Ian Kershaw and the
Final Solution
By Paul Grubach
Hitler,
the Germans, and the Final Solution, by [Sir]
Ian Kershaw, International Institute for Holocaust
Research, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. Yale University Press,
New Haven & London, 2008, 394 pages.
Introduction
IAN
Kershaw is a highly acclaimed historian and professor of
modern history at the University of Sheffield (Great
Britain). Widely considered to be an authority on Nazi
Germany, his two volume biography of Adolf Hitler
was favorably reviewed by numerous mainstream media
sources.
According to the short statement on the book's
jacket, this collection of essays brings together the
most important and influential aspects of Kershaw's
research on the Holocaust for the first time. The titles
of the four sections reveal what topics are dealt with:
"Hitler and the Final Solution": "Popular Opinion and the
Jews in Nazi Germany": "The Final Solution in
Historiography": "The Uniqueness of Nazism."
This very interesting book received flattering
reviews from mainstream Holocaust historians such as
Saul Friedländer, Christopher Browning and
Deborah Lipstadt. The comments of Browning and
Lipstadt are very instructive. After claming that Kershaw
is one of the most insightful and productive historians
of Nazi Germany, Browning then adds: "It is simply
splendid that his many seminal articles are now available
in one volume." Lipstadt also offers her praise for
Kershaw and his book: "Having all these essays together
in one volume enhances their importance and reaffirms
Kershaw's place as one of the stellar historians of the
period."
Considering Kershaw's stature in academia, one
should take very seriously whatever he has to say about
Hitler and National Socialist Germany. This review will
briefly examine what Kershaw writes about The Final
Solution.
The "Final Solution" Defined
Kershaw defines "the Final Solution to the Jewish
Question" as "the systematic [Nazi] attempt to
exterminate the whole of European Jewry [p.60]."
Of course, this is the traditional view, the one
currently accepted by mainstream historians.
Kershaw
goes on to state the three major questions, which in his
view, surround the Final Solution. They are: how and when
the decision to exterminate the Jews came about; what was
Hitler's role in this policy of mass murder; and whether
the "Final Solution" followed a single order from a
long-held program, or did it evolve in a haphazard and
piecemeal fashion over a period of time (p.61).
After posing these questions, he states: "The
deficiencies and ambiguities of the evidence, enhanced by
the language of euphemism and camouflage used by the
Nazis even among themselves when dealing with the
extermination of the Jews, mean that absolute certainty
in answering these complex questions can not be achieved
[p.61]."
In simple language, he is saying there is room for
doubt in regard to the answers mainstream historians have
given to the previous questions.
The "Intentionalists" and "Functionalists"
Two camps have arisen among orthodox historians of
the Final Solution. Holocaust traditionalist Deborah
Lipstadt points out that "intentionalists contend that
Hitler came to power intending to murder the Jews and
instituted an unbroken and coherent set of policies
directed at realizing that goal. In contrast,
functionalists argue that the Nazi decision to murder the
Jews did not originate with a single Hitler decision, but
evolved in an incremental and improvised
fashion."1
So who does our academic authority on the Final
Solution think is right? Kershaw says that "one would
have to conclude that neither model offers a wholly
satisfactory explanation (p.269)." One paragraph later,
he adds: "The vagaries of anti-Jewish policy both before
the war and in the period 1939-41, out of which the
'Final Solution' evolved, belie any notion of 'plan' or
'programme.'"
So there you have it. The two orthodox/mainstream
theories about the Final Solution are flawed, and, before
the war and in the period 1939-41, there was no official,
etched-in-stone plan or program to exterminate the Jews.
Apparently, the latter assertion implies that the
"intentionalist" theory has been falsified.
Did Hitler Order the Extermination of the
Jews?
One of the standard dogmas of the traditional
Holocaust story is that National Socialist leader
Adolf Hitler personally ordered the complete
extermination of European Jewry.
Nonetheless, Kershaw admits that a written statement
from Hitler that orders the extermination of the Jews has
never been found: "Predictably, a written order by Hitler
for the 'Final Solution' was not found [p.96]."
And then, one page later he again raises skepticism in
the reader's mind in regard to Hitler's role in the Final
Solution: "Research had, in certain ways, then, moved
away from the differing hypotheses about the date of
Hitler's decision for the 'Final Solution' by implying --
or explicitly stating -- that no such decision had been
made [p.97]."
He throws even more doubt on the traditional view of
Hitler's role in the Final Solution when he points out
that the evidence upon which it is based is fragmentary
and unsatisfactory: "It seems certain, given the
fragmentary and unsatisfactory evidence, that all
attempts to establish a precise moment when Hitler
decided to launch the 'Final Solution' will meet with
objections [p.100]."
Kershaw concludes with this skeptical admission: "It
seems impossible to isolate a single, specific
Führer order for the 'Final Solution' in an
extermination policy that took full shape in a process of
radicalization lasting over a period of about one year
[p.101]."
Throughout the book, Kershaw discusses the theories
of various mainstream historians of the Final Solution.
He points out that these scholars have inferred different
interpretations from the same evidence, indicating that
the very evidence upon which their interpretations are
based is circumstantial. He is just one step away from
admitting that their evidence is very weak, or even
non-existent.
We quote Kershaw verbatim: "As these varied
interpretations of leading experts demonstrate, the
evidence for the precise nature of a decision to
implement the 'Final Solution,' for its timing, and even
for the very existence of such a decision is
circumstantial. Though second-rank SS leaders repeatedly
referred in post-war trials to a 'Führer Order' or
'Commission,' no direct witness of such an order survived
the war. And for all the brutality of his own statements,
there is no record of Hitler speaking categorically even
in his close circle of a decision he had taken to the
kill the Jews -- though his remarks leave not the
slightest doubt of his approval, broad knowledge, and
acceptance of the 'glory' for what was being done in his
name. Interpretations rests, therefore, on the 'balance
of probabilities'[pp. 256-257]."
Kershaw concedes that some post-war court testimony
of German military officers about the existence of an
order from Hitler to exterminate the Jews is bogus: "The
early post-war testimony of Einsatzkommando leaders about
the prior existence of a Führer order has been shown
to be demonstrably false, concocted to provide a unified
defense of the leader of Einsatzgruppe D, Otto
Ohlendorf, at his trial in 1947 [p.258]."
So, after the reader is exposed to all of this
skepticism and doubt, the question remains: what was the
nature of the "Führer order" for the Final Solution?
Kershaw claims it is not possible to provide an answer:
"The nature and form of the 'Führer order', and
whether it amounted to an initiative by Hitler himself or
was any more than the granting of approval to a
suggestion -- itself, in all probability, emanating from
the local commanders of the killing units and broadened
into a wider remit -- by Heydrich or Himmler, is
impossible to establish [p.259]."
The Unreliability of the Testimonies of Rudolf
Höss and Adolf Eichmann
One of the most important pieces of evidence
traditionally adduced to "prove" the orthodox view of the
Final Solution has been the testimony of the former
commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, Rudolf
Höss. Kershaw points out that Höss
"recalled after the war receiving the extermination order
[to exterminate the Jews] from
[Heinrich] Himmler in the summer of 1941."
Then, he immediately notes that Höss is
untrustworthy as a witness: "But Höss's testimony
cannot be relied upon, and in this case much points to
the conclusion that he had erroneously pre-dated events
by a year and was really referring to the summer of 1942
[p.261]."
Another
"chief witness" was Adolf
Eichmann, a National Socialist bureaucrat who is
widely regarded as playing a seminal role in the Final
Solution. Consider what Kershaw has to say about the
reliability of Eichmann's testimony: "Eichmann's
testimony in Israel in 1960 was also at times inaccurate.
He claimed to remember vividly Heydrich communicating to
him two or three months after the invasion of the Soviet
Union that 'the Führer has ordered the physical
extermination of the Jews.' But his memory was frequently
wayward when it came to precise dates and time. In this
case, too, it is as well not to build too much on such
dubious evidence [p.261]."
Yet, on page 109, Kershaw makes this problematic
statement: "Though their testimony is inaccurate in a
number of ways and cannot be trusted with regard to
detail, Adolf Eichmann, in effect the 'manager' of the
'Final Solution,' Dieter Wisliceny, one of his
deputies, and Rudolf Höss, the Commandant of
Auschwitz, all asserted after the war that the orders
passed on to them to implement the 'Final Solution'
derived from Hitler himself. Second-and third-tier SS
leaders directly implicated in the 'Final Solution' were
in no doubt themselves that they were fulfilling 'the
wish of the Führer.' There is no reason to doubt
that they were correct, and that Hitler's authority --
most probably given as verbal consent to propositions
usually put to him by Himmler -- stood behind every
decision of magnitude and significance."
Does the reader see the predicament here? He says
Eichmann's, Wisliceny's and Höss's testimonies are
not reliable, and then he uses their testimonies as a
part of an ensemble of testimonies to "corroborate" the
orthodox view of the Final Solution.
Kershaw's "Definitive Claim" is Contradicted by
the Evidence.
Amidst all the doubt and uncertainty that Kershaw
has introduced into the traditional view of the Final
Solution, he then makes a statement that is supposed to
be "absolutely true." He states: "By March 1942 the
'Final Solution' as it is known to history was in full
swing [p.78]." In other words, by March 1942 the
alleged Nazi plan for the total extermination of Europe's
Jews was fully operative.
This "definitive statement" is contradicted by the
evidence put forth by mainstream Holocaust historian
Jeffrey Herf.
In the March 7, 1942 entry in Joseph Goebbels's
diary, the National Socialist propaganda minister
discussed an extensive memo concerning the Final solution
to the Jewish question. The document referred to "more
than eleven million Jews" in Europe who "must first be
concentrated in the East" and in due course, "after the
war, be sent to an island" such as Madagascar. Europe
would not see peace until the Jews were "excluded from
European territory." "Delicate questions" concerning
half-Jews, relatives, and spouses, it noted, would be
addressed. Goebbels then wrote: "[T]he situation
is now ready to introduce a definitive solution to the
Jewish question. Later generations will no longer have
the energy and also the alertness of instinct to do so.
Therefore, it is important that we proceed radically and
thoroughly."2
Orthodox Holocaust historian Herf admits this
passage contradicts the traditional Holocaust story. It
speaks not of mass extermination, but of deporting the
Jews to some place outside of Europe after the war is
ended. Herf tries to explain this away by claiming that
Goebbels is lying to his own diary for posterity's sake
-- a bizarre rationalization if there ever was
one.3
On the one hand Herf claims that Hitler, Goebbels
and the Nazi hierarchy on numerous occasions publicly
announced (!) to the world their policy to murder all the
Jews of Europe.4 Yet, he then turns around and
tries to make us believe that Goebbels tried to hide this
extermination policy by lying to his diary for
posterity's sake. Why would Goebbels and the Nazi
hierarchy announce to the world their policy of
exterminating the Jews, and then try to hide this same
policy by lying in private diaries? It would not make any
sense for Goebbels to lie about, cover up and conceal in
his private diary the very thing that he honestly
publicly announced! Here, it appears as though Herf
concocted a convenient rationalization to "explain away"
evidence that undermines the traditional view of the
Final Solution.
Furthermore, this evidence from Dr Joseph
Goebbels's March 7, 1942 diary entry defies
Kershaw's claim that an alleged policy to exterminate the
Jews was in full swing in March 1942. As of said date,
Goebbels was still advocating the deportation of the Jews
out of Europe when the war ended.
Kershaw and the "Nazi Gas Chambers"
Professor Kershaw, certainly no revisionist, clearly
accepts the traditional view of the Holocaust, as he
speaks of the "horror of Auschwitz" (p.237). Here, he is
referring to the alleged systematic murder of European
Jewry in the "Nazi gas chambers."
Despite that, he puts forth evidence that suggests
certain "testimonies" to the "Nazi gas chambers" are
highly questionable. He writes: "According to postwar
testimony provided by his former personal adjutant,
Otto Günsche, and his manservant, Heinz
Linge, Hitler showed a direct interest in the
development of gas-chambers and spoke to Himmler about
the use of gas-vans [p.109]."
Buried in a footnote, Kershaw states the reason as
to why the "testimonies" of Günsche and Linge in
regard to the "Nazi gas chambers" are unreliable: "The
passages in question make no mention of Jews and convey
the impression that the victims of gassing were Soviet
citizens. The text, whose provenance and intended
recipient -- Stalin -- make it problematical in a number
of respects, goes on…to claim that gas chambers were
first established, on Hitler's personal order, at
Charkov, though, in fact, no gas chambers were erected on
the occupied territory of the Soviet Union [p.115,
footnote 66]."
That is to say, it was claimed that homicidal gas
chambers were used at Charkov -- where it is now known
that they never existed.
But even more importantly, Kershaw substantiates
what mainstream Holocaust historian Arno Mayer admitted
as far back as 1988: "Sources for the study of the gas
chambers are at once rare and
unreliable."5
Kershaw concurs, for he writes: "Recorded comments
about the murder of Jews refer almost invariably to mass
shootings by the Einsatzgruppen, which in many cases were
directly witnessed by members of the Wehrmacht. The
gassing, both in mobile gas-units and then in
extermination camps, was carried out much more secretly,
and found little echo inside Germany to go by the almost
complete absence of documentary sources relating to it
[p.203]."
Not only does Kershaw confirm that reliable
documentary sources relating to the "Nazi gas chambers"
are almost non-existent, but he also points out that "gas
chamber" rumors were circulating throughout Germany, and
foreign language broadcasts may have been responsible for
such rumors. "Even so," Kershaw writes, "the silence
[in regard to the secrecy that surrounded the 'Nazi
gas chambers' and the almost complete absence of
documentary sources relating to them] was not total.
Rumours did circulate, as two cases from the Munich
'Special Court' dating from 1943 and 1944 and referring
to the gassing of Jews in mobile gas-vans, prove
[p.203]."
In autumn 1943, a middle-aged Munich woman confessed
to have said: "Do you think that nobody listens to the
foreign language broadcasts? They have loaded Jewish
women and children into a wagon, driven out of the town,
and exterminated (vernichtet) them with gas
[p.203]." For these remarks and for derogatory
comments about Hitler, she was sentenced to prison
(p.203). Another man was also indicted for having claimed
in September 1944 that Hitler was a mass-murderer who had
Jews killed by having them exterminated by gas in a
"gas-wagon" (p.203).
Kershaw further points out that because the sources
for the study of the Final Solution and the "Nazi gas
chambers" are so inadequate, mainstream historians have
inferred very different interpretations from the same
evidence: "The inadequacy of the sources, reflecting in
good measure the secrecy of the killing operations and
the deliberate unclarity of the language employed to
refer to them, has led to historians drawing widely
varying conclusions from the same evidence about the
timing and the nature of the decision or decisions to
exterminate the Jews [pp. 254-255]."
One would think that after admitting that sources
relating to the "gas chambers" are very rare and
inadequate, and rumors about "the Nazi gas chambers" were
circulated by foreign language broadcasts, Kershaw would
at least give some consideration to the Revisionist
theory that these "Nazi gas chambers" never existed and
were the creations of Allied and Zionist war propaganda.
But clearly, this is not possible. The book was published
by the International Institute for Holocaust Research,
Yad Vashem, in Israel. No further comment necessary
Was Hitler's Brutality a Response to Stalin's
Brutality?
Kershaw implies that Hitler's brutal plan to deport
Jews was a response to Josef Stalin's wicked plan
to deport ethnic Germans, for he writes: "Now, aware that
the war would drag on and conscious that the USA would
probably soon be involved, he [Hitler] agreed to
demands from a number of Nazi leaders -- exploiting
Stalin's deportation of hundreds of thousands of ethnic
Germans from the Volga region to the wastes of western
Siberia and Kazakhstan to press for retaliatory measures
-- to deport Germans, Austrian, and Czech Jews to the
east even though the war was not over
[p.105]."
Here, Kershaw raises anew this question: to what
extent was Nazi brutality a response to Soviet, British
and American brutality?
Kershaw's Misleading Claims about David
Irving
Kershaw's treatment of maverick historian and expert
on the leaders of the Third Reich, David Irving,
is very misleading, to put it mildly. One would think
that after all of the doubt and uncertainty that Kershaw
admits exists in regard to the traditional view of the
Final Solution, he would personally give Irving's view of
the matter a thorough examination. No such luck.
Kershaw
refers to "David Irving's apologist claims in Hitler's
War (p.13)"; to "David Irving's attempt to whitewash
Hitler's knowledge of the 'Final Solution (p. 239)'"; and
finally, to "David Irving's attempted exculpations of
Hitler's role in the 'Final Solution' (p. 329)."
In essence, Kershaw is claiming that Irving
attempted to downplay and even hide Hitler's role in the
Final Solution, which is blatantly false. What Irving has
done is to bring to light what Kershaw unwittingly
admitted in this book! That is, there is no real evidence
to prove that Adolf Hitler ever ordered or knew of a plan
to completely exterminate the Jews in "gas chambers" or
by other means. Furthermore, Irving has called attention
to authentic wartime German documents that strongly
suggest that Hitler never ordered the extermination of
the Jews.
As far back as 1977, Irving called attention to
Hitler's brutality in regard to the Jews, thus falsifying
Kershaw's claim that Irving was somehow trying to
"whitewash" Hitler's involvement with the Jewish tragedy
in World War II. Consider this description of Hitler's
meeting with Admiral Miklos Horthy, regent of
Hungary, in 1943. Irving wrote: "Poland should have been
an object lesson to Horthy, Hitler argued. He
[Hitler] related how Jews who refused to work
there were shot; those who could not work just wasted
away. Jews must be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, he
said, using his favorite analogy. Was that so cruel when
one considered that even innocent creatures like hares
and deer had to be put down to prevent their doing
damage? Why preserve a bestial species whose ambition was
to inflict bolshevism on us all? Horthy apologetically
noted that he had done all he decently could against the
Jews: 'But they can hardly be murdered or otherwise
eliminated,' he [Horthy] protested. Hitler
reassured him: 'There is no need for that.' But just as
in Slovakia, they ought to be isolated in remote camps
where they could no longer infect the healthy body of the
public; or they could be put to work in the mines, for
example. He [Hitler] himself did not mind being
temporarily excoriated for his Jewish policies, if they
brought him tranquility. Horthy left
unconvinced."6
In
addition, Irving has called attention to evidence that is
incompatible with the claim that Hitler ordered the
wartime extermination of the Jews. Consider
the "Schlegelberger document." This March 1942 memorandum
of Nazi State Secretary Franz Schlegelberger reads
as follows: "Reich Minister Lammers [Hitler's top
civil servant] informed me that [Hitler] had
repeatedly explained to him that he wanted the solution
of the Jewish Question put back until after the war.
Accordingly the present discussions possess merely
theoretical value in the opinion of Reich Minister
Lammers. But he will be in all cases concerned that
fundamental decisions are not reached by a surprise
intervention from another agency without his
knowledge."7
Irving correctly argued that this document shows
that Hitler had no plans to exterminate European Jewry;
it is incompatible with the notion that he had ordered an
urgent liquidation program. Not only was this document
hidden by Allied prosecutors, but Kershaw has failed to
take it into account.8
Kershaw and the Religion of the Final
Solution
Kershaw admits the Jewish experience in WWII has
been elevated to the status of a sacred religion, as the
very term "Holocaust", he points out, was initially
adopted by Jewish writers and "has been taken to imply an
almost sacred uniqueness of terrible events exemplifying
absolute evil, a specifically Jewish fate standing in
effect outside the normal historical
process…[p.237]." He then quotes Israeli
historian Yehuda Bauer, who claims the "Holocaust" is now
viewed as "a mysterious event, an upside-down miracle so
to speak, an event of religious significance in the sense
that it is not man-made as that term is normally
understood [p.237]."
Kershaw appears to gently reject this
"mystification" of the Holocaust, as he does not even
find Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer's attempt to
make the Holocaust appear "unique" as "very convincing or
analytically helpful"(p.271, footnote 2).
Even though Kershaw rejects the state religion of
the Holocaust, his mind is still locked up in a dogmatic
slumber in regard to the Final Solution.
In regard to Hitler's writings, speeches and ideas,
Kershaw writes: "And, however repulsive, and whatever
their irrational basis, they did constitute a circular,
self-reinforcing argument, impenetrable by rational
critique, something which we genuinely call a
Weltanschauung, or ideology [p.90]."
This criticism of Hitler hurls right back at Kershaw
and the coterie of traditional historians of the Final
Solution. As Kershaw has clearly demonstrated in this
book, the traditional view of the Final Solution is
clearly faulty and questionable. Yet, it is dogmatically
believed and promoted anyway. Kershaw's traditional view
of the Final Solution -- a Weltanschauung if there ever
was one -- is a circular, self-reinforcing argument,
non-falsifiable and impenetrable by rational
refutation.
Kershaw is just one step away from admitting that,
maybe, just maybe, there was no Nazi policy to
exterminate the Jews, and maybe, just maybe, the "Nazi
gas chambers" never existed. Maybe the Final Solution
was, after all, a policy of deportation and ethnic
cleansing, where Europe's Jewish population would be
removed from Europe by brutal and ruthless means. Maybe
the "Nazi gas chambers" were, after all, the creations of
Allied and Zionist war propaganda.
But because of the dogmatic restraints that surround
mainstream historians of the Final Solution, Kershaw just
cannot take this most logical step.
Footnotes
write
to David Irving