A History of Germany 1918 - 2020. Mary Fulbrook

regarding half-Jews who professed the Jewish faith or were married to a Jew, and who were categorized as Geltungsjuden, or ‘counted as Jews’), while ‘three-quarter Jews’ were included as Jews. For many Germans, the Nuremberg Laws were welcomed as an apparent legalization of the rather ad hoc measures of discrimination against Jews. Yet what is particularly striking is the way in which Germans rapidly ‘learned’ to consider their fellow citizens in terms of the new racial categories: friendships were cut off, and German Jews not only lost status and livelihood but were also increasingly cut off from their former social circles and wider support networks. The ‘racialization’ of German society was extremely rapid, laying the groundwork for later, more radical measures.

Far from being the culmination of Nazi anti-Semitic measures, the Nuremberg Laws marked but a stage in the systematic exclusion of Jews from ‘normal’ life. With a brief, partial respite in deference to international opinion when Berlin hosted the Olympic Games in 1936, a series of supplementary decrees and regulations in the following years systematically continued to exclude Jews from their professions, from education, and from public and cultural life. From 1938 discrimination became more severe, with the ‘Aryanization’ or confiscation of Jewish property, and the effective removal of the means of material existence in a variety of ways. The effect, as a Nazi article of 24 November 1938 remarked with glee, would be to reduce the Jews to dependence on crime – which would ‘necessitate’ the appropriate measures on the part of a state committed to law and order, ending in the ‘complete extermination’ (restlose Vernichtung) of German Jewry.¹⁶

      Commitment to law and order was scarcely evident in the actions against Jews on the Reichskristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) of 9 November 1938. Ostensibly precipitated by the murder of a member of the German Embassy in Paris by a young Jew, a supposedly ‘spontaneous uprising’ was incited by a speech by Goebbels on the occasion of the annual anniversary celebration of the Beer Hall Putsch. Party radicals burned synagogues, attacked Jewish homes and businesses, and looted Jewish property across Germany. Official party figures reported ninety-one deaths of Jews, and subsequently around thirty thousand Jews were arrested and detained in concentration camps for a period of time; the true number of deaths as a result of Nazi brutality, and individual suicides out of sheer desperation and despair, ran into far higher figures. Jews had to pay compensation for the destruction of property themselves, and hand over any payments from insurance policies to the state. Many non-Jewish Germans in fact joined in the public humiliation of Jews, or took the opportunity to benefit by looting property from Jewish stores. Innumerable others, far from having spontaneously perpetrated attacks – as the Nazi propaganda would have it – were actually appalled at the wanton destruction of property and evident lawlessness of the Reichskristallnacht. But while some offered sympathy, support and assistance at an individual level, they did little to protest openly against the attacks of November 1938; rumours of what happened to those who did raise their voices, and fear of the likely penalties, ensured widespread passivity and silence. Nor did people protest against the continuing series of measures discriminating against the Jews – the removal of their driving licences, the withdrawal of their passports (which were returned stamped with the initial ‘J’), the enforced adoption of the first names Israel or Sara, the ban on visiting museums, theatres, concerts, swimming pools, the forced surrender of gold and silver objects and all precious jewellery with the exception of wedding rings, the systematic reductions in status and livelihood. Most Germans simply acquiesced in the piecemeal process by which Jews were identified, defined, stigmatized, segregated and stripped of the status of fellow citizens and even human beings to become an oppressed minority in their own homeland. These peacetime measures of discrimination were a precondition for the subsequent preference of many Germans to ignore the later, more tragic fate of these people who had already been effectively removed from a normal status in civil society.

On the foreign policy front, desires for the revision of the Treaty of Versailles were, as indicated above, widespread among Germans. Already in the closing years of the Weimar Republic, after the death of Stresemann, less cautious, more strident tones had been evident in German foreign policy. These revisionist tendencies were unleashed with vigour by Hitler. In 1933 he made clear his preference for bilateral rather than collective security arrangements and soon withdrew from the League of Nations. With the approval of the army, by 1934 rearmament was in full swing, with the production of aircraft, ships and explosives. In January 1935, after a plebiscite, the Saarland was returned to German jurisdiction. In March 1935 the rearmament programme, the existence of a German air force and the introduction of one year’s conscription (raised to two years in August 1936), were made public. These clear breaches of the Treaty of Versailles were censured by the so-called Stresa Front of Italy, France and Britain, and by the League of Nations, in April 1935, but to little effect. By June of that year Britain and Germany had concluded a Naval Agreement under which Germany was permitted to increase her Navy to one-third the strength of the British Navy. The ‘Stresa Front’ was in any case less than solid. Hitler on the whole tended to admire Italy’s Fascist leader Mussolini, and, despite tensions between Italy and Germany over Austria after the attempted coup by Austrian Nazis in 1934, Hitler was concerned to foster good relations with his fellow-dictator. Hitler was also a prime opportunist. Taking advantage of British and French preoccupation with the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935, and under some pressure from domestic discontent over a deteriorating economic situation, Hitler took his first major foreign policy risk in March 1936. German troops marched over the Rhine to reoccupy the demilitarized left bank, in clear defiance of the Versailles Treaty. This served to boost Hitler’s domestic popularity considerably, and occasioned only very limited criticism from abroad.

From then on, foreign policy moved into a new gear. Under the Four Year Plan, presided over by Goering, rather unorthodox economic policies were initiated, which marked a clear break with Hjalmar Schacht’s notions of economic management. Schacht’s resignation as Minister of Economics in November 1937 came partly as a result of conflicts between the Economics Ministry and Goering’s office. There were similar conflicts between Nazis and more traditional conservative nationalists on the diplomatic front. For some time Ribbentrop had been running a diplomatic service in rivalry with the Foreign Ministry. In 1936 Ribbentrop became Ambassador to Britain. The Spanish Civil War, which broke out in July 1936, fostered closer relations between Italy and Germany (with both supporting Franco), and helped to bring about a new alignment. The emergent ‘Rome–Berlin Axis’ was strengthened as, in the course of 1936, it had become clear to Hitler that he would have to abandon his ideas about an alliance with Britain; and, in 1938, under Ribbentrop’s influence, Hitler opted for Japan as the third member of the ‘Axis’. The Tripartite Pact was finally signed in September 1940. Meanwhile, it was becoming increasingly clear that the attempt to combine preparation for war with domestic consumer satisfaction was in the long run economically impracticable and that it was essential for Germany to go to war sooner rather than later. This realization occasioned a new rift between the increasingly radical Nazi regime and the old elites: Hitler’s clash with army leaders in the winter of 1937–8 marked a further step in the gathering momentum of the Nazi regime.

      In November 1937, at a meeting with leaders of the army, navy and air force, together with the Foreign Minister and War Minister, Hitler delivered a lengthy harangue on Germany’s need for Lebensraum. Notes of this meeting were taken unofficially by Hitler’s military adjutant Colonel Hossbach, in what has become known as the ‘Hossbach memorandum’. Some of Hitler’s audience were not convinced by his ideas, which were greeted with grave reservations. Notwithstanding criticisms, in the following weeks Nazi military planning became offensive. Rather than responding or listening to criticism, Hitler simply removed the critics from their strategic positions. By February 1938 a significant purge had been effected: Blomberg’s post of War Minister was abolished; the old Wehrmacht office was replaced by the Oberkommando (High Command) of the Wehrmacht (OKW) under General Keitel; Fritsch was replaced as Commander-in-Chief of the army by General von Brauchitsch; fourteen senior generals were retired, and forty-six others had to change their commands; and, in the Foreign Ministry, Ribbentrop officially replaced Neurath as Foreign Minister. Hitler, who was already Supreme Commander of the army by virtue of his position as head of state since the death of Hindenburg, now also became Commander-in-Chief of the Armed