Source: Based on Browning in Stone (ed.), The Historiography of the Holocaust.
First academic conferences devoted to the Holocaust: New York 1975, San Jose 1977 and 1978 (did not discuss it).
Terms coined: Timothy Mason "Intention and Explanation: A Current Controversy about the Interpretation of National Socialism" in Hirschfield and Kettenacker 1981.
Stuttgart conference 1984 (much discussion there about the issue)
From 1989, collapse of communism in Eastern Europe; 1991, collapse of Soviet Union; opening of archives.
Shlomo Aronson: decision late fall 1941 because of American Lend-Lease to Russia (began October 1941)
Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm: argued in 1981 that Einsatzgruppen had received orders, before the invasion on 22 June 1941, to destroy Soviet Jewry.
Philippe Burrin (1981), "conditional intentionalism": there had indeed been a long-held Hitler plan to annihilate the Jews, but it was conditional on his failing to achieve his goals (see e.g. "Reichstag Speech". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 30 January 1939. Archived from the original on 22 May 2019.).
Richard Breitman, Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (1991): the decision was made early 1941.
Alfred Streim, Die Behandlung (1981) and "The tasks of the Einsatzgruppen" (1987): Einsatzgruppen escalated killings in Soviet Union; no specific order.
Christopher Browning, "The Decision Concerning the Final Solution", presented at a colloquium in Paris 1982, published in Furet, Unanswered Questions (1989)
Hans Mommsen, "Die Realisierung des Utopischen: Die 'Endlösung der Judenfrage" im Dritten Reich", Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 9 (1983).
Raul Hillberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (1985), revised and expanded: removed all references to a decision from Hitler except in one footnote. Talked about "consonance and synchronization". But "pivotal ... was the role of Adolf Hitler himself", thereby straddling intentionalism/functionalism.
Christopher Browning, "Beyond 'Intentionalism' and 'Functionalism'", The Path to Genocide (1995): after mid-July 1941, particularly after Hitler's speech of 16 July, Himmler's trips to the East, the increase in the number of Einsatzgruppen soldiers, and the switch to killing women and children, all signalled "a specific programme to kill all Soviet Jews".
Consensus that a decision was made in 1941 or 1942.
Most scholars agree with Streit-Streim that decision to murder all Soviet Jews did not occur before the invasion in June 1941.
"Growing awareness among historians that the Final Solution was based on a form of consensus politics"
Hans Safrian, Die Eichmann-Männer (1993): December 1941
Peter Witte, "Two Decisions Concerning the 'Final Solution to the Jewish Question" (1995): spring 1942
L. J. Hartog, Der Behfehl zum Judenmord (1997) [1994 in Dutch]: December 1941
Christian Gerlach, "The Wannsee Conference, the Fate of German Jews, and Hitler's Decision in Principle to Exterminate all European Jews" (1998) [1997 in German]: acceleration of mass murder, summer 1942; decision, December 1941
Peter Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung (1998): spring 1942, "stages of escalation" 1939–1942; the final stage was April/May 1942 when a "cluster of decisions" produce what we now think of as the Final Solution. The decisions were: to murder the Jews deported to Lodz, Lublin and Minsk; liquidation of the ghettos in Poland (early spring 1942); to kill families from Slovakia and western Europe on arrival at the camps. People were "working toward the Führer" with a series of incremental decisions.
Tobias Jersak (1999): US was decisive, Atlantic Charter, Hitler decided mid-August 1941.
Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945 (2000): agrees with Longerich.
Christopher Browning, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (2000), chapter 2. Also "The Decision-Making Process" in Stone (2010). Not persuaded by Longerich or Gerlach. Browning 2010: "Throughout the autumn of 1941, the Nazis had referred to the commencement of the Final Solution as both 'after the war' and 'next spring', two terms for the same point in time." The Soviet counter-offensive and America entering the war changed that, and in December 1941 Hitler "made clear" that the Final Solution would go ahead "next spring". Decision made between 16 September and 25 October 1941; see Browning 2000 for details.
Mark Roseman, The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution (2002): November 1941
Saul Friedländer, "Ideology and Extermination" in Smelser, Lessons and Legacies (2002): mid-Oct to mid-December 1941
