The Transfer Agreement (39 page)

Two rabid German national anti-Semites who gained prominence during the Stoecker heyday were Houston Steward Chamberlain and Theodor Fritsch. Fritsch, in the late 1880s, helped form anti-Semitic political parties that would later evolve into the NSDAP. The Nazis referred to him as their spiritual leader. Chamberlain became Hitler's personal inspiration.
²¹

In 1917, a Germany gripped by war lavishly marked the four-hundredth anniversary of Luther's Reformation.
It
was the perfect moment for a Luther revival. As Germans struggled to defend the Fatherland, Luther's ideology of territorial and ethnic destiny gave them conviction and encouragement.
²²

A few years later, a defeated Germany was again looking to Luther, this time for strength and solace. During the 1920S, the church literally became an extension of German nationalism. The purity of German blood, the sanctity of German religion, and the destiny of the German people were all woven into a virtual theomania. Integral to this movement was the compulsion to exclude Jews for all the reasons Martin Luther had enumerated four centuries earlier.
²³

Anti-Semitic German nationalists outside the church resurrected the Luther Solution. They called themselves Nazis. In their campaigns to recruit support, Brownshirts spoke the familiar phrasing of Germany's religious patriarch. From the street comers they constantly reminded that Martin Luther was beckoning Germany to expel the Jews.
²⁴

In spring 1933, Hitler reflected the weight of Luther's words upon his own thought. During a newspaper interview, Hitler asked who was "prepared to harbor ... those who have poisoned the wells of Germany, of the whole Christian world. Gladly we would give each and everyone of them a railroad pass and a thousand mark note for pocket money to be rid of them."
²⁵

From Luther's treatise "On the Jews and Their Lies": "They have been ... murderers of all Christendom for more than fourteen hundred years ... poisoning water and wells .... The country and the roads are open to them to proceed to their land whenever they wish.
If
they did so, we would be glad to present gifts to them on the occasion; it would be good riddance."
²⁶

Julius Streicher's newspaper
Der Sturmer
bannered the Luther slogan in every issue:
"Die Juden sind unser Ungluck!"-
The Jews Are Our Misfortune!
²⁷
And one of Streicher's anti-Jewish picture books was titled after the Martin Luther adage "Trust no fox in the field and no Jew under his oath."
²⁸
In Germany, preaching Jew hatred was as good as preaching the gospel.

When Streicher was captured by the Allies in
1945,
they confiscated his personal copy of "On the Jews and Their Lies." At the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials, Streicher, a philosophical descendant of a centuries-long tradition, explained his actions with these words: "Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendant's dock today if this book had been taken into consideration .... In the book "[On] The Jews and Their Lies" Dr. Martin Luther writes that ... one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them."
²⁹

Martin Luther gave rise to nothing less than a jagged and saltatory lineage of Jew-hating German nationalists that culminated in the men and women of the Nazi movement.

The Nazis had always glossed over Zionist aspirations for statehood. Hitler believed that Jewish laziness, decadence, and impurity made Jewish nationhood an impossibility. In Hitler's words, spoken in the first days of Nazi organization: "The establishment of a [Zionist] state is nothing but a comedy."
³⁰

Instead, the Nazis seized upon the one aspect of Zionism they approved of: the condemnation of a Jewish presence in Germany and the desire to remove Jews to Palestine. On April
6, 1920,
in Munich, Hitler explained the Nazi willingness to embrace Zionism with these words: "To reach our goal, we must use every means at our disposal, even if we have to make a pact with the devil himself." Ironically, Vladimir Jabotinsky had spoken essentially the same words several months before, when he declared to the Twelfth Zionist Congress: "In working for Palestine, I would even ally myself with the devil."
³¹

A few months after his April
1920
promulgation, Hitler made the point again, at a Munich beer hall. While he was preaching his doctrine of Jewish expulsion, someone from the crowd hollered something about human rights. Hitler answered sharply, "Let him [the Jew] look for his human rights where he belongs: in his own state of Palestine."
³²

Hitler's foremost theoretician on Judaism and Zionism, Alfred Rosenberg, adopted Hitler's willingness to exploit Zionism. Writing in
1920
in the Nazi newspaper
Die Spur,
Rosenberg demanded that Germans lay aside all feelings of antipathy: "Zionism must be actively supported so as to enable us annually to transport a specific number of Jews to Palestine, or, in any case, across our borders."
³³

With the appointment of Adolf Hitler, the moment was ripe for a hateful alliance; Nazis and Zionists working in concert for a Jewish exodus. In the first months of
1933,
German Zionists knew they faced either total demise or ultimate vindication.
³⁴
So, in a bold move, the ZVfD launched a two-sided campaign: first, to convince the Nazis to recognize Zionism as the custodian of Germany's Jews; second, to convince Germany's Jews to admit that yes, German Jewry belonged in Palestine.

On January
3I,
I933,
within twenty-four hours of Hitler's appointment, the ZVfD newspaper,
luedische Rundschau,
asserted that the defense of Jewish rights could be waged only by Zionists, not mainstream Jewry. After the May
10
Nazi book burnings,
luedische Rundschau
mourned the loss as did all Jews, but could not resist publicly labeling many of the Jewish authors "renegades" who had betrayed their roots.
³⁵
The anti-assimilationist barrage continued weekly with Zionist aspersions sounding painfully similar to the Nazi line discrediting the German citizenship of Jews.

It became that much harder for German Jews to defend against Nazi accusations of illegitimate citizenship when a loud and visible group of their own continually published identical indictments. It was as mainstream German Jewry feared, and as Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg made clear in his anti-Semitic teachings:
"If
an organization inside the state declares that the interests of the German Reich do not concern it, it renounces all its civil rights."
³⁶
Zionism had become a tool for anti-Semites.

The Hitler hierarchy was at first unwilling to work with Zionism, lest the rank and file misunderstand the association. In fact, by March
1933
the ZVfD was clearly marked for extinction.
³⁷
But all that changed when Stephen Wise rattled the boycott and protest saber at Germany. The critical minute for Zionism had come during the March 25 meeting with Goering. The Zionists stepped forward and offered to try to dissuade Wise from holding his Madison Square Garden rally. In that instant, the Zionist relationship to National Socialist goals underwent a rapid transformation, from theoretical to practical.

Sensing the change,
luedische Rundschau
called in an April 7 column for Zionists and Nazis to be "honest partners."
³⁸
Instrumental in developing this partnership was ZVfD activist Kurt Tuchler, whose many acquaintances in the NSDAP included an Austrian-born engineer named Baron Leopold von Mildenstein, an SS officer dealing with Jewish affairs. Tuchler wanted to convince von Mildenstein's circle that the NSDAP should openly promote Jewish nationalism.
If
von Miidenstein could write a pro-Palestine article in Goebbels' widely read newspaper,
Der Angriff,
it might sway many in the party and the government. Von Mildenstein was receptive, but insisted that he could write a believable piece only if he actually toured Palestine. So Tuchler invited von Mildenstein to Palestine. In late April 1933, both men and their wives boarded an ocean liner for Palestine. The Nazi party and the ZVfD each had granted permission for the joint trip. Von Mildenstein approved of what he saw in the kibbutzim and in Tel Aviv. He even learned a few Hebrew words. Many photographs were taken, numerous mementos were dragged back to Germany. An elaborate illustrated series was published about eighteen months later in
Der Angriff
under
the title "A Nazi Goes to Palestine." Goebbels' newspaper was so proud of the series that a commemorative coin was struck in honor of the voyage. On one side was a swastika. On the other side a Star of David.
³⁹

Von Mildenstein rapidly became the party expert on Zionism. He was said to have read Herzl's
"Der ludenstaat"
and insisted his subordinates do likewise. One of these subordinates was a man named Adolf Eichmann. Von Mildenstein, and later Eichmann, developed the Jewish Section of the Reich Security Main Office, which in the late 1930S coordinated Jewish emigration policies. In the early 1940s, Eichmann's domain would change from emigration and Zionism to deportation and genocide, as he orchestrated the shuttling of millions of Jews to the gas chambers of Europe.
⁴⁰

The Nazi recognition of Zionism that began in April of 1933 was apparent because the Zionists enjoyed a visibly protected political status in Germany. Immediately after the Reichstag fire of February 27, the Nazis crushed virtually all political opposition. Through emergency decrees, most non-Nazi political organizations and suspect newspapers were dissolved. In fact, about 600 newspapers were officially banned during 1933. Others were unofficially silenced by street methods. The exceptions included
luedische Rundschau,
the ZVtD's weekly, and several other Jewish publications. German Zionism's weekly was hawked on street comers and displayed at newsstands. When Chaim Arlosoroff visited Zionist headquarters in London on June 1,
he emphasized, "The
Rundschau
is of crucial importance today for the Zionists. Every day it gets fifty to sixty new subscribers." By the end of I933,
luedische Rundschau's
circulation had in fact jumped to more than 38,000-four to five times its I932 circulation.
⁴¹
Although many influential Aryan publications were forced to restrict their page size to conserve newsprint,
luedische Rundschau
was not affected until mandatory newsprint rationing in I937.
⁴²

And while stringent censorship of all German publications was enforced from the outset,
luedische Rundschau
was allowed comparative press freedoms. Although two issues of
luedische Rundschau
were suppressed when they published Chaim Arlosoroff's outline for a capital transfer, such seizures were rare. Other than the ban on anti-Nazi boycott references, printing atrocity stories, and criticizing the Reich,
luedische Rundschau
was essentially exempt from the so-called
Gleichschaltung
or "uniformity" demanded by the Nazi party of all facets of German society.
iuedische Rundschau
was free to preach Zionism as a wholly separate political philosophy-indeed, the only separate political philosophy sanctioned by the Third Reich.
⁴³

In 1933, Hebrew became an encouraged course in all Jewish schools. By
1935,
uniforms for Zionist youth corps were permitted-the only non-Nazi uniform allowed in Germany. When the Nuremburg Laws in late
1935
stripped German Jewry of their citizenship, it became illegal for Jews to raise the German flag; the same law, however, stipulated that German Jewry could raise the Star of David-emblazoned Zionist flag.
⁴⁴

The ZVfD's quick success in lobbying the Zionist option to the Reich advanced the priority of their second imperative: convincing German Jewry to relinquish ten centuries of German national existence. But the bulk of German Jewry wanted another solution to their predicament.

They wanted to stay, even as second-class citizens--even reviled and persecuted. The hot springs and baths, the outdoor
Konzerten
of Bach and Mozart, the readings of Goethe, Oriental carpets on the floor, exotic fruits from Africa, a noble tradition they had fought for, died for, profited by. These people were integrated. They were Germans. They wanted to stay, even as helots.

Zionism said no. While mainstream Jewish organizations were frantically assembling theories and position papers suggesting a tapered-down but still German national existence, the Zionists were doing the opposite. On June
21, 1933,
a long ZVfD memorandum was sent directly to Hitler outlining those Zionist tenets that were consistent with National Socialist ideology. For example: "Zionism believes that a rebirth ... such as that in German tradition resulting from a combination of Christian and national values, must also come about within the Jewish community. Racial background, religion, a common fate and tribal consciousness must be of decisive importance in developing a lifestyle for Jews too .... Zionism's objective is to organize Jewish emigration to Palestine in such a way that it improves the Jewish situation in Germany .... Jewish settlement is based on agriculture. All productive work, be it of an agricultural, craftsmanship, or industrial nature, is performed by Jewish workers who are inspired by a new, idealistic work ethic."
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