The First Steps Toward a Final Solution

ALFRED ROSENBERG, The Jewish Question as a World Problem (1941)

German military conquests in the early years of World War II allowed the Nazis to expand the scope of their anti-Jewish policies. What began as an effort to create a “Jew-free” Germany became a global crusade to resolve, once and for all, the “Jewish question.” The Nazi propagandist and party official Alfred Rosenberg gave this speech on the “world Jewish problem” in a radio address in March of 1941. A few months later, he was appointed Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories. In the speech, Rosenberg rejected the idea of a Jewish state, outlined Germany’s plans for Europe’s Jews, and argued that world peace would be possible only when these plans had been brought to fruition.

The war which is being waged today by the German armed forces under the highest command of Adolf Hitler, is therefore a war of an immense reform. It does not only overcome the world of ideas of the French revolution, but it also exterminates directly all those racially infecting germs of Jewry and its bastards, which now since over a hundred years could develop without check among the European nations. The Jew question which for 2000 years was a problem for the European nations which was not solved, will now find its solution through the national socialistic revolution for Germany and whole Europe.

And if one asks, in which form, then we have to say the following to this: During these decades a lot has been talked about a Jewish state as solution, and Zionism appears to some harmless people perhaps even today as an honest attempt to contribute on the part of the Jews also something toward the solution of the Jewish question.

In reality there never was nor will there ever be a Jewish State.

Contrary to the other nations on this globe, Judaism is no vertical organization which comprises all professions, but has been always a horizontal class among the different nations, that class which carried on material and spiritual intermediate trade. Secondly, the space being considered in Palestine is in no way suitable for any Jewish state. It is too small to absorb what was formerly 10 and is now 15 million Jews; in other words, therefore impractical for solving the Jewish question. The purpose of Zionism, in reality, was not to solve the Jewish question in the sense of the coordination of the whole Jewish people, but lay in an entirely different direction.

It was intended to build in Palestine a purely Jewish center, a real legitimate Jewish state in order to be able, at first, to be represented at all diplomatic conferences with full rights as national Jew.

Secondly it was intended to make Palestine into a huge, economic staging area against the entire Near East. Thirdly, this Jewish state should have been an asylum for all those Jewish adventurers in the world who were evicted from the countries in which they acted. And, finally, nobody was even thinking of limiting even in the slightest, the so-called state civil rights of the Jews in Germany, England, America, and also France. The Jews therefore, would have maintained the rights of the Germans, Englishmen, Frenchmen etc., and the spaceless Jewish world state would have come constantly closer toward its realization, that is, an all-Jewish center without any interference of non-Jews and the Jewish high finance at the state rudder in all other countries of the world.

This dream is now finished. Now, just the reverse, we have to think of how and where to put the Jews. This can, as mentioned, not be done in a Jewish state, but only in a way which I shall call the Jewish reservation.

It is to be hoped that future statesmen will get together in order to gradually institute a settlement of Jews who, under experienced police supervision, now should do such useful work as they wanted to see done until now by non-Jews.

From an almost unlimited Jewish rule in all European countries to such a radical reverse, to an evacuation of this same Jewish race after 2,000 years of parasitism on the European continent, then only can one conceive through this an idea what an enormous philosophical and political revolution is in the making in Europe today.

Today the Jewish question is somewhat clear before our eyes. It is the problem of a simple national purity. It means the necessity for defense of inherent national tradition for all nations which still value culture and future. It is still a problem of economy for all those who cannot solve the social questions under the Jewish financial dictatorship. It is a political problem of power, because in many states the will has not yet been found to break this financial dictatorship of the Jewry. And, lastly, it is a historically ideological problem, given to the Europeans since the days when the first Jews immigrated to Rome. The totality of this as national socialist, have but one clear answer for all these questions:

For Germany the Jewish Question is only then solved, when the Last Jew has left the Greater German space.

Since Germany with its blood and its nationalism has now broken for always this Jewish dictatorship for all Europe, and has seen to it that Europe as a whole will become free from the Jewish parasitism once more, we may, I believe, also say for all Europeans: For Europe the Jewish question is only then solved, when the last Jew has left the European continent.

At that, it does not matter whether such a program can be realized in five, ten or twenty years. The transportation facilities in our time, if all nations join, would be strong enough to institute and to execute such a resettlement to a great extent. But the problem must and will one day be solved as we have visualized it from the first day of our fight—then accused utopists—and now proclaim it as strict realistic politicians. All nations are interested in the solution of this question, and we must declare here with all passion:

In this cleaning-up even Mr. Roosevelt with his Baruchs and his trophy film Jews will not be able to hamper us, but wholly to the contrary, just this proclamation that the Jewish parasitical spirit shall represent today the freedom of the world, will especially awaken all resistance of the German character, and the strongest military instrument which history has seen, the German Armed forces of Adolf Hitler, will take care of it that this last furious attempt to let the white race once more march against Europe for the benefit of the Jewish financial dominion, will find an end for all times.

We are of the opinion that this great war constitutes also a cleansing biological world revolution and that also those nations which are still opposed to us, will recognize at the end of the war, that Germany’s business is today the business of the whole European continent, the business of the whole Jewish race, but also the business of all other cultured races on this globe who fight for a safe national cultural and state life. Thus we hope that one day, in a reasonable distribution of the great living spaces of this globe the nations will find that peace, that work and that prosperity which for decades have been harrassed by never-tiring parasitical activity. Thus, we consider today the Jewish question as one of the most important problems among the total politics of Europe, as a problem which must be solved and will be solved, and we hope, yes, we know already today, that all nations of Europe will march behind this cleansing at the end.

Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Vol. V (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), pp. 554-557 [Doc. 2889-PS].