I am grateful to the Canada Council for a fellowship grant during 1971–72 which made possible the writing of this article.

1. Behrend-Rosenfeld, Else R., Ich stand nicht allein. Erlebnisse einer Jüdin in Deutschland 1933–1944 (2nd ed., Frankfurt/Main, 1963), pp. 262–63.Google Scholar “I knew that many Germans had no idea of the crimes which had taken place.…How many did not know and how many of them did not want to know because that was dangerous, no one will ever be able to ascertain.”

2. U. S. National Archives, Washington, D.C., Microfilm Publications, Microcopy T-175, Roll 268, Frame 2763310. Hereafter cited as RFSS, T-175/268, 2763310. Cf. nn. 51 and 89, below.

3. Davidson, Eugene, The Trial of the Germans: An Account of the Twenty-two Defendants before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (New York, 1966), pp. 583–84.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., pp. 53–54. Huber, Heinz, in his introduction to Ronald Searle's cartoon collection, Haven't We Met Somewhere Before? (New York, 1966), p. 88,Google Scholar mentions a poll taken in West Germany in 1961 in which more than one-third of those questioned over thirty years of age “admitted to having heard of the genocide of the Jews before the end of the war.” However, no source for this reference is given; nor is it possible to know precisely which aspect of the murder of the Jews was known by those who responded affirmatively.

5. For example,Mau, Hermann and Krausnick, Helmut, Deutsche Geschichte der jüngsten Vergangenheit 1933–1945 (Tübingen, 1956), pp. 160–61;Google Scholar and Zipfel, Friedrich, Kirchenkampf in Deutschland 1933–1945 (Berlin, 1965), p. 137.Google Scholar See also the collection of newspaper commentary on the Eichmann trial edited by Lamm, Hans, Der Eichmann-Prozess in der deutschen öffentlichen Meinung. Eine Dokumentensammlung (Frankfurt/Main, 1961), particularly pp. 14Google Scholar (Die allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Würzburg, Apr. 16, 1961) and 40–41 (Stuttgarter Zeitung, June 16. 1961).

6. Schoeps, Hans-Joachim, Unbewältige Geschichte. Stationen deutschen Schicksals seit 1763 (Berlin, 1964), p. 209.Google Scholar More emphatic in rejecting the claim that few Germans knew anything are Broszat, Martin, ed., Kommandant in Auschwitz. Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen des Rudolf Höss (Munich, 1964), p. 14,Google Scholar editor's introduction; and Bracher, Karl Dietrich, Die deutsche Diktatur. Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus (Cologne and Berlin, 1969), p. 397.Google Scholar

7. The Germans: An Indictment of My People (trans., New York, 1963), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar The Germans interviewed after the war by Mayer, Milton, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933–1945 (Chicago, 1955),Google Scholar ch. 4, in his opinion had no absolutely certain knowledge “of these great governmental systems of crime against humanity.”

8. See the article in Kirche und Mann, Gütersloh, Apr. 1961, reprinted in Lamm, ed., Der Eichmann-Prozess, pp. 16–17, ridiculing such disbelief.

9. For a particularly vigorous contemporary rejection of the notion of German collective guilt, see the sermon of Bishop von Galen of Münster given July 1, 1945, quoted in Bierbaum, Max, Nicht Lob, nicht Furcht. Das Leben des Kardinals von Galen nach unveröffentlichten Briefen und Dokumenten (5th ed., Münster, 1962), pp. 265–66.Google Scholar Thomas Mann's sharp retort and the dispute it provoked with Walter von Molo and others are described in Grosser, J. F. G., ed., Die grosse Kontroverse. Ein Briefwechsel um Deutschland (Hamburg, 1963), pp. 14–15Google Scholar and passim.

10. Henkys, Reinhard, Die nationalsozialistischen Gewaltverbrechen. Geschichte und Gericht (2nd ed., Stuttgart and Berlin, 1965), p. 10.Google Scholar See also Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, ch. 9, passim; and Tempel, The Germans, p. 148.

11. Ibid., pp. 149–50. Or as Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (rev. ed., New York, 1964), p. 150,Google Scholar wrote: “That the Jews were transported to their doom… many Germans and many Nazis, probably an overwhelming majority of them,… knew, of course, even though many of them may not have known the gruesome details.”

12. On the propaganda success of the Nazis in eventually identifying the entire German population with the regime and its crimes, see Macdonald, Dwight, Memoirs of a Revolutionist: Essays in Political Criticism (New York, 1957), pp. 62ff.Google Scholar

13. Internationaler Militärgerichtshof Nürnberg, , Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof Nürnberg 14. November 1945–1. Oktober 1946 (Nuremberg, 1947), II, 120–21 (hereafter cited as IMG).Google Scholar

14. Or that only they were sane. Psychiatrist Dr. Leo Alexander maintains that “the ability to repress our knowledge of the world's cruelty, to be able to live in peace though surrounded on all sides by horror, cruelty and violent death” is “a mark of mental health.” Cited by Schickel, Richard, New York World Journal Tribune “Book Week,” 11 6, 1966, p. 1.Google Scholar

15. See the “Bilanz der Opfer” in Henkys, Die nationalsozialistischen Gewaltverbrechen, pp. 167–76.

16. Robinson, Jacob, And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight: The Eichmann Trial, the Jewish Catastrophe and Hannah Arendt's Narrative (New York, 1965), pp. 273–74.Google Scholar

17. Broszat, , ed., Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 134;Google Scholar see also Davidson, Trial of the Germans, p. 317. Even high-ranking members of the SS, such as Investigating Judge Konrad Morgen, later claimed that they “stumbled” upon the existence of the “super-secret extermination camps” by accident. Höhne, Heinz, Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf. Die Geschichte der SS (Gütersloh, 1967), p. 354.Google Scholar

18. Bulletin der Bundesregierung, Bonn, Apr. 12, 1961, reprinted in Lamm, ed., Der Eichmann-Prozess, p. 13. See also Klepper, Jochen, Unter dem Schatten deiner Flügel. Aus den Tagebüchern der Jahre 1932–1942, ed. Klepper, Hildegard (Stuttgart, 1964), pp. 1132–33,Google Scholar entries for Dec. 9 and 10, 1942.

19. Memoirs of a Revolutionist, p. 42 and note.

20. Schoenbaum, David, Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany 1933–1939 (Garden City, N.Y., 1966), introduction and passim.Google Scholar

21. The most comprehensive account of the subject is Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews (2nd ed., Chicago, 1967),Google Scholar which stresses the gradual acceleration of Nazi anti-Jewish policy. For a brief theoretical discussion of the reasons for Nazism's constant radicalization vis-à-vis the Jews, see Aronson, Shlomo, Reinhard Heydrich und die Frühgeschichte von Gestapo und SD (Stuttgart, 1971), p. 112.Google Scholar

22. For example, Tempel, The Germans, p. 37; and Ernst, Fritz, The Germans and Their Modern History (trans., New York, 1966), pp. 102–103, 117, 119.Google Scholar

23. A thorough compilation is Blau, Bruno, Das Ausnahmerecht für die Juden in Deutschland 1933–1945 (3rd ed., Düsseldorf, 1965);Google Scholar see also Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf, 1939–1945. Der zweite Weltkrieg in Chronik und Dokumenten (5th ed., Darmstadt, 1961), appendix 5.Google Scholar

24. For a convenient summary of these events, see Helmut Krausnick, “The Persecution of the Jews,” in idem, Buchheim, Hans, Broszat, Martin, and Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf, Anatomy of the SS State (trans., New York, 1968), pp. 23ff.Google Scholar

25. An excellent analysis of the history of the camps is Martin Broszat, “The Concentration Camps 1933–45,” Krausnick et al., Anatomy of the SS State, ch. 4. The classic survivor account by Kogon, Eugen, Der SS-Staat. Das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager (Frankfurt/Main, 1946),Google Scholar is frequently inaccurate in its details.

26. Bramsted, Ernest K., Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda 1925–1945 ([East Lansing, Mich.], 1965), pp. 378–79;Google ScholarAllen, William S., The Nazi Seizure of power: The Experience of a Single German Town 1930–1935 (Chicago, 1965), pp. 209–11;Google Scholar and Schleunes, Karl A., The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy toward German Jews 1933–1939 (Urbana, Ill., 1970), ch. 3.Google Scholar

27. See, for example, Zelzer, Maria, Weg und Schicksal der Stuttgarter Juden. Ein Gedenkbuch herausgegeben von der Stadt Stuttgart (Stuttgart, n.d. [1964]), pp. 155–56;Google ScholarEbermayer, Erich, Denn heute gehört uns Deutschland… Persönliches und politisches Tagebuch. Von der Machtergreifung bis zum 31. Dezember 1935 (Vienna, 1959), pp. 51–52,Google Scholar entries for Mar. 31 and Apr. 1, 1933; and the report of the U. S. Consul in Leipzig Apr. 5, 1933, cited in Krausnick, “The Persecution of the Jews,” p. 26.

28. Ibid. See also Schleunes, Twisted Road to Auschwitz, pp. 88–89; and Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur, pp. 276–77.

29. Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism 1933–1944 (2nd ed., New York, 1963), p. 121.Google Scholar For a similar opinion by a conservative historian, see Ritter, Gerhard, Das deutsche Problem. Grundfragen deutschen Staatslebens gestern und heute (rev. ed., Munich, 1962), pp. 116–17.Google Scholar

30. Krausnick, “The Persecution of the Jews,” p. 26. But cf. U. S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1933 (Washington, 1949), II, 360,Google Scholar the Consul General at Berlin (George S. Messersmith) to the Secretary of State, Nov. 1, 1933: “…the action against the Jews in the professions, in business and in other phases of German life has never been acceptable I believe to the mass of the German people.…” Davidson, Trial of the Germans, p. 584, prudently cautions that “we have only the records of what [the German people] were taught, not what they believed.” For evidence, though, that many “average” Germans eventually swallowed the regime's propaganda against the Jews, see Ebermayer, Erich, “…Und morgen die ganze Welt.” Erinnerungen an Deutschlands dunkle Zeit (Bayreuth, 1966), p. 420,Google Scholar entry for Aug. 29, 1939.

31. Zelzer, Weg und Schicksal der Stuttgarter Juden, pp. 177, 181–82; Allen, Nazi Seizure of Power, pp. 212–13, 328, n. 12; and Bramsted, Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda, p. 380. Many examples of the often subtle social and economic ostracism experienced even by such “favored” Jews as veterans with non-Jewish spouse are recorded in Klepper, Unter dem Schatten deiner Flügel, passim. See also Dickinson, John K., German and Jew:The Life and Death of Sigmund Stein (Chicago, 1967).Google Scholar

32. Krausnick, “The Persecution of the Jews,” pp. 31, 33–34; Aronson, Heydrich und die Frühgeschichte, p. 204; and Höhne, Orden unter den Totenkopf, pp. 304–305.

33. Ebermayer, Denn heute gehört uns Deutschland, p. 373, entry for Aug. 19, 1934. By 1935 thousands of Jews who had initially fled returned to Germany—and were often promptly placed in concentration camps! Schleunes, Twisted Road to Auschwitz, pp. 114, 116, 126, 187–88; Höhne, Orden unter dem Totenkopf, pp. 303, 306; Aronson, Heydrich und die Frühgeschichte, pp. 205, 299–300; and Arndt, Ino, “Das Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück,” Studien zur Geschichte der Konzentrationslager (Stuttgart, 1970), pp. 96–97.Google Scholar

34. See the telegrams printed in Schnabel, Reimund, Macht ohne Moral. Eine Dokumentation über die SS (2nd ed., Frankfurt/Main, 1958), pp. 78–79;Google Scholar also Krausnick, “The Persecution of the Jews,” pp. 38ff.; Höhne, Orden unter dem Totenkopf, pp. 312–17, 418–19; Schleunes, Twisted Road to Auschwitz, pp. 235–54; and Kochan, Lionel, Pogrom 10 November 1938 (London, 1957), esp. pp. 50–75.Google Scholar

35. Bramsted, Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda, pp. 383–87; Allen, Nazi Seizure of Power, p. 273; Andreas-Friedrich, Ruth, Der Schattenmann. Tagebuchaufzeichnungen 1938–1945 (Berlin, 1947), pp. 29ff.,Google Scholar entry for Nov. 10, 1938; Krüger, Horst, Das zerbrochene Haus. Eine Jugend in Deutschland (Munich, 1966), p. 48;Google Scholar Zelzer, Weg und Schicksal der Stuttgarter Juden, pp. 194–96, 200, 202; and Steinert, Marlis G., Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen. Stimmung und Haltung der deutschen Bevölkerung im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Düsseldorf, 1970), pp. 74–75.Google ScholarBielenberg, Christabel, The Past Is Myself (London, 1968), pp. 38–39,Google Scholar recalls: “I was often in town during the following week, in the shops and in the trans.…No one to whom I spoke rejoiced in the shambles; on the contrary, those who were supposed to have been spontaneous about it stood around the newspaper kiosks registering puzzlement, perturbation, even disgust, or else they hurried past the hastily boardedup windows on the Neuerwall with their gaze fixed firmly on their boots… ‘Schlimm—schlimm,’ they murmured, sometimes adding, in true Hamburg fashion, that they had heard things had been far schlimmer in, for instance, Frankfurt.”

36. Woodward, E. L. and Butler, R., eds., Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939, Third Series, III (London, 1950), p. 277,Google Scholar No. 313: Sir G. Ogilvie-Forbes to Viscount Halifax, Nov. 16, 1933. See also Macdonald, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, pp. 44–45.

37. Bramsted, Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda, p. 106; also Davidson, Trial of the Germans, p. 539.

38. See the extensive collection of eyewitness reports dealing with the events of 1933 and 1938 in Schoenberner, Gerhard, ed., Wir haben es gesehen. Augenzeugenberichte über Terror und Judenverfolgung im Dritten Reich (Hamburg, 1962), pp. 16ff.;Google Scholar also Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, pp. 75–76, 83; and Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur, pp. 278, 396–97.

39. Macdonald, Memoris of a Revolutionist, p. 42 and note. The principal camp established in Austria following the Anschluss, Mauthausen (near Linz on the Danube), was located seven kilometers from the town of the same name and “could hardly have been overlooked by the occupants of the farms scattered all around it.” Gisela Rabitsch, “Das KL Mauthausen,” Studien zur Geschichte der Konzentrationslager, pp. 51–52; see also Manfred Bornemann and Martin Broszat, “Das KL Dora-Mittelbau,” Ibid., p. 170.

40. Reproduced in Heiber, Helmut and von Kotze, Hildegard, eds., Facsimile Querschnitt durch das Schwarze Korps (Munich, 1968), p. 74.Google Scholar At the end of 1935 there were six concentration camps with approximately 7,500 inmates. Das Schwarze Korps had a circulation of between 200,000 and 300,000 copies. Ibid., pp. 10, 28. See also Aronson, Heydrich und die Frühgeschichte, pp. 233, 242; Henning Timpke, “Das KL Fuhlsbüttel,” Studien zur Geschichte der Konzentrationslager, pp. 13, 18; and Arndt, “Das Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück,” ibid., 104–105.

41. See Broszat, “The Concentration Camps 1933–45,” pp. 400–59; also Aronson, Heydrich und die Frühgeschichte, pp. 114, 117–18, 124–25; Höhne, Orden unter dem Totenkopf, pp. 187–88; and Ebermayer, Denn heute gehört uns Deutschland, pp. 144, 175, entries for July 27 and Sept. 28, 1933. Grunberger, Richard, A Social History of the Third Reich (London, 1971), p. 23,Google Scholar maintains that press polemics during the 1920's about “re-education camps” for “alien nuisances” contributed to an attitude of public indifference toward the occupants as well as fear of the camps themselves.

42. Davidson, Trial of the Germans, p. 317; also Klemperer, Victor, “LTI.” Die unbewältigte Sprache. Aus dem Notizbuch eines Philologen (Munich, 1969), p. 41.Google ScholarThus McKee, Ilse, Tomorrow the World (London, 1960), pp. 57–58,Google Scholar recounts a conversation with a former Munich newspaper reporter who had lost his job because of “his habit of making careless remarks about the new regime” and who expected sooner or later to end up in a concentration camp. “‘Surely they wouldn't send you off to a camp just for making a few silly remarks?’ I said, rather surprised at his suggestion. He laughed rather sarcastically. ‘Oh, wouldn't they! My dear girl, you'd be surprised who's in those places and what for, if only you could go and see for yourself’. ‘You seem to know an awful lot about them,’ I said. ‘Have you ever been in one? What are they like inside and what happens there?’ He gave me a queer, appraising glance and then he shook his head. ‘No, I have never been inside myself, but I knew someone who had. He didn't tell me much, but what he did tell me was unpleasant enough, I assure you.’” Aronson, Heydrich und die Frühgeschichte, pp. 112f., 118ff., describes the legal penalties early enacted to combat the “spreading of horror stories about alleged happenings” in the camps and the arrest of several Bavarian priests on this charge in 1933.

43. Germans and Their Modern History, pp. 102–103. See also Rabitsch, “ Das KL Mautthausen,” pp. 58–59, 65. Only in very exceptional cases were any prisoners released from camps after September 1939. Arndt, “Das Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück,” p. 108; and Bornemann and Broszat, “Das KL Dora-Mittelbau,” p. 183.

44. Heiber, Helmut, Joseph Goebbels (Munich, 1965), pp. 275–77.Google Scholar The decree is printed in Wulf, Joseph, Presse und Funk im Dritten Reich. Eine Dokumentation (Gütersloh, 1964), pp. 350–51.Google Scholar See also IMG, XLII, 318, document (A)-39, sworn affidavit of Walter Huppenkothen. On Goebbels's parallel directives to treat all rumors and accusations of the persecution of Jews, Poles, and other groups as enemy “hate propaganda,” see Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, p. 101.

45. See Kramarz, Joachim, Claus Graf Stauffenberg, 15. November 1907–20. Juli 1944. Das Leben eines Offiziers (Frankfurt/Main, 1965), p. 82,Google Scholar n. 14: “Basic order number one, put up on the wall of every office during the war: it stated that no one, no matter how high his rank, was permitted to know even a single word more about an important military or political project than he absolutely had to in order to fulfill his personal tasks within the limits of that project.”

46. The strikingly brief Führerbefehl, which was actually signed at the end of October, is printed in Office of the United States Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (Washington, 1946), III, 451, document PS-630.Google Scholar See also Shirer, William L., Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934–1941 (New York, 1941), pp. 512, 569–75, entries for Sept. 21 and Nov. 25, 1940;Google Scholarvon Hassell, Ulrich, Vom andern Deutschland. Aus den nachgelassenen Tagebüchern 1938–1944 (3rd ed., Zurich, 1947), pp. 173,Google Scholar 175, 179, entries for Nov. 23 and Dec. 9, 1940, and Jan. 19, 1941; Klepper, Unter dem Schatten deiner Flügel, pp. 876, 917, entries for May 2 and Aug. 30, 1940; Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, p. 243; and Conway, John S., The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933–1945 (London, 1968), pp. 267ff.Google Scholar For an excellent statement of the lessons the Nazi leadership drew from this experience, in particular the need for greater secrecy, see Zipfel, Kirchenkampf in Deutschland, pp. 224–25.

47. Broszat, Martin, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik 1939–1945 (rev. ed., Frankfurt/Main, 1965), pp. 41ff.Google Scholar and passim; and Krausnick, “The Persecution of the Jews,” pp. 50ff. The mentality of even the most “idealistic” Nazi officials in occupied Poland is unsparingly described in the memoir by the former Bund deutscher Mädel leader, Maschmann, Melita, Account Rendered: A Dossier on My Former Self (trans., London, 1964), esp. pp. 64, 65, 70, 82, 84.Google Scholar

48. See, for example, the “Bericht des Wehrkreiskommandos XXI, Posen, über Unmenschlichkeiten der Waffen-SS, 1939,” printed in Schnabel, Macht ohne Moral, pp. 395–96. On the protests of General Johannes Blaskowitz and others, including a number of party members, see Jacobsen, 1939–1945, pp. 606–609, document 213; Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik, pp. 44ff.; Davidson, Trial of the Germans, pp. 571–72; Höhne, Orden unter dem Totenkopf pp. 274–75, 278, 281–82; and Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, pp. 105–106.

49. Reck-Malleczewen, Friedrich P., Tagebuch eines Verzweifelten. Zeugnis einer inneren Emigration (Frankfurt/Main, 1971), p. 65,Google Scholar entry for Sept. 22, 1939; Shirer, Berlin Diary, p. 250, entry for Nov. 19, 1939; Klepper, Unter dem Schatten deiner Flügel, pp. 824, 857, entries for Dec. 5, 1939, and Mar. 10, 1940; and von Hassell, Vom andern Deutschland, pp. 117, 166, entries for Jan. 11 and Oct. 8, 1940.

50. A selection of the SD reports, together with an informative introduction on their authorship and composition, can be found in Boberach, Heinz, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich. Auswahl aus den geheimen Lageberichten des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS 1939–1944 (Neuwied, 1965).Google Scholar See also the author's unpublished doctoral dissertation, “The Sicherheitsdienst (SD) of the Reichsführer SS and German Public Opinion, September 1939–June 1941” (Johns Hopkins, 1972), pp. 200–204,Google Scholar chs. 1–4, passim; and Steinert, Hitters Krieg und die Deutschen, pp. 102–103, 236ff.

51. RFSS, T-175/259, 2751402, “Meldungen aus dem Reich” (hereafter cited as “MadR”), Apr. 29, 1940, section “Allgemeines”; also in Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich, p. 63. Cf. n.2 above. See also Mann, Golo, Deutsche Geschichte des neunzehnten und zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt/Main, 1958), pp. 882–83.Google Scholar

52. RFSS, T-175/258, 2750848, 2750978/9, “MadR,” Feb. 19 and Mar. 6, 1940, section “Gegner.” See also Lewy, Guenter, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York, 1964), p. 227;Google Scholar and Conway, Nazi Persecution of the Churches, p. 235.

53. Thus SD-Chief Reinhard Heydrich wrote to his Einsatzgruppen leaders on Sept. 21, 1939. Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals (Washington, 1952), XIII, Case No. 11 (the “Ministries Case”), 133–37, document PS-3363.Google Scholar

54. Domarus, Max, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945 (Würzburg, 1963), II, 1058.Google Scholar The Führer observed in a speech on Sept. 30, 1942, that the Jews were no longer laughing at this prophecy either; see in addition his speeches of Jan. 30 and Nov. 8, 1942. Ibid., II, 1828–1829, 1920, 1937. Raul Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews, p. 257, emphasizes the significance of Hitler's 1939 statement; also Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur, pp. 399–400.

55. Krausnick, “The Persecution of the Jews,” p. 54. See also the account of the deportation of Jews from Baden and the Rhineland to camps in unoccupied France in October 1940, Ibid., p. 57. For a contrary view of the popular response to these actions (“the population at large obviously could not have cared less”), see Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp.155–56.

56. Davidson, Trial of the Germans, p. 305. The chief purpose of the “model” camp for “privileged” Jews, Theresienstadt, located in what had been Czechoslovakia, was to conceal the real plans of the Nazis under cover of a “resettlement” program supposedly intended to provide needed labor in the East. Krausnick, “The Persecution of the Jews,” pp. 86–91. See also Klepper, Unter dem Schatten deiner Flügel, p. 816, entry for Nov. 7, 1939.

57. See, for example, Behrend-Rosenfeld, Else, Ich stand nicht allein, p. 164Google Scholar, entry for July 5, 1942; Klepper, Unter dem Schatten deiner Flügel, pp. 984, 1003, 1034, 1069, 1103, entries for Nov. 17 and Dec. 20, 1941, Feb. 11, May 30, and Oct. 5, 1942; See, for example, Kolb, Eberhard, “Bergen-Belsen,” Studien zur Geschichte der Konzentrationslager, p. 140;Google Scholar and Schoenberner, ed., Wir haben esgesehen, pp. 282ff. Even exceptionally well placed observers such as Ruth Andreas-Friedrich still spoke as late as the end of 1942 of “terrible rumors [my italics] going about concerning the fate of the evacuees—mass shootings and starvation, torture and gassings.” Der Schattenmann, p. 102, entry for Dec. 2, 1942. See also von Hassell, Vom andern Deutschland, pp. 273, 276, entries for Aug. 1 and 4, 1942.

58. Kempner, Robert M. W., Eichmann und Komplizen (2nd ed., Vienna, 1961), pp. 86–87.Google Scholar Perhaps this meeting produced the “well substantiated rumours of the Nazi's policy of extermination… circulating among the general public in the winter of 1941” mentioned by Conway, Nazi Persecution of the Churches, p. 265, who, however, gives no specific source for this statement.

59. For evidence of public knowledge of what happened among Jews confronted with deportation, see Fredborg, Arvid, Behind the Steel Wall: A Swedish Journalist in Berlin 1941–43 (New York, 1944), pp. 199–201;Google Scholar Klepper, Unter dem Schatten deiner Flügel, pp. 972–73, 1032, entries for Oct. 23, 1941, and Feb. 4, 1942; Kommission zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden, ed., Dokumente zur Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden 1933–1945 (Frankfurt/Main, 1963), pp. 507–508, 515–16;Google Scholar Andreas-Friedrich, Der Schattenmann, pp. 87–88, 91, 109–10, entries for Sept. 19 and Dec. 8, 1941, Mar. 7, 1943; von Hassell, Vom andern Deutschland, p. 236, entry for Nov. 1, 1941; Glum, Friedrich, Zwischen Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft und Politik. Erlebtes und Erdachtes in vier Reichen (Bonn, 1964), p. 542;Google ScholarKnef, Hildegard, Der geschenkte Gaul. Bericht aus einem Leben (Vienna, 1970), pp. 30–31;Google Scholar and Kempner, Eichmann und Komplizen, pp. 118–19. Evidence of a hostile reaction by some Berliners to Jews being rounded up by the police in August 1942 (“Look at the arrogant Jews! They are still laughing, but their last hour has now struck”) is reported by Hilde Miekley, cited in Schoenberner, ed., Wir haben es gesehen, pp. 282ff.; see also Zelzer, Weg und Schicksal der Stuttgarter Juden, p. 221.

60. See the pathetic letters of July 1942 from Berlin acquaintances printed in Keil, Wilhelm, Erlebnisse eines Sozialdemokraten (Stuttgart, 1948), II, 654–56;Google Scholar and the macabre scene recorded by Andreas-Friedrich, Ruth, Der Schattenmann, pp. 106–107,Google Scholar entry for Feb. 16, 1943. Zelzer, Weg und Schicksal der Stuttgarter Juden, p. 221, writes, however, that “the fate of the Jews did not by any means lie within the range of vision of the rest of the population.” It seems, though, that this conclusion could only apply to their ultimate fate, not to the harsh treatment inflicted upon them inside Germany.

61. Fredborg, Behind the Steel Wall, pp. 54–55; Klemperer, “LTI,” pp. 169–70, 175; Behrend-Rosenfeld, Ich stand nicht allein, pp. 113–15, entry for Sept. 21, 1941; Klepper, Unter dem Schatten deiner Flügel, pp. 970, 973, entries for Oct. 20 and 23, 1941; Andreas-Friedrich, Der Schattenmann, Schattenmann, p. 87, entry for Sept. 19, 1941; von Hassell, Vom andern Deutschland, p. 240, entry for Nov. 30, 1941; and von Kardorff, Ursula, Berliner Aufzeichnungen. Aus den Jahren 1942 bis 1945 (Munich, 1962), p. 21,Google Scholar entry for Dec. 31, 1942. This is also the conclusion of Henkys, Die nationalsozialistischen Gewaltverbrechen, p. 31. After Sept. 19, 1941, all German Jews were required to wear on their outer clothing a yellow “Star of David” with the word “Jew” written across it, a measure designed to help the police readily identify those eligible for deportation, which then got underway on a large scale within a month. Krausnick, “The Persecution of the Jews,” p. 74; Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, pp. 239ff., 248; and Klepper, Unter dem Schatten deiner Flügel, p. 1028, entry for Jan. 23, 1942.

62. Grossmann, Kurt R., Die unbesungenen Helden. Menschen in Deutschlands dunklen Tagen (2nd ed., Berlin-Grunewald, 1961), pp. 25ff.;Google ScholarBoehm, Eric H., ed., We Survived: The Stories of Fourteen of the Hidden and Hunted of Nazi Germany (New Haven, 1949);Google Scholar Steinert, Hitlers Kreig und die Deutschen, pp. 244–45; Behrend-Rosenfeld, Ich stand nicht allein, passim; and Andreas-Friedrich, Der Schattenmann, passim. Approximately 5,000 Jews were hidden in Berlin, of whom one in four survived the Nazi terror. Robinson, And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight, p. 337. As Mosse, George L., Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich (New York, 1966), pp. xxxix–xl,Google Scholar concludes: “Helping Jews against the ‘fury of the people’ had to be a lonely, individual action. It should not surprise us that so few took this course; it is surprising that there were so many thousands who did.

63. Schoenberner, ed., Wir haben es gesehen, p. 8 (introduction). See the similar judgment by Grossmann, Die unbesungenen Helden, pp. 13, 187–88; also Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, pp. 238, 242–43, 261–63; and Mann, Golo, “Über Antisemitismus,” in his Geschichte und Geschichten (Frankfurt/Main, 1961), pp. 198–99.Google Scholar This is not to say, however, that other peoples (for example, the Rumanians) did significantly more to save their Jewish populations than did the Germans; in this respect, unfortunately, few nations measured up to the Danes. Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews, pp. 357–63, 485ff., and passim.

64. Boelcke, Willi A., ed., Kriegspropaganda 1939–1941. Geheime Ministerkonferenzen im Reichspropagandaministerium (Stuttgart, 1966), p. 21;Google Scholar Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, pp. 245–46, 253–54; and Bramsted, Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda, pp. 388–402. See also the SD report on the poor reception sometimes accorded the crude Nazi “documentary” film, “The Eternal Jew.” RFSS, T-175/260, 2753073/4/5, “MadR,” Jan. 20, 1941, “Zur Aufnahme des politischen Aulfkärungsfilmes ‘Der ewige Jude.’” For evidence, though, of passive resistance to the regime's persecution of the Jews, see Lochner, Louis P., ed., The Goebbels Diaries (trans., London, 1948), pp. 196, 209, 225, entries for Mar. 2, 6, and 11, 1943.Google Scholar

65. Krausnick, “The Persecution of the Jews,” pp. 50ff., 59ff,; Höhne, Orden unter dem Totenkopf, pp. 273, 326–42; and Henkys, Die nationalsozialistischen Gewaltverbrechen, pp. 112–25. The most thorough account of the career of the Einsatzgruppen can be found in Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals (Washington, 1949), IV,Google Scholar Case No. 9 (the “Einsatzgruppen Case”). The chief defendant, Otto Ohlendorf, was also the director of the SD office in charge of reporting on German domestic opinion. Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich, introduction; and Stokes, “Sicherheitsdienst and German Public Opinion,” esp. ch. 3.

66. Höhne, Orden unter dem Totenkopf, pp. 342ff.; and Krausnick, “The Persecution of the Jews,” pp. 93ff.; see also the discussion of the infamous “Wannsee Conference” of Jan. 20, 1942, ibid., pp. 82–87. The distinction between concentration and extermination camps was, thus, that almost all of the latter were located outside the “Altreich” (mostly in Poland) and that their principal purpose was to kill Jews.

67. Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen, II, 1992, speech of Feb. 24, 1943.

68. Krausnick, “The Persecution of the Jews,” p. 97; Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, pp. 249, 257; Davidson, Trial of the Germans, pp. 53–54, 317; and Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur, pp. 456–57.

69. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Der Schattenmann, pp. 171, 183, 185–86, did not know that Jews were being gassed in the East until Aug. 9, 1944, and only between Oct. 20 and Nov. 12 that Auschwitz camp was being used for this purpose. However, she records detailed rumors of the SS modus operandi at Auschwitz as early as February. Ibid., pp. 132–33, entry for Feb. 4, 1944. Neither Friedrich Glum, Zwischen Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft und Politik, p. 542, nor Keil, Wilhelm, Erlebnisse eines Sozialdemokraten, II, 590–91, 610,Google Scholar knew about Auschwitz and its gruesome function before Germany surrendered. For that matter, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz refused to believe rumors which reached him on the subject based on foreign news reports. Lüdde-Neurath, Walter, Regierung Dönitz, Die letzten Tage des Dritten Reiches (3rd ed., Göttingen, 1964), pp. 91–92;Google Scholar see also IMG, IX, 86, testimony of Field Marshal Erhard Milch, Mar. 11, 1946.

70. For example, von Hassell, Ulrich, Vom andern Deutschland, p. 314,Google Scholar entry for Apr. 20, 1943. See in addition the 1943 correspondence of Lutheran bishops Wurm and Meiser, cited in Boyens, Armin, “Das Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis vom 19. Oktober 1945—Entstehung und Bedeutung,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, xix, No. 4 (10 1971), 379–80;Google Scholar also Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, pp. 258–29.

71. Broszat, ed., Kommandant in Auschwitz, pp. 163–64.

72. Von Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen, p. 228, entry for Dec. 27, 1944. See also von Hassell, Vom andern Deutschland, pp. 285–86, entry for Nov. 26, 1942; and Boyens, “Das Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis,” p. 377.

73. Nuremberg Document NI-11984, cited in Schoenberner, ed., Wir haben es gesehen, pp. 277–80. See also Reitlinger, Gerald, The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe 1939–1945 (New York, 1961), p. 105;Google Scholar and Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals (Washington, 1952), VIII, Case No. 6 (the “Farben Case”), 312–21,Google Scholar testimony of Dr. Hans W. Muench, May 11, 1948.

74. Wright, Gordon, The Ordeal of Total War, 1939–1945 (New York, 1968), p. 127;Google Scholar see also Christ und Welt, Stuttgart, 04 21, 1961,Google Scholar reprinted in Lamm, ed., Der Eichmann-Prozess, pp. 21–23; Wishengrad, H. R., “Alias Karl Frahm,” New YorkTimes, 08 12, 1972, p. 23;Google ScholarFeingold, Henry L., The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust 1938–1945 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1970),Google Scholar esp. ch. 7; Davidson, Trial of the Germans, pp. 5, 53–54; Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, p. 258; Macdonald, Mamoirs of a Revolutionist, p. 42 and note; and Ernst, Germans and Their Modern History, pp. 102–103. Ivone Kirkpatrick, the British diplomat responsible for the wartime publication of a collection of documents on the prewar concentration camps, had great difficulty persuading his own superiors that even these would not “flavour of [World War I] atrocity propaganda and so miss the mark.” The Inner Circle: Memoirs (London, 1959), p. 147.Google Scholar

75. von Lehndorff, Hans Graf, Token of a Covenant: Diary of an East Prussian Surgeon, 1945–1947 (trans., Chicago, 1964), p. 15,Google Scholar entry for Jan. 23, 1945; also Reck-Malleczewen, Tagebuch eines Verzweifelten, p. 144, entry for Aug. 16, 1944. For an opposite interpretation, see Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp. 109–11.

76. Mann, Golo, Deutsche Geschichte, p. 893,Google Scholar makes the same distinction, as does Marlis Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, pp. 261, 595.

77. For example, Matthies, Kurt, Ich hörte die Lerchen singen. Ein Tagebuch aus dem Osten 1941/45 (Munich, 1956), pp. 19, 25–26, 32–33, entries for Aug. 7, 10 14, and Dec. 29, 1941;Google Scholar and Perau, Josef, Priester im Heere Hitlers. Erinnerungen 1940–45 (2nd ed., Essen, 1963), p. 132, entry for Sept. 5, 1943.Google Scholar See also IMG, xvii, 193–94, testimony of Hans Fritzsche, June 27, 1946; Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, pp. 250–52; and Davidson, Trial of the Germans, pp. 317, 560.

78. Hoffmann, Peter C., “The Attempt to Assassinate Hitler on March 21, 1943,” Canadian Journal of History, II, No. 1 (03 1967), 68–69;Google Scholar Krausnick, “The Persecution of the Jews,” p. 71. But see Davidson, Trial of the Germans, p. 570, and Höhne, Orden unter dem Totenkopf, pp. 325–26, 337–38, for examples of a contrary response by other members of the Wehrmacht to the Einsatzgruppen.

79. Keil, , Erlebnisse eines Sozialdemokraten, II, 586–87;Google Scholar von Hassell, Vom andern Deutschland, pp. 231, 254, 289, entries for Oct. 4, 1941, and Feb. 14 and Dec. 20, 1942; and Reck-Malleczewen, Tagebuch eines Verzweifelten, pp. 120, 122, entry for Oct. 30, 1942.

80. Bielenberg, The Past Is Myself, pp. 247–50.

81. See Zawodny, J. K., Death in the Forest: The Story of the Katyn Forest Massacre (Notre Dame, Ind., 1962), pp. 11–30Google Scholar and passim; Bramsted, Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda, pp. 330–33; and Lochner, ed., Goebbels Diaries, pp. 245, 253, 257–58, 270–71, 276, 305, 395, entries for Apr. 9, 14, 17, and 28, May 8 and 20, and Sept. 29, 1943.

82. RFSS, T-175/265, 2759288/9, 2759290/1/2, “MadR,” Apr. 19, 1943, sections “Allgemeines” and “Aufnahme und Auswirkung der allgemeinen Propaganda-, Presse- und Rundfunklenkung in der Zeit vom 16. bis. 19.4. 1943”; also in Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich, pp. 382–86. In addition see Thieme, Hans, “Katyn—ein Geheimnis?” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, IV, No. 4 (10 1955), 409–11;Google Scholar and Höhne, Orden unter dem Totenkopf, p. 342, for Reichskommissar-Ostland Hinrich Lohse's pointed comparison of the Katyn discoveries with the activities of the Einsatzgruppen.

83. RFSS, T-175/265, 2759452/3/4/5/6/7/8, “MadR,” May 13, 1943, “Stimmungsmässige Auswirkungen des Falles Katyn unter den polnischen Zivilarbeitern im Reich.” The “General Government” was the portion of Poland which served as a collecting area for Jews prior to their “final disposition.” Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews, pp. 128ff.

84. RFSS, T-175/265, 2759996/7, “SD-Berichte zu Inlandsfragen,” July 26, 1943, “Meldungen über die Entwicklung der öffentlichen Meinungsbildung”; see also Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, pp. 255–56.

85. See Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich, introduction, esp. p. xv; and Stokes, “Sicherheitsdienst and German Public Opinion,” ch. 4.

86. Völkischer Beobachter (Norddeutsche Ausgabe), Berlin, 04 30, 1942, p. 3.Google Scholar The article, some 800 words in length, purports to describe a “typical” day's activities of an SD subunit in an unnamed Russian town. Amidst freezing temperatures and primitive conditions (sleeping, working, bathing, and eating are all done in one and the same room), the Aussenkommando carried out apparently regular police functions, which included checking on workers to be sent to Germany, informing Volksdeutsche of resettlement plans for themselves in the Reich, determining which of the inhabitants were suitable for local police duties, and settling endless complaints from colorfully clad peasants about neighborhood quarrels, Anti-partisan investigation and suppression, however, is depicted as the unit's most important and dangerous work. An extensive network of informers was utilized to combat the “marauding former GPU spies, terrorist groups,… plunderers, the forces of the Bolshevik underworld,” and their denunciations frequently led to summary executions (“against this poison there is only one absolutely effective antidote!”). The discovery of a cache of food, explosives, and weapons, the interrogation of the doomed villager responsible (“plundering alone carries the death sentence”) and the hopeful prospect of capturing the remainder of his band the following day completed the article. The account was thus intended to fulfill a double purpose: to conceal from the public the main task of the Einsatzgruppen, which in fact were also employed in general police and anti-partisan operations in addition to murdering Jews, and to justify the severity with which the SD and the Security Police treated their opponents (“terrorist groups”). Reports of Jews similarly executed could therefore be explained in the same fashion, since they preeminently belonged to the anti-German “Bolshevik underworld.” For a discussion of the psychological need of members of the Einsatzgruppen to justify to themselves the mass murders they were committing and hence their attempts to depict their operations as anti-partisan undertakings, see Höhne, Orden unter dem Totenkopf, p. 337. In the course of 1942, the units were transformed into stationary command posts of the Sicherheitspolizei. Ibid., p. 339.

87. The Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei, or Sipo), comprising the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei) and the Kripo (Kriminalpolizei), was the most important division within Himmler's comprehensive police organization; it was led until his assassination in June 1942 by Reinhard Heydrich, who was simultaneously chief of the Nazi Party's Sicherheitsdienst. An excellent account of the complicated bureaucratic structure of the Nazi police is Hans Buchheim, “The SS—Instrument of Domination,” Krausnick et al., Anatomy of the SS State, ch. 2, esp. pp. 157ff. See also Stokes, “Sicherheitsdienst and German Public Opinion,” ch. 2.

88. This is a remarkably accurate description of the modus operandi of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland and Russia during 1941 and 1942, prior to the creation of the first extermination camps. See in general the edited transcript and supporting trial documents of the “Einsatzgruppen Case” and other sources cited above, n. 65.

89. RFSS, T-175/268, 2763310. The report was forwarded virtually unaltered to the SD main office in Weimar. Ibid., 2763298ff., “[SD Hauptaussenstelle Erfurt] an SD Hauptaussenstelle Weimar: Meldungen aus dem Aussenstellengebiet,” May 1, 1942.

90. Berichte der Regierungspräsidenten, Schwaben, 10 10, 1942,Google Scholar cited in Peterson, Edward N., The Limits of Hitler's Power (Princeton, N. J., 1969), pp. 366–67.Google Scholar See also Berghahn, Volker R., “Meinungsforschung im ‘Dritten Reich’: Die Mundpropaganda-Aktion der Wehrmacht im letzten Kriegshalbjahr,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, I (1967), 94, 100, 118–19;Google Scholar Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, pp. 254–55, 522; and Bielenberg, The Past Is Myself, p. 133: “What had Ernst, the [Gasthaus] Adler host to report when he came home on leave from the Russian front? ‘If we are paid back one quarter of what we are doing in Russia and Poland, Frau Doktor,’ he had said simply, ‘we will suffer, and we will deserve to suffer.’”

91. This revealing document is printed in Jacobsen, 1939–1945, pp. 584–85; see also Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, pp. 252–53.

92. Presser, J., Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry (trans., London, 1968), p. 481;Google Scholar Zelzer, Weg und Schicksal der Stuttgarter Juden, p. 228; and Günther, Joachim, “Rückblick und Rechenschaft,” in Marcuse, Ludwig et al. , War ich ein Nazi? Politik—Anfechtung des Gewissens (Munich, 1968), pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

93. For Himmler's cynical view of such pleas, see Höhne, Orden unter dem Totenkopf, p. 335; and IMG, XXXIX, 110ff., document 1919–PS, speech in Posen, Oct. 4, 1943. Grunberger, Social History of the Third Reich, p. 23, points out the incongruency between the “Führer-state” in which the German people lived, on the one hand, and their ability “to dissociate centrally directed atrocities from the man at the centre,” on the other.

94. Henkys, Die nationalsozialistischen Gewaltverbrechen, p. 28; also Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur, p. 397.

95. The Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française—Italian Fascism—National Socialism (trans., New York, 1966), p. 400.Google Scholar Zipfel, Kirchenkampf in Deutschland, p. 154, makes the same point.

96. Thus the assertion by SD jurist Alfred Schweder, , Politische Polizei. Wesen und Begriff der politischen Polizei im Metternichschen System, in der Weimarer Republik und im nationalsozialistischen Staate (Berlin, 1937), p. 172,Google Scholar that the struggle against both internal and external enemies of the state (Staatsfeinde) “can be that much better conducted the less the populance… notices the fact of this struggle,” conceals the essentially terrorist role of the police in the Nazi state.

97. Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, p. 359.

98. Aronson, Heydrich und die Frühgeschichte, p. 253; and Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur, p. 278. See the revealing discussion of the “model” Nazi church policy pursued in the Warthegau in Conway, Nazi Persecution of the Churches, pp. 311–27; also Ritter, Das deutsche Problem, pp. 251–16, n. 73.

99. Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, pp. 26, 263, 594. While insisting that like most Germans he knew nothing of the “persecution, the deportation, and the annihilation of the Jews,” Albert Speer admitted that in the summer of 1944 he received an unmistakable report about the horrors of Auschwitz—and “did not investigate.” “[In] the final analysis I myself determined the degree of my isolation, the extremity of my evasions, and the extent of my ignorance.” Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (trans., New York, 1970), pp. 112–13, 375–76.Google Scholar