This applied to the destruction of the Jews. His order to cease the extermination had less consequence than the necessary dismantling of the killing factories before the Russian advance. Even if he had wished it he could not have erased the effects of years of indoctrination. His order had no effect on Eichmann’s sense of mission, no effect on the desensitised camp Kommandants and guards; if Jews were not to be destroyed directly, they could still be worked and starved to death. Of course this did not apply only to Jews: the whole camp labour–industrial complex under Pohl which consumed
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