The_Holokaust_-_origins,_implementation,_aftermath

5
THE PLANNING
INTELLIGENTSIA AND THE
“FINAL SOLUTION”
Götz Aly
One of the most challenging issues confronting historians of the Holocaust is
the ideological, political, and economic context within which it happened. The
problems are obvious: if we examine the “Final Solution” in isolation from the
events that surrounded or preceded it, we are in danger both of gaining only a
very partial understanding of the event, and of dehistoricizing the Holocaust to
the extent that it would acquire the characteristics of a unique, mythical affair
with no links to the rest of the annals of human history. However, if we historicize
the Holocaust and view it as inherent to a larger historical context, we may lose
sight of its specificity and unprecedented aspects, and end up relativizing and
banalizing it as simply one more mass murder in a long history of human
massacres and atrocities.
Götz Aly’s goal in this chapter is first to demonstrate the extent to which the
Nazi regime relied on a group of highly trained experts, mostly with advanced
academic degrees, in planning its policies of occupation, enslavement, and
genocide. Second, he seeks to show that the Holocaust was not the consequence
of an irrational, ideological imperative, but rather of what appeared to the
experts and was accepted by the regime as an entirely rational and urgent
economic necessity, namely, changing the demographic structure of Eastern
Europe and Western Russia so as to both modernize its economy and facilitate
the resettlement there of ethnic Germans. The creation of such “living space”
(Lebensraum) in the East therefore entailed the mass deportation and death from
famine, disease, and exposure of millions of Poles and Russians, as well as the
murder of millions of Jews. Yet while this program succeeded only in its first
phase—the genocide of the Jews—it was neither haphazard nor limited to
“solving the Jewish question.” Aly’s account can be criticized on several counts.
As he concedes, the regime was particularly fanatic about the murder of the
Jews, and while it (or some of its middle- or even high-ranking agents) might
have seen the “Final Solution” as part of an even grander “General Plan East”
(Generalplan Ost), when push came to shove the killing of the Jews gained top
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