Holocaust: When Did They Decide?

Leave it up to historians to write whole books debating the mere days and weeks that certain decisions were made. Armed with their stockpile of Nazi primary sources, historians like Christopher Browning in his book Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers and his adversary, at least in this book, Christian Gerlach debate about how the events of 1939 to 1942 led to the "Final Solution" to the Jewish question. Whereas Gerlach's argument focuses not on gradual transitions but a dramatic turn of events, with the final decision not known until after the War became a true World War, Browning's arguments are more conventional and, inherently, more realistic. By taking into account the military context of the specific time, including the euphoria of victory and the despair of defeats or setbacks, Browning is able to provide a convincing chronological history of the events and decisions that led the Nazi's to decide on the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", though it still neglects the influence of foreign policy, namely with the USSR, and the need for secrecy in wartime.

Chapter One is mostly background information to Browning's main argument, presented later in the book. Here Browning gives a chronological history of the period before, according to him, the final decision about the fate of European Jewry was made. Browning keeps the reader well aware of the military context and how they affected the reasoning of the Nazi leaders. This is also evident in his thesis for chapter one, which claims that "between September 1939 and July 1941, Nazi Jewish policy...evolved through three distinct plans for ethnic cleansing to a transitional phase of implicit genocide in connection with preparations for the war of destruction against the Soviet Union"

The three plans may have been distinct to Browning, but to the reader it may be hard to tell the three "distinct" plans apart from the numerous other ones. The first plan that Browning provides, which was sketched out almost immediately after the conquest of Poland, he gives the name the "Nisko plan". It was the brainchild of then Schutzstaffel (SS) officer Adolf Eichman, who took things into his own hands and began to implement the immediate expulsion of Jews from the Reich and the western areas of Poland. The Nisko plan was too ambitious for its own time, and Himmler ordered it to be halted because it was not "the most important item on [his] agenda". The Nisko plan was the most ambitious seriously considered and implemented (albeit for only a few days) that the Nazi's created up until the implied genocide of Operation Barbarossa.

From then on the rest of the Nazi plans, until Madagascar, sound more like small versions of Nisko or plans with only short-term political goals in minds. Browning tries to paint a clear path toward the "Final Solution", but reality is never as smooth as one would like it to be. The second plan that Browning discusses, the "short range plan", also known as the Nahplan, was created to meet the short terms goals of Himmler to provide space for the incoming ethnic Germans. About this, Browning claims that, " the racial and political criteria emphasized by Himmler gave way to more practical concerns". Isn't deporting Jews and Poles fit nicely under Himmler's racial and political criteria? Unfortunately, this plan doesn't fit nicely into Browning transitional history. Of all the plans that Browning discusses in this section, the Nahplan was the only one carried out completely in its original form, probably because of all the plans, it was the one most tailored toward the current wartime situation. The next plan, the "second short range plan", was, like the Nisko plan, quite ambitious in its goals to remove all Reich Jews into the General Government. And, like the Nisko plan, its demise was another influx of ethnic Germans.
To solve this, two more improvised plans, the Zwischenplan and the "second short range plan" were created, though political and technical difficulties caused both plans to falter.

A central concept to Browning's argument is the concert of victory euphoria and its effect on the planning of the fate of Europe's Jews. The first real case of wartime euphoria occurred after Germany's stunning victory in France. With this came the most ambitious, but never implemented plan of the pre-Barbarossa era, the Madagascar plan. A "freakish idea whose time had suddenly come", and only possible because of the euphoria of victory, Browning paints the Madagascar plan as one taken half seriously by German officials and one that faded with the disappointment that defeat of England would not come nearly as swiftly as the defeat of France had. "Madagascar lingered as the official policy until an alternative one was proposed". The Madagascar plan's time period was probably also of when plans were being made for Operation Barbarossa, though Browning leaves us in the dark about this. Operation Barbarossa is his grand ending for Chapter One, so he cannot mention it to the reader now. The second short range plan, created for political and practical purposes rather than a mass ethnic cleansing campaign, had to be drastically cut down due to political war issues. As important as it is, Browning doesn't incorporate the details of victory Euphoria and its effects on Nazi policy until later in the book, when it fits more clearly into his argument, and tries to tie together ethnic cleansing plans created for practical political purposes into a "larger picture" that is often very opaque to the reader.

Browning neglects to take into account the most important factor in Nazi foreign policy, the USSR, into consideration until late into the first chapter. It is no secret that Hitler was a staunch anti-Bolshevik and that his great "goal in life" was to get rid of the Soviet Union and gain Lebensraum for the German populace. Therefore it is possible that the Soviets are the reason that the plans up until Barbarossa only dealt with expulsions of European Jewry and not with extermination. Had Nazi Germany made any plan to exterminate all European Jewry before the Soviet Union, which had the largest Jewish population of any European country, had been attacked, its likely that the Soviet government would have started to suspect something. Even a toned down plan to exterminate Polish or only Western European Jews might have conjured up fears in the Kremlin. Browning is probably right that the final decision was not made until after the war with the Soviet Union started, but its also likely that a decision like that could NOT have been made until then due to the secrecy of war.

In Chapter Two, Browning offers a counterargument against the positions of various other historians, notably Christian Gerlach, and for his own interpretation of the various documents leading up to the "Final Solution". In this chapter he gives much more weight to victory euphoria and the idea of a long, gradual decision-making process. Christian Gerlach's theory about the decision making process around the Final Solution is extremely focused around the USA's entry into World War II. Gerlach even has it set down to a specific date, Dec 12, and before this day "the fate of European and west German Jews - in contrast to that of Soviet and at least some Polish Jews - was still undecided". Sounds incredibly focused, and dramatic, the decision was made in just one day! Browning takes a more realistic course focusing around particular events, which, "coinciding with Hitler's mistaken victory euphoria, I [Browning] have interpreted as signifying closure to the second stage of the decision process of the Final Solution and sealing the fate of European Jewry". These important events form the basis for Browning thesis about how the decision to exterminate European Jewry was made, and form a strong counterargument against Gerlach and the other historians that he discusses.

Browning argues that many decisions and events led up the final decisions in the fall of 1941, and that even after that date decisions were being made. According to Browning, the first major event was in mid July of 1941 when "Hitler solicited a plan...for the destruction of European Jewry". Browning makes it a key to tell the reader that this is not an order or a decision, but it was still a significant move on the part of the Nazis. The death camps at Belzec are also an important topic, with a large section devoted to evidence about when construction was taking place there and what its purpose was, with Browning making the claim that it was a test camp constructed under the provisions of the planning solicited by Hitler. The next key is evidence he cites to show that experimental gassing occurred in the early fall of 1941 rather than in the spring of 1942, and also documents showing that there was little distinction between the various Jews of Europe. This point seriously weakens Gerlach's argument, which separated Eastern and Western European Jews. By providing detailed evidence to support his argument, Browning is able to sway the reader into believing his perspective and refuting Gerlach's.

Browning then attempts to go beyond Gerlach's argument and present a thorough overview of the decision making process not only till the "Final Solution" but the time period after it, but he does not give it much weight in his overall argument. Again German victory euphoria comes into play, as the Germans held off plans to fully implement the "Final Solution" until "after the war" or "next spring", which, according to Browning, were essentially two phrases for the same time. A key decision that Browning does not go into much detail about is Hitler's decision to put into action the "Final Solution" before the war ended. Had they decided to wait until after the war, there may have been no Holocaust. Possibly defeat despair and Hitler's ghoulish beliefs that Jews were responsible for German setbacks allowed him to make this decision, which in retrospect may even be more important than Gerlach and Browning "Final Solution" decision of late 1941. It was not until May 1942 that the final solution was completely in action. Browning uses the time period after 1941 to add to his argument, but his indifference in the decision making process in the spring weaken his argument when taken it is taken into account.

With the rhetoric and organization skills that Browning uses, it is hard to read this book and not agree, at least somewhat, with Browning's argument. But one has to wonder if maybe Browning did not give us the full "highly stimulating, deeply researched and powerfully articulated research article" that Gerlach himself might have. Did Browning set up a "straw man" argument and pick at the weakest points in Gerlach's paper? It is hard to say without reading Gerlach's article and any rebuttals that he may have written to Browning's work. But, withstanding this book alone, by taking into account the military context of the specific time, including the euphoria of victory and the despair of defeats and setbacks, Browning is able to provide a convincing chronological history of the events and decisions that led the Nazi's to decide on the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", though it still neglects the power of foreign policy, namely with the USSR, and the need for secrecy in wartime.