Preparing for occupation? A Nazi "Sicherheitsdienst" document of spring 1939 on the Jews of Holland

Historians are generally of the opinion that the Nazis formulated plans for dealing with Dutch Jews only after the occupation in May 1940, but this would have been contrary to what is known about Third Reich policies in general, and in regard to Jewish issues in particular. In fact, the Nazis were already planning how to deal with Netherland's Jews by early 1939, as evidenced by a detailed report on the Dutch Jewish community found in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, which is accompanied by a cover letter from the SD-Führer des SS-Oberabschnittes Nord-West in Hamburg, dated 28 March 1939. The report contains demographic, historical, and political information on the Jewish community and its organizations, as well as information on Jewish leaders, all of which would facilitate the implementation of anti-Jewish measures. Discusses, also, power struggles within the Nazi regime. There was no Jewish Department of the SD in the Netherlands because Seyss-Inquart insisted on controlling the various aspects of the German occupation himself. Nevertheless, he used the favored SD organizational tool, the Judenrat, to carry out his plans. He may have also used the 1939 report, a facsimile of which appears on pp. 185-189.