To date, scholarship has undervalued the significance of this meeting on [the Third Reich’s] policy toward [Roma and Sinti], in part because there was no further pursuit of the question of the identity of the representatives of the SD and the RSHA and the necessity of their involvement.10 […] The participation of [Hans] Ehlich and [Georg] Harders in the 15 January 1943 meeting is evidence that the long‐standing goal of the ‘final regulation of the [Romani] question’ was to be decisively expedited on this day.
On the basis of their career profiles, both Ehlich and Harders were ‘makers of extermination policy.’ As strategists and practitioners, they were equipped with experience in the killing of the European Jews. Mass sterilization and the displacement of millions of people were just as much a part of their sphere of action as the ‘racial’ selection of individuals for an eventual decision on, for example, their Germanization or extermination. The institutions they represented were involved at an early stage in the planning for a comprehensive deportation of all [Roma and Sinti] from the Old Reich.
[…]
The decisions reached at the RKPA on 15 January 1943 regarding the further handling of the remaining [Roma] in the Reich following the deportations also included a policy of splitting up and isolating this group, an approach based on sterilization and intended to cause those of mixed ancestry, the Mischlinge, to disappear. The size of the group and its genetic rating had been painstakingly ascertained by the RHF in previous years.
By its account, the RHF had collected data on exactly 28,607 persons in the territory of the Reich and prepared evaluations of 18,904 of them by November 1942. Accordingly, 1079 were classified as ‘full [Roma],’ 1017 as Lalleri, 1585 as Roma, 211 as Balkan […], and 2652 as non‐[Romani]. The largest category consisted of 12,360 persons defined as ‘[Romani] Mischlinge.’18
The course for the treatment of the various categories had already been set. Unless already deported in 1938 or 1940, a small number of full [Roma] and Lalleri were to receive special status as ‘racially pure [Roma].’ All Roma […] and the vast majority of Mischlinge were to be deported to Auschwitz–Birkenau. Differentiation within these groups resulted from the classification by the RHF, which ascribed characteristic properties to each of the different ‘strains’ within the [Romani] population.19
[…]
The exclusion criteria for [Roma and Sinti] working in factories vital to the war effort and for [Roma and Sinti] holding and demonstrating foreign citizenship indicate that protests originating in the armament industry or with the Labor Office were as much to be avoided as diplomatic imbroglios with friendly or neutral states. Here too, the [Fascists] had learned lessons from their experiences during the deportation of the Jewish population.27
[…]
Even though many planned sterilizations were not carried out, the RKPA’s sterilization policy for the most part followed the course agreed upon at the conference on 15 January 1943 until the war’s end. It had been decided at the conference that once sterilization was performed, the RHF would prepare new ‘evaluations’ for those affected, classifying them as non-[Romani] to exempt them from the ‘special law,’ while still retaining the prohibitions against marriage.
From December 1944 at the latest, in such cases the RKPA operated with individual waivers,81 which effectively superseded previous racial and biological evaluations prepared by the RHF. The ‘racial’ classification now merged with the Kripo’s aim of producing an overall decision on the status of those concerned.82 In no case, however, was Germanization, a measure also discussed at the conference in January 1943, carried out.83
[…]
The ‘settlement of the [Romani] question with regard to the existence of this race’ was the formulation used by Heinrich Himmler in December 1938 in his discussion of the objective of [Fascism’s Romani] policy.101 Four years later, the registration was concluded and for all intents and purposes the fate of most [Roma and Sinti] — deportation — was sealed. Therefore, it was indeed a matter of the ‘final solution of the [ROmani] question’ when the [Fascists] decided upon the sterilization of all [Roma and Sinti] remaining in the Reich in January 1943, a step intended to render them extinct within one generation. Anyone ever registered and ‘evaluated’ as [Romani] was at risk.
(Emphasis added.)
Click here for other events that happened today (January 15).
1885: Lorenz Böhler, Fascist physician, was born.
1890: Michiaki Kamada, Axis vice‐admiral, came into existence.
1919: The protofascist Freikorps killed Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, dealing a massive blow to the Spartacist uprising and paving the way for Fascism.
1933: Heinrich Prinz zu Sayn‐Wittgenstein became a group leader (Kameradschaftsführer) in the HJ.
1937: As the Nationalists and Republicans both withdrew after suffering heavy losses, ending the Second Battle of the Corunna Road, Hermann Göring met Benito Mussolini; when Göring brought up the topic of Berlin’s wish to annex Austria, Mussolini showed disapproval.
1940: Fascist submarine U‐44 sank Norwegian steamer Fagerheim in the Bay of Biscay at the early hours of the day, massacring fifteen but leaving five alive. Later, U‐44 fired shots at Netherlandish merchant freighter Arendskerk; realizing his ship could not out run the Fascists, Arendskerk’s captain gave the abandon ship order, but the Fascists sank it. Nevertheless, all sixty‐five of the crew lived; the Italian streamer Fedora rescued them. Meanwhile, Kapitän zur See Ernst Kretzenberg took command of cruiser Köln and U‐23 completed her sixth war patrol.
1941: Axis merchant raider Pinguin captured Norwegian whalers Star XIX and Star XXIV in the South Atlantic north of the Azores, and the Axis submarine Luigi Torelli assaulted an Allied convoy west of Ireland, sinking Norwegian ship Brask and Greek ship Nemea.
1942: In Poland, Axis authorities commenced deporting Jews from the Łódź ghetto to the Chelmno Concentration Camp. In Asia, Axis troops crossed the Gemencheh Bridge over the Kelamah River in British Malaya to assault Australian‐held positions at Gemas; although the initial attack failed with the loss of six tanks, subsequent attacks and flanking maneuvers forced the Allies to fall back to the Gemas River. Elsewhere, the 4th and 5th Imperial Guard Regiments wiped out forward positions held by elements of the Indian 45th Brigade north of the Muar River, and the Axis’s Armeegruppe Mitte began to fall back from the Kaluga area, forming a new defensive lines twenty miles to the west.
1943: Axis aircraft raided Telepte Airfield in Tunisia three times and Youks‐les‐Bains Airfield in Algeria once, but lost a total of fifteen aircraft during these assaults. Elsewhere, two companies of ‘Loreto’ combat engineers battalion of the Italian Air Force transferred by ship from Sicily to Tunis, Tunisia; the remaining two companies of the 1st Air Force Assault Regiment ‘Amedeo d’Aosta’ would remain in Sicily to repair airfields.
1944: The XIV Panzer Corps abandoned Monte Trocchio, Italy and fell back across the Rapido River; the Axis subsequently lost both Monte Trocchio and Monte Santa Croce to the Allies.
1945: A report noted that the total number of prisoners in concentration camps was 714,211; there were about 40,000 guards at the camps. The Greater German Reich’s head of state departed the Adlerhorst headquarters in Wetterau, returning to Berlin, which ordered Panzerkorps Grossdeutschland to move from East Prussia, Germany to Poland to counter the Soviet Vistula‐Oder Offensive. An Axis V‐2 rocket hit Rainham, London, massacring fourteen folk and seriously injuring four, but Axis shipping in Hong Kong and rail facilities at Freiburg both suffered Allied assaults.
1950: Axis commanding officer turned Allied traitor, Petre Dumitrescu, expired. He captured 15,565 Soviet prisoners of war at the cost of 10,541 casualties, but when Bucharest surrendered to the Allies in 1944 he helped capture of 6,000 Wehrmacht members. Make of that what you will.
1951: The Allies found Ilse Koch guilty of incitement to murder, incitement to attempted murder, and incitement to the crime of committing grievous bodily harm. They gave her life imprisonment and forfeiture of civil rights. On the other hand, the Western Allies released Axis war criminal Hellmuth Felmy early.
1965: Winston Churchill suffered a stroke, which caused a severe cerebral thrombosis… okay, I know that this event’s relevance to fascism is arguable, but I’m including it here anyway because it’s too funny.