Gun Control in the Third Reich

by Stephen P. Halbrook

  It is particularly encouraging that today, when we are reaching the end of the year 1938, we were able to extend the prohibition of weapons possession by the Jews to Austria and the Sudetenland. The protection that we are able to offer to our German brothers in the regained regions becomes particularly clear in § 6 of the decree of November 11, 1938.48

  Rendering Jews defenseless facilitated the further expropriation of their assets. Having instigated and controlled the pogrom, the Nazi leadership next carried out Hitler’s decision that the Jews would pay for the destruction. Goebbels noted in his diary on November 12:

  The Jews have volunteered to pay for the damages of the tumults. That makes 5 millions Marks in Berlin alone….

  The situation in the Reich has calmed down broadly…. My decree has done miracles. The Jews can still be grateful to me on top of everything.49

  That same day, key players reported at a ministerial meeting. “The death [Rath’s] costs the Jews a very high price,” commented Goebbels, noting hot arguments about the solution.50 Chief of the Security Police Heydrick summarized the reports received from the State Police offices as follows:

  The extent of the destruction of Jewish shops and houses cannot yet be verified by figures. The figures given in the reports: 815 shops destroyed, 171 dwelling houses set on fire or destroyed, only indicate a fraction of the actual damage caused, as far as arson is concerned. Due to the urgency of the reporting, the reports received to date are entirely limited to general statements such as “numerous” or “most shops destroyed.” Therefore the figures given must have been exceeded considerably. 191 Synagogues were set on fire, and another 76 completely destroyed…. 20,000 Jews were arrested…. 36 deaths were reported, and those seriously injured are Jews.51

  The Decree on an Atonement Fine for Jews with German Citizenship levied Jews with one billion Reichsmarks as payment to the German Reich for the destruction caused by the Nazis.52 Ordered by Field Marshal Göring in his capacity as commissioner for the Four Year Plan, this payment was enforceable because a registry of all Jewish property had been compiled six months earlier. Jews were ordered to repair all damage that had been done to businesses and homes, and the Reich confiscated Jewish insurance claims.53

  On top of all other burdens, and consistent with the ban on possession of any kind of weapon by a Jew, it was again made illegal in what was now hunting season for a Jew to shoot a bird or a deer: “All hunting licenses held by Jews were ordered cancelled by Field Marshal Hermann Goering acting as National Master of the Hunt.”54 Hunting licenses for Jews had already been recalled in 1937—the new measure was for propaganda purposes.55

  Although “order” was restored in Germany, the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported that “the wave of persecution of Jews has spread to Gdansk [Danzig]. There were attacks on shops and raids for weapons.” The Gauleiter (Nazi Party provincial chief) declared the intention to expel all Jews.56

  “We plan another variety of new measures against the Jews,” Goebbels wrote in his diary on November 22, adding that, “in Berlin, we do more than in the remaining Reich. That is also necessary, because so many Jews live here.”57 Enforcement of the ban on possession of firearms by Jews would be continued, to preclude the need to carry out the threat by the SS newspaper Schwarze Korps (The Black Guards): “On the day that a Jewish weapon or a weapon purchased with Jewish money is raised against any of the German leaders, on that day there will be no more Jews left alive in Germany.”58

  Spreading the propaganda that every Jew with a firearm is a danger to the state, Der Strümer, the fanatical anti-Semitic periodical, featured a caricature of a menacing-looking Jew waving a handgun after having shot a good German, presumably Rath.59 It had the caption “Mordjude” (Murdering Jew), and the word Talmud and a Star of David appeared in its background. Unlike the teenager with the youthful, scared look who actually committed the deed, the caricature depicted a hardened assassin with stereotypical Jewish features waving an incorrectly drawn revolver.

  Police reports listing weapons seized from Jews have been difficult to locate. Many such records may have been destroyed during the war, either by the Nazis themselves or due to Allied bombings. Routine police reports mention arms seizures along with other incidents. For example, a report to the commander of the municipal police in Leipzig dated November 29, 1938, noted: “Based on the decree regarding the surrender of weapons in possession of Jews, three Jews surrendered their slashing and thrusting weapons and one Jew surrendered his hunting rifles. Two bayonets and a 85 mm grenade were reported found and surrendered.”60

  Pursuant to the weapons ban for Jews, police in Baden-Baden confiscated the following from attorney Paul Kahn: an officer’s bayonet, a police pistol (Luger), a revolver, and two daggers, all valued at 200 Reichsmark. Residing in Dallas, Texas, in 1958, he submitted this information with a claim under the Federal Restitution Act for several thousand Reichsmark for various items of property confiscated.61 The Regional Court ruled that Kahn did not prove that he surrendered his arms.

  Police were required to list all weapons taken from Jews and to send the weapons seized and listings to the Gestapo. On December 19, the head office of the Gestapo in Munich issued a memorandum to the police, commissars, and mayors concerning the regulation requiring Jews to surrender all weapons. It also explained how the regulation was to be implemented:

  All weapons of all kinds in the possession of Jews are forfeited to the Reich without payment of compensation and must be surrendered.

  This includes all firearms including alarm (starter) pistols and all cutting and stabbing weapons including the fixed blade if like a dagger.

  Requests by emigrating Jews to have their weapons returned to them shall not be granted.

  A list shall be made of all weapons that belonged to Jews and the list shall be sent to this office by January 5, 1939. The weapons shall be well packaged and, if in small numbers, sent as parcel, and if in larger numbers, by freight.

  Because this will have to be reported to the Gestapo office in Berlin, this deadline will absolutely have to be observed.62

  Meanwhile, legal proceedings in the courts continued against Jews who had possessed firearms. Legal forms continued under Nazism unless a person was seized by the Gestapo, which did not submit to the courts. Thus, Jews from whom firearms had been seized could be kept in a concentration camp without judicial review under Himmler’s decree, but prosecution under Frick’s supplemental decree to the Firearms Law would proceed in the courts.

  But what of the firearm seizures from Jews in October under the 1931 Weimar decree, which made it a crime not to surrender firearms if the police so demanded? The Berlin police president had ordered Jews to turn in all firearms before the Himmler and Frick decrees went into effect in mid-November, which thus did not apply to previous seizures (unless these decrees were applied ex post facto).

  In a memorandum titled “Maximum Sentence for Punishment of Jews,” chief judge Dr. Block of the Berlin District Court reported on December 16 to the chief of the Supreme Court in Berlin about the prosecution of a Dr. Sohn. It explained: “The district court has not decided this case. It involves a proceeding arising out of forbidden weapons possession. In October 1938, the accused had surrendered an army revolver to the police, and in particular explained that he had no recollection of the existence of this firearm, which came from the time of his war service. He was surprised that the revolver was found in a search of the attic. The prosecutor had initiated the proceedings on December 8, 1938. The Police President has objected.”63

  Although no more on this case could be located, this memorandum indicates that Jews were being prosecuted in the courts for the firearms seized in October. These Jewish firearm owners were fortunate compared to those who had been thrown into the concentration camps and denied any judicial involvement. Nazi policy for the latter was to force those with any wealth to buy their way out and to emigrate out of Germany.

  On December 15, Himmler issued orde
rs to the German police regarding Gypsies, who under the Nürnberg Laws were, along with the Jews, the only race inhabiting Europe whose blood was not “naturally related” to German blood. Himmler ordered that Gypsies must submit to racial and biological examinations and “are in no circumstances to receive firearms licences.”64

  Reichskristallnacht was instigated above all by Hitler and Goebbels and was exploited by Nazi leaders such as Göring and Himmler, but other officials found the pogrom reprehensible. As the events of October 1938 demonstrate, Berlin police president Helldorf was comfortable using legal means to disarm the Jews, but he could not countenance such a rampage out of police control. According to the anti-Nazi conspirator Hans Gisevius, Helldorf reacted with anger when he returned from Munich to Berlin: “Immediately after his return he called a conference of all police officers and berated them for their passivity—even though under orders. To the dismay of all the Nazis he announced that if he had been present he would have ordered his police to shoot the rioters and looters. It was a remarkably courageous statement for a chief of police and high officer of the SA to make. Precisely because of Helldorf’s position it was particularly dangerous for him to condemn the official Party line.”65

  Six years later Helldorf would participate in the conspiracy to kill Hitler that was consummated in the unsuccessful bomb attack on July 20, 1944. Arrested by the Gestapo and tortured, he was tried with other conspirators by Nazi People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof ) judge Roland Freisler and was hanged in Plotzensee Prison.66 One can only wonder what thoughts flashed through his mind during that time and whether he had regrets for his actions against the Jews.

  Another negative reaction, albeit limited, came from the head of the armed forces, Wehrmacht Oberkommando Chief Wilhelm Keitel, and related to the confiscation of edged weapons from Jewish veterans who served in the Great War and later. An urgent telex to all police departments noted that the Reich law prohibiting possession of arms by Jews included side arms (Seitenwaffen, bayonets and swords). However, former Jewish soldiers left the army under permission to wear the uniform and side arms. This was a prerogative of the Wehrmacht Oberkommando, who would make the necessary arrangements. “The police have therefore been instructed that they not act against the affected persons.”67

  In sum, over a period primarily of several weeks in October and November 1938, the Nazi government disarmed the German Jewish population. The process was carried out both by following a combination of legal forms enacted by the Weimar Republic and by sheer lawless violence. The existence of firearm licensing and registration records together with the unrestricted ability to conduct searches and seizures were the key elements. The Nazi hierarchy could now more comfortably deal with the “Jewish question” without fear of armed resistance by the victims.

  It is tempting to surmise that the anonymous possession of firearms by the German Jews would have made no difference either in the 1938 pogrom or later in the Holocaust when the majority of remaining Jews were deported and killed with bullets and gas. Yet how many individual stories might have been written differently had the October disarming and then the November Reichskristallnacht not been so devestatingly thorough? A fatalistic view ignores that the Nazis themselves perceived armed Jews as sufficiently dangerous to their policies to place great emphasis on the need to disarm all Jews. Indeed, as accounts in the next chapter suggest, some who defended their homes, families, temples, friends, and selves with firearms were occasionally, albeit rarely, successful in driving off their Nazi attackers.

  Until now, it was by no means certain that Jewish armed resistance movements could not develop and even less certain that individual Jews would not use arms to resist arrest, deportation, and attacks by the Nazis. It was only after Reichskristallnacht, when the Jewish population was largely and systematically disarmed, that the Nazis’ iron grip on the country was evident for everyone to see.

  *

  1. See Gerald Schwab, The Day the Holocaust Began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan (New York: Praeger, 1990).

  2. Quoted in Friedrich Karl Kaul, Der Fall des Herschel Grynszpan (The Case of Herschel Grynszpan) (Berlin: Akademie, 1965), 8–9. See Vincent C. Frank, “Neuer Blick auf die Reichs kristallnacht,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Nov. 4, 1998, http://www.hagalil.com/archiv/98/11/pogrom.htm/ (visited May 7, 2013).

  3. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels (The Diary of Joseph Goebbels), Teil I, Aufzeichnungen 1923–41, Band 6, Aug. 1938–June 1939, ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1998), 176–77 (entry for Nov. 8, 1938), 178 (entry for Nov. 9, 1938).

  4. Anthony Read and David Fisher, Kristallnacht: The Unleashing of the Holocaust (New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1989), 64.

  5. In German: “Helldorff läßt in Berlin die Juden gänzlich entwaffnen. Die werden sich ja auch noch auf einiges anderes gefaßt machen können.” Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, 179 (entry for Nov. 10, 1938).

  6. “Nazis Ask Reprisal in Attack on Envoy,” New York Times, Nov. 9, 1938, 24.

  7. Both quoted in “Nazis Ask Reprisal in Attack on Envoy.”

  8. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Nov. 8, 1938, 2.

  9. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, 180 (entry for Nov. 10, 1938).

  10. Read and Fisher, Kristallnacht, 64–66; Schwab, The Day the Holocaust Began, 20.

  11. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, 180 (entry for Nov. 10, 1938).

  12. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, 180 (entry for Nov. 10, 1938).

  13. Schwab, The Day the Holocaust Began, 22; Lionel Kochan, Pogrom: 10 November 1938 (London: Andre Deutsch, 1957), 63–64 (citing Urteil des obersten Parteigerichts in dem Verfahren gegen Frühling u.a.); Rita Thalmann and Emmanuel Feinermann, Crystal Night: 9–10 November 1938, trans. Gilles Cremonesi (New York: Holocaust Library, 1974), 59 (citing Orders of the SA Commander of the “Baltic Group”).

  14. Quoted in Heinz Lauber, Judenpogrom: “Reichskristallnacht” November 1938 in Grossdeutschland (Pogrom Against the Jews: Reichskristallnacht, November 1938, in Greater Germany) (Gerlingen, Germany: Bleicher, 1981), 86–87.

  15. An alle Stapo Stellen und Stapoleitstellen, Berlin Nr. 234 404 9.11.2355, Bundesarchiv (BA) Lichterfelde, R 58/3512 (emphasis in original). See also Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal: Nuremberg, November, 14, 1945–October 1, 1946 (Buffalo, NY: William S. Hein, 1995), 25:377.

  16. Der Bürgermeister Nauen bei Berlin, Ulten betreffend Aktion gegen Juden, Nov. 10, 1938. Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv, Potsdam, Rep. 8 Nauen, Nr. 101.

  17. Thalmann and Feinermann, Crystal Night, 60. See Eberstein’s testimony in The Trial of German Major War Criminals Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany, Aug. 3, 1946, 252, http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-20/tgmwc-20-194-03.shtml (visited Feb. 9, 2013).

  18. Thalmann and Feinermann, Crystal Night, 60–61.

  19. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, 180–81 (entry for Nov. 10, 1938).

  20. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, 181 (entry for Nov. 9, 1938).

  21. “Waffenbesitz für Juden verboten,” Völkischer Beobachter, Nov. 10, 1938, 1; Berliner Börsen Zeitung, Nov. 10, 1938, 1; Der Angriff, Nov. 10, 1938, 7. See also Joseph Walk, Das Sonderrecht für die Juden im NS-Staat (Special Law for Jews in the National Socialist State) (Heidelberg: Muller Juristischer, 1981).

  22. Edward Crankshaw, Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny (London: Greenhill Books, 1956), 90.

  23. Entscheidungen des Preußischen Oberverwaltungsgerichts, Nov. 10, 1938, in Juristische Wochenschrift (1939), 382. See also Ernst Fraenkel, The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship (New York: Octagon Books, 1941), 28.

  24. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, 181 (entry for Nov. 10, 1938).

  25. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, 182 (entry for Nov. 10, 1938).

  26. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Nov. 13, 1938, 2.

  27. Hugh Wilson, “Pogrom in Berlin and Reich,” Nov. 10, 1938, U.S. National Archiv
es, Microfilm Series LM 193, No. 23, 862.4016, pp. 140–41.

  28. “Ueberall spontane Kundgebungen: Demonstration gegen das Weltjudentum auch in Hamburg” (Spontaneous Rallies Everywhere: Demonstration against World Jewry in Hamburg), Hamburger Tagblatt, Nov. 10, 1938, cited in Peter Freimark and Wolfgang Kopitzsch, Der 9./10. November 1938 in Deutschland: Dokumentation zur “Kristallnacht” (November 9–10, 1938, in Germany: Kristallnacht Documentation) (Hamburg: Ludwig Appel & Sohn, 1978), 22.

  29. New York Times, Nov. 11, 1938, 1.

  30. “Nazis Smash, Loot, and Burn,” 4. A London newspaper similarly reported Himmler’s decree: “Any Jew found with arms will be imprisoned for twenty years.” Quoted in “Anti-Jew Riots Raging,” Evening News, Nov. 10, 1938.

  31. “Nazis Smash, Loot, and Burn,” 4.

  32. 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), 333–34.

  33. “Vienna’s Temples Fired and Bombed,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 1938, 2.

  34. Quoted in Sigrid Schultz, “Homes Burned; Stores Looted; Terror Reigns,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 11, 1938, 1, 2B.

  35. Verordnung gegen den Waffenbesitz der Juden, Reichsgesetzblatt 1938, I, 1571.

  36. Id. § 1.

  37. Id. § 3.

  38. Id. § 2.

  39. Id. § 4.

  40. The regulation was widely noticed in the English-speaking press. See, for example, “Jews Pay for Nazi Damage,” London Times, Nov. 14, 1938, 12A; “Ban on Firearms for Jews,” Boston Globe, Nov. 12, 1938, 2.

  41. Schwab, The Day the Holocaust Began, 25.

  42. Peter Padfield, Himmler (New York: MJF Books, 1990), 242.