⚠️ Historical Documentation Notice
This document is part of a historical archive and is presented for scholarly research and educational purposes.
The content reflects historical perspectives and should be understood within its historical context.
Longerich: Hitler’s Role in the Persuection of the Jews by the Nazi Regime
Longerich: Hitler’s Role in the Persuection of the Jews by the Nazi Regime
A CURRICULUM VITAE
(i) For the last twenty years my academic work has been concentrated on the Nazi Dicatorship, its structure, its origins and ist legacy. My work in this field which consists in particular of a dozen monographs and editions is highly regarded both in Germany and internationally.
(ii) I can declare my self an expert in working with archival documents, mostly unpublished, from this period. During the last twenty years I have workd in about 40 archives in Germany, Britian, Israel, Lithuania, the Soviet Union and the United States.
(iii) From the very beginning of my academic research I have been particularly interested in the structure of the Nazi system and the decision making-process. This interest developed when I wrote my dissertation, a study about bureaucratic infighting and decision-making in the Nazi Propaganda machinery. After completion of my dissertation I worked for several years at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich.
During a period of more than five years at the Institute I edited the Second Part of the Project Akten der Partei-Kanzlei, an attempt to reconstruct the lost original files from the Nazi Party Chancellery, the central office of the Nazi party which coordinated the organisation of the Party and controlled the state bureacracy.
This work which envolved the reading and summing up of about 80.000 pages of documents from the Nazi period gave me a unique insight into the day to day history of the Nazi system and a subtle understanding for the bureaucratic language and the behaviour of officials in this system. During my stay at the Institute I wrote two other books, a history of the Nazi Stormtroopers and a organisation history of the Party chancellery.
(iv) Since the end of the eighties my interest concentrated more and more on what I see today as the central chapter of the Nazi period: The persecution and murder of European Jews. I started this work by editing a collection of documents about the Holocaust in 1989. When I edited the book I war particularly concerned with the authenticity of the material and therefore consulted the great majority of the dorcuments as originals in archives.
(v) The publication of the German version of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (together with Eberhard Jäcke and Julius H. Schoeps) a work which included an updating of many of the articles, provided me with an excellent overview about research in this field
(vi) An invitiation to spent ten month at the International Center for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, gave me the opportunity to lay the cornerstone for a major monograph of the Holocaust, a book which was issued in 1998 (in German) under the title policy of annihilation and containes a comprehensive history of the persecution of the Jews in the period between 1933 and 1945.
The manuscript of this book was accepted as Habilitationsschrift by the University of the Armed Forces in Munich in early 1999. (The Habilitation is the highest qualification at a German University and the basic condition for the award of a professorship). During the last two years I had the opportunity to give papers about the main results of this research at numerous Universities, Research Centres and Museums in Germany, Britain, the United States and Israel.
(vii) I have never stopped to attemped to look at the Holocaust and the Nazi period in a broader historical perspecitive; the last book before the book on the Holocaust was a comprehensive history of the Weimar Republic and at the moment I am working on a comparative study about manpower mobilisation in Germany and Great Britain during the Second World War.
Peter Longerich: Born 4 February 1955, Krefeld, Germany: German Citizen
Education and Degrees
Research Grants
Appointments held
Other professional activities
Publications
Monographs
Editing of Documents
Editions
Articles and Chapters
Papers and Broadcasts
HITLER’S ROLE IN THE PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS BY THE NAZI REGIME
There can be no doubt that Hitler’s behaviour during his entire political career—from the end of the First World War until the end of the Second World War—was characterised by radical antisemitism. Hitler’s actions betray a desire to—in one way or another—put an end to the existence of Jews within the “living space” (Lebensraum) of the German people. This objective carried a very high priority in his political practice.
Of course Hitler’s antisemitic stance cannot by itself explain the persecution and murder of the European Jews by the Nazi regime; a history of the “final solution” must nevertheless take account of his central role in the decision making process.
1. General remarks about Hitler’s Antisemitic terminology
1.1 An account of Hitler’s role in the genesis of the final solution is complicated by the fact that the dictator avoided the use of explicit written directives relating to the murder of the Jews. When he came to speak on this subject he used expressions which, to say the least, leave a certain amount of room for interpretation. The meaning of the key words describing the aims of Nazi anti-Jewish policy changed over the years when antisemitic policy became more and more radicalized.
There is no meaning to these terms independent of the time factor. To translate these terms properly, one has to take the reality of antisemitic policy into account. When the same vocabulary was used to describe Nazi aims towards other groups, the meaning might have been be completely different.
As far as the fate of the Jews is concerned, formulations such as annihilation (Vernichtung), extirpation (Ausrottung), final solution (Endlösung) removal (Entfernung), resettlement (Umsiedlung), evacuation (Evakuierung) etc. were used by Hitler and leading National Socialists from mid 1941 onwards increasingly—and from Spring 1942 definitely—as camouflage for mass murder.
1.2 Before this time, the very same vocabulary was used by Hitler and leading Nazis in a different sense. As will be described in more detail in this report, an interpretation has to take into account the different stages of anti-Jewish policy. During the 1920’s and up to the mid 1930’s, the main aim of Nazi anti-Jewish policy was to undermine the legal and economic situation of the German Jews so as to force them to emigrate.
The Jews would disappear from the vantage point of the Nazis from German public life and later on, from German territory. When the Nazis used the term annihilation (Vernichtung) during these early years, they referred on the one hand to the planned destruction of the alleged dominant position of the Jewish minority in German society.
From the context of the relevant texts, however, it is obvious, on the other hand, that this term had a vaguely defined violent and even murderous component, by which Hitler and the Nazis signified their main goal—which was the “removal of the Jews”. In a cautious interpretation of this terminology, it would not be exaggerated to describe the meaning of annihilation here as ambiguous. The perspective of mass murder was already present here.
In conclusion, one has to say, that during this period (the 1920’s end the first half of the 1930’s), the Nazis saw in the “final solution” a potentially violent “removal” of Jews from German public live and German soil.
1.3 At the end of the 1930’s, the Nazis intensified the pressure for emigration or expulsion. During this period, terms like “removal” (Entfernung) or “final solution” (Endlösung) revealed an inconsistency with the notion of a further existence of a Jewish minority in Germany. The violent aspect of anti-Jewish policy became more and more significant. In the last year before the outbreak of the Second World War the term extermination pointed clearly to the possiblility of genocide.
1.4 Between the outbreak of war in Summer 1939 and the middle of 1941, the Nazis were looking for a so called “territorial solution” of the Jewish problem, i.e. they were planning to deport the Jews to a territory on the periphery of their empire where there were insufficient means to subsist and where they would perish.
Technically the terms resettlement (Umsiedlung) or evacuation (Evakuierung) meant a kind of geographical relocation but one cannot disregard the fact that this vocabulary increasingly offered the perspective of the physical end of the Jews in Europe. The term “final solution” was used in this period in the same way.
1.5 Between the summer of 1941 and the spring of 1942 the meaning of this vocabulary changed. It was now increasingly used as a synonym for systematic mass murder. However, even in this period—particularly between Autumn of 1941 and Spring 1942—this terminology can in some cases still be ambivalent. For an interpretation each phrase has to be analysed in its historical context.
In particular, in a period in which one Jewish minority after another was being included in the process of systematic mass murder, one has to determine which Jewish minority was indicated by each of the relevant phrases.
1.6 One cannot exclude the possibility that, for example, up to May or even June 1942, i.e. during the has when preparations for the systematic murder of European Jews were well underway, Hitler and the leading organisers of the murderous programme might have occasionally mentioned “alternative” murderous programmes for a “final solution”; they might, even at this stage, have referred to the earlier plan to deport Jews (particularly those from Western Europe, who before the summer of 1942 had
not been included in the programme of systematic mass murder) to other areas than occupied Poland and to kill them or let them perish. These “alternative” considerations should be interpreted as a kind of reluctance by Hitler and members of the leading circle of Nazis, fully to articulate the consequences of the decision to kill millions of people, a decision which in fact had already been made and implemented at this point.
2. HITLER’S EARLY UTTERANCES ON THE ” JEWISH QUESTION”
2.1 Hitler’s very first political statement, his letter to Adolf Gemlich on 16 September 1919, already includes a clear declaration of his antisemitic position (Gemlich was a former participant in one of the political indoctrination courses organised by the military authorities in Bavaria, on which Hitler had taught).
Antisemitism of the emotional sort finds its final expression in the form of pogroms. Rational antisemitism on the other hand, must lead to a systematic legal opposition and elimination of those special privileges which the Jews hold, in contrast to the other aliens living among us (alien’s legislation). Its final objective must unswervingly be the removal of the Jews altogether.1
Antisemitism of the emotional sort finds its final expression in the form of pogroms. Rational antisemitism on the other hand, must lead to a systematic legal opposition and elimination of those special privileges which the Jews hold, in contrast to the other aliens living among us (alien’s legislation). Its final objective must unswervingly be the removal of the Jews altogether.1
2.2 This outlook also characterises Hitler’s early public posture. The radicalism of his antisemitic statements at this point is remarkable; clearly his vision of a “removal” of the German Jews carried definite implications of violence. As early as 1920 he spoke of extirpation (Ausrottung) and annihilation (Vernichtung). Thus according to a police report of a NSDAP meeting on 6 April 1920 he declared:2
We have no intention of being emotional antisemites who want to create the atmosphere of a pogrom; instead, our hearts are filled with an inexorable determination to attack the evil at its roots and to extirpate it root and branch. In order to reach our goal every means will be justified, even if we have to make a pact with the devil.
We have no intention of being emotional antisemites who want to create the atmosphere of a pogrom; instead, our hearts are filled with an inexorable determination to attack the evil at its roots and to extirpate it root and branch. In order to reach our goal every means will be justified, even if we have to make a pact with the devil.
2.3 In a talk before a gathering of National Socialists in Salzburg on 7 August 1920 he said:
Don’t think that one can fight against disease without killing the cause, without exterminating the germ; and don’t think that one can fight against racial tuberculosis without taking care that the peoples be freed of the germ of racial tuberculosis. The effect of Judaism will never disappear and the poisoning of the people will not end unless the cause—the Jews—are removed from our presence.1†
Don’t think that one can fight against disease without killing the cause, without exterminating the germ; and don’t think that one can fight against racial tuberculosis without taking care that the peoples be freed of the germ of racial tuberculosis. The effect of Judaism will never disappear and the poisoning of the people will not end unless the cause—the Jews—are removed from our presence.1†
2.4 In the first large mass meeting of the NSDAP after the refounding of the Party (which had been banned after the failed putsch of 1923) Hitler, on 27 February 1925, looked back on the founding of the NSDAP and explained: The goal then was clear and simple: fight against the devilish power which has pushed Germany into this misery, fight against Marxism as well as the spiritual carrier of this world plague and epidemic—the Jews.
Fight—not on the bourgeois model ‘carefully’ so that it doesn’t hurt. No and once again no.2†
2.5 In another part of this speech Hitler spoke about the newly founded Party: “Who does this movement have to combat? Against the Jew as an individual and Marxism as his cause.3 2.6 And in another passage, Hitler pointed once again to the chief objective of the National Socialists—to the struggle against the Jewish “poison” within the German people (Volk), in his view clearly a lethal danger: The greatest danger is and remains for us the poison of foreign peoples in our body.
All other dangers are limited in time. Only this alone is eternally present in its consequences for us. […] The peace treaty can be abrogated, reparation obligations can be declared invalid and rejected, political parties can be disposed of, but blood that is once poisoned can never be altered. It remains and proliferates and pushes us down from year to year ever deeper.
If you are surprised today about the inner turmoil of our people than consider the following: The blood which is at odds with itself is merely expressing itself in the inner turmoil of the German people.
And there lies the greatest danger, that with the continuation of this poisoning in 10, 20 and 30 years we will be weaker than now, in 100 years weaker than after 30 and in 200 years more unconsciousness than after 100 years; one day however the time will come when our people will fall from its cultural heights and will finally hopelessly perish as a result of this blood poisoning…4
2.7 In his book, MEIN KAMPF, which appeared in 1926 and especially in a manuscript written in 1927, which remained unpublished until after 1945 (his “Second Book”)5, Hitler placed this radical view, which leads to the “removal” of the Jews from Germany, within the context of a theory which he tried to derive historically. According to this theory, the meaning of world history is a permanent struggle between the races or the peoples (Völker) over “living space” (Lebensraum).
In this model the Jews, who are said to be unable to develop their own territorial state or culture, play the role of parasitic beings who seek to destroy from within (together with other Jews in a international conspiracy) the construction of Lebensraum empires by the superior races. 2.8 This “theory” is described most clearly in a lengthy section in his “second book”:6 The Jewish people, because of their own lack of productive capacity, are not able to build up their own territorial state.
Rather, they need the work and creative activity of other nations as a base for their own existence. The existence of the Jews themselves thus becomes that of a parasite within the life of other peoples. The final goal of the Jewish struggle for survival is therefore the enslavement of productive peoples. To reach this goal, which in truth describes the struggle for existence of Jewry in all times, the Jew uses all weapons which correspond to the whole complex of his being.
Domestically, he fights within the individual nations first for equality and then for superiority. As weapons he uses cunning, cleverness, subterfuge, malice, dissimulation, etc…, qualities which are rooted in the essence of his ethnic character. They are ruses in his struggle for existence, similar to the ruses other peoples use in sword-fights.
In terms of foreign policy, he tries to make the peoples restless, distracting them from their true interests, pushing them into wars with one another and in this way, with the help of the power of money and propaganda to bring them under his dominance.
His ultimate goal is the denationalisation, the promiscuous bastardisation of other peoples—the lowering of the racial niveau of the highest peoples as well as domination over his racial porridge through the extirpation of the völkisch intelligencia and its replacement by members of his own people.
The end of the Jewish world struggle will thus always be bloody Bolshevisation, that means in truth the destruction of the spiritual elite which is bound with the peoples, so that he alone can ascend and become master of a mankind which has been rendered leaderless. Stupidity, cowardice and wickedness help him to achieve his goals. In the bastard he secures himself the first opening so as to break into the body of another people.
The end of Jewish domination is nevertheless always the decay of all culture and finally the insanity of the Jew himself. Then he becomes a parasite of the peoples and his victory signifies the death of his victim as well as his own end.
2.9 As is clearly demonstrated in his MEIN KAMPF and his “Second Book”, Hitler perceived the situation of Germany after the end of the first World War to be the consequence of an international Jewish conspiracy.
Jews dominated “international finance capital” as well as the socialist movement: they were responsible for war, revolutions, the decline of national values and for the pernicious “mixing of the races”. 2.10 The language which Hitler used in this early period to refer to the Jews was filled with boundless hatred.
Eberhard Jäckel once compiled a series of typical designations for Jews from MEIN KAMPF: The Jew is a maggot in a rotting corpse; a germ carrier of the worst sort; mankind’s eternal germ of disunion; the spider that slowly sucks the people’s blood out of its pores; the pack of rats fighting bloodily among themselves; the parasites in the body of other peoples; a sponger, who, like a harmful bacillus, continues to spread; the eternal bloodsucker; the peoples’ parasite; the vampire.7 2.11
An analysis of the public statements by Hitler in the second half of the twentieth century shows clearly that antisemitism had always played a central role in his thinking. In Hitler’s speeches in this period, antisemitism was by no means a marginal element used only for demagogic purposes. Rather, antisemitism was the central component of the ideological structure which he endeavored—with stubborn perseverence—to convey to his listerners. 2.12
For even when Hitler concerned himself with political questions of the day, in the course of his public statements in the second half of the twenties, the large majority of his speeches and articles would usually return to the ideological train of thought which he had developed in MEIN KAMPF and in his second book.
These ideological considerations were necessary for him so as to explain the precarious situation in which Germany found itself after the end of the first World War. 2.13 Central categories in Hitler’s public statements continued to be “space” and “race”: the future of the Germans as a racially valuable people depended upon the conquest of as great a space as possible.8
The fulfilment of this historical mission, which according to Hitler’s central argument was decisive for the security of the existence of the German people, was obstructed by systematic attempts by the “Jewish race” to prevent it.
2.14 Over and over again Hitler repeated in his speeches his stereotypical grievances against the Jews: That they were not able to work productively and were unfit to create culture9; that they lacked a positive attitude towards the soil; that instead they had others work for them and charged them interest.10 He therefore called the Jews “parasites” or “spongers” (Schmarotzer).11 2.15 In Hitler’s view, through clever activities they had gathered the economy in their hands.12
Although personally unable to create culture, they had been able to dominate the culture industry and the press and therefore controlled public opinion.13 The political parties were, in his view, dominated by the Jews.14 This was especially true for the Socialist parties.15 In a typical expression, he called “Marxism” the “greatest instrument for the annihilation of the Aryan peoples, for the annihilation of the intelligence of these Aryan peoples and for the constitution of a thin Jewish upper
class”.16 In the Soviet Union, this goal had already been largely achieved through Stalin’s dictatorship, in his view.17 2.16 On an international level, the Jews had also achieved a dominating position in the economy; he claimed that “international finance Jewry” used their position to put additional economic and political pressure upon Germany.18
Communism and capitalism were, in Hitler’s view, both instruments in the hands of Jews for the attainment of a position of world domination: “Western democracy on the one hand and Russian Bolshevism on the other are the forms in which the present Jewish world conspiracy takes its form.”19 The international order created by the Versailles treaty serves the Jews for the purpose of annihilating the German people.20 2.17 In Hitler’s view, the Jews had thus largely succeeded in infiltrating the
German people and manipulating and splitting it. The Jews were responsible for the fact that the German people had already begun to turn away from their task which was decisive for their future—that of accumulating soil and working it.21 The inner division of Germany, the political conflict between the bourgeoisie and the workers was also the work of the Jews.22
In his speeches, Hitler frequently used the metaphor of a “body of the people” (Volkskörper) which a foreign element had penetrated, in order to describe the supposed dominant position of the Jews within the German “Volk”23: a cancer—which had to be removed.24 2.18 From this chain of reasoning, Hitler came to the conclusion that Germany’s problems could basically only be solved by means of the removal of the dominance of the Jews.
Concretely, he developed specific suggestions which were entirely based upon the Party Programme of the NSDAP: this involved the elimination of the economic ascendancy of the Jews and—in the event that they did not submit—their physical removal: “If he conducts himself well than he can stay, if not than out.”25 Hitler also prepared his listeners for the concept that this settlement of accounts with the Jewish mortal enemy would not be an easy task, but rather might involve a difficult and
if necessary violent confrontation.26 2.19 If one considers the function of antisemitism within Hitler’s world view it becomes clear that it played the role of the central binding element in a hodgepodge of highly contradictory ideas. Hitler’s public statements in the second half of the 1920’s make it clear that his world-view (Weltanschauung) was unthinkable without his antisemitism.
He promised his listeners that with the solution to the “Jewish problem” he could solve Germany’s basic dilemmas in the areas of foreign and domestic policy, as well as in the economic, social and cultural realms. 2.20 After 1930, when the NSDAP had become a party with a mass base, the antisemitic element began to recede markedly.
Clearly Hitler was aware of the fact that the number of his electors had surpassed the number of radical antisemites in the German population.27 A more precise analysis of his speeches reveals however that he had not in any way altered his basic ideology. For in fact in the years 1930 to 1933, as the NSDAP attained unprecedented electoral sucess, the basic elements of the Hitler ideology, “space” and “race”, remained the center of his speeches.28
Hitler emphasized on different occasions that he continued to regard the “Jewish race” as the main enemy of the German people. 2.21
Thus on 29 August 1930, a few days before the greatest electoral victory of the Nazis in the Reichstag election, in a speech in Munich he announced, in regard to the Jews: “The head of another race sits upon the body of our people (Volkskörper); the heart and the head of our people are no longer one and the same.”29 In another speech a few weeks later, he portrayed the struggle against the Jews (without naming them) as a contract with divinity: When we present ourselves as German and try to
protect ourselves from poisoning by another people, then we are trying to return into the hands of the almighty Creator the very same creature which he bestowed on us…30
- HITLER AND THE BEGINNING OF AN ANTI-JEWISH POLICY IN 1933
- HITLER’S ROLE IN THE EMERGENCE OF THE NUREMBERG LAWS
- HITLER AND THE ANTISEMITIC LEGISLATION OF 1936-1937
- HITLER AND THE RADICALISATION OF THE PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS AFTER THE END OF 1937
- HITLER AND THE POGROM OF 9 NOVEMBER
- HITLER ORDERS THE MEASURES FOLLOWING THE POGROM
Back to Table of Contents Previous Chapter Next Chapter
3.1 From the very beginning, Hitler, as head of the National Socialist government, pursued a consistently antisemitic policy. Above all, he aspired to remove German Jews from public positions and to segregate them as much as possible from the German population. The decisive role which Hitler played in the enforcement of the Nazi government’s anti-Jewish policy is apparent in the organisation of the “boycott” of Jewish businesses on 1 April 1933.
Although it was Goebbels, Propaganda Chief of the Party and newly appointed Minister of Propaganda, who organised the embargo on Jewish establishments, the decisive initiative was Hitler’s.
This was confirmed by Goebbels in his diary entry of 26 March 1933: according to this account Hitler called him to Berchtesgaden in order to inform him of his “resolution” according to which one could only deal with the slanderous attacks from abroad if we lay hold of the originators or at least those who stand to profit from them- namely the Jews who live in Germany and who have remained unmolested.31
3.2 Moreover, Hitler took over the full responsibility for the call for a boycott committee consisting of leading NSDAP officials when he made it clear in the Ministerial Conference of 28 March 1933 “that he, the Chancellor of the Reich himself had arranged for the proclamation issued by the National Socialist party”.32 On 6 April 1933, Hitler once again explicitly acknowledged his antisemitic policy when on the occasion of a reception of leading medical officials he declared that through the
coming eradication of Jewish intellectuals from the cultural and spiritual life of Germany, Germany’s natural title to spiritual leadership, which is characteristic for it, must be done justice.33
3.3 Immediately after the boycott, still in April 1933, the Hitler regime passed three antisemitic laws: Jews were largely excluded from public office and the bar respectively34 and a quota for Jewish pupils and students was introduced.35 On the other hand, a series of utterances by Hitler from the first months of the “Third Reich” seem to give the impression, on first glance, that he might have been exercising a rather more moderate influence on the “Jewish policy” of the government and had
turned against the more radical elements of the Party. 3.4 Thus a pronouncement by Hitler which was issued on 10 March 1933 opposed the “individual actions” (Einzelaktionen) of party activists which might disturb the functioning of Jewish and other businesses.36 Further, a planned campaign against the Federal Court of Leipzig by the local Party organisation was stopped by a personal directive by Hitler.37 In the cabinet deliberation on the law concerning lawyers on 7 April, Hitler opposed
further plans for exclusion and took the position that one should “at the moment … only regulate that which is necessary”; legal discrimination against Jewish doctors—an official proposal of this kind had been submitted to the cabinet—was considered “not necessary for the moment”.38 3.5 Hitler’s attitude of apparent restraint stemmed wholly from tactical considerations.
Hitler wanted to avoid unnecessary quarrels with his conservative coalition partners; he didn’t want to put new stress on the already difficult economic situation or to cement the “Third Reich’s” isolation in foreign affairs.39 In his address to the recently appointed Reich Governors on 6 July 1933, Hitler explicitly articulated his foreign policy concerns: “To reopen the Jewish question means to agitate the whole world once again”.40 3.6 In fact, with the take-over of power in 1933, Hitler
intended—over and above the assorted antisemitic laws—deliberately to create a special legal status for German Jews: to place them under “alien status” as had been projected in the NSDAP Party Programme of 1920, and gradually to diminish their position in German society.
His earlier and considerably more far-reaching plans in the area of racial laws and the reasons why these plans had been deferred were clearly elucidated in the report of his speech41 to the Reich Governors’ Conference, held on 28 September 1933: As concerns the Jewish question, we were not able to give way.
For him, the Chancellor, it would have been preferable if we could have aggravated the treatment of the Jews step by step—beginning with a citizenship law and from that point on becoming gradually more and more severe with them. The boycott instigated by the Jews however obliged us to resort immediately to harsh counter measures. Abroad they complain mainly about the legal treatment of the Jew as a second-class citizens.
They argue that the most we can do is to refuse citizenship to Jews who present a danger to the State.
Back to Table of Contents Previous Chapter Next Chapter
4.1 A period of relative calm in the development of National Socialist policy concerning the Jews can be identified42 in the period beginning in the second half of 1933 and extending through 1934.
During this period the regime tried to avoid a further radicalisation of the persecution of the Jews, because it would have deepen its foreign political isolation, worsen the unstable economic situation, inspire the radicalism of the SA (which the Party tried to bring under control in this period), and annoy their conservative coalition partners who were still in a relatively quiet mood.
This situation changed in 1935, after the Nazis had their first success in foreign policy by winning the Saarland referendum, after the Nazi Party had eleminated the leadership of the SA and conservative opponents during the “night of the long knives” (30 June 1934) and secured their dominant power position, and when the economic situation became better. 4.2
Starting in 1935 however, Party activists once again triggered antisemitic excesses in the whole empire; these became more numerous and more extreme in the Spring and Summer of 1935. Party activists repeatedly blocked Jewish businesses, perpetrated acts of terror against so-called “racial defilers”, organised demonstrations, and prevented marriages between Jews and non-Jews and assaulted Jewish citizens.
By means of these abuses, the more radical antisemitic forces in the Party wanted to push through three objectives: 1) the introduction of a special citizenship for Jews 2) prohibitions against marriage as well as sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews and 3) economically discriminatory measures against the Jewish minority.43 4.3 In August, statements were issued in Hitler’s name not only by Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy in Party matters, but also by Minister of the Interior Frick,
forbidding further “individual actions” (Einzelaktionen).44 Once again, Hitler’s sole concern was tactical—to subdue anti-Jewish abuses which were causing unrest and indignation in the population. In essence, however, he shared the same goals as the party activists. 4.4 This clarifies Hitler’s role in the genesis of the Nuremberg laws whereby, in particular, marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews were forbidden and a special, inferior citizenship was defined for Jews.
Hitler played a decisive role in the implementation of both of these basic early antisemitic demands of the Nazi Party.
He preferred “rational antisemitism” instead of pogroms, as he had stated in 1920. 4.5 The decision to include an anti-Jewish law which contained the long-demanded prohibition against “racial defilement” (Rassenschande) in the Reichstag session during the Nuremberg party meeting was made on the evening of 13 September 1935 by a small circle of leading Nazis who had been gathered to meet with Hitler in a Nuremberg hotel.45 4.6 The official in charge of the Jewish question (Judenreferent) in
the Ministry of the Interior, Lösener, has described very vividly in a memoir written after the war how he was unexpectedly called to Nuremberg late in the evening of 13 September in order to help formulate these new laws.46 On the next day, according to Lösener’s report, together with a group of officials from the ministry, he worked out numerous drafts for the law which was later called the Law for the Protection of German Blood (Blutschutzgesetz).
Minister of the Interior Frick presented them to Hitler and then brought them back with specific proposals for amendment. On Saturday, 14 September, around midnight, Hitler demanded that four alternative drafts be submitted for the Blutschutzgesetz by the following morning. Further, according to Lösener’s account, Hitler now asked the officials to prepare another law, namely a blueprint of a “basic law, a citizenship law” for the next day.
On the following day Hitler decided for one of the drafts of the protection of German blood law and had it passed in the Reichstag, together with the Reich citizenship law (Reichsbürgergesetz) which had also been drafted overnight.
4.7 After laws were passed, Hitler declared at the Nuremberg Party Conference that the law for the protection of German blood was “the attempt legally to regulate a problem by which in the event of repeated failure would definitely be transferred to the National Socialist Party by law in order to achieve a final solution”.47 He thereby made clear that he was prepared to use street terror by Party activists (which he had earlier condemned in public declarations) as an instrument for enforcing
his policies.
Back to Table of Contents Previous Chapter Next Chapter
5.1 For the following years, it can be documented that Hitler personally directed anti-Jewish policy and regularly intervened in anti-Jewish legislation. The measures in question were mainly concerned with excluding the Jewish minority from the economy. 5.2 In the summer of 1936, Hitler charged Göring with preparations for the Four-Year-Plan (Vierjahresplan), by which the German economy was to be adapted for war.
The memorandum which Hitler transmitted to Göring on this subject makes clear that preparation for war and further radicalisation of anti-Jewish policy were closely associated in Hitler’s thinking. Hitler’s position in this matter was that a war against a supposed Bolshevik-Jewish menace was unavoidable: Since the outbreak of the French Revolution, the world has been moving ever faster towards a new confrontation.
The most extreme solution to this conflict is called Bolshevism and its content and goals are the liquidation (Beseitigung) and replacement (Ersetzung) of the hitherto leading social stratum of mankind by international Jewry.48
5.3 In the memorandum, Hitler also explained that preparations for the coming war against “international Jewry” should in part be financed through expropriation of Jewish property.
To this purpose he demanded two new anti-Jewish laws: the first, a law “which makes all Jews answerable for the damages which are inflicted upon the German economy and the German people by individual specimens of this criminality”49; further, he called for the death penalty for what he called “economic sabotage”, (Wirtschaftssabotage) meaning the accumulation of currency reserves abroad.
This demand—as further developments would show—was particularly directed against Jewish “economic sabotage”: It was satisfied by the law dealing with economic sabotage, promulgated in December 1936, which in fact called for lengthy prison terms or the death penalty for the illegal transfer of property abroad; in the following period it was primarily applied against Jews.50 5.4 In order to put through the other law which Hitler had proposed in his memorandum on the Four-Year-Plan—the
comprehensive accountability of German Jews—a draft of a “law concerning the compensation of damages incurred by the Jews to the German Reich” was prepared at the beginning of February 1937. After this draft was rejected, because of the anticipated negative implications for the economy,51 Hitler in April 1938 renewed his proposals for a special tax on Jews which could be raised “for the specific situation—behaviour by individual Jews detrimental to the Volk”.
A proposal of this kind was issued by the responsible departments of the government but was once again rejected by Göring.52 Only after the November pogrom was the project realised and an “atonement payment” (Sühneleistung) of billions charged to German Jews.53 5.5 But on the other hand, in the Spring and early Summer of 1937, Hitler decided not to follow through on two important antisemitic legislative projects for the moment.
One was the third decree of the law of citizenship (Reichsbürgergesetz) by which among other things, a special trade symbol (Gewerbezeichen) was to be introduced for non-Jewish businesses; as Frick told Göring in February 1937, this proposal was to be enacted according to Hitler’s specific order.
Nevertheless, the project was once again not treated—and this at Hitler’s explicit behest—since the incorporation of holdings by foreign Jews would create complications; it would not be enacted until one year later.54 Similarly, due to Hitler’s specific orders, the project to enact a special document on citizenship (Reichsbürgerbrief) into law was not further pursued.55 5.6 To conclude this section, one can say that Hitler continued to be intensely preoccupied with anti-Jewish policy
in the years 1936-37 and was once again prepared to be flexible for tactical reasons in pressing his goals, as is apparent in the different treatment accorded to the diverse laws—in particular, in this time period, to the further economic discrimination against Jews. However, as the following paragraphs will show, he has not given up his basic aim: to remove the Jews from Germany.
Back to Table of Contents Previous Chapter Next Chapter
6.1 By the end of 1937, concurrent with the transition to an expansionist foreign policy, a new, more radical phase in the persecution of the Jews began. Priority was given to the goal of expelling the Jews from Germany; this was to be accomplished especially through further discrimination, use of direct violence and greater economic pressure. 6.2
This more radical course was actually launched by the strongly antisemitic address given by Hitler at the Reich Party Congress in 1937.56 In this speech, he turned against, among other things, what he called—in what was typical for his antisemitic vocabulary—”Jewish-Bolshevist subversion” (jüdisch-bolschewistische Zersetzung); the causative organism of the “disease” (Krankheit) Bolshevism was “that international parasite of the Volk which for many centuries has spread in the world,
reaching once again full destructive magnitude in our time”.57 6.3 On 30 November 1937 Goebbels recorded the following in his diary about a conversation with Hitler which had taken place the previous day: Talked about the Jewish question for a long time… The Jews must disappear from Germany, yes out of all of Europe. That will take some time still, but it will happen and must happen. The Führer is firmly committed to this…58
At the beginning of 1938 the Office for Foreign Affairs (Aussenpolitische Amt) of the NSDAP informed the German Foreign Office that Hitler had clearly declared himself in favour of Jewish emigration to Palestine.59 6.4 In order to accelerate the expulsion of the Jews from Germany, a Reich-wide move to arrest Jews having a criminal record (even an insignificant one) began as early as the summer of 1938. Hitler frequently intervened directly in these “actions”.
He personally gave the order to include Jews in a general action against “asocials” as is clear from a note by the Director of the Jewish department of the SD (Security Service, Sicherheitsdienst) of the Nazi Party) of 8 June 1938. In a discussion on 1 June 1938, with C (=Heydrich, P.L), it was confidentially pointed out that—on the orders of the Führer—asocial and criminal Jews should be arrested and used for the purpose of earth-moving work .60
6.5 There also exists evidence that Hitler concerned himself with the details of the propaganda which accompanied the mass arrests. When in the course of the campaign against “asocials” and Jews Goebbels asserted in a speech that more than 3000 Jews had moved to Berlin—he did this for the purpose of stirring up antisemitic feelings—Heydrich complained to the Ministry of Propaganda about this inaccuracy.
He then learned that Goebbels had used the incorrect figures “with the permission of the Führer”.61 6.6 Nonetheless, the arrests in the Reich capital degenerated: Goebbels’s ruthlessly kindled anti-Jewish excesses turned to riots by the Party base and threatened to endanger public order and led to critical reports in the foreign press.
The excesses were put to an end “upon the Führer’s order”, as noted in a draft of a report of the Jewish Department of the Sicherheitsdienst.62 6.7 On 24 August 1938, in a talk with Hitler, Goebbels once again confirmed that despite the break-up of the campaign he had Hitler’s basic agreement for a further radicalisation of the persecution.63 We discuss the Jewish question. The Führer approves my procedures in Berlin. What the foreign press writes is insignificant.
The main thing is that the Jews be pushed out. In 10 years they must be removed from Germany. But in the interim we still want to keep the Jews here as pawns.
6.8 The last sentence already points to the fact that Hitler, in view of increased international tensions, was beginning to think of taking the German Jews as hostages. The German Jews would serve as pawns.
Back to Table of Contents Previous Chapter Next Chapter
7.1 The course of the November pogrom of 1938 also clearly demonstrates Hitler’s personal initiative. It is inconceivable that Hitler was taken by surprise during the party meeting commemorating the 9th of November, 1923 by the news of the death of the German diplomat vom Rath—the event which the Nazis used as an excuse for launching the pogrom.
Rath died in the late afternoon (17.30 German time); Hitler had expressly sent his personal physician Brandt to Paris “for consultation and for direct reportage”, according to the Völkische Beobachter.64 He must therefore have already been informed at first hand in the afternoon, before the party meeting had begun, along with Goebbels65, Gauleiter (i.e. one of the regional chiefs of the Nazi Party) Jordan66 and the Foreign Office.67 7.2
Before Goebbels held his speech that evening, in which he incited the assembled party leadership to the pogrom, he had already received clear instructions from Hitler, as he noted in his diary: “I am going to the party reception in the old City Hall. Huge crowd. I explain the matter to the Führer. He decides: allow the demonstrations to continue, Pull back the police. The Jews shall for once come to feel the anger of the people.
That is correct”.68 7.3 Eyewitness reports69 according to which Hitler seemed surprised and annoyed about the pogrom in the late evening, if they are credible at all, can only be related to the extent of the damages in Munich and elsewhere, not however to the fact that the party had organised an anti-Jewish “action” that night.
The concept of an unsuspecting Hitler is misleading if only because already on 7 November, the day of Rath’s assassination, party activists had provoked violent anti-Jewish excesses in different parts of the Reich which were heralded by the Nazi press as a spontaneous reaction showing the anger of the German population.70
Back to Table of Contents Previous Chapter Next Chapter
8.1 After the pogrom, Göring was entrusted by Hitler with the direction and control of further “anti-Jewish policies”; while Hitler conferred upon Göring the task of investigating all decrees relating to the “Jewish question” before publication,71 in fact Hitler himself settled the details of further “anti-Jewish policies” in the months following the pogrom. 8.2
Thus Göring disclosed a series of concrete decisions by Hitler in a conference with leading representatives of the Reich and the Party on 6 December.72 According to these resolutions, there was to be no particular label for Jews; no prohibition against selling to Jews; a boycott against Jews (Judenbann) could be ordered for certain localities.
8.3 On 28 December 1938, after a discussion with Hitler, Göring communicated to central party and state officials the “authoritative expression of the will of the Führer” (Willensmeinung des Führers) on further measures to be taken against Jews.73 Accordingly, the law for the protection of tenants was not, in general, to be abrogated for Jews.
On the other hand, in “individual cases” it was declared to be desirable to “proceed in such a way that Jews be quartered together in separate houses in so far as the contract situation allow”.74 The use of sleeping and dining cars was to be forbidden for Jews. The use of “certain public establishments” (gewisse, der öffentlichkeit zugängliche Eirichtungen), such as bath houses or health baths, could be prohibited to Jews.
Jews who were civil servants were not to be denied their pensions, but the possibility of reducing payments was to be investigated. Jewish welfare organisations were to be allowed to continue to exist. Jewish patents were to be “aryanised”. Further, Hitler gave specific orders concerning living accommodations for people in “mixed marriages” and the “aryanisation” of their property.
This catalogue is an excellent example of how precisely Hitler’s detailed instructions were transmitted by Göring and translated into reality by the bureaucracy.
8.4 Thus the Reich Transport Minister (Reichsverkehrminister) forbade Jews the use of sleeping and dining cars on 23 February, following Hitler’s “will”.75 By means of the law on rentals to Jews of 30 April 1939, the law for the protection of tenants was extensively curtailed thereby creating a legal situation according to Hitler’s orders whereby Jews could be quartered together in separate houses.76 The law, once again based on Hitler’s “will”, however, ordered that German-Jewish mixed
families with children be allowed to remain in their homes. With the circular put out by the Minister of the Interior
on June 1939 Hitler’s wish regarding the “Judenbann” was fulfilled whereby the presence of Jews in baths and health establishments could be curtailed.77 8.5 As early as 12 November, at the meeting of leading representatives of the Party and State which was held under Göring’s direction and which dealt with further measures of anti-Jewish policy, Göring announced that Hitler would now finally make a foreign policy thrust, beginning with the powers who had raised the Jewish question, in
order really to arrive at a solution to the Madagascar question. This is what he explained to me on 9 November. It doesn’t work otherwise. He also wants to tell the other States: ‘Why do you constantly talk about the Jews? Take them!’78