Nisko Plan - Role in Holocaust Historiography

Role in Holocaust Historiography

The Nisko Plan is an example used in the functionalism versus intentionalism debate. In Christopher Browning's article, "Nazi Resettlement Policy and the Search for a Solution to the Jewish Question, 1939-1941", he focused on the territorial solutions and how they were interpreted for different use. On October 24, 1939, The Times noted that the German plan to create a Jewish state was cynical and would surely doom the Jews to famine. Most historians of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust have concluded that the Nisko Plan was integrally related to Hitler's other programs and intent to destroy the Jews in Europe. Thus they hold that the Nisko Plan was a preface to the Final Solution.

Browning has suggested that the Nisko Plan was an example that Hitler did not have previous intentions for the genocide of the Jews. He contends that the Nisko or Lublin Plan, Madagascar Plan and Pripet Marsh Plan, all served as territorial solutions to the Jewish question, but were separate from the Final Solution. Mainstream historians contend that Hitler and his government created an issue out of the "Jewish question", raised anti-semitism in Germany, and created the need for a "territorial solution" and genocide.