Institute for Historical Review
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Institute for Historical Review |
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[Dr. Christopher R. Browning was the seventh witness called by the Crown. He testified from Monday, February 15 to Friday, February 19, 1988.]
Christopher R. Browning was permitted to give opinion evidence as an expert witness in the area of the policy of the National Socialist regime to Jews of Europe during the Second World War. (13-3029)
Browning, a citizen of the United States, was 43 years of age and lived with his family in Tacoma, state of Washington where he taught history at Pacific Lutheran University. He had obtained his Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College in Ohio in 1967, winning the Comfort Starr Prize in history. In 1968, he obtained a Master of Arts degree in history from the University of Wisconsin and then spent two years teaching Modern European History at Allegheny College. In 1975, Browning was awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Wisconsin. (13-3013 to 3015)
He was the recipient of two German academic awards and had been invited to be a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. (13-3014, 3015)
Browning's research specialty was the treatment of the Jews by the National Socialist government which he had been studying for the past 17 years. In the United States, he had looked through the records of some of the Nuremberg trials, microfilms in the United States National Archives and various books available in university library collections. The microfilms were of German documents captured at the end of the Second World War, brought to the United States, catalogued, microfilmed and returned to Germany in 1958. (13-3016)
He had also conducted research in Germany at the archives of the German Foreign Office in Bonn, the Federal Archives in Koblenz, the Military Branch of the Federal Archives in Freiburg, the Berlin Document Centre, the Nuremberg State Archives, in the Central Agency for the State Administration of Justice in Ludwigsburg and in various state courts in Germany where they had conducted important court cases. In Yugoslavia, Browning conducted research in the Military Archives and in the archives of a Jewish History Museum, both in Belgrade. (13-3017, 3018)
Browning spent a full year and some shorter trips in Israel, studying at the archives library at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Authority in that country. (13 3018)
He was the author of two books, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office: A Study of Referat DIII of Abteilung Deutschland 1940-43, published in 1978, and Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution, published in 1985. By "final solution," Browning meant the Nazi plan or policy to exterminate the Jews of Europe. In addition, he had contributed numerous articles to scholarly journals such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual and Yad Vashem Studies. (13-3019 3028)
Browning was on the editorial boards of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust and the International Scholars Advisory Board of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. He had also contracted to be the editor and primary author of The Final Solution, a forthcoming book on Nazi Jewish policy which was to be part of Yad Vashem's 24- volume history of the Holocaust. (13-3027, 3028)
Crown attorney John Pearson asked Browning to comment on the following passage from Did Six Million Really Die? at page 5:
It is no part of the discussion here to argue whether the German attitude to the Jews was right or not, or to judge whether its legislative measures against them were just or unjust. Our concern is simply with the fact that, believing of the Jews as they did, the Nazis' solution to the problem was to deprive them of their influence within the nation by various legislative acts, and most important of all, to encourage their emigration from the country altogether. By 1939, the great majority of German Jews had emigrated, all of them with a sizeable proportion of their assets. Never at any time had the Nazi leadership even contemplated a policy of genocide towards them.
Browning saw two problems with this paragraph: "A 'great majority' would be an exaggeration because it would be slightly over half, but not a great majority. The serious problem, I think, comes with the statement 'all of them with a sizeable proportion of their assets'. I do not believe that statement is true." (13-3030)
In Browning's opinion, there were a whole series of measures taken against Jews by the Nazis to deprive Jews of their property. In Germany, Jews were banned from certain professions and economic activity and were forced to register all of their property. As a result, if Jews wanted to sell their property they had to sell quickly at far below the market value. The contracts for sale had to be approved by local economic authorities and as a standard rule they would not even allow a contract that gave a Jew more than two-thirds or three-quarters of the market value.
"What that meant then," said Browning, "was that the Jews living in Germany by the end of, say, 1938 were living off whatever they had received in reduced market value for their goods, or not engaged in ongoing businesses or professions any longer so they were living off assets that were rapidly shrinking. Those assets were attacked yet again when the Nazis put upon them a 25 percent property tax in the fall of 1938, which would take even more." (13-3031, 3032)
In 1941 the Nazis passed a law that any Jew leaving Germany as of that date would automatically forfeit any remaining property he had. For the Jews who left Germany before 1941, it was very difficult to take property with them. There was the "flight" tax, which applied to all leaving Germany, not just Jews, which required the surrender of 25 percent of all property in order to be allowed out of the country. Strict currency controls made it difficult to take the remaining property out of the country. (13-3032, 3033)
In Browning's opinion, it was "an entirely false statement to say that a great majority of German Jews had emigrated, all of them with a sizable proportion of their assets." (13-3033)
Pearson asked Browning to comment on the following passage from the pamphlet on page 6:
Had Hitler cherished any intention of exterminating the Jews, it is inconceivable that he would have allowed more than 800,000 to leave Reich territory with the bulk of their wealth...
Browning testified that it was an exaggeration to say that 800,000 Jews left the Reich by 1939. Even by 1941, the total of Jews who had left Germany, Austria and the so called Protectorates was 530,000. The statement with respect to "the bulk of their wealth" was also inaccurate. (13-3035)
Browning turned to a passage on page 5 of the pamphlet:
The Nazi view of Jewish emigration was not limited to a negative policy of simple expulsion, but was formulated along the lines of modern Zionism. The founder of political Zionism in the 19th century, Theodore Herzl, in his work The Jewish State, had originally conceived of Madagascar as a national homeland for the Jews, and this possibility was seriously studied by the Nazis. It had been a main plank of the National Socialist party platform before 1933 and was published by the party in pamphlet form.
Browning testified that it was not a plank of the National Socialist platform before 1933 that the Jews go to Madagascar as a national homeland. There was no reference to Madagascar at all in their platform before 1933. "The first time in which a Nazi leader mentioned Madagascar is 1938. The first point at which there is a plan for Madagascar is 1940, and it is not referred to ever...as a national homeland. It is referred to as a super-ghetto that will be under the SS...They studied it as a place to expel the Jews to and keep them in a kind of extra-large concentration camp." (13 3036, 3037)
Browning turned to page 7:
It is a remarkable fact, however, that well into the war period, the Germans continued to implement the policy of Jewish emigration. The fall of France in 1940 enabled the German Government to open serious negotiations with the French for the transfer of European Jews to Madagascar. A memorandum of August, 1942 from Luther, Secretary-of-State in the German Foreign Office, reveals that he had conducted these negotiations between July and December 1940, when they were terminated by the French.
Browning testified that there were no such negotiations with the French. "This was going to be imposed upon the French when a time for a final peace treaty with France occurred." Browning felt that the pamphlet was trying to leave the impression that the failure of the Madagascar plan was caused by the French and that was not the case. In coming to this opinion, Browning relied on the document referred to by Harwood, the Luther Memorandum of 1942. This memo originated from Luther and his Jewish expert Franz Rademacher and was directed to German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. (13-3038)
On an overhead projector, Browning read the jury portions of the Luther Memorandum of August, 1942, which dealt with the Madagascar plan:
The present war gives Germany the possibility and also the obligation to solve the Jewish question in Europe. In view of the advantageous course of the war against France, DIII proposed in July 1940 as a solution: removing all Jews from Europe and demanding the Island of Madagascar from France as the territory for the reception of the Jews. The Reich Foreign Minister has in principle approved preliminary preparations for the expulsion of the Jews from Europe in close consultation with the agencies of the Reichsführer-SS.
The Madagascar Plan was enthusiastically taken up by the Reich Security Main Office, which in the opinion of the Foreign Office was the only agency with the experience and technical capacity to carry out a large-scale evacuation of the Jews and to guarantee the surveillance of the evacuees. The competent agency of the Reich Security Main Office then prepared an extremely detailed plan for the evacuation of the Jews to Madagascar and their resettlement there, that was approved by the Reichsführer-SS. Gruppenführer Heydrich submitted this plan directly to the Reich Foreign Minister in August 1940.
The Madagascar Plan itself was made obsolete by political developments.
Ambassador Abetz told me already in August 1940, after a meeting with the Führer, that he intended to evacuate all Jews from Europe.
The basic instructions of the Reich Foreign Minister to pursue the evacuation of the Jews in closest consultation with the agencies of the Reichsführer-SS therefore remain in effect for DIII. (Luther Memo filed as Exhibit 36A,B and C, 13-3045)
Browning testified that other parts of the Madagascar plan indicated that the Nazis intended to ship the Jews to Madagascar after Britain was defeated and they had the British navy and merchant marine at their disposal. It was not negotiations with the French which rendered the plan obsolete, but rather the fact that Britain remained in the war. (13-3043)
Browning turned to page 6 of the pamphlet:
As the war proceeded, the policy developed of using Jewish detainees for labour in the war- effort. The question of labour is fundamental when considering the alleged plan of genocide against the Jews, for on grounds of logic alone the latter would entail the most senseless waste of manpower, time and energy while prosecuting a war of survival on two fronts. Certainly after the attack on Russia, the idea of compulsory labour had taken precedence over German plans for Jewish emigration. The protocol of a conversation between Hitler and the Hungarian regent Horthy on April 17th, 1943, reveals that the German leader personally requested Horthy to release 100,000 Hungarian Jews for work in the "pursuit-plane programme" of the Luftwaffe at a time when the aerial bombardment of Germany was increasing (Reitlinger, Die Endlösung, Berlin, 1956, p. 478). This took place at a time when, supposedly, the Germans were already seeking to exterminate the Jews, but Hitler's request clearly demonstrates the priority aim of expanding his labour force.
Browning was familiar with the Hitler-Horthy Protocol of 17 April 1943 and had prepared an English translation of the excerpt dealing with the Jews which he read to the jury:
Discussion of Rationing:
Horthy observed that this problem was very difficult for Hungary. He had not yet been able to control the black market. The Führer replied that that is the fault of the Jews, who even in a world war consider hoarding and profiteering as their main field of activity, exactly as now in England convictions for ration violations and the like chiefly concern Jews. To Horthy's counter-question as to what he should do with the Jews, now that he had deprived them of almost all possibilities of livelihood -- he could not kill them off -- the Reich Foreign Minister declared that the Jews must either be exterminated or taken to concentration camps. There was no other possibility. To the observation of Horthy that Germany has it easier in this regard, because it does not have so many Jews, the Führer gave figures revealing the extraordinarily strong Jewification of certain professions. Horthy replied that he had not known that at all.
In this connection the Führer began to speak about the city of Nüremberg, that for 400 years had not tolerated any Jews there, while Fürth had accepted Jews. The result had been a great flourishing of Nüremberg and a complete decline of Fürth. The Jews never even had any organizational value. Contrary to the fears that he (the Führer) had repeatedly had to bear in Germany, everything continued even without the Jews. Where the Jews were left to themselves, for example in Poland, the most cruel misery and dilapidation prevailed. They are nothing but pure parasites. This state of affairs has been completely cleaned up in Poland. If the Jews there didn't want to work, they were shot. If they could not work, they had to perish. They had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, from which a healthy body can be infected. That was not cruel, if one considered that even innocent creatures of nature like rabbits and deer had to be killed, so that no harm arises. Why should one spare the beasts who wanted to bring us Bolshevism? People who did not ward off the Jews would go to the dogs. One of the most famous examples for this was the decline of that once so proud people, the Persians, who now lead a pitiful existence as Armenians. (13-3048 to 3050a; Hitler-Horthy Protocol, Nüremberg Document 736-D, filed as Exhibit 37A,B)
In Browning's opinion, the plan for Jewish emigration had indeed come to an end and it was replaced with a plan to murder the Jews of Europe. Although some would be used as labourers first, labour was not the new precedent. (13-3053)
Browning turned to page 7 of the pamphlet:
Reitlinger and Poliakov both make the entirely unfounded supposition that because the Madagascar Plan had been shelved, the Germans must necessarily have been thinking of "extermination". Only a month later, however, on March 7th, 1942, Goebbels wrote a memorandum in favour of the Madagascar Plan as a "final solution" of the Jewish question (Manvell and Frankl, Dr. Goebbels, London, 1960, p. 165). In the meantime he approved of the Jews being "concentrated in the East". Later Goebbels memoranda also stress deportation to the East (i.e. the Government General of Poland) and lay emphasis on the need for compulsory labour there...
Browning explained to the jury that Reitlinger and Poliakov, the authors referred to by Harwood, were both early authors of books on the "final solution." Reitlinger had relied mainly on Nuremberg documentation as his source material. Browning also explained to the jury that the reference to the "Government-General of Poland" meant central Poland. While western Poland had been annexed to Germany by the Nazis, central Poland had become a German colony under a German colonial regime called the General Government. Eastern Poland, between 1939 and 1941, was taken over by the Soviet Union as part of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. After that territory was invaded by the Germans in 1941, the part known as Galicia became part of the German Government General. (13-3054)
Browning testified that he was familiar with the March 7, 1942 Goebbels memoranda referred to in Did Six Million Really Die?. It was a reference by Goebbels in his diary to the Madagascar plan on that date. Goebbels had written:
To begin with, they will have to be concentrated in the East; possibly an island, such as Madagascar, can be assigned to them after the war. In any case there can be no peace in Europe until every Jew has been eliminated from the continent.
"It isn't a memorandum in which he speaks in favour of it," said Browning. "It is that he still has not heard that it isn't in operation any longer, that he has been given some information and preparation for a conference apparently in which that mention is still made." (13-3055) Did Six Million Really Die? was inaccurate in saying it was a memorandum in favour of the Madagascar plan. "It would be correct to say that Goebbels mentioned the Madagascar plan in a diary entry. It is not a memorandum." (13-3061)
In Browning's opinion, later entries in the Goebbels diary did not lay emphasis on the need for compulsory labour, as claimed by Did Six Million Really Die?, but in fact said exactly the opposite. Browning read the entry from Goebbels's diary from March 27, 1942:
Beginning with Lublin, the Jews in the General Government are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only about 40 per cent can be used for forced labour.
The former Gauleiter of Vienna, who is to carry this measure through, is doing it with considerable circumspection and according to a method that does not attract too much attention. A judgment is being visited upon the Jews that, while barbaric, is fully deserved by them. The prophesy which the Führer made about them for having brought on a new world war is beginning to come true in a most terrible manner. One must not be sentimental in these matters. If we did not fight the Jews, they would destroy us. It's a life- and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus. No other government and no other regime would have the strength for such a global solution of this question. Here, too, the Führer is the undismayed champion of a radical solution necessitated by conditions and therefore inexorable. Fortunately a whole series of possibilities presents itself for us in wartime that would be denied us in peacetime. We shall have to profit by this.
The ghettos that will be emptied in the cities of the General Government will now be refilled with Jews thrown out of the Reich. This process is to be repeated from time to time. There is nothing funny in it for the Jews, and the fact that Jewry's representatives in England and America are today organizing and sponsoring the war against Germany must be paid for dearly by its representatives in Europe -- and that's only right.
Another diary entry by Goebbels stated:
Finally we talked about the Jewish question. Here the Führer is as uncompromising as ever. The Jews must be got out of Europe, if necessary by applying most brutal methods. (Excerpt from Goebbels Diaries, Louis Lochner, editor, filed as Exhibit 38)
The prophesy of Hitler referred to by Goebbels in this passage, said Browning, was made in a speech by Hitler in January of 1939, where he stated that if world Jewry brought on another war, it would not lead to the destruction of Germany but to the destruction of the Jews in Europe. (13-3058)
Browning returned to page 7:
Statistics relating to Jewish populations are not everywhere known in precise detail, approximations for various countries differing widely, and it is also unknown exactly how many Jews were deported and interned at any one time between the years 1939-1945. In general, however, what reliable statistics there are, especially those relating to emigration, are sufficient to show that not a fraction of six million Jews could have been exterminated.
Browning testified that German statistical studies existed which supported the conclusion that there were enough Jews in Europe to exterminate at least 6 million of them. One such study was done by Professor Dr. Burgdörfer dated 17 July, 1940, the original of which was in the German Foreign Office where Browning had studied and handled it. The Burgdörfer study was commissioned by the German Foreign Office because they were "making plans for the so-called Madagascar plan and obviously they couldn't make adequate preparations for that unless they knew how many people they were dealing with." The study was found in the files of Franz Rademacher, who was the expert on the Jewish question under Secretary Luther. Burgdörfer estimated that the total number of Jews in Europe at that time was between 10.72 million and 9.8 million. (13-3069 to 3072; Burgdörfer Report filed as Exhibit 39A,B)
A second statistical study considered by Browning was a study prepared in the summer of 1940 in Germany and incorporated into the Madagascar plan. This study estimated the number of Jews in the German sphere of control in 1940 at about 4 million. It did not include the eastern section of Poland, Russia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece or Italy, countries which were not yet under German control. The number of Jews in Germany and Austria was 243,000. (13- 3072 to 3075; Madagascar Project study filed as Exhibit 40)
The third statistical study considered by Browning was that contained in the Wannsee Conference protocol of 20 January 1942. The conference, held under the chairmanship of Heydrich, was attended by the state secretaries or undersecretaries of the major ministries of the German government; for example, the Reich Ministry for the occupied eastern territories; Reich Minister of the Interior; Deputy of the Four Year Plan; Reich Justice Ministry; officer of the General Government Foreign Office; Party Chancellery; Reich Chancellery; and others. Adolf Eichmann was also a participant. The Wannsee Conference protocol listed their estimate of the number of Jews in each country or province of Europe as of 1942.
"The total they come to is 11 million," said Browning, "which is the highest estimate, and I think if one examines carefully, one can see there are some clear errors. For instance, unoccupied France they list at 700,000 and I think, [in] my opinion, there must have been some clerical error there because I know of no other historian or other source that believes there were that many Jews in southern France. That's why it's somewhat inflated over the other figures we've seen, but it is close to the 10 million or 9.8 million we had seen earlier." (13-3075 to 3079; Wannsee Conference protocol filed as Exhibit 41A,B)
Browning concluded by saying that the "Germans' figures indicate that there are in the area of 10 million Jews in Europe and therefore 6 million could have been exterminated," contrary to what had been written in Did Six Million Really Die?. (13-3079)
Browning turned to page 7 of the pamphlet:
In the first place, this claim cannot remotely be upheld on examination of the European Jewish population figures. According to Chambers Encyclopaedia the total number of Jews living in pre-war Europe was 6,500,000. Quite clearly, this would mean that almost the entire number were exterminated.
Crown counsel placed before Browning a copy of the Chambers Encyclopedia referred to by Harwood. It stated:
When in 1939 war broke out in Europe anti-semites acted as 'fifth columns' to help to secure German predominance, and the conquest of every country was succeeded by the disenfranchisement of the Jews and the introduction of legislation based on the Nuremberg code. As time passed so the enforcement became more and more severe. The 'Jewish badge' and in eastern Europe even the ghetto were generally reintroduced. The policy was formulated of rendering western Europe free of the Jews and deportations took place on a vast scale to the Jewish reservations which had been set up in Poland. Ultimately there was begun a systematic campaign of annihilation, in a series of death camps of which that of Oswiecim (Auschwitz), where 1,750,000 persons were killed, was the most notorious. On the continent of Europe apart from Russia, whose western provinces also suffered terribly, only a handful of numerically unimportant communities in neutral countries escaped and of the 6,500,000 Jews who lived in the Nazi-dominated lands in 1939, barely 1,500,000 remained alive when the war ended six years later. In these six years the Jewish people lost one-third of its total numbers; in Europe as a whole over one-half and in central Europe, three- quarters.
In Browning's opinion, Chambers Encyclopedia did not purport to deal with the total number of Jews living in pre-war Europe, as stated by Did Six Million Really Die?, but referred only to the "continent of Europe apart from Russia." (13-3082 to 3084; Chambers Encyclopaedia, p. 99 filed as Exhibit 42)
Browning continued on page 7:
This is acknowledged by the World Jewish Congress in its publication Unity in Dispersion (p. 377), which states that: "The majority of the German Jews succeeded in leaving Germany before the war broke out." In addition to the German Jews, 220,000 of the total 280,000 Austrian Jews had emigrated by September, 1939, while from March 1939 onwards the Institute for Jewish Emigration in Prague had secured the emigration of 260,000 Jews from former Czechoslovakia. In all, only 360,000 Jews remained in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia after September 1939.
Browning testified that "the German documentation gives lower numbers for the number of people who have emigrated -- the German documentation would claim that fewer people emigrated by the fall of 1941 than the pamphlet alleges to have emigrated already by the fall of 1939."
Browning referred again to the Wannsee Conference protocol which indicated that extraordinary burdens had been placed on the efforts to facilitate Jewish emigration in the pre- war and early war years; these included financial difficulties, insufficient berths on ships and constantly increasing immigration restrictions and suspensions by the countries of destination. From 1933 to 1941, however, some 537,000 Jews had been moved out: from the Old Reich about 360,000; specifically, from 1938 out of Austria about 147,000, from 1939 out of the protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, about 30,000. (13-3085 to 3088)
A comparison of these statistics with those given in Did Six Million Really Die? showed that in each case the German statistics of Jewish emigration were considerably lower than those given in the pamphlet. Harwood stated that 400,000 Jews emigrated from Germany while the Wannsee statistics said 360,000; Harwood stated that 230,000 Jews emigrated from Austria while the Wannsee statistics said 147,000; Harwood stated that 260,000 Jews emigrated from former Czechoslovakia while the figure given in the Wannsee protocol was 30,000 for the protectorate. (13 3088; Wannsee Conference protocol filed as Exhibit 43A,B)
Browning turned to page 8 of the pamphlet:
From Poland, an estimated 500,000 had emigrated prior to the outbreak of war. These figures mean that the number of Jewish emigrants from other European countries (France, the Netherlands, Italy, the countries of eastern Europe etc.) was approximately 120,000.
This exodus of Jews before and during hostilities, therefore, reduces the number of Jews in Europe to approximately 5,000,000.
Browning testified that since no sources were given for the figure of 500,000, it was difficult to evaluate it. Browning himself had never seen any source for such a figure. Nor could he make any sense of the figure of 120,000 without being provided with sources. In his opinion, the number of Jews in Europe would not have been reduced to anything like 5 million as claimed by the pamphlet. (13-3089, 3090)
Browning continued his criticism of the pamphlet at page 8:
In addition to these emigrants, we must also include the number of Jews who fled to the Soviet Union after 1939, and who were later evacuated beyond reach of the German invaders. It will be shown below that the majority of these, about 1,250,000, were migrants from Poland. But apart from Poland, Reitlinger admits that 300,000 other European Jews slipped into Soviet territory between 1939 and 1941. This brings the total of Jewish emigrants to the Soviet Union to about 1,550,000. In Colliers magazine, June 9th, 1945, Freiling Foster, writing of the Jews in Russia, explained that "2,200,000 have migrated to the Soviet Union since 1939 to escape from the Nazis," but our lower estimate is probably more accurate.
The pamphlet miscited Reitlinger because "the Reitlinger figure of 300,000 is Reitlinger's estimate of how many Polish Jews fled to Russia, not additional other European Jews on top of this 1,250,000 figure that he has given us without a source...Both Reitlinger and other sources take the estimate of about 300,000, so that [the figure of 1,250,000] is about five times too high...In my opinion." (13-3090 to 3091)
Browning read an extract from the book The Final Solution by Reitlinger:
According to an estimate made by the Polish Government in 1946, the voluntary emigrants from the General Government and incorporated provinces in 1939-41 numbered approximately 300,000, a figure which is consistent with Dr. Korherr's statistical returns... (13-3092; The Final Solution, p. 542 filed as Exhibit 44)
Crown counsel produced a copy of the Collier's Freling Foster column "Keep up with the world" which had been cited in the pamphlet. The column stated:
Russia has 5,800,000 Jews, 41 per cent of the present Jewish population of the world, of whom 2,200,000 have migrated to the Soviet Union since 1939 to escape the Nazis.
In Browning's opinion, this was not the type of source which he would use to collect his data. He noted that at the bottom of the column Foster offered ten dollars for each fact accepted for publication in the column. (13-3093, 3094; Freling Foster article filed as Exhibit 45)
Browning turned to page 8 of the pamphlet:
Jewish migration to the Soviet Union, therefore, reduces the number of Jews within the sphere of German occupation to around 3-1/2 million, approximately 3,450,000. From these should be deducted those Jews living in neutral European countries who escaped the consequences of the war. According to the 1942 World Almanac (p. 594), the number of Jews living in Gibraltar, Britain, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland and Turkey was 413,128...When the Jewish populations of Holland (140,000), Belgium (40,000), Italy (50,000), Yugoslavia (55,000), Hungary (380,000) and Roumania (725,000) are included, the figure does not much exceed 3 million.
Browning commented that, in his opinion, Harwood continually overestimated the number of Jews who had emigrated. Other figures were also low. For example, the figure of 380,000 Jews for Hungary did not accord with the Nazi statistics for the number of Jews in Hungary which they listed at 550,000 in 1940 and in January of 1942 at 743,800. "There are also reports of Jews from other parts of Europe fleeing into Hungary and so it may develop within that the population of Hungary grew beyond that before 1944 when the deportations from Hungary began." In addition, the Germans kept track of how many Jews they deported from Hungary in 1944. By July of that year, the figure had already reached 437,000 excluding those who remained in Budapest. This figure was recorded in reports sent from Hungary to Berlin during the course of the deportations and such documentation was reproduced in the book The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry by Randolph L. Braham.
"In short," testified Browning, "even from part of Hungary they recorded deportations that far exceeded what the pamphlet alleges to be the total Jewish population in Hungary." (13- 3095 to 3099; The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry, p. 443, filed as Exhibit 46)
Browning turned to page 17 of the pamphlet:
This would have been almost the entire Hungarian Jewish population, which numbered some 380,000. But according to the Central Statistical Office of Budapest, there were 260,000 Jews in Hungary in 1945 (which roughly conforms with the Joint Distribution Committee figure of 220,000), so that only 120,000 were classed as no longer resident. Of these, 35,000 were emigrants from the new Communist regime, and a further 25,000 were still being held in Russia after having worked in German labour battalions there. This leaves only 60,000 Hungarian Jews unaccounted for, but M.E. Namenyi estimates that 60,000 Jews returned to Hungary from deportation in Germany, though Reitlinger says this figure is too high (The Final Solution, p. 497). Possibly it is, but bearing in mind the substantial emigration of Hungarian Jews during the war (cf. Report of the ICRC, Vol. I, p. 649), the number of Hungarian Jewish casualties must have been very low indeed.
Browning disagreed with Harwood's statement that there was substantial emigration of Hungarian Jews during the war. "There was a mere trickling of emigration from Hungary. The Germans did everything they could to shut it off." Secondly, if Harwood had subtracted his figures from much higher starting figures, "then you [would] have lots of missing Jews to account for." In Browning's opinion, the statement in the pamphlet that "the number of Hungarian Jewish casualties must have been very low indeed" was false because one had to start from a starting figure at many hundreds of thousands higher than Harwood's figure. (13-3100, 3101)
Browning turned to page 8 of the pamphlet:
Indisputable evidence is also provided by the post-war world Jewish population statistics. The World Almanac of 1938 gives the number of Jews in the world as 16,588,259. But after the war, the New York Times, February 22nd, 1948 placed the number of Jews in the world at a minimum of 15,600,000 and a maximum of 18,700,000. Quite obviously, these figures make it impossible for the number of Jewish war- time casualties to be measured in anything but thousands. 15-1/2 million in 1938 minus the alleged six million leaves nine million; the New York Times figures would mean, therefore, that the world's Jews produced seven million births, almost doubling their numbers, in the space of ten years. This is patently ridiculous.
Crown counsel said he appreciated that Browning was not a statistician, but nevertheless, asked him what he would compare the World Almanac pre-war 1938 statistics with if he was to make a comparison. Browning replied that he would compare them with the statistics of the same publication, the World Almanac, in the post-war period. Referring to a copy of page 431 of the 1938 World Almanac, Browning pointed out that the figure given for the number of Jews worldwide was 15,315,359, not the figure of 16,588,259 cited in the pamphlet. Referring next to a copy of the World Almanac for 1950, and a table of Jewish population on page 473, Browning testified that it showed that the American Jewish Committee had estimated the Jewish population of the world in 1939 to be 16,643,120 and the Jewish population of the world in 1948 to be 11,373,000. (13-3102 to 3105; Excerpt from the 1939 World Almanac filed as Exhibit 47A; Excerpt from the 1950 World Almanac filed as Exhibit 47B)
Browning turned to page 9:
So far as is known, the first accusation against the Germans of the mass murder of Jews in war- time Europe was made by the Polish Jew Rafael Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, published in New York in 1943. Somewhat coincidentally, Lemkin was later to draw up the U.N. Genocide Convention, which seeks to outlaw "racialism". His book claimed that the Nazis had destroyed millions of Jews, perhaps as many as six millions. This, by 1943, would have been remarkable indeed, since the action was allegedly started only in the summer of 1942. At such a rate, the entire world Jewish population would have been exterminated by 1945.
Browning testified that on page 89 of his book, Lemkin indicated that 1,702,500 Jews had been killed by organized murder. Lemkin had written:
The number of Jews who have been killed by organized murder in all the occupied countries, according to the Institute of Jewish Affairs of the American Jewish Congress in New York, amounts to 1,702,500.
No mention was made of 6 million as stated by Harwood. Browning did not know, however, whether the figure was given in any other part of the book. In citing this figure, Lemkin had relied on another book entitled Hitler's Ten-Year War on the Jews [published by the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress]. On page 307 of this 1943 work, a table indicated that 1,702,500 Jews had been killed by organized extermination. (13-3106 to 3112; 3116; Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, pp. 88-89 filed as Exhibit 48; Hitler's Ten-Year War on the Jews, p. 307 filed as Exhibit 49)
Browning testified that Harwood was not correct in saying that the "first accusation against the Germans of the mass murder of Jews in war-time Europe" was made by Lemkin. A previous accusation existed, that of the Joint Allied Declaration of December 17, 1942, in which the Allied nations together put on record that they were accusing the Germans of carrying out a genocide of the Jews. A reference to it was made in the Lemkin book itself. The declaration, which was made in different places and was read in the British House of Commons, stated as follows:
The attention of the Governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxemberg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the United States of America, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Yugoslavia, and of the French National Committee has been drawn to numerous reports from Europe that the German authorities, not content with denying to persons of Jewish race in all the territories over which their barbarous rule has been extended the most elementary human rights, are now carrying into effect Hitler's oft repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe. From all the occupied countries Jews are being transported, in conditions of appalling horror and brutality, to Eastern Europe.
In Poland which has been made the principal Nazi slaughterhouse, the ghettos established by the German invaders are being systematically emptied of all Jews except a few highly skilled workers required for war industries. None of those taken away are ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death in labour camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation or are deliberately massacred in mass executions. The number of victims of these bloody cruelties is reckoned in many hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women and children.
The above mentioned Governments and the French National Committee condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination. They declare that such events can only strengthen the resolve of all freedom loving peoples to overthrow the barbarous Hitlerite tyranny. They re- affirm their solemn resolution to ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution and to press on with the necessary practical measures to this end. (13 3114 to 3116; Joint Allied Declaration of 1942 filed as Exhibit 50)
Crown counsel returned to Did Six Million Really Die? and asked Browning to comment on selected portions of the pamphlet dealing with Kurt Gerstein. Browning turned to the following passage on page 9:
Gerstein's sister was congenitally insane and died by euthanasia, which may well suggest a streak of mental instability in Gerstein himself... Gerstein's fantastic exaggerations have done little but discredit the whole notion of mass extermination. Indeed, Evangelical Bishop Wilhelm Dibelius of Berlin denounced his memoranda as "Untrustworthy" (H. Rothfels, "Augenzeugenbericht zu den Massenvergasungen" in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, April 1953).
The relevance of Gerstein was that shortly before his death in 1945 he wrote several versions of a visit he had made to the extermination camps at Belzec and Treblinka, said Browning. These were generally referred to as the Gerstein report or reports. The pamphlet's approach to Gerstein was an attempt to discredit him as a witness. However, the article referred to by the pamphlet, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, did not say what Harwood said it did about Gerstein. The cited article [at p. 187] said that it was not Gerstein's sister, but his sister-in-law who was killed in the Nazi euthanasia programme at Hadamar. Regarding Evangelical Bishop Dibelius, the article actually stated that Dibelius was convinced of the political and human reliability or trustworthiness of Gerstein, the exact opposite of what Harwood said it stated. (13- 3116 to 3120; Excerpt from Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte filed as Exhibit 51)
Browning continued his analysis of the pamphlet with the following passage from page 10:
It should be emphasised straight away that there is not a single document in existence which proves that the Germans intended to, or carried out, the deliberate murder of Jews. In Poliakov and Wulf's Das Dritte Reich und die Juden: Dokumente und Aufsätze (Berlin, 1955), the most that they can assemble are statements extracted after the war from people like Hoettl, Ohlendorf and Wisliceny, the latter under torture in a Soviet prison. In the absence of any evidence, therefore, Poliakov is forced to write: "The three or four people chiefly involved in drawing up the plan for total extermination are dead, and no documents survive." This seems very convenient. Quite obviously, both the plan and the "three or four" people are nothing but nebulous assumptions on the part of the writer, and are entirely unprovable.
Browning did not agree that there was not a "single document" to prove the deliberate murder of Jews and believed there were a number of documents which could be looked at to find such proof. The first was an excerpt from the daily record of Hans Frank, who held the position of governor of the General Government of Poland during the war. This record, which kept track of Frank's speeches, conferences and official activities, was published in 1975 as Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen 1939-1945. It had been captured by the Americans after the war, microfilmed, then given to the Poles for various trials that were being conducted in Poland. Parts of it were also printed in the Nuremberg Military Tribunal records. Browning read to the court an excerpt from page 457 for December 16, 1941. On this date Frank spoke to a conference:
I want to say to you quite openly that we shall have to finish with the Jews, one way or another. The Führer once spoke these words: "If united Jewry should succeed once more in unleashing another world war, then the people who have been driven into this war will not be the only ones to shed their blood, because the Jew in Europe will also have found his end." I know that many measures taken in the Reich against the Jews are criticised. Reports on morale indicate that again and again there are attempts to speak of cruelty and harshness. Before I continue to speak, let me therefore ask you to agree with me upon the following: In principle we want to have compassion only for the German people, otherwise for no one in the whole world. The others have had no compassion for us. As an old National Socialist I must also say: If the pack of Jews were to survive the war while we have sacrificed our best blood for the preservation of Europe, then this war would still be only a partial success. Therefore in principle concerning the Jews I would only start from the expectation that they will disappear. They must go. I have initiated negotiation for the purpose of having them pushed off to the east. In January a major conference will take place in Berlin on this question, to which I shall send State Secretary Dr. Bühler. This conference will be held in the Reich Security Main Office of SS Obergruppenführer Heydrich. A great Jewish migration will certainly begin.
But what is to happen to the Jews? Do you think they will actually be resettled in villages in the Ostland? In Berlin we were told: Why are you making all this trouble? We can't do anything with them in the Ostland or Reichskommissariat either; liquidate them yourselves! Gentlemen, I must ask you to arm yourselves against any feelings of compassion. We must destroy the Jews, wherever we find them and wherever it is at all possible, in order to maintain the entire structure of the Reich. That will obviously happen with methods that are different from those of which Dr. Hummel has spoken. Even the judges of special courts cannot be made responsible for matters which are outside the framework of legal proceedings. One cannot transfer previous perspectives to such a gigantic, unique undertaking. In any case we must find a path that leads to this goal, and I am thinking about it.
The Jews are also for us extremely harmful animalistic eaters. In the General Government we have approximately 2.5 million Jews, and perhaps with Jewish kin and all those connected with them, now 3.5 million. We cannot shoot those 3.5 million Jews, we cannot poison them, but we can take measures that somehow lead to a successful destruction, and indeed I am referring to the large-scale measures to be discussed in the Reich. The General Government must become just as free of Jews as the Reich. Where and how this is going to happen, is a matter for agencies that we must install and create, and about whose operations I will report to you when the time comes." (13-3122 to 3129; Excerpt from Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen with English translation filed as Exhibit 52A,B)
Frank's reference to a major conference to take place in Berlin actually did take place, said Browning; it was the Wannsee Conference and Dr. Bühler did attend. With respect to "measures" that would be taken against the Jews, four extermination camps were located in the General Government: Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor and Majdanek. (13-3129)
At the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich, second in command of the SS, first "reviewed previous policy and then explained that instead of sending the Jews to Madagascar, they would now be sent to the east and now he turns, at this point, to explain what does he mean by what is going to happen in the east and the course of the 'final solution.'" Browning read the translation of part of the Wannsee Conference protocol:
In the course of the final solution, the Jews should be brought under appropriate direction in a suitable manner to the east for labour utilization. Separated by sex, the Jews capable of work will be led into these areas in large labour columns to build roads, whereby doubtless a large part will fall away through natural reduction.
The inevitable final remainder which doubtless constitutes the toughest element will have to be dealt with appropriately, since it represents a natural selection which upon liberation is to be regarded as a germ cell of a new Jewish development. (See the lesson of history.)
Browning pointed out that Heydrich did not say what would happen to those who were not capable of working. Heydrich assumed a large number would die from labour and that the remainder, the "toughest element" would have to be dealt with "accordingly because they represent a germ cell of a new Jewish development." (13 3133)
Browning continued to read the portion of the Wannsee Conference protocol which dealt with Dr. Bühler:
Undersecretary Dr. Bühler stated that the General Government [of Poland] would welcome the start of the final solution of this question in its territory, since the transport problem was no overriding factor there and the course of the action would not be hindered by considerations of work utilization. Jews should be removed from the domain of the General Government as fast as possible, because it is precisely here that the Jew constitutes a substantial danger as carrier of epidemics and also because his continued black market activities create constant disorder in the economic structure of the country. Moreover, the majority of the 2-1/2 million Jews involved were not capable of work.
Undersecretary Dr. Bühler stated further that the Chief of the Security Police and Security Service was in charge of the final solution of the Jewish question in the General Government and that his work was being supported by the offices of the General Government. He only had one favour to ask: that the Jewish question in this territory be solved as rapidly as possible.
Finally there was a discussion of the various types of solution possibilities, with both Gauleiter Dr. Meyer and Undersecretary Dr. Bühler expressing the view that they could carry out certain preparatory measures in their territories on their own, provided, however, that any disturbance of the [non-Jewish] population had to be avoided.
The conference was closed with a plea of the Chief of Security Police and Security Service for the cooperation of all the participants in the implementation of the solution tasks. (Excerpt of Wannsee Conference Protocol and translation by Dr. Raul Hilberg filed as Exhibit 53A,B)
"In my opinion," said Browning, "the Wannsee Conference is the point at which the ministerial bureaucracy, the various parts of the German government in Berlin, were going to be brought into -- initiated into the plan for the physical extermination of the European Jews...By January of 1942, the plan to murder the European Jews had taken form. It had now been communicated to the Ministerial bureaucracy through their State Secretaries in Berlin, that a decision-making process, in effect, had reached its conclusion and that the Germans were now -- the Nazi government was now prepared to implement that plan." (13-3136, 3137; 14-3152)
In Browning's opinion, two extermination camps had already been constructed in the fall of 1941. "The first of those began gassing in fact on December 8, shortly before the Wannsee Conference. At least some experimental gassing was carried out at Auschwitz before the Wannsee Conference too. In the following year, the opening of the death camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka take place in March, May and July, respectively. The gassing at Auschwitz on a larger scale is commenced, and continuing gassing in Chelmno, the first camp goes as well. By the end of 1942 most of Polish Jewry has been killed." (14-3152, 3153).
Browning referred to an excerpt from the Hans Frank diary from 9 December, 1942. At that time "the Nazi government realized it was now in for a long war and that they would have to intensify economic mobilization..." Increased use of Polish labour in Germany as well as Russian prisoners of war had resulted in labour shortages in Poland itself. (14-3153) Browning read his own translation of the Frank entry to the jury:
Not unimportant labor reserves have been taken from us when we lost our old trustworthy Jews. It is clear that the labor situation is aggravated when, in the middle of the war effort, the order comes, to leave all the Jews to destruction. The responsibility for this does not lie with the offices of the General Government. The directive for the destruction of the Jews comes from higher authorities. We must only deal with the consequences and can only communicate to the Reich authorities that the taking away of the Jews has led to most enormous difficulties in the labor field. I have recently been able to show State Secretary Ganzenmüller who complained that a large construction project in the General Government had come to a standstill, that that would not have happened if the many thousands of Jews employed there had not been taken away. Now the order stipulates that the Jews in the armaments industry are to be taken away. I hope that this order, if not already revoked, will yet be revoked, because otherwise the situation looks even worse. (Excerpt from Hans Frank diary and English translation filed as Exhibits 54A,B)
In Browning's opinion, the expression "taking away of the Jews" in this case meant deporting them out of the ghettos to the extermination camps. (14-3155)
Browning next referred to a speech given by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, given to his SS leaders on 4 October, 1943 in the city of Posen and read a portion entitled "Jewish Evacuation" out loud to the jury:
I also want to talk to you, quite frankly, on a very grave matter. Among ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and yet we will never speak of it publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30th, 1934 to do the duty we were bidden, and stand comrades who had lapsed, up against the wall and shoot them, so we have never spoken about it and will never speak of it. It was that tact which is a matter of course and which I am glad to say, is inherent in us, that made us never discuss it among ourselves, never speak of it. It appalled everyone, and yet everyone was certain that he would do it the next time if such orders are issued and if it is necessary.
[Browning explained to the jury that this referred to an incident in which the SS provided a firing squad to execute the leader of the SA and some of his colleagues.]
I mean the clearing out of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It's one of those things it is easy to talk about -- "The Jewish race is being exterminated", says one party member, "that's quite clear, it's in our programme -- elimination of the Jews, and we're doing it, exterminating them." And then they come, 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are vermin, but this one is an A1 Jew. Not one of all those who talk this way has witnessed it, not one of them has been through it. Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500 or 1000. To have stuck it out and at the same time -- apart from exceptions caused by human weakness -- to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written, for we know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves, if -- with the bombing raids, the burdens and the deprivations of war -- we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators and trouble-mongers. We would now probably have reached the 1916/17 stage when the Jews were still in the German national body.
We have taken from them what wealth they had. I have issued a strict order, which SS- Obergruppenführer Pohl has carried out, that this wealth should, as a matter of course, be handed over to the Reich without reserve. We have taken none of it for ourselves. Individual men who have lapsed will be punished in accordance with an order I issued at the beginning, which gave this warning; Whoever takes so much as a mark of it, is a dead man. A number of SS men -- there are not very many of them -- have fallen short, and they will die, without mercy. We had the moral right, we had the duty to our people, to destroy this people which wanted to destroy us. But we have not the right to enrich ourselves with so much as a fur, a watch, a mark, or a cigarette or anything else. Because we have exterminated a bacterium we do not want, in the end, to be infected by the bacterium and die of it. I will not see so much as a small area of sepsis appear here or gain a hold. Wherever it may form, we will cauterize it. Altogether, however, we can say, that we have fulfilled this most difficult duty for the love of our people. And our spirit, our soul, our character has not suffered injury from it.
Browning read to the jury that portion on page 11 of Did Six Million Really Die? which dealt with the Posen speech:
A review of the documentary situation is important, because it reveals the edifice of guesswork and baseless assumptions upon which the extermination legend is built. The Germans had an extraordinary propensity for recording everything on paper in the most careful detail, yet among the thousands of captured documents of the S.D. and Gestapo, the records of the Reich Security Head Office, the files of Himmler's headquarters and Hitler's own war directives there is not a single order for the extermination of Jews or anyone else. It will be seen later that this has, in fact, been admitted by the World Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation at Tel Aviv. Attempts to find "veiled allusions" to genocide in speeches like that of Himmler's to his S.S. Obergruppenführers at Posen in 1943 are likewise quite hopeless.
To Browning, the speech clearly showed that "the Jewish race is being exterminated" and "that's quite clear, it's in our programme - elimination of the Jews, and we're doing it, exterminating them." (14-3162, 3163) Browning himself had never seen the original of the Posen speech but he presumed the original was in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz. There was a sound recording of the speech as well, a copy of which was kept in the National Archives in Washington. (14-3162; Posen speech and extracts filed as Exhibits 55A, B and C at 14-3163)
Browning added that he had never heard of the "World Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation" at Tel Aviv referred to in the pamphlet.
He continued his analysis on page 13:
The Wisliceny statement deals at some length with the activities of the Einsatzgruppen or Action Groups used in the Russian campaign. These must merit a detailed consideration in a survey of Nuremberg because the picture presented of them at the Trials represents a kind of "Six Million" in miniature, i.e. has been proved since to be the most enormous exaggeration and falsification. The Einsatzgruppen were four special units drawn from the Gestapo and the S.D. (S.S. Security Service) whose task was to wipe out partisans and Communist commissars in the wake of the advancing German armies in Russia. As early as 1939, there had been 34,000 of these political commissars attached to the Red Army. The activities of the Einsatzgruppen were the particular concern of the Soviet Prosecutor Rudenko at the Nuremberg Trials. The 1947 indictment of the four groups alleged that in the course of their operations they had killed not less then one million Jews in Russia merely because they were Jews.
Browning testified that the attempt to kill Russian Jews through firing squad methods and the numbers that had been killed, had not been proven to be an exaggeration as claimed by Harwood. Virtually all of the historians whose works Browning had read indicated that a minimum of one million Jews were killed and that the number was probably higher. (14-3166)
Browning continued on page 13:
These allegations have since been elaborated; it is now claimed that the murder of Soviet Jews by the Einsatzgruppen constituted Phase One in the plan to exterminate the Jews, Phase Two being the transportation of European Jews to Poland. Reitlinger admits that the original term "final solution" referred to emigration and had nothing to do with the liquidation of Jews, but he then claims that an extermination policy began at the time of the invasion of Russia in 1941.
Browning agreed with both statements attributed to Reitlinger, i.e., that the term "final solution" referred to something other than extermination originally and then became the code word for extermination. "The first phase of that extermination process," said Browning, "the policy, did begin with the invasion of Russia in June of 1941." (14-3167)
He [Reitlinger] considers Hitler's order of July 1941 for the liquidation of the Communist commissars, and he concludes that this was accompanied by a verbal order from Hitler for the Einsatzgruppen to liquidate all Soviet Jews (Die Endlösung, p. 91). If this assumption is based on anything at all, it is probably the worthless Wisliceny statement...
Browning had not consulted the German version of Reitlinger's book (Die Endlösung) cited by the pamphlet. In the English version the chapter and footnotes on Hitler and the decision to murder Russian Jews did not refer at any time to the Wisliceny statement. "In terms of the Einsatzgruppen," said Browning, "Reitlinger, like other historians, relies on primarily a series of documents that we refer to as the Einsatzgruppen reports. These documents...came in...three kinds. There were a series of daily reports, almost daily with few exceptions, through the summer and fall of 1941, compiled by Heydrich, that was circulated with the SS. There were monthly reports that Heydrich circulated to other ministries in the German government, and then in 1942, there were another series of reports that came, I think, weekly." He regarded these reports as "very important" because they were reports of "what the Einsatzgruppen and other units were doing in Russia." (14-3168, 3169) There were four Einsatzgruppen: Groups A, B, C and D and they were assigned to the northern, central, southern and Romanian fronts. They moved forward with the armies. (14-3172)
Browning referred to document NO (Nazi Organization) 3146, dated 25 September, 1941 being Einsatzgruppen report no. 94. This report summarized the most recent information that Heydrich had received in Berlin and was circulated within the SS. This particular report was number 36 out of 48 copies. (14-3169 to 3171) Browning read a portion of the document to the jury:
Sonderkommando 4a by now had carried out more than 15,000 executions. Einsatzkommando 5 reports the liquidation of 90 political functionaries, 72 saboteurs and looters and 161 Jews during the period of 31 August to 6 September, 1941. Sonderkommando 4b shot 13 political functionaries and 290 Jews -- particularly intellectuals between the 6 and 12 September, 1941, while the Einsatzkommando 6 executed 60 persons between the 1 and 13 September, 1941. The Group staff could liquidate during the last days 4 functionaries and/or informers of the NKVD, 6 anti-social elements (gipsies) and 55 Jews. In the month of August, the formations of the Senior SS and Police leaders shot a total of 44, 125 persons, mostly Jews. (14- 3171, 3172)
As already mentioned, the procedure against the Jews has to be different in the various sectors according to the density of the settlement. Especially in the northern sector of the Einsatzgruppe C, very many escaped Jews turned up again in the villages and they now represent a heavy burden from the point of view of nourishment. They are neither billeted nor fed by the population. Partly they live in holes in the ground and partly packed together in old huts. Thus the danger of epidemics considerably increased so that for this reason alone the complete purging of the places in question became necessary. (14-3173; National Archives document NO-3146 and translations filed as Exhibit 56A, B and C)
Browning next referred to Nuremberg document L-180, which was used at the International Military Tribunal, the so-called "Stahlecker Report." This was a report by the commander of Einsatzgruppe A, a man named Franz Stahlecker, who wrote a summary report of his activities from the beginning of the invasion of Russia on 22 June, 1941 to 15 October, 1941. Einsatzgruppe A operated mainly in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. (14-3174, 3175) Browning read excerpts of the document to the jury:
Aside from those searching activities, a systematic search was made for Communist functionaries, Red Army soldiers, and persons more seriously suspected for their communist activities who had been left behind. In some places the Self-Protection Units themselves had rendered harmless the most infamous Communists already spontaneously.
Using all available units of the Kommandos and Self-Protection Formations, and with the help of the ORPO, large scale actions were carried out in the larger towns resulting in many arrests and search actions...
From the beginning it was to be expected that the Jewish problem in the East could not be solved by pogroms alone. In accordance with the basic orders received, however, the clearing activities of the Security Police had to aim at a complete annihilation of the Jews, Sonderkommandos reinforced by selected units -- in Lithouania partisan detachments, in Latvia units of the Latvian auxiliary police -- therefore performed extensive executions both in the towns and in rural areas. The actions of the execution Kommandos were performed smoothly. When attaching Lithouanian and Latvian detachments to the execution squads, men were chosen relatives had been murdered or removed by the Russians.
Especially severe and extensive measures became necessary in Lithouania. In some places -- especially in Kowno -- the Jews had armed themselves and participated actively in franctireur war [partisan warfare] and committed arson. Besides these activities the Jews in Lithouania had collaborated most actively hand in glove with the Soviets.
The sum total of the Jews liquidated in Lithouania amounts to 71,105.
During the pogroms in Kowno 3,800 Jews were eliminated, in the smaller towns about 1,200 Jews.
In Latvia as well the Jews participated in acts of sabotage and arson after the invasion of the German Armed Forces. In Buonsburg so many fires were started by the Jews that a large part of the town was lost. The electric power station burnt down to a mere shell. The streets which were mainly inhabited by Jews remained unscathed.
In Latvia up to now 30,000 Jews were executed in all. 500 were made harmless by pogroms in Riga.
Most of the 4,500 Jews living in Esthonia at the beginning of the Eastern Campaign fled with the retreating Red Army. About 2,000 stayed behind. In Reval alone there lived about 1,000 Jews.
The arrest of all male Jews of over 16 years of age has been nearly finished. With the exception of the doctors and the Elders of the Jews who were appointed by the Sonderkommandos, they were executed by the Self-Protection Units under the control of the Sonderkommando 1a. Jewesses in Pernau and Reval of the age groups from 16 to 60 who are fit for work were arrested and put to peat-cutting or other labor.
At present a camp is being constructed in Harku, in which all Esthonian Jews are to be assembled, so that Esthonia will be free of Jews within a short while.
After the carrying out of the first larger executions in Lithouania and Latvia it became soon apparent that an annihilation of the Jews without leaving any traces could not be carried out, at least not at the present moment. Since a large part of the trades in Lithouania and Latvia are in Jewish hands and others carried on nearly exclusively by Jews (especially those of glaziers, plumbers, stovebuilders, cobblers) many Jewish partisans [Browning stated to the jury that he believed this was a mistake in the translation: it should read "artisans", not "partisans"] are indispensable at present for repairing installations of vital importance for the reconstruction of towns destroyed and for work of military importance. Although the employers aim at replacing Jewish labor with Lithouanian or Latvian labor, it is not yet possible to displace all employed Jews especially not in the larger towns. In co-operation with the labor exchange offices, however, all Jews who are no longer fit for work are being arrested and shall be executed in small badges. [Browning testified he believed this word should be "batches".]
In this connection it may be mentioned that some authorities of the Civil Administration offered resistance, at times even a strong one, against the carrying out of larger executions. This resistance was answered by calling attention to the fact that it was a matter of carrying out basic orders. (14-3175 to 3180; Report of Einsatzgruppe A (L-180) and translation filed as Exhibits 57A,B,C at 14-3181, 3183))
At the end of the document, Stahlecker attached a number of appendices. Appendix no. 8, statistics for Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and part of White Ruthenia, showed that for a four month period a total of 118,430 Jews and 3,387 Communists had been killed for a total of 121,817. Stahlecker indicated in the report that if other killings were included, such as those of mentally-ill lunatics, the total was 135,567. (14-3180, 3181)
Browning indicated that the Einsatzgruppen reports had been captured by the Americans and filed in the National Archives. They were later returned to Germany. (14-3181)
In document NO-2825, dated 14 November, 1941, being Einsatzgruppen report no. 133, Browning testified that under the heading "Liquidations," it showed that as of that date Einsatzgruppe B had liquidated 45,467 persons in White Russia. (14-3183, 3184; Document NO- 2825 and translation filed as Exhibits 58A,B at 3185))
Browning read to the jury an excerpt from document NO-3157, dated 3 November, 1941, being Einsatzgruppen report no. 128. The report, the 51st copy of 55 copies circulated within the SS, summarized the activities of Einsatzgruppe C which operated in the Ukraine:
As to purely executive matters, approximately 80 000 persons were liquidated until now by the Kommandos of the Einsatzgruppe.
Among these are approximately 8000 persons through investigations convicted of anti-German or bolshevistic activities.
The remainder was liquidated as a retaliatory measure.
Several retaliatory measures were carried out as large scale actions. The largest of these actions took place immediately after the occupation of Kiew; it was carried out exclusively against Jews with their entire families.
The difficulties resulting from such a large scale action -- in particular concerning the seizure -- were overcome in Kiew by requesting the Jewish population through wall-posters to move. Although only a participation of approximately 5-6000 Jews had been expected at first, more than 30 000 Jews arrived who until the very moment of their execution still believed in their resettlement, thanks to an extremely clever organization.
Even though approximately 75 000 Jews have been liquidated in this manner, it is already at this time evident, that this cannot be a possible solution of the Jewish problem. Although we succeeded, in particular in smaller towns and also in villages in accomplishing a complete liquidation of the Jewish problem, again and again it is however observed in larger cities that after such an execution all Jews have indeed disappeared. But when after a certain period of time a Kommando returns again, the number of Jews still found in the city always considerably surpasses the number of the executed Jews. (14-3186 to 3189; Document NO-3157 and translation filed as Exhibit 59A,B)
Browning testified that while Did Six Million Really Die? maintained that the Jews were in fact resettled rather than executed, this document showed that "resettlement was in fact a clever organization of the Germans to assemble Jews and to keep them living in something else until the last moment." (14-3187, 3188)
Document NO-2828, dated 12 December, 1941, being Einsatzgruppen report no. 145, indicated with respect to the activities of Einsatzgruppe D, which operated on the Romanian front, that "2,910 more Jews and nineteen Communist officials were shot after summary proceedings. Thus the sum total of executions has risen to 54,696," said Browning. (14-3189, 3190; Document NO-2828 and Nuremberg translation filed as Exhibit 60A,B at 14-3191)
Browning next referred to document number 3257-PS, dated 2 December, 1941; "a document from the army's inspectorate in the Ukraine to the chief of the military armaments group of the higher command of the armed forces, a man named General Thomas." In Browning's opinion as a historian, the document was significant because it was a report from a person outside the Einsatzgruppen, one Professor Seraphim, who was looking at what was going on in the Ukraine from the perspective of someone involved with the question of labour and production. It stated:
The attitude of the Jewish population was anxious -- obliging from the beginning. They tried to avoid everything that might displease the German administration. That they hated the German administration and army inwardly goes without saying and cannot be surprising. However, there is no proof that Jewry as a whole or even to a greater part was implicated in acts of sabotage. Surely, there were some terrorists or saboteurs among them just as among the Ukrainians. But it cannot be said that the Jews as such represented a danger to the German armed forces. The output produced by Jews who, of course, were prompted by nothing but the feeling of fear, was satisfactory to the troops and the German administration.
The Jewish population remained temporarily unmolested shortly after the fighting. Only weeks, sometimes months later, specially detached formations of the police (Ordnungspolizei) executed a planned shooting of Jews. This action as a rule proceeded from east to west. It was done entirely in public with the use of the Ukrainian militia and unfortunately in many instances also with members of the armed forces taking part voluntarily. The way these actions which included men and old men, women and children of all ages were carried out was horrible. The great masses executed make this action more gigantic than any similar measure taken so far in the Soviet Union. So far about 150,000 to 20,000 [Browning testified that he believed this to be a misprint and that it should read "200,000"] Jews may have been executed in the part of the Ukraine belonging to the Reichskommissariat (RK); no consideration was given to the interests of economy.
Summarizing it can be said that the kind of solution of the Jewish problem applied in the Ukraine which obviously was based on the ideological theories as a matter of principle had the following results:
a) Elimination of a part of partly superfluous eaters in the cities.
b) Elimination of a part of the population which hated us undoubtedly.
c) Elimination of badly needed tradesmen who were in many instances indispensable even in the interests of the armed forces.
d) Consequences as to foreign policy -- propaganda which are obvious.
e) Bad effects on the troops which in any case get indirect contact with the executions.
f) Brutalizing effect on the formations which carry out the executions - regular police -- (Ordnungspolizei).
Scooping off the agricultural surplus in the Ukraine for the purpose of feeding the Reich is therefore only feasible if traffic in the interior of the Ukraine is diminished to a minimum. The attempt will be made to achieve this
It must be realized that in the Ukraine eventually only the Ukrainians can produce economic values by labor. If we shoot the Jews, let the prisoners of war perish, condemn considerable parts of the urban population to death by starvation and also lose a part of the farming population by hunger during the next year, the question remains unanswered: Who in all the world is then supposed to produce economic values here? (14-3191 to 3197; Document 3257-PS and translation filed as Exhibits 61 A,B,C at 14-3198)
Browning testified that Did Six Million Really Die? suggested in a number of places that the question of labour was fundamental: "that this was the true priority of the Nazi regime in regards to the Jews." (14-3193) But the Seraphim report indicated "that those responsible for trying to mobilize the occupied territories for the economic war efforts felt that in fact labour was not a rarity but was being ignored, or for sacrifice to the ideological goal of murdering all the Jews." (14-3197)
Browning next referred to document NO-511, comprising a covering letter and a copy of a report dated 20 December, 1942 from Himmler to Adolf Hitler concerning the combatting of "bands" (the German term for partisans) in South Russia, the Ukraine and Bialystok. (14-3199) In this report, Himmler compiled statistics from the results of combatting partisans from August to the first of December, 1942. These statistics showed that for the four months of August, September, October and November, the number of partisans killed in battle was 1,337; prisoners immediately executed, 737; prisoners executed after lengthy close examination, 7,828; accomplices of partisans and persons suspected of helping them, 16,546 arrested, 14,257 executed; Jews executed in August, 31,246; Jews executed in September, 165,282; Jews executed in October, 95,735; Jews executed in November, 70,948; for a total of 363,211. (14-3200, 3201; Document NO- 511 and translation filed as Exhibits 62 A,B at 14-3208)
Pearson asked Browning to comment on the following passage from the pamphlet at page 14:
The Soviet charge that the Action Groups had wantonly exterminated a million Jews during their operations has been shown subsequently to be a massive falsification... (These horrific distortions are the subject of six pages of William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pp. 1140-46). Here, then, is the legendary 6 million in miniature; not one million deaths, but one hundred thousand. Of course, only a small proportion of these could have been Jewish partisans and Communist functionaries. It is worth repeating that these casualties were inflicted during savage partisan warfare on the Eastern front, and that Soviet terrorists claim to have killed five times that number of German troops. It has nevertheless remained a popular myth that the extermination of the Jews began with the actions of the Einsatzgruppen in Russia.
Browning testified that the Himmler report to Hitler indicated that in a four-month period alone from August to December of 1942, there were recorded executions of Jews totalling 363,211 in the areas of South Russia, Ukraine and Bialystok. With respect to German losses, the same report indicated that "among the SS and Security Police involved in this operation in the four-month period, there was a total of 174 killed. Among the groups that were killed who worked with the so called 'protective squad', there were 285 [killed]. These are units that they organized among the local population." Browning indicated after objection by defence counsel that the German army itself was not included in the loss tally, but simply those SS and protective squad units involved in the anti-partisan campaign. (14-3203 to 3207)
Pearson turned Browning's attention next to page 18 of the pamphlet and the following passage:
In terms of numbers, Polish Jewry is supposed to have suffered most of all from extermination, not only at Auschwitz, but at an endless list of newly-discovered "death camps" such as Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Majdanek, Chelmno and at many more obscure places which seem suddenly to have gained prominence.
Browning testified that while phase one of the extermination of the Jews was the open-air firing squad executions in Russia, phase two was the deportation of the Jews from various parts of Europe to the extermination camps in Poland. He did not agree with the pamphlet that Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Majdanek and Chelmno were "newly-discovered" death camps: "There are reports, even during the war, on the use of gas vans at Chelmno. At Treblinka, for instance, at the first Nuremberg trial, one of the escapees during the Treblinka uprising and breakout in fact testified that Majdanek, we'll see, was liberated in the summer of 1941, and that's well-known. Sobibor and Belzec were not unknown at the time but were not as well known, but I certainly do not characterize them as 'newly-discovered.'" (14-3210, 3211)
The Jews dealt with at these camps came from Poland itself where the camps were located and were also deported by train from the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Greece, "for the most part." (14-3211)
Browning turned to page 18 of the pamphlet:
It has been established already that the 1931 Jewish population census for Poland placed the number of Jews at 2,732,600, and that after emigration and flight to the Soviet Union, no more than 1,100,000 were under German control.
Browning admitted that he was not a demographic expert and stated: "There is so much population movement that at any one time it's still difficult to give exact figures...so I would refrain." Nevertheless, he thought the statistic given in the pamphlet was much too low: "[B]y the German records, they had about a half million or 500,000 in the incorporated territories. I think Frank's figures that he gave in his diary are inflated, but that they would have -- I don't know if I should say, they have two million in the General Government. That may be too high. I would have to analyze those reports before I can make an official, you know, statement in that regard, but 1.1 million is definitely much too low." (14-3212, 3213)
Browning turned next to the following passage in the pamphlet on pages 18-19:
These incontrovertible facts, however, do not prevent Manvell and Frankl asserting that "there had been over three million Jews in Poland when Germany began the invasion" and that in 1942 "some two million still awaited death" (ibid., p. 140). In reality, of the million or so Jews in Poland, almost half, about 400,000 were eventually concentrated in the ghetto of Warsaw, an area of about two and a half square miles around the old mediaeval ghetto. The remainder had already been moved to the Polish Government- General by September 1940. In the summer of 1942, Himmler ordered the resettlement of all Polish Jews in detention camps in order to obtain their labour, part of the system of general concentration for labour assignment in the Government-General. Thus between July and October 1942, over three quarters of the Warsaw Ghetto's inhabitants were peacefully evacuated and transported, supervised by the Jewish police themselves. As we have seen, transportation to camps is alleged to have ended in "extermination", but there is absolutely no doubt from the evidence available that it involved only the effective procurement of labour and the prevention of unrest. In the first place, Himmler discovered on a surprise visit to Warsaw in January 1943 that 24,000 Jews registered as armaments workers were in fact working illegally as tailors and furriers (Manvell and Frankl, ibid, p. 140); the Ghetto was also being used as a base for subversive forays into the main area of Warsaw.
After six months of peaceful evacuation, when only about 60,000 Jews remained in the residential ghetto, the Germans met with an armed rebellion on 18th January, 1943. Manvell and Frankl admit that "The Jews involved in planned resistance had for a long time been engaged in smuggling arms from the outside world, and combat groups fired on and killed S.S. men and militia in charge of a column of deportees." The terrorists in the Ghetto uprising were also assisted by the Polish Home Army and the PPR - Polska Partia Robotnicza, the Communist Polish Workers Party. It was under these circumstances of a revolt aided by partisans and communists that the occupying forces, as any army would in a similar situation, moved in to suppress the terrorists, if necessary by destroying the residential area itself. It should be remembered that the whole process of evacuation would have continued peacefully had not extremists among the inhabitants planned an armed rebellion which in the end was bound to fail. When S.S. Lieutenant-General Stroop entered the Ghetto with armoured cars on 19th April, he immediately came under fire and lost twelve men; German and Polish casualties in the battle, which lasted four weeks, totalled 101 men killed and wounded. Stubborn resistance by the Jewish Combat Organisation in the face of impossible odds led to an estimated 12,000 Jewish casualties, the majority by remaining in burning buildings and dug outs. A total, however, of 56,065 inhabitants were captured and peacefully resettled in the area of the Government-General.
Based on eyewitness accounts and documentary evidence, Browning believed the evacuation of the Warsaw ghetto could not be characterized as peaceful. "The eyewitness testimony comes from units that were involved in clearing the ghetto, and I have read a number of these testimonies in Ludwigsburg. The accounts of clearing the ghetto are among the most hair-raising documents that I have read from the Holocaust. The descriptions of driving people out of building, or beating them down the street, of shooting willfully and wildly on all occasions, can in no way be described as a peaceful resettlement...The head of the Jewish Council in Warsaw had to make a monthly report to the German authorities, and he had to report deaths in the ghetto every month. For the month of August, when the deportations were underway, he reports, among the deaths in the ghetto, 2,305 people dying from shooting wounds, and the following months of September, 3,158 deaths from shooting wounds. This, I think, confirms the eyewitness testimony that people were shot right and left and extraordinary brutality was used to force people onto trains, to take them to the extermination camps."
It troubled Browning greatly that the pamphlet claimed that the resettlement was only for the effective procurement of labour and that the portion dealing with the Warsaw ghetto not only denied the deaths of these people, but imputed that "the Jews were the aggressor and that the Nazis were, in effect, in self-defence, going to clear out the ghetto..." (14-3216, 3217)
Of the alleged peaceful resettlement of the remaining 56,000 Jews, Browning testified that a number were shot on the spot; a number were sent to Treblinka where he believed they were gassed; the rest were sent to the extermination camp at Majdanek where a high proportion of them were gassed on the spot. The remainder were distributed among the work camps in the Lublin area. Most of those were then shot on the following November 3 and 4 in the fall of 1943. (14-3218) In giving this testimony, Browning relied on the testimony of a large number of people. (17-3927)
Pearson asked Browning to comment on the following passage from the pamphlet at page 22:
In his recent book Adolf Hitler (London, 1973), Colin Cross, who brings more intelligence than is usual to many problems of this period, observes astutely that "The shuffling of millions of Jews around Europe and murdering them, in a time of desperate war emergency, was useless from any rational point of view" (p. 307). Quite so, and at this point we may well question the likelihood of this irrationalism, and whether it was even possible. Is it likely, that at the height of the war, when the Germans were fighting a desperate battle for survival on two fronts, they would have conveyed millions of Jews for miles to supposedly elaborate and costly slaughter houses? To have conveyed three or four million Jews to Auschwitz alone (even supposing that such an inflated number existed in Europe, which it did not), would have placed an insuperable burden upon German transportation facilities which were strained to the limit in supporting the farflung Russian front. To have transported the mythical six million Jews and countless numbers of other nationalities to internment camps, and to have housed, clothed and fed them there, would simply have paralysed their military operations. There is no reason to suppose that the efficient Germans would have put their military fortunes at such risk.
Browning was aware of some of the works of Colin Cross and described him as a "quite respectable" historian. Browning said he would be "surprised if Colin Cross in fact was supporting the conclusions that that paragraph draws or the propositions that argues for it." Referring to page 307 of Cross's book, Browning indicated that the pamphlet had correctly quoted the particular sentence from the book, but that other parts of the book indicated that Cross did not support the conclusions drawn by the pamphlet. The following passages from the Cross book were read to the jury:
Although always improvised and, by its own criteria inefficient, the extermination programme moved into its most horrific phase in December 1941 with the opening of a gassing centre at an isolated country house near Lodz, Poland. This made the killing more 'impersonal' and so more bearable to the perpetrators. (The psychology of this was somewhat similar to that of mass terroristic bombing: the airmen who started the Hamburg fire storms did so impersonally; they would have found it repugnant had they been required to throw men, women and children into fire with their bare hands.) Gassing and subsequent cremation were a success and the major centre became Auschwitz (Oswiecim), a complex of concentration camps at a rail junction thirty-two miles west of Cracow, Poland. Interestingly, there were no outright exterminations within Germany itself. Many concentration camp prisoners in Germany did die through maltreatment and overwork -- and in the closing phases of the war through starvation -- but 'the final solution of the Jewish problem', in terms of deliberate mass killing, was carried out in seclusion in Poland. How far this was Hitler's personal decision is not clear. There was some feeling that the soil of Germany should not be polluted by mass killing and, also, some necessity to keep the German population in ignorance of what was going on... Hitler believed it was a 'cleansing' operation and an act of 'retribution'. In reality he showed how far superstition could still count in the high politics of the twentieth century. (14-3221 to 3223; Pages 306 and 307 of the book Adolf Hitler by Colin Cross filed as Exhibit 63 at 14-3223)
Crown counsel returned to the pamphlet and read from page 20:
Certainly the most bogus "memoirs" yet published are those of Adolf Eichmann. Before his illegal kidnapping by the Israelis in May, 1960 and the attendant blaze of international publicity, few people had ever heard of him. He was indeed a relatively unimportant person, the head of Office A4b in Department IV (the Gestapo) of the Reich Security Head Office. His office supervised the transportation to detention camps of a particular section of enemy aliens, the Jews...Strangely enough, the alleged "memoirs" of Adolf Eichmann suddenly appeared at the time of his abduction to Israel. They were uncritically published by the American Life magazine (November 28th, December 5th, 1960), and were supposed to have been given by Eichmann to a journalist in the Argentine shortly before his capture -- an amazing coincidence. Other sources, however, gave an entirely different account of their origin, claiming that they were a record based on Eichmann's comments to an "associate" in 1955, though no one even bothered to identify this person.
In fact, said Browning, Eichmann had given an interview to a journalist named Sassen who had been a member of the SS during the war. There was no coincidence because it was Sassen's attempts to peddle his material with publishers which alerted Israeli police to the fact that Eichmann was alive and thus helped lead to his capture. (14-3225)
Browning considered Eichmann's testimony to be "very, very important and very central. It is also the most extensive testimony of any one single individual involved in the Holocaust." This testimony included the interviews conducted with Sassen in Argentina (which were endorsed by Eichmann's widow as his true account), extensive police interrogations of Eichmann in Jerusalem and an approximately 100 page handwritten memoir written by Eichmann in his cell in Jerusalem. (14-3226) In every account he gave, Eichmann stated that he was called into the office of Reinhard Heydrich and was told "flat out it was the order of the Führer that all the Jews of Europe were to be physically exterminated." This was the same Heydrich who chaired the Wannsee Conference. Said Browning: "...Eichmann notes that Heydrich and one of Heydrich's officials, a man named Heinrich Müller, who is the head of the Gestapo and Eichmann's more direct boss, sent him on various trips to investigate what was happening in different parts of Europe or in Poland and Russia. To be exact, in the fall of 1941 when they are in that stage of trying to figure out 'how are we going to, in fact carry out Hitler's order', that they referred to the verbal order of Hitler for the extermination of the Jews. He tells about his first trip to a camp, the name of which he cannot remember...He tells us about his visit to Minsk where he witnessed Einsatzgruppen execution. He tells about his visit to Chelmno, the first camp that opened on December eighth, where the killing was done not in stationary gas chambers but in gas vans, and in one of his accounts he gave a very detailed description of how he visited the large villa in the town where the Jews were undressed and then forced in the vans, that the driver invited him to look through the peephole which he said he couldn't stand, and he didn't. He followed the truck to the woods. He saw the door opened. He saw the bodies pile out and said it was one of the worst things he had ever experienced in his life, and that he was sufficiently traumatized that he didn't, in fact, even time the operation, and, thus, when he got back to report to Müller, the Gestapo chief, he couldn't, in fact, even tell him in fact what he had been sent to do, which was to figure out how fast this would operate." (14-3228)
Eichmann also testified to his being present at the Wannsee Conference, "that he in fact was in charge of the taking of the protocol; that he then checked with Heydrich a number of times; that the more vulgar language was cleaned up and expressed in more official euphemisms, and then he relates that he indeed had been to Auschwitz on a number of occasions." (14-3229)
"What really upset Eichmann," said Browning, "in terms of his interrogations and being on stand at the court in Jerusalem was the accusations made against him in the memoirs of Rudolf Höss, who was the commandant at Auschwitz, and that Höss had said that Eichmann had come to him very early, that Eichmann was to tell him what gas they were going to use, and that Eichmann had discussed with him shootings in the gas vans that were not efficient enough to accomplish this, and Eichmann was very incensed that he would be accused of, or saddled with, things that he hadn't, in fact, done. He was willing to take responsibility for his actions as the coordinator of deportations. He was only admitting events that he went to and witnessed, for which there was no documentary evidence. This he volunteered, but he was adamant that he was not the man who had decided on Zyklon B gas for Auschwitz; that he had not been involved in the decision to build gas chambers there; that Höss was falsely blaming him for those; and so he spent a long time with the interrogator and also a long time with himself in the cell, trying to make -- to straighten out in his own memory -- he is trying to recover his memory, and he is trying to get -- he has visual images of these different events, and he is trying to get them in sequence, and he, after working at this, comes firmly to the conclusion that he could not have been to Auschwitz until the spring of 1942, when the gassing and the use of Zyklon B was already in action."
Browning knew of Eichmann's struggle with his memory because he had read the 100- page memoirs of Eichmann as well as handwritten notes made by him which he gave to his attorney, Dr. Servatius, who in turn donated them to the Federal Archives in Koblenz. (14-3229 to 3231)
Eichmann, said Browning, wrote that "he had seen the farmsteads where the gas chambers were. He referred to the Zyklon B as the little pellets that are different from the carbon monoxide used elsewhere, and then he finally concludes: 'Why am I placing so much emphasis on this? Because I must prove Höss the arch liar, that I had nothing to do with him and his gas chambers and his death camps.'" (14-3231)
Eichmann stated that he had never seen a gassing operation at Auschwitz; he did not accept Höss's invitation to go to the gas chambers but they did drive past the pits where the bodies were being burned. In only one of his accounts, he said that at Treblinka he saw the naked people standing between the two lines of barbed wire before the gas chamber. (14-3231, 3232)
"In none of the accounts," said Browning, "including the one that is endorsed by his widow as his official account, does he ever deny that there was a plan to exterminate the Jews, that he was informed of this plan to exterminate the Jews directly by Reinhard Heydrich, that Heydrich attributed this to a direct order from Adolf Hitler, and that Eichmann was the man responsible for organizing the deportations from all the countries, other than Poland and Russia, to the death camps." To Browning, Eichmann was probably the highest central figure in the plan that survived the war and testified. (14-3232, 3233)
Browning turned next to consider the following passage from the pamphlet at page 20:
A review of the Höss "memoirs" in all their horrid detail would be tedious. We may confine ourselves to those aspects of the extermination legend which are designed with the obvious purpose of forestalling any proof of its falsity. Such, for example, is the manner in which the alleged extermination of Jews is described. This was supposed to have been carried out by a "special detachment" of Jewish prisoners. They took charge of the newly arrived contingents at the camp, led them into the enormous "gas-chambers" and disposed of the bodies afterwards. The S.S., therefore, did very little, so that most of the S.S. personnel at the camp could be left in complete ignorance of the "extermination programme". Of course, no Jew would ever be found who claimed to have been a member of this gruesome "special detachment", so that the whole issue is left conveniently unprovable. It is worth repeating that no living, authentic eye-witness of these events has ever been produced.
Browning testified that in fact such memoirs did exist from members of the so called "special detachments," one of which was Filip Müller's book Eyewitness Auschwitz. Another account was that of a man named Rudolf Reder, who testified that he had taken bodies out of the gas chambers at Belzec as well as help dig the graves in which the bodies were placed. A third witness admitted to emptying the bodies out of the trucks at Chelmno and putting them into the graves. (14-3234, 3235)
Pearson read the following passage to the jury from the pamphlet at page 16:
However, no living, authentic eye-witness of these "gassings" has ever been produced and validated.
Browning stated that in his research into Chelmno and Belzec, he had run across "numerous testimonies of people who have witnessed the gassings....For Chelmno, in fact two of the people who drove the vans themselves are Gustav Laab and Walter Burmeister, and as well as the man who was in charge of the area in which the Jews were forced -- entered and undressed and then forced up the ramp into the van, a man named Kurt Möbius, as well as a number of guards who were both guards at that villa and also in the woods where the trucks were unloaded. At Belzec, again, we have testimony of a man who was Christian Wirth's adjutant, who was the man who was first commandant at Belzec and then later became the head of three camps: Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor. His adjutant, a man named Josef Oberhauser, in fact testified to...admitting that there were gassings there that he saw. Kurt Franz, who was there and also at Treblinka, admitted to the gassings. Again, Rudolf Reder, the survivor, witnessed those and has admitted it. Gerstein, we have already mentioned a long report about visiting there and testifying to that...in terms of Belzec, that part of the guard detachment -- these were Ukrainians that were -- that have been taken out of Russian prisoner-of-war camps. They were starving and asked, if they were allowed to be out, if they agreed to do behind the lines guard duties in Poland, assured that they would not have to fight Russian soldiers. These people were then used both for clearing ghettos and were used as concentration camp guards. A group of those who were sent to Belzec managed to escape as a group and joined the partisans and survived the war. They, too, testified to it. We have testimony, particularly from the villagers in Chelmno. Chelmno was a small town, and the camp, in fact, was in the town itself. The main villa in the town was surrounded by, first, barbed wire; later, they put a wooden fence up. The Jews were brought in and put through the villa and out on to the van. I have seen the testimony of two school children...who can remember standing at a distance watching the loading of the van and could hear the screams and see the van drive off." (14-3236 to 3238)
In response to defence counsel's observation that the pamphlet had said witnesses "validated" as well as "produced," Browning testified that the "way in which most of these were located were by extensive searches" of the Central Agency of the State Administration of Justice: "That is the agency of the West German government that was created in the late 1950s with the mandate to undertake these investigations [of the camps]. They went to very great lengths to track down the names and numbers of all the guard personnel they could find...They also sought out as many survivors as they could. They were doing this for the purpose of producing witnesses that would be heard in court." (14-3239)
Browning turned next to page 23 of the pamphlet:
It is true that in 1945, Allied propaganda did claim that all the concentration camps, particularly those in Germany itself, were "death camps", but not for long. On this question, the eminent American historian Harry Elmer Barnes wrote: "These camps were first presented as those in Germany, such as Dachau, Belsen, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Dora, but it was soon demonstrated that there had been no systematic extermination in those camps. Attention was then moved to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Chelmno, Jonowska, Tarnow, Ravensbrück, Mauthausen, Brezeznia and Birkenau, which does not exhaust the list that appears to have been extended as needed" (Rampart Journal, Summer 1967). What had happened was that certain honest observers among the British and American occupation forces in Germany, while admitting that many inmates had died of disease and starvation in the final months of the war, had found no evidence after all of "gas chambers". As a result, eastern camps in the Russian zone of occupation such as Auschwitz and Treblinka gradually came to the fore as horrific centres of extermination (though no one was permitted to see them), and this tendency has lasted to the present day. Here in these camps it was all supposed to have happened, but with the Iron Curtain brought down firmly over them, no one has ever been able to verify such charges. The Communists claimed that four million people died at Auschwitz in gigantic gas chambers accommodating 2,000 people -- and no one could argue to the contrary.
Browning testified that four of these camps had ceased to exist by the time they were liberated. Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec were closed in 1943 and "a great effort was made to, in effect, cover them over. We have a document, in fact, that refers to a farmstead that was settled on Treblinka where the man was to act as if he had been there for a long time." Chelmno was evacuated in 1943 and the villa blown up. It was briefly reopened in 1944 when gas vans were operated out of the church. "There wasn't any special camp there at that time, so there was very little to see since the gas vans then left before the Russians arrived." (14-3242)
With respect to Auschwitz and Majdanek, the gas chambers and crematoria in the former camp were blown up before the camp was liberated by the Russians in January of 1945; however, Majdanek was captured intact before the Germans could destroy the camp "so there was one camp intact to be seen in 1944, 1945 that we have been classifying as 'extermination camps.'" (14- 3242)
The statement in the pamphlet that no one was permitted to see the camps was false in Browning's opinion. In late August of 1944 a group of newsmen was allowed to visit Majdanek, which had been liberated in late July of 1944. One of these newsmen was Raymond Arthur Davies, who wrote the book Odyssey Through Hell, published in New York in 1946. Did Six Million Really Die? itself on page 8 cited the Davies book.(14-3243, 3244) An excerpt from page 55 of Odyssey Through Hell in which Davies related his visit to Majdanek was read to the jury:
And as we took off in our plane en route back to Moscow, William Lawrence of the New York Times, who was among the most skeptical of all correspondents in matters of German atrocities, exclaimed: "You know, I shall begin my story: 'I have just come from the most horrible place on earth.'"
And that is how his story of Majdanek began.
Yet events after Majdanek proved that Majdanek was not the most horrible place on earth. It was typical of half-a-dozen other German extermination camps. (14-3245; Excerpt from Odyssey Through Hell filed as Exhibit 64 at 14-3246))
Browning read the text of the story written by correspondent William H. Lawrence concerning Majdanek for the New York Times. The story was published on the front page on Wednesday, 30 August, 1944 under the headline "Nazi Mass Killing Laid Bare in Camp" and the sub-heading "Victims Put at 1,500,000 in Huge Death Factory of Gas Chambers and Crematories":
LUBLIN, Poland, Aug. 27 (Delayed) -- I have just seen the most terrible place on the face of the earth -- the German concentration camp at Majdanek, which was a veritable River Rouge for the production of death, in which it is estimated by Soviet and Polish authorities that as many as 1,500,000 persons from nearly every country in Europe were killed in the last three years.
I have been all through the camp, inspecting its hermetically sealed gas chambers, in which the victims were asphyxiated, and five furnaces in which the bodies were cremated and I have talked with German officers attached to the camp, who admitted quite frankly that it was a highly systemized place for annihilation, although they, of course, denied any personal participation in the murders.
I have seen the skeletons of bodies the Germans did not have time to burn before the Red Army swept into Lublin on July 23, and I have seen such evidence as bone ash still in the furnaces and piled up beside them ready to be taken to near-by fields, on which it was scattered as fertilizer for cabbages. Ten Mass Graves Opened
I have been to Krempitski, ten miles to the east, where I saw three of ten opened mass graves and looked upon 368 partly decomposed bodies of men, women and children who had been executed individually in a variety of cruel and horrible means. In this forest alone, the authorities estimate, there are more than 300,000 bodies.
It is impossible for this correspondent to state with any certainty how many persons the Germans killed here. Many bodies unquestionably were burned and not nearly all the graves in this vicinity had been opened by the time I visited the scene.
But I have been in a wooden warehouse at the camp, approximately 150 feet long, in which I walked across literally tens of thousands of shoes spread across the floor like grain in a half-filled elevator. There I saw shoes of children as young as 1 year old. There were shoes of young and old men or women. Those I saw were all in bad shape -- since the Germans used this camp not only to exterminate their victims, but also as a means of obtaining clothing for the German people -- but some obviously had been quite expensive. At least one pair had come from America, for it bore a stamp, "Goodyear welt."
I have been through a warehouse in downtown Lublin in which I saw hundreds of suitcases and literally tens of thousands of pieces of clothing and personal effects of people who died here and I have had the opportunity of questioning a German officer, Herman Vogel, 42, of Millheim, who admitted that as head of the clothing barracks he had supervised the shipment of eighteen freightcar loads of clothing to Germany during a two month period and that he knew it came from the bodies of persons who had been killed at Majdanek. Evidence Found Convincing
This is a place that must be seen to be believed. I have been present at numerous atrocity investigations in the Soviet Union, but never have I been confronted with such complete evidence, clearly establishing every allegation made by those investigating German crimes.
After inspection of Majdanek, I am now prepared to believe any story of German atrocities, no matter how savage, cruel and depraved.
As one of a group of nearly thirty foreign correspondents brought to Poland on the invitation of the Polish Committee of National Liberation, I also had an opportunity to sit with the special mixed Soviet- Polish Atrocities Investigation Commission, headed by Vice-chairman Andrey Witos of the Polish Committee, and to question six witnesses, including three German officers -- Vogel, Theodore Shoelen and Tanton Earness -- who will probably face trial for their part in the administration of the death camp. Responsible Germans Listed
For the correspondents, the commission's prosecutor, a Pole, summed up the evidence taken. He said it had been decided that these Germans bore the main responsibility for the crimes committed at Majdanek and in the Krempitski Forest: General Globenik, Gestapo, and SS Chief of the Lublin district. Governor Wendler of the Lublin district, described as a distant relative of Heinrich Himmler. Former Governor Zoerner of the Lublin district. Lisske, who had charge of all the concentration camps in the Lublin district. General Weiss, who was in charge of the Majdanek camp. Company Commander Anton Tumann, who at one time had charge of Majdanek. Mussfeld, who was in charge of the crematorium. Klopmann, who was chief of the German political department in the Lublin district.
It is impossible in the space here available to relate details of all the evidence of crimes we saw and heard, but for the benefit of those who have not had the opportunity to see with their own eyes, here is the story as it came from the lips of a German who had been a prisoner in Majdanek and was left behind by the retreating Germans. He is Hans Staub, a 31-year-old, tall, husky man with close-cropped hair, who had been imprisoned for engaging in black market meat operations in Germany.
Despite German orders that prisoners were to keep out of the crematorium area, he managed to slip inside the brick fence one day and secrete himself about the time a truck loaded with about a dozen persons drove up. Among them was a Polish woman he estimated to have been 28 or 29 years old.
The prisoners were guarded by tommy-gunners, who ordered them to alight from the truck and undress. The woman refused and this enraged Mussfeld, who beat her. She screamed and Mussfeld lost his temper, shouting, "I'll burn you alive."
According to Staub, Mussfeld then directed two attendants to grab the woman and bind her arms and legs. They then threw her on an iron stretcher, still clothed, and pushed her body into the oven.
"I heard one loud scream, saw her hair flame and then she disappeared into the furnace," Staub said.
According to several witnesses, the peak death production day for Majdanek was November 3, 1943, when for some reason not made clear the Germans executed a total of 18,000 to 20,000 prisoners by a variety of means, including shooting, hanging and gassing. Camp Covers 670 Acres
This is Majdanek as I saw it. It is situated about a mile and a half from the middle of Lublin on the highroad between Chelm and Cracow. As one approaches he gets a view of the concentration camp almost identical with those pictured in American motion pictures. The first site is a twelve-foot-high double barbed- wire fence, which was charged with electricity.
Inside you see group after group of trim green buildings, not unlike the barracks in an Army camp in the United States. There were more than 200 such buildings. Outside the fence there were fourteen high machine-gun turrets and at one edge were kennels for more than 200 especially trained, savage man- tracking dogs used to pursue escaped prisoners. The whole camp covered an area of 670 acres.
As we entered the camp the first place at which we stopped obviously was the reception centre and it was near here that one entered the bath house. Here Jews, Poles, Russians and in fact representatives of a total of twenty-two nationalities entered and removed their clothing, after which they bathed at seventy-two showers and disinfectants were applied.
Sometimes they went directly into the next room, which was hermetically sealed with apertures in the roof down which the Germans threw opened cans of "Zyklon B", a poison gas consisting of prussic acid crystals, which were a light blue chalky substance. This produced death quickly. Other prisoners were kept for long periods; the average, we were told, was about six weeks.
Near the shower house were two other death chambers fitted for either Zyklon gas or carbon monoxide. One of them was seventeen meters square and there, we were told, the Germans executed 100 to 110 persons at once. Around the floor of the room ran a steel pipe with an opening for carbon monoxide to escape at every twenty-five centimeters. Victims' Death Watched
We were told the victims always received a bath in advance of execution because the hot water opened the pores and generally improved the speed with which the poison gas took effect. There were glass- covered openings in these death chambers so the Germans could watch the effect on their victims and determine when the time had come to remove their bodies. We saw opened and unopened cans of Zyklon gas that bore German labels.
About a mile from the gas chambers was the huge crematorium. Built of brick, it looked and was operated not unlike a small blast furnace for a steel mill, operating with coal as fuel fanned by an electrically operated blower. There were five openings on each side -- on one side the bodies were loaded in and on the other ashes were removed and the fire built up. Each furnace held five bodies at a time.
We were told it took fifteen minutes to fill each furnace and about ten to twelve minutes for the bodies to burn. It was estimated that the battery of furnaces had a capacity of 1,900 bodies a day.
Near the furnaces we saw a large number of partial and complete skeletons. Behind a brick enclosure near by were more than a score of bodies of persons who, we were told, had been killed by the Germans on the day the Red Army captured Lublin, which they did not have time to burn before fleeing.
Not far from the furnaces were a large number of earthenware urns, which investigating authorities said witnesses told them were used by the Germans for ashes of some of their victims, which they sold to families for prices ranging up to 2,500 marks.
We saw a concrete table near the furnace and asked its purpose. We were told the Germans laid the bodies of victims there just before cremation and knocked out gold teeth, which were salvaged. We were told that no bodies were accepted for cremation unless the chest bore a stamp certifying that it had been searched for gold teeth.
It is the purpose of the Polish Committee of National Liberation to keep the main parts of Majdanek just as it now exists as an exhibition of German brutality and cruelty for all posterity to see.
M. Witos struck the universal feeling of all who have seen the camp when he expressed regret that the section of American and British public opinion that favours a soft peace with the Germans will not have an opportunity in advance of the peace conference to look at this plain evidence of the brutality of the Germans practiced towards their victims.
Among the few Polish people whom we had an opportunity to talk there is a widespread sentiment for stronger means of vengeance against the Germans, and the belief that some of those directly responsible for Majdanek should be executed in the terrible death camp they themselves erected. (14-3274 to 3287; Article from New York Times, August 30, 1944, filed as Exhibit 65 at 14-3287)
Lawrence wrote the article just after he and a group of newsmen visited the camp. As far as Browning knew, these were the first newsmen into the camp. It was a brief visit. Browning stated that he would not use such an article to verify such things as numbers because it was obviously "such a preliminary stage, these things would have been estimates." However, Browning continued, "It is evidence in a sense of what impression this place made on someone that had been there and what he visually saw and what people told him." Browning acknowledged that regarding the allegation in the article that the people were given baths prior to being gassed to improve the killing time, "subsequently we know that Zyklon B in fact operates better in drier rather than wetter climate. I'm not a chemist, but I think that he is -- both the Russians and he are quite mistaken about the bathing of people who are going to be gassed." (14-3275, 3284)
This testimony ended Browning's examination by Crown counsel. Defence counsel Douglas Christie rose to commence the cross-examination.
Browning acknowledged under cross-examination that he had come voluntarily from the United States to testify against the publisher of a book: "I came here because I was asked, yes." (14-3287, 3288) He was being paid to testify at the hourly rate of $150 Canadian, which his wife, who worked in a law office, told him was "approximately what her lawyers in her office get. That's considerably more than I make as an academic." Browning stated that he had been in Canada for more than a week. Asked if he would be paid for all that time as well as the time spent testifying, he replied: "I certainly hope so, sir."1 (14-3335)
It had crossed Browning's mind that what he was doing in this trial - testifying against the publisher of a book -- could not occur in his own country, but it did not trouble his conscience. "I know we have a First Amendment and it is possible that if such a law existed in the United States, it would be struck down, but I certainly am no expert in the constitutionality of that...If this [Canada] had been a country which had not been free to set its own rules about how they understood freedom of press, I would not have been willing to come. As far as I know, the Canadians operate a judicial system by due process, that they have chosen, through their own democratic system, to decide how they will interpret freedom of speech and therefore I did not have a problem of conscience about coming and testifying in this case." (14-3288, 3289
Browning was on the advisory board of the Simon Wiesenthal Center but did not consider it to be a historically authenticated or official body of any sort. Browning's only connection with the centre was acting as part of the advisory board to its journal, the Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual. He was confident of the academic integrity of its editor: "...I do not, by being a member of that board, endorse or even am aware of all the things that the Simon Wiesenthal Center does." (14-3290) He received no money from the centre. (14-3300) Later, however, Browning remembered that he had been paid a "moderate fee" for writing two articles. (14 3333, 3334) He was also being paid about $30,000 by Yad Vashem for a 500 to 700 page book which he estimated would take ten years working part-time to complete. (14-3334)
Christie put to Browning that the Simon Wiesenthal organization was a politically active Zionist organization that produced a journal for a political purpose and that he, Browning, worked for it. Browning responded that he did not believe that the centre produced the journal for a political purpose. While the centre had a number of purposes, Browning was interested in the purpose of publishing an academic journal for the Holocaust: "It's an academic journal, not a political journal. It does not publish things about current events and doesn't publish things about Israel." (14-3292)
Browning denied that the centre published about the Holocaust for political purposes. Asked for a single historical accusation which had resulted in a larger financial benefit to a political cause than the Holocaust, Browning replied: "I don't know how many reparations have been paid to Israel. I don't know the figure of reparations that Germany paid after World War II. I don't know the exact figure of reparations that the French paid to Germany after the Franco- Prussian war, so no, I wouldn't feel comfortable making any judgment on that." (14-3292) However, he thought it was "very likely" that the restitution payments in the Franco-Prussian war were comparable to the restitution payments made by West Germany. (14-3294)
Browning acknowledged that he had been in court when Charles Biedermann [Director of the International Tracing Service] testified that about 88 billion dollars had been paid in reparations, but Browning did not know if that was a fact or not. Asked whether he knew that Dr. Raul Hilberg had said that Germany would be paying reparations to the year 2000, Browning testified he had never heard this statement. He had not heard that East Germany was now going to start making reparations to Israel in order to get accepted as a trading partner with the United States. "I do know that some reparations are made to the state of Israel. I know that some restitution is made to individuals who have filed for loss of property. But I do not know the details, I do not know how those agreements were reached. It is not a field of my own study and research." (14-3292, 3293)
Browning denied the suggestion that he was a propagandist for the state of Israel even though he was under contract to write a book for Yad Vashem, an Israeli organization. (14-3290, 3291) He also denied Christie's suggestion that he was involved in a scheme to rewrite history: "If you mean...that I am part of some organized group or conspiracy, certainly not. If you mean as a historian who is continuing to look for new answers and to ask new questions, and thus is indeed looking to enhance how much we know and understand, I would say yes." (14-3295)
Christie put to Browning that before Dr. Hilberg's new edition of his book in 1985, it was generally believed there was a Hitler order. Browning testified that no one had said there was a written Hitler order, certainly not Hilberg. Christie pointed out he had not said "written."
"I will go on, thank you," said Browning, "There is a question of how we understand the word 'order' and this is a case where I think we have deepened our understanding, that we have tried to deal with the concept, what does it mean for there to be a Hitler order, a so-called Führer Befehl? And I have certainly looked into that question. I have, mysel