Hitler's Hangman (27 page)

the persecution of Jewish organizations in 1935. From his vantage point,

the assimilationists who refused to emigrate represented the greatest

obstacle to a successful Jewish policy: ‘The assimilationists deny their

Jewish origins either by claiming that they have lived in this country for

generations and that they are Germans or by maintaining, after getting

baptized, that they are Christians,’ thereby trying ‘to undermine Nazi

principles’.50 But how were they to be induced to leave the Reich?

Heydrich at this point rejected anti-Semitic mob violence as it would

both damage Germany’s position abroad and provoke objections from

large parts of the German population. In a report to the Reich Chancellery

about anti-Semitic riots in the summer of 1935, Heydrich demanded a

more orderly form of anti-Semitic policy, including notably stricter laws

against the Jews: ‘The reports about anti-Semitic demonstrations, which

continue to arrive from all parts of the Reich, show that there is wide-

spread and growing dissatisfaction with the hitherto inconsistent applica-

tion of measures against the Jews. Those among the German people who

are race-conscious believe that the measures so far taken against the Jews

have been insufficient and demand altogether harsher actions.’51

The following month, an internal SD memorandum confirmed that a

‘solution of the Jewish question through acts of terrorism’ was neither

attainable nor desirable:

A concerted approach to the Jewish problem is almost impossible as

long as clear legislation is missing. This lack has created the conditions

for repeatedly condemned independent actions. On the one hand, our

people wish to see the Jews driven out of Germany in accordance with

their Nazi convictions. On the other hand, no action is taken by the

responsible authorities; it is an unfortunate fact that the example set by

some party functionaries and their families in their personal life in rela-

tion to Jews and Jewish business does not always conform with the

wishes and demands of the ordinary party member . . . It should be

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97

remembered in this context that there is legal uncertainty regarding

mixed marriages and race defilement. Registrars who act according to

their conscience and refuse to marry such couples are often forced by the

courts to do so. On the other hand those registrars who wish deliberately

to go against Nazi beliefs can claim the support of official decrees.

Effective laws should therefore be passed which show the people that

the Jewish question is being regulated by law from above.52

The SD stressed above all the urgent need for legislation on citizenship,

freedom of movement and the marking of non-Aryan businesses. Their

criticism arose not from concern for human lives but from a wish to

preserve a state monopoly of power that could not be left in the hands of

party thugs. The SD and the Gestapo had an interest in radicalizing anti-

Jewish policies, but made it clear at the same time that the ‘solution of the

Jewish question’ should remain in the hands of state and party authorities,

and more specifically in the capable hands of Heydrich’s own apparatus.

In an attempt to co-ordinate future anti-Semitic policies, the German

Economics Minister, Hjalmar Schacht, held a top-level meeting on

20 August with the Reich Justice Minister, Franz Gürtner, the Reich

Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, and Heydrich and other officials

in attendance. Schacht, Gürtner and Frick were all anti-Semites, but they

were also concerned with legality, due process and the necessity of

avoiding excesses that might invite economic and international repercus-

sions. Schacht’s demand at the meeting that ‘the present lack of legislation

and unlawful activities must come to an end’ offered Heydrich a welcome

cue. He insisted that the current situation could be remedied only by

legislative measures, which would curb Jewish influence step by step.

More specifically, he demanded a ban on so-called mixed marriages, the

legal prosecution of sexual intercourse between a Jew and an Aryan, and

special legislation restricting Jews’ freedom of mobility, especially migra-

tion to large cities where it would be more difficult to police them.53

In a letter to the meeting’s participants at the beginning of September,

Heydrich formulated his demands in greater detail:

In my opinion the Jewish question cannot be solved through the use of

force or the maltreatment of individuals, or through damage to personal

property and other individual actions. It appears to me that it can be

resolved only by gradually curtailing the influence of the Jews step by

step . . . Just as the influence of the Jews in the civil service, in the arts

and culture has been almost entirely eliminated, their restriction must be

enforced in all areas of public life. With regard to the recent violent

excesses [against Jews], I consider it essential that the notion of legal

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HITLER’S HANGMAN

equality be abandoned, particularly in the economic sphere. I am

convinced that the individual actions across the country will die down

the very moment our
Volksgenossen
realize that the former economic

hegemony of the Jews has come to an end.54

Heydrich made far-ranging recommendations on how to achieve this

goal: if it proved impossible to strip the Jews of their German citizenship

altogether – a solution Heydrich favoured – then a catalogue of alternative

measures should be adopted: new laws should prohibit Jews from moving

to large cities, ban mixed marriages between Jews and Germans and

penalize extramarital sexual intercourse between Jews and Germans. State

commissions and new concessions would no longer be awarded to Jewish

businesses and Jews would be prohibited from dealing in real estate. In

addition, Heydrich proposed that Jews should no longer be issued with

new passports, since they would only use trips abroad to transfer foreign

currency illegally from Germany. Such measures would fulfil the dual

purpose of demonstrating to the German people that the government was

actively working towards the exclusion of Jews from economic life, while

also creating strong incentives for Jews to leave the Reich for good.55

The top-level meeting of ministers and officials on 20 August and

Heydrich’s subsequent letter contradict the long-held view that the

Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 were put together hastily and

without much preparation. It instead shows only too clearly how broad a

consensus existed on future legislation long before the Seventh Nazi Party

Rally at Nuremberg in 1935 where the Nuremberg laws were passed.

The Reich Citizenship Law, the Law for the Protection of German

Blood and subsequent regulations to implement these laws largely fulfilled

most of the demands made during the 20 August meeting called by

Schacht.56

The Nuremberg Laws created the statutory basis for the civic exclusion

of German Jews. Yet there were certain aspects of the Nuremberg Laws

that did not satisfy Heydrich. In particular, he felt that the problem of the

Mischlinge
, people of ‘mixed Jewish blood’, was not sufficiently addressed.

He and his racial experts advocated that even a person with one Jewish

ancestor going back to 1800 should be considered a Jew, but for the time

being such proposals seemed premature and too difficult to implement.

The Nuremberg Laws adopted a rather vague formula that encompassed

only ‘full Jews’ and left the question of
Mischlinge
unresolved.57

Nazi leaders continued to struggle with the concept and ultimate fate

of the
Mischlinge
. The Nuremberg Laws created two ‘degrees’ of
Mischlinge
.

The first degree consisted of Jews with only two Jewish grandparents

who were not married to full Jews and were not members of a Jewish

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99

congregation. Second-degree Jews had only one Jewish grandparent.

Initially the
Mischlinge
and Jews in so-called privileged marriages (with

one Jewish and one non-Jewish partner) were spared many of the discrim-

inatory measures aimed at full Jews. Heydrich considered this solution far

too legalistic and complicated. He and his racial experts would therefore

attempt to readdress the
Judenmischlingsfrage
during the war.58

By 1936 Heydrich had recruited a group of young, educated, self-

confident and ideologically committed staff members for the small but

growing Jewish desk of the SD – Dieter Wisliceny, Herbert Hagen,

Theodor Dannecker and Adolf Eichmann – who began to develop an

independent and comprehensive concept for a Jew-free Germany. It was

their intention to harmonize the various and, to some extent, conflicting

objectives of Nazi Jewish policy – from forced emigration to social and

economic isolation and extortion.59

However, numerous difficulties persisted. The number of countries

prepared to accept German Jews was not exactly large. Strict immigration

quotas imposed by potential receiving countries such as Britain, France

and the United States limited emigration opportunities both to well-

trained artisans and to those with sufficient capital to buy a visa. Palestine

– explicitly designated as a ‘national home for the Jewish people’ in

Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917, a formal policy statement issued by

British Foreign Secretary James Balfour about the future of Palestine –

remained the only territory in the world for large-scale Jewish immigra-

tion and indeed accepted more German Jewish emigrants between 1933

and 1936 than any other country.60 Although Palestine played a key role

in Heydrich’s calculations, he and his staff remained concerned about the

possibility of an independent Jewish state that might strengthen Jewish

influence in the world to the extent that Jerusalem might become the

centre of ‘international Jewry’ just as Moscow had become the capital of

‘world Communism’. But these concerns were offset by two great advan-

tages: first, Palestine was a place that an increasingly large number of

disillusioned Jews wanted to go to anyway, so Heydrich assumed that it

would be easier to convince them to resettle there than in other parts of

the world. Secondly, the influence of Jewish settlers would be contained

permanently by hostile Arab neighbours.61

That autumn, the SD put in place its own rather bizarre initiative to

speed up Zionist emigration. Using Dr Franz Reichert, chief of the

German News Service in Jerusalem and an SD informer, as an interme-

diary, Heydrich’s Jewish experts made contact with a certain Feivel Polkes,

a Polish Jew who in 1920 had emigrated to Palestine where he became

a member of the Zionist underground organization Haganah. Between

26 February and 2 March 1937, a visit to Berlin at the SD’s expense was

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HITLER’S HANGMAN

arranged for Polkes in order to discuss the possibility of Haganah support

for Jewish emigration from Nazi Germany. It was the first time that the

SD was to venture into the field of international politics.62

The man Heydrich put in charge of the negotiations was Adolf

Eichmann, who was subsequently to become notorious for his role in the

wartime extermination of Europe’s Jews as Heydrich’s special adviser on

Jewish matters. Born in Solingen in 1906 into a middle-class family, he

had spent his youth in Austria after his family had moved to Linz the year

before the outbreak of the First World War. After finishing school

Eichmann had worked as a sales representative for a petroleum company

during the troubled 1920s. Ever since his school days he was a keen

supporter of pan-Germanism and came into contact with other right-

wing nationalists, most notably the Kaltenbrunners, whose son, Ernst,

Heydrich’s future successor as head of the Reich Security Main Office in

1942, was a schoolfriend of Eichmann’s. Eichmann joined the Austrian

Nazi Party in 1932 and the SS shortly thereafter. Losing his job in

the Depression, he moved to Germany in August 1933 and joined

Heydrich’s SD as a lowly official to compile information about Freemasons

in Germany. His organizational talents, ruthless energy and efficiency

secured his rapid promotion through the ranks. By 1936, still in his

early thirties, Eichmann was working in the SD’s Jewish department,

where he became a self-taught ‘expert’ in Jewish matters, writing briefing

papers on Zionism and emigration that reflected the department’s ethos