Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (14 page)

there were riots on the Kurfürstendamm during which NS activists forced their

way into cafés and forcibly drove out Jewish customers, and these ended in

confrontations with the police. The events attracted the attention of the inter-

national press and led to the dismissal of the Chief of the Berlin Police Force, von

Levetzow. Goebbels seized the initiative, issued a ban on the very acts of violence

that he had himself been partly responsible for encouraging, and managed to

restore at least a superficial level of goodwill between the police, the city author-

ities, the Gau leadership, and the SA, with a slogan promising the systematic

cleansing of Berlin of ‘Communists, Reactionaries, and Jews’.
13
The violence in Berlin was the starting gun for a new anti-Semitic propaganda campaign that now

extended across the whole of the Reich.

The reports of the Centralverein, the Gestapo, the SPD in exile, and other

sources show quite clearly that NS activists were once more carrying out large-

scale anti-Jewish operations across the Reich from mid-July onwards. Regional

centres for this violence were the Rhineland, Westphalia, Hesse, Pomerania, and

East Prussia.
14
The list of the techniques typically employed includes blockading and obstructing Jewish businesses, threatening customers who tried to get past

these measures, driving Jews from public swimming pools, smashing windows and

daubing shopfronts with paint, desecrating Jewish cemeteries and synagogues,

putting up anti-Jewish signs, and preventing the sale of goods to Jews. ‘Race

defilers’ often had to be taken into protective custody by the Gestapo after attacks

by Party activists. In many places Jewish economic life was destroyed altogether by

the end of the summer as a result of these large-scale hate campaigns.

Radical forces within the Party made an attempt to make a link between the

wave of anti-Jewish sentiment and a general reckoning with all ‘enemies of the

state’ still present in Germany. Thus in many cities Party activists organized

demonstrations against supposedly anti-social businessmen and senior officials

who refused to bow to the demands of local Party bosses.
15
The newspaper Der Stürmer, edited by the radical Nuremberg Gauleiter, tried in June to summarize

the whole campaign in a nutshell:

Who are the enemies of our state? We group them together under the heading ‘reaction-

aries’. And this reaction is a tangled, many-coloured skein. We can see red flags. We can see coal-black flags. We can see flags of black, red, and gold. We can even see a few black, white, Segregation and Discrimination, 1935–7

57

and red flags. The leader of this reactionary rabble is the Jew. The Jew is the general leading the whole reactionary army.
16

At the end of July, before the anti-Jewish wave of terror and the campaigns of

violence had reached their climax, there were already attempts being made by the

NS leadership and the Reich government to stem the tide and to address the main

anti-Semitic demands of the Party activists with the help of legal measures.

It was quite evident that the wave of terror was not achieving the level of public

support that it had intended. It had not succeeded in its original aim of deploying

the ‘Jewish question’ to improve the popular mood, which was still as low as it had

been before, and was if anything getting worse during the summer.
17
In a circular to the Party of 9 August Martin Bormann (who ran the office of the Führer's

deputy, Hess) informed Party functionaries that Hitler had given the order to all

responsible Party offices to cease ‘individual operations’ against Jews.
18

The Nuremberg Laws

At the same time as the Party leadership was making efforts to stem the tide of

anti-Semitic violence, legal measures were being instituted with the aim of regu-

lating the three key elements behind the campaign of violence: ‘racial defilement’

and ‘mixed marriages’; economic discrimination; and the exclusion of Jews from

German citizenship.

Demands for penalties against ‘racial miscegenation’ were central to the

NSDAP’s racial policies. In March 1930 the NSDAP group in the Reichstag had

introduced a draft bill in this area that made provision for the death penalty in

severe cases.
19
Before 1933 the NSDAP leadership had already worked up several draft bills aimed at the ‘separation of races’.
20
In 1933, after preliminary work conducted by a group of experts selected from amongst Party functionaries and

civil servants, the Prussian Minister of Justice had proposed a draft bill, but it was

not taken up by the commission that had been set up to manage the reform of

criminal law.
21
After a law had banned ‘mixed marriages’ for soldiers and reservists in May 1935
,22
and district courts had started to cover for registrars who were refusing to marry Jews and non-Jews,
23
the Reich Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, publicly announced on 25 July that a law against ‘mixed marriages’

was in preparation. On the following day he called upon registrars to postpone

issuing notices of marriage between Aryans and Jews until further notice, since

formal legal regulation of this matter was to follow shortly.
24
The Ministry of Justice had already developed a draft law to combat ‘marriages detrimental to the

German people’, which was intended to prevent marriages with both ‘members of

alien races’ and ‘people with hereditary illnesses’.
25
At the Gau Party rally in Essen on 4 August, Frick announced the legal settlement of the ‘Jewish question’; at the

58

Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

same event Goebbels had already made an unambiguous demand for an end to

marriages between Jews and non-Jews.
26
On 20 August Franz Gürtner, the Minister for Justice, also declared that legal measures would shortly be put in

place.
27
What was originally planned was to declare a ban on ‘mixed marriages’

together with a ban on marriages considered undesirable for eugenic reasons in a

law against ‘marriages detrimental to the German people’. After the Blood Pro-

tection Law (Blutschutzgesetz) was passed in September the second issue was left

to the Marital Health Law (Ehegesundheitsgesetz) in October.
28

The second major legal anti-Semitic assault demanded by the National Social-

ists with increasing vigour in the spring and summer of 1935 was the deprivation of

citizenship. This was one of the NSDAP’s most long-standing demands and had

been included in their Party programme of 1920
.29
Following an initiative from the Reich Ministry of the Interior work had begun on a Reich Citizenship Law as early

as July 1933, and it was intended to demote ‘non-Aryans’ to the level of second-

class citizens. Preliminary activities were suspended in September 1933, evidently

in response to international criticism of these plans.
30

However, from early 1935 onwards demands from within the Reich Ministry of

the Interior were being voiced publicly with increasing urgency. On 26 April Frick

announced the new version of the Citizenship Law.
31
The Immigration Law passed in May 1935 had already created room for refusing citizenship to Jews and others

who were unwelcome for reasons of race by removing existing immigration rights

and transferring responsibilities for decisions to the state authorities.

Under pressure from the continuing boycotts, the third of the National Social-

ists’ key anti-Semitic demands—the judicial restriction of the economic activities

of the Jewish minority—took a particular turn in summer 1935.

The way in which the organized street violence was instrumentalized is made

clear in a situation report by the section of the SD, the Party intelligence service,

responsible for Jewish affairs in August 1935.
32
‘It will not be possible to tackle the Jewish problem thoroughly as long as there are no unambiguous laws in place. This

is the situation which gives rise to the individual operations that have so often been

condemned. . . . In order to put a stop in future to these acts of terror, which are

committed by National Socialists out of inner conviction, or to be able to identify

when operations are undertaken by groups hostile to us, it is desirable, as soon as

possible: (1) that a unified policy is developed for all the ministries handling the

Jewish question, and (2) that effective laws are passed that will demonstrate to the

people that the Jewish question is being dealt with from the top.’

In a speech delivered in Königsberg on 18 August the Reich Minister for

Economic Affairs, Schacht, protested against further ‘individual operations’.
33

What is more, the speech contained remarkably forthright criticisms of the

methods by which Jews were excluded from the economic life of the country. It

was, however, in no sense opposed to economic discrimination against Jews, as the

interdepartmental meeting held two days later at Schacht’s invitation was to show.

Segregation and Discrimination, 1935–7

59

At this meeting there was general agreement about the need to put a stop to the

violence and the infringements and to pass instead a series of anti-Jewish laws. In

line with the discussions that had been held for months, the ban on ‘racial

defilement’, restricted citizenship rights for Jews, and targeted economic measures

were at the forefront of the talks.
34

The anti-Jewish violence only began to recede in September 1935 after Frick had

circulated a decree which was dated 20 August but only reached some of the local

authorities in early September. In Hitler’s name, further ‘individual operations

against Jews’ were forbidden and infringements of this ban would result in the

perpetrators being treated as ‘agents provocateurs, rebels, and enemies of

the state’.
35
In addition, the Party also began to show its clear opposition to the

‘individual operations’—Himmler, for example, in an order of 16 August,
36
and the National Socialist Organization of Small Businesses in a statement on 17

August,
37
various of the Gauleiter towards the end of the month,
38
and Streicher in a series of mass meeting
s39—
in order to convince the Party activists of the seriousness of the ban on ‘individual operations’, even though the process of

enlightenment took several months.

In August, in the run-up to the Party Conference the campaigns against the

Catholic Church and the ‘reactionary forces’ were scaled down. The decision to

step down the campaign against ‘political Catholicism’ and the Stahlhelm was

announced by Hitler on 17 August at a meeting of the official Party speakers in

Nuremberg, which was part of the preparations for the Party rally.
40

Shortly before the start of the rally the Nazi leadership had decided to call a

special meeting of the Reichstag in Nuremberg to pass a special ‘Flag Law’ and

have the swastika declared the only legitimate national flag.
41
On 13 September, after the Reich Party Conference had begun, the spontaneous decision was taken

to use the session of the Reichstag to pass the long-awaited ban on ‘racial

defilement’, which had already been drafted by civil servants.
42

On the evening of the same day the ‘Jewish expert’ of the Reich Ministry of the

Interior, Bernhard Lösener, was summoned to Nuremberg where, according to his

own report, he was told the following day by Pfundtner and Stuckart, both joint

State Secretaries for the Interior, that he had to have ready for proclamation at the

Party rally the day after a ‘Jewish Law’ that would regulate ‘mixed marriages’ and

sexual relations between Jews and non-Jewish Germans.

Lösener portrays graphically how the group of ministerial advisers spent that

Saturday producing several drafts of the law that were all sent back by Hitler, who

was heavily influenced by Gerhard Wagner, leader of the Reich doctors’ organ-

ization. The pressure on this group must have increased to an almost intolerable

level on the Saturday evening when Hitler suddenly demanded in addition a Reich

Citizenship Act or Reichsbürgergesetz by the following morning.

Some historians in the past have tended to interpret Lösener’s memoirs as a

vivid depiction of the largely improvised style of government that characterized

60

Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

the ‘Third Reich’, but they are quite evidently a document of self-justification.

Lösener caricatured the unusual circumstances in which the Nuremberg Laws

were finally formulated to distract attention from the fact that their substance

corresponded closely with what had been planned for months by the bureaucrats

in the ministries, and in a more general form from as early as 1933.
43

The Reich Citizenship Law eventually passed by the Reichstag put a definitive

end to the equality of citizenship enjoyed by Jews in the whole of Germany since

1871, but significantly hollowed out since 1933, by introducing a distinction

between ‘nationals’ (Staatsangehörige) and ‘citizens of the Reich’ (Reichsbürger).

‘Citizens of the Reich’, or in the words of the law ‘bearers of full political rights in