A second major outbreak, one more usually referred to, occurred in mid-July in Berlin, mainly on the Kurfürstendamm, where elegant stores owned by Jews were still relatively active. Jochen Klepper, a deeply religious Protestant writer whose wife was Jewish, wrote in his diary on July 13: “Anti-Semitic excesses on the Kurfürstendamm…. The cleansing of Berlin of Jews threateningly announced.”100 A week later Klepper again wrote of what had happened on the Kurfürstendamm: Jewish women had been struck in the face; Jewish men had behaved courageously. “Nobody came to their help, because everyone is afraid of being arrested.”101 On September 7 Klepper, who in 1933 had lost his position with the radio because of his Jewish wife, was fired from the recently Aryanized Ullstein publishing house, where he had found some employment. That day he noticed that the signs forbidding Jews access to the swimming pool were up, and that even the small street in which he took walks with his wife had the same warning on one of its fences.102
The exiled German Socialist Party’s clandestine reports on the situation in the Reich (the so-called SOPADE [Sozialistische Partei Deutschlands] reports), prepared in Prague, extensively described the spread of anti-Jewish violence throughout Germany during the summer months of 1935. As has been seen, the wrath of Nazi radicals was particularly aroused by Jews who dared to use public swimming pools, by Jewish shops and Jews in marketplaces, and of course by Jewish race defilers. Sometimes the wrong targets were chosen, such as the Gestapo agent from Berlin who on July 13 was mistaken for a Jew in the Kassel swimming pool and beaten up by SA activists.103 Mostly though, there were no mistakes. Thus, on July 11, for example, approximately one hundred SA men descended on the cattle market in Fulda (as previously mentioned, many cattle dealers were Jews) and indiscriminately attacked both dealers and their customers, causing some to suffer severe injuries. According to the SOPADE report, “The cattle ran aimlessly through the streets and were only gradually brought back together again. The whole of Fulda was in agitation for days on end.” The Jüdisches Familienblatt, tongue in cheek, said that the Jewish dealers had brought to the market cows that had not been milked for an entire day; this angered the population, causing it to side with the suffering cows and against their Jewish tormentors.104
Pressure, violence, and indoctrination were not without their effects. An August 1935 SOPADE report cited an impressive list of new, locally initiated, measures against the Jews: “Bergzabern, Edenkoben, Höheinod, Breunigweiler, and other places prohibit Jews from moving in and forbid the sale of real estate to them…. Bad Tölz, Bad-Reichenhall, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and the mountain areas of Bavaria do not allow Jews access to their health resorts…. In Apolda, Berka, Blankenstein, Suiza, Allstadt, and Weimar, Jews are forbidden to attend cinemas.” In Magdeburg, Jews were not allowed to use the libraries; in Erlangen the tramways displayed signs declaring JEWS ARE NOT WELCOME! The report lists dozens of other places and activities forbidden to Jews.105
Not all party leaders opposed the spreading of anti-Jewish violence. Gauleiter Grohe of Cologne-Aachen, for example, was in favor of intensifying anti-Jewish actions in order “to raise the rather depressed mood among the lower middle class [Mittelstand].”106 This was not, however, the prevalent position—not because of potential negative reactions among the populace,107 but mainly because the regime could ill afford to give the impression inside and outside Germany that it was losing control of its own forces by allowing the spread of unbridled violence, particularly in view of the forthcoming Olympic Games. Repeated orders to abstain from unauthorized anti-Jewish actions were issued in Hitler’s name by Hess and others, but without complete success.
For Schacht the spread of anti-Jewish violence was particularly unwelcome. In the United States the economic boycott of German goods had flared up again. On May 3 the minister of the economy sent a memorandum to Hitler regarding “the imponderable factors influencing German exports,” in which he warned of the economic consequences of the new anti-Jewish campaign. On the face of it at least, Hitler fully agreed with Schacht: At that stage the violence had to stop.108
It was in this atmosphere that on August 20, 1935, a conference was called by Schacht at the Ministry of the Economy. Among those present were Minister of the Interior Frick, Justice Minister Gürtner, Prussian Finance Minister Johannes Popitz, Gauleiter and Bavarian Minister of the Interior Adolf Wagner, and representatives of the SD, the Gestapo, and the party’s Racial Policy Office.109
Frick opened the discussion by describing the additional anti-Jewish legislation, in line with the party program, that was being prepared by the ministry. On the other hand, he took the strongest possible stand against the prevalent unruly anti-Jewish attacks and recommended strong police action.110
Wagner concurred. Like Frick he favored further anti-Jewish legal measures, but mentioned that on this matter there were differences of opinion between party and state, as well as among various departments within the state apparatus itself. Not everything had to happen at once; in his opinion further measures had to be taken mainly against full Jews, not against mixed breeds (Mischlinge).111 Yet Wagner insisted that due to demands by a majority of the population for further anti-Jewish measures, new legal steps be taken against the economic activity of Jews.112 At that stage Wagner’s demands went unheeded.
The use of exclusively legal methods was obviously the line adopted at the meeting by the conservative Gürtner: It was dangerous to let the radicals get away with the impression that they were in fact implementing what the government wanted but was unable to do itself because of possible international consequences. “The principle of the Führer-state,” argued Gürtner, “had to be imposed against such initiatives.”113
As could have been expected, Schacht emphasized the damage caused by the anti-Jewish disorders and warned that the developing situation could threaten the economic basis of rearmament. He agreed that the party program had to be implemented, but that the implementation had to take place within a framework of legal instructions alone.114 Schacht s motives, we have seen, were dictated by short-term economic expediency. The meeting’s conclusions were brought to Hitler’s attention, and the measures laid out by Frick were further elaborated during late August and early September.115
Heydrich, at that time chief of the SD and head of the central office of the Gestapo in Berlin (Gestapa), attended the meeting. In a memorandum sent to all the participants on September 9 he reiterated the points he had made during the conference. In this document Heydrich outlined a series of measures aimed at further segregation of the Jews and, if possible, at the cancellation of their rights as citizens. All Jews in Germany should be subject to alien status. Contrary to what is often stated, however, Heydrich did not indicate that the emigration of all the Jews was to be the central aim of Nazi policy. Only in the last sentence of the memorandum did the SD chief express the hope that the restrictive measures he suggested would direct the Jews toward Zionism and strengthen their incentive to emigrate.116
On August 8 both Der Angriff and the Völkischer Beobachter had published, under the banner headline LAW AND PRINCIPLE IN THE JEWISH QUESTION, an announcement by the chief of the German Police, SS-ObergruppenFührer Kurt Daluege, that criminal statistics indicated a preeminence of Jews in all areas of crime. Both papers later complained of the lack of attention to this issue in the foreign press; papers abroad that had run the story had interpreted it as a preparation for new anti-Jewish measures, particularly nasty accusations, Der Angriff said.117
V
On the afternoon of September 15, 1935, the final parade of the annual Nuremberg party congress marched past Hitler and the top leadership of the NSDAP. The Party Congress of Freedom was coming to an end. At 8 P.M. that evening an unusual meeting of the Reichstag opened in the hall of the Nuremberg Cultural Association. It was the first and last time during Hitler’s regime that the Reichstag was convened outside Berlin. Nuremberg had last been the site of a German Reichstag (then the assembly of the German Empire’s estates) in 1543.11
8
In his speech Hitler briefly addressed the volatile international situation, which had compelled Germany to start rebuilding an army in order to defend its freedom. Ominously, he mentioned Lithuania’s control of Memel, a city inhabited by a majority of Germans. The threat posed by international Bolshevism was not forgotten: Hitler warned that any attempt by the Communists to set foot in Germany again would be quickly dealt with. Then he turned to the main topic of his address—the Jews:
The Jews were behind the growing tension among peoples. In New York Harbor, they had insulted the German flag on the passenger ship Bremen, and they were again launching an economic boycott against Germany. In Germany itself, their provocative behavior increasingly caused complaints from all sides. Hitler thus set the background. Then he came to his main point: “To prevent this behavior from leading to quite determined defensive action on the part of the outraged population, the extent of which cannot be foreseen, the only alternative would be a legislative solution to the problem. The German Reich Government is guided by the hope of possibly being able to bring about, by means of a singular momentous measure, a framework within which the German Volk would be in a position to establish tolerable relations with the Jewish people. However, should this hope prove false and intra-German and international Jewish agitation proceed on its course, a new evaluation of the situation would have to take place.”
After asking the Reichstag to adopt the laws that Göring was about to read, Hitler concluded his address with a short comment on each of the three laws: “The first and the second laws repay a debt of gratitude to the Movement, under whose symbol Germany regained its freedom, in that they fulfill a significant item on the program of the National Socialist Party. The third law is an attempt at a legislative solution to a problem which, should it yet again prove insoluble, would have to be assigned by law to the National Socialist Party for a definitive solution. Behind all three laws stands the National Socialist Party, and with it and behind it stands the nation.”119 The threat was unmistakable.
The first law, the Reich Flag Law, proclaimed that henceforth black, red, and white were the national colors and that the swastika flag was the national flag.120 The second, the Citizenship Law, established the fundamental distinction between “citizens of the Reich,” who were entitled to full political and civic rights, and “subjects,” who were now deprived of those rights. Only those of German or related blood could be citizens. Thus, from that moment on, in terms of their civic rights, the Jews had in fact a status similar to that of foreigners. The third, the Law for the Defense of German Blood and Honor, forbade marriages and extramarital relations between Jews and citizens of German or kindred blood. Marriages contracted in disregard of the law, even marriages contracted outside Germany, were considered invalid. Jews were not allowed to employ in their households female German citizens under forty-five years of age.121 Finally, Jews were forbidden to hoist the German flag (an offense against German honor), but were allowed to fly their own colors.
The preamble to the third law revealed all its implications: “Fully aware that the purity of German blood is the condition for the survival of the German Volk, and animated by the unwavering will to secure the German nation forever, the Reichstag has unanimously decided upon the following, which is thereby proclaimed.”122 This was immediately followed by paragraph one: “Marriages between Jews and citizens of German and related blood are forbidden.” The relation of the preamble to the text of the law reflected the extent of the racial peril represented by the Jew.
According to the September 17 Völkischer Beobachter, at a meeting later the same evening with leading party members, “the Führer took the opportunity to underscore the significance of the new laws and to point out that the National Socialist legislation presented the sole means for coming to passable terms with the Jews living in Germany. The Führer particularly stressed that, by virtue of these laws, the Jews in Germany were granted such opportunities in all areas of their own völkisch life as had not hitherto existed in any other land.”123 “In this connection,” the report continued, “the Führer renewed the order to the Party that it continue to refrain from taking any independent action against Jews.”124
In an interview granted on November 27, 1935, to Hugh Baillie, president of the American news agency United Press, Hitler, clearly aiming at the American public, linked the anti-Jewish laws to the danger of Bolshevik agitation.125
Taken at face value, the Nuremberg Laws did not mean the end of Jewish life in Germany. “We have absolutely no interest in compelling the Jews to spend their money outside Germany,” Goebbels declared at a meeting of propaganda officers held in Nuremberg on the morrow of the congress. “They should spend it here. One should not let them into every public swimming resort, but we should say: We have up there on the Baltic Sea, let’s say, one hundred resorts, and into one of them will go the Jews; there they should have their waiters and their business directors and their resort directors and there they can read their Jewish newspapers, of all of which we want to know nothing. It should not be the nicest resort, but maybe the worst of those we have, that we will give them (amusement in the audience)—and in the others, we’ll be among ourselves. That I consider right. We cannot push the Jews away, they are here. We do not have any island to which we could transport them. We have to take this into account….”126
Two different testimonies from the days following the congress report Hitler’s own intentions regarding the future of the Jews. According to Fritz Wiedemann, who was to become his adjutant, the Führer depicted the forthcoming situation to a small circle of Party members: “Out of all the professions, into a ghetto, enclosed in a territory where they can behave as becomes their nature, while the German people look on as one looks at wild animals.”127 From the perspective of 1935, this territorial isolation of the Jews would have had to take place in Germany (this is confirmed by the remark about the German people as onlookers). Thus Goebbels was probably repeating what he had heard from Hitler. The second testimony was quite different.
On September 25, 1935, Walter Gross, head of the party’s Racial Policy Office, reported to the regional chiefs of his organization the interpretation to the Nuremberg Laws that Hitler gave him, and, mainly, how he saw the next steps of the anti-Jewish policy.
It is worth noting that, once again, after taking a major step in line with his ideological goals, Hitler aimed at defusing its most extreme consequences on a tactical level. In the meeting with Gross, he warned the party not to rush ahead either in extending the scope of the new laws or in terms of direct economic action against the Jews. For Hitler the aim remained the limitation of Jewish influence within Germany and the separation of the Jews from the body of the nation; “more vigorous emigration” from Germany was necessary. Economic measures would be the next stage, but they must not create a situation that would turn the Jews into a public burden; thus carefully calculated steps were needed. As for the Mischlinge, Hitler favored their assimilation within a few generations—in order to avoid any weakening of the German potential for war. In the last words of the conversation, however, the pragmatic approach was suddenly gone. According to the Gross protocol, Hitler “declared furthermore, at this point, that in case of a war on all fronts, he would be ready [regarding the Jews] for all the consequences.”128
CHAPTER 5
The Spirit of Laws
I
A few weeks before the Nuremberg party congress, at the beginning of August 1935, Hitler decided that six Jewish or part-Jewish University of Leipzig professors, hitherto protected by the exception clauses of the Civil Service Law, must retire. On August 26 two officials of the Saxon Ministry of Education arrived for a meeting at the Reich Chancellery; they wanted to know whether, from now on, all non-Aryan civil servants were to be retired. Ministerial Councillor Wienstein informed them of the following:
“Basically one should decide case by case, as before. But in each case, however, one should consider that the approach to
the treatment of non-Aryans has become stricter. When the Civil Service Law was promulgated, the intention undoubtedly was to give non-Aryans the protection defined in paragraph 3, section 2 of the law, without any restriction. The new development, however, has led to a situation whereby non-Aryans can no longer refer to the above-mentioned instructions in order to claim the right to remain employed. Instead, decisions should, as Ministerial Councillor Wienstein again mentioned, be made “only case by case.”1
For several months, in fact, Jewish professors still ostensibly protected by the exception clauses had been dismissed. Victor Klemperer had received his dismissal notification in the mail on April 30. Sent via the Saxon Ministry of Education, it was signed by Reichsstatthalter Martin Mutschmann.2 Within a few months, in the wake of the new Citizenship Law, there were no longer any exceptions, and all remaining Jewish professors were expelled.
Much debate has arisen regarding the origins of the Nuremberg Laws: Were they the result of a haphazard decision or of a general plan aiming at the step-by-step exclusion of the Jews from German society and ultimately from the territory of the Reich? Depending on the view one takes, Hitler’s mode of decision making, in both Jewish and other matters, can be interpreted in different ways.
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