by The Destruction of the European Jews, Vol. 1-3 (Third Edition) Yale University Press (2003) (pdf)
novel, published only eleven years before Hitler came to power, depicts an expulsion of the Jews from Vienna. The author shows how Vienna cannot get along without its Jews. Ultimately, the Jews are
recalled. That was the mentality of Jewry, and of Jewish leadership, on
the eve of the destruction process. When the Nazis took over in 1933,
the old Jewish reaction pattern set in again, but this time the results
were catastrophic. The German bureaucracy was not slowed by Jewish
pleading; it was not stopped by Jewish indispensability. Without regard
to
cost,
the
bureaucratic machine,
operating
with
accelerating speed
and
ever-widening
destructive
effect,
proceeded
to
annihilate
the
European Jews. The Jewish community, unable to switch to resistance,
increased its cooperation with the tempo of the German measures, thus
hastening its own destruction.
We see, therefore, that both perpetrators and victims drew upon
their age-old experience in dealing with each other. The Germans did it
with success. The Jews did it with disaster.
48.
Hugo Bettauer, Die Stadt ohne Juden—Ein Roman von übermorgen (Vienna,
1922).
28
c
H
A
P
T
E
R
T
W
ANTECEDENTS O
The first chapter has dealt with historical parallels, with events and
patterns of pre-Nazi times which were repeated in the years 1933-
45. These events were the precedents of the destruction process. Now
we turn to a description of the climate in which the destruction process
began. The activities that were designed to create this climate we shall
call the antecedents.
The specific question to which we shall address ourselves in this
chapter is this: What was the state of readiness for anti-Jewish action in
1933? We know that the antagonistic conception of Jewry, the portrait
in which the Jew was painted as an enemy, a criminal, and a parasite,
was already quite old. We also know that administrative action against
European Jewry had been taken even earlier; Jewry law was a product
of medieval times. We know, third, that an administrative apparatus
capable of efficient operation on a complicated level had been developed in Germany for centuries. Hitler thus did not have to originate any propaganda. He did not have to invent any laws. He did not have
to create a machine. He did have to rise to power.
Adolf Hitler’s ascendancy to the chancellorship was a signal to the
bureaucracy that it could begin to take action against the Jews. Whatever the Nazi movement stood for would now be the aim of all Germany. Such was the general atmosphere and the overall expectation.
The Nazi party, the full name of which was the Nationalsozialistische
Deutsche
Arbeiter
Partei
(National
Socialist
German
Workers
Party),
(NSDAP), assigned to itself the task of activating the bureaucracy and
the whole of society. What it did not provide was a set of specifics. In
fifteen years of activity it had not developed a detailed draft for implementation.
The party was organized soon after World War 1. Some of its
founders
drew
up
a
twenty-five-point
program,
dated
February
24,
1920, which contained four paragraphs that dealt, directly or indirectly,
with Jews. These articles, which were the sum total of guidance supplied by the party to the bureaucracy, were as follows: 31
ANTECEDENTS
4. Only a member of the community [Volksgenosse] can be a citizen.
Only a person with German blood, regardless of his religious adherence,
can be a member of the community. No Jew may therefore be a member of
the community.
5. Whoever is not a citizen should live only as a guest in Germany,
under the law applicable to foreigners.
6. The right to determine the leadership and laws of the state may be
exercised only by citizens. Hence we demand that every public office,
regardless of its nature, in Reich, province, or locality, be held only by
citizens.
8. Every immigration of non-Germans is to be prevented. We demand
that all non-Germans who have migrated to Germany since August 2,
1914, be forced to leave the Reich immediately.1
Paragraph 17 provided for the expropriation of real property for
community
purposes.
This
provision,
which
troubled
the
propertied
supporters of the Nazi party, was authoritatively interpreted by Hitler
to mean that only Jewish property was involved.2 3 4 As Goring, the
second-ranking Nazi, informed us after the war, the program had been
drawn up by very “simple people.” Neither Hitler nor Göring had
participated in the drafting.2
Not until the early 1930s did the party build up its machinery to
include
legal
and
political
divisions.
The
Innerpolitical
Division,
formed at the end of 1931, was headed by civil servants—first Dr.
Helmut Nicolai, then his deputy Ernst von Heydebrand und der Lasa.‘
The two men struggled with such topics as citizenship, exclusions, and
registration. Texts of the drafts are no longer extant, but Heydebrand
summarized his preliminary thoughts in a journal published in 1931.
Significantly, he cautioned against attaching to initial regulations the
kind of consequences that might be all too “gruesome” (allzu grausige
Folgen).s
On March 6, 1933, seven weeks after Hitler had become Chancel-
1. Text in Ludwig Münz, Führer durch die Behörden und Organisationen (Berlin,
1939), pp. 3-4. As of February, the party was still the Deutsche Arbeiter Partei. It was
renamed the NSDAP in March, its First Chairman (I. Vorsitzender) was Anton Drexler,
but Hitler read the program in an open meeting on February 24. Reginald Phelps, “Hitler
als Parteiredner im Jahre 1920,'' Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte II (1963): 274 ff.
2. Münz, Führer, p. 4.
3. Testimony by Göring, Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 9, p. 273.
4. Regierungsrat Nicolai had been dismissed from his civil service position because
of political activities. Uwe Adam, Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich (Düsseldorf, 1972),
p. 28. Regierungsrat Heydebrand obtained early retirement from his post because of
heart trouble. Eike von Repkow (Robert M. W. Kempner), Justiz-Dämmerung (Berlin,
1932), p. Ill (reissued by the author in 1963). The Innerpolitical Division was incorporated into the Legal Division (headed by Hans Frank) in December 1932. Adam, Judenpolitik, p. 28n.
3. Kempner, Justiz-Dämmerung, p. 110.
32
ANTECEDENTS
lor, Staatssekretär Bang
of the Economy Ministry (a party man) wrote
unofficially to Lammers, Chief of the Reich Chancellery, to suggest
some anti-Jewish action (a ban on immigration of Eastern Jews and the
revocation of name changes).6 During the same month, a private committee
(Arbeitsgemeinschaft)·
possibly
called
together
by
the
Interior
Ministry, worked on an elaborate draft of anti-Jewish legislation. The
group, which contained only one or two known anti-Semites, managed
to anticipate several measures that were to be taken in later years,
including
dismissals,
prohibition
of
mixed
marriages,
revocation
of
name
changes,
and the
institution
of Jewish
community machinery.
Reviewing its handiwork, the committee was struck by the fact that its
proposals would deal the victims “a heavy, partially undeserved fate
that would therefore have to be mitigated as much as possible [ein
schweres, zum Teil unverdientes und daher nach Möglichkeit zu milderndes Schicksal]."1
There is little evidence, however, that the ministerial bureaucracy
was much affected by these initiatives or even that it was constantly
aware of them. Rather, these forays may be taken as indications of a
convergence of thinking, inside and outside of the party, about directions to be followed and obstacles to be faced in Jewish affairs. Government officials did not really have to be shown the way. They did not have to be supplied with formulations and ideas. Thus on October 3,
1932, almost four months before Hitler’s rise to power, the Reich Interior Minister von Gayl was considering a twenty-year residence requirement for the attainment of German citizenship in the case of aliens
“belonging
to
a
lower
culture”
(Angehörigen
niederer
Kultur).’
He
meant, in the main, Polish Jews. On December 23, 1932, even as party
men interested in exposing and isolating the Jews were demanding that
Jews have only Jewish names, an official of the Prussian Interior Ministry, Hans Globke, wrote a directive, for internal use only, to prohibit approval of name changes that were sought by Jews who might have
wished
to
“disguise
their
Jewish
descent
[ihre
Abkunft
...
zu
verschleiern]."’ By March and April 1933, the ministerial work to bar
Jews from civil service positions was already leading to the first anti-
Jewish laws.
6. Lammers sent Bang's suggestions to Interior Minister Frick, March 9, 1933,
adding an idea of his own (deportation of Eastern Jews of foreign nationality). Frick
replied to Lammers. March 13, 1933, that the proposals had been passed on to subor-
diantes in the Interior Ministry. For the entire correspondence, see document NG-902.
7. Adam, Judenpolitik, pp. 33-38.
8. Ibid., p. 43.
9. Regierungsrat Globke to Regierungspräsidenten (Polizeipräsident in Berlin),
Landräte, regional police administrations (staatliche Poiizeiverwaher), and local police
offices (Ortspolizeibehörden). December ¿3, 1932. Central Archives (Zentralarchiv) of
the German Democratic Republic, through the courtesy of Ambassador Stefan Heymann.
33
ANTECEDENTS
Still, the party felt that it should employ its offices and formations
to create a climate conducive to anti-Jewish activities by government,
business, and the general public. To this end the party engaged in
exhortations, demonstrations, and boycotts. In these matters, at least,
the party men could claim an exclusive expertise. They did not, however, enjoy freedom from criticism.
In
particular,
Germany's
intellectual
elite
had
always
expressed
distaste for “propaganda” and “disturbances.” Crudity of language or
argument
was
associated
with
ordinary,
uneducated,
common
people.
At times the very word anti-Semite had a negative connotation.10 11 Even
though the advent of Nazism produced some attempts to speak in anti-
Jewish tones (in Oslo, an aristocratic German envoy, moved by the
new spirit, made an old anti-Semitic novel his family’s reading matter)," the habit was difficult to acquire and easy to discard. That is why most ranking functionaries would proclaim routinely after the war that
they had never hated Jews in the first place.
Street activities were even less palatable to the German establishment. For the Jewish New Year on September 12, 1931, the brownshirted party formation (SA) in Berlin had planned molestations of
Jews leaving the synagogues. Miscalculating the hour when services
were to end, the SA timed its operation an hour too late and accosted a
number
of
non-Jews.
Court
proceedings
were
instituted
against
the
organizers of the disturbance. Although the judges were very mild in
their condemnation of the Nazi formation, the episode did not enhance
the party’s prestige.12
AH the same, in 1933 the party men seized the opportunity to
launch a campaign of violence against individual Jews and to proclaim
an anti-Jewish boycott. This time there were serious repercussions in
foreign
countries.
A
boycott
movement
was
started
against
German
exports and was supported by Jews and non-Jews alike. By March 27,
1933, Vice-Chancellor Papen was forced to write a letter to the Board
10. See, for example, Friedrich Nietzsche's letter to Georg Brandes. October 20,
1888. Friedrich Nietzsche. Werkt, ed. Karl Schlechte, 3 vols. (Munich, 1936), vol. 3,
pp. 1325-26. When the young Heinrich Himmler, of middle-class background, first encountered anti-Jewish books, his reaction to this literature was notably reserved. See Bradley Smith, Heinrich Himmler—A Nazi in the Making (Stanford, 1971), pp. 74, 92.
11. Diary of Emst von Weizsäcker, entry of April 22, 1933, in Leonidas E. Hill.ed.,
Die Weizsäcker Papiere 1933-1945 (Vienna and Frankfurt am Main. 1974), p. 31. The
novel was Wilhelm Hauff's Jud Suss.
12. Arnold Paucker, “Der jüdische Abwehrkampf,'' in Werner Mosse, ed., Em-
Scheidungsjahr (Tübingen, 1966). pp. 478-79. P. B. Wiener, “Die Parteien der Mitte,”
ibid., pp. 303-4. On the trial, see Kempner. Justiz-Dämmerung, pp. 32-33,54-57.
34
ANTECEDENTS
of Trade for German-American Commerce, in which he pointed out
that the number of “excesses” against Americans was “less than a
dozen,” that hundreds of thousands of Jews remained unmolested, that
the big Jewish publishing houses were still in business, that there was
no St. Barthol
omew Night, and so on.13 14 15
In June 1933 the German Foreign Minister, von Neurath, visited
London. In his report to Reich President von Hindenburg, the Foreign
Minister noted that he could hardly recognize London. The Jewish
question had come up again and again, and no counterarguments were
of any avail. The Englishmen had declared that in judging this matter
they were guided only by sentiment (gefuhlsmassig). This point was
made to von Neurath by the English King himself in a “very earnest
conversation.”
In
international
conferences
von
Neurath
had
noted
that many governments were represented by people who were well-
known Jews, as a kind of protest.14
Another difficulty was created by the undisciplined behavior of
party members. Many Jews were mistreated and a few were killed. In
Bavaria the police arrested several members of a uniformed party formation, the Schutzstaffeln (Protective Formations) (SS), for the mistreatment of
Jews.
The
SS
office
in
the
city
of
Aschaffenburg
thereupon claimed that no member of the SS could be arrested by a
policeman. This assertion was so novel that the Bavarian Minister of
Justice, Dr. Hans Frank, himself a top Nazi, questioned the claim and
asked the Bavarian Minister President (Siebert) to discuss the matter
with SS Chief Himmler and with Himmler’s superior, SA Chief Rohm.15
Shortly after this incident, a few killings took place in the Bavarian
concentration camp of Dachau. The victims were two Germans and a
Jew (Dr. Delwin Katz). Himmler and Rohm requested that proceedings
against the responsible SS men be quashed for “state-political” reasons.
Bavarian
Staatsminister
of
the
Interior
Wagner
(another
party
man) agreed but expressed the hope that in the future such requests
would not be put to him again. Writing to Frank, Wagner asked the
Justice Minister to quash the proceedings in the concentration camp,
13. VonPapento Board of Trade of German-American Commerce, March 27, 1933,
D-635. New York Times, March 29, 1933. For molestation of Americans, see report by
U S. Consul General Messersmith to the Secretary of State, March 14, 1933, L-198.
Simitar to the von Papen letter is the telegram of the Cologne branch of the American
Chamber of Commerce in Germany to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, March 25, 1933,