Introduction
The German Reich, as a State, should include all Germans, not only with the task of collecting from the people the most valuable stocks of racially primal elements and preserving them, but also to lead them, gradually and safely, to a dominating position.
ADOLF HITLER, Mein Kampf (1923)1
Before we can examine the Nazi genocidal project in the East and the unfolding of the Holocaust, we must understand the basic history of Nazism. Specifically, how did the Nazi party become the Nazi state and how did this regime come to be in a position to carry out its policies in Eastern Europe? This entails meeting Adolf Hitler, the man, and the organization he created. For, it is Hitler who wrote above how important the East was to the Nazis. Simultaneously, we must be careful not to ascribe to Hitler a master plan or sole responsibility for the Holocaust.
The Nazis created a state based on a variety of popular causes that appealed to a broader audience and bought together different constituencies. Hitler built a cult of personality around himself in which he and the state were one—an idea that energized many German people. Territorial expansion was a critical plank in the Nazi platform . . . one which Hitler believed could only be realized in Eastern Europe. He was not alone in this belief either, drawing upon a long history of yearning for a German “return” to the East. This chapter brings us to 1939, the point when the Nazis began that return to the East.
National Socialism must, in principle, claim the right to force its principles on the whole German nation and to educate it in its ideas and thoughts . . . It must determine and reorder the life of a nation, and therefore must imperiously demand for itself the right to overlook boundaries drawn by a tendency which we have rejected.
ADOLF HITLER, Mein Kampf2
While the Nazi state had many actors, many of whom were at odds with one another, the transformation of Germany into a fascist dictatorship began with one man. He drew many Germans to his side with the promises, illustrated above, of a return to greatness and a new national order. Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria to a domineering father who served as a government customs agent. There is no evidence that his parents were particularly antisemitic. Desiring to be an artist, Hitler moved to Vienna in 1905 to attend art school. The Vienna Art Academy rejected him and Hitler struggled, often penniless, homeless, and selling his mediocre artwork on the street. It is likely that he blamed Jews, who he saw as controlling the art world, for his failure. Looking back, he attributed his antisemitism to this period of his life, though it is unclear if this is accurate. In Mein Kampf, Hitler relates some of his early antisemitism. He describes an encounter with an Eastern European Jew, an Ostjuden, saying, “I suddenly came upon a being clad in a long caftan, with black curls. Is this also a Jew? was my first thought.” More ominously, he then asked, “Is this also a German?”3 The following pages devolve into derisive and vulgar descriptions of Jews. It is instructive that he attributed his revulsion to an Eastern European Jew and not an assimilated Austrian Jew. According to Hitler, he also recognized at this time the alleged connection between Jews and Marxism. He alluded clearly to this form of antisemitic fantasy saying, “If, with the help of the Marxian creed, the Jew conquers the nations of this world, his crown will become the funeral wreath of humanity.”4 Hitler also dated his hatred of all things communist and democratic to this period. Again, in Mein Kampf, he wrote, “Democracy of the West today is the forerunner of Marxism, which would be inconceivable without it.”5 He also became disgusted with Viennese cosmopolitanism, which he saw as weakness resulting from racial mixing. Hitler, a constant admirer of all things German, moved to Munich in 1914. It is unclear how much of Hitler’s worldview was actually formed during his time in Vienna, as he wrote in 1923 after having undergone some substantial life changes. In addition, the book was intended for a public audience. Some scholars argue his antisemitism did not truly mature until much later.
Adolf Hitler might have remained a failed artist in Vienna if not for World War I. In August 1914, Hitler enlisted in a Bavarian infantry unit where he served as a corporal on the Western Front. He worked as a courier, running messages between front-line trenches and headquarters. Hitler appears by all accounts to have served honorably in this relatively dangerous duty. His superior, a Jewish lieutenant, recommended him for the Iron Cross, First Class, though this may have had more to do with his assignment to regimental headquarters.6 A comrade described him as “a good and eager soldier.”7 Hitler was wounded twice—on the latter occasion by a mustard gas attack in 1918. He learned of Germany’s defeat as he lay in a hospital suffering from temporary blindness from that attack. He wrote that upon hearing the news, “I groped my way back to the dormitory, threw myself on my cot and buried my burning head in the covers and pillows.”8
This moment might be one of the most important in Hitler’s life. The war had given Hitler’s life a new sense of meaning. He wrote in Mein Kampf, “overwhelmed by impassionate enthusiasm I had fallen on my knees and thanked Heaven out of my overflowing heart that it had granted me the good fortune of being allowed to live in these times.”9 For Hitler, the war was a defining moment, a test of will and endurance from which he personally emerged victorious. In equal measure to his pride in his service and his belief in the ennobling qualities of war was his distress and shame at Germany’s defeat, which he steadfastly refused to admit. Instead, he quickly subscribed to the “Stab in the Back Theory,” blaming Germany’s defeat on Jews, war profiteers, communists, and others who he believed had defeated Germany from within. This myth arose almost immediately. General (and later President) Hindenburg declared the day after the Armistice, “We have borne our arms with honor.” The commanding general of the 18th Army reported that, “Undefeated, it is coming back home, after having faithfully accomplished her duty.” A local newspaper in Köln advised its readers to welcome a unit home with celebration “for the army has not ‘lost the battle.’”10 Former World War I general Erich Ludendorff most vociferously promulgated this false interpretation. Hitler echoed Ludendorff referring to Germany’s civilian government as the “wretched party rascals who betrayed the people.”11
In what must go down as history’s worst job placement, the German army assigned Adolf Hitler in 1919 to monitor right-wing extremist organizations. His supervisor in the Army later referred to Hitler as a “stray dog looking for a master.”12 However, this stray dog would become the master. On September 12, 1919, Hitler arrived as an informant at a meeting of the right-wing German Worker’s Party (Deutsche Arbeiter Partei- DAP) in a brewery in Munich. Rather than remaining a silent observer, Hitler delivered a devastating retort to an audience member and, shortly thereafter, joined the party.13 Within four years, Hitler’s fiery oratory and political maneuvering catapulted him to the top. In 1920, the party was renamed the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei- NSDAP, “Nazi” in abbreviation.
Throughout the early 1920s, Hitler consolidated his hold and began building the embryonic organization that would become the Nazi state. He established a group of armed thugs (the Sturmabteilung (SA) or Stormtroopers) to protect party events and also battle left-wing paramilitaries in the streets. A small bodyguard force that later became the SS protected Hitler personally. Also, during this period, many of the key players in the Third Reich gravitated toward Hitler. Among these were former World War I pilot and morphine addict Hermann Göring and failed chicken farmer Heinrich Himmler. Increasing pageantry and incendiary speeches marked Nazi party events. Hitler consciously built a cult of personality, where he as der Führer or “the Leader” embodied the will of the party and the German race. A guiding principle of the Nazi state imbued the Führer’s wishes with the weight of law. The Nazi party generated a steady stream of propaganda condemning the “November criminals” (civilian leaders who had signed the Versailles Treaty ending World War I), Jews, communists, and playing off the instability of the early years of the Weimar Republic.
By 1923, Adolf Hitler believed the time had come for the revolution that would put him in power. He modeled his coup on Benito Mussolini’s successful March on Rome. Mussolini, who Hitler greatly admired, had marshaled large numbers of his paramilitary “Black Shirts” and, through a powerful bluff, forced the King of Italy to give him the reins of government. Hitler hoped to accomplish the same in Germany. The reluctance of some party and government officials (Staatskommisar Gustav von Kahr, Reichswehr General Otto von Lossow, and Bavarian Police Chief Hans von Seisser) to take such a drastic step frustrated him. As a result, on the night of November 8, 1923, he initiated his power grab, arresting Kahr, Seisser, and Lossow, in a Munich beer hall (hence the name “Beer Hall Putsch”). Hitler assembled a large number of party members and declared the national revolution had begun. He even gained the support of well-respected former general Ludendorff. However, things unraveled rapidly from this point leading to the climactic morning of November 9, when Hitler and 2,000 Nazis marched on the Bavarian Defense Ministry but were met with gunfire by Reichswehr soldiers—which killed sixteen Nazis. Four Bavarian policemen were also killed putting down the revolt. This decisively marked the end of Hitler’s abortive attempt to seize power. Though conservative, the Bavarian government and military was in no mood for the chaos of revolution and remained loyal to the state. Without their support, the coup was doomed before it could begin. Hitler was arrested three days later with a dislocated shoulder. As his biographer wrote, “Hitler was finished. At least, he should have been.”14
On February 26, 1924, Hitler’s trial for high treason began in Munich. He faced serious charges but, instead of portraying Hitler as an extremist and traitor, the trial provided him with a national platform from which to address the people of Germany. A pro-Nazi journalist described the trial in the following melodramatic but also apt way:
And Hitler speaks. Speaks for four and a half hours. The courtroom sinks, the court sinks, the walls sink—only one man is left standing and hundreds of thousands listening—millions—this man is not the accused, by God, he is an inexorable accuser, and his sentences burn like flames.
. . . “I left Vienna a confirmed anti-Semite, a deadly foe of Marxism.” The statement sweeps through the room like a peal of thunder.15
Hitler’s fame grew immensely thanks to his performance at his trial. The judge lost control of the proceedings and only barely succeeded in convincing the jury that they could not acquit Hitler. As a result, he received only five years in prison with the possibility of early release . . . for attempting a violent overthrow of the government.16
Bavarian authorities remanded Hitler to Landsberg Prison along with his co-conspirators. His time there was very comfortable as he was attended upon by his personal secretary, Rudolf Hess, and frequently received visitors. Most importantly, Hitler reexamined his political strategy and wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle): a rambling combination of biography and political philosophy. The book also laid out some of Hitler’s plans for the future, though historians differ over the extent to which these should be considered as actual plans. Hitler walked out of prison a free man, pardoned by the court in December 1924 after barely a year’s incarceration. The biggest change in the Hitler who left Landsberg that cold morning was his coming to realize that he would need to take power through legal, democratic means.
This, Hitler set out to do almost immediately. In his absence, the various fringe right-wing parties that had begun uniting under his leadership had fragmented. He absorbed them again into the NSDAP while molding it into a modern political party with a complete platform—in contrast to fringe single-issue antisemitic parties. In this way, he broadened his base to include more mainstream voters and he began to move more freely in conservative circles of power and with greater legitimacy.
Hitler and the Nazi party succeeded at the ballot box because they tailored their message to different constituencies. Perhaps surprisingly, anti-Communism formed a larger part of Nazi propaganda in the early days than vulgar antisemitism. This made good political sense as most Germans had witnessed the terrifying collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 as well as the very real violence in their own streets as left-wing extremists battled right-wing extremists; after all, a communist state had briefly taken over Bavaria. Nazi propaganda urged a Germanization of the population, a removal of corrupting influences, making Germany great again, and combating the terror of Communism. As economic depression swept through Germany, the Nazis organized soup kitchens and dangled prosperity in front of people crushed by poverty.
This political platform gained traction. The NSDAP went from 6.6 percent of the vote in national elections in May 1924 to a high point of 37.3 percent in July 1932; their number of seats in the Reichstag increased from six to 230.17 In the July 1932 election, Hitler directly challenged the incumbent president, former general Paul von Hindenburg, and was only narrowly defeated. Despite electoral success, the Nazis could not create a governing coalition. Unfortunately, neither could anyone else. The Social Democrats and Communists failed to see a common threat in the Nazis and thus did not combine their significant electoral power to block the NSDAP. At the same time, President Hindenburg also could not form a working government and ruled from crisis to crisis through emergency decrees. Hitler refused the position of Vice Chancellor in July 1932, guessing correctly that he could hold out for a higher position in return for delivering Nazi support and stability. Thus, despite the fact that the Nazis actually lost ground in the last democratic elections of the Weimar Republic, Franz von Papen convinced Hindenburg to name Hitler Chancellor, despite Hindenburg’s obvious detestation of the “bohemian corporal.” Conservatives believed that Hitler was a political blowhard who could be controlled. They were dreadfully wrong.
Adolf Hitler, failed Austrian painter and convicted traitor, was named Chancellor of Germany by one of the country’s most respected war heroes on January 30, 1933. Serendipitously for Hitler, less than a month later, a Dutch communist set fire to the Reichstag (parliament) building. Hitler leapt at this opportunity to further paint his left-wing opposition as clear and present dangers to the German people. This was his “God-given signal” to “crush out this murderous pest [Communists] with an iron first.”18 Seizing upon an unfortunate clause in the Weimar Constitution, Article 48 allowing the Chancellor to take all measures to maintain national security, Hitler issued the “Reichstag Decree” or the Decree for the Protection of People and State. This decree “suspended the personal liberties enshrined in the Weimar Constitution” and centralized power in the hands of the federal government.19
Hitler followed this decree with an immediate wave of assaults on the German Communist Party (KPD) and Social Democratic Party (SPD). He now prepared for a full and permanent seizure of power. After ejecting the KPD from the Reichstag, Hitler sought the passage of the Enabling Act, which granted the Chancellor unlimited executive and legislative powers for a period of four years. With the KPD removed and the SPD cowed, Hitler needed only the support of the Catholic Center party to achieve his aim. On March 23, 1933, the Enabling act was passed and Hitler became an absolute dictator. Social Democrat Otto Wels stood out as a voice in the wilderness. Speaking on the floor of the Reichstag, he noted that
Never before . . . has the control of public affairs by the elected representatives of the people been eliminated to such an extent as is happening now and is supposed to happen even more through the new Enabling Act. Such omnipotence of the government must have all the more serious repercussions inasmuch as the press, too, lacks any freedom of expression.20
Thus, less than ten years after his revolution was literally gunned down in the streets of Munich, Adolf Hitler achieved his goal of absolute control over Germany . . . through mainly political means.
The Evolution of the Nazi State
Membership in the Greater German Chess Association which from now on will be the [country’s] sole chess organization, is to be determined in accordance with an Aryan paragraph.
German Chess Association, July 9, 193321
From the moment Hitler took power, the Nazis began a campaign to consolidate control of every aspect of German private and public life, including in such mundane areas as a game of chess. Central to this was building support among the local population through massive propaganda campaigns. Hitler dedicated two full chapters in Mein Kampf to the “Significance of the Spoken Word” and “Propaganda and Organization.” In order to realize his most extreme visions, Hitler knew that incessant and powerful messages explaining the Nazi worldview and ideology must saturate Germany. The mission of indoctrinating the country fell to the short, sickly, and clubfooted Josef Goebbels. He articulated the goal of Nazi propaganda in a 1933 speech saying, “We, on the other hand, intend a principled transformation in the worldview of our entire society, a revolution of the greatest possible scope that will leave nothing out, changing the life of our nation in every regard.”22 Goebbels’s adoration for the Führer was complete. As he wrote in 1926, “I love him . . . He’s a man, taking it all round. Such a sparkling mind can be my leader. I bow to the greater one, the political genius.”23
In 1933, Goebbels was appointed the Minister of Propaganda in Hitler’s cabinet. He had a keen mind for propaganda and frequently spoke at Nazi party events. He also understood how to leverage the new technology at his disposal such as radio and film. In a speech titled “Radio as the Eighth Great Power,” he proclaimed, “It is, in fact, a modern revolution, and it has used the most modern methods to win and use power . . . the government resulting from this revolution cannot ignore the radio and its possibilities.”24 The Nazi propaganda machine also incorporated print media; from the official newspaper, the Völkischerbeobachter (People’s Observer), to the odiously antisemitic Der Stürmer (The Attacker) published by the even more odious Julius Streicher. Nazi indoctrination also utilized film and all manner of material aimed at specific audiences such as children, students, and women. For example, propaganda targeted children in school and in the Hitler Youth and men in the military via small “knapsack books” on a variety of topics. In addition, Goebbels organized elaborate public events, the most famous of which were the carefully staged and orchestrated Nuremburg rallies, drawing hundreds of thousands of participants for fiery speeches, torch lit ceremonies, and parades. Perhaps the most famous of these was the 1934 rally—the subject of the Leni Riefenstahl film Triumph of the Will, a classic in propaganda filmmaking.
The Nazis gained strong support among ordinary Germans, in large part because they presented a variety of issues to the populace. Nazism promised a return to greatness after the humiliating defeat of World War I, playing on simple nationalism. It added a racial component and the concept of the Volksgemeinschaft, or national racial community. Nazi propaganda also offered economic relief to Germans suffering the effects of the depression while simultaneously blaming those misfortunes on Jews, communists, and other “enemies of the state.” It appealed to more conservative Germans by its rejection of liberal social values, as can be seen in actions against homosexuals and modern art—which it termed “degenerate.” Nazi propaganda outlets also violently condemned communism and promised to protect Germany from this threat; a threat that many could relate to given the chaos of the immediate postwar years. When Soviet massacres of Polish prisoners of war were discovered in 1940, Goebbels ordered that the event would “now be exploited in a major way for anti-Bolshevik propaganda.”25 A related vein of propaganda was the lure of the East, the promise of self-sufficiency guaranteed by the destruction of the Soviet Union and the inferior races of Eastern Europe. Lastly, but certainly not least, the Nazis offered a wide array of antisemitic messages, from the most vulgar to more refined arguments, with racial, economic, and political underpinnings.
The Nazi governing apparatus, however, did not clearly delineate the responsibilities of the government. Areas of authority often overlapped, leaving Hitler’s subordinates to sort out conflicts among themselves. As one historian points out, “Hitler’s way of operating was scarcely conducive to ordered government.”26 Indeed, the Führer preferred maintaining power in his own hands, preventing his subordinates from accumulating too much of their own. Nazi luminaries like Goebbels, Göring, Himmler, Speer and others constantly jockeyed for Hitler’s approval. Indeed, the Nazi cabinet never met during most of the twelve years the Nazis were in power. While this system helped maintain Hitler’s power base, “the Hitler regime was inimical to a rational order of government and administration. Its hallmark was systemlessness, administrative and governmental disorder, the erosion of clear patterns of government, however despotic.”27 This government structure created two important characteristics of the Nazi state and its plans for the future. The first was a tendency to “work toward the Führer.”28 This concept of “working towards the Führer” meant that Hitler rarely gave explicit or written directives to his subordinates; indeed, they attempted to divine his wishes and intent. Those best able to anticipate Hitler’s desires experienced the most success and favor. This system also meant that no single subordinate remained permanently in Hitler’s favor and so competition to best understand their leader was continuous. As one Nazi official recognized as early as 1934, “anyone who really works towards the Führer along his lines and towards his goal will certainly both now and in the future one day have the finest reward in the form of the sudden legal confirmation of his work.”29
The second important characteristic of the Nazi state and its policies arose from the first. This was the phenomenon of “cumulative radicalization.”30 Cumulative radicalization resulted from Hitler’s tendency to be most receptive to the most ambitious, extreme, and far-reaching plans that mirrored his intent. This drove subordinates to seek ever grander, ever more extreme solutions to state dilemmas of all kinds. This had important consequences regarding the Nazi genocidal project and the Holocaust, as we will see later.
The chaotic nature of Nazi government allowed for a complex merging of state and party apparatuses as the Nazis took power in Germany, from village government to the highest national offices. Beginning in Bavaria, for example, Heinrich Himmler took control of the German police force, moving from a party official to a government official, and then combining party and police forces. The Communist and Social Democratic parties were outlawed and their members arrested and placed in “protective custody”—in makeshift camps like the one in Dachau (established March 22, 1933), fashioned from an abandoned munitions factory. Throughout Germany, Nazis interned and sometimes killed their political enemies in a series of “wild camps,” ranging from basements in local party headquarters to river barges. The first prisoners of the concentration camps were German, not Jewish (though Jews were interned if they were also political enemies.) The goal was to terrify the political opposition into silence. In 1936, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler consolidated the concentration camp system under SS Lieutenant General Theodor Eicke, a formerly disgraced SS officer released from a mental hospital.31 This second chance guaranteed Eicke’s loyalty, and he began building a series of organized camps using Dachau as a model. Himmler placed what would become a massive system of camps and subcamps under his control, enhancing his own power within the regime.
Himmler, an awkward and unprepossessing young man who had watched World War I from the sidelines, maneuvered himself into a position of incredible power, beginning in 1929 when he took over Hitler’s personal bodyguard. An opportunist and true believer in Nazi Volkisch and racial policy, he rose to prominence by bringing all German police organizations under his control by 1936. In 1939, he created the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) or Reich Security Main Office. This contained the Geheimstaatspolizei (Gestapo) or Secret State Police, the Sicherheitsdienst or Security Service (SD), and the Kriminalpolizei or Criminal Police (Kripo). The Gestapo and the SD would be most deeply involved in carrying out the Holocaust while the Kripo functioned more or less as regular police. His protégé, the ambitious and talented Reinhard Heydrich, headed the RSHA. His relationship with Himmler was characterized by “deep trust, complementary talents and shared political convictions.”32 Likewise, Himmler “was the man who enabled Hitler actually to exercise his position as a dictator with, in principle, unlimited power through the deployment of state terror.”33 By the end of World War II, Himmler’s SS empire spanned the continent and influenced innumerable areas of Nazi policy. Chief among these would be the murder of the Jews of Europe.
Hitler took advantage of his newfound powers and the instrument of the SS to eliminate potential opponents and settle scores with those he felt had wronged him in the past, as exemplified by the “Night of the Long Knives”—a series of personal and political killings that took place from June 30 to July 2, 1934. To cement the vital support of the military (which he had lacked during the Putsch), Hitler agreed to neuter the SA and eliminate its leader, Ernst Röhm, who envisioned a people’s army that was completely unacceptable to the existing conservative military. The SS and Gestapo murdered Röhm, who had stood by Hitler during the Putsch. Among other political enemies were Nazi party dissenter Gregor Strasser and, the man who had stood in Hitler’s way in 1923, Gustav von Kahr. Hitler’s strike succeeded. The Reichswehr minister, Blomberg, praised “the soldierly determination and exemplary courage” shown by Hitler in destroying the “traitors and mutineers.”34
The Nazi consolidation of power did not stop at governmental agencies or at the national scale. Germany was a nation of clubs, associations, and groups of all kinds and all political stripes, and the Nazis coopted them all. Soon, there was an official Nazi version of each that Germans were forced to join as their other options vanished. This process, known as Gleischaltung (coordination, bringing into line), was the Nazi attempt to simultaneously unite the Volk and control all aspects of public and private life. Catholic singing clubs became Nazi singing clubs, shooting clubs became Nazi shooting clubs (and socialist shooting clubs were disbanded.) Importantly, local authorities made many of these changes without prompting from higher authorities. Thus, the Nazi state gradually narrowed the separation of the public and private spheres in an attempt to create the Volksgemeinschaft: a unified racial community with Nazi values.
Nowhere was this clearer than in Nazi anti-Jewish policy in Germany. With Hitler’s seizure of power, he and the Nazis took their first steps against the Jews, taking advantage of the Führer’s ability to unilaterally dictate policy. Nazi officials organized a boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933. The attempt had mixed results, as reported by Jewish doctor Paula Tobias:
from across the road came two young fellows in full array and told me in the most embarrassed manner that they were supposed to stand in front of our property and not to [let] any patient in . . . . it did not work that way everywhere. In Holzminden for example there had been bloody riots with plenty of arrests and shattered windows.35
The boycott caused damage across Germany, but only partially succeeded economically; yet it represented an important step in the escalation of Nazi anti-Jewish policy. Nazi antisemitism was plain to see in the slogans painted across Jewish businesses and, while some ignored the boycott, Germans in general seemed indifferent, if annoyed, by the interruption in normal affairs.
A week later, on April 7, 1933, the “Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service” removed Jews and political opponents from all government positions—from the bureaucracy to schools. The language was very clear: “Civil service officials of non-Aryan descent are to be retired.”36 The only exception, for the time being, was World War I veterans.
The Nazis went a step further in 1935, issuing the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor,” forbidding marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews. The introduction to the statute claimed that the laws were “compelled by knowledge of the fact that the purity of the German blood is the prerequisite for the continued existence of the German Volk, and inspired by the unbending will to secure the future of the German nation in perpetuity.”37 Violators of these so-called “Nuremburg Laws” were subject to arrest and confinement in a concentration camp. A flurry of other laws and restrictions followed, restricting Jewish social and economic freedoms and personal liberties and slowly removing them from public life, even chess clubs. Many German Jews moved from smaller towns—where they were more vulnerable—to larger cities. In this way, over 400 Jewish communities disappeared.38 The examples below illustrate both local initiative and the escalation of discrimination:
The City Health Insurance Institute will as of April 1 1933 no longer reimburse the costs for treatment by Jewish physicians.
Berlin Commissioner of Health, March 31, 1933
Non-Aryan students will not be permitted to take the examination to become teachers of dance.
President of the Reich Chamber of Theater, July 27, 1934
Entrance of Jews to public bathing and swimming facilities is forbidden.
The City Council of Augsburg, July 19, 1935
All streets named after Jews . . . are to be immediately renamed. The old street signs are to be removed forthwith and exchanged with new signs.
Minister of the Interior of the Reich, July 27, 1938
Jews are not permitted to use public libraries.
President of the Reich’s Chamber of Writers, August 2, 1941
As of September 15, 1941, all Jews over the age of six are forbidden to appear in public without wearing a Jewish star.
Ministry of the Interior of the Reich, September 1, 194139
Gradually increasing antisemitic measures enabled the Nazis to gauge public opinion and also to “encourage” Jews to emigrate from Germany. Many Jewish families made this agonizing choice; however, the Nazis extracted practically all wealth before allowing exit. This made it very difficult for most Jews to enter countries like England and the United States; the rest left for other countries in Europe—which would eventually fall into Nazi hands.
1938 witnessed another major turning point in Nazi anti-Jewish policy. In November, a Polish Jew named Herschel Grynzspan was angered at the treatment of his parents, who were trapped between Poland and Germany by the antisemitic immigration policies of both countries. On November 7, he walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot a low-level diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, and was arrested shortly thereafter. Vom Rath died two days later.
Rath’s assassination gave the Nazis another opportunity to escalate anti-Jewish violence. What was to appear as a spontaneous outburst of righteous anger at Jews was, in fact, a planned and coordinated assault known as Kristallnacht (or the Night of the Broken Glass). Goebbels announced in a speech that Hitler would not intervene in anti-Jewish demonstrations.40 Heydrich issued more specific instructions to the police, noting that “places of business and apartments belonging to Jews may be destroyed but not looted.” He also ordered that “as many Jews in all districts—especially the rich—as can be accommodated in existing prisons are to be arrested.”41 Jewish businesses, synagogues, and homes were damaged and destroyed while the police, firemen, and population looked on. 267 synagogues were burned, 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses were vandalized and looted, and at least 91 Jews were killed during the violence.42 The Nazis billed the Jewish community for the damage caused. The vulgar Nazi propagandist, Julius Streicher, invoked the “Stab-in-the-back” myth as justification for Kristallnacht in a speech the next day. He ranted,
Today we heard of a “lady” who sighed that it was heartbreaking to see all the destroyed shops. Who had pity for us when, after the war, the Jew brought down enormous misery on the German people, as the Jew stole our savings during the great inflation, as Germany was blockaded during the World War by Jewish orders and hundreds of thousands of women and children starved?43
For the first time, the Nazis arrested and interned large numbers of Jewish men in concentration camps. They aimed to extort money for their release and to further encourage emigration. Kristallnacht represented an important turning point, being the most violent and most public violence against Jews yet—and it was, again, more or less tolerated, if not applauded, by most Germans.
We should pause here to briefly discuss the first mass killings conducted by the Nazis. Its victims were not Jews, but Germans. In 1938, the parents of a badly deformed child wrote the Führer, asking him to authorize the “mercy killing” of their infant. Hitler ordered his personal physician, SS Dr. Karl Brandt, to investigate the case, and, if necessary, kill the child. Brandt authorized the killing.44 Hitler then signed a letter authorizing Brandt and his Chief of the Chancellery, Phillipp Bouhler, to expand the program. What followed was a policy of so-called “euthanasia” that was, in fact, the killing of mentally and physically handicapped Germans who were considered to be “useless eaters” and “life unworthy of life.” This was the practical application of the eugenics and racial hygiene theories of Binding and Hoche and others. In late 1938, the Nazis began a secret program to murder the handicapped, known as Operation T-4, after the address of its headquarters—Tiergartenstrasse 4. Panels of doctors analyzed and passed judgment on hundreds of patients a day, based solely on their records, without ever examining them. Special buses transported patients to several designated mental hospitals in Germany and Austria where they were gassed to death. Relatives received ashes with a false cause of death—and were billed for the shipping and handling. This process was not without its mistakes; some families received two sets of ashes or were told their loved one had died of appendicitis when the appendix had been removed years earlier. In short, it became impossible to maintain the secrecy of the operation. This failure became painfully clear when Catholic Bishop Clemens von Galen took to the pulpit on August 3, 1941, in brave opposition to T-4, saying, “we are concerned here with human beings, our fellow human beings, our brothers and sisters! With poor people, sick people, unproductive people, if you will. But does that mean they have forfeited the right to life? Have you, have I, the right to live only so long as we are productive, so long as we are recognized by others as productive?”45 Hitler himself promised to kill Galen at the end of the war. Seeking to avoid a public relations disaster, however, Hitler agreed to—at least publicly—end the program; it continued in a decentralized manner, resulting in the murder of over 70,000 German men, women, and children by the end of the war. The staff that helped carry out this program would not be idle for long, as we shall see later.
The Wars that Hitler Won: Nazi Foreign Policy, 1933–40
“Well, Ribbentrop,” I asked him while we were walking in the garden, “What do you want? The Corridor or Danzig?” “Not any longer”—and he fixed on me those cold . . . eyes of his—“We want war.”
From the Diary of COUNT CIANO, Italian Foreign Minister, August 11, 193946
There are some who prefer to look at Adolf Hitler as insane or living in a dark fantasy world of his own creation. Yet, for a good portion of his rule, Hitler was an adept politician and accomplished diplomat. Indeed, from 1933 to 1940, he faced international (and some domestic) opposition and prevailed repeatedly. He understood very well the geopolitical and strategic climate and quite effectively achieved his foreign policy goals; goals that further solidified his support at home. It was not until the failed Battle of Britain and the invasion of the Soviet Union that Hitler’s worldview drove Germany toward eventual defeat. Moreover, as Ribbentrop clearly recognized above, Hitler wanted war, for he knew that only war would allow him to gain what he sought. What follows is a brief summary of the “wars” that Hitler won up to his invasion of the Soviet Union, which we will discuss in detail later.
Hitler’s foray into foreign policy began with reversing the effects of the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I and so humiliated Germany. The Allies sought to prevent future German aggression by reducing its army to 100,000 men, without heavy naval ships or airplanes. They also took land from Germany—in an attempt to both extract reparations and reduce the power of Germany’s territorial position in Central Europe. The Treaty split eastern Germany, granting the so-called “Danzig corridor to the sea” to Poland. It also created the state of Czechoslovakia, partly from German-speaking lands. In addition, the Treaty demanded the area bordering the Rhine river, known as the Rhineland, be demilitarized to further protect France from any future German attack.
Hitler sought to reclaim lands these lands and to rebuild Germany’s military might, which many Germans viewed as synonymous with Germanic pride. Hitler and many others blamed these penalties on the failures of the “November criminals”—German politicians who had signed the treaty of Versailles. However, Hitler also had much grander plans; reclaiming the lost land of Versailles would never ensure German self-sufficiency and the lebensraum (living space) he believed was required for his future conquests. He never intended to stop at returning to the 1914 status-quo.47 However, Hitler shrewdly started small. He violated the terms of the Versailles Treaty almost immediately. In the interwar period, treaties with the Soviet Union allowed Germans to train on tanks and aircraft in the East. At home in Germany, civilian organizations such as the Nationalsozialistischenfliegerkorps (NSFK), or National Socialist Flying Corps, allowed pilots to conduct military flight training in secret.
The Führer openly violated the Versailles Treaty first on March 7, 1936 when he remilitarized the Rhineland. Against the advice of his generals and advisors, Hitler ordered thirty thousand German troops to occupy the territory while he addressed the Reichstag. When he announced the operation underway in the Rhineland, the deputies went wild. “The Messiah plays his role superbly,” American journalist William Shirer noted with foreboding.48 Hitler recognized the risk he was running by so openly flaunting his disdain for Versailles; he had already ordered his troops to withdraw if they met with any resistance. But they were unopposed. Hitler had gauged his enemies correctly; none of the Allies had been willing to risk a war over Germany returning its own soldiers to its own territory. Hitler justified his actions as a response to French diplomatic overtures to his enemy, the Soviet Union. He then offered to participate in peace talks “to avoid any misinterpretation of [his] intentions and to establish beyond doubt the purely defensive character of these measures.”49 In addition, in his mind, he defied the conventional wisdom of his advisors and succeeded through force of will and prophetic vision.
Nine days later, Hitler drove another nail into Versailles’ coffin, announcing the return of military conscription and an increase in the size of the Army. This ushered in a period of rapid rearmament and military buildup. These developments were just the beginning for Hitler, as he acknowledged in a secret 1936 memo casting Germany as Europe’s defense against Bolshevism. The memo proclaimed, “If we do not succeed in developing the German Army as quickly as possible into the best army in the world—in training, in the number of troops, in armaments, and above all, in mind and spirit—Germany will be lost!”50 Indeed, Hitler aimed to rebuild a powerful army; for him, the new Wehrmacht would be the “victorious sword” that would conquer all of Europe.51 Naturally, such a program pleased both the generals and the industrialists. It also pleased the populace. An opposition report noted that “Hitler has again gained extraordinary ground among the people. He is loved by many.”52 For many, Hitler had erased some of the shame of the defeat in World War I. More importantly, the Führer had gambled successfully that the Allies would not act. France was certainly alarmed, but Britain was preoccupied and not interested in punishing Germany. The United States had forsworn any overseas entanglements. In fact, some of the former allies felt in hindsight that the Versailles Treaty had been too harsh. Regardless, Hitler correctly read the tea leaves and knew that no one would risk another world war over his rearmament program.
Hitler’s next move came in March of 1938, when he “occupied” Austria in what came to be known as the Anschluss; again demonstrating his keen ability to manipulate his adversaries. One of the central principles of the Versailles peace had been the right to national self-determination, which argued that people of like nationalities should have the ability to choose to be together. After Austrian Nazi agitation, the German Army entered Austria and incorporated it into the greater Reich. What had been known as Austria became the province of Ostmark after a “plebiscite.” Again, international reaction was decidedly lackluster.
Source: Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien.
Hitler next targeted the newly formed Czechoslovakia. Initially, he sought to reclaim only the Sudetenland, an area in western Czechoslovakia with a majority German population. He used the Minorities Treaties that resulted from the Versailles Treaty as a justification. The Nazi party had secretly funded the Sudeten German Party—an ally that wanted a return to Germany and that applied pressure to the Czechoslovakian government. Hitler intentionally manufactured a crisis in Czechoslovakia. His saber rattling did not go unnoticed: his own advisors, including Göring, advised against war. Still wishing to avoid a general war, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Neville Chamberlain traveled urgently to Munich in September 1938 for negotiations.
With Hitler threatening war and the former allies having no stomach for it, Germany, France, Italy, and Britain signed the Munich Agreement on September 29, giving Hitler control of the Sudetenland. No one consulted the Czechoslovakian government. Neville Chamberlain declared “Peace in our time” while Hitler told his generals that “it must be possible to smash at any time the remainder of the Czech State.”53 By March of 1939, Hitler had bullied Czech President Hàcha into surrendering the remainder of the Czech state. German troops entered the country unopposed and it became the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in the Greater Reich. Hitler claimed this would be Germany’s last demand for land.
Thus, after only six years in power, Hitler had reversed almost all the humiliations of Versailles and regained most of the lost territory without a shot fired or negative diplomatic repercussions. He had also done it largely against the advice of his closest advisors and generals, a fact that he never forgot and which gave him great confidence moving forward. He now turned toward Poland, which to Germany was more important than any of the previous territories had been. Unlike his previous acquisitions, parts of Poland would be part of the lebensraum or “living space” that Hitler sought in the East. It would also greatly exacerbate his “Jewish Problem” by increasing Jews under German control from around 300,000 to 3,000,000. Unlike previous conquests, this one would not come easily. The Nazi government asked Poland, in October 1938, to return the annoying Danzig corridor to Germany, uniting Eastern Prussia with the rest of the country.54 It was a demand that Poland could never agree to. Hitler may have hoped to bully Poland as he did Czechoslovakia, so he was enraged when the British government allied itself with Poland on March 31, 1939. Sir Neville Chamberlain addressed the House of Commons saying:
In the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence . . . His Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all the support in their power.55
Sensing that war was becoming inevitable, German diplomats in Poland increasingly pressed for ever more unrealistic concessions. Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano correctly wrote in his diary in August 1939 that “I am certain that even if the Germans were given more than they ask for they would attack just the same because they are possessed by the demon of destruction.”56
Meanwhile, Hitler was determined to protect Germany from the two-front war that had ruined Germany in World War I. On August 23, 1939, his Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union. Outwardly, it appeared to be a standard non-aggression treaty, but inside secret protocols divided Poland in case of war and handed half of Poland and the Baltic States to the USSR. On the same day, Hitler received a letter from Chamberlain stating that “whatever may prove to be the nature of the German-Soviet Agreement, it cannot alter Great Britain’s obligation to Poland, which His Majesty’s Government have stated in public repeatedly and plainly and which they are determined to fulfill.” He further warned, that Britain was “resolved and prepared to employ without delay all the forces at [its] command.”57 At this point, it seems that Hitler was ready for war. By April 3, 1939, “Case White,” the plan for the invasion of Poland, was finalized and the Wehrmacht was instructed to be prepared to invade no later than September 1. In addition, while there may have been some doubters, Hitler’s generals seemed to now believe in his vision. Chief of the General Staff Franz Halder practically gushed about the “outstanding, I might say, instinctively sure policy of the Führer.”58 In truth, Hitler had proved the skeptics wrong every time so far. Despite last-ditch diplomatic attempts by others to prevent hostilities, he was determined to go to war. And this war would have ominous implications for Nazi Jewish policy. On January 30, 1939, Hitler had spoken before the Reichstag:
Today I will again be a prophet and say, if international finance Jewry in and outside Europe succeeds in plunging nations into another world war, then the end result will not be the Bolshevization of the planet and thus the victory of the Jews—it will be the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.59
The audience roared. While this does not indicate a decision at this point to murder all the Jews of Europe, it does represent the importance of the war in Hitler’s mind to increasingly extreme measures against Jews.
On the night of August 31, a group of SS men staged a mock attack on a German radio station at Gleiwitz, on the German-Polish border. Early the next morning, on September 1, 1939, the German Army poured into Poland. Hitler addressed the Reichstag the same day, saying, “I have once more put on the uniform which was once the most holy and precious to me. I shall only take it off after victory or I shall not live to see the end.”60 The British and French governments issued ultimatums demanding the immediate withdrawal of German troops in order to avert war. Upon the news, Hitler “sat completely silent and unmoving,” according to his government interpreter.61 Nevertheless, there was no going back; war had already started. On September 17, the Red Army invaded Poland from the East, completing its downfall. The Soviets occupied the Baltic States and their half of Poland and began immediately to implement their communist revolution.
Unfortunately for the Poles, while England and France declared war on Germany, words remained largely the extent of the help Poland received from the West. Geography was the third ally of Nazi Germany and the British or French simply could not reach Poland, certainly not with any hope of impacting the outcome in any way. The period after the surrender of Poland until the invasion of France in 1940 was a period of military inactivity, known as the “Sitzkrieg” while both sides prepared for the inevitable attack on France.
That moment ended when Germany invaded France on May 10, 1940—again employing its superior tactic of blitzkrieg. The French, relying on a series of massive static defenses known as the Maginot Line, were unprepared for the German assault through Belgium that had rendered their fortifications useless. Despite the aid of a British expeditionary force, the French capitulated in less than two months, with the British barely escaping from Dunkirk. Hitler then ordered an aerial assault on Britain in preparation for an invasion. He hoped to eliminate his enemies in the West before focusing on his true targets in the East—and thus avoiding a two-front war scenario. The Luftwaffe campaign under Hermann Göring, however, proved a disastrous failure. It soon became clear that there were, indeed, “bitter weeds in England,” and that the campaign against Churchill would be far more protracted than Göring had promised. Yet, Hitler had already been ordering preparations for an invasion of the Soviet Union in May 1940. The failure of the Battle of Britain encouraged him to continue with these plans, as he believed that the British were only staying in the war in “expectation of the Soviet Union and United States replacing France as Britain’s continental ally.”62 Thus, what Hitler expected would be a quick and decisive destruction of the Soviet Union would isolate Britain and hasten their surrender. However, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, they would soon see how wrong this particular prophecy was. And so began the war that Hitler lost.
Naturally, the Nazi state was essential for the Holocaust. However, its byzantine organization and competitions for favor would drastically impact the way in which it and the larger Nazi genocidal project unfolded in the East; the consent—overt or passive—of the German people for the regime enabled an ever-expanding set of imperial and racial policies. While Hitler and his beliefs have been highlighted here, thousands of Nazi leaders at all levels influenced and altered Nazi policy. The outcomes were usually the same for the victims. Policies, ideologies, and even personnel developed in Nazi Germany from 1933–9 would be exported to occupied territories in the East so that the Holocaust there took place with important roots in the Reich. Finally, Hitler’s foreign policy successes (and failures) created the landscape upon which the Holocaust took place. The Holocaust was not a purely ideological, Hitler-driven event, nor was it created solely by actors and situations on the ground. Situation, ideology, and personalities merged in complex ways to enable genocide.
Selected Readings
Bergerson, Andrew Stuart. Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times: The Nazi Revolution in Hildesheim. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
Friedländer, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939. Vol. 1, New York: HarperCollins, 1997.
Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: A Biography. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008.
Leitz, Christian. Nazi Foreign Policy, 1933–1941: The Road to Global War. London: Routledge, 2004.
Longerich, Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.