The Minister of Economics and the Expulsion of the Jews from German Economy (Part B)
Source: Albert Fischer, International conference: German Society's Responses to Nazi Anti-Jewish Policy 1933-1941, Yad Vashem, 10-13 February 1995.
Moreover, an essential point is that the fundamental course had been changed, with Schacht's approval, long before his dismissal. At an executive meeting on 20 August 1935 he made it clear that he basically accepted the Nazi objectives. He had no objection to either limiting the influence of Jews in the business world or expelling them from it. His only stipulation was that it should take place gradually, and through the enactment and use of laws. Basically, damaging effects on the economy were to be avoided 37 . A year later, in September 1936, a year before Schacht left the Ministry of Economics, his Ministry and the Ministry of the Interior agreed that the question regarding the complete expulsion of all the Jews from Germany had to be tackled. From this time on the only economic activity allowed to the Jews was that which was absolutely necessary for them to earn their living 38 .
The Ministry and the central bank acted accordingly. In 1936 the Ministry of Economics agreed to the classifying of Jewish firms. It instructed, in full agreement with the Nazi party and the Ministry of the Interior, which firms should be classified as Jewish and which not 39 . At the same time the Reichsbank recorded the racial ownership of all German export businesses 40 . Later on Schacht himself gave the order to prohibit Jewish banks from selling and purchasing foreign currencies 41 . It is no surprise then that the Reichsbank finally decided to curtail its business with Jews as much as possible and under no circumstances to undertake any new business with them 42 .
There are some other notable point. Firstly Schacht was convinced that his actions always had the approval of Adolf Hitler. Not only the chancellor explicitly encouraged the banker to keep up his relations with Jewish high finance 43 . It is important to note here that generally there was no discord between Schacht and Hitler or the party's headquarters at Munich; there were conflicts between Schacht and other individual Nazis such as Goebbels, some Gauleiters and the leader of the German Labour Front, Robert Ley, but never with the Nazi party as a whole. In fact, Schacht's statements were nearly always preceded by similar or identical statements from the party's headquarters or by a Nazi minister. Moreover, Schacht insured himself by consulting party officials before voicing his opinion 44 . No, Schacht did not risk any real conflict with Hitler or with the headquarters of the Nazi party. Neither was he the only politician who occasionally opposed the antisemitic terror. His predecessors within the Ministry of Economics, Hugenberg Schmitt, and other important Nazi figures such as Rudolf Hess or Wilhelm Frick did so too 45 . Their dissent was based not on pro-Jewish motives but on economic ones: In the first years after the Machtergreifung they agreed completely with Schacht that absolute priority should be given to Germany's economic recovery. Hitler had himself ordered the party to stop and to prevent all encroachments on banks (March 1934). 'A banking crisis,' he had said, 'would deal a deathblow to the economic upturn which would make everything else fail.' 46
This is precisely the point: the priority of the economic targets, and less a demand for justice, was Schacht's motive for sometimes intervening in favour of Jewish companies. Problems in economic policy, or in the economic sector in general, would reflect on the Minister of Economics ΓÇô Hjalmar Schacht. The words with which he concluded his complaint about the harassment of some banks in March 1933, when he was only the central banker, speak for themselves: 'My request [for stopping this harassment] is strictly limited to the area of banking... because I am not responsible for other economic spheres.' 47 In the summer of 1934 he was appointed Minister of Economics, and as such was responsible for the whole economy. In this role he occasionally asked to speak. Had he been Minister of Finance or Minister of Agriculture he most likely would have kept his silence as Schwerin von Krosigk or Eltz-Ruebenach had done because in this case he would not have been responsible for the economic sphere.
Finally, the point should be made that Hjalmar Schacht was quite willing to take measures against the Jews if those measures could serve to improve or stabilise the economy. It was Schacht who excluded the Jews from the foreign exchange markets in order to limit the selling of Reichsmarks by emigrating Jews 48 . It was Schacht who later forbade the Jews from dealing with almost every foreign currency 49 . Jews who survived the Third Reich complained bitterly about this measure 50 . Schacht was also responsible for making the flight of capital punishable by death from 1936 on, and tightening the foreign exchange laws to such a degree that Jewish property could be legally confiscated 51 . The common denominator of these measures was the objective of a prospering economy. Sometimes the economic policy worked in the Jews' favour, for example when Schacht, fearing damage to foreign trade, opposed the antisemitic terror, and sometimes it worked directly against them such as in the case of the foreign exchange policy.
The fact that Schacht helped Jews in certain individual cases should not be overlooked. He especially supported his long-standing friends in high finance 52 . These efforts are without doubt indeed commendable. However, one should note that his activities were quite limited. He had already told Max Warburg in 1934 that he would not be able to do a lot for the Jews 53 . Later he would shrug his shoulders, leaving to their fate even those Jews who personally appealed to him for help 54 . His position was not very different from those of his colleagues, and other members of the regime acted in a similar way. Schwerin von Krosigk, the Minister of Finance, helped some of those Jews who turned to him 55 ; and even Hermann Goering supported his Jewish friends 56 . So Schacht's effort in individual cases has to be acknowledged, but within the Nazi government he was not the only one who helped Jews. It should be repeated that his behaviour and actions were not so different from those of his contemporaries as has been claimed, and if it was different then it was different for economic reasons.
On balance one has to say that the often-mentioned restraining role of the Ministry of Economics, the Reichsbank and especially of Hjalmar Schacht, was quite a small one. Of course Schacht and his subordinates were not the driving forces of the 'Aryanization' process, and they certainly opposed any acts of violence such as Kristallnacht . A prosperous economy would not be able to withstand violence, boycotts and the like. Nonetheless, we have to note that they helped the Jews somewhat more than did other government institutions.
Finally, not only had Schacht done everything within his power to help Hitler attain the chancellorship, he was responsible for the famous economic upturn and for eradicating mass unemployment. Thus he made an important or even vital contribution to the popularity of Hitler and to the internal stabilisation of the regime. Unintentionally perhaps, he cleared the way for all that followed 57 .
References:
37.Rene Erbe, Die nationalsozialistische Wirtschaftspolitik 1933-1939 im Lichte der modernen Theorie , Zuerich, 1958, pp. 72, 76, 82, 100.
38.BAK, R 18, Reichsministerium des Innern, no. 5513. Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte, Munich, F 71/2 and IMT, doc. NG-4067/II. Die juedische Emigration aus Deutschland 1933-1941. Die Geschichte einer Austreibung , Frankfurt am Main, 1985, no. 131, pp. 71-72; Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP , Munich, 1983, no. 21251.
39.BAK, R 18, Reichsministerium des Innern, no. 5514.
40.Hans-Joachim Fliedner: Die Judenverfolgung in Mannheim 1933-1945. Vol. 2. Dokumente , Stuttgart, 1971, no 117b, p. 194.
41.BAP, 31.01, Deutsche Reichsbank, no. 7252.
42.Fischer, 'Juedische Privatbanken', p. 30.
43.BAP, 31.01, Deutsche Reichsbank, no. 7259.
44. Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher , vol. 12, p. 490.
45.Fischer, Hjalmar Schacht , p. 224.
46.Helmut Genschel, Die Verdraengung der Juden aus der Wirtschaft im Dritten Reich , Goettingen, 1966.
47. Akten der Reichskanzlei , vol. 2, doc. 320, p. 1197/n. 3, p. 1198.
51.Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte, Munich, Sp. 1/5, Ludwigsburg, p. 463.
52.Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1936, pp. 999-1001.
53.Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte, Munich, Sp. 1/4, Ludwigsburg, p. 330.
54.Max M. Warburg, Aus meinen Aufzeichnungen , New York, 1952, p. 154. Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, Staatsbankrott. Die Geschichte der Finanzpolitik des Deutschen Reiches von 1920 bis 1945 , Frankfurt am Main, 1974, p. 221.
55.Henry Bernhard, Finis Germaniae. Aufzeichnungen und Betrachtungen , Stuttgart, 1947, p. 221.
56.Stefan Mehl, Das Reichsfinanzministerium und die Verfolgung der deutschen Juden 1933-1943 , Berlin, 1990, p. 21.
57.Manfred Funke, Starker oder schwacher Diktator? Hitlers Herrschaft und die Deutschen , Duesseldorf, 1989, p. 54. Alfred Kube, Pour le merite und Hakenkreuz. Hermann Goering im Dritten Reich , Munich, 1986, p. 204.
