Introduction E9F5FC

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Hitler - responsible for T4 - his belief in murderous eugenics; his sensitivity to what is politically possible; role of Jews in racial caste system; making money from Jewish emigration; not feeding Jews in East; testament of eradication of Jews; lack of creativity on Jewish issues; pornographic interest in Jewish suffering; willingness of solving by emigration to Madagascar, Lublin, Siberia; defeating Bolshevikism; taking credit for killing the Jews (?); last testament: focus on Jews, and his resolve that they should "pay for it"; focus on punishment of Jews rather than their elimination; elimination is not enough - but must be punished so that they feel remorse; push Jews outside of Europe; "the intoxication of murder".

He didn't believe Germans could kill women and children even as Lithuanians were proving that they could.

But many SS trained at Pretzsch supposed they would be invading Britain, and not all of their ruthless leaders were psychologically prepared to kill women and children. I

Stahlecker was a competitor to Heydrich

• who was psychologically prepared
• condider the rising baselines and who set them and investigate below how they changed
• Criteria for those who are insisting, recruiting, articulating, sacrificing or not, and with ambition, although not necessarily power, to "get things done".
• History has a different standard than criminal investigation - can use a process of elimination - the purpose is to learn, to make sense of the truth.
• Secondary responsibility.
• Ternary responsibility.
• The pyramid of responsiblity.
• Responsibility for one's culture - one's nation or religion - that one chooses to belong to and draw from.
• Responsibility for updraft.
• Jonas Pyragius
  • Mūsų vyrai baliavojo... Visi laiptai smirdėjo. Tikra kiaulystė. Pyragius "špičiavo". Negirdėjau. Esą jo motina išvežta, jis kenčiąs už 1/50,000 dalį išvežtųjų, Cartagina (Sov[ietų] S[ąjunga]) turi būti sugriauta. Tiek. Jo kalba buvo labai šaltai priimta. Šimkus kalbėjo vis, kad reikia vesti realią politiką. (1941.12.18 Blynas)
• Richard Schweizer
• Vytautas Reivytis - "greatest of the armed slaves"
• Stasys Puodzius - organizer
• Klemensas Brunius - organizer
• Bronius Norkus
• Juozas Barzda
• Kazys Simkus
• Ignas Taunys

DESIRED

• Joachim Hamann

DESIRED RECRUITED

• Ignas Vylius
• Helmut Rauca
• Stasys Kviecinskas

RECRUITED

• Reinhard Heydrich
• Heinrich Himmler
• Heinz Graefe
• Emil Just
• Kurt Graebe (OKW) - was German minority in Polish parliament, was
• Kazys Skirpa
• Jonas Dzenkaitis - killed
• Franz Walter Stahlecker - Collecting points for career. Preferred to fight Soviet partisans.
• Smidtas

RECRUITED JUSTIFIED

• Pranas Germantas
• Georg Leibbrandt

JUSTIFIED

• Bronys Raila - articulated. But quit LAF on matter of principle (of style).
• Alfred Rosenberg

DESIRED JUSTIFIED

• Martin Kurmis
• Adolf Hitler
• Peter Kleist

Alternative theories - "chaos happens"; there are so many crazy endeavors out there and only one of them needs to actually happen. But the endeavors that do happen are actually very simple (like kill the Jews). In any event, it is very constructive, instructive to show who can actually be found responsible, to be looking for them and learning from what happened. We need to be careful that there could have been many such people, but simply some are more visible. Or as with Hitler - on a different time scale is responsible - put into place Himmler, Heydrich - and made the final decision - but after Lithuania.

Interactions

• Nebe blume and berlin necexsity of dexecutions in easch city
• kaunas graefe argued jews will be safer in ghetto
• himmker involved but didnt think it poxxsible

ar sukilimas neleido komunistsms psdegti miestus

not prepared - not enugh ss assigned anf leaders blume bluobel not psycologically prepare

graudenz - graefe and ernst damzog

ernst damzog. herbert lange personal initiative for hospital killings. odilo globocnik.

aptitude not enough crucial thing is willingness to sacrifice for the sake of an ideal and the drive to create the ideal, first in the mind

hitler

grammar of responsibility

Profiles:

• Himmler - warrior farmers - goal of having 20 to 30 million Slavs and Jews perish from "military action and crises of food supply".
• Heydrich - as evident from Poland - subjugation of people by decapitation (of intellectual leaders). Upset by people (Franz Six) who left the Einsatzgruppen, though they were able to do so.
• Lohse
• Executioners - Jaeger, Jeckeln - did not know of the job, were simply brought in.

Timeline:

• December, 1940. Madagascar plan fading. Plans made to deport Jews from Europe after the war.
• March 17, 1941. General Franz Halder's diary. Hitler's decision that it would be a war not keeping to international law; kill the intelligentsia put in by Stalin; kill all comissars and Jewish communists.
• Einsatzgruppe's set up - leaders handpicked by Heydrich and Himmler. Heydrich was the initiator of the Einsatzgruppen, the purpose of which was to promptly establish totalitarian control within a country. In Poland, the Einsatzgruppen were disbanded on September 20, 1939. He negotiated the role of the Einsatzgruppen with Eduard Wagner of the army. (March 26, 1941)
• Pretzsch school for 3,000 members of Einsatzgruppen operated in May and June 1941 (three weeks?). Heydrich indicates that Jews will be shot as well. But the members were not told where they were deployed, and many assumed they would be operating in England, where there were few Jews.
• June 6, 1941 - confirmation in the army that Communist political commissars would be executed as such.
• June 22, 1941 - Death to Jews, Communists, Commissars - Ukraine radio.
• July 1, 1941 - Heydrich forbade actions against Polish intelligentsia (which Lithuanians wanted) because they could be expected to be anti-Communist and anti-Jewish - and could initiate pogroms (thus presumably Heydrich's idea.). (His complete pragmatism.)
• July 2, 1941 - Heydrich's policy - not to interfere with any purges initiated by local elements. Initial massacres - pogroms - to be done by locals - quote Graefe that it would be safer for the Jews in the ghetto - this was objectively true. Ghettos served to confine Jews so they would not be partisans. Killing of commissars and Communist Jews.
• June 27 - Himmler assumes personal command of two brigades of Waffen-SS - 11,000 men.
• Late June - Himmler and Heydrich go on tour - annoyed to find Jewish populations in Augustowo and Grodno unconfined - brought killing squads from East Prussia on July 3, 1941. Murdered 316 Jews in Augustowo and Jewish leadership in Grodno.
• July 4 - Blume arrives in Minsk (Sonderkommando 7a). Nebe asks why not undertaken executions of Jews. Nebe criticized - it was impossible to mention the garrison of a commando in a city without at the same time reporting about the executions of Jews. Reasons for "reprisal actions".
• July 8 - Himmler comes to Bialystok, unhappy at low death count (700 Jews burned alive in synagogue) and ordered more killed - another 1,000 were. (Competing with Stahlecker.)
• Genocidal killings start in Paneriai.
• July 11 - Himmler (to his Police Battalions) increased order to kill all Jews (ages 17-45) convicted of looting. (Giving blanket permission.) Himmler forbade public executions, photography (compare with Stahlecker), not allow sites to become places of pilgrimage. Pastoral care of participants, comradely evening gatherings, instruction on necessity of the measure.
• July 13 - Einsatzgruppe A reports that by July 8 the local Einsatzkommando (with the help of Lithuanian auxiliary of 125) liquidated 321 Jews - Lithuanians ordered to take part in the liquidiations - and subsequently 500 being killed per day. Started with intelligentsia, political activists, wealthy - from lists. (54 on July 4, 93 on July 5).
• July 13-15- Himmler in Berlin, meets some time with Hoess - Hitler has given the order for the Final Solution. Need to create Auschwitz.
• July 16, 1941. Hitler uses the Soviet order for partisan warfare as an excuse to exterminate anyone who is hostile. Within a week, Himmler quadruples the number of SS operating behind the advancing German army, assigning 11 battalions of Order Police. (But not in Lithuania?)
• July 17, 1941. Himmler appoints SS (for Lublin) Odilo Globocnik to be his deputy for the Wehrbauern settlement. July 20, Himmler flies for 3 day trip in Lublin. Agree on settling 50,000 German settlers in Zamosc. Concentration camp became Majdenek. Globocnik took up Himmler's vision - exterminate Jews then and there - bases extend to the Ural mountains.
• July 19, 1941 - Himmler assigns part of police to Bach-Zelewski of Russia-Center to comb the Pripet marshes (flush out Jews taking refuge there; July 29 - shoot male Jews; drive females into the swamps) and the other part on July 22, 1941 to Frierich Jeckeln of Russia-South (shoot all except those needed for labor). July 23 - reassigned 5,500 men from Order Police to North, Central and South.
• July 25, 1941 - Himmler orders the formation of auxiliary police units.
• Last week of July - Himmler gives order to kill Jews, including women and children, at Schepetkova.
• July 29 - Himmler visits Kaunas meeets with Hans-Adolf Pruetzmann, who gives him a three day tour that moves on to Riga. ("Resettlment" means to the next world.)
• July 27 - August 11 - on Himmler's order, all Jewish men, women and children killed in the area of the Pripet marshes.
• Himmler brings in the Order Police, genocidal leaders (Jeckeln, Globocnik) and gets personally involved.
• July 31 - Heydrich meets Goering in Berlin to get order (drafted by Eichmann) to move Jews from western Europe to the East.
• August 1 - Hermann Mueller reports that Hitler wants to be informed continually about the Einsatzgruppen, wants speedily delivered visual materials of special interest, such as photographs
• August 2 - Pinsk - all Jews killed - Himmler's order
• Hitler's decisions.

General goal of depopulation. Issue of the Slavs. Subjugation.

Kaunas army had Stahlecker fly down and reprimanded him and forbade killings.

Blume and Blobel pscyhologically not prepared for mass killings.

Pogroms - make feel that Jews are guilty.

Jews are getting what they deserve.