

61

and the preparation i>t rei ommendations foi promotions appointments and dismissals also belonged lonnel

all

in his

files

area ol responsibility

Bormann went to Hitler himseli tor > decision, knowing tuil well that the FGhrei now completely absorbed In moving armies k«- hess pie< es In the 5o\ let Inion, would be I

Irked by the interruption

made

Hitlei

quite plain thai he

it

be bothered with petty Intraparty disputes and ordered that "i> hanges be made In personnel poli< ies. in he uhrer orders me to triumph Bormann replied t

.1

.1

routines ol the

marked SA

leaders,

the Night of the long Knives

— SS

and on )une

killer

squads

himseli led an early-morning raid that took

JO,

1934

—

struck. Hitler

Rdhm and

sever-

others y surprise in their boardinghouse headquarters in Bad Wiessee. The Fuhrer could not bring himself to murder his old comrade. Rohm and his asso< i.ites were taken to a

al

!

where SS assassins shot them down. The killings went on for two days and nights and took a toll of pe haps 200 "enemies of the state." was quite enough to the SA to impotence, and brought the e Fuhrer immediate returns. The dying President of the Reich, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, congratulated Hitler on crushing the troublesome SA, and the Army generals lo< al jail,

It

'

it

—

55 troopers oi Hitler's personal bodyguard, the Leibstandarte-SS Adoli Hitler, stand at rigid attention outside the Fuhrer's study in the Berlin Chancellery (left). This elite unit, numbering only 120 men in 1933, expanded vigorously and reached regimental strength of 3, 100 by 1937, when it marched en masse through the streets of the ( apital (right) to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the Nazi seizure of power.

86

— concluding that Hitler was al

now

their

pawn

— swore person-

loyalty to him.

Himmler and Heydrich were meanwhile playing a leadand their own. ing role in consolidating Nazi power Shortly before Hitler became Chancellor, they set as their

—

goal the take-over of target

was

all

the

police forces. Their

first

the most important and the most dangerous one:

just the

on

his

methods and

In a

long series of closed-door ses-

each officer policies.

sweat some more. Finally,

to a grueling interrogation

Then Heydrich

at his leisure,

them one

let

the officers

he called the

offi-

time that they would retain

type of tough professional officers that Himmler

their jobs

— as members of the SD. The officers were vastly

to make was no national administration controlling or coordinating the political police, Himmler and Heydrich would have to take over the 16 state forces one by one, coercing his security services truly efficient.

Since

— and often anti-Nazi — officers to serve as loyal

followers. Heydrich

cumbed, Germany's

was confident

that as these forces suc-

and local organizations of ordinary uniformed policemen would fall into line without state

resistance.

Himmler and Heydrich struck first at the political police in Bavaria, their SS power base. The Bavarian officers knew that an SS take-over was inevitable and feared reprisals for all

sions, he subjected

and

needed

much

of the political police.

cers back

there

the veteran

street fights. At the very least, they expected to be fired. Heydrich gave them time to nurture their fears. Then, with some SD men, he occupied the Munich headquarters

tight-knit organizations staffed

the political-police forces

by

German

and

the Nazi skulls they had cracked during demonstrations

told

at a

relieved. In a rush of enthusiasm for the Nazi cause, they

assured Heydrich that they were ready to serve without ervation. In

emies

res-

one move, he had converted them from en-

to allies.

Himmler and Heydrich barely paused to enjoy their victory in Bavaria; one by one they extended SS sway over 14 of the remaining

1

5 state political-police forces.

By the end

1933 they were ready to take on the last holdout, the massive Prussian force, which Hermann Goring had com-

of

mandeered by similar tactics. It was not much of a contest. Goring, his heart set on becoming head of the entire German military, had already lost interest in the control of his police,

and he offered only spo-

87

HeydrU

resistant e as

lit

men

h's

Be

infiltrated his force

power leaving Goring a somewhat embarrassed nominal leadei Hut Himmlei km C6ring an opportunity to save face On \pril cioush, 1934 Gdring assembled his men in the presence of Himmlei and Heydrich and commanded them to support his new ill-puts the Ken hsfuhrei ss against .ill enemies ol

Heydrh

fore long

trust .nni

you Nevei

will

Himmlei now tones

wielded

Himmlei seemed told him

the state

rings

h

.ill

to I

the

be deeply touched

shall forevei

Go

b>

remain loyal

to

you have anything to feai from me." ombined .ill o( Germany's politic .)l-police i

nationwide organization under the name Ge appointed Heydri< h its hief. ro justify tins move,

into

st.ipo .mil

.1

(

Himmlei had Informed Hitler

thai

Communist

.)

plot to as-

that he had been impromptu arrests. Under the obliged to make certain was desirable to place t

Himmler devoted endless energy to his Ahnenerbe, 01 Ancestral Heritage Bureau, which was barged with the study ol the German people's ra( ial ori-

tlit-

(

many onerous operational concerns;

o(

to

Ihij

men

true or false

ase the Rei< hsfuhrei ss was grateful

relieving

i.>r

Hlmmlei

treat

t

into

one

of three categories: "in

He

put every

complete accord-

ance with SS selection principles; average; not suitable." If Himmler's verdict and the genealogical investigation concurred, a marriage license In his

would be

issued.

early years as Reichsfiihrer-SS,

Himmler had

started

the Sippenbuch, a sort of SS stud book, and he often pored

through the genealogical register with the scholarly discrimination of

a

professional horse breeder.

He

also studied

was distressed to discover that was only fractionally higher than

the census statistics and birth rate of SS families

national birth rate. Indeed, the

Germany

the

of 1885, though

only half as populous as Nazi Germany, had produced as

many

children.

To bring the population

of the Reich

up

to

the quality and quantity Hitler desired (120 million Aryans

by 1980), Himmler decided that every SS

man

it

was the

patriotic duty of

to sire at least four children. Six

would be

bet-

The Reichsfuhrer-SS liked to point out that Richard Wagner was a sixth child and that without his glorious music Germany would be impoverished. Himmler's concern over population growth led him to ter:

conceive a new program, the Lebensborn, or Fountain of Life,

and also

to

form

a

new bureau

der his close supervision.

"My

to run the enterprise un-

first

aim

in setting

up the

Lebensborn," he later explained, "was to meet a crying need and give unmarried women who were racially pure a

chance to have children free of cost." Toward this end, the bureau established a network of SS "homes," many of them in houses and hospitals that had been confiscated from the Jews. (Cynical Germans called the homes breeding farms and SS officers' clubs.) SS men would send their pregnant women friends there to have their children. And if the mother considered her offspring an encumbrance, the Lebensborn staff would go to great lengths to place the child with foster parents tus

and means resembled the natural

whose

Himmler and

the

sta-

father's or mother's.

the Lebensborn executives

worked

in

con-

state ministries and party leaders to persuade young German women that they were "racially valuable" and should have offspring out of wedlock a "biological in order to satisfy the Reich's "urmarriage," it was called gent need for the victory of the German child." Simultaneously, the Reichsfuhrer-SS campaigned vigor-

cert with

—

—

ously against any practice that contravened a higher birth rate:

contraception, abortion, the possession of pets ("Those

who

give a dog the place to which a child

a

is

entitled

commit

crime against our people") and that darkest crime against

Germanhood, homosexuality. Himmler was about homosexuals that he had

—

his

own

errant

adamant

so

nephew

— an

Dachau. He denied promotion to childless SS officers and enthusiastically backed a new law in 1 938 that made a childless marriage grounds for SS officer to boot

divorce.

(It

put to death

in

apparently never occurred to Himmler that the

SS man, rather than his

woman, might be

infertile.)

Himmler was appalled to think of the damage that a war would do to Germany's genetic pool; warriors, the best breeding stock, might die in such numbers as to jeopardize the future of the German race. The flower of one generation had been destroyed eration 1

in

War and now another gencame in So when World War

the Great

was threatened.

II

939, he took extraordinary measures to prevent

He ordered SS men

to get their

a disaster.

wives with child

— and

if

possible to serve as "conception assistants" to childless

55 doctors examine a group of kidnapped Polish children who have been judged "racially valuable" for adoption by German foster parents. Children in the occupied territories learned to flee SS squads roaming the towns and villages in automobiles, so the Nazis turned to specially trained women who were less conspicuous as kidnappers.

A German teacher singles out a child with "Nordic" features for special praise in

striking

Through the use of such examples, children were encouraged to judge one another from a racial point of view. class.

German school

91

eforethey put themselves in moi

women o( lOoro He gave

peril

t.il

form

women

rii.m

not

consummate

t

insatiable

i

to learn

the invasion

whi< h to pei

He urged

biological

i

his

men's

(

marriages

He had an

ol illegitimate

Poland

i

his unit's

Himmlei

greatly

expanded

Slavic Lebensborn program. Although the Poles, as people were r.u i.il mongrels to the Nazis, the sighl of many blond, blue-eyed Polish children persuaded Himmler to make an "assumption oi Nordic parentage" on then behalf. his

.1

rhus, In 1940 he proposed ived

it). it

.Hi

Mil h

10 be brought to the

(

t

and

Hitlei

the Fiihrer ap-

hildren between the ages

Ken

and raised

h

.1^

(

t

six

and

Polish soldiers killed during the invasion, or the illegitimate

women and German

(

onquerors.

Himm-

hoped th.it tins and other "fet< hing home" operations would mi rease the Kt*ic h's "Nordic " population by another ler

Himmler's dismay, the Lebensim had no measurable effect on the Reich's wartime population. All the SS babies and the kidnapped Slavic U) million by

children

(

l'»80. But to

make up

ould not begin to

Reinhard Heydri'

i

for

hieioflheSS

and intelligence service, dines with Admiral Wilhelm Canari^. head ol the \bwehr military intelligence), in Berlin security

<

in

1936. Despite their convivial meeting'., they were constantly conspiring to outdo and undermine each other's network of agents.

Germany's

t

of the fit-

six million

w.u

invasion

ol

Poland, Himmler orga-

men

anv out the "negative" aspect ot the Reich's racial policy in the conquered last, redu< ing the Slavs to a permanent slave population. hese were the insatzgruppen, or task groups -extermina nized several spec

i.il

units oi SS

to

<

/

1

squads

ol

500

1,000

to

man armies eastward

tor

men

ea< h that trailed the Ger-

the express purpose of liquidating

lews, gypsies, Communists, priests, aristocrats, the professional

c

lass

— anyone and everyone who could

be defined as subhuman or dangerous I

he

men

of the EinsatZgruppen

dregs of the SS, from

German

in

(

oik eivably

the Na/i lexicon.

were recruited from the

police forces and from dubi-

ous foreign auxiliaries. They somewhat debased the

elite

standards of the SS, but their hard work helped spread SS

lermans.

More than 200,000 Polish children were removed and rmanized. Most oi them were orphans, or the c hildren of offspring ol Polish

oik urrent with

(

lion

hildren

*

mark before the end

Idealistic

onnubial relations and

from one commandei

number

"pleasingly large ei

about

uriosity

In

deep moral earnestness

In frivolity i>ui in

was delighted

leaves

procreative duty

patriotic

theii

men generous

tin*

which would pass the

civilian casualties,

,\iu\

military

power through the The SS service

own

that

Eastern provinces.

Himmler loved

child," said an associate

vision strength

thrusting into

May

best

— made

if

official

it

were

debut

his

at di-

German armies Holland, Belgium and France. Combat units in

of the Waffen-SS

went

of

1

940

as part of the

into action against retreating British

forces around the port of Dunkirk, and it

its

— "as

if

their role

was nonetheless significant. The name Waffen-SS was still unknown

was small

to the

German

— people, but the organization had been evolving since the

dawn of the Nazi era. The original personnel came from three SS sources: the Fuhrer's personal bodyguard, known Death's-head bat-

as the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler; the

talions that

Himmler had formed

to

guard the concentration

camps; and the SS training schools, commanded by an

if not hostile" to their Army comrades. Another special SS trait manifested itself in 1940, when the Waffen-SS then consisting of about 125,000 men in three divisions and one reinforced regiment began operations in the West. In two incidents, both of them carefully

troopers were "frigid

—

—

ele-

withheld from the newspapers, SS troopers went consider-

Paul Hausser. Applicants

ably beyond the accepted rules of warfare. Captain Fritz

were judged by strict elitist standards. The men in the Leibstandarte had to be at least 5 feet 11 inches tall, and up to 1936 an otherwise impressive volunteer would be turned down if, as Himmler noted with pride, "he had even one

Knochlein of the Death's-head division ordered 100 British prisoners taken into a meadow near the tiny French village

Army

gant former

filled

tooth."

It

general

named

was Himmler's dream

specimens would one day

fill

that

such magnificent

the ranks of his very

dependent armed force, passionately loyal which would serve the Reich on a basis of Army, the Luftwaffe and the Navy. By 1937, Hausser was graduating 400 SS

own

in-

to the Fuhrer,

parity with the

and shot; two men, buried under

officers a year,

The growth rate was not nearly fast enough to suit Himmler. Part of the trouble was that he had to compete for men and equipment with the regular Army, whose High Command was anxious to protect its military monopoly and represented to Hitler that the SS troopers were policemen, parade martinets and "asphalt soldiers," who were inadequately trained for combat. Himmler remonstrated with the Fuhrer, but to no great avail. As it happened, Hitler was not completely unsympathetic to Himmler's protests. His own relations with the top Army generals had always been difficult. But he wanted to keep visions.

— not another bloated monster

like

their

comrades'

corpses, played dead and survived. The next day, farther north along the perimeter, Sepp Dietrich's Leibstandarte-SS

Adolf Hitler dealt death to another group of about 100 ish prisoners. Dietrich's

ers

by

firing

to

men murdered some of their

squad, others by automatic-weapons

by hand grenades.

and the military units grew slowly but steadily thereafter, the regiments expanding into brigades and brigades into di-

the SS a small elite force

of Paradis

In

the confusion 15 prisoners

escape with their lives. The brutal indiscipline

appalled the

Army

of these

Brit-

prison-

fire,

most

managed

two incidents genuinely

generals. SS headquarters chose not to

punish Knochlein. As for Dietrich, Hitler's former body-

guard was well on tire

his

way

to achieving

command

of an en-

SS panzer army.

Though the Army had

yet to give a morsel of credit to the

Waffen-SS, Himmler's units had proved their mettle by the in June 1940. The SS divisions were because they were larger than their regular

time France capitulated effective partly

Army

counterparts by about 5,000 men, partly because

their infantry

was

fully

motorized, and partly because the

troopers fought with a death-defying zeal that fairly pleaded for the adjective "fanatic."

For

all

this,

Hitler in his July

the SA. Besides, he needed the generals' cooperation, and

speech

to mollify

them he kept a low ceiling on SS combat forces about 25,000 men in 1939. Moreover, he ordered that when Himmler's units were in the field they were to serve as

regiments of the Waffen-SS" and gave thanks to "Party

auxiliaries under

Comrade Himmler, who organized the entire security system of our Reich as well as the Waffen-SS." After the Hitler speech, the Army generals could no long-

Thus,

Army

in

in its

Army command.

virtual 1

938

anonymity, Himmler's units joined the

stroll into

the

Czech Sudetenland. The

lowing year, the units received their baptism of

fire in

ry;

the

Army blamed

sary recklessness.

Himmler

insisted that

Himmler

cent share of the available

German

er ignore the Waffen-SS, but they

still

fol-

be limited to a

the

manpower. However, the Reichsfuhrer-SS found ways

blitzkrieg against Poland; they suffered proportionally higher casualties than the regulars.

"the valiant divisions and

to the Reichstag praised

called this gallant-

it on sketchy training and on unnecesThe generals also complained that the SS

circumvent the to free

3 per

restrictions.

men from

He

to

juggled his unit designations

service under

Army

aegis.

He expanded

begun in 1938, of recruiting non-Germans of "Nordic blood" who lived in such advanced and racially his practice,

93

land

Western nations as Norway Denmark and HolItimately 125,000 Western foreigners would serve

i

with distiru tion the

.1

the Waffen ss Bui these outlanders low

in

perfection ol the force

st.itisin.il

Hlmmk provided

r>s

oi

course

tin- lev* ish

selves free oi

that

his chagrin,

less-perfect speci

accept shortei

to

i

they could prove them

\mn

ed SS units were progress along narrow mountain tr.nls. On when an \mn convoy attempted to pass

ottn ers found thai inexperiem

retarding theii

one occasion

argument ensued, the ss offi< er in charge turned on the \nm commander and shouted, "If you time on without rm permission, will order my men to fire on youi column!" Another such incident brought

some ss tun

and

ks

a hoi

I

i

c

1

limmlei hiet

\

a

ield

formal

i

omplainl trom the Army

Marshal Walther von Brain

Commander

in

hits* h.

Ml the same the Waffen-SS was making headway. The uhrer allowed it to raise another division in preparation for

the

momentous

l i

»4i

invasion ol the Soviet Union; And

at more than 160,000 when the was laurn hed on |une 22.

strength stood

But then disaster strut ties

and

k.

The SS

units took

heavy casual-

He also admitted though they were, fought on "like some prehistoric monster caught in a net." But experience and SS victories came as the armies plunged deep tuient militarv training and experience.

—

Union.

It was Dietrich's division that first made the Army commanders own up to the Waffen-SS's sterling fighting quali-

On December 26, 1941, the commander of the 3rd Panzer Corps, General Eberhard von Mackensen, wrote

ties.

Reinhard Hevdnch 'center newly arrived in Prague as Reich Protector ol Bohemia and Moravia, confers with aides in September 194 Hevdrich quickly informed his policy toward the Czechv He intended to deport or eliminate those of "inferior race with hostile intentions. "Czechs who were "of good race and well-intentioned" would be mi arc onU a link in the endless i ham." ,i

i

c

And

the ss did not forgel the Lebens-

horn children. child

re«

numher tured

at

eived

On -tn

ss

every Imthday, each gift ol the appropriate

which were manufacno cost In prisoners at Dachau. of candles,

An 55 infant is named before an altar topped by Hitler's portrait. Some Lebensborn children grew up so steeped in Nazi pagan dogma that they believed Hitler was Cod, a misconception the 55 did not try to correct.

104

105

\dolt Hitlei considered himself realist. (

I

he qualities,

men dream

ireal

in his

.it once visionary and judgment, were complementary:

.1

.1

greal die. mis; these m.iy be brought to

life

transcendent leader making hard, often unpleasant, workaday de< Isions. Hitler frequently gave free flight to his h\

.1

imagination

and,

tin's to write

foi

down

history's sake, called

in

his secre-

thoughts about the future of the

his

lermanu empire. In the Soviet Union, entire regions of which were to be annexed to the Greater German Reich, a colonial system would be established and millions of German ethnics (

from the fatherland, (

would be

ountries

from Scandinavia and the Low

\

estimated 90 pei cent w.is

paid

fact

in

in

h

ialdom sometimes dispensed with su< h mafavoi oi onfis< ating goods as openly .is they <

ravi

ommandos

s<

Holland, spec

materials. In

oured the

(

ountry

ial

in sear< h oi

Id Lite

l»'s

<

1

Goring also con-

would be smaller and

more tasteful than the olossus-to-be at inz. ( ioring's was that on his (>()th birthday l.inuary 12, 1953 he would bequeath to the Rei< h his museum, which was to be h

c

l

—

ere< ted al Ins Karinhall estate in the S< horfheide forests

45

miles north ol Berlin,

Oi

Thus the two inadvertently bee ame rivals foi the stolen art Urope, with Alfred Rosenberg zealously trying to please I

both

c

ollec tors.

Rosenberg took up headquarters

the |eu

in

de Paume museum in Paris' Tuileries Gardens, to whic h his agents brought then art finds for cataloguing before ship

ment in

Germany. Coring himself drew up the order

to

e

quisition: Hitler

foi ac

had

ler's

approval, Goring

headed the

set list.

choi< e, Goring came and anything left over

received Hit-

about making certain

What

oi prel

first

German museums. Then, having

to

practice, he

Hitler did not

hardly hurt him; the Fuhrer, moreover, was

that,

in

know could

in

Germany,

preoccupied with waging war, while Goring made frequent visits to

the Jeu de

But Hitler

Reich that \uletide. Even Anton Mussert, the

al

sycophantic leader of the Dutch Na/i Party, protested that the "voluntary " c ampaign was in fa< out-and-out robbery.

each

art

to the

Hitler,

that

plan

ably

shipped

one

would go

1

.i

but

"remo\

(

i

museum,

a

anything

942 Sey ss-lnquart subjec ted the Dutch to the .died Christmas -V tion, ampaign to supply German 1\ ill. ins u ith Christmas gifts. In all, more than 2,300 boxcars nt toys, clothing, cosmetics and other items were (

sensibilities than

next, other Nazi leaders followed,

worth sending home ifty trolley ars from Amsterdam ended up in Germany as did more than 100,000 Dutch bicyt

muc

was

offi<

immandeered c

01

tin-

roughly one billion

bought

.in

rem

I

nipulations

al

i

"tls

this

k hethei the Nazis had

osts

ti>

artistic

itet

Paume.

became

suspicious.

In

February 1941, prob-

Martin Bormann's urging, the Fuhrer ordered that

work

arriving at the )eu

de Paume be photographed

the plundering projects, by far the most pleasing to

viewing before distribution. It was now Goring's move. He saw to it that his agents were in charge of the pic ture taking and though Hitler received a multitude of pho-

Nazis was what Alfred Rosenberg called "the

tographs, they rarely included works of the 17th Century

head of the EinsatZStab charged with confiscating "enemy" property, Rosenberg found himself a fas< mated observer at a museum-looting

Dutch masters whom Goring so greatly admired. And so, between October 1940 and July 1944, countless works and objets d'art were pillaged and transported to Germany. Among them were priceless paintings of Rembrandt, Rubens, Goya, Velazquez, Watteau and Reynolds as well as various sculptures and tapestries, and porcelains and

t

for his

-

.ill

i,im high

biggest art operation in history." As

c

between

ontesl

er matters

I

lermann Goring and

Museum

master

in all

oth-

—

\dolt Hitler.

Hitler the Visionary rer

his

to

be

would repose

had

—

in his

mind's eye

a gigantic Fu h-

built at his Linz, Austria, birthplace.

With-

coins of every kind.

prints for the project; as fast as they

Goring missed one find that resided, in a manner of speaking, beneath his very nose. The Luftwaffe in Paris had taken over a mansion at 23 Avenue de Morigny formerly owned by important Jews the Rothschild banking family.

rejected

Inside the house, in a secret

in

Nork

it

'

a collection

without equal

in

world history,

surpassing Paris' Louvre, London's Tate and

easily s

New

Metropolitan. Architect Albert Speer toiled on blue-

were submitted, Hitler them as falling short of his dream. But if his magnifedifice w as slow in taking shape, his treasures could at

be gathered and plac ed

in

storage awaiting the day.

For his part. Goring fancied himself a connoisseur of

1

12

—

room behind

a

bookcase, were

concealed some of the most valuable pieces from the Rothschilds' fabulous art collection

mained

entirely

unaware

as he

—

a fact of which Goring repaced only a few feet away.

The Nazi

theft of Europe's currency, of

its

business, of

its

possessions great and small could scarcely compare to the

enslavement of

its

workers. This was

a

campaign

highest priority and greatest magnitude for

and

in

the end

it

led the

all

other million Frenchmen

— were slaving

involved

Nazis into brutalities hitherto

in factories

The Germans were

of the

— most

them prisoners

of

of

war

and on farms.

insatiable. In June of 1942, Hitler or-

—

dered Sauckel to recruit yet another 250,000 Frenchmen

re-

to

served for Jews, gypsies and other Untermenschen.

a

German agency from the Todt construction corps to made its claim on the conquered populations. In the

Every

work

in

Germany. The Germans offered each volunteer

thousand-franc bonus and "superior accommodations,"

and Sauckel privately

told

Vichy Prime Minister Pierre Laval

as Plenipotentiary for the Allo-

if promises failed to attract enough labor he would use whatever force was required to meet Hitler's quota. Laval replied to Sauckel— whom he once described as "the greatest brute have ever met" that force would not

cation of Labor under the umbrella of the Four- Year Plan.

be needed, that he could get plenty of volunteers by appeal-

Of

Frenchman's patriotic nature. Thus was born la program under which the Germans promised to repatriate one French prisoner of war for every three French volunteer workers. By September, however, only slightly more than 50,000 Frenchmen had volunteered to work in Germany. The Germans reneged on a one-for-three exchange; the ratio actually worked out to something like four or five workers for every prisoner of war. Those who did labor in Germany soon had cause to regret it bitterly. Dr. Wilhelm Jager, a physician for the Krupp factories, described housing for one group of French workers at a work camp near Essen. "Its inhabitants were kept for nearly a half a year in dog kennels, urinals and in old baking houses," he recalled. "The dog kennels were three feet high, nine feet long, six feet wide. Five men slept in each of them. The prisoners had to crawl into these kennels on all fours. There was no water in the camp." As German losses mounted in the War and more and

the SS

West, the master dealer leiter of

whom

in

people was

Fritz

Thuringia, a crude former sailor and factory worker

Goring had installed

the millions of people he rounded up to

man war effort, Sauckel later admitted 200,000 came voluntarily." In

toil for

that

the Ger-

"not even

Holland, Sauckel began his recruitment drive by prom-

good working conditions, good pay and paid vaca-

ising

tions

Sauckel, Gau-

— promises

that he

soon broke, threatening workers

with confiscation of their ration coupons

if

they refused to

Germany. In any event the results fell short of expectations, and by 1942 the Germans had resorted to mass arrest and streetside conscription, the so-called Sauckel Actions. In a single day in Rotterdam, 50,000 men were corralled for forced labor; eventually, between 400,000 and 500,000 Dutchmen were laboring for the Germans, most of them unwillingly. In France by early 1942 nearly 900,000 people were working for the Germans, constructing the Atlantic Wall fortifications along the Channel coast and laboring in plants turning out arms and ammunition. In Germany itself, ango

to

that

—

I

ing to every

releve, a

The ranking Nazi occupiers of Holland solemnly attend a 943 military ceremony for German war dead held in Crebbeberg, where German panzer units first smashed into the country. Hitler's viceroy, Reich Commissioner Arthur Seyss-lnquart (second from right), ruled with such a bloody hand that he was known as (he "Butcher of Holland." 1

113

194

imi. i,

i

pulsory K.-ii

h

•.

i

ted

ServU

du

aboi ServU

i.u

lories

the middle

and

\nm

in-

i

•.•n.'.

in. in-

illed to

In theii



women

to

cam

sang

to

po

men who

01

om-

(

man

to

the

refused to report

food ration

1942 as in the Netherlands round up people in streets m mo\

i

ards.

ie

By

Gei

stood on railroad I

rem

h

.1

resist

(

M

Montlucon,

tra< ks to blo< k

workers

to

Germany.

tin-

stood around and

.1

group

a

train thai

-\s

the

was

women

1

did nothing. iu the tune

1

German

were ailed in, only 20 out ot the i(>0 workers remained. Hundreds ot such incidents took place all over frame ,ind thousands ot people tied into the countryside rather than work tor the Germans— and this naturally fueled the already spreading resistance movement. The Nazi occupiers were increasingly bedeviled by the even Frenc h Resistant e V tually every occupied country resistance, but French had the Resistiny Luxembourg a c

—

Czech agents losefGabc"ik and Ian Kubi< topi studied

training

of

commando

techniques while

m Scotland tor the assassination

Remhard Heydnch.

the 55 overlord of their

homeland. Thev parachuted in and neatly accomplished their mission on May 27, 1942. Heydrich 's wrecked car. blasted by a ie. lies empty ibottomi in a Prague suburb.

114

e

was the biggest and most

laying deadly

Whenever

a

(

ambushes

tor

ierman soldier

Western Europe,

eltec tive in

sabotaging plants and transport,

res<

uing Allied airmen

,\\\d

lone or ill-protected Germ, ins. or

(

ivilian

was

killed in

Fram

hostages selected from the population were to be shot public

Is

proc

la

The German

theaters

workers stole away. he rem h lerman offi< ei who witnessed the in-

Marseillaise,"

military units

t.iiu

lined ratios ranging

up

to

1

00

reprisal killings esc alated in

with Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the

nplained

idenl

1

ot

rem h workers

early

in

hon

im)

tin-

f

\sith the loss oi theii

rhe French soon began to ot

rravail Obligatoire

draft

rhe families

Germans

earlier, the

t

began

I

«•

the

duty

to

staff

Hitler's headquarters, specifying that the victims c

lude well-known personalities or

ilies.

"

On

members

pay of England and

Moscow

941

"should

in

in-

newspaper

"Cowardly criminals

killed the field

1

chief

of their fam-

the 21st of October, 1941, a French

ran a notice signed by Keitel:

at

1

October

Army

e,

in

the

commandant

of

Nantes on the morning of October 20. As expiation for this crime, have ordered that 50 hostages be shot. Fifty more I

hostages will be shot

ed between

in

case the guilty should not be arrest23." The assassins were not

now and October

found, and the hostages were executed. Wrote a French witness to the shooting, "The horror overwhelms us."

The ultimate Nazi weapon against disobedience and resistance was the Nacht und Nebel Erlas$, the Night and Fog Decree.

On December

7,

1941

,

Hitler ordered that persons

"endangering German security" were to be seized by SD agents and dragged off into the night and fog, never to be

which which

seen or heard of again.

contributed to the

Five days later, Keitel amplified Hitler's decree. "Efficient

Hitler

had once envisioned as an orderly process

civilized peoples peaceably

German

— even

if

unwillingly

in

—

Reich, had degenerated into

open warfare between the conqueror and the conquered.

intimidation," he asserted, "can only be achieved either by

punishment or by measures by which the relatives and the population do not know his fate." Even the burial places of the victims were to be kept secret. And though SD files captured after the War bulged with orders dealing with the decree, the number of people who

For

Western Europe

were abducted and murdered was never established. In February of 1942, General Otto von Stulpnagel, military governor of occupied France, protested to Keitel that "I can no longer commit mass shootings with a clear conscience nor can justify them to posterity." Keitel replied I

that Stulpnagel should stop interfering with political matters

and "just be his

cousin,

chose

its

to retire.

He was

replaced by

General Karl-Heinrich von Stulpnagel, then

quered only

occupying forces spread such

among

For the fourth time

under

a

governor he demanded "a clear division of to take

What

hostage system, and the SS was rigorous responsibilities.

was

The number

to total nearly

peared

in

this

meant was

that

over the responsibility for the in

the exercise of

its

of hostages executed in France

30,000; another 40,000 died or disap-

French prisons. The executions,

far

from curbing

provoked more and more of it. Thus, by 1944, the Nazi Occupation of Western Europe,

resistance,

in

governor general

tary

terror as to crush every will

its

sorrowful history, Poland was

and

its

rise to

On October

— ruled

as a protectorate

— were designated

political undesirables

as protector

and supreme

was Hans Frank, who had served during

court of law, the

in a

western provinces were annexed by the

Its

Named

political matters."

these areas will be sufficient

Reich, and the eastern provinces

for racial

all

at-

the population."

Europe.

was now openly

in

instead of punishing resistance

if,

ground

the SS

dissembling and no

territory in the East," said Hitler, "the forces avail-

able for establishing security

opposed hostage shootings, and when he became

duties from

little

millions of people. "In view of the vast size of the con-

head of the Armistice Commission. The second Stulpnagel his military

was

tempt to explain away the enslavement and slaughter of

also

mili-

at least

eration. In the East, there

partitioned:

a soldier."

Instead, Stulpnagel

all

German Occupation of commenced under a cloak of mod-

ultimate brutality, the

capital

of the criminal

as a

from civil

dumping

all

parts of

authority

as the Nazi Party's lawyer

power.

3,

1939, Frank enunciated the policies by

which he intended to rule eastern Poland. Poland, he said, was to be administered "through means of ruthless exploitation, deportation of all supplies, raw materials, machines, factory installations, etc., which are important for the German war economy. Poland shall be treated as a colony. The Poles shall be the slaves of the Greater

German Reich."

55 guards survey the corpses of the men of Lidice, massacred on June 10, 1942, in reprisal for the assassination of Heydrich. Jewish prisoners from Terezin concentration camp were brought in to dig a mass grave and to strip the bodies of valuables before burial. In the weeks that followed, 84,000 square yards of rubble were removed from the bulldozed village, and the entire area was planted with grain to obliterate every trace of habitation.

115

om

Ens<

ed

tf.mk dwell

sh kings

\nn\ oiin

in his castle in Cracovs

ei i" desi nl>«'

the

(

(

.is

and

.1

/.irtoi\ski

da Vin<

h.iiu e .mil .in

i\.w\

.1

caused

German

a

"megalomaniac pasha."

i

.1

14th

National

Rem

.1

both stolen from

portrail

1

Museum

Child from the ('.now

I

1

ow

1. 11

.ipf

him

style thai

.1

cit> ol the

he had provided himsell with

Before he was done

brandl landsi

In

crown

the

(

entur\

Museum

.1

gilded

ornamental vestment festooned with pearls. In starving Hid the governoi general and his retinue gorged them«• .ind buttei and 1,000 eggs selves on fresh i>. month found then way t r.mk - festive table. Both Frank .in

.1

I

.mil his to (

Vk

t

xl

itc

dealt extensively

w

ith

lews

here turs and jewels were to be had

.iscs

or

u

\

bothered submitting any SS orders to him he same competition

I

little

he had

.1

a<

lions

wanted

it

to

—

date to do whatever he pleased.

And most ominous

Himmler and Martin Bormann were conspiring

of

all,

to circum-

vent Frank entirely.

for review.

power was

|ust

as

prove that

his brother-in-law

citizenship to

become

a

had dared

to

renounce

Swedish national, and

his

been caught dealing with Jews. No menwas tion made of Frank's own grand larceny in the ghettos, which onk heightened his anxiety. The Fuhrer did not have to be disturbed with such trifling matters, said Lammers, if Frank would agree to the installasister-in-law had

savage

in

(

in

the Soviet Union. But his decrees carried to plans of the Plenipo-

resources, or

when

whose duty

was

it

economic

to

they displeased the Reichsfiihrer-SS,

maintain security and order. Rosen-

berg also learned that regional military

commanders and

provincial civilian commissioners were both issuing their

own

decrees, and he discovered that he was powerless to

prevent them. The results fully justified a nickname that the

waspish Joseph Goebbels coined

for the

Ostministerium:

the Chaostministerium.

Chaos or no, the looting went forward with both Poland and

great vigor in

occupied Soviet territory. Goring began by appropriating private and state property in the anthe.

nexed areas of Poland and placing

it

in

the hands of his

Four-Year Plan administrators. This territory included 22

West Prussia and Posen as Homes, shops and factories were confiscated. The Polish owners had to leave behind everything except what they could fit into one small bag and 50 to 100 reichsmarks in cash. million acres in the provinces of

were realized on March 5, 1942, when he was summoned to a meeting on Himmler's private train. There, before Himmler, Bormann and his henchman Hans-Heinrich Lammers, the head of the Reich Chancellery Frank was told that some very serious charges had been leveled against him. He was accused of corruption and nepotism. The SS had Frank's worst tears

116

tor

no weight when they ran counter

t.ilk .ind imperial life style,

heed and took any

later

Ktmmister ium, or Ministry of the Fast. Rosenberg was supposed to have complete authority over all civil adbody, the

I.

files to

day on, he

Occupied Soviet territory. On July 17, 1941, after German armies had advanced about 100 miles to Smolensk, Hitler named Alfred Rosenberg to head a giant administrative

most

ot the

German

that

with him. Frank

nevei obeyed any of his orders or even

recalled, Krugei

tor little or, in

derm. in Reichsbahn, the state-owned railway s\stem. through the four-Year Plan, Hermann Goring nmed iiinsdu tion o\er .ill economic exploitation. Heinrich Himmler was armed with a decree enabling him "to combat acts of violence" which he interpreted as a manc

From

ministration

in the name oi military security. Frank's budget was controlled .md approved by the Rei< h Ministry of Finance; Poland s railroads, 01 wli.it was left ol them, were under the itrol

liou e but to ac quiesc e.

as state sec retary

to interfere

tentiary ot the Four-Year Plan for confiscating

rank's tough

him

(

h-Wilhelm Krugei

ghet-

the

deal less powei than his counterparts in the West. tin-

ny paid

had no

riedru

I

and would agree not

Warsaw

in

nothit .ill

tor sc( uritv

\;.i(/on/>.i

from the Cracow cathedral, and

hesl

man

tion oi ss

well as Kattowitz and Zichenau.

In

the part of Poland under Frank's nominal governorship,

many

large

and small plants were dismantled and shipped

to the Reich; in the case of seven electric generating plants in

Warsaw,

it

took 4,500 freight cars to ship

all

the equip-

ment. Polish banks were forced to turn over their currency

exchange for German bonds, which were nonredeemable and therefore valueless. Goods were purchased by various German agencies and private firms, also in exchange for these worthless bonds. For the economic exploitation of conquered Soviet territo the

Germans

in

— most grandiose plans. Huge German monopolies under the central direction of Coring tories,

Coring had created

would control tral

Trading

vital sectors of

Company

duction and

his

economy. Thus, the Cen-

the

would supervise

East

distribution;

agricultural pro-

the Continental

Oil

Company

would be responsible for all petroleum operations; other corporations would be responsible for iron and steel, mingoods,

ing, textiles, leather

But the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin, had ruined every-

What

thing: their

the

German

military forces did not destroy in

advance, the Soviet armies razed while retreating.

"The whole centralized system

and distribution is followed behind the

of trade

who

disrupted," reported an observer

Army. "Supplies have been burned, evacuated or looted. Factories and enterprises have been destroyed in part or in their entirety, their machinery wrecked. Spare parts cannot be located or have been willfully mixed up. All rosters of parts and machinery have been destroyed." To Goring, the prospects were bleak. Under wartime conditions, complete reconstruction of the wrecked industries was clearly impossible. But as the War dragged on it became increasingly evident that the Wehrmacht would be busy in the U.S.S.R. for a distressingly long while and would require Soviet production even to stay in the field. The Plenipotentiary for the Four- Year Plan was compelled to rebuild what he could. The enormous job was begun in tiny ways. Laborers were collected and put to work in a shop repairing Wehrmacht horse carts; a small shoe factory was refurbished to mend footgear for

German

troops. Slowly, with anguishing delays,

major industries began

to operate.

voi Rog, in the southern Ukraine,

The

iron ore

mines

at Kri-

had been put out of action

by the Soviets; by the end of 1942 the mines were producing 5,000 tons a

day

—

still

To appeal to the Ukrainians, many of were anti-Communists and ardent separatists, they announced plans to abolish Soviet collective farms and reagricultural plans.

whom

turn the lands to private ownership. But trators took

far short of the

German

goal of

1 5,000 tons. The manganese ore mines at Nikopol yielded a meager 36,000 tons per month during the summer of 942; a superhuman effort brought production to nearly 123,000 tons exceeding the Soviet prewar output of 100,000 by early 1 943. Of 1 78 coal mines in the Donets Basin, the Russians had left only 25 operable; with the enforced help of 60,000 Russian prisoners of war, production rose from 2,500 daily tons in June 1 942 to 0,000 by the year's end. The Germans arrived in the rich Ukraine with elaborate 1

—

—

1

much

in

was

and be-

such desperate need of foodstuffs,

they retained the collective-farm system it

German adminis-

of the best land for their estates,

cause the Reich was least

etc.

—

in

most areas. At

a system.

To make the farms work, administrators had to ship in vast amounts of machinery and breeding stock from the rest of occupied Europe and from the Reich itself. All in all, some 15,000 freight cars of machinery including 7,000 tractors, 250,000 plows and three million scythe blades as well as thousands of bulls, cows, pigs and horses were

—

sent to rejuvenate Soviet agriculture.

The

return, although statistically impressive,

of Hitler's

dream

that the

fell far

short

Ukraine alone would serve as the

German Reich. Through 1943 the enough provender from Soviet farms to feed the Occupation army without bringing food from the Reich. By March 944 the Germans estimated they had delivered to the Reich 3,000 tons of potatoes, 67,000 tons of granary of the Greater

Germans were

getting

1

1

meat, 1,161,000 tons of bread grains. During the entire

War, Soviet farm lands produced for the Germans only about one billion dollars' worth of agricultural goods somewhat less than Germany received in normal prewar trade with the U.S.S.R.

By

1

942, Heinrich

H

i

mm ler had thrust

himself to the fore as

German exploiters in the East. Nobody, not even Hermann Goring at his best, could compare with Himmler in his masterful use of the two commod-

the most powerful of the

ities

that the East possessed in endless supply: real estate

and human beings. In his

capacity as Reich Commissioner for the Consolida-

German

Himmler had concocted a fantastical scheme for rearranging the demography of Eastern Europe. Its goal was to separate the ethnic Germans and thereby save them from contamination by Poles of "undetion of the

People,

sirable" blood, or by Jews, gypsies and other "trash." These would be uprooted from their homes and transported to Hans Frank's Polish protectorate. The confiscated lands would be turned over to half a mil-

1

17

ethnh Germans from the

whom

choslovakia and Bulgaria

annexed one majoi problem

•tie hi

the

ini

States

Bessa-

had

Hitlei

"t

No

test

existed

!>\

of certainty

whi< h

solutions, in< luding ra<

I

questionnaires disguised

ial

routine health mhm'\v rhe results were sometimes em ing Foi example one ra< ial inventory indu ated thai .-in Di the population ol Slavi< Bohemia and Morai

via

was predominantly on behalf

deten land

Cermani<

ol

whose

No

i.ic

in

the neighboring Su-

Germans

ethnic

ing piesses. shoe

had

Hitlei

Germans

\s the

pillaged the

(looming millions

m

t\

roundup,

pi< al

Erwin

pei

<

Bui no matter.

standard

ii

l

(

I

.i

I

onto railway coaches, that they were being resettled. But

w hen the

i

oa< hes rea< hed then destination, the Poles

loaded onto buses and trucks, and

were

then driven off into the

and exe< uted. here weie people of .ill ages, from small children to old people, men and women of various social classes," recalled t

I

a railroad

tims

(

employee who had helped

)utside

Wejherowo

onto buses or trucks, the

Mid children.

to transport the vic-

Station, these

men

people were taken

separated from the

heard how the

women

Once

in

men and women were shot; most were seized by their legs, and their heads

the forest, the

of the children

were bashed

into tree trunks to

This and other

much

of Heinrich

kill

them.

one

Spretti,

meeting

of

from feathering the SS nest. Expropriations \

ided the SS knights of

in

Poland pro-

commerce with hundreds

of

the

at

the

one Hans

German labor re< ruiters, anal mema. When the urious theater, Spretti made his appeal

the loc

at

in

m

c

c

want you people of Uman to go voluntarhelp the German Army," he announced "If you don't want to go, you will be politely requested to go all the same." ily to

Germany

to

\s resistance increased, so did the brutality of

methods

— to the extent that one German officer

in

Germ, in the Pol-

Hans Frank.

complained to "The wild and ruthless manhunt, as exercised everywhere in towns and country, in streets, squares, stations, ish protec torate a< tually

even

in

churches,

at

night in homes, has badly shaken the

security of the inhabitants," the official reported. "Every-

body and

exposed to the danger of being seized anywhere any time, suddenly and unexpectedly, and of being

is

at

sent to an assembly

happening

is

Once

to

camp. None

of his relatives

knows what

him."

taken, the hapless victims

were jammed

into freight

Germany, usually without food, water or toilet facilities during their journey. It was a sample of what was in store for them once they went to work in Germany. If conditions were bad for French workers in German factories, they were appalling for the Untvrmen^i hen shipped cars

in

methods of racial purification occupied Himmler's time but did not prevent him

ol slave labor-

Order.

for volunteers. "I

women

lamented as their Those who resisted were children were being taken away. he, iten up with rifle butts h\ the SS men." I

New

the Ukrainian city of Um.in, Count

in

showed up

>

loi

run-

they exploited the people,

Eastern workers, or Ostarbeiter;

ot

residents

2

men

Germans were comparatively easygoing

At lust the

then enlistment

Himmler kept tr\mg. was no! ne< essary to deport valHimmlei «!n th.it

caf)

>nal

thi

in di

ided

i

\

ically repulsivi r

ny

form of

hi

i

,

somehow

hi

I

li

out pity," Hitler dei

put

mi

it

rm

. i

mie

bei

'

w en

|ev>

held beloved

mi

.in

en 4

Ciei ith n

r

in itsell

(>

I"

1

i

,

:

,

i'ii.

!

indered the nation «

> ;

ice

the

il

trolled >i

<

the Reichstag; "for this

I

the misfortune of our peopli Is

i

,

derman

lni|

oversexed. The

/

i

"lew

in thrall,

men

nil the* Na/is, w<

e |e\ <

|ev\ ish

The |ew

I.

le

ken m heme,

(

letworks that kept

fin.

poverty

ite

(1

i

in\

v.i

Ik

Ihj

lh(

War

|

w

[M'hinti I'vi'iy

Tin

itm

l

bl.ime for everything." ib.it

•V

the lews, the

weapons: the

N

turned to o

Prop

Mirusti

the ministry bui I

f

its

tenfold, to

187

licturi

ind the

,id

hi

ri

'

li

in

and h. Whatever tin

mc

o,

nd other

a en children's books, posters .irried:

in

mark'

i

the absolute czar of the pn tioi

I

I'

hvisions

meanwhile

annual exp>

442;

Urn

ld.i.

li

th.in

mo

their

'he ibli

in

m

nip Goebl "The rank and file are usually much more primitive than 'iice declared. "Propaganda must therefoi mple and re| Mce of achii mished from the national scene; eve ibtli

ibout

'

!

phyM

'in

Ultim.r

discredited.

propaganda attempted WOUliI which the killing of |e

iemitic

an emotional climate

come

was

in

|i

t

permissible. The film lud

Si

luded with the

pro|<

ofaswindlu

Released

in

/s$),

.1

i'\('(

1

it

w.i

it

66 theaters

in

'

pet 1

i

Berlin

1

(

HI

1940

S< ti

Christmas

1

I

v

;

ty

V v? V

m H|

/

'riegsansfi'fter

\Rriegsverlanger the

i

N>v/

J**1

i

:

fk>nd

in

it.

Charts illustrating

icial

features

were

di

displ

(

While

unary schools

w

vilifying the ler.

The

stud>

our Lord, world." One Hitler

is

Hid

in pai

Germans were and happy; jews were bloat-

children'' books,

I

Germany

while

Hitli

|r

the Chancellorsh

who

rules a brave

new how but

e to

o

=B

1

„Dte 3ubennafe

\r

IT

^

the seta tion step was unne< essary. hi- doomed lews wen- ordered to undress foi a shower \i thi- more commodious camps, such as ^schwitz, they hung thi'n lothes on numbered hooks, and the spec ial nmandos instructed them to remembei theii numbers in \t

left

c

I

i

ordei

(.imps

laim theii

re<

i>>

i

lothes aftei theii

bath." At smaller

and rreblinka, they undressed outside, freezing weathei Many mothers had to help

like Belzei

sometimes

in

livered killed slowly

"just like

Thanks

(

.)

1

hatting about

would be able

c

.imp

and assuring the victims

life

to re< laim

the SS organized

witz

—

(

I

.1

luggage small

.it

.1

camp

that they

later time. At

orchestra.

Ausch-

Groups of

musicians accompanied the victims and played popular tunes or

mann

light operati<

or The Merry

musi<

,

often from the Ta/es of Hoff-

Widow.

nagogue."

to

Zyklon H

.it

left

a

mess.

biggei

Auschwitz, HOSS reported that "there

wet with sweat and urine, the legs covered with excrement menstrual blood."

Once

<

heard wailing sounds

<

and smash then heads againsl a wall. Bui .it \us( ln% it/ sin h brut. iht\ was unusual; are was t.iken not to alarm the lews so they would otter no resistance. Next the spec ial ornm.mdos urged their hargeS up to time— toward the gas hambers. The spe2 000 lews .it cial commandos tried to be helpful and good-humored,

<

children by the legs

sy

in,

put his ear to the wall

was no sign of onvulsions Or dis< olor.it ion. Soiling through opening of the bowels was also rare." In the camps using carbon monoxide, Gerstein said, the bodies were "blue, ,incl

c

I

.1

pumped

who

he carbon monoxide killings also

his aused delays thai irnt.u then sm.iii hildren undress ss ed guards < >< asionally guards would grab the wailing i

)ne visitor,

the gas had been

.itter

I

l

The job

of

c

leaning up

fell

to the special

commandos.

the gas had been dispelled through the ventilation

system, they entered the chambers carrying special hook-

tipped poles and pried apart the bodies. Using large ice

which they clamped on the victims' heads, they then dragged the bodies out of the chamber and wrestled them into a rail wagon or elevator, or onto a conveyor belt for transport to a disposal site. With pliers they pulled out teeth containing gold. They shaved the heads of the women and sent the hair to the camp workshop to be made into felt boots for railroadmen and U-boat crews. Every three or four months the special commandos, who had by now seen too much, were themselves sent into the gas chambers. tongs,

rhese precautions sometimes failed. Occasionally, victims notk ed that

The spec beat

upon stepping

into the so-called

shower room

lacked drainage runnels. That caused them to panic.

it

ial

commandos

the rest of

Next

then had to use clubs and whips to

the victims into the chambers.

the special

commandos slammed

the doors shut

The SS

officers

and the technical aides never found

way

pletely satisfactory sives

were

Burial,

a

com-

Explo-

once with unsatisfactory results. ovens and mass burning in pits were methods used, but each process had cer-

tried at least

cremation

the most

to dispose of the bodies.

common

in

tight to their gasproof jambs. Then a dropped the Zyklon B pellets down the ventilating shafts. The results were dramatic. "It could be observed through the peephole in the door," Commandant Hoss reported, "that those who were standing nearest to the induction vents were killed at once. It can be said that about one third died straightaway. The remainder staggered about and began to scream and struggle for air. The screaming, however, soon changed to the death rattle and in a few min-

tain disadvantages.

utes

Linden, a sterilization expert of the Ministry of the Interior,

and screwed them

camp

officer

all lay still."

The process took somewhat longer in the camps that used carbon monoxide. The chambers were smaller and the victims sometimes had to stand tightly packed for an hour or two before the diesel engine roared into life. The gas it de-

146

Burial

much

ultimately

was rejected because

it

required too

land and labor, and the earthen cover sometimes col-

lapsed before the quicklime had worked completely, allowing odors to spread for miles.

The mass graves, moreover,

on the landscape, evidence that many Nazis considered a problem. However, SS Lieut. General Odilo Globocnik could see no objection and on one occaleft telltale

scars

sion argued his point with a visitor from Berlin. Dr. Herbert

opposed the mass graves, remarking, "General Globocnik, a future generation might not understand." Replied Globocnik,

"Gentlemen,

and soft-boned

if

that

ever a generation should arise so slack it

cannot understand the importance of

our work, then our entire National Socialism will have been vain.

in

I

am

of the opinion that bronze plaques should be

erected with inscriptions to

show

that

it

was we who had

cal air-defense authorities also protested:

The

fires

made

dangerous beacons for enemy bombers to use as checkpoints on their way to or from their targets.

the courage to carry out this great and necessary task."

Though cremation Auschwitz,

for

went on

that

er than

left

evidence,

it

was slow. At

example, the two large new crematoriums

line in the spring of

2,000 bodies

with three

little

retorts.

in

1

24 hours

943 could incinerate fewin their five ovens, each

Attempts to increase the capacity dam-

to be shut down for on several occasions. Commandant Hoss ordered two additional four-retort ovens and paired them with new gas chambers. A. Topf

The task of processing the property of the deceased Jews went on continuously in an immense operation called Acoccupying warecamps, were put to work sorting, cataloguing and distributing the goods mountains of shoes, shirts, tion Reinhard. Large staffs of prisoners,

houses

at the

—

aged them severely and caused them

watches, eyeglasses, gold teeth and other effects.

repairs

Most of the possessions were turned over to the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, known by its German initials WVHA. The German paper money collected by the WVHA was bundled off directly to the Reichsbank. Dental gold, jewelry, precious stones, pearls and foreign currency were inventoried at the WVHA, then deposited at the Reichsbank. The bank credited all the value to one Max

I.

and Sons, an

Erfurt

competitive bidding.

tract after highly

experts calculated that the dle

1

,500 bodies

won the conCompany technical

heating-equipment firm,

a day,

new

units

would be able

to han-

but wartime shortages led to shoddy

construction and the ovens were a great disappointment.

One broke down

after

only a short time and eventually

had to be taken out of service altogether. The second had to

be shut

down

repeatedly because after four to six weeks

of continuous use

its

flimsy

fire

walls and chimneys would

be burned out.

One

many bodies were burned

Auschwitz and Belzec that pefoot or more of human fat had to be scraped off at

chimney walls. When a camp's ovens were inoperative, the commandant had no choice but to order the bodies burned in open pits.

the

pawnshops and on the Swiss time the Swiss outlets were glutted

selling the loot through Berlin

jewelry market. For a

by-product of incineration caused further delays. So

riodically a

code name for the WVHA account. Soon the bank's vaults were filled to overflowing. Though a bank director sniffed, "the Reichsbank is not a dealer in secondhand goods," trading specialists for the bank began Heiliger, a

with such wares. Less

valuable items

— watches,

clocks,

fountain

pens,

mechanical pencils, razors, pocketknives, scissors, flashlights, wallets and purses were sent to Army post exchanges for sale to the troops. Other useful commodities

—

of railroad ties to assure a

second agency, called VOMI, a contraction of Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, the SS Welfare Organization for Ethnic Germans. Men's and women's clothing was sent by

pile with

VOMI

Special

commandos

alternated layers of bodies with layers

good draft, and then soaked the whatever petroleum wastes were available. Sometimes they drew buckets full of human fat from the pit bottoms and hurled the fat back onto the fire to increase the intensity of the blaze.

Once

the

fire

was burning properly,

more bodies were added. If the fires burned out too soon, the special commandos would complete the incineration with flamethrowers. Ultimately, the pit fire proved the cheapest and fastest

method of disposing of bodies. But the fires burned slowly and gave off dense clouds of smoke that hung unpleasantly low in misty or rainy weather. Townspeople many miles

away complained about

the stench of the burning flesh. Lo-

went

to a

needy Germans. Feather beds, quilts, blankets, umbrellas, baby carriages, handbags, leather belts, shopto

ping bags, pipes, mirrors, suitcases and other accessories and possessions were sent by VOMI to distributors throughout the Reich and the occupied lands. There were a few exceptions. All valuable furs were claimed by the WVHA, while more ordinary furs were allocated to the SS clothing factory

at

Ravensbriick for alteration

and distribution to the Waffen-SS. Miscellaneous items of very low value went to the Ministry of Economics to be sold by weight. The Ministry of Economics also appropriated women's silk underwear and other silk garments, which

147

it

distributed

hf property

1

wedding presents

.1-

ol tin- dta

the brides ol ss

t

men.

eased lews was enormously valu-

During ihf two years following the invasion oi the i«'^ s from Soviet I nion tin- Germans deported hat operation alone, a< ording to an \< eastern c iali< ia able.

-1

1

<

yielded

Reinhard inventory

lion

booty that included:

.1

ms 214,678 pounds) of gold coins; 167,740 (.no kg .

silv.

;

i

kg.

wedding

kl.i.

4.

-

'i

126,780 J0.880

watches;

1,133 kg

watches

1,256 kg

»>8

kg

1

silvei

watches;

1

etc.; ,r

(>lt'

«

.tli

unnwn

Utok on. a Rw>-i.tn

by German*. Many ili>|)l.i)> otbruUllty \\vrt'\imply ul.itt'd fi) m.\kv thv pt-oplv $ubmlni\ •'

txuten nithriHihln i>

iiully

I k .

*\

THE FIRST ATROCITIES

AFTER THE CONQUEST All

the unfortunates

list

of enemies and

on the Nazis' long

"subhuman"

r

Unter-

menschen were stunned by the violence that erupted with the arrival of victorious

German armies

in Eastern

Europe. But the

lews suffered the worst horrors. They were beaten and humiliated by German sol-

—

by local anti-Semites and most ofand most viciously by the SS. SS men ripped clumps of hair from the Jews' beards and sometimes set the beards on fire. Terrified Jews in the Polish town of Turck were driven into their synagogue by SS men; they were forced to drop their pants and were lashed with horsewhips. Jewish women and girls were routinely raped in the streets and town squares.

diers,

—

ten

I

At times, the Jews' Gentile neighbors of only a short time before

bade fair to outdo the Nazis in savagery toward the Jews. Under the prod of the SS, latent antiSemitism exploded into pogroms in which Jews were robbed and beaten and murdered in the most barbaric fashion. In an occupied town in the Ukraine, a

mob

of Gentiles tied a Jewish

hair to the

tail

woman's

of a horse and drove the ani-

The horse dragged the woman una Jew who watched from a distance "her whole face was completely disfigured and there wasn't the slightest sign of life from her body. Most of the crowd was hysterical with laughter." mal

til

off.

— said —

A convict released by the Germans uses a lead pipe on a Jewish pogrom victim in Lithuania. The pogrom took place on June 28, 1941, just days after the invasion of the Soviet Union.

,*7k

~ ,v-7""*

vsSr

A rape victim in the city of Lvov cries out in rage and anguish as an older woman comforts her. Anti-Semitic citizens rounded up 1 ,000 lews and turned them over to the Germans.

SO MANY BODIES WERE

UL;lJHi]ii In the wake of (he German armies, whole communities of Polish and Russian lews were wiped out by the journeymen killers of the SS Ein\jt/$rupp( n. In most of the massacres, th«> procedure was the same. The lews were marched to a remote execution site. There they were ordered to undress; they did not understand why, hut it was partly lo facilitate the searching and salvaging of their clothes, and partly because naked people rarely resisted. "Our father did not want to undress," ,

said Rivka Yosselevscka,

who

;.

survived a

massacre of Russian lews at Zagrodski in spue of a bullet wound in her head. "He did not want to stand naked. They tore the clothing off the old man and he was shot." Immobilized by horror, Rivka watched as her mother was shot. Then her 80-yearold grandmother was shot along with the two children she held. "And then there was my father's sister. She also had children in her arms, and she was shot on the spot, with the babies in her arms." Rivka's younger sister was the next to die.

"She went up

>»

Germans with

to the

c

—

one of her friends they were embracing each other and she asked to be spared,

—

standing there naked.

**tj

A German looked

and shot the two of them." The Germans then shot Rivka's second sister, and finally it was Rivka's turn. "I felt into her eyes

the

German

take the child from

my

arms.

The child cried out and was shot immediately. And then he aimed at me. He aimed the revolver at me and ordered me to watch and then turned my head around and shot me. Then fell to the ground into the pit amongst the bodies." After the Germans left, "I rose, and with my last strength came up on top of the grave, and when did, did not know the place, so many bodies were lying all over. Not all of them dead, but in their last sufI

1>

m

\m

r ;v

I

I

ferings;

I

naked; shot, but not dead."

J-^Tr uETXm.

*

*

A Polish lew kneels before his 55 executioner while other Germans watch. The executed man fell

into the

common grave below.

%

Wearing blindfolds and with r :( MT'f jf

-.

man

to a

barren execution

arms guided by an 55

their

linked, apprehensive lews are

site in

Poland.

Near the Latvian town ofLijepaja, women and girls huddle together, waiting in fear. Their clothes are scattered about on the ground.

Forced to strip, four Jewish men and a young boy from a town in Poland are brought forward by members of a killing squad.

'

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^N

^

.1*^'

^uif -*-

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»M

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«

Barbed-wire fences surround the 75 square miles of the AuschwitzBirkenau death camp. An estimated two million people from Germanoccupied countries were killed there in less than three years.

Sm In

THE FINAL TRAIN TRIP

water.

In

the spring of 1942, Jewish leaders in

the ghettos of Poland and nearby Slovakia

were directed by the Nazi authorities

to

prepare a specified percentage of their populations for "resettlement." Unaware of the horror that lay ahead, the Jewish

communities yielded thousands of deportees. These people would become the first victims of the

new death camps

in

Poland.

Most Jews traveled to their places of death by train. They were marched to the nearest station and packed in boxcars that lacked sanitary facilities, seats and often ventilation. For

some

cramped

the

quarters, people slept in

relays or in layers. There

the trip took weeks.

Many

was

passengers,

little

food or

already weak-

ened by the privations of ghetto life, fell sick. The stench of vomit and excrement was overpowering. At length the journey

On

came

to

an end.

death camp, one Jew "The doors were torn ajar. SS men with whips and half-wild Alsatian dogs swarmed all over the place. Parents screamed for lost children." At death camps where laborers were needed, the Jews were lined up and prodded past an SS officer. With a gesture of his his arrival at a

later recalled:

hand, the officer separated out the strongThey would work until they died;

est ones.

the rest

would die immediately.

A carload of captives from

the Jewish ghetto of Lublin, Poland, rumbles toward the Belzec death camp. The German authorities began liquidating the Lublin lews on March 17, 1942. By May 9. some 30,000 of them had been deported, and only 4,000 were still left in Lublin

fcfc.

H

/ews from Hungary, newly arrived at Auschwitz, pass a camp officer task it was to determine their fate. About 10 per cent, mostly men,

whose

were sent