The confiscation of arms, in particular “military” firearms, was stepped up. The Bavarian interior minister’s Decree for the Surrender of Weapons set a deadline of March 31. Although persons with “well-founded requests” could apply to the local police for a permit to possess a handgun, military firearms were confined to Nazi-approved organizations: “The units of the National Revolution, SA, SS, and Stahlhelm, offer every German man with a good reputation the opportunity to join their ranks for the fight. Therefore, whoever does not belong to one of these named units and nevertheless keeps his weapon without authorization or even hides it, must be viewed as an enemy of the national government and will be held responsible without hesitation and with the utmost severity.”48
Of the three listed organizations, the SS (Schutzstaffeln or Elite Guard) of the National Socialist Party, headed by Heinrich Himmler (who was also Munich police president at this time), emerged as the most powerful Nazi police organization.49 The SA (Sturmabteilung or Storm Troopers), headed by Ernst Röhm, carried out many of the excesses of the Nazi revolution until its leadership was eliminated in the 1934 Night of the Long Knives.50 Before long, Hitler would abolish the Stahlhelm, or Steel Helmets, the veterans’ organization with its honorary commander, President Hindenburg, because it included too many non-Nazis, even former Reichsbanner members and other leftists.51
Searches of the houses of alleged “Communists” continued unabated, resulting in the reported seizure of numerous arms and “confessions” by the subjects.52
Reich interior minister Wilhelm Frick would play a decisive role in ordering the disarming of alleged enemies of the state, especially the Jews, over the coming years. Hitler had endorsed Frick, chief of Munich’s political police in the 1920s, in Mein Kampf.53 On being appointed Reich interior minister by Hitler in 1933, Frick wrote police stations that Communists dressed like SA members were rioting and smashing Jewish shop windows.54
On March 28, 1933, Interior Minister Frick wrote to the state governments that firearm manufacturers’ records must be strictly inspected by the police:
Among the shady arms deals that were planned last year by Suhler arms companies, it has become known that seven of the arms trade books include columns showing foreign companies that do not exist. It is further known in preparation for a criminal case for high treason…that over 400 pistols of an arms dealer have been transferred, without entry into his arms record book, to a number of Communists who had no arms acquisition permits. The responsible Interior Minister for this area therefore recommends that the arms records of firearm and ammunition manufacturers be inspected preferably by officials of the state criminal police departments and simultaneously that all conspicuous transfers, especially larger arms orders through small unknown companies, be inspected by the police in the districts of the recipients for discrepancies from the manufacturer’s arms records to verify the deliveries.55
In addition to higher sentences, Frick urged the police to enforce controls strictly and to inspect closely the arms orders of small, unknown companies. Prosecutors should seek the highest penalties for arms offenses and should appeal low sentences.
Directives were issued to the government units, police, municipal commissars, and special commissioners of the highest SA leaders regarding the execution of the March 1933 Decree for the Surrender of Military Weapons. It began: “Despite all of the measures taken so far, parts of the population opposed to the national government and the national movement behind it are still in possession of military weapons and military ammunition.” It ordered the police “immediately to order the population to surrender any military weapons in a timely manner to the special commissars listed in the official gazettes as well as in the local press.” Weapons to be surrendered included not just heavy weapons, but also “military rifles” (which were bolt actions) and “army revolvers.” The directive continued:
Pursuant to § 4, paragraph 2, of the decree the Special Commissar of the Highest SA Leader may exempt members of the SA, SS, and Stahlhelm units as well as members of veterans’ associations by confidential order to the pertinent leaders of those units/associations. Under no circumstances may the public, especially the press, be informed about this exemption, given the fact that the provisions on disarmament of the Versailles Treaty are still in effect. Further, upon request, the Special Commissar may allow reliable persons to keep a rifle together with the necessary ammunition for the protection of house and farm. The same applies to army revolvers that are the personal property of the owner. Only such persons can be considered reliable from whom a loyal attitude toward the national government can be expected. These approved exceptions must also be treated as confidential.56
The surrendered arms were to be stored with the SA, SS, and Stahlhelm. These groups in turn would assist the police “to conduct weapons searches in places where military weapons and military ammunition are still suspected.”57 The net result of this decree was the disarming of all opponents of National Socialism and the general populace, but the arming of the members of the SA, SS, and Stahlhelm.
On March 29, municipal governments such as Bad Tölz were urgently informed about the directive to surrender military weapons. It “assumed that the population is adequately informed through the official proclamations and through the daily press about the duty to surrender military weapons. The surrender deadline is March 31.” After defining “military weapons,” it concluded: “Whoever does not surrender his weapons on time or does not surrender all weapons may become subject to a weapons search. Severe penalties may be imposed for the concealment of weapons.”58
A terse newspaper announcement by authorities about the directive began: “We would like to point out one more time that all military weapons and ammunition in private possession have to be surrendered by March 31, 1933.” It warned that “if we find military weapons or ammunition after” that deadline, “we will be forced to proceed ruthlessly.”59
Not encompassed in the order were nonmilitary revolvers such as that possessed by Frau Bella Fromm, the Berlin Jewish socialite mentioned earlier. She was invited to a reception by Vice Chancellor and Frau von Papen on the evening of March 29. None other than Adolf Hitler made his first social appearance there since becoming chancellor. The führer spoke to Bella and kissed her hand, giving her a “slight nausea.” She confided to her diary: “Weird ideas flashed through my mind. Why did I not have my little revolver with me?” After polite conversation about Bella’s Red Cross decorations from the Great War, Hitler kissed her hand again and moved on to other guests. Not having her revolver with her and being a polite lady, she could not shoot Hitler, but she wiped off her hand on a friend’s sleeve, joking, “He’s supposed to be able to smell a Jew ten miles away, isn’t he? Apparently his sense of smell isn’t working tonight.”60
Although the Nazi focus continued to be the disarming of political enemies—for instance, a police raid of the local labor union in Hannover, where shots were exchanged and police searched the building for weapons61—the Jews’ turn soon came. The government announced that an anti-Semitic boycott would not be resumed on the condition that the “atrocity campaign” abroad be ended, referring to the American and Polish consulates’ repetition of accusations by eastern Jews against the Nazis. Apparently hoping to depict Jews as subversive by proving them to be in possession of firearms, search-and-seizure operations were executed on April 4, 1933. The New York Times reported: “A large force of police assisted by Nazi auxiliaries raided a Jewish quarter in Eastern Berlin, searching everywhere for weapons and papers. Streets were closed and pedestrians were halted. Worshipers leaving synagogues were searched and those not carrying double identification cards were arrested. Even flower boxes were overturned in the search through houses and some printed matter and a few weapons were seized.”62
The Völkische Beobachter, Hitler’s newspaper, described the raid under the alarming headline “The Time of the Ghetto Has Come; Massive Raid in the Scheunenviertel; Numerous Discoveries of Weapons�
��Confiscation of Subversive Material; Numerous Arrests of ‘Immigrants’ from East Galicia.” The article dramatically described how the police, supported by the SS and criminal detectives, approached Berlin’s Scheunenviertel (Barn District)63 and searched the houses and basements of the Jewish inhabitants. It reported: “During the very extensive search, the search details found a whole range of weapons. Further, a large amount of subversive printed material was confiscated. Fourteen persons who did not have proper identification were detained. Most of them were Jews from Poland and Galicia who were staying in Berlin without being registered.”64
The article did not state how many or what types of arms were seized or whether they were even unlicenced—indeed, Weimar-era firearm registration records may have directed the police to exactly which Jews to search for arms. As will be seen, no prohibition on Jewish possession of firearms was decreed until 1938. The article does expand on the “subversive material” discovered. It includes two illustrations: first, the assemblage of SS and police on the street and, second, a pathetic picture of an elderly Jewish man in front of a microphone explaining to Nazi radio broadcasters on the scene that he did not know why he was being searched. Beobachter readers were apparently supposed to “get it,” but the picture and statement only evoke sympathy for the old man.
On April 12, Reich interior minister Frick promulgated the newly decreed law on racial and political restrictions in the civil service, dismissing from government service non-Aryans (except war veterans) and members of democratic and socialist groups. An Associated Press account under the headline “Seize Literature and Arms” gave the following description:
Systematic search by the police of passengers’ baggage deposited at Prussian railway cloakrooms has yielded a rich harvest of treasonable material, it was said in an official report issued tonight.
Truckloads of trunks filled with Communist literature, arms and munitions were seized in Berlin and other cities, the report said.65
An April 21 report “Permission to Possess Arms Withdrawn from Breslau Jews” described what was happening in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), home to 10,000 Jews:
The Police President of the city has decreed that “all persons now or formerly of the Jewish faith who hold permits to carry arms or shooting licenses must surrender them forthwith to the police authorities.”
The order is justified officially on the grounds that Jewish citizens have allegedly used their weapons for unlawful attacks on members of the Nazi organization and the police.
Inasmuch as the Jewish population “cannot be regarded as trustworthy,” it is stated, permits to carry arms will not in the future be issued to any member thereof.66
The Breslau police would have known the identities of such persons because they themselves had issued the firearm licenses and registrations that had been required by the 1928 and 1931 Weimar laws. It was those same laws that authorized confiscation of firearms from persons not deemed “trustworthy.”67
As the Nazis consolidated power, traditional elements temporarily accorded recognition were then attacked. The Stahlhelm, the “steel helmet” veterans who had fought in World War I and who had been exempted from some of the arms seizures, came under scrutiny. An informer notified Munich’s political police that a suspect “who belongs to the Stahlhelm is currently in the process of hiding weapons. Schnürpel [the suspect] has been said to have repeated several times that the Stahlhelm, fearing its dissolution, was hiding a part of its weapons.”68 The Stahlhelm would be subordinated under SA command in July and wholly absorbed by the SA early the next year.69
A police raid in Frankfurt resulted in the arrest of 200 alleged Communists and the seizure of fifty weapons and a duplicating machine.70 A massive raid in Berlin netted “extensive written inflammatory material” along with “hitting and stabbing weapons.”71 Victor Klemperer, a Jewish war veteran, noted in his diary: “The garden of a Communist in Heidenau is dug up, there is supposed to be a machine-gun in it. He denies it, nothing is found; to squeeze a confession out of him, he is beaten to death. The corpse is brought to the hospital. Boot marks on the stomach, fist-sized holes in the back, cotton wool stuffed into them. Official post mortem result: Cause of death dysentery, which frequently causes premature ‘death spots.’”72
In the month of May, the newspapers, buildings, and other assets of political enemies were forfeited to the state,73 and the infamous book burning consumed in flames “subversive,” Jewish, and “degenerate” works.74 The SPD was banned in June, and the so-called bourgeois parties were prohibited by the Law Against the Formation of New Parties of July 14, 1933.75
The burgeoning police state needed detailed information on every person. For the previous fifty years, the state registry offices had maintained files on every person’s status and religion, making Jews readily identifiable.76 Beginning in June, a new census began that would provide to authorities detailed information on every household. For the census, Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft (Dehomag), the subsidiary of the U.S. firm International Business Machines (IBM), provided its new punch card and card-sorting system, which allowed an enormous amount of data to be stored in 600 punch hole possibilities per card. Besides name, address, sex, birthdate, native language, family, and employment, the cards included at column 22: hole 1 for Protestant, hole 2 for Catholic, and hole 3 for Jew.77 It is unclear whether firearm ownership was included, but census records could easily have been correlated with police records to identify Jews, political opponents, and others who had obtained permits to acquire or carry firearms or who had registered firearms pursuant to the 1931 decree.
Indeed, the Gestapo on July 19 directed the Berlin police president and other police agencies in Prussia to keep monthly statistics of confiscated firearms and explosives, noting: “Recently, especially with search and seizure operations of wider scope, arms and explosives in great numbers have been confiscated.” The requirement extended to “military arms and other firearms.”78
This information gathering was hardly limited to the census and police firearm records. In an August diary entry, Victor Klemperer denigrated the ostensible support for Hitler with the comment: “But everyone, literally everyone cringes with fear. No letter, no telephone conversation, no word on the street is safe anymore. Everyone fears the next person may be an informer.”79
Opponents of the New Order were by now invariably labeled “Communists,” but these enemies of the state were frequently Social Democrats, political moderates of various stripes, and Jews. The Weimar firearms laws and decrees were ready made to justify the escalating police raids for unregistered or otherwise unauthorized firearms. The ostensible dimunation of the rule of law was itself paradoxically based on a perverted concept of the rule of law, arising from the legislative branch’s surrender of law-making power to the executive—now embodied in the person of the führer Adolf Hitler. The repression would only become more systematic and pointed as the Nazis consolidated power and flexed their growing police-state muscle and firepower.
*
1. See, for example, reports in Völkischer Beobachter, Jan. 29, 1933, 2; New York Times, Feb. 3, 1933, 1; Der Bund (Bern), Feb. 11, 1933 (Saturday edition), 1.
2. “Razzia in Charlottenburg” (Police Raid in Charlottenburg), Der Bund (Bern), Feb. 2, 1933 (evening edition), 2.
3. New York Times, Feb. 13, 1933, 4.
4. Quoted in Konrad Heiden, Geburt des Nationalsozialismus (The Birth of National Socialism) (Zürich, 1934), cited in Gerd H. Padel, Dämme Gegen die Braune Flut: Die Schweizerpresse und der Aufstieg des Dritten Reiches 1933–1939 (Dam Against the Brown Flood: The Swiss Press and the Ascent of the Third Reich 1933-1939) (Zürich: Thesis, 1998), 16.
5. Hans Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 535–37, 542.
6. Leon Dominian to Secretary of State, Feb. 21, 1933, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers 1933, vol. 2: The British Commonwe
alth, Europe, Near East, and Africa (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949), 195–96.
7. “Hitlerites Wreck Catholic Meetings,” New York Times, Feb. 22, 1933, 1.
8. Quoted in Frederick T. Birchall, “Hitler Arms Nazis as Prussian Police,” New York Times, Feb. 25, 1933, 1, 5. See also Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, 534–35, 542.
9. Quoted in Birchall, “Hitler Arms Nazis as Prussian Police,” New York Times, Feb. 25, 1933, 1, 5.
10. Hans Bernd Gisevius, To the Bitter End: An Insider’s Account of the Plot to Kill Hitler, 1933–1944, trans. Richard Winston and Clara Winston (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998), 13, 33–36.
11. “Red Terror Plans Alleged by Reich,” New York Times, Mar. 1, 1933, 11. See also William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1990), 194, citing Nürnberg Document 1390-PS, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), III, 968–70.
12. Franz von Papen, Memoirs (London: Andre Deutsch, 1952), 269.
13. Reichsverordnung zum Schutz von Volk und Staat, Reichsgesetzblatt 1933, I, 83, § 1.
14. Id. § 5.
15. Ernst Fraenkel, The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941), 3; Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, 542–43.
16. Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, July 1, 1937, quoted in Fraenkel, The Dual State, 25, 216 n. 71.
17. “Red Terror Plans Alleged by Reich,” New York Times, Mar. 1, 1933, 11.
18. Der Reichsminister des Innern (RMI) to Landesregierungen, Mar. 1, 1933, I A 2130/1.3, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, München (BHStA), (MA) 106312.
19. Der Bund (Bern), Mar. 3, 1933, 3.
20. See “2000 Sprengkapseln in der Wohnung eines Kommunisten gefunden” (2000 Detonators Found in a Communist’s Apartment); “Maschinengewehr bei Kommunisten beschlagnahmt” (Machinegun Confiscated from Communists); “Feuergefecht in Hamburg, Kommunistische Dachschützen mit Karabinern bewaffnet” (Shootout in Hamburg, Communist Snipers Armed with Carbines); See also “Anklage gegen 9 Kommunisten” (Charges Against 9 Communists), Völkischer Beobachter, Tägliches Beiblatt (Supplement), Mar. 4, 1933, 2.
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