Thomas J. Laub
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199539321
- eISBN:
- 9780191715808
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199539321.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, Military History, European Modern History
At the start of the Occupation, Theodor Dannecker and junior SS officials built an apparatus to facilitate the deportation of Jews while superiors like Helmut Knochen accrued power. Once vested with ...
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At the start of the Occupation, Theodor Dannecker and junior SS officials built an apparatus to facilitate the deportation of Jews while superiors like Helmut Knochen accrued power. Once vested with executive authority, Adolf Eichmann, Heinz Röthke, and other SS leaders pressed for the immediate deportation of Jews, but personnel shortages hamstrung the efforts of the Black Corps. Previous disagreements with Otto von Stülpnagel precluded substantial support from the military administration. Pierre Laval's enthusiasm for racial deportations evaporated as French opposition to deportations mounted, Germany's prospects for victory dimmed, and cooperation with the SS yielded few diplomatic concessions. With a brief limited to security, Oberg could not accommodate other French and German institutions and secure broad‐based support for the Final Solution. As a result, three‐quarters of the Jews who lived in France managed to survive World War II.Less
At the start of the Occupation, Theodor Dannecker and junior SS officials built an apparatus to facilitate the deportation of Jews while superiors like Helmut Knochen accrued power. Once vested with executive authority, Adolf Eichmann, Heinz Röthke, and other SS leaders pressed for the immediate deportation of Jews, but personnel shortages hamstrung the efforts of the Black Corps. Previous disagreements with Otto von Stülpnagel precluded substantial support from the military administration. Pierre Laval's enthusiasm for racial deportations evaporated as French opposition to deportations mounted, Germany's prospects for victory dimmed, and cooperation with the SS yielded few diplomatic concessions. With a brief limited to security, Oberg could not accommodate other French and German institutions and secure broad‐based support for the Final Solution. As a result, three‐quarters of the Jews who lived in France managed to survive World War II.
Levene Mark
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199683048
- eISBN:
- 9780191763137
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199683048.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Cultural History
This chapter charts the sequence of Jewish and Roma mass killing from Operation Barbarossa in 1941 through to the collapse of the Hitler state in 1945. It follows the pattern of killing both in the ...
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This chapter charts the sequence of Jewish and Roma mass killing from Operation Barbarossa in 1941 through to the collapse of the Hitler state in 1945. It follows the pattern of killing both in the Balkans and Soviet Russia, proposing that these represented a series of genocides, rather than simply one monolithic Holocaust. Nevertheless, by degrees, associated with the failure of Hitler's ultimate geopolitical goals, this extended into a comprehensive Europe-wide deportation of Jews to dedicated death camps in the rimlands. The chapter considers these camps, most infamously Auschwitz, and asks whether this relentless mass killing was a 'system' in its own right and the degree to which this embraced the Roma. It concludes by interrogating the erratic and problematic winding down of mass murder as Himmler covertly attempted to link the 'Jewish question' with his unsuccessful efforts to make a separate peace with the Western Allies.Less
This chapter charts the sequence of Jewish and Roma mass killing from Operation Barbarossa in 1941 through to the collapse of the Hitler state in 1945. It follows the pattern of killing both in the Balkans and Soviet Russia, proposing that these represented a series of genocides, rather than simply one monolithic Holocaust. Nevertheless, by degrees, associated with the failure of Hitler's ultimate geopolitical goals, this extended into a comprehensive Europe-wide deportation of Jews to dedicated death camps in the rimlands. The chapter considers these camps, most infamously Auschwitz, and asks whether this relentless mass killing was a 'system' in its own right and the degree to which this embraced the Roma. It concludes by interrogating the erratic and problematic winding down of mass murder as Himmler covertly attempted to link the 'Jewish question' with his unsuccessful efforts to make a separate peace with the Western Allies.
Levene Mark
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199683048
- eISBN:
- 9780191763137
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199683048.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Cultural History
This chapter emphasises the pan-European nature of Jewish destruction, arguing that other states and societies under the Nazi aegis saw and took advantage of the 'Final Solution' in their own ...
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This chapter emphasises the pan-European nature of Jewish destruction, arguing that other states and societies under the Nazi aegis saw and took advantage of the 'Final Solution' in their own domestic, national interests. The issue of the 'degree' to which they went down this route is a major facet of the discussion, different perceptions of 'tolerable' and irredeemable' Jews playing a part, alongside questions of the degree to which a state's policy continued to be independent. Manoeuvrability could lead to Jewish destruction — the partial case of Antonescu's Rumania — but its lack, as in the case of post-spring 1944 Hungary could equally play to sovereign state 'advantage'. State sabotaging or going slow on collaboration in the 'Final Solution' generally says more about opportunity, or the change in the fortunes of war, than it does about genuine humanitarianism or the intrusion of democratic values.Less
This chapter emphasises the pan-European nature of Jewish destruction, arguing that other states and societies under the Nazi aegis saw and took advantage of the 'Final Solution' in their own domestic, national interests. The issue of the 'degree' to which they went down this route is a major facet of the discussion, different perceptions of 'tolerable' and irredeemable' Jews playing a part, alongside questions of the degree to which a state's policy continued to be independent. Manoeuvrability could lead to Jewish destruction — the partial case of Antonescu's Rumania — but its lack, as in the case of post-spring 1944 Hungary could equally play to sovereign state 'advantage'. State sabotaging or going slow on collaboration in the 'Final Solution' generally says more about opportunity, or the change in the fortunes of war, than it does about genuine humanitarianism or the intrusion of democratic values.
Thomas J. Laub
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199539321
- eISBN:
- 9780191715808
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199539321.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, Military History, European Modern History
At the start of the Occupation, both French and German agencies accepted the fundamental legitimacy of the so‐called Jewish Question (Judenfrage) and adopted anti‐Semitic policies of defamation, ...
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At the start of the Occupation, both French and German agencies accepted the fundamental legitimacy of the so‐called Jewish Question (Judenfrage) and adopted anti‐Semitic policies of defamation, discrimination, and despoliation with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Perceiving Jews as a security threat, the military administration evicted Jews from a security zone along the Channel coast and played a major role in the ‘Aryanization’ of the French economy, but the MBF condemned ‘Aryanization’ on legal grounds and did not believe that Jews stood behind all resistance activity. The Vichy regime defamed and discriminated against Jews on its own accord, created the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs to despoil Jews, and ordered French police to incarcerate specific categories of Jews, but Pierre Laval objected to the arrest of assimilated French Jews because the roundups undermined support for his government. The SS and German embassy in Paris both championed the entire defamation, discrimination, despoliation, and deportation process, but they lacked the manpower and a legal mandate to act on their own before the summer of 1942. As the fortunes of war turned against the Reich, Hitler championed increasingly ruthless anti‐Semitic measures that culminated in the Final Solution.Less
At the start of the Occupation, both French and German agencies accepted the fundamental legitimacy of the so‐called Jewish Question (Judenfrage) and adopted anti‐Semitic policies of defamation, discrimination, and despoliation with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Perceiving Jews as a security threat, the military administration evicted Jews from a security zone along the Channel coast and played a major role in the ‘Aryanization’ of the French economy, but the MBF condemned ‘Aryanization’ on legal grounds and did not believe that Jews stood behind all resistance activity. The Vichy regime defamed and discriminated against Jews on its own accord, created the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs to despoil Jews, and ordered French police to incarcerate specific categories of Jews, but Pierre Laval objected to the arrest of assimilated French Jews because the roundups undermined support for his government. The SS and German embassy in Paris both championed the entire defamation, discrimination, despoliation, and deportation process, but they lacked the manpower and a legal mandate to act on their own before the summer of 1942. As the fortunes of war turned against the Reich, Hitler championed increasingly ruthless anti‐Semitic measures that culminated in the Final Solution.
Catherine Epstein
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199546411
- eISBN:
- 9780191701429
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546411.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This book is the biography of Arthur Greiser, the man who initiated the Final Solution in Nazi-occupied Poland. Beginning with his early years prior to the First World War, it charts his rise to Nazi ...
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This book is the biography of Arthur Greiser, the man who initiated the Final Solution in Nazi-occupied Poland. Beginning with his early years prior to the First World War, it charts his rise to Nazi prominence in Danzi and his years as the Nazi territorial leader of the Warthegau, to his trial and execution in post-war Poland. Between 1939 and 1945, Greiser was in charge of the Warthegau — an area of western Poland annexed to Nazi Germany. In an effort to ‘Germanize’the area, he introduced a multitude of dreadful policies: he spearheaded an influx of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans, segregated Germans from Poles and introduced wide-ranging discriminatory measures against the Polish population. The first and longest-standing ghetto, the largest forced labour program, and the first mass gassings of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, were all initiated by this man. His biography reveals how nationalist obsessions, political jealousies, and personal insecurities shaped the policies of a man who held remarkable power in his Nazi fiefdom. It brings to light questions of why anyone could imagine genocide and ethnic cleansing to be solutions to political problems.Less
This book is the biography of Arthur Greiser, the man who initiated the Final Solution in Nazi-occupied Poland. Beginning with his early years prior to the First World War, it charts his rise to Nazi prominence in Danzi and his years as the Nazi territorial leader of the Warthegau, to his trial and execution in post-war Poland. Between 1939 and 1945, Greiser was in charge of the Warthegau — an area of western Poland annexed to Nazi Germany. In an effort to ‘Germanize’the area, he introduced a multitude of dreadful policies: he spearheaded an influx of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans, segregated Germans from Poles and introduced wide-ranging discriminatory measures against the Polish population. The first and longest-standing ghetto, the largest forced labour program, and the first mass gassings of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, were all initiated by this man. His biography reveals how nationalist obsessions, political jealousies, and personal insecurities shaped the policies of a man who held remarkable power in his Nazi fiefdom. It brings to light questions of why anyone could imagine genocide and ethnic cleansing to be solutions to political problems.
Thomas J. Laub
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199539321
- eISBN:
- 9780191715808
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199539321.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Military History, European Modern History
On the morning of 21 August 1941, French Communist Party activists launched a wave of symbolic assassinations by shooting Alfons Moser, a young German naval cadet. Although preoccupied by events on ...
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On the morning of 21 August 1941, French Communist Party activists launched a wave of symbolic assassinations by shooting Alfons Moser, a young German naval cadet. Although preoccupied by events on the eastern front during the Moser attack, Hitler learned about subsequent assaults, condemned Stülpnagel's response of gradually increasing reprisals as ‘much too mild’, and ordered the execution of 50 to 100 hostages after every assassination. Wilhelm Keitel, Walther von Brauchitsch, Eduard Wagner, and other senior officers in Berlin condemned Stülpnagel's restraint, joined senior Nazis like Joseph Goebbels, and pressed for severe countermeasures against Jews who allegedly organized all resistance activity. Demonstrating the ideological purity of the SS, Helmut Knochen ordered SS minions to bomb seven Parisian Synagogues, embarrassed Stüpnagel, and earned the enmity of the German military administration. This chapter examines security debates between the military administration, SS, and German diplomats in Paris and a second argument between generals in Paris and Nazis in Berlin.Less
On the morning of 21 August 1941, French Communist Party activists launched a wave of symbolic assassinations by shooting Alfons Moser, a young German naval cadet. Although preoccupied by events on the eastern front during the Moser attack, Hitler learned about subsequent assaults, condemned Stülpnagel's response of gradually increasing reprisals as ‘much too mild’, and ordered the execution of 50 to 100 hostages after every assassination. Wilhelm Keitel, Walther von Brauchitsch, Eduard Wagner, and other senior officers in Berlin condemned Stülpnagel's restraint, joined senior Nazis like Joseph Goebbels, and pressed for severe countermeasures against Jews who allegedly organized all resistance activity. Demonstrating the ideological purity of the SS, Helmut Knochen ordered SS minions to bomb seven Parisian Synagogues, embarrassed Stüpnagel, and earned the enmity of the German military administration. This chapter examines security debates between the military administration, SS, and German diplomats in Paris and a second argument between generals in Paris and Nazis in Berlin.
Levene Mark
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199683048
- eISBN:
- 9780191763137
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199683048.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Cultural History
The Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 lit the touchpaper for a catastrophic wave of genocides in the ensuing world war. At the core of this chapter is the fate of Poland and its peoples under both ...
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The Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 lit the touchpaper for a catastrophic wave of genocides in the ensuing world war. At the core of this chapter is the fate of Poland and its peoples under both Soviet and Nazi occupation, Katyn the most infamous episode in the former instance. Even so, the first significant genocide of this period took place in Turkey's Dersim province, reinforcing the ongoing vulnerability of rimlands communities. The Nazi-Soviet division of the 'Lands Between' highlighted similar vulnerabilities among minority communities there. One of these was the Volksdeutsche, the 'return' of whom to the Greater Reich set in motion mass SS-directed deportations of Poles and Jews. Yet the problem of where they would go underscored Hitler's lack of the Russian dumping ground which Stalin possessed for his unwanted peoples. The 'Jewish question' thus played into Hitler's drive for further conquest and lebensraum in the east.Less
The Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 lit the touchpaper for a catastrophic wave of genocides in the ensuing world war. At the core of this chapter is the fate of Poland and its peoples under both Soviet and Nazi occupation, Katyn the most infamous episode in the former instance. Even so, the first significant genocide of this period took place in Turkey's Dersim province, reinforcing the ongoing vulnerability of rimlands communities. The Nazi-Soviet division of the 'Lands Between' highlighted similar vulnerabilities among minority communities there. One of these was the Volksdeutsche, the 'return' of whom to the Greater Reich set in motion mass SS-directed deportations of Poles and Jews. Yet the problem of where they would go underscored Hitler's lack of the Russian dumping ground which Stalin possessed for his unwanted peoples. The 'Jewish question' thus played into Hitler's drive for further conquest and lebensraum in the east.
Gideon Greif
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300106510
- eISBN:
- 9780300131987
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300106510.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
The Sonderkommando of Auschwitz-Birkenau consisted primarily of Jewish prisoners forced by the Germans to facilitate the mass extermination. Though never involved in the killing itself, they were ...
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The Sonderkommando of Auschwitz-Birkenau consisted primarily of Jewish prisoners forced by the Germans to facilitate the mass extermination. Though never involved in the killing itself, they were compelled to be “members of staff” of the Nazi death-factory. This book, translated into English from its original Hebrew, consists of interviews with the very few surviving men who witnessed at first hand the unparalleled horror of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Some of these men had never spoken of their experiences before. Over a period of years, the author interviewed intensively all Sonderkommando survivors living in Israel. They describe not only the details of the German-Nazi killing program but also the moral and human challenges they faced. The book provides direct testimony about the “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem,” but it is also a unique document on the boundless cruelty and deceit practiced by the Germans. It documents the helplessness and powerlessness of the 1.5 million people, 90 percent of them Jews, who were brutally murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.Less
The Sonderkommando of Auschwitz-Birkenau consisted primarily of Jewish prisoners forced by the Germans to facilitate the mass extermination. Though never involved in the killing itself, they were compelled to be “members of staff” of the Nazi death-factory. This book, translated into English from its original Hebrew, consists of interviews with the very few surviving men who witnessed at first hand the unparalleled horror of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Some of these men had never spoken of their experiences before. Over a period of years, the author interviewed intensively all Sonderkommando survivors living in Israel. They describe not only the details of the German-Nazi killing program but also the moral and human challenges they faced. The book provides direct testimony about the “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem,” but it is also a unique document on the boundless cruelty and deceit practiced by the Germans. It documents the helplessness and powerlessness of the 1.5 million people, 90 percent of them Jews, who were brutally murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Marion A. Kaplan
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195130928
- eISBN:
- 9780199854486
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195130928.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
The author concludes with a discussion on the social death of the Jews and the German indifference to their suffering. These two combined to form the prerequisites for Hitler's “Final Solution”. The ...
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The author concludes with a discussion on the social death of the Jews and the German indifference to their suffering. These two combined to form the prerequisites for Hitler's “Final Solution”. The Jewish response throughout the Holocaust is related along with accounts of the knowledge of German perpetuators and bystanders. It is reiterated that the Jews were lulled into a false sense of security in the initial stages of Nazi persecution as the measures were implemented by Germans in stages and with periods of inactivity in between. Accounts from German historians focus on the war-time sufferings that the German populace experienced and their ignorance of the horrific crimes being perpetuated upon the Jews. The author, through the accounts of Jewish victims and survivors, presents a differing view since the persecution of the Jews started much earlier than the war.Less
The author concludes with a discussion on the social death of the Jews and the German indifference to their suffering. These two combined to form the prerequisites for Hitler's “Final Solution”. The Jewish response throughout the Holocaust is related along with accounts of the knowledge of German perpetuators and bystanders. It is reiterated that the Jews were lulled into a false sense of security in the initial stages of Nazi persecution as the measures were implemented by Germans in stages and with periods of inactivity in between. Accounts from German historians focus on the war-time sufferings that the German populace experienced and their ignorance of the horrific crimes being perpetuated upon the Jews. The author, through the accounts of Jewish victims and survivors, presents a differing view since the persecution of the Jews started much earlier than the war.
Holly Case
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780691131153
- eISBN:
- 9781400890217
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691131153.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter examines the argument about force, which views universal war and genocide, the Final Solution, as representative of the fullest realization of the age of questions. It begins with a ...
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This chapter examines the argument about force, which views universal war and genocide, the Final Solution, as representative of the fullest realization of the age of questions. It begins with a discussion of rhetoric surrounding a “solution” to the Polish question, and how the ideal of emancipation brought with it the longing for an emancipator, an advocate and liberator. It then considers how questions were bundled to suggest or combine solutions, how equilibrium emerged as the prerequisite for a solution to the Eastern question, and how the Jewish question was formulated in the age of questions. It also explores a number of attributes of the age of questions that figured into the trajectory from a Jewish question to the Final Solution before concluding with an analysis of the chain of questions that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis opened during the years and months preceding the Great War.Less
This chapter examines the argument about force, which views universal war and genocide, the Final Solution, as representative of the fullest realization of the age of questions. It begins with a discussion of rhetoric surrounding a “solution” to the Polish question, and how the ideal of emancipation brought with it the longing for an emancipator, an advocate and liberator. It then considers how questions were bundled to suggest or combine solutions, how equilibrium emerged as the prerequisite for a solution to the Eastern question, and how the Jewish question was formulated in the age of questions. It also explores a number of attributes of the age of questions that figured into the trajectory from a Jewish question to the Final Solution before concluding with an analysis of the chain of questions that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis opened during the years and months preceding the Great War.
Holly Case
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780691131153
- eISBN:
- 9781400890217
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691131153.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
In the early nineteenth century, a new age began: the age of questions. In the Eastern and Belgian questions, as much as in the slavery, worker, social, woman, and Jewish questions, contemporaries ...
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In the early nineteenth century, a new age began: the age of questions. In the Eastern and Belgian questions, as much as in the slavery, worker, social, woman, and Jewish questions, contemporaries saw not interrogatives to be answered but problems to be solved. Alexis de Tocqueville, Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Frederick Douglass, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and Adolf Hitler were among the many who put their pens to the task. This book asks how the question form arose, what trajectory it followed, and why it provoked such feverish excitement for over a century. Was there a family resemblance between questions? Have they disappeared, or are they on the rise again in our time? This book presents seven distinct arguments and frameworks for understanding the age. It considers whether it was marked by a progressive quest for emancipation (of women, slaves, Jews, laborers, and others); a steady, inexorable march toward genocide and the “Final Solution”; or a movement toward federation and the dissolution of boundaries. Or was it simply a farce, a false frenzy dreamed up by publicists eager to sell subscriptions? As the arguments clash, patterns emerge and sharpen until the age reveals its full and peculiar nature. Turning convention on its head with meticulous and astonishingly broad scholarship, the book illuminates how patterns of thinking move history.Less
In the early nineteenth century, a new age began: the age of questions. In the Eastern and Belgian questions, as much as in the slavery, worker, social, woman, and Jewish questions, contemporaries saw not interrogatives to be answered but problems to be solved. Alexis de Tocqueville, Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Frederick Douglass, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and Adolf Hitler were among the many who put their pens to the task. This book asks how the question form arose, what trajectory it followed, and why it provoked such feverish excitement for over a century. Was there a family resemblance between questions? Have they disappeared, or are they on the rise again in our time? This book presents seven distinct arguments and frameworks for understanding the age. It considers whether it was marked by a progressive quest for emancipation (of women, slaves, Jews, laborers, and others); a steady, inexorable march toward genocide and the “Final Solution”; or a movement toward federation and the dissolution of boundaries. Or was it simply a farce, a false frenzy dreamed up by publicists eager to sell subscriptions? As the arguments clash, patterns emerge and sharpen until the age reveals its full and peculiar nature. Turning convention on its head with meticulous and astonishingly broad scholarship, the book illuminates how patterns of thinking move history.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804755849
- eISBN:
- 9780804772495
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804755849.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
From the time it was invaded by the Axis up to the Occupation, Greece fought for almost seven months during World War II. After defeating Italy in the first stages (November 1940 through February ...
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From the time it was invaded by the Axis up to the Occupation, Greece fought for almost seven months during World War II. After defeating Italy in the first stages (November 1940 through February 1941), the mainland was overrun by Germany during the invasion of April 1941. By the end of May 1941, the Axis had full control of Crete. The onset of World War II in Greece in the predawn hours of October 28, 1940 was unwanted but not unexpected. Both Allied and Axis countries pursued Greece as a theater of operations or occupation. This chapter examines the military role of the Jews in Greece from October 1940 to June 1941, along with the vicissitudes of occupation during the period preceding the first stages of the Nazis' implementation of their Final Solution of the Jewish Question.Less
From the time it was invaded by the Axis up to the Occupation, Greece fought for almost seven months during World War II. After defeating Italy in the first stages (November 1940 through February 1941), the mainland was overrun by Germany during the invasion of April 1941. By the end of May 1941, the Axis had full control of Crete. The onset of World War II in Greece in the predawn hours of October 28, 1940 was unwanted but not unexpected. Both Allied and Axis countries pursued Greece as a theater of operations or occupation. This chapter examines the military role of the Jews in Greece from October 1940 to June 1941, along with the vicissitudes of occupation during the period preceding the first stages of the Nazis' implementation of their Final Solution of the Jewish Question.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804755849
- eISBN:
- 9780804772495
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804755849.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
The Final Solution, or Endlösung, of the Jewish Question was an attempt by the Nazis to expel the Jews from the Reich. The general situation during World War II may well have affected Germany's ...
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The Final Solution, or Endlösung, of the Jewish Question was an attempt by the Nazis to expel the Jews from the Reich. The general situation during World War II may well have affected Germany's decision to implement the Final Solution in Salonika and its environs. In response to the series of military disasters suffered by the Axis in November 1942, Adolf Hitler reorganized the Balkan front in his war directive of December 28, 1942 as preparation for a possible invasion of Crete, the German and Italian bases in the Aegean, and the Balkan Peninsula. Greek Jews underwent isolation and ghettoization, getting a reprieve only from Italy. Their deportation began in March 1943 and ended a year later. Before the Germans left Greece by the end of October 1944, approximately 90 percent of prewar Greek Jewry was dead.Less
The Final Solution, or Endlösung, of the Jewish Question was an attempt by the Nazis to expel the Jews from the Reich. The general situation during World War II may well have affected Germany's decision to implement the Final Solution in Salonika and its environs. In response to the series of military disasters suffered by the Axis in November 1942, Adolf Hitler reorganized the Balkan front in his war directive of December 28, 1942 as preparation for a possible invasion of Crete, the German and Italian bases in the Aegean, and the Balkan Peninsula. Greek Jews underwent isolation and ghettoization, getting a reprieve only from Italy. Their deportation began in March 1943 and ended a year later. Before the Germans left Greece by the end of October 1944, approximately 90 percent of prewar Greek Jewry was dead.
Patrick Montague
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835272
- eISBN:
- 9781469601854
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807869413_montague
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
As the first extermination camp established by the Nazi regime and the prototype of the single-purpose death camps of Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec, the Chełmno death camp stands as a crucial but ...
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As the first extermination camp established by the Nazi regime and the prototype of the single-purpose death camps of Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec, the Chełmno death camp stands as a crucial but largely unexplored element of the Holocaust. This book is a comprehensive work that details all aspects of the camp's history, organization, and operations, and to remedy the dearth of information in Holocaust literature about Chełmno, which served as a template for the Nazis' “Final Solution.” It reveals events leading to the establishment of the camp, how the mobile killing squad employed the world's first gas van to terminate the lives of mentally ill patients, and the assembly-line procedure employed in the camp to commit genocide on the Jewish population. Based on over 20 years of careful research, the book provides a single-volume history of the camp and its handful of survivors, and includes previously unpublished first-hand accounts and photographs.Less
As the first extermination camp established by the Nazi regime and the prototype of the single-purpose death camps of Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec, the Chełmno death camp stands as a crucial but largely unexplored element of the Holocaust. This book is a comprehensive work that details all aspects of the camp's history, organization, and operations, and to remedy the dearth of information in Holocaust literature about Chełmno, which served as a template for the Nazis' “Final Solution.” It reveals events leading to the establishment of the camp, how the mobile killing squad employed the world's first gas van to terminate the lives of mentally ill patients, and the assembly-line procedure employed in the camp to commit genocide on the Jewish population. Based on over 20 years of careful research, the book provides a single-volume history of the camp and its handful of survivors, and includes previously unpublished first-hand accounts and photographs.
Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199363490
- eISBN:
- 9780190254650
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199363490.003.0018
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter reviews the books “Dwell in safety: Holocaust survivors in the rural cooperative settlement,” by Shlomo Bar-Gil and Ada Schein and “Israeli Society, the Holocaust and Its Survivors,” by ...
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This chapter reviews the books “Dwell in safety: Holocaust survivors in the rural cooperative settlement,” by Shlomo Bar-Gil and Ada Schein and “Israeli Society, the Holocaust and Its Survivors,” by Dina Pora. It discusses the growth of Holocaust-related research and publications after World War 2 on topics such as Jewish leadership, Jewish resistance, rescue and the “Final Solution.” These books provide scholars with in-depth analysis of some of the ways in which the Yishuv (and later, the state of Israel), dealt with the Holocaust and those who survived it.Less
This chapter reviews the books “Dwell in safety: Holocaust survivors in the rural cooperative settlement,” by Shlomo Bar-Gil and Ada Schein and “Israeli Society, the Holocaust and Its Survivors,” by Dina Pora. It discusses the growth of Holocaust-related research and publications after World War 2 on topics such as Jewish leadership, Jewish resistance, rescue and the “Final Solution.” These books provide scholars with in-depth analysis of some of the ways in which the Yishuv (and later, the state of Israel), dealt with the Holocaust and those who survived it.
