The Nazi press whipped up the anti-Semitic fervour, with Goebbels in the role of the ringleader. “Jewish question—take more of a lead,” he noted in early May 1935. During a stroll down Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm, he found himself angered by the number of Jews who still appeared in public. “Another veritable parade of Jews. That will have to be taken care of soon.”188 In the newspaper Der Angriff, he wrote: “Some people believe that we do not notice how Jewry is once more trying to spread out today across all our streets. The Jew had better respect the dictates of hospitality and not act as if he were our equal.”189
But in the spring of 1935, it became clear that once unleashed, anti-Semitic violence could develop a dynamic of its own and spread beyond the control of party authorities. In late May in Munich, Nazi activists and SS men in civilian clothing descended upon Jewish businesses in the city, intimidating customers and employees, and forcing shop owners to close their doors. Passers-by who criticised what was going on were abused, and a few policemen physically attacked. “These conditions are intolerable,” protested the Jewish lawyer Leopold Weinmann, who had witnessed several of the incidents, in a letter to the Reich Interior Ministry. “Surely a cultured tourist city like Munich cannot tolerate regularly recurring scenes straight out of the Wild West.”190
In mid-July, there was also major anti-Semitic violence in Berlin. The starting point was a cinema on Kurfürstendamm where Jewish patrons had allegedly protested against the showing of the anti-Semitic Swedish film Petterson and Brendel. Goebbels, who was on holiday in the Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm and who discussed the matter intensely with Hitler from 12 to 14 July, remarked: “Telegram from Berlin: Jews demonstrating against an anti-Semitic film. The Führer has had enough…This is truly outlandish. Something will have to give soon.”191 On the evening of 15 July, as Der Angriff reported the next day, a mob assembled in front of the cinema in order to “express their dissatisfaction at the provocative behaviour of the Jewish cinemagoers.”192 Afterwards, the demonstrators moved on to nearby cafés and restaurants where they beat up Jewish patrons and passers-by. “The street echoed with countless repeated cries of ‘The Jews are our misfortune!,’ ” wrote the reporter for the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper.
Several Jewish shops were demolished. In panicked terror, several figures that were difficult to identify in the light of the street lamps fled across the boulevard…Vendors of Der Stürmer appeared with thick bundles of the paper and did brisk business. Gradually the police dispersed the mob and restored the normal flow of traffic. By 12.30 in the morning the tumult was over.193
The unrest was replicated in many German cities and regions, accompanied by a frenetic anti-Semitic publicity campaign. “The anti-Jewish agitation has exceeded all bounds,” noted Victor Klemperer in his diary in early August 1935. “It is much worse than during the first boycott. Here and there, there have been incipient pogroms. Everyone fears that they will be beaten to death before too long.”194 With violence threatening to get completely out of hand, the Nazi leadership decided that the time was ripe to draw in the reins. “Clear instructions from central administrative offices are needed as to what is allowed and what is not in the anti-Jewish wave of propaganda,” the state police office of the region of Cologne was already demanding in June 1935. Otherwise, police officers, who “ultimately bore the entire weight of responsibility,” could not count on adequate support when they intervened.195
On 4 August, at the Gau party conference in Essen, Interior Minister Frick announced comprehensive legal measures concerning the “Jewish question,” explicitly coming out against street terror by radical party members.196 Five days later, Hitler had his deputy Hess tell all party offices to prevent individual acts of violence against Jews in future.197 These individual instances of persecution had served their purpose in so far as they had paved the way for a further tightening of anti-Semitic legislation. Speaking in the wake of the unrest in Berlin, the head of the Security Service of the SS, Reinhard Heydrich, made much the same point: “The racially inclined part of the German people believes that the measures taken thus far without fanfare against the Jews are insufficient and they are demanding a generally stricter approach.”198 A memo by the Security Service’s “Department of Jewish Affairs” of 17 August seconded that sentiment, stating that “all major offices reject a solution to the Jewish question by acts of terror.” Instead, the memo argued, it was necessary to proclaim “effective laws to show the people that the Jewish question is being resolved from above.”199
The Gestapo and Security Service’s “Jewish experts” shared this wish with Hjalmar Schacht, whom Hitler had made Reich economics minister in early August 1934 in addition to his duties as president of the Reichsbank. In May 1935 he had complained to Hitler about the “uncontrolled battle against individual Jews outside the law, indeed in contravention of government ordinances,” warning that the international boycott was having a negative effect on the German economy.200 In a speech in Königsberg on 10 August, which was broadcast on national radio, Schacht launched a remarkably direct attack on anti-Semitic rowdies in the NSDAP, calling them “people who heroically deface windows at night and put up posters calling any German who buys anything in a Jewish shop a traitor to his people.”201 But this criticism was by no means a rejection of the Nazis’ racist anti-Jewish policies, as Schacht made clear two days later at a high-ranking meeting at the Economics Ministry, to which he invited Wilhelm Frick, Franz Gürtner, Schwerin von Krosigk, Reinhard Heydrich, Education Minister Bernhard Rust and Prussian finance minister Johannes Popitz.
There a determined Schacht demanded that the “current lawlessness and the illegal activity” be halted since it made it impossible for him “to solve the economic questions with which he was entrusted.” At the same time, he stated for the record that he held the principles of the National Socialist programme to be “thoroughly correct” and felt that they “must be carried through by all means.” Schacht declared: “I’ve lived for thirty years with Jews, and for thirty years I have taken money from them, not vice versa. Nonetheless, the current methods are intolerable. A system has to be introduced into the prevailing confusion, and before this system is put into practice, people must cease and desist from other measures.” Frick agreed that the “Jewish question” could not be solved with “wild individual actions,” but rather only “slowly but surely with legal means” until, in accordance with the party manifesto, “the alien Jewish organism has been expunged without exception from the German people.” Frick announced that laws were being drawn up to “rein in the dominance of Jewish influence.” Among them was a “law on race,” which, as Gürtner elaborated, would prohibit marriage between Jews and Aryans. Heydrich, who spoke last, concurred with the earlier speakers that the unsatisfactory situation at present could only be cleared up through “legislative measures by the state that would gradually, step by step and upon orders by the Führer achieve the goal of expunging the Jewish influence without exception.”202
In a letter of 9 September to the participants at the meeting, Heydrich once again detailed his proposals for “solving the Jewish question.” He called for the Jews to be subjected to “foreigners’ law” as a means of “separating them from the German ethnic-popular community” and of denying them freedom of mobility, thereby preventing “the tide of Jews moving to the big cities.” “Mixed marriages” should be forbidden, and extramarital relations between Germans and Jews criminalised as acts of “racial defilement.” Public contracts should no longer be awarded to Jews, and they should be prohibited from dealing in property. All of these measures, Heydrich wrote in summing up, would serve as an “incentive to emigrate.”203 That was the goal which the head of the Security Service was advocating in the mid-1930s. “Systematic mass murder,” Heydrich’s biographer Robert Gerwarth has concluded, “was at this point beyond the imagination of even Heydrich and his anti-Jewish ‘theoretical pioneers.’ ”204 The same seems to have been true of Hitler. Despite the h
omicidal fantasies he had committed to paper in Mein Kampf, his steadfast insistence of “removing” Jews from the German ethnic-popular community did not entail physically annihilating them, but rather pursuing their legal discrimination, social isolation and economic expropriation to the point that they would either live in Germany under pitiable conditions and in utter segregation—or, preferably, be forced to emigrate.
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By late August 1935, a broad consensus had crystallised between the Nazi leadership, the relevant government ministries and the Gestapo and the Security Service as to how to proceed on the “Jewish question.” The approval of the race laws at the Nuremberg rally in mid-September was no great surprise.205 What was surprising was that Hitler staged the announcement in a manoeuvre reminiscent of his foreign-policy coups. Originally, the Reichstag, which was called to session for the first and only time in Nuremberg on 15 September, was only supposed to ratify a law making the swastika flag the Reich’s official national banner, replacing the old black-white-and-red imperial flag. The background was an incident in New York, where anti-Nazi dock workers had forcibly lowered the swastika flag from the MS Bremen. They were arrested, but an American judge subsequently ordered their release and attacked the policies of the Third Reich. Hitler and Goebbels were livid. The propaganda minister noted: “Our answer: The Reichstag will convene in Nuremberg and declare the swastika banner to be our national flag. Hitler in full swing.”206
But on the evening of 13 September, the fourth day of the Nuremberg rally, Hitler decided that the Reichstag session should ratify not just the Reich Flag Law, but also the “race law,” which Frick and Gürtner had announced at the meeting of 20 August. Goebbels wrote: “In the evening palaver in the hotel. Consulted with the Führer about the new laws.”207 The reasons for Hitler’s sudden decision are not entirely clear. Possibly, with pressure from below having built up for months, Hitler may have felt that the time was ripe to placate his radical party comrades with a decisive administrative step and thus tame their need for action. That would be in keeping with his tendency to postpone taking major decisions, only to then make up his mind in a flash without considering any arguments to the contrary. He knew that the preparations for the planned law were advanced, and in his eyes, the rally may have seemed like the perfect forum to pressure the ministerial bureaucrats to finish formulating it and to ensure that it was greeted with the maximum enthusiasm when announced.
Late on the evening of 13 September Ministerial Counsel Bernhard Lösener, the “Jewish expert” in the Reich Interior Ministry, was ordered by telephone to fly to Nuremberg the next morning with his colleague from the Central Division, Ministerial Counsel Franz Albrecht Medicus. There they were informed by State Secretaries Hans Pfundtner and Wilhelm Stuckart that Hitler had charged them the previous day with formulating a “Jewish law” that would prohibit marriages between Jews and Aryans, extramarital sexual relations between the two, and the employment of Aryan servant girls in Jewish households.208 Over the course of the day, the bureaucrats came up with a number of versions, which Frick presented to Hitler, only to be sent back with orders for changes. The main issue was whether the law should only apply to “full Jews,” or whether it was to include Jewish “half-breeds’ as well. Finally, around midnight, Hitler ordered the bureaucrats to give him four variations by the following morning, ranging from a strict version A to intermediate versions B and C to a mild version D. To “round off the legislation,” he also demanded a Reich Citizenship Law to be presented to him that very night. In his recollections from 1950, Lösener was still outraged at “Hitler’s new mood” that had forced him and his colleagues to come up with the draft law under extreme pressure when they were “physically and mentally at the end of their strength.”209 In fact, this was anything but a spontaneous intervention by Hitler. On the contrary, the need for a new Reich citizenship law had been under discussion for months, and preparations were well advanced. It only made sense to introduce it together with the “race law.” Goebbels emphasised the connection in his diary entry he wrote about a conference with Hitler during the night of 14–15 September: “Frick and Hess were still there. Thoroughly consulted about the laws. New citizenship law that strips Jews of citizenship…Jew law that prohibits Jewish marriages with Germans and a series of other intensifications. We’re still adjusting it. But it will work.”210
The ministerial bureaucrats only learned during the Reichstag session on 15 September that Hitler had opted for the mild version D, albeit having struck out the phrase “This law only applies to full Jews” with his own hand, yet in the official announcements of the law, presumably with an eye towards foreign reactions, the phrase was maintained.211 The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour prohibited marriage and sexual intercourse “between Jews and citizens of Germany or related blood.” Jews were also banned from taking on non-Jewish female household employees under the age of 45 and from “flying the Reich and national flag or displaying the Reich colours.” The Reich Citizenship Law read: “A Reich citizen can only be someone who is a national of German or related blood and who proves by his conduct that he is willing and suitable to loyally serve the German people and Reich.” Only full Reich citizens were entitled to “full political rights as spelled out in laws.” Jewish Germans would henceforth only be considered as members of “the Protective Association of the German Reich,” to which they owed “special loyalty.”212
In a short speech by his standards, in the auditorium of the Nuremberg Cultural Association, in which he asked the Reichstag deputies to ratify the law, Hitler let the tactically maintained mask of moderation drop and showed himself for what he truly was: a fanatic anti-Semite who was determined to enact the racist Nazi programme at all costs. He scathingly attacked Jews in Germany and abroad whom he accused of being “corrosive and pitting peoples against one another.” He unapologetically declared that the victims of anti-Semitism in Germany had triggered the violence themselves. In numerous locations, Hitler contended, people had “bitterly complained about the provocative behaviour of individual members of this people.” If such behaviour was not to lead “to unpredictable defensive reactions of the outraged populace…the only way was to legally regulate the problem.” His government had been guided, Hitler claimed, by the idea that “a singular secular solution would perhaps create a level on which the German people might find a tolerable relationship to the Jewish people.” Should this hope not materialise, Hitler threatened, the problem would be transferred to the National Socialist Party “for a definitive solution.”213 In other words, in that case the radical activists in the party would be given the green light to intensify the anti-Semitic pressure from below.
Hitler’s claim that the Nuremberg Laws were an attempt to find a “tolerable relationship to the Jewish people” was a deliberate lie intended to lead the public astray. In his diary, Goebbels left no doubt that the laws of 15 September were aimed at segregating Jews from the majority of society and providing momentum for their further persecution. “Today was of secular significance,” he wrote. “Jewry has suffered a heavy blow. We have dared become the first people in many hundreds of years to take the bull by the horns.”214 Ten days after the Reichstag had unanimously ratified the Nuremberg Laws, Walter Gross, the Reich director of the NSDAP Office for Racial Politics, told his local officials how Hitler wished them to be interpreted: “The ultimate goal…of the Third Reich’s entire racial policy…is the displacement of everything Jewish in the sense of the excretion of an alien element.”215
“If you followed the National Socialist movement attentively, you had to see these things coming,” Willy Cohn commented after the ratification of the Nuremberg Laws. “In this respect they’re extremely consistent.”216 Victor Klemperer, who was married to a non-Jewish German, confined himself to a bitter diary entry: “The disgust is enough to make you ill.”217 The Nazi press enthusiastically welcomed the new legislation. On 16 September, the Westdeutscher Beobachter led with the hea
dline: “We profess our loyalty to the purity of the race!” In a cynical commentary, the editor-in-chief wrote: “The Jewish race should feel lucky for the generosity of an Adolf Hitler. Every other people would have deemed its corrupters fair game. Instead of an emergency law, however, Germany provides state protection and legal order.”218
It seems that the reactions of the German populace to the Nuremberg Laws varied greatly. Gestapo reports initially asserted that the laws had been received with approval and satisfaction since they finally created “a situation of clarity” and would put an end to the “unsavoury individual actions” of previous months.219 On the other hand, from heavily Catholic areas like the region of Aachen came reports that “the laws had not been greeted with unanimous applause.”220 SPD-in-exile observers even wrote that the laws had “been met with vigorous rejection within the populace” and had been interpreted “not as a sign of the strength of the National Socialist movement but as evidence of weakness.”221 At the same time, the observers could not deny that constant anti-Semitic propaganda had left its mark on the German working classes. “In general, one can say that the National Socialists have in fact succeeded in deepening the gap between the people and the Jews,” one report from January 1936 read. “The sense that the Jews are a separate race is now very common.”222
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