ABSTRACT
In my recent book, The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (1991),1 I sought to describe the range of high-level planning on resolving the so-called Jewish question and to illuminate general relationships among Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Oswald Pohl, Hermann Goering, Hans Frank, Alfred Rosenberg, Joachim von Ribbentrop and others. The historian’s attribution of responsibility for plans and decisions that are poorly (if at all) documented is bound to be somewhat speculative, depending partly on one’s assessment of personalities and the personal and political relationships among individuals and agencies. So I do not expect we will ever have full agreement on just who initiated, planned, improvised or ordered the Final Solution, let alone when.
