The Holocaust: A New History

by Laurence Rees

  Most Germans, however, desired radical change. While the Nazis themselves never gained a majority of the popular vote, a majority of Germans did support parties that openly said they intended to remove democracy. In the general election of July 1932 the Nazis received 37 per cent of the vote and the Communists 14 per cent – so a total of 51 per cent between them. It was an extremely significant result, since it meant that most voters wanted to destroy the system of democratic government that existed at the time. Germans felt that they had been let down not just by individual politicians or parties, but by the entire mechanism of governance.

  The aversion of Germans to democracy during the early 1930s excited comment at the time. ‘Speaking for the victory of National Socialism, above all, is the fact that in this country democracy has never been won in bloody battle,’ wrote the novelist Heinrich Mann in December 1931. ‘In one historical moment, after the defeat in the war, it appeared as a possible way out, compared to the disaster of the monarchy and the threat of bolshevism – only a way out, not a goal, much less a passionate experience.’71

  ‘The Germans have no democratic tradition,’ claims Arnon Tamir. ‘Never have had. There has been, in Germany, until today no democracy which the citizens themselves fought for.’ Growing up as a Jew in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, he also reached the conclusion that Hitler flourished only because of the crisis within the German state: ‘The Nazis emerged in circumstances during the 1920s, after the world war had been lost, when the German people were oppressed and humiliated and staggering from one economic crisis and from one political crisis to another. So this actually was very propitious. Someone must be to blame for it. And the entire anti-Semitism of the Nazis is actually encapsulated in the words: The Jew is guilty, for everything, always.’72

  While Hitler may have toned down his rhetoric on Jews during their period of electoral growth, Nazi policy remained clear – and it wasn’t far from Arnon Tamir’s paraphrase: ‘The Jew is guilty.’ As Gregor Strasser, a senior member of the Nazi party, said in October 1931, once in power the Nazis would make certain that ‘the rule of Jews in Germany would come to an end.’ This would be achieved by ‘the exclusion of Jews from all areas in which they are in a position to obstruct the German economy’.73 The 37 per cent of the electorate who supported the Nazis in July 1932 were therefore voting for a party that openly intended, if elected, to persecute German Jews. The Nazis did not pretend otherwise.

  Many in the German political elite had common ground with the Nazis. They also wanted to restore order to Germany by eliminating democracy and crushing the threat from the Communist Party. In 1932 President von Hindenburg, the eighty-five-year-old former commander of German troops in the First World War, was prepared to remove democracy and support the establishment of a government of the right. The trouble, as far as Hindenburg was concerned, was that though the Nazis were by now the most powerful force on the right in German political life, Hitler was not acceptable as Chancellor. When the two of them met in August 1932, Hindenburg told Hitler that he ‘could not justify before God, before his conscience or before the Fatherland, the transfer of the whole authority of government to a single party, especially to a party that was biased against people who had different views from their own’.74 He reiterated this opinion when he met Hitler again in November 1932, saying that he feared that ‘a Presidential Cabinet headed by you would inevitably develop into a party dictatorship with all its consequences, resulting in a worsening of the antagonisms within the German people …’ Hindenburg added that he could not reconcile such a situation ‘with his oath and his conscience’.75

  Hindenburg’s objections to Hitler as a potential Chancellor were partly based on class. He referred to Hitler as a ‘bohemian corporal’.76 But he also indicated that he did not support every Nazi policy – in particular he questioned the party’s overt anti-Semitism. In August 1932 he wrote to the Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith condemning attacks against Jews. The Nazi deputies in the Reichstag had even ridiculed Hindenburg as the ‘Jewish candidate’ during his re-election campaign for the Presidency earlier that year.77

  However, a number of those close to Hindenburg did hold anti-Semitic views. Franz von Papen, Chancellor of Germany for much of 1932, revealed in an interview with the London Evening Standard the following year that the large number of Jews in medicine and the law in Germany would be ‘unthinkable’ in Britain, and that it was necessary to combat the influence of the ‘international Jews’ who held high positions within the German civil service.78

  The problem that Hindenburg faced was that neither of the Chancellors he appointed during 1932 – Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher – had mass support, and he feared that the disconnect between the governing class and the ordinary German voter might grow still wider in the future. It could even lead to civil war as the Communists and Nazi Stormtroopers fought on the streets.

  Hitler positioned himself both as respectful of Hindenburg and as the young patriot determined to unite Germany. In a speech in Detmold on 4 January 1933, he said, ‘What has brought the National Socialist movement into being is the desire for a true community of the German people … Fate has set us the great task of removing the disunity of the German people …’ What was necessary, argued Hitler, was ‘uncompromisingly [to] eliminate everything’ that was pulling the country apart. He named ‘Marxists’ as one threat to the unity of the Volk, and though there was no specific mention of the Jews, once again many would have heard the reference to ‘Marxists’ as code for Jews.79

  Franz von Papen finally managed to reconcile Hindenburg to Hitler. Papen had been forced to give up the Chancellorship to Kurt von Schleicher in December 1932 because his administration lacked popular support. Schleicher, a born intriguer, had attempted – and failed – to gain a broader base for his own government. Now Papen took revenge and proposed re-entering government as Vice-Chancellor with Hitler as Chancellor. Hindenburg agreed. Their theory was that Hitler as Chancellor would be ‘tamed’ as Papen and a number of other non-Nazis would be appointed to the cabinet.

  On 30 January 1933, thirteen years after he had announced his party’s programme at the Hofbräuhaus in Munich, and less than five years after the Nazis had gained just 2.6 per cent of the popular vote in the general election, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Now, at last, he could attempt to put his long-cherished beliefs into practice.

  4. Consolidating Power

  (1933–1934)

  Millions of Germans saw Hitler’s appointment as a positive development. They agreed with Goebbels’ judgement that Germany was at ‘a turning point in her history’.1 Manfred von Schröder, a student, says, ‘the young people were enthusiastic and optimistic, and believed in Hitler, and thought it was a wonderful task to overcome the consequences of the First World War, and especially the Treaty of Versailles. So we were all in high mood … So there was a feeling of national liberation, a new start.’2

  ‘Naturally we were excited,’ confirms Gabriele Winckler, a young secretary. ‘We thought now everything will be different, and everything will be better.’ She remembers that ‘all the young people … were all beaming, because they were all happy.’3 Günter Lohse, nineteen years old in 1933, believes that ‘it was Hitler’s personality which you trusted – that he would not only keep his promises, but also realize them. There was already a myth about him.’4

  Torchlight celebration parades were held in many cities, and Luise Solmitz watched the one in Hamburg on 6 February 1933. Her description of what was happening in front of her was made against the background of a family history that was out of the ordinary – though she was a staunch nationalist and not Jewish, her husband had converted from Judaism to Christianity. ‘It turned 10 o’clock by the time the first torches came,’ she wrote in her diary, ‘and then they followed each other, like waves in the sea, about 20,000 Brownshirts, their faces glowing with enthusiasm in the torchlight.’ She recalled that Nazi Stormtroopers called out ‘De
ath to the Jews’, shouted ‘The Republic is shit,’ and sang of ‘the Jewish blood which would squirt from their knives’. Alongside that last remark, Luise Solmitz subsequently wrote, ‘who took that seriously then?’5

  For many German Jews the impact of Hitler’s Chancellorship was immediate. Eugene Leviné, a student at a mixed-religion school, remembers that a non-Jewish boy who had previously been friendly came up to him and asked, ‘Well, Leviné, have you got your ticket to Palestine?’ Eugene was shocked: ‘But, you see, anti-Semitism’s always there beneath the surface. And I knocked him down. But the interesting thing is he didn’t get up and start a fight. I made him realize how angry I was and he felt guilty, and he just slunk away. So you see people’s feeling depends very much on circumstances, and what you can do at any one time varies.’6

  Arnon Tamir, in Stuttgart, faced a similar confrontation: ‘The stupidest boy in the class, who was already coming to school in his Stormtrooper uniform, offered me a piece of cardboard, with writing on it: “Ticket to Palestine, out and no return, ever.” And I got ready to lay into him, but the senior boys of the class intervened. One was the son of a general and another the son of an officer – they were the “noble” anti-Semites in the class. They intervened and said: “That’s not an issue … it’s nothing to do with him. He’s nothing to do with the Bolshevik Jews, with the capitalist Jews, he’s nothing to do with it.” And then I was, for the first time, invited to their homes as a demonstration that there were also decent, honourable opponents. Of course I didn’t accept that. In response to this honour, of being invited, I declined.’7

  In Hamburg, the Jewish schoolgirl Lucille Eichengreen and her sister also experienced sudden discrimination: ‘Hitler came to power in January 1933. The children that lived in the same building … no longer spoke to us. They threw stones at us, they called us names, and that was maybe three months after Hitler came to power. And we couldn’t understand what we had done to deserve this. So the question always was why? And when we asked at home the answer pretty much was, “Oh it’s a passing phase, it won’t matter, it will normalize.” What that actually meant we did not know. But we couldn’t understand the change … The first thing they [her parents] told us was on the way home, in the bus or in the street car don’t draw attention to yourself, stand in the back, don’t talk loudly and don’t laugh, just sort of disappear. And we couldn’t understand, it didn’t make sense to us. And questions were not answered … It made us afraid because when we walked to school it was a forty-five-minute walk. And we were shouted [at], other children were spitting at us. The adults were looking away. Although we had no markings we felt marked.’8

  What these experiences demonstrated was how easy it was for many Germans who had never previously expressed anti-Semitic views to fall into the behaviour now expected of them by the regime. For some, these beliefs had always been latent; others just decided to follow the path of least resistance – especially since the mighty German state now had a Chancellor who was known to be a dedicated anti-Semite.

  However, even though he had been appointed Chancellor, Hitler was not yet the undisputed dictator of Germany. His actions were constrained by a number of powerful forces – all of which he sought to control. To begin with, he knew he needed the support of the military. So it was no accident that one of his first decisions – just four days after his appointment as Chancellor – was to meet with leading figures in the armed forces. On 3 February he told them that he was committed to a massive programme of rearmament, and that they need have no fear that he would attempt to merge the regular army with the Nazi Stormtroopers. This message, unsurprisingly, was a welcome one to the professional soldiers. ‘An army was to be built which was capable of really defending Germany,’ says Johann-Adolf Graf von Kielmansegg, then a young army officer. ‘Here was a revolutionary action.’ What was also reassuring, and ‘played a big role for the soldiers’, was that President von Hindenburg ‘had given his blessing to Hitler’s behaviour. That was the important thing for us. You know, for the army, Hindenburg was not Hitler.’9

  On 10 February 1933 Hitler delivered a lengthy speech at the Sportpalast in Berlin that was broadcast nationwide on radio. He was careful to be vague about the details of any specific policies that his government might implement, remarking that when his opponents said, ‘Show us the details of your programme,’ his response could only be, ‘after your fine state of affairs, after your dabbling, after your subversion, the German Volk must be rebuilt from top to bottom, just as you destroyed it from top to bottom! That is our programme!’ He did reiterate, however, that nothing would distract him ‘from stamping out Marxism’.10

  Hitler was proceeding with care. He had called an election for 5 March in an attempt to legitimize his new regime and to pass an Enabling Act that would allow him to govern both without parliament and without each piece of legislation needing the approval of President von Hindenburg. So he had to make a number of compromises. In order to ensure the support of the Centre Party, for instance, he promised that he would never enter an alliance with any party that wanted to destroy Christianity.11

  On 27 February 1933, there was a surprising development. A Dutch Communist called Marinus van der Lubbe set fire to the German parliament, the Reichstag. Initially, as Goebbels recorded in his diary, Hitler was ‘in a rage’ as he saw the flames. ‘Now is the time to act!’ wrote Goebbels. A few hours later they had discovered the perpetrator – a man who encapsulated the dangers of Marxism. ‘Just what we needed,’ said Goebbels, ‘a Dutch Communist.’12 The convenient timing of the attack, one week before the election, together with the equally convenient political affiliation of the perpetrator, has led to a raft of conspiracy theories alleging some kind of Nazi involvement in the burning of the Reichstag. But the participation of the Nazis in the crime has never been proved conclusively.

  What is certain is that this act of arson was of immense benefit to Hitler. The next day Hindenburg signed legislation that curtailed basic human rights in Germany, such as the right to assembly and the right to free speech, and a new impetus was given to the rounding up of German Communists. Hermann Göring, as Prussian Minister of the Interior, had already recruited large numbers of Nazi Stormtroopers as Auxiliary Police in order to target the Nazis’ former political opponents.

  As for the German Jews, while there were sporadic attacks against individuals over the next weeks and months as the Stormtroopers celebrated their victory, they were not detained en masse, and most often the assaults were humiliating and distressing rather than murderous. In Nuremberg, for instance, Rudi Bamber’s father was one of a number of Jews taken by the Stormtroopers to a sports stadium where they were made to cut the grass with their teeth. Rudi Bamber learnt about the attack only because the children of others who had suffered the same treatment told him that his father had been targeted as well. ‘My father couldn’t talk about it or wouldn’t talk about it,’ he says, ‘he just came back very grey and ashen faced and that was that … I didn’t think there was a coherent plan of anti-Semitism, it was simply every now and then an opportunity arose and some action would be taken against the Jews just to show them where they stood in relation to the Germans as such, to humiliate them, really. There were sort of vague instructions given which people could interpret in any way which they wanted to, and they knew they had carte blanche and they did whatever they felt like – if some people were anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish or had strong feelings or wanted to show-off to their colleagues.’13

  But while Rudi Bamber’s assessment of the actions of the Stormtroopers in Nuremberg during those early months of 1933 may well be correct – there was certainly little coherence in the way the Nazis chose to persecute individual Jews – there was shortly to be a nationwide action against the Jews that was very much a deliberate act of state-sanctioned terror. It occurred after the Nazis had won nearly 44 per cent of the vote in the 5 March election. Starting on 7 March in the Rhineland and then moving across Germany in the next few days, S
tormtroopers and other Nazi supporters demonstrated outside Jewish shops, harassed Jewish shopkeepers and often forced the shops to close for the day.

  On 24 March the Enabling Act Hitler had wanted was finally passed. This ‘law to remedy the distress of the people and the Reich’ gave Hitler sweeping powers to rule without the Reichstag, and was the legal basis for what became the Nazi dictatorship. Just four days later, on 28 March, Hitler instigated a call for a countrywide boycott of Jewish shops and businesses. The form of this appeal to ‘National Socialists’ and ‘Party Comrades’ is significant for a number of reasons. First, now that his new powers had been agreed, Hitler felt comfortable coupling the word ‘Marxist’ with ‘Jewish’ once again. The ‘German Volk’, he said, had put a ‘lightning end to the Marxist-Jewish nightmare’. Second, the Nazis claimed that Jews who had fled from Germany were ‘unfolding an unscrupulous, treasonous campaign of agitation’ from abroad. And third, he argued that ‘the parties responsible for these lies and slander are the Jews in our midst,’ since the German Jews had the ‘power to call the liars in the rest of the world into line’.14 It was the same belief in a conspiracy of Jews across national boundaries that Hitler had talked about in the early 1920s, but which in recent years he had refrained from openly proselytizing. Hitler clearly wanted to demonstrate to the international community that foreign criticism of the Nazi regime, particularly of the Nazis’ anti-Semitic policy, would not be tolerated. The German Jews were thus used as ‘hostages’ to try and stop foreign Jews denigrating the Nazis. It is the earliest example of what was to become a common Nazi response to criticism from abroad – the worse the attacks on Germany were in the foreign press, the more the Jews in Germany would be at risk. Finally, Hitler did not sign the document himself. It bore only the signature ‘National Socialist German Workers’ Party Leadership’. But we can be certain that Hitler was involved, not just because the content so mirrors his own previously expressed views, but because the Völkischer Beobachter reported that, at the first cabinet meeting to be held since the passing of the Enabling Act, Hitler had remarked that the measures to combat ‘Jewish atrocity propaganda abroad’ had been made necessary because otherwise ‘the Volk itself’ would have acted against the Jews, and that this would have ‘perhaps assumed undesirable forms’.15