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

by Saul Friedlander

  33. Karl Haushofer, the founder of German geopolitics, was Hess’s teacher at the University of Munich, and by way of Hess he influenced parts of Mein Kampf regarding international affairs and world strategy; although himself a declared anti-Semite, Haushofer was married to a “half-Jewish” woman, Martha Mayer-Doss. From 1934 to 1938 Karl’s son, Albrecht, was employed by the foreign affairs agency “Office Ribbentrop”—Dienststelle Ribbentrop. For Karl’s and Albrecht’s attitudes to Judaism and the Jews, and for their personal situation in this respect, see Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Karl Haushofer: Leben und Werke, 2 vols. (Boppard, 1979); and Ursula Laak-Michael, Albrecht Haushofer und der Nationalsozialismus (Stuttgart, 1974); for an overall interpretation see Dan Diner, “Grundbuch des Planeten: Zur Geopolitik Karl Haushofers,” in Dan Diner, Weltordnungen: Über Geschichte und Wirkung von Recht und Macht (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), pp. 131 ff.

  34. Akten der Parteikanzlei der NSDAP, microfiches, 30100219–30100223, IfZ, Munich.

  35. See Shlomo Aronson, Reinhard Heydrich und die Frühgeschichte von Gestapo und SD (Stuttgart, 1971), pp. 11–12; Werner Maser, Adolf Hitler: Legende, Mythos, Wirklichkeit (Munich, 1971), pp. 11ff.

  36. Akten der Parteikanzlei der NSDAP (abstracts), part 1, vol. 2, p. 226.

  37. Lothar Gruchmann, “Blutschutzgesetz und Justiz: Zu Entstehung und Auswirkung des Nürnberger Gesetzes vom 15 September 1935,” VfZ 3 (1983): 419.

  38. Akten der Parteikanzlei der NSDAP (abstracts), part 1, vol. 1, p. 55. On various levels, German racial laws and racial discrimination continued to be a source of difficulties in the relations between the Reich and numerous countries. Thus, according to a 1936 report from the German legation in Bangkok, discriminatory measures were applied to “colored” passengers (Japanese, Chinese, and Siamese, among others) on German ships in the Far East. The Ministry of Transportation in Berlin requested German shipping companies to be aware of the negative consequences of such measures. Ibid., p. 178. During the same year the Wilhelmstrasse had to assuage the worries of Egyptian authorities: There were no obstacles to the marriage of a German non-Jewish woman with an Egyptian non-Jewish man; as for the difficulties regarding the marriage of non-Jewish German men with non-Jewish foreign women, they were of a general nature and in no way discriminated against Egyptians. Ibid., part 2, vol. 3, p. 108. All in all, various states in the Middle East felt targeted by German legislation regarding non-Aryans, despite all efforts of the Foreign Ministry in Berlin. Ibid., p. 109. Turkey was placated by a German declaration that the Turks were of “related racial stock,” but the ruling as far as other Middle Eastern nations were concerned was not clear at all. Ibid., p. 104.

  39. Ibid., part 1, vol. 2, p 168.

  40. For a strong affirmation of the primacy of the wider biological vision, and for the victimization of women that it implied, see, in particular, Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus; regarding the 1935 laws see particularly pp. 100–103. In her more recent writings Gisela Bock has formulated positions closer to those presented here. See Gisela Bock, “Krankenmord, Judenmord und nationalsozialistische Rassenpolitik,” in Frank Bajohr et al., eds., Zivilisation und Barbarei: die widersprüchlichen Potentiale der Moderne (Hamburg, 1991), pp. 285ff. and particularly pp. 301–3. Throughout the twelve years of the Nazi regime, a number of university research institutes were bolstering the racial policies with so-called scientific data: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Biology in Berlin; the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography at Breslau University; the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene at Frankfurt University; the Racial-Biological Institutes at Königsberg and Hamburg Universities; the Thüringian Center for Racial Questions, linked to Jena University; and the Research Institute in Hereditary Biology at Alt-Rhese in Mecklenburg. Klaus Drobisch et al., Juden unterm Hakenkreuz: Verfolgung und Ausrottung der deutschen Juden 1933–1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1973), pp. 162–63.

  41. For the beginning of this story see chapter 1, pp. 33ff.

  42. Mommsen, “Die Geschichte,” p. 352.

  43. Ibid., pp. 353–57.

  44. For the inquiry and the quotes see Noakes, “The Development of Nazi Policy,” pp. 299ff.

  45. Ibid., pp. 300–301.

  46. Ursula Büttner, “The Persecution of Christian-Jewish Families in the Third Reich,” LBIY 34 (1989): 277–78.

  47. Adam, Hochschule und Nationalsozialismus, p. 117.

  48. Cohn, “Bearers of a Common Fate?” pp. 360–61.

  49. Müller, Hitler’s Justice, pp. 99–100.

  50. Ibid., pp. 100–101.

  51. Ibid., pp. 101–2.

  52. I am using the title of Klaus Theweleit’s study, Male Fantasies, 2 vols. (Minneapolis, Minn., 1987–89).

  53. Noam and Kropat, Juden vor Gericht, pp. 125–27.

  54. Müller, Hitler’s Justice, p. 102–3.

  55. Akten der Parteikanzlei, microfiche No. 031575, IfZ, Munich.

  56. See Götz von Olenhusen, “Die ‘Nichtarischen’ Studenten,” note 52, and also Michael H. Kater, “Everyday Anti-Semitism in Prewar Nazi Germany: The Popular Bases,” Yad Vashem Studies 16 (1984): 150.

  57. Adolf Diamant, Gestapo Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), p. 91.

  58. Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing the Racial Policy 1933–1945 (Oxford, 1990).

  59. Ibid., p. 164.

  60. Ibid., pp. 163–64.

  61. Robert Gellately, “The Gestapo and German Society: Political Denunciations in the Gestapo Case Files,” Journal of Modern History 60, no. 4 (December 1988): 672–74. According to Sarah Gordon, some evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, although in the thirties some Rassenschänder were first held in ordinary prisons (Gefängnisse), whereas the Jewish Rassenschänder were sent to the much harder forced-labor establishments (Zuchthäser), the fate of both categories of prisoners was ultimately the same. Sarah Gordon, Hitler, Germans and the “Jewish Question,” (Princeton, N.J., 1984), pp. 238ff.

  62. Ministry of Justice, the Spokesman to all Justice press offices, 11.3.1936, Reichsjustizministerium, Fa 195/1936, IfZ, Munich.

  63. Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution, p. 77.

  64. Ibid., p. 78.

  65. Ibid., pp. 78–79.

  66. Ibid., p. 79.

  67. Richard Gutteridge, “German Protestantism and the Jews in the Third Reich,” in Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism and Christianity under the Impact of National Socialism, p. 237. See also Gutteridge, Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb! pp. 153ff. and particularly pp. 156–58.

  68. Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution, p. 80.

  69. Kulka, “Die Nürnberger Rassengesetze,” p. 602–3.

  70. For this interpretation of the long-term impact of the laws on the population, see Drobisch, Juden unterm Hakenkreuz, p. 160.

  71. Gestapa [the Gestapa was the central office of the Gestapo, in Berlin] to State police offices, 3.12.1935, Ortspolizeibehörde Göttingen, microfilm MA–172, IfZ, Munich.

  72. Gestapa to Central Association of German Jews (CV) June 1, 1934, ibid.; State police Hannover, 16.8.1934, ibid.

  73. Gestapa to all State police offices, 24.11.35, ibid.

  74. Gestapa to all State police offices, 4.4.1936, ibid.

  75. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, p. 166.

  76. For this case see Friedlander and Milton, Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 11, Berlin Document Center, ed. Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton (New York, 1992), part 1, pp. 210–22.

  77. Akten der Parteikanzlei (abstracts), part 1, vol. 1, p. 121.

  78. Friedlander and Milton, Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 11, part 1, pp. 210–22.

  79. Abraham Margalioth, “The Reaction of the Jewish Public in Germany to the Nuremberg Laws,” Yad Vashem Studies 12 (1977): 76.

  80. Bankier, “Jewish Society Through Nazi Eyes 1933–1936,” pp. 113–14.

  81. Margarete T. Edelheim-Mühsam, “Die Haltung der jüdischen Presse gegenüber der nationalsozialistischen Bedrohung,” in Robert Weltsch, ed., De
utsches Judentum: Aufstieg und Krise (Stuttgart, 1963), p. 375.

  82. Some Gestapo reports, such as the one emanating from Koblenz and dealing with October 1935, reported greater pessimism among the Jews and an urge to emigrate, also to Palestine. According to this report, the Jews did not believe in the possibility of staying in Germany and envisioned that “within approximately ten years the last Jew would have left Germany.” Heyen, Nationalsozialismus im Alltag, pp. 138–39.

  83. Boas, “German-Jewish Internal Politics,” p. 3.

  84. Ibid., p. 4, n. 4.

  85. Edelheim-Mühsam, “Die Haltung der jüdischen Presse,” pp. 376–77.

  86. Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (New York, 1987), p. 358.

  87. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, p. 178.

  88. William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934–1941 (New York, 1941; reprint, New York, 1988), p. 36.

  89. Quoted in Lowenstein, “The Struggle for Survival of Rural Jews,” p. 120.

  90. Yoav Gelber, “The Zionist Leadership’s Response to the Nuremberg Laws,” Studies on the Holocaust Period 6 (Haifa, 1988) (Hebrew).

  91. Chernow, The Warburgs, pp. 436ff.

  92. Akten der Parteikanzlei der NSDAP (abstracts), part 1, vol. 2, p. 208.

  93. Chernow, The Warburgs, pp. 436ff.

  94. Charlotte Beradt, Das Dritte Reich des Traums (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), p. 98.

  95. Ibid.

  96. Ibid., p. 104.

  97. Feuchtwanger and Zweig, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, p. 97.

  98. C. G. Jung, “Civilization in Transition,” in Collected Works, vol. 10 (New York, 1964), p. 166. This text is but one of many more or less identical statements made by Jung during the years 1933 to 1936 at least. The controversy concerning Jung’s attitude toward National Socialism has continued since the end of the war. The mildest appraisal of the issue by a historian not belonging to either camp is that of Geoffrey Cocks: “It is by no means clear that the personal philosophical beliefs and attitudes behind Jung’s dubious, naive and often objectionable statements during the Nazi era about ‘Aryans’ and Jews motivated his actions with regard to psychotherapists in Germany. The statements themselves reveal a destructive ambivalence and prejudice that may have served Nazi persecution of the Jews. But Jung conceded much more to the Nazis by his words than by his actions.” Psychotherapy in the Third Reich: The Göring Institute (New York, 1985), p. 132. Cocks’s evaluation would have to be thoroughly examined; nonetheless, given the circumstances, Jung’s attitude seems repellent enough.

  99. Ernst L. Freud, ed., The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Arnold Zweig (New York, 1970), p. 110.

  100. Kurt Tucholsky, Politische Briefe (Reinbek/Hamburg, 1969), pp. 117–23.

  Chapter 6 Crusade and Card Index

  1. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3, p. 55.

  2. Ibid., p. 351.

  3. The primacy of the anti-Bolshevik crusade has been argued by Arno J. Mayer. As will be seen, the speeches of 1936–37 explicitly indicate that the Jews were considered as the enemy behind the Bolshevik threat. For Mayer’s argument see his Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The Final Solution in History (New York, 1988).

  4. Lipstadt, Beyond Belief, p. 80.

  5. Arad, “The American Jewish Leadership’s Response,” pp. 418–19.

  6. Arnd Krüger, Die Olympischen Spiele 1936 und die Weltmeinung (Berlin, 1972), pp. 128–31. On June 13, 1936, notwithstanding a jump of five feet three inches (equaling the German women’s record) during the training period, athlete Gretel Bergmann received a letter from the German Olympic Committee that read in part: “Looking back on your recent performances, you could not possibly have expected to be chosen for the team.” In the spring of 1996, eighty-two-year-old Margaret Bergmann Lambert, a U.S. citizen who lives in New York, accepted the invitation of the German Olympic Committee to be its guest of honor at the Centennial Games in Atlanta. Ira Berkow, “An Olympic Invitation Comes 60 Years Late,” New York Times, June 18, 1996, pp. A1, B12.

  7. Eliahu Ben-Elissar, La Diplomatie du IIIe Reich et les Juifs, 1933–1939 (Paris, 1969), p. 179.

  8. Ibid., p. 173.

  9. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 2, p. 630.

  10. Ibid., p. 655.

  11. Walk, Das Sonderrecht, p. 153.

  12. Hitler, Speeches and Proclamations, pp. 750–51.

  13. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 2, p. 718.

  14. Heinrich Himmler, Die Schutzstaffel als antibolschewistische Kampforganisation (Munich, 1936), p. 30.

  15. Noakes and Pridham, Nazism 1919–1945, vol. 2, p. 281.

  16. Akten der Parteikanzlei (abstracts), part 1, vol. 2, p. 249.

  17. Der Parteitag der Ehre: Vom 8 bis 14 September 1936 (Munich, 1936), p. 101.

  18. Hitler, Reden und Proklamationen, p. 638.

  19. Der Parteitag der Ehre, p. 294. In his Reichstag speech of January 30, 1937, Hitler had already broached the theme of the Judeo-Bolshevik revolutionary action attempting to penetrate Germany. Hitler, Reden und Proklamationen, p. 671.

  20. Klee, Die “SA Jesu Christi,” p. 127.

  21. Der Parteitag der Arbeit vom 6 bis 13 September 1937: Offizieller Bericht über den Verlauf des Reichsparteitages mit sämtlichen Kongressreden (Munich, 1938), p. 157. Alfred Rosenberg’s contribution was unusual, even by Nazi standards. In his speech he described in gory detail the murderous rule of the Jews in the Soviet Union. He then produced a book “published in New York,” entitled Now and Forever, a “dialogue” between the Jewish writer Samuel Roth and the purportedly Zionist politician Israel Zangwill, with an introduction by Zangwill; the book was dedicated to the “president of the Jewish university in Jerusalem.” Der Parteitag der Arbeit, pp. 102–3. The texts mentioned by Rosenberg, who did not hesitate to quote chapter and verse, make the Protocols of the Elders of Zion seem like a harmless lullaby. In reality, as becomes clear even from the two-part article devoted to Roth’s book in the NS Monatshefte of January and February 1938, the book is based on a fictitious dialogue between Roth and Zangwill, mainly about anti-Semitism and the difficulties of political Zionism. See Georg Leibbrandt, “Juden über das Judentum,” Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte 94, 95 (January, February, 1938). No occasion was missed in the Rosenberg-Goebbels feud. In Rosenberg’s August 25, 1937, letter informing Goebbels that he, Rosenberg, would speak first at the rally, the master of ideology enjoyed a parting barb, closing with the following remark: “Finally, I would like to draw your attention to a small mistake. The quotation defining the Jew as the visible demon of the decay of humanity comes not from Mommsen but from Richard Wagner.” Rosenberg to Goebbels, 25.8.1937, Rosenberg files, microfilm MA–596, IfZ, Munich.

  22. Hitler, Speeches and Proclamations, p. 938; German original in vol. 2, p. 728.

  23. Ibid., p. 939.

  24. Ibid., p. 940.

  25. Ibid., p. 941.

  26. Ibid.

  27. The Führer’s Deputy, Directive, 19.4.1937, NSDAP Parteikanzlei (Anordnungen…), Db 15.02, IfZ, Munich.

  28. Goebbels, Tagebücher, part 1, vol. 3, p. 21.

  29. See the various studies in Hans-Erich Volkmann, ed., Das Russlandbild im Dritten Reich (Cologne, 1994). For Heydrich’s statement see Gerhart Hass, “Zum Russlandbild der SS,” Ibid., p. 209.

  30. See Michael Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1988), p. 146.

  31. Peter-Heinz Seraphim, Das Judentum im osteuropäischen Raum (Essen, 1938), p. 266.

  32. Ibid., p. 262.

  33. Ibid., p. 267.

  34. Commander of main region Rhine to SS-Gruppenführer Heissmeyer, 3.4.35 (“Lagebericht Juden,” 30 Lenzing [from the old German form of “springtime,” der Lenz] 1935), Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers SS, SD Oberabschnitt Rhein, microfilm MA–392, IfZ, Munich.

  35. Helmut Krausnick and Hildegard von Kotze, eds., Es spricht der Führer: Sieben exemplarische Hitler-Reden (Güte
rsloh, 1966), pp. 147–48.

  36. State police station Hildesheim to county prefects, mayors…28.10.1935, Ortspolizeibehörde Göttingen, microfilm MA–172, IfZ, Munich.

  37. Ibid., 23.10.1935.

  38. Gutteridge, “German Protestantism,” p. 238. See also Gutteridge, Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb! pp. 158ff.

  39. Gutteridge, “German Protestantism,” p. 238.

  40. Gutteridge, Open thy Mouth for the Dumb! pp. 159–60.

  41. Schönwälder, Historiker und Politik, pp. 86–87.

  42. Helmut Heiber, Walter Frank und sein Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands (Stuttgart, 1966), pp. 279–80.

  43. Karl Alexander von Müller, “Zum Geleit,” Historische Zeitschrift 153, no. 1 (1936): 4–5.

  44. Heiber, Walter Frank, p. 295.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Historische Zeitschrift 153, no. 2 (1936): 336ff. Sometimes reviews of Jewish publications that could appear hostile and damning for the Nazi reader could have been understood as praise from a non-Nazi perspective. One of the strangest examples is the review published in 1936 in the NS Monatshefte by Joachim Mrugowsky (later of criminal notoriety for euthanasia) on letters of fallen Jewish soldiers. Mrugowsky compared these letters with those of fallen German soldiers and came to the conclusion that the absolute racial incompatibility of the two groups was clearly revealed in the main ideals expressed by each group. Whereas the German ideal was the race, the Volk, and the struggle for the right to live, the Jewish letters idealized equality, humanity, and world peace. Joachim Mrugowsky, “Jüdisches und deutsches Soldatentum: Ein Beitrag zur Rassenseelenforschung,” Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte 76 (July 1936): 638.

  47. For a detailed presentation of Frank’s and Grau’s activities regarding the “Jewish Question” see Heiber, Walter Frank, mainly pp. 403–78.

  48. DAZ, 20 Nov. 1936, Nationalsozialismus/1936, Miscellanea, LBI, New York.

  49. Heiber, Walter Frank, pp. 444ff.

  50. See Das Judentum in der Rechtswissenschaft, vol. 1, Die Rechtswissenschaft im Kampf gegen den jüdischen Geist (Berlin, 1937), pp. 14ff, 28ff. See also Bernd Rüthers, Carl Schmitt im Dritten Reich: Wissenschaft als Zeitgeist-Bestärkung? (Munich, 1990), pp. 81ff, 95ff.