Gun Control in the Third Reich

by Stephen P. Halbrook

  Attached to the report was the “Memorandum on the Subversive Activity of the Communists in the Winter of 1932/1933.” A section entitled “The Arming of the Proletariat” explained the preparation of the armed uprising through “the accumulation of arms of all kinds, of ammunition and of explosives.” It recited the fact of numerous criminal convictions by the Reich Court against KPD functionaries in the period 1923–30 for the procurement of arms for violent revolution. These procurement efforts had allegedly intensified:

  The thefts in gun shops, breakins into ammunition depots, transfers of weapons, requests for handgun ammunition in gun shops, all observed in recent times all over the Reich and attributable to the Communist influence, and the discovery of Communist weapons’ caches make it clear that the KPD is attributing increased importance to the procurement of weapons and is trying systematically to arm its followers so that they will be sufficiently equipped with handguns and explosives when the armed uprising begins.23

  Then Hitler came to power and saved Germany, or so went the mythology. But aside from dramatic searches, the Nazis only needed to compare their blacklists with police records on firearm owners to disarm their enemies and to do so legally under the 1928 Firearms Law. The leading legal journal noted in November 1934: “If the police consider a person dangerous and if such person, because of concerns about his reliability under §16(1), should not have received a firearm or ammunition acquisition license or carry license, then the police may prohibit such person from possession of arms and ammunition.”24 This section of the Weimar law allowed the police to decide who was “reliable” and who could or could not possess a firearm.

  However, the Firearms Law also provided that if a firearm was seized, the owner could designate an eligible person to have the firearm, and otherwise the government must pay market value to the owner if it forfeits the firearm.25 In early 1935, the police commissioner of Stettin sent an inquiry to the Gestapo about whether these provisions were to be followed in light of the 1933 emergency decrees against subversives.26

  This query prompted Reinhard Heydrich, second in command to Heinrich Himmler in the Gestapo and a key player in the Night of the Long Knives, to write a broader memorandum asserting Gestapo authority over matters involving the firearms laws. Reciting a maze of Gestapo orders, Heydrich wrote:

  Matters regarding the substantive Firearms Law are in accordance with the Secret Police Law of November 30, 1933, Gs.S.413.27 Previously, the Political Group of the Prussian Interior Ministry prepared them according to standing orders. Now these duties are transferred to the Prime Minister in his role as Chief of the Secret State Police [Gestapo] and are in turn delegated to me as the deputy independent command in accordance with the order of November 20, 1934, St.M.P.1317. Though this change of jurisdiction occurs at the central level, still lower-level organizations of the General and Interior Administrations’ jurisdiction have not changed and, as the Police Commissioner of Stettin has pointed out, no regulations have yet been changed, either. The acquisition of new, unforseen duties by the State Police (Staatspolizei, or Stapo) authorities is thus out of the question. Furthermore, I refer to the directive of the Prussian Prime Minister, Chief of the Secret State Police, of July 6, 1934, St.M. I 70 22, especially section IV. It goes without saying that State Police authorities will participate in an extensive way when political concerns are touched by the issuance of firearm licences etc.28

  In short, whereas firearm license matters would be administered at the state level, apparently by the Public Order Police, the Stapo and Gestapo would make the decisions if a political angle were found in the applicant or application.

  No right of judicial review existed from action by the Stapo or the Gestapo, held the Prussian Supreme Administrative Court (Oberverwaltungsgericht) on May 2, 1935.29 That would have included, for instance, decisions denying a firearm permit to a Jew or ordering a person into protective custody even if acquitted of a charge by a court. Only actions by the ordinary police could be appealed to a court. To remove any doubt about the legality of the Gestapo’s absolute power, a law was passed in 1936 that explicitly prohibited judicial review.30

  Even in the courts, a revision to the Criminal Code in June 1935 authorized judges to declare an act criminal by analogy: “That person will be punished who commits an act which the law declares to be punishable or which deserves punishment according to the fundamental principle of a criminal statute or healthy popular opinion.”31

  How did all of this translate to actions by the police and the lives of German citizens? One manifestation was an ever-growing number of arrests and searches. In a routine report from April 1935, the Köln Stapo noted two recent arrests. One was a worker who “has offended the Führer in a most offensive way and has scorned the measures of the Reich government.” The other was a sailor who possessed unauthorized weapons. “In the apartment of the sailor, who previously was a leading member of the KPD, was found 1 carbine, 1 hunting rifle, 1 bayonet, and a blackjack made from an altered piece of cable.”32

  In another incident, the report continued, an SA Sturmführer removed his pistol from its holster in an automobile and accidently shot and killed an SS lance corporal. A rumor spread that the corporal had been shot by a Jew, and for two nights rioters, including SA members, smashed the windows of Jewish homes and businesses.

  Daily life under Nazism was further reflected in a July diary entry by Victor Klemperer: “The Jew-baiting and the pogrom atmosphere grow day by day. Der Stürmer, Goebbels’ speeches (‘exterminate like fleas and bedbugs!’), acts of violence in Berlin, Breslau, yesterday also here in Prager Strasse. The struggle against Catholics, ‘enemies of the state,’ both reactionary and Communist, is increasing. It is as if the Nazis were being driven toward and prepared to go to any extreme, as if a catastrophe were imminent.”33

  Reflecting the reality of Klemperer’s description, the Berlin police issued an intelligence report on various Jews. “The Jew Bruno Cohn stated in a pub at the Stettin railway station: ‘25 000 RMS were taken from me by the Nazis back in the days of the Revolution, and they would also have taken my horses, if I had not pulled out a revolver.’” Cohn predicted an early collapse of the regime. And an eavesdropper at a meeting of the conservative National Association of German Jews (Verband nationaldeutscher Juden) in Schubert-Saal reported on a patriotic speech by Dr. Max Naumann. “The speaker welcomed the new Defense Act and only regretted that Jews are excluded from bearing arms.”34 (The act required Aryan descent for military service.35) The meeting ended with the singing of German patriotic songs.

  The report concluded with two matters of weighty concern. First, Jews were still flying the national flag, which had become illegal. Second, Aryans, including even Nazi Party comrades, had sought to intervene on behalf of Jews who had been arrested.

  On September 15, 1935, the Nazi Party’s National Day, the Reichstag unanimously adopted the Nürnberg Laws.36 They included the Reich Citizenship Law, which Hitler and Interior Minister Frick signed and which provided that “[a] citizen of the Reich is only that subject who is of German or kindred blood, and who, through his conduct, shows that he is both desirous and fit to serve faithfully the German people and Reich.”37 The English term “citizen” fails to reflect two differing German terms that are both translated as such. While Jews retained German nationality (Staatsangehörigkeit), they were no longer citizens with civil rights (Reichsbürger), a concept that had no prior legal meaning.

  The Nürnberg Laws also included the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, which declared that “the purity of German blood is essential for the further existence of the German people” and forbade “marriages between Jews and nationals of German or kindred blood,” punishable with hard labor.38 Hitler, Frick, Führer Deputy Rudolf Hess, and Justice Minister Gürtner signed this law.

  Not every “Aryan” was taken in by the anti-Jewish hysteria. Victor Klemperer recorded a Christian landlady saying about Hitler: “And there is nobody who kills
this big swine?” But the mood of the Jews in Berlin was dark, Klemperer commented: “We shall not live to see the end of this tyranny, the populace is enthusiastically devoted to Hitler.”39

  Pursuant to the Nürnberg Laws, on November 14 Frick and Hess issued the First Supplementary Decree, proclaiming: “A Jew cannot be a citizen of the Reich. He cannot exercise the right to vote; he cannot occupy public office.”40 There followed convoluted formulas for determining whether a person is a Jew based on blood, descent, marriage, and membership in the Jewish religious community.

  The Jewish communities were already reporting their members to officials on a quarterly basis.41 The ability to keep and to access records quickly about Jews was facilitated by the IBM punch card technology utilized by the German IBM subsidiary Dehomag, which kept track of all births and marriages, including religion.42

  Two days before the decree defining Jews was issued, on November 12, Frick circulated a new draft of the Weapons Law.43 Purging society of the enemies of Nazism apparently was taking longer than expected, for discussion of reform of the law had been dropped for two years following its proposal in 1933.

  The draft’s definition of firearm included “weapons designed to propel a solid body through a barrel by means of combustion gases or compressed air.” This inclusion of air guns was a radical innovation, and even more so was the inclusion of all “ammunition,” which would have included air gun ammunition such as BBs. Any manufacture of firearms and ammunition (including the reloading of cartridges) required a license. The draft introduced the following new qualification for issuance of such license: “No license may be issued if the applicant or the person contemplated as technical manager of a facility is Jewish.”44 However, Jews were not precluded from being authorized to trade in firearms. Nevertheless, trade in firearms would be prohibited to “wandering persons” such as Gypsies and at fairs, shooting matches, and exhibitions.

  As under the 1928 law, a license to carry a gun would be “issued only to persons considered reliable and only if a need has been proven.” Licenses would not be issued to persons suspected of being “enemies of the people or the state.” Besides police and members of the Wehrmacht (the new name for the Reichswehr, the German army), the following would not need a license: “Political leaders of the National Socialist German Workers Party beginning with the rank of local group leader and up, and members of the SA, SS, and the National Socialist Motor Corps beginning with the rank of lieutenant and up, if the deputy of the Führer or an office designated by him have granted them the right to carry firearms.”45

  Persons not supportive of the Nazi regime would be prohibited from possession of any kind of weapon. As the draft provided: “The competent authority may prohibit a person who acted as an enemy of the people and the state or who is considered a threat to public security from acquiring, possessing and carrying firearms and slashing and thrusting weapons.”46

  No person could make or even possess “firearms that are specially built to be folded, telescoped, shortened, or easily disassembled to an extent that exceeds the normal extent for hunting and sports purposes,” and even hollow-point .22-caliber rimfire cartridges would be banned.47

  The general penalty for violation was three years imprisonment, and possession of a weapon by an “enemy of the state” was punishable with ten years imprisonment.

  A memorandum with an analysis of the draft law began with a basic premise: “The requirement for any relaxation of the current weapons law must be that the police authorities remain able to proceed with relentless severity against the possession of weapons by enemies of the people and the state.”48 It noted that section 20—under which the authorities could prohibit any person from possession of a weapon as a “public enemy”—was “the draft’s key instrument for the police.” Given this absolute police discretion to deny entitlement of firearm possession to enemies of the state, “it will therefore be possible for any national comrade faithful to the state to acquire firearms without a special permit.”49 However, allowing everyone to carry a firearm would “create a grave danger to public security and order,” and thus permits to carry would still be required.50

  The discussion about licenses to be in the firearms business indicated a partial motive to suppress competition. It stated that “the weapons industry has to be subject to strict control by the state” and that it was “the request of the weapons industry itself to keep the industry free of inappropriate elements.” Accordingly, only citizens of the German Reich could obtain permits to engage in the firearms industry, and, further, “there will be no room for Jews in the German weapons industry.” The draft “therefore provides that no permit may be issued if the applicant or the person designated to be the technical head of a facility is Jewish.”51

  At this very moment, the Nazis were in the process of expropriating the arms manufacturer Simson & Co., owned by the Jewish brothers Arthur and Julius Simson. In the period 1925–34, it was the only company authorized by the Inter-Allied Disarmament Commission, under the Treaty of Versailles, to make and repair machine guns and Lugar pistols for the Reichswehr. Also making hunting guns and pocket pistols, it became the largest gun manufacturer in Thuringia.52

  During the Weimar Republic, Nazi Gauleiter (governor) Fritz Sauckel had accused the “Jewish” company of fraud. When Hitler took power, Sauckel was appointed Reichsstatthalter (Reich governor) of Thuringia. He instigated criminal charges, but after a show trial the court rejected the accusations. Sauckel turned to extortion, imposing “party comrades” as managers in the firm and forcing a merger under the name Berlin-Suhle Arms and Vehicle Works (Berlin-Suhler Waffen-und Fahrzeugwerke, or BSW). Anti-Nazi workers had another meaning for BSW: “Bis Simson Wiederkommt” (Until Simson Returns).

  On April 14, 1935, Arthur Simson was arrested and thrown into one of the isolation cells of Berlin’s Moabit Prison, joining other political prisoners there. Hitler personally approved Sauckel’s takeover of the arms company, and on November 28 a “contract” was ready to sign. In the cellar of Gestapo Headquarters in Berlin, Julius and Arthur Simson were forced to admit cheating the Reich out of 10 million Reichsmark and to sign the expropriation of their business. They were released and thereafter escaped to Switzerland.

  The Nazi expropriation of the Simson company, well known in Europe for its sporting and military arms, reverberated throughout the Continent as an attack on private enterprise and the first major “Aryanization” of a Jewish business. Sauckel would rename the company Gustloff Werke (Gustloff Works), after a Nazi “martyr” shot by a Jewish student in Switzerland. The firm was described as “the first National Socialist industrial foundation and its most modern model factory.”53 Sauckel would be hanged after the war for his role in the slave-labor program.

  As the Simson episode illustrates, it did not matter that the draft law prohibiting Jews from the firearms industry had not been adopted. That adoption was not needed because the firm was expropriated under the guise of the company owners’ fraud against the state. Of course, the Nazis could make such allegations and seize such businesses as they wished.

  Although the draft revision of the Firearms Law did not propose that Jews be denied firearm ownership, the Gestapo would see to that. This blend of de facto policy execution and legal rhetoric faciliated a program of serious disarming of the populace. The Nazis were interested in taking away arms from any individual or party who might oppose their rule or whim—and the German Jews were a particular target even before the infamous Nürnberg Laws took effect.

  *

  1. Wolfgang Langhoff, Die Moorsoldaten: 13 Monate Konzentrationslager (Zürich: Schweizer Spiegel, 1935).

  2. Wolfgang Langhoff, Rubber Truncheon, trans. Lilo Linke (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1935).

  3. Langhoff, Rubber Truncheon, 4.

  4. Langhoff, Rubber Truncheon, 57–58.

  5. Langhoff, Rubber Truncheon, 63–65, 66, 67–69, 76.

  6. Langhoff, Rubber Truncheon, 103, 193–94.

  7. L
anghoff, Rubber Truncheon, 210–11.

  8. Langhoff, Rubber Truncheon, 268.

  9. Langhoff, Rubber Truncheon, 276–77.

  10. Raphaël Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), 15–16.

  11. Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, 16.

  12. Gesetz über den Neuaufbau des Reichs, Reichsgesetzblatt 1934, I, S. 75.

  13. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933–1941, trans. Martin Chalmers (New York: Modern Library, 1999), 54.

  14. Michael Wildt, “Violence Against Jews in Germany, 1933–1939,” in Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941, ed. David Bankier (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), 187.

  15. 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), 124–25.

  16. James M. Diehl, Paramilitary Politics in Weimar Germany (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 291. See also Kurt G. W. Ludecke, I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood Purge (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938). Ludecke found refuge in the United States but was deported after World War II. See Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U.S. 160 (1948).

  17. U.S. ambassador William E. Dodd to the Secretary of State, July 24, 1934, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers 1934, vol. 2: Europe, Near East, and Africa (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951), 243.

  18. Richard L. Miller, Nazi Justiz: Law of the Holocaust (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), 46.

  19. U.S. ambassador William E. Dodd telegram, Aug. 21, 1934, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers 1934, 2:245.

  20. William E. Dodd, Ambassador Dodd’s Diary: 1933–1938, ed. William E. Dodd Jr. and Martha Dodd (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1941), 189–90 (entry for Nov. 13, 1934).