Leonidas E. Hill, ed. Die Weizsdcker-Papiere, 1933-1950. Frankfurt: Propylaen Verlag, 1974. 684 pages.
Marion Thielenhaus. Zwischen Anpassung und Widerstand: Deutsche Diplomaten, 1938-1941. Paderborn: F. Schoeningh, 1985. 247 pages.
Hans-jilrgen Doscher. Das Auswfirtige Amt im Dritten Reich: Diplomatie im Schatten der "Endlosung." Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1987. 333 pages.
Christopher Browning. The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office: A Study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland, 1940-1943. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978. 276 pages.
The role played by German diplomats during the Third Reich, particularly in the "final solution" and in the resistance to Hitler, is still a controversial topic. Some historians have argued that a few of the diplomats, particularly those trained before World War I and active in the diplomatic service prior to 1933-men like Ernst von Weizsacker and Ulrich von Hassell-actively opposed Hitler and should be considered part of the German resistance.1 Others believe that the diplomats, especially Constantin von Neurath and Weizsacker, who supported Hitler at least initially, lent prestige and respectability to the regime and thus helped the Nazi cause.2 These men have been singled out by historians, because they differed from those with sympathies toward Nazi ideology, who were appointed to the Foreign Ministry and diplomatic service after 1933; unlike those career-driven young men, the older diplomats were highly educated and intelligent men with considerable experience of the world.
The man who best symbolizes the dilemma of the conservative, old-line official serving a criminal regime is Ernst von Weizsdaker: naval officer during the Empire, ambassador during the Weimar Republic, and state secretary and ambassador in the Third Reich. Weizsdaker is a controversial figure because, at different times and on different issues, he both supported and opposed the Nazi regime. He believed, initially, that national socialism offered Germany the hope of an orderly future and renewed preeminence in central Europe. At the same time, however, Weizsdaker had a horror of war and civil disorder that often placed him at odds with the Nazi leadership.3 The historical controversy over Weizsdaker centers on his actions at two critical points in his career: in the months before the Munich crisis in 1938 and during the Polish crisis in 1939, when he used intermediaries to inform the British and Italian governments of Hitler's war plans; and in 1942, when he initialed the orders that sent a group of French Jews to Auschwitz.4
Two of the four books under review, those by Hill and Thielenhaus, focus on Weizsdaker and shed light on his role in the resistance; the two other books by Browning and Doscher, concentrate on the Foreign Ministry and the role of its staff in the final solution. What each of these books demonstrates is that the number of Foreign Ministry officials and diplomats who actively participated either in the resistance or the final solution was very small. These studies also make it clear that many in the ministry and the diplomatic service knew about the atrocities committed by the SS in the East. In addition, several of these volumes demonstrate, albeit implicitly, that it was quite possible to be both an anti-Nazi and an antisemite.5
Hill's edition of the Weizsdaker Papers is a scholarly two-volume collection of the state secretary's letters, memoranda, and diaries. The second volume, under review here, deals with the period 1933 to 1950, that is, from Weizsdaker's service as minister in Oslo to the date of his impending release from prison in 1950.6 Hill believes that Weizsdaker came to abhor the Nazis and used his position as state secretary to resist Hitler's foreign policy and plans for war.7 According to Hill, Weizsdaker, who had been in the diplomatic service since 1920, stayed on under Hitler "to continue the lines of moderate foreign policy and to prevent the Nazis from filling the positions in the Foreign Ministry and in posts abroad with party members."8 Hill notes that both Heinrich Bruning, the former chancellor, and Bernhard Wilhelm von Bulow, the state secretary, urged Weizsacker not to resign when Hitler took over.
Weizsacker also remained at his post because he viewed many elements of the Nazi program as positive: German rearmament, the pact with Poland, Germany's leaving the League of Nations, and the naval agreement with Great Britain.9 Like most Germans, he wanted to reverse the "injustices" of the Treaty of Versailles and believed it appropriate for Germany to dominate her neighbors, albeit without using force.10 For example, Weizsacker initially opposed the Anschluss of Austria because he feared that it would lead to war, but he welcomed it once it had been accomplished.11 Similarly, Weizsacker's almost single-minded fear of war (whether civil or foreign) led him to oppose the occupation of the Rhineland, the 1934 Nazi Putsch in Austria, and German intervention in the Spanish Civil War.12
Hill's overall judgment is that Weizsdaker's decision to remain at his post as state secretary did have a positive influence on foreign affairs, at least during the Munich crisis. Further, Hill believes that Weizsaker's attempts to warn the British and Italian governments of Hitler's plans for war justify including Weizsacker in the ranks of the resistance to Hitler.13
Hill is aware that Weizsacker can be criticized for not opposing the brutal domestic policies of the Third Reich and concedes that Weizsacker, like most members of the German upper bourgeoisie, had antisernitic views and prejudices. He quotes Weizsacker as saying that the Jews from the East had come to Germany in the 1920s when the door had been opened "too wide"; they had achieved so much power in banking, art, business, publishing, law, and medicine that, according to Weizsacker, "even thoughtful Jews themselves were alarmed."14 Hill argues, unconvincingly, that if Weizsacker had only had the facts and the numbers about the extent of Jewish participation in the professional life of Germany, he would undoubtedly have changed his views on the Jewish question.15 Hill also believes that Weizsdaker's conviction at Nuremberg for war crimes and crimes against humanity 16 was unfair. Weizsacker himself found it ironic that he was tried by the Americans; he believed that his actions while in office were such that they could have led to his trial by the Nazis.17 Weizsacker was convicted at, Nuremberg primarily on the basis of having initialed an order in 1942 for the deportation of French Jews. At his trial, Weizsacker stated that he believed Auschwitz (where the deported French Jews were sent) was only a concentration camp, not an extermination camp; he also believed at the time that transferring French Jews to Germany would improve their condition.18 Hill admits that a number of deportation documents were brought to Weizsacker's attention and that he did know about the severe mistreatment of civilians, especially Jews, in the East. Hill argues, however, that Weizsacker perceived these activities as necessary measures of war.19 Weizsacker was also of the opinion, according to Hill, that he had no control over these matters and that his refusal to initial deportation documents would not have made any difference.20 Hill is convinced, based on his intensive study of all of Weizsdaker's papers and a review of all of the available evidence, that a man of Weizsdaker's character and sensibilities would not knowingly have initialed an order condemning people to death.21 Hill may be right, but it is also possible that Weizsdaker's awareness of his own inability to influence events, shown so clearly in the Polish crisis, and his antisemitism combined to cause him to acquiesce in domestic policy as he could not have done in foreign policy.22
Thielenhaus's well-documented and detailed study concentrates on Weizsaaker and the circle of young diplomats who looked to him for guidance and saw in him the symbol of resistance to Hitler's foreign policy. Thielenhaus finds Hill's appraisal of Weizsacker too favorable; she believes that Hill has relied too heavily on the version of events presented in Weizsacker's postwar memoirs. However, she does agree that the secretary was the intellectual center of the group in the ministry opposed to Hitler, and was thus aware that Hitler's plans would lead to catastrophe.23
Thielenhaus reports that Weizsacker initially thought that Ribbentrop would be able to control the radical Nazi Party elements and that he, Weizsacker, would be able to influence Hitler's foreign policy through Joachim von Ribbentrop. When Weizsdaker realized that this was not the case and that Hitler was willing to risk a European war over the Sudetenland, he turned to highly unorthodox (and perhaps treasonable) methods to maintain peace: he informed both the British and the Italians, through intermediaries, that Hitler was planning to go to war.24 When Hitler agreed at Munich to a peaceful settlement of the Sudeten crisis, the Weizsdcker group took credit for the peaceful outcome, believing that it had been primarily achieved through the group's efforts. Because Weizsacker believed that his views had prevailed in the Sudeten crisis, he chose the same course the next year during the Polish crisis when, in the hopes of persuading Mussolini to influence Hitler toward peace, he told the Italian ambassador that Hitler was willing to go to war over Poland. As subsequent events showed, Weizsacker seriously overestimated Mussolini's influence on Hitler and misjudged Stalin's Polish aims.25
Although the young diplomats in the circle around Weizsacker were generally in agreement in matters of foreign policy, a split developed in late 1938 over Hitler's domestic policies. The younger members of the group wanted to take a stand against those policies, especially after the pogrom of November 1938. However, as Thielenhaus shows, Weizsacker was unwilling to endanger the foreign policy of the Reich by supporting a coup d'etat over domestic issues. Thus, even as early as 1938, WeizsAcker demonstrated a lack of concern about the domestic transgressions of the regime and an unwillingness to object to antisemitic measures.26
Both the Weizsacker Papers and the Thielenhaus study clarify Weizsacker's relationship to and feelings about the resistance to Hitler. He emerges in both studies as a man of high principles in foreign affairs, a man so horrified by the events of World War I and its aftermath that he was willing to go to almost any length, including treason, to avoid another war. According to Hill, Weizsacker would have welcomed Hitler's overthrow (much as he approved of the Anschluss once it was an accomplished fact). However, since Weizsacker was so determined to avoid war, he was constitutionally incapable of supporting "a [civil] war to remove Hitler."27 In contrast to Hill, Thielenhaus is unwilling to include Weizsacker in the German resistance, although she recognizes that Weizsacker disapproved of Hitler's foreign policies and did actively maintain contact with many individuals who opposed Hitler.28 Weizsacker himself was careful to distinguish between his actions and those of Claus von Stauffenberg and his circle; he did not believe that he should be considered a member of the resistance.29
Since Weizsdaker's time our understanding of the meaning of resistance in the Third Reich has been broadened considerably. In the years before 1960, when the Federal Republic of Germany was struggling for legitimacy and recognition, the German resistance to Hitler became the symbol of German heroism and democratic sentiment. After the Federal Republic had gained acceptance and was once again a power in world affairs, however, the figure of the heroic resistance fighter was no longer needed to legitimize West German democracy; and the importance of those individuals who had opposed Hitler less dramatically began to be recognized. As a result, a number of staunch conservatives and even people who joined the Nazi Party in the 1920s but later became disillusioned and turned to the opposition are now considered a part of the resistance.30 Thus, judged by these more sophisticated standards, which recognize that successful internal resistance may mean that those in power must alternately oppose and comply with the regime to remain undetected, Weizsacker can be said to be a member of the resistance.
As Thielenhaus's study shows, the circle around Weizsdcker was a small one. The volumes by Browning and Doscher demonstrate that while knowledge of the events surrounding the final solution was widespread in the Foreign Ministry, the number of officials actively participating in its implementation was also small. Both Browning and Doscher deal with the Foreign Ministry and its involvement in the final solution. Browning concentrates on Section D III (Abteilung Deutschland), which was responsible for Jewish affairs in the ministry, while Doscher's study focuses on the cooperation that existed between the SS and the Foreign Ministry's staff in the implementation of the final solution.
Doscher's book is particularly valuable for its extensive use of hitherto neglected Foreign Ministry personnel files (on microfilm in the National Archives) and for its documentation, for the first time, of the fact that many senior members of the ministry and the diplomatic service joined the Nazi party and the SS. Before February 1938, there were about 50 SS officers among the 500 employees in the higher grades of the Foreign Ministry, and during Ribbentrop's tenure, there were more than 100.31 "Dnring 1937," Doscher writes, "so many [German] diplomats wanted to join the SS ... that one could talk about a mass flight into the SS ... [and this] trend continued until 1939-1940."32 It is thus not surprising that many members of the Foreign Ministry were later willing to comply with party and SS plans for the final solution.
The increasingly close cooperation between the ministry and the SS was also the result of the loss of influence and jurisdiction that befell the ministry after the outbreak of the war. Hitler's long-standing distrust of diplomats and the fact that more and more countries were occupied by German troops, and were thus no longer under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Ministry, contributed to the ministry's decline. In an effort to bolster his position and to find favor with Hitler, Ribbentrop decided to cooperate with the SS. He was not alone in believing that compliance and cooperation would further his career.33 Doscher believes that personal advancement and the bureaucratic tendency to support the government in power were the major reasons the staff of the ministry went along with the SS, and it was this willingness to cooperate and to comply that entangled the Foreign Ministry in the crimes of the regime. In the end, the extensive diplomatic preparations carried out by the ministry made the destruction of the Jews of western and southeastern Europe possible.34 What Doscher has done is refute the thesis that the Foreign Ministry was unpolitical and that it was
National Socialist outsiders who were foisted on the Foreign Ministry by the NSDAP who were responsible for the crimes perpetrated on European Jews, which the Foreign Ministry, "in spite of its determined . . . resistance" could not prevent.35
While Doscher focuses on SS penetration of the Foreign Ministry, Browning is concerned with the ministry's role in the development of the policy that led to the final solution and its implementation. Browning does not believe that Hitler had a blueprint for the final solution when he became chancellor. Instead, Browning starts from the premise that
German Jewish policy was not the result of a conspiratorial plot carried out with single-minded purpose ... [but] evolved from a conjuncture of several factors.36
The Foreign Ministry's involvement in Jewish affairs in the first years after Hitler's accession to power was initially quite limited. The ministry defended the government's "legitimate" restrictions against the Jews and replied to "unjustified" attacks from abroad. Most members of the Foreign Ministry's staff did not find defending Nazi Jewish policies difficult, because antisemitism was widespread even among the old-line conservative and nationalistic members of the ministry and the diplomatic service. Evidence of this can be found in a circular approved by the chief of Referat Deutschland, the section of the ministry that had been put in charge of the foreign-policy aspects of Jewish affairs. This circular was approved by both Neurath and Biflow before distribution to all German missions abroad. It alleged that the Jews had achieved an influence in the life of Germany that was grossly out of proportion to their numbers and then presented, in the crudest terms, the theory of the Jewish-communist world conspiracy. Surprisingly, this circular was not written by ideologically driven Nazis but by respected members of the old guard.37
Browning agrees with Doscher that the Foreign Ministry increasingly lost influence over foreign and occupation affairs to the Nazi Party and the SS; he believes that Ribbentrop's incompetence in the internal Nazi struggle for power, as well as Hitler's distrust of diplomats, was responsible for the ministry's loss of status.38 Ribbentrop's appointment in May 1940 of his subordinate, the former SA man Martin Luther, to head Abteilung Deutschland reflected Ribbentrop's determination to improve his competitive position. Browning also agrees with Doscher that the bureaucrats in Abteilung Deutschland were motivated by careerism rather than ideological antisemitism. Most of these men generally showed little initiative and merely waited for their superiors to formulate policy.
Luther, however, was an active and aggressive competitor. Sensing that participation in the final solution was essential to remaining competitive in the struggle for Hitler's favor, Luther demonstrated his zeal for the final solution by suggesting that the SS execute all men in a group of Serbian Jews assembled for deportation. This activity brought Luther to the attention of Reinhard Heydrich, and led to Luther's being invited-as representative of the Foreign Ministry-to attend the Wannsee conference in January 1942, where the preparation for a "total solution" of the Jewish question was to be the major topic.39 Browning states that
the Plan of the Ultimate Final Solution, the outline of which Luther and Rademacher were aware of since the end of October [19411, had now been officially promulgated. The Foreign [Ministry] ... was now officially involved [in the Final Solution] and the rules for cooperation between ... [the ministry] and the SS had been discussed and mutually agreed upon.40
There can be little doubt that many in the Foreign Ministry knew about the anti-Jewish measures carried out by the SS in Serbia and Romania in the fall of 1941. For example, Weizsacker received an account of the shooting of 8,000 Jewish men in Serbia (and of Luther's and the Foreign Ministry's role in the shootings) on 7 November 1941. He protested to Luther that the ministry had exceeded its authority by becoming involved in Jewish affairs within Serbian borders, but this attempt to assert his authority over Luther was unsuccessful.41 In the case of Romania, both the army and the German embassy in Bucharest sent reports to the Foreign Ministry, although these were received only after the deportations had taken place. Moreover, many in the ministry knew that the government's Jewish policy had taken a new and extreme course in the East. Weizsdcker himself was informed by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of military intelligence, of the slaughter of the Jews by the Einsatzgruppen, and Ribbentrop and his staff received official reports of these activities in November 1941.42
Like Dbscher, Browning concludes that the Foreign Ministry's involvement in the final solution was a result more of the bureaucrats' willingness to go along and their eagerness to advance their careers than of their antisemitism. Luther saw in the final solution an opportunity to enhance his own power and that of the Foreign Ministry; he realized that "no one could hope to be competitive if he proved inadequate when the Final Solution of the Jewish question was at stake."43 Ribbentrop, having learned from Luther, also attempted to use the final solution to enhance his power: he competed with the SS in exerting pressure on Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria to resolve the Jewish "problem" within their borders to Germany's satisfaction. What motivated the bureaucrats of Abteilung Deutschland and the Foreign Ministry was a desire to succeed within the establishment. As Browning observes, these men "were not coerced by any external physical threat to behave the way they did. They were dominated by an internal compulsion to keep their records unstained."44 Browning and Doscher both agree that most of the members of the Foreign Ministry looked the other way or were silent when reports of discussions of the final solution came to their attention, because they understood that to do otherwise would jeopardize their careers. They must also have been aware that to know might have required them to act.45
The four books under review deal with two complex and interrelated problems: complicity in the actions of a criminal regime and resistance in a totalitarian system. At Nuremberg and in their memoirs, the officials of the Foreign Ministry and the diplomatic service denied almost unanimously having knowledge of the crimes committed against the Jews and other minorities. Ribbentrop claimed at his trial that he knew about the concentration camps at Dachau and Oranienburg, thought that Theresienstadt was an old people's home for Jews, and had never heard of Auschwitz.46 Weizsacker noted in his diary that the Foreign Ministry's permanent staff were unaware of many major decisions and policies because they had not been consulted about them. Although he admitted knowing about the activities of the Einsatzgruppen in the East, Weizsacker stated that he had been told that the final solution "involved a policy to establish reservations for Jews in eastern Europe, but ... not a policy of annihilation." In an undated diary entry (which he made during his trial in 1947), Weizsacker wrote that the activities of the Einsatzgruppen were an "action behind the lines in the East [that] had nothing to do with the general treatment of the Jewish question of the Third Reich," and he equated the activities of the Einsatzgruppen with the Allied bombing of German cities.47
Knowledge of the final solution was not confined to the bureaucrats of the Foreign Ministry. German diplomats in the field had access to more detailed information than their colleagues in Berlin, but they too testified that they knew nothing about the policy of extermination. Ambassador Franz von Papen (in Ankara from 1939 to 1944), who knew about the methods of the SS from his own experience with them at the time of the Roehm Putsch, claimed at his trial that he had heard about the murder of the Jews "during the war, [but] knew nothing about systematic extermination."48 And although he was personally involved in saving 10,000 French Jews from being deported to Poland, Papen claimed that he did not know that they would have been sent there to be killed. However, Dr. Marchionini, Papen's friend and a professor of medicine at Ankara's Model Hospital, testified that he (Marchionini) knew that the Jews were deported "to Poland for extermination."49 Curt Prufer, German ambassador to Brazil from 1939 to 1942,
recalled after the war [that] he and his wife had heard "rumors" from German and enemy sources about the "mass deportation of Jews" to the East; while travelling through Spain on the return in October 1942 to Germany, he [Prafer] had received further information from an SS official. Such reports, he claimed later, "seemed to us to be so dreadful that we held them to be 'atrocity stories,' or at the very least exaggerated, like so many other reports of enemy propaganda that had proved to be incorrect." But shortly after he arrived back home, he had learned the truth about the deportations and what they meant.50
These are only a few of the many examples showing that knowledge of the extermination of Jews in the East was widespread among Foreign Ministry officials as well as the German diplomats. However, the actual details of the final solution were not known to many of these people.
What these books suggest is that even the elites of Germany-the bureaucrats and the diplomats-looked the other way when it came to facing the realities of the excesses in the East. They pretended, often even to themselves, that these measures were necessary in wartime, or were gross exaggerations or atrocity stories propagated by Germany's enemies.51 The ability to put oneself first, to deny reality, and to refuse to believe the evidence, even when it is overwhelming, was facilitated in the case of the final solution by the fear of opposing Hitler, the routinization of killing, the fact that everybody else was quietly going along, and the deep-seated and traditional antisemitism felt even by as civilized a man as Ernst von Weizsacker.
NOTES
1. Peter Hoffman, The History of the German Resistance, 1933-1945 (Cambridge, MA, 1977), pp. 99-172; Harold C. Deutsch, The Conspiracy Against Hitler in the Twilight War (Minneapolis, 1968), pp. 16ff.
2. Lewis Namier, In the Nazi Era (London, 1952), pp. 63-83.
3. Weizsacker-Papiere, 1933-1950, p. 29.
4. On the Munich and Polish crises, see Weizsacker-Papiere, 1933-1950, pp. 28- 35, 126-64; Hoffman, History of the German Resistance, pp. 49-113; Deutsch, Conspiracy Against Hitler, pp. 9-67; Gerhard L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany: Starting World War II, 1937-1939 (Chicago, 1980), chaps. 10-14. On deportation orders, see Weizsacker-Papiere, 1933-1950, pp. 38-39, 425-28; Browning, Final Solution, pp. 99-108; Doscher, Das Auswdrtige Amt, p. 188.
5. In this connection, see C. Dipper, "Der deutsche Widerstand und die Juden," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9, no. 3 (1983): 349-80.
6. This volume was published in 1974, whereas the volume covering the years 1900-1932 appeared in 1982.
7. Weizsacker-Papiere, 1933-1950, pp. 28ff.
14. Die Weizsacker-Papiere, 1900-1932, ed. Leonidas E. Hill (Frankfurt, 1982), p. 44.
16. Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10 [Green Series], 14 vols. [Washington, 1950-52), 14:950 [hereafter cited as Green Series].
17. Weizsacker-Papiere, 1933-1950, p. 417.
18. Ibid., pp. 38-39; Green Series 14:494-505.
19. Weizsacker-Papiere, 1933-1950, p. 38.
22. In this connection, see Margaret Bovari, Der Diplomat vor Gericht (Berlin, 1948), esp. p. 30.
23. Thielenhaus, Zwischen Anpassung und Widerstand, pp. 12-13. Thielenhaus's view of Weizs5cker is shared by R. A. Blasius, Far Gropdeutschland gegen den gropen Krieg (Cologne and Vienna, 1981). For Hill's reply to Thielenhaus and Blasius, see Leonidas E. Hill, "The Genesis and Interpretation of the Memoirs of Ernst von Weizsacker," German Studies Review 10, no. 3 (1987): 443-80.
24. Thielenhaus, Zwischen Anpassung und Widerstand, pp. 227-28; WeizsackerPapiere, 1933-1950, pp. 28-31; Hoffman, History of the German Resistance, pp. 63-65.
25. Thielenhaus, Zwischen Anpassung und Widerstand, p. 226.
27. Weizsacker-Papiere, 1933-1950, p. 31.
28. Thielenhaus, Zwischen Anpassung und Widerstand, pp. 66ff.
29. Weizsacker-Papiere, 1933-1950, pp. 30-31.
30. Thielenhaus, Zwischen Anpassung und Widerstand, pp. 15ff.
31. 136scher, Das Auswfirtige Amt, p. 39, notes 21-22, and p. 69, note 10.
32. Ibid. p. 14. Weizsacker joined the Nazi Party and the SS in 1938; he joined with the rank of Colonel and was promoted to Brigadier General in Jan. 1942. He believed that joining the party and the SS would increase his influence in foreign policy. After the outbreak of the war, when Weizsacker realized that he had no influence, he asked repeatedly to be relieved of his duties. His request was not granted until 1943, when he was appointed ambassador to the Holy See. Ibid., pp. 185-90.
36. Browning, Final Solution, p. 1. See also idem, Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution (New York, 1985), pp. 8-38; Tim Mason, "Intention and Explanation: A Current Controversy about the Interpretation of National Socialism," in Der Fahrerstaat: Mythos und Realitdt, ed. G. Hirschfeld and L. Kettenacker (Stuttgart, 1981), pp. 21-40.
37. Browning, Final Solution, pp. 11-13; Doscher, Das Auswdrtige Amt, p. 121.
38. Browning, Final Solution, pp. 87ff.
40. Ibid., p. 79. Franz Rademacher was counselor and chief of Division D III in Abteilung Deutschland.
43. Ibid., p. 183. On the attitude of the bureaucrats, see F. E. Katz, "Implementation of the Holocaust: The Behavior of Nazi Officials," Comparative Studies in Society and History 24 (1982): 510-29.
44. Browning, Final Solution, pp. 180, 185.
45. Ibid., pp. 178-85; Doscher, Das Auswdrtige Amt, pp. 306-11.
46. Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal [Blue Series], 42 vols. (Nuremberg, 1947-49), 10:387-89, 397-406, 40912, and also 129, 135, 138, 215 [hereafter cited as Blue Series].
47. Hill, "Genesis and Interpretation," p. 451; Weizsacker-Papiere, 1933-1950, p. 638, note 37, p. 639, note 41, p. 427. During his trial before the U.S. Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Weizsacker testified that he first learned about the extermination camps through Allied press reports during his tenure as ambassador to the Vatican. Green Series 13:442-43.
48. On the Roehm Putsch and Papen's involvement, see Blue Series 16:35868; on Papen's claim, ibid., p. 421.
50. Donald M. McKale, Curt Prufer: German Diplomat from the Kaiser to Hitler (Kent, OH, 1987), pp. 174-75. See also idem, "Traditional Antisernitism and the Holocaust: The Case of the German Diplomat Curt Prafer," SWC Annual 5 (1988): 61-75; Akten zur deutschen Auswdrtigen Politik (Gottingen, 1969ff.), series E, volume 3, document 209.
51. Walter Laqueur, "Hitler's Holocaust," Encounter 55 (July-Dec. 1980): 625, observed that there is a profound difference between "knowing" and "believing." Even American Jews knew about, but refused to believe, the information that came to them from the Polish underground and the Jewish Labor Bund. It is thus quite possible that many Germans, in the Foreign Ministry and elsewhere, knew about, but did not credit, those terrible stories.
