1 Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party, 2 vols. (Pittsburgh, 1969).
2 See Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (New York, 1994).
3 John C. Fout, "The Fate of Gays in the Wehrmacht in World War II," paper delivered at the German Studies Association annual meeting, Chicago, Sept. 21-24, 1995.
4 See Doris L. Bergen, "The 'Volksdeutschen' of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust: Constructed Ethnicity, Real Genocide," in Keith Bullivant, Geoffrey Giles, and Walter Pape, eds., Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural Identities and Cultural Differences; Yearbook of European Studies 13 (Amsterdam, 1999): 70-93.
5 Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, 1996).
6 See SS-Oberscharführer Reinhold Ratzeburg, "Dienstreisebericht 2/45," Wiesbaden, Jan. 28, 1945, in Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden 483/7360, pp. 1-2.
7 See, e.g., the records of the Deutsche Umsiedlungs- Treuhand GmbH, Berlin, involving 1944 and 1945, in Bundesarchiv (hereafter BA) Potsdam 17.02, e.g.: files 118-19, 494-5. On relocation due to war damages, see BA Potsdam 17.02/444.
8 "Remnants: Memoirs of a Survivor," the Charles Kotkowsky papers, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives (hereafter USHMMA), RG 10.045, pp. 88-9. For the whole account, see fiches 1-5, pp. 57-94.
9 Case of Helene Huff, geb. 1923, in Choinek, Gemd. Rataje, Kr. Waldrode, Volksdeutsche, Beruf Haustochter, signed Walter End, SS-Oscha, Kutno, June 24, 1943, Archiwum Panstwowe w Lodzi (hereafter AP Lodz) 201/29, p. 4; related materials in same file.
10 Kommandeur der Sicherheitspolizei, Grenzpolizeikommissariat Kutno, to Kommandeur der Sicherheitspolizei Litzmannstadt, Kutno, Dec. 1, 1944, AP Lodz 201/29, p. 23.
11 Bernd Weisbrod, "Der 8. Mai in der deutschen Erinnerung," WerkstattGeschichte 13 (1996): 72-81.
12 Himmler's speech to SS leaders in Posen on Oct. 4, 1943, is excerpted in Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds., Nazism: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (New York, 1988), 2:919.
13 See, e.g., Chaplain Wirtz, 2d Infantry Division (motorized), "Tätigkeitsbericht über den Einsatz im Westen vom 10. Mai bis 9. Juli 1940," Stettin, Aug. 1, 1940: Captured German Documents, National Archives microfilm, series T-315 (Records of German Field Commands: Armies)/roll 87/frames 637-8.
14 Franz Justus Rarkowski, "Generalabsolution," Verordnungsblätter des katholischen Feldbischofs der Wehrmacht, no. 6 (Aug. 12, 1944): 30, in Archiv des Katholischen Militärbischofsamts, Bonn.
15 On "excess cruelty," see Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners, 17; for a summary of his interpretation of the phenomenon in practice, see 452-3.
16 Thanks to Arthur Kuflik of the University of Vermont for insight on rationalization and denial as "tributes that vice pays to virtue."
17 "Geheimer Monatsbericht für Oktober 1944 des SS-Hauptamtes Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle," in Anton Scherer, ed., Unbekannte SS-Geheimberichte über die Evakuierung der Südostdeutschen im Oktober und November 1944 sowie über die politische Lage in Rumänien, Ungarn, der Slowakei, im Serbischen Banat und im "unabhängigen Staat Kroatien" (Graz, 1990), 42.
18 "Fernspruch des Kommandeurs der Ordnungspolizei Posen vom 10.5.1944," in "Kreislaufgespräch Nr. 44/44," Gendarmerieposten Dolzig, Kreis Schrimm, Reg. Bez. Posen, Dolzig, May 10, 1944, signed Walter, Oberst d. Gendarmerie, USHMMA, RG 15.012M (Records of the Gendarmerie Kreis Schrimm), reel 2, file 29 (Collection of written messages, received by telephone, to police posts re: operational tasks and special actions, 1941-4), p. 226.
19 "Fernspruch des Kommandeurs der Ordnungspolizei," in "Kreislaufgespräch Nr. 129/44," Gendarmerieposten Dolzig, Kreis Schrimm, Reg. Bez. Posen, Dolzig, Sept. 21, 1944, signed Walter, Oberst d. Gendarmerie, USHMMA, RG15 .012M, reel 2, file 29, p. 310.
20 Hans Eberhard von Cube, Überleben war alles: Aufzeichnungen eines baltischen Umsiedlers von 1939 bis 1946 (Lüneburg, 1986), 38 and 61.
21 "Fernschreiben Ia Tgb. Nr. 572/44 g," Lublin, June 7, 1944, to the Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer Ost - Führungsstab Ia, Krakau, signed the SSuPF Lublin, I.A. Wehrheim, USHMMA, RG 15.027M (Records of the SS und Polizeiführer im Distrikt Lublin), reel 2, file 13 (Partisans, June 1944 to July 1944), pp. 30 and reverse.
22 See Tadeusz Piotrowski, Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces, and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947 (Jefferson, N.C., 1998), 88.
23 Ian Kershaw provides a thoughtful assessment of the difference between the Nazi movement pre- and post-1933 in Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris (New York, 1998).
24 Gellately, opening remarks at symposium on "Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany," sponsored by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Madrid, Dec. 1998.
25 On Hitler's transformation of the impossible into the possible, see Götz Aly, "Final Solution": Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews, trans. Belinda Cooper and Allison Brown (London, 1999), 257; published in German as "Endlösung": Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen Juden (Frankfurt am Main, 1995).