What Shall Finally Happen to the Jews

Roger Berkowitz
It is widely believed that the Final Solution began in German at the Wannsee Conference led by Reinhard Heydrich, deputy to SS Chief Heinrich Himmler and superior to Adolf Eichmann. Christopher R. Browning argues that the Wannsee Conference was only one step in an often conflicted and unclear Nazi effort to make good on Hitler’s promise to make all of Europe Judenrein, free of Jews. It was in answer to a memo from Rolf-Heinz Höppner that Hitler finally approved the deportation of European Jews in September of 1941. This was months before the Wannsee Conference in January, 1942. Browning writes:

Immediately after the invasion of the USSR, Himmler and Heydrich traveled together behind the advancing German lines, inciting and sanctioning the execution of Jews and recruiting killing units beyond the Einsatzgruppen for this task. After midsummer both Heydrich and Himmler gave instructions to different units to now target Jewish women and children. Although the onset of the Final Solution in Soviet territory in midsummer 1941 sealed the fate of Soviet Jews, the fate of the rest of European Jewry remained undecided. Heydrich did not need a new authorization to continue his previous planning. He procured one from Göring on July 31 to submit a plan for a Final Solution for the Jews in the rest of the German sphere in Europe precisely because he faced a new task—determining if and how the Final Solution underway on Soviet territory could be extended to the rest of Europe. And it was Heydrich, not Himmler, who in August unsuccessfully urged Hitler to begin deportations of Jews from Germany during the war.
When Goebbels and Hitler met on August 19–20, the former added his pressure to begin deportations from Germany, but Hitler continued to insist that deportations “to the east” would not commence until “immediately after the end of the campaign.” As for the fate of the deportees, Hitler noted, “Then they will be worked over in the harsh climate there.” Thus it was Hitler, not Heydrich, who was still clinging to the January plan, but among Heydrich and his own men impatience was growing.

On September 2, one of Heydrich and Eichmann’s superiors in the SS, Rolf-Heinz Höppner, composed a memo complaining about a significant problem in planning for deportations into conquered Soviet territory. “To go into further details…would be fantasy, because first of all the basic decisions must be made. It is essential in this regard…that total clarity prevail about what finally shall happen” to the deportees. “Is it the goal to ensure them a certain level of life in the long run, or shall they be totally eradicated.” The crucial historical question to my mind is exactly that posed by Höppner: When did those in Hitler’s close circle obtain “total clarity” that they were planning for the total eradication of the Jews? Longerich’s answer is April–May 1942; mine is late October 1941.