The blueprint for genocide

The great debate between historians of the Holocaust is between the "intentionalists" and the "structuralists" (or " functionalists"). Both schools have asked, "How did a civilised nation, Germany, descend to such bestial levels?" This question applies not only to the systematic degradation and murder of the Jews, but also to the inhuman treatment of Soviet prisoners of war, two million of whom were done to death by violence and starvation. These events required the participation of many thousands of apparently respectable, educated Germans of the administrative and military middle class. The problem is a very real one, and very troubling to all who value the humanising effect of upbringing and culture.

According to the " intentionalists", this terrible result was caused by indoctrination, which made the people concerned believe they were doing right. According to the "structuralists", however, there was no such willing consent; there was merely a muddle, in which bureaucratic trends took over and achieved a spontaneous momentum, independently of personal choices.

Mark Roseman, in his well-researched and subtly argued book, takes an intermediate position. He gives full weight to impersonal bureaucratic factors, and also to the time-factor by which brutalisation was gradually stepped up, but he also shows that, in the last resort, the motive force behind the atrocities was belief. For example, he shows that the individuals who attended the conference at Wannsee, where the Holocaust was planned, were mostly youngish enthusiasts for Nazi "ideals", and that the few older participants who retained some of the earlier civil service ethos did try, however ineffectively, to counsel moderation.

Roseman's grasp of every detail of the Wannsee Conference is impressive. The conference was convened by Heydrich, and took place on 20 January, 1942. Heydrich had risen high in the Nazi hierarchy, and wished to rise even higher; one of the aims of the conference was to consolidate his position as supreme overlord (under Hitler) of Nazi Jewish policy. His second-in-command was Eichman, whose frank evidence at his trial in Jerusalem is one of the most important sources for the Wannsee narrative.

Equally important, however, is the document translated here in full: the minutes of the meeting, known as the Wannsee Protocol, though these had been edited in ways closely explored by Roseman. It is clear, however, even after the editing, that the meeting was concerned explicitly with the proposed extermination of the Jews of Europe, and that previous plans for the solution of the "Jewish problem" by forced emigration or resettlement in some area of the conquered Eastern territories had now been abandoned.

The only question remaining was the preferred method of extermination: whether by gassing, shooting or working to death. It was even stated that any Jews who survived the brutal process of overworking should be killed immediately, since they had proved themselves to be the fittest, and therefore the most dangerous, of the Jewish nation.

The extermination of the Jews had in fact already begun even before the Wannsee Conference. One death camp, complete with gas chambers, had already been in operation at Chelmno, and mass shootings had taken place elsewhere. Roseman explains that final confirmation and consolidation were needed for a process already under way. However, the conference was also needed for other purposes, particularly in order to discuss the definition of the term "Jew". Should this include half-Jews, even quarter-Jews, and those whose children were being brought up as Christians? Endless minute discussions took place, resulting in the deaths of many thousands who did not even think of themselves as Jews.

Roseman's book is also a contribution to the question of how far Hitler was personally responsible for the extermination programme. Should the main blame be put rather on Himmler or Heydrich? Roseman's answer, after much careful discussion, is that it was indeed Hitler who was primarily responsible, even though he avoided signing any Holocaust document. All decisions were referred back to Hitler, and the guiding pronouncement for all (including himself) was his "prophecy" in a 1939 speech that a world war would trigger the end of the Jews in Europe. For in Hitler's fantasy, the Allies were tools of the Jews, who were his main enemy.