The tail end of that sentence was “…was made clear.” Up until then, the narrative seen to the world and the German public was different.

I’m not even claiming that Germany had a perfect veil of secrecy over it; just that they would use propaganda to push just enough plausible excuses over the “missing people”, the smokestacks, that the world wasn’t convinced until the end of the war that systematic execution was really going on.

And yes, deportation was an early public part of Germany’s plans, in part because that’s more publically digestible. They canceled plans to move many Jews to France after colonizing it - referred to as the Madagascar Plan - because of a blockade.

Of course, one major aspect of deportation is that people become sight-unseen at many destinations. The gestapo can easily execute people with gunfire en masse once they’re in a place no one can access them. So, saying “They only wanted to deport them” is not a compliment to the “decency” of old Nazis. It’s a word of caution about the new ones.