by The Destruction of the European Jews, Vol. 1-3 (Third Edition) Yale University Press (2003) (pdf)
Schlegelberger
(acting)
Thierack
Staatssekretär:
Schlegelberger 1 Rothenberger 1 Klemm
I
Personnel and Organization
Letz
II
Training
Segelken
Penal Code
Schafer
i111
Criminal 1IV
Criminal Law (Procedure)
Engert
lv
Prisons
Civil Law
Altstötter
[VI
Deputy
Hesse
Civil
Race Experts
Rexroth, Meinhof
VII
Trade and International Law
Quassowski
l viii
Pensions
Schneller
Courts
Ordinary Courts
Extraordinary Courts
(Each court divided into
(Prosecution of
criminal and civil sections)
political crimes)
Reichsgericht
Volksgerichtshof
(People's Court)
1
Oberlandesgerichte
Landgerichte
Amtsgerichte
Sondergerichte
(Special Courts)
note: Organization chart of Reich government (certified by Frick), PS-2905;
organization chart of Division VI, February, 1944, NG-917; affidavit by Rothenberger,
February 12,1947. NO-776- For titles of judges and prosecutors, see document NG-2252.
definition is in no sense based on racial criteria, such as blood type,
curvature of the nose, or other physical characteristics. Nazi commentators,
for
propagandistic
reasons,
called
the
decrees
“racial
laws”
(Rassengesetze,)1 and non-German writers, adopting this language, 4
4.
For example, the commentary by Wilhelm Stuckart and Rolf Schiedermair, Raisin- und Erbpflege in der Gezetzgebung des Reiches, 5th ed. (Leipzig, 1944).
67
DEFINITION BY DECREE
T A B L E 4-3
THE REICH CHANCELLERY
Chief of the Chancellery.............................................. Hans Heinrich Lammers
Staatssekretär.................................................................................................Kritzinger A. Administration, Propaganda, Education, Public
Health.................................................................................................... Meerwald
B. Four-Year Plan, Reichsbank, Transport, Agriculture______________ Willuhn
C. Finance, Budget, Labor, Audit,
Civil Service Matters...................... Killy
D. Foreign Affairs, Occupied Areas in Eastern Europe.. Stutterheim
E. Interior, Police, Justice,
Armed Forces, Party................................ Ficker
note: Organization chart of the Reich Chancellery, NG-3811; affidavit by Dr. Otto
Meissner (Chief, Prdsidialkanzlei) on role and power of Lammers, May 15, 1947,
NG-1541; affidavit by Hans Heinrich Lammers on his career, April 26, 1947, NG-1364;
affidavit by Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger on his career, April 25, 1947, NG-1363.
have also referred to these definitions as “racial.”5 But it is important to
understand that the sole criterion for categorization into the “Aryan” or
“non-Aryan” group was religion, not the religion of the person involved but the religion of his ancestors. After all, the Nazis were not interested in the “Jewish nose.” They were concerned with the “Jewish
influence.”
The 1933 definition (known as the Arierparagraph) did give rise to
difficulties. One problem arose from the use of the terms Aryan and
non-Aryan, which had been chosen in order to lend to the decrees a
racial flavor.* Foreign nations, notably Japan, were offended by the
general
implication
that
non-Aryans
were
inferior
to
Aryans.
On
November 15, 1934, representatives of the Interior Ministry and the
Foreign Office, together with the chief of the party’s Race-Political
Office, Dr. Gross, discussed the adverse effect of the Arierparagraph
on Far Eastern policy. The conferees had no solution. The Foreign
Office reported that its missions abroad had explained the German
policy of distinguishing between the types of races, rather than the
qualities
of
the
races
( Verschiedenartigkeit
der
Rassen,
rather
than
Verschiedenwertigkeit der Rassen). According to this view, each race
produced its own social characteristics, but the characteristics of one
race were not necessarily inferior to those of other races. In short,
5. One Jewish historian went so far as to call the medieval practice of identifying
new Christians as former Jews ‘‘racial." See Cecil Roth, “Marranos and racial Antisemitism—A Study in Parallels,” Jewish Social Studies, 2(1940): 239-48.
6. Actually, the term Aryan, like Semitic, is not even a race designation. At best it is
a term for a linguistic-ethnic group.
DEFINITION BY DECREE
racial “type" comprised physical and spiritual qualities, and German
policy attempted no more than the promotion of conditions that would
permit each race to develop in its own way. However, this explanation
did not quite satisfy the Far Eastern states, who still felt that the
catchall term non-Aryan placed them in the same category as Jews.’
There was another difficulty that reached into the substance of the
measure. The term non-Aryan had been defined in such a way as to
include not only full Jews—that is to say, persons with four Jewish
grandparents—but
also
three-quarter
Jews,
half-Jews,
and
one-quarter
Jews. Such a definition was considered necessary in order to eliminate
from official positions all persons who might have been carriers of the
“Jewish influence” even in the slightest degree. Nevertheless, it was
recognized that the term non-Aryan, aside from embracing the full
Jews, included also a number of persons whose inclusion in subsequent, more drastic measures would result in difficulties. In order to narrow the application of subsequent decrees to exclude such persons,
a definition of what was actually meant by the term Jew became necessary.
At the beginning of 1935 the problem received some attention in
party circles. One of the meetings was attended by Dr. Wagner, then
Reichsärzteführer (chief medical officer of the party). Dr. Gross (head
of the Race-Political Office), and Dr. Blome (at that time secretary of
the
medical
association,
later
Deputy
Reichsärzteführer).
Dr.
Blome
spoke out against a special status for part-Jews. He did not want a
“third race.” Consequently, he proposed that all quarter-Jews be considered Germans and that all half-Jews be considered Jews. Reason:
“Among half-Jews, the Jewish genes are notorious
ly dominant.”7 8 This
view later became party policy, but the party never succeeded in imposing that policy on the Interior Ministry, where the decisive decrees were written.
On the occasion of the Nuremberg party rally. Hitler ordered, on
September 13, 1935, that a decree be written—in two days—under the
title “Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor.” Two experts of the Interior Ministry, Ministerialrat Medicus and Ministerialrat Lösener,
were
thereupon
summoned
to
Nuremberg
by
plane.
When
they arrived they found Staatssekretäre Pfundtner and Stuckart, Ministerialrat Seel (civil service expert of the Interior Ministry), Ministerialrat
Sommer
(a
representative
of
the
Führer's
Deputy
Hess),
and
several other gentlemen in the police headquarters, drafting a law.
7. Circular letter by Pfundtner, February 9, 1935, NG-2292. Billow-Schwante
(Foreign Office) to missions and consulates abroad. May 17, 1935, enclosing circular letter
by the Interior Ministry, April 18, 1935, NG-3942.
8. Affidavit by Dr. Kurt Blome, January 17, 1946. NO-1710.
69
DEFINITION BY DECREE
Interior Minister Frick and Reichsärzteführer Wagner shuttled between
Hitler’s quarters and the police station with drafts. In the midst of the
commotion, to the accompaniment of music and marching feet and in a
setting of flags, the new decree was hammered out. The law no longer
dealt with “non-Aryans” but with “Jews.” It prohibited marriages and
extramarital intercourse between Jews and citizens of “German or related blood,” the employment in Jewish households of female citizens of “German or related blood” under the age of forty-five, and the
raising by Jews of the Reich flag.’ None of the terms used were defined
in the decree.
On the evening of September 14, Frick returned to his villa from a
visit to Hitler and told the exhausted experts to get busy with a draft of
a Reich citizenship law. The Staatssekretäre and Ministerialräte now
went to work in the music room of Frick’s villa to write a citizenship
law. Soon they ran out of paper and requisitioned old menu cards. By
2:30 a.m. the citizenship law was finished. It provided that only persons of “German or related blood” could be citizens. Since “citizenship” in Nazi Germany implied nothing, no interest attaches to the drafting of this decree, except for a provision to the effect that “full
Jews” could not be citizens. This implied a new categorization differentiating between Germans and part-Jews, on the one hand, and such persons regardless of religion who had four Jewish grandparents, on
the other. Hitler saw this implication immediately and crossed out the
provision.9 10 11
The attitudes of the party and of the civil service toward part-Jews
had not emerged quite clearly. The party “combatted” the part-Jew as a
carrier of the “Jewish influence,” whereas the civil service wanted to
protect
in
the
part-Jew
“that
part
which
is
German.”"
The
final
definition was written in the Interior Ministry, and so it is not surprising
that the party view did not prevail.
The authors of the definition were Staatssekretär Dr. Stuckart and
his expert in Jewish affairs, Dr. Lösener. Stuckart was then a young
man of thirty-three. He was a Nazi, a believer in Hitler and Germany’s
destiny. He was also regarded as a party man. There is a difference
between these two concepts. Everyone was presumed to be, and was
accepted as, a Nazi unless by his own conduct he insisted otherwise.
But not everyone was regarded as a party man. Only those people were
9. Law forlhe Protection of German Blood and Honor, September 15, 1935, RGBl
1, 1146.
10. The history of the two laws is taken from the affidavit by Dr. Bernhard Lösener,
February 24, 1948, NG-1944-A. Final version of the Reich Citizenship Law, dated September 15, 1935, inRGBl 1,1146.
11. See letter by Stuckart, March 16, 1942, NG-2586-1.
70
DEFINITION BY DECREE
party men who held positions in the party, who owed their positions to
the party, or who represented the party’s interests in disagreements
between the party and other hierarchies. Stuckart was in the party (he
had even joined the SS in an honorary capacity), he had risen to power
more quickly than other people, and he knew what the party wanted.
But Stuckart refused to go along with the party in the definition business.
Stuckart’s
expert
on
Jewish
affairs,
Dr.
Bernhard
Losener,
had
been transferred to the Interior Ministry after long service in the customs
administration.
Definitions
and Jewish affairs were an entirely
new experience to him. Yet he became an efficient "expert” in his new
assignment. Ultimately he drafted, or helped draft, twenty-seven Jewish decrees.I! He is the prototype of other "experts” in Jewish matters, whom we shall meet in the Finance Ministry, in the Labor Ministry, in
the Foreign Office, and in many other agencies.
The two men had an urgent task to perform. The terms Jew and
German had already been used in a decree that contained criminal
sanctions. There was no time to be lost. The final text of the definition
corresponds in substance to a memorandum written by Losener and
dated November 1, 1935.1! Losener dealt in his memorandum with the
critical problem of the half-Jews. He rejected the party’s proposal to
equate half-Jews with full Jews. In the first place, Losener argued,
such a categorization would strengthen the Jewish side. “In principle,
the half-Jew should be regarded as a more serious enemy than the full
Jew because,
in addition to Jewish characteristics, he possesses so
many Germanic ones which the full Jew lacks.” Second, the equation
would result in an injustice. Half-Jews could not emigrate and could
not compete with full Jews for jobs with Jewish employers. Third,
there was the need of the armed forces, which would be deprived of a
potential 45,000 men. Fourth, a boycott against half-Jews was impractical (the German people would not go along). Fifth, half-Jews had performed meritorious services (recital of names). Sixth, there were many marriages between Germans and half-Jews. Suppose, for example, that
Mr. Schmidt finds out, after ten years of marriage, that his wife is half-
Jewish—a fact that, presumably, all half-Jewish wives kept secret.
In view of all these difficulties, Losener proposed that the half-
Jews be sorted into two groups." There was no practical way of sorting
half-Jews individually, according to their political convictions. But 12 13 14
12. See list compiled by Losener in his affidavit of February 28, 1948, NG-1944-A.
13. Stuckart to Foreign Minister von Neurath, November I, 1935, enclosing
LOsener memorandum, NG-
3941.
14. The nature of these arguments is quite interesting, since they could have been
used equally well against all anti-Jewish measures.
71
DEFINITION BY DECREE
there was an automatic way of dealing with that problem. Losener
proposed that only those half-Jews be counted as Jews who belonged
to the Jewish religion or who were married to a Jewish person.
The Losener proposal was incorporated into the First Regulation
to the Reich Citizenship Law, dated November 14, 1935.13 * 15 In its final
form
the
automatic
sorting
method
separated
the
“non-Aryans”
into
the following categories: Everyone was defined as a Jew who (1) descended from at least three Jewish grandparents (full Jews and three-quarter Jews) or (2) descended from two Jewish grandparents (half-
Jews) and (a) belonged to the Jewish religious community on September 15, 1935, or joined the community on a subsequent date, or (b) was married to a Jewish person on September 15,1935, or married one on a
subsequent date, or (c) was the offspring of a marriage contracted with
a three-quarter or full Jew after the Law for the Protection of German
Blood and Honor had come into force (September 15,1935), or(d) was
the offspring of an extramarital relationship with a three-quarter or full
Jew and was bom out of wedlock after July 31, 1936. For the determination of the status of the grandparents, the presumption remained that the grandparent was Jewish if he or she belonged to the Jewish religious community.16 17
Defined not as a Jew but as an individual of “mixed Jewish blood”
was (1) any person who descended from two Jewish grandparents (half-
Jewish), but who (a) did not adhere (or adhered no longer) to the
Jewish religion on September 15, 1935, and who did not join it at any
subsequent time, and (b) was not married (or was married no longer) to
a Jewish person on September 15, 1935, and who did not marry such a
person at any subsequent time (such half-Jews were called Mischlinge
of the first degree), and (2) any person descended from one Jewish
grandparent
(Mischling
of
the
second
degree).
The
designations
"Mischling of the first degree” and "Mischling of the second degree”
were not contained in the decree of November 14, 1935, but were
added in a later ruling by the Interior Ministry.1’
In practice, therefore, Losener had split the non-Aryans into two
groups: Mischlinge and Jews. The Mischlinge were no longer subjected