Third, on December 12, 1941, the day after Hitler declared war on the United States in solidarity with his Japanese ally, he met with the Nazi Party Gauleiters at his private apartment in Berlin and informed them that the Jews would have to pay “with their lives” for the war they had inflicted on Germany—indeed, that they already were doing so. As historian Peter Fritzsche has remarked, “this is as close to a Hitler order as historians will get,” meaning the closest counterpart to the euthanasia letter he signed that we are likely to find to connect Hitler personally with the command to kill
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