In a revelation that may reshape historians’ understanding of the Holocaust’s origins, nearly 800 newly unearthed recordings and transcripts of post-World War II interrogations have been published, including a staggering confession from one of the Nazis’ most notorious war criminals.

Among the digital files released Saturday by the Hoover Institution is a recording of SS officer Bruno Streckenbach, a man long suspected of overseeing some of the most gruesome crimes of the Third Reich. In the tape, Streckenbach admits that Adolf Hitler himself issued the explicit order for the “Final Solution” — a grim confirmation in what has long been a contested historical debate.

“This is the order from the Führer,” Streckenbach recalled being told by Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the Nazi killing machine. “He chose the SS to carry out this order.”

The confession not only places Hitler at the center of the genocide but also lifts the veil on the internal horror and moral breakdown among SS officers as the killing escalated.

Streckenbach, who commanded the Einsatzgruppen — Nazi death squads that executed hundreds of thousands of Jews across Eastern Europe — recounts an early encounter with fellow officer Erwin Schulz, who had grown visibly shaken by the mass executions in Ukraine.

“Schulz trembled, trembled like I’m trembling now. He said, ‘What are we doing?’ And I said, ‘We can’t do anything… there was an order.’”

The testimony is especially damning because Streckenbach was never tried or imprisoned, despite his suspected involvement in the murder of over one million people. He died a free man, evading justice even as prosecutors attempted for decades to bring him to trial.

The release of the recordings, which also detail escape routes used by Nazi fugitives, offers a grim window into both the operational mechanics of the Holocaust and the bureaucratic coldness with which genocide was executed.

Thomas Weber, professor of history at the University of Aberdeen and the researcher who uncovered the materials, emphasized the historic weight of the confession.

“This recording decisively alters the historical record,” Weber said. “For decades, the defense of many Nazi officers hinged on the claim that they were following broad directives — not a direct order from Hitler. This tape destroys that narrative.”

The recordings address the long-disputed origins of the “Holocaust by bullets” — the early stage of the genocide where mass shootings replaced gas chambers — and clarify the chilling chain of command.

Though much of the Holocaust’s horror has long been documented, this cache of firsthand, unfiltered testimony sheds new light on the psychological toll, the inner workings of SS command, and the deliberate misrepresentation of responsibility by Nazi officers during post-war trials.

The evidence now made public represents what historians are calling one of the most important archival releases of the last decade, and a sobering reminder that even decades later, the full truth of the Holocaust is still coming to light.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)