By early 1942, a change had occurred. Nazi Germany no longer killed just Jewish people. It killed Jewish populations. This was the data-driven denouement of Hitler’s war against the Jews.
Hollerith codes, compilations, and rapid sorts had enabled the Nazi Reich to make an unprecedented leap from individual destruction to something on a much larger scale. No longer were such vague notions as “destruction” and “elimination” bandied ambiguously in speeches and decrees. From early 1942, the prophetic new Nazi word openly pronounced in newspapers was extermination. The context, as spoken in Europe and widely reported in the media, always connoted but one objective: mass killing. Systematic co-ordinated extermination would yield an unimaginable new solution to the Jewish problem in Europe. This ultimate phase was known as Endlosung. In German, the term conveyed a singular meaning: “The Final Solution.”67
SEVERAL FORCES were in play on January 1, 1942, as Hitler set the Final Solution in motion.
First, the Reich was well along in implementing its policy of pauperizing and enslaving European Jewry. In this campaign, the goal of emigration had become essentially curtailed or nonexistent, replaced by a program of “extermination by labor,” organized ghetto starvation, and pit massacres. Still many Jews were hearty enough, or lucky enough, to survive the rigors of inhumane Nazi-style “forced labor,” or escape into the forests.
Second, the long-standing goal of the Nazi movement, that is, the complete destruction of the Jewish people, was now crystallizing. For years, the debate within Nazi circles had taken many forms, including physical extermination. Hitler had publicly prophesied in 1939 that if the world again returned to war, he would utterly destroy the Jewish people. In Hitler’s view, the conflict in Europe became a “World War” when America entered after Pearl Harbor was bombed in December 1941. Der Fuhrer was now determined to unleash a long contemplated campaign of systematic, automated genocide, thus once and for all ridding the world of Jews.68
Just weeks after America entered the war with Germany, the two related campaigns accelerated: extermination by labor, and the new drive to exterminate all Jews by the most expedient method possible. On January 20, 1942, a top-secret conference of Hitler’s key lieutenants was held in a Berlin suburb at the elegant terraced villa located at Am Grossen Wannsee 56-58. The purpose: coordinate the efficient murder of millions of Jews. The secret gathering was limited to senior Nazi leadership, including Reinhard Heydrich, the head of Security Police, and Gestapo Chief Heinrich Muller. Yet the conferees in many ways relied upon three key lower-level experts. One was Roderich Plate, a racial census expert. The second was Richard Korherr, Himmler’s handpicked statistical overlord. The third was Adolf Eichmann. Plate was Korherr’s assistant and both were established Hollerith experts.69
During the meeting, Heydrich presented a long list of Jewish populations, broken down by territory and country. Eichmann provided the list based on compilations by Korherr and Plate. Working with a coterie of current and former Dehomag experts, they developed the statistics. The conclave at Wannsee resulted in a Protocol, which outlined the massive demographic and geographic logistical challenge. The printed Protocol’s centerpiece was, in fact, the statistical report on the mission ahead.70
Germany: 131,800; Ostmark region: 43,700; Eastern territories: 420,000; Occupied Poland: 2,284,000; Bialystok: 400,000; Bohemia and Moravia: 74,200; Latvia: 3,500; Lithuania: 34,000; Belgium: 43,000; Denmark: 5,600; Occupied France: 165,000; Unoccupied France: 700,000; Greece: 69,600; Netherlands: 160,800; Norway: 1,300…. The long enumeration of population statistics went on, country after country, and even included England and Ireland.71
The Protocol’s grand total was 11 million including the British Isles and a broad estimate of 5 million for Russia. The conference was told, “the number of Jews given here for foreign countries includes, however, only those Jews who still adhere to the Jewish faith, since some countries still do not have a definition of the term ‘Jew’ according to racial principles.”72
Korherr’s estimates for the conference were profoundly inflated. Certainly, Reich experts had been able to create precise population tables for Greater Germany and most of the occupied territories. But, at the time, the Nazis simply lacked accurate information about many other countries, especially Russia. Nonetheless, for the Nazi leadership assembled, the numbers, howsoever inaccurate, presented the outline of the genocidal task they faced. It was massive and unprecedented.
A two-tiered genocide was emphasized: extermination by labor and expedient mass murder. “In the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East,” the Protocol recorded. “Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action, doubtless, a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival.73
“In the course of the practical execution of the Final Solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east…. The evacuated Jews will first be sent, group by group, to so-called transit ghettos, from which they will be transported to the East.” Jews in Poland were specified as “epidemic carriers” and “of approximately 2.5 million Jews, the majority is unfit for work.”74 In the parlance of Wannsee, those “unfit for work” were to be put to death as soon as possible.
As daunting as the deportation campaign would be, the Nazis insisted it be subordinated to their own Nuremberg racial theories. A complicated list of mandatory or potential exceptions was laid out. For example, “persons of mixed blood of the first degree married to persons of German blood” would be “treated essentially as Germans.”75
The Wannsee Conference and its Protocol were considered by many to be the next major step in the Final Solution of the Jewish problem in Europe. Although most of the bizarre formulaic exceptions would be eventually discarded, and although the true number of Jews existing in Europe was vastly overstated in the meeting, this much was apparent: the Final Solution would require an enormous amount of statistical information. Korherr, assisted by Plate, was ready to provide it.
Plate was an experienced Hollerith expert. After a stint as administrative assistant with the Reich Statistical Office, he joined the Race Political Office of the NSDAP in 1935. Soon thereafter, he assisted noted raceologist Friedrich Burgdorfer in compiling an estimate of all racial Jews in Germany. Later, he helped produce a second estimate, this one of World Jewry. In succeeding years, Plate functioned as the Reich Statistical Office’s liaison to Eichmann’s Referat II 112, also known as the Jewish Division. Plate was described by colleagues as an expert “in all important questions regarding the census, religious and race statistics, special counts of Jews, special counts of foreigners, and minority statistics.” Plate, a civilian when Wannsee convened, was required to sign an oath of secrecy three days before the conference and was drafted into the military five days later.76