By late July, the book, “a clear prophesy of what threatens us if we lose our will and thereby throw away our victory…, the extermination or sterilization of the entire German people,” had come to Goebbels’s attention. He saw in it confirmation of Nazi claims of the existence of a bloodthirsty conspiracy of plutocracy and Bolshevism and further justification for harsh measures in the east. Over the next few months, the German press and radio promoted the Kaufman story in endless variations, most notably to present the war, in a perverse inversion of reality, as a Jewish attempt to exterminate Germans. “Who should die, the Germans or the Jews?” was the stark question posed as Goebbels worked tirelessly to expose the “true goals” of the nation’s enemies. “One has to imagine what the Jews would do with us if they had the power,” he noted in his diary on 20 August, “in order to know what one should do with them when we have the power.” The propaganda minister also issued a short brochure designed to create a more determined German attitude toward the war and allow “even the stupidest idiot… [to] figure out what threatens us” and that the only choice was victory or death. In fact, Kaufman’s book paid instant dividends, an SD report of 31 July on the German mood noting, “The situation in the United States was being followed with the greatest attention. Increasingly the view spreads that… this war is really a life-and-death struggle. The Kaufman plans have deeply impressed even the most obdurate skeptics.” By October, with the “book… devoured by all sectors of society,” Goebbels concluded, “It has been extraordinarily useful for us domestically. It is impossible to imagine a better illustration of the desires and goals of the other side.”56
Even as the SD noted a hardening of the German public mood, on that same 31 July, Heydrich received a written authorization (actually drafted by Adolf Eichmann on instructions from Heydrich) from Goering to make “all necessary preparations with regard to organizational, technical, and material matters for bringing about a complete solution of the Jewish question within the German sphere of influence in Europe”: “I request you further to send me, in the near future, an overall plan covering the organizational, technical, and material measures necessary for the accomplishment of the final solution of the Jewish question which we desire.” Controversy still surrounds the question of whether Heydrich viewed this authorization to mean merely an extension of his earlier mandate of 24 January 1939 to organize a solution to the Jewish question based on emigration or whether he understood it as marking a significant new departure. The Führer himself, in a conversation with the Croatian field marshal Kvaternik on 22 July, indicated that he was still thinking along lines of mass deportation to an inhospitable region. Once again referring to the Jews as a bacillus of decomposition that had to be destroyed, he then remarked, “Wherever one sends the Jews, to Siberia or Madagascar, is all the same.” The key, Hitler emphasized, was to “annihilate them,” to “do away with them.” If Hitler was openly talking of annihilating the Jews in front of a Croatian field marshal, however, Christopher Browning is surely correct in arguing that Heydrich must have sensed that something radically different was brewing since he had not sought a new authorization when the earlier emigration schemes evolved into plans for mass resettlement and expulsion. At the least, he believed it necessary, at this key juncture, to have a new authorization in order to have decisive influence over the heads of rival agencies and administrations. In any case, and whatever solution emerged, Heydrich certainly understood that he was to draw up a feasibility study that would result in the mass death, one way or another, of European Jews.57
In retrospect, then, the meeting of 16 July can be seen as a key point at which the mass killing of Soviet Jews, partisans, and anyone else deemed a threat to German rule became the foundation for future policy. The consequences were immediate. Most Einsatzgruppen commanders understood very well what was expected of them and set about implementing the new policy, although one SS officer complained in an 11 August report, “Driving women and children into the swamps did not have the success it was supposed to have as the swamps were not deep enough [to drown them].” Still, sufficient actions were being taken that, on that same day, Goebbels gloated, “Vengeance was being wreaked on the Jews…. What the Führer prophesied is taking place: that if the Jews succeeded in provoking another war, [they] would therefore lose [their] existence.”58
Pressure, in fact, was mounting among Nazi officials to take a more radical approach to the Jews. SD reports in early August mentioned increasing hostility to Jews on the streets of western German cities subjected to British air raids, while Goebbels complained that the continued presence of “parasitical Jews” in Berlin undermined morale and outraged soldiers home on leave. In mid-August, in fact, one of his close advisers had proposed that the Berlin Jews, some seventy-six thousand, simply be “carted off to Russia…. Best of all actually would be to kill them.” Determined to do something about this intolerable situation, Goebbels flew to the Führer Headquarters on 18 August for discussions with Hitler. Although the Führer was ill and under acute nervous strain, Goebbels related his complaints about Jews damaging morale, a claim that fell on fertile ground. Venting his hatred for the Jews seemed to act as a tonic, in fact, as Goebbels noted,
The Führer is convinced that his past prophecy in the Reichstag, that if the Jews succeeded in provoking a world war, it would end with the annihilation of the Jews, is being confirmed. It is coming true in these weeks and months with an almost eerie certainty. In the east the Jews must pay the bill; in Germany they have in part already paid and will in the future pay still more…. Jewry is an alien body among civilized nations, and their activity in the last three decades has been so devastating that the reaction of the peoples is absolutely understandable, necessary…, [and] urgent.
Evidently warming to the subject, Hitler noted ominously, “In this matter a man like [the Rumanian dictator] Antonescu proceeds much more radically than we have done. But I will not rest or be idle until we too have drawn the final consequences with regard to the Jews.”59
Hitler’s reference to his prophecy, the fact that he was ill and irritable, and the mid-August crisis in military affairs have tempted some historians, most notably Tobias Jersak, to make a connection with another key mid-August event: the issuance on 14 August of the Atlantic Charter. To Jersak, the Atlantic Charter, which indicated certain American entry into the war and pledged both the United States and Great Britain to the destruction of Nazism, along with a joint letter two days later by Roosevelt and Churchill offering support to Stalin, must have been seen by Hitler as confirmation of his worst nightmare: a global war of the Jewish conspiracy to annihilate Germany. After all, as Hitler remarked at the time to the Spanish ambassador, “The main guilty parties in this war… are the Americans, Roosevelt…, Jews and the entirety of Jewish Bolshevism…. The Americans are the greatest scoundrels…. America will pay a bitter price.” In consequence, with the Jews no longer possessing any preventive value as hostages, and with hopes of a blitzkrieg victory dashed, Hitler now made the decision to kill all the Jews of Europe during the war, not after it, as originally intended. Only the timing and method of killing remained to be determined.60
Tidy though this argument may be—and it has the great value of locating the Final Solution firmly within the context of the war—available evidence fails to offer much support. Both Goebbels and Hitler dismissed the Atlantic Charter at the time as a bluff, typical Wilsonian bluster that had little impact on the war, Hitler concluding that it “can do us no harm at all.” Only years later did he claim to have seen in it a Jewish threat to exterminate Germany. Further, when Goebbels and Heydrich tried to push the pace of radical anti-Jewish measures, they met with only partial success. Hitler gave the go-ahead to Goebbels’s suggestion that German Jews be required to wear an identifying mark but rebuffed the two on a more radical idea, the immediate deportation of German Jews, promising Goebbels only that evacuations would take place once transportation problems had been resolved. Since the transportation situation could not possibly improve before the end of the eastern campaign, however, Hitler in effect had postponed any action until after the war. Heydrich was allowed to prepare plans for a partial evacuation of the larger German cities, but, here again, Hitler “rejected evacuations during the war.” If Hitler had decided in mid-August to kill all the Jews of Europe, his immediate actions certainly gave no indications of it.61