Paper presented at the conference "Genocide and the Modern World",
Association of Genocide Scholars, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, June 11-13, 1997
By Stig Hornshøj-Møller, Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
The paper presents a core summary of my Danish book FØRERMYTEN. ADOLF HITLER, JOSEPH GOEBBELS OG HISTORIEN BAG ET FOLKEMORD (The Fuehrer-Myth. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and the History behing a Genocide). It argues the importance of a Nazi propaganda film, "Der ewige Jude", which is characterized as an X-ray of the decision-making process that led to the Holocaust, as the film is the result of the efforts of both Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler themselves. Based on a source-critical analysis of the film and its production history a new, very precise chronology is presented of the final decision-making process to launch the Holocaust, with four key events:
1. Viewing rushes on October 16, 1939, Goebbels decided to use the film as an advocacy for killing the Jews.
2. Finally approving the film on May 20, 1940, Adolf Hitler had become emotionally prepared to take the ultimate decision.
3. Adolf Hitler took the decision on June 1, 1940, while visiting the site, where he was blinded in WW1.
4. On June 22, 1940, Adolf Hitler gave an oral order to Heinrich Himmler to be in charge of the extermination program.
The paper furthermore argues that the film can be seen as the official promulgation of Hitler's decision, and that it - together with the feature film Jud Süss - deliberately was used to prepare both prepetrators and bystanders for the extermination of the Jews. Finally, the paper contains principal reflections on the importance of "produced reality" in reality-like media, and the need to leave the still rather literary tradition and to aim for a broader concept of recognition in scientific research.
When first the concept of
differentness has been rooted,
all the incomprehensible becomes possible.
Slavenka Drakulic, 1992
Introduction
The Holocaust has changed human civilization. The knowledge of the fact that it was possible to disestablish and exterminate a certain group of people from the rest of the society simply because they were defined by the authorities as different and dangerous, is a challenge of the outmost importance to the human mind. The systematic mass murder of six million Jews cannot be erased from the history of mankind, but could, should and must be used to discern and warn against structures and developments in present society which could lead to new genocides.
Therefore the complex development that led to the Holocaust has been submitted to numerous investigations, based on theories and methods from widely different scientific disciplines and research traditions. Many questions have been solved, but the intense debate after Daniel J. Goldhagen's book on "Hitler's Willing Executioners" has shown that there are still many major problems left to clarify.
One of these problems - and, as I see it, probably the principal reason for the very critical reception of the book by leading scholars of contemporary history - is the lack of a commonly accepted interpretation of the decision-making process itself, because a detailed, chronological reconstruction of this process (like in all other crimes) is the very precondition for evaluating the significance of the many different contributory factors and their complex interrelations.
Only after establishing a chronology which acknowledges all those data and observations which can be considered to have factual character, will it be possible to evaluate the relationship between the conditions which could be characterized as historically unique in the case of the Holocaust, and those factors and structures which can be considered more general elements of processes leading to genocidal behaviour.
The establishment of such a chronology belongs to the most heavily discussed issues in modern history because written evidence is weak and inconsistent. It is in its original context deliberately so vaguely phrased that the same document can lead to directly opposite conclusions among scholars of today. After more than 25 years of intense debate most historians now tend to consider 1941 as the decisive year, although there still exists a major controversy whether Hitler actually took the key decision himself, and about the time at which such a decision was made (spring, summer or autumn, 1941).
Two fundamentally different views of history have led to two different traditions of interpretation. The "intentionalists" (Philippe Burrin, Gerald Fleming, Eberhard Jäckel and others) claim that Adolf Hitler did give a formal order to set in train the extermination programme - although it was never put into writing as was the order transferring the responsibility of the socalled Euthanasia-Project to Philipp Bouhler and Rudolf Brandt at the beginning of October 1939. On the other hand, the "functionalists" (Götz Aly, Christopher R. Browning, Hans Mommsen and others) claim that such an order was never neccessary because the administrative system started the systematic annihilation of the Jews in Europe "all by itself" as a "natural" consequence of Nazi ideology. The differences between these two schools have, however, in recent years become less distinct and most historians today use elements from both traditions in their models of interpretation, almost exclusively based on the existing written source material.
The purpose of this paper is to suggest a new chronology of the final decision-making process with two crucial dates:
June 1, 1940, as the date on which Adolf Hitler personally took the decision to shoulder the ultimate consequence of his own ideology
and
June 22nd, 1940, as the date on which the Fuehrer gave Heinrich Himmler an oral order to prepare for the total annihilation of the Jews in Europe, which should begin simultaneously with the attack on Soviet Russia.
Theoretical background
The basic assumption behind my attempt to establish this new chronology is a notion that the decision to kill other human beings ultimately is taken by a human being - the fundamental question being: How and why is the empathy towards fellow human beings removed in the decision-makers, the perpetrators and the bystanders?
The whole reasoning behind this attempt is also greatly indebted to Hannah Arendt and her observation on Eichmann in Jerusalem from 1961:
"The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the point of view of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied ... that this new type of criminal, who is in fact hostis generis humani, commits his crimes under circumstances that makes it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong."
The importance of this statement is supported by the testimony of Kurt Möbius which is related by Daniel J. Goldhagen at a key place in his book:
"I would also like to say that it did not at all occur to me that these orders could be unjust. It is true that I know that it is also the duty of the police to protect the innocent, but I was then of the conviction that the Jews were not innocent but guilty. I believed the propaganda that all Jews were criminals and subhumans and that they were the cause of Germany's decline after the First World War. The thought that one should disobey or evade the order to participate in the extermination of the Jews did not therefore enter my mind at all."
Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and other instigators of the Holocaust, however, were also human beings - and if one wants to understand the complex of factors and structures that created the genocidal mentality of both decision-makers and perpetrators, one consequently has to use a very broad - and in the very sense of the word: human scientific ("humanwissenschaftlich") approach where the actual use of theory and methods of analysis is defined by the character of the different detail-questions raised during the research. And the evolving explanation must be in accordance with both the scientific standards and the accepted knowledge of all these disciplines.
The sociological notion of "the social construction of reality" consists of both imagery (pictures) and words, but the social (re-)construction of reality in a scientific context nevertheless still primarily consists of words, based on an interpretation of written evidence, although these only reflect a part of that social construction of reality from which a person perceives, thinks and acts. The significance of the non-verbal part - especially of imagery - for the world view of the person in question and his relations with the outer world is often disregarded.
This is partly because it is most difficult and time-consuming to reconstruct. Or to put in a another way: The non-verbal side has not received the attention it ought to have had - especially in a modern mass-media society like the Third Reich, where the production of "reality" by means of visual media, like photos and films, played a well-documented role in establishing and reproducing Nazi world view to the German society. And although it is well-known that Adolf Hitler was a person who reacted very emotionally to what he saw - and that many of his decisions were taken suddenly and often took the men around him with surprise - there does not seem to have existed a systematic analysis of the possible relation between such decisions taken by Hitler personally and the experiences he had had just before taking these decisions.
This observation - together with the use of both the newest psychiatric knowledge on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and a broad semiotic/cultural anthropological approach including a consequent use of film, fotos, art, architecture, music etc. as sources equal to the written source material - has led me to undertake an analysis of some of the situations in Adolf Hitler's life where he took key decisions.
In the centre of my reconstruction of the most important decision of all - the Holocaust decision - stands the source-critical analysis of the notorious propaganda film "Der ewige Jude" (1940) which - from my point of view - can best be characterized as an X-ray of the decision-making process itself, thus making the history of its production and distribution the skeleton for a very precise chronology of the decision-making process.
Empirical research background
Going back to the formation of a critical historical science in the 19. century there exists a long tradition concerning the standards of publishing written sources, but although our century has witnessed the development of other media for social communication, scholars of contemporary history still seem to consider written evidence to be more valuable and trustworthy than other kinds of sources. It should also be noted that it has been specialists of medieval history - and not scholars of contemporary history - who have taken the initiative to establish a methodology for using film and television in historical research.
One of the pioneers was the late professor Niels Skyum-Nielsen at the Institute of History, University of Copenhagen, who laid down his principles in a book called "Film and Source Criticism" (only in Danish, 1972). His main interest was aimed at developing methods to evaluate the authenticity of single clips which in his opnion always had a pars eventu-character contrary to most written sources which normally had to be considered as post eventum-evidence.
In 1970 he made "Der ewige Jude" the topic of a project in order to establish methodological criteria for future source-critical editions of important film documents. The editorial method was based on these principles, but it also had a semiotic angle, as it analysed in details the many different kinds of symbols and imagery in the film which were part of the social construction of reality for the German audience in the cinemas in 1940.
Apart from this attempt to create an exemplary demonstration of how to edit historical film documents, the original research project soon came up with another perspective. Film historians had for a long time claimed that on the basis of an analysis of its contents, the film should be considered as deliberate targeting propaganda for the Holocaust; it should - using the words of Erwin Leiser in 1968 - "turn brave citizens into willing mass murderers". Such a claim would, however, mean that a conscious decision to instigate the Holocaust had been taken at least before the first performance of the film on November 28, 1940, and for chronological reasons this was imcompatible with the models of interpretation put forward by historical research.
The original purpose of my analysis was therefore to demonstrate that a painstaking source-critical analysis would show no positive evidence to substantiate such a claim and that it must therefore be seen as an over-interpretation by the film historians deriving from the sheer fact of the Holocaust. My original working hypothesis was to prove that the production of the film was solely due to a wish by the Ministry of Propaganda to use the film medium as a another means of legitimizing anti-Semitism as a corner-stone in Nazi ideology to the German public.
During the study this hypothesis began to crumble, because it was impossible for me to find any such evidence, which supported it in any way. Instead more and more sources indicated that the film expressed a deliberate call for genocide where the "produced reality" in the most reality-like medium at that time was intended to legitimate to the public the "need" to annihilate the Jews of Europe. It should act as the "visual proof" of Adolf Hitler's notorious prophecy from January 30, 1939, which in a recut version played a predominant part in the film's conclusion.
It became clear that the whole film could only be understood as one long "commercial" for genocide, using the same simple technique of "problem/solution" now to be seen in TV-commercials for e.g. washing detergents. From Goebbels' diary as well as from other contemporary written sources it could furthermore be documented that the original concept of the film came directly from the Minister of Propaganda himself, and that the film was considered to be of such importance that Hitler himself saw several versions of the film and repeatedly ordered changes. Eventually, it was Hitler, not Goebbels, who decided upon the release of the film for the public.
Fritz Hippler - executive director of the film - told the BBC in 1992, in a TV-interview, that
"Hitler wanted with this film to prove, so to speak, that Jewry was a parasitic race in humanity which should be extirpated from the rest of humanity. This film should be the very evidence for this purpose. For more than 13 months this film was changed, recut, enlarged etc. on at least more than a dozen occasions, not to speak of the different versions of the commentary which became increasingly more bloodthirsty, more aggressive".
And the correctness of this testimony is corroborated in detail by the source-critical analysis of the production history of the film.
The production history of "Der ewige Jude"
On November 10th, 1938, the Fuehrer made an important speech to the German press. Although he did not directly refer to either the Reichskristallnacht itself or to Jews in general, he nevertheless did so in his own way, when he spoke about matters of foreign policy: as the German Jews from his point of view did not belong to the German people, the Jewish Question consequently was a matter of foreign policy. Therefore, his whole speech can be regarded as his comments upon the lack of support for the pogrom of the German public. He rebuked the propaganda makers for not having understood his strategy - aiming at war - and made it unmistakingly clear to his audience what he meant:
"Coercion was the reason why for years I only talked about peace. But gradually it became necessary to attune the German people psychologically and slowly make them grasp that there do exist things which one must solve with violent means when this is not possible by peaceful means. To do so, however, it was neccessary not to make propaganda for violence as such, but to elucidate certain events of foreign policy to the German people in such a way that the nation's inner voice all by itself slowly begins to call for violence. Accordingly, certain events would be presented in such a way that there in the brain of the broad masses gradually totally automatically would evolve the conviction:
What one cannot solve benignly, one has to solve with violence because it cannot go on like that."
The rebuke was certainly understood by Joseph Goebbels who immediately launched a fierce anti-Jewish campaign and also for the first time decided to use the film medium as part of inducing anti-Semitism into the German people. Being responsible for Nazi film production Goebbels had for almost six years preferred other topics for the screen (including sheer entertainment and a more "positive" presentation of Nazi world view), but immediately after Hitler's speech he called upon the production companies to present scripts for anti-Semitic feature films. Eventually this order led to the production of two films, "Die Rothschilds" and "Jud Süss, both released in 1940.
Goebbels also wanted to have a "documentary" - a "reality film" - based on the concept of the 1937-exhibition in Munich called "Der ewige Jude" in order to reach the attention of all Germany. He was, however, confronted with a practical problem which delayed the production of the film: He simply lacked footage of Jews who looked like Jews (i.e. Orthodox Jews) and the Polish authorities declined his request for filming in the ghettoes of Poland. However, with the outbreak of World War II this obstacle no longer existed, and the UFA newsreel 471 of September 14, 1939, contained a minor sequence with Polish Jews.
Three weeks later - on October 4, 1939, after having approved a newsreel with a comprehensive story on life in the Polish ghettos - Goebbels decided to send Fritz Hippler, Head of the Film Department in the Ministry of Propaganda, to Lodz to take further shots for a "Ghetto film", and on the following day he outlined the structure for such a film to Hippler and his expert on anti-Semitism, Eberhard Taubert. Hippler was ordered to film "characteristic types of Jews", life in the ghetto, service in the synagogue as well as ritual slaughter.
Hippler returned to Berlin on October 16, 1939. After having informed Hitler about the project which had the Fuehrer's "great interest", Goebbels later that night saw half-an-hour of rushes with slaughter of cows, calfs and sheep. Although Goebbels himself had ordered the recordings to look like cruelty to animals - and so they were! - he was nevertheless deeply shocked at what he saw. He wrote in his diary: "This Jewry must be annihilated". That night - October 16, 1939 - Goebbels must have passed the "Threshold of Genocide" (Robert Jay Lifton), and from that day on he deliberately used these pictures as well as the whole film production as a cynical and ruthless advocacy for genocide.
Twelve days later Goebbels showed these slaughtering scenes to Hitler and others present at the dinner table. According to his diary they were all "deeply shocked". And in estimating the effect on Hitler one should not forget his attitude towards animals: he was almost religiously a vegetarian. To Adolf Hitler these scenes - and later the whole film, in which they were the emotional climax - must have functioned as a reinforcing factor and legitimization of his latent wish to exterminate the Jews as the "Evil of the World".
Three days later - on October 31, 1939 - Goebbels personally went to Lodz and summarized his impressions of the visit in the ghetto in his diary:
"Lodz is a disgusting city. Driving through the ghetto. We get out and inspect everything carefully. It is indescribable. They are no longer human beings, but animals. It is, therefore, also no humanitarian task, but a task for the surgeon. One has got to cut here and that most radically. Or Europe will vanish one day due to the Jewish disease."
This notion certainly defined the whole mentality behind the production of the film and Goebbels was explicitly confirmed in his opinion of Jews by Hitler when he reported on his visit to Poland. An entry in his diary of November 2, 1939, states:
"Above all my description of the Jewish problem finds his (i.e. Hitler's) total approval. The Jew is garbage. Rather a clinical than a social matter."
On this trip Goebbels was probably accompanied by his script-writer Eberhard Taubert and a cameraman, Erich Stoll, who was considered to be politically particularly trustworthy. Additional footage for the film was shot. About one week later Goebbels saw new rushes - and during the following weeks and months entries in his diary demonstrate how intensely he took interest in the film, and how important he considered it to be. His diary from November 19, 1939: "I inform the Fuehrer about our Jew film. He gives some ideas for it. On the whole film is a very valuable propaganda medium for us just now." It should also be noted that Goebbels regarded himself as an important film maker, and that Hitler, too, considered himself to be an expert on film propaganda. He took each week the neccessary time to review the latest UFA-Newsreel. The Fuehrer even sometimes ordered changes before approval for public screening.
On December 11, 1939, the Fuehrer rebuked Goebbels for bad film making - and worse: It happened at Hitler's dinner table while Goebbels' intimate enemy Rosenberg was present. "Der ewige Jude" could therefore also be seen as Goebbels' answer to this rebuke. The first cut of January 8, 1940, did not include the sequence with Hitler's notorious prophecy made on January 30, 1939. It contained only "Jewish" scenes (including a comparison between Jews and rats) and climaxed with the slaughter scenes. Hitler turned this version down on January 11, 1940.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to discern who came up with the idea of including the speech: Goebbels, Hitler or a film-researcher looking for a suitable Hitler-quotation. But, as the Fuehrer's public response to the Jewish way of slaughter, it was included in the following versions. The quotation that 'if a war should start the consequence would be "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe"' was, as-it-were, "hammered" into Hitler's own mind by constant repetition as he viewed Goebbels' different versions.
A protocol of a test screening before top propagandists from all branches of the Third Reich on March 1, 1940, proves that "Der ewige Jude" was tested the way commercials are tested to-day before shown on television. Another intention of this screening was probably to radicalize the mentality of these opinion-makers of German society through the effect of the slaughter scenes, as ritual slaughter had for long been one of the spearheads of anti-Semitic propaganda. This protocol is together with the source-critical shot-to-shot analysis of the film another elucidating proof of the subtle accuracy and the technical perfection with which "Der ewige Jude" was produced in order to be as effectful as possible.
From the start, the so-called "film document" was to be understood as Goebbels' advocacy for a radical solution as the ultimate logical consequence of Hitler's own anti-Semitism - the Fuehrer, not Goebbels, being the decision-maker in the "Jewish Question". And this also seems to be the reason why the film was so very well "researched" and in an almost "scientific" way embedded in the traditions of anti-Semitic propaganda, although it also used the whole range of audio-visual manipulations known in 1940.
According to the rolling titles at the beginning of the film it was a "documentary film" which "shows us Jews the way they really are, before they conceal themselves behind the mask of the civilized European." It used the slaughter scenes as the emotional climax, claiming that the reason for showing this "original footage", which belonged to the "most dreadful" ever recorded by a camera, was justified by one argument: By means of seeing for themselves the German people would at last "comprehend the truth of Jewry". And according to the commentary - read by the authoritative speaker of the Newsreels - "these pictures prove the cruelty of this form of slaughter. It reveals the character of a race which conceals its brutality beneath the cloak of pious religious practices." Therefore the screenings of the film - being Hitler's only concrete confrontation with Jews after the Campaign in Poland - must have actualized the Jewish question in general and especially the "need" for him to take a decision in accordance with his ideology. It must have put him psychologically under pressure for making a move, as the "Saviour" of the German people, and thus to adhere to his own "prophecy" of January 30, 1939, which in the film was presented as the "solution" to the Jewish problem. And in 1940 the premise had become a reality, as the war was already in progress - a fact which was explicitly stressed in the promotion in press and radio, when the film finally had its opening night on November 28, 1940.
It was, however, only when "Providence" once more had confirmed him in his psychopatic world view on May 20, 1940 (i.e. when German troops according to his strategy cut the enemy forces into two by reaching the Channel Coast, and thus proving to himself that he had chosen the right strategy contrary to the advice of his military staff), that he seems to have given Goebbels his approval of the version of the film which is known today.
The visualized and structured externalisation of Hitler's more vague thinking through the "film document" had finally struck back. It had become the validation of his own hatred to the Jews and had removed any last doubts he, Hitler, might still have had in his subconsciousness. To the World, the climax of this film was to be understood as the Führer's unspoken yet incontrovertible Sentence of Death upon the Jews. And yet, from his psychopatic point of view it was not him, but "Fate" - or "Providence" - that commanded the extermination of Evil: He was just a "tool".
"Der ewige Jude" was nevertheless not released immediately after its approval by Hitler in May, 1940. The reason was that it awaited the final cut of the feature film "Jew Süss" which was another part of the propaganda package and which should arouse those anti-Semitic feelings that were to be "proven" by the other, "authentic film-document". While "Jud Süss" had its opening night during the film festival of Venice on September 6, 1940, "Der ewige Jude" was shown to the top people of the Third Reich on September 8.
On that occasion Goebbels used it as a concrete demonstration of the new kind of war propaganda, which was to be used to prepare the German audience for the continuation of the war. Members of the attendant audience protested strongly against showing the slaughtering scenes outside party meetings, and Goebbels had to produce a milder version for women and children. However, he insisted that both should be screened in public cinemas. "Der ewige Jude" finally had its opening night on November 28, 1940, when the director of the film - Fritz Hippler - stressed that the film was the proof of the correctness of Hitler's prophecy of 1939. In an interview, broadcasted all over Germany, Hippler ended by quoting this prophecy after having pointed out that the premise - the war - had become reality.
And just after the film had been shown all over Germany, Hitler himself on January 30, 1941, started recalling this his prophecy in his broadcasted speeches - thus virtually giving oral confirmation of the call for genocide expressed and legitimized in the film. Especially as he - on this occasion and ever after - claimed to have said it at the very outbreak of the war (just as he backdated the Euthanasia order). It was the dreadful images of the "inhumanity" of the Jews that the German public was expected to recall when they heard or read these speeches. In a time where real blood was virtually never shown on the screen, the slaughter scenes certainly had the same psychological effect of creating the genocidal mentality as the use of pictures of commited atrocities by the enemy during the war in former Yugoslavia in the 1990's.
In other words, there are many cogent reasons to argue that "Der ewige Jude" can be considered to be Hitler's public statement to perpetrators and bystanders of what was going to be the next step in his war against the Jews.
The final decision
Using this notion and the well-established chronology of the production of "Der ewige Jude" it seems possible to suggest the exact dates and places for Hitler's insane decision and for his order to Heinrich Himmler to take charge of the extermination project.
Hitler's pattern of behaviour during the Campaign in France was certainly defined by his war trauma from WW1. Although he was the Supreme Commander of the German army he was more interested in visiting his old battle-fields from this war. From a psychological point-of-view the approval of "Der ewige Jude" for public release must have activated his latent desire for a "Final Solution of the Jewish Question", but his visits to key places of relevance to his own, personal war trauma pulled the trigger and enforced his irrevocable decision to kill European Jewry.
On June 1, 1940 at around 6 p.m. Adolf Hitler returned to a little hill called "La Montagne" on the French-Belgian border, 2 kilometres to the south of the village of Wervicq. Here during the night of October 13/14, 1918, he had been blinded by a British gas grenade. He had then been transferred to a hospital in Pasewalk, Pomerania, where he recovered his ability to see, but as on November 10, 1918, he heard that the Kaiserreich had disintegrated and Germany lost the war, he wept hysterically and once more he temporarily lost his eye-sight.
In order to get back his ability to see the future "psychopatic God" (Robert G.L. Waite) Adolf Hitler signed his personal Faustian pact with the Devil - or God or Providence, as Hitler preferred to call it. At least that is how he himself perceived and internalized this traumatic experience, which made him take the decision to become a politician: "With the Jew there can be no pact - only 'either ... or'". This sentence became the "credo" of his life.
Standing on "La Montagne" he was once more confirmed in his "mission", because with his very own eyes Hitler could see that he had done what he had promised himself to do in Pasewalk. He had turned the wheel of history and reestablished the power of the German nation: He had achieved the conquest of France.
Apart from this psychological argument there is some evidence supporting such an interpretation, especially if one accepts the notion of Yehuda Bauer and others, that the war against the Soviet Union from Hitler's point of view, was a war against the Jews. On the day after the visit to Werwicq - June 2, 1940 - he told a general, that he hoped that England would soon "come to its sense", so that he could commence his "real task" and march against "Bolshevik Russia".
The following days also saw new initiatives in anti-Jewish policy, but the most important piece of evidence is probably the secret decree of June 5, 1940, which could be used to cancel all German laws representing legal obstacles to total warfare. This move can hardly have been justified by the second phase of the campaign in France, but must be seen in connection with a principal decision of attacking the Soviet Union. This interpretation is supported by the dates when the decree was renewed - December 20, 1940 and May 15, 1941. Both have clear connections with the planning of Operation Barbarossa.
On the following day - June 6, 1940 - Hitler moved to a new Field Headquarters which he himself renamed and gave the symbolic name "Wolfsschlucht". The "Wolfsschlucht" does not only refer to Hitler's first name - "the noble Wolf" - but also to the German national opera "Der Freischütz" by Carl Maria von Weber, where the Wolf's Gorge is the place of a Faustian pact with the Devil. Shortly after he also named the next Field Headquarters to be used in Schwartzwald after the capitulation of France. He called it "Tannenberg", thus clearly indicating his decision to attack Russia as his next step in the war.
On June 17, 1940, France asked for negotiations and Hitler ordered a "re-enactment" of the armistice of WW1 in Compiègne on June 21, where he was present as a "mute", god-like figure. However, he also visited old battle-fields that day, including the site near Soissons where he had been awarded his Iron Cross 1st Class. Then - on the evening of June 22, 1940 - he received the official document, stating that France had surrendered. From a psychological point of view this must have been the final confirmation to Hitler of his "chosenness", and this made him externalize the decision taken at Werwicq. He called upon Heinrich Himmler right after having received the document around 9 p.m. and installed him by an oral order with the task to annihilate all European Jews.
This hypothesis, based on an analysis of Hitler's traumatic pattern of behaviour, is supported by one written source. According to Himmler's masseur Felix Kersten, Himmler at first refused to accept the order, because he considered it to be "un-Germanic" to kill an entire people, but finally he gave in and accepted the dreadful commission. Kersten claimed that this command was given by Hitler "immediately after the capitulation of France" - and that Himmler explicitly blamed Goebbels as the person who had made Hitler take the decision. From Kersten we also learn how the Fuehrer carefully checked Himmler's various actions. For example, Hitler had all Himmler's secret speeches recorded - and Himmler later told Kersten about Hitler's rages when the Fuehrer found his speeches or measures too weak - or when he didn't like the speed with which the actions against the Jews were being carried out.
As usual when confronted with moral problems Himmler got stomach cramps and let Heydrich - the real "Architect of the Final Solution" - take over. On June 24, 1940, Heydrich wrote a short but pointed letter to Ribbentrop, reminding him that in January 1939 Göring had entrusted him, Heydrich, with authority over Jewish emigration. As the American specialist on this matter, Richard Breitman, has pointed out, this letter is unthinkable, unless Heydrich was sure that he acted on the authority of the Fuehrer.
The assumption that Hitler gave such a verbal order to Himmler on June 22, 1940, would explain why there is no reference to Jews in Himmler's second plan for Germanization of Eastern Europe, dated June 30, 1940, in contrast to his former plan, presented to and approved by Hitler on May 25, 1940. It would also explain the purpose of Heydrich's wellknown report of July 2, 1940, on the activities of the SS and the SD during and after the Polish Campaign. This report was certainly intended for Hitler's eyes and can be seen as an operational step to secure the independence of the killer force. At the same time it can be seen as the formal acceptance by Heydrich (and Himmler) of the assignment.
In return for this acceptance there is some evidence that suggests that Hitler promised Himmler a both significant and somewhat odd "fee": On July 12, 1940, the Reichsführer-SS got permission to tear down a church and enlarge the Wewelsburg Castle near Paderborn which Himmler meant to be the future "Centre of the World". The architecture of the North Tower as well as the planning of the whole site implies that Hitler's body was going to be buried here, and the possession of this most sacred "relic" of The Third Reich would secure Himmler's power after Hitler's death.
The implementation of the order
The Reichsführer-SS was to keep the task as secret as possible, following Hitler's general instructions of not letting anyone know anything they did not need to know, and to inform those, who had to know, as late as possible. In this respect, the plan for sending the Jews to Madagascar was part of the cover-up, because it ensured the cooperation of the authorities (from Eichmann as chief coordinator and down- and outwards in the bureaucracy) and of the Jews themselves, who were made to believe in this possibility of a "human way" of solving the Jewish problem. Judging from the psychology and moral thinking of Himmler, he - contrary to Heydrich - was reluctant to carry out his assignment and desparately hoped that the Madagascar Plan would become a reality, for both Madagascar and annihilation had the first phase - registration and segregation - in common.
The designated murderers (including Himmler himself) had to be psychologically prepared, because they had to believe that they were doing something good and noble - even while killing. And the German public as well as the non-Jewish population in occupied Europe had to accept what was going to happen to the (once) fellow citiziens that they could still meet in the streets.
"Der ewige Jude" was instrumental for this purpose together with the feature film "Jew Süss". Both films were used to "elucidate" the Jewish problem to the Waffen-SS which had to cope with the gradually growing economical and social problems of detaining Jews in ghettos, and the public showings of these films in Germany and the rest of occupied Europe were a subtle way of making the public accomplices in the killings - even if the task itself was delegated to the SS. In acting in this manner, Hitler once more followed the strategy he had outlined in the chapter on propaganda and organization in "Mein Kampf".
Hitler's prediction of a "conviction" that would be "gradually, totally and automatically released" became true, as we can discern from the above-mentioned testimony by Kurt Möbius as well
as from the notorius letter from Rolf-Heinz Höppner in Lublin to Adolf Eichmann on July 16, 1941. Höppner found it more 'human' to search for a way of killing the Jews than to let them starve in the forthcoming winter. In his brain-washed mind they had to die anyway.
Concluding comments and perspectives
The source-critical shot-to-shot analysis of the film demonstrates that "Der ewige Jude" probably is the most manipulated film ever made. Apart from being a shuddering example of Nazi paranoia towards the Jews it is also one of the best illustrations of how distorted "reality" can be used as a means of creating hate and genocidal mentality, because the way it was done can be documented down to the tiniest detail.
Unfortunately, the story of the "produced reality" of "Der ewige Jude" is not just a contribution to the ongoing academic discussion of the decision-making proces, which led to the Holocaust. Despite the fact that German authorities has forbidden its distribution and public showing, it can easily be obtained in both German and English versions and it is used by Neo-Nazi groups as "cult film". Finally, one has just to see the propaganda of the contending sides in former Yugoslavia to conclude that Joseph Goebbels with his anti-Semitic films did create standards for dehumanization that still are applied as justification of genocide.
The psychologist Israel W. Charny once concluded from his comprehensive study of genocidal killing: "The mass killers of humankind are largely everyday human beings - what we have called normal people according to currently accepted definitions by the health profession". The sociologist Everett C. Hughes confirmed the observation by Hannah Arendt on Eichmann and stated that such mass killers could in fact be viewed as "good people" doing the "dirty work" of their societies. The sociologist Michael Ley has described the necessity to understand the "religious" function of National Socialism and the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has stressed genocide as part of modern mass society. Finally the sociologist Eric Markusen and the historian David Kopf have underlined the function of mediated dehumanization as a neccessary condition for such mass killings.
Bearing all these observations on the reasons for instigating past genocides in mind one also has to acknowledge another important fact which in many ways have been sadly neglected by scholars of genocide: the influence of modern mass media. As most of our conscious perception of the outer world derives from our eyes and as modern society is more and more developing into a mediated "information society", where our perception of reality is more and more shaped by visual information, it becomes urgently important to create a scientific approach which can integrate and compare information from written and non-written evidence.
The case of "Der ewige Jude" as Hitler's unspoken, yet unmistakingly clear, order to commit genocide is a warning example that we as historical scientists need to revaluate our basic thinking and methodology, deriving from the traditional primacy of written evidence, and to take the consequence of the fundamental character of science as societal communication. As the history of the film shows, it is neccessary to use a broader approach than the traditional, based as it is on the assumption that only written evidence is permissible in scientific contexts.