The Origins of the Final Solution

[Hesper]

I'm about a third of the way through Christopher R. Browning's book called "The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942". It is an incredible and challenging read, so far. The dimensions of the Nazi's racial policy are covered with real depth and scope, regarding the impact the military had first on limiting, and then succumbing to, the drive towards the Final Solution, the Nazi in-fighting, the official and unofficial use of terror against victims, as well as the tremendous practical hurdles that the Nazis ran up against time and time again.

The overall impression that I'm left with, at this point, is the fact that the Nuremburg Trials were really just show trials. The number of people involved in this extensive, genocidal movement absolutely boggles the mind - the logistics are overwhelming. In another book, "The Cunning of History," Richard L. Rubenstein places Auschwitz in perspective with the history of slavery. He shows that it was, in actuality, the evolution of Western slavery to its logical conclusion. His thesis included the fact that it was a glimpse at a new type of human society, and we know what kind of "human" would seek to create such a society. Putting the Final Solution in context with its proper history and the world we live in today, once the obvious lies and distortions are done away with, will no doubt reveal a picture that no one in their right mind would ever want to see peeking back at them. But there it is.

From the blurb:

In 1939, the Nazi regime's plans for redrawing the demographic map of Eastern Europe entailed the expulsion of millions of Jews. By the fall of 1941, these plans had shifted from expulsion to systematic and total mass murder of all Jews within the Nazi grasp. The Origins of the Final Solution is the most detailed and comprehensive analysis ever written of what took place during this crucial period - of how precisely, the Nazis' racial policies evolved from persecution and "ethnic cleansing" to the Final Solution of the Holocaust.

From the Table of Contents:

1. Background
2. Poland, Laboratory of Racial Policy
a. Abdication of the Army
b. Racial Policy and Terror
3. The Search for a Final Solution through Expulsion, 1939-1941
a. Eichmann and the Nisko Plan
b. The Baltic Germans, the First Short-Range Plan, and the Warthegau Deportations
c. The Curbing of Nazi Deportation Plans, January - February 1940
d. The Intermediate Plan, the Stettin Deportations, and the Volhynian Action, February - July 1940
e. The Army, from Abdication to Complicity
f. The Madagascar Plan
g. The Last Spasms of Expulsion Policy, Fall 1940-Spring 1941
4. The Polish Ghettos
a Ghettoization
b. Exploitation
c. Production or STarvation, the Ghetto Managers' Dilemma
5 Germany and Europe
a. Racial Persecution inside Germany, 1939-1941
b. The Nazi Sphere of Influence
6. Preparing for the "War of Destruction"
a. Military Preparations for the "War of Destruction"
b. Preparations of the SS
c. Economic and Demographic Preparations for "Operation Barbarossa"
7. Operation Barbarossa and the Onset of the Holocaust, June - December 1941 by Jurgen Matthaus
a. German Perceptions and Expectations Regarding "The East"
b. Early Anti-Jewish Measures and the Mid-July Turning Point
c. Pogroms and Collaboration
d. Toward the Final Solution, August - December 1941
e. The Final Solution in the East
8. From War of Destruction to the Final Solution
a. Euphoria of Victory and Decision Making, July - October 1941
b. Consternation and Anticipation
c. Inventing the Extermination Camp
9. The Final Solution from Conception to Implementation, October 1941 - March 1942
a. Deportations from Germany, the First and Second Waves
b. Integrating the Bureaucracy into the Final Solution
c. The Gassing Begins
10. Conclusion
a. Hitler and the Decision-Making Process in Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 - March 1942
b. Germans and the Final Solution

Notes
Bibliography
Index

From Cambridge Journal:

Christopher Browning is perhaps most widely known for his seminal study of the motives of the “ordinary men” who perpetrated the systematic murder of European Jewry at the behest of the Third Reich. Nevertheless, in the past two decades he has devoted much of his attention to studying the processes and decisions that led the Reich to make systematic mass murder its official policy and to provide the impetus and means for its implementation. Now he has brought his empirical findings and interpretations together in a single volume that provides the most rigorous, cogent, and lucid analysis currently available of this crucial problem in the history of the encounter between Nazi Germany and the Jews.

_http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=357303&fileId=S0364009405310178