The Unwritten Order: Hitler's Role in the Final Solution

by Peter Longerich

Overview

The Holocaust differs from other genocides in recent history for one main reason: there is no other example in which a minority was annihilated systematically and as completely as possible on the orders of a head of state and through the apparatus of government. To reconstruct Hitler’s central role in the Final Solution represents a particular challenge. Hitler treated the murder of the Jews as a matter of the utmost secrecy and was careful wherever possible not to leave behind any written orders. Wherever his instructions on this matter are recorded he has used codified language. He kept away from the implementation of the orders and feigned ignorance, even to his closest friends and colleagues. Under these conditions, the surviving source material can only be described as fragmentary. The Unwritten Order aims to offer documentary proof of Hitler’s central role in the murder of the European Jews. In order to achieve this aim, various documents and fragments of documents have been pieced together and the codified language of the dictator deciphered.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780750968492
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	08/04/2016
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Peter Longerich is former Director of the Research Centre for the Holocaust and 20th-century history. He was an expert witness in the celebrated trial between David Irving and Deborah Lipstadt/Penguin Books, his role to demonstrate that the murder of millions of Jews was conducted on Hitler’s orders. He is the author of Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler.

Table of Contents

	Map	7
	Preface	8
1	Remove, Annihilate, Extirpate	21
2	Complete removal of the Jews	27
3	Eradication from the cultural and intellectual life of the Nation	41
4	Attempting a legal solution to a problem	49
5	The Jews must be expelled from Germany, from the whole of Europe	59
6	All measures against the Jews are to be discussed directly with the Fuhrer	73
7	Granting a merciful death	77
8	An attempt at the settlement and regulation of the Jewish Problem	85
9	Some time in the future we want to ship the Jews out to Madagascar	91
10	According to the will of the Fuhrer	95
11	The Jewish-Bolshevik Intelligentsia... must be eliminated	105
12	...Shoot everyone who even looks odd	115
13	It is good if the terror that we are exterminating the Jews goes before us	127
14	We are experiencing the fulfilment of this prophecy	137
15	The World War is here, the extermination of the Jews must be the necessary consequence	153
16	After appropriate prior approval by the Fuhrer	159
17	In this matter the Fuhrer is the untiring pioneer and spokesman for a radical solution	167
18	The Fuhrer has laid the implementation of this very difficult order on my shoulders	175
19	In accordance with the wishes of the Fuhrer	187
20	To be treated like tuberculosis bacilli	195
21	By removing the Jews	205
	List of Abbreviations	214
	Notes	216
	Bibliography	241
	Index	253

Editorial Reviews

"Peter Longerich is one of the leading German authorities on the Holocaust." —Ian Kershaw

From the Publisher

Breaking news, at least of a kind: Adolf Hitler played a central role in the Holocaust. There seems little surprising in that thesis, which is apparently self-evident. But it is not: because Hitler took great care not to issue instructions or to specify procedures in writing, documentary evidence linking Hitler to mass murder is scarce; thus Holocaust deniers have argued that the enormity was the doing of misguided lieutenants, and not of the Fuhrer. British historian Longerich drafted this work as expert testimony for the defense in the 1997 libel suit brought by one such apologist, David Irving, against Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust. His argument provides beyond-reasonable-doubt evidence that Hitler's political career was bracketed, from start to finish, by deep-seated bloodlust against the Jews, "a murderous intention that was expressed over and over again, internally and in public speeches, by the leader of the Nazi Party, the head of state and commander of the armed forces," and that Hitler saw to it that his intentions were made real. Though many hands were required to effect the Nazi program of genocide, and though German anti-Semitism had deep roots, Hitler took the guiding role in shaping every phase of the regime's anti-Jewish policies and actions, rejecting programs that originated with others within the Reich, such as Heinrich Himmler's proposal to resettle European Jews in Madagascar, prefaced with modest words of dissent to the effect that Himmler had dismissed "Bolshevist methods for the physical extirpation of a people as un-German and impossible." Hitler had no such scruples, Longerich demonstrates, and though direct orders have yet to be found, thefact that "Hitler had expressed himself in the most drastic manner imaginable about the 'solution' to the Jewish question" means that Nazi responsibility for the crime cannot be separated from the will of the Nazis' supreme leader. Even if those whom it is meant to sway will likely reject it out of hand, students of the Nazi era will find Longerich's work of much value.

Kirkus Reviews