Poznan speeches

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Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler (1942)

The Posen speeches were two secret speeches that the Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler on 4 and 6 October 1943 in the town hall of at that time the incorporated German Reich Polish city of Poznan held (Poznań). Your notes are the first known documents from the time of National Socialism in which a high-ranking member of the government openly spoke and glorified the extermination of European Jews taking place at the time in front of a select audience . They prove that the Nazi regime wanted, planned and carried out the Holocaust .

overview

The Poznan speeches of October 1943 are two of 132 speeches, preserved in various forms, that Himmler gave between 1925 and 1945 to officials of the NSDAP and the Nazi regime. He gave the first speech to 92 SS officers, the second to Reich and Gauleiter as well as other government representatives. They are among his most important speeches during the war, which show his role as the “architect of the final solution ” and visionary of a future “SS state” supported by a “ race elite”.

Although the genocide of the Jews was not the central theme in them, both speeches received their historical significance as its documents since 1945. Himmler renounced the otherwise usual cover-up terms and spoke explicitly about the "extermination of the Jews", which he presented as a historical mission of National Socialism . In five other speeches between December 1943 and June 1944 before commanders of the Wehrmacht he became clear in this regard.

Until 1970, only the first lecture was known in literature as the “Poznan Speech”. The second speech discovered at that time is often confused or equated with the first.

Historical context

Himmler delivered the Poznan speeches at a time when German warfare suffered constant setbacks in World War II , which increasingly unsettled the Nazi leadership elite. The Allies had at the Casablanca Conference that in January 1943 unconditional surrender of Germany decided to be the only acceptable war aim. The victory of the Soviet Union on February 2, 1943 in the Battle of Stalingrad marked the turn of the war. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced on February 12 that those chiefly responsible for war and genocide would be prosecuted ; this was followed by the United States Congress on March 18. Allied troops had landed in Sicily on July 7th and were gradually advancing northwards after the Cassibile armistice between Italy and the Allies on September 8th. On October 1st, Naples liberated itself from German occupation in a popular uprising .

The Red Army also launched a successful summer offensive on July 17, during which partisans blew up many rail connections behind the Eastern Front on August 3 . In the week from July 27 to August 3, Allied air strikes destroyed Hamburg with Operation Gomorrah , and on August 18 with Operation Hydra , the Peenemünde Army Research Station was also destroyed . At the same time, resistance against the German occupiers, who declared a state of emergency in Norway (August 17) and Denmark (August 29), grew . Opposition Germans planned a reorganization of Germany ( Kreisau Circle ) and assassinations of Adolf Hitler (" Enterprise Valkyrie "). On September 4, he ordered the “ scorched earthstrategy for the foreseeable withdrawal of the Eastern Front and a right of standing for those who refused to obey orders in the Wehrmacht, which was initially introduced in the General Government on October 2 .

Former forced laborers from special action 1005 demonstrate the function of a bone mill in the Lemberg-Janowska forced labor camp (August 1944).

During the same period, the extermination of the Jews became the most important war goal for the Nazi regime. In the spring of 1943, the bodies of the Einsatzgruppen massacres on the entire Eastern Front were exhumed and burned in Sonderaktion 1005 in order to erase the traces of the genocide of 1.8 million Jews. On June 11th, Himmler ordered the "liquidation" of all Jewish ghettos in Poland, and on June 21st that of all Jewish ghettos in the Soviet Union. On June 25, four new crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were completed. On July 1st, all Jews in the German Reich were placed under police law, extradited to police arbitrariness and completely disenfranchised, as were their helpers. On August 24, Himmler was appointed Reich Minister of the Interior , so that all police forces in the Reich and in the conquered areas were subordinate to him. " Aktion Reinhardt " was to be ended by October 19, and three of the extermination camps set up for this purpose were to be closed.

In Poland there was an uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto (April 19 to May 16), the Treblinka uprising (August 2) and the Sobibór uprising (October 14); Jewish residents of Białystok opposed the dissolution of the ghetto there (August 16-23). In Denmark, the local population helped most of the Danish Jews scheduled for arrest to escape (October 1st and 2nd). In Germany, church representatives condemned the killing of innocent lives (Catholic pastoral letter , August 19) for reasons of age, disease and race ( Confessing Church , October 16).

Speech of October 4, 1943

Sound and writing recordings

Himmler's speech on October 4, 1943 in Posen

Himmler did not prepare most of his speeches in advance, but kept them on the basis of brief handwritten notes. Since the end of 1942, his oral lectures were no longer recorded in shorthand, but recorded on wax records. Untersturmführer Werner Alfred Venn typed these sound recordings and corrected some obvious grammatical errors or added missing words. Himmler corrected this rough version again by hand; the text so authorized was copied again on a typewriter with large types and then filed.

The final typewritten version of 115 pages of Himmler's three-hour speech on October 4, 1943 (one sheet was lost) was found in the SS files and presented as Document 1919-PS at the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals . On the 23rd day of the trial, a passage was quoted that did not, however, concern the Holocaust. The audio recording of this speech has also been preserved, so that the differences between the spoken and the edited text version can be checked: They are minor and in no way distort the meaning.

Addressees, occasion and purpose

The New Town Hall in Poznan on a picture postcard from 1916

Himmler did not give the first Poznan speech, as often mistakenly assumed, in the Poznan Castle , but in the Poznan City Hall . 33 Obergruppenführer, 51 Gruppenführer and eight brigade leaders of the SS from all over the Reich were present at the SS-Gruppenführer conference there (leadership level of the SS). Many of them came from the occupied territories of Eastern Europe . Large parts of the speech therefore concerned the precarious situation on the Eastern Front. The war and resistance successes of the " Slavs " as alleged subhumans required an explanation in order to prepare the SS officers for the impending hard fighting in the third winter of the Russian War.

Only about two minutes of the speech dealt with the murders of the Jews. In doing so, Himmler assumed his listeners' experience of mass shootings, ghetto liquidations and extermination camps or their knowledge of them. The speech should justify crimes already committed and swear the listeners to their "higher purpose". For this purpose, the text of the speech was also sent to high SS officers who were not present (around fifty) for their information, which they had to confirm. The relentless portrayal of the genocide is therefore interpreted as a means of making the high-ranking SS and NSDAP functionaries formally aware of and accomplices in its implementation.

On the course of the war

After honoring the dead, Himmler presents his view of the course of the war. The tough Russian resistance can be traced back to the political commissioners . A Russian attack had been narrowly anticipated, and the failure of the allies resulted in victory in 1942 being given away. Himmler speculates about the potential of the Russian army, makes derogatory comments about the " Vlasov hype", spreads about the inferiority of the "Slavic race" and adds thoughts about how a German minority could rule there.

In later passages Himmler talks about Italy, whose army is contaminated by communists and has an Anglo-American attitude, and touches on the situation in the Balkans and the other occupied territories, whose acts of resistance he disregards as annoying pinpricks. He briefly discusses air and sea warfare and then turns to the “inner front”. Enemy transmitters and air strikes caused defeatism , and one had to set examples as a deterrent.

Then Himmler devotes himself to the "situation on the enemy side"; speculates about the relationship between England (meaning United Kingdom ) and the USA as well as about their resilience and willingness to go to war. He goes into detail on personnel changes in the SS, individual divisions and police associations, outlines his tasks as Reich Minister and those of the SS business enterprises.

To treat the peoples of Eastern Europe

In his sketch of the course of the war in the East, Himmler also comments on the mass deaths of Soviet prisoners of war and forced laborers in the millions . As in pre-war speeches and in agreement with Hitler's remarks in Mein Kampf , he speaks of the fact that the eradication of the Slavic “subhumans” is a historical and natural necessity. Here is "mind in the wrong place":

“One principle must absolutely apply to the SS man: honest, decent, loyal and comradely we have to be to members of our own blood and to no one else. How the Russians are doing, how the Czechs are doing is totally indifferent to me. What good blood of our kind is present in the peoples, we will get by robbing them of their children, if necessary, and bringing them up with us. Whether the other peoples live in prosperity or whether they perish from hunger, that interests me only insofar as we need them as slaves for our culture, otherwise I am not interested. Whether or not 10,000 Russian women fall from exhaustion when an anti-tank ditch is being built is only of interest to me insofar as the anti-tank ditch is ready for Germany. "

"Extermination of the Jewish People"

Then Himmler speaks about the genocide of the Jews in an unveiled language that had not been heard by a representative of the Nazi regime before:

“I mean now the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. It's one of those things that is easy to pronounce. - 'The Jewish people will be exterminated,' says every party member, 'very clearly, it is in our program, elimination of the Jews, extermination, we do.' [...] Of all those who talk like that, none of them watched, none of them got through it. Most of you will know what it means when 100 corpses are lying together, when 500 are lying there, or when 1000 are lying there. To have persevered and to have remained decent - apart from exceptional human weaknesses - that has made us hard and is a glorious page of our history that has never been written and never written. Because we know how difficult it would be if we still had the Jews as secret saboteurs , agitators and agitators in every city today - with the bombing , with the burdens and hardships of war . We would probably now have reached the stage of 1916/17 if the Jews were still part of the German national body . "

Then Himmler praised the "attitude" of the SS men and spreads on around 30 of 116 pages about their alleged "virtues" and about their task of becoming the leading class in Europe in 20 to 30 years.

Speech of October 6, 1943

Records, discovery, publication

From the second Poznan speech, both Himmler's brief speech notes and the full text of the speech, which was typed based on shorthand and corrected in detail, as well as the final version authorized by Himmler have been preserved. All three versions were in the files of the " Personal Staff Reichsführer SS ", whose documents were completely confiscated by the US authorities in 1945.

The speeches recorded on microfilm in the USA were handed over to the Federal Archives . During the evaluation of these now accessible documents, the historian Erich Goldhagen discovered this previously unknown speech in Koblenz in 1970 . It was first printed in full in 1974 in the selection of Himmler's secret speeches edited by Bradley Smith and Agnes Peterson.

Reason, purpose, relevance

At the end of September 1943, the party chancellery had invited all Reich and Gauleiter, Reich Youth Leader Artur Axmann and Reich Ministers Albert Speer and Alfred Rosenberg to a conference. The conference began on October 6th at 9:00 am with speeches by Speer, his speakers and four major industrialists on arms production. Lectures by Karl Dönitz and Erhard Milch followed before Himmler gave his speech from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. It is shorter than the first Poznan speech, but contains a somewhat longer and unmistakable passage on genocide. It is mostly mentioned in connection with the question of whether Albert Speer had knowledge of the Holocaust during the war. After the war he always denied having been present at this speech, which addressed the murder of the Jews in unmistakable terms, although Himmler (in the recordings contained in the speech) seems to address Albert Speer personally at one point.

Start of speech

In his speech, Himmler first addressed the partisans in Russia and the support provided by the Vlasov auxiliary force. The widespread idea that behind the German front there is a 300-kilometer-wide belt that is ruled by partisans is wrong. It is often said that Russia can only be defeated by Russians. This thought is wrong and dangerous. Slavs are fundamentally unreliable and Russian volunteers are only allowed to be used as fighters in mixed groups.

The danger from infiltrated parachutists, fugitive prisoners of war and forced laborers is low, since the German population is “in an impeccable condition and does not give the enemy shelter” and the police have the problem under control. A "Gau special troop" called for by some Gau leaders against an uprising in the country is unnecessary and inadmissible.

About the "Jewish Question"

Then Himmler leads "in this very narrow circle" over to the " Jewish question ", which he describes as "the most difficult question of my life":

“I ask you to really only hear what I am telling you in this circle and never to talk about it. The question came up to us: How about the women and children? - I have decided to find a very clear solution here too. I did not think I was entitled to exterminate the men - that is, to kill or have them killed - and to let the avengers in the form of children grow up for our sons and grandchildren. The difficult decision had to be made to let this people disappear from the earth. For the organization that had to do the job, it was the hardest we have ever had. [...]
I felt obliged to speak to you as the highest will-bearers, as the highest dignitaries of the party, of this political order, this political instrument of the Fuehrer, once again quite openly about this question and to say how it was is. - The Jewish question in the countries occupied by us will be settled by the end of this year. There will only be remnants of individual Jews who have slipped into hiding. "

Once again, Himmler justified the Holocaust with the Allied air strikes. He is convinced that "we would not have endured the bombing war, the stresses of the fourth and perhaps the coming fifth and sixth year of the war, and would not have endured if we still had this plague in our national body."

Comment on Albert Speer

Himmler refers to the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto (April 19 to May 16, 1943) and the heavy fighting there. He introduces this passage ironically:

“So this whole ghetto made fur coats, dresses and the like. If you wanted to get there earlier, it was said: stop! You are disrupting the war economy! Stop! Armaments factory! - Of course this has nothing to do with Party comrade Speer, you cannot do anything about it. It is the part of alleged arms factories that Party comrade Speer and I want to clean up together over the next few weeks. "

Photo of the boy from the Warsaw Ghetto , probably taken during the ghetto uprising in 1943

Albert Speer, Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunition since 1942 , was Reich Minister for Armaments and War Economics since September 2, 1943, responsible for all German armaments production. Some of the Jewish slave laborers employed there had been exempted from deportations for extermination until 1943 . After 1945 Speer always claimed that he had left the conference before Himmler's speech began and that he knew nothing about the Holocaust. However , several historians consider Himmler's direct address - “ You can't do anything” - as proof of his presence. Gitta Sereny refers to a meeting between Speer and several Gauleiter the following day and considers it “simply impossible that he didn't know anything about Himmler's speech, whether he was sitting there or not.” In 1971, Erich Goldhagen accused Speer of having his Presence at Himmler's speech was silent. Speer then wrote in a private letter to a friend: “There is no doubt. I was there when Himmler announced on October 6, 1943 that all Jews would be killed. ”He was afraid that he would now be seen as a liar in front of her. Later, on the other hand, he had two contemporary witnesses confirm under oath that he had left before Himmler's speech.

More content

In his speech, Himmler then goes into the liberation of Duce Benito Mussolini ( Oak Company ), whose overthrow led to defeatism . Some death sentences for corrosive statements are a chilling warning to thousands of others. Party members must always behave in an exemplary manner.

Himmler then goes into his duties as Reich Minister of the Interior; According to the will of the Führer, the party organization and the administrative apparatus will continue to be two different pillars. Decentralized decisions are important, but central orders take priority in the tense war situation. Himmler criticized the personnel policy of Gauleiter in a general way. In the last part of his speech, Himmler reports in detail on the achievements of the Waffen SS . At the end, he once again emphasizes the goal of moving the German nationality border for a 120 million people by 500 kilometers to the east, and ends with the appeal:

“When we see this, then faith will never leave us, we will never be unfaithful, we will never be cowardly, never be in a bad mood, but we will try to be worthy of having lived under Adolf Hitler and to fight with us allowed to."

More speeches

Statements about the “total solution to the Jewish question” in five other secret speeches by Himmler confirm his statements in Poznan. On December 16, 1943, he said to commanders of the Navy in Weimar :

“[…] I basically gave the order to have the women and children of these partisans and commissioners killed. I would be a weakling and a criminal against our descendants, if I let the hateful sons of these subhumans, which we killed in the struggle of man against subhuman, grow up. "

A handwritten note from Himmler's speech on January 26, 1944 in Posen to generals of the fighting troops reads:

"In the GG [Generalgouvernement] greatest calming since the solution d. Jewish question. - racial struggle . Total solution. Not avenger f. let our children arise. "

On May 5, 1944, Himmler told generals in Sonthofen that holding out in the bombing war was only possible because the Jews in Germany had previously been "expelled". Then he paraphrased Hitler's statement of January 30, 1939 before the Greater German Reichstag : "If you once again incite the European peoples into war against one another, it will not mean the extermination of the German people, but the extermination of the Jews." He continued :

“The Jewish question has been resolved in Germany and in general in the areas occupied by Germany. [...] You may empathize with me how difficult it was to fulfill this soldier's order, which I obeyed and carried out out of obedience and out of complete conviction. When you say: 'We see it in men, but not in children', I may remind you of what I said in my first remarks. [...] We are m. E. Even as Germans, with all the emotions coming so deeply from our hearts, not entitled to let the hate-filled avengers grow up, so that our children and our grandchildren have to deal with them because we, the fathers and grandfathers, are too weak and were too cowardly and left it up to them. "

The sound recording of another Sonthofen speech to generals on May 24, 1944 allows applause to be heard at the following passage:

“Another question that was decisive for the internal security of the Reich and Europe was the Jewish question. It was uncompromisingly resolved according to orders and intellectual knowledge [applause]. […] I did not consider myself justified - namely, that concerns Jewish women and children - to let the avengers grow up in children […] I would have thought that was cowardly. Hence the question was resolved uncompromisingly. At the moment, however - it is strange in this war - we are initially introducing 100,000 and later 100,000 male Jews from Hungary into concentration camps, with which we are building underground factories. But not one of them somehow comes into the field of vision of the German people. "

On June 21, 1944, Himmler said during the ideological and political training of the generals in Sonthofen:

“It was the most terrible task and the most terrible assignment that an organization could get: the assignment to solve the Jewish question. I can say this again in all frankness with a few sentences in this circle. It is good that we had the hardship to exterminate the Jews in our area. "

Also in Poznan, on August 3, 1944, shortly after the failed assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 , Himmler gave a speech to the Reich and Gauleiter of the NSDAP.

reception

Historical classification

The Nazi regime kept the Holocaust strictly secret from the outside world, but was only able to organize and carry it out with the participation of all relevant officials from the state and the party (cf. contemporary knowledge of the Holocaust ). The Poznan speeches look back on the mass murders that have already taken place and show how these and other acts of extermination were ideologically justified. The "extermination" of the "enemy within", the "Jewish race", had become a war goal: "Successes" in this area were also intended to compensate for defeats in the course of the war.

Saul Friedländer emphasizes Himmler's self-image as an absolutely obedient executor of Hitler's plans for the Germanic " living space in the east ":

“The Reichsführer regularly presented the extermination of the Jews as a heavy responsibility which the 'Führer' had given him and which was therefore not up for discussion; this task required incessant dedication and a constant spirit of self-sacrifice from him and his men. "

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This corresponded to Himmler's endeavors to oblige the listeners of his Posen speeches to persevere and continue the complete "extermination of the Jews" and thus to develop morally as the future leadership elite. This is often analyzed as a perversion of positive values ​​such as "decency", "honor" and "loyalty" - here in relation to perseverance in mass murder. Konrad Kwiet sees Himmler's speeches as examples of a new " ethics " and conscious education for mass murder, which shielded the perpetrators from the suffering of their victims and from becoming aware of their crimes after the war :

“It is precisely this monstrous connection between murder and morality, between crime and decency, that hits the core of the perpetrator mentality. As part of a Nazi ethic of this kind, a completely new concept of decency was created and made an obligation. Hannah Arendt coined the formula for the ' banality of evil ', other authors emphasize the 'normality of crime'. Almost all of the perpetrators were indeed characterized by the ability to return to the routine of everyday life after the murder was committed and to lead a 'normal' life. Most reacted with surprise, confusion and anger when they were identified in the course of the Nazi prosecution and reminded of the past. Ignorance and innocence were emphasized in court. With a few exceptions, the murderers were spared the traumatic experiences they left behind for the surviving victims. "

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The social psychologist Harald Welzer uses the example of the Posen speeches to illustrate the main features of Himmler's “ethics of decency”, namely not to enrich oneself personally and not to derive any personal advantage from the crimes, but to do everything “for the sake of a higher purpose”.

"In fact, this form of National Socialist morality - which also provides that one can certainly suffer from the 'dirty work' that one has to do murderously - allows one to murder and not feel bad in a moral sense."

According to Hans Buchheim , the perpetrators addressed had an awareness of injustice. Himmler's revaluation of military virtues was not an absolute negation of moral norms, but their suspension for the exceptional situation of the "extermination of the Jews", which was passed off as a historical necessity. That is why Himmler also approved murders of Jews without orders, but for the "right" ideological motives, while he had such murders prosecuted out of sadism or self-interest.

According to Hans Mommsen , Himmler's primary concern in disclosing the Holocaust was to dispel the impression of the leading Nazi officials that it was solely a matter of his private project. With the two speeches he tried to "distribute the responsibility over many shoulders". This succeeded only imperfectly, since the speech had indirectly contributed to the “strategy of planned escaping responsibility” for the Holocaust, which was presented purely as a matter for Himmler and the SS, to which all the necessary competencies were gladly left.

The historian Peter Hayes describes the speech as the “epitome of the attitude of the perpetrators, who deceived themselves about it and distanced themselves from what they did: they never admitted to having tortured and murdered, they always had a“ sacred purpose ” who protected them from the accusation of having acted immorally.

Holocaust denial

Holocaust deniers try again and again to question the probative value of the Poznan speeches for the planning and implementation of the Holocaust by the Nazi regime. In doing so, they pursue opposing, logically mutually exclusive lines of argument. Some claim that the first speech was completely forged, others on the other hand that it was genuine, only the passages on the extermination of the Jews were forged or incorrectly translated.

The first thesis was represented by Wilhelm St Tages in his book The Auschwitz Myth from 1979 with the following unsubstantiated claims: A secret speech would not have been recorded permanently. Most of the addressees addressed as perpetrators were not involved in the murders of the Jews. Himmler's voice cannot be identified on the record. The speaker's statement was wrong, the 25-point program of the NSDAP from 1920 already called for the "extermination of the Jews". One of the top party leaders responsible for propaganda could not have been wrong. The speaker also presented this extermination as completed in October 1943: This contradicts the prevailing historical view of the Holocaust. That is why the Allies must have forged the speech documents for the first Nuremberg trial. The statements of some accused are credible, not remembering the content of the speech or their presence. - Himmler's obvious intention, confirmed by his further speeches, to let those not directly involved in the "open secret" ( Frank Bajohr , Dieter Pohl) of the Holocaust and to make them knowledgeable about the Holocaust, disregarded every day.

Germar Rudolf and Udo Walendy claimed that a voice impersonator appointed by the Allies after 1945 gave the first speech.

David Irving , on the other hand, assumed the authenticity of the records, but claimed that the passages on the extermination of the Jews had been inserted into the typescript with a different typewriter and numbered with a different script. Elsewhere, Irving claimed that Himmler delivered the text of the documented speech, but only meant "extermination" as a metaphor . His testimony of 100 to 1000 people lying together, which most of those present had seen, referred to soldiers who had fallen in the First World War , not to murdered Jews.

But other secret speeches by Himmler were also recorded in the same way in sound and writing and can be clearly assigned to this speaker independently of one another. They confirm every doubted detail of the first speech. In particular, the discovery of the second Poznan speech in the Koblenz Federal Archives ripped off the falsification hypotheses. The "most open and most striking text passage about the extermination of the Jews" contained therein leaves no room for reinterpretations. For this reason, historical science rejects the claims of the Holocaust deniers as unfounded, deliberate misdirection without a factual basis.

Artistic processing

At the beginning of the third part of his 7-hour film Hitler, a film from Germany (1977), Hans-Jürgen Syberberg quotes longer passages from the Himmler speech of October 4, on the one hand from the mouth of his Himmler actor Heinz Schubert himself SS men who were not shown as off votes.

In the documentary the decent one has Vanessa Lapa 2014 leave the key sentences of the speech repeat of actors.

In 2000, Romuald Karmakar recalled the October 4th speech in his film The Himmler Project . The actor Manfred Zapatka speaks the entire text of the speech in a sober manner according to the wording of the audio recording with all interim occurrences. He doesn't wear a uniform and just stands in front of a gray wall.

In Heinrich Breloer's multi-part television film Speer und Er from 2005, the question is discussed whether Reich Armament Minister Albert Speer was among the audience of Himmler's second speech on the evening of October 6, 1943.

In Jonathan Littell's The Well-intentioned from 2006, the first-person narrator can no longer remember whether Speer was still present at the speech.

literature

  • International Military Court of Nuremberg (IMG): The Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals. Emphasis. Delphin Verlag, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7735-2523-0 , Volume 29: Documents and other evidence (Document 1919-PS).
  • Bradley F. Smith, Agnes F. Peterson (Eds.): Heinrich Himmler. Secret speeches 1933–1945 . Propylaen Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-549-07305-4 .
  • Peter Longerich : The unwritten order. Hitler and the way to the "final solution" . Piper, Munich et al. 2001, ISBN 3-492-04295-3 .
  • Richard Breitman: The Architect of the "Final Solution". Himmler and the extermination of the European Jews. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 1996, ISBN 3-506-77497-2 (Schöningh collection on past and present) .

Web links

Commons : Posen speeches  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Smith, Peterson: Heinrich Himmler , Redeververzeichnis, pp. 268–277 f.
  2. ^ Richard Breitman: Heinrich Himmler. The architect of the "final solution". Pendo Verlag, Zurich u. a. 2000, ISBN 3-85842-378-5 .
  3. Joachim Fest, Introduction to Smith, Peterson: Heinrich Himmler , p. 15 ff.
  4. ^ Raul Hilberg: The sources of the Holocaust , Frankfurt / Main 2002, ISBN 3-10-033626-7 , chapter Drastic and veiled language, p. 123 ff.
  5. Peter Longerich : The unwritten order , Munich 2001, pp. 175-184.
  6. Wolfgang Benz: Survival in the Third Reich: Jews in the Underground and their helpers. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-51029-9 , p. 14 .
  7. Christoph Studt: The Third Reich in Data , Becksche Reihe, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-47635-X , pp. 212-221.
  8. ^ Smith, Peterson: Heinrich Himmler , pp. 251 f.
  9. IMT: Volume 29, pp. 110-173.
  10. IMT: Volume 4 (negotiation records, December 19, 1945), p. 197.
  11. Holocaust history: audio sample, transcription and edited final version
  12. z. B. in Posen - Poznan the website www.deutsche-und-polen.de
  13. ^ Heinrich Schwendemann, Wolfgang Dietsche: Hitler's Castle. The 'Führer Residence' in Posen , Berlin 2003, p. 133.
  14. 3sat: SS generals present at the "Poznan speech"
  15. ^ 3sat: Explanations of Himmler's Posen speech
  16. Peter Longerich: Heinrich Himmler - biography. Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-88680-859-5 , p. 710 / see Gitta Sereny: Albert Speer ... , p. 468.
  17. IMT: Volume 29 (documents and other evidence), p. 123.
  18. IMT: Volume 29, pp. 145 f.
  19. Stefan Krebs, Werner Tschacher: Speer and Er. And we? German history in broken memory. In: History in Science and Education , Heft 3, 58 (2007), p. 164. Online here as pdf [1] .
  20. Smith, Peterson: Heinrich Himmler , p. 267 (Notes on the edition), p. 273 (No. 85) and p. 300, fn. 1.
  21. Gitta Sereny: Albert Speer: His wrestling with the truth. Munich 2001, ISBN 3-442-15141-4 , p. 468 ff.
  22. ^ Smith, Peterson: Heinrich Himmler , pp. 162-183.
  23. ^ Smith, Peterson: Heinrich Himmler , pp. 169/170.
  24. Quoted from Peter Longerich: Heinrich Himmler - Biographie. Siedler, Munich 2008, p. 710.
  25. ^ Smith, Peterson: Heinrich Himmler , p. 170.
  26. Krebs, Tschacher: Speer and Er , pp. 163–173.
  27. Gitta Sereny: Albert Speer: His wrestling with the truth. Munich 2001, ISBN 3-442-15141-4 , p. 484.
  28. ^ Robert Kriechbaumer: Turn of the times: The SPÖ-FPÖ coalition 1983-1987. Böhlau, Vienna 2008, ISBN 3-205-77770-0 , p. 52f. ; Gina Thomas (FAZ, March 10, 2007): Albert Speer: There is no doubt, I was there
  29. ^ Smith, Peterson: Heinrich Himmler , p. 183.
  30. ^ Smith, Peterson: Heinrich Himmler , p. 201.
  31. ^ Smith, Peterson: Heinrich Himmler , p. 201.
  32. ^ Smith, Peterson: Heinrich Himmler , p. 202.
  33. ^ Smith, Peterson: Heinrich Himmler , p. 203.
  34. Peter Longerich: The unwritten order p. 191.
  35. ^ Smith, Peterson: Heinrich Himmler , p. 203.
  36. ^ Institute for Contemporary History : Full text of the speech (with a foreword by Theodor Eschenburg )
  37. ^ Saul Friedländer: The Third Reich and the Jews 2nd volume: The years of destruction 1939–1945 , CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-54966-7 , p. 570.
  38. Konrad Kwiet: Rassenpolitik und Genölkermord , in: Enzyklopädie des Nationalozialismus , dtv, 2nd edition, Munich 1998, p. 64.
  39. Sönke Neitzel , Harald Welzer : Soldiers - Protocols of fighting, killing and dying. Frankfurt / M. 2011, ISBN 978-3-10-089434-2 , p. 201.
  40. Hans Buchheim: Anatomy of the SS State Volume 1: The SS - the instrument of rule. Command and obedience. dtv (1st edition 1967) 2nd edition Munich 1979, ISBN 3-423-02915-3 , pp. 247-253 and pp. 266 f.
  41. Hans Mommsen: The Nazi regime and the extinction of Judaism in Europe . Wallstein, Göttingen 2014, p. 192 f.
  42. Peter Hayes: Why? A story of the Holocaust. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2017, p. 178.
  43. Holocaust reference : Heinrich Himmler in Posen: "With that I want to close the Jewish question."
  44. Holocaust History Project: Holocaust Denial, the Poznan speech, and our translation
  45. ^ Smith, Peterson: Heinrich Himmler ... , p. 301 and fn. 16.
  46. ^ Hans-Jürgen Syberberg: Hitler, a film from Germany ; Rowohlt 1978, ISBN 3-499-25108-6 , pp. 197 ff.
  47. Israel, Germany, Austria 2014, 94 min., With Tobias Moretti , Sophie Rois , Antonia and Lenz Moretti, Pauline Knof , Florentín Groll , Martin Lalis; Screenplay with Ori Weisbrod. The decent one in the Internet Movie Database (English)
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on December 7, 2007 in this version .