Gun Control in the Third Reich

by Stephen P. Halbrook

  21. Der Pr. Min.d.Inn. to Staatspol. Potsdam, July 30, 1934, Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv (BrLHA), Pr. Br. Rep. 2A, Reg. Potsdam I Pol/3477, Waffenangelegenheiten Bd. 3, 1928–37.

  22. Staatsministerium des Innern Der Politische Polizeikommandeur, G6358 I1A, München, Aug. 25, 1934, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, München (BHStA), (MA) 106312.

  23. Denkschrift über die kommunistische Wühlarbeit im Winter 1932/33, RR.ie.r. von Lengriesser, BHStA, MA 106312, IAN.2160/14.3, at 33–35.

  24. “Schusswaffengesetz 12.4.28, 16, 17” (Firearms Law, April 12, 1928, §§ 16, 17), Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung, Nov. 15, 1934, 1417.

  25. Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition, §§ 17(2), 18(2), Reichsgesetzblatt 1928, I, 143, 145.

  26. Preußische Geheime Staatspolizei, B.-Nr. 80 249/34—I 1 D, Feb. 6, 1935, Bundesarchiv (BA) Lichterfelde, R 58/2507.

  27. The “Secret Police Law” is the Gesetz über die Geheime Staatspolizei, Pr. GS., S. 413 (1933), decreed by Göring, which placed the Gestapo under his direct supervision as a branch of the Interior Ministry.

  28. Preußische Geheime Staatspolizei, Betrifft die Angelegenheiten des materiellen Waffenrechts, Feb. 21, 1935, BA Lichterfelde, R 58/2507.

  29. Ernst Fraenkel, The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941), 26, 216 n. 74. The court relied on the Secret Police Law (Gesetz über Geheime Staatspolizei), Nov. 30, 1933, Preussische Gesetzessammlung, 1933, 41.

  30. Gesetz über die Geheime Staatspolizei, February 10, 1936, Preussische Gesetzessammlung, 1936, 21, cited in Fraenkel, The Dual State, 26, 217 n. 78. See also Edward Crankshaw, Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny (London: Greenhill Books, 1956), 89.

  31. Reichsgesetzblatt 1935, I, 839; Ingo Müller, Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich, trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 74.

  32. Der Regierungspräsident, Apr. 25, 1935, Tagesbericht der Stapo Köln, BA Lichterfelde, R58/3864.

  33. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, 128 (entry for July 21, 1935).

  34. Der stellv.Polizeipräsident, Bericht über die innerpolitische Lage im Landespolizeibezirk Berlin, July 30, 1935, BA Lichterfelde, R 58/3657.

  35. Section 15(1), Wehrgesetz vom 21.Mai 1935, Reichsgesetzblatt 1935 I, 609.

  36. For a legal treatise complete with the pertinent laws and subsequent regulations, see Bernhard Lösener and Friedrich A. Knost, Die Nürnberger Gesetze (Berlin: Franz Vahlen, 1936).

  37. Reichsbürgergesetz, Reichsgesetzblatt, I, 1935, 1146, § 2.

  38. Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre, Reichsgesetzblatt, I, 1935, 1146–47, § 1.

  39. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, 138 (entry for October 31, 1935).

  40. Erste Verordnung zum Reichsbürgergesetz, Reichsgesetzblatt 1935, I, 1333, § 4.

  41. Götz Aly and Karl Heinz Roth, The Nazi Census: Identification and Control in the Third Reich, trans. Edwin Black and Assenka Oksiloff (Philadelphia: Temple University Press: 2004), 72.

  42. Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (New York: Random House, 2001), 188, 197–98.

  43. Der Reichs-und Preußische Minister des Innern, An die Herren Reichsminister [et al.], I A 13258/6310, Nov. 12, 1935, BA Berlin, R 43 II/399, Fiche 1, Row 6.

  44. Id. § 3(3).

  45. Id. § 16.

  46. Id. § 20.

  47. Id. § 22.

  48. Der Reichs-und Preußische Minister des Innern, An die Herren Reichsminister [et al.], A 13258/6310, 12 November 1935. BA Berlin, R 43 II/399, Fiche 1, Row 7, p. 1.

  49. Id. at 3.

  50. Id. at 4.

  51. Id. at 4–5.

  52. Ulrike Schulz, “Die Enteignung der Firma ‘Simson & Co’ 1929–1935” (Expropriation of the Firm “Simson & Co.,” 1929–1935), in Thüringer Blätter zur Landeskunde (Thuringia Regional Studies), (Erfurt, Germany: Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen, 2006), http://www.thueringen.de/imperia/md/content/lzt/die_enteignung_der_firma_simson.pdf (visited April 28, 2013). See also Robert Codek, “There is No Way Back,” in The Simson Company in Suhl: Simson—BSW—WAFFA—Gustloff: The Almanacs of German Hunting Guns and Their Makers, Nr. 3 (Meriden, NH: German Gun Collectors Association, 2009), 4–5; Edward B. Tinker and Graham K. Johnson, Simson Lugers: Simson…Co, Suhl, the Weimar Years (Galesburg, IL: Brad Simpson, 2007), 15–16, 28–29, 81; Ed Buffaloe, “The Simson Model 1922 and 1926 Vest Pocket Pistol,” http://unblinkingeye.com/Guns/Simson/simson.html (visited April 28, 2013).

  53. Zeitschrift des Vierjahresplan 3 (1939), 225, and Das Schwarze Korps (May 4, 1939), cited in Michael Thad Allen, The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 190–91.

  8

  The Gestapo

  TO DEVISE AND enforce its policies to repress private gun ownership, the Nazi leadership needed a strong arm it could trust. Dr. Werner Best, chief legal adviser and head of Department 1 of the Gestapo, issued a directive on December 16, 1935, “Issuance of Weapons Permits to Jews,” to all Gestapo, State Police, and Political Police authorities in Prussia and the states. The text stated:

  With regard to the issuing of firearms permits to Jews, the regular police authorities must always obtain the opinion of the Geheimen Staatspolizei [Gestapo] authorities on the political reliability of the individual applicant. I direct that the following be heeded:

  In principle, there will be very few occasions where concerns will not be raised regarding the issuance of firearms permits to Jews. As a rule, we have to assume that firearms in the hands of the Jews represent a considerable danger for the German people. Therefore, in the future, an extreme measure of scrutiny will have to be applied to the question of political reliability of the applicant in all cases where an opinion needs to be given about the issuance of firearms permits to Jews. Only in this way will we be able to prevent numerous Jews from obtaining firearms and causing danger to the German population.1

  The directive noted that it was answering an inquiry made by the Stettin State Police (Stapo) on September 30. Given the month and a half lag time it took to respond, the alleged grave danger of Jews with firearms must not have been so urgent. Moreover, uncertainty existed on the issue. The Stapo in Magdeburg, in the Prussian province of Saxony, decided in January 1935 to continue to allow licenses to Jews to possess firearms. To preempt danger to the population, the police would reconsider the policy should too many Jews apply.2 Werner Best’s directive now resolved the issue.

  Illustrating how such policies filtered down, this directive was distributed in an order dated February 5, 1936, from the Bavarian Political Police to all subordinate police units. Noting that the police authorities must obtain the Gestapo’s opinion of “the political reliability of the individual applicant before any firearms permits are issued to any Jews,” the order added: “Requests by Jews for the issuance of firearms permits therefore have to be sent to the Bavarian Political Police, II/1, for special disposition, so that it can state its opinion about the political reliability of the applicant.” Repeating the language of the directive verbatim, the order concluded: “Most likely, the forwarding of applications will come into consideration only in special cases.”3

  The Weimar law allowed police to deny firearm ownership to any “unreliable” person. At this time, the Gestapo were keenly concerned with firearms confiscations. Dr. Best had recently written on November 27, 1935, to the Berlin police president and to government and police officials concerning the utilization of confiscated weapons in police custody: self-loading pistols (but not revolvers) must be sent to the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Governmental units and police could requisition other confiscated arms, and those not needed must be destroyed.4

  This clarification came from the same Werner Best who, as described in chapter 3, had authored the Boxheimer documents in 1931 advocating a Nazi
seizure of power that would declare that all firearms must be surrendered within twenty-four hours under penalty of death. Now a top Gestapo official under Heydrich and Himmler, he would head Gestapo repression in France and then Denmark during the war, where failure to surrender firearms was cause for execution.

  The Gestapo concerned itself with affairs of the “political police,” and its orders for detention in protective custody could not be challenged in the administrative courts, as clarified in the Gestapo Law of February 10, 1936. If the charge was “political,” a person could be acquitted of a charge by a normal court and then taken into protective custody by the Gestapo indefinitely.5

  Under this bizarre regime, laws continued to be important for a segment of the government, but the Gestapo needed no law to do as it wished—which itself was proclaimed as law. So the Gestapo could proclaim Jews to be “unreliable” under the Weimar Weapons Law and no court could hear an appeal. At the same time, the Hitler cabinet could continue to debate whether to revise the Firearms Law. In a note to the other ministers, Interior Minister Frick decided in early 1936 to take that issue off the table: “Authoritative sources have expressed their concerns to me that this might not be the appropriate time to replace the acquisition permit requirement for firearms and ammunition with a police weapons prohibition. I have therefore decided to postpone for the time being the issue of amending the weapons law.”6

  Arms searches continued as an everyday occurrence. For instance, on December 15, 1935, the Halle Stapo reported to the Gestapo in Berlin that information from an informant had led to a search for arms in a house garden. Digging a meter and a half deep, police discovered a wooden box with a Model 08 army pistol, 120 cartridges, and a bayonet. The interrogation revealed that worker Otto Max Haller had obtained the items in the Great War and had kept them in his house until April 1932, when he hid them in a garden shed. “After the radical change [to Nazism], he has not dared to surrender the arms from fear of getting in trouble with the authorities.” Not wanting trouble, he gave them to his brother-in-law, worker Werner Rolle. Despite knowing of the duty to surrender the arms, Rolle buried them in his parents’ garden. He, too, was afraid to turn in the arms. “Both of the accused admit they knowingly committed criminal acts.”7

  At the same time, persons armed under government sanction could run amok committing crimes against Jews and others, who could only use improvised blunt objects to resist. An incident on February 10, 1936, reported by the Düsseldorf Gestapo, described how a Jewish family tried to defend themselves against a vandalizing watchman armed with a revolver and club but were overpowered:

  On February 10, 1936, at 2:40 a.m., the watchman Wilhelm Schmitz from Hammerden in the district of Grevenbroich-Neuß smashed two high windows with a fence post at the house of the Jewish businessman Jakob Daniel from Bedburdyck. The son of the victim pursued on a bicycle and caught up with the perpetrator, who was still in company of another person, and who would have beat him up with a rubber truncheon, so that he had to escape leaving behind the bicycle and a steel rod he carried. Schmitz shot a revolver behind the fleeing man. Daniel returned after a short time with his father and retrieved his bicycle. On the way home both were pursued by Schmitz and were again attacked at the Bodburdyok school. On this occasion he hit the victim, Daniel senior, over the head with a blow of the rubber truncheon. The attacked defended themselves with a fence post and as a result were threatened by Schmitz with the words: “Three steps back or I shoot.” The Daniels, father and son, then fled to their dwelling. Charges were brought against Schmitz. The police interrogations are continuing.8

  In a different society, such incidents could have been used for propaganda that firearms in the hands of “Aryans” were a danger to the German Jews. As noted earlier, Werner Best’s Gestapo directive alleged that “firearms in the hands of the Jews”—meaning the German Jews, who would thus be denied firearms permits—“represent a considerable danger for the German people.” Shortly after Best issued his directive, the Nazis would manipulate an incident abroad to prove his premise—except that it did not involve a German Jew.

  On February 4, 1936, in Davos, Switzerland, David Frankfurter, a young Jewish medical student from Yugoslavia, shot and killed Wilhelm Gustloff, the leader of the NSDAP-Landesgruppe.9 Each foreign country had a local Nazi Party for Germans abroad, and Gustloff headed the German Nazis residing in Switzerland. The incident highlighted not only the supposed dangers of Jews with firearms, but also Switzerland’s liberal laws that allowed ready availability of firearms and a free press that allowed criticism of the Nazi regime.

  Frankfurter, who himself had severe medical problems affecting his nervous system, had witnessed the persecution of Jews while studying in Germany and now was studying in Bern. He bought a 6.35-mm Browning automatic pistol for 10 francs at a gun shop in Bern in December 1935. “For me and any Nazi,” he later told authorities. He learned how to use it at a shooting range near Bern.

  Frankfurter traveled to Davos and went to Gustloff’s apartment. He rang the doorbell, was admitted by Frau Gustloff, and waited in the study. He heard Gustloff railing on the telephone against “pig Jews and Communists,” and when the Nazi leader entered the study, Frankfurter fired three or four fatal shots. He could not shoot himself as he had planned, however, and surrendered to Swiss police.

  Gustloff was a minor figure, but his stature was elevated as grist for the Nazi propaganda mill and as pretext for further anti-Jewish measures. Flags throughout Germany were flown at half mast, noted U.S. ambassador William Dodd in his diary, adding, “Hitler made an amazingly aggressive attack on all Jews. Other addresses were made in Hamburg and in other cities, tens of thousands of people listening, compelled to be present…. Today’s papers are full of attacks upon the Swiss.”10

  A Gestapo report asserted: “The deepest revulsion against this cowardly crime of a Jew has been evoked in all circles of the population since the opinion broadly predominates that World Jewry, in its abysmal hate against the New Germany, wished to hit the whole German people with its shots at the NSDAP Landesleiter[Gustloff].” 11 It described an enormous funeral in Erfurt, which turned into political rallies to praise Gustloff as a Nazi martyr and to denounce the murder and the foreign Jewish–Marxist press that excused it.

  A few days after the funeral, the report continued, an ongoing defamation trial was taking place in Bern, in which a German “expert” appeared to testify on the genuineness of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an alleged Jewish plan for global domination. He had received in the mail a 7.65-mm cartridge and a piece of paper on which was written “Hitler–Fleischhauer–Gustloff,” with the name “Gustloff” crossed out and a red cross marked beside it. Although not reflected in the report, the Swiss court in Bern would declare the Protocols to be a fraud.

  The final insult to injury detailed by the Gestapo report was that Switzerland banned the NSDAP. The report depicted the Nazis as persecuted victims—a Jew with a firearm killed a Nazi leader, Jews worldwide applauded the murder, other Nazis received threats of gun violence, and the Swiss banned the Nazi Party.

  At his trial, Frankfurter testified that Gustloff as a person was not the target, but he was a Nazi agent, and Hitler could not be reached. The act was committed not only to act against persecution of Jews, but also to defend Switzerland, which was constantly attacked by the Nazis. Although this particular defense was not an accepted one to be found in the criminal law books, it and political homicide had special relevance in Switzerland. The precedent of William Tell, who had shot not only an apple off his son’s head, but also the tyrant Gessler through the heart, reverberated during the trial.

  The court admitted into evidence documents submitted to demonstrate the Nazi persecution of Jews. Frankfurter’s deed and the trial further sensitized the Swiss public to the idea of armed resistance against National Socialism. The court found Frankfurter guilty of unlawful homicide but with diminished responsibility. He was sentenced to imprisonment but was released
at the end of World War II and immigrated to Israel.

  In 1936, exiled German author Emil Ludwig published The Davos Murder, which depicted Frankfurther’s killing of Gustloff as an understandable act of defiance. He noted the parallel with William Tell and discussed the classical doctrine of tyrannicide, asking whether the law would recognize “the notion of a right to self-defense which will entitle the individual to take the law into his own hands and forcibly react against such collective misdeeds as the murder of political opponents, or the murder, desecration, and plunder of a whole section of the population?” Stating that such idealists generally have been “unaccustomed to the use of arms,” Ludwig commented, “[H]ow strong must be the stimulus that incites a man of Platonic temperament to use a pistol.” “Above all,” he stated, “his deed comes within the limits of permissible self-defense,” which includes defense of others, and he quoted Frankfurther as noting that “Gustloff wanted to make a vassal State out of Switzerland.”12

  The Nazis exploited the incident to depict the armed Jew as a worldwide menace. For instance, Wolfgang Diewerge wrote two books on the Gustloff incident. His first tome repeated Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’s threat that any further attacks on German officials would lead to revenge against German Jews.13 The title of the second book, which reported on Frankfurter’s murder trial, aptly expressed this sentiment: Ein Jude hat geschossen (A Jew Has Shot).14

  Frankfurter’s act exacerbated Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitic policies. Victor Klemperer noted in his diary: “In Davos a Jewish student has shot the German Party agent of the NSDAP. For the moment, as the Olympic Games are taking place here, everything is being hushed up. They will turn on the hostages, on the German Jews later.”15 When the Polish Jew Herschel Grynszpan shot an official in the German embassy in Paris in 1938, he was dubbed “a second Frankfurter” and his act was the excuse to instigate the Night of the Broken Glass (Reichskristallnacht).