SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 225
“There was no written order for the final solution, and we have
no reference to an oral order except what Himmler told Heydrich
when he said that he acted with the Führer’s approval.” (Emph.
added)
Browning himself supports the following thesis: 647
“The intention to massacre systematically all the European Jews
was not clearly present in Hitler’s mind before the war; it crystallized
only in 1941, after the solutions considered previously had
turned out to be unrealizable and after the imminent offensive
against Russia brought along the perspective of having to deal with
an even greater number of Jews than in the expanding German empire.
The final solution took shape starting with a certain number of
decisions taken in that very year. In the spring Hitler ordered the
preparation of the massacre of the Jews who would fall into German
hands in the course of the impending invasion. During the summer
of that same year Hitler, sure of his military victory, had a plan prepared
aiming for the extension of the extermination process to the
European Jews. In October, even though the hope for a victory had
not been borne out, Hitler approved the general lines of this plan,
which entailed the deportation to extermination centers and the use
of a lethal gas.”
But even this theory is purely conjectural. In any case, Browning
himself declared that this alleged decision did not fit into a general plan
for the extermination of the Jews: 653
“However, the Jewish policy of the Nazis in the rest of Europe
was not changed immediately in this sense. One continued to talk
about emigration, of expulsion, and of plans for a future resettlement.
In the autumn of 1940 Jews were expulsed to unoccupied
France from the region of Baden and from the Palatinate in Germany
as well as from Luxemburg; there were also expulsions from
Vienna to Poland in early 1941. In February of 1941 Heydrich still
spoke of ‘moving them to a country which will be determined later.’
And the Ministry of Foreign Affairs went on talking to the RSHA, the
Reich agency of security, about blocking the emigration of Jews
from other countries, thus monopolizing, for the German Jews, the
possibilities of emigration, which were limited. This policy was even
reconfirmed in a circular, dated 20 May 1941 and signed by Walter
652 Ibid., p. 211.
653 Ibid., p. 198.