Hitler's Bureaucrats: The Nazi Security Police and the Banality of Evil

319 Pages·2005·16.44 MB·English

by  Yaacov Lozowick

Hitler's Bureaucrats
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Hitler's
Bureaucrats
The Nazi Security Police and
the Banality of Evil
Yaacov Lozowick
Translated by Haim Watzman
continuum
LONDON • NEW YORK
CONTINUUM
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London, SEl 7NX
370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6503
First published in German as Hitler's Bürokraten: Eichmann, seine willigen Vollstrecker und die Banalität des Bösen.
© Pendo Verlag GmbH, Zurich 2000
English edition first published 2002 by Continuum in association with Leicester University Press.
Translated from the unpublished Hebrew version by Haim Watzman
English translation © Yaacov Lozowick 2000
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-8264-5711-8 (hardback)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lozowick, Yaacov.
[Hitlers Biirokraten. English]
Hitler's bureaucrats : the Nazi security police and the banality of evil / Yaacov
Lozowick ; translated by Haim Watzman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8264-5711-8
1. Nazis—Biography. 2. War criminals—Germany—Psychology. 3. Holocaust, Jewish
(1939-1945) 4. Eichmann, Adolf, 1906-1962. 5. Bureaucracy—Germany—History—20th
century. 6. National socialism—Germany—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Watzman, Haim.
II. Title.
DD244 .L6413 2002
940.53'18—dc21
2001047405
Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, www.biddles.co.uk
Contents
Preface to the English Edition vii
Archival Sources x
Tables and Charts of SS Organization xii
Introduction 1
1 From Theory to Practice: 1933-8 10
2 Documents in the Bureaucratic System 43
3 Toward the Final Solution 57
4 Executing the Final Solution in Germany 94
5 Holland 143
6 France 179
7 Hungary 238
8 Conclusion: Listening to the Screams 268
Bibliography 281
Index 293
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Preface to the English Edition
Evil is powerful, palpable, and very real. Rationalism would wish to
reduce it to a poetic expression of something else — social, psychological
or perhaps economic stresses and currents. In our age of postmodern
cacophonies of competing voices, narratives and viewpoints, evil seems a
leftover, a relic of an earlier, religious age. Yet for me, the writing of this
book has been accompanied by the growing awareness of the aridity of
these explanations and, finally, of their futility. Having spent years
watching Adolf Eichmann and his colleagues from as close as I dared, I
was forced to re-evaluate the understanding with which I began my
research; eventually, an honest appraisal of what I was finding forced me
to recognize the evil in them.
Numerous people assisted me. At Yad Vashem, Esther Aran and
Judith Levin showed me the documentation of the West German
prosecutors which, alongside the documentation collected for the
Eichmann trial, is the basis of the research; both repeatedly told me
there was an important thesis in there. Once I was launched, Haddassah
Modlinger offered her hospitality in the reading room, and kept an eye
open for relevant documentation in unexpected files. Judith Kleiman gave
me the run of her strongrooms. Shmuel Krakowski sent me to the
Zentralle Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen in Ludwigsburg, armed
with a letter of introduction stating that I was operating for the Yad
Vashem Archives of which he was the director. Once at Ludwigsburg,
Willi Dressen was a valuable guide.
Yehuda Bauer, under whose tuition the original thesis was
written, granted me the large degree of freedom I needed, while offering
valuable guidance. As my thesis grew away from what both of us had
expected, he was both an important critic and an enthusiastic supporter.
In the 1960s Raul Hilberg was turned away from Yad Vashem.
When he spent a week in the archives twenty-some years later, I fear that
his main problem was that we pestered him all week, vying for his time
and not letting him read. For me he was an eldorado; in a week of
informal discussions I learnt much of what I know about the workings of
viii
Preface
the bureaucracy of the Third Reich. I don't know what he will make of
this book, but I hope he will appreciate the attempt to understand the
murder of the Jews through the memos of the murderers. Similarly,
Christopher Browning, who also counts himself as a student of Hilberg,
has been an important model. His own research, ever coherent and
thought-provoking, is quoted often in the following pages; over the years
we have repeatedly found occasion to discuss what we were doing. Often
we have disagreed, but it has always been a pleasure to talk, and I would
hope our ability to disagree amicably might be a model for others.
A number of colleagues gave me many hours to let me sound off
my ideas, Daniel Blatman, David Silberklang and Robert Rozett foremost
among them. Shalmi Barmore, at the time our boss in the Education
Department at Yad Vashern, never accepted the direction I was moving
in, and was a fascinating and tenacious adversary, forcing me to fight
every sentence of my evolving understanding. I miss the atmosphere of
intense intellectual fervor he managed to create around him.
A large number of German friends assisted me in understanding
contemporary Germany, which, while radically different from the
Germany I was studying, was not without its own value. A partial list
of them would include Dierk Julich, Karin Finsterbusch, Regina Schlegel
and Hinrich Krahnstoever, Joachim Schutte and Katrin Volkmann with the
perspective of the East, Jaqueline Gierre (an American who has spent her
adult life in Germany) and of course Christoph Mtinz.
Not reading French or Dutch meant that I was not certain the
chapters on France and the Netherlands were good enough; I was helped
by Renee Poznanski and Josef Michman, who may not have always
agreed with me but pointed out the occasional error so as to improve my
accuracy. Haim Watzman translated the original Hebrew into English,
while finding hundreds of pitfalls that needed clarification; Malka
Lozowick then took his product and went over it again with a fine-
tooth comb. She has been supportive of this project since its very
beginning.
As I completed the research and should have sat down to writing
I became director of the Yad Vashem Archives. I am greatly indebted to
my deputy, Nomi Halpern, for taking upon herself parts of my tasks so
that I could find the time needed to write. Another colleague, Efraim
Kaye, regularly invited me to lecture to his groups of educators, thus
supplying me with a critical sounding board for my evolving ideas.
The Jewish Memorial Foundation granted me two scholarships
ix
Preface
while I was researching. Nonetheless, being the proud father of three
meant that holding a full-time job always took priority over research and
writing, much of which was done late at night. At one point, Meir,
Nechama and Achikam were literally counting down to completion. My
wife Sarah offered far more than support, she often added the necessary
steel to my resolve to complete this project. For this, for her friendship
and counsel, and for her love I am deeply grateful.
Yaacov Lozowick
Jerusalem
July 2001
Archival Sources
Most archival material upon which this research is based is to be found in
the Yad Vashem Archives (YVA). This includes documentation from
other archives, i.e. the Special Archive (Ossobi) in Moscow, and the
Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen in Ludwigsburg (ZSL),
Germany. The single most important record group is that of the
Eichmann Trial, as collected by Section 06 of the Israeli Police, in 1960-1.
These document were culled from the Nuremberg Trial documents, from
the German Foreign Ministry, and from other sources. Here, it has been
quoted by its title in the YVA: TR.3.
Record groups
Eichmann Trial documents: YVA TR.3
Interrogation of Adolf Eichmann by Captain Avner Less of Section 06,
prior to Eichmann's trial. Six volumes, YVA.
Nuremberg Documents; YVA TR.l, TR.2 (but quoted as Nuremberg
Documents, not by YVA numbers).
West German NSG (Nationalsozialistische Gerichtsverfahren) are to be
found in YVA primarily in TR.10. Much of this material reached YVA
from the Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen in Ludwigsburg;
however, TR.10 includes also indictments and court decisions (verdicts,
annulments, etc.) which were sent directly to YVA, not through the ZSL.
A number of TR.10 files appear repeatedly in this book, and are
quoted by their YVA file numbers. The original Verfahern numbers of
these files are as follows:
TR.10-515 = Staatsanwaltschaft Wien, 15St 1416/61, Anklageschrift
gegen Franz Novak, 3.6.64.
TR. 10-652 — Vermerk zur Anklageschrift gegen Fritz Wohrn, 1 ks
1/69 (RSHA), 21.5.69.
TR.10-767 = Vermerk iiber das Ergebnis der Staatsanwltlichen
Ermittlung nach dem Stande von 30.4.1969 in den Ermittlungsverfahren