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

by Saul Friedlander

  51. Ibid., pp. 97ff.

  52. Ibid.

  53. Ibid., p. 30.

  54. Carl Schmitt, Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes (Hamburg, 1938), p. 18. For the translation see Susan Shell, “Taking Evil Seriously: Schmitt’s Concept of the Political and Strauss’s True Politics,” in Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Nigorski, eds., Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker (Lanham, Md., 1994), p. 183, n. 22. I am grateful to Eugene R. Sheppard for having drawn my attention to this text. All in all Schmitt’s anti-Semitism appears to have run deeper than mere opportunism, and his political and ideological commitment between 1933 and 1945 cannot, it seems, be equated with mere “card-carrying,” as his defenders would have it. See, for example, Dan Diner, “Constitutional Theory and ‘State of Emergency’ in Weimar Republic: The Case of Carl Schmitt,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte 17 (1988): 305.

  55. For a good overview of the impact of Nazi ideology on German scientific research, see the essays in H. Mehrtens and S. Richter, eds., Naturwissenschaft, Technik und NS-Ideologie (Frankfurt, 1980). For a very thorough survey of the development of biology in Nazi Germany, see Deichmann, Biologen unter Hitler

  56. On this issue see Cocks, Psychotherapy in the Third Reich, p. 7.

  57. Beyerchen, Scientists under Hitler, pp. 156ff.

  58. See Hans Buchheim, “Die SS—Das Herrschaftsinstrument,” in Hans Buchheim et al., Anatomie des SS-Staates, 2 vols., Olten, 1965, vol. 1, pp. 55 ff; in particular George C. Browder, Foundations of the Nazi Police State. The Formation of Sipo and SD, Lexington, 1990.

  59. Browder, Foundations of the Nazi Police State, p. 231.

  60. Buchheim, “Die SS,” p. 54.

  61. All the details about Aus den Ruthen’s brides are taken from William L. Combs, The Voice of the SS: A History of the SS Journal Das Schwarze Korps, vol. 1 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1985), pp. 29–30.

  62. Heinrich Himmler, “Reden, 1936–1939,” F 37/3, IfZ, Munich.

  63. Helmut Heiber, ed., Reichsführer!…Briefe an und von Himmler (Stuttgart, 1968), p. 44. In his answer the researcher, SS-Haupsturmführer Dr. K. Mayer, mentioned that, although no Jewish ancestry was found, Mathilde von Kemnitz had no fewer than nine theologians among her forefathers which, for him, offered the explanation. To which Walther Darré remarked: “I have three Reformators among my ancestors. Does it make me unacceptable to the SS?” Ibid., p. 45, n. 3.

  64. Ibid., p. 52, as well as pp. 64, 66, 75, 231, 245.

  65. See in Friedlander and Milton, Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 11, part 2, pp. 124–25.

  66. Heiber, Reichsführer, p. 50.

  67. “Warum wird über das Judentum geschult?” SS-Leitheft 3, no. 2, 22 Apr. 1936.

  68. Ibid., quoted in Josef Ackermann, Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe (Göttingen, 1970), p. 159.

  69. For the entire case see Friedlander and Milton, Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 11, part 2, , pp. 55ff.

  70. For the reorganization of the SD, see Wildt, Die Judenpolitik des SD, pp. 25, 73ff. I wish to express my thanks to Dr. Wildt and to Dr. Norbert Frei for allowing me to have access to this study and its appended documents before publication.

  71. For the administrative structure of the SD in 1936–37, see Hebert, Best, p. 578, Drobisch, “Die Judenreferate,” pp. 239–40. For Wisliceny’s indication see Hans Safrian, Die Eichmann-Männer (Vienna, 1993), p. 26.

  72. For the development and organization of the Gestapo see Johannes Tuchel and Reinhold Schattenfroh, Zentrale des Terrors (Berlin, 1987).

  73. Herbert, Best, p. 187.

  74. About the topics discussed at that meeting see Wildt, Die Judenpolitik des SD, pp. 45ff.

  75. II. 112 to II. 11, 15.6.37, Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers SS, SD Hauptamt, Abt. II 112, microfilm MA–554, IfZ, Munich. It is hard to tell on the basis of what concrete “evidence” the SD spun such fantastic links.

  76. Ibid.

  77. Drobisch, “Die Judenreferate,” p. 242.

  78. Ibid., as well as Götz Aly and Karl-Heinz Roth, Die restlose Erfassung: Volkszählen, Identifizieren, Aussondern im Nationalsozialismus (Berlin, 1984), pp. 77–79.

  79. Wildt, Die Judenpolitik des SD, p. 134.

  80. Shlomo Aronson, Heydrich und die Anfänge des SD und der Gestapo (1931–1935) (Berlin, 1967), p. 275.

  81. Reinhard Heydrich, Wandlungen unseres Kampfes (Munich, 1935).

  82. Wildt, Die Judenpolitik des SD, p. 33.

  83. Ibid., p. 66–67. Excerpts of this document were previously published in Susanne Heim, “Deutschland muss ihnen ein Land ohne Zukunft sein: Die Zwangsemigration der Juden 1933 bis 1938,” in Beiträge zur Nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik, vol. 11, Arbeitsmigration und Flucht (Berlin, 1993).

  84. Safrian, Die Eichmann-Männer, p. 28.

  85. SD main region Rhine to SD-Commander, SD main region Fulda-Werra, 18.9.37, Himmler Archives, Berlin Document Center, microfilm No. 270, roll 2 (LBI, NY, microfilm 133g).

  86. The Commander, concentration camp Columbia, to Inspector of the concentration camps, SS-Gruppenführer Eicke, 28.1.1936, SS-Standort Berlin, microfilm MA–333, IfZ, Munich.

  87. The Commander of the SS Death Head units to Chief of the SS Personnel Office, 30.1.1936, ibid.

  88. The Chief of the SS Personnel Office to Standortführer-SS, Berlin, 4.2.1936, ibid.

  89. Martin Broszat, “Nationalsozialistische Konzentrationslager” in Buchheim et al., Anatomie des SS-Staates, p. 75.

  90. Ibid., pp. 173–74.

  91. Ibid., pp. 78–79.

  92. Ibid., p. 81.

  93. Ibid., pp. 81–82.

  94. Burleigh and Wippermann, The Racial State, p. 116.

  95. Ibid., pp. 119–20. For details about Ritter’s research, see in particular Michael Zimmermann, Verfolgt, vertrieben, vernichtet: Die nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik gegen Sinti und Roma (Essen, 1989), pp. 25ff.

  96. For details on the Gypsy camps see in particular Sybil Milton, “Vorstufe zur Vernichtung: Die Zigeunerlager nach 1933,” VfZ 43, no. 1 (1995): 121ff.

  97. Burleigh and Wippermann, The Racial State, p. 191.

  98. Ibid., p. 196.

  99. Ibid., p. 197.

  100. Broszat and Fröhlich, Alltag und Widerstand, p. 466.

  101. Ibid., pp. 450ff.

  102. Ibid., p. 461.

  103. Ibid., p. 463.

  104. Ibid., pp. 475–76.

  105. For the most complete investigation of this subject, see Reiner Pommerin, Sterilisierung der “Rheinlandbastarde”: Das Schicksal einer farbigen deutschen Minderheit 1918–1937 (Düsseldorf, 1979).

  106. Ibid., pp. 44ff.

  107. Dokumente des Verbrechens: Aus Akten des Dritten Reiches 1933–1945, vol. 2 (Berlin, 1993), pp. 83ff.

  108. Ibid., pp. 122ff. Also Pommerin, Sterilisierung der “Rheinlandbastarde,” pp. 71ff.

  109. Burleigh and Wippermann, The Racial State, p. 130.

  110. Führer’s Deputy (the chief of staff) to all Gauleiters, 30. März 1936, Stellvertreter des Führers (Anordnungen…), 1936, Db 15.02, IfZ, Munich.

  111. For the sterilization policy see the already mentioned studies by Bock, Proctor, Schmuhl, and others as well as Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995), pp. 23ff.

  112. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, p. 43.

  113. Ibid., p. 187.

  114. Burleigh and Wippermann, The Racial State, p. 154.

  115. Ibid.

  116. Ernst Klee, “Euthanasie” im NS-Staat: Die Vernichtung “lebensunwerten Lebens” (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), p. 62. According to Hans-Walter Schmuhl, some psychiatric patients were killed between 1933 and 1939 on the basis of local initiatives. Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie (Göttingen, 1987), p. 180.

  117. Ibid., p. 61. The attitudes of these pastors should not hide the fact that from the outset, even the sterilization policy encountered mostly
silent but nonetheless tangible opposition from the wider population, particularly in Catholic areas. See Dirk Blasius, “Psychiatrischer Alltag im Nationalsozialismus,” in Peukert and Reulecke, Die Reihen fast geschlossen, pp. 373–74.

  118. Klee, “Euthanasie” im NS-Staat, p. 67.

  119. Burleigh and Wippermann, The Racial State, p. 142; Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, p. 93–96; Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, p. 39.

  120. Martin Höllen, “Episkopat und T4,” in Götz Aly, ed., Aktion T4 1939–1945: Die “Euthanasie”-Zentrale in der Tiergartenstrasse 4 (Berlin, 1987), pp. 84–85; Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (New York, 1974), pp. 64ff.

  121. Höllen, “Episkopat und T4”; Sereny, Into That Darkness, pp. 67–68.

  122. Ibid., pp. 68–69. Burleigh has doubts about the reliability of Hartl’s testimony, but does not question the existence of Mayer’s memorandum. Cf. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, p. 175.

  Chapter 7 Paris, Warsaw, Berlin—and Vienna

  1. See especially Pierre Birnbaum, Le peuple et les gros: Histoire d’un mythe (Paris, 1979).

  2. Georges Bernanos, La grande peur des bien-pensants, in Essais et ecrits de combat (Paris, 1971), p. 329.

  3. Ibid., p. 350.

  4. Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Bagatelles pour un Massacre (Paris, 1937); André Gide, “Les Juifs, Céline et Maritain,” Nouvelle Revue Franfaise (Apr. 1, 1938). Within months Céline’s Bagatelles was translated into German under the title Judenverschwörung in Frankreich (Jewish conspiracy in France) and received rave reviews from Streicher’s Stürmer and from the SS weekly Das Schwarze Korps as well as an array of provincial papers. Albrecht Betz, “Céline im Dritten Reich,” in Hans Manfred Bock et al., eds., Entre Locarno et Vichy: Les relations culturelles franco-alleman-des dans les années 1930 (Paris, 1993), vol. 1, p. 720.

  5. Jean Giraudoux, Pleins pouvoirs (Paris, 1939).

  6. Quoted in Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France (Berkeley, Calif., 1986), p. 265. For the evolution of Bergery’s attitude on the Jewish issue (he himself was probably part Jewish), see a highly nuanced analysis in Philippe Burrin, La Dérive fasciste: Doriot, Déat, Bergery 1933–1945 (Paris, 1986), pp. 237ff.

  7. Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars (Bloomington, Ind., 1983), p. 1.

  8. Béla Vago, The Shadow of the Swastika: The Rise of Fascism and Anti-Semitism in the Danube Basin, 1936–1939 (London, 1975), pp. 15–16.

  9. Friedlander and Milton, Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 8, American Jewish Archives Cincinnati: The Papers of the World Jewish Congress 1939–1945, ed. Abraham L. Peck (New York, 1990), p. 21. (The translation from the Polish has been kept as it was.)

  10. Ibid., p. 20.

  11. Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe, pp. 23–24.

  12. Ibid., p. 27. Mendelsohn uses the statistics compiled by the foremost historian of Polish Jewry between the wars, Rafael Mahler, whose standard work, Yehudei Polin bein Shtei Milhamot ha-Olam [The Jews of Poland between the two world wars], was published in Tel Aviv in 1968.

  13. Ibid., pp. 29–30.

  14. Joseph Marcus, Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland 1919–1939 (Berlin, 1983), p. 362.

  15. S. Andreski, “Poland,” in S.J. Woolf, ed., European Fascism (London, 1968), pp. 178ff.

  16. Ibid., pp. 362–63.

  17. Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe, p. 74.

  18. These percentages are quoted in Leslie Buell, Poland: Key to Europe (New York, 1939), p. 303, and reproduced in Götz Aly and Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne für eine neue europäische Ordnung (Hamburg, 1991), p. 86.

  19. Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe, p. 75.

  20. Ibid., p. 71.

  21. Ibid., p. 73.

  22. For the details of the plan mentioned here see Leni Yahil, “Madagascar—Phantom of a Solution for the Jewish Question,” in Bela Vago and George L. Mosse, eds., Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe (New York, 1974), pp. 315ff. For an account of Polish efforts to obtain the support of the League of Nations and that of foreign countries for the immigration of Jews to their colonies (Madagascar) or to Palestine see Pawel Korzec, Juifs en Pologne: La question juive pendant l’entre-deux guerres (Paris 1980), pp. 250ff.

  23. Rolf Vogel, Ein Stempel hat gefehlt: Dokumente zur Emigration deutscher Juden (Munich, 1977), pp. 170–71.

  24. Yahil, “Madagascar,” p. 321.

  25. Jacques Adler, Face à la persecution: Les organisations juives à Paris de 1940 à 1944 (Paris, 1985), p. 25.

  26. Ibid., pp. 26–27.

  27. It is extremely difficult to evaluate the exact number of foreign Jews living in France in the late thirties, as a result of the reemigration of some of the immigrants. Approximately 55,000 Jews entered France between 1933 and the beginning of the war. Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (New York, 1981), p. 36.

  28. Michael R. Marrus, “Vichy Before Vichy: Antisemitic Currents in France During the 1930’s,” Wiener Library Bulletin 33 (1980): 16.

  29. Vicki Caron, “Loyalties in Conflict: French Jewry and the Refugee Crisis, 1933–1935,” LBIY 36 (1991): 320.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Ibid., p. 326.

  32. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, pp. 54ff.

  33. Marrus, “Vichy Before Vichy,” pp. 17–18.

  34. Some historians see a distinct regression of French anti-Semitism between the end of the Dreyfus Affair and the mid-thirties, others—with whom I tend to agree—perceive persistent strands of anti-Jewish attitudes, mainly in the cultural field, even throughout the “quieter” years. For the first interpretation, see Paula Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Remaking of French Jewry, 1906–1939 (New York, 1979); for the second see Léon Poliakov, Histoire de l’Antisémitisme, vol. 4, L’Europe Suicidaire 1870–1933 (Paris, 1977), pp. 281ff.

  35. Jean Lacouture, Léon Blum (Paris, 1977), p. 305.

  36. See mainly David H. Weinberg, A Community on Trial: The Jews of Paris in the 1930s (Chicago, 1977), pp. 78ff.

  37. Ibid., pp. 114–16.

  38. Eugen Weber, Action Française: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth-Century France (Stanford, Calif., 1962), p. 363.

  39. There were three Jewish ministers in the first cabinet (Blum, Cécile Leon-Brunschwicg, and Jules Moch) and three in the second (Blum, Moch, and Pierre Mendès-France). Stephen A. Schuker, “Origins of the ‘Jewish Problem’ in the Later Third Republic,” in Frances Malino and Bernard Wasserstein, eds., The Jews in Modern France (Hanover, N.H., 1985), pp. 156–57.

  40. Robert Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave, 1933–1939 (New Haven, Conn., 1995), pp. 55, 278–79. According to Soucy, Doriot himself dismissed anti-Semitism at least until 1937. In 1936 his party received financial support from three Jewish-owned banks (Rothschild, Worms, and Lazard), and among his closest collaborators there was a Jew, Alexander Abremski, and the partly Jewish Bertrand de Jouvenel. Abremski was killed in a automobile accident in 1938; in that same year Doriot changed his position on the Jewish issue.

  41. Michel Laval, Brasillach ou la trahison du clerc (Paris, 1992), pp. 75–76. See also Pierre-Marie Dioudonnat, Je suis partout, 1930–1944 (Paris, 1973).

  42. Rita Thalmann, “Du Cercle de Sohlberg au Comité France-Allemagne: une évolution ambigüe de la coopération franco-allemande,” in Bock, Entre Locarno et Vichy, vol. 1, pp. 67ff.

  43. Reinhard Bollmus, Das Amt Rosenberg und seine Gegner: Zum Machtkampf im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem (Stuttgart, 1970), pp. 121ff.

  44. For the protocol of the meeting as established by Wilhelm Stuckart, see Hans Mommsen and Susanne Willems, eds., Herrschaftsalltag im Dritten Reich: Studien und Texte (Düsseldorf, 1988), pp. 445ff. For Stuckart’s remark see ibid., p. 446.

  45. Ibid., p. 448.

  46. Ibid., p. 457.

  47. Fridolf Kudlien, Ärtzte im Nationalsozial
ismus (Cologne, 1985), p. 76.

  48. Akten der Reichskanzlei, vol. 5 (24 Jan. 1935–5 Feb. 1938), serial number 859, IfZ, Munich.

  49. Friedlander and Milton, Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 20, pp. 85–87, and Akten der Parteikanzlei der NSDAP (abstracts), part 1, vol. 1, p. 245. In a meeting with Hitler on December 3, 1937, it was decided that “within weeks” the minister of the interior would submit to the chief of the Reich Chancellery the draft of a Law for the exclusion of Jewish physicians from medical practice. Ibid., p. 97.

  50. Ibid.

  51. Reich Minister of Education…, 25.11.1936, Reichsministerium für Wissenschaft…, microfilm MA 103/1, IfZ, Munich.

  52. Ibid., 19.4.1937.

  53. Akten der Parteikanzlei, microfiches 016639–40, IfZ, Munich.

  54. Akten der Parteikanzlei der NSDAP (abstracts), part 1, vol. 2, p. 262.

  55. Ibid. The reason for Hitler’s decision can be tentatively surmised on the basis of the issues raised by the minister of education himself. Moreover, when it appeared, on September 10, 1935, that a similar law about Jewish schooling would be enforced from the beginning of the school year 1936, Cardinal Bertram sent a protest to Minister of Education Rust on precisely the issue of the converted Jewish pupils. See Akten deutscher Bischöfe, vol. 3, 1935–1936, p. 57.

  56. Regarding the general situation of Jewish students in Nazi Germany see Götz von Olenhusen, “Die ‘nichtarischen’ Studenten” and Grüttner, Studenten im Dritten Reich, pp. 212ff. For details on the doctorates issue, see also Friedländer, “The Demise of the German Mandarins,” pp. 75ff.

  57. Wilhelm Grau to State Secretary Kunisch, Reich Ministry of Education…, 18.2.1936, Reichsministerium für Wissenschaft u. Erziehung, microfilm MA 103/1 IfZ, Munich.

  58. Reich Minister of Education, 28.4.1936, ibid.

  59. The Dean, Philosophy Faculty of the Friedrich Wilhelm University, 29.2.1936, ibid.

  60. The Führer’s Deputy to the Reich Minister of the Interior, 15.10.1936, ibid.

  61. Reich Minister of Education…, 15.4.1937, ibid.

  62. Dean Weinhandel, Philosophical Faculty, Kiel, to Reich Minister of Education, 21.4.1937, ibid. The issue of Heller’s dissertation, one of the elements that triggered the revision process in regard to doctoral degrees for Jews, had a delayed aftermath. Heller defended his dissertation on July 5, 1934, and was awarded summa cum laude. Soon after, Dr. Heller left for Tel Aviv, where he was informed, on November 23, 1935, by the dean’s office in Berlin that his diploma would be sent to him on receipt of 4.25 RM to cover postage. But, instead of the diploma, Heller received the following letter from Dean Bieberach on January 10, 1936: