Sobibor - Holocaust Propaganda And Reality - Unity of Nobility ...

228 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
Hillgruber (1972), Hitler’s decision was taken in July of 1941 in
connection with the expected triumph over the Soviet Union and with
the planned expansion towards the East. As opposed to this, Martin
Broszat (1977) questioned the thesis that there had been an express
and specific extermination order issued by Hitler. The physical elimination
of the Jews, according to Broszat, had not been planned a
long time in advance and then carried out systematically, had not
been set in motion by a single decision and a single secret order issued
by Hitler; rather, the ‘program’ to annihilate the Jews had
grown over time out of ‘individual actions’ until it became an institutionalized
fact in the spring of 1942; it had assumed its defining
characteristics, after the extermination camps in Poland had been
set up (between December, 1941, and July, 1942). Such an interpretation,
according to Broszat, could not be documented with absolute
certainty, but could claim a greater degree of probability than the
assumption of an all-embracing secret order to annihilate the Jews,
issued in the summer of 1941 […].
Broszat’s explanatory model of the genesis of the assassination
plan was more clearly stated by Hans Mommsen (1983). In agreement
with Broszat, Mommsen expressly asserts that there was no
‘formal order’ […].
Still, the majority of researchers cling to the idea that Hitler was
the deciding factor in the murder of the European Jews and that
there was an annihilation order issued orally.
Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm admits that there is no proof for an order
to annihilate the Jews generally to have been issued prior to the
start of the Russian campaign in 1941. He refuses, however, the thesis
of an ‘improvised radicalization’ of the persecution of the Jews
culminating in their systematic assassination and asserts that, without
an overall directive from Hitler and without his approval, no
partial activities eventually leading up to the program of a final solution
would have been possible.
Christopher Browning (1981), explicitly targeting Broszat’s explanation,
comes to the conclusion that Hitler did order the elaboration
of an annihilation plan in the summer of 1941; the foundations
of the murder project are said to have been approved by Hitler ‘in
October or November of 1941.’
Gerald Fleming (1982) notes that the fateful change in the Jewish
policy of the Third Reich occurred in the ‘summer of 1941’; it