In December 1941, the military commander Otto Stuelpnagel took advantage of the attempted killing of a German officer in Paris to escalate anti-Jewish activities in France. He sought permission to shoot 100 hostages, impose a mammoth fine on the Jews of France, and deport 1,000 Jews to the East. Hitler approved these measures, and on December 12 Jews were arrested in Paris and interned in a camp in Compiegne. Serious transport difficulties delayed the deportation for some time. The deportation of Jews from France to Auschwitz was the first such action in Western Europe, and Eichmann approached the matter cautiously. He wished to increase the number of deportees to 10,000 and obtained authorization to do so from the German Foreign Office, which operated in close coordination with the government of France. The first train, carrying 1,012 Jews, did not leave on March 23 as planned, but on March 27. The Jewish population was horrified; thousands of panic-stricken Jews sought hideouts from the Nazis and the French police in any possible location. Eichmann, inspired by the success of this transport, began to plan mass deportations from the West.
