Chapter 18 Flashcards
Overall Nazi policy towards Jews 33-39
Between 1933 and 1939, the Nazi regime began an intensive campaign of persecution and legal discrimination against Jews in Germany. To carry out Nazi policies towards the Jews, Hitler needed to steer a careful course, emphasising legality. During this period, Hitler and the Nazi leadership set about a scheme of anti-Semitic legislation. At the same time, a relentless propaganda campaign was launched to ‘educate the German people about the need to purge Jewish influences from German society.
The boycott of Jewish shops
On 1 April 1933, the Nazi regime imposed a boycott of Jewish shops and businesses. Hitler claimed that this action was justified retaliation against Jews in Germany and abroad who had called for a boycott of German goods.
Goebbels organised an intensive propaganda campaign to maximise the impact of the boycott, which was carried out by gangs of brown-shirted SA men. The SA marked out which places of business were to be targeted and stood menacingly outside to intimidate would-be customers.
Shops were the main target of the boycott, but it also applied to Jewish professionals such as doctors and lawyers. Court proceedings involving Jewish lawyers and judges were disrupted in Berlin, Breslau and elsewhere. Many Jewish lawyers were attacked in the street and had their legal robes stripped from them. Jewish doctors, school teachers and university lecturers were also subject to similar rough treatment by the SA.
Confusion regarding boycott
The boycott made a big public impact and featured prominently in news coverage both in Germany and in foreign countries, but it was not an unqualified success. It was unclear in many cases what was a Jewish business and what wasn’t. Many businesses were half-Jewish or half-German in ownership; many others were controlled by foreign creditors or German banks. A number of German citizens defiantly used Jewish shops to show their disapproval of Nazi policies. The boycott was abandoned after only one day, even though the SA had hoped it would last indefinitely.
Why did Hitler allow the boycott?
At the time, the boycott seemed to show the unleashing of Nazi violence by an aggressive new dictatorship flaunting its power just a week after the passing of the Enabling Act. The real situation was rather different. Hitler was not a all enthusiastic about a revolution from below bringing chaos in Germany.
He was anxious to keep the SA under control and he was genuinely concerned about adverse reactions from his conservative allies in Germany or from foreign public opinion.
It is possible that Hitler only ever intended the boycott to be a brief affair. From this perspective, Hitler allowed the boycott to go ahead only as a limited, grudging concession to the radical activists. His main aim was to avoid instability while he carried through his ‘legal revolution. However, Hitler was willing to allow a considerable degree of Nazi intimidation. It was useful to him as an expression of spontaneous public anger’ that only his new government could satisfy. For Hitler, anti-Semitic violence was a two-edged sword. Just enough and the Nazis could claim that only they could maintain order in an unstable Germany; too much and Hitler’s position might be threatened by the conservative elites on whom he still depended.
The Civil Service Laws in 1933 and success
In April 1933, the Nazi regime introduced the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, requiring Jews to be dismissed from the Civil Service. This was not as straightforward as the Nazis hoped. There was no objective, scientific definition of who was racially Jewish according to Physical characteristics or blood group. Under the 1933 law, people were considered hon-Aryan’ if either of their parents or either of their grandparents were Jewish. Another difficulty was that President Hindenburg insisted on exemptions for German Jews who had served in the First World War and for those whose fathers had been killed in the war. Hitler reluctantly accepted this as a political necessity and the exemption was kept in place until after Hindenburg’s death in 1934. The exemptions amendment lessened the law’s impact because it applied to up to two thirds of Jews in the Civil Service.
The Civil Service Law had a devastating economic and psychological impact on middle-class Jews in Germany and contributed to the increasing levels of Jewish emigration. In 1933, 37,000 Jews left Germany. Most Jews, however, stayed behind. At that time, they could not know how much worse the persecution would become.
Anti-Semitic legislation,
1933-35 KEY CHRONOLOGY
1933
April
Boycott of Jewish shops and businesses
Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil
Service
Law against
Overcrowding of German
Schools and Universities
October
Exclusion of German
Jews from the press
1935
September
The Nuremberg Laws
November
Supplementary Decree on the Reich Citizenship Law
Overview of other laws targeted at Jews in professions and success
Similar laws were passed after the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, aimed at excluding Jews from the professions. These measures were not as effective as the Nazis would have hoped, partly because there were exemptions for those who had fought in the First World War and partly because Jews in medicine, the law and education were numerous and well-established, so it was not feasible to remove them all at once.
Jews in legal profession
Jewish lawyers made up about 16 per cent of Germany’s legal profession, eiten working in family firms. Of the non-Aryan lawyers practising in 1933, so per cent were able to continue working in spite of the new regulations. In the years that followed, the regime introduced stricter regulations to try to close these oopholes. The exclusion of lawyers was a gradual process over several years
Jewish doctors
More than ten per cent of German doctors were Jews. They were attacked br Nazi propaganda as a danger to German society. Nazi officials at local government level and in private associations initiated their own anti-Semitic measures. Some local authorities started removing Jewish doctors from their posts. Anti-Semitic propaganda against Jewish doctors treating Aryans was laced with lurid stories about inappropriate and malicious actions supposedly carried out by Jewish doctors. The Nazi regime was pushed along by these local initiatives. The regime announced a ban on Jewish doctors in April 1933. in theory, Jewish doctors could now treat only Jewish patients, but many Jewish doctors carried on their normal practice for several years after 1933.
Education
Also in April 1933, the Law against Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities restricted the number of Jewish children who could attend state schools and universities. It was promoted on the basis that Aryan students would receive more resources and attention, instead of wasting time and money on pupils who would ‘grow up to be enemies of Germany.
Nazi propaganda stressed the danger that a well-educated Jew would be a greater threat to Germany than an uneducated one. German children were being told that their former friends and classmates were unworthy of being in the same schools as them and that they were a burden and threat to Germany.
Not all Jewish children were forced out of state schools at this point. The process was not completed until 1938. Jewish children could also still attend private education and Jewish schools (which were one of the few places Jewish teachers could find work). These schools had many problems in gaining funding and in maintaining academic standards, but Jewish children were not yet completely denied an education. The key aim of the Nazis, of course, was the segregation of Jewish children from Aryan children. In the universities, many Jewish professors came under pressure from students and local government officials. Many lost their jobs. German academics willingly seized the opportunity to replace them.
Jews in the press
In October 1933, the Reich Press Law enabled the regime to apply strict censorship and to close down publications they disliked. Jews had had a prominent role in journalism and publishing in Weimar Germany, and the Press Law effectively silenced the large number of Jewish journalists and editors, many of whom were forced to leave the country. The closing down of the free press was not only a matter of laws and regulations; there were also many instances of violence and intimidation.
Background behind the Nuremberg Laws of 1935
In 1935, the Nazi regime extended the anti-Semitic legislation through the Nuremberg Laws, so called because they were announced at the annual party rally at Nuremberg. By 1935, many fanatical anti-Semites in the Nazi movement were restless because they believed Nazi persecution of the Jews had not gone far enough. They urged Hitler to move further and faster.
These radicals became the driving force behind the demands for anti-Jewish legislation. At the Nuremberg Party Rally in 1935, Hitler announced that the Communist International had declared war on Nazism and that it was time to deal once and for all with Jewish- Bolshevism.
What were the Nuremberg Laws? (2)
On 15 September, the Nuremberg Laws were introduced:
• The Reich Citizenship Law meant that someone could be a German citizen only if they had purely German blood. Jews and other non- Aryans were now classified as subjects and had fewer rights than citizens.
• The Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour outlawed marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans. It was made illegal for German citizens to marry Jews. It was also illegal for Jews to have any sexual relations with a German citizen.
The laws made the enforcing of anti-Semitism the major concern of civil servants, judges and the Gestapo.
How were the Nuremberg laws extended and to what effect?
The law was later extended to cover almost any physical contact between
Jews and Aryans. The mere fact of an allegation was enough to secure a conviction. Aryan women were pressured to leave their Jewish husbands, on the grounds that men who lost their jobs through anti-Semitic legislation would be a burden on their partners. Although some relationships continued, there was a high risk of being denounced to the Gestapo. Punishments were harsh and Jewish men convicted under the terms of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour were often re-arrested by the Gestapo after being released and then sent to concentration camps.
First Supplementary Decree on the Reich Citizenship Law and impact of lives of Jews
In November 1935, the First Supplementary Decree on the Reich Citizenship Law defined what constituted a ‘full Jew - someone who had three Jewish grandparents, or who had two Jewish grandparents and was married to a Jew. ‘Half Jews were labelled Mischlinge. The law was difficult to interpret as the definition of a Jew was based on the number of Jewish grandparents. In many cases, Jews or their Jewish parents had converted to Christianity. This confused situation meant that legal classifications were often arbitrary and inconsistent.
The position of Jews without the rights of citizenship left them with obligations to the state, but with no political rights and powerless against the Nazi bureaucracy. Possessing documentary proof of a person’s ancestry became a high priority for many people. Many non-practising Jews attempted to prove their Aryan ancestry; some acquired falsified documents on the black market. There was further discrimination by local authorities and private companies that would not employ Jews, although Mischlinge were able to continue relatively ‘normal’ lives and could even serve in the lower ranks of the military.
