Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 (24 page)

Heydrich, at that time chief of the SD and head of the central office of the Gestapo in Berlin (Gestapa), attended the meeting. In a memorandum sent to all the participants on September 9 he reiterated the points he had made during the conference. In this document Heydrich outlined a series of measures aimed at further segregation of the Jews and, if possible, at the cancellation of their rights as citizens. All Jews in Germany should be subject to alien status. Contrary to what is often stated, however, Heydrich did not indicate that the emigration of all the Jews was to be the central aim of Nazi policy. Only in the last sentence of the memorandum did the SD chief express the hope that the restrictive measures he suggested would direct the Jews toward Zionism and strengthen their incentive to emigrate.
¹¹⁶

On August 8 both
Der Angriff
and the
Völkischer Beobachter
had published, under the banner headline
LAW AND PRINCIPLE IN THE JEWISH QUESTION
, an announcement by the chief of the German Police, SS-ObergruppenFührer Kurt Daluege, that criminal statistics indicated a preeminence of Jews in all areas of crime. Both papers later complained of the lack of attention to this issue in the foreign press; papers abroad that had run the story had interpreted it as a preparation for new anti-Jewish measures, particularly nasty accusations,
Der Angriff
said.
¹¹⁷

V

On the afternoon of September 15, 1935, the final parade of the annual Nuremberg party congress marched past Hitler and the top leadership of the NSDAP. The Party Congress of Freedom was coming to an end. At 8
P.M.
that evening an unusual meeting of the Reichstag opened in the hall of the Nuremberg Cultural Association. It was the first and last time during Hitler’s regime that the Reichstag was convened outside Berlin. Nuremberg had last been the site of a German Reichstag (then the assembly of the German Empire’s estates) in 1543.
¹¹⁸

In his speech Hitler briefly addressed the volatile international situation, which had compelled Germany to start rebuilding an army in order to defend its freedom. Ominously, he mentioned Lithuania’s control of Memel, a city inhabited by a majority of Germans. The threat posed by international Bolshevism was not forgotten: Hitler warned that any attempt by the Communists to set foot in Germany again would be quickly dealt with. Then he turned to the main topic of his address—the Jews:

The Jews were behind the growing tension among peoples. In New York Harbor, they had insulted the German flag on the passenger ship
Bremen
, and they were again launching an economic boycott against Germany. In Germany itself, their provocative behavior increasingly caused complaints from all sides. Hitler thus set the background. Then he came to his main point: “To prevent this behavior from leading to quite determined defensive action on the part of the outraged population, the extent of which cannot be foreseen, the only alternative would be a legislative solution to the problem. The German Reich Government is guided by the hope of possibly being able to bring about, by means of a singular momentous measure, a framework within which the German
Volk
would be in a position to establish tolerable relations with the Jewish people. However, should this hope prove false and intra-German and international Jewish agitation proceed on its course, a new evaluation of the situation would have to take place.”

After asking the Reichstag to adopt the laws that Göring was about to read, Hitler concluded his address with a short comment on each of the three laws: “The first and the second laws repay a debt of gratitude to the Movement, under whose symbol Germany regained its freedom, in that they fulfill a significant item on the program of the National Socialist Party. The third law is an attempt at a legislative solution to a problem which, should it yet again prove insoluble, would have to be assigned by law to the National Socialist Party for a definitive solution. Behind all three laws stands the National Socialist Party, and with it and behind it stands the nation.”
¹¹⁹
The threat was unmistakable.

The first law, the Reich Flag Law, proclaimed that henceforth black, red, and white were the national colors and that the swastika flag was the national flag.
¹²⁰
The second, the Citizenship Law, established the fundamental distinction between “citizens of the Reich,” who were entitled to full political and civic rights, and “subjects,” who were now deprived of those rights. Only those of German or related blood could be citizens. Thus, from that moment on, in terms of their civic rights, the Jews had in fact a status similar to that of foreigners. The third, the Law for the Defense of German Blood and Honor, forbade marriages and extramarital relations between Jews and citizens of German or kindred blood. Marriages contracted in disregard of the law, even marriages contracted outside Germany, were considered invalid. Jews were not allowed to employ in their households female German citizens under forty-five years of age.
¹²¹
Finally, Jews were forbidden to hoist the German flag (an offense against German honor), but were allowed to fly their own colors.

The preamble to the third law revealed all its implications: “Fully aware that the purity of German blood is the condition for the survival of the German
Volk
, and animated by the unwavering will to secure the German nation forever, the Reichstag has unanimously decided upon the following, which is thereby proclaimed.”
¹²²
This was immediately followed by paragraph one: “Marriages between Jews and citizens of German and related blood are forbidden.” The relation of the preamble to the text of the law reflected the extent of the racial peril represented by the Jew.

According to the September 17
Völkischer Beobachter
, at a meeting later the same evening with leading party members, “the Führer took the opportunity to underscore the significance of the new laws and to point out that the National Socialist legislation presented the sole means for coming to passable terms with the Jews living in Germany. The Führer particularly stressed that, by virtue of these laws, the Jews in Germany were granted such opportunities in all areas of their own völkisch life as had not hitherto existed in any other land.”
¹²³
“In this connection,” the report continued, “the Führer renewed the order to the Party that it continue to refrain from taking any independent action against Jews.”
¹²⁴

In an interview granted on November 27, 1935, to Hugh Baillie, president of the American news agency United Press, Hitler, clearly aiming at the American public, linked the anti-Jewish laws to the danger of Bolshevik agitation.
¹²⁵

Taken at face value, the Nuremberg Laws did not mean the end of Jewish life in Germany. “We have absolutely no interest in compelling the Jews to spend their money outside Germany,” Goebbels declared at a meeting of propaganda officers held in Nuremberg on the morrow of the congress. “They should spend it here. One should not let them into every public swimming resort, but we should say: We have up there on the Baltic Sea, let’s say, one hundred resorts, and into one of them will go the Jews; there they should have their waiters and their business directors and their resort directors and there they can read their Jewish newspapers, of all of which we want to know nothing. It should not be the nicest resort, but maybe the worst of those we have, that we will give them (amusement in the audience)—and in the others, we’ll be among ourselves. That I consider right. We cannot push the Jews away, they are here. We do not have any island to which we could transport them. We have to take this into account….”
¹²⁶

Two different testimonies from the days following the congress report Hitler’s own intentions regarding the future of the Jews. According to Fritz Wiedemann, who was to become his adjutant, the Führer depicted the forthcoming situation to a small circle of Party members: “Out of all the professions, into a ghetto, enclosed in a territory where they can behave as becomes their nature, while the German people look on as one looks at wild animals.”
¹²⁷
From the perspective of 1935, this territorial isolation of the Jews would have had to take place
in
Germany (this is confirmed by the remark about the German people as onlookers). Thus Goebbels was probably repeating what he had heard from Hitler. The second testimony was quite different.

On September 25, 1935, Walter Gross, head of the party’s Racial Policy Office, reported to the regional chiefs of his organization the interpretation to the Nuremberg Laws that Hitler gave him, and, mainly, how he saw the next steps of the anti-Jewish policy.

It is worth noting that, once again, after taking a major step in line with his ideological goals, Hitler aimed at defusing its most extreme consequences on a tactical level. In the meeting with Gross, he warned the party not to rush ahead either in extending the scope of the new laws or in terms of direct economic action against the Jews. For Hitler the aim remained the limitation of Jewish influence within Germany and the separation of the Jews from the body of the nation; “more vigorous emigration” from Germany was necessary. Economic measures would be the next stage, but they must not create a situation that would turn the Jews into a public burden; thus carefully calculated steps were needed. As for the
Mischlinge
, Hitler favored their assimilation within a few generations—in order to avoid any weakening of the German potential for war. In the last words of the conversation, however, the pragmatic approach was suddenly gone. According to the Gross protocol, Hitler “declared furthermore, at this point, that in case of a war on all fronts, he would be ready [regarding the Jews] for all the consequences.”
¹²⁸

CHAPTER
5

The Spirit of Laws

I

A few weeks before the Nuremberg party congress, at the beginning of August 1935, Hitler decided that six Jewish or part-Jewish University of Leipzig professors, hitherto protected by the exception clauses of the Civil Service Law, must retire. On August 26 two officials of the Saxon Ministry of Education arrived for a meeting at the Reich Chancellery; they wanted to know whether, from now on,
all
non-Aryan civil servants were to be retired. Ministerial Councillor Wienstein informed them of the following:

“Basically one should decide case by case, as before. But in each case, however, one should consider that the approach to the treatment of non-Aryans has become stricter. When the Civil Service Law was promulgated, the intention undoubtedly was to give non-Aryans the protection defined in paragraph 3, section 2 of the law, without any restriction. The new development, however, has led to a situation whereby non-Aryans can no longer refer to the above-mentioned instructions in order to claim the right to remain employed. Instead, decisions should, as Ministerial Councillor Wienstein again mentioned, be made “only case by case.”
¹

For several months, in fact, Jewish professors still ostensibly protected by the exception clauses had been dismissed. Victor Klemperer had received his dismissal notification in the mail on April 30. Sent via the Saxon Ministry of Education, it was signed by Reichsstatthalter Martin Mutschmann.
²
Within a few months, in the wake of the new Citizenship Law, there were no longer any exceptions, and all remaining Jewish professors were expelled.

Much debate has arisen regarding the origins of the Nuremberg Laws: Were they the result of a haphazard decision or of a general plan aiming at the step-by-step exclusion of the Jews from German society and ultimately from the territory of the Reich? Depending on the view one takes, Hitler’s mode of decision making, in both Jewish and other matters, can be interpreted in different ways.

As has been seen, the idea of a new citizenship law had been on Hitler’s mind from the outset of his regime. In July 1933 an Advisory Committee for Population and Race Policy at the Ministry of the Interior started work on draft proposals for a law designed to exclude the Jews from full citizenship rights.
³
From the beginning of 1935, the signs pointing to such forthcoming changes multiplied. Allusions to them were made by various German leaders—Frick, Goebbels, and Schacht—during the spring and summer months of that year; the foreign press, particularly the London
Jewish Chronicle
and the
New York Times
, published similar information, and, according to Gestapo reports, German Jewish leaders such as Rabbi Joachim Prinz were openly speaking about a new citizenship law that would turn the Jews into “subjects” (
Staatsangehörige
); their information seemed precise indeed.
⁴

Simultaneously, as has also been seen, mixed marriages were encountering increasing obstruction in the courts, to such an extent that, in July, Frick announced the formulation of new laws in this domain as well. In the same month the Justice Ministry submitted a proposal for the interdiction of marriages between Jews and Germans. From then on the issue was the object of ongoing interministerial consultations.
⁵
Thus, whatever the immediate reason for Hitler’s decision may have been, both the issue of citizenship and that of mixed marriages were being discussed in great detail at the civil service level and within the party, and various signs indicated that new legislation was imminent. Incidentally, when Goebbels brought up the topic of “Jewish arrogance” in one of their conversations, Hitler cryptically remarked that “in many things there will soon be changes.”
⁶

It has been suggested by historians who emphasize the haphazardness of Nazi measures that until September 13, Hitler had been planning to make a major foreign policy statement about the situation in Abyssinia, but that he was dissuaded at the last moment by Foreign Minister Neurath. This hypothesis is not supported by any proof, except for dubious testimony at the Nuremberg Trials by the Interior Ministry’s “race specialist,” Bernhard Lösener. (In the courtroom it was in Lösener’s interest to show that there had been no prolonged planning for the 1935 racial laws, for he would necessarily have been involved in such planning.)
⁷

In his opening address of September 11 at the Nuremberg party congress, Hitler warned that the struggle against the internal enemies of the nation would not be thwarted by failings of the bureaucracy: The will of the nation—that is, the party—would, if necessary, take over in case of bureaucratic deficiency. It was in these very terms that Hitler ended his September 15 closing speech by addressing the solution of the Jewish problem. Thus it seems that the basic motive for pressing forward with anti-Jewish legislation was to deal with the specific internal political climate already alluded to.

In the precarious balance that existed between the party on the one hand and the state administration and the Reichswehr on the other, Hitler had in 1934 favored the state apparatus by decapitating the SA. Moreover, at the beginning of 1935, when tension arose between the Reichswehr and the SS, Hitler “warned the party against encroachments on the army and called the Reichswehr ‘the sole bearer of arms.’”
⁸
It was time to lean the other way, especially since discontent was growing within the lower party ranks. In short, the Nuremberg laws were to serve notice to all that the role of the party was far from over—quite the contrary. Thus, the mass of party members would be assuaged, individual acts of violence against Jews would be stopped by the establishment of clear “legal” guidelines, and political activism would be channeled toward well-defined goals. The summoning of the Reichstag and the diplomatic corps to the party congress was meant as an homage to the party on the occasion of its most important yearly celebration, irrespective of whether the major declaration was to be on foreign policy, on the German flag, or on the Jewish issue. The preliminary work on the Jewish legislation had been completed, and Hitler could easily switch to preparation of the final decrees at the very last moment.

The conditions under which the drafting of the laws took place are known from another report by Lösener, this one written in 1950, which describes the drafting of the decrees on the last two days of the congress.
⁹
There was no reason for Lösener to offer a false picture of these two hectic days, except for the suppression of the fact that much preliminary work had been accomplished before then. According to Lösener, on the evening of September 13, he and his Interior Ministry colleague, Franz Albrecht Medicus, were urgently summoned from Berlin to Nuremberg. There, State Secretaries Pfundtner and Stuckart informed them that Hitler, who considered the flag law an insufficient basis for convening the Reichstag, ordered the preparation of a law dealing with marriage and extramarital relations between Jews and Aryans, and with the employment of Aryan female help in Jewish families. The next day Hitler demanded a citizenship law broad enough to underpin the more specifically racial-biological anti-Jewish legislation. The party and particularly such individuals as Gerhardt Wagner, Lösener wrote, insisted on the most comprehensive definition of the Jew, one that would have equated even “quarter Jews” (
Mischlinge
of the second degree) with full Jews. Hitler himself demanded four versions of the law, ranging from the least (version D) to the most inclusive (version A). On September 15, at 2:30
A.M.
, he declared himself satisfied with the draft proposals.
¹⁰

Hitler chose version D. But in a typical move that canceled this apparent “moderation” and left the door open for further extensions in the scope of the laws, Hitler crossed out a decisive sentence introduced into the text by Stuckart and Lösener: “These laws are applicable to full Jews only.” That sentence was meant to exclude
Mischlinge
from the legislation; now their fate also hung in the balance. Hitler ordered that the Stuckart-Lösener sentence be retained in the official announcement of the laws disseminated by the DNB, the official German news agency.”
¹¹
He probably did this to assuage foreign opinion and possibly those sectors of the German population directly or indirectly affected by the laws, but the sentence was to be absent from all further publications of the full text.

There is a plausible reason why, if Hitler was planning to announce the laws at the Nuremberg party congress, he waited until the very last moment to have the final versions drafted: his method was one of sudden blows meant to keep his opponents off balance, to confront them with
faits accomplis
that made forceful reactions almost impossible if a major crisis was to be avoided. Had the anti-Jewish legislation been submitted to him weeks before the congress, technical objections from the state bureaucracy could have hampered the process. Surprise was of the essence.

During the days and weeks following Nuremberg, party radicals close to the Wagner line exerted considerable pressure to reintroduce their demands regarding the status of
Mischlinge
into the supplementary decrees to the two main Nuremberg Laws. Hitler himself was to announce the ruling on “
Mischlinge
of the first degree” at a closed party meeting scheduled for September 29 in Munich. The meeting did take place, but Hitler postponed the announcement of his decision.
¹²
In fact, the confrontation on the issue of the
Mischlinge
between the party radicals Wagner and Gütt (the latter formally belonged to the Ministry of the Interior) on the one hand, and the Interior Ministry specialists Stuckart and Lösener on the other, lasted from September 22 to November 6, with Hitler’s opinion being requested several times by both sides.
¹³

Early in the debate both sides agreed that three-quarter Jews (persons with three Jewish grandparents) were to be considered Jews, and that one-quarter Jews (one Jewish grandparent) were
Mischlinge
. The entire confrontation focused on the status of the half Jews (two Jewish grandparents). Whereas the party wanted to include the half Jews in the category of Jews, or at least have a public agency decide who among them was a Jew and who a
Mischling
, the ministry insisted on integrating them into the
Mischlinge
category (together with the one-quarter Jews). The final decision, made by Hitler, was much closer to the demands of the ministry than to those of the party. Half Jews were
Mischlinge
; only as a result of their personal choice (not as the result of the decision of a public agency), either by choosing a Jewish spouse or joining the Jewish religious community, did they become Jews.
¹⁴

The supplementary decrees were finally published on November 14. The first supplementary decree to the Citizenship Law defined as Jewish all persons who had at least three full Jewish grandparents, or who had two Jewish grandparents and were married to a Jewish spouse or belonged to the Jewish religion at the time of the law’s publication, or who entered into such commitments at a later date. From November 14 on, the civic rights of Jews were canceled, their voting rights abolished; Jewish civil servants who had kept their positions owing to their veteran or veteran-related status were forced into retirement.
¹⁵
On December 21 a second supplementary decree ordered the dismissal of Jewish professors, teachers, physicians, lawyers, and notaries who were state employees and had been granted exemptions.

The various categories of forbidden marriages were spelled out in the first supplementary decree to the Law for the Defense of German Blood and Honor: between a Jew and a
Mischling
with one Jewish grandparent; between a
Mischling
and another, each with one Jewish grandparent; and between a
Mischling
with two Jewish grandparents and a German (the last of these might be waived by a special exemption from the Minister of the Interior or the Deputy Führer).
¹⁶
Mischlinge
of the first degree (two Jewish grandparents) could marry Jews—and thereby become Jews—or marry one another, on the assumption that such couples usually chose to remain childless, as inidicated by the empirical material collected by Hans F. K. Günther.
¹⁷
Finally, female citizens of German blood employed in a Jewish household at the time of the law’s publication could continue their work only if they had turned forty-five by December 31, 1935.
¹⁸

In a circular addressed to all relevant party agencies on December 2, Hess restated the main instructions of the November 14 supplementary decree to explain the intention behind the marriage regulations that applied to both kinds of
Mischlinge
: “The Jewish
Mischlinge
, that is, the quarter and half Jews, are treated differently in the marriage legislation. The regulations are based on the fact that the mixed race of the German-Jewish
Mischlinge
is undesirable under any circumstances—both in terms of blood and politically—and that it must disappear as soon as possible.” According to Hess, the law ensured that “either in the present or in the next generation, the German-Jewish
Mischlinge
would belong either to the Jewish group or to that of the German citizens.” By being allowed to marry only full-blooded German spouses, the quarter Jews would become Germans and, as Hess put it, “the hereditary racial potential of a nation of 65 million would not be changed or damaged by the absorption of 100,000 quarter Jews.” The Deputy Führer’s explanations regarding the half Jews were somewhat more convoluted, as there was no absolute prohibition of their marrying Germans or quarter Jews, if they received the approval of the Deputy Führer. Hess recognized that this aspect of the legislation went against the wishes of the party, declaring laconically that the decision had been taken “for political reasons.” The general policy, however, was to compel half Jews to marry only Jews, thus to absorb them into the Jewish group
¹⁹
—evidence of Hitler’s wish, as stated to Walter Gross, for the disappearance of the
Mischlinge
.