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Chapter VI: National-Socialist Policy of Jewish Emigration 189
Thus, on Hitler’s order, the deportation of Jews into the occupied territories
of the east replaced the emigration or expulsion of all European Jews to
Madagascar, though merely as a “provisional” solution pending a ‘final solution’
of this issue after the war’s end.
In August 1940, Hitler announced his intention to evacuate all the Jews of
Europe after the war. 539 According to a note of the Reich Chancellery from
March or April 1942, he had repeatedly informed Lammers, the chief of this
Chancellery, “that he wanted to defer the solution of the Jewish problem until
after the war.” 540 On July 24, 1942, the Führer confirmed this intention with
pithy words: 541
“After finishing the war he will take the rigorous position that he will
crush city after city, if the Jews would not come out and migrate to Madagascar
or some other Jewish national state.”
The intention of the National Socialists to deal with the solution of the
Jewish problem after the war is also apparent from the so-called ‘Brown Portfolio,’
which was outlined by Rosenberg on June 20, 1941, and integrated into
the ‘Green Portfolio’ of September 1942. There, the section “Richtlinien für
die Behandlung der Judenfrage” (Guidelines for the handling of the Jewish
question) begins with the following words: 542
“All measures for the Jewish problem in the occupied eastern territories
must be executed from the perspective that the Jewish problem will be
solved for all of Europe in general after the war. For this reason they are
to be applied as preparatory partial measures and must be in harmony
with the decisions otherwise affecting this area. On the other hand, the experiences
gained in the handling of the Jewish question in the occupied
eastern territories can point the way to the solution of the whole problem,
since the Jews in these regions, together with the Jews of the General Gouvernement,
comprise the strongest contingent of European Jewry. Measures,
which are of a purely harassing nature, are to be refrained from under
any circumstances as being unworthy of a German.”
In a copy of these “Guidelines for the Handling of the Jewish Problem,”
which bears no date but which nevertheless certainly comes from this period,
an additional sentence was inserted after the sentence ending with “decisions
otherwise affecting this area”: 543
539
Memorandum of Luther for Rademacher of August 15, 1940, in: Documents on German
Foreign Policy 1918-1945, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, Series D, vol. X, London 1957,
p. 484.
540
PS-4025.
541
Henry Picker, Hitler’s Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier, Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag,
Munich 1981, p. 456.
542
“Richtlinien für die Führung der Wirtschaft in den besetzten Ostgebieten” (Grüne Mappe),
Berlin, September 1942. EC-347. IMT, vol. XXXVI, p. 348.
543
PS-212. IMT, vol. XXV, p. 302.