The growing confidence of radical Party activists also emerged through further conflict with the ‘forces of reaction’. The main objective was finally to neutralize the Stahlhelm.15 From April onwards the organization had faced a ban on its activities in a number of regions and in May it was forbidden to parade anywhere in the Reich.16
Yet from April/May 1935 onwards the regime began to restrain anti-Semitic attacks17 and shortly afterwards started being less aggressive towards the Churches. One reason for this change of direction was the fear that these campaigns would in time damage business. Schacht, the Economics Minister, warned Hitler emphatically at the beginning of May about threats to German exports, naming the conflict with the Churches, the ‘Jewish question’, and the activities of the Gestapo as the three most critical aspects of the problem.18 The other more crucial reason had to do with foreign policy. The formation in April of the Stresa Front, coupled with the Franco–Soviet military pact in May, exacerbated Germany’s political isolation internationally, and at the same time the regime did not want anything to upset the current naval negotiations with Britain. Clear signals were coming from Britain that German persecution of the Jews would prove an obstacle to Anglo–German relations.19
The measures being taken against Christians in Germany, as well as reports of the persecution of the Jews, led to growing concern in a number of Protestant Churches outside Germany, which had been alerted in particular by members of the Confessing Church. George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester and President of the Ecumenical Council for Practical Christianity, had long been the central figure in this movement of protest and solidarity.20 In June 1935, while Germany’s naval negotiations with Britain were in train, Bell wrote to Ribbentrop, Hitler’s special envoy, warning him that outrage in the Anglican Church over the oppression of Christians in Germany might result in ‘the opportunity for friendship between Britain and Germany being lost for a very long time’.21 Bell expressed the same sentiment in a letter to The Times on 3 June.
These warnings had an impact. All the Protestant clergy who had been detained in concentration camps were released by the end of May,22 after which Hitler also called a temporary halt to the foreign currency trials in June.23 On 20 June Ribbentrop listened to Bell’s complaints when they met and assured him that he was very anxious that public opinion in Britain should not turn against Germany.24
Meanwhile, the summer of 1935 showed clearly how precarious many Germans thought the economic situation to be.25 In July Interior Minister, Frick, responding to reports from various parts of the Reich, informed Hans Heinrich Lammers, the head of the Reich Chancellery, that for three months there had been a surge in prices, ‘which in view of wage stagnation has a very negative impact on the population’s mood, particularly among the working classes.’26 In August the Agriculture Minister also sent the Chancellery detailed and worrying reports about increases in the price of food.27 In spite of this public mood, a month later the trustees of labour opposed any wage increases: ‘Fighting unemployment and rearming the German nation must take priority . . .’28
At the end of September Hitler had in his hands a detailed analysis produced by the Reich Chancellery of the development of incomes, prices, and food supplies.29 According to this, while wages had not risen, the cost of living on 21 August 1935 as compared with the summer of 1933 had increased by 5.4 per cent and the price of food by 8.1 per cent. Deciding how these price rises could be brought under control led to conflict within the regime. In view of the precarious situation Goerdeler, the Prices Commissioner, whose fixed term of office came to an end on 1 July 1935, asked Hitler to extend it and also to expand his powers. A number of ministers expressed their reservations. Hitler at first set aside any discussion of these disagreements and gave instructions at the beginning of August that Goerdeler’s powers should for the time being be exercised by the relevant ministries.30
Against the background of this tense situation, in June Party activists had resumed the anti-Jewish campaign they had interrupted during the Anglo–German naval negotiations. Events in Berlin served as a catalyst. Goebbels, the Gauleiter of Berlin, had long been pondering the possibilities of taking more radical steps against the Jewish residents of the capital and had tried repeatedly to secure Hitler’s approval. His impression was that he had been successful.31 In June members of the Hitler Youth were repeatedly forming gangs outside Jewish shops in Berlin. On 30 June Goebbels raised the temperature at the Gau Party Rally by publicly denouncing the fact that ‘at the moment Jews are trying to throw their weight around on every street’.32 In the middle of July he saw his opportunity to create a blatant pogrom atmosphere in Berlin. The pretext for doing so was a Swedish anti-Semitic film that had allegedly been booed by Jewish members of the cinema audience. The Party press immediately seized on this incident and the Berlin NSDAP organized a ‘counter-demonstration’. On the evening of 15 July ‘outraged national comrades’ attacked Jewish citizens, which led amongst other things to confrontations between Party members and the police, for the latter were unsure how to handle this ‘outburst of spontaneous national indignation’. In the international press the assaults were reported as ‘violent incidents in the Kurfürstendamm’. Goebbels managed to pin the blame on Magnus Levetzow, the Berlin police chief, whom he had long been trying to get rid of, and succeeded in having his friend Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff appointed his successor. The 19 July edition of Der Angriff indicated the direction Goebbels intended to take: ‘Berlin cleansed of communists, reactionaries, and Jews. Dr Goebbels makes a clean sweep in his Gau.’
The Berlin events prompted Party activists to mount similar attacks all over Germany, repeating the kinds of actions they had carried out in the winter and spring of 1934/35, while the Party press once more set the tone of anti-Jewish incitement.33 The attacks, however, once again gave rise to serious concerns, voiced primarily by Schacht, the Economics Minister, about the negative effects they could have on what was already a precarious economic situation.34 At the end of July/beginning of August leading members of the Party and government therefore began a campaign to calm things down and prevent ‘individual initiatives’. On 9 August Hitler via Hess called for a complete stop to all violent incidents,35 but further bans from Frick (taking his authority expressly from Hitler), Himmler, and other leading Nazis were needed before the attacks actually diminished in September.36 At the same time, new plans for anti-Semitic legislation were made public.
As far as the Churches were concerned, Hitler assumed more of a mediating role in the summer of 1935. During May and June Interior Minister Frick, claiming authorization from Hitler, drafted a bill giving him the power ‘to bring clarity to the legal position’ within the Protestant Church.37 However, Hitler soon after intervened with an alternative solution; his edict of 16 July assigned responsibility for Church matters to Reich Minister Hanns Kerrl.38 After the Prussian Ministry of Justice was dissolved in June 1934, Kerrl had remained in the Reich cabinet as a minister without portfolio and during the earlier negotiations conducted by Frick had already been named as a potential Churches commissar by a Nazi ecclesiastical functionary. Frick had warmly welcomed this suggestion as Kerrl was ‘a man the Führer trusted’.39
At a meeting at the beginning of August for state ministers responsible for Church matters and all the heads of the Prussian provinces (Oberpräsidenten), Kerrl sketched out the path he intended to take with regard in particular to the Protestant Church. It was, he said, to be brought to heel by the imposition of state supervision of its financial and property administration, as was already happening in Prussia. It had been a mistake in the past to back the German Christians one-sidedly, he continued, and the Church was instead to be open to clergy of all persuasions. This would prompt people to distance themselves of their own accord from ‘quarrelsome priests’.40 In mid-August Kerrl attended a meeting of leading Party comrades in Nuremberg, to get Hitler to confirm this policy.
Hitler’s decision to introduce the Nuremberg Laws
<
br /> The purpose of the meeting Hitler held on 17 August in Nuremberg was to establish the overall line to be taken at the Party Rally, which would in turn, via the regime’s control of the public sphere, help to overcome the crisis in the national mood. To that end Hitler made a series of policy decisions, for which Goebbels’s diaries provide our source.41
First of all, he announced that he wanted to ‘make peace with the Churches’, although with the important proviso that Goebbels records: ‘At least for a while’. As Hitler explained to Goebbels two days later, Kerrl would ‘let the warring clerics simmer’. Armed with these instructions, Kerrl had separate meetings a few days later with the Reich Bishop and the leaders of the German Christians as well as with representatives of the Confessing Church, telling them his aim was to bring ‘order’ to the Church but not to get involved in matters of faith. That was clearly his way of letting the warring parties ‘simmer’.42 In late September/early October the legal framework for this new Church regime was to be worked out. A Reich Church Committee was created replacing the Church governing body under Müller that had existed up to that point and had been controlled by the German Christians.43 Keeping the peace on the Church front for the time being also determined Hitler’s reaction to a memorandum sent to him by the Catholic Church on 20 August. It posed crucial questions concerning the regime’s future Church policy, to which Hitler did not respond. He also ignored a pastoral message from the bishops to the ‘hard-pressed’ Catholic associations, ‘faithful even through trials and tribulations’.44
Secondly, on 17 August Hitler announced the dissolution of the Stahlhelm. This step came as a surprise to nobody. Five days earlier, as the Völkischer Beobachter had reported, he had met the leader of the Stahlhelm, Seldte, to ‘discuss the future’ of the organization. In fact the only issue was how the expected dissolution should proceed.45
Hitler’s third stipulation was that the overriding theme of the Party Rally should be ‘Anti-Comintern’: in other words it should paint as alarming a picture as possible of the ‘Bolshevist threat’. The primary reason for this was not only to provide a distraction from domestic concerns but to emphasize the associated ‘great foreign policy opportunities’, as Hitler pointed out on 17 August to those who were going to speak at the Rally. The following day, during an excursion to Upper Bavaria, Hitler gave Goebbels more detail on these ‘opportunities’. In essence, he meant forming a common policy in alliance with Britain and Italy against the Soviet Union.46
On 17 August Hitler spoke briefly about the negative mood in the country. However, he evidently made no mention of the problem that had caused so much concern in the previous months, namely the attacks on Jews prompted by the Party rank and file’s expectation of radical measures to tackle the ‘Jewish question’.47 He evidently assumed that the instructions he had already issued to refrain from ‘individual initiatives’ were sufficient. It was Schacht, above all, who during this period was pressing for the attacks to be halted once and for all, not least because of their effect on the economy, and for a set of legal guidelines to tackle a problem that the regime had itself created. In a speech in Königsberg on 18 August, extracts from which were circulated in the press, he opposed further ‘random initiatives by individuals’.48
On 20 August Schacht chaired a top-level meeting where there was substantial agreement that there must be an end to public disorder. Instead they intended to pass a series of anti-Jewish laws. Prominent in their deliberations were a ban on ‘racial disgrace’, a special form of citizenship for Jews, and certain economic measures. No concrete decisions were made, however.49 Thus, in the run-up to the Party Rally there was movement towards the creation of an extensive legal framework for dealing with the ‘Jewish question’, though no details had been fixed, nor any timetable set. Hitler, who at this time was remarkably uninvolved with the ‘Jewish question’, appeared to be letting matters take their course.
As expected, Hitler’s proclamation at the opening ceremony of the Party Rally placed the whole event under the banner of the fight against ‘Jewish Marxism and the parliamentary democracy linked with it’, against ‘the politically and morally corrupting Centre Party’, and against ‘certain elements within an incorrigible and stupidly reactionary bourgeoisie’.50 Hitler also referred to ‘temporary shortages of certain kinds of food’. He had, he said, been forced to ‘use every means of holding prices down’ and to refuse any wage increases, as he wanted to avoid inflation at all costs; anyone who thought it necessary to respond to shortages of goods by raising prices would be targeted ‘brutally and ruthlessly’ and in certain circumstances sent to a concentration camp.51 In fact Hitler already knew a few days before this proclamation that there was no prospect of preventing increases in food prices from the detailed report analysing the rises that had taken place over the previous two years. At the same time, he had been unable to decide whether to make Goerdeler Prices Commissioner with extraordinary powers, as the latter had suggested. Thus the threat of a concentration camp had to take the place of the absent state measures to control prices. Otherwise, on 11 September, Hitler delivered his usual speech on Art at the Party Rally, once again targeting modern art, and during the following days went on to address the various Party organizations at their rallies and conferences.52
Yet while he was carrying out this programme of events, which by now had almost become a ritual, Hitler decided to give prominence to a different topic from the one originally planned. On 8 September, shortly before the Rally began, he had decided to summon a special session of the Reichstag, in order to pass a ‘Flag Law’. The swastika flag was now to be declared the only national flag. This new measure was prompted by an incident in New York, where demonstrators had taken down the swastika flag from a German ship as a protest against the regime’s policies. The new law was designed both ostentatiously to raise the status of this Nazi symbol and also be a slap in the face to the forces of ‘reaction’, as it was no longer to be permitted to fly the black, white, and red flag of the old German empire, which had hitherto been used as the national flag in addition to the swastika.53 Barely two months later Hitler was to announce almost casually the long expected dissolution of the Stahlhelm – a third-class burial for his partner in the government of ‘national concentration’ formed in 1933.54
The highly charged anti-Semitic atmosphere in the run-up to the Party Rally also influenced the drafting of the Reich Flag Law, which was to contain a provision forbidding Jews to display the swastika national flag. In addition, on 13 September 1935 Hitler also decided to have the Reichstag pass a set of anti-Jewish laws that had been planned for some time. He may possibly have been prompted to do this by a speech made the previous day by the Reich doctors’ leader, Gerhard Wagner, who had announced that a law would ‘soon’ be passed ‘to protect German blood’, although he had no inkling that such a law could come into effect only two days later.
Following Hitler’s instructions of 13 September the Interior Minister, Frick, with the help of a number of officials from his ministry who were present at Nuremberg, seems at first to have pursued the plan of drafting one single comprehensive bill. This project in its constantly changing versions was debated animatedly during 14 September by Hitler, Frick, Hess, Goebbels, and the doctors’ leader Wagner, along with experts from the Interior Ministry, among them state secretaries Wilhelm Stuckart and Hans Pfundtner, and the ‘desk officer for Jewish questions’ Bernhard Lösener, who was flown in specially from Berlin. In the end the complex of issues was disentangled to form a series of individual laws. Thus a law against ‘racial disgrace’ (the so-called blood protection law) was drafted, also a citizenship law. The issue of the flag returned, as originally intended, to being a law on its own, while the introduction of a ‘certificate of eligibility to marry’ for non-Jewish Germans [involving a medical examination] was also discussed but withdrawn at Hitler’s request. According to Lösener’s account, Hitler chose the most lenient version of the four drafts of the blood protection l
aw, although personally crossing out the introductory sentence, ‘This law applies only to full Jews’. In doing so he himself was raising the problem of how to define and treat ‘half Jews’ and ‘quarter Jews’, an issue that would continue to exercise bureaucrats up until the end of the Third Reich.55
The drafting of these bills had been planned for some time. Now Hitler decided to have them produced quickly and to get them passed in demonstrative fashion by the Reichstag (which had been excluded from the legislative process since 1933). In so doing he was removing the drafting of anti-Jewish laws, already in train, from the ministerial bureaucracy, thereby preventing civil servants from delaying them, from adding complications, or from loading them down with rulings allowing for exceptions. This initiative sprang from domestic considerations. On the one hand, Hitler had considered any radical measures regarding Church politics to be inopportune in late summer 1935 and, as far as his battle with the forces of ‘reaction’ was concerned, he was doing no more than bringing about the overdue dissolution of the Stahlhelm and the downgrading of the black, white, and red flag; on the other hand, he had nothing substantial to announce on the problem that was troubling the population the most – rising prices and food shortages; so he turned the spotlight on to the ‘Jewish question’. Thus he not only pacified the Party activists pressing for more radical measures against the Jews but also showed he was listening to ministerial bureaucrats and business circles, of which Schacht had made himself spokesperson. For the latter group was keen to settle the ‘Jewish question’ by legal means and thus avoid further disruption to the economy. As in June of the previous year, in September 1935 Hitler was again attempting to take control of a complex set of domestic problems through a spectacular and surprising decision and thus reset the political agenda. Although he could not solve existing problems, in particular those affecting the economy and Church policy, this tactic allowed him, for a time, to push these unwelcome subjects into the background.
Hitler Page 57
