Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti - 23.sējums

Dr. Matthew Kott*
with additional research by Bernt Rougthvedt**
What Does the Holocaust in the Baltic States Have to Do
with the SS’ Plans for Occupied Norway?
What does – or did – the Holocaust in the Baltic States have to do with the Nazi German
SS’ plans for occupied Norway? Such questions are not often asked in the field of
Holocaust studies, despite its international scope and character. The reason for this is that
in most cases the answer to such questions at first glance would be: “Not very much.”
As we gain a broader understanding of the workings of Nazism and its allied regimes in
wartime Europe, however, we begin to discern a complex web of interconnectedness on
a continental scale. By attempting to piece together the relations between individuals and
events that have heretofore most often been studied in isolation, we can start answering
some of the questions that have remained unanswered for too long.
Herein, the attempt will be made to show that the SS leadership had important
designs for Norway in a future New Europe, and that these plans were in several aspects
directly linked to the mass murder of Jews and other perceived racial enemies of the
Nazi Germanic Volksgemeinschaft, particularly in the territories of Reichskommisariat
Ostland and north-western Russia.
Himmler’s priorities in 1940 and in 1941
It would not be an understatement to say that the question of how to deal with the Jews
of the newly-occupied territories in eastern Europe, including the Baltic States, was one
of the issues foremost in the mind of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler throughout the
second half of 1941. As historian Martin Cüppers has demonstrated, the specially-created
Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS and its subordinate units of the Waffen-SS acted as
* Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities (HL-senteret), Oslo, Norway. The research
presented in this paper constitutes part of the project “Norwegian Volunteers in the Waffen-SS,
1940–1945”, funded by the Norwegian government.
** Bernt Rougtvedt is an author and historian currently writing a biography of Jonas Lie for the Norwegian
publisher Aschehoug. He has kindly allowed me to use some of the sources he has found in this
paper. Such instances are marked [BR] in the notes.
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