“Between Colonialism and the ‘Final Solution’ Revisiting Eichmann’s “Jewish Question” in the Context of Empire, 1933-1941”

• In Event: Alternative “Solutions” to the Nazi “Jewish Question”? Revisiting Adolf Eichmann’s Judenfrage in the Context of Antisemitism, Colonialism, and Postwar Jurisprudence, 1933-1962

Abstract

Despite the intense recent debates regarding the colonial roots of the Holocaust, we have remarkably little research on the role of colonialism, particularly overseas colonialism, in Nazi thinking around the “Jewish Question” before the “Final Solution.” Yet nearly every “solution” conceived by the Third Reich between Spring 1933 and Spring 1941, not least of which those proposed and (partially) carried out by Adolf Eichmann and his SD associates, involved planning within a colonial context, often in direct conversation and sometimes detailed negotiation with other colonial empires, from imperial rivals such as Great Britain, France, and the United States to Germany’s future allies, Italy to Japan. Even where the leaders of non-colonial states or peoples were involved––including Jews, Arabs, Poles, and Chinese, among others–– the conceptual and logistical frameworks shared by all parties often remained embedded in a (settler) colonialist and related Zionist or so-called “territorialist” framework.

In the interest of gaining a better understanding of the linguistic and rhetorical context in which “solutions” to the “Jewish Question” were conceived and deployed before the “Final Solution, my paper will reexamine the planning conversations and negotiations carried out by Adolf Eichmann in respect four brief case studies: resettling the Jews in Palestine, Shanghai, Lublin, and Madagascar. The paper will illustrate, first, how salient a linguistic and rhetorical framework grounded in overseas empire and colonialism remained for Eichmann throughout the period 1933 and 1941, which manifested itself, if only partially successfully, in a variety of concrete resettlement plans. Second and perhaps most importantly, given current historiographical debates regarding the genocidal nature of colonialism, my paper argues that such plans, while certainly aimed at removing as many Jews as possible from Germany and Europe, rarely appeared to contemplate physical extermination or even mass attrition as an explicit goal or outcome.

Author

• Eric Kurlander, Stetson University