The Holocaust: James Cowell asks for good archival sources which answer the questions, What did the German people know, and when did they know it?

I wrote to you as I am having trouble finding reliable sources or texts on the subject. Quite a lot of the material is published by Jewish associations, who claim that the German population knew whole-heartedly what the Nazis were carrying out and assisted them in carrying out of the Final
Solution.

I find this view rather extreme, as one cannot generalize on a subject such as this. I thought that you might know of sources, books or even have material that could assist me in my research.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for continuing my investigations I would really appreciate it.

James
Cowell

Our dossier
on Auschwitz

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David Irving comments

THAT is a good basic question. Not many researchers drill down deep into the archives to find questions to the answers, what did people
NOT know.

Only a few weeks ago I posted one interesting document, a report by the Warsaw Poles to British Deputy Prime
Minister Clement Attlee, Jan 10,
1944, revealing definite suspicions about Auschwitz.

You can try five or six basic sources.

1. The Gestapo security
   service (Sicherheitsdienst) carried out morale
   surveys — eavesdropping by plain-clothes agents
   on bar room conversations, etc. — to find out
   what people were thinking. These Meldungen
   aus dem Reich (there are similar series for
   Norway, France, Holland, etc.) are largely
   intact in the files of the SS (see the Guides
   to US National Archives, Microcopy T175).
   The originals are back in the Bundesarchiv in
   Koblenz now.

   K Boberach published an abridged
   edition of Meldungen aus dem Reich, and
   you can take it that he would not have omitted
   any Holocaust-related references found in these
   reports.

2. In the files of the
   propaganda ministry are a few isolated documents
   referring to unrest caused by the deportations
   from Poland (i.e. the Generalgouvernement) of
   Jews and their subsequent fate, which was
   popularly rumored; I refer to these in my
   biography “Goebbels.

   Mastermind of the Third
   Reich”.

3. German soldiers’ and
   civilians’ mail often fell into the hands of
   Allied Intelligence, as the armies advanced, or
   ships carrying such mail were captured. Search
   for the reports on the contents of this mail.
   You will find some in the papers of Colonel
   Philps in the Hoover Library, Special
   Manuscripts Division, at Stanflord University
   California.

   No explicit references here to the
   Holocaust, at least in those summaries that I
   read.

4. Read the real private
   diaries of Germans at the time. But make sure
   they are genuine, contemporary diaries, not
   rehashed for post-war publication.

   Not much
   reference to the Holocaust here either. (And
   don’t believe the conformist waffle about people
   being frightened to write diaries in a
   dictatorship).

5. The
   closer people got to the front, the more they
   knew: See for this knowledge the overheard
   conversations of German (and Italian) prisoners
   of war, both high- and low ranking, in the
   Public Records Office in London: these CSDIC
   reports are mostly in PRO series WO.208. There
   are hundreds of thousands of these transcripts.

   I have posted some of them — which answer your
   question — on my website: they take weeks, if
   not months, to exploit, and I will eventually
   publish the
   best as a book; the
   knowledge of some German generals like
   Bruns
   and Kittel
   is clear.

   See too my index
   to interrogations
   relating to my forthcoming Heinrich
   Himmler biography, where you will find many
   conversations of prisoners aware of the
   atrocities on the eastern front, at
   Babi
   Yar and
   elsewhere.

6. You might also try a
   newspaper search of newspaper indices: The
   New York Times, The Times (London) and other
   newspaper of record have useful indices: this
   will tell you what the rest of the world knew
   about what was going on (often grossly

   inflated
   for propaganda reasons). Look at the period
   around September/October 1942, particularly.

7. The BBC Monitoring
   Service [find them now at http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk]
   published voluminous daily reports on broadcasts
   from Axis and Allied transmitter; but these
   would take immense wading through, and I don’t
   think there is any index.

8. Finally, the British
   carried out their own regular morale surveys,
   and circulated top secret letter-censorship
   reports which reflected not only what members of
   the British public were writing to one another,
   but also foreign letters that passed through
   British hands: there are several quarterly
   surveys on “The Jewish Problem” based on this
   source, and although they are widely scattered
   they are of extraordinary source value, as they
   are based on the bedrock of original letters
   written

   by ordinary people. The letters written by Jews in
   England and elsewhere to Jews in Palestine are
   particularly revealing on the subject of such
   knowledge, and there are even one or two such
   letters from people in Germany, which have
   somehow made it to the outside world. I refer to
   these reports in my book “Churchill’s
   War”, vol. ii:
   “Triumph
   in Adversity”. Check
   the source notes, I am afraid I don’t have time
   to do all your homework for you.

Having said that, you may find one or two published sources addressing the same questions, What did people know, and When did they know it? I believe that Martin Gilbert, an otherwise undistinguished historian, has published a book on this very topic (he is an obsessive Holocaust historian, but a conformist. So expect no original thinking from Gilbert).

As for the non-conformists, try codoh.org
for general information. Another good starting point would be the news bulletins of the Polish
Press Agency in New
York, or the Jewish Telegraph
Agency during the war — that would also show what people really knew. Have a look at my
Auschwitz index (and don’t forget the previous
Auschwitz index) and get back to me if you need more pointers.