Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews by Peter Longerich (booksvooks TXT) 📕

public sphere in conformity

with racial norms via its campaigns of 1935 was successful in that the policy of

segregation initiated by the Nuremberg Laws was evidently gaining in at least

passive acceptance by the majority of the people, in one form or another. From the

point of view of the regime, it was important that the principle of judicial

discrimination against, and the separation of the Jewish minority had been

established—without any particular enthusiasm outside Party circles, but also

without meeting with notable resistance from the population. Sufficient condi-

tions for continuing the persecution of the Jews had thus been achieved.

An Apparent Lull in Anti-Jewish Policy 1936–1937

Debates about the Definition of Jews

After the promulgation of the anti-Semitic laws of September 1935 two prob-

lems occupied centre-stage in further discussions about anti-Jewish policy.

These were first the economic measures against German Jews that had long

been called for but were not put into law in the Nuremberg Laws, and

second—but closely related—the exact and conclusive definition of ‘Jewish

half-breeds’ (Mischlinge). 49

As early as 23 September Ministers Frick and Schacht agreed upon a catalogue

of suggestions for further constraining the economic position of the Jewish

minority by judicial and administrative means. Schacht was concerned above all

to ensure that all planned measures were put into practice as quickly as possible

and for the future position of the Jews to be fixed once and for all, in order to

minimize superfluous economic unrest. It was important in this context to define

clearly and precisely the group known as ‘Jewish half-breeds’. 50

There was disagreement on this question between the stance adopted by the

Ministry for the Interior—where the general feeling was that ‘half-Jews’ should be

made citizens of the Reich—and the Führer’s Deputy (represented by Gauleiter

Wagner)—who wished in general to treat this group as Jews. After lengthy

negotiations (Hitler avoided making a decision) there was eventual agreement

on a compromise enshrined in the ‘First Decree Pursuant to the Reich Citizenship

Law’ of 14 November 1935.51

According to this ordinance a person was defined as a Jew if he was

descended from ‘at least three racially wholly Jewish grandparents’; a Jew was

not permitted to be a citizen of the Reich. However, provisional Reich citizen-

ship (although there were regulations discussed in 1936 and 1937,52 they were not actually passed) was also to be granted to ‘Jewish half-breeds’, which is to say

those with one or two Jewish grandparents, as long as they were not ‘Jews by

definition’ (Geltungsjuden).

62

Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

People were in future to be treated as ‘Jews by definition’—and thus equivalent

to Jews—if they were ‘half-breeds’ with at least two grandparents to whom one or

more of the following criteria applied: that they were members of the Jewish

religious community, that they were in a marital partnership with a Jew, or that

they were descended from a marriage with a Jew that had been joined after the

Nuremberg Laws came into force or from a non-marital partnership that had been

begun after this point.

On the same day the ‘First Decree Pursuant to the Blood Protection Law’ was

passed, amongst the provisions of which was that ‘Jewish half-breeds’ with two

Jewish grandparents required special permission to marry an ‘Aryan’. 53 This permission could be granted by a Reich Commission for Marriage Permits,

which was to be established by the Reich Minister for the Interior and the Führer’s

Deputy. In reality, however, the Party representatives on this body—which

immediately changed its title to ‘Reich Commission for the Protection of German

Blood’—almost always voted against, so its meetings were suspended in 1936 and

applications were thenceforth treated as a purely administrative matter. 54

After the ‘Jewish half-breeds’ were officially defined, there were further discus-

sions about legislation for anti-Jewish economic measures but they did not result

in any concrete action. On the contrary, as the Olympic year of 1936 grew ever

closer, a lull in anti-Jewish policy began to set in. Neither more drastic anti-

Semitic legislation nor more radical persecution took place. Even the murder of

the NSDAP National Group Leader (Landesgruppenleiter) in Switzerland,

Wilhelm Gustloff, by David Frankfurter in February 1936 did not result in any

immediate acts of revenge on the part of the National Socialists. 55

Nevertheless, even without the more spectacular acts of persecution, continuing

attempts to marginalize German Jews in the public sphere still left them in a

steadily worsening situation. In particular, the wave of boycotts did not diminish

after the Nuremberg Laws, and because Party activists believed that anti-Jewish

economic laws were about to be passed they pressed on with the boycotts in the

furthest corners of the German Reich. 56

The Four-Year Plan: Intensifying the Displacement of

Jews from Economic Life

Once the Olympic Games were over, and thus once Berlin was no longer in the

international spotlight, the regime immediately set about intensifying the persecu-

tion of the Jews, and the plans for displacing Jews from the economic life of the

country that had been put on hold in the autumn of 1935 were now once more at the

heart of planning. Those involved, however, could not get round the fact that in 1936

the Reich was facing a very precarious situation regarding raw materials and a

Segregation and Discrimination, 1935–7

63

currency crisis, and in these circumstances anti-Jewish measures would certainly

damage foreign trade and thus have negative effects on the rapid pace of rearma-

ment. Goering was appointed Commissioner for Raw Materials and Currency in

April 1936, and in October of the same year was put in charge of the Four-Year Plan,

and this showed that the regime was making attempts both to manage the crisis and

somehow to mediate between the desire to displace the Jews economically and

forcibly expel them and the need to increase the momentum of rearmament.

It is important not to overlook the close link between the Four-Year Plan (the

centralized direction of the regime’s rearmament plans) and the anti-Jewish

policy. This link was present from very early on, and for Hitler rearmament

within the context of the Four-Year Plan was the decisive instrument for waging

war on ‘international Jewry’ supposedly hiding behind the mask of ‘Bolshevism’.

According to the introduction to the memorandum on the Four-Year Plan that

Hitler gave to Goering when he was appointed:

Since the outbreak of the French Revolution the world has been racing ever more quickly

towards a new conflict, whose most extreme solution is called Bolshevism but whose

content and aims are rather to remove