Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

solution’ once victory in the east — presumed imminent — had been won.⁶⁴ Hitler did not need to be consulted.⁶⁵

The dragnet was closing on the Jews of Europe. But Heydrich’s mandate was not the signal to set up death camps in Poland. The aim at this point was still a territorial solution — to remove the Jews to the east.⁶⁶ Within the next few months, recognition that the great gamble of the rapid knockout victory in the east had failed would irrevocably alter that aim.

III

With victory apparently within Germany’s grasp, pressures to intensify the discrimination against the Jews and to have them deported from the Reich were building up.⁶⁷ The growing privations of the war allowed Party activists to turn daily grievances and resentment against the Jews. The SD in Bielefeld reported, for instance, in August 1941 that strong feeling about the ‘provocative behaviour of Jews (das provozierende Verhalten der Juden)’ had brought a ban on Jews attending the weekly markets ‘in order to avoid acts of violence’ (um Tatlichkeiten zu vermeiden)’. In addition, there had been general approval, so it was alleged, for an announcement in the local newspapers that Jews would receive no compensation for damage suffered as a result of the war. It was also keenly felt, it was asserted, that Jews should only be served in shops once German customers had had their turn. The threat of resort to self-help and use of force against Jews if nothing was done hung in the air. Ominously, it was nonetheless claimed that these measures would not be enough to satisfy the population. Demands were growing for the introduction of some compulsory mark of identification such as had been worn by Jews in the General Government since the start of the war, in order to prevent Jews avoiding the restrictions imposed on them.⁶⁸

Evidently, Party fanatics were at work — successfully, so it seems — in stirring up opinion against the Jews. The pressure from below was music to the ears of Party and police leaders like Goebbels and Heydrich anxious for their own reasons to step up discrimination against the Jews and remove them altogether from Germany as soon as possible. It did not take long for it to be fed through Goebbels to Hitler himself.

An identification mark for Jews was something Hitler had turned down when it had been demanded in the aftermath of ‘Crystal Night’. He had not thought it expedient at the time. But he was now to be subjected to renewed pressure to change his mind. By mid-August, Goebbels had convinced himself that the ‘Jewish Question’ in Berlin had again become ‘acute’. He claimed soldiers on leave could not understand how Jews in Berlin could still have ‘aryan’ servants and big apartments. Jews were undermining morale through comments in queues or on public transport. He thought it necessary, therefore, that they should wear a badge so that they could be immediately recognized.⁶⁹

Three days later a hastily summoned meeting at the Ministry of Propaganda, filled with Party hacks, attempted to persuade representatives from other ministries of the need to introduce identification for the Jews. Eich-mann, the RSHA representative, reported that Heydrich had already put a proposal to this effect to Goring a short while earlier. Goring had sent it back, saying the Fuhrer had to decide. On this, Heydrich had reformulated his proposal, which would be sent to Bormann, for him to speak to Hitler about it.⁷⁰ The view from the Propaganda Ministry embroidered upon the remarks Goebbels had entrusted to his diary a few days earlier. The Jews of Berlin, it was alleged, were a ‘centre of agitation’, occupying much-needed apartments. Among other things, they were responsible, through their hoarding of food, even for the shortage of strawberries in the capital. Soldiers on leave from the east could not comprehend that Jews were still allowed such licence. Most of the Jews were not in employment. These should be ‘carted off’ to Russia (nach Ru?land abkarren). ‘It would be best to kill them altogether (am besten ware es, diese uberhaupt totzuschlagen).’⁷¹ On the question of ‘evacuation of the Jews from the Old Reich’, Eichmann commented that Heydrich had put a proposal to the Fuhrer, but that this had been refused, and that the Security Police Chief was now working on an amended proposal for the partial ‘evacuation’ of Jews from major cities.⁷² Given the alleged urgency of the need to protect the mood of the front soldiers, Goebbels, it was announced, intended to seek an audience with the Fuhrer at the earliest opportunity.⁷³

This was the purpose of the Propaganda Minister’s visit to FHQ on 18 August. He encountered a Hitler recovering from illness, in the middle of a running conflict with his army leaders, in a state of nervous tension, and highly irritable.⁷⁴ In this condition, Hitler was doubtless all the more open to radical suggestions. Eventually raising the ‘Jewish problem’, Goebbels undoubtedly repeated the allegations about Jews damaging morale, especially that of front soldiers. He was pushing at an open door. Hitler must have been reminded of the poor morale which had so disgusted him in Berlin and Munich towards the end of the First World War, for which he (and many others) had blamed the Jews. He granted Goebbels what the Propaganda Minister had come for: permission to force the Jews to wear a badge of identification. According to Goebbels, Hitler expressed his conviction that his Reichstag ‘prophecy’ — that ‘if Jewry succeeded in again provoking a world war, it would end in the destruction of the Jews’ — was coming about with a ‘certainty to be thought almost uncanny’. The Jews in the east were having to pay the bill, noted Goebbels. Jewry was an alien body among cultural nations. ‘At any rate the Jews will not have much cause to laugh in a coming world,’ Goebbels reported him as saying.⁷⁵

Next day, Goebbels wrote that he would now become immediately active in the ‘Jewish Question’, since the Fuhrer had given him permission to introduce a large yellow Star of David to be worn by every Jew. Once the Jews wore this badge, Goebbels was certain they would rapidly disappear from view in public places. ‘If it’s for the moment not yet possible to make Berlin into a Jew-free city, the Jews must at least no longer appear in public,’ he remarked. ‘But beyond that, the Fuhrer has granted me permission to deport the Jews from Berlin to the east as soon as the eastern campaign is over.’ Jews, he added, spoiled not just the appearance but the mood of the city. Forcing them to wear a badge would be an improvement. But, he wrote, ‘you can only stop it altogether by doing away with them. We have to tackle the problem without any sentimentality.’⁷⁶

On 1 September, a police decree stipulated that all Jews over the age of six had to wear the Star of David. A week later, preparing the population for its introduction, Goebbels ensured that the party Propaganda Department put out a special broadsheet, with massive circulation, in its publication Wochenspruche (Weekly Maxims), emblazoned with Hitler’s ‘prophecy’.⁷⁷

According to SD reports — echoing in the main no doubt hardline feelings in Party circles — the introduction of the Yellow Star met with general approval but, in the eyes of some, did not go far enough, and needed to be extended to Mischlinge as well as full Jews. Some said the Yellow Star should also be worn on the back.⁷⁸ Not all ordinary Germans responded in the same way as the Party radicals. There were also numerous indications of distaste and disapproval for the introduction of the Yellow Star, along with sympathy for the victims. According to the diary entry of one woman in Berlin, who had a strong antipathy to the regime, ‘the mass of the people is not pleased at this new decree. Almost all who come across us are ashamed as we are.’⁷⁹ The Dresden intellectual Victor Klemperer, depressed and fearful at venturing out of doors once the Star of David singled him out, encountered indirect words of comfort from a tram-driver. On another occasion a driver, thumping his fist on his control-panel, exclaimed to Klemperer’s wife: ‘Such a mean trick! (Solch eine Gemeinheit!)’⁸⁰ Inge Deutschkron, then a young woman living in Berlin, emphasized like Klemperer the devastating discriminatory isolation of the Yellow Star, but recalled some small acts of kindness and a mixture of attitudes: ‘There were people who looked at me with hate; there were others whose glances betrayed sympathy; and others again looked away spontaneously.’⁸¹ It is impossible to be certain which was the more typical response.⁸² Open support for Jews was at any rate dangerous. Goebbels castigated those who felt any sympathy for their plight, threatening them with incarceration in a concentration camp. He turned up his antisemitic invective to an even higher volume.⁸³ Whatever the level of sympathy, it could carry no weight beside the shrill clamour of the radicals, whose demands — voiced most notably by the Reich Minister of Propaganda — were targeted ever more at removal of the Jews altogether. As Goebbels had recognized, deportation had to wait. But the pressure for it would not let up.

On 22 August, SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Carltheo Zeitschel, Legation Counsellor at the German Embassy in Paris, produced a memorandum for the Ambassador, Otto Abetz, suggesting that the newly occupied areas of the east offered the possibility of ‘an ultimate (endgultigen) satisfactory solution’ to the ‘Jewish