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Hitler and the Final Solution
Fleming is the only scholar given access to the interrogations of the German civilian crematoria engineers lying inaccessible, until a few months ago, in Moscow. This historically important information finally places the last stone in the mosaic of Auschwitz-Berkenau.
243 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 5, 2019
Q: Although you knew about the mass liquidation of innocent human beings in the crematoria, you devoted yourself to designing and creating high-capacity incineration furnaces for crematoria - and on your own initiative?
A: I was a German engineer and a key member of the Topf works, and I saw it as my duty to apply my specialist knowledge in this way to help Germany win the war, just as in wartime an aircraft construction engineer builds airplanes, which also kill human beings.
(from a 1946 interrogation)
Despite all his Jew-hating rhetoric, writings, and speeches, Hitler was careful never to issue a written order for the extermination of European Jewry. This led revisionist historians like David Irving to pretend Hitler was unaware of his own Final Solution until 1943. But there's still much evidence, written and oral, that that was his intention. Fleming ferreted some of it out, through interviews with former Nazi officials, and hidden archives.
October 8, 2017
A detailed and persuasive refutation of the 'functionalist' position on the Holocause, and a defense of the 'intentionalist' position.
March 8, 2024
A CRITIQUE OF DAVID IRVING’S ‘NO WRITTEN HITLER ORDER’ THEORY, AND MUCH MORE
Saul Friedländer wrote in the Introduction to this 1984 book, “[This book] is important … as a timely resource in the growing debate among historians of Nazism… From the end of the sixties… the traditional interpretation of National Socialism has been increasingly challenged. Recently, the term ‘intentionalist’ was appended to the traditional school, the term ‘functionalist’ to the new wave.” (Pg. viii-ix) “That Hitler would have been unaware of the Final Solution up to 1943, as suggested by David Irving, goes against all evidence; that he gave an oral order sometime in the spring or summer of 1941 for the overall extermination of the Jews of Europe is highly probable, but cannot be proven with absolute certainty on the basis of existing documents… This intention does not mean that from the very beginning of his political career Hitler concretely planned the extermination of the Jews of Europe, nor does it mean that such a plan existed in 1933, 1938, or even 1940…” (Pg. xxviii-xxix)
Gerald Fleming wrote in the Author’s Preface, “This book was written in an effort to come to grips with the issues surrounding this ‘quasi-industrial’ mass extermination: How could our age produce it and, more specifically, how can we establish the links between the ‘Führer’s wish’ and its execution at different administrative levels? If I have succeeded in contributing to a clearer understanding of these controversial questions, if the following pages serve to awaken particularly the younger generation to the dangers inherent in ‘the beast in man’ and to a distrust for demagogues and zealots of whatever political leaning, then this book shall have served its purpose.”
He recounts, “Throughout his life Hitler was repeatedly indebted for the personal assistance he received or the kindness he was shown by Jews, as a few examples will illustrate… He was on perfectly good terms with his Jewish landlady in Vienna… Jewish art dealers in Vienna … [bought] Hitler’s rather mediocre watercolors… Romanian dictator Antonescu… sent Hitler his Jewish cook… [who] the Führer allowed to ‘Aryanize.’ However, Hitler proved less responsive to … the adjutant of his regiment during World War I… Hitler had nothing but base lies to say about his former well-wisher. Or perhaps Hitler’s spitefulness … was in fact his particular response to the great lengths that this officer---a Jewish officer---had gone to on his behalf. Could it be, then, that all his personal interactions with Jews contributed over the years not to a weakening, but rather to an intensification, of Hitler’s irrational, fanatical anti-Semitism?” (Pg. 5-6)
He observes, “The code language agreed upon by Hitler and his most intimate political advisers originated in the widespread, systematic secrecy that cloaked the euthanasia program, and it remained instrumental in later schemes… what was the meaning of the code word ‘evacuation’? … Sonderkommando Lange, who had been called in earlier to kill mental patients in Soldau, was assigned to carry out the ‘evacuation.’ ” (Pg. 20-21) Later, he adds: “After the start of the Russian campaign, the ‘Final Solution of the European Jewish question’ meant nothing other than physical extermination. ‘Elimination’ was one of the more frequently used [terms] like ‘evacuation’.” (Pg. 66)
He outlines, “we shall select a number of significant moments from the past, some of which will be brought to light for the first time, including a number of documents and statements produced by Hitler that will make clear his … commanding role in the large-scale ‘actions’ of the Final Solution. For… scholarship proceeded perhaps too hurriedly over this complex of issues when no written liquidation order from Hitler regarding the Final Solution could be found after the war in the surviving documentary evidence.’ (Pg. 42)
He quotes Reichsführer SS Himmler, and comments, “These remarks… need only the following commentary:… this soldierly order can only have been given … by Adolf Hitler; no one else stood between them in the chain of command… [Himmler] wished to make it clear to his listeners that… had the commission not come from ‘the highest level’ he could NEVER have given the command on his OWN initiative. David Irving’s contention, in his book ‘Hitler’s War,’ that … ‘never … did Himmler hint at a Führer order’ is completely unfounded… Himmler left no doubt in the minds of his listeners as to the Führer-order he had received that called for the extermination of the European Jews.” (Pg. 54-55)
He reports, “The following needs to be said concerning this description of the liquidation process in Auschwitz-Birkenau… Franke-Gricksch’s account … is a fraudulent and cynical whitewashing of death by gassing. Filip Müller, a surviving witness who had been assigned to the Auschwitz-Birkenau special prisoner commando in the crematorium recalls a liquidation action as he experienced it… The account of the SS officer and the former concentration camp prisoner concur on one fact: that the cremation capacity of the camp ovens reached up to ten thousand corpses per twenty-four hours.” (Pg. 144-145)
He suggests, “The precise count of those murdered at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp alone cannot be given with complete, attestable certainty, for the Jews ‘cleared’… from occupied Europe and deported to Auschwitz for liquidation were brought immediately ‘into the gas,’ without any prior registration in the camp index files. [Gerald] Reitlinger’s figure for Auschwitz---700,000 gassed---is undoubtedly too low.” (Pg. 174)
He concludes, “Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution ideology represented in stark reality a cult of the irrational bordering on lunacy advanced under the guise of ice-cold reason, a cult whose founder saw himself as the benefactor and savior of the Greater German Reich. Now that the huge surge of power had ebbed away and the great gamble had failed, the only remaining course for Hitler, given his painful realization of all that had happened, was suicide.” (Pg. 188-189)
This book will be “must reading” for those seeking critiques of Holocaust deniers like David Irving, and studying the Holocaust and the Nazi regime.
Saul Friedländer wrote in the Introduction to this 1984 book, “[This book] is important … as a timely resource in the growing debate among historians of Nazism… From the end of the sixties… the traditional interpretation of National Socialism has been increasingly challenged. Recently, the term ‘intentionalist’ was appended to the traditional school, the term ‘functionalist’ to the new wave.” (Pg. viii-ix) “That Hitler would have been unaware of the Final Solution up to 1943, as suggested by David Irving, goes against all evidence; that he gave an oral order sometime in the spring or summer of 1941 for the overall extermination of the Jews of Europe is highly probable, but cannot be proven with absolute certainty on the basis of existing documents… This intention does not mean that from the very beginning of his political career Hitler concretely planned the extermination of the Jews of Europe, nor does it mean that such a plan existed in 1933, 1938, or even 1940…” (Pg. xxviii-xxix)
Gerald Fleming wrote in the Author’s Preface, “This book was written in an effort to come to grips with the issues surrounding this ‘quasi-industrial’ mass extermination: How could our age produce it and, more specifically, how can we establish the links between the ‘Führer’s wish’ and its execution at different administrative levels? If I have succeeded in contributing to a clearer understanding of these controversial questions, if the following pages serve to awaken particularly the younger generation to the dangers inherent in ‘the beast in man’ and to a distrust for demagogues and zealots of whatever political leaning, then this book shall have served its purpose.”
He recounts, “Throughout his life Hitler was repeatedly indebted for the personal assistance he received or the kindness he was shown by Jews, as a few examples will illustrate… He was on perfectly good terms with his Jewish landlady in Vienna… Jewish art dealers in Vienna … [bought] Hitler’s rather mediocre watercolors… Romanian dictator Antonescu… sent Hitler his Jewish cook… [who] the Führer allowed to ‘Aryanize.’ However, Hitler proved less responsive to … the adjutant of his regiment during World War I… Hitler had nothing but base lies to say about his former well-wisher. Or perhaps Hitler’s spitefulness … was in fact his particular response to the great lengths that this officer---a Jewish officer---had gone to on his behalf. Could it be, then, that all his personal interactions with Jews contributed over the years not to a weakening, but rather to an intensification, of Hitler’s irrational, fanatical anti-Semitism?” (Pg. 5-6)
He observes, “The code language agreed upon by Hitler and his most intimate political advisers originated in the widespread, systematic secrecy that cloaked the euthanasia program, and it remained instrumental in later schemes… what was the meaning of the code word ‘evacuation’? … Sonderkommando Lange, who had been called in earlier to kill mental patients in Soldau, was assigned to carry out the ‘evacuation.’ ” (Pg. 20-21) Later, he adds: “After the start of the Russian campaign, the ‘Final Solution of the European Jewish question’ meant nothing other than physical extermination. ‘Elimination’ was one of the more frequently used [terms] like ‘evacuation’.” (Pg. 66)
He outlines, “we shall select a number of significant moments from the past, some of which will be brought to light for the first time, including a number of documents and statements produced by Hitler that will make clear his … commanding role in the large-scale ‘actions’ of the Final Solution. For… scholarship proceeded perhaps too hurriedly over this complex of issues when no written liquidation order from Hitler regarding the Final Solution could be found after the war in the surviving documentary evidence.’ (Pg. 42)
He quotes Reichsführer SS Himmler, and comments, “These remarks… need only the following commentary:… this soldierly order can only have been given … by Adolf Hitler; no one else stood between them in the chain of command… [Himmler] wished to make it clear to his listeners that… had the commission not come from ‘the highest level’ he could NEVER have given the command on his OWN initiative. David Irving’s contention, in his book ‘Hitler’s War,’ that … ‘never … did Himmler hint at a Führer order’ is completely unfounded… Himmler left no doubt in the minds of his listeners as to the Führer-order he had received that called for the extermination of the European Jews.” (Pg. 54-55)
He reports, “The following needs to be said concerning this description of the liquidation process in Auschwitz-Birkenau… Franke-Gricksch’s account … is a fraudulent and cynical whitewashing of death by gassing. Filip Müller, a surviving witness who had been assigned to the Auschwitz-Birkenau special prisoner commando in the crematorium recalls a liquidation action as he experienced it… The account of the SS officer and the former concentration camp prisoner concur on one fact: that the cremation capacity of the camp ovens reached up to ten thousand corpses per twenty-four hours.” (Pg. 144-145)
He suggests, “The precise count of those murdered at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp alone cannot be given with complete, attestable certainty, for the Jews ‘cleared’… from occupied Europe and deported to Auschwitz for liquidation were brought immediately ‘into the gas,’ without any prior registration in the camp index files. [Gerald] Reitlinger’s figure for Auschwitz---700,000 gassed---is undoubtedly too low.” (Pg. 174)
He concludes, “Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution ideology represented in stark reality a cult of the irrational bordering on lunacy advanced under the guise of ice-cold reason, a cult whose founder saw himself as the benefactor and savior of the Greater German Reich. Now that the huge surge of power had ebbed away and the great gamble had failed, the only remaining course for Hitler, given his painful realization of all that had happened, was suicide.” (Pg. 188-189)
This book will be “must reading” for those seeking critiques of Holocaust deniers like David Irving, and studying the Holocaust and the Nazi regime.
April 30, 2019
If you are interested in the study of Anti-Semitic Nazi policies, this is a good read. It discusses the intentionalist and functionalist arguments, as well as looking at the war as the most significant factor for the radicalisation of such policies. There are plenty of sources, and does not take all of them at face value!
January 1, 2016
Painstaking and exhaustive refutation of David Irving's thesis in Hitler's War that the Final Solution was all Himmler's doing.
June 29, 2016
Novelists need to know the final solution.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews