NAZI PERSECUTION

THEORIES OF RACE: NAZI ANTI-SEMITISM AND ATTITUDES TO ASOCIAL GROUPS

The German military defeat in 1918 came as a shock to many German soldiers fighting at the Front. Adolf Hitler, himself a soldier, believed that the Jews within Germany were partly to blame for this ‘humiliation’. Some years later, when Hitler became leader of the German Workers’ Party, he vowed that he would take revenge upon those people who had “stabbed Germany in the back” by signing the Armistice and then the Treaty of Versailles with the Allies.

Hitler’s anti-semitism, however, seems to have been in evidence long before World War One. Accounts of his time in Vienna as a young man highlight this fact.

Q. What light does Source 1 throw on the origins of Hitler’s personal
anti-Semitism?

The Development of Anti-Semitism

  • Jewish people had been persecuted throughout History. They had been blamed for, and made the ‘scapegoats’ of, many terrible events (for example the death of Jesus Christ and The Black Death).
  • The Jews were often seen as a stateless people, forming a minority in many countries in which they lived. Jewish people often suffered from prejudice.
  • Anti-Jewish propaganda was in evidence across the political spectrum in Germany from 1918 to 1933. Nazi propaganda made ‘the Jews’ the focus for problems that occurred within Weimar Germany: inflation, unemployment and economic crisis.
  • Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda was not that effective it seems during the 1920’s. Polls show that less than 20 per cent of Nazi Party members regarded anti-Semitism as being a crucial issue.
  • Hitler could be both fanatical and a pragmatist. He used anti-semitism for his own electoral ends. Radical anti-capitalist Nazis were often encouraged to attack Jewish owners of department stores and Jewish bankers.
  • Many of Germany’s 525,000 Jews believed and hoped that once the Nazis were in power they might curb their anti-Semitism and adopt more moderate policies.

The Nazi Come to Power

  • Hitler came to power in January 1933 via the ‘back door’. The Nazi share of the vote had fallen by November 1932 and they were running out of campaign funds.
  • Hitler’s assumption to power way aided by Von Papen, who believed that Hitler could be controlled by the right-wing conservatives who surrounded President Hindenburg. Papen commented ‘We’ve hired Hitler’. The decision to allow Hitler to become Chancellor would have dire consequences for many minority groups within Germany and the countries that Germany was to occupy.

The first phase in the Nazi attack on Germany’s Jewish community would involve a legislative campaign, which gradually deprived Jews of their civic rights. This campaign, which made a mockery of the legal processes which existed in Germany at this time, would go hand in hand with a second objective, which was to persuade Jewish people to leave Germany altogether. Only when this second objective, emigration, proved to be impractical would there be movement towards a more radical programme – which would ultimately lead to more brutal means of victimisation.

Jewish Discrimination in Nazi Germany, 1933-37

  1. On 1 April 1933 the Sturmabteilung (SA) was allowed to organise a boycott of Jewish shops all over Germany. In the Nazis’ eyes the results were disappointing. Ordinary Germans were either apathetic to the boycott or openly sympathetic to the plight of the Jews; some continued to patronise Jewish shops, despite the efforts of the S.A. to persuade them otherwise. The boycott was abandoned because of diplomatic pressure from abroad and the cold economic calculation by Hitler that such a boycott would impede German economic recovery.
  2. In the early years of the regime Hitler appears to have been ‘moderate’ with regards to the ‘Jewish Question’, often resisting and sometimes giving into demands by party activists for more radical anti-Semitic measures.
  3. March 1933 – Jewish judges were ordered to retire from the bench and Jews were prevented from serving on juries.
  4. April 1933 – only 5% of school places were allocated to Jewish children. Jewish academics were forced out of university posts and Jewish lawyers prevented from practising.
  5. September 1933 – Goebbels excludes Jews from employment in the theatre, the film industry and the music profession. Jews were prevented from gaining work as journalists.
  6. Gleichschaltung (‘co-ordination’ or ‘bringing into line’), whereby every strata of German life was to be Nazified. Complaints against anti-semitism became a criminal offence.
  7. The enactment of the Nuremberg Laws on 15th September 1935 defined a Jew as a person with any of the following characteristics: a Jewish parent; two or more Jewish grandparents; or any person who was a member of the Jewish religious community. Jews were defined as neither German or kindred blood, but were not defined in exclusively genetic/racial terms.
  8. The second major Nuremberg Law, ‘For the protection of German Blood and German Honour’, banned marriage between Germans and Jews and stripped Jews of all civil and political rights, defining them as ‘non-citizens’. The Jews were effectively banned from normal membership of German society by these laws.
  9. Propaganda against the Jews carried the same message: ‘the Jews are our misfortune’. The Nazi regime sought to build up hatred, especially amongst the younger generation. Frequent use was made of pictures showing Jews leaving Germany – as then all would be ‘sweetness and light’.

DISCUSSION POINT:

  • From your reading of source 3, what principle formed the basis of the 1933 shop boycott and how effectively was it applied?

(Key Skills Communication Level 3 C3.1a –Contribute to a group discussion about a complex subject)

Q. How valuable is source 4 for a historian of the Nazi period? Why?

The Impact of the Nuremberg Laws

According to Nazi statistics available for 1935 there were 750,00 Germans who could be categorised as ‘Part—Jews’. There were 475,000 Jews who regularly practised their religion and a further 300,000 who did not. This made up a total of over 1.5 million people, or 2.3 per cent of the German population.

There were complicated provisions in the Nuremberg Laws to define who was, and who was not, a Jew. Three categories were legally defined:

  1. ‘Jew’;
  2. ‘Mischling’ (part-Jew), first degree’, and
  3. ‘Mischling, second degree’.

TALKING POINT:

(Key Skills Communication Level 3 C3.1a –Contribute to a group discussion about a complex subject)

  • Comment on what source 5 tells us about public opinion in Germany towards Nazi anti-Jewish legislation.
  • Do you think there was a well-prepared plan for dealing with the ‘Jewish question’ when the Nazis came to power?

Other Minorities - Asocials

It is important to note that the Nuremberg Laws targeted other groups of people. ‘Asocial’ was a very broad term that could be applied to anyone who did not fit into the Volksgemeinschaft. In 1938 asocials were defined as vagabonds, gypsies, beggars, prostitutes, alcoholics, eccentrics, the work-shy and juvenile delinquents. Thousands were sent to concentration camps and forced to wear badges that marked them out as being enemies of the state. The Nazis were keen to stress the biological origins of asocial behaviour. They were “unworthy people” who needed to be removed from society in the interests of the community.

At first the Nazi regime contented itself with detaining the gypsies in camps and putting them to work. Eventually however, the forced sterilisation of many gypsy women took place in an attempt to prevent future generations of gypsies being born. Towards the end of 1942, gypsies were sent to Auschwitz, where they were subjected to medical experiments. Of the 20,000 Gypsies transported to Auschwitz, 11,000 were killed. Within Germany only 5,000 of the original 30,000 gypsies survived the war.

Another group deemed to be asocial were homosexuals. Their lifestyle deeply offended traditionally minded Nazis. It was believed that homosexuality would threaten Germany’s position in the world by reducing the country’s birth rate. In 1936 the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion was created and Himmler tried to establish a register of homosexuals. In 1937 he ordered that homosexual SS officers should be sent to concentration camps. Nearly 15,000 homosexuals were arrested and sent to camps where they were forced to wear pink triangles on their clothes. Some became the object of medical experiments designed to correct their ‘unnatural’ feelings. Lesbians on the other hand were not subjected to formal persecution in the Third Reich since they were not seen as ‘a threat to the nation’.

TALKING POINT

  • Why do you think the Nazis could not accept that lifestyle choices/decisions are entirely the concern of individuals?
  • Do you consider prejudice against people with different behaviour and lifestyles inevitable?

(Key Skills Communication Level 3 C3.1a –Contribute to a group discussion about a complex subject

The Growth of Radical Anti-Semitism, 1937-39

  • More open persecution of Jews took place from 1937 to 1939.
  • Jews were driven out of certain towns, which declared themselves judenfrei (‘Jew free’).
  • As the German economy moved into rapid expansion, the big industrial concerns, eager to get rid of their Jewish competitors, pressed the regime to proceed with the ‘Aryanisation’ of the economy. Goring put in place measures to ruin Jewish owned businesses. Jews were ordered to register all property over 5,000 marks in value and they stopped from selling without permission.
  • Jewish people were banned from public leisure facilities, parks, cafes, theatres and restaurants.
  • Throughout 1938 there was a further raft of anti-Jewish legislation, which banned Jewish doctors, salesmen, lawyers, vets and dentists, from practising their trade. Jews were virtually excluded from economic life.
  • The climax to this increasing radicalisation came on 9 November 1938 in the event known as Kristallnacht (‘Crystal Night’).

CASE STUDY: KRISTALLNACHT

The assassination of Ernst von Rath, a diplomatic official at the German embassy in Paris by a Jew on 7 November gave the regime the opportunity to launch its first state-led persecution of the Jewish Community. S.A. thugs and NSDAP members attacked and burned down Jewish synagogues throughout Germany; Jewish homes and businesses were also destroyed, while physical assaults were made on Jewish people. In all, 191 synagogues were burned down and 36 Jews killed in Berlin alone. Across Germany, the death toll rose to 91, with 7,500 businesses being burnt to the ground. Even more disturbing was the arrest and imprisonment of 30,000 Jewish men who were placed in concentration camps at Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen.

The Nazis tried to portray Kristallnacht as a popular, spontaneous reaction of outrage at the news of von Rath’s death. Hitler himself said nothing publicly, either about the assassination or the anti-Jewish violence that it allegedly provoked. The real villain seems to have been Joseph Goebbels. He made an inflammatory speech in Munich on 9 November, which inspired the attacks on the Jewish community within Germany. However, Goering inflamed the situation further by confiscating insurance payouts to Jews, so making them liable for the repair of the damaged buildings. On November 12 Goering fined the Jewish community 1 billion Reichmarks and issued the Decree on Eliminating the Jew from German Economic Life. This measure excluded Jews from any type of participation in the economic life of the Reich.

DISCUSSION POINT

TALKING POINT:

  • What insight does source 7 provide into the reaction of ordinary

Germans towards Kristallnacht?

(Key Skills Communication Level 3 C3.1a –Contribute to a group discussion about a complex subject)

RESEARCH:

Investigate the role of Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler in the planning and implementation of the ‘The Final Solution’ (Holocaust).

Towards War and Holocaust

While senior Nazis considered the fate of the Third Reich’s Jewish population early in 1939, Hitler made one of his great, set-piece speeches in the Reichstag. Hitler had told the Czech foreign minister, ‘We are going to destroy the Jews. They are not going to get away with what they did on 9 November 1918.’ In his speech of 30 January 1939, Hitler warned that ‘if international-financial Jewry within Europe and abroad should succeed once more in plunging the peoples into a world war’ this would result in the ‘destruction of the Jewish race in Europe’.

During the spring of 1939 Hitler made a number of hostile comments relating to his determination to destroy the Jews, which have been interpreted by ‘Intentionalist’ historians as confirmation that Hitler had a long-term aim of getting rid of the Jews. This view is not shared by many other historians who have pointed to the apparent inconsistencies and contradiction in Nazi policy against the Jews. These historians argue that the Nazis had no clear idea of what policies they would implement regarding the Jews in Europe. They point to Himmler’s encouragement of an emigration policy from 1934, which suggests that Hitler was not committed to, or had even contemplated the destruction of the Jewish population during the early part of the 1930’s. Himmler’s emigration policy however, met with limited success. Only 120,000 of Germany’s 503,000 Jews had left Germany by 1937 and many had subsequently returned.

The anti-Semitic aspects of Nazi racial policy became a policy of extermination as Nazi control in Europe brought millions of Jews under German rule between 1939 and 1941. War therefore opened up a new and more intense persecution of Jewish people. Hitler’s role in the escalation of the Nazi anti-Jewish policies of terror and genocide, as leader of the Third Reich, must be seen as being central to any debate about the ‘Final Solution’.

Opportunities to further develop Level 3 Communication Key SKIlls:

  • C3.1bMake a ten minute presentation about an aspect of
    Nazi racial policy that you have researched.
  • C3.2 Carry out research from at least two historical texts

about the Holocaust. Read and synthesise information from at least two documents. Each document must be a minimum of 1000 words long.

  • C3.3What role did Hitler play in Nazi decision-making
    regarding the treatment of Jews within Europe?
  • C3.3Why did the Nazis commit mass murder?

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