"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (18 page)

But the Nazi propagandists were in no way satisfied with this abstract demonization of Jewry: the
Volksgemeinschaft
, postulated as a value per se, needed a visible enemy as a permanent phenomenon; the racial threat was meant to have an integrative effect, aiming collective feelings of hatred at specified targets in all areas of life.
²⁰²
Hitler himself frankly admitted to his inner circle that if the Jew ceased to exist, he would have to be invented.
²⁰³

Accordingly, Hitler himself made Jewry responsible for all the “humiliations” of the past (the Treaty of Versailles, liberalism, democracy, humanism, pacifism, Marxism-Bolshevism),
²⁰⁴
as well as for present difficulties and for World War II;
²⁰⁵
far-reaching decisions (such as the domestic policy of neutralizing the Jews and the acquisition of living space (
Lebensraum
) in the East) could be justified by Hitler at any time with the thesis of Jewry as the incarnation of evil itself and with sloganeering about the “international Jewish conspiracy.”
²⁰⁶
A flood of anti-Semitic writings inundated the world of jurisprudence, all with the object of enlightening the reader about the “danger” of “penetration” and “sapping” carried on by Jews in the economy, the administration, and the judiciary.
²⁰⁷
Party organizations and academics (under Carl Schmitt’s slogan “German jurisprudence in the fight against the Jewish spirit”) called for the removal of all Jewish literature and all Jews from the academy.
²⁰⁸
A Jewish author could have “no authority, not even a purely academic one” in Germany. The necessary consequence was the removal of all jurists of Jewish descent from the judiciary and the administration.
²⁰⁹
For the Nazi leadership, however, Jewry was from the beginning no mere object of economic exploitation but also a potential target for physical destruction. For Hitler himself, and for the radical anti-Semites in the SS and the police, the Jews were not actually human but objects, treated arbitrarily as goods to be bargained over and traded, commodities with which to practice blackmail and extortion on foreign countries or cannon fodder in the coming war.
²¹⁰
Thus, in theoretical anticipation of the “Final Solution,” the Jews were referred to, in the language of the SS and the police, as pests, vermin, and so forth, who were to be disposed of as quickly as practicable and who could rightfully lay claim neither to life nor to legal protection.

The impact of such anti-Semitism was even greater in that the term
Jew
, though outwardly focused upon concretely identifiable minorities, was yet kept indefinite enough that any number of persons could be declared to be Jewish “race enemies,” as the following examples will demonstrate.

Within the Reich itself, as already mentioned, the relevant criterion was fundamentally that of religious affiliation (sec. 7 of the First Decree subsequent to the Reich Citizenship Law dated November 14, 1935); but from the outset the leadership had allowed for exceptions (Hermann Göring said, “I will decide who is a Jew!”). In the so-called Occupied Eastern Territories, which were to become the center of the eastern German empire, the definition of the term
Jew
was, according to the above-mentioned section 7, infinitely broad (“A Jew is any person who professes the ‘Jewish faith’ … or otherwise professes or has ever professed to being a Jew or whose affiliation with Jewry can be established by
other
circumstances”), in order to encompass all racially or politically unpopular persons and include them in the campaign of racial extermination.

These two factors, its political function and its indeterminacy, lent anti-Semitism its extraordinary magnetism as a political program. Reminiscent in its simplicity of old legends and tribal myths, “it exerted … a powerful fascination.”
²¹¹
It acted as a connecting link among all classes and levels of society, welding them together as those who could, by dint of “objective” racial characteristics, count themselves among the “chosen people.”
²¹²

It is only from this starting point that we can begin to understand the nature and politically explosive force of the Nazi system, more particularly the intimate connection between race and politics, the equation of law with race law, the inseparable association of war (in the East) with race war
²¹³
and of the politics of conquest with the extermination of the Jews.

bb. Other “Non-German” Minorities

The indeterminacy of the race concept in regard to Jewry already points up the fact that the race principle was fundamentally capable of unlimited interpretation and was consciously set up in such a way as to expand the range of application of
völkisch
inequality to cover more than just the Jews.
²¹⁴
An indication of this was that even the first anti-Jewish measures (the Professional Civil Service Code) did not mention “Jewish descent” but rather “non-Aryan descent.” This opened the door to numerous possibilities of subjecting other “foreign-race” persons as well to discriminations under special law, since, as already remarked, neither the term
Aryan
nor the term
non-Aryan
was ever satisfactorily defined. The objects of such discriminatory policies were, as in the ones practiced against the Jews, first and foremost the non-European races or racial mixtures that were considered to be undesirable, such as coloreds (Negroes); these were put on the same level as the Jews in regard to prohibitions on marriage and sexual intercourse with Germans. The policies toward Gypsies were similar:
²¹⁵
even when Gypsies possessed German citizenship, they were held on account of their “work-dodging” and “asocial” character to be an “objective threat” (“Gypsy nuisance”) and, on instructions from the Reich Ministry of the Interior, were now subjected to harsher and more rigorous treatment (“ruthless intervention”).
²¹⁶
As evidenced by the decisions handed down by the administrative courts, local administrative authorities acted similarly, even if there existed no legal authority for doing so.
²¹⁷

cc. “Non-Germans” in General

But all of these were merely borderline groups without statistical significance. The principle of
völkisch
inequality truly came into its own when its application was extended to the territories annexed and occupied by Germany. Since only a member of the racially defined
Volksgemeinschaft
was entitled to rights or privileges, the indigenous populations there were, where the Nazi leadership was concerned, not only a priori outside the German legal order but also outside any legal order whatsoever. This fundamental lack of all rights, which affected above all the peoples of Eastern Europe, could not, in the National Socialist view, stand in contradiction to the ideal of justice, since (as Roland Freisler said) “to each
Volk
was ordained its own right”
²¹⁸
(one that was, of course, assigned to it by the Nazi leadership), and thus any substantive equality was, according to the literature, “a theoretical impossibility.”
²¹⁹

In its treatment of “non-Germans,” consequently, the National Socialist government and administration were not only free from any restraints imposed upon them in dealing with their own citizens but also free from any legal restraints or obligations whatsoever. The nonapplication of German law to “non-Germans” thus became the rule, its application the exception. When German law was utilized, it was presented as being a special legal benefaction and granted as a privilege to honor uncommon merit (for instance, pledging oneself to the German nation or military service in the German armed forces).

Since the preexisting indigenous law—at least in the Annexed Eastern European Territories—was not used because it was incompatible with “German sovereignty” and the application of German law was not even considered, the administration, as remains to be demonstrated, was faced with the problem of creating separate provisions for every aspect of life. The sole measure for the form these regulations was to take, and particularly for the decision as to which legal status was to be conceded to “non-Germans,” was that of political-administrative expediency. This was determined by the degree of desirability or undesirability of the regulations from the standpoint of German interests, which in turn, as will be further shown, were primarily oriented toward the exploitation of the labor force and otherwise the suppression of the “non-Germans.” Legal considerations, of course, were left altogether out of account.

Once theory and practice were committed to the essential significance of race as the central value motivating National Socialist ideology, the racial or
völkisch
aspect of the treatment of “non-Germans” under special law receded more and more into the background, indeed lost its meaning altogether, notwithstanding that this shift in meaning was still veiled behind racial arguments. The original racial foundation of
völkisch
inequality (special law) thus metamorphoses into a
political
principle.
²²⁰

The ultimately political motivation behind the idea of special law for “non-Germans” is revealed in the mere fact that the “non-German” peoples of northern, western, and southern Europe enjoyed a “privileged” position, that is, were still allowed a certain legal status—ostensibly for reasons of race (“racially related peoples”) but in actuality because of power politics (they were seen as allies or potential allies). Furthermore, various incentives were put in place, by decree or administrative provision, to encourage the complete integration of “non-German” but politically desirable persons into the German legal sphere. Thus, beginning in early 1942 it was possible to award German citizenship even to foreigners not domiciled within the borders of the Reich.
²²¹
To boost the rate of population growth, particularly in order to gain conscripts for the German army, the Reich Ministry of the Interior had, moreover, drafted thorough legislative proposals according to which allies of “non-German” descent could be granted, by decree of the Führer, one of several documents (the
Adlerbrief
, the
Ehrenbrief
, the
Europabrief
, or the
Zusatzpaß
) as a reward for services rendered, thus achieving a status equal to that of the German citizen.
²²²
These proposals were elaborated during the war years to the point where they needed only a signature to become law, and they failed to receive the signature only because of the final outcome of hostilities.

The best example of the shift in meaning that occurred in the conception of
völkisch
inequality toward that of a political principle is seen in the position of the Eastern European peoples in the National Socialist scheme of things. From the outset, Hitler’s particular hatred, and that of the Nazi leadership, was reserved for the so-called Slavic peoples, who were considered inferior and intended for the future slave class of Europe. From a purely racial standpoint, however, this was incapable of satisfactory proof, since even according to German ethnology it was impossible to speak of a Slavic race.
²²³
According to National Socialist doctrine, justification for discrimination against the Slavs lay rather in the “ethnic threat” presented by their fecundity. This is why Hitler quite early sketched precise outlines for the future “depopulation policy” in the East, which foresaw the annihilation of these peoples
²²⁴
and which was later carried out virtually to the letter by the civil administration and the police forces. Such arguments already imply that the treatment of the “non-Germans” under special law was actually justifiable only from the standpoint of (population) policy; nevertheless, the National Socialist leadership clung fast to the concept of racial value or lack thereof, in an attempt to concoct their policy on the basis of absolutely untenable racial arguments.

Where members of neutral or allied nations in (southern) Europe were concerned, of course, it was not possible to speak of inferiority; therefore, these peoples were either classified as “Southern Slavs,” as “Dinarians” and thus as racially related;
²²⁵
or else they were simply not counted among the Slavs at all.
²²⁶
Members of enemy states, by contrast, were turned into “racial foes” as a means of justifying their classification under special law. Thus Hitler simply insinuated that the Czechs were (racially) inferior (descended from “Mongoloid tribes”), since he desired to rid himself of them in order to incorporate “Bohemia and Moravia” into the Reich; also “inferior” were Ukrainians, east-European Jews, Soviet Russians, Bulgarians,
²²⁷
Lithuanians, and members of other Eastern European peoples. Of course, this was nothing more than sloganeering and from a racial perspective not acceptable as justification even in the Nazi sense of the word. More imprecise than anything else was the position of the Soviet Russians in the Nazi racial scheme. Since they were declared to be political mortal enemies (as Bolshevists) while simultaneously being considered the incarnation of the
racial foe
(Jewry), Bolshevism and Jewry were flatly equated with one another, referred to as the “Jewish-Bolshevist threat,” and made out to be the very quintessence of all types of inferiority.
²²⁸