Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

The ideological dynamic of the Nazi regime was a vital component of the drive for expansion. This was by no means solely a matter of Hitler’s personalized Weltanschauung. In fact, Hitler’s ideological aims had so far played only a subordinate role in his expansionist policy, and would not figure prominently in the Polish crisis during the summer of 1939. The Party and its numerous sub-organizations were, of course, important in sustaining the pressure for ever-new discriminatory measures against ideological target- groups. But little in the way of coherent planning could be expected from the central Party office, under the charge of Rudolf He?, Hitler’s deputy in Party affairs.¹ The key agency was not the Party, but the SS.

The interest in expansion was self-evident. Buoyed by their successes in Austria and the Sudetenland, Himmler, Heydrich, and the top echelons of the SS were keen to extend — naturally, under Hitler’s aegis — their own empire. Already in August 1938, a decree by Hitler met Himmler’s wish to develop an armed wing of the SS. It provided in effect a fourth branch of the armed forces — far smaller than the others, but envisaged as a body of ideologically motivated ‘political soldiers’ standing at the Fuhrer’s ‘exclusive disposal’.² It was little wonder that Himmler had been one of the hawks during the Sudeten crisis, aligning himself with Ribbentrop, and encouraging Hitler’s aggression.³ The leaders of the SS were now looking to territorial gains to provide them with opportunities for ideological experimentation on the way to the fulfilment of the vision of a racially purified Greater German Reich under the heel of the chosen caste of the SS elite. In a world after Hitler, with ‘final victory’ achieved, the SS were determined to be the masters of Germany and Europe.

They saw their mission as the ruthless eradication of Germany’s ideological enemies, who, in Himmler’s strange vision, were numerous and menacing. He told top SS leaders in early November 1938: ‘We must be clear that in the next ten years we will certainly encounter unheard of critical conflicts. It is not only the struggle of the nations, which in this case are put forward by the opposing side merely as a front, but it is the ideological (weltanschauliche) struggle of the entire Jewry, freemasonry, Marxism, and churches of the world. These forces — of which I presume the Jews to be the driving spirit, the origin of all the negatives — are clear that if Germany and Italy are not annihilated, they will be annihilated (vernichtet werden). That is a simple conclusion. In Germany the Jew cannot hold out. This is a question of years. We will drive them out more and more with an unprecedented ruthlessness…’⁴

The speech was held a day before Germany exploded in an orgy of elemental violence against its Jewish minority in the notorious pogrom of 9–10 November 1938, cynically dubbed in popular parlance, on account of millions of fragments of broken glass littering the pavements of Berlin outside wrecked Jewish shops, ‘Reich Crystal Night’ (Reichskristallnacht).⁵ This night of horror, a retreat in a modern state to the savagery associated with bygone ages, laid bare to the world the barbarism of the Nazi regime. Within Germany, it brought immediate draconian measures to exclude Jews from the economy, accompanied by a restructuring of anti-Jewish policy, placing it now directly under the control of the SS, whose leaders linked war, expansion, and eradication of Jewry.

Such a linkage was not only reinforced in the eyes of the SS in the aftermath of ‘Crystal Night’. For Hitler, too, the connection between the war he knew was coming and the destruction of Europe’s Jews was now beginning to take concrete shape. Since the 1920s he had not deviated from the view that German salvation could only come through a titanic struggle for supremacy in Europe, and for eventual world power, against mighty enemies backed by the mightiest enemy of all, perhaps more powerful even than the Third Reich itself: international Jewry. It was a colossal gamble. But for Hitler it was a gamble that could not be avoided. And for him, the fate of the Jews was inextricably bound up with that gamble.

I

The nationwide pogrom carried out by rampaging Nazi mobs on the night of 9–10 November was the culmination of a third wave of antisemitic violence — worse even than those of 1933 and 1935 — that had begun in the spring of 1938 and run on as the domestic accompaniment to the foreign-political crisis throughout the summer and autumn. Part of the background to the summer of violence was the open terror on the streets of Vienna in March, and the ‘success’ that Eichmann had scored in forcing the emigration of the Viennese Jews. Nazi leaders in cities of the ‘Old Reich’, particularly Berlin, took note. The chance to be rid of ‘their’ Jews seemed to open up. A second strand in the background was the ‘aryanization’ drive to hound Jews out of German economic life.⁶ At the beginning of 1933 there had been some 50,000 Jewish businesses in Germany. By July 1938, there were only 9,000 left. The big push to exclude the Jews came between spring and autumn 1938. The 1,690 businesses in Jewish hands in Munich in February 1938, for instance, had fallen to only 666 (two-thirds of them owned by foreign citizens) by October.⁷ The ‘aryanization’ drive not only closed businesses, or saw them bought out for a pittance by new ‘aryan’ owners. It also brought a new flood of legislative measures imposing a variety of discriminatory restrictions and occupational bans — such as on Jewish doctors and lawyers — even to the extent of preventing Jews from trying to eke out a living as pedlars. It was a short step from legislation to pinpoint remaining Jewish businesses to identifying Jewish persons. A decree of 17 August had made it compulsory for male Jews to add the forename ‘Israel’, females the forename ‘Sara’ to their existing names and, on pain of imprisonment, to use those names in all official matters. On 5 October, they were compelled to have a ‘J’ stamped in their passports.⁸ A few days later, Goring declared that ‘the Jewish Question must now be tackled with all means available, for they [the Jews] must get out of the economy’.⁹

Alongside the legislation, inevitably, went the violence. Scores of localized attacks on Jewish property and on individual Jews, usually carried out by members of Party formations, punctuated the summer months. Far more than had been the case in the earlier antisemitic waves, attention of Party activists increasingly focused on synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, which were repeatedly vandalized. As an indicator of their mood, and an ‘ordered’ foretaste of what would follow across the land during ‘Crystal Night’, the main synagogue in Munich was demolished on 9 June, the first in Germany to be destroyed by the Nazis. During a visit to the city a few days earlier, Hitler had taken objection to its proximity to the Deutsches Kunsterlerhaus (‘German Artists’ House). The official reason given was that the building was a hindrance to traffic. The Jewish Community in Munich was given only hours’ notice of the synagogue’s destruction.¹⁰ Learning quickly from his master, Julius Streicher, the Nazi Party’s Jew- baiter-in-chief soon instigated the demolition of Nuremberg’s main synagogue, claiming that the building disfigured ‘the beautiful German townscape’ (das schone deutsche Stadtbild). Tens of thousands gathered to view the demolition on 10 August.¹¹

Hitler saw it as important that he should not be publicly associated with the anti-Jewish campaign as it gathered momentum during 1938. No discussion of the ‘Jewish Question’ was, for example, permitted by the press in connection with his visits to different parts of Germany in that year.¹² Preserving his image, both at home and — especially in the light of the developing Czech crisis — abroad, through avoiding personal association with distasteful actions towards the Jews appears to have been the motive. Hence, he insisted in September 1938, at the height of the Sudeten crisis, that his signing of the fifth implementation ordinance under the Reich Citizenship Law, to oust Jewish lawyers, should not be publicized at that stage in order to prevent any possible deterioration of Germany’s image — clearly meaning his own image — at such a tense moment.¹³

In fact, he had to do little or nothing to stir the escalating campaign against the Jews. Others made the running, took the initiative, pressed for action — always, of course, on the assumption that this was in line with Nazism’s great mission.¹⁴ It was a classic case of ‘working towards the Fuhrer’ — taking for granted (usually on grounds of self-interest) that he approved of measures aimed at the ‘removal’ of the Jews, measures seen as plainly furthering his long-term goals. Party activists in the Movement’s various formations needed no encouragement to unleash further attacks on Jews and their property. ‘Aryans’ in business, from the smallest to the largest, looked to every opportunity to profit at the expense of their Jewish counterparts. Hundreds of Jewish businesses — including long-established private banks such as Warburg and Bleichroder — were now forced, often through gangster-like extortion, to sell out for a pittance to ‘Aryan’ buyers. Big business gained most. Giant concerns like Mannesmann, Krupp, Thyssen, Flick, and IG-Farben, and leading banks such as the Deutsche Bank and the Dresdner Bank, were the major beneficiaries, while a variety of business consortia, corrupt Party