By James Joseph Martin , David Irving , Colin Cross , et al.
Published: 1960 - 01 - 01
As shocking as it may seem, no order for the extermination of the Jews
written or authorized by Adolf Hitler has ever been discovered. Popular media
frequently suggests that there is a significant amount of material from
Hitler's hand that ordered a vast extermination program. The historical evidence
is just the opposite. The result of this situation is that many historians
presume that the order was transmitted orally or through "winks and
nods." Such a position is purely theoretical and is often used to support
a predetermined historical or political bias. What follows is a series of
quotes from various historians, writers and thinkers who have examined this
question.
"There does not exist
then, anything like a written order signed by [Hitler] for the extermination of
the Jews in Europe." - Colin Cross, Adolf
Hitler, (Milan, 1977), p. 313.
* * *
"Despite the great
harvest of Nazi documents captured by the Allies at the end of the war, it is
precisely the documents concerning the process of the formation of the idea of
the final solution of the Jewish
question that are missing, to the point that up until the present it is
difficult to say how, when, and exactly by whom the order to exterminate the
Jews was given." - Lilliano Picciotto Fargion,
La congiura del silenzio (The Conspiracy of Silence), La Rassegna
mensile d'Israel, May - August 1984, p. 226.
* * *
"For in the table talk,
the speeches, the documents or the recollections of participants from all those
years not a single concrete reference of [Hitler's] to the practice of annihilation
has come down to us. No one can say how Hitler reacted to the reports of the Einsatzgruppen, whether he asked for
or saw films or photos of their work, and whether he intervened with
suggestions, praise, or blame. When we consider that he ordinarily transformed
everything that preoccupied him into rampant speechmaking, that he never
concealed his radicalism, his vulgarity, his readiness to go to extremes, this
silence about the central concern of his life - involving, as it did in his
mind, the salvation of the world - seems all the stranger." - Joachim C. Fest, Hitler (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), p. 681.
* * *
"Insofar as no one has
yet discovered a written trace of this order [to liquidate the Jews under
German control] in the sources which have been exploited up to the present, and
insofar as it seems unlikely, it is incumbent on the historian to date it as precisely
as possible by appealing to interpretation. Since the methods and the
hypotheses on this subject are very numerous, we find ourselves confronted with
very diverse opinions." - Saul Friedländer, L'Allemagne
nazie et le genocide juif, Gallimard, Le Seuil, 1985, pp. 177 - 178.
* * *
"For the want of hard
evidence - and in 1977 I offered, around the world, a thousand pounds to any
person who could produce even one wartime document showing explicitly that
Hitler knew, for example, of Auschwitz. My critics resorted to arguments
ranging from the subtle to the sledgehammer (in one instance, literally). They
postulated the existence of Fuehrer orders without the slightest written
evidence of their existence. ...Of explicit, written, wartime evidence, the kind
of evidence that could hang a man, they have produced not one line." - David Irving, Hitler's War (London: Focal Point, 1991), pp. 19 - 20.
* * *
"To the present day a
written order by Hitler regarding the destruction of the European Jewish
community has not been found, and, in all probability, this order was never
given." - Walter Laqueur, Was
niemand wissen wollte: Die Unterdruckung der Nachrichten uber Hitlers Endlösung
(What Nobody Wanted to Know: The Suppression of News About Hitler's "Final
Solution"), (Berlin - Vienna, 1981), p. 190.
* * *
"The New York Times' ... editorial (December 2, 1942) claimed
that 'Of Germany's 200,000 Jews in 1939 all but 40,000 have been deported or
have perished,' while going on to assert that 'according to evidence in the
hands of the [U.S.] State Department, an order of Adolf Hitler demanding the
extermination of all Jews in all territories controlled by Germany' was known
to exist. Researchers nearly 40 years later were still searching for that
order, or information leading to anyone who might have ever seen it at any
time." - James J. Martin, The Man
who invented 'Genocide': The Public Career and Consequences of Raphael Lemkin
(Torrance: Institute for Historical Review, 1984), p. 40.
* * *
"No written document containing
or reporting an explicit command to exterminate the Jews has come to light thus
far. This does not of course mean that such direct evidence will not appear in
the future. In the meantime, the presumption must be that the order or informal
injunction to mass - murder Jews was transmitted orally." - Arno J. Mayer, Why did the Heavens not Darken?: The 'Final Solution'
in History (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990), pp.235 - 36.
* * *
"The process by which
total extermination replaced resettlement in Madagascar or 'the East' as the so
- called final solution of the Jewish
question remains unclear. No written order by Hitler for the
extermination of the Jews has been discovered and the evidence of an oral order
is only indirect. The chronology of the development of the extermination
programme is also confused." - J. Noakes and G. Pridham,
eds., Nazism: A History in Documents and Eyewitness accounts 1919 - 1945 - Vol.
2, (New York: Schocken Books, 1988), p. 1136.
* * *
"The archives torn from
the bowels of the Third Reich, the depositions and accounts of its chiefs
permit us to reconstruct in their least detail the birth and the development of
its plans for aggression, its military campaigns, and the whole range of
processes by which the Nazis intended to reshape the world to their pattern.
Only the campaign to exterminate the Jews, as concerns its completion, as well
as in many other essential aspects, remains steeped in fog. Psychological
inferences and considerations, third - or fourth - hand accounts, allow us to
reconstruct the developments with a considerable verisimilitude. Certain
details, nevertheless, will remain unknown forever. As concerns the concept
proper of the plan for total extermination, the three or four principal actors
are dead. No document remains, and has perhaps never existed." - Leon Poliakov, Breviaire de la haine (Breviary of Hate) , Paris,
1979, p. 134.
* * *
"What became known in
high Nazi circles as the Fuehrer Order
on the Final Solution apparently was never committed to paper - at least
no copy of it has yet been unearthed in the captured Nazi documents." - William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York:
Fawcett Crest, 1960), p. 1256.
* * *
"One cannot fix the exact
moment when Hitler gave the order - without doubt never drawn up in writing - to
exterminate the Jews." - Christian Zentner, Adolf
Hitler, Mein Kampf. An edition with commentary by Christian Zentner,
Munich, 1974, p. 168.
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