Customer Reviews

The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942 (Comprehensive History of the Holocaust)

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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 understanding of this part of the road to the Holocaust, and their work will no doubt be definitive for many years to come.

Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, author of The Destruction of the European Jews, calls this book "by far the most incisive analysis of the decisions that gave rise to the annihilation of the Jews in Nazi Europe."

--reviewed by Charles Patterson, author of ETERNAL TREBLINKA: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust

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 economic value prior to murder. The "polycratic" nature of the Nazi state and Hitler's decision making methods. All of these important topics are analyzed thoughtfully.
In many respects, this important book is profoundly dispiriting. Many portions are simply painful to read. This book makes clear the incredibly destructive consequences of ideologies demonizing other human beings and provides considerable insight into how such acts occur.

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 subject I have yet read, and while I find it an impressive work of historical research (Browning's use of new archives and secondary materials is particularly impressive in this regard), I remain unconvinced that Professor Browning has successfully ended the debate (not that he claims to have done so), nor do I think he has explained some very deliberate and troubling evidentiary materials that seem to provide grist for the other camp regarding the instructions given to both the Wehrmacht and to special troops under the command of the Gestapo regarding the conduct of troops in the eastern zone.

In this regard, German troops were encouraged from the very beginning of the so-called eastern campaigns against both the Poles and the Russians to consider all indigenous Jews as communists, and thus subject to summary execution whenever and wherever they might be discovered, whether in urban areas working as academics or as rural farmers tending to their humble fields, and to support and aid the special troop formations trained and organized to systematically round up and murder indigenous Jewish populations from village to village, from the very outset of military operations in September 1939. So, while I personally subscribe to Browning's interpretation of the gradual move toward more and more intentionally systematic and increasingly more murderous assaults against the Jewish population, I do not believe he has proven once and for all that it was not part of the original plan from the time the Nazis took power in 1933. Nonetheless, this is indeed a superb book, and one I can heartily recommend. Enjoy!

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.

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 being included across the occupied Soviet Union, though not everywhere. By October plans were being drawn up to create gas chambers and by January 1942 the Wansee Conference was held. By March 1942 the Nazis were systematically moving to slaughter every Jew in Europe from Ireland to Vladivostok. When was the decision made to do all this? Browning makes four important points. First, there was no big bang of the origins of the Final Solution, no single decision which launched everything. Second, the planning for Barbarrossa, with mass executions, mass expulsions and mass starvation on a level previously unforeseen, clearly implied the genocide of the Jews, if not their absolute extinction. Third, Nazi decision making policy was "an unsytematical dialectical interaction of mutual radicalization between central and local authorities...as well as decisions and orders from above; and intuition, initiative, and experimentation, as well as obedience from below." Fourth, one cannot just concentrate on Hitler and Himmler, one must look also at the military, civil administration, the bureaucracy, economists and collaborators. The role of anti-communism in the war against Germany's most dangerous foe was of special importance. Having pointed out how polycratic struggles and local initiative set the stage for genocide and how previous plans for expulsion had been consistently thwarted until 1941, Browning then presents a theory for Hitler's role, in two stages. In July 1941 Hitler moved towards the Final Solution in a euphoria of victory, but then stopped plans for deportations in August when the Wehrmacht's offensive was delayed. But in September, the military situation improved, the euphoria returned and it was in this six-week period until the end of October that Hitler decided to kill every Jew the Nazis could get their hands on.

This summary does not go into the immense detail and considerable nuance that Browning provides on every point from popular opinion to the setting up of the first death camps to the role of the euthanasia program where many exterminators started their career. Some details stand out. As the Holocaust was about to make their work redundant, the professional anti-Semitic bureaucrats added a new round of petty restrictions of Jewish life, such as a 1941 rule in Dresden that prevented Jews from buying cut flowers. Later we learn of how, in order to meet their anti-partisan hostage quotas, the Germans in Serbia started shooting male Jews in Serbia out of hand. One of the people behind this policy, Field Marshall List, was not only not Nazi "but a highly cultured and deeply religious man" who was praised by the future pope John XXIII for his attempts to alleviate famine and military mistreatment in Greece. But the prejudices of his caste against guerrillas and Serbs made him push an open door to genocide. Indeed one of the most dispiriting things in this book is that no-one in the vast Nazi machine seems to have stopped to point out how evil it was to murder millions of innocent people.

The mystery of how the Final Solution became the Final Solution will never be truly solved, that is lost to history, lost within Hitler's mind. Christopher Browning explains some of the forces and events that sped the Final Solution along. Browning may be the most eminent Holocaust scholar in America today. He has been looking at the whys and hows and wheres, mainly of the executioners, where motivations are still not crystal clear. What I saw as a reader was that the road to the Final Solution was almost an organic event. Poland was the first step, ethnic German resettlement next,then the necessities of occupation and finally Russia. Not one decision, but as you will see, decisions and choices dictated by events as much as ideology. This story will carry you along with fascination, with horror, and with a chilling understanding, not justification mind you, but understanding.

This is the best book an a Holocaust topic I have read, even though it troubled me greatly. I had always believed that the destruction of Europe's Jews was carefully planned, not largely improvised as Professor Browning demonstrates with blinding clarity and unassailable research. It does not diminish the evil but it helps to explain et. Do buy this powerfull book.

I gave this book 5 stars not because it is an easy read and certainly not because books detailing the atrocities of the holocaust "should" be given a high ranking. I rate it high precisely because of the high quality of scholarship and because of the author's insights.

I will make no attempt to summarize this detailed, complex history. I will, however, paraphrase what I learned. The Nazis entering the halls of power in 1933 were antisemitic but, despite Hitler's barely-veiled threats in "Mein Kampf", there was no plan for genocide. Also, Nazi anti-semitism stemmed from multiple roots one of which was an ingrained pattern of belief going back centuries. Another root was no-doubt the Nazi struggle with Communists in Bavaria in the 1920's and early '30's. Many/most of these Communists were Jews. Somehow--gradually probably--the belief arose that the Jews were inveterate Communists and the Communist leadership was essentially Jewsih. Here, I think, we can smell a whiff of "Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

In any event, the Nazis were determined to get rid of the Jews by "humane" means and ratcheted up the pressure on German Jews to leave the country--school segregation, Stars of David, boycotts and Kristal nacht. Many left. Then came the war and suddenly millions of Jews were included in the Greater Reich. The Nazis, in their malign wisdom, decided it was necessary to compel ethnic Germans to live in or close to Germany; for Poles to settle elsewhere; and for Jews to survive as best they could. The Nazis got USED to the idea of absolutely controlling the movements and fates of millions of people although, at this point, murder was the exception.

No problem. Germany would win the war and the Jews--all the Jews--would be rounded up and exported to Madagascar. Germany, although militarily successful beyond their early expectations, couldn't defeat England...and...England controled the waves. Germany continued to gain ground--and Jews--in the East but had no military capability of shipping the Jews out. Something had to be done. Forced labor was definitely considered and, to a certain extent, was used. More radical Nazis--Heydrich, Himmler and probably Hitler--opted for mass murder rather than the use of the Jews as slaves.

The Nazi psychology is remarkable. To the extent that is possible to get into their mind-set, the "Final Solution" was incredible. Why not, indeed, use the Jews--many of whom were skilled craftsmen and scientists--for their talents? These arguments were definitely made but the exterminatists gained the upper hand. Here we see the schizophrenia inherent in Nazi circles. They came to a kind of evil compromise. Jews were worked as slaves as they were simultaneously starved to death. What kind of a worker is a starving, dying person?

Nazis responsible for Jewish labor made precisely this complaint to their superiors but, like I said, the exterminationists won the argument. Or, as one Nazi official said, "We may lose the war against our external enemies, but we'll win our war against the Jews." [!].

Still, the holocaust was not deliberately sadistic. German soldiers suffered imprisonment and even death for deliberate cruelty against the Jews and other people. Not that there wasn't plenty of sadism but this was counter to official Nazi policy. The killings, the camps, the gas chambers were meant to be cold, efficient and mechanical. Let Poles, Ukrainians, Russians and even Jews do most of the real dirty work.

There are still important questions. How many Jews actually died? I've heard figures of six to fourteen million but how were these figures arrived at? Robert Conquest, in his studies of Stalin's purges, actually studied Russian population statistics to come up with a minimum of twenty million people murdered by Stalin. Why hasn't this been done for the holocaust? Maybe it has and I'm not familiar with it.

In one sense the precise number matters only to the dead. Is a person who murders 100 people less evil than someone who murders 1,000? I doubt it.

Ron Braithwaite, author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico

I found Professor Browning's work on the German police battalions to be one of the most influential books I have ever read regarding WW II and the capacity for me to do evil.

Without a signed document from Hitler it is difficult to say when the actual turning point was. The author makes some good points, using other peoples work for the most part, to make his case. I do not come away convinced but the points he makes are clear and are the best I have read to date.

This is really two books. The cut over between the two is not well defined. Jurgen Matthaus writes the second section. I was surprised when I finished the book to see how little credit he receives because this is his book really. Professor Browning, a man whose work on the police battalions is so good, hardly mentions them in his book. I understand his is the big picture there is no, or very minor, mention of the head of the OrPo who would have been a voice in the decision making process.

We may never know. I believe the answer is partially explained in theological terms. There is evil. This was a manifestation of it.

The index was good but not great. The footnotes were excellent. The writing, especially Mr. Matthaus's contribution was very good. I gave it four stars because for me I never felt the answer was explained well enough to convince me.

This is probably the most detailed study ever written of the evolution of Nazi Jewish policy from the beginning of the war in 1939 to the implementation of extermination in the killing centers in 1942. It is not, nor was it intended to be, a complete history of the holocaust because it is part of a series in which the periods before 1939 and after March 1942 are covered by other works by other scholars.

Mr Browning is one of the most admired and respected scholars of this subject, and with good reason. He does acknowledge a range of opinions on the question of just when the decision was made to pursue a program of mass extermination. In particular, he addresses the opinion of Christian Gerlach ("The Wannsee Conference, the Fate of German Jews, and Hitler's Decision in Principle to Exterminate All European Jews" in Journal of Modern History, 1998) that the decision was not made until the commencement of war with the United States in December 1941. Browning has long held that there was a two-stage decision-making process, one for Soviet Jews in mid-July and another for European Jews in early October 1941, and that these extermination decisions themselves were the final stage in a process of elimination that had been evolving since the start of the war in 1939. Richard Rhodes, in MASTERS OF DEATH, the subject of which is the Einsatzgruppen murder units unleashed on eastern Poland and the Soviet Union in 1941, accepts Gerlach's argument and incorporates it into his book (with appropriate notation).

The question of just how and when the Nazis committed themselves to murder as the Final Solution is not a trivial one, although there may well be no final determination. If you are interested in the subject, but not sure you have the time to commit to over 400 detailed pages, I suggest you start with the first 2 chapters of Browning's 2000 work NAZI POLICY, JEWISH WORKERS, GERMAN KILLERS. If you seek more detail you can then move on to this work.