ABSTRACT
Two or three Jewish policies: The chapter examines the major change in Nazi policy toward the Jews marked by the Kristallnacht pogrom as well as the seeming additional change in August 1941. Between 1933 and 1938 the Nazis induced German Jews to emigrate; from then on until the end of the war they robbed the Jews of Germany and the conquered territories of their wealth. Once the Jews were impoverished the Nazi authorities had no more use for them and gradually devised ways of eliminating them. During the invasion of Poland in September 1939 this policy was fully implemented: special SS and police murder units (“task groups”), army units and auxiliary local militias systematically killed Jewish and Catholic Poles. After the invasion of Soviet Russia in June 1941 the Nazis paid less attention to the Poles and concentrated on eliminating Jews and Russian prisoners-of-war. When the Russian campaign ground to a halt in August 1941, the German leadership was no longer sure it could win the war and elevated the elimination of Jews into an official (and still achievable) war aim.
