Hitler

General Government would be the first territory to be made free of Jews. But only three days after this meeting, Eichmann was still talking of Heydrich presiding over the ‘final evacuation of the Jews’
into
the General Government. Evidently (at least that was the line that Eichmann was holding to), Heydrich still at this point had his sights set on the General Government as offering the
temporary
basis for a territorial solution. Frank was refusing to contemplate this. And Hitler had now opened up to him the prospect of his territory being the first to be rid of its Jews. Perhaps this was said simply to placate Frank. But in the light of the ideas already taking shape for a comprehensive new territorial solution in the lands, soon to be conquered (it was presumed), of the Soviet Union, it was almost certainly a further indicator that Hitler was now envisaging a new option for a radical solution to the ‘Jewish problem’ once the war was over by mass deportation to the east.
    Heydrich and his boss Himmler were certainly anxious to press home the opportunity to expand their own power-base on a grand scale by exploiting the new potential about to open up in the east. Himmler had lost no time in acquainting himself with Hitler’s thinking and, no doubt, taking the chance to advance his own suggestions. On the very evening of the signing of the military directive for ‘Operation Barbarossa’ on 18 December, he had made his way to the Reich Chancellery for a meeting with Hitler. No record of what was discussed survives. But itis hard to imagine that Himmler did not raise the issue of new tasks for the SS which would be necessary in the coming showdown with ‘Jewish-Bolshevism’. It was a matter of no more at this point than obtaining Hitler’s broad authority for plans still to be worked out.
    Himmler and Heydrich were to be kept busy over the next weeks in plotting their new empire. Himmler informed a select group of SS leaders in January that there would have to be a reduction of some 30 million in the Slav population in the East. The Reich Security Head Office commissioned the same month preparations for extensive police action. By early February Heydrich had already carried out preliminary negotiations with Brauchitsch about using units of the Security Police alongside the army for ‘special tasks’. No major difficulties were envisaged.
    III
    What such ‘special tasks’ might imply became increasingly clear to a wider circle of those initiated into the thinking for ‘Barbarossa’ during February and March. On 26 February General Georg Thomas, the Wehrmacht’s economics expert, learned from Göring that an early objective during the occupation of the Soviet Union was ‘quickly to finish off the Bolshevik leaders’. A week later, on 3 March, Jodl’s comments on the draft of operational directions for ‘Barbarossa’ which had been routinely sent to him made this explicit: ‘all Bolshevist leaders or commissars must be liquidated forthwith’. Jodl had altered the draft somewhat before showing it to Hitler. He now summarized Hitler’s directions for the ‘final version’. These made plain that ‘the forthcoming campaign is more than just an armed conflict; it will lead, too, to a showdown between two different ideologies … The socialist ideal can no longer be wiped out in the Russia of today. From the internal point of view the formation of new states and governments must inevitably be based on this principle. The Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia, as the “oppressor” of the people up to now, must be eliminated.’ The task involved, the directions went on, was ‘so difficult that it cannot be entrusted to the army’. Jodl had the draft retyped in double-spacing to allow Hitler to make further alterations. When the redrafted version was finally signed by Keitel on 13 March, it specified that ‘the Reichsführer-SS has been given by the Führer certain special tasks within the operations zone ofthe army’, though there was now no direct mention of the liquidation of the ‘Bolshevik-Jewish intelligentsia’ or the ‘Bolshevik leaders and commissars’.
    Even so, the troops were to be directly instructed about the need to deal mercilessly with the political commissars and Jews they encountered. When he met Göring on 26 March, to deal with a number of issues related to the activities of the police in the eastern campaign, Heydrich was told that the army ought to have a three- to