TlsMS93 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 24, 2025 10:54 am
What did you refute? What correspondence was the Germans trying to deny what the Allies were saying in their presses? “Write there, you filthy Jew, there is no gas chamber here, we live better here in this camp than you do in the free world”? How would correspondence between individuals provoke a response to extraordinary allegations of extermination?
This involves more than 'the Allies'.
When deportations begin the Germans can either offer an explanation or go silent towards multiple audiences:
1) what they say to their own officials inside the local and national bureaucracies
2) what they say to the German public via media inside Germany
3) what they say to Axis allies and collaborator states (Slovakia, Vichy France)
4) what they say *about* handovers from Axis allies like Slovakia
5) what they say to neutral diplomats and international organisations like the ICRC making private enquiries
6) what they say to Jewish councils at national (Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Netherlands) or municipal (Lodz, Warsaw etc) levels
7) what they say to non-Jewish populations in occupied territories where there is German media, as was the case in France, the Netherlands, the Generalgouvernement
Because this involved multiple offices across multiple countries and regions, there was very poor coordination for private claims to Axis allies, Jewish councils, etc, little to no publicity in official German media except to mention some Axis contributions, with zero publicity for deportations from the Reich, and limited acknowledgement of ghetto clearances in e.g. the Generalgouvernement, leaving the field wide open for the Polish underground press and for local knowledge to spread among the Polish and Polish Jewish population.
The result was that the Polish and Ukrainian populations often became convinced that they were next in line for extermination, which was given further credence by the Zamosc action beginning in November 1942, which followed the main run of deportations of Jews in the Generalgouvernement. Further east, an even greater dearth of media and communication meant that some Belarusians, Ukrainians and Russians also became convinced that the Germans would move on to slaughtering Slavs once the Jews had been exterminated.
Not bothering to come up with convincing cover stories for all of the potential audiences meant that the cover stories offered contradicted each other. Petain's cabinet heard in July 1942 before the onset of mass arrests and larger-scale deportations from France that the Germans had supposedly said the immigrant Jews were basically being 'repatriated' to Poland, mentioning the Lublin region. In 1942 no Jews from France were deported anywhere near the Lublin region, they all were deported to Silesia and Auschwitz. Internally, the Germans in France constantly referred to Auschwitz, and despite some discussion of shipping Jews from France to the Generalgouvernement (which dates from after the French cabinet meeting), all the transports went to Auschwitz in 1942. So the French authorities, pursuing a policy of collaboration, had been misinformed or had misunderstood what they were being told. Eventually, months later, the Pariser Zeitung reprinted an article from a Slovakian ethnic German journalist who visited labour camps in Silesia to the west of Auschwitz (the Schmelt camps).
Nearly every formal Axis ally - Italy, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Finland - concluded by autumn 1942 that the Germans were exterminating the Jews, while Slovakia was also unsettled by 1943, and Bulgaria rejected plans to deport Jews from prewar Bulgaria in the same year after a parliamentary debate. The number of private attempts to reassure these allies about German policy was minimal, the main protocolled example was Himmler speaking to Mussolini in autumn 1942 and lying. But Italian diplomats and military staffs had concluded otherwise based on being out in the east and on policies in the Balkans, as well as the reports from their Berlin embassy.
The Germans thus had a colonial arrogance to the peoples of occupied Eastern Europe, especially the Poles, an arrogance within their own Axis alliance, and a continent-wide arrogance towards neutrals who might make enquiries. This is before we even get to their arrogance to the Allies.
The Germans also
did respond to the UN Declaration of 17 December 1942 on the extermination of the Jews, but did so weakly, by trying to deflect attention to the British empire. Goebbels admitted as much when he learned of the Allied press coverage rising up before the declaration, saying "we do not have all that much to bring forth by way of counter-evidence" on December 12, 1942. The same day, he wrote in his diary that
The atrocity campaign about Poland and the Jewish Question is assuming enormous dimensions on the other side. I fear that over time we cannot master the issue with silence. We have to have some kind of answer... It is best to go over to the offensive and talk about English atrocities in India or the Middle East. Perhaps that will get the English to keep quiet. In any case, by doing so, we change the subject and raise another issue.
Two days later, Goebbels admitted that “there can be no question of a complete or practical refutation of the allegations of anti-Jewish atrocities.”
(HC critique, pp.67-68)
The correct cope for this PR disaster is to note that the Third Reich was a polycracy and there was extremely poor coordination between ministries and organisations, in this case between the SS and the Propaganda Ministry. The Germans did not make things easier for themselves by applying extreme need-to-know and also restricting the flow of information from other countries.
But, there *was* coordination on some issues, so the 'Final Solution' conferences following Wannsee in March and October 1942 contributed to the knowledge of officials in different ministries and regions of extermination, 'off the record'.
There also *were* various departments in the Propaganda Ministry, Foreign Office and RSHA who monitored foreign press reporting, and might even ask regional authorities about this.
“Top Secret” telegram from Promi to the Presseabteilung of the Government General and the Propagandaabteilung Warschau, concerning charges of mass executions in the Warsaw Ghetto published in the “Daily Telegraph,” September 9, 1942 Promi asked for information about the “Daily Telegraph” report, according to which 700,000 Jews had been murdered in the Warsaw Ghetto, and 40,000 in Chelmno. - YIVO Occ E2-72
https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/7 ... ts/1344721
This was in reaction to an article 'Gas Chamber Massacres, Nazi Slaughter of Polish Jews', Daily Telegraph, September 3, 1942, p.3, which cited 'news reaching the Polish government in London', specifying as the telegram summarised, 7000 being deported from Warsaw per day 'ostensibly for deportation, but actually for execution', without naming Treblinka.
The source was further clarified as Shmuel Zygielbojm, the Bund representative on the Polish National Council, at a meeting of the Labour Party to protest atrocities in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Zygielbojm referred to the Bund report noting the earlier estimate to May 1942 of 700,000 deaths, which the Promi telegram also included, as well as gas chambers, highlighting Chelmno - "in Chelmno 40,000 people were gassed in only 50 days".
If one misread the dating on the website European style - 9/7/42 one might think this was premature, as on July 9, 1942, there were no deportations from Warsaw but there had been publicity abouf the Bund report.
There were precisely two articles between 1942-44 that clearly mentioned Chelmno in much of the British press - Times, Telegraph, Daily Mail, Economist and many other papers are all in the same database (Gale Primary Sources). Both articles appeared in the Telegraph in 1942. While the Polish government in exile note of December 1942 on the extermination of Polish Jews also IIRC mentioned Chelmno, the camp name wasn't repeated in the late 1942 reports, instead emphasising Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. The name of Treblinka wasn't known outside Poland until late November 1942.
So the German propaganda apparatus had almost three months to formulate a response to news of deportations from the Warsaw ghetto, arguably four and a half months since this could have been coordinated and planned from the start of the action on July 22, 1942. No public comment on the Warsaw deportations from German sources is known, although maybe rescrutinising Krakauer Zeitung might find a passing allusion at some point. The Krakauer Zeitung had referred retrospectively to the evacuation of the Lublin ghetto earlier in the summer, but said nothing as the deportations unfolded in March-April 1942.
The Propaganda Ministry sent its query to the press department of the Generalgouvernement. Press offices of corporations and government departments are almost always the last to know of anything dramatic or scandalous, since they might not be informed of awkward or illegal actions. But the whole of the civil administration in the GG had been muscled out from the Warsaw action - Auerswald as commissar of the Jewish residential district had been shoved aside by the SS, Ludwig Fischer as district governor was not officially informed of more than the deportation numbers via the Jewish council reports, and no destination further east.
Koerber of the Propaganda Ministry could potentially have asked Goebbels himself, who passed through Warsaw in August 1942 and was given the internal cover-story of evacuation to the east, no destination specified, even though Goebbels had received the Einsatzgruppen reports, Wannsee protocol and had been informed of Globocnik's camps unofficially in March 1942 and likely knew better. But presumably Koerber was many rungs separate to the minister and could not easily phone him up or buttonhole him in the corridor to the ministerial cafeteria or whatever.
Goebbels had had 15 months to think about how to spin deportations, and from late October 1941 had simply prohibited any reporting of deportations of Jews from the Reich, when the first big wave began that autumn. He had a year between hearing Hitler announce the 'annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe' to the Reichsleiter and Gauleiter and the UN Declaration, and nine months between hearing of Globocnik's camps and the UN Declaration.
So the helplessness of his remarks in December 1942 is all the more striking. On December 14 he additionally remarked,
“We can’t respond to these things. If the Jews say that we’ve shot 2.5 million Jews in Poland or deported them to the east, naturally we can’t say that it was actually only 2.3 million. So we’re not in a position to get involved in a dispute, at least not in front of world opinion.” (Longerich, Goebbels, p. 639)
Goebbels would have known that the reports were now of extermination camps and not just 'deportations to the east'. Certainly the regime as a whole, including the RSHA and Foreign Office press monitoring offices, knew this.
Thus, the German government, media and authorities across Europe surrendered the playing field already in 1942 and lost the ability to shape the narrative or put a spin on their Jewish policy of deportations.
But they COULD have tried to shape the narrative and done a much better job of coordinating publicity, PR lines and Potemkin villages to contradict the claims being heard by "world opinion", and done a much better job of doing this toward the peoples of occupied Europe, their Axis allies, and other audiences.
They also DID circulate cover stories to SOME audiences. The Party Chancellery sent out a confidential circular to NSDAP offices on October 9, 1942 (3244-PS):
For that reason, the complete expulsion or separation of the millions of Jews residing in the European economic domain is a compelling commandment in the struggle to secure the existence of the German people. Beginning with the territory of the Reich and leading to the rest of the European nations included in the final solution, the Jews will be continuously transported to the east into large camps, some existing, some still to be constructed, from whence they will either be put to work or be taken still farther to the east. The old Jews, as well as the Jews with high war decorations (Iron Cross, First Class; Golden Medal for Bravery etc.) will continue to be resettled in the city of Theresienstadt located in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
That was just ONE of the potential audiences that might need to be reassured or have the deportations explained to them, but the Germans could not be bothered to do the PR work to explain things to Poles, the neutrals/ICRC, etc.
They also failed to provide back-up evidence for the hopelessly vague cover story noted above. So when an actual German journalist, Dr Hans-Joachim Kausch, toured Ukraine in June 1943, he found no Jews 'taken still farther to the east' but instead learned of mass murder:
On the Jewish question we hear quite unequivocal and clearcut statements. There were 1.1 million Jews among the 16 million inhabitants of the territory of the Ukrainian civil administration. They have been liquidated without remainder. As a matter of fact, during our entire trip, we saw only four Jews; they worked as tailors in a penal camp of the SD. As the last group the Jewish artisans were liquidated. During some executions Hungarian or Slovak officers took photographs which afterwards found their way to America. This was considered particularly unpleasant. The Ukrainians watched the execution of the Jews with relative indifference. Some villages resisted the last executions last winter. A senior official from the Reich Commissariat summed up the execution with the words: “Jews were exterminated like bugs.”
(YIVO Occ E4-11)
The German Foreign Office representative in the Generalgouvernement confirmed the curiosity of Axis allies in a report of November 1943, noting that Hungarian officers photographed mass graves of Jews near Stanislawow (NG-3522). An ethnic German resident of Stanislawow had complained directly to Ribbentrop in April 1942 about mass shootings of Jews in Stanislawow as well as in the neighbouring towns of Tartarów, Delatyn, Kossów, Kolomea and Rohatyn. (VEJ and PMJ 9/62, transcribing from PA AA, Inland II A/B 67/3, fol. 2433r–v).
With allies and citizens like these, who needs enemies?
