Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 01: The Years of Persecution
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However, neither the “de-Judaization” represented by the Staatspartei nor the hostility of the DVP was of any avail to these parties. Whereas in the elections of 1928 the DDP obtained twenty-five seats and the DVP forty-five, and in those of 1930 the DDP still gained twenty seats and the DVP thirty, in the elections of July 1932, the DDP was reduced to four seats and the DVP to seven.145 The decline of the liberal parties during the Weimar Republic has been thoroughly analyzed, and the social transformation that underlay it starkly defined.146 In terms of the changing situation of the Jews of Germany, it meant that their main political basis (apart from the Social Democrats) had simply disappeared.
The “pernicious” influence of Jews on German culture was the most common theme of Weimar anti-Semitism. On this terrain, the conservative German bourgeoisie, the traditional academic world, the majority of opinion in the provinces—in short, all those who “felt German”—came together with the more radical anti-Semites.
The role of Jews in Weimar culture—in modern German culture in general—has been most extensively discussed, and, as we have seen, this theme was not only on the minds of anti-Semites, but often a source of preoccupation for Jews themselves, at least for some of them. In his first book on the subject, the historian Peter Gay showed what role the former “outsider” (mainly the Jew) played in the German culture of the 1920s;147 later he reversed his position, arguing that, objectively, there was nothing to distinguish Jewish from non-Jewish contributions to German culture and that, as far as cultural modernism in particular is concerned, the Jews were neither more nor less “modern” than their German environment.148
Such downplaying of the Jewish dimension may well miss part of the context that provided the anti-Semitic ranters of the twenties with their ammunition.149 The situation described, for example, in Istvan Deak’s study of “Weimar’s left-wing intellectuals” seems closer both to reality and to what the general perception was. After surveying the dominant influence of Jews in the press, book publishing, theater, and film, Deak turns to art and literature: “Many of Germany’s best composers, musicians, artists, sculptors and architects were Jews. Their participation in literary criticism and in literature was enormous: practically all the great critics and many novelists, poets, dramatists, essayists of Weimar Germany were Jews. A recent American study has shown that thirty-one of the sixty-five leading German ‘expressionists’ and ‘neo-objectivists’ were Jews.”150 Deak’s presentation in turn demands some nuancing, as, after all, the cultural scene in the twenties was dominated by such figures as Thomas Mann, Gerhart Hauptmann, Bertolt Brecht, Richard Strauss, Walter Gropius; but undoubtedly, in the minds of the middle-class public, be it of the extreme or the moderate right, anything “daring,” “modern,” or “shocking” was identified with the Jews. Thus, when shortly after (the entirely non-Jewish) Frank Wedekind’s death, his “sexually explicit” Schloss Wetterstein was staged in Munich (December 1919), the political right did not hesitate to call it Jewish garbage. The police warned that performance of the play would lead to a pogrom,151 and, sure enough, during the last performance Jews and people who “looked Jewish” in the audience were beaten up.152 As a police report put it: “One can easily understand that a German who still feels German to some degree and who is not morally and ethically perverted looks with greatest disgust upon the public enjoyment of Wedekind plays.”153 Jewish writers and artists may not have been any more extreme modernists than their non-Jewish colleagues, but modernism as such flourished in a culture in which the Jews played a central role. For those who considered modernism the rejection of all hallowed values and norms, the Jews were the carriers of a massive threat.
More ominous, however, than cultural modernity was left-wing culture in all its aspects. Within months of the end of the war, Jewish revolutionaries were easy targets of the counterrevolution. After Rathenau’s murder no Jew (with the exception of the Socialist finance minister Rudolf Hilferding) played any significant role in Weimar politics. On the other hand, left-wing political, social, and cultural criticism and innovation were often “Jewish.” “If cultural contributions by Jews were far out of proportion to their numerical strength,” Deak writes, “their participation in left-wing intellectual activities was even more disproportionate. Apart from orthodox Communist literature where there were a majority of non-Jews, Jews were responsible for a great part of the leftist literature in Germany. [The periodical] Die Weltbühne was in this respect not unique; Jews published, edited, and to a great part wrote the other left-wing intellectual magazines. Jews played a decisive role in the pacifist and feminist movements, and in the campaigns for sexual enlightenment.”154
Polemics regarding the role of Jews on the cultural scene raged and became more virulent as the Nazi movement grew in strength and as the republic approached its end. One of the most extreme forums of the Right was the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg’s Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (Fighting League for German Culture), established in 1928; it achieved wide influence by opening its ranks to a variety of antirepublic, anti-Left, anti-Jewish elements—from members of the Bayreuth Circle to conservative Catholics like Othmar Spann, from fanatic anti-Semitic literary specialists like Adolf Bartels to Alfred Heuss, publisher of the Zeitschrift für Musik. But sometimes the debates took place in more neutral contexts or were even initiated by Jewish organizations. Thus, in 1930, Max Naumann’s Association of National German Jews invited the right-wing literary critic Paul Fechter to lecture on “The Art Scene and the Jewish Question.” Fechter did not mince words. He warned his listeners that the “anti-Germanism” of left-wing Jewish intellectuals was a major source of rising anti-Semitism and that the Germans would not tolerate for long the continuation of this state of things. National Jews and national Germans, Fechter suggested, should act in common to oppose such anti-national Jewish intellectual attacks. In a more roundabout way, he hinted at the excessive presence of Jews in German art, literature, and theater. This, too, although unsaid, could be understood as a source of growing anti-Jewish feelings: “I feel obliged to express,” declared Fechter, “that a great number of German authors, painters, playwrights go around today with the feeling that it is much more difficult to find a place in German theaters, on the German book market, in the German art business, for things German than for others.”155
Fechter’s lecture was published in the January 1931 issue of Rudolf Pechel’s Deutsche Rundschau, with the following editorial comment: “We reproduce [the lecture] as it indicates one of the sources of the dangerous growth of anti-Semitism clearly confirmed during the second half of 1930 and as it indicates some ways that still may allow us to counter this danger.”156 A bitter debate followed. It is in this context that the novelist Jakob Wassermann, whose autobiographical essay, “My Way as German and Jew,” was possibly the strongest expression of the anguish German Jews felt in the face of the growing tide of anti-Semitism, addressed his question to Rudolf Pechel: “Do the rules of good behavior help against ‘Perish, Jew!’?”157
One of the more remarkable Jewish contributions to the debate was that of Arthur Prinz, published in the periodical’s April 1931 issue under the title “Toward Eliminating the Poison from the Jewish Question.” After asking why radical Jewish journalists and literati could provoke such furious anti-Semitic rage in Germany, Prinz ventured an answer that probed deeply into the relations between Germans and Jews: “That sort of journalism and literature would be impossible without that deep and old insufficiency of a healthy state and national feeling in Germany, which threatens to become fatal since the sad outcome of the war and can certainly not be ‘compensated for’ by the excessive nationalism of the extreme right. The agitation of rootless Jews is poison in a body particularly receptive to it, and precisely this is the main reason for boundless anti-Jewish hatred.”158
When one turns to the wider reaches of German society as it approached the political turning point of 1933, there is no way of assessing clearly the strength of its anti-Jewish a
ttitudes. For example, the League of Jewish Women (Jüdischer Frauenbund) found its allies in the much larger Federation of German Women’s Associations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, or BDF) in their common struggles on feminist issues, but any indication of Jewish identity was not more acceptable to the German women’s organization than it was to the surrounding society. In the words of a historian of the league, the attiudes in the BDF “ranged from liberal impatience with Jewish distinctiveness to covert or overt anti-Semitism.”159 As for the nature of this anti-Semitism, one of its most nuanced evaluations remains the most plausible: “More common and widespread than outright hatred or sympathy for the Jews was…moderate anti-Semitism, that vague sense of unease about Jews that stopped far short of wanting to harm them but that may have helped to neutralize whatever aversion Germans might otherwise have felt for the Nazis.”160
In early August 1932 Hitler was negotiating with the consummate schemer and not yet the short-lived last chancellor of the Weimar Republic (November 1932-January 30, 1933) Gen. Kurt von Schleicher, at the time still a close confidant of President Hindenburg, the conditions for his being named to the chancellorship. On the tenth of that month, five SA men forced their way into the home of Konrad Pieczuch, a pro-Communist worker in the small town of Potempa in Upper Silesia, and trampled him to death. “Such brutality once again put a serious obstacle on the path of the Nazi march to power.”161 Hitler had apparently believed that the top position would now be offered to him; what Hindenburg proposed when they finally met was a mere vice-chancellorship. The meeting had been cool, and the official communiqué dismissive of the Nazi leader. Hitler was utterly humiliated and furious. It was exactly then, on August 22, that the court in Beuthen sentenced the five SA men to death. The announcement of the verdict led to tumultuous scenes in the courtroom; outside, Jewish and “socialist” shops were attacked. Hitler reacted with an outburst of rage. He wired the convicted murderers: “My comrades! In view of this incredible criminal verdict I feel myself tied to you in unlimited fidelity. From this moment on, your freedom is our honor, the fight against a government under which such a thing was possible, our duty.”162
THE JEWS ARE GUILTY! Goebbels thundered in Der Angriff: “The Jews are guilty, the punishment is coming…. The hour will strike when the state prosecutor will have other tasks to fulfill than to protect the traitors to the people from the anger of the people. Forget it never, comrades! Tell it to yourself a hundred times a day, so that it may follow you in your deepest dreams: the Jews are guilty! And they will not escape the punishment they deserve.”163
In a moment of sheer frustration, Hitler had abandoned his carefully constructed facade of respectability and given vent to relentless and murderous rage. Nonetheless, during those same weeks of the summer and fall of 1932, Hitler continued to oppose the use of force for toppling the regime and went on negotiating and maneuvering in order to reach his goal.164 What emerges here with uncanny clarity is a personality in which cold calculation and blind fury coexisted and could find almost simultaneous expression. If a third ingredient—Hitler’s ideological fanaticism—is added, an insight into the psychological makeup that led to the Nazi leader’s most crucial decisions may be possible, also with regard to the Jews.
Ideological fanaticism and pragmatic calculation constantly interacted in Hitler’s decisions. The ideological obsession was unwavering, but tactical considerations were no less compelling. Sometimes, however, the third element, uncontrolled fury, would burst into the open—triggered by some obstacle, some threat, some defeat—sweeping away all practical considerations. Then, fed by the torrent of ideological fanaticism, the murderous fury would explode in an unlimited urge for destruction and death.
CHAPTER 4
The New Ghetto
I
“Cell 6: approximately 5 m. high, window approx. 40 × 70 cm. at a height of 4 meters, which gives the feeling of a cellar…. Wooden plank with straw mat and two blankets, a wooden bucket, a jug, a basin, soap, a towel, no mirror, no toothbrush, no comb, no brush, no table, no book from January 12 [1935] until my departure on September 18; no newspaper from January 12 to August 17; no bath and no shower from January 12 to August 10; no leaving of the cell, except for interrogations, from January 12 to July 1. Incarceration in an unlighted cell from April 16 to May 1, then from May 15 to August 27, a total of 119 days.”1
This was the Würzburg wine merchant Leopold Obermayer writing about the first of his imprisonments in Dachau, in a seventeen-page report, dated October 10, 1935, which he managed to smuggle out to his lawyer. It was seized by the Gestapo and found after the war in their Würzburg files. Obermayer had a doctorate in law (from Frankfurt University); and he was a practicing Jew and a Swiss citizen. October 29, 1934, he had complained to the Würzburg police that his mail was being opened. Two days later, having been ordered to report to headquarters, he was arrested. From then on he became a special case for the local Gestapo chief, Josef Gerum, a Nazi “old fighter” with a bad reputation even among his colleagues. Gerum accused Obermayer of spreading accusations about the new regime. Shortly afterward nude photographs of Obermayer’s male lovers were found in his bank safe. Both a Jew and a homosexual: For Gerum this was indeed a rewarding catch.
In his report Obermayer alludes many times to his tormentors’ boundless hatred of the Jews; they assured him that he would never be set free, and tried to drive him to suicide. Why didn’t they kill him? Writing about Obermayer’s story, Martin Broszat and Elke Fröhlich give no clear explanation. It seems, however, that murdering a Swiss citizen, albeit a Jewish one, was not yet done lightly in 1935, all the more so since the Swiss consulate in Munich, and later the legation in Berlin, were aware of Obermayer’s incarceration; the Ministry of Justice in particular was worried about the possibility of Swiss intervention.2
Under interrogation Obermayer was pressed to give details about his lovers; he refused and was beaten up. On May 15, as he was once more being taken to the camp commander’s office for interrogation, he asked an SS man named Lang, who had just threatened to shoot him, whether he had any compassion at all. Lang replied: “No, for Jews I have none.” Obermayer complained to the commander, SS-Oberführer Deubel, about the way he was being treated. “Thereupon the SS-Truppenführer standing at the window said: ‘You are not a human being, you are a beast!’ I started to answer: ‘Frederick the Great was also one….’ Before I could say another word, this Truppenführer hit me in the face: my upper middle tooth was knocked out and I started bleeding from the mouth and nose: ‘You Jewish pig, comparing yourself to Frederick the Great!’” Further retribution was immediate: unlighted cell, no straw mat on the wooden plank, arms tied behind the back, manacles left unopened for up to thirty-six hours, so that, Obermayer wrote, he had to defecate and urinate in his trousers.3
In mid-September 1935 Obermayer was transferred from Dachau to an ordinary prison in Ochsenfurt, pending court interrogation. In the meantime Obermayer’s lawyer, Rosenthal, a Jew, had also been arrested, and it was in his house that Gerum found the incriminating report about the conditions of Obermayer’s detention in Dachau. Rosenthal was released and later left Germany: His wife had committed suicide. The court in Ochsenfurt did not keep Obermayer for long. At Gerum’s insistence the Jewish homosexual was taken back to Dachau on October 12, 1935.4 Obermayer will reappear in these pages.
At this time Germany and the world were witnessing a dramatic consolidation of Hitler’s internal and international power. The murder of Ernst Röhm and other SA leaders on the notorious Night of the Long Knives in June 1934 eliminated even the faintest possibility of an alternative source of power within the party. Immediately following Hindenburg’s death, the naming of Hitler as Führer and chancellor on August 2 made him the sole source of legitimacy in Germany. Hitler’s popularity reached new heights in 1935: On January 13 an overwhelming majority of the Saar population voted for return of the territory to the Reich. On March 16 general conscription and establishment of the Wehrmacht
were announced. No foreign power dared to respond to these massive breaches of the Versailles Treaty; the common front against Germany formed at Stresa by Britain, France, and Italy in April 1935, in order to defend Austria’s independence against any German annexation attempt and preserve the status quo in Europe, had crumbled by June, when the British signed a separate naval agreement with Germany. On March 17 of that year, Hitler had been in Munich, and a report for the clandestine Socialist Party vividly captured the overall mood:
“Enthusiasm on 17 March enormous. The whole of Munich was on its feet. People can be forced to sing, but they can’t be forced to sing with such enthusiasm. I experienced the days of 1914 and can only say that the declaration of war did not make the same impact on me as the reception of Hitler on 17 March…. Trust in Hitler’s political talent and honest intentions is getting ever greater, just as generally Hitler has again won extraordinary popularity. He is loved by many.”5