The Third Reich

by Thomas Childers

  Although the Reich government had not moved on these issues, party officials at the local level did, arresting Jews suspected of having sex with Aryans, an offense referred to as “racial treason.” In some areas mobs seized suspected transgressors and turned them over to the authorities, although just what law they were breaking was not at all clear. In some communities registrars refused to issue marriage licenses to mixed couples and reported them to local Nazi authorities. To bring some order and uniformity to the situation, the Gestapo intervened, directing registrars to report all such proposed marriages, so that its agents could “enlighten” the Aryan partner of his or her impending blunder.

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  Such was the situation as the party prepared for the 1935 rally at Nuremberg, set to begin on September 9 and run through the 15th. The climax of the great extravaganza was always the Führer’s address on the final day of the festivities, and Hitler planned to announce a new law, the Reich Flag Law, which would formally make the party’s swastika banner Germany’s national flag. Adding a special ideological twist to the law, Jews would be forbidden to raise the flag or show the national colors. In the Third Reich German Jews could never be accused of being unpatriotic—they were forbidden to be patriotic. It was thought that perhaps Hitler would also offer some remarks on foreign policy. To lend the occasion some additional gravitas, the virtually forgotten Reichstag was summoned to Nuremberg for a special session on the 15th. Its role in the performance was to act as chorus, chanting its superfluous approval at the appropriate moments before rubber-stamping the legislation.

  But two days before he was to deliver his address, Hitler changed his mind. The Flag Law was not substantial or stirring enough. He needed something else, something with greater ideological clout. In a speech earlier in the rally, Gerhard Wagner, leader of the Nazi Physicians League, had proposed a law that would forbid mixed marriages between Jews and Aryans, and late in the night of the 12th Hitler decided that dramatic new race legislation would do. State and party officials were sent scrambling to come up with a draft. Bernhard Lösener, who manned the Interior Ministry’s desk for Jewish affairs, was flown in from Berlin, and a small team of officials worked frantically through the night to craft a preliminary draft. Several versions of the proposed law, one of which was written on the back of a menu, were presented to Hitler, and at 2:30 in the morning of the 15th, only hours before his closing speech, he chose the most “moderate.” At eight that evening, standing before the assembled Reichstag Hitler announced what came to be known as the Nuremberg Laws. Göring was given the honor of reading out the text.

  The Reich Flag Law, by now virtually an afterthought, was overshadowed by two others, the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. The Reich Citizenship Law deprived Jews of their German citizenship; they were now to be considered “subjects” of the Reich, aliens in their own country. Although aside from political rights, of which there were precious few in Nazi Germany, the law did not remove any specific rights, it left the tiny Jewish community utterly vulnerable to the whims of the regime—and to their neighbors. Of far greater consequence was the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, often simply called the Blood Protection Law, which forbade marriage and “sexual intercourse outside of marriage between Jews and Aryans.” It also prohibited the employment in Jewish households of German women under the age of forty-five—an expression of the prevailing Nazi stereotype of Jewish men as sexually voracious creatures who could not be trusted with Aryan women of child-bearing age.

  Hitler’s last-minute decision to enact these measures was characteristic of his leadership as it was of so much in the governance of the Third Reich. He had not come to Nuremberg intending to announce a new initiative in Nazi race policy, nor were the laws a carefully calculated escalation of the regime’s persecution of the Jews, a planned step in an inevitable march to genocide. Instead, their sudden announcement in September 1935, after a frenzied thirty-six hours of formulation in Berlin and Nuremberg, is a prime example of the improvisational nature of Nazi decision making—spontaneous and portentous action taken within an ideological context. And yet, if the timing of the laws was not calculated, their substance was hardly improvisational or spontaneous. Hitler—and many other party leaders—had long favored some sort of discriminatory legislation outlawing mixed marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Aryans, and stripping Jews of their citizenship had been a recurrent demand since the earliest days of the NSDAP. Fragmentary work on such ideas had been conducted within state and party bureaucracies since the summer of 1933.

  It was also symptomatic of Hitler’s modus operandi that after firing off a sweeping ideological barrage against the Jews, party and state officials were left to translate his pronouncements into practical policy, and here—again typically—little agreement could be found. In their haste to draft the laws, Nazi officials left many questions unanswered. The most important—and most vexing—was exactly who was to be classified a Jew and how. Neither Hitler nor the Nazi bureaucracy had addressed this question. Was it anyone with one Jewish grandparent, as the Civil Service law of 1933 had dictated? Two Jewish grandparents? Three? State officials, especially Economics Minister Schacht and Foreign Minister Constantin von Neurath, insisted on three grandparents; party radicals, led by Rudolf Hess, on only one. The army, concerned about manpower needs, also hoped for a more restrictive definition.

  Once his broadside had been fired, Hitler, as usual, could not be bothered with the details. When, several weeks after his dramatic announcement at Nuremberg, Hitler was asked to decide the issue once and for all at a meeting of the warring factions, he typically refused to take a stand—or even address the issue. Instead, he launched into a lengthy diatribe against the nefarious role of Jews in German history and then stalked from the room, leaving party and state officials to thrash matters out. It was vintage Hitler. A month later when he discovered that an agreement over who was considered Jewish had still not been reached and that he was again expected to decide the issue at a similar gathering, he abruptly canceled the meeting, and State Secretary Hans Lammers announced to frustrated officials that the Führer had far more important things to do than officiate at a debate between clashing Nazi factions. The message was get it done, and don’t bother the Führer about the details.

  In the end, the state position prevailed—three Jewish grandparents was determined to be decisive. The status of racially mixed individuals—half Jews (two Jewish grandparents) or quarter Jews (one Jewish grandparent)—remained a source of conflict and confusion within the regime for years. In November a supplement to the Law for the Protection of German Blood classified anyone with two Jewish grandparents “a Mixture of the first degree” (Mischling erster Grad), except where the grandparents were religiously practicing, in which case the individual was declared “a full Jew.” The introduction of religious practice as a consideration came as something of a surprise since it was utterly inconsistent with the party’s official position that religious and environmental factors were irrelevant; blood was all. Anyone with one Jewish grandparent—a quarter Jew—was declared a Mischling second degree. An inquiry by the Jewish umbrella organization the Central Association of German Jews determined that 502,200 full Jews were living in Germany in May 1935, and using the categories that would be formally established as a result of the Nuremberg Laws, the study calculated the number of half Jews at 70,000 to 75,000, and quarter Jews at 25,000 to 130,000.

  The classifications would have serious implications. Quarter Jews were to be treated as virtual Aryans: they were permitted to serve in the military and to marry Aryans; half Jews were not. Although Mischlinge of the first degree were forbidden to marry an Aryan, they could appeal to Hitler himself for a special dispensation. Few such appeals were ever successful. The Mendelian complexities created by the laws led to a plethora of unanticipated problems, as Nazi jurists gathered again and again to debate whether this or that anti-Semitic
law could or should be applied in the case of Mischlinge. How would a child of a quarter Jew and half Jew be classified? What about the child of two quarter Jews? And what did “religiously practicing” actually mean? The permutations were myriad and were the subject of interminable debate within the party and the state bureaucracy. In all there were five supplements to the Blood Protection Law between 1935 and 1939, each attempting to clarify the status of Mischlinge. The question of how to treat them was still being vigorously discussed at the infamous Wannsee Conference in January 1942.

  Nor was this all. Many in the party felt that forbidding “intercourse outside of marriage,” as defined in the Blood Protection Law, was far too narrow to protect Germany’s racial stock. That law had explicitly mentioned sexual intercourse, but this, Nazi legal specialists came to argue, was merely the starting point. As battles flared in the lower courts, the statute was extended to cover a broad range of sexual practices, and the resulting cases led regularly to extraordinarily graphic proceedings. In December 1935, the matter reached the German Supreme Court, which issued a ruling declaring that “the term sexual intercourse” included “all forms of natural and unnatural sexual intercourse—that is, coition as well as those sexual activities with the person of the opposite sex which are designed, in the manner in which they are performed, to serve in place of coition to satisfy the sex drive of at least one of the partners.” Under National Socialism, German jurisprudence had come to this.

  The first trials arising from the Nuremberg Laws began in December 1935, and the number rose steadily in the following years. Between those first trials and the close of 1940 German courts sentenced 1,911 persons for the crime of miscegenation. All were men; most were Jews, a reflection of Hitler’s belief that in sexual matters women were essentially passive. The sentences ranged from incarceration of two or so weeks to two years. These numbers probably understate the number of cases, since in June 1937 Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Security Service (SD) and the second most powerful man in the SS, issued a decree that a suspect could be sent directly to a concentration camp without first being sentenced in court.

  Under the circumstances, any sort of normal social interaction between Jews and non-Jews became impossible. “Aryan” Germans became cautious, ducking their former Jewish friends; Jews withdrew into themselves. There were some brave souls, “who carry on a friendly, neighborly relationship in Germany,” but they were isolated and scorned as “servants of the Jews.” In Breslau, the local Nazi newspaper published the names and addresses of “Aryan women and girls, who carry on intimate relations with Jews.” Storm Troopers posted placards throughout the city, on which the names of such women and Jews were printed, and local Nazis snapped photographs of Aryan customers entering Jewish businesses.

  Most of these cases were the result of anonymous denunciations. And everything was suspect. A handshake, a touch on the shoulder, a perfunctory wave of the hand, even a glance might cause someone to be turned in to the Gestapo or local police. So swamped were the authorities by these anonymous denunciations, many of which were dismissed out of hand, that the Gestapo had to issue warnings against frivolous denunciations. Still, the result was that Jews increasingly withdrew from ordinary social interaction with their German neighbors, and even longtime friendships between “Aryans” and Jews gradually disintegrated. Jews were not forced into physical segregation—there were no ghettos—but their social and psychological isolation was virtually complete. Ostracized by their neighbors, terrorized by Nazi militants, unprotected by the police, Jews kept their heads down.

  The Jewish community in Germany did not collapse or wither up and die. Officials from all over the country reported increased activity by Jewish organizations—Jewish veterans, Jewish sports clubs, Jewish youth groups, Jewish welfare societies were particularly active; even Jewish newspapers, such as the widely distributed Jüdische Rundschau, continued to be published into 1938. Lecture series were launched; cultural evenings were held; as were concerts by Jewish musicians. Talks were held on Palestine and the possibilities of settlement there, a subject that before 1933 had drawn little interest in the German Jewish community. Some Jews held out the hope that the Nuremberg Laws, as odious as they were, would bring an end to the SA terror and set a legal framework for continued Jewish life in Nazi Germany. Now, perhaps, there would be stability and the possibility of living unmolested in their homeland.

  In 1933, approximately 38,000 Jews left Germany; in 1934, 22,000 followed. In 1935 the number actually dropped to 21,000, and there was even a small trickle of Jews returning from immigration—Jews who found living a reduced existence in exile more traumatic than living in their own country, where they had roots, community, and their own German culture. The introduction of conscription and the creation of a German army in the spring of 1935 even prompted some Jews to express their interest in joining the military as good German patriots. So many had served honorably in the Great War. Their inquiries were scornfully rebuffed, amid Nazi suspicions that such offers to enlist were nothing more than a crafty Jewish tactic to infiltrate the military and would provide an opportunity to slip back into the German mainstream.

  Still, in the mid-1930s it seemed possible, albeit under drastically reduced circumstances, to live in Germany, and Jews struggled to interpret the ambiguous signals they received from the state and the public. In the years before the war, Jews confronted different local and regional practices, some of which deviated slightly from national directives. They were left to interpret mixed signals not only from the state but also from sympathetic “Aryans,” a confusing situation that at least gave Jews a glimmer of hope. Despite the remarkable tenacity of Jewish organizations and a modicum of Jewish public life, Jews lived on a knife’s edge. Ostracized, determined to do nothing that could draw attention to themselves, to make no open criticism of the regime, some burned their papers, letters, newspaper clippings, anything that might be construed as anti-Nazi or subversive. Many were convinced that their telephones were tapped, their correspondence opened—a fear they shared, although in a more heightened fashion, with much of the German public. Fear was their constant companion. It was dangerous even to be in the presence of anyone, “Aryans” included, who complained about any aspect, no matter how trivial, of the regime. One Jewish woman, upon hearing an Aryan neighbor in a shop grumble about the price of butter—didn’t she think so?—“did not answer and hurried away without buying anything. I was frightened. Fear, fear, fear—morning, noon and night. Fear followed us into our dreams, racking on our nerves. How imprudent, how inconsiderate of the woman to speak like that in public.”

  In the aftermath of the Nuremberg Laws, the regime introduced no new initiatives in racial policy in 1936–37, which has led many to speak of a lull in Nazi persecution of the Jews. To some it appeared that the regime’s racial harassment of the Jews had lost momentum. That was only superficially true. While no major legislation in Jewish policy was undertaken in 1936 and 1937, five supplements to the Blood Protection Law were introduced between 1935 and the close of 1938, each further constricting the lives of Germany’s Jews. Jews were banned from the practice of dentistry, from the practice of law, from the distribution of stamps, from operating as druggists, from owning restaurants or pubs; Jews were forbidden to serve as auditors, dieticians, land surveyors; and the fifth supplement issued in September 1938 liquidated Jewish law firms and put an end to any form of medical practice by Jewish doctors. The status of Mischlinge was a major target, and with each new supplement their position deteriorated.

  In these years, Nazi racial initiatives took a backseat to Hitler’s dramatic foreign policy moves, which held the nation’s attention and added greatly to his popularity. In 1935 he announced that Germany would build an army and an air force; he signed a naval agreement with Great Britain, which allowed Germany to begin building a high-seas fleet, including submarines. In March 1936 he sent troops into the Rhineland, German territory that according to the Versailles Treaty was to remai
n a demilitarized zone. And that summer the Olympic Games in Berlin brought Germany a tremendous boost in international prestige. At home they were viewed as a glowing accomplishment of the Third Reich. The year 1938 was a year of international crises and spectacular triumphs for Hitler. In March, the Anschluss, the absorption of Austria, brought an additional ten million ethnic Germans into the Reich along with around 200,000 Jews, an action that would have profound implications for Nazi racial policy. (Nazi foreign policy is treated in the following chapter.)

  Another development occurred in the mid-1930s that would have enormous impact on the evolution of Nazi racial policy. In June 1936 Hitler named Heinrich Himmler Reichsführer-SS and placed him in command of all German police, yet another profound incursion of the party into the competencies of the state. Gradually the SS began to play an increasingly prominent role in the formulation and enforcement of the regime’s Jewish policy. The dreaded Gestapo, officially a branch of the state police, was absorbed by the SS, which now engaged in its own surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations. Officially Jewish policy was directed by the Interior Ministry, but in typical Nazi fashion, other state ministries—Justice, Health, the Office of Racial Policy—and various party agencies laid claim to jurisdiction in various areas of the policy. In 1936 the SS began to assert itself, relentlessly claiming leadership in all matters relating to the Jewish community. The SS of the mid- to late 1930s functioned virtually as a government ministry, with departments for Administration, Internal Intelligence, and Foreign Intelligence. These departments in turn had numerous subsections for Ideological Opponents (the Left), Freemasons, Political Churches, and “the Opponent Jewry.” The Jewish subsection was by far the most active, and Heydrich’s Security Service, the SD, assumed the leading role. The Jewish section was composed of several desks, one each for Assimilationist Jewry, Orthodox Jewry, and Zionists. The Zionist desk was presided over by an obscure ex–traveling vacuum cleaner salesman, Adolf Eichmann, who claimed, falsely, as it turned out, to have a passable knowledge of Hebrew.