General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHitler never issued the orders for the Holocaust
It is unthinkable that he wasn't directly responsible for it, but no one has been able to discover any orders from Hitler for it. You could blame it on Himmler, but he couldn't have done it without Hiler's support. I imagine TFG might have followed his example for the 1/6 insurrection. They might have a hard time proving he ordered it. He's certainly had a lot of experience covering his own ass.
Takket
(21,568 posts)Al Capone never kills anyone. he doesn't want to go to jail for murder.
he just passes the dirty work down through so many layers there is no tracing the order back up to him.
Eliot Rosewater
(31,112 posts)He cant personally harm most people , for instance, he is afraid of anyone his own size.
Baked Potato
(7,733 posts)Mike Nelson
(9,956 posts)... Charles Manson did not kill any of those people he is famous for killing.
Budi
(15,325 posts)BSdetect
(8,998 posts)Budi
(15,325 posts)Celerity
(43,383 posts)https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1170&context=constructing
centered on the question of whether Adolf Hitler personally premeditated and instigated the Final
Solution, or whether the idea and its implementation developed out of a collaborative effort within the
ranks of the Nazi bureaucracy. This debate has largely been fueled by the fact that no written decree
from Hitler directly ordering the Final Solution has ever been found. However, evidence in the form of
personal statements made by Hitler as well as verbal recollections, diary entries, and wartime
documents made by his Nazi colleagues, point to the idea that he did indeed personally order the Final
Solution. Overall, through careful examination of Nazi primary source materials, Hitler's direct
responsibility for the premeditation and implementation of the systematic annihilation of European
Jewry can be firmly established.
Critics of the idea that Hitler personally developed and instigated the Final Solution generally
point to the absence of a Führer-signed decree ordering this genocidal campaign as evidence for their
position. However, there is good reason why, in spite of Hitler's being directly responsible for
implementing the Final Solution, a written order has never been found: his desire to avoid public
association with it for fear of outrage and reprisal, both domestic and international, over his brutal
policies of mass murder. An example of the public outrage Hitler feared is seen in the negative reaction
of the German populace to his official authorization of the T4 euthanasia program. In general Hitler had
a fixed policy of not issuing written instructions for policies relating to what would later be classified
as crimes against humanity. However, he made an exception in the case of the T4 euthanasia program,
in order to overcome opposition to it within the German state bureaucracy.
In a 1939 written decree, Hitler charged program head Reichsleiter Philip Bouhler, and lead
program physician Dr. Karl Brandt, with the responsibility for expanding the authority of
physicians...to the end that patients considered incurable...can be granted mercy death.
However, Hitler quickly came to regret authorizing the program in writing, as throughout
1940 the general population became increasingly aware that thousands of mentally and
physically disabled Germans were being 'mercy-killed' by the Nazis in a Hitler-sanctioned state
program. Between 1940 and 1941 the German people's negative reaction became increasingly
vocal and vehement, culminating in Hitler being openly jeered by a crowd watching mentally
challenged patients being loaded onto a train at a rail station in Hof, Bavaria in 1941.
Ultimately, this negative public reaction to the T4 program and Hitler's sanctioning of it,
bolstered by denunciations from Catholic and Protestant church leaders, forced Hitler to publicly
cancel the program in August of 1941, though it continued in secret until 1945. Overall, no direct
Hitler order for the Final Solution has ever been found due to the public relations debacle that
erupted over his sanctioning of the T4 program, as well as its successful continuation
in secret following its public 'cancellation'. These events reinforced for Hitler the value of carrying
out his programs of systematic murder covertly without written orders, and subsequently informed
his methodology for implementing the Final Solution.
snip
moondust
(19,981 posts)Even if it wasn't him specifically who started it. Undoubtedly he knew about the Wannsee Conference where his senior Nazi officials planned the "Final Solution to the Jewish question" on January 20, 1942.
I wonder if Hitler sat in his dining room gleefully listening to radio reports of his troops loading Jews onto trains and heading for the camps.
appalachiablue
(41,132 posts)Plan to exterminate Jews although he claimed otherwise. A letter of his was found as evidence.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/mar/13/secondworldwar.kateconnolly
WarGamer
(12,444 posts)Last edited Sat Jan 8, 2022, 11:21 PM - Edit history (1)
There was never a formal order from Hitler...
But I'd bet that he spoke of it in private but wanted to be disconnected from it historically.
Hitler envisioned himself as a grand leader for the next half century in a Germanic Empire and wanted to be "clean" in the eyes of history...
This is actually why Hitler never ordered the use of chemical weapons even though the Germans had Sarin and derivatives first.
He certainly expressed his desires to Himmler... possibly directly to Reinhard Heydrich as they met several times... probably to Bormann... Burgdorf...
Without a doubt... Trump hand picked people to do his will... on or off the record.
Lithos
(26,403 posts)Orders come in various types. He didn't need a written order. What was needed was an understanding.
In July 1941, Hermann Goering, writing under instructions from Hitler, had ordered Reinhard Heydrich, SS general and Heinrich Himmlers number-two man, to submit as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative, material, and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-wannsee-conference
This resulted in the (in)famous Wannsee conference which was essentially the start of the fully organized part of the Final Solution.
Trump was noted for operating in a similar "understanding". I would not look to find anything written by Trump, but the notes and actions of his subordinates. Their remarks and notes will fill in this gap.
L-
JohnSJ
(92,190 posts)There was no ambiguity
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)were diverted to the holocaust, something the military strongly and repeatedly objected to. It could not have been accomplished without a long series of orders and authorizations by Der Fuhrer.
And definitely for that last. Remembering all those private, undocumented meetings with Putin and other leaders, unheard of. Long before he became president, tRump destroyed business records even or especially when ordered by law to produce them. In office, he personally tore up up documents and ordered them destroyed rather than kept as required by law. though he may have finally been persuaded not to do it with others watching. For sure he would have considered a system that stored records beyond his reach a serious problem.
Greybnk48
(10,168 posts)all developmentally disabled people (at that time, retarded people), German citizens rebelled strongly. What the Nazi hierarchy came up with was to change the word "exterminate" to "relocate," and the people were ok with this.
They were not ok with agreeing to killing these people, but were ok with getting them out of Germany. Few asked where they were going (to a gas chamber it turned out).
I believe this info is in Daniel Goldhagen's book "Hitler's Willing Executioners."
Joinfortmill
(14,423 posts)cachukis
(2,239 posts)He wants to out Putin, Putin. And, he knows his audience and the purveyors to that audience. And he has a flow of money and all that.
Aristus
(66,377 posts)But the truth is, Hitler was a lazy administrator. Historians relate that he rarely spent any time at his massive desk at the Reich Chancellery. He was bored by the day-to-day paperwork drudgery of running a nation. He would delegate paperwork to underlings, and talk big ideas to senior Nazi officials at dinner.
When he wanted to put those big ideas into action, he rarely had documents drafted for his signature; he would simply dictate an order to whomever happened to be standing nearby, and expect it to be carried out.
If there were any incriminating documents bearing his signature, it's not hard to imagine that those were the first papers selected for burning in the massive destruction of records that went on as the Russians closed in.
Hundreds of thousands of photographs and millions of feet of film footage of the death camps, and the lack of a signed paper proves to the Holocaust-deniers that it didn't happen.
rampartc
(5,407 posts)stab her 28 times and write helter skeiter on the wall with her blood" manson never said it
it is well known that henry ii did not order the murder of the archbishop as well.
"who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?" shakespeare
Maru Kitteh
(28,340 posts)RandiFan1290
(6,234 posts)That is why so many of them do 'extensive research' on the topic
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)Trump was the same in that regard.