TBR News September 30, 2016

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C.  September 30, 2016: “The American television news stations are universally praising Clinton and heaping dung on the head of Trump but are so amateurish and obnoxious that one gets through bored in the viewing. Soon enough, very negative emails emainating from the Clinton camp are slated to release from various groups like Wikileaks and then the media will turn a blind eye to them and continue their childish rantings. Remember the saying that once a politician, always a whore and all will become very clear.”

Media Hails Shimon Peres as Man of Peace — But Doesn’t Bother to Ask Arabs

September 30, 2016

by Zaid Jilani, Naomi LaChance

The Intercept

Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres’s death unleashed an outpouring of adoration from American media outlets, with major newspapers and broadcast media calling Peres a great man of peace, almost exclusively quoting Israelis and Americans who shared that view.

Lost in the rush to praise Peres were the voices of Arabs such as the Palestinians who lived under the Israeli occupation he expanded, the Lebanese civilians who survived the massacre his military perpetrated, or the Arab representatives in Israel’s Knesset who boycotted his funeral over his support for policies that suppress the Palestinian population.

The New York Times, for example, ran zero op-eds by Arab writers reacting to Peres’s death. It did, however, feature op-eds by one Israeli columnist prior to Peres’s death and one Israeli politician following it. Its own columnists turned exclusively to Israeli sources, with Thomas Friedman quoting an Israeli CEO praising Peres and Roger Cohen citing a former Israeli ambassador.

In its news reporting, the Times was barely more balanced. In numerous articles and profiles, a Palestinian critical of Peres was interviewed once: a Hamas spokesman blamed him for being one of the “founding leaders of the occupation.” Peres’s role in a massacre in Lebanon is only briefly mentioned, and no Lebanese people are interviewed. The least one-sided piece the Times produced was an online video featuring reactions to Peres’s death. In that video, seven Israelis praising Peres are interviewed, including the current Prime Minister and President. Toward the end, three Palestinians on street corners are interviewed. All condemn Peres for his role in furthering the occupation.

The Washington Post published one op-ed about Peres, authored by a former member of his cabinet who gushed that the late leader was an “Israeli patriot who believed in peace.” Its obituary of Peres called him a “man best known internationally for promoting peace” and made only passing mention to his militarism in Lebanon. The editorial board deemed him a “lion, he last of the founding generation of leaders” and cited a biography of him where a friend compared him to Winston Churchill. One exception in the paper’s coverage was an article looking exclusively at Arab media’s largely negative reaction to Peres’s legacy.

The Wall Street Journal published an editorial by the former editor of the Jerusalem Post that called Peres a “mensch.” The Journal’s obituary remembered his “tireless efforts to forge peace” as well as “a man dedicated to Israel’s security.” In one of the most positive reflections on his legacy, the Journal ran a video piece that called Peres a “social media star.” Another story listed the world leaders who have offered tribute, like Barack Obama, who said “Shimon never gave up on the possibility of peace,” and Bill Clinton, who called Peres a “genius” with a “big heart.” It did quote former Jordanian politician Tarek Khoury, who called Peres a “criminal Jewish Zionist terrorist.”

The Associated Press called him a “visionary” and “one of the country’s most admired leaders.” Reuters described him as “known for his energy and enthusiasm.” USA Today interviewed several Israelis who reflected on Peres’s legacy, but no Palestinians.

At NPR, ambassador and former Obama Middle East advisor Dennis Ross credited Peres with building Israel’s Defense Ministry, adding that there is a “genuine outpouring of affection for [Peres].” On Morning Edition, Thomas Friedman said, “you could have a really intelligent conversation with him about any subject.” Another piece interviewed two Palestinians — “nobody likes Peres,” one said — but it focused on his message of “tolerance and innovation,” not war.

Much of his reputation as a man of peace comes from his role in helping negotiate the Oslo Accords, which created the Palestinian Authority and limited autonomy for Palestinians. For these negotiations, Peres was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But decades later, many view that agreement as a failure; Israel’s settler population has doubled since that time, and many see the Palestinian Authority as little more than a subcontractor of the occupation.

Peres’s remarks on the 2014 Gaza war are emblematic of the contradiction between his professed beliefs about peace and his continued support for militarism. While calling for a diplomatic solution, he also advocated for the elected Hamas government in Gaza to simply be replaced by the Israeli-allied Palestinian Authority. As Israeli airstrikes and artillery pounded Palestinian civilians, Peres praised the conduct of the country’s military while demonizing Palestinians, saying the war was “a war of the army against terrorism, but also a war of every soldier against a person who doesn’t respect human life, who is ready to murder. A war of brave people against people who have no restraints. Wicked people who don’t have pity even on themselves.”

The Israeli columnist Gideon Levy, who worked as an aide to Peres, summarized him in Haaretz: “He wanted peace. Who doesn’t? But the truth must be told, even in difficult moments; he never perceived the Palestinians as equal to Jews, and certainly not as having equal rights.”

In the 1970s as Israel’s defense minister, Peres pushed for many of the first settlements in the West Bank; late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin noted in his memoir that “Peres raised the banner of ‘settlement everywhere.’” He also is considered one of the architects of Israel’s nuclear weapons program,  and ordered Israeli intelligence to capture the whistleblower who exposed the program to the world. In Lebanon, Peres is known for his role in the shelling of a United Nations refugee camp in Qana.

At Peres’s funeral Friday, Obama echoed the clean narrative put forth by the New York Times. He compared Peres to Nelson Mandela: “He understood from hard-earned experience that true security comes from making peace with your neighbors,” he said.

World leaders like French President Francois Hollande and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were there, as was Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas — but no Arab Knesset members attended. Lawmaker Yousef Jabareen, explaining his boycott, noted Peres’s “history of harming the rights of the Palestinians.” Lawmaker Ayman Odeh explained that he and his colleagues take issue with Peres’s role in building settlements that would comprise the Israeli occupation. His work bringing nuclear weapons to the Middle East and his support for Benjamin Netanyahu also raised opposition.

Odeh explained: “The memory of Peres in the Arab [Israeli] public is different from that of the narrative that has been recounted over the past few days, and I understand that such complex messages are hard to hear after someone’s death.”

Erdogan’s ‘Goldfinger’ on trial in US

Iranian-Turkish businessman Reza Zarrab is on trial in New York, accused of violating sanctions against Iran. He has President Erdogan’s support. Erdogan’s family is said to have profited from Zarrab’s business deals.

September 30, 2016

DW

In mid-September while the UN General Assembly was taking place in New York, the Turkish head of state, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sought a private audience with US Vice President Joe Biden. The US authorities had arrested a Turkish-Iranian businessman, who has Erdogan’s personal support.

The case concerns 33 year-old Reza Zarrab, who has allegedly spent years handling money transactions between Iran and Turkey – on a significant scale and with the support of the Turkish government. He has pleaded not guilty.

Journalists describe Zarrab as Erdogan’s “Goldfinger.” The only problem was that he violated the sanctions that Washington had imposed on Iran. According to his lawyers, Zarrab, together with his wife and 5 year-old daughter, traveled to the US in March 2016 to visit the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando. Since his arrest in Miami, he has been detained in New York to await trial.

Erdogan sees the whole affair as a conspiracy, as an attempt to drag his name through the mud. He also accuses the New York public prosecutor who is responsible for the charges, Preet Bharara, of maintaining contact with his arch-enemy, Fethullah Gülen.

In a recent interview with Deutsche Welle, Tolag Tanis, Washington correspondent for the “Hurriyet” newspaper, says he believes that Erdogan is seriously concerned. According to his information US authorities have solid evidence that Erdogan and other high-ranking politicians from his party, the AKP, were involved in breaching the sanctions against Iran. Tolag Tanis is referring to documents held by Bharara

Preet Bharara is one of the most internationally renowned public prosecutors for dealing with criminal networks. In a report he has described Reza Zarrab’s relationships with “corrupt politicians in Turkey.” For example, between March 2012 and August 2013 Zarrab is believed to have paid the former Turkish economics minister, Mehmet Zafer Caglayan, a total of 32 million euros, 10 million US-dollars and 300,000 Swiss franks. It will now be determined whether this unusually large payment to a high-level politician has involved kick-backs.

Alleged bribes for Togem foundation

In theory the US justice department could open investigations into several other high-ranking AKP members. For example, Reza Zarrab had direct contact with the former prime minister and current head of state, Erdogan. Erdogan’s wife Emine runs the TOGEM-DER foundation, which assists the mentally and physically disabled. According to the Iranian-Turkish political expert, Hossein Zamanloo, Zarrab donated $4.5 million to the foundation. “This is the largest donation that TOGEM-DER has ever received,” Zamanloo said during a recent DW interview.

Turkish media describe Emine Erdogan as a founding member of the foundation as well as its most well-known face. Erdogan now denies that he or his wife were ever founding members. At the time of publication, Emine Erdogan was visible in three out of seven images on the organization’s online homepage.

Libertarianism and War

Rothbard’s rule: Foreign policy comes first

September 30, 2016

by Justin Raimondo

AntiWar

The year was 1956: the icy winds of the cold war were blowing across the political landscape. And it was a presidential election year, pitting the internationalist Republican Dwight Eisenhower against Adlai Stevenson, the darling of the Democratic party’s left wing. The “isolationist” faction of the GOP, led by Sen. Robert A. Taft, had been finally defeated by what Phyllis Schlafly later called the Republican “kingmakers” of the Eastern Establishment. And the looming menace of the cold war turning hot was everywhere in the headlines. While Eisenhower was rallying the nation against the alleged Communist “threat,” Stevenson was calling for a nuclear test ban, negotiations with the Soviet Union, and an end to the military draft.

There was no organized libertarian movement at the time, although the people and institutions that would later emerge as the leadership were beginning to coalesce. Prominent among them was Murray Rothbard, then a thirty year old economist and consultant for the Volker Fund, who was also the Washington correspondent for the quasi-libertarian Faith and Freedom magazine. While most if not all conservatives and libertarians favored Eisenhower, Rothbard shocked his readers with a ringing endorsement of the liberal Democrat Stevenson.

While opposing Stevenson’s domestic program of more government spending and expanded social programs, Rothbard explained that it was the Democratic nominee’s position on the vital foreign policy issues of the day that ought to earn him libertarian support. While Eisenhower was playing the Soviet “threat” card, Stevenson was warning of the dangers of a nuclear confrontation between the two superpowers. Richard Nixon was quick to jump on Stevenson as an “appeaser” when Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin endorsed Stevenson’s nuclear test ban proposal. The Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt further escalated the cold war hysteria that was sweeping the nation, and Eisenhower easily won a second term.

Yet Rothbard’s dissent was prescient: the Communist system, he wrote in Faith and Freedom, was “relatively inefficient” and doomed to fail. The enemy, he pointed out, was not merely communism, but “statism in all its forms.” Furthermore, under a wartime regime the State made its greatest inroads on the private sector: America’s wars had always been the occasion for a “great leap forward” in the power of the centralized State to impinge on every aspect of our lives. The ultra-conservative readers of Faith and Freedom were not convinced, and Rothbard was soon out as a columnist – yet his stand against the anti-communist hysteria and warmongering of the cold war Right was both prescient and principled.

As early as 1952, Rothbard had noted the fatal flaw in the “New Right” of  William F. Buckley, Jr., whose magazine, National Review, would become the flagship periodical of the conservative movement a few years later. In a piece for Commonweal, Buckley had written:

“We have to accept Big Government for the duration – for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged … except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores.”

Buckley maintained that conservatives had to become apologists for “the extensive and productive tax laws that are needed to support a vigorous anti-Communist foreign policy” and the “large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington – even with Truman at the reins of it all.”

The conservative project in the cold war era was essentially fraudulent. All that talk about “free markets,” individual liberty, etc. etc. was just window-dressing for making the world safe for the CIA, the military-industrial complex, and the embittered ex-Communist and ex-Trotskyist types who flocked to Buckley’s banner, and whose “expertise” on the ins-and-outs of “international Communism” gave them status and cushy jobs in the cold war era.

Rothbard broke with the National Review crowd, and went on to play a decisive role in severing the youthful libertarian movement from organized conservatism. And it was his emphasis on the centrality of foreign policy – that is, non-interventionism – that was the signal issue provoking the split. It was irreconcilable opposition to the Vietnam war that finally separated out libertarians from their former allies in the conservative movement. It was no coincidence that, just as that war was reaching its height during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, so the conservative Republicans’ adherence to anti-statism and the free market was reaching its nadir with wage and price controls, the introduction of significant welfare measures, and the creation of OSHA and other regulatory agencies that the conservatives of yesteryear would’ve looked on with horror.

In a 1994 speech, Rothbard averred:

“My ideological and political activism has been focused on opposition to American’s wars, first because I have believed our waging them to be unjust, and second, because war, in the penetrating phrase of the libertarian Randolph Bourne in World War I, has always been ‘the health of the state,’ an instrument of the aggrandizement of state power over the health, the lives, and the property of their subject citizens and social institutions.”

What Rothbard called his “antiwar and ‘isolationist’ guiding star” had been the moral and ideological compass that had charted his course from the 1950s to the 1990s – from the “Old Right” to the New Left and then on to the Libertarian Party of the 1970s and ‘80s and the revival of the Old Right in the 1990s. He realized that the vital question of war and peace isn’t just a side issue – he knew that, for libertarians, it is the most important issue of our time or any time. The reason is because either, like Buckley, we choose to worship at the altar of the war god, and must therefore bow down before the “necessity” of a “totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores,” or, like Rothbard, we can reject this false idol and take up the banner of liberty.

What the latter means, in actual practice, is always supporting the least interventionist political movement or candidate: it means supporting Stevenson over Eisenhower in spite of the former’s domestic program, because, in the long run, the victory of the latter candidate means more resources diverted to the public (military) sector and more power invested in the centralized State.

Conversely, the more we pull back from the international stage, and abjure the pernicious hubris of exercising American “global leadership,” the more the power and reach of the State shrinks on the home front. It is a process that is almost automatic.

Freed of the scourge of internationalism, think of the tremendous resources that would stay in this country – in the pockets of American taxpayers – instead of flowing out to every petty despot and Third World hellhole on earth. During the first presidential debate, Donald Trump opined that “We’ve spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, according to a report that I just saw. Whether it’s 6 or 5, but it looks like it’s 6, $6 trillion in the Middle East, we could have rebuilt our country twice. And it’s really a shame.”

It’s not just a shame – it’s a crime, one that has consequences far beyond the specter of impending bankruptcy.

The domestic spying program exposed by Edward Snowden – perhaps the greatest incursion on our civil liberties ever — is entirely the consequence of our foreign policy of perpetual war. The more we hit the hornets’ nest the more terrorist attacks we see on the home front – and this provides the justification not only for universal surveillance, but also for even more draconian restrictions on our basic rights as the pace of terror and retaliation picks up. For those who value liberty above all else, this cannot end well.

Our job, then, is clear enough: we must lift the burden of empire from our shoulders. This must be the central task of libertarians under any and all circumstances – but especially now, when the threat of another cold war with Russia looms large, and the cries of the War Party for yet another Middle East crusade are getting louder by the hour. Every political tendency, every occurrence, must be weighed and evaluated with this standard in mind.

The simple fact of the matter is that we cannot be a republic and an empire: we cannot have a globe-spanning network of bases, dozens of tripwires planted across every continent, a military budget that exceeds those of the seven biggest spenders put together and still remain faithful to the constitutional vision of limited government handed down to us by the Founders. It is one or the other – and the time for choosing is at hand.

The Wholesale Failure of American Foreign Policy

How long will the people permit it?

September 29, 2016

by Daniel L. Davis

The American Conservative

One has to wonder just how much longer the American people will silently permit the categorical failure of American foreign policy, both in theory and in practice. The evidence confirming the totality of our failure is breathtaking in scope and severity. Changes are needed to preserve U.S. national security and economic prosperity.

Recent headlines have captured the character of this failure. Fifteen years after the invasion of Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) released findings that “corruption substantially undermined the U.S. mission in Afghanistan from the very beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. … We conclude that failure to effectively address the problem means U.S. reconstruction programs, at best, will continue to be subverted by systemic corruption and, at worst, will fail.”

Earlier this month, a British Parliament study found that the result of Western military intervention in Libya “was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL in North Africa.”

Airstrikes and drone attacks are accidentally killing thousands of civilians, aid workers, wedding parties, and now even the troops of a nation against whom we are not at war. Each of these mistakes, repeated hundreds of times over the past 15 years, creates more antagonism and hatred of the United States than any other single event. Whatever tactical benefit some of the strikes do accomplish, they are consumed in the still-worsening strategic failure the misfires cause.

Bottom line: The use of military power since 2001 has:

• Turned a previously whole and regionally impotent Iraq that balanced Iran into a factory of terrorism and a client of Tehran;
• Turned Afghanistan from a country with a two-sided civil war—contained within its own borders—into a dysfunctional state that serves as a magnet for terrorists.
• Turned a Libya that suffered internal unrest, but didn’t threaten its neighbors or harbor terrorists, into an “unmitigated failure” featuring a raging civil war, serving as an African beachhead for ISIS and a terrorist breeding ground;
• Contributed to the expansion of al-Qaeda into a “franchise” group, spawned a new strain when ISIS was born out of the vacuum created by our Iraq invasion, and seen major terrorist threats explode worldwide;
• Joined other nations in battles in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other areas within Africa whose only result has been the expansion of the threat and the deepening of the suffering of the civil populations.

These continued and deepening failures kill unknown numbers of innocent civilians each year, intensify and spread the hatred many have of America, and incrementally weaken our national security. But these military failures have another, less obvious but more troubling cost.

Perpetual fighting dissipates the fighting strength of the armed forces. The non-stop employment of the U.S. Air Force in flying sorties, bombing runs, and strategic airlift has been orders of magnitude higher than what it was in the 15 years prior to 9/11, dramatically cutting short the lifespan of each aircraft, increasing the maintenance requirements, and depleting stocks of bombs and missiles.

The U.S. Army and Marine Corps have put thousands of miles of grueling use on their tanks and other armored vehicles and worn out countless weapons. The refurbishing and replacement costs for these vehicles has been enormous, and—like the Air Force—the Army has severely shortened the lifespan of its armored fleet. But not only have these permanent military operations degraded the vehicles, the damage has come at the expense of conventional military training.

This might be the most alarming cost. The Army has recognized this problem and has belatedly begun to reorient some of the training time to high-end conventional battle. But it will take many years of focused training to rebuild the strength the military had prior to Desert Storm or even the opening operations of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

Entire generations of leaders and troops at every level have grown up training almost exclusively on small-scale counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare.

As one who has fought in both high-end armored warfare and small-scale COIN, I can tell you that creating effective battle units for conventional war is far, far more difficult and time consuming.

Likewise, the Air Force has not fought against a modern adversary with fleets of effective fighter jets, bombers, and potent air-defense capabilities. Such operations are orders of magnitude more difficult than attacking insurgents on the ground who pose no threat to aircraft.

It is critical to understand that no insurgency or terror group represents an existential threat to viability of the United States. Failure in a conventional battle to a major power, however, can cripple the nation.

It is discouraging to see the administration, Congress, and the Department of Defense fully tethered to the perpetual application of military power against small-scale threats. Terrorism definitely represents a threat to U.S. interests, and we must defend against it. But the obsession with using major military assets on these relatively small-scale threats has not only failed to stem the threat, it has in part been responsible for expanding it. Meanwhile, the unhealthy focus on the small-scale has weakened—and continues to weaken—our ability to respond to the truly existential threats.

If the incoming administration does not recognize this deterioration of our military power and take steps to reverse it, our weakness may one day be exposed in the form of losing a major military engagement that we should have won easily. The stakes couldn’t be higher. A change in foreign policy is critically needed. We will either change by choice or we will change in the smoldering aftermath of catastrophic military failure. I pray it is the former.

Cleric Gulen says certain Erdogan behind failed Turkey coup

September 29, 2016

Reuters

U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkish authorities accuse of orchestrating a failed coup in July, told a German newspaper that he was sure President Tayyip Erdogan was behind the putsch.

Gulen said in an interview with the weekly Die Zeit that the military coup attempt betrayed the principles of the Turkish government and his global movement called “Hizmet”. He pointed to Erdogan’s comments that the July 15 putsch was a “gift from God” because it would allow the army to be cleansed.

Asked if he was suggesting that Erdogan was behind the coup, Gulen said: “Until now I only thought that was a possibility. Now I think it’s certain.”

Gulen said a Turkish officer had recently said that the chief of general staff and the intelligence chief met in the army headquarters during the night of the coup, adding: “They already knew everything that would happen later.”

Exactly how events unfolded on the night of the coup has yet to be fully uncovered but Erdogan has repeatedly complained of what he described as an intelligence failure, saying he found out about the putsch only from his brother-in-law.

Turkish officials have said an informant who came to Turkey’s national intelligence agency provided the tip-off on the coup. The head of the armed forces, along with several other senior commanders, were abducted by the putschists.

Gulen said the coup gave Erdogan the opportunity to dismiss thousands of perceived opponents in ministries, the military, police and judiciary authorities as well as to arrest lawyers, business people, journalists and wives of Gulen supporters, and added that this must have been planned in advance.

In the post-coup crackdown, some 100,000 people in the police, civil service, military and judiciary have been sacked or suspended. Another 40,000 people have been detained.

Turkish officials have said Ankara’s intelligence agency had already been tracking Gulen followers well before the coup attempt and had identified many figures previously.

Gulen distanced himself from Erdogan, saying they had only met a few times before Erdogan became prime minister in 2003.

“Neither my friends nor I were close to Erdogan ourselves, even if that is being claimed,” he told Die Zeit.

The Hizmet movement once backed Erdogan because when he founded the AK Party he promised democracy and stronger human rights as well as to limit the military’s political power, Gulen said. But, he said, Erdogan broke his promises after the 2011 election.

Turkey wants the United States to extradite Gulen and prosecute him on charges he masterminded the attempt to overthrow the government. Gulen denies any involvement. Washington has said it is cooperating with Ankara on the matter and asked for patience as it processes the extradition request for Gulen to meet U.S. legal requirements.

Gulen also told Die Zeit he did not think the United States would extradite him to Turkey but said that if it did decide to hand him over, he would buy himself a ticket and fly there.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin in Berlin and Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul; editing by Mark Heinrich)

 WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange:’We Believe in What We’re Doing’

WikiLeaks is now 10 years old. SPIEGEL met with founder Julian Assange, 45, to discuss the whistleblower platform’s achievements and whether recent criticism leveled at the site is justified.

September 30, 2016

Interview Conducted by Michael Sontheimer

Spiegel

SPIEGEL: Mr. Assange, 10 years after the founding of WikiLeaks, the whistleblower platform is again being criticized. WikiLeaks is said to have put millions of Turkish voters in danger. What is your response?

Assange: A few days after the publication of internal emails from the Democratic National Committee, an entirely false story was put out that we had published the names, addresses and phone numbers of all female voters in Turkey. It is completely false. And it was and is simple to check. Power factions fight back with lies. That’s not surprising.

SPIEGEL: Quite a few German journalists have long sympathized with WikiLeaks and also with Edward Snowden. But they aren’t impressed with the publishing of the DNC emails. Are you campaigning on behalf of Donald Trump?

Assange: Our publication of the DNC leaks has showed that the Democratic National Committee had effectively rigged the primaries in the United States on behalf of Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders. That led to the resignation of leading members of the DNC, including its president Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

SPIEGEL: People within the Clinton campaign have suggested that the DNC emails were given to you by the Russian secret service.

Assange: There have been many attempts to distract from the power of our publications. Hillary Clinton is the favorite to win. As always, most media aligns with the presumptive winner even though their claimed societal virtue is to investigate those in power.

SPIEGEL: The fact is, WikiLeaks is damaging Clinton and bolstering Trump.

Assange: We’re not going to start censoring our publications because there is a US election. Our role is to publish. Clinton has been in government so we have much more to publish on Clinton. There is a lot of naivety. The US presidency will continue to represent the major power groups of the United States — big business and the military — regardless of who the talking head is.

SPIEGEL: If someone submitted internal documents from the Trump campaign or the Republican Party, you would publish that as well?

Assange: Yes, of course. That’s what we do.

SPIEGEL: The German newsmagazine Focus has even has accused WikiLeaks of publishing NSA documents and other documents that have been forged by the Russian secret service. What’s your comment on that?

Assange: The claims are not credible. Even the US government had to come out and say that they have no evidence of a link to WikiLeaks. I exposed the same German magazine back in 2008 as having been extensively penetrated by the BND (Eds. note: Bundesnachrichtendienst, the German foreign intelligence agency). We listed the times and dates of 58 contacts that a Focus journalist had with the BND.

SPIEGEL: Isn’t WikiLeaks vulnerable because it isn’t possible for you to check and verify every single document submitted and to find possibly forged documents?

Assange: We have a perfect record in detecting forgeries and, unlike the traditional press, we publish every document so everyone else can check too. WikiLeaks is literally the worst place in the world to try and plant a false story.

SPIEGEL: Would WikiLeaks publish material about corruption in the Russian leadership?

Assange: Yes. In fact we have already published more than 650,000 documents on Russia and President Vladimir Putin, most of which was critical. A number of highly critical books were written using this material, like “The Mafia State” by the Guardian journalist Luke Harding. The documents have also gone on to be used in a number of significant litigations, including the Yukos case.

SPIEGEL: How can you prevent WikiLeaks from being taken advantage of in the global war of information?

Assange: Our editorial criteria are public and they have been the same for about eight years. If a source gives us material that is of political, diplomatic, ethical or historical significance that has not been published before and is comprised of official documents or recordings, then we will publish it. Is the majority of our material in English? Yes. But that is a resource constraint. Most of our submissions are in English because most of our readers speak English.

SPIEGEL: On Oct. 4, 2006, you registered the domain name www.wikileaks.org. What have you accomplished since then?

Assange: WikiLeaks has published over 10 million documents in 10 years. Most have been published over the last six years, during which time I have been illegally detained, without charge, in the United Kingdom.

SPIEGEL: You have received political asylum from the government of Ecuador, but have been stuck in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for the last four years. British authorities would like to arrest you and extradite you for interrogation to Sweden. Hasn’t this situation handicapped WikiLeaks?

Assange: While many of the established media make losses or go bankrupt, WikiLeaks has survived a major conflict with a superpower, including an unlawful economic blockade by its banks and credit card companies and the detention of its editor. We have no debts. We have not had to fire staff. We have never lost a court case related to our publishing. We have never been forced to censor. Adversity has hardened us. We’re 10 now. Just wait until we’re teenagers.

SPIEGEL: What has been WikiLeaks’ most important publication?

Assange: The most important publication of WikiLeaks is that it has published more than 10 million documents. The most important single collection of material we have published is the US diplomatic cable series. We started with 251,000 in 2011, but are up to 3 million now and have more coming.

SPIEGEL: What have been the shortcomings of WikiLeaks? What would you like to improve?

Assange: Resources. Has WikiLeaks been forced to do one thing rather than another in response to resource constraints? Yes. Constantly.

SPIEGEL: For example?

Assange: For example, resource constraints forced us to deal with politically compromised publications like the New York Times in order to harness their distribution networks.

SPIEGEL: Do you regret the fact that you no longer have a cooperation with established papers like the New York Times or the Guardian — and that WikiLeaks is even criticized by liberal papers?

Assange: We have subsequently worked with journalists from both papers. Liberal papers are not necessarily liberal. We have excellent relations and contracts with more than 110 media organizations from all over the world. We aggressively enforce our agreements.

SPIEGEL: Your source Chelsea Manning, a US soldier, was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Edward Snowden is stuck in Moscow. And you are stuck here in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. How can whistleblowers come to terms with such setbacks?

Assange: Let us not compare Edward Snowden’s situation with that of Chelsea Manning or Jeremy Hammond, who is also imprisoned in the United States. As a result of WikiLeaks’ hard work, Edward Snowden has political asylum, has travel documents, lives with his girlfriend, goes to the ballet and earns substantial speaking fees. Edward Snowden is essentially free and happy. That is no coincidence. It was my strategy to undo the chilling effect of the 35 year Manning sentence and it has worked.

SPIEGEL: Given all the pressure that you and those you work with are facing, how do you keep going?

Assange: We believe in what we are doing. It’s very satisfying. It’s extremely interesting intellectually. Sometimes great moments of justice come out of it. In one case, a man falsely accused left prison thanks to a publication of ours. A lot of people who work for WikiLeaks have the same instinct as me: If you are pushed you push back.

50 asylum-seekers stage riot, attack guards at refugee center in Berlin

September 30, 2016

RT

Some 50 refugees staged a riot at an accommodation facility in the northern district of Reinickendorf in Berlin, knocking down doors, damaging furniture, stealing personal belongings, and physically attacking security guards, local media reports.

Security personnel turned on the lights in the building late Thursday night after it was discovered that one of their offices had been broken into and looted. Several residents of the refugee center broke down the door to the security room and stole some personal belongings of the employees, German newspaper Berliner Morgenpost reported.

Some refugees punched and kicked the security guards. Some of the guards’ personal cars, parked nearby, were vandalized. Security personnel called police, and around thirty police officers arrived to rescue them and restore order.

Police have launched an investigation. Possible charges include disturbing the peace, property damage, burglary, and attempted aggravated assault, DPA news agency reported.

Most of the attackers are believed to have been intoxicated.

There were no reports of injuries except for one security guard who was rushed to the hospital with head injuries.

This is not the first time the refugee center located on Zobeltitzstraße has made the headlines of German newspapers. Back in May, around 150 asylum-seekers engaged in a brawl with security personnel following a row over a drunken resident.

This kind of incident occasionally happens in Germany and most often involves young refugees who are under the influence of alcohol, which is prohibited in the places where they reside. The restriction, however, does not prevent them from drinking outside the facilities during the day.

In January, police broke up a huge brawl between around 200 asylum-seekers who clashed at the Leiman centre in southern Germany. According to reports, one group caught another drinking alcohol and called them “bad Muslims,” causing a fight to break out. More than 30 police cars were sent to the scene to stop the brawl. Five people were taken to the hospital with injuries.

At the same time, Germany has seen a rise in hate crimes against refugee camps. Refugee facilities have been targeted more than 650 times since the beginning of 2016, a recent police report indicated. Most of the attacks were allegedly carried out by far-right activists who oppose German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ‘open-door policy.’

Alabama chief justice Roy Moore suspended in gay marriage case

Punishment removes Moore from office without officially ousting him after he was found to have encouraged judges to deny marriage licenses to gay couples

September 30, 2016

AP

Montgomery, Alabama-Alabama chief justice Roy Moore has been suspended for the rest of his term for defying federal gay marriage rulings.

The punishment effectively removes Moore from office, without the court officially ousting him. The nine-member Alabama court of the judiciary handed down the punishment on Friday after ruling Moore had violating standards of judicial ethics.

Moore was found to have encouraged probate judges to deny marriage licenses to gay couples six months after the US supreme court ruled that everyone had a fundamental right to marry regardless of sexual orientation in all 50 states.

Moore vehemently denied that his administrative order was an act of defiance and said his personal beliefs had nothing to do with it.

The same panel removed the outspoken Republican in 2003 because he refused to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building. Voters later re-elected him as chief justice after he lost a race for governor.

This time, Moore sent an administrative order to the state’s 68 probate judges, maintaining that the Alabama supreme court’s gay marriage ban remained in “full force and effect” despite the ruling from the nation’s highest court.

Moore testified that his January order merely provided judges with a status report on a technical aspect of the law.

Moore, 69, had already been suspended from the bench since May, when the state’s judicial inquiry commission accused him of violating judicial ethics. By the end of his term in 2019, he will be beyond the age limit of 70 for judges, unless voters raise the limit in November.

“We are here 13 years later because the chief justice learned nothing from his first removal. He continues to defy the law,” John Carroll, a lawyer representing the commission, argued on Wednesday in Moore’s judicial court hearing.

Moore was loudly applauded when he entered the ornate chamber where he usually presides over the state supreme court. He told his inquisitors the ethics charges were “ridiculous”.

“I gave them a status in the case, a status of the facts that these orders exist. That is all I did,” Moore testified.

Moore’s ethics trial came amid upheaval in all three branches of Alabama’s government. The Republican speaker of the state house of representatives was removed from office this summer for criminal ethics violations. A legislative committee is weighing whether Governor Robert Bentley should be impeached over a scandal involving a top aide.

U.S. Military Is Building a $100 Million Drone Base in Africa

September 29, 2016

by Nick Turse

The Intercept

From high above, Agadez almost blends into the cocoa-colored wasteland that surrounds it. Only when you descend farther can you make out a city that curves around an airfield before fading into the desert. Once a nexus for camel caravans hauling tea and salt across the Sahara, Agadez is now a West African paradise for people smugglers and a way station for refugees and migrants intent on reaching Europe’s shores by any means necessary.

Africans fleeing unrest and poverty are not, however, the only foreigners making their way to this town in the center of Niger. U.S. military documents reveal new information about an American drone base under construction on the outskirts of the city. The long-planned project — considered the most important U.S. military construction effort in Africa, according to formerly secret files obtained by The Intercept through the Freedom of Information Act — is slated to cost $100 million, and is just one of a number of recent American military initiatives in the impoverished nation.

The base is the latest sign, experts say, of an ever-increasing emphasis on counterterror operations in the north and west of the continent. As the only country in the region willing to allow a U.S. base for MQ-9 Reapers — a newer, larger, and potentially more lethal model than the venerable Predator drone — Niger has positioned itself to be the key regional hub for U.S. military operations, with Agadez serving as the premier outpost for launching intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions against a plethora of terror groups.

For years, the U.S. operated from an air base in Niamey, Niger’s capital, but in early 2014, Capt. Rick Cook, then chief of U.S. Africa Command’s Engineer Division, mentioned the potential for a new “semi-permanent … base-like facility” in Niger. That September, the Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock exposed plans to base drones at Agadez. Within days, the U.S. Embassy in Niamey announced that AFRICOM was, indeed, “assessing the possibility of establishing a temporary, expeditionary contingency support location” there. The outpost, according to the communiqué, “presents an attractive option from which to base ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) assets given its proximity to the threats in the region and the complexity of operating with the vast distance of African geography.”

Air Force documents submitted to Congress in 2015 note that the U.S. “negotiated an agreement with the government of Niger to allow for the construction of a new runway and all associated pavements, facilities, and infrastructure adjacent to the Niger Armed Force’s Base Aerienne 201 (Airbase 201) south of the city of Agadez.” When the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2016 was introduced last April, embedded in it was a $50 million request for the construction of an “airfield and base camp at Agadez, Niger … to support operations in western Africa.” When President Obama signed the defense bill, that sum was authorized.

Reporting by The Intercept found the true cost to be double that sum. In addition to the $50 million to “construct Air Base 201,” another $38 million in operation and maintenance (O&M) funds was slated to be spent “to support troop labor and ancillary equipment,” according to a second set of undated, heavily redacted, formerly secret documents obtained from U.S. Africa Command by The Intercept. But the $38 million O&M price tag — for expenses like fuel and troops’ per diem — has already jumped to $50 million, according to new figures provided by the Pentagon, while sustainment costs are now projected at $12.8 million per year.

The files obtained by The Intercept attest to the importance of Agadez for future missions by drones, also known as remotely piloted aircraft or RPAs. “The top MILCON [military construction] project for USAFRICOM is located in Agadez, Niger to construct a C-17 and MQ-9 capable airfield,” reads a 2015 planning document. “RPA presence in NW Africa supports operations against seven [Department of State]-designated foreign terrorist organizations. Moving operations to Agadez aligns persistent ISR to current and emerging threats over Niger and Chad, supports French regionalization and extends range to cover Libya and Nigeria.”

The Pentagon is tight-lipped about the outpost, however.

“Due to operational security considerations, we don’t release details on numbers of personnel or specific missions or locations, including information regarding the Nigerien military air base located in Agadez,” Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Michelle L. Baldanza told The Intercept in an email, stressing that drones are not yet flying from the outpost. However, the declassified documents say construction will be completed next year.

The documents offer further details, including plans for a 1,830-meter paved asphalt runway capable of supporting C-17 cargo aircraft and “miscellaneous light and medium load aircraft”; a 17,458-square-meter parking apron and taxiway for “light load ISR aircraft”; and the installation of “three 140’ x 140’ relocatable fabric tension aircraft hangars”; as well as all the standard infrastructure for troops, including “force protection” measures like barriers, fences, and an “Entry Control Point.”

While AFRICOM failed to respond to requests for information about the projects, a May 2016 satellite photo of the site provides a status report. “The image shows that the main runway … has been repaved,” said Dan Gettinger, the co-founder and co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College and author of a guide to identifying drone bases from satellite imagery. “Near the runway there’s a structure that appears to be a future hangar, though it’s still under construction. There’s also a new dirt road that runs a fair distance from the runway to a U.S. base that’s enclosed with a perimeter wall and there are a number of shelters there for personnel as well as a command center. All the things that you’d expect on a base.”

According to the documents, Niger was the “only country in NW Africa willing to allow basing of MQ-9s,” the larger, newer cousins of the Predator drone. The documents went on to note: “President expressed willingness to support armed RPAs.”

The U.S. military activity in Niger is not isolated. “There’s a trend toward greater engagement and a more permanent presence in West Africa — the Maghreb and the Sahel,” noted Adam Moore of the department of geography at the University of California in Los Angeles and the co-author of an academic study of the U.S. military’s presence in Africa.

Since 9/11, in fact, the United States has poured vast amounts of military aid into the region. In 2002, for example, the State Department launched a counterterrorism program — known as the Pan-Sahel Initiative, which later became the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) — to assist the militaries of Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Between 2009 and 2013 alone, the U.S. allocated $288 million in TSCTP funding, according to a 2014 report by the Government Accountability Office. Niger was one of the top three recipients, netting more than $30 million.

U.S. special operations forces regularly train with Niger’s army and the U.S. has transferred millions of dollars’ worth of planes, trucks, and other gear to that impoverished nation. In a 2015 report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, Lauren Ploch Blanchard of the Congressional Research Service noted that since 2006 Niger had received more than $82 million in assistance through the Department of Defense’s Global Train and Equip program.

“In close coordination with partner militaries in West Africa, including Niger, USAFRICOM supports a range of security and capacity building efforts in the greater Sahelian region,” Baldanza told The Intercept. “These efforts support U.S. diplomatic and national security objectives and are designed to strengthen relationships with African partners, promote stability and security, and enable our African partners to address their security threats.”

Stability and security have, however, proved elusive. In 2010, for example, a military junta overthrew Niger’s president as he attempted to extend his rule. In fact, all the original members of the Pan-Sahel Initiative have fallen victim to military uprisings. Chad saw attempted coups in 2006 and 2013, members of Mauritania’s military overthrew the government in 2005 and again in 2008, and a U.S.-trained military officer toppled the democratically elected president of Mali in 2012.

The region, relatively free of transnational terror threats in 2001, is now beset by regular attacks from Boko Haram, a once-tiny, nonviolent, Islamist sect from Nigeria that has since pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and threatens the stability of not only its homeland but also Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. And Boko Haram is just one of 17 militant groups now menacing the region, according to the Defense Department’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

Drones have long been integral to U.S. efforts in Niger. In 2012, according to the files obtained by The Intercept, Niger agreed to host U.S. drones in Niamey, the capital, on the condition that operations would eventually be shifted to a more remote military base in Agadez.

In February 2013, the U.S. began flying Predator drones out of the capital. Later in the spring, an AFRICOM spokesperson revealed that U.S. air operations there were providing “support for intelligence collection with French forces conducting operations in Mali and with other partners in the region.” The Air Force recently announced plans to upgrade shower and latrine facilities at Niamey “to serve a steady state of 200 to 250 personnel a day.”

“The U.S. shares that base with France,” said Gettinger. The base in Niamey, he explained, “is strategically important simply because to the north there’s Mali and the threat posed by al Qaeda-linked groups, including al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. … To the south you have Nigeria and Boko Haram, so there’s lots of demand for ISR capabilities.” At Agadez, he noted, the U.S. doesn’t need to share facilities with the French military or commercial aircraft. And it is, he said, “more strategically located than Niamey.”

As UCLA’s Moore puts it: “The recent trajectory of sites and money suggests that Niger is becoming, after Djibouti, the second most important country for U.S. military counterterrorism operations on the continent.”

THE WANSEE PROTOCOL

By Harry von Johnston, PhD

________________________________________

This English text of the Wannsee protocol is based on the official U.S. government translation prepared for evidence in trials at Nuremberg, as reproduced in John Mendelsohn, ed., _The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes._ Vol. 11: The Wannsee Protocol and a 1944 Report on Auschwitz by the Office of Strategic Services (New York: Garland, 1982), 18-32. Substantial revisions to the Nuremberg text have been made to add clarity and, in some cases, to correct mistakes in an obviously hasty translation. These revisions were made by Dan Rogers of the University of South Alabama. This document is in the public domain and may be freely reproduced. Comments and suggestions may be e-mailed to drogers@jaguar1.usouthal.edu.

________________________________________

Wannsee conference

 

The Wannsee conference was the discussion by a group of Nazi officials about the “final solution of the Jewish question” (Endlösung der Judenfrage); it took place in Berlin, am Grossen Wannsee on January 20, 1942 and would lead to the Holocaust.

Discussion centred on the aim of the expulsion of the Jews from every sphere of life of the German people and the expulsion of the Jews from the living space of the German people. Measures to date were discussed and the concept of the ‘deportation’ of the Jews to the East was introduced – for “appropriate labour… in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes”, the “final remnant will… have to be treated accordingly, because it… would, if released, act as a the seed of a new Jewish revival”. The number of Jews in Europe were enumerated (roughly 11 million) and the methods of evacuation were considered with regard to age and country of origin. The treatment of people with ‘mixed blood’ was also carefully discussed.

Dr. Josef Buhler pushed Heydrich to take off the final solution in the General Government. As far as he was concerned, the main problem of General Government was an overdeveloped black market that deorganises the work of the authorities. He saw a remedy in solving the Jewish question in the country as fast as possible. An additional point in favour was that there were no transportation problems here.

The meeting is noted as the first discussion of the ‘final solution’ and also because the records and minutes of the meeting were found intact by the Allies at the end of WW II and used during the Nuremberg Trials.

The protocol of the meeting was prepared by Adolf Eichmann aided by Reinhard Heydrich and does not explicitly mention mass murder; Eichmann later admitted at his trial that the actual language used during the conference was much more blunt and included terms such as “extermination” and “annihilation”.

Present were:

Origins of the current version of the protocol:

According to his own statements, Robert M. W. Kempner, the prosecutor in the Wilhelmstraßen Trial of Ernst Weizsäcker, had been expecting a shipment of documents from Berlin in early March 1947. Among these papers, he and his colleagues discovered a transcript of the Wannsee Conference. The author of the protocol, it was claimed, was Eichmann. In 1983 the WDR (West German Radio) broadcast Kempner’s original taped statement, according to which he had discovered the protocol in autumn of 1947. Beyond Kempner’s verbal statements quoted here, no other documentation verifying the place and circumstances of the discovery were found. Kempner: “Of course no one doubted the authenticity [of the protocol].” The Court, he said, introduced the protocol as Number 2568. In the court records it appears as G-2568.

Göring’s Commission to Heydrich

Berlin: July 31, 1941

The Reich Marshal of the Greater German Reich Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan

Chairman of the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich

To: the Chief of the Security Police and the SD

SS Major General Heydrich, Berlin:

As a supplement to the task which was entrusted to you in the decree dated January 24, 1939, to solve the Jewish question by emigration and evacuation in the most favorable way possible, given present conditions, I herewith commission you to carry out all necessary preparations with regard to organizational, substantive, and financial viewpoints for a total solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe.

Insofar as other competencies of other central organizations are affected, these are to be involved.

I further commission you to submit to me promptly an overall plan showing the preliminary organizational, substantive, and financial measures for the execution of the intended final solution of the Jewish question.

//signed//Göring

3.2 Analysis of the Wannsee Conference Protocol

3.2.1 Form

While it is claimed that the copy of the Wannsee minutes held by the Foreign Office is the original, this cannot in fact be the case, since it is identified as the 16th copy of a total of 30. Regardless whether it is genuine or fake, however, its errors and shortcomings as to form render it invalid under German law, and thus devoid of documentary value:

The paper lacks a letterhead; the issuing office is not specified, and the date, distributor, reference number, place of issue, signature, and identification initials are missing (Wahls(7) and Walendy(8)). The stamp with the date of receipt by the Foreign Office, which is (today!) named as the receiver, is missing (Tiedemann(11)). The paper lacks all the necessary properties of a protocol, i.e. the minutes of a meeting: the opening and closing times of the conference, identification of the persons invited but not attending (Tiedemann, ibid.), the names of each of the respective speakers, and the countersignature of the chairman of the meeting (Tiedemann, ibid., and Ney(10)). The paper does, however, bear the reference number of the receiving(!) office, namely the Foreign Office – typed on the same typewriter as the body of the text (Tiedemann(11)). The most important participant, Reinhard Heydrich, is missing from the list of participants (Wahls(7) and Walendy(8)).

3.2.2 Linguistic Content

The Wannsee Conference Protocol is a treasure-trove of stylistic howlers which indicate that the authors of this paper were strongly influenced by the Anglo-Saxon i.e. British English language. In the following we will identify only the most glaring of these blunders; many of them have been pointed out by all the authors consulted, so that a specific reference frequently does not apply.

The expressions “im Hinblick” (“considering”,* 8 times), “im Zuge” (“in the course of”, 5 times), “Lösung” (“solution”, 23 times), “Fragen” (“questions”, 17 times), “Problem” (6 times), “Bereinigen” (“to clarify”, 4 times), frequently even more than once in the same sentence, bear witness to such a poor German vocabulary that one may assume the author to have been a foreigner.

Further, the expressions “Lösung der Frage” (“solution of the problem”), “der Lösung zugeführt” (“brought near to a solution”), “Lösungsarbeiten” (“tasks involved” [in a solution; -trans.]), “Regelung der Frage” (“to settle the question”), “Regelung des Problems” (“to settle the problem”), “restlose Bereinigung des Problems” (“absolutely final clarification of the question” [i.e. the “problem”; – trans.]), “Mischlingsproblem endgültig bereinigen” (“securing a final solution of the problem presented by the persons of mixed blood”), “praktische Durchführung” (“practical execution”; is there such a thing as a theoretical execution?), and especially the frequent repetition of these expressions, are not at all the German style (Walendy(8)).

Further:

“Bezüglich der Behandlung der Endlösung” (“Regarding the handling of the final solution”)

How does one handle a solution? (Walendy(8))

“Wurden die jüdischen Finanzinstitutionen des Auslands […] verhalten […]”

Does the author mean “angehalten”?*

“Italien einschließlich Sardinien” (“Italy incl. Sardinia”)

Why the need to specify? In Europe people knew very well what all was part of Italy.

“Die berufsständische Aufgliederung der […] Juden: […] städtische Arbeiter 14,8%” (“The breakdown of Jews […] according to trades […]: […] communal workers 14.8%” [i.e. “municipal” workers; -trans.]

Were all of these people common laborers? (Ney(10)) “Salaried employees” is probably what the author meant here. “[…] als Staatsarbeiter angestellt” (the Nuremberg Translation renders this as “employed by the state”, which glosses over the difference between “Arbeiter”, i.e. blue-collar workers, and “angestellt”, i.e. the condition of employment enjoyed by salaried and public employees; -trans.): so what were they, laborers or government employees? Did the author mean civil servants? (Ney, ibid.)

“In den privaten Berufen – Heilkunde, Presse, Theater, usw.” (“in private occupations such as medical profession, newspapers, theater, etc.”).

In German these are called “freie Berufe”, not “private Berufe”. Such persons are known as doctors, journalists, and artists. “usw.” is never preceded by a comma in German, whereas the English “etc.” almost always is.

“Die sich im Altreich befindlichen […]”

1. Hitler had participated in the discussion, according to Simon Wiesenthal.There is no evidence to indicate this.

30) S. Wiesenthal, Doch die Mörder leben noch, Munich: Droemer Knaur, 1967

Geheime Reichssache

30 Ausfertigungen

16. Ausfertigung

Besprechungsprotokoll.

An der am 20.1.1942 in Berlin, Am Großen Wannsee Nr. 56/58, stattgefundenen Besprechung über die Endlösung der Judenfrage nahmen teil:

Gauleiter Dr. Meyer und               Reichsministerium für die besetzten

Reichsamtsleiter Dr. Leibbrandt       Ostgebiete

Staatssekretär Dr. Stuckart           Reichsministerium des Innern

Staatssekretär Neumann                Beauftragter für den Vierjahresplan

Staatssekretär Dr. Freisler           Reichsjustizministerium

Staatssekretär Dr. Bühler             Amt des Generalgouverneurs

Unterstaatssekretär Luther            Auswärtiges Amt

SS-Oberführer Klopfer                 Partei-Kanzlei

Minsterialdirektor Kritzinger         Reichskanzlei

SS-Gruppenführer Hofmann              Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt

SS-Gruppenführer Müller               Reichssicherheitshauptamt

SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann

SS-Oberführer Dr. Schöngarth          Sicherheitspolizei und SD

Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei

und des SD im General-Gouvernement

SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Lange          Sicherheitspolizei und SD

Kommandeur der Sicherheitspolizei

und des SD für den Generalbezirk

Lettland, als Vertreter des Befehlhabers

der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD

für das Reichskommissariat Ostland.

Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, SS-Obergruppenführer H e y d r i c h, teilte eingangs seine Bestellung zum Beauftragten für die Vorbereitung der Endlösung der europäischen Judenfrage durch den Reichsmarschall mit und wies darauf hin, daß zu dieser Besprechung geladen wurde, um Klarheit in grundsätzlichen Fragen zu schaffen. Der Wunsch des Reichsmarschalls, ihm einen Entwurf über die organisatorischen, sachlichen und materiellen Belange im Hinblick auf die Endlösung der europäischen Judenfrage zu übersenden, erfordert die vorherige gemeinsame Behandlung aller an diesen Fragen unmittelbar beteiligten Zentralinstanzen im Hinblick auf die Parallelisierung der Linienführung.

Die Federführung bei der Bearbeitung der Endlösung der Judenfrage liege ohne Rücksicht auf geographische Grenzen zentral beim Reichsführer-SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei (Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD).

Der Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD gab sodann einen kurzen Rückblick über den bisher geführten Kampf gegen diesen Gegner. Die wesentlichsten Momente bilden

a/ die Zurückdrängung der Juden aus den einzelnen Lebensgebieten des deutschen Volkes,

b/ die Zurückdrängung der Juden aus dem Lebensraum des deutschen Volkes.

Im Vollzug dieser Bestrebungen wurde als einzige vorläufige Lösungsmöglichkeit die Beschleunigung der Auswanderung der Juden aus dem Reichsgebiet verstärkt und planmäßig in Angriff genommen.

Auf Anordnung des Reichsmarschalls wurde im Januar 1939 eine Reichszentrale für jüdische Auswanderung errichtet, mit deren Leitung der Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD betraut wurde. Sie hatte insbesondere die Aufgabe

a/ alle Maßnahmen zur Vorbereitung einer verstärkten Auswanderung der Juden zu treffen

b/ den Auswanderungsstrom zu lenken

c/ die Durchführung der Auswanderung im Einzelfall zu beschleunigen.

Das Aufgabenziel war, auf legale Weise den deutschen Lebensraum von Juden zu säubern.

Über die Nachteile, die eine solche Auswanderungsforcierung mit sich brachte, waren sich alle Stellen im klaren. Sie mußten jedoch angesichts des Fehlens anderer Lösungsmöglichkeiten vorerst in Kauf genommen werden.

Die Auswanderungsarbeiten waren in der Folgezeit nicht nur ein deutsches Problem, sondern auch ein Problem, mit dem sich die Behörden der Ziel- bzw. Einwandererländer zu befassen hatten. Die finanziellen Schwierigkeiten, wie Erhöhung der Vorzeige- und Landungsgelder seitens der verschiedenen ausländischen Regierungen, fehlende Schiffsplätze, laufend verschärfte Einwanderungsbeschränkungen oder – sperren, erschwerten die Auswanderungs- bestrebungen außerordentlich. Trotz dieser Schwierigkeiten wurden seit der Machtübernahme bis zum Stichtag 31.10.1941 insgesamt rund 537.000 Juden zur Auswanderung gebracht. Davon

vom 30.1.1933 aus dem Altreich          rd. 360.000

vom 15.3.1938 aus der Ostmark           rd. 147.000

vom 15.3.1939 aus dem Protektorat

Böhmen und Mähren        rd. 30.000.

Die Finanzierung der Auswanderung erfolgte durch die Juden bzw. jüdisch- politischen Organisationen selbst. Um den Verbleib der verproletarisierten Juden zu vermeiden, wurde nach dem Grundsatz verfahren, daß die vermögenden Juden die Abwanderung der vermögenslosen Juden zu finanzieren haben; hier wurde, je nach Vermögen gestaffelt, eine entsprechende Umlage bzw. Auswandererabgabe vorgeschrieben, die zur Bestreitung der finanziellen Obliegenheiten im Zuge der Abwanderung vermögensloser Juden verwandt wurde.

Neben dem Reichsmark-Aufkommen sind Devisen für Vorzeige- und Landungsgelder erforderlich gewesen. Um den deutschen Devisenschatz su schonen, wurden die jüdischen Finanzinstitutionen des Auslandes durch die jüdischen Organisationen des Inlandes verhalten, für die Beitreibung entsprechender Devisenaufkommen Sorge zu tragen. Hier wurden durch diese ausländischen Juden im Schenkungswege bis zum 30.10.1941 insgesamt rund 9.500.000 Dollar zur Verfügung gestellt.

Inzwischen hat der Reichsführer-SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei im Hinblick auf die Gefahren einer Auswanderung im Kriege und im Hinblick auf die Möglichkeiten des Ostens die Auswanderung von Juden verboten.

III.

Anstelle der Auswanderung ist nunmehr als weitere Lösungsmöglichkeit nach entsprechender vorheriger Genehmigung durch den Führer die Evakuierung der Juden nach dem Osten getreten.

Diese Aktionen sind jedoch lediglich als Ausweichmöglichkeiten anzusprechen, doch werden hier bereits jene praktischen Erfahrungen gesammelt, die im Hinblick auf die kommende Endlösung der Judenfrage von wichtiger Bedeutung sind.

Im Zuge dieser Endlösung der europäischen Judenfrage kommen rund 11 Millionen Juden in Betracht, die sich wie folgt auf die einzelnen Länder verteilen:

 

 

Land                                     Zahl

 

131. Altreich        131.800

Ostmark                                     43.700

Ostgebiete                                 420.000

Generalgouvernement                      2.284.000

Bialystok                                  400.000

Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren               74.200

Estland        – judenfrei-

Lettland                                     3.500

Litauen                                     34.000

Belgien                                     43.000

Dänemark                                     5.600

Frankreich /   Besetztes Gebiet            165.000

Unbesetztes Gebiet          700.000

Griechenland                                69.600

Niederlande                                160.800

Norwegen                                     1.300

 

48. Bulgarien 48.000

England                                    330.000

Finnland                                     2.300

Irland                                       4.000

Italien einschl. Sardinien                  58.000

Albanien                                       200

Kroatien                                    40.000

Portugal                                     3.000

Rumänien einschl. Beßarabien               342.000

Schweden                                     8.000

Schweiz                                     18.000

Serbien                                     10.000

Slowakei                                    88.000

Spanien                                      6.000

Türkei (europ. Teil)                        55.500

Ungarn                                     742.800

UdSSR                                    5.000.000

Ukraine                             2.994.684

Weißrußland aus-

schl. Bialystok                       446.484

 

Zusammen    über         11.000.000

Bei den angegebenen Judenzahlen der verschiedenen ausländischen Staaten handelt es sich jedoch nur um Glaubensjuden, da die Begriffsbestimmungen der Juden nach rassischen Grundsätzen teilweise dort noch fehlen. Die Behandlung des Problems in den einzelnen Ländern wird im Hinblick auf die allgemeine Haltung und Auffassung auf gewiße Schwierigkeiten stoßen, besonders in Ungarn und Rumänien. So kann sich z.B. heute noch in Rumänien der Jude gegen Geld entsprechende Dokumente, die ihm eine fremde Staatsangehörigkeit amtlich bescheinigen, beschaffen.

Der Einfluß der Juden auf alle Gebiete in der UdSSR ist bekannt. Im europäischen Gebiet leben etwa 5 Millionen, im asiatischen Raum knapp 1/4 Millionen Juden.

Die berufsständische Aufgliederung der im europäischen Gebiet der UdSSR ansäßigen Juden war etwa folgende:

In der Landwirtschaft                         9,1 %

als städtische Arbeiter                      14,8 %

im Handel                                    20,0 %

als Staatsarbeiter angestellt                23,4 %

in den privaten Berufen –

Heilkunde, Presse, Theater, usw.             32,7 %

Unter entsprechender Leitung sollen im Zuge der Endlösung die Juden in geeigneter Weise im Osten zum Arbeitseinsatz kommen. In großen Arbeitskolonnen, unter Trennung der Geschlechter, werden die arbeitsfähigen Juden straßenbauend in diese Gebiete geführt, wobei zweifellos ein Großteil durch natürliche Verminderung ausfallen wird.

Der allfällig endlich verbleibende Restbestand wird, da es sich bei diesem zweifellos um den widerstandsfähigsten Teil handelt, entsprechend behandelt werden müssen, da dieser, eine natürliche Auslese darstellend, bei Freilassung als Keimzelle eines neuen jüdischen Aufbaues anzusprechen ist. (Siehe die Erfahrung der Geschichte.)

Im Zuge der praktischen Durchführung der Endlösung wird Europa vom Westen nach Osten durchgekämmt. Das Reichsgebiet einschließlich Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren wird, allein schon aus Gründen der Wohnungsfrage und sonstigen sozial- politischen Notwendigkeiten, vorweggenommen werden müssen.

Die evakuierten Juden werden zunächst Zug um Zug in sogenannte Durchgangsghettos verbracht, um von dort aus weiter nach dem Osten transportiert zu werden.

Wichtige Voraussetzung, so führte SS- Obergruppenführer H e y d r i c h weiter aus, für die Durchführung der Evakuierung überhaupt, ist die genaue Festlegung des in Betracht kommenden Personenkreises.

Es ist beabsichtigt, Juden im Alter von über 65 Jahren nicht zu evakuieren, sondern sie einem Altersghetto – vorgesehen ist Theresienstadt – zu überstellen.

Neben diesen Altersklassen – von den am 31.10.1941 sich im Altreich und der Ostmark befindlichen etwa 280.000 Juden sind etwa 30 % über 65 Jahre alt – finden in den jüdischen Altersghettos weiterhin die schwerkriegsbeschädigten Juden und Juden mit Kriegsauszeichnungen (EK I) Aufnahme. Mit dieser zweckmäßigen Lösung werden mit einem Schlag die vielen Interventionen ausgeschaltet.

Der Beginn der einzelnen größeren Evakuierungsaktionen wird weitgehend von der militärischen Entwicklung abhängig sein. Bezüglich der Behandlung der Endlösung in den von uns besetzten und beeinflußten europäischen Gebieten wurde vorgeschlagen, daß die in Betracht kommenden Sachbearbeiter des Auswärtigen Amtes sich mit dem zuständigen Referenten der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD besprechen.

In der Slowakei und Kroatien ist die Angelegenheit nicht mehr allzu schwer, da die wesentlichsten Kernfragen in dieser Hinsicht dort bereits einer Lösung zugeführt wurden. In Rumänien hat die Regierung inzwischen ebenfalls einen Judenbeauftragten eingesetzt. Zur Regelung der Frage in Ungarn ist erforderlich, in Zeitkürze einen Berater für Judenfragen der Ungarischen Regierung aufzuoktroyieren.

Hinsichtlich der Aufnahme der Vorbereitungen zur Regelung des Problems in Italien hält SS-Obergruppenführer H e y d r i c h eine Verbindung Polizei-Chef mit dem Polizei-Chef in diesen Belangen für angebracht.

Im besetzten und unbesetzten Frankreich wird die Erfassung der Juden zur Evakuierung aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach ohne große Schwierigkeiten vor sich gehen können.

Unterstaatssekretär L u t h e r teilt hierzu mit, daß bei tiefgehender Behandlung dieses Problems in einigen Ländern, so in den nordischen Staaten, Schwierigkeiten auftauchen werden, und es sich daher empfiehlt, diese Länder vorerst noch zurückzustellen. In Anbetracht der hier in Frage kommenden geringen Judenzahlen bildet diese Zurückstellung ohnedies keine wesentliche Einschränkung.

Dafür sieht das Auswärtige Amt für den Südosten und Westen Europas keine großen Schwierigkeiten.

SS-Gruppenführer H o f m a n n beabsichtigt, einen Sachbearbeiter des Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamtes zur allgemeinen Orientierung dann nach Ungarn mitsenden zu wollen, wenn seitens des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD die Angelegenheit dort in Angriff genommen wird. Es wurde festgelegt, diesen Sachbearbeiter des Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamtes, der nicht aktiv werden soll, vorübergehend offiziell als Gehilfen zum Polizei-Attaché abzustellen.

1. Im Zuge der Endlösungsvorhaben sollen die Nürnberger Gesetze gewißermaßen die Grundlage bilden, wobei Voraussetzung für die restlose Bereinigung des Problems auch die Lösung der Mischehen- und Mischlingsfragen ist.

Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD erörtert im Hinblick auf ein Schreiben des Chefs der Reichskanzlei zunächst theoretisch die nachstehenden Punkte:

1) Behandlung der Mischlinge 1. Grades.

Mischlinge 1. Grades sind im Hinblick auf die Endlösung der Judenfrage den Juden gleichgestellt.

Von dieser Behandlung werden ausgenommen:

1. a) Mischlinge 1. Grades verheiratet mit Deutschblütigen,aus deren Ehe Kinder (Mischlinge 2. Grades) hervorgegangen sind. Diese Mischlinge 2. Grades sind im wesentlichen den Deutschen gleichgestellt.
2. b) Mischlinge 1. Grades, für die von den höchsten Instanzen der Partei und des Staates bisher auf irgendwelchen Lebensgebieten Ausnahmegenehmigungen erteilt worden sind. Jeder Einzelfall muß überprüft werden, wobei nicht ausgeschlossen wird, daß die Entscheidung nochmals zu Ungunsten des Mischlings ausfällt.

Voraussetzungen einer Ausnahmebewilligung müssen stets grundsätzliche Verdienste des in Frage stehenden Mischlings selbst sein. (Nicht Verdienste des deutschblütigen Eltern- oder Eheteiles.)

Der von der Evakuierung auszunehmende Mischling 1. Grades wird – um jede Nachkommenschaft zu verhindern und das Mischlingsproblem endgültig zu bereinigen – sterilisiert. Die Sterilisierung erfolgt freiwillig. Sie ist aber Voraussetzung des Verbleibens im Reich. Der sterilisierte “Mischling” ist in der Folgezeit von allen einengenden Bestimmungen, denen er bislang unterworfen ist, befreit.

2) Behandlung der Mischlinge 2. Grades.

Die Mischlinge 2. Grades werden grundsätzlich den Deutschblütigen zugeschlagen, mit Ausnahme folgender Fälle, in denen die Mischlinge 2. Grades den Juden gleichgestellt werden:

2. a) Herkunft des Mischlings 2. Grades aus einer Bastardehe (beide Teile Mischlinge).
3. b) Rassisch besonders ungünstiges Erscheinungsbild des Mischlings 2. Grades, das ihn schon äußerlich zu den Juden rechnet.
4. c) Besonders schlechte polizeiliche und politische Beurteilung des Mischlings 2. Grades, die erkennen läßt, daß er sich wie ein Jude fühlt und benimmt.

Auch in diesen Fällen sollen aber dann Ausnahmen nicht gemacht werden, wenn der Mischling 2. Grades deutschblütig verheiratet ist.

3) Ehen zwischen Volljuden und Deutschblütigen.

Von Einzelfall zu Einzelfall muß hier entschieden werden, ob der jüdische Teil evakuiert wird, oder ob er unter Berücksichtigung auf die Auswirkung einer solchen Maßnahme auf die deutschen Verwandten dieser Mischehe einem Altersghetto überstellt wird.

4) Ehen zwischen Mischlingen 1. Grades und Deutschblütigen.

1. a) Ohne Kinder.

Sind aus der Ehe keine Kinder hervorgegangen, wird der Mischling 1. Grades evakuiert bzw. einem Altersghetto überstellt (Gleiche Behandlung wie bei Ehen zwischen Volljuden und Deutschblütigen, Punkt 3.)

1. b) Mit Kindern.

Sind Kinder aus der Ehe hervorgegangen (Mischlinge 2. Grades), werden sie, wenn sie den Juden gleichgestellt werden, zusammen mit dem Mischling 1. Grades evakuiert bzw. einem Ghetto überstellt. Soweit diese Kinder Deutschen gleichgestellt werden (Regelfälle), sind sie von der Evakuierung auszunehmen und damit auch der Mischling 1. Grades.

5) Ehen zwischen Mischlingen 1. Grades und Mischlingen 1. Grades oder Juden.

Bei diesen Ehen (einschließlich der Kinder) werden alle Teile wie Juden behandelt und daher evakuiert bzw. einem Altersghetto überstellt.

6) Ehen zwischen Mischlingen 1. Grades und Mischlingen 2. Grades.

Beide Eheteile werden ohne Rücksicht darauf, ob Kinder vorhanden sind oder nicht, evakuiert bzw. einem Altersghetto überstellt, da etwaige Kinder rassenmäßig in der Regel einen stärkeren jüdischen Bluteinschlag aufweisen, als die jüdischen Mischlinge 2. Grades.

SS-Gruppenführer H o f m a n n steht auf dem Standpunkt, daß von der Sterilisierung weitgehend Gebrauch gemacht werden muß; zumal der Mischling, vor die Wahl gestellt, ob er evakuiert oder sterilisiert werden soll, sich lieber der Sterilisierung unterziehen würde.

Staatssekretär Dr. S t u c k a r t stellt fest, daß die praktische Durchführung der eben mitgeteilten Lösungsmöglichkeiten zur Bereinigung der Mischehen- und Mischlingsfragen in dieser Form eine unendliche Verwaltungsarbeit mit sich bringen würde. Um zum anderen auf alle Fälle auch die biologischen Tatsachen Rechnung zu tragen, schlug Staatssekretär Dr. S t u c k a r t vor, zur Zwangssterilisierung zu schreiten.

Zur Vereinfachung des Mischehenproblems müßten ferner Möglichkeiten überlegt werden mit dem Ziel, daß der Gesetzgeber etwa sagt: “Diese Ehen sind geschieden.”

Bezüglich der Frage der Auswirkung der Judenevakuierung auf das Wirtschaftsleben erklärte Staatssekretär N e u m a n n , daß die in kriegswichtigen Betrieben im Arbeitseinsatz stehenden Juden derzeit, solange noch kein Ersatz zur Verfügung steht, nicht evakuiert werden könnten.

SS-Obergruppenführer H e y d r i c h wies darauf hin, daß diese Juden nach den von ihm genehmigten Richtlinien zur Durchführung der derzeit laufenden Evakuierungs aktionen ohnedies nicht evakuiert würden.

Staatssekretär Dr. B ü h l e r stellte fest, daß das Generalgouvernement es begrüssen würde, wenn mit der Endlösung dieser Frage im Generalgouvernement begonnen würde, weil einmal hier das Transportproblem keine übergeordnete Rolle spielt und arbeitseinsatzmäßige Gründe den Lauf dieser Aktion nicht behindern würden. Juden müßten so schnell wie möglich aus dem Gebiet des Generalgouvernements entfernt werden, weil gerade hier der Jude als Seuchenträger eine eminente Gefahr bedeutet und er zum anderen durch fortgesetzten Schleichhandel die wirtschaftliche Struktur des Landes dauernd in Unordnung bringt. Von den in Frage kommenden etwa 2 1/2 Millionen Juden sei überdies die Mehrzahl der Fälle arbeitsunfähig.

Staatssekretär Dr. B u e h l e r stellt weiterhin fest, daß die Lösung der Judenfrage im Generalgouvernement federführend beim Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD liegt und seine Arbeiten durch die Behörden des Generalgouvernements unterstützt würden. Er hätte nur eine Bitte, die Judenfrage in diesem Gebiet so schnell wie möglich zu lösen.

Abschließend wurden die verschiedenen Arten der Lösungsmöglichkeiten besprochen, wobei sowohl seitens des Gauleiters Dr. M e y e r als auch seitens des Staatssekretär Dr. B ü h l e r der Standpunkt vertreten wurde, gewiße vorbereitende Arbeiten im Zuge der Endlösung gleich in den betreffenden Gebieten selbst durch zuführen, wobei jedoch eine Beunruhigung der Bevölkerung vermieden werden müsse.

Mit der Bitte des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD an die Besprechungsteilnehmer, ihm bei der Durchführung der Lösungsarbeiten entsprechende Unterstützung zu gewähren, wurde die Besprechung geschlossen.

 

The Original Wannsee Protocol Translation

Stamp: Top Secret [Geheime Reichssache}

30 copies

12th copy

Minutes of discussion.

1942. The following persons took part in the discussion about the final solution of the Jewish issue which took place in Berlin, am Grossen Wannsee No. 56/58 on 20 January 1942.

Gauleiter Dr. Meyer and Reichsamtleiter

Dr. Leibbrandt- Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern territories

Secretary of State Dr. Stuckart-Reich Ministry for the Interior

Secretary of State Neumann – Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan

Secretary of State Dr. Freisler-  Reich Ministry of Justice

Secretary of State Dr. Buehler – Office of the Government General

Under Secretary of State Dr. Luther –  Foreign Office

SS-Oberführer Klopfer – Party Chancellery

Ministerialdirektor Kritzinger – Reich Chancellery

SS-Gruppenührer Hofmann  –  Race and Settlement Main Office

SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich -Chief of the Secret Security Police and of  SD,

SS-Gruppenführer Müller- Amtchef IV (Gestapo) RSHA

SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann –Amt IV (Gestapo) RSHA

SS-Oberführer Dr. Schoengarth -Security Police and Chief of the Security Police and  the SD in the Gouvernment General

SS-Sturmbannührer Dr. Lange- Security Police and SD Commander of the Security Police and the SD for the General-District Latvia, as deputy of the Commander of the Security Police and the SD for the Reichs Kommissariat “Ostland”.

1. At the beginning of the discussion Chief of the Security Police and of the SD, SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich, reported that the Reichsmarschall had appointed him delegate for the preparations for the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe and pointed out that this discussion had been called for the purpose of clarifying fundamental questions. The wish of the Reichsmarschall to have a draft sent to him concerning organizational, factual and material interests in relation to the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe makes necessary an initial common action of all central offices immediately concerned with these questions in order to bring their general activities into line.

The Reichsführer-SS and the Chief of the German Police (Chief of the Security Police and the SD) have been entrusted with the official central handling of the final solution of the Jewish question without regard to geographic borders.

The Chief of the Security Police and the SD then gave a short report of the struggle which has been carried on thus far against this enemy, the essential points being the following:

1. a) the expulsion of the Jews from every sphere of life of the German people,
2. b) the expulsion of the Jews from the living space of the German people.

In carrying out these efforts, an increased and planned acceleration of the emigration of the Jews from Reich territory was started, as the only possible present solution.

By order of the Reichzmarschall, a Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration was set up in January 1939 and the Chief of the Security Police and SD was entrusted with the management.  Its most important tasks were

1. a) to make all necessary arrangements for the preparation for an increased emigration of the Jews,
2. b) to direct the flow of emigration,
3. c) to speed the procedure of emigration in each individual case.

The aim of all this was to cleanse German living space of Jews in a legal manner.

All the offices realized the drawbacks of such enforced accelerated emigration. For the time being they had, however, tolerated it on account of the lack of other possible solutions of the problem.

The work concerned with emigration was, later on, not only a German problem, but also a problem with which the authorities of the countries to which the flow of emigrants was being directed would have to deal.  Financial difficulties, such as the demand by various foreign governments for increasing sums of money to be presented at the time of the landing, the lack of shipping space, increasing restriction of entry permits, or the canceling of  such, increased extraordinarily the difficulties of emigration. In spite of these difficulties, 537,000 Jews were sent out of the country between the takeover of power and the deadline of 31 October 1941.  Of these

approximately 360,000 were in Germany proper on 30 January 1933

approximately 147,000 were in Austria (Ostmark) on 15 March 1939

approximately 30,000 were in the Protectorate of Bohemia and  Moravia on 15 March 1939.

The Jews themselves, or their Jewish political organizations, financed the emigration.  In order to avoid impoverished Jews’ remaining behind, the principle was followed that wealthy Jews have to finance the emigration of poor Jews; this was arranged by imposing a suitable tax, i.e., an emigration tax, which was used for financial arrangements in connection with the emigration of poor Jews and was imposed according to income.

Apart from the necessary Reichsmark exchange, foreign currency had to presented at the time of landing.  In order to save foreign exchange held by Germany, the foreign Jewish financial organizations were – with the help of Jewish organizations in Germany – made responsible for arranging an adequate amount of foreign currency.  Up to 30 October 1941, these foreign Jews donated a total of around 9,500,000 American  dollars.

In the meantime the Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police had prohibited emigration of Jews due to the dangers of an emigration in wartime and due to the possibilities of establishing  Jewish  settlements in the occupied eastern areas., bzw. The General Gouvernment.

III. Another possible solution of the problem has now taken the place of emigration, i.e. the evacuation of the Jews to the East, provided that the Fuehrer gives the appropriate approval in advance.

These actions are, however, only to be considered provisional, but practical experience is already being collected which is of the greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish question.

Approximately 11 million Jews will be involved in the final solution of the European Jewish question, distributed as follows among the individual countries:

 

Country         Number

 

1. Germany proper 131,800

Austria 43,700

Eastern territories     420,000

General Government 2,284,000

Bialystok        400,000

Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia  74,200

Estonia          – free of Jews –

Latvia  3,500

Lithuania       34,000

Belgium         43,000

Denmark       5,600

France / occupied territory   165,000

unoccupied territory  700,000

Greece 69,600

Netherlands   160,800

Norway          1,300

 

1. Bulgaria 48,000

England         330,000

Finland          2,300

Ireland          4,000

Italy including Sardinia        58,000

Albania          200

Croatia          40,000

Portugal         3,000

Rumania including Bessarabia        342,000

Sweden         8,000

Switzerland    18,000

Serbia 10,000

Slovakia         88,000

Spain  6,000

Turkey (European portion)  55,500

Hungary        742,800

USSR  5,000,000

Ukraine         2,994,684

White Russia excluding Bialystok    446,484

 

Total   over  11,000,000

The number of Jews given here for foreign countries includes, however, only those Jews who still adhere to the Jewish faith, since some countries still do not have a definition of the term “Jew” according to racial principles.

The handling of the problem in the individual countries will meet with difficulties due to the attitude and outlook of the people there, especially in Hungary and Rumania.  Thus, for example, even today the Jew can buy documents in Rumania that will officially prove his foreign citizenship.

The influence of the Jews in all aspects of life in the USSR is well known.  Approximately five million Jews live in the European part of the USSR, in the Asian part scarcely ¼  million.

The breakdown of Jews residing in the European part of the USSR according to trades was approximately as follows:

Agriculture                                              9.1 %

Urban workers                                            14.8 %

In trade                                                 20.0 %

Employed by the state                                    23.4 %

In private occupations such as

medical profession, press, theater, etc.                 32.7%

Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes, such as death by natural causes, and diseases such as flecktyphus

In the course of the practical execution of the final solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east. Germany proper, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, will have to be handled first due to the housing problem and additional social and political necessities.

The evacuated Jews will first be sent, group by group, to transit ghettos, from which they will be transported to the eastern resettlement areas..

SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich went on to say that an important prerequisite for the evacuation as such is the exact definition of the persons involved.

It is not intended to evacuate Jews over 65 years old, but to send them to an old-age ghetto -Theresienstadt is being considered for this purpose.

In addition to these age groups – of the approximately 280,000 Jews in Germany proper and Austria on 31 October 1941, approximately 30% are over 65 years old – severely wounded veterans and Jews with war decorations (Iron Cross I) will be accepted in the old-age ghettos.  With this expedient solution, in one fell swoop many interventions will be prevented.

The beginning of the individual larger evacuation actions will largely depend on military developments.  Regarding the handling of the final solution in those European countries occupied and influenced by us, it was proposed that the appropriate expert of the Foreign Office discuss the matter with the responsible official of the Security Police and SD.

In Slovakia and Croatia the matter is no longer so difficult, since the most substantial problems in this respect have already been brought near a solution.  In Rumania the government has in the meantime also appointed a commissioner for Jewish affairs.  In order to settle the question in Hungary, it will soon be necessary to force an adviser for Jewish questions onto the Hungarian government.

With regard to taking up preparations for dealing with the problem in Italy, SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich considers it opportune to contact the chief of police with a view to these problems.

In occupied and unoccupied France, the registration of Jews for evacuation will in all probability proceed without great difficulty.

Under Secretary of State Luther calls attention in this matter to the fact that in some countries, such as the Scandinavian states, difficulties will arise if this problem is dealt with thoroughly and that it will therefore be advisable to defer actions in these countries.  Besides, in view of the small numbers of Jews affected, this deferral will not cause any substantial limitation.

The Foreign Office sees no great difficulties for southeast and western Europe.

SS-Gruppenführer Hofmann plans to send an expert to Hungary from the Race and Settlement Main Office for general orientation at the time when the Chief of the Security Police and SD takes up

the matter there.  It was decided to assign this expert from the Race and Settlement Main Office, who will not work actively, as an assistant to the police attaché.

1. In the course of the final solution plans, the Nuremberg Laws should provide a certain foundation, in which a prerequisite for the absolute solution of the problem is also the solution to the problem of mixed marriages and persons of mixed blood.

The Chief of the Security Police and the SD discusses the following points, at first theoretically, in regard to a letter from the chief of the Reich Chancellery:

1) Treatment of Persons of Mixed Blood of the First Degree

Persons of mixed blood of the first degree will, as regards the final solution of the Jewish question, be treated as Jews.

From this treatment the following exceptions will be made:

1. a) Persons of mixed blood of the first degree married to persons of German blood if their marriage has resulted in children (persons of mixed blood of the second degree). These persons of mixed blood of the second degree are to be treated essentially as Germans.
2. b) Persons of mixed blood of the first degree, for whom the highest offices of the Party and State have already issued exemption permits in any sphere of life. Each individual case must be examined, and it is not ruled out that the decision may be made to the detriment of the person of mixed blood.

The prerequisite for any exemption must always be the personal merit of the person of mixed blood. (Not the merit of the parent or spouse of German blood.)

Persons of mixed blood of the first degree who are exempted from evacuation will be sterilized in order to prevent any offspring and to eliminate the problem of persons of mixed blood once and for all.  Such sterilization will be voluntary.  But it is required to remain in the Reich.  The sterilized “person of mixed blood” is thereafter free of all restrictions to which he was previously subjected.

2) Treatment of Persons of Mixed Blood of the Second Degree

Persons of mixed blood of the second degree will be treated fundamentally as persons of German blood, with the exception of the following cases, in which the persons of mixed blood of the second degree will be considered as Jews:

1. a) The person of mixed blood of the second degree was born of a marriage in which both parents are persons of mixed blood.
2. b) The person of mixed blood of the second degree has a racially especially undesirable appearance that marks him outwardly as a Jew.
3. c) The person of mixed blood of the second degree has a particularly bad police and political record that shows that he feels and behaves like a Jew.

Also in these cases exemptions should not be made if the person of mixed blood of the second degree has married a person of German blood.

3) Marriages between Full Jews and Persons of German Blood.

Here it must be decided from case to case whether the Jewish partner will be evacuated or whether, with regard to the effects of such a step on the German relatives, [this mixed marriage] should be sent to an old-age ghetto.

4) Marriages between Persons of Mixed Blood of the First Degree and Persons of German Blood.

1. a) Without Children.

If no children have resulted from the marriage, the person of mixed blood of the first degree will be evacuated or sent to an old-age ghetto (same treatment as in the case of marriages between full Jews and persons of German blood, point 3.)

1. b) With Children.

If children have resulted from the marriage (persons of mixed blood of the second degree), they will, if they are to be treated as Jews, be evacuated or sent to a ghetto along with the parent of mixed blood of the first degree.  If these children are to be treated as Germans (regular cases), they are exempted from evacuation as is therefore the parent of mixed blood of the first degree.

5) Marriages between Persons of Mixed Blood of the First Degree and Persons of Mixed Blood of the First Degree or Jews.

In these marriages (including the children) all members of the family will be treated as Jews and therefore be evacuated or sent to an old-age ghetto.

6) Marriages between Persons of Mixed Blood of the First Degree and Persons of Mixed Blood of the Second Degree.

In these marriages both partners will be evacuated or sent to an old-age ghetto without consideration of whether the marriage has produced children, since possible children will as a rule have stronger Jewish blood than the Jewish person of mixed blood of the second degree.

SS-Gruppenführer Hofmann advocates the opinion that sterilization will have to be widely used, since the person of mixed blood who is given the choice whether he will be evacuated or sterilized would rather undergo sterilization.

State Secretary Dr. Stuckart maintains that carrying out in practice of the just mentioned possibilities for solving the problem of mixed marriages and persons of mixed blood will create endless administrative work.  In the second place, as the biological facts cannot be disregarded in any case, State Secretary Dr. Stuckart proposed proceeding to forced sterilization.

Furthermore, to simplify the problem of mixed marriages possibilities must be considered with the goal of the legislator saying something like: “These marriages have been dissolved.”

With regard to the issue of the effect of the evacuation of Jews on the economy, State Secretary Neumann stated that Jews who are working in industries vital to the war effort, provided that no replacements are available, cannot be evacuated. (emphasis added)

SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich indicated that these Jews would not be evacuated according to the rules he had approved for carrying out the evacuations then underway.

State Secretary Dr. Buehler stated that the General Gouvernment would welcome it if the final solution of this problem could be begun in the General Government, since on the one hand transportation does not play such a large role here nor would problems of labor supply hamper this action.  Jews must be removed from the territory of the General Government as quickly as possible, since it is especially here that the Jew as an epidemic carrier represents an extreme danger and on the other hand he is causing permanent chaos in the economic structure of the country through continued black market dealings.  Moreover, of the approximately 2 1/2 million Jews concerned, the majority are unfit for work.

State Secretary Dr. Buehler stated further that the solution to the Jewish question in the General Government is the responsibility of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD and that his efforts would be supported by the officials of the General Gouvernment.  He had only one request, to solve the Jewish question in this area as quickly as possible.

In conclusion the different types of possible solutions were discussed, during which discussion both Gauleiter Dr. Meyer and State Secretary Dr. Buehler took the position that certain preparatory activities for the final solution should be carried out immediately in the territories in question, in which process alarming the populace must be avoided.

The meeting was closed with the request of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD to the participants that they afford him appropriate support during the carrying out of the tasks involved in the solution.