Gun Control in the Third Reich

by Stephen P. Halbrook

  33. Read and Fisher, Kristallnacht, 95, citing British acting counsel General A. E. Dowden’s reports from Frankfurt-am-Main, F0371/21638.

  34. Samuel W. Honaker, “Anti-Semitic Persecution in the Stuttgart Consular District,” Nov. 12, 1938, U.S. National Archives, Microfilm Series LM 193, No. 23, 862.4016, pp. 408–15, reprinted in John Mendelsohn, ed., The Holocaust, vol. 3, The Crystal Night Pogrom (New York: Garland, 1982), 183–84. See also Christoph Strupp, “Observing a Dictatorship: American Consular Reporting on Germany, 1933–1941,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, no. 39 (Fall 2006), 79.

  CONCLUSION

  Whither the German Resistance?

  THE NAZI DICTATORSHIP conjured up imaginary enemies—for instance, by demonizing the Jews—to justify the need for their repressive measures.1 A politically unreliable firearm owner—above all, a Jewish firearm owner—was the ultimate threat. What occurred during the second half of the Third Reich, during World War II, may be understood in part by the previous disarming of political opponents, Jews, and other purported enemies of the state. In particular, firearm prohibitions nipped in the bud the possibility of a popular armed resistence movement and ensured in particular that no armed Jewish resistance to the Holocaust could arise. Armed opposition was limited to isolated instances of individuals resisting deportation, together with loners and Wehrmacht officers unsuccessfully trying to kill Hitler.

  On November 10, 1938, as thousands of Jews were being taken into Gestapo custody during the pogrom, a judicial ruling was issued clarifying that no judicial review of Gestapo action was allowed. The Prussian Supreme Administrative Court held that none of the following could be appealed to a court: direct Gestapo action, ordinary police acts under special or general Gestapo orders, and ordinary police acts within Gestapo jurisdiction. A court could intervene only if the ordinary police went beyond Gestapo orders.2

  Although this decision reinforced that no Jew thrown into a concentration camp for allegedly possessing a firearm or for any other reason could appeal to a court, it ironically had been rendered to prohibit a shooting competition. The Gestapo dictated that target matches were in the exclusive domain of the officially approved German Defense Association. Thus, a shooting gallery owner whose rifle match was prohibited had no right to judicial review even though the association banned the match out of personal antagonism.

  Shooting clubs, like all other institutions in Germany, were subjected to Gleichschaltung (forcing into line) with the Nazi state agenda. As described previously, this subjection took place in the phases of formal, institutional, and finally structural forcing into line. The final phase of structural forcing into line was dictated by Hitler’s mandate of December 21, 1938, under which all Reich sport associations were subsumed by the Nazi Party under the National Socialist Reich Association for Physical Exercise (Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen, or NSRL). “German communities” (deutschen Gemeinschaften) replaced the traditional concept of the club, the leaders of which were required to be approved by the responsible Nazi Party district leader. The NSRL was officially part of the party, and sports organizations in general, including the remaining shooting clubs, were absorbed into the party.3

  Thus, from the beginning of 1939, the shooting clubs were subject to the dual control of the Reich and the Nazi Party. Hitler’s launching of World War II on September 1, 1939, further accomplished this forcing into line. It was fully accomplished by a February 1940 directive providing that the members’ meeting was optional and that the club leader was nominated by the NSRL district leader and approved by the responsible Nazi Party district leader.4 The result was the total deprivation of the clubs’ and their members’ rights.5

  Hitler thought hunting to be “a dreary sport” and said that “shooting is not a popular sport.” “Personally, I cannot see what possible pleasure can be derived from shooting.” A vegetarian, the führer was sensitive to the feelings of animals and remarked: “The Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would do well to turn its attention to the sportsmen themselves.”6 As the war and the Holocaust would prove, he had no such sensitivity to humans.

  In freer societies, independent shooting clubs or some of their members might help dissuade or resist a dictatorship. However, as a result of the successful Nazi forcing of the shooting clubs into line, little or no hope of any kind of resistance movement or activities could be expected from that quarter.

  German resistors were different than their European counterparts in that there was no partisan force. The German resistance to Hitler was not characterized by any armed popular movements or uprisings against the Nazi regime, although small groups and individuals armed themselves for protection. Lone individuals or military cliques with firearms or bombs sought to kill Hitler himself.7

  Hitler could have been assassinated in 1939. Wehrmacht general Franz Halder repeatedly visited Hitler with a pistol in his pocket intending to shoot the dictator but could not bring himself to do it.8 Georg Elser, a private citizen, set off a bomb at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich, but Hitler finished his speech and left before the explosion, and Elser was apprehended while attempting to escape over the Swiss border.9 Victor Klemperer wrote: “In the night after news of the attempt (We know the culprits: England and behind it Jewry) I was reckoning with arrest, concentration camp, perhaps also the bullet.”10 Swiss theology student Maurice Bavaud got almost close enough to shoot Hitler with a handgun but was caught and executed.11

  Hitler later recalled about this last attempt that “my life was saved because the would-be killer, a Swiss, who stalked me for three months in the neighbourhood of the Berghof, regularly missed me when I went out, and when he tried to continue his stalking in Munich, he was discovered by a railway official…. The confessions of this Swiss interested me in so far as they confirmed my conviction that not a soul could cope with an assassin who, for idealistic reasons, was prepared quite ruthlessly to hazard his own life in the execution of his subject.”12

  The coming of World War II brought increasingly severe control over all segments of German society. Although Poland fell quickly, many Germans blamed Hitler for his failure to spare the country a new war. When the blitzkrieg succeeded, the Nazi occupation authorities predictably decreed the most severe penalties if the Polish population failed to surrender any weapons.13

  There was only a phony war in the West, as Britain and France declared war on Germany but did not lift a finger to help the Poles. Evidence of anti-Nazi sentiment in Germany could be found. Opined the London Times: “All this does not imply that Germany is ready for a revolution. Civilians are disarmed, and so powerless.”14 Germans generally longed for, it was asserted, the return of legality, freedom, and human dignity.

  Entries in Victor Klemperer’s diary for May 1940 bore out those observations. He referred to a protest group’s “harmless” bombing at the Technical University in Dresden and a group with the motto “Everything for Germany, nothing for Hitler.” Reflective of the continued clampdown on civilians with anything that might be used as a weapon, he described “the Jews’ House” where he now resided after being evicted from his own house because he was Jewish: “Her husband owned a large sporting goods shop, which their son (thirty-five years of age) then managed. Competitive fencer with prizes for foil. Was in a concentration camp for three weeks, his mother in custody for a week. Foils with the points missing were found behind her stove. Public prosecutor decided: sports gear, not weapon.”15

  Firearms would be another matter. When the Wehrmacht conquered France, it proclaimed (as it did in other countries) that civilians’ failure to surrender all firearms within twenty-four hours would be punishable with the death penalty, and in the coming occupation it executed those who failed to comply.16 The New York Times observed:

  The best way to sum up the disciplinary laws imposed upon France by the German conqueror is to say that the Nazi decrees reduce the French people to as low a condition as that occupied by the German people. Mil
itary orders now forbid the French to do things which the German people have not been allowed to do since Hitler came to power. To own radio senders or to listen to foreign broadcasts, to organize public meetings and distribute pamphlets, to disseminate anti-German news in any form, to retain possession of firearms—all these things are prohibited for the subjugated people of France, as they have been verboten these half dozen years to the people of Germany.17

  Even with the glorious victory over France, were the German people fully behind the führer? If so, the article asked, “will Hitler now abolish the Gestapo and set up a free press?” The negative answer was clear.

  Indeed, a 1941 order from Gestapo Headquarters in Berlin required a registration of all persons obtaining firearms. Regional Gestapo offices were put “in charge of the supervision and control of the sale of firearms and ammunition,” and local governments were directed to record monthly “all persons who have acquired firearms from arms dealers requiring a permit or who have submitted a request for a permit to acquire firearms if the request was granted by the responsible authority. This also applies to cases where the firearm was not acquired from an arms dealer.” Also to be recorded were persons who purchased ammunition from dealers requiring a permit. Identifying information included name, occupation, date and place of birth, street address, the type and serial number of the firearm, and the ammunition type.18

  Exempt from the compulsory registration were military officers, leaders of SS Special Assignment Troops, police officers, and higher political leaders. Hunting weapons and ammunition were excluded. Firearms dealers were to be “monitored and inspected” by the police.

  The local police could deny a firearm license, and the Gestapo could quash any appeal. For instance, an official in Brandenburg denied a firearm license to Dr. Ing. J. Henke, a mine manager.19 Although no evidence existed that he was an “enemy of the state,” and he had been issued a license before the war, he was a foreigner, and sufficient “need” had not been established. The Gestapo in Frankfurt/O refused his appeal, noting that “his wife is of Jewish descent on her father’s side.”20

  In a 1942 harangue, Hitler explained that opponents of any kind must be ruthlessly suppressed: “If the slightest attempt at a riot were to break out at this moment anywhere in the whole Reich, I’d take immediate measures against it. Here’s what I’d do: (a) on the same day, all the leaders of the opposition, including the leaders of the Catholic party, would be arrested and executed; (b) all the occupants of the concentration camps would be shot within three days; (c) all the criminals on our lists—and it would make little difference whether they were in prison or at liberty—would be shot within the same period.”21

  The White Rose (die Weiße Rose), a student group, sought to resist with thousands of leaflets, mailings, and “Down with Hitler” signs, even painting those words on the revered Feldherrnhalle, where Hitler had sought to seize power in 1923.22 They were emboldened by carrying firearms for protection when out painting graffiti, and they otherwise sought to obtain weapons, which must have been difficult because they had to smuggle some from the Russian front.23 Ringleader Sophie Scholl told a schoolmate: “If Hitler came walking by right now and I had a pistol, I would shoot. If the men don’t do it, then a woman will have to. You have to do something to avoid being guilty yourself.”24

  Although passive resistance was the only realistic method for the group to use, one of its leaders insisted: “People who had loathed each other in the Weimar days had to forget the past and work together for one goal: kill Hitler, overthrow the government, and negotiate peace with the Allies.”25

  In 1943, after being caught spreading leaflets at the University of Munich, Sophie, her brother Hans, and Christl Probst were quickly tried by Judge Roland Freisler of the People’s Court and guillotined. A moving depiction of their last days was rendered in the 2005 film Sophie Scholl. More executions followed, but not before the White Rose’s strong moral message reached many Germans and was leaked to the outside world.

  Although the German population had long been cowed, there nevertheless remained resistance of the mind. Victor Klemperer’s diary entries are filled with expressions of silent protest. A traveler at their table in an eatery “told awful anti-Nazi jokes, one after the other. ‘People have to tell jokes, as long as it stays within limits.’” He noticed an increase in the number of people in shops who would say “good afternoon” rather than “Heil Hitler.” A story circulated about a couple who learned that their four sons were all killed in Russia: “The father hangs himself, the mother hurls the picture of Hitler out of the window into the courtyard. Half an hour later she is arrested (‘taken away’).”26

  In 1941, Jews were required to wear the yellow Star of David with the word Jude written on it. Klemperer perceptively explained how this directive was intended to induce fear among the “Aryans” and thus the perception of dire need for the protection of the Nazi state: “The newspaper justification: After the army had got to know, through Bolshevism, the cruelty, etc. of the Jew, all possibility of camouflage must be removed from the Jews here, to spare the comrades of the people all contact with them.—The true reason: fear of Jewish criticism because things look bad in the East or at least are at a standstill. And: rule of the terror people, of Himmler, because things look bad in the East.”27

  But Klemperer had favorable experiences wearing the star, noting: “There is no doubt that the people feel the persecution of the Jews to be a sin.” A friend was greeted by a stranger at a shop, who stated, “We are a group ‘who greet the Jew’s star.’” This was despite “an explicit warning on the radio, supported by a Goebbels article, against any association whatsoever with Jews.”28

  The deportation of the Jews from the Greater German Reich that began in October 1941 involved the ever-present searches for weapons. A Gestapo directive to the police president in Rostock concerning the deportation of Jews to the East ordered: “Before the Jews leave, their apartments must be searched for weapons, ammunition, explosives, poison, money, jewelry, etc.”29 But that was not enough. As Alfred Hartmann recalled, Jews were sent to the Milbertshofen barracks camp near Munich, a staging area for deportation to more deadly camps: “After their arrival at the camp and assignment to individual barracks, Gestapo members collected the luggage of the Jews and searched it for weapons, jewelry, etc.”30

  This was the final stage in the disarming of any Jews who may still have possessed firearms, making individual or collective resistance impossible. After Reichskristallnacht, the historical record does not reflect that German Jews unlawfully obtained or used arms as tools of resistance, at least not on a wide basis. In fact, the National Representative Organization of Jews in Germany (Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland), the German Jewish leadership, insisted that Jewish activities be legal. Militant resistance was rejected as futile and provocative of reprisals.31 This organization helped to register Jews selected for deportation and to ensure transportation arrangements for deportees.32

  Firearms did play a role in resistance to deportations from Germany, although not on a wide scale as in the occupied countries. Anecdotal evidence exists of Jews with firearms who hid in Berlin. Fritz Corner fed his family on the black market by trading jewels but was identified by a “catcher”—a Jew working for the Gestapo who turned in other Jews to save himself. Corner refused the Gestapo’s offer to betray ten Jews in exchange for not being sent to Auschwitz and escaped before being deported. He vowed that he would not be arrested again and walked the streets with his eyes on everyone coming his way and his right hand in his coat pocket holding a small pistol.33

  Countess Maria von Maltzan (called “Marushka”) hid Jews in her Berlin apartment and helped many to safety. She befriended a major in the Wehrmacht, persuading him to give her a Mauser pistol because she felt unsafe living by herself. She worked with Erik Wesslen of the Swedish Church in smuggling Jews and political refugees out of Germany. He bought their release by bribing SS officers with coffee and ciga
rettes. On one occasion, when leading six elderly Jews released from Gestapo custody, she was followed and shot the pursuer in the leg. They escaped, but Wesslen scolded her for not having killed the pursuer because the same escape route could not be used again.34

  Due to years of repression, armed resistance was not widespread. But as Holocaust survivor Arnold Paucker noted, “Was there an armed resistance of German Jews? There most certainly was!” However, one cannot “blame the Jews in Nazi Germany in hindsight for not having thrown themselves into any military adventures, on top of all the other threats they faced. It was only beyond Germany’s borders that Jews could take up arms in the fight against their oppressors.” Although Paucker does not discuss armed self-defense and survival by individuals within Germany, he criticizes the disparagement of the partisan struggle as inconsequential: “For us Jews who were so strongly committed to it, such denigration of the European partisan struggle is particularly painful. We were long accused of not having defended ourselves, and when we demonstrated the contrary, smart or supercilious military historians inform us that this self-defence was pointless and useless anyway.”35

  Nazi policy in the occupied countries sought to preclude partisan resistance by decreeing that failure to surrender firearms was punishable by the death penalty. For example, an early 1941 Warsaw newspaper report noted the execution of three Poles—one for failure to surrender a pistol “despite the universally known order about surrendering arms,” another for buying it, and a third who never possessed it but “failed to fulfill his duty to report it to the proper authorities.”36 A formal Reich decree in late 1941 imposed the death penalty on any Pole or Jew “[i]f he is in unlawful possession of a firearm, hand-grenade, any weapon for stabbing or hitting, of explosives, ammunition or other implements of war, or if he has credible information that a Pole or a Jew is in unlawful possession of such objects, and fails to notify the authorities forthwith.”37