The extermination of 6 million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust was the end product of such a complex labyrinth of social, political, economic and military courses of action which coalesced in Hitler's Germany that it is very difficult to sort out all of its parts. To a large extent, it is this complexity which has, for a half-century now, made the Holocaust so incomprehensible. Slowly, however, there has emerged an outline of events, decisions, motivations and realities which permit at least an historical understanding of what took place between 1932 and 1945. Grasping the Holocaust on any moral, spiritual or emotional basis, however, becomes increasingly elusive as the factual account becomes more transparent.
INTENTIONALISTS VERSUS FUNCTIONALISTS
Two historical schools of thought have emerged around the question of the origins of "The Final Solution" (German, Enloesung)- the decision to completely obliterate European Jewry. Tim Mason (1981) has framed the debate in terms of "intentionalists" versus "functionalists. The "intentionalists" (1) have argued that it was Hitler's intention from the beginning (even before his rise to power) to exterminate the Jews and that the war with Russia was a pretext for that undertaking, at the very least, an integral part of it. Based on his avowed antisemitism as early as Mein Kampf (1923) and his early statements (1939) that Jews would be completely destroyed if they plunged Germany into another world war, these historians have taken the view that all decisions, political and military, were made with an eye to the ultimate extermination of the Jews.
The other point of view, espoused by the "functionalists,(2) has argued that the "Final Solution" was decided upon only after many failed attempts to force Jews to emigrate from Germany and that the closure of possible destinations by the rest of the world combined with the logistical problems of such a massive deportation "forced" the "Final Solution" into existence. Further, these scholars suggest, Hitler's style of leadership, his demand for total loyalty from his subordinates (fuhrerprinzip) and the paranoia they engendered, caused subordinate SS agencies to come up with the Final Solution in early 1942.
[Serious readers are encouraged to take a careful look at Christopher Browning's The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution, 1992:86-121 for an excellent discussion of this controversy and the middle ground positions which have emerged in recent years.]
The position taken here is that the "Final Solution evolved between 1933 and 1941 as Hitler's political and military fortunes, shifted. Hitler's antisemitism is displayed as early as 1919 in a letter to Adolf Gemlich in which he stated that the Jewish problem would eventually be solved through a process of systematic deprivation of Jews of their privileges and having them classified as foreigners. He concluded by saying that "The final goal, however, must stedfastly remain the removal of the Jews altogether." (cf Christopher Browning, "The Final Solution, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (ed. Gutman), Vol.II, p.489). The "final goal" was most often articulated in terms of removal of Jews from Germany or the exclusion of Jews from German economic and political life. There were times, however, when Hitler's language was more foreboding, e.g., his comparison of Jews to "bacilli" and his characterization of the Jews as "our greatest evil." His disbelief that Germany could have lost World War I led him to seek a scapegoat for Germany's ills. He found it in the Jews. In Mein Kampf, Hitler outlined his belief that if Germany were to be strong it must be united on the principle of racial purity. He made it clear as early as 1924 that it would be necessary to "rid Germany of all Jews."
But, despite the fact that Hitler was driven by a virulent antisemitism, there is little documentary evidence that his early thinking included the physical extermination of Jews as a matter of official policy. With Hitler's rise to political power, he was necessarily sensitive to world opinion and sought first to force the emigration of Jews to other parts of the world. His ultimate goal was to rid the Reich of Jews. When resettlement via emigration failed, he pursued the "final solution."
My position is tempered, however, by the distinct possibility, perhaps probability, that Hitler was well aware of the fact that Jews forced out of the Reich would not be favorably received around the world. The year before the publication of Mein Kampf, the United States passed the Johnson-Reed Act (1924) which set very restrictive quotas on foreign immigration. The isolationism following WWI made resettlement through emigration an unlikely prospect. It is not likely that Hitler was ignorant of these policies and the sentiment they represented. If he was unsure of world opinion prior to 1938, the Evian Conference (July, 1938) held at Evian, France should have left little doubt. The conference, called by Roosevelt to address the plight of Jewish refugees, was attended by the representatives of 32 governments -- 20 Latin American countries, Britain, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Denmark and the U.S. The conference ended without taking any significant action. Their resounding non-response sent a message not only to Hitler, but to all the nations around the world. Hitler knew by early summer, 1938 (more than a year prior to the beginning of World War II) that forced emigration would not solve the"Jewish problem." If this is true, all of Hitler's resettlement plans, (e.g., the Madagascar Plan) assume an ominous, hollow sound. Less than four months later, the dastardly events of Kristallnacht unfolded.
In any case, the ultimate destruction of the Jews unfolds in four major evolutionary stages