Population Statistics and the Final Solution Under National Socialism

National Socialist rulers in Germany used census results for the planning and implementation of the Holocaust between 1933 and 1945. The Holocaust has been defined as the deliberate extermination of up to six million European Jews by the Nazis before and during the Second World War. In a broader sense, the Holocaust can be interpreted as the intention to exterminate all European Jewry. Only occasional reference is made to the activities closely linked to the Holocaust of eliminating other “undesirable” population groups such as Sinti and Roma, homosexuals and mentally and physically disabled people. Two questions are to be examined in more detail: First, the collection and use of population statistics data during the Third Reich for the purpose of the Holocaust. The presentation of the “unconcern” and thus the misuse of official statistics and the population statistics data the Nazis provided in the service of the Holocaust leads to depressing results. The 1939 census in Germany and the statisticians associated with it are thus exemplary for the misuse of official statistics by a totalitarian regime. Official statistics also supported the National Socialist rulers in their preparations for the deportation and killing of the Jewish population without any major scruples. Ethical conflicts did not seem to play a major role in their activities and decisions. Second, the use of this data in the Nuremberg war crimes trials is examined. This research shows that the goal of estimating the number of Holocaust victims with some degree of accuracy largely failed due to the incompleteness of the data. After the Second World War, the experiences of the Third Reich had a significant influence on the development of ethical standards in the political environment and in the field of statistics. In politics, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in 1950. A legal regulation of the professional independence of statistics was only achieved in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1953 with the introduction of the Federal Statistics Act. When the German Bundestag passed this law, it was the first time that the framework conditions in procedural, organisational and substantive law for German official statistics were comprehensively defined. A self-commitment to the professional independence of official statistics vis-à-vis political authorities and administrative bodies was not adopted until 2005 with the European Statistics Code of Practice.