It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Nazi Germany, despite its military strength and stamina, would have had the resources to cross the Atlantic and take control of North America (even in The Man in the High Castle, the Nazis don’t attempt to invade the East Coast until they had all the oil and resources from conquering Europe and the Soviet Union). But that doesn’t mean they weren’t seriously thinking about it, and a book recently acquired by the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) indicates that continuing the Holocaust in the Western Hemisphere was at the top of their minds.
CBC News reports that the LAC recently purchased a book from Hitler’s personal library from a private collector for about $4,500. The 137-page confidential report, “for official service use only,” offers a detailed census on Jewish organizations and Jewish populations across the U.S. and Canada, including major urban centers and even small cities, like Troise-Rivieres in Quebec, which had a Jewish population of just 52.
The tome, which translates to Statistics, Press, and Organizations of Jewry in the United States and Canada, was acquired in June and has since undergone preservation work. It went on display last weekend, as part of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“This information would have been the building blocks to rolling out the Final Solution in Canada,” LAC curator Michael Kent tells the CBC.
