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The Reich Chancellery meeting of 12 December 1941 was an encounter between Adolf Hitler and the highest-ranking officials of the Nazi Party. Almost all important party leaders were present to hear Hitler declare the ongoing destruction of the Jewish race, which culminated in the Holocaust. The meeting is less known than the later Wannsee Conference.
The announcement Hitler made on 12 December to the Reichsleiter and Gauleiter refers to an earlier statement he had made on 30 January 1939:
If the world of international financial Jewry, both in and outside of Europe, should succeed in plunging the nations into another world war, the result will not be the Bolshevization of the world and thus a victory for Judaism. The result will be the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe. [1]
With the entry of the United States into World War II on 7 December 1941 and the declaration of war on the US by Nazi Germany on 11 December, the war, especially in regard to the above statement, had become truly a World War. [1] Hitler announced this declaration of war on 11 December in the German Reichstag , a speech also broadcast on radio. On 12 December 1941, he had a meeting with the most important Nazi leaders.
On the afternoon of 12 December, Hitler ordered the leading members of the Nazi Party to a meeting in his private rooms at the Reich Chancellery. [2] Because the meeting took place in private rooms rather than Hitler's office, no official record of it exists. However, entries in the diaries of Joseph Goebbels and Hans Frank confirm it. [3] Goebbels made the following entry in his diary for 12 December:
Bezüglich der Judenfrage ist der Führer entschlossen, reinen Tisch zu machen. Er hat den Juden prophezeit, daß, wenn sie noch einmal einen Weltkrieg herbeiführen würden, sie dabei ihre Vernichtung erleben würden. Das ist keine Phrase gewesen. Der Weltkrieg ist da, die Vernichtung des Judentums muß die notwendige Folge sein.
Regarding the Jewish question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that, if they yet again brought about a world war, they would experience their own annihilation. That was not just a phrase. The world war is here, the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence. [4]
Apart from the fact that the European war had turned into a world war, another reason for this shift was the fact that the entry of the United States into the war meant that the Jewish population had lost its value for Hitler as hostages deterring the United States from becoming an active member of the Allied coalition, and he was finally free to act according to his long-term plans. [5] [6]
Hitler's presence at the Chancellery meeting undermines allegations that he was unaware of the Holocaust and that it was carried out by subordinates without his knowledge. [2]
The meeting marked a turning point in the Nazi regime's attitude towards the Jewish people. It was part of a shift from propaganda, intimidation, and attacks to outright and planned extermination. The latter step had already been taken in some parts of Eastern Europe as early as August 1941. [7] The better-known Wannsee Conference in January 1942 marked the next step in the Nazis' plans to exterminate the Jews.
High Nazi Party officials were obligated to attend this meeting. No official attendance list exists, but the following leaders of Nazi Germany, out of the about 50 present, are known to have been there: [2] [8] [9]
In addition, Christian Gerlach writes that it is "virtually certain" that Alfred Rosenberg; Gauleiters Arthur Greiser, Fritz Bracht, and Fritz Sauckel; Reichskommissars Hinrich Lohse and Erich Koch; and Alfred Meyer were present. [10]
Known to have been absent from this meeting were Hermann Göring and probably Reinhard Heydrich. [9]
The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to the Jewish question" was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, and culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the murder of 90% of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe.
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was a German politician who was the Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany, and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, primarily known for being a main architect of the Holocaust.
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German philologist and Nazi politician who was the Gauleiter of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945. He was one of Adolf Hitler's closest and most devoted followers, known for his skills in public speaking and his deeply virulent antisemitism which was evident in his publicly voiced views. He advocated progressively harsher discrimination, including the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust.
The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior government officials of Nazi Germany and Schutzstaffel (SS) leaders, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference, called by the director of the Reich Security Main Office SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, was to ensure the co-operation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to occupied Poland and murdered. Conference participants included representatives from several government ministries, including state secretaries from the Foreign Office, the justice, interior, and state ministries, and representatives from the SS. In the course of the meeting, Heydrich outlined how European Jews would be rounded up and sent to extermination camps in the General Government, where they would be killed.
The Sportpalast speech or Total War speech was a speech delivered by German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels at the Berlin Sportpalast to a large, carefully selected audience on 18 February 1943, as the tide of World War II was turning against Nazi Germany and its Axis allies. The speech is particularly notable as Goebbels almost mentions the Holocaust, when he begins saying "Ausrotten", but quickly changes it to "Ausschaltung". This was the same word Heinrich Himmler used on 18 December 1941, when he recorded the outcome of his discussion with Adolf Hitler on the Final Solution, wherein he wrote "als Partisanen auszurotten".
The Reich Security Main Office was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as Chef der Deutschen Polizei and Reichsführer-SS, the head of the Nazi Party's Schutzstaffel (SS). The organization's stated duty was to fight all "enemies of the Reich" inside and outside the borders of Nazi Germany.
Odilo Lothar Ludwig Globocnik was a Nazi Party official from Austria and a perpetrator of the Holocaust. A high-ranking leader of the SS, Globocnik played a leading role in Operation Reinhard, the organized murder of around one and a half million Jews, mostly of Polish origin, during the Holocaust in the Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibór and Bełżec extermination camps. Historian Michael Allen described him as "the vilest individual in the vilest organization ever known". Globocnik killed himself shortly after his capture and detention by British soldiers.
The Holocaust—the murder of about six million Jews by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945—is the most-documented genocide in history. Although there is no single document which lists the names of all Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, there is conclusive evidence that about six million Jews were murdered. There is also conclusive evidence that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Operation Reinhard extermination camps, and in gas vans, and that there was a systematic plan by the Nazi leadership to murder them.
Viktor Hermann Brack was a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and a convicted Nazi war criminal and one of the prominent organisers of the involuntary euthanasia programme Aktion T4; this Nazi initiative resulted in the systematic murder of 275,000 to 300,000 disabled people. He held various positions of responsibility in Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin. Following his role in the T4 programme, Brack was one of the men identified as responsible for the gassing of Jews in extermination camps, having conferred with Odilo Globočnik about its use in the practical implementation of the Final Solution. Brack was sentenced to death in 1947 in the Doctors' Trial and executed by hanging in 1948.
The Madagascar Plan was a plan proposed by the Nazi German government to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar. Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Department of the German Foreign Office, proposed the idea in June 1940, shortly before the Fall of France. The proposal called for the handing over of control of Madagascar, then a French colony, to Germany as part of the eventual peace terms.
The functionalism–intentionalism debate is a historiographical debate about the reasons for the Holocaust as well as most aspects of the Third Reich, such as foreign policy. It essentially centres on two questions:
The Nuremberg Laws were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens. The remainder were classed as state subjects without any citizenship rights. A supplementary decree outlining the definition of who was Jewish was passed on 14 November, and the Reich Citizenship Law officially came into force on that date. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani and Black people. This supplementary decree defined Romanis as "enemies of the race-based state", the same category as Jews.
Polesian National Park is a National Park in Lublin Voivodeship, eastern Poland, in the Polish part of the historical region of Polesia. Created in 1990 over an area of 48.13 square kilometres, it covers a number of former peat-bog preserves: Durne Marsh, Moszne Lake, Długie Lake, Orłowskie Peatland. In 1994 its size was augmented by the addition of Bubnów Marsh, a swampy terrain adjacent to the park. Currently, the park occupies 97.62 km2 (37.69 sq mi), of which forests make up 47.8 km2, and water and wastelands 20.9 km2.
Heinz Peter Longerich is a German professor of history and historian. He is regarded by Ian Kershaw, Richard Evans, Timothy Snyder, Mark Roseman and Richard Overy, as one of the leading German authorities on the Holocaust.
The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland.
Responsibility for the Holocaust is the subject of an ongoing historical debate that has spanned several decades. The debate about the origins of the Holocaust is known as functionalism versus intentionalism. Intentionalists such as Lucy Dawidowicz argue that Adolf Hitler planned the extermination of the Jewish people as early as 1918, and personally oversaw its execution. However, functionalists such as Raul Hilberg argue that the extermination plans evolved in stages, as a result of initiatives that were taken by bureaucrats in response to other policy failures. To a large degree, the debate has been settled by acknowledgement of both centralized planning and decentralized attitudes and choices.
Otto Adolf Eichmann was a German-Austrian official of the Nazi Party, an officer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. He participated in the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the implementation of the genocidal Final Solution to the Jewish Question was planned. Following this, he was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of millions of Jews to Nazi ghettos and Nazi extermination camps across German-occupied Europe. He was captured and detained by the Allies in 1945, but escaped and eventually settled in Argentina. In May 1960, he was tracked down and abducted by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, and put on trial before the Supreme Court of Israel. The highly publicised Eichmann trial resulted in his conviction in Jerusalem, following which he was executed by hanging in 1962.
During a speech at the Reichstag on 30 January 1939, Adolf Hitler threatened "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe" in the event of war:
If international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.
The Holocaust in Germany was the systematic persecution, deportation, imprisonment, and murder of Jews in Germany as part of the Europe-wide Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany. The term typically refers only to the areas that were part of Germany prior to the Nazi regime coming to power and excludes some or all of the territories annexed by Nazi Germany, such as Austria or the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.