"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (140 page)

167.
Too narrow in that sense is the view of Arendt,
Ursprünge und Elemente totaler Herrschaft
(1958), 39, who sees the chief characteristic of the totalitarian state in the problem of refugees and stateless persons and equates deprivation of rights with deprivation of citizenship. The Jews in Germany, as long as they remained there, were not stateless, but they were without rights.

168.
The direction was indicated by sec. 1 of the Tax Adjustment Law; see also Prussian Supreme Court, Berlin, judgment of October 26, 1934,
Deutsches Strafrecht
(1935): 50.

169.
State Labor Court of Appeals, Düsseldorf, of July 7, 1939,
Deutsches Gemein- und Wirtschaftsrecht
(1939): 194, quoted in Rüthers,
Die unbegrenzte Auslegung
(1973), 170; cf. also 188.

170.
Reich Supreme Court,
JW
(1937): 99 f.

171.
In the judgment of the State Court of Appeals, Halle, of September 12, 1941 (
DR
[1941] [A]: 2662), the private libel action brought by a Jew against a convict was turned down. The plaintiff—who was seriously disabled as a result of wounds sustained fighting on the front in World War I—had brought his action because the convicted prisoner had asserted that, like the rest of his race, he was “all lies and deceit.” However, the protection of the honor of the plaintiff was considered secondary to that of the accused. The criminal court came to the conclusion that a Jew had no honor: “the general personal honor of the German
Volksgenosse
must also be respected in someone who is temporarily deprived of the citizen’s rights of honor, whereas the Jew stands outside the German national community with regard to protection of honor.”

172.
Weinkauff and Wagner,
Die deutsche Justiz
, 133, with reference to an article in the SS organ
Das Schwarze Korps
, ser. 50 (1938): 14, which had applauded such a judgment.

173.
Weinkauff and Wagner,
Die deutsche Justiz
, 133, with reference to an article in
Das Schwarze Korps
, ser. 44 (1938): 11, in which various verdicts were attacked or applauded, depending on whether the evictions carried out by Aryan landlords against Jewish tenants had succeeded or failed.

174.
Sächsen Administrative Supreme Court, November 20, 1937 (
DVerw
[1938]: 125).

175.
Cf. Rosenberg,
Der Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts
(1933), 558: “If a German woman voluntarily becomes involved with Negroes or Jews, she has no recourse to any form of legal protection for herself or her children, illegitimate or legitimate, who are excluded a priori from the rights of German citizenship”; implemented through sec. 4 of the Twelfth Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law of April 25, 1943 [
RGBl.
I 268]: “Jews and Gypsies cannot become nationals.”

176.
RVerwBl.
136, 360 f. (also in OVGE [Decisions of the Prussian Administrative Supreme Court], 97, 117 ff., 120); similarly, OVG 100, 141: “As German nationals, Gypsies do not enjoy special rights. In the sense that they are subject to general statutory duties, they are both without and within the protection of the law.”

177.
Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law of November 25, 1941 (
RGBl.
I 722).

178.
Regarding the different forms of anti-Semitism at that time, see G. Mann,
Der Antisemitismus
(1960), 11 ff., 18 ff., 22 ff.; Massing,
Vorgeschichte des politischen Antisemitismus
(1959); Mieses,
Der Ursprung des Judenhasses
(1923); Mohrmann,
Antisemitismus. Ideologie und Geschichte;
Pulzer,
Die Entstehung des politischen Antisemitismus;
Coudenhove and Kalergi,
Das Wesen des Antisemitismus
(1932); cf. also Löwenstein,
Psychoanalyse des Antisemitismus
(1968); Silbermann, “Exkurs über die Aufgaben der Soziologie zur Bekämpfung des Antisemitismus” (1967), 736 ff.

179.
Sec. 5 of the First Implementing Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law of November 14, 1935 (
RGBl.
I, 1333); for further details, see Adler,
Der verwaltete Mensch
, 278; Groß, “Die rassenpolitischen Voraussetzungen zur Lösung der Judenfrage,” 2 ff., 7, 9.

180.
Cf. Coudenhove-Kalergi,
Das Wesen des Antisemitismus
, 243 ff., Mieses,
Der Ursprung des Judenhasses
, 21 ff., 222 ff., 305 ff., 308 ff., 312 ff., 318 ff., 346 ff. They point out that the most extreme racialists were also fierce opponents of Christianity. The Pan-Germans, for example, wanted to reestablish the Wotan cult; E. Dühring,
Der Ersatz der Religion durch Vollkommeneres
(Leipzig, 1926), calls for the abolition of Christianity. According to Günther,
Rassenkunde
, 428, Christianity had rendered the nation “totally helpless in the face of the alien Indian mentality.” For similar comments, see 398 f. The abolition of Christianity was also a long-term goal of the NSDAP leadership.

181.
Circular from the Reich Ministry of the Interior dated November 26, 1935 (
MinbliV
[1935]: 1430).

182.
Günther,
Rassenkunde
(1930), 13; Groß, “Die rassenpolitischen Voraussetzungen zur Lösung der Judenfrage,” 2 ff., 4 f.

183.
Cf., for example, W. Groß (head of the NSDAP’s Office of Racial Affairs), “Die rassenpolitischen Voraussetzungen zur Lösung der Judenfrage,” 2, 5, 9; according to him, non-European races were—as a general principle—inferior to European races. The non-European nature of the Jews stemmed from the form of racial mixture found in their “Near Eastern” and “Oriental” branches; the negative characteristics of the Jews did not derive from these two racial types as such but from the “singular racial mixture that has become established … over a period of centuries.” Whereas the Semitic peoples of the Arabian world doubtlessly had “estimable” and “likable” qualities, the Jews were an “inharmonious racial mixture”; given that the Arabs were similar to the Jews, it would be better not to speak of “anti-Semitism.” The struggle was exclusively directed against “Near-Eastern/Oriental/Mediterranean” Jewry.

184.
Gütt and Linden,
Kommentar zum Ehegesundheitsgesetz
, 22.

185.
Günther,
Rassenkunde
(1930), 398 f., 415 ff., 417, 419 f.

186.
Cf. among many others Günther,
Rassenkunde
(1922), which can be regarded as a classic of so-called scientific anti-Semitism. The description of the characteristics of the Jewish
Volkstum
(367 ff., 420 f.) consistently implies negative traits in facial form, odor, skin, hair, and expression of the eyes; it also specifies lisping, “slovenly gait,” tendency to flat feet, and a marked propensity for certain mental and nervous diseases and for all criminal acts relating to money and commerce, such as theft, fraud, falsification of documents; a “calculating,” “cunning” mentality; flexibility, “Jewish haste,” and a particular prevalance of
sexuelle Applanation
(translates roughly as “sexual approximation”—meaning “effeminate males and masculine females”). It also asserts that a high proportion of Jews work in the intellectual professions, where success “depends largely on exerting influence over others” (373 ff., 379, 381 f., 426 ff.); the hypothesis of the “international Jewish conspiracy” is already recognizable (cf. 423 ff.).

187.
See, for example, ibid., 385, 395 ff., 400; cf. also Gauch,
Neue Grundlagen der Rassenforschung
(1933), for whom only the Nordic race counted as a human race; all other races were (together with the animal world) “non-Nordic”; this was equated with the “subhuman,” that is, a transitional stage from animal to man (17, 77 ff., 84 ff., 155, 175).

188.
Günther,
Rassenkunde
(1922), 369 f.

189.
W. Groß, “Die rassenpolitischen Voraussetzungen zur Lösung der Judenfrage,” 2, 5, 9; Gütt and Linden,
Kommentar zum Ehegesundheitsgesetz
, 22.

190.
For further details, see Phelps, “Hitlers ‘grundlegende’ Rede,” 395, reprint of the speech on 400 ff.

191.
Hitler,
Mein Kampf
(1939), 297 ff.; for more details, see table talk of May 29, 1942: “The manner in which the Jewish police beat their coreligionists in the ghettos—worse than the German police during the period of ‘struggle’ against National Socialism—shows ‘the whole crudeness of the Jewish nature.’ ” So-called highly cultivated Jews, doctors and lawyers from European countries, were totally ghettoized within two weeks, running around in kaftans. What clearer proof could there be “that the Jews … are Asians and not Europeans. They should not be sent to Siberia—that would only harden them. They should be sent to Africa to an unhealthy climate” (Picker,
Hitlers Tischgespräche
[1968], 172).

192.
Remarkably, it was a Jewish contemporary, no less, who called for the book to be taken seriously (Walk,
Als Jude in Breslau
, 34).

193.
Hitler,
Mein Kampf
(1939), 310 f.

194.
Regarding the anti-Semitism of the NSDAP, see the recent illuminating essay by Goldhagen, “Weltanschauung und Erlösung” (1976); he puts forward the view that the anti-Semitism of the Nazis was not only a political instrument but sprang from the most deeply held convictions (392 f.).

195.
Hitler,
Mein Kampf
(1939), 160, 295 ff. (297 ff.), 302 ff.; the most important characteristics of the Aryan was his idealism, that is, “capacity for sacrifice” and the “readiness to do his duty” (293 f.).

196.
Cf. Schmitt, “Die deutsche Rechtswissenschaft” (1936), 1194 ff., which says among other things, “The relationship of Jewish thinking to the German intellect is as follows: the Jew has a parasitic, mercantile attitude toward our intellectual work. By virtue of his talents as a trader, he often has a strong sense of what is genuine. That is his instinct as a parasite, a true merchant.”

197.
Von Schwerin-Krosigk,
Freiheit und Gebundenheit im germanischen Staat
(1933).

198.
Cf. Stuckart and Schiedermair,
Rasse- und Erbpflege in der Gesetzgebung des Reiches
(1942), 12: “This [Jewish] race—as the Führer stressed in his speech to the Party labor rally—is neither intellectually nor morally superior; on the contrary, it is by both criteria a thoroughly inferior race. Therefore, the extermination of the Jews is justified not only by the different nature but the different value of Jewry.”

199.
Hitler,
Mein Kampf
(1939), 302 ff. For more on the period of assimilation, see G. A. Walz,
DR
(1942) (A): 2 ff.: “It appears to us today that this whole period of assimilation was a comprehensive attempt at mimicry. The blame can also be placed at the door of the French revolution with its notions of equality.”

200.
Cf. the remarks of R. Freisler: “Those with Jewish blood are lost to the community. Jewish blood makes Judases”; for more details, see the outcome of congresses of the League of National Socialist German Jurists of October 3–4, 1936, on the theme “The Jews in Jurisprudence” and November 19–21, 1936, on “German Science and the Jews.” For example, a speech by Joh. von Leers, supervisor of the Berlin Academy of Administrative Studies (later a professor in Jena), contained the following “insights”: that “in Antiquity—the Jews were considered the embodiment of criminality”; the “Jewish heroes of the Old Testament” were convicts and criminals. “Jewishness is genetic criminality…. Every people has the right to weed out genetic criminals” (all quotations in Göppinger,
Die Verfolgung der Juristen jüdischer Abstammung
[1963], 72 ff.).

201.
For more details, see Goldhagen, “Weltanschauung und Erlösung,” 385 f., 400.

202.
For further details, see Fraenkel,
Der Doppelstaat
, 231.

203.
Hitler, in Rauschning,
Gespräche mit Hitler
, 220, 223, 227; “The Jew remains our worldwide enemy”; “The Jew is the antihuman.” Replying to Rauschning’s question whether the Jews should be destroyed, Hitler said: “No,” for “then we would have to invent him. One needs a visible enemy, not an invisible one.” The Germans, not the Jews, should be God’s “chosen people.” In the mideighties, however, the source cited here was revealed to be a fake (cf. F. J. Schoeps,
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
, no. 183, August 10, 1985, 8; K. Janßen,
Die Zeit
, no. 30, July 19, 1985, 16).

204.
Hitler,
Mein Kampf
(1939), 547 ff., 616 ff., 692 ff.

205.
Cf. an excerpt from the “propaganda speech” by the Reich minister for education of the people and propaganda in confidential information no. 25/318 of May 21, 1943: “The Jews are to blame for this war. And with that they are also to blame for what this war has brought the German people in terms of grief, sorrow, discomfort, privations, oppression, and adversity…. We must always keep sight of the fact that the end of the war must be followed by an anti-Jewish world revolution that will destroy the influence of the Jews everywhere in the world” (
Verfügungen
, 4:461 f.). See also Goldhagen, “Weltanschauung und Erlösung,” 389, 392.

206.
For more about the racial character of the war in the East, see Hillgruber, “Die ‘Endlösung’ und das deutsche Ostimperium” (1970), 137 ff.

207.
Cf. Feldscher, “Rassenpflege und Erbpflege im deutschen Recht” (Feldscher was an
Oberregierungsrat
in the Reich Ministry of the Interior), in
Reichsrechtspflege und Verwaltung, 1943. Die Juden und die Justiz
, written at the request of the Reich Ministry of the Interior by Dr. S. Lorenzen,
Amtsgerichtsrat
in the Reich Ministry of the Interior; Streicher,
Die Judengesetze Großdeutschlands
(1939); Breusing, “Die Juden” (1936); Meyer, “Das jüdische Hehlerrecht” (1937); Ruth, “Wucherund Wucherrecht der Juden im Mittelalter” (1937); Franz, “Der Jude im katholischen Kirchenrecht” (1937); Claßen, “Der Judeneid” (1937); Köhler, “Die Juden in Deutschland” (1937); Lorenzen, “Judentum und Judenfrage” (a report on a series of evening lectures at the University of Berlin, January 12–28, 1939, on the theme of “Jewry and the Jewish Question”); Lorenzen, “Das Eindringen der Juden in die Justiz vor 1933” (1939), 731 ff., 768 ff., 958 ff.; Lorenzen, “Die Rechtsstellung der Juden vor der Emanzipation” (1939), 1949 ff.; Menzel,
Minderheitenrecht und Judenfrage
(two lectures given to the League of National Socialist German Jurists, Hamburg, on February 17 and April 28, 1933); von Medeazza, “Judenfrage und Judengesetzgebung in Europa” (1941); for more details, see NSRB, ed., “Das Judentum in der Rechtswissenschaft” (undated), which contained the discussions of a scientific meeting of the NSRB in 1936. It includes the following titles: (1) “Die Deutsche Rechtswissenschaft im Kampf gegen den jüdischen Geist,” (2) “Das Judentum in der Wirtschaftswissenschaft,” (3) “Judentum und Verbrecher,” (4) “Judentum und Strafrecht,” (5) “Der Einfluß des Judentums in Staatsrecht und Staatslehre,” (6) “Der Einfluß jüdischer Theoretiker auf die deutsche Völkerrechtslehre,” (7) “Das Judentum im Handels- und Rechtsverkehrsrecht,” (8) “Rechtsquellenlehre und Judentum,” and (9) “Judentum und Wettbewerb.” For an account of the conceptual world of anti-Semitism, see Bein, “Der jüdische Parasit” (1965).