Chapter 19 - the development of anti-semitic policies 1938-40

Question 1

What was the relationship like between Germany and Austria before the Anschluss?

Answer 1

• Before ww1, Austria-Hungary was the largest political entity in mainlain Europe
• It spanned from Italy to Ukraine to Transylvania
• 11 major ethnolanguage groups were scattered scross the empire
• It was a dual monarchy (2 monarchies and prime ministers that also had one emperor)
• The ethnically German proportion of the empire (based in Austria) has an affinity with Germany, seeing themselves as part of the same “volk”
• Austria and Germany were banned from unification or alliance under the terms of the treaty of Versailles (despite these being perceived as unfair and against the principles of self-determination lad out in the treaty)
• The idea of unification with Germany was very popular in Austria, in fact more popular than It was in Germamy at the time
• Many Austrians voted for pro unification parties in the 1920s
• However, in the 1930s, Austria was subjected to a facist coup, while Hitler took power in Germany, which turned many left wingers away from the idea of the Anschluss
• The government went to Mussolini who promised to defend the Austrians against Hitler

Question 2

What was the Anschluss?

Answer 2

• Hitler offered Mussolini an alliance, after which Mussolini stopped caring about Austrian independence
• Hitler told Goebbels in the late summer of 1937 that eventually Austria would have to be taken by “force”
• Hitler began threatening the Austrian Chancellor, Schushnigg, to give in to his demands and appoint nazis in positions of power
• Schushnigg held a referendum into Austrian independence
• Hitler demanded that Schushnigg hand over the Austrian government
• Schnushnigg looked to other nations for support, but they did nothing and so he resigned
• Hitler invaded Austria

Question 3

What was the effect of the Anschluss, March 1938?

Answer 3

• Although the Anschluss (union) with Austria was banned under the Treaty of Versailles, it was a long term ambition of German nationalists and was achieved in March 1938
• The Anschluss was a union between Germany and Austria into a great Germany and was one of Hitler’s key aims
• Although a plebiscite showed the majority of Austrians were opposed to union, when it became clear that Britain, France and Italy would not intervene to support Austrian independence, the Austrian government resigned and Hitler ordered the German army to invade
• The German takeover of Austris was achieved without a shot being fired and German troops were welcomed enthusiastically by the Austrian people
• This “bloodless victory” further emboldened Hitler and the Nazi leadership to pursue their ambitions in foreign policy and to adopt more radical racial policies in the Greater Germany they had created
• By 1938, therefore, Hitler was growing in confidence that Germany was ready for war if necessary and that the allied powers lacked the resolve to act against him
• After his “bloodless victory” in Austria, his next target was Czechoslovakia, which included a large german minority living in the area known as Sudetenland
• In September 1938, Hitler risked war with Britain and France over his demand for Sudetenland to be handed over to Germany
• Once again, he achieved a “bloodless victory” after Britain and France agreed to the German takeover
• In March 1939, he achieved another success with the occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia
• In August 1939, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia signed a non aggression Pact (known as the Nazi soviet pact) under which the USSR agreed not to oppose the German invasion of Poland
• This invasion followed on 1st Septemner 1939, which led to war between Germamny and Britain, and France 2 days later
• The more radical phase of Nazi anti-semitism was part of the more general radicilising of the regime’s policies, which began in the winter of 1937-38
• By late 1937, the Four year plan was beginning to improve both the economic and military situation in Germany
• Those who had been advocating these improvements (Schacht in economic policy and Blomberg and Fritsch in military) were swept aside and the balance of power in the regime shifted towards the more radical elements in the Nazi party
• Schacht had argued strongly against radical anti-semitism in the economic field because he did not want to alienate foreign investors
• Goering, in charge of the Four Year Plan, did not care about foreign opinion and was determined to remove jews from businesses as soon as possible
• The occupation of Austria in March 1938 led to a rapid acceleration of the economic campaign against Jews as the Nazis in Austria were allowed to act against Jews without constraint
• This prompted Goering to take more radical action in Germany itself

Question 4

What other anti-semitic decrees were implemented between April and November 1938?

Answer 4

• In April 1938, the Decree of Registration of Jewish property provided legislation for the confiscation of all Jewish owned property worth more than 5000 marks
• This was the starting point for the Aryanisation of Jewish property and businesses
• In April 1938, there were roughly 40,000 Jewish owened businesses in Germany
• A year later only around 8000 had avoided being closed down or aryanised
• Further legislation banned Jews from work as well as travelling salesmen, security guards, travel agents and estate agents
• As a result, 30,000 Jewish travelling salesmen lost their jobs
• In 1938, Jews also lost their entitlement to public welfare
• The increasing number of unemployed and poor Jews depended completely on the charities set up by the Jewish community, such as the Central Institution for Jewish Economic Aid
• From October 1938, the passports of German Jews had to be stamped with a large J
• The drive to make Jews easily identifiable and, at the same time, strip them of their individuality led to a new change in 1939
• Jews that were deemed to have non-jewish names had to change them – Jewish women had to take the name Sarah and men had to take the name Israel
• At this stage, Hitler turned down the suggestion of making all Jews wear a yellow star in public

Question 5

What was Kristallnacht, 9th – 10th November 1938?

Answer 5

• Between 1933 and 1938, Jews in Germany were subjected to increasing pressure of persecution through anti semitic legislation, propaganda ad the growing power of the police state
• For many jews, however, it was still possible to carry on some kind of normal existence
• However, all this changed on Reichkristallnacht (the night of the broken glass) on 9th-10th November
• Jewish homes and businesses were looted and vandalised, synagouges were set ablaze and thousands of Jews were arrested beaten up and killed
• The Kristallnacht pogrom can be viewed as an uncontrolled outpouring of anti-semtiic feelings amongst radica; elements of the nazi movement, partly supported by German public opinion
• Certainly this was the view put out by Nazi propaganda, which announced that “the national soul has boiled over”
• It is also true that some people in the Nazi hierarchy were concerned about the violence running out of control
• In the days after the pogrom, Hitler gave Hermann Goerring a coordinating role to “sort things out”
• From this point of view, it might appear that the situation in November 1938 was similar to that of April 1933, when the regime had to rein in the SA boycott
• In reality, Kristallnacht was orchestrated by the Nazi leadership and the majority of those involved in the violence and vandalism were SA and SS men who had been instructed not to wear uniforms
• The nazis seized the opportunity presented by the murder of Ernst von Rath on 9th November
• Rath was a minor German official in Paris who was killed by Herschel Grynszpan, a young Polish Jew angry at the treatment of his parents by the Nazi regime
• The killing of von Rath was more of an excuse for unleashing anti-jewish terror rather than the actual cause
• The chief instigator of the pogrom was Joseph Goebbels
• He gave instructions to the Nazi officials in the regions to organise the violence and vandalism, but to be careful to make it appear that it was not orchestrated by the Nazi party
• The 15th anniversary of the 1923 Munich Putsch was on 9th Nobemnber and Goebbels hoped to please Hitler by marking the occasion with a spectacular event
• In the violence 91 jews were killed and thousands injured
• There was looting of cash, silver, jewlery and works of art
• Damage to shops and businesses amounted to millions of marks
• Much of the vandalism was purely destructive, not for gain
• Orders from the SS directed the police not to intervene against the demonstrators and they were ordered to place 20,000-30,000 Jews in “preventive” detention
• The fire brigades watched and did nothing as synagouges burned to the ground (their only concern was to stop fires spreading to other buildings)

Question 6

What was the impact of Kristallnacht?

Answer 6

• The anti-Jewish violence of November 1938 was not received with universal approval in Germany
• Some ordinary German citizens joined in the violence, looting alongside the SA thugs who were equipped with crowbars, hammers, axes and petrol bombs, but many german people were horrified by the destruction
• In Leipzig, the American consul reported that silent crows of local people were “benumbed and aghast” at the sight of the burned-out and looted shops the next morning
• In Hamburg, a young mother, Christabel Bielenberg, witnessed similar crowds of pedestrians appalled by what they saw, mumbling quietly to eachother “its terrible”
• A british official in Berlin claimed “he had not met a single German from any walk of life who does not disapprove to some degree of what has occurred”
• All over Germany, the great majority of people understood that the violence was not spontaneous, but organised by the state
• The events of the night 9th-10th Nobember 1938 were a watershed for Jews in Nazi Germany
• Hermann Goerring pronounced “now the gloves are off”
• In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, Goering moved quickly to prevent insurance companies from paying out compensation to Jewish victims
• The Decree for the Restoration of the Street Scene in relation to Jewish business premises meant that the Jews had to pick up the costs of repairs
• The jewish community was also made to make a 1 billion Reichsmark contribution in compensation for disrupting the economy
• The Decree Excluding Jews from German Economic Life was issued on 12th November and the Aryanisation of Jewish businesses was accelerated

Question 7

What was the use of emigration under the Nazis?

Answer 7

• From the early days of the Nazi movement, Hitler had spoken of making Germany Jew free
• The culmination of this ideology was the mass killings of the holocaust but the first method of achieving it was through voluntary emigration
• As war approached and the nazi regime moved to more radical policies, the focus moved to forced emigration
• From late 1938 until the autumn of 1941, emigration was seen as the “solution to the Jewish problem” by the Nazi leadership

Question 8

What was the extent of voluntary emigration?

Answer 8

• The nazi regime allowed for jewish emigration, but strictly controlled it
• In 1937, 37,000 jews left Germany, including many leading scientists and cultural figures
• Perhaps the most prominent was Albert Einstein, world famous for his work on the theory of relativity
• Einstein described the German people as having a “psychic illness of the masses”
• Overall, 150,000 Jews voluntarily left Germany between March 1933 and November 1938
• The question of whether to stay or leave was agonising and Jews frequently disagreed among themselves about the issue of emigration
• The situation was made even more confusing by the fact that the Nazis were both encouraging the Jews to emigrate and threatening to confiscate some of their assets
• For those with skills that were easily transferable to other countries, the decision was easier – the same was true for those who had family members living in another country
• The Nazis were also willing to encourage Zionists to emigrate to Palestine, then under British rule
• The majority of German jews were not Zionists and did not choose this option
• Most german jews, especially the older generation, felt thoroughly German and wanted to stay
• Many jews believed that the Nazi persecution was just one more example of the surges of anti-semitism that had come and gone in the past
• Making the reich “jew free” through emigration was not straightforward
• It was difficult to finf foreign countries willing to accept large numbers of jews, as many countries had begun to raise barriers to limit Jewish immigration
• Even Palestine could only receive a limited number, partly because the British, who controlled it, were worried about Arab hostitlity to mass Jewish immigration
• Nazi policies were also contradictory, pressuring people to emigrate but at the same time, making it harder for them to do so by stripping them of their wealth
• The situation became more urgent after Reichkristallnacht
• Many jews now desperately sought safe refuge from the obvious dangers they faced in Germany
• Jewish parents were particularly keen to get their children out of Germany and to safe countries
• For example, 9000 Jewish children were sent to Britain in 1938-39

Question 9

What was the extent of controlled emigration?

Answer 9

• Controlling emigration was a key policy aim of the Nazi regime, not least because it enabled massive economic exploitation
• After the Anschluss in March 1938, Reinhard Heydrich used Austria as a laboratory for developing SS policy
• The Central Office for Jewish emigration was set up and 45,000 of Austria’s 180,000 Jews were forced to emigrate
• The illegal seizure of Jewish property was used to fund the emigration of poorer jews
• In January 1939, Heydrich took charge of the Reich office for Jewish emigration, with the task of promoting the emigration of Jews “by every possible means”
• Goering’s claims to have jurisdiction over Jewish affairs were bypassed
• The SD set about amalgamating all Jewish organisations into a single “Reich association of the Jews in Germany”
• The organisation was modelled on methods used in Austria by the SS emigration expert Adolf Eichmann in 1938
• This system suited the Nazis because organisational difficulties had to be dealth with by the Jews themselves

Question 10

What was the impact of the war against Poland?

Answer 10

• The situation changed with the outbreak of war in September 1939
• The german conquest of western Poland provided the regime with new territories in which Jews could be settled
• It also brought many more Jews under Nazi rule
• The emphasis moved away from forced emigration to deportations and the “resettlement” of Jews
• From September 1939, nazi race policies were shaped by war
• Nazi anti-semitism had already become more blatant and extreme by 1938, but it was war that brought about the final radicalisation of race policies
• War provided:
• A natural emergency that enabled them to act with more dictatorial power and in greater secrecy
• A propaganda machine to whip up patriotism and hatred of Germany’s enemies
• New territories to the Reich under the expanding administrative power of the SS
• A way for the Germanisation of the occupied territories in Poland and a “jew free” Nazi empire
• The conquest of Poland carved the country up in 3 separate areas
• Eastern Poland was occupied by the USSR, in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939
• The western parts of Poland, Upper Silesia, West Prussia and the Warthegau were incorporated into the Germam Reich and placed under the rule of the Nazi gauliters
• The area between was designated the “general government” of Poland, under a Nazi governor, Hans Frank
• The nazi master plan was to create Lebensraum for ethnic Germans by driving Poles and Jews out of West Prussia and the Warthegau so that the “empty” lands could be completely “Germanised’
• However, the conquest of Poland also enormously increased the number of Jews under Nazi control
• According to the official consensus in Poland in 1931, there were 3,115,000 Jews in Poland, of whom 1,901,000 (61%) were in the territory occupied by Germany at the end of 1939
• These Polish Jews were different from the assimilated Jews in Germany
• They were in the main poor and more orthodox
• In appearance, they fitted the Nazi stereotype of racially inferior untermenschen
• Their sheer numbers posed difficult strategic problems for the Nazi regime
• The nazis intended to use the General Government districts as a dumping ground for poles and jews displaced from the areas that were to be coloised by ethnic germans
• At the end of September, Hitler informed Alfred Rosenberg, his minister for the eastern occupied territories, that all Jews, including those from the reich, were to be moved to the area between the River Vistula and the River Bug
• On the same day, Heydrich reported that “in the area between Warsaw and Lublin” a reservation, or “Reich ghetto” was established to contain the deported Poles and Jews
• The nazis deliberately intended conditions in the reservation to be bad so that most of the people deported there would die
• In October 1939, the Gestapo Chief Heinrich Muller instructed Afolf Eichmann, the Head of the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration, to arrange the deportation of 70,000-80,000 Jews from the district of Katowice in Germanised Poland
• Eichmann quickly expanded this to include Czech Jews from the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia
• On top of this, Hitler demanded the deportation of 300,000 Jews from Germany and the removal of all Jews from Vienna
• Although these orders were given, it would prove impossible to implement them because the problems of dealing with Jews already in Poland were so pressing
• Between November 1939 and February 1940, the SS attempted to deport one million people eastwards – 550,000 were Jews
• They were transported to the General Government where they faced terrible conditions
• The fact that so mahy people were entering this area meant that the authorities there could not possibly cope with the mass deportations of Western Jews from Germany and Austria at the same time
• Governor Hans framk complained vigorously to his superiors in Berlin that the General Government could not take any more Jews

Question 11

What were the key nazi policies in Poland?

Answer 11

• In September 1939, Poland was invaded and occupied by 2 powers: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, acting in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentop Pact. Germany acquired 48.8% of the former polish territory.
• On the 8th of march 1940, the Polish decrees were announced which were used as a legal basis for foreign labourers in Germany. The decrees required Poles to wear indetifying purple P’s on their clothing, made them subject to a curfew and banned them from using public transportation. Sexual relations between Germans and poles were forbidden as race defilement under the death penalty
• By the end of 1940, at least 325,000 Poles from annexed lands were forced to abandon most of their property and forcibly resettled in the General Government
• The expulsions continued in 1941 with another 45,000 Poles forced to move eastwards, but following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the expulsions slowed down, as more and more trains were diverted for military logistics, rather than being made available for population transfers

Question 12

What was the Madagscar Plan?

Answer 12

• The idea of removing Europe’s Jews to the island of Madagascar was first promoted by French anti-semites in the late 1930s
• At that time, it was merely a wild idea with little or no prospect of becoming reality
• The rapid conquest of France by German armies during May to June 1940 changed the situation
• The Foreign Ministry’s department for Internal German Affairs proposed that the island of Madagascar should be taken away from France to become a german mandate
• Vichy France would be responsible for resettling the French population there of approximately 25,000 so as to make Madagascar available for a solution to the “Jewish question”
• The nazis planned to send 4 million jews to Madagascar
• In the first phase, farmers, construction workers and artisans up to the age of 45 would be sent out to get the island ready to receive the mass influx of Jews
• The sale of remaining jewish property in Europe would finance the initial costs
• As with the ghettos being established in Poland at this time, the living conditions in Madagascar were intended to be harsh, leading in the long term to the elimination of Jews by “natural wastage”
• Since 1936, SS experts at the RSHA (Reich Security Head Office) led by Adolf Eichmann had been working on schemes for mass emigration of Jews to Palestine. This involved remarkable cooperation between SS racists and the leaders of the Zionist community in Germany
• However, there were huge practical problems about Palestine, which was a small territory under British rule and not so far from Europe
• Madagascar was far away, offered indefinitely more space and there was no serious political problems to get around
• There was only a short period of time, however, in the late summer and early autumn of 1940, when the Madagascar plan seemed viable
• Germany’s failure to end the war with Britain, either by military victory or a pace agreement, meant that the British royal navy would be able to disrupt the mass transportation of Jews by sea to Madagascar
• Attention turned back to the east
• By October 1940, there was already planning for Operation Barbarossa
• The Madagascar Plan was shelved in favour of the plan to send Europe’s Jews deep into Siberia, “east of the urals”, once the forthcoming conquest of the USSR was complete
• What the Madagascar plan reveals about nazis intentions towards the “Jewish question” in the 1940s is open to debate
• On the one hands, its plausible that it proves the decision to exterminate all Jews had not been made at this point, that all kinds of different plans were under consideration, and that the “final solution” was still not inevitable
• On the other hand, the driving force behind the Madagascar Plan was the determination to remove the Jews from Europe to some reservation where they would soleyly die off through harsh conditioms
• The plan could be regarded as proof that the long term goal of sending the Jews to die somewhere far away was fixed, even if the exact location was not