Hitler and the Policy-Making Process on the Jewish Question (Part C)
Source : David Bankier, in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 3, Number 1 (1988), pp.1-20.
Little wonder then, that even minute details concerning what he perceived to be his avowed eternal enemy, the Jews, were brought to his attention. Thus, he was kept abreast of cases entailing race defilement. In April 1943, the Ministry of Justice informed him that a Jewish woman had been punished for selling her milk to a nursing home to feed German children 52 , and of the case of Leo Katzenberger, head of the Jewish community in Nuremberg, who was accused of Rassenschande. 53 When a Jew was allegedly mixed up in crimes against the war economy, the information was passed on to him, prompting his 2┬╜ years for hoarding eggs. He was delivered to the Gestapo and executed under direct instructions from Hitler. 54 Furthermore, his profound interest in all matters concerning Jews served as a guideline for state policy on the Jewish question, as evidenced by the initiative to erect a monument to the victims of WWI, which was to include Jewish names. The controversy began when the Kreisleiter in Unna proposed to build the monument and an army officer suggested that it contain the names on the monument 55 and this decision led the Ministry of Propaganda to issue a decree several months later that no new memorials were to bear the names of fallen Jews. 56 Hitler's position was subsequently embodied in the February 1939 ordinance on the matter. 57
The issue of the status of the Mischlinge leaves no doubt as to the extent of Hitler's involvement with petty details when the topic interested him. For Hitler, the question of the status of Germans of partial Jewish descent was indisputably of paramount importance because of his obsession with racial purity. The ferreting out of Mischlinge in the party ranks was much stricter than that demanded by state law, and the expulsions from the NSDAP embraced Mischlinge even up to the fifth degree. Excellence prior to 1933 and a small degree of Jewish blood permitted Mischlinge to remain in the Nazi party, but only Hitler could grant exemptions. 58 Hitler repeatedly complained that the treatment of Mischlinge and their equalisation was being handled too soft-heartedly. In the future, he stated, he would make exceptions only in special cases: when the involved had been unaware of his Jewish ancestry, for example, and had been active in the party for years. All applications for exemptions had to go through Hitler, and by 1942 some 340 Jews had been equalised with Mischlinge of the first degree. He also granted the status of Half-Jews to some 3000 people considered Jews by legal fiction. 59 This is plain from the decree dated 1 April 1944 in which he states that on this matter I have reserved the right of decision for myself', and all applications shall be submitted personally to me'. 60 The exemptions on divorce and marriage involving Mischlinge were another prerogative exclusive to Hitler, as Bormann put it, nur der Fuehrer entscheiden koenne ' (only the Fuehrer can decide). Small wonder then, that he personally intervened in the case of Ms. Kohler and Mr. Engelsing. After ΓÇ£scientificallyΓÇ¥ examining their Aryan physiognomy against their photographs, he refused to permit the marriage. 61 Even the question of the numerical composition of the committee granting marriage permits, and the site of its deliberations, required Hitler's decision. 62
Hitler was also the one to decide if civil servants and party members were to remain in their posts when there were suspicions of Jewish ancestry. Typical of this state of affairs was the case of Reinhard Sunkel, a Ministerialdirektor in the Ministry of Education. On 3 August 1938, Hess told Lammers that the Minister of Education considered Sunkel to be a suitable candidate for the Board of Governors of the University of Greifswald. However, since Hitler had previously made a ΓÇ£personal decisionΓÇ¥ ( persoenliche Entscheidung ) refusing to grant Sunkel the post of Governor of the University of Berlin, the question was, what would Hitler's position be now. The case could not be decided by either Hess or Bormann, through whose offices it passed, but had to be presented to Hitler. Although he was the Fuehrer's deputy, Hess made it absolutely clear that he could not decide whether Sunkel should be employed in public service. This question, he said, required Hitler's ΓÇ£direct decisionΓÇ¥ ( unmittelbare Entscheidung ). Following inquiries into Sunkel's Aryan ancestry, Hitler decided not to nominate him as Governor. He nonetheless let him stay in public service, though not at a post that would highlight his origins. Out of the same considerations, he agreed some years later to send him as Landesrat to the provincial administration of Schleswig Holstein. 63
In other similar cases Hitler took a different stand, allowing a civil servant to remain at his post, or a party member to be promoted, despite his Jewish origins. Two such instances will serve as illustrations. On 14 October 1936, Lammers informed Bormann of Hitler's decision that Oberregierungsrat Dr. Hans von Dohnanyi, a Mischling of the second degree and personal advisor to the Minister of Justice, should in no way be inconvenienced because of his grandfather's racial origin, but was to be treated as a German in every respect. 64 He reached a similar decision regarding Wilhelm Metz, a member of the NSDAP since 1930, leaving him in the party. Years later, when the Minister of the Interior wished to nominate Metz for Polizeipraesident in Oppeln, he inevitably had to consult Hitler first. After the ensuing enquiry, he was informed that Hitler agreed to the proposed nomination. 65
On this issue, his decisions had the force of law, as can be seen from the various attempts made by party leaders to discriminate against Mischlinge . The matter of the Mischling Heinz Gaertner of Dresden Buehlau, who fell in battle, provides an apt test case. His children, Mischlinge of the third degree, complained that the party office in Saxony refused to grant the widow child support, in flagrant contradiction to prevailing regulations. Besides, the plea argued the population condemned the discrimination against war orphans who were Germans according to the Nuremberg Laws. When the case reached Bormann's office, he reprimanded Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann, making it clear that Hitler, who received similar cases regarding Mischlinge , had explicitly decided that the state laws be followed, and these were not to be changed by an individual Gauleiter or Reichsstatthalter. 66 The profound interest, personal concern and involvement shown by Hitler with respect to the status of the Mischlinge in Germany, rested on racist belief that all Mischlinge were a menace and that the complete assimilation of foreign blood was impossible. Families', he argued, - even if they have but a minute quantity of Jewish blood in their veins - produced regularly, generation by generation, at least one pure Jew.' 67 For this reason, applications of equalisation were processed by the Ministry of Interior and all potential approvals had to be referred to Hitler. Hitler's decision was then sent to the Mischling . For this reason too, on 20 February 1944, Hitler expressly ordered that all Mischlinge cases be dealt with by Bormann and submitted to him for final approval. 68 As we have seen, the personal intervention engendered by his racial beliefs could yet lead him at time to contradict his own principle.
Hitler's personal interest was also necessary when according to the racial legislation a number of Mischlinge received a different racial classification than that corresponding to their biological condition. In all these cases, Hitler's personal decision was required to clarify the status of the individual concerned. This was true also of mixed marriages involving Mischlinge, a matter on which Hitler definitely declared that the decisions I kept for myself' ( deren Entscheidung ich mir herbehalten habe ). 69 Hitler decided the position of Mischlinge in state offices, and concomitantly ruled that Mischlinge of the fdegree serving in the bureaucracy were not entitled to medals and honors. Following the attempt on his life on 20 July, his obsession with Jewish influence grew so strong that he ordered that civil servants who were Mischlinge , or who were married to Jews or Mischlinge , could no longer hold high governmental office even if their partners had previously been equalised with Aryans. This new regulation affected a whole range of people in important posts, including an ambassador and a high official in the Ministry of Churches. 70 Against this background, the drafting of Mischlinge into the armed forces was obviously of great interest to him. In another contradictory intervention, he equalised some 260 officers or their wives who were Mischlinge of the first degree 71 , while saying in his table talk that he was convinced that Germany would harm herself by accepting Mischlinge into the army and exemptions should therefore be reduced to a minimum. A Fuehrererlass (Fuehrer decree) of 8 April 1940 declared that only Hitler could grant permits to Mischlinge to serve in the army. The same motive underlay his order that a second-degree female Mischling required his permission to marry if the groom was in active service. 72
If he was so punctilious with respect to the civil service and the army, it is hardly surprising that he was even stricter regarding membership in the Nazi party, which was meant to be a bastion of racial purity. All cases were dealt with individually, although he issued the general instruction that the offspring of political leaders were not to marry Mischlinge even if the latter had received equal status to Germans. 73 Whenever an ambiguous matter prompted bureaucrats to initiate measures, they met with a typical response: wait until Hitler will express himself in the case. Thus, when the Minister of Education tries to establish regulations on the status of the Mischlinge in higher education, Lammers told him that he and Bormann had agreed that the question of Mischlinge of the first degree had to be treated ΓÇ£ dilatorisch ΓÇ¥, and he should avoid regulations that could be considered conclusive until Hitler's decision. 74
This concern not to let over-zealous bureaucrats resort to their own initiative is understandable, in view of the large number of ambiguous cases which could have led to a public discussion of the fate of the Jews during the war. Hitler was not oblivious to the fact that such a discussion could involve tens of thousands of families. For, according to the census of 1939, there were some 72,000 Mischlinge of the first degree, some 39,000 of the second degree and tens of thousands of higher degrees. And if, as we have shown, his concern over the Mischlinge was so obsessive, it is impossible to assume that his interest in the full Jews would be only marginal. Nor can it be assumed that he would leave antisemitic policy with the bureaucrats and content himself with signing their proposals, and, as Mommsen puts it, relate to the Jews just with chiliastic visions coupled with demagogic rhetoric. It is informative, in this regard, to trace Hitler's fingerprints in the major anti-Jewish legislation, the Nuremberg Laws and some of their implementation ordinances.
Hitler's role in anti-Jewish legislation
To begin with, Hitler was not detached from the preparation of the Nuremberg Laws. These laws were extremely important to his subsequent antisemitic policy and it can hardly be supposed that they emerged out of mere chance as depicted by most functionalists. The function of the Racial Laws was not simply symbolic, for they not only dramatised the exclusion of Jews from German society, but also served another twofold objective. They provided the rationalisation and legitimisation for the campaign of antisemitic riots and arrests, which characterised the summer of 1935, and at the same time they put an end to the instability created by the riots. 75 Certainly, the bureaucrats (who else?) worked on the formulation of the Nuremberg Laws and their implementation ordinances, but this does not mean that they determined the form that these took.
The documentary evidence shows that Hitler did not simply seize upon every suggestion submitted to him, and we know that there were alternative drafts. When he decided to accept one, he did so on the basis of his own distinctive ideas on the Jewish question. Kershaw, expounding the thesis of the impersonal character of Nazi policy, argues that Hitler was vague and elusive on the question of how to define a Jew, leaving it to the Ministry of the Interior and the party to decide. 76 However, the fact is that they were merely to formulate drafts for Hitler to decide. This is clear from his involvement in the formulation of the first implementation ordinance to the Nuremberg Laws, which legally defined a Jew. As we learn from the available documents, the first implementation ordinances to the Nuremberg Laws were reshaped to conform with Hitler's views and only then submitted to him for his signature. 77 Moreover, he went into smallest details. Thus, for example, Lammers told Frick that Hitler had decided to change the formulation of the second paragraph of the sixth article of the first ordinance. 78
On the issue of the segregation of Jewish children, it was Hitler who ordered that the drafting of a law on Jewish schools be stopped. 79 It was he, too, who decided the matter of the employment of German maids with foreign citizenship by Jews. This question had remained unsolved in the third clause of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour, which forbade the employment of German women under 45 in Jewish households. His intervention in the legislation is obvious from the memorandum of the meeting on 24 August 1936. It ends with the clear-cut statement: … considering the interest manifested by the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor on this issue, as stated by Lammers in his letter dated 22 December 1935, the Reich's chancellery should decide whether German maids of foreign citizenship are exempted or not.' And indeed Hitler decided on the basis of political calculations: at one point he rejected the draft of the Ministry of the Interior, and accepted another when the international situation and the German labour market changed. 80
When on June 1936 Himmler spoke of German names to Hitler, the latter mentioned that Jews should not be called Siegfried or Thusnelda. This utterance sufficed to initiate the legislation on the matter. A few months later, immediately after the Olympic games, Bormann ordered Frick to begin drafting a law, adding the word Jude to Jewish surnames. This, as is well known, culminated in the addition, in 1938, of the names Israel and Sara to all names of German Jews. 81
A most instructive example of Hitler's direct intervention in the antisemitic Legislation in 1936-38, when, according to Schleunes, he was not involved at all, is the process that led to the fourth implementation ordinance pursuant to the Law of Citizenship. Issued on 25 July 1938, the ordinance prohibited all Jewish doctors from providing medical services to Aryans. When the topic was raised in the cabinet session on 7 November 1933, there were some 4000 Jewish doctors in Germany out of a total of 55,000. Hitler rejected the idea of ousting Jewish doctors without launching a comprehensive propaganda campaign beforehand, thereby showing neither moderation nor inconsistency but the skill of a political actor who waits for the appropriate moment to make his entrance. 82 He returned to the subject i1937 following a conversation with Reichsarztfuehrer (Party Health Chief) Gerhard Wagner on 14 June. When Wagner spoke of the need to bar all Jewish doctors from medical practice, Hitler replied that he considered this step most necessary and urgent. The issue, he added, was much more important than the removal of Jews from civil service, and he commissioned Lammers to prepare the legal basis for the measure. When Wagner mentioned the financial consequences of such a step, which he estimated at some 10 million RM, Hitler replied that the matter was of such importance, that no financial consshould pose a barrier and the state must cover all expenses. 83
This was not simply a reaction to Wagner's initiative, as it may appear at first glance. The very fact that Pfundtner was ordered to meet Hitler to receive the exact instructions, before the bureaucrats put the legislature machinery into motion, clearly shows that the initiative came from Hitler and none other. He intervened in the bureaucratic process to impose his will and set the pace, when he asked Pfundtner, as Interior Ministry files reveal, to come to Berchtesgaden on 1 September 1937 to discuss various issues, including the question of Jewish doctors. Pfundtner was confidentially instructed to come alone because, as he was told by Lammers, Hitler did not yet want others involved in the matter. 84 Only after the preliminary discussions did Hitler give the green light to the state machinery to start rolling. On 18 December 1937, Staatssekretaer Pfundtner was able to inform Lammers that a draft was being prepared for the fourth implementation ordinance. But the matter was still not left to the discretion of the bureaucrats. While they worked on the exclusion of related professions, we again find Hitler's direct involvement. It was he who decided that the law should limit itself exclusively to Jewish doctors. 85 Kurt Blome, who was in charge of the preparations, ordered that the legislation on other medical professions be dropped until further notice from the Fuehrer. So crucial did Hitler view the issue that Hess asked Lammers to show the draft to Hitler, even though he was certainly preoccupied with the Austrian affair at the time. When the draft was finally ready, it was circulated among all concerned and signed by Hitler. 86
The birth of the eleventh implementation ordinance to the Nuremberg Laws was equally typical of the nature of the policy-making on the Jewish question and of Hitler's role in it. From December 1940 on, representatives of various state and party agencies began discussing the eleventh implementation ordinance, which was aimed at revoking the citizenship of German Jews. The Nazi regime became concerned with this matter in the process of regulating citizenship in the expanded Nazi State. As a result of the territorial expansion, the Nazi empire included millions of people who, by the Nazi race categories, had kindred blood but belonged to other Volk and could not therefore have the same rights as Germans. In the future, the plan was to grant citizenship exclusively to German nationals and make this status available to foreigners only after meticulous racial selection. The rest were to be Staatsangehoerige . It would have been equally paradoxical to declare the Jews State protectees since this would have placed the racially related alien nations and the racially alien Jews on the same level. 87 Therefore, in order to avoid these paradoxes, the Ministry of the Interior proposed to revoke the citizenship of all Jews living in Germany and abroad, declaring them stateless. Considering the urgency of the matter and the Foreign Office's wish to promulgate the law simultaneous with the announcement of American aid to England, the bureaucrats were pressed to decide on the matter quickly. At this point, the issue was referred to Hitler. On 27 December 1940, Lammers informed Frick that his suggestion to make the Jews protectees of the German Reich had been firmly rejected by Hitler. Hitler had ordered instead that only the citizenship of Jews living abroad be revoked and their property confiscated. The reason for his moderation, as compared to the more extreme proposal of the bureaucrats, is revealed in Lammers' correspondence to Bormann. Lammers confided that Hitler took issue with the draft prepared by the Ministry of the Interior, because he thought that after the war there would no Jews in Germany anyhow, and because he was fully aware of the complications the proposal would create for the ΓÇ£privilegedΓÇ¥ mixed marriages. Deportations would cause unrest among the German relatives. This case also exemplifies the difference between the leader and the bureaucrat in the Nazi State. The bureaucrat was concerned with the legal issue of measures such as deportation being taken against citizens. He suggested, therefore, that the Jews be deprived of their citizenship and then be deported as foreigners. Hitler was much more practical and characteristically simplified the matter. Once Hitler's decision was received, the open questions of the eleventh ordinance of implementation were discussed on 1 October 1941, and the ordinance was eventually issued on 25 November 1941. 88
In summation, the present study has shown that Hitler's active involvement can be seen clearly though a meticulous and detailed analysis of his place in the decision-making process. The functionalist views that the elimination of the Jews was a vague, ideological imperative, that Hitler took little part in the formulation of policy, and that his chief role was to set the vicious tone and provide sanction and legitimisation for initiatives which came mostly from others, are thus highly disputable. In this author's view, Hitler's ideology was an undeniably powerful factor in the shaping of Nazi antisemitic policy and the relationship between ideology and policy was one of interaction. It was a two-way process in which the policy-making was subjected to the dual influence of theoretical conceptions on the one hand, and practical considerations on the other.
Hitler was not the prisoner of forces, but rather their creator. He was not unwilling to take decisions, but he was led by ideological obsessions which became policy when implemented by his bureaucrats. On crucial issues, he dominated the decision-making process. He was, as Allan Bullock puts it, a mixture of calculation and fanaticism 89 , with a preconceived goal: the total removal of all Jews. He conceived, initiated and directed the entire process which, once it started, took on a momentum of its own, a self-propelling force advanced by party officials and bureaucrats. Without any doubt, the latter were Hitler's tools and not independent figures.
References:
52 ND, NG 1656.
53 ND, NG 5170; cf. Hilberg, op. cit. , pp. 110ΓÇô11.
54 ND, NG 287.
55 Gauleitung Westfalen Sued to Wiedemann, 8 August 1935, BA NS 10/550e.
56 Decree of October 1935, Joseph Walk (Ed.), Das Sonderrecht fuer die Juden im NS-Staat , (Heidelberg: C. F. Mueller, 1981), II, p. 34.
57 Ibid. , III, p. 140.
58 For example the case of party member Mansfeld who was allowed to stay in the party despite his Jewish grandfather. See Wiedemann, 23 October 1936, BA NS 10/223. cf. the circular of the Ministry of the Interior on the matter, 26 July 1937, R 18/5645.
59 On what he considered a tender-hearted treatment of Mischlinge; see his address to the highest Reich officials on 20 July 1942, NS, NG 4819. On the equalisation see: NS, NG 2586 and NG 2982.
60 BA R 43 II/1648, cf. BA R 55/711.
61 Hess to Ministry of the Interior, 28 June 1937, BA NS 10/1153b.
62 Ministry of Interior, 9 December 1935, BA R 18/5514.
63 See the correspondence: Hess to Lammers 3 August 1938, Bormann to Ministry of the Interior, 12 October 1938; Hitler's decision mentioned in Lammers to Hess, 2 November 1938, BA R 43 II/939a.
64 Lammers to Bormann, 1 November 1938, BA R 43 II/1145b.
65 Ministry of the Interior to Lammers, 13 January 1939, and Hitler's response, 1 February 1939, R 43 II/1136b.
66 Bormann to Mutschmann, BA R 2/31097.
67 Hitler's Table Talk , op. cit. , p. 545.
68 BA R 43 II/1648; cf. BA R 55/711 and ND, NG 998.
69 On Mischlinge policy, BA R 43 II/941; BA NS 19/199; AA Inland II/g 177, 179.
70 Bormann to Lammers, 2 November 1944, BA R 43 II/599.
71 Stuckart to Himmler, September 1942 ND, NG 2982.
72 BA NS 10/338.
73 Adjudantur der Wehrmacht Major Engel to OKW, 2 November 1943, BA R2/31097.
74 Lammers to Ministry of the Interior, 18 February 1942, R 43 II/941.
75 On the Nuremberg Laws see: Lothar Gruchmann, ΓÇ£BlutschutzgesetzΓÇ¥ und Justiz. Zur Entstehung und Auswirkung des Nuernberger Gesetzes vom 15. September 1935', Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte 31 (1983), 418-442; Otto D. Kulk, ΓÇ£Die Nuernberger Rassengesetze und die deutsche Bevoelkerung im Lichte Geheimer NS-Lage und StimmungsberichteΓÇ¥, ibid. , 32 (1984), 582-624.
76 Kershaw, op. cit. , p. 94.
77 Stuckardt to Pfundtner, 7 November 1935, BA R 18/5514.
78 I find it difficult to agree with Mommsen's interpretation that Bormann persuaded Hitler to issue a secret instruction on the first ordinance, Mommsen, op. cit., p. 105. The document, if we both refer to the same one, does not mention Bormann, but says that Hitler indicated to Lammers to tell Frick to introduce a specific change. See: Lammers to Frick, 20 February 1936, BA R 43 II/1555.
79 Lammers to Minister of Education, 30 September 1936, ND, NG 1256.
80 Memorandumof the meeting held on 24 August 1936, BA R 18/5514; Ministof the Interior's circular, 23 February 1937, ibid. On Hitler's personal intervention in this issue, Ministry of the Interior, 25 May 1938, ND, NG 347.
81 Adam, op. cit. , pp. 156-7.
82 Idem, ibid. , p. 67.
83 BA, R 43 II/733.
84 Lammers to Pfundtner, 21 August 1937, BA R 18/5516.
85 Pfundtner to Lammers, 24 January 1938, ibid.
86 Hess to Lammers, 17 March 1938; Pfundtner to Lammers, 11 June 1938, ibid.
87 The Reich Citizenship Law of September 1935 stated that only Germans or those people with related blood could be citizens of the Reich. German Jews lost their rights due to this law which made them Staatsangehoerige (state subjects) whereas the ΓÇ£AryanΓÇ¥ Germans were declared Reichsbuerger (citizens of the Reich); On the background of this period and the population problems, see most recently: Christopher R. Browning, ΓÇ£Nazi Resettlement Policy and the Search for a Solution to the Jewish Question, 1939-1941ΓÇ¥ German Studies Review 10 (1986), 497-519.
88 On the arduous preparations of the 11th ordinance see among the many documents the circulars of the Ministry of the Interior of 3 January and 19 March 1941; Hess to Ministry of the Interior, 24 March 1941, files in BA R 43 II/136a; AA, Inland II A/B 121/2, Hitler's rejection of the revocation of citizenship in BA R 2/511; Hitler's decision to limit the revocation of citizenship to Jews living abroad: Lammers to Ministry of the Interior, 7 June and 27 September 1941, BA R 18/5519.
89 Allan Bullock, Hitler, A Study in Tyranny (London: Pelican Books, 1969).
