The Chancellery of the Führer in the Shoah: Initiative, Expertise and Scope for Action in Mass Murder

The article examines the contribution of the Chancellery of the Führer of the Nazi Party (Kanzlei des Führers der NSDAP) to the Shoah. Analysis of extensive legal material and attention to new sources, some visual, suggests that the focus on SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik as the man responsible for Operation Reinhard needs to be reconsidered. This research suggests that as part of a distribution of murderous tasks, the Chancellery of the Führer was directly responsible for the Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps and thus for the murder of at least 1.6 million people. Initiatives by the Chancellery of the Führer can also be traced in the implementation of the Shoah in the Soviet Union and in connection with the construction of the Kulmhof and Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camps. In this article, this broad spectrum of initiatives by the Chancellery of the Führer is examined for the first time. The discussion also provides illuminating insight into the National Socialist system of power, for in this instance the logic of command and obedience was not solely decisive: an interplay of factors such as the systematic use of existing expertise, the creation of broad room for manoeuvre, and the combination of regional and central initiatives also made the Shoah a reality.