Holocaust Versus Wehrmacht: How Hitler's "Final Solution" Undermined the German War Effort

378 Pages·2015·23.978 MB·English

by  Yaron Pasher

holocaust wehrmacht
VERSUS
MODERN WAR STUDIES
Theodore A. Wilson
General Editor
Raymond Callahan
J. Garry Clifford
Jacob W. Kipp
Allan R. Millett
Carol Reardon
Dennis Showalter
David R. Stone
Series Editors
HOLOCAUST
VERSUS

WEHRMACHT
How Hitler’s “Final Solution”
Undermined the
German War Effort
Yaron Pasher
U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S O F K A N S A S
© 2014 by the University Press of Kansas
All rights reserved
Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66045), which was
organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated and funded by Emporia
State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg
State University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pasher, Yaron, author.
Holocaust versus Wehrmacht : how Hitler’s “Final Solution” undermined the German
war effort / Yaron Pasher.
pages cm -- (Modern war studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7006-2006-7 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-7006-2037-1 (ebook)
1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945) — Europe, Eastern — Influence. 2. World War, 1939–1945
— Campaigns — Eastern Front — Social aspects. 3. World War, 1939–1945 — Atrocities
— Eastern Front. 4. World War, 1939–1945 — Campaigns — France — Normandy — Social
aspects. 5. World War, 1939–1945 — Transportation--Germany. 6. Europe, Eastern — Ethnic
relations. 7. Germany — Armed Forces — History — World War, 1939–1945. I. Title.
DS135.E83P37 2014
940.54(cid:994)1343 — dc23
2014029767
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication is recycled and contains 30 percent postconsumer
waste. It is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials
Z39.48-1992.
For my daughters, Nili and Ruthi

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Part 1: Operation Typhoon and German Deportations to
the East 11
1. Operation Barbarossa: From Minsk to Moscow 15
2. Operation Typhoon: The Battle for Moscow 27
3. The German War Economy 41
4. Soviet Capabilities 57
Part 2: Operation Reinhard and the Downfall at Stalingrad 83
5. The Wehrmacht and the SS: Operating on Parallel Lines 87
6. From German Blue to Russian Uranus 103
7. Jewish and Military Proportions: Reinhard versus
Stalingrad 119
8. The State of the Reichsbahn in Winter, 1942–1943 132
viii Contents
Part 3: The Battle of Kursk and the Height of the Final
Solution 151
9. On the Road to Another Disaster 153
10. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Footnote or Major
Operation? 170
11. The Allied Invasion of Sicily 185
Part 4: The Extermination of Hungarian Jewry and the Allied
Invasion of Normandy 215
12. A Long and Winding Road 217
13. Risk and Fear of Invasion 230
14. The Destruction of Army Group Center 259
Conclusion 275
Notes 291
Works Cited 325
Index 347
Map galleries follow pages 77 and 145.
Photo galleries follow pages 94 and 202.
Preface
The present research was a long journey for me — and not just through
modern European history of the twentieth century. It was also an
opportunity to explore my own family history, to better understand
where I came from, and to link this knowledge to the historical nar-
rative. The extraordinary life stories of two people in particular in-
fluenced and shaped my way of thinking and point of view: Louis B.
Pasher and Aharon Anglister (Agmon). Both men (my grandparents)
were forced in midlife to suffer the horrors of World War II, an expe-
rience that would haunt them till their last days.
Louis B. Pasher was a British subject born in London in 1905. He
was the first of nine children from a Zionist family, which emigrated in
1921 in order to fulfill Theodor Herzl’s vision and move to their home-
land, Israel, where they resided in a tent in the eleven-year-old city of
Tel Aviv. In September 1939, at the age of thirty-four, he joined the
British army in its war against European fascism. He would return to
Tel Aviv only in mid-1947 after a long period of service that included
over two years in Italy and Germany after the Third Reich’s uncon-
ditional surrender. Back home, he met for the first time a seven-year-
old boy, my father, born in March 1940. Louis was one of the first to
join the British armed forces and one of the last discharged. During
his military service, Louis would fight Erwin Rommel’s Panzerarmee
Afrika in El Alamein with Bernard Montgomery’s 8th Army, and he
would be taken prisoner in Sicily and eventually manage to escape the
POW camp there with an Australian colonel. In April 1945, he would
be present in Milan to see Benito Mussolini and his mistress’s bodies
hanging upside down, and even manage to capture this historic scene
on camera. In 1961, Louis Bernard Pasher was honored with an OBE
from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for helping Jewish widows and
orphans of the British Legion after the war ended. Until his death ten