Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 01: The Years of Persecution

by Saul Friedlander

  Indeed, Göring was no exception, nor were the Stuttgart society ladies. Gestapo reports from various parts of the Reich indicate that at the end of 1935 and in 1936, many Germans were still not hesitating to do business with Jews. Despite the party’s growing concern, the cattle trade in rural areas remained largely Jewish; according to a Gestapo report on the month of November 1935 “the Jews almost totally control the cattle trade [in Hesse]. They have transferred their activities to the late evening hours or to night time. Sometimes it even happens that Volksgenossen put themselves at the Jews’ disposal as hidden representatives, i.e., under their own name but for the benefit of the Jews, and do business for them in the large markets of cattle for slaughter in Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, and Koblenz.”78Almost one year later, a report from the Franconian district of Hipoltstein sounded the alarm: “The peasants’ business relations with Jews have assumed such a dimension that the political leadership felt prompted to intervene energetically.”79

  In the cities the annual late-winter sales at Jewish stores were big occasions. Thus in February 1936, the Munich police directorate reported that the sale at the Jewish-owned textile house Sally Eichengrün had drawn “large crowds.” At times as many as three hundred eager female customers stood in line on the street outside the store.80 And various SD reports indicate that even in 1937 economic relations between Germans and Jews still remained active in several domains, with, for example, members of the aristocracy, of the officer corps, and of the high bourgeoisie still keeping their assets in Jewish banks.81

  It is difficult to assess what was paid—as an average percentage of value—to the tens of thousands of Jewish owners of small businesses during this early phase of Aryanization. As noted in chapter 1, recent research indicates that the considerable scope of Aryanization at the medium- and small- business level was not indicative of the situation at the higher levels of the economy: There the competition was more limited, and the attitude toward extortion still negative, because the enterprises involved had higher international visibility. The Nazis decided, therefore, to avoid any head-on clash.82

  Dozens of Jews remained on boards of directors and in other important managerial positions at companies such as Mannesmann, IG Farben, Gesellschaft für Elektrische Unternehmungen, and so on. The Dresdner Bank, for instance, “still had 100 to 150 Jewish employees in Berlin in 1936, and five directors retained their posts until the period 1938 to 1940.”83

  When Aryanization did take place at the big-business level, there are indications in some very significant instances that fair prices were being offered to the owners until the end of 1937, when the situation was to change drastically. Self-interest was obviously part of the motivation for this kind of seeming restraint and fairness. The economic recovery remained uncertain. Some of the largest German firms, eager to avoid additional taxation of their new profits or to escape the effects of eventual devaluation, used the costly acquisition of tested yet depreciable enterprises to improve their accountable benefits. In any case, this is both the Nazi and the business press interpreted the acquisition by Henkel of the Jewish-owned Norddeutsche Hefeindustrie above par, and a similar operation by Unilever’s main German subsidiary.84 In general, however, the overall economic situation of the Jews in Germany was steadily worsening.

  A remarkable contemporary summary appeared in December 1935 in the Austrian Reichspost “The Jewish merchants in small- and medium-size [German] provincial towns have, for some time now, been fighting a difficult battle. In these towns, the weapon of the boycott can be utilized far better than in a place like Berlin, for example. The consequence is that there is now a massive sell-off of Jewish retail shops…. There are reports…from certain areas…that an average of 40 to 50 percent of all Jewish businesses have already been transferred to Aryan ownership. Along with this, there are many small towns in which the last residues of Jewish business activity have already been liquidated. This is also the reason for the fact that various small congregations are offering their synagogues for sale. Only recently, a farmer in Franconia was able to purchase such a building for the price of 700 marks—for the purpose of storing grain.”85

  In villages and small cities, harassment was often the easiest way to compel Jews to sell their businesses at a fraction of their value and move away or emigrate. In the larger cities and for larger businesses, credit restrictions and other boycott measures devised by Aryan firms led to the same result. Those Jews who clung to their economic activity were increasingly confined to the rapidly shrinking Jewish market. Excluded from their occupations, Jewish professionals became peddlers, either selling wares out of their homes or traveling from place to place—a reversal of the historic course of Jewish social mobility. Barkai has noted that, since peddling had to be registered, the state and party authorities were sometimes under the misapprehension that Jewish economic activity was growing. After the Nuremberg Laws forbade Jews to employ female Aryans under forty-five in their homes, young Jewish girls moved into the newly vacant positions, again reversing a trend that modern Jewish women had been supporting, and fighting for, for decades.86

  This overall evolution is unquestionable; yet it demands to be nuanced if we are to rely on SD reports. Thus, the annual report for the year 1937 of the SD’s Jewish section gives the impression that attitudes toward the Jews among some sectors of the population remained mixed, and were fed not only by economic but also by religious and possibly some political motives:

  “The year covered by the report has shown that large parts of the population, and even of the Party community, do not bother anymore even about the most basic demand, namely not to buy from the Jew. This kind of sabotage is particularly strong in strictly Catholic areas and among the supporters of the Confessing Church, who partly from ideological motives—the solution of the Jewish question by way of baptism and the inclusion of the Jews in the Christian community—but also partly in order to strengthen the opposition to National Socialism, try to hamper the work of the Reich with regard to Jewry. The best proof of the success of this oppositional activity is the fact that, in contrast to other parts of the Reich, in mid and lower Franconia as well as in Swabia a move of the Jewish population is taking place from the cities to the rural areas, where the Jews, under the moral protection of the Church, are less directly affected by the measures taken by the Reich. A similar trend can be noticed in the Catholic areas of the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau and in Hesse.”87

  Although the SD report only described the situation in some areas, and although—since the contrary trend is generally documented—the movement of Jews from the cities to the countryside must have been very limited, anti-Semitism was apparently not becoming an active force within the overall population. The words “do not bother anymore” even indicate a growing indifference, on this subject, to party propaganda. Yet, as before, during these two years some religious constraints and economic self-interest seem to have been the main motivations for such “lax” attitudes toward the Jews. But the forthcoming disappearance of almost all Jewish economic activity, coupled with more violent official pressure, would soon make themselves felt.

  Once Hitler had taken concrete steps to launch the Reich on the course of a major military confrontation, the fate of the conservatives was sealed. At the end of 1937, Schacht would be on his way out, replaced by the Nazi Walther Funk. At the beginning of 1938, other conservative ministers, including Foreign Minister Neurath and Defense Minister Blomberg, would follow. At the same time, the army chief of staff, Gen. Werner von Fritsch, left in disgrace on trumped-up charges of homosexuality. Hitler himself became the commander of the armed forces, which henceforward were led de facto by a new Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW), under Gen. Wilhelm Keitel. The ever weaker and ever more ambiguous protection offered by the conservatives against radicalization of the regime’s anti-Jewish policies had therewith disappeared.

  In the directive establishing the Four-Year Plan, Hitler demanded passage o
f a law that “would make the whole of Jewry responsible for all damage some individual members of this gang of criminals caused the German economy and thereby the German people.”88 In order to punish the Jews for Gustloff’s death (Gustloff, it will be remembered, was the Nazi representative in Switzerland who was murdered by a Jewish student in early February 1936), the decree concerning the collective fine Hitler wanted to impose on the Jews of Germany was to be ready by the end of the assassin’s trial in Switzerland. The deadline was missed because discussions between the Ministries of Finance and the Interior on technicalities regarding the fine continued throughout 1937 and the first half of 1938. But the postponement really resulted from Göring’s hesitations about the potential effects of such a decree on the Reich’s foreign currency and raw materials situation.89 It would be Göring, however, who finally announced the imposition of a collective fine on the Jews of Germany after the Kristallnacht pogrom that followed Ernst vom Rath’s assassination.

  The waning of conservative influence, particularly with regard to the economic situation of the Jews, became palpable at various levels, as well as in the tone of the exchanges between party grandees and the Ministry of the Economy. In the fall of 1936, the Chemnitz clothing manufacturer Königsfeld became a target of growing harassment from the local party organizations. As the owner of the firm was a Mischling of the first degree married to a German woman and therefore still entitled to the status of full-fledged German citizen (Reichsbürger), and as, according to a Ministry of the Economy memorandum, no Jewish influence could be perceived in that enterprise, the party authorities in Saxony were requested to put an end to their campaign against the Königsfeld company. On December 6 Reichsstatthalter Mutschmann responded to this request in a letter to Councillor Hoppe at the ministry. Mutschmann was “astounded” by Hoppe’s stance regarding the “non-Aryan” Königsfeld enterprise: “Such a position is contrary to the National Socialist worldview and is, in my opinion, a sabotage of the Führer’s orders. I request you therefore not to change any aspect of the existing situation; otherwise I would be compelled to take countermeasures that might be quite unpleasant. In time I shall present your position to the Führer very clearly. In any case, I am not willing to transmit your instructions to the officials who are under my orders; quite the contrary, I am of the opinion that you have proven by your attitude that you are totally in the wrong job.”90

  Party activists now took it upon themselves to publish in the press the names of Volksgenossen who patronized Jewish stores; for good measure, the culprits’ addresses were added. Bormann had to react. In an order of October 23, 1937, he took issue with these initiatives by pointing out a well-known circumstance: Many shoppers were not aware that a particular store was Jewish, and thus found themselves exposed in the press for a totally unintentional misdeed. Names should therefore be carefully checked before publication, and party members who were in an area unfamiliar to them should avoid buying in Jewish stores by inquiring beforehand about the proprietors’ identity.91

  By 1936 it was clear that the Haavarah Agreement had brought Germany no economic or political advantages, but, quite the contrary, that channeling Jewish emigration toward Palestine could foster the creation of an independent Jewish state. Such a state could become a center of agitation against Nazi Germany or, worse still, could enhance and coordinate world Jewry’s power. The issue seemed to become particularly urgent from the end of 1936 and into 1937, when Britain’s Peel Commission recommended the division of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab-Palestinian states, with other areas to remain under British control. What should Germany’s diplomatic stance be? By April 1937 Ernst von Weizsäcker, head of the political division of the Wilhelmstrasse and future secretary of state, had adopted a position, consistently promoted by the Foreign Ministry’s Department Germany against the creation of a Jewish state; in concrete terms, however, the policy remained one of noninterference, which meant, among other things, no active support for the Arab national movement.92

  The Wilhelmstrasse’s anti-Zionist position became more adamant, at least on the level of principle, when, in June 1937, Foreign Minister Neurath himself took a stand: “The formation of a Jewish State or of a Jewish political entity under British Mandate is not in Germany’s interest,” Neurath cabled to his diplomatic representatives in London, Jerusalem, and Baghdad, “given the fact that such a state in Palestine would not absorb all the Jews of the world but would give them a new power position, under the cover of international law, something comparable to what the Vatican represents for political Catholicism or Moscow for the Comintern. That is why it is in the interest of Germany to contribute to the strengthening of the Arab world in order to offset, if need be, the increased power of world Jewry. Clearly, one cannot expect the direct intervention of Germany in order to influence the evolution of the Palestinian problem. However, it would be good if the interested foreign governments were not left uninformed of our position.”93

  Neurath’s position and the general trend of thought prevailing at the Foreign Ministry encouraged opponents of the Haavarah through the year 1937, although it was becoming clear that the recommendations of the Peel Commission were leading nowhere, mainly as a result of violent Arab opposition. But no one dared to take any concrete measures against the agreement, as Hitler had not yet expressed his viewpoint. His decision, announced at the end of January 1938, clearly implied maintenance of the Haavarah: Further Jewish emigration by all possible means. The bureaucracy was left with only one choice: Comply. And so it did.94

  A few days before Hitler’s decision, a somewhat less weighty matter was resolved in court: A Jewish businessman was sentenced for selling swastika flags and other national emblems. The court argued that, just as the law forbade Jews to display the national colors because they had no possible “inner relation” to the symbols of the movement or were even hostile to them, so trading in these symbols by Jews—an even more demeaning action—represented an offense against the honor of the movement and of the German people.95

  V

  On November 5, 1937, Hitler convened a wide array of military, economic, and foreign affairs experts to inform them of his strategic plans for the next four to five years. In the near future Hitler envisioned taking action against Czechoslovakia and against Austria (in that order), given the Western democracies’ glaring weakness of purpose. In fact Austria came first, due to an unforeseen set of circumstances cleverly exploited by Hitler.

  In the German-Austrian treaty of 1936, the Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg had promised to include some Nazi ministers in his cabinet. As, in the Nazis’ eyes, Schuschnigg was going neither far nor fast enough in acceding to their requirements, Hitler summoned him to Berchtesgaden in February 1938. Under threat of military action, Schuschnigg accepted the German dictator’s demands. Yet, once back in Vienna, he tried to outwit Hitler by announcing a plebiscite on Austrian independence. Hitler responded by threatening an immediate invasion of Austria if the plebiscite was not canceled. Berlin’s further demands—including Schuschnigg’s resignation and his replacement by an Austrian Nazi, Arthur Seyss-Inquart—were all accepted. Nonetheless Hitler’s course was now set: On March 12, 1938, the Wehrmacht crossed the Austrian border; the next day Austria was annexed to the Reich. On March 15 Hitler spoke from the balcony of the Hofburg to hundreds of thousands of ecstatic Viennese assembled on the Heldenplatz. His closing words could hardly have been surpassed: “As Führer and Chancellor of the German nation and Reich, I now report to history that my homeland has joined the German Reich.”96

  On March 16, as the Gestapo was coming to arrest him, the Jewish playwright and historian of culture, Egon Friedell, jumped to his death from the window of his Vienna apartment. Five Jews had committed suicide in Vienna in January 1938, four in February. In the second half of March, seventy-nine Viennese Jews killed themselves.97

  In Austrian author Thomas Bernhard’s last play, Heldenplatz, the Jewish professor Robert Schuster, originally from
Vienna, returns from Oxford to the Austrian capital sometime in the 1980s. For himself and his wife, he discovers, the past remains hauntingly present:

  My brother Josef may speak of luck

  that he managed such a spontaneous departure

  I always admired those who committed suicide

  I never believed that my brother would be capable of

  doing it….

  Later he alludes to his wife:

  For months, she again hears the really frightening way

  in which the masses were shouting on the Heldenplatz

  You know: on March fifteenth Hitler arrives

  at the Heldenplatz…98

  *Dacia was an ancient kingdom and a Roman province whose borders roughly corresponded to those of the Romanian state of the 1930s.

  *This tirade was in keeping with the party’s vituperative anti-Catholic campaign of the late thirties: Its main ideologue was Alfred Rosenberg, but soon Martin Bormann was to become its principal driving force.

  CHAPTER 8

  An Austrian Model?

  I

  On June 4, 1938, Sigmund Freud, aged eighty-two, was allowed to depart from Vienna, the city that had been his home since he was four years old. His apartment had twice been searched by the Gestapo, and his daughter Anna summoned for interrogation. Finally, after the Nazis had impounded part of his possessions and imposed the emigration tax, they demanded his signature on a declaration that he had not been ill treated. Freud dutifully signed, and added: “I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone.” The Gestapo men were too dull witted to perceive even such heavy-handed sarcasm, but the risk of such a comment was considerable—and one may wonder “whether there was something at work in Freud making him want to stay, and die, in Vienna.”1