Everyday Anti-Semitism in Pre-war Nazi Germany: The Popular Bases (Part A)
Source: Michael H. Kater, Yad Vashem Studies XVI (Jerusalem, 1984), pp. 129-159.
The thesis that manifestations of "anti-Semitism" in the Third Reich were largely a result of manipulations by Nazi politicians rather than the reflection of true sentiments among the German people appears firmly established nowadays. This thesis treats the course of German history as being devoid of a specific anti-Semitic tradition and regards what authentic symptoms of anti-Semitism there were, before and during Hitler's rise to power, as merely incidental 1 . One might well agree with Hajo Holborn's suggestion that Hitler, the supreme propagandist of his Nazi Party (NSDAP) and of the Third Reich, conjured up anti-Semitism by arousing hatred within the Germans, in order to further the regime's ultimate goals. But then one cannot, like Eva Reichmann, altogether discount pre-existing notions of Judeo-phobia among the German people and, by implication, absolve them of their complicity in the Holocaust 2 . Since the appearance of Reichmann's and Holborn's writings, certain younger scholars, while indubitably presenting cogent arguments, have overemphasised the degree of high-level Nazi management of anti-Jewish action. Conversely, they have downplayed the spontaneity of such action and its general popularity with the German public. In so doing, however, they have come close to mis-comprehending the social basis of anti-Semitism in the Third Reich and to ignoring its important historical antecedents 3 .
In this essay these antecedents will be briefly reviewed, in order to document the continuity of anti-Semitism in German history primarily as a social phenomenon. Even though the factor of manipulation of the anti-Semitic issue by the Nazi rulers from 1933 to 1939, for instance in the guise of anti-Jewish "legislation," cannot be denied, more attention will be paid to the grey zones of overlapping responsibilities of a semi-legal and semiprivate nature, as in cases of seemingly spontaneous pogroms by the Stormtroopers (SA), which were witnessed by neutral and often astonished bystanders. A further focus of this paper will be arbitrary, hostile activities visited upon the Jews by civilians or nonofficial institutions after 1933 that must be seen as a consequence of decades, if not centuries, of anti-Semitism in Germany.
No one could seriously dispute the importance of anti-Semitism as a social, economic, and political force of great vitality in the history of Germany, more precisely: in the history of coexistence of Germans and Jews since the late Middle Ages 4 . In the centuries following the Protestant Reformation German Jews were able to improve their lot slowly, although they had to wait for the Enlightenment and for Napoleonic rule in order to experience real emancipatory progress. In the nineteenth century they gradually received full political, if not full social, rights. Significantly, the rate of Jewish integration into German society was not commensurate with the degree of political equalisation - a condition that still distinguished this minority from other Germans 5 . As George L. Mosse, Peter G.J. Pulzer, and others have indicated, the fate of German Jews again deteriorated at the dawn of the twentieth century, as the new factor of ideology that claimed to set the Jews anthropologically apart from Gentile Germans came into play. Perhaps one of the most negative side-effects of the budding modern democracy in those decades was that anti-Semitism, as a novel racist creed, could now be articulated with impunity at various political levels. Due to the efforts of such politically influential men as Heinrich von Treitschke, Max Hugo, Liebermann von Sonnenberg, and Heinrich Class, anti-Jewish prejudices once more had become well entrenched within German society by the time of World War I 6 . For many German Jews the phase of the Weimar Republic from 1918/19 to 1933 promised to complete the process of emancipation begun so prodigiously before 1914 7 . At the outset, this impression surely seemed justified, especially when the Republic was compared with Eastern European countries 8 . However, precisely because the Republic became associated, in the mind of the German public, with increased liberties for Jews, it provoked further Judeo-phobia. Hence, one can argue that there was a continuation of previous anti-Semitic trends, notably the ideologically motivated strains of the post-Bismarckian era, facets of which eventually merged easily with the pronouncedly virulent Jew hatred of the Nazis 9 . Despite the fact that Jewish soldiers took full part in military activities during WW I, they were sometimes discriminated against in the armed forces, and the anti-Semitic German press characterised German Jews as war shirkers who would stay behind the front lines in order to engage in war-profiteering 10 . Anti-Semitism at the grass-roots level became manifest in the fall of 1918, when angry mobs in Munich and Berlin physically attacked Jews during the turmoil of the revolution 11 , and in 1923/24, when in several areas of the Reich, including the capital, Jewish shopkeepers were manhandled and even killed 12 . The concentration of Jews in certain occupations (e.g., cattle-vending and tailoring within the lower middle class, and legal and medical practice within the upper class) and their preponderance in urban locations like Berlin, Frankfurt am Stain, Hamburg, and Breslau, facilitated random attacks on and wanton discrimination against them throughout the Weimar Republic 13 . In her recently published memoirs, the German-Jewish physician Dr. Kaete Frankenthal writes that in the early days of the Republic she was ordered an opportunity to engage in postdoctoral studies at the University of Greifswald (hardly a mainstay of anti-Semitism). Yet she did not accept the position, as she had doubts whether she would be tolerated there sufficiently to enable her to finish her studies 14 . Anti-Semitism, with all its well-known signs,' writes a surviving eyewitness, the German-Jewish high-school teacher Dr. Heinemann Stern, fully showed itself at a time when Hitler and his movement were still the object of curiosity or of casual jokes.' 15 In the Weimar Republic, many of these Jew-haters turned to National Socialism because it offered them an
outlet for their anti-Semitism 16 . Historically, many privately or spontaneously executed acts of anti-Semitism during the early years of the Third Reich can be linked to precedents perpetrated by vicious anti-Semites in the republican era. Hence in Hanover, at a public meeting in July 1922, after local Nazi leader Gustav Seifert had blamed all of Germany's ills on the influx of Eastern Jews, his remarks were loudly applauded by the audience 17 . The Nazis formulated a specifically anti-Jewish platform as part of their February 1920 program and toward the end of the Republic they reiterated that in a Third Reich Jews would be deprived of their rights by legal process.' 18 They consistently fanned the flames of anti-Semitism by the fabrication and distribution of hate propaganda, especially after 1929. Their tirades were ingeniously contrived to cater to all manner of German groups, whatever their anti-Semitic motives. Many German women, for instance, customarily bore grudges against Jews for religious or aesthetic reasons, so the Nazis tried to reach them on those grounds 19 . Since in some areas of Germany, predominantly the small towns and rural districts, the myth of Jewish ritual killings of young Christian boys was still given credence, Der Stuermer, the weekly paper of Nuremberg Jew-baiter Julius Streicher, published spurious evidence on Jewish child-murders that was received from as far afield as East Prussia 20 .
Many Germans of the Weimar Republic resented the Jews as economic rivals, be they doctors or lawyers within the upper segments of German society 21 , or shopkeepers and tradesmen in the lower middle class 22 . The latter found a particularly accommodating political champion in Hitler. The Fuehrer and his lieutenants in turn exploited the antisemitism of carpenters, greengrocers, and their likes. The durability of this alliance must be regarded as one of the chief reasons for the success of the Nazi movement until 1933. Examples of this mutually complementary relationship are plentiful. In January 1928 a paperhanger from Rheinish Krefeld sent a linocut he had made to the regional Nazi Party headquarters; it depicted a National-Socialist knight galloping over a Jewish dragon 23 .
Three years later East Prussian tobacco vendors were said to be joining the Nazis because of the competition in the trade by "Eastern Galician Jews." 24
It must be said that the Nazis appealed to these feelings with a great deal of sensitivity, and it is entirely possible that with their clever slogans and specious but effective argumentation they inculcated anti-Semitic resentment among those members of the lower middle class who had formerly been neutral or impervious. A case in point is the well-known Nazi campaign against German chain stores, many of which were indeed owned by Jews, in the midst of the Great Depression in December 1930. The Nazi allegation, directed toward Gentile shopkeepers and corner-store proprietors, that "Jewish department stores are destroying the retail trade," not only fell on the open ears of those who had started to suffer from economic setbacks and were, typically, blaming the Jews already, but it may also have reached and converted to Nazism those who were afraid of running into trouble in the future. Squarely, the Nazis told them who would be responsible on all counts: the Jews. Hence new anti-Semites could easily have been reared 25 . It was at about this time, after the Nazis had made astonishing gains in the September 1930 elections, that the first serious anti-Jewish pogrom broke out in Berlin, orchestrated, it is true, by the Nazi Wolf Heinrich Graf von Helldorf, but staged by people who, if they were National Socialists, certainly had not been compelled to join Hitler's movement by anything but their own decision, however that was motivated 26 .
During the early days of the Third Reich the German Jews were not persecuted within the framework of a rationally conceived scheme nor according to a secret master plan, although Hitler's instinctive antipathy to them always remained, implicitly, the ideal guideline. After January 30, 1933, Nazi policy against the Jews came to resemble a pattern of interactions between private or personal initiative, semi-legal activities (in which the avant-garde of the Nazi Party, notably the SA, were often pitted against the more temperate officials of the state), and, Finally, governmental legislation. Such legislation was introduced relatively haphazardly and appeared to touch only on major aspects of what was officiously called the "Jewish Question," but it was intended to be synchronised with the less official action. Evidently Hitler and his cronies hoped that such action would in itself suffice to motivate the German Jews to leave the country. Paradoxically, when popular and official persecutions did begin, the opportunities for Jewish emigration abroad were progressively curtailed until, in the end, Hitler and his followers consolidated and carried out the plan of the Final Solution 27 .
Prior to the outbreak of World War II, official anti-Semitic policy, which not only lacked the sanction of populist initiative but transpired entirely beyond the control and even knowledge of the common people, was implemented at two levels: that of the state and of the party. This distinction is important, because activities at the party level -at least potentially -allowed for the participation of "Aryan" civilians and thus could provide visible proof of the kind of popular, spontaneous anti-Semitism which the Nazis were always at great pains to demonstrate, particularly to foreign critics. There were two main ordinances at the governmental level, and two additional lines of action at the party level that were government-inspired and officially supported. The first governmental law against German Jews was the one regarding the "Reconstitution of the Civil Service" of April 7, 1933, and it was later followed by the Nuremberg race legislation of September 15, 1935 28 . The anti-Jewish machinations instigated by agencies of the NSDAP consisted of the boycott of April 1, 1933, and the events of the so-called Reichskristallnacht of November 9 to 10, 1938, about which much has already been written 29 . In both these scenarios, the main protagonists were members of the predatory SA. Taking his cue from these Brown Shirts, who had been molesting Jews - especially those with small and medium-sized business - indiscriminately since the political take over at the end of January 1933, Hitler, while trying to ensure full control over the SA, decided to give them free reign in the boycott of Jewish businesses and offices on April 1, 1933, thereby attaining several goals at once. First, he could teach German Jews a harsh lesson by letting them know that his brand of anti-Semitism was not trivial but serious 30 . Second, he was able, momentarily at least, to placate the impatient Brown Shirts who were increasingly crying out for the fulfilment of a "second" Nazi revolution; at the same time he could attempt to contain them. And third, he could utilise these initial anti-Jewish measures to gain a sense of future direction for himself, in terms of how far the German people would be prepared to go, the Jewish reaction with a view to emigration, and the technical and logistic aspects of the implementation of anti-Semitic policy.
References:
1. The first view has been succinctly stated by Thomas Nipperdey, ΓÇ£1933 und Kontinuitaet der deutschen Geschichte,ΓÇ¥ Historische Zeitschrift 227, 1978: 98. An example of the second view is in William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town 1930ΓÇô1935 , Chicago, 1965, p. 77, who writes that the inhabitants of the small North German town of Northeim (ΓÇ£ThalburgΓÇ¥) were drawn to anti-Semitism because they were drawn to Nazism, not the other way around.'
2. Hajo Holborn, ΓÇ£Origins and Political Character of Nazi Ideology,ΓÇ¥ Political Science Quarterly 79, 1964: 546; Eva G. Reichmann, Die Flucht in den Hass: Die Ursachen der deutschen Judenkatastrophe , Frankfurt am Main, n.d., especially pp. 279ΓÇô82. For a recent, sympathetic criticism of Reichmann's view, see Michael R. Marrus, ΓÇ£The Theory and Practice of Anti-Semitism,ΓÇ¥ Commentary , August 1982: 38.
3. See especially Ian Kershaw, ΓÇ£Antisemitismus und Volksmeinung: Reaktionen auf die JudenverfolgungΓÇ¥ (hereafterΓÇôKershaw, ΓÇ£Antisemitismus und VolksmeinungΓÇ¥) in Martin Broszat and Elke Froelich, eds., Bayern in der NS-Zeit II: Herrschaft und Gesellschaft im Konflikt, Teil A , Munich and Vienna, 1979, pp. 291ΓÇô308; idem , ΓÇ£The Persecution of the Jews and German Popular Opinion in the Third Reich,ΓÇ¥ Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 26, 1981: 261ΓÇô89; idem , ΓÇ£Alltaegliches und Ausseralltaegliches: Ihre Bedeutung fuer die Volksmeinung 1933ΓÇô1939,ΓÇ¥ Detlev Peukert and Juergen Reulecke, eds., Die Reihen fest geschlossen: Beitraege zur Geschichte des Alltags unterm Nationalsozialismus , Wuppertal, 1981 (hereafterΓÇôPeukert and Reulecke), pp. 273ΓÇô92. Kershaw also underestimates anti-Semitism as a factor in the preΓÇô1933 rise of National Socialism, in his ΓÇ£Ideology, Propaganda, and the Rof the Nazi Party,ΓÇ¥ in Peter D. Stachura, ed., The Nazi Machtergreifung , London, 1983, pp. 167ΓÇô68. To a lesser extent Falk Wiesemann's remarks in M. Broszat et al., eds., Bayern in der NS-Zeit: Soziale Lage und politisches Verhalten der Bevoelkerung im Spiegel vertraulicher Berichte , Munich and Vienna, 1977, p. 430. Such interpretation is supported, from the contemporary view of the 1930s, by judgements in the reports of the exiled SPD. See, for example, Deutschland-Berichte der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Sopade) 1934ΓÇô1940 , Salzhausen and Frankfurt am Main, 1970, 2 (1935): 925; and ibid. 7 (1940): 260. A balanced assessment of the problem is given in Lawrence D. Stokes, ΓÇ£The German People and the Destruction of the European Jews,ΓÇ¥ Central European History 6, 1973 (hereaftΓÇôStokes), especially pp. 173ΓÇô74, 182, 190.
4. See the relevant chapters in Max L. Margolis and Alexander Marx, A History of the Jewish People , New York, 1974. See also Wanda Kampmann, Deutsche und Juden: Studien zur Geschichte des deutschen Judentums , Heidelberg, 1963 (hereafterΓÇôKampmann), pp. 13ΓÇô34; Leo Sievers, Juden in Deutschland: Die Geschichte einer 2000jaehrigen Tragoedie , Hamburg, 1979 (hereafterΓÇôSievers), pp. 21ΓÇô56.
5. Reinhard Ruerup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus: Studien zur ΓÇ£JudenfrageΓÇ¥ der buergerlichen Gesellschaft , Goettingen, 1975 (hereafterΓÇôRuerup), pp. 11ΓÇô73; Kampmann, pp. 35ΓÇô224; Sievers, pp. 83ΓÇô224. For Stuttgart, see Maria Zelzer, Weg und Schicksal der Stuttgarter Juden: Ein Gedenkbuch , Stuttgart, n.d. (hereafterΓÇôZelzer), pp. 20ΓÇô60. For the example of Gerson von Bleichroeder, see Fritz Stern, Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichroeder, and the Buildingof the German Empire , New York, 1977 (hereafterΓÇôF. Stern), pp. 461ΓÇô93; for the example of Albert Ballin, see Lamar Cecil, Albert Ballin: Business and Politics in Imperial Germany 1889ΓÇô1918 , Princeton, 1967, pp. 3ΓÇô142.
6. George L. Mosse, Germans and Jews: The Right, the Left, and the Search for a ΓÇ£Third ForceΓÇ¥ in Pre-Nazi Germany , New York, 1971, pp. 3ΓÇô76; Peter G. J. Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria , New York, 1964 (hereafterΓÇôPulzer), pp. 76ΓÇô126. See also Ruerup, pp. 74ΓÇô114; F. Stern, pp. 494ΓÇô531; Gordon A. Craig, Modern Germany 1866ΓÇô1945 , New York and Oxford, 1978, pp. 83ΓÇô85, 204; Richard S. Levy, The Downfall of the Anti-Semitic Political Parties in Imperial Germany , New Haven and London, 1975; and the preΓÇô1914 chapters in Brewster S. Chamberlain, ΓÇ£The Enemy on the Right: The Alldeutsche Verband in the Weimar Republic, 1918ΓÇô1926,ΓÇ¥ PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, 1972.
7. Donald L. Niewyck, The Jews in Weimar Germany , Baton Rouge and London, 1980 (hereafterΓÇôNiewyck), especially p. 12; Egmont Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik und die Juden im Ersten Weltkrieg , Goettingen, 1969 (hereafterΓÇôZechlin), pp. 554ΓÇô55; Heinemann Stern, Warum hassen sie uns eigentlich? Juedisches Leben zwischen den Kriegen , ed. Hans Ch. Meyer, Duesseldorf, 1970 (hereafterΓÇôH. Stern), p. 163; Wolfgang Scheffler, Judenverfolgung im Dritten Reich 1933ΓÇô1945 , 2nd ed., Berlin, 1964, p. 15.
8. Undoubtedly, this is why many Russian and Polish Jews came to Germany after 1918, even though some of them went on to France and the USA. See S. Adler-Rudel, Ostjuden in Deutschland, 1880ΓÇô1940: Zugleich eine Geschichte der Organisationen, die sie betreuten , Tuebingen, 1959, pp. 64ΓÇô150. For Heilbronn, see Hans Franke, Geschichte und Schicksal der Juden in Heilbronn: Vom Mittelalter bis zur Zeit der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgungen (1050ΓÇô1945) , Heilbronn, 1963 (hereafterΓÇôFranke), pp. 106ΓÇô107.
9. This is ably shown in Monika Richarz's introduction to the book she edited, Juedisches Leben in Deutschland: Selbstzeugnisse zur Sozialgeschichte 1918ΓÇô1945 , Stuttgart, 1982, esp. pp. 28ΓÇô30, 37. Also see first-hand accounts by survivors, ibid., pp. 77ΓÇô227. Further, see the balanced judgements rendered in a volume of essays edited by Werner E. Mosse, Entscheidungsjahr 1932: Zur Judenfrage in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik , 2nd ed., Tuebingen, 1966 (hereafterΓÇôW. E. Mosse). The blending of pro-Nazi and Nazi impulses of anti-Semitism is most ably described in Niewyck, pp. 46ΓÇô54.
10.Pulzer, p. 289; Zechlin, pp. 517ΓÇô53; H. Stern, pp. 96ΓÇô97, 106; Paul Sauer, Die juedischen Gemeinden in Wuerttemberg und Hohenzollern: Denkmale, Geschichte, Schicksale , Stuttgart, 1966 (hereafterΓÇôSauer), p. 196.
11.Theodor Abel, Why Hitler Came To Power , New York, 1966; first printing, 1936, p. 156; George L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism , New York, 1978, pp. 177ΓÇô78.
12.Julius Wissmann, ΓÇ£Zur Geschichte der Juden in Wuerttemberg 1924ΓÇô1939ΓÇ¥ (hereafterΓÇôWissmann) in Sauer, p. 200; Max P. Birnbaum, Staat und Synagoge 1918ΓÇô1938: Eine Geschichte des Preussischen Landesverbandes juedischer Gemeinden (1918ΓÇô1938) , Tuebingen, 1981 (hereafterΓÇôBirnbaum), p. 85.
13.For the demography and social conditions of German Jews, see Heinrich Silbergleit, Die Bevoelkerungs- und Berufsverhaeltnisse der Juden im Deutschen Reich, Berlin, 1930; Esra Bennathan, ΓÇ£Die demographische und wirtschaftliche Struktur der Juden,ΓÇ¥ in W. E. Mosse, pp. 87ΓÇô131; Gerhard Schulz, Aufstieg des Nationalsozialismus: Krise und Revolution in Deutschland , Frankfurt am Main, 1975 (hereafterΓÇôSchulz), pp. 615ΓÇô17. As an impressionistic account of Jews in Frankfurt, see Valentin Senger, No. 12 Kaiserhofstrasse , New York, 1980, pp. 9ΓÇô53.
14.Kaete Frankental, Der dreifache Fluch: Juedin, Intellektuelle, Sozialistin: Lebenserinnerungen einer Ärztin in Deutschland und im Exil , Frankfurt am Main, 1981 (hereafter–Frankethal), p. 99. Also see the examples in G. L. Mosse, Final Solution , pp. –79; Niewyck, pp. 55–81; Franke, p. 110; Stern, pp. 104–05, 163–80; Michael H. Kater, Studentenfreundschaft und Rechtsradikalismu in Deutschland 1918–1933 : Eine sozialgeschichtliche Studie zur Bildungskrise in der Weimarer Republik , Hamburg, 1975, pp. 146–47; Franz Hundsnurscher and Gerhard Taddey, Die Juedischen Gemeinden in Baden: Denkmale, Geschichte, Schicksale , Stuttgart, 1968, p. 22. In more general terms: Zechlin, p. 565; Alex Bein, Die Judenfrage: Biographie eines Weltproblems , Stuttgart, 1980 (hereafter–Bein), Vol. 1, p. 371.
15.H. Stern, p. 168. As in this case, all translations of original German texts into English are by the author.
16.This connection is explained in Michael H. Kater, The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of Members and Leaders , 1919ΓÇô1945 , Cambridge, Mass., 1983 (hereafterΓÇôKater, Nazi Party ), pp. 19ΓÇô71. See also Peter H. Merkl, Political Violence under the Swastika: 581 Early Nazis , Princeton, 1975, passim.
17.John Farquharson, ΓÇ£The NSDAP in Hanover and Lower Saxony 1921ΓÇô26,ΓÇ¥ Journal of Contemporary History , Vol. 8, No. 4, October 1973, p. 110.
18.Niewyck, p. 53, Karl A. Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy Toward German Jews 1933ΓÇô1939 , Urbana, Ill., 1979 (hereafterΓÇôSchleunes), p. 70.
19.See the reference to Unsittlichkeit (immorality) in an anti-Jewish flyer, ΓÇ£Wohnungsnot und Juden-Einwanderung,ΓÇ¥ n.d. [appr. 1929], Staatliches Archivlager Goettingen, Gauarchiv Ostpreussen, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, microfilms Niedersaechsisches Staatsarchiv Bueckeburg (hereafterΓÇôSAG), SF 6826, GA/101. Examples of rabid anti-Semitism among German women of the upper classes are to be found in Guida Diehl, Die Deutsche Frau und der Nationalsozialismus , Eisenach, 1933, pp. 15, 56; Hildegard Passow, ΓÇ£Juedische Greuelpropaganda,ΓÇ¥ Informationsdienst der NSF (Deutscher Frauenorden), No. 11, Munich, April 8, 1933, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford, NSDAP Hauptarchiv, microfilm 13/254.
20.Correspondence of Der Stuermer with NSDAP chapter Koenigsberg, December 1932, SAG, SF 6818, GAΓÇô29.
21.See Kater, Nazi Party , pp. 67ΓÇô68, 110ΓÇô11.
22.The anti-Semitism of the lower-middle-class members in the Weimar Republic is treated in Heinrich August Winkler, Mittelstand, Demokratie und Nationalsozialismus: Die politische Entwicklung von Handwerk und Kleinhandel in der Weimarer Republik , Cologne, 1972 (see, for instance, p. 177). See also Schulz, p. 618.
23.Enclosure with letter from Beil to Gauleitung Ruhr, Krefeld, January 14, 1928, Hauptstaatsarchiv Duesseldorf, RW 23/NSDAP, GauleitungRuhr.
24.Brettschneider to Heidrich, Elbing, January 23, 1931, SAG, SF 6819, GAΓÇô35.
25.The Nazis argued wrongly, but, according to lower-middle-class shopkeeper mentality, utterly convincingly, when they said: Cheap merchandise, manufactured under the personal direction of Jews, is flooding the Christmas market. The golden calf is playing the role of the Christ child! With typically Jewish cynicism one rabbi says: Too bad that Mary did not bear two Jesus boys. Had she done so, our people could now double their Christmas sales!!!' (flyer, ΓÇ£Die Christus ans Kreuz schlugen, machen das Weihnachts-Geschaeft!ΓÇ¥ Koenigsberg, n.d. [shortly before December 12, 1930], SAG, SF 6826, GAΓÇô101). See also Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundation of Fascism in Germany, 1919ΓÇô1933 , Chapel Hill and Lon, 1983.
26.Frankenthal, p. 237. See also Franke, p. 108; Birnbaum, p. 186.
27.The background for the above is in Hans Mommsen, ΓÇ£Der nationalsozialistische Polizeistaat und die Judenverfolgung vor 1938,ΓÇ¥ Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte 10, 1962: 68ΓÇô77; Schleunes; Uwe Dietrich Adam, Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich , Duesseldorf, 1979 (hereafterΓÇôAdam); and Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of European Jews , Chicago, 1967, pp. 18ΓÇô105. Also see Mommsen, ΓÇ£Die Realisierung des Utopischen: Die Endloesung der Judenfrage' im Dritten Reich,'ΓÇ¥ Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9, 1983: 381ΓÇô420.
28.Partial text is in Gerd Ruehle, Das Dritte Reich: Dokumentarische Darstellung des Aufbaues der Nation , Berlin, 1933, pp. 112ΓÇô13, and cf. p. 145. The most exhaustive interpretation of this law is still that in Hans Mommsen, Beamtentum im Dritten Reich: Mit ausgewaehlten Quellen zur nationalsozialistischen Beamtenpolitik , Stuttgart, 1966, pp. 39ΓÇô61. See also Adam, pp. 51ΓÇô64. See Gerd Ruehle, Das Dritte Reich: Dokumentarische Darstellung des Aufbaues der Nation: Das dritte Jahr 1935 , Berlin, 1935, pp. 254ΓÇô58, 277ΓÇô82; Schleunes, pp. 120ΓÇô32; Adam, pp. 114ΓÇô44.
29.A contemporary Nazi interpretation of Reichskristallnacht and its consequences is provided in Gerd Ruehle, Das Dritte Reich: Dokumentarische Darstellung des Aufbaues der Nation: Das sechste Jahr 1938 , Berlin, 1938, pp. 394ΓÇô404. Critically and in the context of other official anti-Semitic measures: Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National Socialism , New York and Washington, 1972, pp. 366ΓÇô68; Hermann Graml, Der 9. November 1938: ΓÇ£Reichskristallnacht,ΓÇ¥ Bonn, 1958; Helmut Genschel, Die Verdraengung der Juden aus der Wirtschaft im Dritten Reich , Goettingen, 1966, pp. 177ΓÇô217; Schleunes, pp. 214ΓÇô54; Adam, pp. 204ΓÇô16. For local examples of how the destruction was organised see, in the case of Mannheim, Hans Joachim Fliedner, Die Judenverfolgung in Mannheim 1933ΓÇô1945 , Stuttgart, 1971 (hereafterΓÇôFliedner), pp. 199ΓÇô204; in the case of Stuttgart, Zelzer, pp. 194ΓÇô96.
30.In 1933 and even later, there was a sizeable number of German Jews who either did not believe Hitler's judeo-phobic utterances or ΓÇô worse ΓÇô pretended to identify themselves with them by pointing their fingers at ΓÇ£badΓÇ¥ Germans or allegedly inferior Eastern Jews. For the period before April 1, 1933, see the evidence in Peter Hanke, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Muenchen zwischen 1933ΓÇô1945 , Munich, 1967 (hereafterΓÇôHanke), pp. 106ΓÇô108; Frankenthal, p. 235; entry for March 28, 1933, in Erich Ebermayer, Denn heute gehoert uns Deutschland. Persoenliches und politisches Tagebuch: Von der Machtergreifung bis zum 31. Dezember 1935 , Hamburg and Vienna, 1959, p. 49. See also Fliedner, p. 45; Carl J. Rheins, ΓÇ£Deutscher Vortrupp, Gefolgschaft deutscher Juden 1933ΓÇô1935,ΓÇ¥ Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 26, 1981: 207ΓÇô29; Hans-Joachim Schoeps, ΓÇ£Bereit fuer DeutschlandΓÇ¥: Der Patriotismus deutscher Juden und der Nationalsozialismus: Fruehe Schriften 1930 bis 1939: Eine historische Dokumentation , Berlin, 1970, pp. 9ΓÇô166; example Toni Ullstein in Hermann Zondek, Auf festem Fusse: Erinnerungen eines juedischen Klinikers , Stuttgart, 1973, p. 171. Especially telling is the telegram by the Jewish Centralverein functionary Dr. Julius Brodnitz to Hitler [Berlin], March 23 [1933]: ΓÇ£Zusammenstellung der Schritte, die der Centralverein Deutscher Staatsbuerger Juedischen Glaubens e.V. gegen die Greuelpropaganda des Auslandes [!] unternommen hat,ΓÇ¥ n.d. [1933], SAG, SF 6818, GAΓÇô29. For Goering's role in this see Birnbaum, p. 225, n. 3. The examples of the Jewish Professor Otto Lubarsch, at the medical faculty of the University of Berlin, and (honorary) Professor Paul Nikolaus Cossmann, in Munich, are particularly tragic. Both were hyper-nationalistic and on the verge of anti-Semitism. Lubarsch greeted Hitler's rise to power with enthusiasm. He died in April 1933 before the Nazis could touch him, but Cossmann was deported and killed in Theresienstadt (1942). On Lubarsch, see Walter Stoeckel, Erinnerungen eines Frauenarztes , ed. Hans Borgelt, Munich, 1966, p. 180; Otto Lubarsch, Ein bewegtes Gelehrtenleben: Erinnerungen und Erlebnisse, Kaempfe und Gedanken , Berlin, 1931, pp. 539ΓÇô68. On Cossmann, see George F. W. Hallgarten, Als die Schatten fielen: Erinnerungen vom Jahrhundertbeginn zur Jahrtausendwende , Frankfurt am Main, 1969, pp. 67ΓÇô76; Else Behrend-Rosenfeld, Ich stand nicht allein: Erlebnisse einer Juedin in Deutschland 1933ΓÇô1944 , 2nd ed., Frankfurt am Main
