The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution
A book review of Henry Friedlander.
Henry Friedlander’s The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution is his exploration of the thesis regarding the belief that the “euthanasia” killings of handicapped children and adults preceding the genocide against Jews and Gypsies, was not a separate event, but instead the prelude in which the ways of mass murder were perfected and then applied to the Final Solution. The racial sciences and the “othering” of unwanted minorities: the disabled, Jews and Gypsies, allowed for the justification of their murders.
To support his thesis, Friedlander develops his argument by investigating the series of events which ultimately led to Hitler’s implementation of the Final Solution against Jews. The roadmap Friedlander discovers is one that starts with the frenzy surrounding racial and eugenic sciences was paralleled in America and Germany until the First World War. Such sciences were concerned with what made different races different from each other and ultimately led to a hierarchy of races dictating which were superior to others. When the research ceased in America in the 1930s, it continued to flourish in Germany and soon became intertwined with the new Nazi party’s policies. Some of these connected policies included the institutionalization and systematic murder of Germans under the guise of genetic cleansing in Germany and of the rest of Europe as the Second World War continued. The agenda soon shifts from murder of disabled children, to adults. In the first act against adults, it is shown that adults are sterilized for everything between feeblemindedness and depression to severe mental and physical handicaps. Soon the program moves to the implementation of “euthanasia” for institutionalized adults as well. The numbers of adults that needed to be “euthanatized” proved too large for tactics of murder used on children to be duplicated for their use on adults. Starvation and purposeful overdoses of sedatives were not efficient enough to process the killings at the rate required. As a solution, the testing and construction of gas chambers in killing centres commenced as demand for more efficient methods of mass murder were needed.
In addition to the genetic cleansing driving the “euthanasia” programs for disabled Germans, the racial science and anti-Semitism fused and progression towards the mass murders of disabled Jewish persons in 1939 and 1940. With the experimentation of murder methods in the hospitals and killing centres for the disabled, the refined methods were then employed in order to carry out the Final Solution against the Jews and Gypsies starting in 1941 on an even larger scale than that seen previously in the “euthanasia” programs. Friedlander argues that the anti-Semitism attitudes, along with the popularity and belief in racial and eugenic sciences created the clear path from the belief that certain races were superior and therefore others superior, to the escalation to the murder of disabled German children, all the way then to the attempted eradication of Jews in Europe.
As a sub-topic in his book, Friedlander set out to see if the claims that there were those ordered and could not get out of serving in the “euthanasia” program by the use of threats as many quoted happened in the medical trials at Nuremburg. He finds that there is not a case of someone being forced to participate; they could refuse at any time. Only one case he could find, a SS physician had refused and stated there was “not been any extraordinary pressure” for him to take the position.[1] Friedlander finds that many of those participating were willing and doing it in order to further their political careers within the Nazi party or because they thought what they were doing was right for Germany, but not because they wanted to become better practitioners.[2]
Friedlander’s stance through out the book is of intentionalism, the ideology that Hitler orchestrated the Final Solution from the top down. This is evident in his reliance on the order Hitler signed authorizing the “euthanasia” of the disabled adult Germans in 1939. From the written order Hitler gave, Friedlander came to the conclusion that Hitler was also the driving force behind all further stages of the “euthanasia” program and the Final Solution, just the authorization for the Final Solution was to leave less of a paper trail. As Friedlander said in his book, “the decision to kill handicapped Jews as a group, made in spring of 1940 at the highest level, possibly foreordained the final solution of 1941”.[3] Stating that once Hitler had ordered the transportation and murders of disabled Jewish persons, it was the foreshadowing to Hitler’s bigger plan, the Final Solution for all Jews.
Friedlander’s research into his book is highlighted both in his acknowledgements section and in the ninety-six pages of endnotes and bibliography. In the acknowledgments section, Friedlander gives thanks to those who allowed him access to presumably unseen documents such as court proceedings and interrogations that have never been readily available before for use in a publication. These works, along with the published material Friedlander consulted showcases a widespread range of research in order to construct his work. The bilingual selection ranges from everything between personal correspondences to American official reports. Friedlander’s personal experience with the subject matter is not mentioned. While his experiences could have been included as first hand accounts, the decision to include his personal accounts from Aushwitz could have allowed room for his argument to be discredited in critiques as his personal emotions, could have arguably tainted his view and accreditation on the subject.
His research also allows groups that are often overshadowed in Holocaust studies, to have a voice. Even the Jews who receive a vast amount of attention, are shown as individuals instead of a group without a personal affiliation. Friedlander’s argument is a mix of historical data mixed with personal accounts of victims and short biographies of the perpetrators to draw the large picture of the events which occurred and helps to gain context to the actors of the bigger plan Hitler had set out to complete.
Sources in the book were used in a variety of different ways, they were used as quotes to better explain a point, they were used as tables to show numbers, or they were as used simply as citing dates for an event. Friedlander did not rely too heavily on any one kind of source. For example, not too much of his argument was based on personal accounts or government figures, instead it was balanced between informal personal accounts, and formal records such as government documents and correspondence.
The argument that the euthanasia program in Germany led directly into the Final Solution is smoothly written. Transitioning seamlessly between the chapters broken up by stages in the “euthanasia” program and flowing into the Final Solution. The highly detailed account moves almost month to month through the Nazi regime’s actions in regards to the implementation of their racial cleansing of German citizens and surrounding territories captured in the war.
The tone in which the book is written makes it evident that it is written for those with previous knowledge of the Nazi regime, and not for casual reading. The book is full of detail with biographies intertwined with the body of the text. The vocabulary and syntax used though out the novel is approachable in an attempt to make the convoluted and difficult topic easier to comprehend. A second reading would be necessary to fully grasp all the details and points Friedlander has complied.
Despite the coherent and continuous argument Friedlander makes, his argument ignores the functionalist argument. The functionalist view is one that the steps that led to the holocaust where twisted and, unlike the intentionalist view, the argument is that the Final Solution came to be through the lower ranks deciding how to first expel, and then to eliminate the Jews. Despite Karl A. Schleunes’ key functionalist work, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz being published in the 1970s (almost twenty years before the publication of Friedlander’s Origins of Nazi Genocide), Friedlander does not engage or dispute Schleunes’ arguments, let alone any functionalist view points or possible critics to his theory[4].
As well, in the book there are chapters entitled “Excluding the Handicapped” and “Excluding the Gypsies”. While Friedlander’s main argument in his book is how the genetic sciences drove Hitler to eradicate those who were racially or genetically impure, he skips over the social aspects Hitler needed to implement on the German citizens in order to gain support and to justify his actions towards those affected. The German people were given propaganda about how the disabled Germans were “useless eaters” and costing the country resources such as hospital beds and money in order to gain support for his “euthanasia” program.[5] However, these propaganda schemes are not mentioned in his Friedlander’s book, instead he opts for solely focusing on how science dictated how the disabled German or the Jew was scientifically inferior and therefore should be excluded.
Henry Friedlander’s research for The Origins of Nazi Genocide, has created an intentionalist argument, full of details to answer his thesis that the German racial science and anti-Semitism came together in the Nazi regime to create the “euthanasia” program. A program that led to tens of thousands of disabled German children and adults, and later Jewish adults’ deaths. Friedlander argues and shows that the “euthanasia” programs then led the way straight into the Final Solution where upwards of six million Jewish and other unwanted minorities were murdered by the state until 1945.
Bibliography
Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: University of North Caroline Press, 1995.
Schleunes, Karl A. The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policies towards German Jews, 1933-1939. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1970.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Nazi Persecution of the Disabled: Murder of the “Unfit”.” Accessed October 5, 2013. http://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-features/special-focus/nazi-persecution-of-the-disabled.
[1] Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Caroline Press, 1995), 225.
[2] Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 226.
[3] Ibid., 282.
[4] Karl A. Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policies towards German Jews, 1933-1939 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1970).
[5] “Nazi Persecution of the Disabled: Murder of the “Unfit”,” The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed October 5, 2013, http://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-features/special-focus/nazi-persecution-of-the-disabled.