The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942

by Christopher R. Browning

Book Overview

Published by the University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, and Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803213271
• ISBN13: 9780803213272
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 615 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.1" x 6.3" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Intensive but worthwhile

This is one of the best books on the market that explains the political development of the Holocaust inside the Nazi power circle. It provides a strong argument that the Nazis did not originally plan to exterminate the Jews in Europe, but rather export them from Germany. Browning's thesis is a challenge to the slippery slope fallacy, which suggests that just because a person steps a foot in one direction doesn't mean he'll step a mile. The Nazis clearly started out w/ a 'Final Solution' plan of sending the Jews to a place like Madagascar (which was on the table as late as the Battle of Britain), but after the invasion of Russia this 'Final Solution' snowballed into a landslide of killing Jews via gas chambers (not that the Anti-Semitic rhetoric of the early 30s were justified in any way, whether pro-genocide or pro-expulsion). The Nazis took a step in a bad direction, and then they walked a mile along that evil path. This would give logicians a nightmare. Most people assume that Hitler ran on a genocide program in 33. This is a dangerous assumption, for two reasons: 1.) it tends to view the Nazis as a supernatural party of evil. Make no mistake, the Nazis WERE evil, but they believed themselves to be do-gooders who provided solutions to the problems the average German faces. Did the German people know what they were getting into in 1933? Sure, they were willing to view Jews as the scapegoats for the Depression, but did they hate Jews enough to kill them? This book challenges the "Hitler's Willing Executioners" theory, because although Hitler touted a Final Solution in Mein Kampf, that wasn't interpreted by him or his companions as outright genocide until 1941. And 2.) Holocaust deniers use this fact, that the "Final Solution" in the 30s meant population dispersal rather than genocide, and then they play the "Well, if you were lied to in high school about the original intentions of the Nazis, what else were you lied to about? (hint hint, you were lied to about the Holocaust period!)" card to gain confidence w/ the unsuspecting listener, and then convert this person into a Holocaust denier. It is important that we know the facts about the Holocaust, so that the uninitiated in deep WWII history won't be hoodwinked w/ "gotcha" facts by Holocaust deniers.

Superb Investigation Of Holocaust Circumstances!

While no serious Holocaust scholar would argue against the idea that the Third Reich meant in some fashion to dispose of its so-called "Jewish Problem" through some dispicable action or another, whether it by via forced emigration, deportation, resettlement in either Madagascar or the western reaches of the Ukraine, or through other means, there has been a long-ranging debate within the academic community regarding the intent of the Nazis from the beginning regarding the actual attempted extermination of the Jewish people as it later occurred, primarily in Poland and the occupied territories, during the later course of World War Two. One school of thought argues that from the very beginning Hitler intended to rid himself and Europe of the Jews through such nefarious means as starvation, forced labor, and later, in the death camps. Others, such as Professor Christopher Browning, posit that the policy of extermination evolved as a result of existential factors such as food and shelter as the Wehrmacht marched east into Poland and beyond to the Soviet escarpment. Thus, this brilliant work by Browning intends to offer proof of the more circumstantial theory, one in which various attempts were made to offer some relief to over-extended troops and resources to deal with the indigenous Jewish population within Poland and the other territories as they were conquered based both on logistics and the state of chaos that ensued in the war zone. This is not to suggest that the Nazis intended to spare the Jews; on the contrary, the issue was how to dispose of them, whether it be through forced emigration, slave labor, simple starvation, or finally, through implementation of an intentional murder machine by way of the death camps. From the beginning Hitler intended to use them to best advantage. As Browning argues, however, the course of events must be taken into consideration when viewing the evidence, for while Hitler's main aim in warring first with Poland and later with Russia was for what he referred to as "Liebenstraum", or living room, it was also his intent to brutally subjugate the native populations within the conquered areas and literally work them to death, so their labors could profit the Third Reich and prepare the areas for German immigrants. But given the chaotic and undisciplined nature of the Nazi hierarchy and its bureaucracy, several overlapping policies worked against each other and created a wilderland of competing efforts, many of which left the local authorities puzzled as to what policy to follow and how to reach the unrealistic goals given to it by higher headquarters. In the midst of the chaos, according to Browning, evil machinations gradually emerged and as they succeeded in reaching goals, became the modus operandi. Browning brilliantly focuses on the specific time frame in which the policies of the Third Reich solidified into what became the Final Solution. This is easily the best and most completely documented work on the s

detailed look at the Nazi genocide

Professor Christopher Browning of the University of North Carolina (with contributions by the German historian Jurgen Matthaus) describes in unprecedented detail the steps that led to the crystallization of the Final Solution during the first two and a half years of World War II. Browning identifies the five weeks between September 18 and October 25, 1941, as the climactic turning point in Nazi policy. By then the close circle around Hitler knew what he expected of them. They were aware that no European Jews were to escape the anti-Jewish measures that had once been planned for after the war and that the goal of these measures was the physical destruction of the Jewish people--men, women, children. Although the cluster of fatal decisions in the fall of 1941 was the culmination of a series of events which began with the invasion of Poland 25 months earlier, it was Operation Barbarossa--the war of destruction against "Jewish Bolshevism"--that set in motion the German genocide against Soviet Jews and dramatically changed the tone and pace of Nazi policy and practice. As Browning makes clear, Hitler himself was the driving force behind the Final Solution. "His obsession with the Jewish question ensured that the Nazi commitment would not slacken, that the search for a final solution one way or another to the problem would not be neglected or be indefinitely postponed." As the embodiment of Nazi ideology and the constant inciter of the party faithful, Hitler exerted enormous pressure on the regime to implement his wishes. No leading Nazi could prosper who did not appear to take the Jewish question as seriously as he did himself. This pressure stimulated "a competition among the faithful and ambitious to advance ever more radical proposals and to carry out Jewish policy in an ever more brutal and comprehensive manner." It was not Hitler's style to micromanage or even to give orders. He preferred to have his subordinates carry out his wishes without him needing to oversee their work. "Where would I be," he said, "if I would not find people to whom I can entrust work which I myself cannot direct, tough people of whom I know they take the steps I would take myself. The best man is for me the one who bothers me least by taking upon himself 95 out of 100 decisions." This important, thoroughly researched book is part of Yad Vashem's Comprehensive History of the Holocaust project that "seeks to summarize research findings on the Holocaust during the generations following the war." As the middle volume of three volumes to be devoted to an examination of the development of Nazi Jewish policy, this book will come after a volume on the prewar years and before a volume on the implementation of the Final Solution. The rest of the volumes in the series will cover the impact of the Holocaust on the individual national Jewish communities of Europe. Browning (and Matthaus) have succeeded admirably in their goal of broadening our unde

The dynamic of death

Christopher Browning's book is the most detailed account of how Nazi Germany moved from discriminating against Jews and encouraging their emigration just before September 1939, to the systematic extermination of them by March 1942. It is based on the most recent research and has 111 pages of notes and a thirty page bibliography. How such an atrocity could have happened by a wealthy, otherwise sophisticated state against a small powerless minority is still difficult to comprehend. Browning shows how complex the path was. In September 1939 the German attack on Poland was marked by massacres of the local population, with a disproportionate emphasis on Jews. Poland, which had been divided between Germany and the Soviet Union, was further divided by the Nazis between those areas that had belonged to pre-Versailles Germany which were returned to the Reich, and the remainder, which became the General Government of Poland. Many ambitious people, among them Adolf Eichmann, thought that one could simply expel the Jewish population into the General Government, or later into the Wesern countries. This was not a detailed plan decreed on high by Hitler. Instead it was the response often of local initiative or by powerful players in the Nazi government, with the SS being the most important, sometimes getting a sign from Hitler to move forward, occasionally getting a sign to stop. But the expellers had problems. The general government was reluctant to be swamped with Jewish refugees. France in particular did not want Jews from Luxembourg. The army's military jurisdiction had to be reigned in and any concern over the brutal tactics diluted. This was done with some success, but the people who sought to economically exploit Poland (around Goering) had their own, limited pragmatic objections. At the same time there was a similarly complex process with ghettoization. As the ghettoes developed (Browning is very careful to point out the differences between Warsaw, Lodz, Cracow and elsewhere) a division developed between "attritionists" who thought confining the Jews to ghettoes would reduce their numbers, while "productionists" argued it would be easier to exploit the Jews economically if they were guaranteed a certain minimum standard of living. Although some scholars have sought to find an economic logic to the Nazi's actions, Browning notes the irony that the productionists were slowly winning the battle over the ghetto when it was decided to exterminate the Jews.The key turning point was the decision to invade the Soviet Union. In the months beforehand plans were drawn up that assumed the deaths of millions, even tens of millions of Soviets from starvation and dispossession. Within days of the invasion the SS Einsatzgruppen were murdering thousands of people. At the same time other Nazis, other allies and local populations in the Baltic and Ukraine carried out massacres of male Jews on their own initiative. By August women and children were bei

Superb Scholarship; Dispiriting Reading

This important book is a detailed narrative and analysis of how the Nazis came to pursue the systematic extermination of the European Jews. It is aimed at summarizing and clarifying approximately 2 generations worth of scholarship on this aspect of the Holocaust and distilling it into an accessible form. Written primarily by Christopher Browning with contributions from the German scholar Jugen Matthaus, this very well written and organized book is entirely successful in achieving its aims. The Holocaust, at least in its final form, was an improvisation. There is no doubt that virulent anti-Semitism was a core feature of Nazi ideology and that elimination of Jews from any society dominated by the Nazis was an essential goal of the Nazis. In the years prior to WWII, the chosen instruments, however, were legal discrimination, coercion but not mass murder, and intense pressure to force Jews to emigrate from Germany. As with other aspects of Hitler's goals and policies, he and his underlings had not thought ahead as to how they would realize their ultimate objective of purging German (and European) society of Jews. The great success of the German military in 1939-1941 acted as a spur and radicalizing force in Nazi Jewish policy. The conquest of Poland, and later much of the Soviet Union, with their large populations of Jews, meant that the prewar solutions were inadequate. What followed were a set of expedients; forced emigration and starvation, ghettoization and starvation, mass executions by shootings, and early experiments with mass murder by gassing. Flushed with apparent victory in the fall of 1941, Hitler and his minions made the decision that none of the previous measures were satisfactory and embarked on the policy of developing extermination camps. Browning and Matthaus not only chart the development of these measures and provide judicious analyses of the available data on how and when decisions were made by the Nazis, they also provide great and important detail on the context in which decisions occurred. The development of mass murder by gassing, for example, occurred in the Nazi eugenic campaigns, another aspect of their ideology of 'racial hygiene.' The murderous campaigns against Jews in occupied Poland are set in the context of the German effort to reduce Polish society to a rural proletariat that would be used as a source of cheap labor for the Reich. Yet another aspect of racial hygiene and part of the Nazi effort to guarantee Lebensraum in Eastern Europe. Indeed, the Nazi campaign against Jews is comprehensible only as part of a broader racist ideology and effort to obtain lebensraum. The Jews, unfortunately for them, occupying the central place in the Nazi demonology. Several other important issues are dealt with. The complicity of the German Armed Forces. The role of public opinion in Germany. The competition between those of the Nazis who wished to proceed directly to murder and those who wished to extract some