German Jews in the Era of the “Final Solution”: Essays on Jewish and Universal History 9783110671438, 9783110667707

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Otto Dov Kulka German Jews in the Era of the “Final Solution”

Otto Dov Kulka

German Jews in the Era of the “Final Solution” Essays on Jewish and Universal History

The Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Funded by the BMBF, through the generosity of The Minerva Foundation

ISBN 978-3-11-066770-7 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-067143-8 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-066775-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019947087 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston & The Hebrew University Magnes Press Cover illustration: https://www.gettyimages.de/detail/foto/ acrylic-texture-background-lizenzfreies-bild/471762893?adppopup=true Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

And yet there is this terror. Is it the memory of times long past or the premonition of times to come? Does this old animal perhaps know more than the three Generations of those who are gathered together in the Synagogue? Franz Kafka, The Animal in the Synagogue The situation can approximately be described by saying that humankind’s history has once again become ‘labile’, and apparently more ‘labile’ than ever before. […] The human being is exposed. But the most exposed human family are the Jews. Martin Buber, Jüdische Rundschau, 7 July 1933

Foreword The present selection of essays and texts stretches over half a century of research and thought on German and Jewish history, reflective memory and what I call my “private mythology.” It deals with the uniqueness of a phenomenon in its historical and philosophical context. My attempt to approach this unique chapter of history with the “classical” empirical tools of a historian and incorporating it into the continuum of Jewish and universal history, tries to understand the meaning behind the unprecedented, ideologically motivated mass murder and immense suffering. All these dimensions of my research work, my memory and imagination, though focusing on the period between 1933 and 1945 are aiming at an aspect of the developments of over three centuries in modern times, which might be called “The Era of the ‘Final Solution.’” The opening article, “Reflections on Jewish Studies, the Jerusalem School and the Research on the Era of the ‘Final Solution’,” serves as an introduction to the entire volume. It examines the conceptual and methodological questions of my entire way of research on a subject of major significance in universal historical consciousness and in historiography, and defines my position within the historical discipline of Jewish Studies. The first chapter, on German Jewry in historical perspective and in a comparative context, summarizes my previous research on this subject and presents an integrative history,1 with the main focus on the period of the Third Reich. Although it provides an opening overview, in retrospect it can also be read as the summarizing chapter of the book’s primary research sections. The three following chapters are devoted to the three central aspects of the history of this period: Modern Antisemitism and the Ideology of the “Final Solution” (Chapter II); German Society and the Jews under the Nazi Regime (Chapter III); Jewish Society and its Leadership in Nazi Germany (Chapter IV). Chapter V closes the scholarly section of this volume. It opens with an article which examines sixty years of German historiography on National Socialism and the “Final Solution.” The other two articles in this chapter deal with subsequent historiographical controversies, including the most recent.

1 The relatively recent term “integrative history” in the historiographical context of Nazi Germany and the “Final Solution” does not limit itself to the one-dimensional research of the persecution and annihilation of the Jews. It denotes the methodology which combines the writings on Nazi ideology and policy, the attitude of the German population to the Jews and the self-perception of the Jewish population and its leadership. See also the penultimate paragraph of the introductory essay, “Reflections on Jewish Studies, the Jerusalem School and the Research on the Era of the “Final Solution”. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-202

VIII 

 Foreword

The last chapter of the book – In Search of History and Memory – is devoted to my reflections on memory and imagination and approaches the period of the “Final Solution” from a non-scholarly viewpoint. The language in this chapter is predominantly metaphoric. The name Auschwitz almost never appears, but instead the Metropolis of Death, and so, too, the Great Death and the unalterable Law of the Great Death. Memory here becomes very personal, and takes on a metaphorical historical meaning. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, June 2019

Editorial Note The original titles of the articles and papers in this volume, along with their bibliographical indications, appear in the list of “Annotated References”. Some of the titles have been slightly modified, in line with the current terminology which developed in historiography since their original publication. The same applies also to terminology used within the texts of the individual articles. So, for example, the term “messianic antisemitism” has been replaced by the now more widely used “redemptive antisemitism.” My original term for “Public Opinion” (in parantheses), in regard to the Nazi secret reports on the attitudes and mood among the German population, is now, more aptly, “Popular Opinion.” Similarly, in the scholarly apparatus I have added and updated references to recent important publications which appeared subsequent to the articles in this volume.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-203

Acknowledgments During over five decades in which the essays of this volume appeared I had the privilege of enjoying a fruitful collaboration and exchange of views with many colleagues and friends in Israel and abroad. Among them I am particularly indebted to Sir Ian Kershaw for our longstanding intellectual friendship, which yielded so many ideas and insights that shaped our research on Nazi Germany and the fate of the Jews. A no less lengthy collaboration involves the late Eberhard Jäckel, the co-author of our extensive documentary edition on German society and the Jews under the Nazi regime. I also wish to express my thanks and appreciation to other historians and colleagues for a fruitful and creative, in part also critical, dialogue on various aspects of the research underlying the articles in this book, among them Martin Broszat, Richard Y. Cohen, Israel Gutman, Susanne Heim, Ulrich Herbert, Michael Meyer, Hans Mommsen, Ernst Nolte and Moshe Zimmermann. The joint publication of this book by the Hebrew University’s Magnes Press and De Gruyter Oldenbourg was initiated by the director of Magnes Press, Jonathan Nadav. I express my appreciation to him for this idea and its realization, and in particular to Dr. Julia Brauch, De Gruyter’s Acquisitions Editor, Jewish Studies & History, and Lukas Lehmann, Production Editor, for their outstanding and devoted care in regard to every detail of this book. This publication was supported by a generous grant from the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and I am grateful and appreciative for the initiative and support of the center’s director, Prof. Ofer Ashkenazi. My warmest thanks go to my two excellent assistants: Esther Rachow, who worked with me in the initial stages of shaping this book, and Shiri Shapira, who helped me bring the manuscript to its completion. Last but not least, I am grateful to my wife Chaia for her support and patience during all the years of research and publication of my works.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-204

Contents Foreword 

 VII

Editorial Note 

 IX

Acknowledgments 

 XI

List of Illustrations 

 XV

Reflections on Jewish Studies, the Jerusalem School and the Research on the Era of the “Final Solution”   1

I German Jewry under the National Socialism in Historical Perspective 1

German Jewry under the National Socialism in Historical Perspective   13

2

History and Historical Consciousness. Similarities and Dissimilarities in the History of German and Czech Jews 1918–1945   37

II Modern Antisemitism and the Ideology of the “Final Solution” 3

Critique of Judaism in European Thought. On the Historical Meaning of Modern Antisemitism 

4

Richard Wagner and the Origins of the Redemptive Antisemitism   77

5

Uniqueness in Context. Review of Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914–1949   95

 63

III German Society and the Jews under the Nazi Regime 6

Popular Opinion in Nazi Germany and the “Jewish Question” 

 109

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 Contents

7

German Population in Nazi Germany as a Factor in the Policy of the “Solution of the Jewish Question”: The Nuremberg Laws and the Reichskristallnacht   143

8

German Population and the “Solution of the Jewish Question” at the Time of the Wannsee Conference   171

IV Jewish Society and its Leadership in Nazi Germany 9

Jewish Society in Germany as Reflected in Secret Nazi Reports on Popular Opinion 1933–1943   181

10 The Reichsvereinigung and the Fate of the Jews. Continuity or Discontinuity in German-Jewish History in the Third Reich   197 11 Ghetto in an Annihilation Camp. Jewish Social History in the Years of the “Final Solution” and its Ultimate Limits   209

V Historiography of the National Socialism and the “Final Solution” 12 Major Trends and Tendencies in German Historiography on National Socialism and the “Final Solution” 1924–1984    227 13 Singularity and its Relativization. Changing Views in German Historiography on National Socialism and the “Final Solution”  

 267

14 The Historikerstreit from a Personal Retrospective. On the “Case Nolte” and his Generation   295

VI In Search of History and Memory 15 In Search of History and Memory. Excerpts from Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death   311 Annotated References 

 327

Index of Names and Places 

 333

List of Illustrations Fig. 1

Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5

Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9 Fig. 10 Fig. 11

Fig. 12 Fig. 13

Figs. 14–15

Leopold (Jom Tov Lippmann) Zunz (courtesy of Joseph and Margit Hoffman Judaica Postcard Collection, Folklore Research Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)   6 Gershom Scholem. Photo by Aliza Auerbach (courtesy of Gideon Ofrat)   6 Cover page of the first issue of the Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft des Judentums,  7 Berlin 1822  The “Judenstein” (Jew stone) from the Nuremberg Synagogue destroyed in 1499 (courtesy of Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Nürnberg, 2019)   35 Julius Streicher, speaking at the mass rally before the demolition of the Nuremberg Main Synagogue, August 10, 1938 (courtesy of Yad Vashem Photo Archive)   35 Rabbi Leo Baeck, woodcut by Jehuda Bacon, 1955 (courtesy of the artist)   38 The ‘Altneu’ Synagogue and the Jewish Town Hall of Prague, 1942 (courtesy of the Jewish Museum in Prague)   39 From Richard Wagner’s anonymous article, “Das Judenthum in der Musik,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 3 September 1850   79 Richard Wagner in 1871   93 Sir Ian Kershaw, photo by James Pearson, University of Sheffield   96 Newspaper stand in Berlin, 1935. Photo by Herbert Sonnenfeld (courtesy of Jewish Museum Berlin, Inv.-Nr. FOT 88/500/304/004, purchased with funds provided by Stiftung DKLB)   186 Postcard sent from the Family Camp, postdated March 25, 1944 (courtesy of Jewish Museum in Prague, Auschwitz-Birkenau Postcards Collection)   212 Letter from Himmler’s office dated May 18, 1944, granting permission for a delegation from the International Red Cross to visit the camp in early June. (i.e. the Jewish camp in Birkenau) (courtesy of Yad Vashem Archives, M.29- JM 1700 3507893)   222 The ruins of the annihilation camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, Summer 1978 (photos by the author)   315

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-206

Reflections on Jewish Studies, the Jerusalem School and the Research on the Era of the “Final Solution” During one of the early stages of my academic career at the beginning of the 1970s I experienced a remarkable episode. I was asked to deliver a course, for the first time in the curriculum of the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, on the subject of Nazi Germany, which I called: “The Third Reich and The Jews—The Jews in the Third Reich”.1 I composed a series of lectures accompanied by exercises on selected sources and basic readings in historiography that were conducted by me and three tutors. At the end of the course one of those tutors, who later became a distinguished historian and colleague of mine, approached me with a surprising observation: “During the whole cycle of your lectures, you haven’t used the term Holocaust once”. And indeed, I hadn’t. When examining myself to answer him I looked back and asked: “what have I been using instead?”, there were two terms which I consciously and intentionally used: “History of the Jews under the Nazi-Regime” or “The Final Solution.” And indeed, as the following essays are going to show, it seems as if I felt that the term Holocaust, in its original Greek meaning “burned offering”, as well as the amorphous term for a catastrophe—“Shoah”—were inadequate. The “Final Solution”, however, denotes most exactly the teleological meaning of its goal (telos), the ultimate end of the historical existence of the Jewish People as well as its heritage in Judeo-Christian civilization. The term “Jewish History under the Nazi Regime” integrates this unprecedented chapter, in all its aspects, in the historical continuum. Until today, the term Holocaust, that became an almost indispensible terminus technicus—is only used by me in rare, unavoidable cases, e.g. titles of articles, quotations, or in relation to historiography. In the present essay I wish to examine the origins of my integrative approach in the research of the era of the “Final Solution”, the Jerusalem School of history and its place in the broad context of two centuries of Jewish Studies. Multiple usages have been foisted on the term “Jerusalem School” in the various debates and controversies that have sprung up concerning the Jewish history in the Israeli historiography. Rarely, however, has the broad meaning of this term been addressed—that is, within the context of the original goals set for Jewish studies by its founders. Likewise, the question of whether the research 1 The original Hebrew tape recorded version of the lectures from the academic year 1971/ 1972 as well as the digitized text is included in my scholarly estate at the National Library in Jerusalem. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-001

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 Reflections on Jewish Studies, the Jerusalem School and the Research

of the “Final Solution” in Israel possesses special traits in terms of a connection with Jewish studies has not been discussed on its own terms. In this article I shall offer some reflections on these two issues, which in my view are in need of clarifications and definitions. It is perhaps not superfluous to recall the leading figures who founded and represented this important stream—innovative at the time—of modern Jewish historiography, known as the Jerusalem School, and their specific guiding principles. From the broad gallery I will mention Gershom Scholem, Ben-Zion Dinur, Yitzhak Baer; and, from a different generation, Shmuel Ettinger, Jacob Talmon, and a name that many will find less obvious: the sociologist and historian Jacob Katz.2 True, the members of this school refrained from dealing directly with this period. The only exception, and as early as 1943, was Dinur, in his illuminating article, “Diasporas and their Destruction.”3 However, he too recoiled in the face of the blinding glare of the flames, as he put it, and the unfathomable depths in which the diasporas were annihilated before his eyes. Instead, Dinur developed an impressive historical construct encompassing two millennia of Jewish diaspora life vitiated by a chain of destruction of all the “centers of exile,” nearly always at the peak of their flowering. Dinur’s basic thesis was that by its very flourishing —culturally, economically, or otherwise—every Jewish center in the diaspora bore within it the seeds of its destruction. The ground for the thesis and its conclusions are presented at the end of his article. Its body, as noted, offers a sweeping historical construct. Opening with a description of the rise and destruction of the Jewish communities in the Hellenistic cities, particularly Alexandria in the lifetime of the great Jewish philosopher Philo, the essay goes on to recount the destruction of about a thousand Jewish communities in the Byzantine empire of the ninth century and the annihilation of the great Jewish centers in Babylon and Persia. The arena now shifts to the Jewish centers in Europe, where the same pattern is found: the expulsion of the Jews from England in the twelfth century and from France in the thirteenth century; the horrific devastation wrought upon the flourishing

2 I draw here on the retrospective categorizations and assessments of Katz himself concerning the totality of his historiographic work, in an article from the beginning of the 1990s, which he described to me shortly before its publication as “Katz vs. Katz.” “Zur jüdischen Sozialgeschichte. Epochale und überepochale Geschichtsschreibung,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 20 (1991) 429–436; English “On Jewish Social History. Epochal and Supra-epochal Historiography,” Jewish History 7 (1993) 89–97. 3 Ben-Zion Dinur (Dinaburg), “Galuyot veHurbanan” (Diasporas and their Destruction), Knesset: Writers’ Essays in Memory of Hayyim Nachman Bialik 8 (1943) 46–60 (in Hebrew).

Reflections on Jewish Studies, the Jerusalem School and the Research 

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communities of Central Europe in the mid-fourteenth century during the “Black Death”; and the expulsion of the magnificent Jewish community of Spain at the close of the Middle Ages in the late fifteenth century. Dinur concludes his historical survey with a description of the crises and upheavals in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, as the background to the “great calamity” (ha-shoah hagdolah).4 At the end of the article, Dinur reiterates his basic belief that the flowering of the diaspora centers contained the seed of their annihilation; in his words, “Destruction is merely the shadow of the exile.” Jewish existence throughout the diaspora is likened to a house with walls and a roof but lacking foundations in the earth. Every wind, every outside shock, will leave it in ruins. It can be inferred, then, that only in the Land of Israel is the ground stable enough to build lasting foundations. Dinur concludes by setting forth his credo of a secular, political messianism of “Aliya bachoma”—“storming the battlements.” This doctrine is intended as a rebuke to those who follow the halakhah (Jewish religious law) and oppose attempts to revive Jewish national and political existence before the advent of the messiah. Dinur urges the unity of the Jewish people and the ingathering of the nation in its historic homeland. The termination of the historic halakhic prohibition against “storming the battlements” is also, Dinur maintains, one consequence of the destruction of the Diaspora. There is no doubt that this bold, towering construct of the course of Jewish history through two millennia of exile, conceived against the backdrop of the great conflagration that consumed the centers of exile in Europe, is suffused with a radical Zionist spirit. It is no less than a convergence of ideology and historiography at a point as sensitive as it is painful: the incipient attempt in the Land of Israel to cope with what today is known as the Shoah, the Holocaust. As noted, the founders of the Jerusalem School avoided dealing directly with the period of the “Final Solution”; however, they imparted to us, as their third generation, their guiding principles. And, as their successors at the Hebrew University, we received them not as a credo but as a challenge. We set out to test them and implement them, confirm or refute them; and above all, to apply the methodological tools they had devised for earlier periods to the singularity of the period we were about to study. And beyond this, to try to integrate that period into

4 This is probably the first appearance in historiography of the terms “ha-shoah hagdolah” and “shoah”—coined by Dinur in this paper and its printed version in 1943—in their full historical dimension.

4 

 Reflections on Jewish Studies, the Jerusalem School and the Research

the historical continuum—or exclude it from the historical sequence—but on the basis of empirical research, not merely an a priori declaration. What united all the adherents of the Jerusalem School was a deep-seated national approach: Zionist ideology and belief, if you will (or, if you will, a type of secular redemptive doctrine). They also believed fervently that the establishment of the Center for Jewish Studies in the revived Land of Israel would free them from dependence on the theological institutions of the various streams of diaspora Jewry and from apologetically subjugating Jewish studies to their self imposed limitations. Yet, as Scholem himself wrote in his trenchant 1944 Hebrew article “Reflections on the Science of Judaism”: “We sought to rebel but found ourselves continuing instead.”5 Continuing, among others, by subjugating Jewish studies anew—to the by now institutionalized ideology of the Zionist rebellion. However, Scholem, as well as Dinur—from different and similar perspectives— also put forward a powerful and original conceptual approach to the modern period in Jewish history, as a deep internal crisis. In their view, it was not external historical causes—Enlightenment, acculturation, Emancipation, and so forth— that underlay the advent of the modern period in Jewish history; but rather an immanent and shattering turning point within Jewish history: the Sabbatian crisis and its consequences. This is argued by Scholem in his article “The Holiness of Sin,”6 and more forcefully in his monumental work Sabbatai Sevi;7 and by Dinur in his collection of articles, The Turn of Generations.8 Indeed, within the context of their conception of the modern era as an immanent crisis—though external, too, of course—they both adduced the message of redemption; that is, the eradication of the sages’ traditional imperative against “storming the battlements” and the rebellion against it through Zionism, their secular doctrine of redemption. This approach, I would say, is characteristic of and shared by all the adherents of the Jerusalem School, among whom I include, as noted, Shmuel Ettinger and Jacob Talmon. I am certain that objections can be raised to my interpretations. But I have raised the ideological element in the doctrine of the proponents of the classic Jerusalem School here for one reason—a paradoxical one—namely that it is impossible to discuss this subject without it. But—and this is the crucial point—it was

5 “‫ ”באנו למרוד ונמצאנו ממשיכים‬:94110 ,(‫ לוח הארץ ד )תש“ה‬,‫ מתוך הרהורים על מדעי היהדות‬,‫גרשום שלום‬. 6 ,‫ )מחקרים ומקורות לתולדות השבתאות וגלגוליה‬347–392 ,‫ תרצ“ז‬,‫ כנסת‬,“‫ ”מצוה הבאה בעבירה‬,‫גרשום שלום‬ 9–67 ,‫)ירושלים תשל“ד‬. 7 Sabbatai Sevi. The Mystical Messiah, translated by R.J. Zwi Werblowsky, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1975. 8  ,‫ מוסד ביאליק‬,‫ מחקרים ועיונים בראשיתם של הזמנים החדשים בתולדות ישראל‬:‫ במפנה הדורות‬,‫בנציון דינור‬ 1972 ,‫ירושלים‬.

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present in our consciousness as young teachers at the Hebrew University in the first half of the 1980s when we developed, so I believe—Israel Gutman, Richard Yerachmiel Cohen, and I—what one might call the Jerusalem School of Holocaust Research in Jewish Studies. The paradox was that this aspect—the ideological baggage we received from our teachers—was excluded from our conception. What, then, did we receive, apply, and pursue, to the point where I dare to present it here as the Jerusalem School’s continuation and innovation in regard to a subject which, as I pointed out, its practitioners refrained from dealing with directly: the period of the “Final Solution”? The classic Jerusalem School formulated two axiomatic basic principles concerning the Jews’ overall history: the unity and continuity of Jewish history: unity for the places where Jewish history unfolded throughout the world, and continuity for the periods of a history covering more than 3,000 years. Here we need to add another important concept, as all this occurred—perhaps in the spirit of the historiosophic doctrine propounded by Hegel and the founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums (the Science of Judaism), who were his pupils— primarily with regard to the Jews’ historical consciousness and the consciousness of their identity in each different place and time. Methodologically—and this, too, the Jerusalem School received, and applied boldly, albeit dialectically, from the founders of the Science of Judaism in the first third of the nineteenth century—the demand was to study the history of the Jews in the totality of its aspects, both external and internal, and of course in all its periods.9 Suffice it to mention here the tremendous conceptual and methodological program propounded by Leopold Zunz and the other cofounders of the Society for the Culture and History of the Jews, and Scholem’s specific reference to them in his 1944 article cited earlier. Notwithstanding the paradoxicality inherent in his critique of the founders of the Science of Judaism, their doctrine became the alpha and omega of the pristine aspirations of Jewish Studies in the emerging scientific environment of the Land of Israel. (Let us recall that Zunz and his colleagues had in mind the total, impartial study of all the historical aspects of the Jews’ existence and works, and their reciprocal relations with their surroundings.)

9 Siegfried Ucko: “Geistesgeschichtliche Grundlagen der Wissenschaft des Judentums.” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland (1937) 1–34. Max Wiener, “The Ideology of the Founders of Jewish Scientific Research,” YIVO Annual V (1950), 194–196; Nahum Glatzer, “The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Studies,” in: Alexander Altman (ed.) Studies in Nineteenth Century Jewish Intellectual History, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1964, 27–45; H. G. Reissner, “Rebellious Dilemma: The Case Histories of Eduard Gans and some of his Partisans,” Yearbook of Leo Baeck Institute, II (1957), 179–193.

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 Reflections on Jewish Studies, the Jerusalem School and the Research

Fig. 1: Leopold (Jom Tov Lippmann) Zunz (1794–1886), one of the founding fathers and the lifetime scholar of Wissenschaft des Judentums.

Fig. 2: Gershom Scholem (1897–1982), the most prominent personality among the Jerusalem School of Jewish Studies.

From our point of view—by which I mean a group of teachers and research students at the Hebrew University in the 1980s and their approach to the study of the period of the “Final Solution”—this meant researching simultaneously, or in parallel: 1. The external ideological and political aspects that determined the fate of the Jews, and of course the antisemitic factor in historical perspective and contemporary incarnation; 2. The attitude of the various segments of the surrounding population to the Jews—before, during, and perhaps also after the period of Nazi rule; and 3. The Jewish society itself—its form of organization, institutions, and leadership—including its diverse religious and political streams, spheres of activity, and its achievements; not omitting, of course, its attitude toward the government and surrounding society. But always hovering in the background is the question of the Jewish society’s self-awareness, fixed and variable in changing situations, and the identity consciousness of the Jewish society and of each individual within it, encompassing the entire range of the streams and Jewish identities of the period.

Reflections on Jewish Studies, the Jerusalem School and the Research 

Fig. 3: Cover page of the first issue of the Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft des Judentums, Berlin 1822.

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 Reflections on Jewish Studies, the Jerusalem School and the Research

But I have put the cart before the horse: I have not yet related the story of the birth—with a question mark, of course—of the “Jerusalem School of Holocaust Research.” In the first half of the 1980s, three teachers at the Hebrew University—Israel Gutman, Richard Yerachmiel Cohen, and I met—at my initiative, as I recall, though also under the inspiration of the fascinating seminars of teachers and students held at the home of the late Prof. Shmuel Ettinger. The three of us planned a multiyear series of seminars for M.A. and PhD students on the subject of “The Study of the History of the Jews under the National-Socialist Regime in Europe.” One of our guiding principles was to hold a comparative discussion based on the perspective that I mentioned in connection with the Jerusalem School—the unity and continuity of Jewish history—here in regard to the period of the “Final Solution”. My research students and I discussed Germany and Central Europe, Richard Cohen and his students addressed France and Western Europe, and Israel Gutman with his many students took Poland and Eastern Europe as their subject. Within this framework we examined the various subjects and areas, though always with an eye to the historical perspective of all the subjects we considered. Here too the guiding methodological approach we had received from the Jerusalem School via our teachers came into practice: to examine the historical reality in the totality of its manifestations—in our case, in terms of the regime’s ideology and policy and the attitude of the surrounding society, and the Jewish society itself. We addressed the first two principles, posited as axioms in the original Jerusalem School—the unity and continuity of Jewish history—through comparative research and discussion: horizontally, on the ground; and vertically, in time. And even though the Jews’ shared sealed fate is more blatant in this period than at any other time in the history of the Jewish diaspora, we found much that was both similar and different, unifying and differentiating, in different places and different historical perspectives. What we took as a basic, almost deterministic assumption, became an important and productive point of departure in our work for an examination based on comparative critical research. As for the methodological approach that entails an all-encompassing historical inquiry—which, as we saw, originated in the modern science of history in the nineteenth century and became an integral aspect of the study and teaching of history at the Hebrew University in regard to other periods—we applied it beyond the boundaries of historical time demarcated by our teachers, who refrained from dealing with the period of the“Final Solution”. But it was precisely our affinity for the classic Jerusalem School that differentiated us then from researchers of Nazism and the “Final Solution” in other countries, most of whom confined

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themselves solely to the ideological and political dimension of the study of the persecution and annihilation of the Jews. To sum up: our teachers, the architects and representatives of the Jerusalem School, aspired, by means of a paradoxical dialectic, to realize fully the pristine principles of the founders of the Science of Judaism in the nineteenth century— without apologetically subjugating themselves to the modern Jewish conditions of diaspora existence in the Emancipation era. In retrospect, owing to the immanent perception of the Zionist revolution in their aims, they “sought to rebel but found themselves continuing instead” by creating new confines for the goals of the pure Science of Judaism. They did not engage directly in the study and teaching of the “Final Solution” period; indeed, one can say that they recoiled from crossing its threshold (with the possible exception of Jacob Talmon, in one aspect of the subject, though even so very impressionistically, albeit most impressively at the time). However, they endowed us with conceptual approaches and methodological tools which made it possible to approach the study of this singular period like any other historical period. We proceeded without the ideological baggage that distinguished their national conceptions and messages. Our studies, accordingly, were open-ended in every direction. These joint seminars of teachers and students from different departments of history went on for three years in this format, and were followed by a joint seminar with Israel Gutman on the historiography of the “Final Solution”. No few of our students who took part in these seminars later became teachers in Israeli and foreign universities, and their students after them. This integrative conception and methodology was accepted, or developed in parallel, in much of the Israeli historiography and in historical research in other countries. The most conspicuous, later, example of that integrative concept and methodology in the study of the “Final Solution” period is Saul Friedländer’s Nazi Germany and the Jews.10 In regard to the place of the “Holocaust” in the historical memory, in public rhetoric and in the various historians’ controversies, let me reiterate: The singularity of this period and of the phenomenon of National-Socialism and the “Final Solution,” where that singularity exists and if it exists—and I believe that it does exist—is not determined by its a priori declaration, but by means of systematic comparative research that is integrated into history, and not by wrenching it from history.

10 Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, two vols., London, 1997, 2007.

1 German Jewry under the National Socialism in Historical Perspective The first few Jews to arrive in Germany came there in the wake of the Roman legions and settled in the cities along the Rhine. The earliest documents attesting to a sizable Jewish population are imperial edicts, dating back to A.D. 321 and 331, concerning the city Colonia Agrippensis (Cologne). There is no clear evidence, however, of an uninterrupted presence of a Jewish population in Germany after the Roman Empire came to an end, and it is only from the tenth century, when Jewish merchants from Italy and France settled in Germany, that a continuous history of Jews in Germany is certain. By the late Middle Ages the Jewish population of Germany was consolidated. The German Jewish community became one of the centers of spiritual creativity among European Jewry, and the cradle of Ashkenazic Jewry and the Yiddish language. The most significant body of Jewish community and supra community organizations developed in the three flourishing cities along the Rhine, Speyer, Worms and Mainz, known for their preserved constitution (takanot Shum). In the economic sphere the Jews grained prominence in commerce (including trade with Near Eastern countries) and later primarily as money-lenders. This period, however, witnessed widespread persecution of Jews and, even the destruction, in various parts of Germany, of entire Jewish communities. The persecution of Jews, in most cases, was set against a background of religious and social ferment and political upheaval. The worst persecutions took place during the Crusades (especially the first Crusade in 1096) and during the period of the Black Death (1348–1349). From the fifteenth century, and especially during the Reformation, the status of the Jews and of the role they played deteriorated, and they were expelled from most of the large German cities. Some of those expelled remained in Germany, taking up residence in hundreds of small communities while others migrated to the newly emerging centers of Jewish population in the countries of Eastern Europe. In the Age of Absolutism the situation of Jews improved, one of the reasons being the status and activities of the “court Jews” (Hofjuden), who were instrumental in enabling Jews to resettle in the large cities. The economic rise of an elite Jewish group and the penetration into late 18th century Jewish society of the ideas of Enlightenment marked the beginning of the process of the social and political emancipation of the Jews, the struggle for which was waged throughout the 19th century and reached its goal, in formal terms, when Germany was unified in 1871. The drawn-out struggle for emancipation, and the new ideological trends that had emerged among German Jewry since the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment movement) in the 18th century, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-002

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 1 German Jewry under the National Socialism in Historical Perspective

had a very significant impact on Jewish communities in other parts of Europe and overseas. Among the important transformations that took place in German Jewry in the 19th century and that affected Judaism as a whole were the rise of the Wissenschaft des Judentums (the modern scholarly study of Judaism and Jewish history); the growth of new religious movements in Judaism—Reform, Conservative, and Neo-Orthodox; the rapid urbanization of the Jews; and their integration into modern society and the economic life. In the 19th century the Jews of Germany made important contributions to cultural life, to social and political philosophy, to the economy, and even to political life. Among outstanding Jews were the poet Heinrich Heine; the fathers of socialism, Ferdinand Lasalle and Karl Marx; the bankers of the Rothschild and Bleichröder families; and the leaders of the National Liberal party, Eduard Lasker and Ludwig Bamberger. The emancipation of the Jews, however, and their integration into the various spheres of German life, met with resistance from a sizable part of German society. By the 1870s this opposition led to politically organized antisemitism—which in its modern form also had racism as a basic ingredient. In the following two decades antisemitic political parties ran in elections and scored successes. The influence of these parties waned toward the end of the 19th century, but antisemitism continued to flourish in economic, social, and academic organizations. It also penetrated the major political parties in various ways and became a factor in the struggle between the national conservative and democratic socialist camps over the future political character of German society. The rise of modern antisemitism, in addition to other factors, led to the establishment of political organizations among German Jewry in Imperial Germany. The most important organization established in this period (in 1893) for the defense of the Jews’ civil rights was the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (CV, Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith). It had been preceded by the non-Jewish Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus (Association for Combating Antisemitism), founded in 1890. Also in the 1890s, with the awakening of Jewish national movement, the German Zionist Federation was formed. Before long, its leaders, including David Wolffsohn, Otto Warburg, Arthur Ruppin, and Max Bodenheimer, assumed leading posts in the World Zionist Organization. From the death of Theodor Herzl up to the end of World War I, the organizational center of the Zionist movement was located in Germany. During World War I, antisemitism was again on the rise. Its most humiliating manifestation was the German High command’s decision in 1916, in response to the demand of certain sectors of public opinion and the Prussian officers’ corps, to take a special census of Jewish soldiers to determine whether the number of Jews serving in the armed forces, and especially the number in combat units, was in proportion to their percentage of the general population. The results of

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that census remained officially unpublished, though according to the research of the former Jewish front-soldiers’ organization from the beginning of 1930s their number, as well as their number among the fallen soldiers exceeded the percentage of the Jews among the total of Germany’s population.

Weimar Republic, 1918–1933 A new era in the history of German Jewry began when Imperial Germany collapsed and was replaced by the democratic regime of the Weimar Republic. The outstanding feature of this period was the polarization between the unprecedented integration of the Jews in every sphere of life, and the radicalization of political antisemitism among various organizations and political parties, especially in the immediate postwar years. Important achievements by Jews were recorded in the theater (Max Reinhardt), in music (Arnold Schönberg), in the visual arts (Max Liebermann), in philosophy (Herman Cohen), and in science (Albert Einstein). Among the Nobel Prize winners in Germany up to 1938, 24 percent were Jews (nine Jews out of a total of thirty-eight). It was in political and public life, however, that the Jewish role was most prominent. Jews played an important role in the first cabinet formed after the 1918 revolution (Hugo Haase and Otto Landsberg), the Weimar Constitution was drafted by a Jew (Hugo Preuss), and Jews were conspicuously present in the abortive attempts to create radical revolutionary regimes, especially in Bavaria. The revolutionary government in Munich was headed by Jewish intellectual, Kurt Eisner, and after his assassination, two other Jewish leaders, Gustav Landauer and Eugen Levine, assumed positions of major influence in the short-lived “Räterepublik” (“Soviet” Republic). Rosa Luxemburg, who was also assassinated, was a leader of the revolutionary Spartakusbund, which was one of the predecessors of the German Communist party. In the following years as well, Jews held major political posts, primarily in the leadership of the democratic and socialist parties. The most prominent Jewish political figure was Walther Rathenau, who served first as minister for economic affairs and then as foreign minister. Rathenau’s murder by right-wing radicals in June 1922 was one of the dramatic high points of the antisemitic incitement that charged the Jews with responsibility for German’s defeat in the war (the Dolchstoßlegende, or “stab-in-the-back” myth) and for the economic and social crises that struck the newly born republic after the war, reaching their climax in the terrible inflation of 1922 and 1923. The presence of Jews from Eastern Europe (Ostjuden), who had immigrated to Germany before, during and after the war, was also a favorite subject of antisemitic incitement.

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 1 German Jewry under the National Socialism in Historical Perspective

Among the antisemitic movements and political parties, the most radical was the relatively small National Socialist party, which had been founded in Bavaria in 1919. Its platform included conspicuous racialist paragraphs calling of the abolition of civil rights for Jews and far-reaching measures for eliminating Jews from various spheres of life. The propaganda speeches and publications of the party’s leaders, especially those of Adolf Hitler, presented a radical antisemitic ideology that did not stop short of demands for the “total removal, the elimination of the Jews” and called for the Ausrottung (“extermination”) of the Jews mit Stumpf und Stiel (“root and branch”). Despite the party’s nationalist character, the antisemitism it advocated went beyond the confines of national categories, its redemptive ideology demanding a radical solution of the “Jewish question” in order to save all of human society. The National Socialist racial doctrine, which was based on the inequality of races and a pseudo Social Darwinist struggle for survival among them, regarded Judaism and Jews as spiritual and biological source of universalist ideologies (including Liberalism, democracy, Marxism, and even Christianity) that defy the “nature’s order” (Naturgordnung) of inequality of races, their hierarchy and the struggle for survival. As a result of the stabilization of the German economy and of the republic in 1924, the strength of the antisemitic parties went into a temporary decline and the number of their members in the Reichstag dropped from forty to fourteen. According to the 1925 census, the Jewish population of Germany was 564, 379, representing 0.9 percent of the total population. The great majority (377,000, or 66.8 percent) lived in six large cities, which also had the largest Jewish communities: Berlin (with 180,000 Jews, a third of the entire Jewish population in the country), Frankfurt, Hamburg, Breslau, Leipzig, and Cologne. Approximately 90,000 Jews (16 percent) lived in the smaller cities, and 97,000 (17.2 percent) in over a thousand towns and villages with a population of less than 10,000. For the most part the Jews belonged to the middle class and were self-employed, in various branches of business and in the professions. The Jews’ intensive participation in the active life of German society accelerated the process of assimilation, which was manifested in the growing number of mixed marriages, secessions from the organized Jewish community, and conversions to Christianity. Thus, in 1927, 54 percent of all marriages of Jews were contracted with non-Jews, and in that year one thousand Jews are estimated to have opted out of Judaism, about half of them by conversion to another faith. On the other hand, in the Weimar era the activities of the Jewish political religious and social organizations were maintained and even expanded. New organizations were added to the Centralverein, the Zionist Federation, the

Weimar Republic, 1918–1933 

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Orthodox and Liberal organizations, and the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden (German Jews’ Aid Society), which all had their beginnings before Weimar. The major new organizations were the Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten (RjF, Reich Union of Jewish Frontline Soldiers); left- and right-wing Zionist parties such as the Jüdische Volkspartei, or Left Zionist Workers Party (Poalei Zion Smol); youth and sports organizations; student groups, and so forth. The Jewish communities retained the officially recognized legal status they had attained under the Kaiser; the innovations in the Weimar era were the establishment of supra-communities Landesverbände jüdischer Gemeinden (Regional State Unions of Jewish Communities) and attempts to organize all of German Jewry into a nationwide body. The influx of Jewish scholars and intellectuals from Eastern Europe, coupled with the revival of Jewish consciousness among the established Jewish population, turned Germany in that period into a great center of modern Jewish scholarship and culture. As a result of efforts of Jewish thinkers and educators— men like Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber—large groups among the general Jewish population began to take an interest in Jewish learning, leading to the establishment of Jüdische Lehrhäuser (institutes of Jewish learning) for adult Jewish education. A wide range of Jewish periodicals and Jewish publishers played an important role in Jewish life; two of the significant publishing projects undertaken were the five-volume Jüdisches Lexikon and the Encyclopaedia Judaica (of which ten volumes had appeared when its publication came to a halt in 1934). The final years of the Weimar Republic, during which Germany was hard hit by the global economic crisis, were marked by the rise of the National Socialist party. Just before the crisis broke out in 1928, the Nazis won only three percent of the vote; however, in the first elections that took place during the crisis in September 1930, their share jumped to 18 percent, and in July 1932 to 37 percent of the vote. With 230 members in the Reichstag, the Nazis became the largest party—and retained that position in the next elections in November 1932, despite a drop to 33 percent of the vote and 196 Reichstag members. During those years, antisemitism came to have a profound effect on Jewish life. It was one of the central elements in the Nazi party’s violent struggle for power, and its effect on the Jews was not confined to physical violence (desecrations of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, and even attacks on individual Jews). Nazi political propaganda succeeded in making the “Jewish question” into a major issue in the Nazi struggle against the democratic regime. As a result, not only was the position of the Jews in German society impaired, but many of them underwent a crisis of Jewish consciousness and began to reexamine their Jewish identity.

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 1 German Jewry under the National Socialism in Historical Perspective

From 1933 to 1938 In January 1933, on the eve of Hitler’s rise to power, the Jewish population of Germany (including the Saar district, which two years later was reincorporated into Germany) numbered 522,000 Jews by religion; under the racist criteria established by the Nazis, which were to form the basis of their persecution of the Jews and to find formal expression in racist legislation, the number of Jews by race was 566,000. On January 30, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Reich chancellor. This appointment was the outcome of a continuous economic and parliamentary crisis in which the democratic system of government became an authoritarian regime, on the basis of the emergency powers granted to the president by the constitution. As soon as Hitler was appointed, the National Socialist party and its paramilitary organizations—primarily the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers) and the SS—launched a drive to seize, by violent means where necessary, all government and public institutions and to transform Germany into a totalitarian state. In the ensuing terrorist actions (as early as February and March 1933) against opponents of National Socialism, especially members of the Left political parties, liberals, and intellectuals, the Jews were a major target. Many Jews were subjected to public humiliation and were arrested; others were forced to quit their posts, especially at the universities and the law courts. Before 1933, the Nazis had called for the damaging of Jewish property and for a boycott of Jewish businesses and services; this was now adopted as the official policy of the ruling party. A climax was reached with the Anti-Jewish Boycott of April 1, 1933, the first occasion on which the new regime openly took discriminatory action against a part of the country’s citizens. It caused a deep shock to Germany’s Jews and evoked a sharply hostile reaction from world public opinion. The boycott was brought to a halt after a day had passed, but from April 7, anti-Jewish laws were enacted that in effect abolished the principle of equal rights for Jews, rights that had been established by the German constitution in 1871. The legal basis for these measures was the Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Law), passed on March 24, 1933, which gave the government dictatorial powers first for a four-year period and subsequently for the life span of the Third Reich. The regime used this emergency law to abolish the democratic freedoms that had been in force under the republic and brought about the dissolution of Germany’s independent political parties and organizations. The process of totalitarian Gleichschaltung (“coordination,” that is, Nazification) held to the reorganization of all spheres of public and official life, including control of the media and all forms of publication, and a thorough and far-reaching purge of the civil and

From 1933 to 1938 

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public service. In the March 5 elections, which nominally were still democratic and were held before the Enabling Law was passed, the Nazis received only 44 percent of the vote, as against the more than 90 percent support they achieved in the November 1933 referendum and later. Anti-Jewish policy was put into effect on two parallel levels: from below—“spontaneous” acts (Einzelaktionen) of terror and incitement of the population to hostility and demonstrations against the Jews; and from above—anti Jewish legislation: the early anti-Jewish laws included the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. The racist basis of that law was expressed by the Arierparagraph (“Aryan Paragraph”), which became the foundation for all anti-Jewish legislation passed during the years before the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws in the fall of 1935. Other laws passed at that stage restricted the practice of law and medicine by Jews; a special law mandated that the number of Jews in an educational institution must not exceed that proportional to their percentage of the population; and Jews were excluded from cultural life and journalism. The only (temporal) exception to these laws applied to Jews who had served as frontline soldiers in World War I. The main purpose of the legislation was to give formal expression to the ideology and policy of discrimination against and persecution of the Jews, but it was in part also meant to serve as a means of restraining violent excesses of terror actions and stabilizing the status of the Jews in the National Socialist state. In particular, it was the conservative elements in the government coalition who in the second half of 1933 advocated such “stabilization,” out of concern for the country’s international standing and the adverse effect that unstrained Nazi action against the Jews could have on efforts to restore the country’s economy. Among the officials who warned of the impact that a foreign economic boycott might have on Germany was Hjalmar Schacht, head of the Reichsbank, and Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath. Hitler spoke in a similar vein in July 1933, when he called for a curb on the revolutionary zeal and the need to direct it into channels designed to consolidate the foundations of the new regime. The methods employed in the regime’s terror campaign against its opponents consisted mostly of arrest and imprisonment in concentration camps. The percentage of Jews among the detainees was quite high, and they were singled out for particularly cruel and humiliating treatment, which in many instances resulted in death. Shocked by such terrorization and the overall onslaught on their position in the country, many Jews reacted with headlong flight, a wave of emigration that encompassed thousands of people. According to the census taken in June 1933, the Jewish population in Germany was 502,799 (by religion) or 540,000 (by race); these figures show that since January of that year about 26,000 Jews “by race” had left the country. By the end of 1933, 63,000 Jews had emigrated, according

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to retrospective statistics compiled in 1941 by the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (Reich Association of Jews in Germany). Support of the German people for the regime’s policy against the Jews was not uniform, and while there was broad recognition of the need to find a “solution” to the “Jewish question,” there were also reservations about the violent methods being applied, as well as individual cases of solidarity with the Jews. However, few public protests were made by the leadership of institutions that were still relatively independent, such as the Protestant and Catholic churches; the objections raised to the persecution of the Jews referred primarily to the thousands of Christians of Jewish origin who were affected by the racist legislation. Among the Jews, the reaction to what was happening was different on the individual and the organizational level. Although the Jews’ social and political status had suffered a tremendous blow, their existing organizational network was scarcely touched—indeed, new organizations came into being. In this respect the situation of the Jews was in stark contrast to the prevailing trend of totalitarian Gleichschaltung, the purpose of which was to destroy the existing social and political fabric of German society and construct a homogeneous national society in its place. It was the exclusionary racist principle on which the policy toward the Jews was based—their separation and isolation from the general society—that made possible the continuing existence of the Jews’ own institutions. Moreover, “alien” and “decadent” ideas and principles such as political pluralism and democracy, which were now beyond the pale among the general population, were still the rule in Jewish public life. This was, however, the freedom of the outcast, of a community that now seemed doomed to disappearance (at this stage of the Nazi regime) through emigration. The mass flight and emigration and the large number of suicides were manifestations of the crisis experienced by German Jewry as it saw the fundamental premises on which its existence had been based collapsing. At the same time, the organizational structure of German Jewry adapted itself to the changing conditions, and even intensified its varied internal activities. Prior to 1933 the Jewish religious communities had been entities recognized by public law—a status they retained under the Nazis, in that early stage—but no nationwide organization of Jewish communities of similar official status had come into being. In 1932 a beginning was made with the formation of a loose national federation of regional associations of Jewish communities (Landesverbände), which in the Third Reich made its first public appearance in a memorandum published in May 1933. It was only in September of that year, however, that a truly representative and comprehensive national organization was established, which, in addition to the Landesverbände, included the major political bodies and the large communities. This was the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden (Reich Representation of German Jews), under the leadership of

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Rabbi Leo Baeck and Otto Hirsch. Its major operational instrument was the Zentralausschuss für Hilfe und Aufbau (Central Committee for Support and Development), which had been formed even before the Reichsvertretung was formally constituted. The Reichsvertretung, an umbrella organization, set itself the purpose of representing the Jews of Germany vis-à-vis both the authorities and Jews in other countries, assuming the leadership of the Jewish population and coordinating the wide range of new activities through which the German Jews had attempted to cope with their changed situation. Prominent among these activities was the creation of an expanded network of educational institutions for youth and adults, especially through the work of the Mittelstelle für Jüdische Erwachsenenbildung (Jewish Center for Adult Education), founded and administered by Martin Buber. Other areas covered by the Reichsvertretung were vocational training and retraining, expanded welfare operations, economic assistance, aid in finding employment for Jews who had lost their jobs, and preparing for emigration. In the political sphere, it submitted memoranda to the authorities and published statements in the Jewish press in which it demanded safeguards for Jewish life, even under the existing circumstances. On several occasions, as when the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer (The Attacker) came out with a special issue on the blood libel—the accusation that Jews kill gentiles to obtain their blood for Jewish rituals—the Reichsvertretung did not hesitate to react with public protests. The Jewish press at this time greatly increased in size and circulation. In 1934 the combined monthly circulation of national and community newspapers was 1,180,000. In the area of cultural activities, a special organization was founded in July 1933, the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden (Cultural Society of German Jews), which set itself the tasks of finding employment for the many Jewish artists and intellectuals who had been dismissed from their posts, and of serving as the cultural center for the Jewish population. Before long, The Kulturbund became one of German Jewry’s largest and most proficient organizations. The emergence of umbrella organizations did not remove from the Jewish scene the competition among different political and religious orientations for influence among the Jews and for representation in the community institutions. The main polarization was between the mainstream of German Jewry and the Zionist movement. The former was represented by the Centralverein (CV) and the Reichsbund der Jüdischen Frontsoldaten (RjF), and their main purpose was to struggle for Jewish existence and the preservation of Jewish rights in Germany. The primary goal of the Zionist movement was gradually to prepare the Jews for a new life in the national home in Palestine. By this time the Zionists had made substantial gains in Germany, especially among the Young people. The He-Haluts socialist pioneering movement had a strong base, and Recha Freier had established the Aliyat Noar organization for Jewish Youth emigration to Palestine.

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 1 German Jewry under the National Socialism in Historical Perspective

All public activities by Jews were under the watchful eye of the surveiling authorities, mainly the Gestapo and the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, Security Service of the SS), whose policy was to segregate the Jews and put restraints in particular on tendencies that were designed to encourage them to stay in the Reich (mainly by the CV and RjF). On the other hand the Zionist movement was able to carry on with relative freedom of action and with less interference. Notwithstanding National Socialism’s sharp opposition to the Zionist movement’s political aim of establishing a Jewish state, the Nazi regime at this time encouraged the work of the Zionists, believing that it too promoted the emigration of Jews from Germany. As far as official antisemitic policy was concerned, 1934 was a relatively uneventful year, and some of the Jewish émigrés living in difficult circumstances as temporary refugees in neighboring countries even decided to return to Germany. The restriction of Jewish rights now took the form of decrees and professional organizations’ measures that applied in practice the principles enunciated in the 1933 anti-Jewish legislation. The clash between the regime’s tendency toward stabilization and consolidation as an authoritarian and totalitarian state and the still-existing revolutionary radicalism in the party ranks prompted Hitler in June 1934 to stage a purge in which the top echelon of the SA, as well as other opposition leaders, were executed. One outcome of this confrontation was the strengthening of the conservative elements in the government, mainly among the army officers and the officials dealing with economic affairs; another was the rise of new centers of power, primarily the SS. The ongoing process of centralization resulted in the seizure of control over all police forces in the Reich by Heinrich Himmler, chef of the SS and the Gestapo. The effect of the development on the situation of the Jews was the establishment of special sections in the Gestapo and SD to deal with the “Jewish question.” In the wake of the sweeping victory in the Saar plebiscite in January 1935, which restored that district to the Reich, a new drive of violence against the Jews “from below” was launched. This time it again took the form of a series of locally initiated actions (Einzelaktionen), accompanied by a high-powered campaign of incitement against the Jews in the press and in mass rallies, a campaign orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels and Julius Streicher. A special feature of it was the denunciation and public humiliation of persons accused of having committed Rassenschande (“race defilement”) that is, sexual intercourse between Jews and “Aryans.” The various German states passed anti-Jewish legislation of their own, for example, forbidding Jews to display the German flag and outlawing marriages between Jews and Aryans. It was in the smaller population centers that the Jews suffered most in this campaign, and as a result more and more Jews left their homes in the provinces and took up residence in the large cities.

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This terror wave reached its height in the summer of 1935 and was one of the factors leading to the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws in September of that year. These laws were designed to serve two purposes: to restore “law and order,” among the population and to meet the demands of radical party circles for implementation of the original antisemitic planks in the Nazi platform. The Nuremberg Laws were Verfassungsgesetze (constitutional laws), one of them the Reich Citizenship Law and the other the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, and they contained a new definition of the term “Jew,” based on race. This was the definition on which all subsequent anti-Jewish legislation was based until 1943, when a final decree was enacted under which Jews were denied protection of the courts. Secret government and party repots on the mood of the German population revealed that the reaction to the Nuremberg Laws was mixed. In wide circles it was believed that Hitler’s statement describing the laws as a possible formal framework for the continued existence of the Jews in Germany mean that the laws were a solution of sorts, providing for racial and cultural segregation of the Jews from the German people and for their social isolation. Other circles, especially those with religious leanings and among the liberal bourgeoisie, expressed reservations and even criticism. Yet a third group, consisting mainly of radical Nazi party members, found the Nuremberg Laws too moderate, called for a more far-reaching solution of the “Jewish question,” and, on their own initiative, continued anti-Jewish violence on the local level. The church leadership took no public stand on the Nuremberg Laws, despite the fact that the laws also affected thousands of converts, an issue that had confronted the churches from the moment the first anti-Jewish legislation was enacted in April 1933. The Jewish population and its leaders tried to cope with the deteriorating situation by intensifying and broadening their own activities in the social and economic sphere. In some Jewish quarters it was believed that under the situation created by the Nuremberg Laws the Jews would experience a kind of “group emancipation.” The resulting status would safeguard certain diminished civil rights of German Jews as a group, replacing the nineteenth-century Emancipation, which had endowed the individual Jew with equal civil and political rights. On the political level, the Reichsvertretung reacted by lodging protest and issuing a statement for publication by the Jewish press. Other Jewish reactions at that time included a manifesto of August 1935 remonstrating against the rising tide of terror, and a special sermon for strengthening the Jews to withstand this ordeal, written and signed by Leo Baeck and Otto Hirsch on the eve of the Day of Atonement. Both these protests led to punitive action by the Gestapo. In its memorandum reacting to Nuremberg Laws, the Reichsvertretung gave expression to the sense of humiliation and insult aroused among the Jews by the laws, but it also

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saw in that a possible basis for some kind of continued autonomous Jewish existence in Germany. In 1936, when the Olympic Games were held in Berlin, there was a relative relaxation in public anti-Jewish activity. It seemed that the continued economic activities of the Jews and the consolidation of their newly established organizational and social structures had created a pattern of life that could be maintained even under a racist totalitarian regime. At that very time, however, a new antisemitic policy that was to have far-reaching consequences was being formulated for translation into practice during the following years. Hitler’s secret memorandum on the Four-Year Plan, which he wrote in August 1936, contained in its introducing first part an ideological and political section in which he called for an all-out war against Judaism as a driving motive in Germany’s future foreign policy and its preparations for the war against the Soviet Union that was sure to come within four years. The last part of this document contained the principles of the draconian punitive measure against the Jews that were to be the guidelines of future policy. In late 1936 and early 1937 the practical details of this radical policy were spelled out in documents drafted by the SD’s Jewish section for future application. The interim goals for the “solution of the Jewish question” were to include an intensified drive to eliminate Jews from the economy, and increased pressure for their emigration by such means as the “people’s fury,” that is, officially organized or supported terror “from below”. The implementation of this policy on an informal basis was launched in the second half of 1937, mainly by the “Aryanization” (Arisierung) of Jewish business enterprises. In this operation the SD contested the policies of other official agencies, especially the moderate pragmatic policy advocated by the Ministry for Economic Affair. The struggle intensified when the minister, Hjalmar Schacht, was dismissed from his post in the fall of that year. As evident from the confidential Gestapo and SD-reports on popular opinion in Germany, the year 1937 was a time of crisis inside the Third Reich, with signs of ideological wariness on the one side and strengthening of the opposition to the regime on the other, manifested in various sectors of German society. One expression of the crisis was the sharpening conflict between the churches and the regime (Kirchenkampf). Its most prominent manifestation was the German-language encyclical issued by Pope Pius XI, Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Concern), which was clandestinely distributed all over Germany. The encyclical denounced Nazi neo-paganism and the cult of racism, but it did not explicitly condemn the persecution of the Jews. The reactions of the regime varied, and included the staging of numerous show trials of clerics, who were imprisoned in concentration camps. According to secret official reports, by the end of the year the disapproval of and outright opposition to the regime were

From 1933 to 1938 

 25

fast becoming a threat to its stability. These attitudes were especially prominent in conservative circles, with the churches and the army in the lead, but they were also evident among the workers. This was the background of the “crisis of the generals” (Blomberg-Fritsch Crisis), which erupted in early 1938, and of the drastic changes introduced by Hitler in the top echelons of the army and the ministries of war and foreign affairs. Werner von Blomberg and Konstantin von Neurath fell from power, and Joachim von Ribbentrop was appointed foreign minister, in preparation for a radicalized policy in both internal and foreign affairs. The Ministry of War was abolished and Hitler took personal command of the military. This policy soon resulted in the annexation of Austria in March 1938, the Czech crisis in September of that year and subsequent annexation of the Sudetenland, the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia out of the occupied western part of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, and, finally, the invasion of Poland in September 1939, which marked the beginning of World War II. Of special significance was the declaration that Hitler made on January 30, 1939, which he was to repeat during the war on various public occasions and in closed meetings with party and army leaders: “If international-finance Jewry in Europe and elsewhere once again succeeds in dragging the nations into a world war, its outcome will not be the Bolshevization of the globe … but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” The year 1938 witnessed a significant stage in the further radicalization of the Third Reich’s anti-Jewish policy, which was also applied in the newly acquired territories. The radical policy took the form of a series of new laws and decrees, mass arrests of Jews, preceded and accompanied by a variety of terror actions “from below” as well as actions from above, the latter culminating in the pogrom of November 9–10. The first important step in this process was a law put into effect on March 28, 1938, that abolished the legally recognized status of the Jewish communities, a status they had been accorded in the 19th century. This was followed on April 26, by a decree ordering the registration of Jewish property, and on June 15, by the arrest of 1,500 Jews and their imprisonment in concentration camps (the “June Operation”). Other anti-Jewish laws passed at this time forbade Jews to practice medicine (June 25), ordered male Jews to assume the name Israel, and female Jews, the name Sarah (August 17), forbade Jews to practice law (September 27), and stipulated that the passports of Jews be marked with a capital J, standing for Jude (October 5). In this period, and especially during the Sudeten ‘brink of war’ crisis in late summer, there was a sharp rise in the number of “unofficial” terror actions taking place. They included the destruction of Jewish property, the expulsion of Jews, mainly from smaller towns and villages, and the desecration and destruction of synagogues, among them (on

26 

 1 German Jewry under the National Socialism in Historical Perspective

Hitler’s order) the destruction of the main synagogue at Munich (June 9) and (on Streicher’s initiative) at Nuremberg (August 10). On October 28, 1938, fifteen thousand to seventeen thousand Jews of Polish nationality were expelled from Germany, The Polish government refused to admit them into Poland, and for a considerable period of time they were trapped in the no-man’s land between the two countries. Their bitter fate caught the attention of public opinion all over the world. On November 7, Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish youth whose parents were among the expelled Jews, shot Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The Nazi regime used this act as the pretext for an organized pogrom against the Jews, which took place on November 9–10 in every part of Germany and in the areas it had annexed that year (Austria and the Sudetenland). In this pogrom, which came to be called by the German population Kristallnacht or “Night of Broken Glass” (so named from the shattering of the show windows of Jewish enterprises), hundreds of synagogues and thousands of Jewish businesses were burned down, destroyed, or damaged. Some thirty thousand Jews were put into concentration camps. And almost one hundred Jews were murdered. The pogrom was followed by a collective fine of 1 billion Reichsmark imposed on the Jews and by a new series of harsh laws and regulations. Among these were a law providing for elimination of the Jews from the German economy (November 12); a regulation on the final expulsion of Jewish pupils from public schools, also on November 12; restrictions on the freedom of movement by Jews in public places (November 28); and a regulation ordering all Jewish newspapers and periodicals to be shut down (there were sixty-five newspapers and periodicals and forty-two organizational bulletins with a total monthly circulation of 956,000). All Jewish organizations were dissolved, leaving only the Reichsvertretung, the Kulturbund, and, temporarily, the Palestine Office of the Zionist organization. The only paper permitted to be published was the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, the semi-official newspaper of the Reichsvertretung. The confidential reports by the Reich security services revealed that the reaction of the German public to the Kristallnacht pogrom, like that to the Nuremberg Laws, was not uniform. The disapproval voiced was on a much larger scale, but it focused primarily on the damage caused to German property and the German economy, and in lesser degree expressly on the moral aspect of the atrocities against the Jews and the destruction of their property. Once again the church leadership refrained from taking a public stand. A few individual clerics denounced the riots for their barbarity, which, they said, “contradicted the spirit of the Gospels.” The underground German Communist party devoted an entire issue of its newspaper Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag) to condemning the pogrom and the Nazi regime.

From 1938 to 1945 

 27

From 1938 to 1945 Before the end of November 1938 the Reichsvertretung resumed its activities, which centered mainly on intensifying the support for emigration of Jews from Germany and obtaining the release of those who had been imprisoned in concentration camps. It also proceeded to implement its earlier decisions to revise its organizational structure and its position within Jewish society and the National Socialist state, a process begun when the legal status of the Jewish communities was abolished in March 1938. By July that year all the Landesverbände of Jewish communities and the major Jewish organizations had decided to merge and to establish a new central organization, a nationwide Jewish community with a democratic constitution that would seek official recognition by the authorities. The name proposed for the new body was the Reichsverband der Juden in Deutschland (Reich Federation of Jews in Germany). Based on this initiative, which did not materialize in the wake of the November pogrom and its immediate repercussions, the Jewish leadership, after negotiations with the Nazi authorities and their official approval, announced in February 1939 the formation of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (Reich Association of Jews in Germany). The Reichsvereinigung regarded its main concerns as emigration of Jews from Germany, Jewish education, and welfare. This development took place at a time when the authorities as well had an interest in the existence of a more authoritative, centralist Jewish organization. On July 4, 1939, a law was passed granting recognition to the Reichsvereinigung. This law, however, required that all Jews by race, as defined by Nuremberg Laws, had to belong to the new organization. The Reichsvereinigung was put under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior, which in practice meant that it was under the control of the SD. In 1938 and 1939 emigration of Jews (“by race”) from Germany reached new heights—49,000 in 1938 and 68,000 in 1939—despite the many difficulties that stood in the way, such as new restrictive entry regulations in the target countries, restrictions on immigration to Palestine, and the failure of the Evian Conference. Long before November 1938, the Reichsvertretung had recognized the importance of the role it had to play in emigration, and early that year it had set up a coordinating office for this purpose. The Reichsvereinigung kept up its efforts on behalf of Jewish emigration even after the war broke out, routing the emigrants through neutral Spain and Portugal to the Western Hemisphere, through the Soviet Union to East Asia, and through Italy and the Balkan states to Palestine by means of Aliya Bet (“illegal” immigration). These efforts came to an end in October 1941, when all Jewish emigration was officially prohibited. As the agency with the sole responsibility for Jewish education, the Reichsvereinigung created a network which ensured that Jewish schooling was available

28 

 1 German Jewry under the National Socialism in Historical Perspective

wherever Jews lived in Germany and also supervised the training of teachers. The Kulturbund continued its activities and, indeed, added to them by taking over some of the functions of the Mittelstelle, those for adult education. With regard to social welfare, the Reichsvereinigung was confronted with enormous problems, owing to the fact that practically all German Jews had been deprived of their livelihood, that the average age of the Jews remaining in Germany was quite high, and that financing had to be found for the emigration of the growing number of would-be emigrants who had no means of their own. To deal with these problems the Reichsvereinigung gave its support to existing fundraising institutions for mutual help, but its main source of funds was the revenue it obtained from a progressive tax imposed on Jews who still had property in their possession, including Jews who were about to emigrate. The Reichsvereinigung also continued to receive financial assistance from American Jewish welfare agencies until America’s entry into the war in December 1941. As a growing number of countries became involved in the war, the Nazi regime expanded its policy of Jewish persecution as it had evolved in Germany since 1933, applying it in the countries that it occupied or that were under its influence. The form of this policy differed from one country to another, but its ultimate aim was the same everywhere—the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” In Germany proper the outbreak of the war set off a new round of anti-Jewish decrees and regulations affecting nearly every sphere of the Jews’ life. Among the first was a decree that prohibited Jews from leaving their homes after dark and placed certain sections of cities out of bounds to them. Another that reduced their allocation of rationed foods and restricted their purchases to certain shops and certain times of day. Other decrees, by the dozen, ordered the Jews to hand over their jewelry, radios, cameras, electrical appliances, and any other valuables in their possession. In September 1941 all Jews aged six and above were ordered to wear the Judenstern (the Jewish star), and Jews were no longer permitted to use public transportation. In contrast to the situation in most other countries of Europe, according to Hitler’s wish, no ghettos were created in Germany, and the physical segregation of the Jews was achieved by imposing residential restrictions that forced them out of their homes and concentrated them in special Judenhäuser (“Jewish buildings”). Jews who were declared “fit to work” were put on forced labor, and the practice of arresting individual Jews and sending them to concentration camps was continued. The persecution of the Jews by means of decrees and regulations was formally ended in July 1943 by another decree that removed them from the protection of the law and placed them under the exclusive jurisdiction of the security services and the police. The first deportations of Jews from Germany took place in February 1940 and affected Jews from Stettin (now Szczecin) and Schneidemühl (Pila) and their

From 1938 to 1945 

 29

environs. These deportations were discontinued in the spring of that year, but in the summer, after the victory over France, temporarily the idea came up to deporting the Jews from Nazi occupied Europe to the Reservatgebiet on the island of Madagascar. In October 1940, in a single night, almost all the Jews of Baden, the Palatinate, and the Saar district—a total of 7,500 persons—were deported to France, most of them to the Gurs concentration camp, and from here later to the extermination camps in Eastern Europe. In October 1941 mass deportations of Jews “to the East” on a systematic basis were launched, a process that led to the liquidation of German Jewry. The majority of transports at that time had as their destination the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos in Poland, and the ghettos of Riga, Kovno, and Minsk in the German-occupied parts of the Soviet Union. By then the mass executions of Jews by the SS-Einsatzgruppen, in which also units of the German Wehrmacht and German police took part, was in full swing in the German-occupied Soviet territory; the first phase of the total annihilation of the Jews of Europe had begun. Some of the transports from Germany to these territories were liquidated upon their arrival in the ghettos (as in Riga and Minsk) during the course of local Aktionen; the other deportees, if they did not die from epidemics and starvation, were deliberately killed. In 1942 and 1943 German Jews were deported by the tens of thousands directly or indirectly to the extermination camps. Some forty-two thousand Jews from Germany, mostly elderly people and those with “privileged status,” were sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto; the majority either died there of epidemics and exhaustion or were further deported to be exterminated, mainly in Auschwitz. Even before the systematic mass annihilation started, several hundred Jews were murdered between 1939 and 1941 inside Germany, within the Euthanasia Program. The link between ideology and political aims and the destruction of the Jews in Europe in relation to the impending or ongoing war was propounded by Hitler in public speeches e.g. on January 30, 1939 and January 30, 1942, in secret operational directives that he issued during the war, and in his last testament, dictated in April 1945. Most scholars believe that there was a close connection between the radicalization of the war that was inaugurated by the invasion of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the mass murder of the Jews and that the rassenideologischer Vernichtungskrieg (the racist ideologically motivated war of extermination) deliberately coincided with the campaign against “Jewish Bolshevism” and its “biological sources, the millions of Jews in Eastern Europe.” But despite its unique character, the Nazi extermination of the Jews should be seen as part of a larger concept, the racial revolution planned by the Nazis, which was to restructure the face of Europe by exterminating and subjugation entire sectors of the population and by uprooting millions of people from their homes, mainly in Eastern Europe. During the war, and beyond the total annihilation of

30 

 1 German Jewry under the National Socialism in Historical Perspective

Jews in Germany and all occupied countries of Europe, the Nazis also murdered Gypsies, the mentally ill in Germany itself, Soviet prisoners of war, and intellectual and political elites in Poland and so far remained, in the occupied Soviet Union. In practical terms, the policy toward the Jews in all its phases, both before the “Final Solution” and during its course, was shaped by the Third Reich’s bureaucracy and police, and especially by the section for Jewish affairs, headed by Eichmann, in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office; RSHA). As mentioned above, taking part in the mass murder of the Jews or witnessing it were tens of thousands who served in the Einsatzgruppen, of soldiers in the German occupation army, police units and civil administration; these were also the main sources that channeled information on the fate of the Jews to the German population. The attitude of the German population to the “solution of the Jewish question” during the war years does not appear to have been essentially different from that during the years preceding the war, but because of the far harsher treatment meted out to the Jews once the war began and escalated, the German people’s reaction takes on a different meaning. The growing isolation and legal persecution of the Jews during the war, prior to their marking with the yellow badge and the deportations, is reflected mainly in the absence of considerable concern on the part of the German population to what was happening to the Jews. But even at that stage, particularly before the start of the mass deportations, there was pressure by various groups for a more extreme anti-Jewish policy in Germany, along the lines of the policy that had been introduced in Poland by this time. There were appeals for further restrictions to be imposed on the Jews in day-to-day life, for the introduction of the Jewish badge, and even for the expulsion and mass deportation of the Jews “to the East”. Secret reports on popular opinion in Germany at that time and other sources inform that the knowledge about the fate of the deported Jews and their mass executions in the occupied territories in the East was quite wide spread. On the other hand there were sporadic reservations about the inhuman treatment of the Jews, expressed primarily in the educated circles of the middle class, among religious population, and in the lower ranks of the clergy. A noteworthy popular reaction to reports on the extermination of German Jewish deportees and of Jews from other occupied countries was expressed in 1943 when after the defeat at Stalingrad growing concern among the population has been reported about “the fear […] that the soldiers taken prisoner by the Russians could be killed in retaliation for the alleged German mass shootings of Jews in the East.” At the same year, in the wake of the massive air raids on German cities by the Allies, many voices in the population were reported that saw in them a retaliation for the German atrocities against the Jews.

From 1938 to 1945 

 31

In general the German church leadership did not openly protest against the mass murder of the Jews. A certain exception was when in 1943 it seemed that a similar fate was in store for the thousands of German Jews who had hitherto been spared of deportation because they were married to Christian spouses, and also for their (mostly Christian) descendants. In February the same year a limited but effective public protest by the non-Jewish spouses on behalf of their threatened Jewish husbands (The Rosenstrasse protest) took place in Berlin on the same issue. As far as criticism of the extermination of Jews on religious basis has been reported it came from the lower ranks of the clergy. Quite conspicuous was the stand of the “conservative resistance” circles, led by army chiefs. The political plans drawn up by the participants in the July 1944 plot against Hitler contain little reference to the Jews, and the leading figures in the conspiracy were of opinion that there was no room for the resettlement of the surviving Jews in Germany, or anywhere in Europe. At the same time, there is evidence that thousands of Germans risked their lives and the lives of their families to extend help to Jews, thus saving some of the Jews who had gone into hiding. Despite the progressive radicalization of the Nazi policy on the Jews, the Reichsvereinigung of the Jews in Germany continued to function throughout the war years according to the policy that had crystallized when it was reorganized in 1938 and reshaped 1939. The new situation, and especially the onset of the mass deportations in 1940 and 1941, created problems and posed unprecedented challenges to the Reichsvereinigung. The welfare need, which in the past had been confined to a minority, now came to involve the great majority of the Jewish population in Germany. In addition to the regular subsidies that it made, the Reichsvereinigung had to provide emergency housing for the thousands of Jews who had been evicted from their homes and particularly for the patients and inmates of medical institutions and old-age homes that had to be evacuated and turned over to the authorities. The Reichvereinigung provided educational facilities to all German Jews, even after emigration and, later on, mass deportation, had thinned out the ranks of both students and teachers. Only in July 1942 was the Jewish school system closed down, on orders issued by the Gestapo when the wave of the deportation was at its height. The Reichsvereinigung also continued to run its training and retraining institutions, and to help support the agricultural training farms (hakhsharot) of the Zionist movement, which in the eyes of their participants were “the remaining islands of self-contained Jewish life” in Germany. These establishments, too, were gradually closed down in 1942 and 1943, during the mass deportations. The Reichsvereinigung did not abandon its declared role as the responsible Jewish leadership, as demonstrated forcefully by its reaction to the first mass

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 1 German Jewry under the National Socialism in Historical Perspective

deportations from Germany in 1940. When Eichmann presented to the Reichsvereinigung leaders the intention for the “plan for the comprehensive solution of the Jewish problem in Europe by the deportation of Jews from their countries of residence and concentrating them in a reservation (Reservatgebiet) in a colonial area” [“The Madagascar Plan”] their declared response was that in their eyes the only possible place for the mass settlement of Jews was their historical homeland Palestine. After the deportation of nearly all the Jews of Baden and the Palatinate in October 1940, the Reichsvereinigung undertook a number of protest actions to which the Nazi authorities brutally retaliated, among others by arresting and murdering one of the organization’s leading officers, Julius Seligsohn. From then on, until the liquidation of German Jewry, the leadership’s activities in relation to the authorities were conducted in an atmosphere of growing terror, with some of the leaders arrested and deported to concentration camps. One of the first victims was its Director General Otto Hirsch, who was murdered in the concentration camp Mauthausen in June 1941. In those years, a major concern as well of the Reichsvereinigung vis-à-vis the Nazi authorities was to assert its rights of ownership of Jewish public property. Such property was gradually being sold, and the proceeds were one of the most important sources for the financing of the Reichsvereinigung’s operations on behalf of the Jews remaining alive in Germany in the wake of the deportations. Beginning in 1941, the procedure for the mass deportations usually consisted of rounding up Jews by the Gestapo and taking them to special assembly points in the large cities. The RSHA planned the deportations, and the lists of the candidates for deportation were compiled by the Gestapo offices in the various districts and large cities. In some places the local Jewish community was ordered to distribute the deportation orders to its members. Contrary to an assumption prevailing among survivors for many years after the war and consequently found in early research literature, the Reichsvereinigung did not participate directly in the deportations; this has been revealed in documents in its archives, which came to light in part at the mid 1960ies and completely after the fall of the communist regime of the GDR. Many of the Reichsvereinigung leaders and staff were among the victims imprisoned and deported in June 1942 in retaliation for an attack on an anti-Soviet exhibition in Berlin by the underground Jewish Communist Baum Gruppe. During the retaliatory operation, hundreds of Jews from Berlin and elsewhere were executed. At the end of January 1943, when the mass deportations were drawing to an end, two of the remaining leaders of the Reichsvereinigung, Leo Baeck and Paul Eppstein, were transferred to the Theresienstadt ghetto. In July, after the mass deportations had come to an end, the liquidation of German Jewry was

Conclusion 

 33

officially declared to have been completed; the offices of the Reichsvereinigung and the Berlin Jewish community were closed down and the remainder of the staff was deported. The semi-official Jewish newspaper Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt was also closed down. During the time it was published from November 1938 to July 1943, it had served primarily as a source of information on emigration opportunities and on the ways and means of organizing emigration. When emigration was forbidden, the paper’s main role was to inform the German Jews about decrees and orders issued by the authorities concerning Jewish affairs. After the disbandment of the Reichsvereinigung in July 1943, the affairs of the approximately fifteen thousand Jews who were left in Germany (most of them because they were married to non-Jews) were put in the hands of an organization known as the Rest-Reichsvereinigung (Residue Reich Association). It had little authority and played a very modest role, but it remained in existence until the end of the war.

Conclusion Of the 566,000 Jews (by race) who lived in Germany when Hitler came to power, some 200,000 fell victim to the Nazi extermination policy and some 300,000 were saved, mostly by emigrating from the country. (These and subsequent figures refer to Jews by “race” and are rounded off in thousands.) During the existence of the Third Reich, the surplus of deaths over births among the Jewish population of Germany (which had a rate of aging that was high even before 1933, and that rose further as a result of emigration) was 66,000. The actual number of Jewish emigrants from Germany between 1933 and 1945 was 346,000. This figure includes 98,000 who emigrated to other European countries conquered later by the Nazis; of these, an estimated 70,000 were deported during the Nazi occupation, together with Jews from the local population. Some 5,000 of these deportees survived the war. Approximately 137,000 Jews were deported from Germany, of whom about 9,000 survived. The figure of 200,000 German Jews who fell victim to Nazi extermination also includes several thousand Jews who were murdered in the Euthanasia Program or who committed suicide (most of the suicides occurred at the time of the deportations). In addition to the 20,000 Jews surviving the war in Germany (15,000 in the open, mostly in mixed marriages (Mischehen), and 3,000 to 5,000 who had gone underground), another 5,000 survived in the Theresienstadt ghetto and 4,000 in other concentration camps.

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 1 German Jewry under the National Socialism in Historical Perspective

In the early stage of the war no Jews were sent to Germany on forced labor, but this policy changed in the final stages, during which tens of thousands of Jews were taken out of concentration camps in Nazi occupied countries and brought to Germany. They worked there under subhuman conditions, mostly in the armament industry and in the removal of debris in the German cities caused by the Allied air raids. The majority of these Jews soon lost whatever physical strength they had left and were sent back to the extermination camps, to be killed there; only a small number Jews in the so called mixed marriages (Mischehen), were left in Germany and liberated when the war ended. During the last few months of the war, tens of thousands of Jews were evacuated from concentration camps in the occupied territories in the East, where the war front was drawing near, and put on death marches to Germany. Those who survived the marches were put in concentration camps in Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Many of them died there, after the camps were liberated, from exhaustion and the epidemics that broke out. In some of the concentration camps, such as Dachau and Buchenwald, Jewish underground resistance groups were organized in the final months of the war, and shortly after the liberation formed the core of the She’erith ha-Peletah, or “the surviving remnant,” of about two hundred thousand survivors of the “Final Solution” liberated on German soil. “The Third Reich has put an end to a thousand years of Jewish history in Germany.” These prophetic words, uttered by Rabbi Leo Baeck as early as 1933, proved true to an unfathomably tragic extent. German Jews were the first in Europe to experience the consequences of the National Socialist Ideology and politics. As elaborated in an article of the following chapter on the historical meaning of the Nazi Redemptive Antisemitism, and further developed in historiography (e.g. by Saul Friedländer and in a global context by Ian Kershaw), the “Final Solution of the Jewish question” implemented during the World War launched by Nazi Germany could be regarded as a point of departure in an attempt that aspired to change the course of human history.

Addendum After the defeat of the Third Reich, the Western Allies initiated a series of public opinion surveys. The questions related, among others, to the attitude of the German population to the Nazi “Final Solution”. The results for the US Office of Military Government (OMGUS) poll conducted in the American zone of Germany in October 1945, relatively early after the collapse of the Nazi regime, were as

Addendum 

 35

Fig. 4: The “Judenstein” (Jew stone) from the Nuremberg Synagogue destroyed in 1499; restored in the newly erected Main Synagogue in 1909; clandestinely rescued in 1938, shortly before the synagogue’s destruction by the Nazis; restored again in the postwar Nuremberg Synagogue.

Fig. 5: Julius Streicher, speaking at the mass rally before the demolition of the Nuremberg Main Synagogue on Hans Sachs Square; August 10, 1938.

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 1 German Jewry under the National Socialism in Historical Perspective

follows: “20% of those questioned supported Hitler’s anti-Jewish policies, while a further 19% were generally in favor, but felt that he had gone too far.” A quite high percentage refused to answer. A later general survey on the attitude toward National Socialism revealed that, by August 1947, an average of 55% of the population still expressed the opinion that: “National Socialism was a good idea badly carried out.”

2 History and Historical Consciousness. Similarities and Dissimilarities in the History of German and Czech Jews 1918–1945 “The 1000 year-history of German Jewry has reached its end.” Thus, in April 1933, the president of the Reich Representation of the German Jews (Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden), Rabbi Leo Baeck, summed up the acute shift that had occurred in the existential situation of Germany’s Jews following the rise to power of the National Socialist movement.1 In August 1939, five months after the occupation of the Czech Lands by Nazi Germany, Dr. Emil Kafka, head of the Jewish Community of Prague, convened an emergency meeting of all the Jewish communities to inform them that Adolf Eichmann had ordered the expulsion of all Jews from the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.” “Never in the thousand-year history of Czech Jewry have we known a harder time than this,” he said.2 “The authorities have issued an order that the Jews residing in the Protectorate must leave their places of residence and emigrate, this time to remote foreign lands.”3 Kafka was referring to the fundamental difference between the new historical situation and past expulsion decrees, drawing a comparison with the seemingly analogical but in fact radically different case of the last expulsion order issued to the Jews of Prague, Bohemia, and Moravia, in the mid-eighteenth century, during the reign of the Empress Maria Theresa. A striking feature of the declarations made by the two Jewish leaders at this critical juncture in the history of the Jews in each country is their awareness, deriving from a deep historical consciousness, that a distinctively new period has begun. Common to both statements, by Baeck and by Kafka, is a sense that the

1 German: “Die Tausendjährige Geschichte des deutschen Judentums ist zu Ende.” Cf.,: Kurt Alexander, „Die Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden“, in: Eva Reichmann (ed.), Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag von Rabbiner Dr. Leo Baeck am 23. Mai 1953, London n.d. [approx. 1953], 76–84, here 78.—Hans Reichmann, „Der Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens“, in: Ibid. 63–75, here 72.—For a different version cf. Caesar C. Aronsfeld, „Was niemand ahnen konnte“, in: Die Zeit, May 8, 1991. 2 “ … v tisíciletých dějinách židovstva v Čechách nebylo ještě tak težkých dob jako dnes.” Cf. Otto Dov Kulka, “The SD Judenpolitik in the First Three Occupied Countries (Austria, BohemiaMoravia, Poland 1938–1939”, in: Yalkut Moreshet 18 (1974) 163–184, here 168 (Hebrew, facsimile of the documents in German and Czech). 3 Ibid. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-003

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 2 History and Historical Consciousness. Similarities and Dissimilarities

Fig. 6: Rabbi Leo Baeck (1873–1956), head of the central organization of German Jews 1932–1943. Woodcut by Jehuda Bacon, 1955.

onset of Nazi rule signals the impending end of the Jews’ historical existence: in Germany as the first country in which the Nazis gained power; and in the Czech Lands as the first Nazi occupied country outside the sphere of the “German Nation.” Despite this awareness of the looming end, which in one form or another began to trickle into the consciousness of everyone, the Jews went on with their daily business seemingly oblivious to the new situation. The main effort of the communities and their leadership was devoted to the struggle for material and spiritual survival, and not only in Berlin of 1933 and Prague of 1939 but equally between the walls of Theresienstadt and other ghettos up to the violent phase of the “Final Solution.” This article draws a comparison between the Jews of Germany and the Jews of the Czech Lands in the period between 1918 and 1945: the parallel or analogical developments, the ties and reciprocal influences, the differences in their political and social status, and the ways with which they tried to cope with a changing historical situation. The primary framework for the comparison is chronological, following a parallel periodization of the history of the Jews in the two countries during these years:

2 History and Historical Consciousness. Similarities and Dissimilarities

 

Fig. 7: The ‘Altneu’ Synagogue and the Jewish Town Hall of Prague, 1942. Front page of the report by the Jewish Community of Prague on the Jewish population’s decrease in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939–1942.

 39

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 2 History and Historical Consciousness. Similarities and Dissimilarities

1. 2.

Weimar Germany vis-à-vis the First Czechoslovak Republic. The years 1933–1938 in Germany in comparison with the period of the “Second Czecho-Slovak Republic,” which survived in the shadow of Nazi Germany between October 1938 and March 1939. 3. The first War years under the rule of “Greater Germany” (Großdeutsches Reich)—which also included the former Austria and parts of Poland—in the two countries up to the beginning of the mass deportations in fall 1941. 4. The period of mass deportations and annihilation until the end of the war. In this last chapter the Theresienstadt Ghetto played a singular role in the life and fate of the Jews from both countries. The axis around which the discussion will revolve is the period between 1918 and 1938 in Germany and between 1918 and 1939 in the Czech Lands. This will provide the basis for a later discussion of the parallel deportation policy in the two countries, the initiatives of Czech Jewry’s leadership to avoid further deportations of the Jews to the East by establishing the Theresienstadt Ghetto, and the continuation of Jewish activity in the struggle for survival under Nazi rule until the period of the “Final Solution.” An epilogue will describe the different fates of the heritage of the historical past in the two countries, following the destructions during the “Reichskristallnacht” on the one hand and the initiatives to establish the “Museum of the Extinct Jewish Race” on the other.

1 The Weimar period and the period of the First Czechoslovak Republic 1a The Weimar Republic The period of the Weimar Republic is marked by a polarization in the two basic tendencies that had shaped the history of German Jewry in the modern era. On the one hand, there was an unprecedented increase in tendencies of acculturation and integration into the country’s cultural, social, and political life. Yet at the same time there also was an unprecedented radicalization of Antisemitism, especially of a racist secular appearance bearing a political character. Much has been written about the Jews’ integration and about their achievements, mainly as individuals, in the areas of culture and science and in the public and political life of the state during the Weimar period, and I will not dwell on this subject here. Suffice it to mention, for example, Niewyk’s “The Jews in Weimar

1 The Weimar period and the period of the First Czechoslovak Republic 

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Germany”4 and Peter Gay’s “Weimar Culture”.5 On the other hand, I want to set the record straight and refute, once and for all, the notion that Antisemitism in Weimar was “relatively moderate” as compared with the “Kaiserreich” and more especially as compared with the Antisemitism of the mass pogroms in Eastern Europe. It needs hardly to be pointed out that this image has taken root in the writings of many historians, in Germany and other countries, including Israel. As for the decline of the Antisemitic parties after the 1890s, several scholars have shown that there was no longer a need for them, since their basic ideas were integrated into the ideology and propaganda of most of the large political parties in Germany on the eve of the First World War and during the Weimar period.6 As David Bankier has shown, these attitudes penetrated the political propaganda even of the socialist parties, including the Communists.7 Those who maintain that there was a substantial difference between the Antisemitism of Weimar Germany and the Antisemitism that underlay the pogroms in Eastern Europe disregard the basic differences in political culture between Eastern and Central Europe in those years. It is obvious that the short-lived revolutions and the regime changes in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia between 1918 and 1920 bore  a different character from both the massive violent changes generated by the Russian October Revolution and the bloody civil war in Russia, and from the wars of independence in Poland and Ukraine in the latter part of the First World War and its aftermath. The supposed comparison, based on the notion that Antisemitism in Germany during the Weimar period bore a minor character, ignores the vast scale of Antisemitic publications in this period. According to a bibliographic study conducted by the Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, this literature reached unprecedented dimensions, unexampled both in earlier periods in Germany or in any other country in Europe. Similarly, the traumatic Antisemitic experience undergone by German Jewry in the First World War, when, in 1916, the Empire’s military and political leadership ordered a “count of the Jews” (Judenzählung)—and of Jews only—who were 4 Donald L. Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany, Baton Rouge, London, 1980. 5 Peter Gay, Weimar Culture. The Outsider as Insider, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1968; for more updated systematical work about this period cf. Michael A. Meyer (ed.), German-Jewish History in Modern Times. Vol. 4: Renewal and Destruction 1918–1945, Columbia University Press, New York, 1996, chapters 1–8. 6 Cf. Shmuel Ettinger, “The Secular Roots of Modern Antisemitism”, in: Otto Dov Kulka and Paul Mendes-Flohr, (eds.), Judaism and Christianity under the Impact of National Socialism 1914–1945, Zalman Shazar Center, Jerusalem, 1978, 37–61, here 60–61. 7 David Bankier, “The German Communist Party and Nazi Antisemitism 1933–1938”, in: Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 32 (1987), 325–340.

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soldiers on the front lines is unparalleled in any other army in a war situation, including the army of the Antisemitic conservative regime in Czarist Russia.8 To this we need to add the findings of Saul Friedländer, Ulrich Herbert and Michael Wildt9 concerning the attitude of the intellectual elites, especially the students, in the Weimar period. About 70 percent of the students were members of Antisemitic organizations, whose charters not only denied Jews admission to their ranks but also demanded their expulsion from Germany. As Ulrich Herbert and Michael Wildt have shown, the members of this generation of students from the Weimar period later occupied most of the positions in the civil and military governments in the occupied countries and were active in the initiatives for the persecution and mass murder of the Jews, on ideological grounds. A similar path was followed by many young university teachers, including important future historians such as Theodor Schieder and Werner Conze, whom Götz Aly and Susanne Heim describe in their study, with at least partial justification, as “forerunners of the Final Solution” (Vordenker der Vernichtung).10 Indeed, Antisemitism in Weimar Germany, though not without manifestations of violence—such as desecrations of hundreds of Jewish cemeteries, boycott, incitement, and physical attacks on Jews—can be characterized not only as a political stream and a social mindset, but also as a salient intellectual trend.11 In the light of these findings, it is also called for a reexamination of the oftquoted theses propounded by Shulamit Volkov about the ostensible differences between Antisemitism of the “Kaiserreich” and under Nazism. The former is described as “Antisemitism of the written word” or as a “cultural code” of the conservative German society, the latter of the “spoken word,” referring to the

8 Jacob Rosenthal, “Die Ehre des jüdischen Soldaten”: die Judenzählung im Ersten Weltkrieg und ihre Folgen, Campus, Frankfurt am Main, 2007. 9 Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews. Vol. I: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939, HarperCollins, New York, 1997. Ulrich Herbert, Best. Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft 1903–1989, I.H.W. Dietz Nachf, Bonn, 1996. Michael Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten. Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes, Hamburger Edition, Hamburg, 2002. 10 Götz Aly und Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung. Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne für eine neue europäische Ordnung, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 1991. 11 In addition to the books by Herbert and Friedländer on the academic elites and Antisemitism at the universities, cited above, cf. Dirk Walter, Antisemitische Kriminalität und Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik, J. H. W. Dietz Nachf, Berlin, 1998. Jacob Borut, “Antisemitism in Tourist Facilities in Weimar Germany”, in: Yad Vashem Studies 28 (2000) 7–50. Frank Bajohr, “Unser Hotel ist judenfrei”. Bäder-Antisemitismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 2003.

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Nazis’ mass rallies.12 In fact, the written word and its intellectual representatives are as prominent in Weimar Antisemitism as they were in the earlier period, and according to the number of Antisemitic publications more than in any other European country. Therefore the time has come to dispense with the generalizing, unfounded, and misleading statements that are adduced in the dialogue between historians in Germany or Israel. To conclude the discussion of the Weimar period, we will note another sphere in which the developments now appear partly different from the image that has taken root in the historiography. Opposed to the trends of uncritical integration and acculturation, which were mentioned above, a contrariwise trend is also discernible in the life and culture of German Jewry and its self-perception. This development is described in Michael Brenner’s study, “The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany”,13 which shows how Weimar Germany became an important center of modern Jewish culture, largely secular, not only German, but even Hebrew. In this context the Ostjuden—Eastern Jewry and its culture—also appear in a new light. The subject of the Ostjuden was generally raised only in connection with the causes of Antisemitism and the disdain in which the Ostjuden were held by the autochthonous Jews of Germany.14 Yet Eastern European Jews also appear as a revelation and a source of inspiration for assimilated Jewish intellectuals, representing a living, fruitful Jewish culture that carried messages relevant to the modern era without forsaking the historic Jewish identity. Suffice it to mention the works and intellectual activity of Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Gershom Scholem. Brenner notes many other Jewish writers and scholars, whose short-lived careers in Germany had a significant influence throughout the Jewish world, especially in Israel and the United States. I have noted this special facet of the Jewish society and culture in Weimar Germany because of the newly emerging innovative aspects of current research. Clearly, this is only one element in a broader spectrum: a manifold Jewish life that included various political, religious, and cultural organizations, a variegated Jewish press, and the fascinating Jewish-German literature produced in 12 Shulamit Volkov, „Das geschriebene und das gesprochene Wort. Über Kontinuität und Diskontinuität im deutschen Antisemitismus“, in: idem, Jüdisches Leben und Antisemitismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, C. H. Beck, München, 1990, 54–75. 13 Michael Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 1996. 14 Steven E. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers. The East European Jew in Germany and German-Jewish Consciousness 1800–1923, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1982. Trude Maurer, Ostjuden in Deutschland 1918–1933, Hans Christians Verlag, Hamburg, 1986. Yfaat Weiss, Deutsche und polnische Juden vor dem Holocaust. Jüdische Identität zwischen Staatsbürgerschaft und Ethnizität 1933–1940, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, München, 2000.

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this period. The overall picture of the Weimar period in this sphere is more widely known and I will sum it up here very briefly. As so often in history, German Jewry in this period was characterized by both continuity and change. New organizations and ideologies sprang up alongside others that continued from the period of the Kaiserreich or even earlier. Politically, the main triangle consisted of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith (Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens, C.V.), the Zionist Federation of Germany (Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland, ZVfD), and the nationalist German-Jewish organizations; while in the religious sphere the three sides of the triangle were the Reform Communities, the Orthodox “Austrittsgemeinden” and the moderate “Gemeindeorthodoxie.” Among the new forces that rose to prominence after the First World War, the organization of Jewish front soldiers (Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten, RjF), stood out. However, in terms of the significance of the Jewish organizations within the Jewish public, it is clear that the thrust toward integration into the surrounding society and its culture was far more powerful in this period than focusing on Jewish identity.

1b The First Czechoslovak Republic The parallel period in the history of Czech Jewry is that of the First Republic, which existed from October 1918 to September 1938. In comparison with German Jewry, historical research on the Jews in the Czech Lands in this era has been less fruitful.15 Many features of Czech Jewry in this period bear a remarkable similarity to those of German Jewry, though there are also a number of basic differences, which affected its subsequent development. The similar, parallel, or analogous features are apparent in several spheres: the trends of acculturation and integration, which were quite intensive at this time and produced unprecedented achievements; the social and class structures; the professional diversity; the demographic thrust toward urbanization; the declining birthrate; the proportion of Jews who abandoned Judaism, and also the scale of intermarriage, which was above 40 percent in both countries; and the relative share of the Jews in the total

15 For literature see: Bibliographie zur Geschichte der Juden in den böhmischen Ländern bzw. in Tschechien im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, compiled by Robert Luft, Collegium Carolinum, München, cf. http://www.collegium-carolinum.de/doku/lit/juedg/bibl-jud-per.htm (28.10.2005).

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population—about one percent in the last census of 1930. All these features show marked similarities between the Jewish communities in the two countries. Similarities also existed in internal Jewish life, notably in structural organization and in ideological cleavages between the Assimilationists and the Zionists, though the ratio was slightly different. In the religious sphere there was a certain organizational difference: as in Austria, relations between Reform Judaism and Orthodoxy did not lead to an intercommunal rift as it occurred in Germany. The efforts to establish a central umbrella organization were tellingly similar to the founding of the National Representation in Germany in January 1932, a year before the Nazis’ assumption of power. In the Czech Lands, the National Organization of Jewish Communities came into being and was accorded legal status in April 1937, about a year and a half before the fall of the First Czechoslovak Republic and the rise of the authoritarian conservative nationalist regime of the Second Republic, with its acute Antisemitic orientation. Toward the end of this period, and during the Second Republic, various programs relating to internal Jewish life emerged which drew their inspiration explicitly from the contemporaneous example of German Jewry.16 Finally, we find among Czech Jews, too, trends toward the renewal of the Jewish cultural and religious identity, inspired by the encounter with the Jews of Eastern Europe and their culture. I will cite a few examples in this respect: the wide reverberations generated by the famous speeches “Reden über das Judentum” which Buber delivered in Prague about Judaism; Franz Kafka’s diary entries about his conversations with the actors of the Yiddish theater of Lvov, who visited Prague; the enthusiastic reports in the Jewish press about the Prague performances by the Hebrew Theater Company Habimah from Moscow; and the literary works and illuminating studies by Georg Langer about the cultural traditions of Eastern European Jewry and about Jewish mysticism. Although Langer was not alone in addressing these subjects, his “reawakening” to ultra-Orthodox Judaism according to Eastern European tradition certainly made him an unusual figure in Prague. However, there were also a number of significant differences. Unlike the situation in Germany, where integration was into one society and culture—the German—the Jews in the Czech Lands were oriented toward different and rival trends of integration and acculturation: German, Czech, and—according to the declaration on national identity—Jewish as well. In the 1930 census, 46 percent of the members of the Jewish religious communities in Bohemia declared themselves to be of Czech nationality, 34 percent declared German nationality, and

16 This will be discussed in the next section.

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20  percent Jewish nationality; whereas in Moravia only 18 percent described themselves as being of Czech nationality, 30 percent said they were of German nationality, and 52 percent cited Jewish nationality. Overall, of 117,551 Jews of the Czech Lands at the time, 37 percent declared Czech nationality, 32 percent Jewish nationality, and 31 percent German nationality. The decline in identification with German nationalism continued until the end of the period of the First Republic, while identification with Czech and Jewish nationalism increased. We have no accurate statistics to enable a comparison with the 1930 census.17 One way to illustrate this multicultural integration is by noting the names of Jewish writers from Prague in this period: Franz Werfel, Franz Kafka and the poet Otto Pick—all of whom wrote in German; the playwright František Langer, then known throughout Europe; Jiři Orten, a young poet who wrote in Czech and was known as the “Czech Rilke”; and Vojtěch Rakous and Karel Poláček, who recorded the Jewish way of life in Czech. Among the Zionist writers who wrote in German, Max Brod must be mentioned, while those who wrote in Czech included Avigdor Dagan—who published in Czech under his original name, Viktor Fischel. And there were also those who wrote in both languages as well as in Hebrew, such as Georg Jiří Langer, who was already mentioned. It is only natural that within this multicultural reality—or perhaps better, triangular cultural symbiosis—the Jews were among the most important translators. They mediated between the two principal cultures, the German and the Czech, in both directions. One needs only to mention the two most outstanding linguists, Otakar Fischer and Pavel Eisner. Nor is it by chance that in the famous correspondence between Kafka and his Czech translator, Milená Jesenská, he wrote in German and she in Czech. This national, cultural, and linguistic dilemma was also widely reflected in education. Nearly all the German-language Jewish schools gradually closed and few Czech-Jewish educational institutions were opened in their place. The majority of the Jewish students in the First Republic attended institutions of the Czech education system, at all levels. The national-cultural tangle also generated social and political confrontations, which were felt most acutely by the Jewish intellectuals. This had a considerable impact on the emergence of the different forms of Antisemitism in the First and Second Republics, as well as on the character of the Zionist movement.

17 František Friedmann, Einige Zahlen über die tschechoslovakischen Juden: Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie der Judenheit, Barissia, Prag, 1933.

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This particular aspect is the subject of several important new studies by young American and Israeli scholars who explored the origins of the Jewish students’ organizations in Prague toward the end of the Habsburg Empire and in the early stage of the First Republic.18 The Jewish students were originally members of the associations and cultural institutions of the German liberal students, but were expelled from them as the organizations became increasingly nationalist, racist, and Antisemitic. Attempts by Jews to join Czech student associations met hostile refusal, owed to their actual or alleged attachment to the German language and culture. In this state of affairs the Jewish students established—almost concurrent with the appearance of the Zionist movement—Jewish national associations and cultural institutions that bore a distinctive Zionist orientation. A groundbreaking contribution by Dimitry Shumsky points out the limitations of the above-mentioned research based on ethnocentric methodology in dealing with the social, cultural, and political history of the Jews in Bohemia (e.g. viewing its essence as lying in conflicting tendencies of assimilation into the Czech or German nation). He adduces instead the socio-cultural concept of a bilingual and multicultural “Czech-German Jewry.” Though Shumsky focuses in particular on the first generation of Zionists, he also demonstrates that the bilingual and multicultural orientation was characteristic of the broad Jewish public in the Czech Lands between the fin de siècle and the end of the First Republic.19 It is here, I believe, that the explanation lies for the predominantly intellectual character of the Zionist movement in the Czech Lands. I will mention only the best-known figures of the Zionist leadership in Czechoslovakia: Hugo Bergmann, one of the founders of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and its first rector; Robert Weltsch, the Prague journalist and editor of the Zionist Jüdische Rundschau in Berlin; his nephew, the philosopher Felix Weltsch, who was the editor of the Prague-based Zionist journal, Selbstwehr; and the Moravian-born Jewish linguist and publisher, Moshe Moritz Spitzer, who edited the “Schocken-Bücherei”, a series of Jewish books that appeared under the imprint of the Schocken Publishing 18 Gary B. Cohen, “Jews in German Society: Prague 1860–1914”, in: Central European History X (1977) 28–54. Idem, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: German in Prague 1861–1914, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1981. Hillel J. Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry, Oxford University Press, New York, 1988. Alon Rachamimov, “Between Czechs and Germans: Jews in Student Associations, Prague, 1876–1914” M.A. Thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1992 (Hebrew). Scott Spector, Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka’s Fin de Siecle, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2000. 19 Dimitry Shumsky, “Historiography, Nationalism and Bi-Nationalism: Czech-German Jewry, the Prague Zionists and the Origins of the Bi-National Approach of Hugo Bergmann” (Hebrew), in: Zion. A Quarterly for Research in Jewish History LXIX (2004) 1, 45–80. Idem, Zweisprachigkeit und binationale Idee. der Prager Zionismus 1900–1930, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 2013.

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House in Germany up to the end of 1938 and was distributed even in 1939. Hence also, the ties and the reciprocal influence between the Jews of the Czech Lands and Germany in the realm of Jewish culture were discernible. The national confrontations were fertile ground for the emergence of the modern form of Antisemitism within the intelligentsia. Antisemitism then spread through the German and Czech publics, drawing its inspiration and political support from the national tensions. According to a myth that has taken root in the historical memory and in the public consciousness everywhere—Jewish and non-Jewish alike—the tolerant Czech nation was sympathetic to the Jews and even showed philosemitic tendencies. The Czech nation is frequently depicted as an island of light in the dark sea of anti-Jewish hostility during the interwar period. That is the picture as construed by memory and historical image. Historical research, though, paints a very different picture. Modern Antisemitism in Bohemia and Moravia took shape in the fading period of the Habsburg monarchy, as one of the by-products of the national conflicts between the Czechs and the Germans. Among its dramatic manifestations in the latter stages of the Empire were the anti-Jewish riots and the controversies surrounding the Polná blood libel of 1898. On that occasion, the Czech philosopher and future president Tomáš G. Masaryk confronted the militant majority of the Czech national movement and came to the defense of both the Jewish defendant and Judaism. The birth of the Czech Republic was accompanied by riots as well as by several anti-Jewish pogroms, of which the most widely known occurred in the Moravian city of Holešov. At the same time, Jewish veterans of the First World War organized independent Jewish self-defense. The first two presidents, Tomáš G. Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, tried to cope with the Antisemitism, seeking to demonstrate the young state’s ability, notwithstanding its serious minority problems, to maintain a regime of religious and national tolerance and thereby strengthen its political standing among the nations of the West. That this was a highly fragile trend is apparent from the affair of the Jewish historian Samuel Steinherz. His election as rector of the German University of Prague in 1922 touched off Antisemitic riots by students, in the wake of which the Czech Minister of Education was compelled to accept Steinherz’s resignation “for reasons of health.” Steinherz went on to devote much of his research to Jewish history and from 1929 on he edited the series of famous historical yearbooks of the Czech-Jewish Historical Society, Jahrbücher der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Tschechoslowakischen Republik (1929–1938). Nevertheless, in the final analysis the period of the First Czech Republic overall was marked by the successful effort of the central government in Prague, led by the first two presidents, to ensure the equality of the Jews and their free political and social activity. The regime resolutely fought manifestations of Antisemitism

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by the large German minority and by the fascist nationalist minority within the liberal Czech majority, in what was by then the last democracy in Central Europe, until its fall in the wake of the Munich agreement. This period saw a rising tide of racist Antisemitism among the approximately three million Germans in the Czech Lands, under the influence of the surging Nazism in neighboring Germany. It was manifested primarily in the form of the anti-Jewish boycott in the Sudetenland and the migration of Jews into the interior of Czechoslovakia, even before the territories were handed to Germany. A wave of nationalist Antisemitism coursed through the Czech population already in the wake of the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in March 1938, and more acutely following the national disaster of Munich. This wave continued to gather momentum throughout the brief period of the Second Czech Republic and its repercussions were felt in the period of the Nazi occupation as well. With regard to this period in Czechoslovakia, it is also important to note a striking difference to the situation in Germany, stemming from the chronological asymmetry of the two periods under discussion. After 1933, Czechoslovakia, and especially the capital, Prague, became a base for anti-Nazi activity and a haven, though “uncertain”20 for political émigrés from Germany, among them many Jewish intellectuals. Political exiles from Austria also arrived in Czechoslovakia after the Anschluss of March 1938, until the catastrophe of Munich. The Jews of Czechoslovakia themselves viewed the political developments following the annexation of Austria as a Damoclean sword hanging over them. A few spoke of “the writing on the wall” and read the writing carefully, understanding that they, too, were potential refugees in their own country.

2 The Jews in Nazi Germany and the Second Czecho-Slovak Republic 2a Germany from 1933 to 1938 About the first six years of the Nazi regime, during which German Jewry became the first Jewish community in Europe to experience the signs of the looming end, we have numerous publications to rely on. Most of the historical literature deals with the Nazi policy of discrimination and persecution. The societal

20 Kateřina Čapková und Michal Frankl, Unsichere Zuflucht. Die Tschechoslowakei und ihre Flüchtlinge aus NS-Deutschland und Österreich 1933–1938, Transl. by Kristina Kallert, Böhlau, Köln, 2012.

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aspects and internal Jewish life, including the Jews’ understanding of their situation and their activity in this period, have received less scholarly attention. I will focus primarily on this latter aspect and try to summarize my research findings in this area. The first dramatic change was that the Jewish issue became the center of the public, political, and media nexus in Germany and remained so until the fall of the Third Reich. This development actually had its origins in the last years of the Weimar Republic and left its imprint on the attitude of the German society toward the Jews and on the self-perception of German Jewry. Another change, which impinged on day-to-day life, was the establishment of a regime of unrelenting anti-Jewish terror—bureaucratic and saturated with uncontrolled violence—in state policy as well as through “pressure from below.” A third change occurred in the Jews’ self-understanding and the patterns of activity of the Jewish society and its leadership. With the Nazi’s rise to power, the Jews of Germany faced three alternatives: The first alternative was the atomization of the Jewish society and the paralysis of all its institutions and organizations under the impact of the waves of anti-Jewish terror. At the individual level, this alternative initially took the form of panic-stricken mass flight, though many returned soon in desperation and in quite a number of extreme cases Jews chose suicide as their way out. The second alternative was diametrically opposed to the first. It was the temptation to draw the supposedly logical conclusions from the political crisis and from the failure of the democratic regime, also ascribed to the failure of the internal democratic principles in Jewish society. In this view, all of German Jewry should be placed under a regime of authoritarian Jewish leadership based on the Führerprinzip. This approach was advocated by German-Jewish nationalist organizations, such as Max Naumann’s group, Deutsch-Nationale Juden, but also by those around Hans Joachim Schoeps and his organization, Der Deutsche Vortrupp. In contrast, the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden, whose all-encompassing forum had been founded already a year earlier, chose a third alternative. It opted for the continued existence of the democratic, pluralistic tradition of Jewish society from the post-Emancipation period, together with the creation of a new general framework consisting of a central organization based on voluntary membership of each body and on free activity within the organization. At the same time, the continued existence of all the components of the Reichsvertretung was also marked by an element of change: in the pre-1933 period their place in the life of the Jews was marginal, whereas after 1933 they became central and assumed existential significance.

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This development was not self-evident. The Nazi regime did not force the continued existence of the political and religious groups and organizations, still less the existence of their parliamentary central organization. However, under the racist ideology underlying the process of the totalitarian Gleichschaltung, the Jews were excluded a priori from this process, which applied solely to the members of the “German nation and race” (Volksgemeinschaft). The paradoxical result was the existence of a pluralistic democratic society within the racist totalitarian state. Thus, the Jews in Germany gained a modicum of autonomy in many spheres, in contrast to the surrounding society. However, it was autonomy of the ostracized, and in retrospect, freedom of the doomed. The final aspect of the paradoxical duality that I want to mention is the apparent similarity and difference between the Nazi regime’s aims with respect to the “Jewish question” and the activity of the Reichsvertretung. The regime set itself two general goals: First, to remove the Jews from political and social life as well as from the public administration in Germany and to isolate them (what current German historiography refers to as Ausgrenzung). And second, to expel the Jews from Germany by exerting pressure on them to emigrate. Parallelly, in nearly every sphere of life, the German Jews filled the void that was generated by the government’s policy of social segregation with substantive content and frameworks of activity. Although most of these activities appeared to be new, they were actually a continuation and further development of existing organizations. Some of the associations, such as the Jewish Kulturbund and the Reichsvertretung itself, were created as a direct reaction to the new reality of the Third Reich; yet even they were shaped mainly on the base of modern Jewish secular culture and the existing organizational traditions. This was also the case with the expansion and renewal of the Jewish educational system, especially adult education, which was headed by Martin Buber. Amid the unremitting pressure for the expulsion of the Jews from Germany by means of emigration, the Reichsvertretung developed its own organizational tools and modes of operation. It sought emigration possibilities, financed emigration, organized professional training and vocational retraining, and encouraged young people to leave as preparation for their families to follow in their wake. At the same time, the Reichsvertretung also participated in illegal immigration to Palestine—an operation known as Aliyah Bet—at the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s. What the regime viewed as “cleansing Germany of the Jews” was perceived by the Reichsvertretung as an escape from terror and discrimination, and afterward, especially after the pogroms of the Kristallnacht, rescue in the sense of saving lives. This paradoxical continuity did not cease with the Kristallnacht or even with the establishment of the successor organization to the Reichsvertretung—the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland. It persisted

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in distinctive ways until the liquidation of German Jewry in 1943 and perhaps even beyond.21

2b The Second Czecho-Slovak Republic The Second Czecho-Slovak Republic, which existed from October 1938 until March 1939, displays, in my opinion, instructive and fascinating similarities—if one may speak thus of such a tragic and cruel period—to the situation in Germany from 1933 to 1939, as described in the previous chapter. However, as in the case of the First Republic, there are also striking differences, which stem directly from the divergent reality.22 In this period, the atmosphere of liberal openness that characterized the political regime and the social climate were transformed almost overnight into a hostile anti-Jewish orientation and social mindset, as occurred in Germany after 1933. In the pursuit of this policy, the Jews were removed from all spheres of political, cultural, and economic life. Socially, the most active Antisemitic element was the intellectual elite and the professional organizations, such as the federations of lawyers and physicians, the cultural and sports associations, and the journalists, including the preeminent liberal humanists from the period of the First Republic. A policy of “Aryanization” was introduced in the economic sphere, and Czech and German groups competed with each other over who would seize more Jewish property. The Czech and German population perpetrated acts of violent anti-Jewish terror, especially the German Hitlerjugend organizations and the Czech fascist youth organizations. The political background to this extreme change was of course the Munich agreement and its ramifications. In its wake, tens of thousands of Jews fled or were expelled into the Czech interior lands from the Sudeten areas that were annexed to Germany. As such, they created the first stream and pressure of migration to the remaining Czecho-Slovakia with the intention to emigrate. This trend

21 Otto Dov Kulka, Deutsches Judentum unter dem Nationalsozialismus, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 1997, 24–31, 382–452. Idem, “The Reichsvereinigung and the Fate of German Jews, 1938/9–1943. Continuity or Discontinuity in German-Jewish History in the Third Reich”, in: Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe 1933–1945: Proceedings of the Third Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1977, 45–58. 22 For a specific study on this period, see: Otto Dov Kulka, “The Munich Agreement and the Jewish Question in Czechoslovakia in 1938” (Hebrew), in: Yalkut Moreshet 2 (1965) 51–78. The second part of the article (60–78) also includes data and a description of the developments during the First Republic.

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of emigration continued until it was banned for all the Jews of Germany and the annexed lands in October 1941. Ironically, despite the tragedy of the expelled Jews, Czech statesmen and many members of the Czech public leveled a wild collective accusation against the Jews, alleging that they were responsible for the disaster that befell the Czech nation. This absurd fiction centered on the argument that the Jews strengthened the German linguistic and cultural segments, thus creating a basis for the claims of Nazi Germany to annex the territories in question, which were populated by some three million German speaking population. In fact, the number of Jews who declared German national affiliation constituted less than half of one percent of those three million. However, the paramount political factor that affected the attitude toward the Jews was the pressure exerted by Germany on the government of the new republic. Germany demanded the introduction of a systematic and comprehensive anti-Jewish policy as a condition for fulfilling its promise to guarantee the borders of the truncated republic, and in effect to guarantee its continued existence. In contrast, England and France, the Western partners to the agreement, brought heavy pressure to bear on the Czech government, especially in the financial sphere, to refrain from pursuing an Antisemitic policy. The crux of the issue was funding for the emigration of the Jewish refugees. Even the Soviet Union declared that the Czech government’s avoidance of an Antisemitic policy would serve as a criterion by which to measure whether it was subordinate to the Third Reich or whether it preserved its political independence. Both the new political reality and the social dimension of the shift were summed up concisely in an illuminating report sent by the British ambassador in Prague to London on December 8, 1938: But it is over the Jewish question that German influence is being most actively pressed. It seems that, not content with exterminating the Jews in their own country, the Germans are determined to carry the campaign into that of their neighbor, realizing, no doubt, that Jewish influence is bound to be hostile to them and should therefore be eradicated wherever possible. The Czechs thus find themselves between two fires, being urged by the Germans to destroy the Jews, and by us to protect them. I fear there is little doubt, which advice will be the more strongly heeded, nor in which direction the sentiments of the Czechs themselves are now turning. There are already a number of individual cases of persecution in the professions and by students at the university. Even the more decent-minded have the feeling of helplessness in the matter […].23

23 Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939, Vol. III, H.M.S.O, London 1947, 407–414.

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It bears noting that there were also individuals, including some intellectuals, who spoke out publicly in defense of the Jews. Prominent among them were the writer and journalist Milena Jesenská, Kafka’s translator and beloved friend, whom we know primarily from his Briefe an Milena of 1920–1922;24 and Josef L. Hromádka, Dean of the Comenius Faculty of Theology of the Czech Protestant minority. These, then, were the broad political and social developments that paralleled those in Germany from 1933 to 1938. As noted, however, there were also important differences. The major difference lay in the character and definitions of Antisemitism, especially in the legislative sphere. In the Czech Lands the official basis of Antisemitism was not racist but nationalist. In other words, for the purpose of the anti-Jewish laws and regulations, Jews were considered those who did not identify themselves with the Czech nationality in the 1930 census but instead defined themselves as being of Jewish or German nationality. This distinction also had harsh consequences for internal Jewish life. Against the background of intensive internal organizing and intensified autonomous Jewish activity, paralleling what we saw in Germany after 1933, the Czecho-Jewish movement (Česko-židovské hnutí) demanded that a clear line of distinction be drawn between their members and the other Jews in the country. The organization also supported discriminatory measures against the other Jews and supported the calls for their migration to countries whose nationality they identified with, which in practice meant Nazi Germany or Mandatory Palestine. The activity of the Jewish communities and of the new central Jewish organization, which as mentioned was not ratified by law until 1937, focused on organizing emigration and vocational retraining, and mobilizing economic aid for the growing numbers of the needy. However, Jewish education was also reorganized and cultural institutions were created, and an effective political leadership was established in which the status of the Zionists was greatly enhanced. This was to have important implications in the period of direct Nazi occupation. In the sphere of internal Jewish life, already toward the end of the First Republic and more especially in the period now being discussed, we find a number of developments and programs that were based explicitly on the example of German Jewry. Among them I will note the efforts to expand Jewish education and to establish a Czech rabbinical college and train teachers for Jewish education, together with the intention to found a Society for Jewish Studies, initiate a translation of the Jewish Bible into Czech, establish a central Jewish book

24 Jesenská’s collected essays from that period were recently published in Czech: Milena Jesenská, Nad naše síly: Češi, Židé, Němci 1937–1939 [Beyond Our Power: Czechs, Jews, Germans 1937–1939], Votobia, Olomouc, 1997.

3 “Greater Germany” 

 55

publisher like “Schocken-Verlag” in Germany, and more. These steps were undertaken with a sense of admiration for the way in which the parallel institutions in Germany struggled with the harsh conditions of life under the Nazi regime in its first six years. In February 1939, toward the end of the Second Republic, expectations and preparations mounted within the Czech government and among the public for what was termed the “Czech-German dialogue on the subject of the Jews.” However, the conquest by Nazi Germany of the remaining Czech Lands in March of that year rendered that dialogue—and the direct responsibility of the Czech political leadership and of the Czech society for the fate of the Jews—irrelevant.

3 “Greater Germany” 3a German Jewry between Kristallnacht and Mass Extermination The period between the Kristallnacht pogroms and the beginning of the mass deportations in October 1941 is marked by the growing radicalization of antiJewish policy in all spheres. The wave of terror, destruction, and mass arrests in November 1938 received legal sanction, and the bureaucratic terror was expanded, with the declared aim of bringing about the final removal of the Jews from whatever share they still had in economic and social life in Germany. The brutal pressure to complete the “Aryanization” process, and above all emigration, continued unabated. There were also mass deportations on a regional basis to the neighboring occupied countries—to Poland, in the East, in February 1940, and to France, in the West, in October of that year. The abolition and closure of most of German Jewry’s institutions and organizational frameworks is well known. Less known is that the central Jewish organization—the Reichsvertretung—was not abolished and that its internal structure and spheres of activity remained fundamentally unchanged. Immediately after the November pogroms, the Reichsvertretung continued its reorganization into a more centralized framework, a process which had begun following the abolishment of the communities’ legal status in March 1938. Internally, this process concluded with the establishment of the Reichsvereinigung, as a kind of comprehensive national community, in February 1939; its legal status was enshrined in the law of the German Reich in July of the same year. The Reichsvereinigung continued its intensive activity to promote legal and illegal emigration, which now became a matter of sheer life-saving. The efforts to liberate Jewish prisoners from concentration camps and help them out of Germany were also part of this activity. The education system was expanded and vocational retraining and adult education went on as before. Relief work—now

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critical due to the impoverishment of German Jewry—was stepped up. The activity of the Kulturbund also persisted in this period, within a more officially dependent and centralist structure. Nor did political activity entirely cease in 1938: it assumed a more dramatic character through the protest by the leadership and demonstrative actions against the first mass deportations, in 1940. That protest cost the lives of several of the Reichsvereinigung’s representatives. For the most part, this activity also continued after the critical date of onset of the Deportations October 1941. Indeed, it can be said that in this period the Jews’ material and spiritual existence as individuals would have been impossible without close ties to the Reichsvereinigung and its branches in the former communities. A characteristic reaction by the German population to the fate of the Jews and to their continued existence among them was its amazement, in the wake of the decree that all Jews must wear a yellow Star of David, that so many Jews still lived in Germany, including Christians of Jewish origin (according to the race laws). The latter now attended Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany, wearing the mark of opprobrium.25

3b Czech Jewry between 1939–1941 From March 1939 to October 1941 the Jews of Czechoslovakia were subjects of Greater Germany (Großdeutsches Reich), though still within their own organizational framework. The major change was the transformation of the Prague community into an umbrella organization of the Jews in the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.” The most dramatic implication of this development was a change in the Jews’ legal status, which was adjusted to render it almost the same as the legal status of the Jews in Germany. Their status was no longer a question of national identity but was based on a uniform definition of Jews under the race laws. The semi-autonomous Czech authorities also treated the Jews in this spirit, and—what was the hardest for the Czech Jews to accept—so did the great majority of the Czech public. More than in the past, the Prague community now headed the Czech Jews’ activities. Although it was intensified and expanded along lines similar to those of German Jewry, it remained different in character. The official decrees were

25 Cf. Otto Dov Kulka, “The Churches in the Third Reich and the ’Jewish Question’ in the Light of Secret Nazi Reports on German ’Public Opinion’”, in: Bibliothèque de la Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique. Miscellanea historiae ecclésiasticae IX, (1984), 490–505.

4 Deportations and Annihilation 

 57

written in German and Czech, and the only semi-official Jewish newspaper was also published in two parallel editions, in German as Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt and in Czech as Židovské Listy. The events of November 1938 in Germany did not bring about a sharp shift in the history of Czech Jewry, with the exception of the Sudeten regions, which were annexed to Germany in the wake of the Munich agreements and in which during the November pogroms all the Synagogues were destroyed. However, October 1941 was as fateful for the Czech Jews as it was for the Jews in Germany.

4 Deportations and Annihilation 4a German Jewry German Jewry between October 1941 and June 1943 was characterized by the dual process of continued activities by the Reichsvereinigung parallel to deportations and annihilation. The systematic mass deportations to Poland and to the occupied areas of the Soviet Union beginning in October 1941, which often ended with the immediate execution of the deportees, went on alongside the continued activity of the Jewish leadership to ensure the material and spiritual existence of the Jews in Germany itself. A special chapter in the history of this period was the deportations from Germany to the Theresienstadt Ghetto, from where most of the deportees were sent later to the annihilation camps. There were no ghettos in Germany itself, but the remaining Jews were concentrated in the so-called Judenhäuser. The still existing self-directed activities were mainly in the fields of welfare for the aged, who by then were the majority of the Jewish population, as well as education and culture. The first activity to be officially terminated was that of the Kulturbund, in September 1941. Jewish education continued amid the mass deportations up to its official abolition in July 1942. Welfare activity also went on, until the official dissolution of the Reichsvereinigung and the proclamation of Germany as “Free of Jews” in June 1943. Until the end of the war, the so-called Rest-Reichsvereinigung looked after several thousand Jews living in mixed marriages and the so-called Mischlinge.

4b The Deportations from the Czech Lands and the Role of the Theresienstadt Ghetto The period of 1941–1943 in the history of Czech Jewry bears a marked similarity to the processes of continuity and liquidation in Germany, though there is

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also an important difference in the political sphere. The Jewish leadership, and above all the Zionist leaders, confronted with the fear generated by the first mass deportations “to the East,” because of the unknown fate of the deportees and the rumors about inhuman living conditions and even of mass executions, tried to find a way to cope with the situation. They knew that it was impossible to stop the deportations as such and were appreciative of the demand by the Czech autonomous authorities to concentrate the Protectorate Jews at a single location: Jewish leaders hoped that in this way the majority would survive the war in their native land. Thus the initiative was engendered which in one of its alternatives would become Theresienstadt Ghetto. Both the S. D. and the Gestapo, headed by Reinhard Heydrich, decided on a similar initiative, though of course with completely different intentions. Their goal was to deport to Theresienstadt, for “humanitarian reasons,” certain groups whose fate was being watched by world public opinion with concern, notably the elderly Jews of Germany and certain privileged groups, such as disabled veterans of World War I and well-known public figures. Subsequently, Theresienstadt Ghetto, as well as a special camp for Theresienstadt Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau, was used to disguise the “Final Solution.” The ghetto was presented to representatives of the International Red Cross as a haven of Jewish autonomy under the auspices of the Führer. However, the German authorities’ true intention was to use Theresienstadt as a transit ghetto for deportees from the Czech Lands, Germany, Austria, and even Holland; from there they would be transported systematically to the extermination camps, mainly Auschwitz. Even though Theresienstadt Ghetto was not completely liquidated, and on May 3, 1945, was placed under the protection of the International Red Cross, only a handful of deportees remained there. Among them was Rabbi Leo Baeck, the leadership figure who symbolizes German Jewry during the Nazi period.26

26 From the many publications on Theresienstadt, I here mention only the basic study by Hans G. Adler, Theresienstadt 1941–1945. Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft. Geschichte, Soziologie, Psychologie, J. C. B. Mohr, Tübingen 1960, which does not include information about the Jewish initiative for the establishment of the Ghetto. This information appears in a Hebrew book of testimonies by the survivors of Theresienstadt: Yehuda Reznichenko (ed.): Theresienstadt (Hebrew). Mifleget Po’alei Erets Yisrael, Tel Aviv, 1947. The most recent research works have been published in the Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente/Terezínské studie a dokumenty, a yearbook published by the Institut Theresienstädter Initiative/Institut Terezínská iniciativa since 1994.

Epilogue 

 59

Epilogue The physical end of German Jewry is quite similar to the end of Czech Jewry, although probably far more Jews in Germany survived by finding sanctuary with the underground than in the Czech Lands—in contrast to the fate of the historical remnants of the material culture in the two countries. Because the largest part of the Czech Lands was occupied by Germany only in March 1939, four months after Kristallnacht, most of the synagogues were left intact. It was only in the Sudeten areas, annexed to Germany in October 1938 that synagogues were burned. The sacred objects and other assets of the communities, including archives and libraries, survived in the abandoned synagogues and community centers. During 1942 the Jewish leadership in Prague proposed a new rescue initiative, which was put to the Nazi government. Their intention was to collect and preserve the ritual items in order to save them, and at the same time to rescue the large Jewish staff before deportation and engage them in collecting, registering, and cataloguing. The German administration accepted the proposal for its own purposes, in a manner that in part echoes the acceptance of the plan to establish Theresienstadt Ghetto. They viewed the project as the basis for the creation of a museum that would be used for exhibitions and propaganda about the “extinct Jewish race.”27 Indeed, the idea to establish a Jewish Museum in Prague was realized after the war, under different political circumstances. By then, however, Czech Jewry had been almost completely wiped out, though the heritage of its magnificent culture survived in this way.28 There is much that is similar, parallel, and analogous in the history of these two Jewish communities both before the rise of Nazism and under its rule. At the same time, as we saw, there were substantial dissimilarities, stemming primarily from the different historical, political, social, and cultural background of the two countries. In regard to both the fate of the Jewish historical heritage in the two countries and the impact of the Jewish historical consciousness in the postwar era, the dissimilarities were greater than the similarities.

27 On the short-lived so-called “Family Camp” of the Jews from Theresienstadt in AuschwitzBirkenau cf. Otto Dov Kulka, “Ghetto in an Annihilation Camp. Jewish Social History in the Holocaust Period and its Ultimate Limits”, in: Israel Gutman (ed.), The Nazi Concentration Camps. Structure and Aims. The Image of the Prisoner. The Jews in the Camps, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1984: 315–332 (Chapter 11 of this book). Hana Volavková, A Story of the Jewish Museum in Prague, Artia, Prague, 1968. 28 Details about the number, names, and destiny of the Czech Jews were published in: Miroslav Kárný et al. (eds.), Židovské oběti nacistických deportací z Čech a Moravy 1941–1945 [Jewish Victims of Nazi Deportations from Bohemia and Moravia 1941–1945]. 2 vols, Melantrich, Praha, 1995.

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The small number of Jews who emigrated from the Czech Lands between 1938 and 1941 could make only limited efforts to go on cultivating the Czech-Jewish historical consciousness and the tradition of historical research that was abruptly cut off.29 Since the reestablishment of democracy in 1989, a renaissance of Jewish studies and publications is taking place, reviving the scholarly tradition, which was terminated in 1939. The Jews from Germany, in contrast, continued to cultivate the historical consciousness and historical research of their country of origin. The relatively large number of Jews who succeeded in leaving the country between 1933 and 1941 established the research and publication centers of the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem, London, and New York. Moreover, since the war the study of the history of German Jewry has attracted generations of historians, both Jews and non-Jews. They are fascinated by the distinctiveness of this community, which was the first in Europe to pave ways into the modern age, but tragically also the first to face the looming end and have to cope with the Nazi policy, which ultimately encompassed all of European Jewry.30 Although the material culture of German Jewry was destroyed almost completely, they left behind substantial documentation, important parts of which have become available to researchers only in the past decades, after being discovered in former GDR and in Russia. This material is enabling a reexamination of the final chapter in the thousand-year history of German Jewry, and in its light also of key aspects of the tragic end to the history of the Jews in Europe

29 The only comprehensive publication on the history and the cultural heritage of the Jews in the Czech Lands was published by the Society for the History of the Czechoslovak Jews: Avigdor Dagan (ed.), The Jews of Czechoslovakia. Historical Studies and Surveys, 3 vols, Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1968–1984. The only periodicals dealing with the History and Culture of Czech Jews are Judaica Bohemiae, published since 1965, the eve of the “Prague spring”’ and the above mentioned Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente. 30 The most important publications are the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, which has been published in London since 1956; the fourth volume of the series on German Jewish History: Michael Meyer (ed.), German Jewish History in Modern Times. Vol. 4. Renewal and Destruction: 1918–1945, Columbia University Press, New York, 1998. For further extensive literature, see the bibliographies in the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book.

3 Critique of Judaism in European Thought. On the Historical Meaning of Modern Antisemitism In memoriam Shmuel Ettinger

In the introduction to her Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt points to the paradox of the relative unimportance of Jewish existence as a reality and its demonization as a threat in all its world-historical dimensions: It must be possible to face and understand the outrageous fact that so small (and, in world-politics, so unimportant) a phenomenon as the Jewish question and antisemitism could become the catalytic agent for first, the Nazi movement, then a world war, and finally the establishment of death factories.1

Many past and present explanations of antisemitism have tried to interpret it as an expression of hatred or fear of otherness representing the strange, the weak, or characteristics of social marginality and ostracism. But how shall we explain the perception of Judaism and Jews as a threat identified with the most powerful factors within Western civilization, such as Capitalism and Democracy, Socialism and Bolshevism, Modernity or Anti-Modernism? I agree with Arendt “that the scapegoat explanation remains one of the principle attempts to escape the seriousness of antisemitism and the significance of the fact that the Jews were driven into the storm center of events,”2 though I cannot accept her interpretation of its causes in the modern era as being connected with the political systems of imperialism and totalitarianism. The present paper is an attempt at re-examination of a number of concepts fundamental to the study of modern antisemitism and proposes alternative ways of characterizing the phenomenon, its causes, and implications. Its methodological approach can be summed up as a reassessment of the ambivalent meaning of the centrality of the Jewish component in Western civilization. Its retrospective point of departure will be the findings of the historiography on National Socialism, which stress the world historical significance of its anti-Jewish principles as an expression of one of the gravest crises of this civilization—a crisis with the potential to change the course of human history.

1 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian Books, 1958), viii. 2 Ibid. 7. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-004

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Notwithstanding the singularity of National Socialist antisemitism and its “Final Solution,” and despite the difficulty in tracing and proving historical continuities, the research of the last decades, particularly of Jerusalem scholars like Shmuel Ettinger, Jacob Talmon (and from a different methodological approach, Jacob Katz), as well as of important works of German historiography since the 1960s, makes it possible to examine the development in a wide historical perspective.3 We are now able to show the inherent nature of the critique of Judaism as a source of active anti-Jewish ideology in the main philosophical, social and political currents of modern Europe—Indeed as part of the process of its secularization since the end of the seventeenth century. Yet it appears that due to the constant and unique role of the Jewish component in this culture, the rationalization of the anti-Jewish criticism had enormous mythic potential and made it possible not only to identify Judaism with powers and systems such as capitalism, democracy, and socialism, but to postulate a monistic world view that explained the entire course of history as a manichean struggle between the Jews and all other nations.

The Centrality of Antisemitism in National Socialist Ideology and the Crisis of Western Civilization Many scholarly works written on National Socialism over the past three decades have reached the conclusion that antisemitism played a vital role in ideology and policy of the Third Reich.4 Of all the ideological and political ingredients that went 3 I shall base my analysis of the historical developments up to World War I mainly on Shmuel Ettinger, Modern Anti-Semitism. Studies and Essays (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Hapoalim, 1978); several chapters of this book appeared in an English translation and are quoted accordingly; Jacob L. Talmon, “European History as the Seedbed of the Holocaust,” in Holocaust and Rebirth. A Symposium (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1974), 11–75; Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction. Anti-Semitism, 1770–1933 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1980); idem, “On Jewish Social History. Epochal and Supra-Epochal Historiography,” Jewish History 7 (1993): 89–96. Concerning research on National Socialism, particularly in German historiography, see below, fn. 4. 4 For these conclusions, particularly in non-Jewish historiography, cf. my study “Die deutsche Geschichtsschreibung über den Nationalsozialismus und die ‘Endlösung.’ Tendenzen und Entwicklungsphasen 1924–1982,” Historische Zeitschrift 240 (1985): 599–640; for an extended English version up to 1984 see Yisrael Gutman and Gideon Greif, eds., The Historiography of the Holocaust Period (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1988), 1–58 (Chapter 12 of this book). On various tendencies in the so-called Historikerstreit, see O. D. Kulka, “Singularity and Its Relativization. Changing Views in German Historiography on National Socialism and the ‘Final Solution’,” Yad Vashem Studies 19 (1988): 151–86 (Chapter 13 of this book); and Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship—Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (London: Arnold 1993), ch. 9 and 10.

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into the making of Hitler’s outlook, antisemitism, in its broadest sense, appears to be not only the one consistent and immutable element, it also bridges such seemingly contradictory leanings as anti-Marxism and anti-capitalism, the struggle against democracy and modernism, and a basic anti-Christian disposition. The same is true of the conceptual bearing and functional significance of these apparent contradictions in the foreign policy and war aims of National Socialism: anti-Bolshevism, conceived as determining the inevitable struggle against the Soviet Union, “anti-plutocracy” and “anti-Democracy” as basic motives for the war against the Western Powers—France, Britain, and the United States.5 Yet Hitler consistently portrays this ideological war in the international arena as an extension of the struggle that the National Socialist movement had waged, from its inception, against its ideological and political enemies within Germany itself: Jewish Marxism, Jewish parliamentary democracy, Jewish capitalism, and even the “Political churches” and the Jewish foundations of Christianity. In the movement’s racial-determinist conception, the Jews stand in an obviously dominant relationship to all these forces and factors as the biological source of doctrines and ideologies whose most radical expression is Bolshevism but whose origin was Judaism’s introduction of Christianity into the Western world.6 National Socialist antisemitism traced the sense of crisis that dogged the modern world to its domination by “Jewish-Christian-Bolshevik” principles that were based on a universalist destructive belief in the unity of the world and the  equality of men in all spheres of life. These principles were antithetical to the Nazi Social-Darwinist version of the “nature’s order,” (Naturordnung) i.e., the inherent inequality of the races and the eternal struggle between them for their very survival. Hence only the restoration of this order—which was conditional upon the absolute annihilation, physical and spiritual, of Judaism—could ensure the future health, indeed the very existence of the human race.

5 Among others, see Eberhard Jäckel, Hitler’s World View. A Blueprint for Power (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); Andreas Hillgruber, “The Extermination of the European Jews in its Historical Context—A Recapitulation,” Yad Vashem Studies 17 (1986): 1–15; idem, “War in the East and the Extermination of the Jews,” Yad Vashem Studies 18 (1987): 103–32; Ulrich Thamer, Verführung und Gewalt. Deutschland 1933–1945 (Berlin: Siedler, 1986); Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State. Germany 1933–1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Philippe Burrin, Hitler and the Jews. The Genesis of the Holocaust (London: Arnold, 1994); and in a broad historical perspective, Steven T. Katz, The Holocaust in Historical Context, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 6 Cf. Klaus Scholder, ‘‘Judaism and Christianity in the Ideology and Politics of National Socialism,” in Judaism and Christianity under the Impact of National Socialism, eds. O. D. Kulka and Paul R. Mendes-Flohr (Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 1978), 183–95; idem, “Die Kirchen im Dritten Reich,” Beilage zur Wochenzeitung, Das Parlament, B15/71, April 10, 1971.

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In the name of a struggle against historical principles and forces—allegedly represented by Judaism—the messianic-political creed of National Socialism was meant to change the course that history had taken since the encounter between Judaism and Hellenism and the birth of the Judeo-Christian culture. Yet clearly this aim—unique in terms of its ideological radicalism and harrowing historical realization—was but one aspect of the antagonism intrinsic to Judeo-Christian culture, which throughout its history has both been shaped by and struggled against its Judaic sources. Only in this sense and through this perspective can one attempt to propose an “explanation of the inexplicable” (to use a paraphrase on Kafka’s dictum on the meaning of the relationship between myth, reality, and history)7 regarding both the historical and substantive import of Nazi antisemitsm and the “Final Solution”.

The Destruction and Restoration of Nature’s Order (Naturordnung) Though the most radical ideological expression of Nazi antisemitism was the apocalyptic vision of humanity’s demise due to the triumph of “Jewish Bolshevism”—the traumatic historical event that underlay this development was “Christianity’s entry into and destruction of the ancient world.” In Hitler’s words: The sensational event of the ancient world was the mobilisation of the underworld against the established order… The Jew who fraudulently introduced Christianity into the ancient world— in order to ruin it—reopened the same breach in modern times, this time taking as his pretext the social question… Just as Saul changed into St. Paul, Mardochai became Karl Marx.8

This, so Hitler believed, was the first assault on the world’s “nature’s order”: Peace can result only from a nature’s order… The condition of this order is that there is a hierarchy amongst nations. The most capable nations must necessarily take the lead… It is Jewry that always destroys this order… A people that is rid of its Jews, returns spontaneously to the nature’s order.9

Notwithstanding the pronounced distinctiveness of these formulations, there is no difficulty tracing their sources directly to the ramified antisemitic literature 7 Franz Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes (New York, Schocken Books), 1966, 83 and my paraphrase in Kulka, Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death (London, Penguin Books), 2013, vii. 8 H. R. Trevor-Roper, ed., Hitler’s Table Talk 1941–1944 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), 313 (from Hitler’s “monologue” of 17 February 1942). 9 Ibid., 314.

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of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.10 But as we have pointed out, antisemitism reached such a level of radicalization in National Socialism and through its appalling political realization so thoroughly changed its character that the question of continuity becomes problematic. Nevertheless, the key question that the study of modern antisemitism must address is where the entire process began, or, as Ettinger put it, where are “the roots of antisemitism in the modern era.”11 It seems to me that late seventeenth-century English Deism—the first philosophical current to express the crisis of faith in Christianity and to offer a rationalist concept of “natural religion” as a radical alternative—is the historical point of departure for the development.12 Its critique of Christianity arose from the self-exploration of a religious, social, and political system whose radical thinkers tried to delve down to its historical origins and arrived, almost inevitably, at an examination of Christianity’s Judaic sources. “Natural religion,” as the rational basis of the cultural and social values of the pre-Christian world, was portrayed by the Deists as the antithesis of Judaism, an alternative to it, and the system of ideals that was destroyed by it.13 What we have here is a paradigmatic situation in which the inherent logic underlying the radical critique of the Judeo-Christian tradition generated the beginning of that radical revolution that strives, in the name of progress and renewal, to turn back the clock and restore the glories of the past. Yet by the time

10 See Léon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism, vols. 3–4 (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978 and 1985); Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction, as in fn. 3; and Talmon, “European History as the Seedbed”, as in fn. 3; Hermann Greive, Geschichte des modernen Antisemitismus in Deutschland (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983); Helmut Berding, Moderner Antisemitismus in Deutschland (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1988); Paul W. Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction. A Study of Political Antisemitism in Imperial Germany (New York: Harper, 1949); Peter Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria (New York: Wiley, 1964); Uriel Tal, Christians and Jews in Germany. Religion, Politics and Ideology in the Second Reich (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1975); Reinhard Rürup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus. Studien zur Judenfrage der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht,1975), ch. 3–5. 11 See Ettinger’s opening essay of the same name (in Hebrew) in Ettinger, Modern Anti-Semitism, as in fn. 3, 1–27. 12 Shmuel Ettinger, “Secular Roots of Modern Antisemitism,” in Judaism and Christianity, as in fn. 6, 43. See, in particular, Ettinger’s salient study, “Jews and Judaism as Seen by the English Deists of the 18th Century,” (in Hebrew), in Ettinger, Modern Anti-Semitism, as in fn. 3, 57–87; for an English abstract see, Zion 29 (1964): i-ii. 13 Ettinger, “Deists,” as in fn. 12, esp. 84–85. The only exception among the British Deists in their sharp criticism of and dispute against Judaism was John Toland (1670–1722), in his 1714 Reasons for Naturalising the Jews.

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it reached the final stage of the National Socialist revolution, the original rationalist ideal of “natural religion” had been transformed into an irrational vision of “saving the human race” by reinstating “nature’s order” of history. One can trace an unbroken thread of influence leading from the critique of Judaism by the English Deists to modern antisemitism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As we shall see further on, Ettinger examined this thread of thought in England, France, and Germany over the course of more than a century. He showed that the Young Hegelian radicals of the mid-nineteenth century did not reflect the ideas of the German Enlightenment and not even those of Hegel himself; rather, they demonstrated their direct resort to the critique of religion and anti-Jewish concepts of the English and French Materialists of the preceding century.14 Ettinger, whose studies trace continuity in the development of modern antisemitism, stressed the paradox of radicalism in espousing the idea of progress and at the same time, by its criticism of Judaism, perpetuating the hostile historical stereotype of earlier ages.15 I believe that in this context as well, the consciousness of a crisis of the entire epoch of secularism and modernism deserves equal stress. From this point of view, the ongoing trend of criticism of and hostility towards Judaism need not be interpreted as a paradoxical phenomenon at all. Indeed, it may well exist not despite the progressive and modernist ideas of the new currents but because of them.

Critique of Religion by the English Deists and French Rationalists: The Ambivalence of “Natural Religion” and anti-Christian Antisemitism Let us now return to Ettinger’s historical starting point: the critical initial influence of English Deism. The direct tie between English Deism and French rationalism is commonplace in the history of modern thought, but the same cannot be said of the connection between the critique of Judaism in both these schools. The most prominent example of this approach is of course Voltaire’s negative view of Judaism, which many have traced to an unpleasant personal experience with Jewish moneymen—though some believe his anti-Jewish vitriol to be just a tactic in his struggle with the Church.16 Indeed, the strong connection between 14 See Shmuel Ettinger, “The Young Hegelians—A Source of Modern Antisemitism?,” Jerusalem Quarterly 28 (1983): 80. 15 Ibid., 82. 16 Ettinger, “Deists,” as in fn. 12, 58.

Capitalism and the “Jewish Spirit”: Marx and the Critique of Religion 

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the criticism of Christianity and its Jewish roots (and the identification of Judaism and the Bible as the basis of the social-political order) is argued as convincingly by French rationalists as it is by the English Deists. Moreover, given the objective historical circumstances of the mid-eighteenth century, their writings reflect an even more acute crisis whose impact on subsequent developments was so formidable that it may well be regarded as the dawn of the new “Age of Revolution” that would make such a lasting impression upon the modern world.

Capitalism and the “Jewish Spirit”: Marx and the Critique of Religion by the Young Hegelians As we have already noted the next significant stage in the development of the secular antisemitic ideology can be found in the radical thinking of the Young Hegelians. Karl Marx considered the Young Hegelian “criticism of religion” to be “the greatest achievement of German philosophy.”17 Yet the new context in which the critique of Judaism and Christianity appears in Marx’s work lumps together the “practical spirit of Judaism” with the rule of capital that had gained sway over Christian society and found its latest expression in modern capitalism. It was his sense of the keen social crisis brought on by industrialization that prompted Marx to examine the entire history of Christian society from this standpoint. In an attempt to uncover the “root of evil” in a single dominant factor, he arrived (by the same logic as the English Deists) at Judaism: “The practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations.” Hence the vision of reforming Christian society is defined as the “emancipation from Judaism,” which is also the “social emancipation of the Jew.” Yet here in mid-nineteenth-century Germany, we find that the social and political situation of the Jews had already changed; and for all their historiosophic significance, the words of the young Marx were written at the height of the debate over the highly concrete question of abolishing the long-standing restrictions on the legal status of the Jews.18 As Eleonore Sterling already demonstrated in her pioneering study on the genesis of political antisemitism in Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century, in this particular situation the conclusions of an abstract historio-theological debate on the character and properties of Judaism were incorporated into discussion of the “essential nature” and traits

17 Ettinger, “Young Hegelians,” as in fn. 14, 73. 18 See Nathan Rotenstreich, “For and Against Emancipation. The Bruno Bauer Controversy,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 4 (1959): 3–36.

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of Jews of the day.19 Ettinger for his part believed that what distinguished the Young Hegelians’ discussion of Judaism and the Jews was their rejection of the developmental approach associated with the thinkers of the German Enlightenment that “accorded the Jews and their religion a respectable place on the ladder of human-historical development.”20 Whereas the German eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Enlightenment theorists explained the condition of the Jews and their flaws as a consequence of the persecution to which Christian society had subjected them, “the Young Hegelians viewed these defects as the inevitable result of the immutable ‘nature of Judaism.’”21 The reappearance of the critique of religion in the mid-nineteenth century was parallel and even symbiotically related to the development of a radical romanticism like that of Richard Wagner, himself influenced by the thinking of the Young Hegelians. Wagner was one of the first to articulate a racial-determinist version of the anti-Jewish doctrine.22

The “Conservative Revolution”: Wagner, the Existential Import of the Crisis of Creativity, and the “Judaization of European Culture” Judaism, including all its basic anthropological features, appears at the heart of Wagner’s outlook, as a historical fossil whose existence in all spheres of life is marked by the “absence of authentic human qualities, hence its eternal creative sterility.” Paradoxically, however, this alien and “inferior” phenomenon, in Wagner’s rendering of it, had wrested control of all spheres of life, including the arts, in modern Europe. The cultural crisis in this case was not about the endurance of a conservative regime or the exposure of its roots but concerned the process of disintegration and decline of an organic wholeness of life. It was this crisis and the abstract-rationalist principles of the Age of Emancipation that made possible the rise of capitalism (a creation of the Jews), the emergence of the modern press and Jewry’s control of public opinion, of literature (on which it inflicted its sterile style), and above all, music. One could say that Wagner identified the “spirit of

19 Eleonore Sterling, Judenhaß. Die Anfänge des politischen Antisemitismus in Deutschland (1815–1850), (Frankfurt a. M.: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1969). 20 Ettinger, “Young Hegelians,” as in fn. 14, 78–79. 21 Ibid., 79. 22 See O. D. Kulka, “Richard Wagner und die Anfänge des modernen Antisemitismus,” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts 4 (1961): 281–300 (for an English version see chapter 4 of this book). For a diverging view cf. Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction, see fn. 3, ch. 15.

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Judaism” and the activities of Jews with the epitome of modernism not in the sense of progress and human liberation but as an expression of man’s decadence and subjugation. Following Wagner’s logic, the necessary condition for restoration, regeneration or “redemption” was the liberation from the rule of Jewry in every creative realm and walk of life. The elimination of Judaism and an end to Jewish existence are portrayed as “redemption from the curse hanging over them,” as the freedom from their destructive role throughout human history. Such liberation would restore the world to its old glory, to the pre-modern (and pre-emancipatory) era, which presumably did not abide the destructive and decadent influence of Judaism. Yet Wagner’s gospel of redemption and regeneration also aimed at purifying the Christian tradition of its Jewish components and in its most radical expression signaled a return to the pre-Christian mythological past.23 Here again the critique of Judaism and even an extreme antisemitic approach are part and parcel of an attempt at self-examination by a society and culture in crisis which in Wagner’s portrayal of it, takes on the existential meaning of a choice between life and death. To illustrate the grave implications of this outlook, it is enough to quote a few lines from Wagner’s 1850 piece “Judaism in Music,” which Jacob Talmon once called a “turning point” on “the road to Auschwitz”: So long as the separate art of Music has a real organic life-need in it, down to the epochs of Mozart and Beethoven, there was nowhere to be found a Jew composer: it was impossible for an element entirely foreign to that living organism to take part in the formative stages of that life. Only when a body’s inner death is manifest, do outside elements win the power of lodgment in it—yet merely to destroy it.24

Here we must again pose the question of how important established patterns of thinking about the nature and properties of Judaism may have been in forging the antisemitic attitudes that are characteristic of Wagner and the radical-romantic anti-Jewish school. As we have seen, the dogmatic anthropologically-based patterns of the French and English rationalists, later reformulated by the Young Hegelians, may have influenced Wagner’s racist anti-Jewish thinking. The same can be said of the inclusion of historical anti-Jewish stereotypes in his critique of Judaism. But if we take the reflection of the historical situation in his outlook 23 See especially the findings of Hartmut Zelinski’s “Einleitung” in Richard Wagner—ein deutsches Thema. Eine Dokumentation zur Wirkungsgeschichte Richard Wagners, 1876–1976 (Berlin: Medusa Verlagsgesellschaft, 1983), 6–22, 278–84. 24 Richard Wagner, Das Judenthum in der Musik (Leipzig: J. J. Weber, 1869), 31; Jacob L. Talmon, The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution. The Origins of Ideological Polarisation in the Twentieth Century (London: Secker & Warburg, 1981), 208–209.

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to be an authentic awareness of the existential crisis he portrayed (inter alia, through the moods prevailing in German romanticism), we can assume that these influences were not a decisive causal factor in forging the ideological core of his beliefs. Indeed, following the same logic by which the critique of Judaism emerged in other radical schools of secular thought, Wagner may have arrived at his approach independent of these influences. In any event it should be mentioned that Wagner’s antisemitic ideas were formulated in the climate of pessimism and despair that followed the failure of the revolutions of 1848. Moreover, his protest against the emancipation of the Jews was, as we have noted, a function of his rejection of the principles of the “abstract rationalism” underlying it.25 Yet such pessimism, along with a romantic longing for regeneration through a return to the values of the past and a rejection of the impact of rationalism, brings us back to an earlier crisis in Germany at the time of the Napoleonic Wars—when the Jews were first granted partial emancipation. Indeed, this school of anti-Jewish criticism initially took shape with the consolidation of the German romanticnationalist movement among a number of its more radical exponents.26 Yet even the ideology of the conservative opponents of emancipation, who espoused the idea of the “Christian state,” was fuelled by a fear of the destructive influence of Judaism. Naturally, their hostile approach did not view Christianity’s roots in Judaism as being the heart of the problem; instead it stressed the antagonistic nature of Jewry’s existence within Christian society before the crisis of secularization. Jewry’s entry into Christian society and its impact on that society’s image were perceived as the infiltration of an alien, antagonistic element, and the imposition of its anti-Christian character on a state and society in whose formative historical development the Jews had played no part. This society was even defined as Christian by virtue of its religious antagonism to Judaism. The critique of the secularization and modernization of Christian society brought in its wake, as one of its explanations and the responses to it, an attack on emancipated Jewry, which was identified with various expressions of modernism. The conservative-Christian school initially saw the possibility of resolving religious antagonism by the conversion and assimilation of the Jews. The later penetration of racist thinking into the conservative ideology changed, however, its perception of assimilation as not merely irrelevant but as a threat to the very existence of non-Jewish society. In this context it should be noted that due to the 25 Richard Wagner, Das Judenthum in der Musik, see fn. 24, 10–11. 26 See Sterling, Judenhaß, as in fn. 19, and Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany (London: Macmillan, 1965). A contemporary autobiographical account appears in Heinrich Heine, “Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland” in Heines Werke in fünfzehn Teilen, vol. 9 (Berlin: Bong Verlag, n.d.), 275–277, and in his “Ludwig Börne,” ibid., vol. 14, 89–90.

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dialectic of the revolutionary historical situation from which it arose during the first half of the nineteenth century, the conservative ideology of the “Christian state” had radical qualities of its own that justify the use of the term “conservative revolution.”

Antisemitism as anti-Christian and anti-Democratic Radicalism: National Socialism as Political Messianism and as a Dual Revolution Following these distinctions we can say that the ideological, social, and political manifestations of antisemitism were essentially concentrated in two trends. First, there was the anti-Christian, radical-rationalist critique of Judaism which identified its shortcomings—especially the Jewish antecedents of Christianity— with the ills of contemporary Christian society. Its point of departure was the consciousness of a crisis of faith and also of corruption and injustice in contemporary political and social systems deriving from the legacy of the rule of religion. The cure for these ills was to be radical change and faith in progress—congruent with the general aim of liberation from Judeo-Christianity as a condition for emancipating man and society. Second, there was the conservative critique of Judaism, which identified it with the spirit of modernism per se, including the processes of change, secularization, and revolution in all spheres of life. Here a belief in the absolute merit of the basic values of the past, prior to the crisis of secularization and modernism, generated a desire to preserve or restore a historical tradition in which hostility towards Judaism was built into the system. In essence the two kinds of anti-Jewish criticism, equated the influence of Judaism with the existential causes of the crisis within contemporary society. Yet the first type of critique perceived that crisis as a result of the endurance and further distortion of society’s Judeo-Christian character, while the second regarded Judaism as an attack on the survival of the Christian tradition as well as the national organism. There is no doubt that more than being an expression of hostility towards the Jew as an individual or distinct minority in the surrounding society, both these trends express an awareness of the need for self-examination by a society in crisis. In attempting to examine the roots of the crisis, such radical introspection may lead, as one of the possible explanations, to a confrontation with Judaism or to a re-examination of the Jewish component in Western culture—either as one of the elements upon which its culture was based or as an antagonistic factor that defined the particular existence and role of that culture as the heir to Judaism and executor of its mission.

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I shall not expand upon this point by drawing on the wealth of extant “classic” antisemitic literature and journalistic commentary from the last third of the nineteenth century. The social, political, religious, and cultural developments and crises of this period in which modern antisemitism developed into a public movement and political organization have already been discussed at length in the scholarly literature. Instead I prefer to dwell on the claim that the diminishing importance of the antisemitic parties towards the end of the nineteenth century, especially in Germany, does not indicate a parallel decline in the basic ideas underlying their critique of Judaism. Rather it suggests the penetration of this criticism into the ideologies of most of the large political parties at the end of the imperial age and during the Weimar era.27 The National Socialist ideology also emerged against the background of a sharp sense of crisis and historical upheavals. There was the trauma and outcome of World War I, the dissolution of the empire, revolutions and counterrevolutions, the world economic crisis and collapse of the monetary system; above all the structural changes and accelerated modernization that encompassed all spheres of life in the new democratic Weimar republic were highly conducive to introspection and pondering the reasons for the unintelligible crisis, with one of the possible explanations focusing on Judaism and the Jews. What distinguished National Socialist antisemitism from its immediate predecessors, however, was its tendency to combine the two primary and ostensibly contradictory elements of the critique of Judaism in modern antisemitism: the radical anti-Christian trend, with all its revolutionary implications, and the radical-conservative tendency, with its anti-revolutionary and anti-democratic slant. Moreover, the anti-Jewish element, which was an integral but relatively inconsequential component of the main schools of nineteenth-century political thought, now became a focal feature of an ideology that developed into the political program of a modern totalitarian party aspiring to global hegemony.28 This ideology, including Hitler’s political messianism, became one of the basic motives in the Nazi attempt to change the course of history by eliminating the Jewish foundations of European civilization.

27 Ettinger, “Secular Roots,” see fn. 12, 60. 28 See Ernst Nolte’s standard work on Fascism and National Socialism (his latter views in connection with the Historikerstreit notwithstanding), Three Faces of Fascism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1963), 332. On Richard Wagner, see Kulka, “Richard Wagner und die Anfänge,” as in fn. 22; Talmon, Myth of the Nation, as in fn. 24; on Wilhelm Marr, see Moshe Zimmermann, Wilhelm Marr. The Patriarch of Anti-Semitism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); and Robert S. Wistrich, “Antisemitism as a ‘Radical’ Ideology in the 19th Century,” Jerusalem Quarterly 28 (1983): 88; on the Völkisch movement, see George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology. Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964).

The Mythic Potential of the Jewish Component in Western Culture 

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For it was these “Jewishly tainted” factors that had purportedly brought humanity to the brink of self-destruction. Only by destroying the regimes and ideologies that embodied the spirit of Judaism and physically annihilating the millions of Jews that comprised its biological source, would it be possible to rescue the human race and restore the harmony that had epitomized the “nature’s order.”

The Mythic Potential of the Jewish Component in Western Culture and the Recurrent Crises of the Secular Age At the beginning of this article I noted that the scholarly literature has already established the centrality of antisemitism in the ideology and policy of the Third Reich. In the course of this discussion we have seen that the “Jewish Question” lay at the heart of the gravest and most menacing crisis of Western civilization— an attempt to revolt against the moral core of its very existence. Most works on modern antisemitism, including studies on the background to its National Socialist version, focus on the period beginning in the last third of the nineteenth century with its advent as an organized political movement. We have taken as our point of departure the innovating contribution of Shmuel Ettinger’s studies, which explore the critique of Judaism as a source of active anti-Jewish ideology in the secularization process of modern Europe since the end of the seventeenth century.29 This perspective has also enabled us to stress the decisive contribution of radicalism of both the Left and the Right. The critique of Judaism and the Jews involved virtually all the phenomena that shaped the modern world—including Christianity, capitalism, and revolution, democracy and socialism; on another plane the Jews were associated with the domination of the modern finance, with domestic and international political systems, and with the press, literature, and the arts. It seems to us that the critique of these concepts by modern antisemitism can best be seen as a reflection of Western society in an age of constant crisis marked by the process of secularization and modernization. This critique of Judaism, which contained both fear and bewilderment over the implications of these changes, could not have arisen had Judaism not been a constant and central component of Western culture. The radical protest aimed at modern society together with the thirst for rational explanations and solutions undoubtedly expressed an authentic perplexity and 29 Apart from Ettinger’s pioneering work we might mention Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), Hermann Greive, Geschichte des modernen Antisemitismus in Deutschland, and Léon Poliakov, History of AntiSemitism, as in fn. 10.

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sense of far-reaching alienation.30 The critique of the Jewish elements in Western culture and their influence on modernity was often congruent with other rational or even monocausal explanations of that situation and the perplexities, hopes, and fears that accompanied it. But as a result of the constant and unique role of the Jewish component in Western culture, the rationalization of this anti-Jewish ideology had enormous mythic potential. This fact made it possible not only to identify Judaism with forces such as capitalism, democracy, and socialism, but to postulate a monistic worldview that explained the entire course of history as a Manichean struggle between the Jews and all other nations.31 During the era of secularization in European thought, this potential of mythic rationalization broke free from the standard theological view on the place of Judaism and the Jew in Christian society and in the future course of history. It waxed, waned, and ultimately rebounded with unimagined force, following the same inherent logic of reactions that we have attempted to trace in this essay. It would, of course, be a dangerous exaggeration to regard modern antisemitism through its various manifestations in deterministic terms. The history of Western society and its self-critical confrontation with modernity should not be read as a history of unrelenting “pan-antisemitism.” Yet research into modern antisemitism, and particularly its most radical manifestation in National Socialism, suggests that it would be equally unacceptable and no less dangerous to ignore the significance of the central role which the “Jewish Question” has played in the history of modern Western culture.

30 Some of these observations with regard to the rise of modern antisemitism in Germany are discussed in Eva Reichmann, Hostages of Civilisation. The Social Sources of National Socialist Anti-Semitism (London: Gollancz, 1950). 31 Cf. also Jacob L. Talmon’s formulation: “It is no accident that Nazism found it necessary to reinterpret the whole of history as a permanent life-and-death struggle between Nordic Aryanism and the Jewish spirit attributing to Jews a significance and effectiveness which the most extreme Jewish chauvinist would not dream of claiming,” “Uniqueness and Universality of Jewish History. A Mid-Century Revaluation,” in idem, The Unique and the Universal. Some Historical Reflections (London: Secker & Warburg, 1965), 87. Similarly the German historian Andreas Hillgruber: “Der geschichtliche Ort der Judenvernichtung,” in Der Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Entschlußbildung und Verwirklichung, eds. Eberhard Jäckel and Jürgen Rohwer (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1985), 220.

4 Richard Wagner and the Origins of the Redemptive Antisemitism This essay examines one of the early characteristic conceptions of modern antisemitism as exemplified in the thinking of Richard Wagner. What we encounter here is not the general sort of anti-Jewish animus, the traditional Jew-hate which can erupt in occasional and locally determined violence. Rather, here we meet with one of the first theoretical foundations of modern antisemitism, where we can discern the beginnings of that fateful path which ultimately culminated in the “Final Solution.” Indeed, the anti-Jewish writings of Wagner initiate that process which can be perceived in the post-emancipation era of German Jewry as a trajectory of development: from the “static conception of the Wandering Jew” leading to the “revolutionary redemptive ideology of the ‘Final Solution’.”1 In general, these two conceptions are distinguished in connection with the criterion of “race.” But racial discrimination as such does not necessarily have to lead on to the most extreme consequence, namely physical annihilation. On the contrary: historical examples such as ancient Sparta or South African apartheid regime, prove that racial discrimination is quite possible without that. Only in modern antisemitism, which developed the ideology of the “Final Solution”, does the element of race emerge in a new context. The theory of race here is underpinned by a redemptive idea; joined with that theory, it acts as a revolutionary ideology in society and politics. The literature dealing with Richard Wagner’s writings and statements often stresses the personal aspect of his animus toward the Jews. When his political views are discussed, his revolutionary ideas are presented as liberal radicalism or an extreme anti-liberal nationalism. Or they are viewed merely as an episode in his life and work. If his antisemitic views are mentioned, then usually alongside his theories on art and society, and independent of them—not in close connection with them. But explaining his antisemitic views is only meaningful if they are studied connected organically with his general political and artistic theories. 1 The ‘Wandering Jew’ (in German: Der ewige Jude, the Eternal Jew) is a concept centering on the degrading but stable situation of the Jews in medieval Christian society in Europe, and is also reflected in Church doctrine. This antagonism toward the Jews ensured in theoretical terms the further physical existence of the Jews as a corporate body to the extent that individual Jews did not seek conversion. The second concept characterizes a view that only recognizes the perpetual existence of the Jews, as a community and individually, under the determinism of the biologic category of race. But at the same time, it leads to a revolt against this determinism, accompanied by redemptive messianic ideas. That revolt aims at the physical annihilation of the Jews. Its final consequence is the National Socialist interpretation of racial doctrine. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-005

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Only on the basis of seeing the nexus between these ideas will it also be possible to perceive their distinctive character and grasp their real historical significance. Several years ago Eleonore Sterling pointed out that in the case of several radicals of the Young Hegelian school, supporters of the 1848 Revolution, one can see a development in their revolutionary ideas leading to antisemitic views.2 Nathan Rotenstreich has recently done a study of the theological and racial thinking of a representative Young Hegelian, Bruno Bauer, looking at this aspect.3 From this perspective, the “case of Wagner” becomes one of the most interesting, characteristic and doubtless most influential in the history of modern antisemitism. While in exile in Zurich, where he had been living as a refugee since the collapse of the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849, Wagner wrote an essay entitled “Judaism in Music” (Das Judenthum in der Musik). It was published in September 1850 in the journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik under the pen name K. Freigedank. In this rather extensive essay, he writes: We have no need to first substantiate the be-Jewing (Verjudung) of modern art; it springs to the eye, and thrusts upon the senses, of itself. Much too far afield, again, should we have to fare, did we undertake to explain this phenomenon by a demonstration of the character of our art-history itself. But if emancipation from the yoke of Judaism appears to us the greatest of necessities, we must hold it weighty above all to prove our forces for this war of liberation. Now we shall never win these forces from an abstract definition of that phenomenon per se, but only from an accurate acquaintance with the nature of that involuntary feeling of ours which utters itself as an instinctive repugnance against the Jew’s prime essence. Through it, through this unconquerable feeling—if we avow it quite without ado— must there become plain to us what we hate in that essence; what we then know definitely, we can make head against; nay, through his very laying bare, may we even hope to rout the demon from the field, whereon he has only been able to maintain his stand beneath the shelter of a twilight darkness—a darkness we good-natured Humanists ourselves have cast upon him, to make his look less loathly.4 2 Eleonore Sterling, Er ist wie du (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1958), 111 ff. There has as yet [in 1961] been no detailed study on the importance of this phenomenon for the history of modern antisemitism as one of the secular messianic ideologies. 3 Nathan Rotenstreich, “For and against Emancipation. The Bruno Bauer Controversy,” Leo Baeck Year Book IV (1959): 3–36. 4 Richard Wagner, Das Judentum in der Musik (Leipzig: J. J. Weber, 1869), 12–13. This brochure of the second Edition, which appeared under his full name was often reprinted, for example in 1914 by the Deutschvölkischer Schriftstellerverband, Deutschvölkischer Verlag, Weimar. The text here is from the translation “Judaism in Music,” in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, Vol. 3: The Theatre. trans. William A. Ellis (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Kübner & Co., first published 1894), 79–100. Available online: http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagjuda.htm . Another more contemporary English translation is contained in Charles Osborne, ed., Richard Wagner: Stories and Essays, (London: Peter Owen, 1973), 23–39. Most of Osborne’s translations in the volume follow Ellis, but Osborne has produced a totally new translation of “Judaism in Music.”

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Fig. 8: Facsimile of the opening page of Richard Wagner’s anonymous article, “Das Judenthum in der Musik,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, September 3, 1850.

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With this essay, Wagner emerged as one of the precursors of modern antisemitic race theory. The sense of national danger expressed here reoccurs in his writings whenever he speaks about the Jewish Question. And that ‘Question’ itself came to occupy him as a social (and some even contend as a personal5) problem for the entire length of his life.

The Wagner Cult and Historiography But before we move on to examine Wagner’s antisemitic views, it is useful to comment briefly on his role in the world of art in Europe and in European thought. For many decades, far down into the 20th century, the cult of Richard Wagner played a determinant role almost everywhere in cultural life. His works were perceived as an act of redemption and the rebirth of a culture in the depths of crisis and degeneration. Especially telling is Thomas Mann’s remark, pointed out repeatedly, that his creations found a very special and enthusiastic admirer early on, already in the middle of the 19th century, when they were still barely known: namely in the person of the author of Fleurs du Mal. In 1849, Charles Baudelaire wrote to a young German music critic who was enthusiastic about the young Wagner: “You will be serving the cause of a man whom the future shall make the most famous among the great masters.”6 And who was able, like Baudelaire, to feel with such an intensity the mood of desperation and decline, so characteristic of the coming decades—a mood which many considered Wagner to have vanquished! It was not only Wagner’s dramatic opera that had a huge influence. His theoretical writings exercised a great impact as well. There were even some scholars who valued his theories more than his artistic creations. In the 1880s and ’90s in particular, his theories on art and his philosophical effusions were propagated by thousands of his fans, devotees organized in Wagner societies in Germany, France, England and other countries. Among the periodicals which his admirers published to spread his teachings and spark research, noteworthy are the Bayreuther Blätter in Germany, the Revue Wagnerienne in Paris and The Meister in London. It is not surprising that among the many incontestably 5 There is extensive literature on Wagner’s own “racial extraction.” The suspicion that his stepfather, the actor Ludwig Heinrich Geyer, was not only his physical father, but was also a Jew, has proved to be unsubstantiated, especially since research by Otto Bournot and Ernest Newman. Mention of this factor would not lessen the importance of his antisemitic attacks, since they form an organic component in his world view. 6 Thomas Mann, Adel des Geistes (Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1945), 468.

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liberal personalities, including Jews, who felt attracted by the magnetism of his person and art, the Wagner phenomenon served to create a kind of intellectual schizophrenia. Nor is it surprising that he naturally was lauded ever and again as Meister by antisemitic, German-folkish circles. While there are decidedly liberal thinkers and historians such as Bernhard Diebold (Der Fall Wagner, 1928) or F.C. Sell (Die Tragödie des deutschen Liberalismus, 1955) who think that Wagner’s creations sprang from a revolutionary spirit and that his theories are liberal, the young National Socialist Karl Richard Ganzer viewed Wagner differently. For him, it was obvious that Wagner was a precursor of National Socialist ideas. His dissertation “Richard Wagner, der Revolutionär gegen das 19. Jahrhundert, published in Munich in 1933, angrily attacks all those who saw Wagner as a standard bearer of “armchair communist, pacifist or other humanitarian” ideas.7 In 1932, Richard Eichenauer, writing in his book Musik und Rasse, expressly emphasized that “Wagner’s political, religious and philosophical views were more important than his artistic works. They frequently showed themselves to be prophetic prognoses of present-day thoughts and aspirations.” Thomas Mann thinks differently. In his essay “Leiden und Grösse Richard Wagners,” published on 13 February 1933, the 50th anniversary of Wagner’s death, Mann wrote: “What I have always taken exception to, or better, what left me indifferent, was Wagner’s theory. I’ve hardly ever been able to convince myself to believe that anyone ever took any of that seriously.”8 Among those who took these theories seriously and heard the call to make them reality was Adolf Hitler. One of the reasons for the great influence and quite inexhaustible possibilities for interpretation open to all who wish to rely on Wagner as an authority is the fact that there is hardly a question in regard to politics, culture and religion to which this “brilliant dilettante”9 did not express some view in his distinctive style, imbued with a characteristic pathos. All possible and impossible ideas which came to his mind—whether from his readings, social intercourse or under the impress of the events of the time—he seized upon, bending them into the Procrustean bed of his sole chief idea: repairing the human (or national) society by means of a revolutionary art, and the redemptive mission of this art in a human (or national) society that had been purified. All that has to be borne in mind if we seek to accord a proper place in history to Wagner’s racial theories and their influence. The present essay focuses on the 7 Karl Richard Ganzer was also the expert on Wagner at the Reichsinstitut für die Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands. There is an essay by Ganzer, “Richard Wagner und das Judentum,” in Forschungen zur Judenfrage (Reichsinstitut Hamburg, 1937–1943): 105–120. 8 Thomas Mann, ibid., 410. 9 Ibid.

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period from ca. 1848 to the end of the 1860s. That was a time frame in which Wagner was not only a refugee, but was also forced to struggle for public recognition.

The Revolution Several passages in his notorious essay of 1850 on “Das Judenthum in der Musik” show clearly how much Wagner already regretted his liberal ideas from the days of the recent revolution. In any event, he takes upon himself the burden of a “collective guilt” that he became implicated in when he stood up for the emancipation of the Jews, feeling that the segregation of the Jews was an injustice. He writes: When we strove for emancipation of the Jews, however, we virtually were more the champions of an abstract principle, than of a concrete case: just as all our Liberalism was a not very lucid mental sport—since we went for freedom of the Folk without knowledge of that Folk itself, nay, with a dislike of any genuine contact with it—so our eagerness to level up the rights of Jews was far rather stimulated by a general idea, than by any real sympathy; for, with all our speaking and writing in favour of the Jews’ emancipation, we always felt instinctively repelled by any actual, operative contact with them. […] To our astonishment, we perceive that in our Liberal battles, we have been floating in the air and fighting clouds. […] Even to-day we only purposely belie ourselves, in this regard, when we think necessary to hold immoral and taboo all open proclamation of our natural repugnance against the Jewish nature.10

But what actually were the liberal views Wagner was fighting for at the time of the revolution? Among his numerous essays from these stormy years, I think the treatise “Die Kunst und die Revolution” (1849) is especially characteristic; it belongs most clearly among Wagner’s revolutionary pamphlets. In it he initially advances the postulate that true and noble culture—or more precisely, true and noble art— can only be the legitimate possession of a free human being. But this postulate condemns itself to death if this freedom, which for Wagner also at the same time signifies social justice, does not become the general possession and patrimony of all of humankind. He sees concrete examples that prove the need for this prerequisite in the fate of the Greek people in the past and the place of the capitalist-aristocratic oligarchy in the present. There he writes: The Slave, by sheer reason of the assumed necessity of his slavery, has exposed the null and fleeting nature of all the strength and beauty of exclusive Grecian manhood, and has shown to all time that Beauty and Strength, as attributes of public life, can then alone prove

10 Original, 10–11. Trans., ibid., see fn. 4.

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lasting blessings, when they are the common gifts of all mankind.[…] To the Greek the fair, strong man alone was free, and this man was none other than himself; whatever lay outside the circle of Grecian manhood and Apollonian priesthood, was to him barbarian, and if he employed it,—slave. […] but he was still a man, and his barbarianism and his slavery were not his nature but his fate: the sin of history against his nature, just as to-day it is the sin of our social system, that the healthiest nations in the healthiest climates have brought forth cripples and outcasts.

In Wagner’s view, “[t]his historical sin, however, was destined soon to be avenged upon the free Greek himself.” The history of “two hundred million men, huddled in helpless confusion in the Roman empire” teaches this, and the principle still stands that “when all men cannot be free alike and happy—all men must suffer alike as slaves. Thus we are slaves until this very day, with but the sorry consolation of knowing that we are all slaves together.”11 Already at the beginning of his essay, Wagner explains that “our object will naturally be, to discover the meaning of Art as a factor in the life of the State, and to make ourselves acquainted with it as a social product” (p. 9). On the other hand, he ascribes to art, as he understands it, a redemptive, historical task: the redemption of the proletarian masses, which have almost lost their human face. After having described the degrading fate of the artist who has perforce to pawn his work to the capitalist, he compares him with the artisan, who works only for the utility which his activity gives him: “The latter is the lot of the Slave of Industry; and our modern factories afford us the sad picture of the deepest degradation of man,—constant labour, killing both body and soul, without joy or love, often almost without aim” (p. 25). All his accusations regarding this despicable exploitation are directed here against Christianity, which is the institution that stands behind this modern form of slavery by dint of large-scale Capital and “financial speculation”: “to speed the rich, God has become our Industry, which only holds the wretched Christian labourer to life until the heavenly courses of the stars of commerce bring round the gracious dispensation that sends him to a better world” (p. 26). He asks: “In what way, then, does this revolutionary force exhibit itself in the present social crisis? Is it not in the mechanic’s pride in the moral consciousness of his labour, as opposed to the criminal passivity or

11 Richard Wagner, Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen, Vol. 3: Die Kunst und die Revolution (Leipzig: Breitkopf et Härtel, 6th printing, 1912–1914), 26–27. Trans. here: “Art and Revolution,” in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, Vol. 1: The Art-Work of the Future, trans. William Ashton Ellis (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Kübner & Co., 1895). Online http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagartrev.htm . All further passages below from “Art and Revolution” are taken from the Ellis translation, with page numbers referring to the German original edition.

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immoral activity of the rich?” The “indignation of the most suffering portion of our social system” thus springs from a “deeper, nobler, natural instinct” (p. 32). Here Art takes on a leading, ennobling task: It is for Art therefore, and Art above all else, to teach this social impulse its noblest meaning, and guide it toward its true direction. Only on the shoulders of this great social movement can true Art lift itself from its present state of civilised barbarianism, and take its post of honour. Each has a common goal, and the twain can only reach it when they recognise it jointly. This goal is the strong fair Man, to whom Revolution shall give his Strength, and Art his Beauty (p. 32)!

At the conclusion, in a manner replete with great pathos, he blends the liberation of the worker, progress, new Art, human revolution and enlightenment into a resounding call, where he states: Ye suffering brethren, in every social grade, who brood in hot displeasure how to flee this slavery to money and become free men: fathom ye our purpose, and help us to lift up Art to its due dignity; that so we may show you how ye raise mechanical toil therewith to Art; and the serf of industry to the fair, self-knowing man who cries, with smiles begotten of intelligence, to sun and stars, to death and to eternity: “Ye, too, are mine, and I your lord!” (p. 39).

One may wonder what influences Wagner was subject to while on the barricades in Dresden and thereafter. On his 36th birthday, wanted by the police as an illegal and threatened with arrest, he embarked under duress for Jena, on a six-hour trek on foot from Weimar, in order to arrange a passport to flee to Switzerland. He himself admits that the thinking of Proudhon, which had exercised a powerful influence on his Dresden friend August Röckel, a failed musician and ardent revolutionary, had an impact on him and on the ideas of social and artistic reform he espoused at the time. Scholars have repeatedly pointed out that his ideas, “this mixture of republicanism, reform from above, Feuerbach, Stirner and Proudhon,”12 largely resemble what Marx and Engels strongly condemned in the section “German or ‘True’ Socialism” in the Communist Manifesto. We should not take too seriously Wagner’s much later statement in his autobiography, namely that his close acquaintance with the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, which Georg Herwegh had recommended and Röckel helped to arrange, “had no important influence on him.13 After all, in Wagner’s famous pamphlet “Die Revolution,”

12 Hans Mayer, Richard Wagner in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959), 59. 13 Wagner, Sämtliche Schriften, Vol. 14: Mein Leben, 225–255.

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dated 8 February 1848, ideas of Proudhon and the influence of Bakunin are most especially discernible. However, and that is worth stressing here, the concept of the mission of national liberty already appears in an interesting connection with imperialisticmessianic ideas, and of some historical importance, at about the same time. It is expressed in Wagner’s address to the Dresden Vaterlandsverein, “How Do Republican Aspirations Stand in Relation to the Monarchy?,” a talk he gave on 14 June 1848. In his view as elaborated there, after German society has been emancipated, the historical hour will also come for the German people, and it will lend its hand to spreading the blessings of ‘civilization’ across the globe. He envisions: Let’s now travel in ships across the sea, founding here and there a young new Germany. Let us fructify it with the results of our struggle and striving, producing and raising the most noble children, offspring most similar to God. We want to do this better than the Spaniards […] and do it differently than the English […] We want to do it in a German way, and do so magnificently. From sunrise to sunset, the sun shall look down upon a Germany beautiful and free […] The rays of German liberty and German gentleness shall warm and transfigure the Cossack and the Frenchman, the Bushman and the Chinaman.14

Nonetheless, we should exercise due caution in wanting to see basic views of Wagner that belonged to the very foundations of his world view in what he was writing in those days, however honest their intention. If you look through the numerous periodicals of the day—which in this stormy period, seemed to sprout like mushrooms, only to disappear again for the most part after 1849— or if you peruse the many pamphlets issued during those years, it becomes quite evident that such ideas were common and widespread at the time. And the belief in the omnipotence of the ideas of liberty and the possibilities of the young socialist movement was still untarnished, untouched by historical events. The decisive question in relation to the further development of Wagner’s thinking is this: did his departure from radical ideas and the propagation of a racial view from 1850 on mark a total change in orientation, and a shift into the ranks of the old conservative camp? Or was this perhaps a new more personal transformation of his revolutionary ideas? I will now turn to these questions.

14 Wagner, Sämtliche Schriften, Vol. 12, 234. Trans. B. Templer.

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The Jewish Question What is the relation between Wagner’s view on the Jewish Question and his political convictions as we have come to known them? It would appear that a thorough study of that small piece on Judaism and Jewishness in music, and not a reading that suffices with a mere biographical investigation, reveals a remarkable conceptual ambivalence. Wagner criticizes the dominance of the Jews in the social sphere, economy and culture of Germany. But his description of Jewish fate, especially the fate of modern Jews, reveals the tragedy of a hopeless resistance against a cruel historical determinism. In this description, he proceeds from racist assumptions which, when they enter the realm of historical inquiry, take on mythical forms. But when he describes the degree of participation of the Jews in contemporary German life, this mythical conception changes into a frightful vision. Its sole solution is the physical annihilation of this horrible monster, a creature that cannot live its own normal life nor die a natural death. For the Jew, his decline and disappearance are a kind of act of mercy which history to date has denied him. But for the German “Geist,” it is a purifying redemption, coming after the contemporary situation has brought the German spirit to the very edge of the precipice of ruin. Wagner’s accusations are of the same sort as was common from now on among all the attacks against Jews in stereotypical form. It was alleged that with the help of their capital, the Jews had abused and misused the civil rights granted to them through emancipation in order to achieve dominance over the most diverse areas of life in the modern state. From the murky wellspring of exploitation of workers (where the name Rothschild stands but as a symbol), they drew the means to dominate over the life of art, and to determine public taste. As a result of emancipation, they are able to acquire education which opens for them the doors to a new position of power in modern society. And since today there is nothing in this society that is not subject to the rule of money, “according to the present constitution of this world, the Jew in truth is already more than emancipate: he rules, and will rule, so long as Money remains the power before which all our doings and our dealings lose their force.”15 For that reason, a new emancipation is necessary, but this time it is: emancipation from domination by the Jews. When Wagner forgoes all liberal principles in his treatment of the Jewish Question, he does this in the name of a demand for re-establishing social justice that has been cast aside, and out of a sense of concern for the spiritual well-being of the German nation. Precisely at the time of the revolution, his accusations

15 Wagner, Das Judentum in der Musik, 11. Trans., see fn. 4.

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against the Jews are on the same level as his attacks against the Church, the aristocracy, and against all the propertied classes. The real task Wagner wished to deal with in writing his essay on Jewishness in music was to discover and lay bear the roots of Judophobia, which essentially was “instinctual,” irrational. 1850—a year when Wagner undertook his third trip to Paris was an uncommonly productive year for him as a writer. In February, his essay on “Art and Climate” appears in Paris; the same year, O. Wigand publishes in Leipzig his book Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (The Art-Work of the Future). In January 1851, he finishes the most extensive theoretical work, in three volumes, Oper und Drama, and sends the manuscript to his Leipzig publisher J. J. Weber. These three writings form basically a unit, since each develops further the ideas present in the work that preceded it. The passages in his essay Das Judentum in der Musik, where Wagner appears as an original thinker, prove that he sought to deal with the Jewish Question on the basis of his ideas about art theory. In this essay, Wagner gives his response to his critics by putting forward his theory of race for the first time. In his eyes, the racial distinctive feature of the Jew is predominantly physical: The Jew—who, as everyone knows, has a God all to himself—in ordinary life strikes us primarily by his outward appearance, which, no matter to what European nationality we belong, has something disagreeably foreign to that nationality: instinctively we wish to have nothing in common with a man who looks like that (p. 13).16

For that reason, for example, the Jew cannot appear anywhere on stage without distorting the role of the hero in European drama to the point of sheer ridiculousness. Likewise, he is denied from being creative in the realm of the plastic arts. But in Wagner’s view, the main difference lies in his inner special characteristics, which cannot be eradicated. The Jew, who speaks the languages of the various nations, can do this only as an outsider. For Wagner, striking features of this lie in the special way in which Jews speak their mother tongue Yiddish. In his eyes, the bungling of words, the falsification and adulteration of the pure sounds, the arbitrary rearrangement in collocations and word order are the most notable features of Jewish race. “Throughout an intercourse of two millennia with European nations, Culture has not succeeded in breaking the remarkable stubbornness of the Jewish naturel as regards the peculiarities of Semitic pronunciation” (p. 15). “If we hear a Jew speak, we are unconsciously offended by the entire want of purely-human expression in his discourse” (p. 16).

16 Regarding English trans., see fn. 4. All translations below are from Ellis, except in fn. 19.

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In the tradition of Romanticism, but in his own distinctive way, Wagner accords language a special place and role, as the foundation of national culture in general, and artistic creativity in particular. In his famous schema on the relations between the various art genres which he echoes here, Song is just Talk aroused to highest passion: Music is the speech of Passion. All that worked repellently upon us in his outward appearance and his speech, makes us take to our heels at last in his Song, providing we are not held prisoners by the very ridicule of this phenomenon. Very naturally, in Song […] the peculiarity of the Jewish nature attains for us its climax of distastefulness (p. 16).

Wagner says: behold that music which is supposed to be the passionate ardour of a Jewish manner of speaking. It is a mixture of the styles and directions of diverse musical types and forms, a multifarious clutter, encompassing all and containing nothing. We are apparently faced here with a contradiction. A linguistic expression that is devoid of any artistic value cannot soar to the level of a true musical expression. For Wagner though it is axiomatic that any music written by a Jew will always be nothing but a repetition of foreign values, which he will spoil and falsify in his racial style. If we recall what Wagner says in his essay “Die Kunst und die Revolution” about the connection between a full national life and true art, then we can see that basically he denies Judaism any right to exist, because Jews lack the elementary creative powers of life. But also their mere, sterile existence in the womb of a creative nation undermines the belief of that nation in its everlasting creative powers. Just as the mere presence of slavery in freedom-loving Athens eroded and withered the belief that freedom and beauty are the natural possessions of the human race. Wagner goes on to describe the absurd attempt by modern Jewry to overcome the determinism of race. In his attempt to integrate into the intellectual creativity of his surroundings, “[a]lien and apathetic stands the educated Jew in midst of a society he does not understand, with whose tastes and aspirations he does not sympathise, whose history and evolution have always been indifferent to him.”17 He stands in terrible isolation within a society whose history and values he has no part in, and which is indifferent toward his fate. Each true creation must, even if unconsciously, be the expression of the vital spirit of the Folk. But this wellspring is for ever inaccessible to the Jew. The only source of inspiration he has available,

17 Trans., see fn. 4.

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the fossilized tradition of his own people, is closed to him because of a lack of love for his own people. Only in one case does Wagner see the possibility for the Jew to come into closer contact with true artistic creativity: in the expression of tragic powerlessness, in its attempt to achieve the impossible, and in the ensuing resignation that sets in. “This, as we have said, is the tragic trait in Mendelssohn’s life-history.”18 Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy is for Wagner the only Jew to reach this tragic self-perception. Wagner underpins his theory of race with a mythical explanation. Via the mythological figure of the “Wandering Jew” (“Ahasver”), who is denied living a full human life, but cannot die a real natural death, Wagner concludes that the only possible solution to the malign Jewish Question lies in the total elimination, the doom of the Jews—as an act of mercy of history toward this errant tribe. He ends his essay with the sentence: “But remember that your redemption from the curse laid on you can be achieved by only one thing, and that is the redemption of Ahasuerus—decline and fall!”19 (der Untergang!—that in German tends more to the meaning of doom and death). Certainly, we cannot assume here that there was a conscious intention on Wagner’s part to call for the concrete implementation of this solution. On the other hand, it is clear that his racial presuppositions exclude the possibility of assimilation. The only exception he allowed was in the case of Börne, who apparently had been successful in his attempt. But that exception is not convincing over against the detailed, consequent description of the impossibility of the assimilation of ‘educated Jews.’ It may be that Wagner was not aware of the logical consequence of his thoughts, according to which the solution of “Untergang” ultimately means physical annihilation. And it may also be true that at that time, there was no justification for such an interpretation. But after those, who saw in him a prophet and pathfinder drew this conclusion, we in turn have no right to close our eyes to this. Wagner thus presents the tragic history of the Jews as a-historical phenomenon. But in this essay, he wants to focus in particular on the contemporaneous situation of the German nation, in cultural and political-national terms. His description generates an absolutely paradoxical image: it is precisely this disadvantaged spectral creature, which lacks the most decisive human attribute, which has achieved dominance over all of German cultural life. He writes: The Jew, who is innately incapable of enouncing himself to us artistically through either his outward appearance or his speech, and least of all through his singing, has neverthe-

18 Ibid. 19 Trans. John Osborne, 39, see fn. 4.

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less been able in the widest-spread of modern art-varieties, to wit in Music, to reach the rulership of public taste (p. 17).

That became possible as a consequence of the deep crisis of creative intellect which for Wagner constitutes the primary problem of modern culture. As a result of Beethoven and Goethe, all creative possibilities to shape the cultural legacy have been exhausted. After them, in their wake, begins the process of decline and degeneration. Only in that situation was the astonishing rise of sterile Jewish intellect possible. Everywhere, making use of the traditional forms, it supplanted the place of national creative intellect. To prove this, Wagner here utilizes a symbol once again, meant to point up the danger in its full dimensions. But this is no longer the tragic figure of Jewry. He uses the allegory of the decomposing body of a great culture, which provides the stage for a frenzied orgy by an army of parasites, which is feeding on the decomposing body. Only when a body’s inner death is manifest, do outside elements win the power of lodgement in it—yet merely to destroy it. Then indeed that body’s flesh dissolves into a swarming colony of worm-life: but who, in looking on that body’s self would hold it still for living? (p. 31).

There can be no doubt that the pessimism of being an epigone and imitator that speaks forth from Wagner’s theory forms an essential part of the spirit of the times predominant in Germany after the failure of the 1848 revolution. Because with that abortive uprising, all hopes were also dashed for universal miraculous forms of redemption, which at the time seemed already within grasp. In any event, the extreme description of the Jewish Problem as an existential question for the German National spirit also resurfaces in his later writings.20 The demonizing description of the Jewish danger in “Das Judentum in der Musik”, and the “only possible solution” recommended there, takes on a new significance. It is not only an act of mercy for Jewry, but above all a salvation, or in any case the condition for a salvation of the threatened German Geist. Yet Wagner even now remains the prophet of a “positive revolutionary redemption.” That redemption which he proclaims in his teaching as a revival of the Folk spirit apparently only demands the elimination of Jewish influence as a preliminary stage for the desired purification. On the other hand, the exclusively ‘national’ nature of the redemption demands elimination of the foreign element itself—an element that can never take part in that redemption. 20 Mainly in the writings: Was ist deutsch? (1865), Deutsche Kunst und deutsche Politik (1866) and in the preface to the 2nd ed. of Das Judentum in der Musik (1869), to say nothing of his later writings from the period of the general boom in antisemitism.

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Antisemitism—Continuity of Tradition?—Revolution?— Continuous Revolution? Wagner’s attacks against Jews and Judaism began at a point when his enthusiasm for the liberal ideas of the revolutionary period had already cooled. Once again, proper etiquette called for an anti-liberal and simultaneously anti-Jewish attitude in Germany, as the traditional stance of the clerical-conservative camp. Were Wagner’s anti-Jewish views solely a continuation (or even elaboration) of this traditional attitude, casting aside liberal ideas of the revolution? Or was this a passing mood of some sort, expressing his disappointment and pessimism in the wake of the abortive revolution? Regarding the first question, the answer seems clear. Wagner remained faithful to his rejection of the Church, a view he had taken over from his Young Hegelian teachers and friends. His treatise The Art-Work of the Future bears the dedication: “To Ludwig Feuerbach in grateful veneration.” In contrast with the traditional anti-Jewish animus of the Church, Wagner’s anti-Jewish accusations and conclusions derive from anthropologicaldeterministic presuppositions. This racial antisemitism of Wagner thus is in marked contrast with the liberal principle of human equality, and also clashes with the universal striving of the Church to unite in its bosom all of humanity. The historical importance of Wagner and his anti-Jewish racial theory lie in the circumstance that at least in this form, this was the first time racial viewpoints were injected into the social ideology in this period. It is perhaps of some interest to compare Wagner’s later statements on this topic with his comments in 1850. Aside from the fact that sometimes emphasis is placed more on the political aspect, sometimes the cultural or even the social aspect, we can note that his attitude toward the Jews remained basically unchanged. Always dominant was the same feeling of stunted growth, degeneration, decline, self-alienation of the German nation, and the domination of its life by a foreign element. This creates the atmosphere of a great misfortune, an acute danger that necessitates special preventive measures. An essay of 1865 entitled “Was ist deutsch?,” originally written as an editorial for the newly founded paper in Munich, the Süddeutsche Presse is enlightening in this regard. After Wagner had a falling out with the paper’s editor-in-chief, Dr, Julius Fröbel, the article was not published; it appeared in 1878, 13 years later, in the Bayreuther Blätter. There he wrote: It everywhere appears to be the duty of the Jew, to shew the nations of modern Europe where haply there may be a profit they have overlooked, or not made use of. […] None of the European nations had recognised the boundless advantages, for the nation’s general economy, of an ordering of the relations of Labour and Capital in accordance with the

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modern spirit of burgher-enterprise: the Jews laid hand on those advantages, and upon the hindered and dwindling prosperity of the nation the Jewish banker feeds his enormous wealth. […] that a profit here, as well, was left unused, could be cognisable to none but a mind which misunderstood the very essence of the German nature […] The Jew set right this bungling of the German’s, by taking German intellectual labour into his own hands; and thus we see an odious travesty of the German spirit upheld to-day before the German Folk, as its imputed likeness. It is to be feared, ere long the nation may really take this simulacrum for its mirrored image: then one of the finest natural dispositions in all the human race were done to death, perchance for ever. […] the danger that menaces the whole of German public life, I have already pointed out. Woe to us and the world, if the nation itself were this time saved, but the German spirit vanished from the world! How are we to conceive a state of things in which the German Folk remained, but the German Spirit had taken flight? The hardly-thinkable is closer to us than we fancy.21

In an essay written in 1878 for the Bayreuther Blätter and entitled simply “Modern,” intended as a response to a pamphlet by Rabbi Friedmann, Wagner touches again on the Jewish Question. At the end of the essay, Wagner ironically resorts to open threats, stating that the word “Shibboleth” inspires me with terror: upon closer investigation of the meaning of this word I have learnt that, of no particular importance in itself, it was employed by the ancient Jews in a certain battle as means of detecting the tribesmen of a race they proposed, as usual, to root quite out; who pronounced the “Sch” without a hiss, as a soft “S,” was slaughtered. A decidedly fatal “mot d’ordre” in the fight for Popularity, especially with us Germans, to whom the lack of Semitic sibilants might be most disastrous if it ever came to an actual battle delivered by the Liberal-modern Jews.22

Wagner’s theories of art and his revolutionary views spring from one and the same source. The origin of the deterministic elements in his doctrine lie in the mythical conception and meaning of these fundamental ideas: man, Nature, culture, the nation, freedom, revolution, history—in Wagner’s thinking, all these concepts are imbued with a largely mythical dimension of meaning. They serve to unite historical antipodes—past and future—and despise the present, or rebel under duress against that present. So it is not surprising that in the encounter with modernity, the decline of society as he sees it triggers such a violent reaction in him. Whether in the 21 See Richard Wagner, Sämtliche Schriften, Vol. 10: Was ist deutsch? 44, 48–49. Here: “What is German?” in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, Vol. 4: Art and Politics, trans. W. A. Ellis, (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Kübner & Co., 1895), 151–169. Online: http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagwiger.htm 22 See R. Wagner, Sämtliche Schriften, Vol. 10: Modern, 54–60. Here: “Modern,” in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, Vol. 6: Religion and Art, trans. W. A. Ellis (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Kübner & Co., 1897), 43–49. Online: http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagmodern.htm

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guise of the industrial servant who has lost his human dignity, whether in the guise of an art whose sole function is to provide entertainment for a few bored wealthy gentlemen. And most especially as a consequence of the rule of impure and contaminating money, that extends its dominion over all. For that reason, revolution—which will liberate the primal forces of Nature and also restore the lost ideal—appears to him to be a necessary event, and a legitimate historical solution. After the failure of the revolution, Wagner viewed the Jews as the typical representative of the rotten order of the present. From his perspective, Jewry was consciously or even unconsciously frustrating the spread of revolutionary ideas and their realization, the striving within the German people for redemption. He now directed all his attacks against this Verjudung, this Judification of German life. The development of Wagner’s views, extending from extreme radicalism to the elaboration of a theory of race, thus consists more in the search for a solid foundation to his theories than in their fundamental transformation. After the failure of “universal-abstract ideas,” he strives for an “genuine natural being made of blood and soil” as a real object of his doctrine of redemption. He finds this being in the racial-national organism. But it was already intuitively present, latent during his revolutionary period. The universal aspect of that era now is transformed into the idea of the racial-national mission, a process which was

Fig. 9: Richard Wagner in 1871.

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 4 Richard Wagner and the Origins of the Redemptive Antisemitism

already discernable in his political thought in the stage of revolution. Over against the racial-national organism, Wagner now looks for a suitable antipode, an object in which the dark forces of the present are embodied. What was that object? For Wagner, it was the Jew, recognizable in his unmistakable racial distinctiveness, and also imbued even with a universal meaning. The universal concepts, which for Wagner at the time of the revolution had mythical properties (such as Nature, freedom, etc.), now turn toward the racial national object, while his former accusations against society are redirected against the image of Jewry which he has constructed. The redemptive-revolutionary ideas thus form an immanent part of the antisemitic views of Richard Wagner. This Wagnerian antisemitism is one of the first of its kind and, as history has shown, one of the most calamitous.

5 Uniqueness in Context. Review of Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914–1949 Ian Kershaw’s writing on subjects related to the historiography of Nazi Germany is distinguished by his unique grasp of the historical place and ideological motivation behind the annihilation of European Jewry. In this review of his comprehensive European history of the first half of the twentieth century, I will focus on the history of the Jews within the context of the abyssal depths of destruction that characterize this period. His insights regarding the self-perception of the Jews as they faced their doom marks a new dimension of understanding in his writings and evokes reflection on the part of the reader. Throughout the entire book1 he is especially sensitive to the presence of the Jewish aspect within the framework of Europe’s broader history. To Hell and Back is the first of a two-volume history of Europe in the twentieth century, part of The Penguin History of Europe, which stretches from classical antiquity to our time. The second volume on the twentieth century, also by Kershaw, will be titled Fractured Continent: Europe 1950—The Present. Like all the volumes in this series, To Hell and Back is not annotated with footnotes, but does contain an extensive—albeit selective—bibliography that covers all the book’s themes. In Kershaw’s masterful prose, the manifold historical events and developments acquire a perspective that is extraordinarily detailed and exhaustive, yet readable as it is exact. And though the book covers one of the darkest periods of human history, the author’s humanistic approach is palpable throughout. There is no doubt that for the daunting task of producing a history of Europe in the twentieth century, with the disastrous and unprecedented role played by Nazi Germany, the publishers could not have chosen more judiciously than Ian Kershaw. This is equally true in regard to the second half of the century, in which divided Germany became the embodiment of the “fractured continent,” the focus of the Cold War, and, subsequently, the leading force for economic reconstruction in unified Europe. Kershaw’s methodological approach is chronological with thematic subdivisions; he explores and analyzes the concurrent diverse developments in broad areas of the European continent: Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, including czarist Russia and, after the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet Union as a separate entity. The book traces the major political, economic, and social

1 Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914–1949, London, Allen Lane (Penguin Books), 2015. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-006

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Fig. 10: Sir Ian Kershaw, the eminent British historian of Nazi Germany.

developments at both the macro and micro levels, yet not forgoing everyday life as well. The effect is heightened by the occasional use of personal observations by individual contemporaries drawn from diaries or letters. Kershaw posits the explosion of ethnic and integral forms of nationalism throughout Europe as one of four major interlocking elements that fomented the comprehensive crisis that was unique to these decades. Its lethal interaction with the other three—bitter and irreconcilable demands of territorial revisionism; an acute class conflict, given concrete focus through the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia; and a protracted crisis of capitalism—spawned an era of extraordinary violence that led to two world wars and brought the entire continent to the brink of self-destruction. Beginning with an overview of Europe on the eve of World War I, Kershaw makes his way to “the unleashing of a further great conflagration within a generation and the devastating collapse of civilization that this Second World War produced” (p. xix). Chapter 8, titled “Hell on Earth,” and devoted to the unspeakable horrors that attended the genocide of European Jews, is in many ways the axis around which the book revolves and will be the hub of this review. This catastrophe, together with the unprecedented levels of genocide from which the conflict cannot be separated, makes the Second World War the epicenter and the determining episode of Europe’s troubled history in the twentieth century (pp. 1ff.).

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In the ninth and penultimate chapter, Kershaw departs from the chronological structure to offer a summary of the story so far, paying special attention to the long-term changes wrought in this turbulent half century. The author tracks social and economic changes, values and beliefs, the role of the Christian churches, the reactions of the intellectuals, and the development of the “culture industry.” Kershaw’s sensitivity and open-mindedness about the Jewish presence in the history of the period is pervasive in this chapter. Most significant is his predominantly critical description of the attitude of the churches (pp. 430–447). Moreover, he presents an impressive evaluation of the creative role of the Jewish intellectuals in brilliant subchapters on the intellectuals and the European crisis (pp. 448–459) and on popular entertainment (pp. 459–469). As Kershaw noted in the chapter before, “The destruction of the Jews, in particular, had wiped out centuries of a rich cultural presence” (p. 406). Kershaw’s earlier works, with two exceptions, focused on Nazi Germany and the “Jewish Question” within the boundaries of German history itself. The first of his books that marked his advent as the future leading historian of Nazi Germany, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich (1983), opened a hitherto almost neglected field of research: the German population’s attitude toward the regime and its ideology and policy, with a special chapter devoted to the attitudes toward the Jews.2 His most recent book before the new work was a monograph published in 2011, The End: Hitler’s Germany 1944–45.3 It dealt with the absurd, cruel continuation of fighting and destruction during the last one-and-a-half years of the war, a period of incalculable suffering and havoc into which the Nazi regime dragged the entire German nation, army and civilians, prisoners of war, enslaved foreign laborers, and what remained of the Jewish prisoners. Kershaw’s collected essays, Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution,4 initiated by Yad Vashem and co-published with Yale University Press in English in 2008 and with Am Oved in Hebrew in 2011, cover the main areas of his research on Nazi Germany and the fate of the Jews. These include Hitler’s role in the “Final Solution,” the German population and the “Jewish Question,” the “Final Solution” in historiography, and the uniqueness of the historical phenomenon of Nazism.

2 Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933—1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). On this and other books about the Germans and the Jews, see also Otto Dov Kulka and Aron Rodrigue, “The German Population and the Jews in the Third Reich: Recent Publications and Trends in Research on German Society and the ‘Jewish Question,’” Yad Vashem Studies, 16 (1984), pp. 421–435. 3 Ian Kershaw, The End: Hitler’s Germany, 1944–45 (London: Penguin, 2011). 4 Idem, Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution (Jerusalem, New Haven and London: Yad Vashem and Yale University Press, 2008).

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In the opening article, “Working Towards the Führer,” Kershaw propounds his original and far-reaching thesis on the role of the ideologically motivated bureaucracy. He was thus able to resolve the prolonged and frustrating debate over the final goals of National-Socialist policy on the way to the “Final Solution” that had divided historians of the so-called “intentionalist” and “structuralist” (or “functionalist”) schools for decades. This thesis and the methodological approach already mentioned are central to Kershaw’s acclaimed monumental two-volume biography of Hitler (1998; 2000), which, in its scope and structure, is also a comprehensive political and social history of Nazi Germany. Here, too, the part played by the “Jewish Question” is an essential element in his analysis of Hitler’s life and politics.5 The first of the two exceptions mentioned above was Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World 1940–1941. While the chronological scope is limited to the two decisive years of World War II, the geographical reach is global.6 As the title indicates, Kershaw analyzes strategic decisions, almost all taken by the major powers during the “fateful” year of 1941, that changed the course of the war and the subsequent course of history. The book’s final chapter deals with Hitler’s ideological decision to annihilate European Jewry. In discussing Nazism’s attitude toward the Jews, Kershaw here offers a profound analysis of how Hitler’s ideas about the “solution of the Jewish Question” acted as a primary cause for his decision to plunge the world into war, with the aim of changing the course of human history. The Nazi image of the Jew went way beyond conventional hatreds. It presupposed the Jew as nothing less than the supreme existential [Emphasis added—O.D.K.] danger…In fact, the Jew stood for a world which was totally anathema to Nazism, a set of moral values which had filtered through both Judaism and Christianity to form the foundations of the civilization that, as he repeatedly made plain, Hitler wanted to eradicate. In this sense, Nazism amounted to an apocalyptic vision of a renewed nation and society which would arise out of the destruction and eradication of the corrosive values epitomized by the Jew. It was no less than a fundamental attempt to change the course of history, to attain national redemption by eliminating not only all Jewish influence, but the Jews themselves.7

The second exception is in fact Kershaw’s latest book, To Hell and Back, which, as its subtitle, Europe 1914–1949, indicates, transcends the limits of space and time in his work on Nazi Germany. This study places the fate of the Jews within 5 Idem, Hitler. Volume 1:1889–1936 Hubris (London: Allen Lane, 1998); Volume 2: 1936–1945 Nemesis (London: Penguin, London 2000). 6 Idem, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World 1940–1941 (New York: Penguin, 2007). 7 Ibid., p. 436.

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the context of the whole century and the entire European continent. Though the chronological sequence of the study (from the eve of World War I to the reshaping of Europe from the ruins of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War) encompasses all the major developments of this historical period, the book unavoidably leads to a nexus that is adumbrated in its title. It becomes explicit in a subsection of Chapter 8, “Hell on Earth,” titled “The Bottomless Pit of Inhumanity,” which Kershaw defines as the “epicenter and determining episode in Europe’s troubled history in the twentieth century.” At the conclusion of this crucial chapter, the author reflects on the historical meaning of the genocide of the European Jews: [T]he collapse of civilization was denoted by the German attempt to destroy physically the Jews of Europe on grounds of race alone. That this vast war had a racial project—one of genocidal destruction—at its very heart would come over time to be seen as its defining feature (p. 406).

Beginning with an analysis of what sets World War II essentially apart from World War I, this chapter goes on to place the war in a far broader historical perspective: Entering war driven by hatred and being set on eradicating—not just defeating—the enemy was the recipe for the collapse of all standards of basic humanity….The resulting hell on earth, not just for the fighting troops but also for civilians, was primarily a product of ideology. That is, who should live and who should die was in the first instance an ideological question…The clearest demonstration of the ideological priority was the singling out of Jews, among all the countless victims of the extreme violence, in what soon turned into all-out genocide (pp. 356ff.).

Kershaw then defines the context of the global historical meaning of this war and of the eradication of European Jewry. It was a descent into the abyss never previously encountered, the devastation of all the ideals of civilization that had arisen from the Enlightenment. It was a war of apocalyptic proportions, Europe’s Armageddon … . It was to be a war to destroy what he saw as the baleful power of Jews throughout Europe. In sum: a new war would rewrite history (p. 347).

Much has been written about the genocidal thrust of the “Final Solution.” Kershaw describes in detail the course of the war through all its stages and fronts, and in particular the vast dimensions of the mass murder of civilian populations. Set in this context, the uniqueness of the annihilation of Europe’s Jews—the “Final Solution”—has rarely if ever been so clearly articulated. None should be placed higher or lower in a ranking order. There were differences, however, in the motivation behind the killings, and in the essential character of the murderous programmes. No social or ethnic group other than Jews had been encapsulated in ideology, long before the war began, as a cosmic enemy of diabolic power to be eradicated.

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[Emphasis added―O.D.K.] Only Jews were carefully slated for destruction through the machinery of a meticulous bureaucracy. No other people—not even Sinti and Roma (demeaningly labeled ‘gypsies’)—were then so relentlessly destroyed in a systematic programme, not just in mass shootings but increasingly in an industrialized system of mass annihilation (p. 369).

Yet another insight distinguishes the work of Ian Kershaw, a non-Jewish historian, from the generally one-dimensional historiography that circumscribes research on Nazi persecution and annihilation. I refer to his perception of the selfunderstanding, continuity of values, and creativity of the Jews in extremis, even in facing inescapable death. Against the background of this empathetic approach, he invokes the writings of the Jewish deportee from Italy, Primo Levi, to cast light on, “what it was like to be deprived of one’s identity” in Auschwitz (p. 369). By quoting yet another Jewish voice from Auschwitz, the author makes it possible for his readers to understand in what way, “they [the Jews] kept their human dignity even as they prepared to enter the gas chambers” (p. 369). The words in this case are from a letter written by Chaim Hermann to his wife and daughter—“truly a voice from the gas chambers”—that was found in February 1946, beneath human ashes near one of the Auschwitz crematoria (ibid.). In order to evoke the atmosphere of the death camps, Kershaw turns to a powerful apocalyptic vision of the countless armies of the dead and their macabre resurrection as written by an anonymous Jewish poetess; this was literally smuggled out from the threshold of the gas chamber: And there are more and more of us down here; we swell and grow day by day; your fields are already bloated with us and one day your land will burst. And then we’ll emerge, in awful ranks, a skull on our skulls and bony shanks; and we’ll roar in the faces of all the people We, the dead, accuse! (pp. 372ff.) In these powerful, dramatic scenes of individuals hurled into “hell on earth,” Kershaw’s deep understanding of the unique place of the Jews in the context of the war and the full implications of the “Final Solution” is manifest. Indeed, sensitivity toward the fate of the Jews is evident in all the relevant periods of this work. The reader is actually able to follow the history of the Jews within the context of European history in the first half of the last century. Thus, Kershaw questions European stability during the last decades before World War I in his introductory subchapter, “A Golden Age?” He looks at the foreign and domestic

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political developments and tensions, social and economic changes, and ideological trends in relation to the roots of modern antisemitism in Germany and Austria and elucidates its core and future direction: In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the long standing, frequently vicious, forms of Jew-hatred had come to be overlain with something still worse. They were now intermixed with new, potentially lethal, race doctrines, which offered pseudo-scientific, biological justification for hatred and persecution…It was a doctrine that pointed not just to discrimination but to total exclusion. Beyond that, it was potentially the way to physical destruction (p. 19).

Within the East European context that is addressed in detail, Kershaw mentions the brutal pogroms that took place in czarist Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, and the Baltic regions, and the suffering of the Jewish population in Galicia during World War I, and, even more intensely, during the civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution (pp. 19, 48, 71–73, 77–90). Kershaw states that, “amid the wild outrages, Jews suffered worst” (p. 44), which had led to a mass flight of the Jews from the region. In the chapter “Turbulent Peace,” about the reshaping of Europe’s political structure after World War I, Kershaw discusses the deep ideological fear of Bolshevism, which was identified with the “Jewish menace,” as yet another source of accusations against the Jews in Central and Eastern Europe (p. 106). Virtually every chapter in the book reflects on at least some of the relevant aspects of Jewish history within its particular historical context. And this is not confined solely to the topics of antisemitism or the persecution of the Jews. For example, in dealing with the Spanish Civil War, Kershaw takes note of the disproportionately high number of Jewish volunteers in the International Brigade, who were out to halt the advancing forces of fascism and Nazism in Europe (p. 307). International political developments in the second half of the 1930s brought about the progressive collapse of democracy in most of the Central and East European countries and a transition to nationalist authoritarian regimes. Kershaw traces these tendencies in each country of the region. Anti-Jewish legislation was introduced in Poland, Hungary, Romania, totalitarian fascist Italy, and, above all, Nazi-occupied Austria. In Germany itself the year 1938 was marked not only by the exacerbation of the anti-Jewish laws but by outbursts of massive violence. At the end of the chapter in which Kershaw leads the reader “towards the abyss” of World War II, he contrasts views about the likelihood of its outbreak with the war’s future meaning. Gloomiest of all is the opinion of “the Austrian Jewish writer,” Stefan Zweig, which concludes the chapter:

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Few, however, perhaps felt the depth of foreboding noted in his [Zweig’s] diary…The new war, he wrote on 3 September 1939, would be ‘a thousand times worse than 1914…I am expecting everything…What a breakdown of civilization’ (p. 345)8.

In retrospect Kershaw considers the Jewish presence in a broader European context. Summarizing the results of World War II from a historical perspective, he observes that Europe’s culture had lost the rich creative heritage of generations through the destruction of the Jews (p. 406). As mentioned above, Kershaw does not conclude To Hell and Back with the usual periodization in which the end of the first half of the twentieth century is concurrent with the end of the war in 1945. In the last chapter, “Out of the Ashes,” he draws a picture of a devastated Europe, a vast number of survivors liberated from the camps, forced laborers who had been brought to Nazi Germany from all the occupied countries, and refugees who were trying to reach home or at least find a place of temporary refuge before moving on. Among those who could not turn back to their former homes were Jewish survivors or Jews who encountered new hostility and even pogroms after their return to Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia. They were housed in displaced persons’ camps operated by the Allies in West Germany, Austria, and Italy. Kershaw pays special attention to the anti-Jewish pogroms that were perpetrated in Poland and to the circumstances of their eruption. The worst such assault occurred in the city of Kielce, and Kershaw describes it in detail. He also analyzes the background to this postwar phenomenon, in which the persistence of the traditional antisemitic legend of ritual murder and the repercussions of the Nazi occupation merged into brutal animosity. The Nazi assault on Polish Jewry had, in fact, allowed many Poles to benefit from the despoliation of Jewish property. Implicit in the post-war violence was the sense that Jews still posed a threat to a social order which had partly been built on their exclusion and the expropriation of their possessions (p. 475).

The postwar reshaping of the political boundaries and ethnic structures in Central and Eastern Europe was accompanied by massive population transfers. The populations most affected were those located in the territories now annexed by the Soviet Union and in regions of Germany and Poland that endured extensive territorial changes, including Ukrainians, Poles, and, above all, millions of ethnic Germans. Under the division of the spheres of influence between the Soviet Union

8 From Stefan Zweig’s diaries written during his British exile and, as Kershaw mentions, “in imperfect English.”

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and the Western Allies, the territorial and political polarization of postwar Europe took shape as the two superpowers gradually slid into the Cold War. Western Europe’s way “out of the ashes,” in Kershaw’s portrayal, is above all marked by the beginnings of a gradual political and economic reconstruction in the shadow of the intensifying Cold War. At the end of the last chapter, he cites the formation of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) in 1948, and the establishment of NATO in the following year as symbolic developments auguring the new situation in the second half of the century. As Kershaw notes earlier in the book, the liberation of Europe from Nazi dictatorship had different effects on the two parts of Europe. Even as pluralist politics and the restoration of democratic structures gained ground in the western part of the continent, the tragic history of totalitarian dictatorships continued to shape the lives of East Europeans for more than four decades longer. The new factor of the mutually deterring destructive nuclear potential in the possession of the two superpowers, against the background of the developments within the first postwar years, fully justifies Kershaw’s challenging and innovative decision to end his book by marking the watershed between the two halves of the century at the year 1949.9 The future lay open. But amid the lasting scars, physical and moral, of the most terrible war of all time, possibilities were emerging of a more stable and prosperous Europe than could ever have been imagined within living memory, in the decades when the continent had come close to self-destruction (p. 522).

Ian Kershaw’s To Hell and Back is a comprehensive and masterly analysis of the central currents and multiple aspects of a continent’s crucial historical period and its global historical significance. It is a rare scholarly and literary achievement and demonstrates the author’s rare sensitivity to the Jewish component within the context of European history. As Kershaw notes in his preface, several other histories of Europe in the twentieth century have appeared in the past two decades. Eric Hobsbawm’s Age of Extremes (1994) and his posthumously published Fractured Times (2013) framed the following: Mark Mazower, Dark Continent (1999); Harold James, Europe Reborn (2003); Richard Vinen, A History in Fragments (2002); Bernard Wasserstein, Barbarism and Civilisation (2007).10 Clearly, then, Kershaw was well aware 9 In 1949, the Soviets exploded their first nuclear bomb, after the Americans had done so in 1945. 10 Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London: Michael Joseph, 1994); idem, Fractured Times: Culture and Society in the Twentieth Century (London: Little, Brown, 2013); Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (London: Penguin,

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of the daunting task he had undertaken in deciding to retell and reinterpret the history of Europe in the twentieth century (p. xvii). It is equally clear that he was well equipped to meet the challenge. Indeed, most reviews of To Hell and Back since its release, in September 2015, have hailed it as an extraordinary achievement in both content and style. Characteristic is Tim Bouverie’s concise review in The Guardian (October 25, 2015): [H]e [Kershaw] has achieved the remarkable feat of drawing together and comparing the histories of the entire continent, during its most turbulent years, into one highly readable volume. His thoughtful and comprehensive history is likely to become a classic.

Nigel Jones, in The Spectator (September 19, 2015), evokes Kershaw’s “much acclaimed” two-volume biography of Hitler, noting that Kershaw now seeks to repeat that accomplishment with a two-volume history of Europe. At the same time, Jones, like several other reviewers, is critical of what he perceives as Kershaw’s uneven analysis and judgment of the totalitarian regimes and the fate of their citizenry in Western and Eastern Europe: If Nazism and fascism are the predictable villains of Kershaw’s narrative, their mirror image ideology of communism—though mildly scolded for such horrors as the Ukrainian famine and the great purges—does not come off half so badly.

A similar though more scathing criticism has been leveled by Robert Gellately. Obviously under the impact of his own recently published monograph, Stalin’s Curse,11 Gellately emphasizes in his review in Times Higher Education (September 17, 2015) the prolonged suffering of populations under the Soviet regime even after the end of the war. He contrasts this sharply to Kershaw’s portrayal of the onset of the postwar economic and political reconstruction of Western Europe. The point is made unequivocally in Gellately’s closing sentence: That brings us to this book’s inappropriate title, which might fit Western Europe, although nowhere east of Berlin, where after 1945 people found themselves not back from hell, but condemned for generations to another kind of nightmare.

Quite a different approach is taken by Harold Evans in the Sunday Book Review of The New York Times (November 24, 2015). He reads Kershaw’s book from a 1999); Harold James, Europe Reborn: A History, 1914–2000 (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2003); Richard Vinen, A History in Fragments: Europe in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Da Capo, 2002); Bernard Wasserstein, Barbarism and Civilisation: A History of Europe in Our Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 11 Robert Gellately, Stalin’s Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

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contemporary perspective, as a point of departure for comparative considerations of Europe’s future. According to Evans, Kershaw’s analysis of Europe’s history in the inter-war period of highly charged national and racial tensions and resentments, conjures up the ethnic, cultural, and political strains and anxieties of contemporary Europe. Hence his Cassandran conclusion: “‘To Hell and Back’ should be required reading in every chancellery, every editorial cockpit and every place where peevish Euroskeptics do their thinking.” Evans’s positive review also singles out two key qualities of Kershaw’s scholarship: “Kershaw documents each and every ‘ism’ of his analysis with extraordinary detail and passionate humanism.” For the most part the reviews do no more than mention the six million Jews among the estimated tens of millions of civilian victims of the war. Some reviewers also refer to the industrial mass murder in death factories. This is perhaps understandable within the broad picture of a multifaceted history of a continent with half a billion citizens. Nevertheless, the distinctive role of the Nazis’ “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” and the history of the Jews under the Nazi regime as such—and in particular the unique significance attributed by Kershaw to the physical annihilation of the Jews and of “the Jewish spirit” within European civilization—was generally overlooked by reviewers. In this review of Ian Kershaw’s book, I have tried to describe and interpret the uniqueness of a historical phenomenon within its context of European history, a history that is well known and has now been retold by Kershaw in masterful prose informed by an inherently humanistic approach. I have focused on what Kershaw depicts as the epicenter of Hell.

6 Popular Opinion in Nazi Germany and the “Jewish Question” This essay seeks to examine possible approaches to research into the attitudes of the various strata in German society towards the Jews and the ‘solution of the Jewish Question’ in the Third Reich. We regard this as a necessary complement in the study of Jewish history in that period which, until now, has been examined in only two basic aspects: primarily the ideology and politics of the regime, and to a lesser extent the internal life of Jewish society and the activities of its leadership. Our work raises the problem of popular opinion in a totalitarian state, a matter seldom dealt with in connection with the Third Reich. Sources relevant to public or popular opinion in the Third Reich can be classed in two categories: open sources, published either by the government (or under its control) or by critics and opponents of the regime (mainly abroad), and secret sources, intended not for publication but for official use, as a means of gaining reliable information on the attitude of the public. Until the discovery of the secret sources, the majority of works describing this aspect of the Third Reich, tended, almost habitually, to affirm the monolithic portrait which the régime sought to foster. With the discovery of the wide-ranging secret archival material on popular opinion from various party and government sources, possibilities of research have changed radically. The government and party organizations regarded the establishment of a mechanism to provide constant, reliable and secret information on the public mood in all walks of life as necessary for efficient functioning. This was achieved through an information system in the form of situation reports (Lageberichte, hereafter Lgb.) supplied by the newly established party and state security organs, alongside the perpetuation of the civil administration’s pre-1933 system of confidential periodic reports to ministers of various Länder from their district governors. Besides these, several other independent systems of public reports existed during the Third Reich, e.g., by various party organizations as well as the national reports of the party headquarters in Munich. The most valuable sources of this kind are the reports of the SD (the security service of the SS), the Gestapo, and the district governors, and since Judentum figured among the main enemies to be tracked down and fought, special sections were devoted to this subject in the bulletins. They appear on two different levels: (l) in the reports on various ‘ideological enemies’ (weltanschauliche Gegner) of the régime, alongside such enemies as the Marxism, liberalism, the “political churches,” or freemasonry; or (2) in the reports on the public’s general mood and its attitudes towards the régime’s policy. Here, for example, the reactions of the church leadership and the laymen can be compared with those of other groups in https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-007

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the population, and we can calculate the influence of religious adherence (Catholic or Protestant) on the response to official policy towards the Jews. Similarly, it is possible to examine Marxist opposition and underground activities, as well as the specific question of their attitude towards the ‘Jewish Question’. There are several ways to examine the reliability of the sources: analysis and comparison of reports written for a parallel period by different authorities, as well as of the reports compiled on local, district, regional, and national levels. Furthermore, the guidelines and directives for preparing such reports have been preserved. They clearly show that the regime was interested in receiving reliable information—regardless of whether or not it was sympathetic to the régime—for in a totalitarian framework such authentic information was not available from any overt, public source. Over the past few years, various editions of these sources have been published, and research has been initiated on this basis. Most of these publications are limited to regional frameworks, such as the districts of Bavaria or the provinces of Prussia, and generally cover only limited periods in the lifespan of the Third Reich. They also include selections devoted specifically to affairs of defined sections of the public, such as the churches, the working classes, etc. In only one regional publication, edited by the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, can we find concentrated in two chapters various types of reports on Jews and analysis thereof.1 Yet even here they are limited to Bavaria alone.2 Only one general research work, dealing with the attitude of Germany’s population to World War II, includes

1 The most important of these publications is Heinz Boberach’s Meldungen aus dem Reich. Auswahl aus den geheimen Lageberichten des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS 1939–1944, Neuwied and Berlin, 1965; among the others we shall mention: idem, Berichte des SD und der Gestapo über Kirchen und Kirchenvolk in Deutschland 1934–1944, Mainz, 1971; Timothy W. Mason, Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft. Dokumente und Materialien zur deutschen Arbeiterpolitik 1936–1939, Opladen, 1975; Bernhard Vollmer (ed.), Volksopposition im Polizeistaat. Gestapo- und Regierungsberichte 1934–1936, Stuttgart, 1957; Helmut Witetschek (ed.), Die kirchliche Lage in Bayern nach den Regierungspräsidentenberichten 1933–1943, Vol. I, Mainz, 1966; Robert Thévoz, Hans Branig, Cecile Lowenthal-Hensel (eds.), Die Geheime Staatspolizei in den preussischen Ostprovinzen 1934–1936. Pommern im Spiegel van Gestapo-Lagebetichten und Sachakten, Köln and Berlin, 1974. For further publications of these and similar sources see Kulka, “‘Public Opinion’ in National-Socialist Germany and the ‘Jewish Question’” (Hebrew with English summary and documentary appendix in German), in Zion, Quarterly of Jewish History 40 (1975): 186–290, esp.194–195, and fn.18–22. The present article is a shortened version of the abovementioned Hebrew article with only its partial footnotes apparatus. 2 Falk Wiesemann, “Judenverfolgung und nichtjüdische Bevölkerung 1933–1944,” in: Martin Broszat et al. (eds.), Bayern in der NS-Zeit, Vol. I, München, 1977, 427–486; Ian Kershaw, “An-

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a short chapter devoted to the subject of the Jews (during that period alone),3 and only one special article addresses itself exclusively to the attitude of the German public towards the persecution and annihilation of the Jews, and is likewise limited to the war years.4 The uniqueness of our project, carried out in Jerusalem, is that it assembles material on the attitude of the German population towards the Jews from reports of various kinds (e.g., weekly, monthly, yearly; local, district, and country-wide reports) prepared by various arms and organizations of the régime. They have been collected, restored from fragments, and even reconstructed from secondary sources found in several archives in the Bundesrepublik, the DDR, and other countries. Furthermore, the collected material covers the entire lifespan of the Third Reich and is drawn from all over Germany. The description emerging from the reports on the varied and changing attitudes of the population towards the government and its policies in certain spheres contradicts the wholly monolithic portrait which the government invariably presented as its achievement and justification of its régime. This contradiction provoked dissension within government circles and, in turn, led to conflicts over the question of continuing the reports and the extent of their internal distribution. Nevertheless, several types of reports continued to appear until the end of the war. Before we turn to a discussion of this subject itself, we can sum up the methodological problems of examining these sources and assessing their historical significance in a single pronouncement: Whatever the final conclusion on the degree of their reliability, one thing is clear: the reports reveal the picture presented to the régime and thus served it in its deliberations and decisions. In this respect there is no doubt that this kind of popular opinion influenced, or could have influenced, the implementation of the régime’s anti-Jewish policy in its various stages.5 On the following pages we shall examine this popular opinion in relation to three crucial stages in the ‘solution of the Jewish Question’ in the Third Reich: the

tisemitismus und Volksmeinung. Reaktion auf die Judenverfolgung,” in: ibid., Vol. II, München, 1979, 281–348. 3 Marlis G. Steinert, Hitler’s War and the Germans. Public Mood and Attitude during the Second World War, Athens, Ohio, 1977. 4 Lawrence D. Stokes, “The German People and the Destruction of the European Jews,” in: Central European History VI (1973): 167–191. 5 More detailed discussion of the methodological problems appears in section one of the original unabridged study in Zion as in fn.1, which has not been included here.

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promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, the Kristallnacht, and the deportations and mass annihilation of the Jews between 1941 and 1943.

The Nuremberg Laws The two new ‘constitutional laws’—one abolishing the equal rights of the Jews, the other to ensure the ‘protection of German blood’—were adopted at a special session of the Reichstag on the occasion of the National-Socialist Party’s ‘Freedom Convention’ in Nuremberg on September 15, 1935. Hitler’s Reichstag speech advocating the adopting of the laws concluded with an unequivocal declaration: ‘The National Socialist Party stands behind all three laws and the nation stands with it in support of the laws’. This depiction of monolithic identification with the Nuremberg anti-Jewish legislation, reinforced by the ecstatic support of the masses in attendance at the party rally, was naturally reflected in the German press and made an impression upon contemporary observers in other countries. But how were the laws actually received by the German population and what were they understood to mean? In addressing this Question, we can base our examination on a comprehensive collection of monthly Gestapo and district governors’ situation reports, covering all the districts of Prussia and Bavaria for the months AugustNovember 1935. The first conclusion to emerge from a perusal of these reports is that the response of the German public to the Nuremberg Laws was far from uniform. In several districts the majority took a positive view of the laws and stressed the importance of the very establishment of a formal legal framework for dealing with the Jewish question. The prevailing view in these districts was that the laws constituted a desirable solution insofar as they promoted the social, cultural and biological segregation of the Jews from the German population and even created a framework for the ‘autonomous’ life of the Jews as a minority group. A statement characteristic of this type of reaction appears in the Berlin district Lgb. for September: The new laws issued by the Reichstag at the Freedom Convention, i.e., The Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, have finally established a clear relationship between Jews and Germans after years of struggle. Jews will be relegated to a minority status and given the opportunity to develop their own cultural and national lives under the protection of the law. Any interference whatsoever in the national affairs of the German people is forever rendered impossible and strictly forbidden. The laws were generally received with great satisfaction and enthusiasm.

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The Lgb. from other districts, especially those in the western provinces of Prussia, portray a different picture in underscoring that most of the population had reservations, or expressed outright criticism of the legislation. Thus, we read the following in the general introduction to the Aachen district report for that month: The new laws announced in Nuremberg were not received by unanimous acclaim… The Jewish legislation is not approved of in ecclesiastical circles, which comes as no surprise considering the well-known mentality of the local Catholic population. Only in the sense that they neutralize excesses in anti-Semitic propaganda and riots are the Jewish laws welcomed. In fact, it would be commendable if the anti-Semitic riots, which are condemned by the majority of the people, would cease. During the month covered by this report, several more individual attacks against Jews were reported. This caused more damage than good among the local population, especially considering the proximity to the borders of the Reich.

Specific examples of statements from the published (and confiscated) sermons of evangelical preachers that contradict the National-Socialist Weltanschauung and are critical of the racial measures taken by the government, appear in the September Lgb. from the city of Speyer and the Pfalz (Palatinate) district. In this context the Lgb. also reports on the continuing debate within the Evangelical church about admitting Jews who wished to convert. Those in favour were from the Bekenntnisfront camp. However, the introduction to the report also states: the new state laws passed by the German Reichstag in Nuremberg on September 15, 1935, were definitely approved by the majority of the population. The new regulations finally eliminated some of the causes of dispute.

The population of Allenstein, a city with a Catholic majority related to the Jews differently from the Protestant population of the surrounding cities and the district as a whole. This picture emerges from the October report on the Königsberg district in East Prussia, which reported not only an antithetical reaction to the Nuremberg Laws but also a strong fabric of day-to-day economic and social relations. The report states: In the city of Allenstein, with a predominantly Catholic population, it must be conceded that shopping continued in the Jewish stores... Furthermore, a portion of the Catholic population is friendly to the Jews and shows little understanding for the new racial laws. For this reason, one cannot point to any tangible outcome of the anti-Semitism or a substantial decline in the Jewish population in Allenstein itself. In contrast, the picture in the other cities of the region is quite different.

Religious background was not the only factor associated with criticism of the Nuremberg Laws. The Lgb. identify another social and ideological camp common to opponents of the laws, namely bourgeois liberal circles and the intelligentsia.

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A typical description of their ‘failure to comprehend’ the ideas of National Socialism and its policy towards the Jews is found in the September report for the Halle district: The arrests made at the beginning of the month for racial desecration revealed the usual criminal picture of this inferior race. The development of the Jewish problem as a whole was decisively influenced, of course, by the Nuremberg Reichstag Laws. The laws were received with understanding by a considerable part of the population—even in non-National Socialist circles. It can generally be said that an awareness of this basic issue of National-Socialist Weltanschauung continues to grow among the people. Lack of proper understanding is prominent mainly among the members of the so-called upper and better-educated classes. It is especially in these circles that we are often able to discern an almost complete loss of the racial primal instinct. They believe—reminiscent of the cessation of submarine warfare [in World War I]—that it is possible to avoid an inescapable fight by making concessions to the enemy in a specific area.

Yet, for the first two months after the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, hardly anything was heard from another important class and ‘ideological enemy’ whose activity among the population was under surveillance, the Social Democrats and the Communists. Unlike the two major churches for which the racial laws constituted a pressing and concrete problem (at least with regard to their attitude towards converts, the continuation of conversion and marriage), at that stage the German left apparently was not interested in focusing on the specifically antiational-Social Semitic character of the regime. Instead it strove to pronounce the class character of fascist repression and the struggle against it by emphasizing the social and economic hardships resulting from the régime’s domestic policy and the certainty that its foreign policy would lead to war. The one exception, of special importance, appears in the September Gestapo Lgb. on Berlin. Here, too, no response of the left is mentioned in the special sections devoted to ‘Marxism’, ‘Social Democracy’, etc.—or in the sections devoted to the Jews, but it appears in a special section that traces ‘the distribution of inflammatory literature’ and reports the confiscation of hundreds of ‘leaflets and handbills of the illegal Communist party and other hostile elements’. As the introductory comment to this section notes, the salient subject of some of these circulars is ‘incitement against anti-Semitism … , and the attempt to influence the population by means of this [literature]’. Characteristic among the headlines of these handbills are such examples as: ‘We hate no race, / We hate the capitalist base’; ‘Whether he Christian or Jewish be, / The capitalist is the worker’s enemy’; ‘Workers! Open your eyes! The agitation against the Jews is meant to divert your attention from all the broken Nazi promises’; ‘We workers are not only fighting against [the Jewish owned companies] Wertheim and Tietz, / We are also fighting against Siemens and Krupp’.

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The report continues to quote extensively from a leaflet dealing with this subject entitled Anti-Stürmer: A Pamphlet ‘Against Anti-Semitism and Racial Hatred,’ in the form of a manifesto addressed to the working population: Anti-Semitism as a diversion tactic is not an invention of National Socialism, but an age-old tested means for all economic systems based on exploitation. The best examples from recent times, which could well have served as a model for the leaders of the Third Reich, are the recurring pogroms in pre-war Czarist Russia. These aimed at deflecting the dissatisfied masses of peasants from recognizing their real oppressors and served as an outlet for their general dissatisfaction and indignation. The Hitler régime in Germany is acting on the basis of this example... Turn all anti-Semitic rallies into anti-fascist demonstrations. Ask those at the rallies and the curious bystanders whether food prices are reduced through the closing of Jewish stores or whether salaries are increased as a result of the attacks on the Jews. Don’t stop halfway. Combine your struggle against anti-Semitism with that against fascism itself. Join the ranks of the anti-fascist People’s Front in their struggle against hunger and barbarism. Consider the fact that new reductions and salary cuts are coming. The preparations for war are being pursued with increasing ardour. The living standard of the people will become ever more depressed. They will try to divert your attention from your want through the instigation against the Jews. Don’t let yourselves be misled by your exploiters. Don’t remain idle. He who witnesses such developments with his own eyes and tolerates them makes himself an accomplice and becomes equally responsible for all future atrocities...

No authorship is indicated here, but the content is clearly congruent with Marxist principles and rhetoric. Following are two other selections from similar leaflets, which are expressly ascribed to Communist sources, but neither of these mention anti-Semitism. The second refers to the Nuremberg Party Convention but does not mention the anti-Jewish legislation, limiting itself to an attack on the renewed militarization of Germany and the enslavement of the German masses by the war machine. Another aspect of the critical attitude towards the anti-Semitic Nuremberg legislation—or at least concern about its possible ramifications—was especially noticeable among economic circles. I am referring to apprehension about the response of the Western world, and especially the possibility that the economic boycott of Germany would be intensified. Such fears related specifically to retaliatory measures that might be taken by Jews and economic circles under their sway in various countries. The problem is discussed in the bi-monthly report of the Munich police administration for the months of August-September under the subheading ‘General Survey of Developments in Domestic Policy’:

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The new legislation, for which the Reichstag had been called to Nuremberg, was the subject of lively discussion among the population. The law mentioned above [i.e., The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour] was generally approved. However, in commercial circles, the fear was expressed that anti-German elements abroad would use these laws as a pretext for boycotting the German economy.

Later on in this report, mention is made of anxiety based on ‘serious discussion of this matter at the recent Zionist Congress last month’. Similarly, various Lgb. from Prussia report concern about the prospect of aggravated economic measures and present concrete data on the spread of the boycott (the cancellation of export orders and of participation in the Leipzig Fair with the Nuremberg Laws explicitly cited as the reason) that was brought to the attention of the authorities by ‘authoritative economic and industrial circles’. Yet another kind of critical response voiced by the population to NationalSocialist anti-Semitism related to the Nuremberg Laws were the many objections to the propaganda style of the notorious anti-Semitic weekly Der Stürmer. Thus the September-October Lgb. from Merseburg states that the ‘Nuremberg Laws have met with general approval’ but goes on to assert: ‘The propaganda methods of Der Stürmer came in for sharp criticism. It is generally agreed that Der Stürmer has accomplished its task.’ Streicher and his paper had indeed played no small pan in fanning the wave of violent, vulgar anti-Semitism characteristic of the months prior to the passage of the Nuremberg Laws. The outbursts took the form primarily of public abuse of those charged with ‘racial desecration’. Moreover, anti-fascist popular opinion (as well as much of the research literature) identified Streicher and his paper as the moving spirit behind the Third Reich’s policy on the ‘Jewish question’. It is therefore interesting to note that a no less critical stand on Streicher and his newspaper—based in part on the public mood reflected in these reports—was also adopted by the Department of Warfare Against Jewry (Section II 112 in the SD-Hauptamt), under the direction of Herbert Hagen and Adolf Eichmann. They regarded themselves as expositors and executors of Hitler’s views and, like him, had reservations about vulgar emotional anti-Semitism—with its rioting and brutality—as an end in itself, for not only did such conduct lack purposiveness, it had a ‘repulsive effect on the enlightened population’. Yet none of this prevented Section II 112 from recommending the deliberate and controlled exploitation of ‘popular rage that expresses itself in violent outbursts’ as a psychological instrument for honing the Jews’ historical sensitivity to ‘a hostile atmosphere that could spontaneously turn against [them] at any moment’. This strategy was of course only a means for attaining the ‘provisional goal’ for that stage of the policy for solving the Jewish question, namely forcing the Jews out of various spheres of life in Germany and stepping up the pressure on them to emigrate.

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The most cogent version of this approach appears in a memorandum prepared a year later by Section II 112 and presented to the head of the SD and the Gestapo, Reinhard Heydrich, in January 1937. Under the section heading ‘Intensification of Political Pressure’, sub-sections ‘Information’ and ‘Intimidation’, we read: Since attacks of the Der Stürmer type rarely command attention any more, because this kind of warfare is discredited by the enlightened population as extremely primitive and an insult to good taste, propaganda built more along the lines of intellectual persuasion and a rational approach would probably be more effective. Consideration should be given to the widespread use of statistics as a means of influencing the people... The most effective means for depriving the Jews of their sense of security is the rage of the people manifesting itself in violent outbursts. Although this method is illegal it has a considerably long-lasting effect— so much so that even Jews from Palestine no longer dare to come to Germany. This reaction is readily understandable from a psychological standpoint, since the Jew has learned quite a lesson from the riots and pogroms of the last centuries and nothing frightens him more than a hostile atmosphere that could spontaneously turn against him at any moment.

Clearly, then, reservations about Der Stürmer did not necessarily have a direct bearing on one’s attitude either to the Nuremberg Laws or the principles underlying them. Indeed, as we have seen in many cases popular opinion regarded the discriminatory and degrading Nuremberg Laws as the permanent framework of a ‘legal solution’ designed inter alia to contain or channel unbridled anti-Jewish terror. This brings us to the last subject in our account of the public’s reaction to the Nuremberg Laws (and the one most extensively discussed in the reports): terrorism, rioting and denunciations by radical anti-Semitic elements, especially within the various party organizations. Contrary to the rather paradoxical directives (issued along with the Nuremberg Laws) to guarantee the personal safety of the Jews, these radical elements viewed the enactment of the racial laws as an endorsement and encouragement of the locally instigated persecution and violence that had led up to the legislation. According to the reports from various districts, the incitement and violent outbursts reached their peak in some places in April-May 1935, in other places in September (the month of the party convention) and still elsewhere they remained at that level of intensity for several months afterwards. The actions of the extremist elements included demonstrations against ‘racial desecrators’—both Jews and Aryans alike—and subjecting them to public abuse; the stationing of guards in front of Jewish businesses to enforce the boycott; harassment, threats and demonstrations against those who violated the boycott; vandalistic attacks on Jewish homes and businesses; the desecration of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries; offensive or threatening anti-Semitic graffiti and signs on Jewish homes or in the streets; denunciations and acts of violence,

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abuse and humiliation against individual Jews or those suspected of being Jews, all at the whim of the instigators. A typical internal contradiction into which the authorities and the National Socialist ‘zealots’ found themselves drawn during the first months after the legislation of the Nuremberg Laws is described in the Gestapo Lgb. for the Trier district: The outbursts against individual Jews and Jewish property have not relented despite the repeated strictest instructions... To the extent that the perpetrators could be apprehended, measures were initiated against them and dossiers were submitted to the Prosecutor’s Office. In almost all cases, the investigations have not yet been concluded. They encounter enormous difficulties and are doomed to end in futility because every member of the movement -including the political counsellors and the squadron leaders!!!—has not been convinced of the absolute forthrightness of the regulation banning ‘individual actions’. Again and again one encounters condescending smiles, as if to say: ‘We know better! [It’s] only for reasons of foreign policy’.

In some places the police stepped in to halt acts of terror only after maltreatment of Jews aroused spontaneous popular opposition to the instigators of the ‘undesirable venture’. A characteristic description of such a situation appears in the summarizing Lgb. for the former land of Anhalt, which was prepared in its capital, Dessau. Following a list of incidents of terror and harassment that occurred during the months of August and September, we find an account of a ‘very stupid special action’ in which two Jewish welfare cases from Jessnitz were forced to march through the city with large signs suspended from their necks denouncing violators of the anti-Jewish boycott. ‘The result was the creation of a popular mood that was partly responsible for people intervening on behalf of the Jews. Once the situation was reported the action was immediately halted by the local authorities.’ The introduction to the same report, which gives a general account of the reaction to the Nuremberg Laws in Anhalt, states: The rare expressions of criticism voiced against these laws arise primarily from the so-called better bourgeois circles, which have still not developed the proper attitude to the imperatives of the racial policy.

A report from Bielefeld in Westphalia stated that ‘the wave of anti-Semitism was quite clearly manifested in the district as early as the beginning of the month’. Here too we find the typical listing of local acts of terror and propaganda ventures, including an account of the desecration of a synagogue in Minden and the texts of graffiti and signs posted in various places, e.g., ‘Jews are not human beings’; ‘Death to the Jew’; ‘Go back to Palestine’; ‘Jews have no reason to snoop around here’; ‘Whoever knows a Jew, knows the Devil’; and the like. The account of the synagogue desecration is followed by a description of plans for further actions, such as:

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… to disgrace the Jewish bank director in Bielefeld in the town square because of his reputation ‘as a violator of a blond German girl’ and to lead him through the city with a sign around his neck. A number of inhabitants have already banded together to carry out this plan. In a similar spirit, an action was planned against the Jew S.G., resident of Bielefeld... But due to the enactment of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour and the directives from the Führer to refrain from individual initiatives in fighting Jews, out of consideration of both foreign and economic policy, the planned actions were not executed.

This same report also describes a demonstration by the residents of the town of Brackwelde protesting the stationing of boycott guards in front of a Jewish department store. But that account is followed by details of another demonstration in the town of Paderborn, where an enraged mob converged on the town hall because the wife of a senior municipal official was known to shop in a Jewish department store. The demonstrators dispersed after the city police persuaded them to cooperate. Statistical data on the number and causes of arrests by the Munich police in that city’s August-September Lgb. reveal that of the twenty different types of ‘political infractions’, the greatest number of arrests (eighteen in August and thirty-two in September) were for ‘racial desecration’. The following are the most frequent reasons for arrests by the Political Department of the Munich police: Type of violation

August

September

Racial desecration

18

32

Insulting leading personalities

16

23

Suspicion of illegal activity on behalf of the Communist Party (suspicion of abetting high treason)

12

2

Spreading rumours about atrocities

4

2

Espionage and high treason

2

-

With regard to those arrested for ‘racial desecration’, the Lgb. explains that: they were detained under police arrest because accusations related to this matter were raised against them by elements in the population and there was a threat to their personal security. Most of them were taken into ‘protective custody’… .[the Jewish men] to the Dachau Concentration Camp.

A similar picture emerges from the appendix to the August Gestapo Lgb. for the Berlin district. We may therefore conclude that the legislation was essentially meant to provide ex post facto legal approbation to pressures and initiatives that had already been aroused or released by ideology and propaganda. Indeed, the ‘war against the Jews’ and the arrests, many of which were carried out in response to public pressure (usually on the initiative of extremist elements in the

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party organizations) had become a common feature of life in the Third Reich long before the laws were passed. On the other hand, the festive proclamation of the anti-Semitic racial laws in Nuremberg—as evidence that the planks of the original party platform were being manifested as a constitutive part of the social and political reality of the Third Reich—should be seen in the light of the régime’s need to come to grips with the public mood during the preceding months. The growing mood of indifference, disillusion and disgruntlement among the population at large and even within the National-Socialist movement itself, seemed to be turning into a crisis of confidence in the régime and the expectation that it would soon be ousted. At the same time, the results of the ubiquitous anti-Semitic campaigns addressed to the masses proved to be ambivalent, meeting with either rejection and reservations, or abounding success that expressed itself in waves of uncontrollable ‘revolutionary’ violence and placed the institutions responsible for maintaining ‘law and order’ in a situation they regarded as perilous. Detailed evidence to this effect can be found in the August Lgb. from the Berlin district (referred to earlier): ‘The mood on the domestic front’ was influenced particularly by the difficult economic situation, and for that reason the report first described the dangerous developments primarily among the ‘working population’, as ‘widespread subversive criticism of the state and, no less dangerous, word-of-mouth propaganda opposing every imaginable government institution and measure’: The state of affairs in all other areas of domestic policy has continued to deteriorate in an alarming manner. On the one hand, the circles that were only superficially won over to National Socialism are turning their backs on the movement; on the other, in contrast [sic!], it is precisely those sectors of the people, with a National-Socialist outlook, that are beginning to dissociate themselves from the party in greater and greater numbers. Dangerous though the former instance may be, the latter is of far greater significance.

After citing various reasons for this development, including the usual complaint that the ‘promises made during the period of struggle were not kept’ and that ‘corruption is steadily spreading through the party organizations’, the special section devoted to the Jews has the following to say on this same subject of disillusionment and discontent: no basic change has taken place in the anti-Semitic movement as compared with the previous month... The people and the party are complaining of the lack of a clear line in the policy for dealing with the Jews. As detailed in the previous Lgb., there is conspicuous redundancy in the work of the state and the party regarding the Jewish question. This must be remedied urgently, since these clashes are at the expense of the few remaining party activists. The measures taken against them by the authorities meet with little understanding because the state is held responsible for the prevailing atmosphere of general confusion. At any rate, police methods alone will not be able to prevent a repetition of the anti-Jewish demonstrations.

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The picture that emerges from most of the August Lgb.,—i.e.,on the eve of the party convention and the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws—is more or less similar, the variations being in the scope of the anti-Semitic propaganda and especially in the public response to it. There is no doubt, then, that popular opinion, as brought to the authorities’ attention by the Lgb. played some role in the determination of government policy. The promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws had two objectives: the demonstrative realization of a basic plank in the ‘revolutionary’ ideology preached by the National-Socialist movement since its inception as a political force; and the institutionalization within a controllable framework of the revolutionary ideology and its militant manifestations for the benefit of domestic no less than for foreign consumption. Thus the legislation of the Nuremberg Laws appears to be a stage in the development of the régime and society of the Third Reich in which the original positions of National Socialism on the ‘Jewish question’ were formally realized through a complex dialectical relationship between government policy and popular opinion. This same dynamic is also essential to other decisive stages in the development and realization of fundamental ideological positions in the Third Reich. Against this background we are able to distinguish four principal types of reactions to the Jewish issue: (1) Viewing the Nuremberg Laws as the framework of a permanent solution for the political and social status of the Jews by establishing a clear and binding definition of the areas of segregation and discrimination (as well as areas and boundaries of independent Jewish activity) and by creating a division of authority between party organizations and state organs for maintaining law and order. (2) Objections, criticism and even open opposition to the racial laws and the principles underlying them, as well as to acts of terror and abuse perpetrated against Jews by groups of citizens or party organs. In some cases, both the laws and the acts of terror are deplored, although it was also true that only one or the other elicited a negative response. Objections solely to the acts of terror are reported more frequently than objections to the laws and are even expressed by those who favoured the racial legislation. Among the ‘Ideological enemies’ of National Socialism who take an explicitly negative stand on the régime’s policy towards the Jews are laymen and clergy of both churches (but primarily Catholics) and the bourgeois liberal intelligentsia. Another active and persecuted enemy of the régime, the Communist and SocialDemocratic Left, is conspicuous in its prevailing passivity regarding this issue, even though many of the arrested activists were identified in the Lgb. as Jews and the régime saw a connection between their racial origin, ideological

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belief and anti-fascist activities. (The report from Berlin on the underground agitation against anti-Semitism in this spirit seems to be an exception.) Another type of critical response to the Nuremberg Laws, anti- Jewish terror and especially the showy economic boycott of the Jews was based on purely pragmatic considerations, i.e., fear of economic reprisals against Germany. This attitude is not always identified with a specific population group. In several districts and population centers the generally negative response is portrayed as the majority view, though more often it is depicted as the attitude of a minority or of isolated circles or individuals or the report refrains from assessing its prevalence. (3) Active identification with the anti-Semitic propaganda that was conducted with special intensity in the months prior to the Nuremberg party congress, and acceptance of the anti-Semitic legislation as a license for acts of boycott and terror, anti-Jewish demonstrations and the public degradation of the Jews—all of which were locally instigated and most often by party organizations (the most active of which was the SA). The radical anti-Semitic elements, portrayed in most of the Lgb. as an active minority, found it difficult to resolve the contradiction between anti-Semitic incitement on the part of the ruling party and government figures and the legal restrictions on translating official ideology into the language of rioting, public abuse and other acts of violence against Jews, their property or their institutions. Similarly, the police and the Gestapo in various places hesitated or found it difficult to act in the spirit of this contradiction and explain to the local ‘activists’ that their actions would have to be investigated and that they would be required to stand trial. In any event, it should be noted that acts of terror were perpetrated against the Jews in all districts and virtually in every location, although for the months we examined their tendency to multiply or diminish is not uniform. In general it can be said that the explicit instructions to refrain from acts of terror which were issued at about the same time as the Nuremberg Laws, did have an effect in most districts, although in some it is clear that the number of such acts did not decline from August to September (when the laws were promulgated) or the two succeeding months. Similarly data on the arrests of Jews for ‘racial desecration’ and ‘antigovernment conduct’ before and after the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, as well as accounts of the role played by public pressure in these arrests, indicate that the legislation did not serve to increase the number of arrests in the spirit of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour. Instead it constituted a response to public and ‘movement’ pressures and institutionalized them in controllable framework.

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(4) Only very few Lgb. fail to mention some public reaction to the Nuremberg Laws, although all of them cite responses to the law concerning the state flag, which was passed together with the anti-Jewish legislation. Similarly, in every district there is mention of locally instigated acts of terror against Jews. Nevertheless, the Lgb. seem to imply that quite a sizeable portion of the population was indifferent to ideological and political concerns, including the laws discriminating against the Jews (although this is less true in the case of acts of violence against Jews). We may therefore draw two general conclusions about the relationship between popular opinion and government policy during the period under discussion. The picture of popular opinion that emerges here is markedly different from the one drawn from readily accessible sources or the subjective assessments which have influenced the historiography until now. No less important is the fact that it was this description of popular opinion that was served up to the régime and supplied a basis for its deliberations and assessments of the situation in shaping its policy towards the Jews. It therefore follows that a familiarity with the régime’s sources on popular opinion at this and every other stage in the evolution of the policy regarding ‘the Jewish question’ is indispensable for the scholarship in this field, not only as a means of gauging popular feeling, but because these sources were a factor that influenced decision-making all the way up to the last, fateful decision on the ‘Final Solution’ and throughout the period of its harrowing execution.

The Munich Crisis and Kristallnacht The Kristallnacht riots of November 10, 1938 were the most forceful expression of the blatant radicalization of National Socialist anti-Jewish policy in 1938– 1939. The riots were preceded by increasing anti-Jewish pressure from various circles within the régime—especially the security service of the SS- and by flood of anti-Jewish legislation beginning in February 1938. Following the riots came another long series of restrictive laws, consummating in the social isolation of the Jews and their exclusion from the country’s economic life. The destruction wrought on Kristallnacht has been described by a number of sources. It is nevertheless of value to see how the authorities related to the event. In the SD’s summary report for 1938, there is account of: … the action taken against the Jews throughout the Reich following the murder of the secretary to the ambassador in Paris, vom Rath, by a Jew of Polish citizenship, Feivel Grynszpan... The actions generally took the form of destroying or burning synagogues and

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demolishing almost all Jewish shops... Jewish apartments were damaged as well. Valuable archival pieces and art treasures were destroyed through the inattentiveness or ignorance of the participants. A number of Jews were killed or wounded while trying to resist. In order to increase the pressure towards emigration, some 25,000 Jewish males were simultaneously transported to concentration camps, some of them only temporarily. The operation was followed by regulations against the Jews in the form of laws and decrees.

The report goes on to describe details regarding the law barring the Jews from German economic life, as well as their final exclusion from German cultural life and education. Beyond that, the Jews were required to pay a fine of one billion Reich marks as compensation for the damage incurred during the action. The relatively extensive research on the Kristallnacht riots generally agrees that the SS did not initiate the action and that the SD even opposed rioting as a method for the ‘solution of the Jewish question’. Our study indicates, however, that the SD not only approved the controlled and purposeful use of violence, but in a January 1937 memorandum explicitly recommended use of this method. Early in February 1938, following the radical changes that Hitler had effected in Germany, the Zionist leadership outside of Germany received information from ‘a very reliable private source—one which can be traced back to me highest echelons of SS leadership, that there is an intention to carry out a genuine and dramatic pogrom in Germany on a large scale in the near future’. Thus even though the SS (which at that stage played the major role in formulating the policy on the ‘Jewish question’) did not directly initiate the rioting on the night of November 10, 1938, throughout the preceding months and years it had advocated concrete ideas and plans of a similar nature. Two years earlier, following the murder of the head of the National-Socialist Party in Switzerland, Wilhelm Gustloff, by a Jew, David Frankfurter, Hitler himself had considered imposing a collective punishment and fine on the Jews of Germany, but for various reasons the plan was not carried out at the time. The Lgb. also indicate another factor that served as background to the riots some time before vom Rath’s murder and Goebbels’ well-known initiative, namely the public’s tension and fears of war breaking out during the Munich crisis and the consequent anti-Jewish reactions during September and October 1938. An indication to this effect is found in a draft of the SD national Lgb. of November 1, 1938, which describes the development of the public’s attitude on the issue, as follows: In the past few months the attitude of the population regarding the Jewish question was manifested by particularly numerous individual actions mostly promoted by the local party organizations.

Reports from the Bavarian districts fully confirm the national SD summary and explain the motives for the ‘individual actions’. Thus we find the following in the

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section entitled ‘Jews’ in the Lgb. for the districts of Upper and Central Franconia covering the events of September-October: As I mentioned in last month’s report, the eventful days in September, both in Franconia and elsewhere, caused the Jews to emerge from their previous timidity and shrewd resistance and show their true faces. They wish a war and are eager for it to happen.

This statement is followed by a description of the Jews’ disappointment and despondency following Hitler’s triumph in Munich and the reaction of the people of Franconia: For those people in Franconia who have long been thoroughly enlightened about the Jewish question, this situation has become unbearable. The behaviour of the Jews is regarded as a provocation that in many cases has aroused overt outrage and rebellion against these traitors to the fatherland.

The next paragraphs contain a detailed listing of assaults on Jews in acts of violence and destruction, including the expulsion of Jews from various places in Bavaria. A similar reaction to the Munich crisis is recorded in the September report from Würzburg, dated October 10, 1938 (very soon after the event itself). The general introduction states that: While there was general indignation over the Czech excesses, the mood of the populace was very dejected due to the fears that the situation could deteriorate into large-scale military actions... During this tense time, it was noted that the Jews revived and seemed happy. Individual Jews even gave vent to malicious gloating and expressed the hope that matters would now take a turn.

There follow examples of such statements and the public response in the form of rioting which included breaking into the homes of Jews, beating them and destroying their property, and in one instance the destruction of a synagogue in the town of Miltenstein is also reported. A similar account, relating to a long list of places in Central Franconia, appears in the October report on Würzburg. However, the author of this report calls the rioting ‘unacceptable’ and adds: ‘It cannot be denied that such riots put the police in a very difficult position’. Here we find an atmosphere similar to the anti-Jewish ferment of radical elements prior to the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, and the position adopted by the régime—as it appeared to the author of the report—hardly differs from the one assumed after the proclamation of the laws in 1935. Now, however, the rioting proves to be more serious and broader in scope and, as we shall see, the régime’s attitude towards it changed very quickly. No account of the rioting

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in September-October 1938, or even mention of it, can be found in the historiography of the Third Reich. It was most probably overlooked because of the great impression made by the events that followed in November. Yet these riots were a precedent that cleared the way for the wave of destruction, violence and arrests which gained momentum from the virulent anti-Jewish propaganda of November 8–10 (following news of the attack on vom Rath’s life), spread far and wide and was organized on the national level into the Kristallnacht pogroms. The reaction of the population to the Kristallnacht riots and the dimensions of the state-inspired destruction was in many cases dissentient and even critical. Alongside indications of agreement with the government’s measures (underscoring the collective responsibility of the Jews for the assassination in Paris), an increasingly critical tone began to spread even within that sector of the population usually supportive of the régime, not to mention opposition circles and ‘enemies of the régime’. As we shall see below, in contrast to the reactions to the Nuremberg Laws, objections were now voiced not only by the churches, the liberal bourgeoisie and the conservative ‘reactionaries’ but also by the Left, including the underground Communist Party. The outstandingly characteristic aspect of most of these reactions, however, is not so much denunciation of the anti-Jewish acts on moral grounds as criticism based on essentially pragmatic considerations. This comes out in the repeated statements denouncing the destruction of property and the economic damage being done to the German people and to the state’s plans for the economy. It is against this background that we can later discern a ‘gradual improvement’ in the popular mood, especially after a fine of one billion marks was imposed on Jewish property. Here we find that the intensive ‘information’ campaign about the tremendous wealth still concentrated in Jewish hands—compared to the average holdings of the rest of the German population—was likewise a success. We shall now examine a number of concrete instances and try to ascertain their relationship to political and religious attitudes and other background factors. In the November report from Speyer (Palatinate district) we find the following assessment: With very few exceptions, the populace had been anti-Jewish long before the cowardly murder was committed. They now welcome the legal measures taken by the government of the Reich, especially the imposition of a fine [of one billion marks] to compensate for damages, and find them justified. The exposure of the great wealth in Jewish hands considerably contributed to this. The public at large also agreed with the transport of Jews to the Dachau concentration camp. Some people expressed regret, however, that valuable objects were destroyed during the Nov. 11, 1938 demonstration. They felt that if these valuables had been distributed to the poorer classes through party and state agencies, it would have been in the spirit of the slogan ‘Fight against Waste’ and saving raw materials.

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Similar views are advanced in the reports from Würzburg, Munich and Regensburg. The latter also underscores the fear that the wildly destructive impulse of the masses might be reawakened: The Jewish murder of the German secretary to the ambassador in Paris roused wild outrage in all circles of the population. It was generally expected that the government of the Reich would retaliate. Therefore, the legal measures taken against the Jews met with complete approval. For exactly this reason, however, a large part of the population displayed far less understanding for the spontaneous acts perpetrated against the Jews. Moreover, the action was even condemned by a good number of party circles. People viewed the wreckage of shop windows and stock and of furniture and appliances in plots as the unnecessary destruction of valuable property which, in the final analysis, was a loss of German people’s property. This destruction stood in stark contrast to the goals of the four-year plan—especially the present campaign to collect usable materials. Apprehension was also expressed that the destructive impulse of the masses could be aroused by such measures.

A corollary to this type of reaction and its exploitation by the authorities for political and propaganda purposes also figures prominently in the December reports. The following, for example, is found in the report from Munich: The domestic political situation, which had temporarily been agitated by the anti-Jewish action, has once again calmed down. The anti-Jewish proceedings are now rarely discussed. The only criticism is that the same ends could have been achieved by less drastic means. The directive regulating the systematic removal of the Jews from German economic life was received with satisfaction. Daily radio broadcasts on the Jewish question preceding the newscasts prove to be an excellent educational measure. Only those circles under the sway of the church fail to cooperate on the Jewish question.

Similar reactions were reported from other districts and in other types of Lgb. Thus the national Gestapo Lgb. on Marxist activity, prepared by the Gestapo head office in Berlin, states that ‘the damages done by the destruction of valuable objects were repeatedly noted [in working-class circles]; at the same time it was compared with the contradictory efforts of the government’s ‘Fight against Waste’. The author adds that by means of such arguments ‘these same people evidently tried to induce a negative mood among the National-Socialist activists’ and that as a result, even segments of the population ‘that have adopted a negative attitude towards the Jews’, object to the acts of destruction that characterized the events of November 9 and 10. Objections to the destruction of national property also appeared as a central theme in the special edition of the German Communist Party’s underground newspaper, Die Rote Fahne (published after the Kristallnacht riots). This same contention is also found in documents, diary entries and memoirs of prominent government

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figures. It should also be noted that the various manifestations of negative response to the November rioting served to consolidate the opposition camps and underground movements of varying philosophies, as we can see from the above-mentioned Gestapo Lgb. under the heading ‘Underground Communist Movement’: During the period in question, alongside the stepped-up propaganda to consolidate the ‘popular front’ (Volksfront), the Communist movement has welcomed the latest events surrounding the Jewish question as a basis for inducing agitation in practically all parts of the Reich. In their general attitude to this question, the Communists declared their solidarity with the Jews... The sympathy which the Communists have expressed for the Jews has found eager support in middle-class and especially clerical circles. It appears that the Communists, in concert with all the other elements hostile to the state, were able to influence popular opinion and found ready support among the population.

Nevertheless another section of the Lgb. testifies to the reluctance of former Marxist leaders to identify with the plight of the Jews: On the other hand, the German counter-propaganda in various cases also aroused understanding for the anti-Jewish action in some former Marxists. Even one-time top functionaries are now against defending Jews and concede the achievements of the National-Socialist domestic and foreign policy.

The Gestapo Lgb. from Magdeburg for the same month makes mention of both the attitudes evident in Berlin and an interesting development in the leanings of some Social Democrats: [It has been observed] that former Social Democrats who had openly declared themselves in favour of National Socialism because of its achievements have now begun to sway in their opinions as a result of the anti-Jewish action.

On the other hand, as noted in the SD Lgb. from Thüringen, not everywhere was it the working class which reacted with the most outspoken criticism: During the night of November 9/10, 1938, a general action was carried out against the Jews in Gotha, as in the entire rest of the Reich. At that time a total of 52 Jews were taken into custody from the Gotha city and country districts and 28 of them were transferred to the Weimar-Buchenwald concentration camp. While the arrests were being made, Gotha’s synagogue burned down. This action aroused the greatest satisfaction within the population of Gotha. Yet here too there were some exceptions who believed the action taken against the Jews was too severe. It is worthy of special mention, however, that the voices raised in support of the Jews came neither from the workers nor the farmers but rather from the camp of the so-called ‘better’ circles.

The term ‘better circles’ is used to refer to the intelligentsia and the liberal bourgeoisie, as was seen above in relation to the responses to the Nuremberg Laws.

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The objections voiced by such circles, stemming in part from a humane impulse, induced the authors of the SD’s annual national Lgb. for 1938 to conduct something of a comparative study of the extent to which such views appear in various regions of the country with differing levels of population density and industrial development. In the section ‘Liberalism’, the following is said about the reaction to the Kristallnacht: ...the actions against Jewry in November have been received very badly. Criticism varied with the individual attitude. Commercial circles referred to the [financial] loss caused by these actions, others criticized the legal measures, while the middle classes, which had just been relieved of the fear of war, pointed to the harmful effects these actions might have abroad. Later on, after foreign countries reacted with a fierce campaign of incitement and boycott, these liberal pacifist circles agreed with them and called the actions ‘barbaric’ and ‘uncivilized’. Out of liberalistic principles many people found it imperative openly to intervene on behalf of the Jews. The destruction of the synagogues was declared an irresponsible act; people interceded on behalf of the ‘poor oppressed Jews’. It could be observed that the opposition to the anti-Jewish actions was much stronger in the south (with the exception of the Ostmark [formerly Austria] and the west of the Reich (with a dense, Catholic and mostly urban population).

Here and there in the district reports we also read of humane empathy with the suffering of the Jews unlinked to any particular ideological orientation. But such identification is mentioned only as a marginal phenomenon, as in the lone sentence at the end of the report from Regensburg noting the expression of pity for the ‘unfortunate’ Jews in the city and the countryside. Various types of reports cite the reaction of schoolteachers especially in connection with classes on religion and of clerics who commented on events in their classrooms or sermons. The section of the November report from Speyer entitled ‘Evangelical Church’ includes an account of the arrest of a pastor who ‘spoke of the destruction of synagogues during a religious class, stating that it was wrong to burn down a house of worship’. The author of the report adds that as a result of the popular furor aroused by the minister’s remarks, it was necessary to take him into ‘custody’, and after his release it was made clear to him that he would have to leave the community. Similarly, in that month’s Lgb. from Ansbach (Franconia) we read under the heading ‘School and Church’ of cases in which Lutheran and Catholic clergymen were brought to detention by the ‘furious mob’ on charges of being servants of the Jews (Judenknechte) because they made similar remarks. The initiative behind these actions came from those who had participated in the riots and the mob also assaulted the clergymen during the uproar. The SD’s annual report describes the results of an inquiry conducted in the wake of such incidents (which evidently broke out all over Germany), after which it was proposed that religious instruction be abolished in schools:

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The reaction to an inquiry of the NSLB [Nazi Teachers’ Union] indicates that the influence of the church on the body of Evangelic teachers is still comparatively strong. The inquiry— whose subject was the abolition of religious instruction—followed the anti-Jewish action of Nov. 9–10, 1938. A large percentage of the teachers did not comply with the NSLB’s request [to demand the cancellation of religious instruction].

As we can see from the subsequent SD national Lgb. (for the first quarter of 1939), the Jewish problem continued to affect the two churches, both in their response to actual events and in principle—political and theological. A struggle went on in both churches between those who wished to adopt the principles of National Socialism regarding the Jews and those opposed to the anti-Jewish policy. However, as with the reactions in church circles to the Nuremberg Laws, a striking feature of the criticism and opposition to the régime’s anti-Jewish policy was the daring of clergymen who ‘admonished the congregation during services to pray for their Christian brethren from the House of Israel’. On this subject the report states that: the ‘Church Aid Group for Evangelic non-Aryans’ which has been formed within the church is further proof of the pro-Jewish attitude of this church movement [the Bekenntnisfront] on the racial question. Although the Evangelic clergymen have repeatedly been denounced in the Stürmer for their efforts to baptize Jews, such official activity has not ceased.

Summing up, it must be said that similar to the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws the official policy was not the only instigating factor and the reactions of the populace were far from uniform. As in the climate that prevailed before the passage of the Nuremberg Laws, once again local initiatives by radical elements helped to create a situation in which the highest rank had to take decisions in shaping a radical anti-Jewish policy and providing an official framework for this latest trend. These developments occurred against the background of international tension and the eve-of-war atmosphere in the autumn of 1938, a year marked by the radicalization of foreign policy and of the régime’s stand on the Jewish question. But in contrast to the Nuremberg legislation which was designed to institutionalize anti-Jewish terror and pressure by a law that allegedly supplanted acts of unchecked terror, this time the régime’s action was intended to give broader vent to the spontaneous ‘rage of the people’. The presumably ‘spontaneous’ terror became an organized and controlled operation conducted along similar lines in all parts of the country by the organized network of the party and the régime’s operational arms. The ex post facto legislative activity of the subsequent weeks and months, which was designed to accord official sanction to the situation that developed

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in the wake of the ‘revolutionary act’ of November 10, concentrated primarily on laws and regulations affecting economic life. In effect, it extended and radicalized the anti-Jewish legislation that had preceded the rioting throughout most of 1938. Continuity can also be discerned in German popular opinion on the régime’s anti-Jewish policy and the Jews themselves. The very diversity of critical reactions based on ideological orientation at variance with the régime, is itself an indication that opposition to the régime did exist in the totalitarian NationalSocialist state of that period, and one of the issues arousing opposition was the Jewish question. Moreover, the blatantly destructive nature of the November riots served for a while to catalyze a sharper and more widespread expression of oppositional views. In fact, the articulation of protest or criticism was attested to even among segments of both the rural and urban population that did not identify with ideologies hostile to the régime. It is difficult to estimate from the reports what proportion of the population explicitly approved of the rioting or silently acquiesced in it. However, critical comments regarding certain aspects of the rioting were voiced even by the segment of the population that generally agreed with the régime’s anti-Jewish policy and its basic aims. Their contentions focused for the most part on the ‘senseless’ economic damage inherent in the wrecking of Jewish property—assets that the critics charged could have been used to serve the needs of the nation as a whole and whose destruction ran contrary to the declared objectives of the régime’s economic policy. In trying to isolate the common denominator behind the critical reactions of varying sectors of the population—the régime’s supporters and opponents alike as well as those who lacked any political identity—in most cases we arrive at a sense of concern about the pragmatic-economic aspect of the question. Moreover, while this pragmatic approach is a central argument in much of the protest or criticism, the moral problem posed by the persecution of the Jews—their public humiliation and abuse, in short the very act of their dehumanization—is either not mentioned at all or arises as only a secondary issue. We cannot of course disregard the possibility that this approach was an oppositional tactic of expressing criticism of the régime in the guise of assertive economic patriotism. Yet there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the pragmatic-economic motive itself. The tendency exhibited here is that of a growing depersonalization in the attitude towards the Jews and the Jewish problem. Moreover, viewing the issue in terms of pragmatic criteria foreshadows future developments in the public’s attitude towards the Jews during the war period and especially in the advanced stages of the ‘solution of the Jewish question’ by means of deportation and physical annihilation.

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The Deportations and Annihilation of the Jews during the War The systematic mass deportations of the Jews of Germany and their physical annihilation in the occupied territories of the East began in the autumn of 1941 following the invasion of the USSR, as the last and most radical stage in the realization of Hitler’s strategic and ideological goals of the war and the ‘solution of the Jewish question’. The main sources for examining the reaction of the German populace during this period are the reports of the SD (which assumed a different form during the war), of the Gestapo and of the district governors (especially from the Bavarian districts) the form of which remained unchanged even during these years, and of the party headquarters. We have also examined letters from German citizens to the authorities, diaries, legal material, memoirs and other similar sources that shed light on popular opinion regarding the plight of the Jews. When the Second World War began, the Jewish issue appeared in the Situation Reports in relation to the authorities’ expectations of renewed anti- Jewish rioting, similar to what had happened in the tense war atmosphere of the previous year, during and after the Munich crisis. Instructions were issued for the imposition of a partial curfew on the Jewish population throughout Germany, and the Gestapo took broad preventive measures, especially against radical elements in the party organizations. However, in the picture emerging from our sources the public has no real concern with the Jews or the ‘Jewish question’, despite the intensification of the propaganda harping on the alleged link between the hostile activity of the Jews and the outbreak of war. Apathy or lack of interest in the fate of the Jews and in the policy towards them also characterizes most of the reports on public reactions for the next two years, until the beginning of the mass deportation. A typical reaction indicating the extent of the Jews’ isolation from their surroundings during that period is found in the SD national Lgb. which describes the public’s first responses to the decree requiring Jews to wear a yellow Shield of David as a badge of identification. That was in September 1941, two years after the war had begun and shortly before the deportations to the East were to begin: The initial appearance of Jews wearing the yellow star created a stir everywhere. People were astonished to note how many Jews still remained in Germany... An occasional protest about the regulation could be heard, especially in Catholic and middle-class circles... [Most of these protests] expressed the fear that countries hostile to Germany would order the Germans living there to wear swastikas and take other punitive steps against them.

On the other hand, there are virtually no reactions to the other laws and decrees issued frequently even during the war—from its beginning up until the liquidation of German Jewry in 1943. The general thrust of these laws was to further the

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isolation, deepen the discrimination, and intensify the restrictions, prohibitions and control in various spheres of life, gradual confiscation of household goods and other items of property, and a general worsening of the material conditions of the Jews’ existence. Each time the German public’s explicit reference to the Jews living among them and the conditions under which they were living is citied in a report, the context has to do with specifically material issues. Typical are the many requests to local party leaders that Jewish families be removed from rented apartments and be concentrated in buildings still under Jewish ownership in order to ease the housing shortage. This kind of interest in the Jews mounted once the mass deportations began, as the head of the party bureau in Göttingen wrote to the Gestapo in Würzburg in December 1941: ‘Since the intention to deport the Jews from Göttingen in the near future has already become common knowledge, the district [party] administration has been flooded with applications for flats’. Another national survey dated February 2, 1942 and dealing with the ‘effect of the police directive of September 1, 1941, ordering the Jews to wear a Yellow Star’, appears in a detailed SD Lgb. summarizing the reports received over the previous five months from dozens of districts throughout the Reich. By that time, the mass deportations from Germany to the occupied territories in the East had already been going on for some three months, and following the Wannsee Conference (held two weeks before the report was compiled), the ‘Final Solution’ was extended to encompass all of European Jewry. Three days earlier, on January 30, 1942, Hitler made one of his notorious speeches reiterating his ‘prophecy’ of 1939 about the connection between the outbreak of the Second World War, the ‘vanishing’ of the Jews of Europe and their annihilation: It is clear to us that the war can only come to an end when either the Aryan peoples are wiped out or Jewry vanishes from Europe. I have already stated on the 1 September 1939 in the German Reichstag—and I am wary of hasty prophecies—that the outcome of this war will not be as the Jews imagine, namely the extermination of the European-Aryan peoples, but the outcome of this war will be the annihilation of Jewry. For the first time the genuine ancient Jewish law will be applied: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

A summary of reactions from dozens of places in Germany indicates that: ...the regulation ordering the Jews to wear a Yellow Star is invariably seen not as a final measure but merely as a prelude to further decisive regulations that will aim at a final elimination of the Jewish question.

Even if this comment was intended as criticism of the fact that certain categories of Jews were exempt from having to wear the badge and expressed the expectation

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that an ‘uncompromising’ distinction between all the Jews and their surroundings would be effected (including resort, to marking their homes), there can be no doubt that the public was aware of the latest stage of the overall ‘general solution’ that was being carried out at the time, at least in terms of the deportation of the Jews to the East, for at the end of the report we find explicit mention of the general expectation that ‘ all the Jews of Germany will soon be deported’. What is more, from the reactions to Hitler’s speech cited in the SD Lgb. of that date, it is evident that the public was fully aware of the drastic implications of the deportations and their all-European scope: The renewed denunciations of Jewry [in Hitler’s speech] and his stress upon the Old Testament saying ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ were interpreted to mean that the Führer’s battle against the Jews would be followed through to the bitter end with merciless consistence and that very soon the last Jew would be driven off European soil.

It is characteristic of the public’s attitude to the fate of the Jews at the time that in referring to Hitler’s speech, the Lgb. does not mention any enthusiastic support for, or even agreement with, the notion that the Jews were responsible for the war and the sufferings of the German people. Yet neither does it note any objections to, disagreement with or criticism of this contention. This situation differs strikingly from what we saw of the public’s attitude towards the Jews in earlier periods and from the diversity of reaction—both positive and negative—to other parts of Hitler’s speech (relating to foreign and domestic policy, economics and other issues touching on daily life). This same spirit emerges from local and district reports that cover the entire period of the deportations. In point of fact, the deportations and the plight of the deportees did not spark much reaction, even though the reports indicate the public’s knowledge of details, including the fact that the deportees were being massacred. Reports on the deportations from all localities fail to note any expression of comment by the populace, although these same reports mention, a wide variety of reactions to government measures taken on other matters. Considering the method of reporting and the explicit instructions to file exhaustive and reliable reports regarding the subject of the Jews, there can be no doubt that had the public expressed any reaction it would have found its way into the reports. A typical example from an early stage of the deportations is the following account of a mass deportation found in the report from the Upper and Middle Franconia districts dated December 7, 1941: In the course of the evacuation of the Jews, a special train left Nuremberg for Riga on Nov. 29, with 1,001 Jewish adults and nine children. Three Jewesses committed suicide apparently out of fear of the impending evacuation.

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That is the entire account of a mass evacuation that occurred in full public view. Another report describing this first mass deportation of Jews from Nuremberg, observes that the ‘population, which was not oblivious to the matter, accepted the fact with approval’. We should mention that the first Lgb. describes in detail an angry public demonstration protesting the order to remove crucifixes from schools, during which the methods of the régime were likened to those of the Communists (who were then being vilified by the war propaganda). The continuation of the deportations and the ‘cleansing’ of the district’s cities of Jews during 1942 is described in similar style, without any mention of reactions, In the section ‘Public Mood’ under the heading ‘Jews’, the April Lgb. reports on the ‘evacuation’ of 781 Jews in March and 105 in April, adding that ‘aside from a few suicides and attempted suicides, there were no incidents of disturbances’. The August report from the same district likewise observes: As a result of further deportation measures, several Schwabian cities and communities, such as Johenhausen, Nördlingen and Fischach are once again free of Jews. An elderly Jewish woman in Oberstdorf poisoned herself out of fear of the deportation.

And a Lgb. for that same month from Augsburg (Schwabian and Neuburg districts) reports under the heading ‘Jews’: During the period in question, additional deportation actions were carried out. In Augsburg an elderly Jew killed himself and three elderly Jewesses attempted suicide. One of them later died at the hospital.

At the same time, other sections of the Lgb. carry descriptions of various reactions on the part of the population to developments in the war, the economic situation (especially the problem of food supply), assessments of the credibility of the media and official information in general, oppositional activity or actions hostile to the régime, and so on. Special surveys were devoted to specific issues, such as ‘euthanasia’ and the fear that it might be abused by the régime (based, for example, on reactions to the screening of a film on this subject) or the positions taken by representatives of the two churches, especially at the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942. The mass deportation of German Jews came to an end during the early half of 1943. In that period, the typical reporting continues without any mention of a reaction to these deportations in the special section entitled ‘Jews’. The general sections of the reports, however, now begin to mention remarks about the fate of the deportees and the possible consequences for the German public, discussed together with the public’s reactions to developments on the fronts (especially the defeat at Stalingrad), the heavy bombings of German cities, fear that gas will be used against the civilian population and the régime’s war propaganda.

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Thus, in the Lgb. from Augsburg for May 1943, we find the following reported under the heading ‘General Political Situation and Public Security—Mood and Attitude of the People’: The shock of Stalingrad has still not completely worn off. In some circles the fear is expressed that the soldiers taken prisoner by the Russians could be killed in retaliation for the alleged German mass shootings of Jews in the East.

Similar thoughts about the connection between the heavy bombardments by the Allies (usually referred to as ‘aerial terror’) and the terror against the Jews appeared two weeks earlier in the SD Lgb. from the Halle district, which reports on various and contrary reactions to the bombings among the public. One such response contends that ‘ … the government and the NSDAP have acted irresponsibly by resorting to such means against the Jews’. These statements may be viewed as an indirect response to the attempts of the official propaganda machine to depict the bombing of the Ruhr Valley dams as a ‘Jewish inspired atrocity’, though the public did not take that explanation seriously. However, most of the Lgb. from the early half of 1943 that cite the fate of the Jews as a topic of conversation associate this subject with reactions to the propaganda surrounding the ‘discovery of the Bolshevik mass crime in the Katyn Forest’. The April Lgb. from Bavaria carries the following statement together with a report about the ‘growing weariness with the war’ and frequent comments to the effect that ‘time is not on our side’: The propaganda connected with this affair [the Katyn massacre] which has continued over the last few weeks, has also had the effect of causing families to give serious thought to the fate of those soldiers missing or assumed to be prisoners of war in Russia... The Katyn propaganda has also triggered discussions concerning the treatment of Jews in Germany and in the Eastern territories.

The author of a letter sent to the state secretary of the Ministry of the Interior in Berlin in August 1943 felt it incumbent upon herself to report at length about ‘the prevailing mood of the people at this time … in the hope that the few lines I write below will receive the proper consideration at the highest levels’. Besides complaints about the hardships of the day, loss of faith in the country’s leadership and the corruption of its representatives, alongside mention of the traditional Bavarian hatred for the ‘Prussian swine’, she reports on a contention being aired in Munich and the towns of Bavaria: It is claimed time and again that ‘the Bolshevik murders in Katyn and Winniza leave us outraged while the SS is doing exactly the same thing with the deported Jews in Russia’, I am quoting word for word here, in order to present you with the clearest picture.

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The author of the letter goes on to state that she had heard of similar reports from a party member in Munich based on casual conversations overheard on the train. The passengers often complained that ‘no one can express his own opinion freely. It’s not necessary to read the newspapers, because they all said the same thing’. The substance of a similar conversation in a Berlin underground train among soldiers who had participated in the Russian campaign was recorded in a private diary entry of the same period. On reading the sensational newspaper item on the ‘Katyn discovery’, one of the soldiers remarked: ‘If you dig 100 km further, you’ll find 10,000 Jewish corpses. That’s war!’, to which the author of the diary added: ‘The entire underground heard that and no one said a word’. A letter sent to the Propaganda Ministry on April 27, 1943 by another army man notes that the reversals in the war have caused many to fear that the treatment of the Jews in the East ‘will one day be our undoing’. According to the author of this letter, only a few party stalwarts still believed in ultimate victory. That the mass annihilation of the Jews of the occupied countries and those deported from Germany became a topic of casual conversation can be seen from the SD national Lgb. devoted to the repercussions of the Katyn Affair. Here again we learn of the public’s earlier knowledge of the facts about the fate of the Jews, by virtue of the topicality of the mass murder of non-Jews. A major part of a special Lgb. reviewing public reactions during the first week after the disclosure of the Katyn atrocity was devoted to this subject. The general character of the public’s response, insofar as direct or indirect reference to the Jewish issue is concerned, was either to view the unprecedented propaganda campaign regarding the affair as hypocritical or, at best, as a ‘gift from heaven’ to the German foreign propaganda designed to provide impressive proof of our conception of Bolshevism and Judaism or of the ‘spirit of the Jewish race’. In citing typical statements, there is mention of the irony with which the public observed that ‘the German propaganda used the dead Poles against the Soviets and the Jews’ and it is admitted with a ‘wink’ ‘that we ourselves have not exactly treated the Poles, Jews and Bolsheviks with kid gloves’. A different approach—namely, viewing the mass murder of the Jews as an inevitable result of the special nature of the war—is also cited in the SD Lgb., as in the following random comment: ‘If it were not clear to me that every means is justified in our nation’s battle for survival, I would find this hypocritical exploitation of pity for the murdered Polish officers intolerable.’ As in the reports from the Bavarian districts and the letters cited above, here too there is mention of ‘the many voicing concern about the fate of the German prisoners of war in the USSR’. Comments about the ’hypocrisy in the position adopted by the German propaganda’ and the ‘concern for the soldiers who have

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been missing on the Eastern Front since Stalingrad’ are cited in the general introduction to the country-wide SD Lgb., along with the widespread belief that ‘much larger numbers of Poles and Jews have been liquidated by the Germans’. The author of the report adds that this last argument has been used especially in intellectual and religious-oriented circles in their campaign against the exploitation of the Katyn Forest revelations for propaganda purposes. Concrete testimony to this effect can be found in a number of reports from individual districts that relate to the voices raised in ‘hostile political circles’. One of these, from the district of Oberdonau, reports on the mood among priests, some of whom cast doubt on the claim that the Soviets were responsible for the slaughter of Katyn, while others were moved to take a stand on the moral and religious ramifications of the crime of annihilating the Jews: One pastor said the following: ‘Since German propaganda has become so concerned with Katyn, I have heard more and more voices expressing the conviction that these murders were committed by the Germans’. Another clergyman expressed the following views on this matter: ‘People who have the death of thousands of Jews, Poles, Serbs, Russians, etc. on their conscience have no right to be upset when others have done only a fraction of what they are doing every day’. In a report from Oberschlesien, the Auschwitz extermination camp is specifically mentioned in the same context. It reads as follows: With regard to the Katyn Affair, there is a report by the Gauleitung [regional party organization] of Upper Silesia; according to it our propaganda on this matter had a very considerable impact not only among the Germans but also among the Polish population. However, in recent days there are clear indications of the counter-propaganda of the Polish resistance movement. Thus in the industrial regions, the following inscriptions appeared in various places: ‘Russia—Katyn, Germany—Auschwitz’… They mean the concentration camp Auschwitz, which is well known in the East.

An instructive detail that complements this report can be found in an SD report from an earlier period that describes the arrest of a priest from the monastery of the ‘Salesianer Orden’ in the city of Auschwitz itself. The reason for the arrest: The priest Karl Golda, who resides at the monastery of the ‘Salesianer Orden’ in Auschwitz, was arrested by the Kattowitz Gestapo. G., who investigated things about the Auschwitz concentration camp that are to be kept secret, is strongly suspected of having intended to use the information he gathered for hostile anti-German propaganda activities.

The strongest expression in this direction appears in an SD Lgb. from the northern province of Westphalia describing the political reaction of religious circles (konfessionell gebundene Kreise). In the wake of reports on the fearsome murder in the Katyn Forest, clerical circles adopted the following position:

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The National-Socialists had no right to be in an uproar about the bestial slaughter. In the war against the Jews in the East, the SS used similar methods of slaughter. The disgusting and inhuman treatment inflicted on the Jews by the SS clearly calls for the punishment of our people by the Lord God. If we do not pay a heavy price for these murders, then divine justice is no more. The German people has taken upon itself such a burden of blood guilt that there can be no hope for mercy or forgiveness. Everything is mercilessly revenged in this world. As a result of these barbaric acts, our enemies cannot be expected to wage humane warfare. The outcry of rage of the Jewish press and its destructive tendencies are a natural reaction.

It should be noted that further on in these accounts of popular opinion the same reports cite the concern of the German population in a number of districts that their relatives who became prisoners of war at Stalingrad might share the fate of those exterminated in the East. (Reports from the districts of Baden, Niederdonau, and the Warthegau reported such concern, for example in the wake of the report on Katyn and Auschwitz cited above.) In the three latter reports, we have seen, as a rare exception to the rule, the concern of local churchmen about the mass extermination of the Jews, which included their taking unequivocal stands expressed in moral and theological terms. An example of the stand taken by the conservative opposition, which included the men who conspired against Hitler’s life in July 1944, can be found in the diary entries of the ex-Ambassador von Hassell. The entry for May 15, 1943 mentions the liquidation of the Jews and the Polish intelligentsia by the SS in connection with the ‘futile attempts to distract world public opinion by means of Katyn’. Von Hassell’s information is based on a detailed report by one of his confidants, an SS man who had been employed by the German occupation administration in Poland; he provides us with, a rare and relatively accurate description of ‘the gassing of innumerable Jews in chambers especially built for this purpose … ’. The same entry also mentions the revolt of the remaining Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto and the tough fighting that would undoubtedly end with them being totally wiped out by the SS. In his secret diary von Hassell unequivocally denounced these acts by means of which ‘Hitler has turned the Germans into a wild animal abhorred throughout the world’. However, his particular concern here and in other entries is over the consequences that may ensue if information about these actions reached the world via neutral countries. Overall, it is evident that the population throughout Germany (not to mention the leading circles of the conservative opposition) was generally apprised of the principal facts regarding the deportations and the mass murder of the deportees in the East. Such knowledge is evident from explicit references to the subject in discussions of events that ‘hit home’ in that they had more pressing and concrete implications for German society.

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Later in the war, from the autumn of 1943 onwards, though the destruction of European Jewry continued apace, we find virtually no mention of explicit public reaction on the fate of the Jews. During this period, as in the two years that preceded the initiation of the mass murders, there is only slight indication that the public knew about the extermination camps. This may be because the organization of the liquidation process was confined to the enclosed areas of the extermination camps (as compared to the wide open expanses in which the Einsatzgruppen carried out their massacres in the early stages) and first-hand knowledge of it was limited to the relatively compact teams that carried out the work and the few others in the know. Added to this were the stringent instructions about keeping the matter secret in all documents and statements. There may, however, be another explanation. Just as there were relatively few references to the mass murders in the East prior to the Katyn Affair, it may well be that the extermination camps were not discussed simply because there had been no propaganda campaigns or public discussions of topics likely to evoke a mention of this subject by association. The only concrete example of such talk has to do with the practice of ‘euthanasia’ in certain institutions defined as ‘charity wards for the treatment of the mentally ill’. Some of these institutions (outside of Germany) were in fact converted into centers for mass extermination (Auschwitz among them). However, the polemic and protests surrounding this issue in 1940–1941, i.e., prior to the onset of the systematic mass murder of Jews in the death camps, promptly ceased when the ‘mercy killings’ of Germans were halted. That the methods of killing by injections and gas (which had been tested on Jewish and non-Jewish mental patients and inmates) were, from the end of 1941 onwards, used only to kill Jews and certain segments of the non-German population (mostly Poles, Soviet prisoners of war and Gypsies) and that this method was extended to the point of liquidating millions of European Jews did not arouse public concern once the debate over euthanasia had been put to rest. In any event, the lack of explicit reaction to the annihilation of the Jews of Europe at the various stages of the ‘Final Solution’ in no way detracts from the impression that the population of Germany was generally aware of what became of the Jews deported to the East, not to mention the fate of the Jews of Eastern Europe proper. Of this there can hardly be any doubt, even on the basis of the few sources we have cited, especially from the first half of 1943. In seeking to characterize the special nature of the public’s reactions throughout the period of the deportations and liquidation operations or even throughout the war, we find some strains of continuity with the reactions of the 1930s, but far more striking is the change that occurred in this period. While public’s reaction to the Nuremberg Laws and to the 1938 riots was widespread and varied, during the

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war period the unquestionably dominant feature was the almost total absence of any reference to the existence, persecution and the extermination of the Jews. We cannot ignore the fact that the concrete examples of public reaction we have cited for this period are relatively rare exceptions and are dwarfed by the intense and diverse reactions to a variety of issues that occupied public attention during the period, including countless instances of criticism of and protest against various measures of the regime or its general policy. The deportations and extermination operations evoked two principal types of reaction: (1) passive observation of the deportations without any active response to the act itself or its implications; and (2) in certain situations, explicit reference to the fate of the deportees as well as to the policy towards the Jews as a whole. As we have seen, the period during which the latter type of reaction intensified was the first half of 1943, especially after the defeat at Stalingrad and the disclosure of the Katyn Affair. It emerged in relation to anxiety about the outcome of the war and the fate of the German people. What is shocking about the reaction is that, apart from a few important exceptions, the criminal systematic mass murder of the Jewish deportees is related to not on moral grounds but rather on the instrumental-pragmatic level of tangible consequences and possible implications, namely, fear of murderous reprisals against German prisoners of war in the East or massive ‘terror bombings’ of civilian population centers in Germany, criticism of the hypocrisy and incredibility of German war propaganda, the damage done to Germany’s image in the world, and the like. The only active response—a wave of interest in the flats of the Jews marked for deportation after word of the impending expulsions first spread—is consistent with the pragmatic response cited above. All these reactions are characterized by a striking abysmal indifference to the fate of the Jews as human beings. It seems that here, the ‘Jewish question’ and the entire process of its ‘solution’ in the Third Reich reached the point of almost complete depersonalization. As we have seen, responses to the régime’s policy on pragmatic grounds were also evident in the 1930s: there were expressions of anxiety about the possible heightening of the economic boycott in retaliation for the anti-Jewish campaign that accompanied the passage of the Nuremberg Laws. Among the most prominent complaints about the November 1938 riots was criticism of the wanton destruction of property that was of value to the German economy and people; denunciation of the violence on moral grounds was a much rarer phenomenon. It is equally apparent that a sizeable portion of the German population did not respond actively to the ‘Jewish question’ in the 1930s, either. However, the context was different then, and their failure to respond must be seen within the framework of a wide range of responses ranging from expressions of sympathy for the Jews and protests against their abuse and humiliation (often on the part

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of elements whose political and religious outlook stood in opposition to the régime’s) to locally instigated anti-Jewish actions, identification with the régime’s anti-Jewish policy and anti-Semitic ideology, and pressure for still more extreme measures, especially by various party organizations. Nevertheless, while there was still a measure of balance between the various trends in 1935, what emerges as most prominent in 1938, against the backdrop of a general exacerbation of the anti-Jewish policy, is the utilitarian depersonalized attitude. A devastating extension of this trend is the quality of public response following the outbreak of war, especially in relation to the mass deportations and annihilation program. Outstanding here is the indifference and almost complete disregard of the fate of the Jews precisely when the campaign against them had intensified, when the nature and scope of the crime were assuming unprecedented dimensions, but also when the anti-Semitic wartime propaganda was placing ever greater stress on Jewry’s ‘responsibility’ for the war. Among other things, this indifference is an indication that the slogans of the régime’s official propaganda including its anti-Semitic propaganda—were losing their potency, up to the point where they were even being ignored. Yet it appears that the propaganda campaign’s underlying assumption about the need for a ‘solution of the Jewish question’ by means of ‘removal of the Jews altogether’, had embedded itself in the consciousness of the majority of the German people, even before the actual physical ‘removal’ had begun. In and of themselves, the means of ‘removal’ and the fate of those being ‘removed’—be it emigration or segregation within Germany, deportation to ghettos and camps or systematic mass murder whose objective was the extermination of a whole people—genocide—did not constitute a problem for them.

7 German Population in Nazi Germany as a Factor in the Policy of the “Solution of the Jewish Question”: The Nuremberg Laws and the Reichskristallnacht I This article examines two sample cases of the interrelation between radical expressions of German popular opinion and the policy of the totalitarian racialist regime of the Third Reich concerning the “Jewish question.”1 A systematic examination of this relation became possible following the publication of a digital edition of all available secret Nazi reports on the German population’s attitudes toward the Jews and the anti-Jewish policy of the regime between 1933 and 1945.2 Here, a text-analytical approach will be combined with quantitative, computerbased research. As already established in research, the Nazi leadership did not itself wholly believe in its own monolithic image of state and society as it was portrayed in the mass media and projected to the world. Consequently, the regime set up secret internal reporting systems to provide reliable information about the prevailing popular mood and about activities conducted by the different sectors of the population. Among the categories of surveillance and reporting, the subject of the regime’s “ideological enemies” (weltanschauliche Gegner)—Marxism, liberalism,

1 For a broader scope that includes less radical voices, and even some critical of the regime’s anti-Jewish policy, see my articles: “‘Public Opinion’ in Nazi Germany and the “ Jewish Question”,” Zion, A Quarterly for Research in Jewish History, 40:3–4 (1975): 186–290 (in Hebrew with Engl. summary); Shortened English version, in: The Jerusalem Quarterly 25 (Fall 1982), 121–144, The Jerusalem Quarterly 26 (Winter 1983), 34–45 (Chapter 6 of this book); idem and Aron Rodrigue, “The German Population and the Jews in the Third Reich. Recent Publications and Trends of Research on German Society and the “Jewish Question,” Yad Vashem Studies (YVS) 16 (1984), 421–35; Otto Dov Kulka, “The German Population and the Jews: State of Research and New Perspectives,” in: David Bankier (ed.) Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism. German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941, New York and Oxford, 2000, 271–81. 2 tto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel (eds.), Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–45, Schriften des Bundesarchivs 62 (Düsseldorf, 2004); Book (752 selected documents) and (comprehensive digital edition of 3744 documents) CD. (Hereinafter: K/ J, Book or K/ J, CD.). Extended English edition: The Jews in the Secret Nazi Reports on Popular Opinion in Germany, 1933–1945, trans. by William Templer, New Haven, Mass., and London, 2010. The documents are numbered as in the German edition. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-008

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the so-called “political churches,” the conservative opposition, and the Jews— occupies a significant place. These reports on the attitudes prevalent in the German population toward the Nazi regime and its politics were also meant to provide an authentic picture that should be taken into consideration in deciding policies toward the Jews. The most important reports, generally called Lageberichte or Stimmungsberichte, were provided by a Reich-wide network of 30,000 agents and reporters employed by the SD alone, i.e. the security service of the SS,3 together with reports by the secret political police (Gestapo), the district governors (Regierungspräsidenten), and the local police. Additional reporting was done by the NSDAP party headquarters in Munich and by a variety of organizations, such as the SA and organizations for women (NS-Frauenschaft) and for teachers (NS-Lehrerbund), etc. In all reporting systems, the reports were written at different levels—local, district, regional—and compiled at the national level.4 According to a directive by Heydrich in 1937, the purpose of the SD reports written “for the political leadership of the Reich” was “to fight the enemy with passion but to be ice cold and objective in the assessment of the situation and its presentation.”5 Similarly, the Gestapo and the district governors had already been asked in 1934 “not to adorn” the information but to adhere to “frank reporting of the mood in the country.”6 On the other hand, the sometimes “pronounced pessimistic” picture the regime received in the wake of this frank reporting prompted

3 This figure was given by the head of the SD reporting system, Ohlendorf, in 1945. See Heinz Boberach (ed.), Meldungen aus dem Reich. Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS 1938–1945, Herrsching, 1984, 16. A recent study on the SD in Saxony arrived at a figure of 2,746 agents and reporters for this region alone. Carsten Schreiber, “‘Eine verschworene Gemeinschaft’: Regionale Verfolgungsnetzwerke des SD in Sachsen,” in: Michael Wildt (ed.), Nachrichtendienst, politische Elite und Mordeinheit. Der Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers SS. Hamburg, 2003, 57–85, esp. 84. 4 On the various systems of the reports, their development, and evaluation see: Otto Dov Kulka, “Die Nürnberger Rassengesetze und die deutsche Bevölkerung im Lichte geheimer NS-Lage- und Stimmungsberichte,” Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte (VfZ) 32 (1984), 582–624, esp. 582– 600; David Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution. Public Opinion under Nazism, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass. 1992, 4–10. 5 Reinhard Heydrich, “ An die SD-Führer der SS-Oberabschnitte”, Reichsführer SS, Der Chef des Sicherheitshauptamtes, Berlin, 4 September 1937, Bundesarchiv Berlin (BArch) R 58/990, Bl. 23. 6 Staatsministerium des Innern, “ Berichterstattung in politischen Angelegenheiten, 17 July 1934”, Bayrisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, MA 106669: “Besonderer Wert ist darauf zu legen, daß im Interesse einer ungeschminkten Unterrichtung der Reichsregierung alle persönlichen und sonstigen Rücksichten ausgeschaltet werden und daß über alle politisch wesentlichen und für die Stimmung im Lande maßgeblichen Ereignisse und Zustände rückhaltlos berichtet wird.”

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Göring and other leaders complain about the reports. Their concern was that the often too realistic picture that the reports painted would lead “to a deterioration of the mood” among the Nazi leadership. Subsequently, Göring, in his function as the Prussian prime minister, ordered the discontinuation of the reports by the Gestapo and the district governors in Prussia as early as 1936.7 The independent reports by the SD, as the most important reporting system, continued to be provided until the end of the war, as did other reports, though they were constantly subjected to severe criticism and attempts to suspend them by state and party leaders, particularly Goebbels.8 We have no evidence of similar criticism or references to the form and content of the reports on the part of Hitler. However, proof exists that the head of Hitler’s Reich Chancellery, Lammers, received the reports on a regular basis, and that Hitler himself was either informed about their content or read them. On several occasions, he made direct or indirect use of the reports. In January 1934, for example, Hitler made direct use of the Gestapo reports when he confronted representatives of the “Confessing Church” in a heated discussion: Hitler countered very sharply that concern for the Third Reich should be left to him […]. It was undeniable that in many cases Protestant pastors were whipping up feeling against the government and against National Socialism. To prove this he had Minister-President Göring read out a series of reports by the political police [i.e., Gestapo] on sermons and articles in the church press which contained such utterances.9

The reliability of the sources can be examined in several ways: by analysis and comparison of reports written for a parallel period by different authorities, and 7 Facsimile in K/ J, Book: 552/3. 8 See Aryeh L. Unger, “The Public Opinion Reports of the Nazi Party,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 29 (1965): 565–82; Boberach 1984 (as in fn. 3), 36f. 9 See Bishop Wurm’s notes about the reception in the Reich Chancellery on 25 January 1934, in: Peter Matheson (ed.), The Third Reich and the Christian Churches, Grand Rapids, MI, 1981, 43. An example of an indirect reference can be found in Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag on 15 September 1935, following the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws. The speech clearly reflects the descriptions that were presented by the reports from across the Reich (see: Kulka 1984, as in fn. 4, 620f.). On 10 November 1938, Hitler refers to the dramatic shifts in public opinion in the critical situations before and after the Anschluss of Austria and the Munich agreement (Bankier 1992, as in fn. 4, 12f.). On another occasion, in his Table Talk of 25 October 1941, Hitler clearly referred to a public rumour that “it’ s good when the horror precedes us that we are exterminating Jewry.” (Werner Jochmann, (ed.), Adolf Hitler. Monologe im Führer-Hauptquartier 1941–1944. Die Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heims, Hamburg, 1984, 106). Similarly, on 15 May 1942: “And it is the same Jew, who once stabbed us in the back, over whom our so-called bourgeoisie now sheds tears when we ship him off to the East!” (Andreas Hillgruber (ed.), Henry Picker: Hitlers Tischgespräche, Munich, 1963, 145).

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of the reports compiled on the local, district, regional, and national levels. The credibility of the Reich-wide reports, which summarized conclusions that drew on reports from lower instances, can be examined by reference to the concrete description of the events and cases in local and regional reports. Furthermore, the guidelines and directives for the preparation of the reports have been preserved.10 In spite of the critical voices by individual party and state leaders, the instructions clearly show that the regime was interested in receiving reliable information regardless of whether it was sympathetic to its views—for in the totalitarian framework of the Third Reich authentic information of this sort was not available from any overt, public source. Whatever the final conclusion on the degree of their reliability, one thing is clear: the reports reveal the picture presented to the regime and thus served it in its deliberations and decisions. In this respect, there is no doubt that this kind of “public opinion” influenced, or could have influenced, the implementation of the regime’s anti-Jewish policy in its various stages. Though research on the National-Socialist ideology and policy regarding the persecution and annihilation of the Jews developed already during and immediately after the war11 and continues to dominate the research literature, research on German society and on the Jews in the Third Reich began rather late. One reason for this was that even long after the war the prevalent image of Nazi Germany was based on the sweeping generalization of a monolithic, regime-devoted population, represented in every illustrated standard work and encyclopaedia by pictures of enthusiastic masses and multitudes of flags to communicate the idea and reality of “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.” Another reason was a rather agnostic approach by historians, who maintained that research on the German population’s opinion under the totalitarian regime of the Third Reich was impossible owing to the lack of any reliable sources.12

10 See Facsimile in K/ J, Book: 550f. For internal critical evaluations of the reports by the SD Main Office and the Main Office’ s directives to the report writers at the regional level (Oberabschnitte) cf. Yad Vashem Archives, 0.51 OSO/48. 11 Mainly literature by exiled German historians and post-war works by non-German historians, e.g. Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and practice of National Socialism, London, 1942; Ernst Fraenkel, The Dual State. A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship, New York, 1941; Leon Poliakov, Breviaire de la haine: le IIIe Reich et les Juifs, Paris, 1951; Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945, London, 1953; Raoul Hilberg, The Destruction of European Jews, Chicago and London, 1961. 12 “[…] A strict line is to be drawn between Nazism during the so-called period of struggle, before accession to power and Nazism after this accession. […] No single word was spoken or written after 30 January 1933 which gives any direct indication of the feeling of the masses.”

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In German historiography of the post-war decade, silence prevailed regarding the Nazi regime and the fate of the Jews.13 This was also true of German society as a whole, where silence and the active denial of knowledge about “it” had become the “secret national anthem.”14 The situation changed in the 1960s with the discovery and first publications of the secret Nazi reports on popular opinion.15 The availability of these documents enabled a diverse research literature to develop beginning in the mid-1970s, including a number of studies devoted to the Jewish aspect.16 It is perhaps no accident that the first to conduct such studies covering the whole period of the Third Reich were non-German historians.17 One of the basic findings that has emerged from these sources is that beneath the cover of totalitarian uniformity (Gleichschaltung), social and religious structures and even political orientations of the previous period were preserved to a certain extent, revealing the population’s heterogeneous views on the government’s ideology and policy. The research on German popular opinion and the Jews in the Third Reich also brought about more variegated results, both on the local and national level. In general, the studies came to the result that among Eva Reichmann, Hostages of Civilization. The Social Sources of National Socialist Anti-Semitism, London, 1950, 190f. 13 See: Otto Dov Kulka, “Die deutsche Geschichtsschreibung über den Nationalsozialismus und die Endlösung,” Historische Zeitschrift 240 (1985), 599–640, esp. 609–14 (revised Engl. edition in Yisrael Gutman (ed.), The Historiography of the Holocaust Period, Jerusalem, 1988, 1–51. 14 Frank Bajohr and Dieter Pohl, Der Holocaust als offenes Geheimnis, Munich, 2006, 9; see also: Peter Longerich, “ Davon haben wir nichts gewusst!” Die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung 1933–1945, Munich, 2006, 7; and Bernward Dörner, Die Deutschen und der Holocaust. Was niemand wissen wollte, aber jeder wissen konnte, Berlin, 2007, 605. 15 During the four decades preceding the publication of our Stimmungsberichte, most of the editions limited themselves to a regional scope or to certain periods of Nazi rule, and information regarding the Jews could be found only scattered through them. For a complete overview of the various editions, see introduction, K/ J, Book: 17–19. 16 For an overview of these studies, see: Kulka and Rodrigue 1984 (as in fn. 1), and Kulka 2000 (ibid.); for an updated research review, see: Longerich 2006 (as in fn. 14), 10–21. 17 The first such studies on the topic were published in 1975 and 1979 by Israeli and British historians: Kulka 1975 (as in fn. 1); Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933–1945, Oxford, 1983, 224–77, 358–72; in 1992 another comprehensive study followed by another Israeli researcher (Bankier 1992, as in fn. 4). The first German systematic studies appeared only after 2004 and already made use of the digital data prepared for the Stimmungsberichte edition: Longerich 2006 (as in fn. 14); also Michael Wildt, Volksgemeinschaft als Selbstermächtigung. Gewalt gegen Juden in der deutschen Provinz 1919 bis 1939, Hamburg, 2007; Dörner 2007 (as in fn. 14) as well as Frank Bajohr, “The ‘Folk Community’ and the Persecution of the Jews: German Society under the National Socialist Dictatorship, 1933–1945,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20:2 (2006), 183–206; Bajohr and Pohl 2006 (as in fn. 14).

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the population there was a substantial minority of radical anti-Jewish attitudes, a marginal appearance of critical voices, and an overwhelming silent majority. They interpreted the apparent silence—in particular during the war years—as indifference,18 though some studies, such as Kershaw’s and mine, adduced different understandings and interpretations of the term,—no longer regarding “indifference” as a neutral attitude.19 In my later publications, I have presented the different conclusion of a wide consensus among the population on the Jewish question, and Ian Kershaw has avoided reference to the term “ indifference” in his most recent comprehensive study on Nazi Germany and the Final Solution.20 Although it was the significant achievement of this research on German society and the Jews to revise the one-dimensional historiography of the persecution and annihilation, these initial studies, based on a more or less fragmentary 18 The first to introduce the theory of indifference into the post-war historiography was Marlis Steinert, though her study touched upon the Jewish Question on only 15 of 387 pages in the quoted English edition. She adopted the term “ indifference” from the analysis of methodologically highly problematic statistics in a post war publication of the German psychologist Müller-Claudius and drew an analogy to a study of Gabriel A. Almond on the indifference and isolationism of American society during the war (Marlis G. Steinert, Hitler’s War and the Germans. Public Mood and Attitude during Second World War, Athens, OH, 1977, 136f.) Mommsen and Obst, who in 1988 also uncritically based their study on Müller-Claudius’ “statistics,” added to the topos of indifference the concept of “ repression”: “[D]ie Gleichgültigkeit zumal gegen das Schicksal der Juden verknüpfte sich mit einer am Ort und Zeitpunkt des Geschehens einsetzenden Verdrängung […].” Hans Mommsen and Dieter Obst, “Die Reaktion der deutschen Bevölkerung auf die Verfolgung der Juden 1933–1943,” in: Hans Mommsen and Susanne Willems (eds.), Herschaftsalltag im Dritten Reich. Studien und Texte, Düsseldorf, 1988, 374–421, esp. 420. 19 For his most quoted and often misinterpreted dictum, “The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference” (Kershaw 1983, as in fn. 17, 277), Kershaw consequently coined the term “ moral indifference”: “[…] apathy and “ moral indifference” to the treatment and fate of the Jews was the most widespread attitude of all. This was not a neutral stance.” (Ian Kershaw, “German Popular Opinion and the “ Jewish Question”, 1939–1943: Some further Reflections,” in: Arnold Paucker (ed.), Die Juden im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland 1933–1943, Tübingen, 1986, 365–86, esp. 383f.). Even earlier, indifference had been described as an “abysmal indifference to the fate of the Jews as human beings” that “reached the point of almost complete depersonalisation.” Apparently, for the majority of the German people “ the means of “ removal” and the fate of those being “ removed”—be it segregation within Germany or emigration, deportation to ghettos and camps or systematic mass murder whose objective was the extermination of a whole people— genocide—did not constitute a problem for them.” (Kulka 1983, 45, as in fn. 1.) 20 Cf. Kulka 2000 (as in fn. 1); Ian Kershaw on “The Dialectic of Radicalisation in Nazi AntiJewish Policy” in his article “Hitler’s Role in the “ Final Solution”,” YVS 34 (2006): 7–43. See also Bajohr: “Vom antijüdischen Konsens zum schlechten Gewissen: Die deutsche Gesellschaft und die Judenverfolgung 1933–1945,” in Bajohr and Pohl 2006 (as in fn. 14), 15–79.

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body of documents, were in a way impressionistic, as soberly noted by Kershaw, even for the pre-war period of the Third Reich.21 With the publication of the comprehensive edition of 3,744 documents in the Stimmungsberichte edition, of which nearly 1,000 are from the years 1939–45, a systematic re-examination of the various attitudes of the population became possible, and we can no longer speak of either a “ silence of the documents” or of a silence of the majority of the German population. It seems to be obvious that many results of the research preceding the comprehensive edition of the Stimmungsberichte, including the concept of “indifference,” must now be re-examined, a task that has already begun in publications of the last few years.22 The main aspects of the re-examination cover not only the population’s reactions to the regime’s policy but also its active and passive participation in socially excluding and ostracizing the Jews: their isolation and removal from all spheres of life, their expropriation, their expulsion from their homes, the pressure for their removal from Germany by emigration and later by deportation, which finally meant the “removal of the Jews altogether.” In what follows, two situations will be re-examined in which the radicalised anti-Jewish attitudes and actions becoming dominant among the population preceded and influenced political decisions of the regime in regard to its policy on the “ Jewish Question”: First, the developments leading to the Nuremberg Laws, and, second, the chain of events preceding the Reichskristallnacht.

II The promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws on 15 September 1935 institutionalised the social exclusion of the Jews from German society, based upon a biological definition. The laws also legalized the exclusion of the Jews from the German national community by revoking their German citizenship. The racial definition of the Jew, as laid out in the first executive order of the Nuremberg Laws, was the basis of all future ordinances and measures aimed at the “removal” of the Jews. The laws were regarded by contemporaries as well as by the authors of the first comprehensive works on the fate of the Jews in the Third Reich as a historical 21 See his statement: “The development of trends of opinions after 1933 can be reconstructed only in an impressionistic way.” Ian Kershaw, “Alltägliches und Außeralltägliches: Ihre Bedeutung für die Volksmeinung 1933–1939,” in Detlev Peukert and Jürgen Reulecke (eds.), Die Reihen fest geschlossen. Alltag im Nationalsozialismus: Vom Ende der Weimarer Republik bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg, Wuppertal, 1981, 273–92, esp. 274. 22 Longerich 2006 and Dörner 2007 (as in fn. 14); Bajohr 2006 and Wildt 2007 (as in fn. 17).

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milestone. They were viewed as a reversion to the Middle Ages, and at the same time as manifesting the ideological quintessence of the racialist Nazi dictatorship.23 The historical significance of the Nuremberg Laws in the post-war public sphere re-emerged in 1960 with the political campaign against Hans Globke, who wrote the official Nazi commentary on the laws24 and who since 1953 had served as director of the Adenauer Federal Chancellery. It reached a peak during the Eichmann trial in 1961, when for the first time the full scale of the “Final Solution” became a central subject of Western public and media awareness, while the GDR media and historians in particular portrayed the Nuremberg Laws as constituting the instrument and the real origin of the mass murder of the Jews and Globke as the main responsible.25 Precisely at that time, the West German Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte published the posthumous memoirs of the former officer for racial affairs in the Nazi Ministry of Interior Affairs, Bernhard Lösener, who, surprisingly, trivialized the Nuremberg Laws as a last-minute improvisation by Hitler and some top Nazi-Leaders without any legal preparation or ideological content.26 It seems difficult to believe that the timing of the publication coincided with the public debate on Globke by pure accident. In the short introductory note to Lösener’s text, the then editor of the VfZ, H[ans] R[othfels], apologizes for the publication of the document without the usual source-critical comments.27 This promised

23 See for example G[ustav Otto] Warburg, Six Years of Hitler. The Jews Under the Nazi Regime, London, 1939; and the first comprehensive works on the “ Final Solution” by Poliakov 1951, Reitlinger 1953 and Hilberg 1961 (as in fn. 11). 24 Wilhelm Stuckart and Hans Globke, Reichsbürgergesetz vom 15. September 1935. Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre vom 15. September 1935. Gesetz zum Schutze der Erbgesundheit des deutschen Volkes vom 18. Oktober 1935, Munich, 1936. 25 See for example: Ausschuß für Deutsche Einheit (ed.), Globke und die Ausrottung der Juden. Über die verbrecherische Vergangenheit des Staatssekretärs im Amt des Bundeskanzlers Adenauer, Berlin/GDR, 1960; idem, Neue Beweise für Globkes Verbrechen gegen die Juden, Berlin/GDR, 1960. These and similar brochures were also published in other languages, including English, French, and Spanish. The publication of numerous articles in papers and journals began in the same year. 26 Bernhard Lösener, “Als Rassereferent im Reichsministerium des Innern,” VfZ 9 (1961): 264–313. 27 Lösener himself expressed his wish that the document should be published “at an appropriate point in time.” See: ibid., 263. This appropriate occasion seems to have been the Eichmann Trial, mentioned by Rothfels, which he regarded as an opportunity to improve the image of German “ Conservative” Bureaucracy. On Rothfels’ role in German post-war historiography and the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, see: Nicolas Berg, Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker. Erforschung und Erinnerung, Göttingen, 2003 (chs. 2.3, 3.2, and 3.3); idem, “The Invention of

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critical edition of the document did not appear in the VfZ to this day. But since then the significance of the Nuremberg Laws was marginalized in German and international historiography. Based on the 1961 publication of Lösener’s memoirs they were depicted as a mere example of the totalitarian chaos and “Planlosigkeit” of the Nazi regime’s anti-Jewish policy.28 This interpretation was first questioned in an article that examined the administrative and legal preparation of the laws and in particular the significance and the consideration the decision makers attached to popular opinion during the months preceding the promulgation of the laws.29 This approach was taken further in recent years in works by several German historians of a younger generation.30 Here, I will analyse the “pressure from below,” as reflected in the Stimmungsberichte, between November 1934 and the Reichsparteitag in 1935, where the Nuremberg laws were promulgated. The question is, whether and to which extent the “ pressure from below” in this period had effects on the political decisions leading to the introduction of these laws. “Pressure from below” is understood as all forms of radical initiatives from the population that internalised the ideological messages from above and aimed at an increasing radicalisation of the policies against the Jews. Even though most of the violent actions were instigated by local

Functionalism”. Josef Wulf, Martin Broszat, and the Institute for Contemporary History (Munich) in the 1960s,” Yad Vashem: Search and Research–Lectures and Papers (Jerusalem, 2003): 4. 28 The first links in this chain of trivializing the Nuremberg Laws based on Lösener’s memories, which appeared in the publications of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in 1962 and 1965, were Hans Mommsen’s documentation “Der nationalsozialistische Polizeistaat und die Judenverfolgung vor 1938,” VfZ 10 (1962), 88–94, esp. 76 and fn. 30, and in the first German comprehensive history of Nazi Germany and the “Final Solution” by Helmut Krausnick (then director of the Institute), “The Persecution of the Jews,” in: Helmut Krausnick and Martin Broszat (eds.), The Anatomy of the SS-State, London, 1970, 17–110, esp. 44f. Since the early 1970s, Lösener’s memories have uncritically been referred to by mainly so-called functionalist historians, e. g. Karl A. Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz. Nazi Policy toward German Jews 1930–1939, Urbana, Ill., 1970, 121–25 and 131f.; Uwe Dietrich Adam, Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich, Düsseldorf, 1972, 126–32; Mommsen and Obst 1988 (as in fn. 18), 384–485. This approach was also adopted by the Israeli historian Leni Yahil in her Hebrew-language comprehensive history of the Holocaust: HaShoah, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, 1987, 100–2, which also appeared in German as Die Shoah. Überlebenskampf und Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, Munich, 1998; and most recently by the American historian Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, Oxford, 2001, 122. 29 Kulka 1984 (as in fn. 4), 615–24. 30 Longerich 2006 (as in fn. 14), 75–100; Wildt 2007 (as in fn. 17), 260–66. For a detailed deconstruction of the historiographical myth created by Lösener with his document published in 1961, see: Cornelia Essner, Die “ Nürnberger Gesetze” oder: Die Verwaltung des Rassenwahns 1933–1945, Paderborn, 2002, 113–34.

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party activists, they carried away with them non-organized individuals and parts of the population and thus created a radical anti-Jewish atmosphere all over the Reich. To analyse the relation between the “pressure from below” and its effects on the regime’s policies, a textual analysis will here be combined with a quantitative one.31 Already in November 1934, the District Office of Alzenau in Bavaria reported that “[…] in many SA circles there is talk that after the Saar plebiscite,32 harsh steps should be taken more generally against the Jews. In this connection, there were quite open threats of murder expressed. These statements should not be taken lightly, since rash actions in this area could result in extremely serious consequences for the economy and foreign policy.” (CD484, B53)33 A report of December 1934 from the Rheinpfalz also expresses the assumption that a harder line will be followed against the Jews after the Saar plebiscite.34 These expectations were in fact realized during the following months, until the introduction of the laws in September 1935, as the Gestapo situation report (Lagebericht) from the Government District Münster for May 1935 shows: As in most other places in the Reich, locally here in the district in recent weeks the Jewish Problem has once again become a focus of general concern. […] In broad segments of the population, and especially in the ranks of the SA, the dominant view is that the time has now come to finally solve the Jewish Question once and for all. As they put it, they wish to come to grips from below with the Jewish Problem, and believe that the government authorities will then have to take action, following suit. (CD865, B122)

The “new antisemitic wave” of 1935 was unleashed by the party press in April,35 and by September 1935 hundreds of violent actions against Jews were initiated and carried out independently by local activists, with broader elements of the population swept up in this wave. The violence took a large variety of forms and affected all aspects of everyday life. The most frequent and most violent public expressions were anti-Jewish excesses (Einzelaktionen) and mass rallies, a boycott against Jewish shops and enterprises, and a variety of actions against so-called

31 The analysis for this period is based on local and regional reports, completely preserved for Prussia and Bavaria, and on sporadic reports from other Reich regions. No Reich-wide reports were preserved for this period, either by the Gestapo or by the SD. 32 The plebiscite on the political status of the Saarland was held on 12 January 1935. 33 Since the quantitative analysis used here is based on the complete digital version of the Stimmungsberichte edition, all documents are quoted with the CD-Rom number (CD … ). If the document has been included into the printed volume of selected documents, the book number is also given (B … ). The translation is based on the English edition of the book (New Haven, 2010). 34 SA-Standarte 22 Zweibrücken (Rheinpfalz), Report for December 1934 (CD548, B84). 35 Longerich 2006 (as in fn. 14), 75f.

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race defilement (Rassenschande). Remarkably, between January and September 1935, more than one of every two reports (389 out of 667) described these radicalised expressions of popular opinion – a number that gives a first overall impression of the scope of this eruption of anti-Jewish violence. Among the most violent mass demonstrations were those in Munich in May (CD863, B121), the so-called Kurfürstendamm-Krawalle in Berlin in July (CD1004, B139), and rallies with 30,000 participants in Stettin in August (CD1033) and 25,000 in Osnabrück in August (CD1109, B151). The mood of early summer 1935 is pointedly summed up in a report by the Gestapo Berlin for June: […] German Volksgenossen apparently regard them [the Jews] to be fair game in every respect.36 For that reason, in the past month as well, there have been a large number of outrageous incidents. The positive aspect of those events, however, is that the population is clearly having its eyes opened ever wider, and that hostility towards the Jews is on the constant rise. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising should the population on occasion express its indignation and takes the law into its hands […] (CD933, B129).

The wave reached its crest in July and August. An example of the escalation but also of clashes between authorities and population can be found in the Gestapo report from Berlin for July 1935: For months, the Gestapo in Berlin has been observing a constant rise in the wave of antisemitism. […] First at the beginning of June in Spandau and Pankow, there were several demonstrations out in front of Jewish businesses. These rallies were suppressed by taking the Jews temporarily into protective custody, their seizure fully visible to the demonstrators. But soon the demonstrations increased in size […] (CD1004, B139).

From here, the report continues with a detailed description of the KurfürstendammKrawalle with their violent boycott and destruction of Jewish ice-cream parlours and shops, and the manhandling of patrons and cinemagoers, among them foreign visitors. During these events the accusation of “Judenknechte” (Jews’ lackeys) was hurled at the police by the public, and the report finally concludes with the topic of “ race defilement:” In connection with these incidents, it must be noted that the police, forced to intervene in these cases, found itself in an extremely difficult situation, since the most of the public had little understanding for its actions. The officials were greeted by the demonstrators and the rest of the public with shouts of “Jews” lackeys […].’

36 “Deutsche Volksgenossen betrachten sie anscheinend in jeder Hinsicht als Freiwild.”

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In several cases, the population has taken steps to publicly expose the Jewish race-defilers and their Aryan girlfriends by means of posters […].37 (CD1004, B139) While the general tendency in the “antisemitic movement” did not change in the following month, the tension between population and authorities increased, as reported by the Gestapo for Berlin: Everywhere in the population and the Party, people note the lack of a straight and clear line in policy on the Jews. As was already detailed in the last situation report, what is generally noticed is that the government and the Party are not working hand in hand when it comes to the Jewish Question […]. In any event, police force alone will not be able to prevent a repetition of the demonstrations against the Jews (CD1089, B146).

A characteristic picture of mass rallies against and pillorying of “ race-defilers” is given in the Gestapo report for July 1935 from Breslau: […] After race defilement of Aryan women by Jews has finally been presented to the public in a very clear and unambiguous light, the bitter feeling against these criminals has assumed huge proportions, beyond any limit. There was not any abatement until a total of 20 Jews and 20 Aryan “ females” were taken into protective custody. The public reacted with great applause to the internment of these race defilers in the concentration camp. Thus, on 30 July 1935, thousands of Volksgenossen gathered in the streets who wished to witness the dispatching of these race defilers to the camp […] (CD1007, B141).

The extent of scenes like this, which spread throughout the Reich, prompted even a Gestapo reporter from Bielefeld to speak of a kind of mass hysteria: […] Large segments of the population have been seized by a certain kind of race defilement psychosis. They seem to sense race defilement everywhere, and in some cases have called for the state to proceed against race defilement on the basis of events that in some cases occurred many years ago. In these circles of the population, people likewise fail to understand why all those persons whom they named as guilty of race defilement were not sent immediately for a long period of detention to a concentration camp. […] (CD1006, B150)

The Gestapo also reported about the impact of the mass rallies on the Jewish population, as can be seen in an August report from Osnabrück on a demonstration attended by 25,000 people: “This anxiety psychosis [of the Jews] is so powerful that during a rally of the NSDAP at the Ledenhof in Osnabrück, some of the Jews suddenly decided to leave town and did not return until the following day […].” (CD1009, B151)

37 Even though a law against “race defilement” was not yet in existence, 72 persons were arrested in Berlin in July on charges of this offence, according to this report.

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In smaller cities and towns as well, thousands participated in demonstrations and anti-Jewish violence, as described in special reports by the Gestapo from Aurich (East Frisia) on July 27 and 30 about “demonstrations in the North against Jews” (CD1000, B140). The county commissioner of the small town of Hünfeld (Hessen) did not hesitate to label what happened in provincial towns “ terror”: “ The acts of terror against Jews and Jewish property continue unabated, since the perpetrators think they are protected from any sanctions under the law.” (CD985, B138)38 In many places, the demonstrations turned into pogroms and the Jews under attack had to be evacuated if they did not flee, as was seen above in Osnabrück: In Diez a. d. Lahn, a crowd gathered out in front of a Jewish orphanage and, using ladders, attempted to enter the building. It was successful in causing the police to intervene and come to the aid of those inside, some 50 persons, mainly children, and deport them to Frankfurt am Main. Popular indignation was especially violent in Gladenbach, where three houses inhabited by Jews were ransacked. People forced their way into the houses and then turned on the water taps, or ripped out the pipes, so that the houses were totally destroyed by the water […] (CD1140, B154).39

Across the Reich, the crowds accompanied the violent actions and massdemonstrations by hanging banners and painting slogans on the windows of Jewish shops, carrying ideological as well as practical messages such as: ‘“Kauft nicht bei Juden,” “Juden und Judenkechte unerwünscht,” “Die Juden sind unser Unglück,” “Ohne Lösung der Judenfrage keine Erlösung des deutschen Volkes” u.ä.’ (“Don’t shop with Jews,” “Jews and Jews’ lackeys not wanted,” “The Jews are our misfortune,” and “No salvation of the German people without solution of the Jewish question.”) (CD627) A quantitative analysis of documents of the period preceding the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 as compared with the same period in 1934 allows more concrete conclusions to be drawn about the developments.40 For this analysis, the most widespread anti-Jewish phenomena have been chosen: “Einzelaktionen” (individual

38 For a detailed description of the violence in the German provinces up to 1939, see Wildt 2007 (as in fn. 17). 39 District Governor Wiesbaden, Report for August 1935. 40 This research was carried out computer-supported with the help of the search engine of the Stimmungsberichte CD-R. The search produces the number of documents in which a certain key word is found but not the considerably higher number of occurrences of that term in the text. This so pre-selected group of documents was then researched by what is professionally called an intellectual analysis that makes uses of traditional means of textual analysis to gain a comprehensive result.

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actions) and “Rassenschande” (race defilement), “Boykott” (boycott), “Kundgebung” (rally), and “Demonstration” (demonstration). Number of documents with: boykott* OR rassensch* OR einzelaktionen* OR kundgebung* OR demonstra* 1. Jan.-15 Sept. 1934

Total number of documents 228

63 (27%) 1. Jan.-15 Sept. 1935

667

389 (58%)

The number of documents that mention anti-Jewish actions during the first three quarters of 1935 unequivocally shows the trend toward the radicalisation of hostility in popular opinion—a kind of pressure from below—which had not yet been institutionalised by law. In addition to the computer-based analysis presented above, an intellectual quantitative text analysis of the reports (see note 39) from July and August 1935 in regard to “Einzelaktionen” and “Rassenschande” more than confirms these findings and provides a more differentiated picture of the situation. For this type of analysis, the following violent actions are understood as “Einzelaktionen:” anti-Jewish demonstrations, damage to and/or destruction of synagogues and cemeteries, manhandling of Jews resulting in injuries, and “protective custody” of Jews in connection with these excesses and protests against “race defilement.” For the period between 1 July and 10 August 1935,41 the computerized search for “Einzelaktionen” showed that fifty-three of 127 documents reported such actions, while the intellectual analysis of these texts showed that a total of more than 328 cases were involved. Or, to put it the other way round: the total number of anti-Jewish excesses was higher by at least six fold than indicated by only a count of the relevant documents. This is also seen from a comparison of the computerized search and the textual analysis regarding “race defilement” in reports between 1 August and 10 September 1935. The computerized search found that in this period forty of 158 documents reported on “Rassenschande,” while the textual analysis showed that these

41 Most of the reports are monthly, written during the first ten days of the following month. For example, the reports for June had to be submitted by 10 July. As a result, the period of examination here includes reports on the situation in June and July 1935.

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forty documents actually reported on at least 185 cases. Some of the 185 cases were unspecific (“a number of Jews and their non racial-aware girls,” CD1034) while other reports, in addition to precise numbers, mentioned that “more persons” have been affected (cf. CD1090). Based on these reports, the overall number of “race defilement” cases reported for August can with certainty be estimated as considerably higher. This also is true for the “Einzelaktionen” and other kinds of actions where the exact number of cases exceeds the findings because of the mechanism described here. As shown above, the violent “pressure from below” and general lawlessness caused concern among local authorities responsible for public order and confronted them with a difficult situation: on the one hand their duty was to maintain public order, whereas at the same time they were part of the policy of the struggle against the Jew declared by the party and the state. Concern was also expressed by some segments of the population, who felt uneasy in the face of untrammelled public violence and even threatened by it, as a Gestapo report from Aachen for August 1935 shows: […] The way the Jewish Question is being dealt with in my district has likewise caused great displeasure, since given their mentality, the Roman Catholic population initially sees the Jew as a human being, and only secondarily thinks of evaluating the matter from the standpoint of race policy. […] It is thus very welcome that in future there are to be no more individual actions against Jews, especially since here in this district, such actions have in any case led to the most detrimental consequences in regard to our close foreign neighbours just over the border. […] (CD1086, B147

As the Gestapo reported from the district of Merseburg for September 1935, this attitude was not limited to religious circles: “Lack of proper understanding is prominent among the members of the co-called upper and better-educated classes. It is especially in these circles that we are often able to discern an almost complete loss of the racial primal instinct.” (CD 1224) The mounting pressure from below as presented in the reports created a reality, in which the local and regional authorities acted on their own initiative by adopting quasi-legal measures, which actually preceded the anti-Jewish laws of Nuremberg on the Reich-level. The “Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour” was preceded by the refusal of local registrars to perform marriages between “Aryans” and “Non-Aryans”42 and by the daily arrests of men and women who were accused of “race defilement.” Also the “Reich Flag Law” forbidding Jews to fly the German state flag and the Swastika was preceded by local initiatives as well as by

42 See K/ J, CD, Doc. 535, Book, Doc. 78; CD, Doc. 762; CD, Doc. 933, Book, Doc. 129; CD, Doc. 1048; CD, Doc. 1082 as well as K/ J, Book: 729f.: Mischehen, and 741: Rassenschande.

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a Reich-Wide directive of the Gestapa.43 Furthermore the demand of the population for a law depriving the Jews of their Reich citizenship is reported by the SD in August 1935 in connection with the pressure from the “Volk … which accordingly to its national socialist worldview wishes to see Jews being ousted from Germany.”44 All these kinds of radicalising pressure from below as presented in the reports clearly influenced the political leadership of the Reich. This can be seen from the minutes of a high-level meeting convened on 20 August 1935 to discuss the necessary next steps in regard to the Jewish question—a meeting that led to the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws a few weeks later. Participating were ministers of the Reich government, the heads of the Gestapo and the SD, and others. The Bavarian interior minister and Gauleiter of Munich, Adolf Wagner, obviously based his conclusion on the reports about popular opinion from the preceding months: State Minister Wagner likewise criticized the violent excesses. He explained them by stating that in regard to the Jewish Question, there was a divergence of opinion between the government and the Party, and also with some departments of the Reich administration. About 80 percent of the population was pressing for a solution to the Jewish Question as spelled out in the Party platform. They thought that the Reich government had to keep that in mind, otherwise it would suffer a loss in its authority.45

It should be mentioned that a few months earlier, in May, Adolf Wagner had been the chief instigator of the violent anti-Jewish mass demonstrations in Munich. Among the ministers who spoke along a similar line was the president of the Reichsbank and conservative minister of economic affairs, Hjalmar Schacht who had already spoken out against the violence and lawlessness in a public speech in Königsberg on 18 August 1935.46 He commented on the detrimental “exaggerations and violent excesses of antisemitic propaganda. […] The conclusion of his

43 See K/ J, CD, Doc. 868; Doc. 883; Doc. 894; Doc. 1004 and Book, Doc.139, here as well the Reich-wide ordinance of the Gestapa of 12 February. See also K/ J, Book: 683f: Flaggengesetzgebung. 44 K/ J, CD, Doc. 1082. 45 Minutes of the meeting (Chefbesprechung) of the heads of the Reich and state ministries, the Gestapo, the SD, and others, 20 August 1935 (Preussisches Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Rep. 320, Nr. 513), excerpts quoted in Kulka 1984 (as in fn. 4), 616–19. The minutes were actually taken by Lösener himself, though in his memories (as in n. 26) he does not mention this meeting at all. The mentioned fear of a “ loss in the authority” of the government appears in several preceding reports like in the Cologne Gestapo report for June 1935: “But ultimately what suffers in both instances is the authority of the state” (K/ J, CD, Doc. 942, and Book, Doc. 133). For an analysis of another version of the minutes of this meeting, kept by the Gestapo see now Wildt 2007 (as in fn. 17) 261–64. 46 See K/ J, CD, Doc. 1099, Book, Doc. 148 and CD, Doc. 1141.

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remarks was that the Party program of the NSDAP should be made reality, but solely on the basis of legal measures and decrees.”47 At this stage, Hitler himself was disinclined to accede to the legislation proposals for various reasons. Thus, he rejected Schacht’s personal intervention on the matter in May, though, in the end, he followed the pressure from below.48 There is no doubt that popular opinion, as it reached the authorities through the reports, played a role that cannot be ignored both in the preparations as well as in the final political decision on the Nuremberg Laws. The laws were intended to meet two goals alike: the spectacular realization of a basic principle of the revolutionary ideology which the movement had preached from the outset of its political path; and the simultaneous institutionalisation of the revolutionary ideology and its militant manifestations within a controlled legal framework. This appears to be one of the stages of a complex dialectical relationship between government policy and popular opinion in the Third Reich. The reports on the population’s reactions to the Nuremberg Laws are eloquent from this point of view: The new laws on Jews have sparked great enthusiasm among the enlightened population. The activists and old veteran fighters in the movement are also very satisfied, and generally people are shouting with joy: “The state is still revolutionary, after all! The points of the Party platform have not been forgotten!” The violence against the Jews has ceased almost completely as a result of a strict decree issued by the Interior Ministry and an unmistakable statement on these matters by the Führer.49

While the Gestapo of Kassel reports enthusiastic acceptance of the Nuremberg Laws as realization of the Party program they had strived for and that made violence no longer necessary, in Aachen the picture was more particular. According to the Gestapo there, the laws were welcomed only in so far as they were to prevent further anti-Jewish violence: “The new laws announced in Nuremberg were not greeted by the population with unanimous approval. […] The only aspect praised is that this legislation will prevent excesses in antisemitic propaganda and violence.”50 Several other reports mention critical utterances about the laws and the earlier violence but emphasize the desirable contribution they will make toward the goal of isolating and excluding German Jewry:

47 See Kulka 1984 (as in fn. 4), 617. 48 On the explicit reference to the preceding reports on popular opinion in Hitler’s speech on the occasion of the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws at the Reichsparteitag, see ibid., 620. 49 Gestapo Kassel, Report for September 1935 (K/ J, CD, Doc. 1215). 50 Gestapo Aachen, Report for September 1935 (K/ J, CD, Doc. 1202).

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The Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour was also received for the most part with a sense of satisfaction. One major reason for that is because psychologically it will lead, more so than through unpleasant individual actions, to the desired goal of isolating Jewry. However, there are some who have mixed opinions regarding this law.51

Similarly, the Gestapo report from Berlin comments on the laws as a clear and final measure for the exclusion of the Jews from German society: The new laws passed by the Reichstag at the Convention of Liberty, in particular the Law on the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service and the Law on the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, have finally cleared the air and brought clarity after years of struggle between Germandom and Jewry. In future and for all time to come, no interference is possible in the völkisch affairs and concerns of the German nation, and is forbidden.52

The far-reaching teleological meaning of this significant step of 1935 toward the “removal” of the Jews is most pointedly expressed in one of the ubiquitous anti-Jewish banners and graffiti paintings “from below”: “Keine Erlösung des deutschen Volkes ohne Lösung der Judenfrage.”53 The dialectics between pressure from below and measures from above are also integral to further decisive stages in the development and realization of fundamental ideological principles in the Third Reich, in which the solution of the Jewish question, with its multiple implications, was of central significance.

III The Reichskristallnacht is perhaps the most thoroughly researched chapter in the pre-war history of German Jewry in the Third Reich. Historiography, as well as Jewish and German collective memories, mainly presents the traumatic image of the November 1938 pogrom as an event of destruction and devastation in the course of one night and one day.54 As is well known, the government’s pretext

51 Gestapo Koblenz, Report for September 1935 (K/ J, CD, Doc. 1216). 52 Gestapo Berlin, Report for September 1935 (K/ J, CD, Doc. 1209 and Book, Doc. 158). 53 “No salvation of the German people without the solution of the Jewish question,” Stapostelle Regierungsbezirk Koblenz, report for February 1935 (see K/ J, CD, Doc. 627). 54 Hermann Graml, Der 9. November 1938: “ Reichskristallnacht”, Bonn, 1955; Walter H. Pehle (ed.), Der Judenpogrom 1938: Von der “ Reichskristallnacht” zum Völkermord, Frankfurt a. M., 1988, 10–117, as well as particular chapters in almost all comprehensive books on the Third Reich and on Nazi Germany and the Jews. For a select bibliography see in: Longerich 2006 (as in fn. 14), 374 fn. 1. On German popular opinion and the National Socialist “ Judenpolitik” in 1938, see in particular: Kershaw 1983 (as in fn. 17), ch. 6 (iii) “ Crystal Night”; Bankier 1992 (as in fn. 4), 85–88.

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for the entire action was the dramatic news of 9 November 1938, about the death of the first secretary of the German embassy in Paris, vom Rath, as the result of Hershel Grynszpan’s assassination attempt two days earlier. A revealing document that sheds light upon the pre-history of the Reichskristallnacht is the Reich-wide SD report for January to October 1938—that is, for the ten months preceding the pogrom. The report is dated 1 November 1938, about a week before Kristallnacht: “ The attitude of the population to the Jewish Question was manifested in the very numerous individual actions especially in recent months, which in most instances were promoted by the local Party organizations.” (CD2529, B354) A more graphic account of the nature, scope, and circumstances of the events in those recent months is given in the monthly Reich-wide SD report for October 1938, which was discovered several years ago in the Osobyi-Archive in Moscow: The intensified anti-Jewish attitude in the population […] had its most powerful expression in actions against the Jewish population. In the south and southwest of the Reich, this violence at times took on the character of a pogrom [italics my own]. In a number of towns and localities, the synagogues were destroyed or set on fire, and the windows of Jewish shops and homes were destroyed. In the Gau Franconia and in Württemberg, the Jews in a few localities were in some instances forced by the population to leave their residence immediately, taking along only the barest essentials (CD2529, B353).

As in the previous chapter, a quantitative, computer-based analysis was carried out, followed by an intellectual, manual examination of the texts. The results show that seventy-six of 161 detailed reports from all parts of the Reich report on 117 “Einzelaktionen” [individual actions] against the Jews between 1 March and 8 November 1938. Often only non-quantified information referring to “numerous events” is given, without exact numbers, so that the total number is actually considerably higher than 117. A great many of the actions were those events of destruction and violence that the above-mentioned report did not hesitate to describe as bearing “the character of a pogrom.”55

A different approach, pointing to the context of the preceding radicalization “ from below”, was taken in: Kulka 1982 (as in fn. 1), 135–38: “The Munich crisis and Kristallnacht.” Following the Stimmungsberichte edition, it was further developed by Longerich 2006 (as in fn. 14), 119–21 and Wildt 2007 (as in fn. 17), 312–19. 55 While for 1935 only local and regional reports were preserved but no Reich-wide reports, the source situation regarding 1938 is different. We now have monthly Reich-wide SD reports at our disposal for the overall picture, but fewer of the more concrete and detailed regional and local reports. The local and regional reports from Bavaria, Westphalia, and Palatinate were more or less completely preserved, with sporadic reports from other regions of the Reich. Cf. fn. 31.

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It turns out that the pattern of anti-Jewish rioting and violence and even the cleansing whole localities of Jews was extremely widespread during the period of May to October 1938, a time of brink-of-war tension over the Sudeten crisis with Czechoslovakia, and even before that in relation to the tension around the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938. The reports also allow an insight into the mood and reactions of the Jews in this period; the most insightful example appears in the Reich-wide SD report for September 1938: The mood of the Jews in the territory of the Reich was shaped in the past report period almost exclusively by the situation in foreign affairs. It gave rise to the most sundry and varied rumors about the possible way in which Jews might be treated in the event of war. […] Jews in general had fears of being sent to a concentration camp, or of being disposed of in some other manner (CD2509, B347).56

The first example of a pogrom-like destruction of Jewish houses and synagogues and attacks on Jews occurred in connection with the Anschluss of Austria. In his report for March 1938, the district governor of Lower Franconia and Aschaffenburg writes about six such events “ on the occasion of the incorporation of Austria” in his district alone, namely in Adelsberg, Burgsinn, Gemünden, Mittelsinn, Kleinlangheim, and Lohr (CD2399, B313).57 The remarkable radicalisation of all forms of anti-Jewish activity by the population was triggered by the escalation of the Sudeten crisis following the Czechoslovakian mobilization on 20 May 1938. The fear of imminent war is in general presented as related to the role ascribed by the population to “the Jew” as the force that provokes war against Germany. During the war itself, this link became fatal for the Jews, particularly in the years after the invasion of the Soviet Union and the American entry into the war in 1941, when the European conflict became a world war.58 In this context, the anti-Jewish mood found expression even in most remote provincial towns, as reported from the local police office of Sandberg in Bavaria on 27 September 1938: The mood in the population can be best described as depressed. It (the population) is anticipating a large-scale war. People are in complete agreement with the need for measures to

56 The report uses “unschädlich gemacht werden” for “being disposed of”, a term used in German for the extermination of pests in particular. 57 Another Bavarian document reports on tensions between the German population and the Jews even before the Anschluss, during the “test mobilization” on March 10 and 11 (District governor Upper- and Middle-Franconia, Report for March 1938, K/ J, CD, Doc. 2397). 58 See most recently Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices. Ten Decisions that Changed the World 1940– 1941, New York, 2007, ch. 10; Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy. Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust, Cambridge, MA, 2006.

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care for the refugees from the Sudetenland, and they also show very great compassion. In general, the “Jew” is held responsible as the originator of these critical times (CD2525).

This accusation reinforced the demand for the complete “removal” of the Jews down to the very last of them from the German Volksgemeinschaft: In the days prior to October 1,59 many instances were noted where the Jews still living in the area were following the mounting tension with a kind of inner joy. From this it could be concluded they are indulging in a kind of relish in their anticipation of the coming war. This gave rise among the German population to a justified sense of repugnance. It then was vented in many places in action against the Jews after the positive solution to the question of the Sudeten Germans was found. […] If a number of illegal means were employed in this connection, that is only understandable. […] In any event, it is necessary to press forward with the struggle against the Jews, even if by permissible means, until the last Jew has finally disappeared from our Volksgemeinschaft.60

To reach the goal of removal, pogrom-like actions were carried out even before the tensions culminated in the Reichskristallnacht. A cumulative report by the governor of the Palatine district for October 1938 explicitly underlines this connection in reporting on the devastation wreaked on the synagogue in Leimersheim on the night of 9 to 10 October 1938 and other Palatine synagogues and houses of Jews. After listing a large number of “Einzelaktionen,” this extensive report for October, written on 9 November, the eve of Kristallnacht, sums up by noting that all reports from the various places that contributed to this regional compilation provide the same “justification” for the actions: The reason for all these events lies once again in the behaviour of the Jews during the period of high tension. […] The population wants to see the Jews get out of the villages and leave, and seeks to avenge itself in this way for the insolent behaviour of the Jews during the critical period in September. This justification for the actions of the population runs through all the reports. (CD2538, B355)

Altogether, the Sudeten crisis and tensions caused by the fear of war are explicitly mentioned in seventeen documents—each of which reports on more than one case—as reasons for violent anti-Jewish excesses. Aside from these explicit reports, the connection is implicit in most of the other documents on such incidents. All actions that typify Reichskristallnacht—the destruction and devastation of synagogues and Jewish houses, manhandling of Jews and attacks against

59 Following the “Munich Agreement” of 30 September 1938, the Sudetenland was occupied on 1 October. 60 NSDAP Hofheim, Report for October 1938 (K/ J, CD, Doc. 2545).

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them, their arrest and expulsion—can already be found with increasing intensity during the first ten months of the year. The unspecified number of cases of synagogues damaged and destroyed was not only a result of anti-Jewish violence from below as described in 11 documents.61 In two spectacular cases, total destruction was initiated and carried out from above: in Munich in June on special order by Hitler, and in Nuremberg in August at the initiative of Streicher.62 As explicitly stated in one of the reports, the Nuremberg action was intended as the first stage of a “ Großaktion” and “tens of thousands of Volksgenossen were present at the historical hour.”63 Similarly, the bimonthly SD report from Berlin for June and July 1938 spoke about widespread boycott actions initiated by the party leadership that spiralled into destruction, looting, and physical violence against Jews and appear, in retrospect, as rehearsals for the Reichskristallnacht: Beginning on 10 June 1938, a Jews’ operation [Judenaktion] was carried out in Berlin, initially only in a few sections of the city. All formations of the Party participated, as instructed by the Gau Direction. The operation reached its high point on 20/21 June 1938, when all the Jewish shops in Berlin and the signs of the Jewish lawyers and doctors were painted over with the word “Jew” and the Star of David. In the course of the operation, there was here and there destruction and plundering of Jewish shops, as well as physical assaults. The operation was ended on the afternoon of 21 June 1938. […] (CD2458, B332)

According to the Reich-wide SD-report for July, similar actions occurred all over Germany (CD2473, B341). The cases reported from provincial towns and villages range from the devastation of synagogues to full-fledged pogrom-like actions initiated from below. One example of a heavily damaged synagogue is from the district of Main Franconia, where in Mellrichstadt the interior of the synagogue was completely destroyed in an action that mushroomed into increasing public participation: “The first attack involved a small number of individuals, and then people from the gathering crowd chose to join in on the destruction.” (CD2513, B350).64 In the same district, Jewish farms were attacked and damaged, a Jew was beaten up, and “ the embitterment of the population found an outlet in similar excesses against the Jews at other places.”65 In many places the situation escalated, as for example 61 Thirteen cases are listed with name of the places, while a still larger number is unspecified. 62 For Nuremberg see K/ J, CD, Doc. 2464 and Book, Doc. 336; for Munich: “Ein Schandfleck verschwindet,” Der Stürmer, 26 June 1938. 63 District Governor Upper and Central Franconia, Report for August 1938 (K/ J, CD, Doc. 2498 and Book, Doc. 343). 64 District Governor Main Franconia, Report for September, 10 October 1938. 65 K/ J, CD, Doc. 2513 and Book, Doc. 350.

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described by the SD in a special report for 27 September 1938, from Wiesbaden district, where in Nassau/Lahn a large crowd gathered against the local Jews: The house was surrounded by the crowd, and windows and shutters were smashed. The Jew Walter Rosenthal was taken into protective custody by the police for his own safety. A further report will soon follow. Another incident occurred in Rauenthal/Rhg., where a male and female Jew commented on the current foreign situation in remarks to the residents, saying that in two years they would once again be in power. The following night the people dragged these two persons from their beds and, whips in hand, forced them to march in their nightclothes through the streets of the town. (CD2510, B348)

The pattern of the police taking Jews into protective custody “for their own safety” when the situation lurched out of control can be found repeatedly, for example in a report for May 1938 on a mass gathering in Bad Alzenau that turned into a violent excess (CD2441, B328). Under the impression of the Sudeten crisis, the violence against the Jews in this period of brink-of-war tension preceding the Reichskristallnacht resulted in Jews leaving several places or being forced out by the population, making the towns “judenrein:” As a result of the murders and atrocities perpetrated against Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, a great indignation flared up against the local Jews in the market town of Bechhofen, district office Feuchtwangen, and in Wilhermsdorf, district office Neustadt a.d.Aisch. The Jews then left Bechhofen and Wilhermsdorf. These localities are now completely free of Jews, like the entire district of Feuchtwangen.66

During the months preceding the Reichskristallnacht, there were of course other voices in the population as well. Some of them either openly or implicitly criticized the anti-Jewish violence, while others expressed their apprehension in the face of the increasing brutality and lawlessness of the pogrom-like actions. In the same Reich-wide SD report for October 1938, which describes the extent and details of the pogrom-like actions, the reporter also mentions: “It was possible to note that the Catholic population generally disapproved of these actions.” (CD2529, B353) Similar critical voices from different parts of the population had already been noted earlier in a Reich-wide SD report for April and May 1938. It describes “a strengthened anti-Jewish attitude among the population” on the one hand and “indirect support for the Jews on the part of strict Catholics and Protestants, and 66 District Governor Upper and Central Franconia, Report for September 1938 (K/ J, CD, Doc. 2515 and Book, Doc. 351).

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among farmers” on the other. (CD2434, B324) A local SD report of 15 May 1938 from Hanau reports on critical voices emanating in particular from so-called “bessere Leute,” a term generally used for the liberal bourgeoisie. (CD2435, B325) However, there is no doubt that this new wave of “intensified anti-Jewish attitude in the population,” to quote again the cumulative Reich-wide retrospective report for October, written a few days before the Reichskristallnacht, “had its most powerful expression in actions against the Jewish population” and that the radical trend regarding the Jewish question was then dominant. It can now be concluded that the Reichskristallnacht pogrom was an expansion and a centrally organized escalation from above of the patterns of anti-Jewish violence that had swept Germany from below during the previous months of the year. As shown, the often minute and identifiable details given in the local and regional reports on the events of this period confirm the reliability of the Reichwide SD reports that were the point of departure for this chapter.67 It was these reports, summarizing the information provided by lower reporting levels across the Reich that were presented to the political leadership and served it in its decision-making. The decision on the Kristallnacht pogrom itself was made at the highest level, and according to recent research, was also motivated by and aimed at foreign politics.68 The pogrom as such remains a milestone in the historical awareness of Germans and Jews, as well as one of the central issues in the historiography on the Third Reich in the pre-war period. But, as it is now evident, it was by no means an isolated event unleashed on the night of 9–10 November 1938, just as the Nuremberg Laws were not Hitler’s chance improvised initiative on the eve of the Reichsparteitag of 15 September 1935. The pressure from below preceding the Nuremberg Laws almost unavoidably brought about the institutionalisation of the radical demands in the form of legislation that also sought to put an end to the uncontrollable public violence. In 1938, on the other hand, the pressure from below created local patterns of massive violence which, following the decision from above, were readily available to be expanded and escalated into the Reich-wide pogrom of Kristallnacht, with all its implications and consequences. As such, the population’s attitudes and actions—the radicalised “pressure from below”—provided a background for the political leadership’s decisions. This long unresearched dimension of violence and destruction from below preceding the Reichskristallnacht went hand-in-hand with the well-researched radicalisation of the “Judenpolitik” from above: Beginning in the economic 67 A more detailed description of the period discussed here can be found in recent publications by Wildt 2007 (as in fn. 17), 314–19 and Longerich 2006 (as in fn. 14), 119–21 who used the documents of the Stimmungsberichte edition and other sources. 68 See: Stefan Kley, “Hitler and the Pogrom of November 9–10, 1938,” YVS 28 (2000), 87–112.

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sphere with the escalation of Aryanization in 1937, continuing with measures of administrative and political terror, such as registration of all Jewish property in April 1938, and followed by mass arrests of Jews in June 1938 and the first mass expulsions from Germany of Jews with Soviet citizenship in February and Jews of Polish citizenship in October 1938.69 In the course of this radicalisation of anti-Jewish politics, the Reichskristallnacht itself was of course an event of major historical significance. Even though no central, uniform order was issued, an unambiguous signal to the party leaders— based on a clear decision by Hitler—was given by Goebbels immediately after the news arrived of vom Rath’s death on the evening of November 9. Heydrich followed this up with his urgent telegram of 1:20 A.M. on November 10, in which he directed the Gestapo and the SD to immediately inform the already “active” Gauleiters and district party leaders of his orders.70 The message they received was that the police had been instructed to tolerate most forms of violence and not to tame the anti-Jewish excesses but rather to arrest as many Jewish men as local prisons could hold and later deport them to concentration camps.71 Any orders from above for the pogrom, however, could not have been carried out with such immediacy and effectiveness in all parts of the Reich without the patterns of violence and destruction developed during the preceding months.72 Even though the SD did not initiate the November pogrom, it was more than well aware of the “wrath of the people” (Volkszorn) as an accelerating factor in the “ Solution of the Jewish question.” This is seen in the SD memorandum of January 1937 for Heydrich “On the Jewish Problem:” The most effective way to deprive the Jews of a feeling of security is the wrath of the people, as manifested in violence. Although this method is illegal, it has a long-lasting effect, as the “ Kurfürstendamm riot” showed. […] Psychologically this is all the more comprehensible, since the Jew has learned a great deal from the pogroms of recent centuries and his greatest fear is of a hostile mood which can spontaneously turn against him at any time (CD2063, B252).

On 24 November 1938, a mere two weeks after the Reichskristallnacht pogrom, the views of the secret SD memorandum found their public expression in the 69 See Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews. Vol. I: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939, New York, 1997, 257–68; Avraham Barkai, “Exclusion and Persecution: 1933–1938,” in: Michael A. Meyer (ed.), German-Jewish History in Modern Times, vol. 4: Renewal and Destruction 1918–1945, New York, 1998, 195–230, esp. 216–22; see also: K/ J, Book, Zeittafel, 618–23. 70 For a detailed reconstruction of that evening and night, see Kley 2000 (as in fn. 68). 71 IMT, PS 3051. 72 This has been persuasively demonstrated by Wildt 2007 (as in fn. 17), 301–19, summarized on 318, and Longerich 2006 (as in fn. 14), 119–21.

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SS journal Das Schwarze Korps, where a frighteningly precise prediction of all the subsequent steps leading toward the Final Solution of the Jewish question was published: The removal of the Jews from all spheres of the economy, their marking, their ghettoisation, and, finally, the unavoidable annihilation “by fire and sword.”73 Both the destructive violence of the Reichskristallnacht and the cold rationalistic thinking of the SD, the central drive behind the Judenpolitik, were already then part of the “genocidal mentality” in Nazi Germany, as tellingly analysed by Ian Kershaw.74 That no further pogroms like the Reichskristallnacht took place in Germany was probably due to the mainly negative reactions of the German population, even though the dominant thrust of their pragmatic arguments concentrated on criticism of the futile destruction of “German property.”75 The regime’s radicalised anti-Jewish policy was subsequently channelled into other forms, including the complete removal of the Jews from the German economy76 and the use of Jewish prisoners in the concentration camps as hostages to exercise pressure on the Jews to enforce and accelerate emigration. The outbreak of the war brought in its wake two different policies—for the Reich and for occupied Poland. In Germany, renewed local “Einzelaktionen” of anti-Jewish violence from below and the “old fighters” demand for large-scale actions were reported, but the Gestapo ordered all these activities to be nipped in the bud.77 In Poland however, murderous violence against the Jews was unleashed by the SD-Einsatzgruppen and the Wehrmacht immediately with the invasion.78 *** Concluding, the complex dialectical interrelation between popular opinion and political decisions in Nazi Germany existed throughout the history of the Third

73 “Juden, was nun?”, Das Schwarze Korps, 24 November 1938, 47, Folge, 1. See also: Saul Friedländer (as in fn. 69), 212ff. 74 Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis, London, 2000, 151ff. 75 See Kulka 1982 (as in fn. 1), 135–44. 76 Directive on the exclusion of Jews from German Economy, November 12, 1938 (RGBl. I, 1580). 77 See the directive of 9 September 1939, by the Gestapo Main Office in Stimmungsberichte, 632 and the reports on the suppression of the renewed attempts at anti-Jewish violence “ from below” in K/ J, CD, Doc. 2972, Book, Doc. 458; CD, Doc. 2988, Book, Doc. 467; CD, Doc. 2991, Book, Doc. 469; CD, Doc. 2993, Book, Doc. 471. 78 See: Jochen Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg. Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939, Frankfurt a. M., 2006; Saul Friedländer, The Years of Extermination. Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939–1945, New York, 2007, 26–30.

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Reich. As shown here, this relationship played a significant role in the two situations of 1935 and 1938—although in two different ways. Regarding the attitudes of the German population during the war years, a similar examination based upon the Stimmungsberichte can now be undertaken of the situation preceding the decision on the deportation of the Jews from Germany and during the Final Solution. For this future research, the question will not only be what the German population knew about the fate of the Jews, but rather what the majority wanted in regard to the solution of the Jewish question.79

79 See interview on the occasion of the release of the Stimmungsberichte at the Frankfurt book fair 2004: “Man wollte die Juden loswerden.” Tribüne-Gespräch mit Eberhard Jäckel und Dov Kulka, Autoren des Buches “Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945,” Tribüne–Zeitschrift zum Verständnis des Judentums 43:172 (2004), 202–4.

8 German Population and the “Solution of the Jewish Question” at the Time of the Wannsee Conference There is a wide range of research in historiography on the significance of the Wannsee Conference for the unfolding of the “Final Solution”. The new volume of biographical essays by leading historians on the participants of the conference, which dealt with the planning and implementation of the so-called “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” is unquestionably an important achievement in the field of research on the Nazi perpetrators.1 Particularly valuable is the exceptional concept of bringing together these biographical studies in one volume. Furthermore, in addition to examining the participants’ individual roles at the conference, the essays range across their complete biographies. In each case, the reader is led back to the origins of their political activities, generally in the wake of World War I and during the formative stages of the Nazi movement. One can view the new volume as a continuity and extension of Ulrich Herbert’s innovative approach in his acclaimed major biography of Werner Best on “Radicalism, Ideology and Reason.”2 However, unlike the collective biography by Michael Wildt —An Uncompromising Generation: The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office,3 on the rather homogeneous body of the RSHA —this volume references a time-specific historical event while also considering a heterogeneous gathering of leading representatives of the Nazi regime from different ministerial offices, security agencies, plenipotentiaries for the occupied territories, and party representatives. Each of the senior representatives invited to the conference, which was convened by Reinhard Heydrich, was indispensable for planning, organizing, and implementing the annihilation of European Jewry. Thus, the distinction of the present volume derives not only from its ability to take earlier historiographical approaches to a new level, but also from its singular compilation of the biographies of representatives of the leading echelon of the Nazi regime. Hence its innovative value for research about key Nazi figures.

1 Hans-Christian Jasch and Christoph Kreutzmüller (eds.), The Participants. The Men of the Wannsee Conference, Berghahn, New York and Oxford, 2017. 2 Ulrich Herbert, Best: Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft, 1903–1989, Bonn, 1996. 3 Michael Wildt, An Uncompromising Generation: The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office, Washington, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-009

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At the same time, the editors and some of the contributors have gone beyond research about the perpetrators. In their introduction, Hans-Christian Jasch and Christoph Kreutzmüller devote considerable space to the unconcealed picture displayed by the German press around the time of the conference about the impending and indeed already ongoing extermination of European Jews, also referring to Hitler’s notorious prophecy from January 1939 and January 1942. Accordingly, it might be worth posing the question on how the German population reacted to these frank media representations and, beyond that, what their attitude was toward the regime’s anti-Jewish policy —and toward the Jews themselves— at this critical stage of the persecution. Today, we have massive, albeit not yet adequately researched source material that can shed light on these questions.4 It turns out that the Nazi regime itself did not accept at face value the monolithic image of state and society that it portrayed in the mass media. The authorities established secret internal reporting systems to provide reliable information about the prevailing popular mood and about activity among the different segments of the population. The most important as well as the most dependable of these systems was that of the SS Security Service (the SD). The directives to the compilers of the reports emphasized repeatedly that the authorities wanted a true, unembellished picture of the situation and of the population’s attitude toward the policy of the regime and of course toward its Judenpolitik and toward the Jews themselves.5 Particular attention was to be paid to critical or even negative attitudes and activities. According to the directive issued by Heydrich in 1937, the purpose of  the SD reports—written “for the political leadership of the Reich” —was “to fight

4 Otto Dov Kulka/Eberhard Jäckel (eds.), The Jews in the Secret Nazi Reports on Popular Opinion in Germany, 1933–1945, New Haven and London, 2010. See in particular the Introduction. The book itself presents 752 selected documents of the whole corpus of 3,744 reports that appear in the comprehensive digital edition of the original German documents attached to the book on CD. The numbers of the documents or their excerpts in the book are quoted: Kulka/Jäckel Book Doc. XX; The numbers of the full digital texts relevant to the Jews on the CD are quoted: Kulka/Jäckel CD Doc. XXX. See also Alan E. Steinweis, “An Essential Source Collection on German Popular Opinion and the Jews”, in: Yad Vashem Studies, 40 (2012). The original German edition with the attached CD already appeared in 2004. See Kulka/ Jäckel, Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, Schriften des Bundesarchivs, 62, Düsseldorf 2004. See also Bernward Dörner, in: H-Soz-Kult, http://www.hsozkult.de/ searching/id/rezbuecher-5053?title=o-kulka-u-a-hgg-juden-in-ns-stimmungsberichten&q=doerner&page=5&sort=&fq=&total=125&recno=87&subType=reb 5 Kulka/Jäckel 2010 (as in fn. 4), see in particular the Introduction.

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the enemy with passion but to be cold as ice and objective in the assessment of the situation and its presentation.”6 The existence of these reports had been known since the mid-1960s and sporadically quoted in the research literature on various issues, including “the Jews.” For the war years, however, the dominant impression was that “the Jewish question” was all but neglected in the reports. Overall, the assessment of the historians on this issue was encapsulated in the phrase: “the silence of documents.” Hence, it was concluded, the German population, preoccupied with personal matters of subsistence during the war, was generally indifferent to the fate of the Jews. The result was the ongoing “indifference thesis” in research. However, the documentation available today allows a reexamination of this thesis. The comprehensive scholarly edition of the Secret Reports contains nearly 4,000 documents relating to the Jews during the period 1933–1945. Nearly 1,000 of them were written during the war years. Beginning from the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, many of them contain information about the deportations of the Jews to the East and their fate, as well as the reactions of the population in various parts of the Reich. One such document is the SD report for December 10–16 1941 of the District Office Bielefeld: On Thursday, 11 December 1941, the action began here locally to transport the first Jewish families to Riga. [...] Although this action had been kept secret by the Gestapo, the fact that the Jews were being sent off was the object of discussion in all segments of the population. Accordingly, there were also a number of statements reflecting the prevailing mood. It should be noted that the action was welcomed and approved by the preponderant majority. [...] It was stated that the Jews were all being deported to Russia. The transport was to be in railway carriages to Warsaw, and then in cattle cars from there on to Russia. In Russia, people were saying, the Jews were being deployed for labor in former Soviet factories, while the elderly and frail Jews were to be shot. It was, some said, inconceivable that the Jews could be treated so brutally. Whether a Jew or an Aryan, we’re all the children of God.7

Such information obviously came from local personnel, who accompanied the transports to the East. Many more detailed reports on mass executions of Jews in the East were circulated by soldiers on leave. One such report, dated as early as July 21, 1941 is an actual eyewitness testimony: According to a report from Major Frantz, 2,600 Jews were recently shot in Bialystok. He drove through a street that had been closed off by the police, and asked a German police officer:

6 Ibid., xxviii. 7 Ibid. Book, Doc. 605, CD 3386.

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“Are Jews being deported here?” “No,” he replied, “but they’re being shot.” The day before, they shot 2,600 Jews, the next day 6,000 were to follow. Supposedly all Jews between the ages of 15 and 60 are being shot. According to the police officer, the operation is being carried out daily, each day by a different unit of men on duty. Several police officers who are no longer able to take part in such operations because of nervous breakdown have reported ill to a German physician on duty there. An execution of Jews in Baranawitschy has as yet not taken place.8

The systematic reporting, on all levels, continued until nearly the end of the war. The following section of an SD report of November 6, 1944, from Stuttgart, refers also to the views among the German population regarding the fate of the Jews: [...] Didn’t we slaughter the Jews by the thousands? Don’t soldiers repeatedly tell stories that the Jews in Poland were forced to dig their own graves? And what did we do with the Jews who were in Alsatia in concentration camps? After all, Jews are only human too. In doing this, we gave the enemies an example of what they are allowed to do with us in the event of their victory. (numerous voices from all circles of the population).9

One of the most comprehensive, detailed documents compiled close to the time of the Wannsee Conference and covering the period from September 1941 to January 1942, is the nation wide SD report dated February 2, 1942. Like all the reports on national level they were submitted to and read by “the political leadership of the Reich,”10 among them certainly all the participants at the Wannsee conference. It summarizes on a national level the reports from all parts of the Reich. The main issue was the population’s reactions to the edict of marking the Jews with a yellow patch, though at the end it also relates to people’s expectations of further measures regarding the solution of the “Jewish question”. The summarizing section opens as follows: [...] According to reports now available from all parts of the Reich [...]11 the issuance of the ordinance on the marking of the Jews has in general had a favorable impact in the population. It is emphasized everywhere that this ordinance is in keeping with a wish long present among broad circles of the population, especially in localities where there are still a relatively large number of Jews [...]. It is significant that many regard the ordinance on marking not as a final

8 Ibid. Book, Doc. 557, CD 3275. 9 Ibid., Doc. 749, CD 3740. 10 Cf. Heydrichs directives, as in fn. 6. 11 Berlin, Weimar, Darmstadt, Würzburg, Nürnberg, Frankfurt/M., Breslau, Oppeln, Bielefeld, Wiesbaden, Fürth, Bremen, Braunschweig, Augsburg, Schwerin, Halle, Königsberg, Dessau, Hamburg, Köln, Koblenz, Stettin, Kattowitz, Leipzig, Neustettin, Dresden, Karlsruhe, Linz, München (Kulka/Jäckel (as in fn. 4), Doc. 618, CD 3417).

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measure of some sort, but rather only as the prelude to further more drastic ordinances,with the goal of a final resolution of the Jewish Question.12

And it concludes: The population wishes to mark in an appropriate manner also the apartments of the Jews. But most of all, they say, a deportation in the near future of all Jews from Germany would be warmly welcomed.13

Like all special reports, this one, about the popular reception of the marking of the Jews, was preceded by a general overview (Allgemeines) of the mood of the population in the Reich. This included the first reactions to Hitler’s notorious speech of January 30, 1942, in which he reiterated his prophecy of January 30, 193914 on the interdependence between a new world war and the extermination of the Jews in Europe, which is now being realized: […] We are fully aware that this war can end either in the extermination of the Aryan people or in the disappearance of Jewry from Europe. […] I wish to avoid making hasty prophesies, but this war will not end as the Jews imagine, namely, in the extermination of the European-Aryan people; instead, the result of this war will be the annihilation of Jewry. For the first time, the old, truly Jewish rule of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” will obtain.15

The report opens with a description of the tense, impatiant expectations of the people for Hitler’s speech, owing to the continuing lack of adequate informations about the situation on Eastern front. In regard to Hitler’s prophecy, the report notes: [...] The renewed denunciation of the Jews and the emphasis on the phrase from the Old Testament “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” were interpreted to mean that the Führer’s struggle against Jewry will continue on with relentless consistency until it is completed and soon the last Jew will be expelled from European soil. [...]16

12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Hitler invariably dated it wrongly to September 1st 1939, the day of the German invasion of Poland. 15 Max Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, Vol.4. Wiesbaden 1983, 1828–9. English translation in: https://archive.org/stream/TheEssentialHitlerSpeechesAndCommentary/TheEssentialHitler-SpeechesAndCommentary_djvu.txt See also: Ian Kershaw, ”Hitler‘s Prophecy and the “Final Solution”, in: Moshe Zimmermann (ed.), On Germans and Jews. Essays by Three Generations of Historians. A Festschrift in Honor of Otto Dov Kulka, Jerusalem, 2006, 49–66. 16 Kulka/Jäckel 2010 (as in fn. 4), Doc. 618, CD 3417.

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As we have seen, information about the fate of the Jews deported from Germany was already widespread among the German population. Thus, the question is no longer what the German population knew, but rather which political course for the solution of the “Jewish question” the majority of Germans favored at this stage. In his historiographical survey of the developments, focusing on the perpetrators, Mark Roseman hints at “the most recent trend of blurring the boundaries between direct perpetration and a wider societal participation.”17 The prolonged, frustrating debate between the so-called Intentionalists and Structuralists, or “Functionalists,” gradually changed its focus following Ulrich Herbert’s groundbreaking biography of Werner Best and turned its attention more to the early biographies in the Third Reich. As mentioned above, the conceptual framework of the present volume is based on this fruitful approach. However, the historiographical debate could be resolved by yet another approach. I refer to Ian Kershaw’s innovative thesis based on the metaphor of “working towards the Führer” (dem Führer entgegenarbeiten). In his article titled with the same phrase, “Working Towards the Führer,”18 Kershaw developed the theoretical implications of this thesis, based on his earlier empirical research, that he later applied in his monumental biography of Hitler, which is virtually also a social and political history of Nazi Germany: [...] The notion of ‘working towards the Führer’ could be interpreted, too, in a more indirect sense where ideological motivation was secondary, or perhaps even absent altogether, but where the objective function of the actions was nevertheless to further the potential for implementation of the goals which Hitler embodied. [...] The result was the unstoppable radicalisation of the ‘system’ and the gradual emergence of policy objectives closely related to the ideological imperatives represented by Hitler. [...]19

Would it be too daring to propose that Kershaw’s thesis on the perpetrators is also applicable to the research on the German population as well? That this is indeed the case is suggested by the reports about the population’s awareness of the radicalization in the regime’s “Jewish policy” and its favorable anticipation of even more radical steps against the Jews, such as the already ongoing deportations (Abschiebung). 17 Mark Roseman, “Biographical approaches and the Wannsee Conference” in: Jasch and Kreutzmüller (as in fn. 1), 29. 18 Ian Kershaw, “‘Working towards the Führer’: Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler Dictatorship.” In: Ian Kershaw, Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution, New Haven and London, 2008, 29–49. Using the equation “metaphor” for the thesis that appeared in the title of his article was chosen by Kershaw himself. 19 Kershaw, ibid., 42–43.

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We have to take into consideration that the reports quoted above on the moods and attitutes of the population reflect the period when Germany under Hitler’s uncontestable leadership seemed to be at the peak of its political and military achievements, and anti-Jewish sentiments and policies became widespread not only in Germany but across the continent. In his above-mentioned article, Mark Roseman is well aware of the recently developing trend in the historiography on Nazi Germany, as he takes note of some of the newer studies, according to which the German population as well was responsible for the genocide.20 The present study seeks to explore prevailing approaches in historiography and the now avaliable documentation that might enable us to understand how, and to what extent, this complicity took place.

20 Roseman (as in fn.17). It’s worth mentioning the works of, for example: Bernward Dörner, Die Deutschen und der Holocaust. Was niemand wissen wollte, aber jeder wissen konnte, Berlin, 2007; Peter Longerich, „Davon haben wir nichts gewusst!“ Die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung 1933–1945, München, 2006; Michael Wildt, Volksgemeinschaft als Selbstermächtigung. Gewalt gegen Juden in der deutschen Provinz 1919 bis 1939, Hamburg, 2007; Frank Bajohr, “The ‘Folk Community’ and the Persecution of the Jews: German Society under the National Socialist Dictatorship, 1933–1945,” in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20, 2 (2006). 183–206. Frank Bajohr and Dieter Pohl, Der Holocaust als offenes Geheimnis. Die Deutschen. Die NS-Führung und die Alliierten, München, 2006. Susanna Schrafstetter and Alan E. Steinweis (eds.), The Germans and the Holocaust. Popular Responses to the Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford and New York, 2016.

9 Jewish Society in Germany as Reflected in Secret Nazi Reports on Popular Opinion 1933–1943 I chose the title of this article in accordance with the conventional scientific concepts apparently open in all directions and for any and all images of history that may emerge from the sources. So the picture of history inscribed in the title appears to be open-ended, even if what we first and always have in our minds is the violent end of the “Final Solution”. Had I wished to give it a title that points to the surprising, perhaps paradoxical results of the investigation, I might well have opted for the title “The Jews in Nazi Germany—A Pluralistic-Democratic Society in a Totalitarian Racial State.” Though with a proviso: the paradoxical relative freedom of this pluralistic society was the freedom of the outcast, the banished and—in retrospect—the freedom of the doomed. But I didn’t opt for this title since I would like to demonstrate my findings by presenting and evaluating the source material. The source material of the internal Nazi reports on popular opinion utilized here is not unknown and has in part already been investigated, exploring certain aspects, including the attitudes of the German population toward the Jews. But there has never been a systematic look at the image of Jewish society under the Nazi regime, its activities and self-perception, as it emerges from these sources. The documents used here are from a broadly conceived scientific edition of source materials, titled “Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933– 1945,” compiled together with Eberhard Jäckel and our research teams at the universities of Jerusalem and Stuttgart.1 For those not familiar with this kind of source material, let me describe in brief its origin and nature. The National Socialist regime, as we now know, did not itself wholly believe in its own monolithic image of state and society as it was portrayed in the mass media and projected to the world. The authorities set up secret internal reporting systems to provide reliable information about the prevailing popular mood and about activity being conducted by the different sectors of the population. These reports on the attitudes prevalent in the German

1 Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel (eds.), Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, Düsseldorf, Droste, 2004: Book (752 selected documents) and (comprehensive edition of 3744 documents) CD. (Hereinafter: K/ J, Book or K/ J, CD.) Extended English edition: The Jews in the Secret Nazi Reports on Popular Opinion in Germany, 1933–1945, trans. by William Templer, New Haven, Mass., and London, 2010. The documents are numbered as in the German edition. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-010

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population toward the Nazi regime and its policies were also meant to provide an authentic picture that should be taken into consideration in the decisions in the policies toward the Jews. The most important reports were those prepared by the security services of the SS (the SD), the Gestapo, the district governors, the party, and its various organizations. The reports were written on different levels—local, district, and regional—and finally compiled at a national level. One of the basic findings that have emerged from these sources is that beneath the cover of totalitarian uniformity, the social, political and religious structures of the previous period were preserved, thus also revealing the public’s heterogeneous view of the government’s ideology and policy. Among the categories of surveillance and reporting, the subject of the regime’s “ideological enemies” (weltanschauliche Gegner)—Marxism, liberalism, “political churches,” the “conservative opposition” and the Jews—occupies a significant place. With respect to the Jews, the reports also provide current information on the attitude of different groups in the population toward them and toward the different stages of the government’s policy on the so-called “solution of the Jewish Question.” But as a matter of fact, the main part of this section is devoted to the aspect of surveillance of Jewish society itself, its organizations, trends and tendencies in their activities as well as the mood and self-understanding of the Jews in general and as individuals. I came across the first source materials for our later edition back in the 1960s in the Federal German Archives in Koblenz and in the archives of the former German Democratic Republic. The most recent materials are from a documentation discovered few years ago in the so-called Special Archive (Osobyi Arkhiv) in Moscow. As mentioned, several of these sources have already been investigated in respect to the Jews, and it should suffice to list several books and articles in chronological order to make clear what was examined, what excluded: In 1975 my study, “‘Public Opinion’ in National Socialist Germany and the ‘Jewish Question’” appeared;2 in 1979 Ian Kershaw’s chapter “Antisemitismus und Volksmeinung: Reaktion auf die Judenverfolgung” in Martin Broszat’s project on Bavaria3 and his 1981 article “The Persecution of the Jews and German

2 Otto Dov Kulka, “‘Public Opinion’ in National Socialist Germany and the ‘Jewish Question’,” Zion: Quarterly for Research in Jewish History 40 (1975): 186–290 (Hebrew with English summary); documentary part in German: 260–90; condensed English version with additional source material, in The Jerusalem Quarterly 25 (1982): 121–44; 26 (1983): 34–45, reprinted in: Michael Marrus (ed.), The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews, vol. 5, Westport and London, Meckler, 1989, 115–50 (Chapter 6 of this book). 3 Ian Kershaw, “Antisemitismus und Volksmeinung: Reaktion auf die Judenverfolgung,” in: Martin Broszat (ed.), Bayern in der NS-Zeit, vol. II, Munich and Vienna, R. Oldenbourg, 1979, 281–384.

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Popular Opinion in the Third Reich”4; then in 1990 David Bankier’s The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion under Nazism5; and finally Michael Wildt’s 1995 research and documentation, Die Judenpolitik des SD 1935 bis 19386 and his 1999 essay “Violence against Jews in Germany 1933–1939.”7 Common to all these studies is that they examine the behavior and attitudes of the German population toward the Judenpolitik of the regime, including antiJewish violence and the “pressure from below” to radicalize anti-Jewish policy as well as the criticism of the persecution of the Jews, coupled with attitudes that were in varying degrees positive towards the exclusion of the Jews from all spheres of life and their final “removal altogether”. They also investigate various tendencies in developments in the period between the seizure of power and the Final Solution. Yet it is evident from this research that to date, inquiry has excluded those reports and sections of reports dealing with the Jews themselves and Jewish society. The reasons for this historiographic approach were quite understandable viewed in the context of the earlier phase of historical research on the Third Reich. Yet given the demands and possibilities of contemporary historiography, this approach can no longer be justified. In the initial phase it was quite justifiable to want to examine, along with the policies that ultimately led to the Final Solution, how German society viewed these policies, the extent to which it accepted and actively supported them. Behind this was another question: did these reports which also included critical reactions in the population actually influence the regime’s policy? And could they have had any such influence, such as in the case of popular protest against the so-called euthanasia? By contrast, the reactions of the Jews and the multifaceted history of Jewish society were viewed as irrelevant, bracketed out, since Jews were perceived solely as a passive object of the policy of persecution and destruction. Our comprehensive text edition, where the internal aspect of Jewish life and activities is quite central, now makes it possible to fill in lacunae and redress the long neglect of research in this area. On the one hand, it is necessary to round out

4 Ian Kershaw, “The Persecution of the Jews and German Popular Opinion in the Third Reich,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 26 (hereafter LBIY) (1981), 261–89. 5 David Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion under Nazis, Oxford, Blackwell, 1992. 6 Michael Wildt (ed.), Die Judenpolitik des SD 1935 bis 1938: Eine Dokumentation, Munich, R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1995. 7 Michael Wildt, “Violence against Jews in Germany 1933–1939”, in: David Bankier (ed.), Probing the Depth of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem and Leo Baeck Institute, 2000, 181–209.

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the fuller picture of German history in the Nazi period; on the other, the edition provides an important empirical basis for researching Jewish history under National Socialism. When I first came across these sources in the mid-1960s, the thrust of my questioning was initially consistent with the image of history then generally dominant in historical memory. That memory was still very much under the sway and imprint of war and post war publications on the Jews and the research literature on the regime’s policy towards the Jews. It was the one-dimensional picture of persecution, forced emigration, expulsion and destruction. Correspondingly, I combed through the NS-reports from January 1933 on looking for evidence of internal dissolution, paralysis, oppression and the step-by-step destruction of Jewish life in Germany. What I discovered was a surprising, perhaps paradoxical picture. We can get some idea of this picture from two of the first systematic, Reichwide NS-reports on the Jews in Germany compiled in the second year of the National Socialists’ rule. They were written independent of one another by the two principal surveillance and reporting agencies, the Gestapo and the Security Service of the SS, the SD. The first passage is from the comprehensive report of the Berlin Central Gestapo Office (the Gestapa) in April 1934 entitled “Die Juden in Deutschland”: The activity of Jewish organizations and associations, already well developed before, has been given a powerful new impetus as a consequence of the comprehensive exclusion of the Jews from the civil service and public bodies and the curbing of their influence in economic and private life. Existing associations have experienced a continuing growth in membership, and new associations have been established, especially organizations that have a strong internal Jewish political and economic character. The result is a very vigorous and lively associational activity that, due to the need for requisite surveillance and control, represents a considerable burden on the organs of the Secret State Police.8

In conclusion, the April 1934 report noted: The Gestapo has consciously refrained up to now from imposing a forced coordination (Gleichschaltung) on the numerous associations, often vehemently opposed one to the other because internal disunity among the Jews is our best ally in preventing Jewish influence in the domestic political sphere.

8 K/ J, CD, Doc. 110. In this report, no figures are given, but in February 1935 the Berlin Gestapo indicated there had been a total of 3,001 meetings for the month in the capital, of which only 72 were placed under surveillance. That is an average of better than 100 meetings a day, see: ibid., Book, Doc. 93, CD, Doc. 615.

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The report then presents 18 pages of detailed description of the innumerable Jewish organizations, their political and religious orientations and activities and Jewish associational activity. The first Reich-wide SD situation report (Lagebericht) for May to June 1934 also contains a systematic description.9 After detailing the most important currents among the German Jews (the Zionists; the Centralverein [CV] and the Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten as a middle grouping; with the National German Jews and the Ultra-orthodox as marginal minorities), reporting on the newly established Reich Representation of the German Jews (the Reichsvertretung)10 and the Kulturbund—the Lagebericht goes on to describe the Jewish press: Analogous to the Jewish clubs and organizations, the Jewish press has also experienced an almost undreamt-of spurt in development. The associations’ newspapers and local communal papers have increased the size of their readership manifold, expanding their content and enlarging their format. The example of the development of the C[entral]V[erein]-Zeitung can serve as an illustration. A year ago it was still a small-size newsletter. In the autumn [of 1933] it shifted to a full-size newspaper format. It has expanded the political section and added sections on law and the economy, a page of youth affairs, a supplement for children, a women’s page and a large section with classified ads. The first page usually features articles on Jewish intellectual life, disputes with other groups, tasks facing Jewish society as a whole, etc. The political section appears to be a bit thin, but it contains everything of importance for the Jews. The paper promptly publishes the latest decrees and court decisions verbatim, frequently along with commentary on their importance and scope. It publishes all relevant passages from ministerial speeches, etc., for the most part verbatim, without any conspicuous headline, but in a prominent position in the paper. It is not surprising that the editors generally refrain from any commentary of their own since in any case, the Jews know what is meant.11

The local and regional reports, on which the nation-wide reports are based, provide a far more varied and multifaceted picture of everyday Jewish life in the

9 See K/ J, Book, Doc. 33, CD, Doc. 139. 10 On the Reich Representation of the German Jews, see: Otto Dov Kulka (ed.), Deutsches Judentum unter dem Nationalsozialismus, Vol. I, Dokumente zur Geschichte der Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden 1933–1939, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 1997. For short information and bibliography on the Jewish organizations in Nazi Germany, see in the historical glossary there. 11 On the Jewish press in Nazi Germany see: Margaret T. Edelheim-Muehsam, “The Jewish Press in Germany,” LBIY 1 (1956), 163–76; idem, “Reactions of the Jewish Press to the Nazi Challenge,” LBIY 5 (1960), 308–29; Katrin Diehl, Die jüdische Presse im Dritten Reich: Zwischen Selbstbehauptung und Fremdbestimmung, Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1997.

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Fig. 11: Newspaper stand in Berlin before the public sale of Jewish newspapers was prohibited in September 1935. Photo by Herbert Sonnenfeld.

Third Reich. Let me quote from a report by the Württemberg Police Office (Landespolizeiamt) in Stuttgart for July 1934: At the moment, Jewish autonomy in cultural respects is being expanded and developed in Württemberg with special zeal. There is a Jewish country school house maintained in Herrlingen near Ulm. In May of this year, this Landschulheim was the venue for a national Jewish conference that dealt with reform in Jewish education. Prominent Jewish cultural leaders took part in the conference, including Martin Buber, Professor Ernst Kantorowicz,

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Georg Lubinsky and Dr. Ernst Simon.12 According to available information, the conference did not discuss immediate and pressing political questions.13

The Jüdisches Lehrhaus in Stuttgart, founded in 1925 with the outstanding assistance of Dr. Otto Hirsch (the former Ministerial Secretary), has organized a series of cultural events, lectures, art exhibitions, concerts, etc. in recent weeks, and has expanded its potential scope for activities by setting up a Lehrhaus Residence. The vigorous expansion of Jewish organization is also reflected in the opening of a new Jewish Apprentices’ Hostel in Stuttgart. In accordance with a decree of the Württemberg Ministry of Culture, Jewish religious classes are no longer taught in the secondary schools … The Jews have responded to this measure by deciding to establish a Jewish school in Stuttgart. It is reported that a proposal has been put forward to construct a new school building.

On the Jewish vocational retraining it reports: “ … it has been determined among other things that Zionist applicants for emigration have been accommodated on farms in Württemberg.”14 So much then for the regional report from Württemberg. Here is a passage from a parallel local report by the Gestapo in Bielefeld, Westfalia, at the beginning of 1935: Jewish associational activities have never been as active as they are at present. There are such frequent cultural evenings, social and gymnastic get-togethers that it is becoming more and more difficult to carry out the necessary degree of surveillance and observation. From these meetings, the Jews derive inner strength to persevere in these times. They are introduced to historical facts from the past which serve as a source of strength. Thus, Jews are called on again and again to be genuine Jews, true to their heritage in their attitude and conduct. Recently, a Jewish speaker at an event emphasized that Judaism is above blood, soil and nation (Blut, Boden und Nation). … To date, it has not been possible to muster evidence that the Jewish associations are engaged in activities hostile to the state. On February 3, the Kulturbund der deutschen Juden put on a musical evening in the Bielefeld synagogue featuring Edith Herrnstadt-Oettingen from Berlin, with some 250 persons in attendance. Ms. Herrnstadt performed various pieces. The purpose of the event was to make Jews more familiar with Jewish culture and to bolster

12 Simon was then called back from Palestine to assist Buber’s work in Jewish adult education in Germany. 13 On that meeting in Herlingen and the Mittelstelle für jüdische Erwachsenenbildung bei der Reichsvertretung, see: Ernst Simon, Aufbau im Untergang: Jüdische Erwachsenenbildung im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland als geistiger Widerstand, Tübingen, Mohr, 1959. The Freie Jüdische Lehrhäuser were established in the early 1920s and patterned in part on the general adult evening colleges (Volkshochschulen) being organized at that time. 14 See K/ J, Book, Doc. 35, CD, Doc. 191.

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the inner cohesion of the Jewish people. By presenting Jewish poetry, which is in the main oriented to persecution and oppression, an effort is made to uplift the Jewish people in the current situation and point a direction for the times.15

A Gestapo report from Hanover, likewise from February 1935, describes the continuity of political pluralism and the intensification of internal Jewish ideological controversies: The Jewish federations and associations are developing an ever more active range of activities, especially manifest in the youth organizations within the Zionist Association and the Centralverein. Thus, in the month of February, the Zionist Association, Hanover branch organized six meetings or events, the R[eichsbund] j[üdischer] F[rontsoldaten] three, the Jewish Women’s Organization (Israelitischer Frauenverein) three, the Jewish Kulturbund three, the Bund deutsch-jüdischer Jugend 31, the Werkleute 27 and the Youth Group of the orthodox Agudas Jisroel one meeting. The very lively and diverse associational activity of the Jews and their ever bolder and more impudent conduct is the object of pointed public criticism. The differences between the Jewish associations continue to be sharp and pronounced. Especially vehement are the differences between the Zionist Association and the RjF. Both organizations are making increased efforts to woo Jewish youth. This is probably the principal reason behind the sharp controversies between them. The Zionists wish to bring Jewish youth together and prepare them for Palestine, regarding Palestine as their future national state. By contrast, the RjF wishes to school young people in the spirit of the combat soldier, and fights under the motto ‘German and Jewish!’ […] The local RjF branch has a membership of 341 persons and about 250 young people in its United Gymnastic Association. The Zionist Association, Hanover branch has some 250 members and about 300 young people in its sports organization Bar Kochba. The CV has 320 members, many of whom are also members of the RjF. […]

It should be noted that due to the large number of Jewish events, it is impossible to guarantee proper and orderly surveillance of their meetings and events.16 The passages chosen here represent only a crosscut of the life of the Jews under the Nazi regime. The NS reports also contain descriptions of the harsh reality of daily discrimination, humiliation, anti-Jewish violence and anti-Jewish legislation. But these phenomena were all amply familiar before, and it was only expected that they would be described in detail in the reports. By contrast, what is surprising are the detailed descriptions of an intensive, constantly reinvigorated Jewish organizational life, marked by a broad pluralism and astounding degree of vitality. These descriptions gave a vivid picture of the spirit and means

15 Ibid., Book, Doc. 96, CD, Doc. 635. 16 Ibid., CD, Doc. 624.

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with which the Jews confronted the new situation in Germany after January 1933. Initially, that astounding reaction was not at all self-evident or a matter of course. But it characterizes the predominant tendency among the German Jews under National Socialism—and, I would contend, all the differences in Jewish society in the various countries notwithstanding, among Jews under Nazi occupation elsewhere as well. There were three alternatives that were open to Jews after the Nazi takeover and in the subsequent years: The first alternative was the disintegration and atomization of Jewish society and the paralysis of all its institutions and organizations under the impact of the anti-Jewish waves of terror. In the lives of individuals, this was manifested in a hurried mass flight, the desperate return of some, and in extreme cases, in the form of suicide.17 The second alternative, advocated by a small minority of so-called Nationaldeutsche Juden, was diametrically opposed to the first. It was the temptation to draw the ostensibly inevitable conclusions from the crisis and failure of the democratic system of Weimar, and by the same token from the failure of the internal democratic principles of the Jewish society, and introduce in their place for all of German Jewry a regime of authoritarian leadership based on the Führerprinzip.18 However, most Jewish organizations opted for a third alternative: the continued existence of the democratic-pluralistic institutions of the Jewish society from the post-Emancipation period and the establishment of a new all-inclusive central organization based on the principle of voluntary affiliation of each body and free activity within the organization. But the continued existence of all the autonomous elements, as well as the banding together in common central representative organizations, like the Reichsvertretung, the Zentralausschuss für Hilfe und Aufbau and the Kulturbund, also marked a new significant development: in the pre-1933 period, the social and cultural integration of the Jews in their environment was dominant and the role of Jewish organizations and the issue of Jewish identity were increasingly marginalized, whereas after 1933 they became central and assumed existential significance. For the Nazi regime, this turn of events was not self-evident either. The regime did not impose the continued existence of the variety of political and religious currents 17 On the suicides of the Jews under the Nazi Regime in Germany, see: Konrad Kwiet, “The Ultimate Refuge: Suicide in the Jewish Community under the Nazis,” LBIY 29 (1984), 135–67. 18 On German-Jewish nationalistic organizations, see: Carl J. Rheins, “The Verband nationaldeutscher Juden 1921–1933,” LBIY 25 (1980), 243–68; idem., “Deutscher Vortrupp: Gefolgschaft deutscher Juden 1933–1935,” LBIY 26 (1981), 207–29; Hans Joachim Schoeps (ed.), Wille und Weg des deutschen Judentums, Berlin: Vortrupp Verlag, 1935.

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and organizations, and certainly not the existence of their central, parliamentarylike organization, the Reichsvertretung. However, because of the racist ideological character of the totalitarian Gleichschaltung of the German state and society, the Jews were a priori excluded from this process, which was intended to include only the members of the German racial Volksgemeinschaft. Thus was engendered the paradox initially alluded to: the existence of a democratic, pluralistic society, a kind of enclave in a totalitarian racist state. In this way, Germany’s Jews obtained relative freedom in many spheres as compared with the surrounding society. But it was, in a way, a freedom of outcasts, or rather, a freedom of the doomed. The final aspect of this paradoxical duality that I want to mention involves the substantive parallels and differences in the Nazi government’s goals regarding the “Jewish problem” on the one hand, and in the activity of the main Jewish organizations represented in the Reichsvertretung on the other. Up to 1941 the regime set itself two major aims: (a) removal of the Jews from all spheres of life of the German state and society, and their isolation; and (b) the cleansing of Germany of the Jews by pressuring them to emigrate. In my attempt to present the basic tendencies in the development of Jewish life from 1933 on, there are two different dimensions of time: the historical dimension of time and the time dimension of the Third Reich—defined teleologically, the era of the Final Solution. The first historical perspective explores this time against the background of continuity: what existed before 1933 and continued even if under an altered guise after that watershed. The second perspective centers on the dimension of what was significantly new and novel, introduced and developed under the new regime. Both dimensions must be examined side by side. Of course, the first was predominant until 1938/1939, the second from then on to 1943 or even 1945. Within the reality that was created by the government’s policy of social isolation, Germany’s Jews forged, in almost every realm of life, substantive content, frameworks of activity, and a variety of Jewish identities, most of which appear to be new but were really a continuation and intensification of historical frameworks and values. Some of them, such as the Kulturbund and the Reichsvertretung itself, came into being as a direct reaction to the new reality of the Third Reich; yet they too were built on a foundation of modern predominantly secular Jewish culture and existing organizational traditions. Operating within the reality of pressure to expel the Jews from Germany by means of emigration, the Reichsvertretung developed its own organizational tools and modes of action: vocational training and retraining, a search for possibilities of emigration and ways to finance them, and at the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s, illegal immigration to Palestine as well. What the government viewed as “Germany’s cleansing of the Jews,” its Entjudung, was for the

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Reichsvertretung a mean of rescue from a regime of terror and discrimination, and later, particularly after Kristallnacht, rescue in the sense of saving lives. The Nazi reports on popular opinion continued to be filed down to the end of the war, but in respect to our focus here, there are important differences between the prewar period and wartime. Instead of the detailed reports by the Gestapo and the regional governors (Regierungspräsidenten) up to 1936, Jewish life is systematically described after 1936 only in the SD reports. They are most extensive and detailed for the period 1937–1939. With their help, we can trace the developments and crises in the political and social situation of the Jews as well as internal changes in Jewish life. After the beginning of the war, however, there is no longer any special section devoted to the Jews, and the topic appears only sporadically. There are only very rare reports there about internal aspects of Jewish life. I will return now to a description of the historical events as reflected in the reports from the late 1930s. The characteristic picture familiar from the first reports continued down to early 1937. But the progressive tightening of the screw of anti-Jewish policy is reflected in reports from the middle of 1937 on. A January 1937 SD memorandum for Heydrich, based on reporting from this period, notes: …The previous measures to promote Jewish emigration from Germany, … by excluding Jews from certain areas of public life—not from the economy—… were insufficient, or were at least inadequate at the time. By contrast, most especially in the past several months, one can notice a considerable “weariness of emigration” (eine starke Auswanderungsmüdigkeit) taking hold. According to statements by numerous Jews, this stems from the great “pacifying of the Jewish problem” (große Befriedung der Judenfrage).19

The current SD report for January—March 1937 describes the realities in internal Jewish life in a broader context: “The activity of the Jewish cultural associations, especially pronounced in the larger metropolitan areas, is slowly placing the Jews in an intellectual ghetto, one abundantly familiar to them as a form of life for centuries.”20 The continued existence of political pluralism is reflected in a Gestapo report at the end of February 1937 on the electoral struggle and infighting in the communal elections in Berlin and their results: The election at the beginning of the year for the executive committee of the Berlin Jewish community sparked many meetings in Jewish organizations. … The upshot of the elections is that the committee is now made up of three Liberals [represented by the Centralverein], three Zionists and one Conservative.”21

19 See K/ J, Book, Doc. 252, CD, Doc. 2063. 20 See Ibid., Book, Doc. 260, CD, Doc. 2118. 21 See ibid., Book, Doc. 257, CD, Doc. 2095. The term “Conservative” relates here to moderate orthodoxy, the so-called Gemeindeorthodoxie. The radical Austrittsorthodoxie in Berlin was or-

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I will not go into a description here of the power struggle in which the Zionists tried to gain the upper hand in the Berlin Community, a struggle the CV with its 55,000 members responded to by threatening to leave the Community and organize its own independent Gemeinde. Paradoxically, the legal basis for this threat was the same law of 1876, still valid, enabling Orthodox minorities to leave the Gemeinde and set up their own separate community (a so-called Austrittsgemeinde). In the end, though, they agreed on a joint list based on parity with equal representation. Meanwhile, the CV continued in its own way to pursue activities geared to maintaining Jewish life in Germany. The Gestapo report notes: Over and beyond this, the Jewish Centralverein intends to use all possible means to Jewish existence in Germany by establishing commissions, economic institutions, offices for legal consultation … Recently we noted that the Centralverein has set up conciliation boards in an attempt to arbitrate in disputes between Jews and come to an amicable solution before court litigation. As is evident from a circular letter, the CV is not limiting this activity to its own members. It is also appealing to Jews in other organizations to make use of this arrangement. This is a clear sign that the CV seeks to gain influence in Zionist circles. Consequently, it must no longer be seen as a dividing element vis-à-vis these circles but rather as a force seeking to bind persons together.22

The principles of democratic pluralism also continued to be maintained within the central Jewish organization, the Reichsvertretung. An SD-report of September 1938 comments in derogatory terms on the Reichsvertretung: The Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland is the only organization that officially represents Jews in their dealings with the national government. … At the moment, there are still consultations and negotiations under way, based on legislation of March 28, 1938, with an eye to unifying the regional federations and the Jewish communities.23 At the top will be the Reichsvertretung as a publicly registered association, now called the Reichsverband of the Jews in Germany. … The disputes that have arisen in this connection and have been dragging on since April of this year are clear proof for the slow pace of a democratic principle of administration and the total failure of the Jews in the area of administration—even in those crucial moments when questions of their own existence are at stake.24

ganized in a separate community, Adass Jisroel. See: Kulka, Deutsches Judentum unter dem Nationalsozialismus (as in fn. 10), the entries: “Achduth—Vereinigung gesetzestreuer Juden Deutschlands”, 453; “Adass Jisroel”, 453; “Austrittsgemeinde”, 458. 22 Ibid. On the Centralverein under the Nazi regime up to its dissolution in 1938, see: Avraham Barkai, “Wehr dich!” Der Zentralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens 1893–1938, Munich, C. H. Beck, 2002. 23 This law had abrogated the traditional status of the Gemeinden as corporative bodies under public law. On its significance see: Kulka, Deutsches Judentum unter dem Nationalsozialismus (as in fn. 10), Doc. 114, 382–401. 24 See K/ J, Book, Doc. 340, CD, Doc. 2508: Die Organisationen der Judenheit, ihre Verbindungen und politische Bedeutung.

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Indeed, a parallel SD-report on this period describes the existential threat of imminent war the Jews sensed during the Sudeten crisis between May and October 1938: The mood of the Jews the Reich was determined in the past reporting period almost exclusively by the crisis situation in foreign policy, which gave rise to all kinds of rumors about how Jews might be dealt with should war break out. There is a general fear among the Jews that they may be placed in concentration camps or disposed of (unschädlich gemacht) in some other way.25

The ever more evident and growing awareness that future Jewish existence in Germany was in a precarious situation is also reflected in the message issued by the central Jewish organization on the occasion of the Jewish New Year in the autumn 1938, referred to in that same report.26 As evident from the October SD-report on the preceding months, the feeling of existential threat was based not only of fears of a crisis in foreign policy and the danger of war, but was also connected with the unprecedented wave of antiJewish violence and destruction more than a month prior to the Kristallnacht: The mounting anti-Jewish mood in the population … was most powerfully expressed in acts against the Jewish population. In the south and southwestern parts of the Reich, some of these actions took on a pogrom-like character. In numerous cities and towns, synagogues were destroyed or set ablaze and the windows of Jewish shops and dwellings were smashed. In the Gau of Franconia and in Württemberg, Jews in some localities were forced by the population to leave their homes immediately, taking along only the barest essentials.27

I will not go into the details of the reports on the events of the Kristallnacht, the dissolution of the Jewish organizations and their forced integration into the new central framework of the Reichsvereinigung and proceed to a later SD-report on the predominant mood in Jewish society inside Germany about a month before the outbreak of the war: A SD-report of July 1939 notes: Even those Jews on whom the events of November and the subsequent total exclusion of Jews from all areas of public life had no genuine lasting effect due to the time now lapsed have been forced by the most recent government measures to recognize that the National Socialist government is determined to press on relentlessly with the ultimate solution (endgültige Lösung) of the Jewish problem in Germany. These Jews are now also stepping up their efforts to prepare for emigration. Thus, the constant pressure inside the country also necessarily leads to an increased desire among Jews to get out.28

25 Ibid., Book, Doc. 347, CD, Doc. 2509. 26 For the full text of the New Year of the Reichsvertretung for the Jewish year 5699 see Kulka, Deutsches Judentum unter dem Nationalsozialismus (as in fn. 10), Doc. 118. 27 See K/ J, Book, Doc. 353, CD, Doc. 2529. 28 Ibid., Book, Doc. 440, CD, Doc. 2915.

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As mentioned above, beginning in September 1939, the form of the central SD-reports changes. The special rubric “Jews” no longer appears. If there is sporadic mention of the Jews, then the report details the reactions of German society to the anti-Jewish measures of the regime. Jewish society itself is no longer dealt with directly. We know from other sources, especially the preserved archives of the Reichsvereinigung,29 that it continued its activities in almost all areas of the former Reichsvertretung and the communities in an effort to support the remaining Jews in Germany materially and spiritually. Down to the autumn of 1941, continued efforts were made to use the final still available possibilities for emigration. The Kulturbund also continued to function up to September 1941. Jewish educational work continued on down into the summer of 1942, when mass deportations were already in full swing. Until its official disbanding on 10th of June 1943, the Reichsvereinigung concentrated on provision of welfare and social relief. This allowed the ageing Jewish population to survive with some modicum of dignity, and was of invaluable assistance. In this period, it is only isolated local reports which make any mention of those aspects of Jewish life, especially in reports from Bavaria, where earlier forms of reporting were retained. However, on the basis of a comparison of such local reports from earlier years with those from other parts of the Reich, we can assume that these Bavarian reports were to a certain extent representative for the entire Germany. A November 1939 report by the mayor of Bad Nauheim notes that the Reichsvereinigung had demanded the reopening of the Jewish district school, whose building had been confiscated for military purposes.30 The governor for Upper and Central Franconia reported on October 6, 1940 on a conference of Jewish teachers in Bavaria, held in Nuremberg which dealt with the coordination of education in Jewish schools. The same report makes mention of a similar meeting of Jewish physicians, now termed Jewish Krankenbehandler, in the Bavarian town of Fürth. They negotiated with representatives of the Reichsvereinigung from Berlin on medical care for the Jews and its financing.31 A report of the district governor in Ansbach for February 1941 describes the continuing activity of the Kulturbund and events dealing with questions of education, vocational training and emigration:

29 On the discovery of the Reichsvereinigung archives for 1939–1945 and their significance see: Otto Dov Kulka and Esriel Hildesheimer, “The Central Organisation of German Jews in the Third Reich and its Archives (On the Completion of the Reconstruction Project),” LBIY 34 (1989), 187–203. 30 K/ J, CD, Doc. 3031. 31 K/ J, Book, Doc. 521, CD, Doc. 3165.

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On February 24, 1941, the Jewish Community of Nuremberg held a closed meeting of the Jewish Kulturbund in the Jewish Athletics Hall in Nuremberg. The event was attended by 400 Jews, mainly children of school age. On February 3, 1941, there was a meeting of the Jewish teachers in northern Bavaria in the school building of the Jewish community of Nuremberg. The director of the Reichsvereinigung’s School Department, Paula Sara Fürst from Berlin, spoke on educational work in the Jewish schools, preparation for Jewish emigration overseas and promotion of the concept of settlement [in Palestine and elsewhere]. There were some 36 persons in attendance. Eleven Jews emigrated in the month of February.32

Everyday Jewish life too, is illuminated by those sporadic reports from Bavaria. I limit myself here to one single example taken from a September 1941 police report from Urspringen in Lower Franconia: In recent months, the Jewish inhabitants of Urspringen have shown great piety, to the annoyance of some of the local residents. Thus, the resident male Jews proceed every Saturday morning about 9 a.m. to the homes of Rudolf Dillenberger and David Rothfeld, where they recite their Hebrew prayers. At 10 a.m. they return home, dressed in their Sunday [sic] best. In this way they keep their Sabbath; some also go out for a walk before dusk. The population wonders how it is that Jews today still have a right to gather together for such Talmudic [sic] prayers. In so doing, the Jew gives those of other faiths an example of piety, awakening pity in the population. They are induced to think that he is after all just a poor, harmless person and does not wish to do anything wrongful or improper. Recently, it was even remarked that the Jews are gathering together every morning for prayers. In any event, [they pray] for the victory of the Bolsheviks.33

The reports however, bring details not only on everyday life of the Jews but also on their everyday death in its two dimensions: deportations and suicides. Such accounts begin appearing in regional and local reports already in the autumn of 1940, but become ever more frequent starting in the fall of 1941.34 Commenting on the first mass deportation of the Jews from Baden and Saarpfalz in October 1940 to occupied France, the public prosecutor from Karlsruhe noted: “During the deportation of the Jews from Baden on October 22, 1940, there were a number of suicides. In Mannheim there were eight such cases.”35

32 Ibid., Book, Doc. 538, CD. Doc. 3218. 33 Ibid., Book, Doc. 579, CD, Doc. 3330. 34 According to estimates by Konrad Kwiet, “The Ultimate Refuge” (as in fn.17), between October 1941 and the middle of 1943, some three to four thousands Jews committed suicide after receiving a deportation order. 35 K/ J, Book, Doc. 533, CD, Doc. 3190.

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From the autumn of 1941, reports on deportations and suicides became almost routine. Here are a few characteristic examples. The district governor of Upper and Central Franconia reported in November 1941: In the course of evacuating the Jews, a special train with 1,001 Jews and nine children left Nuremberg for Riga on November 29. Presumably out of fear for their imminent evacuation, three Jewish women committed suicide.36

Half a year later, the same official reported: “On March 24 [1942], 781 Jews were evacuated to the East, on April 25, 105 Jews were deported. There were no disturbances aside from several suicides and attempted suicides.”37 The district governor in Swabia reported on a further stage of the removal of Jews from Germany in August 1942: As a result of further resettlement measures, several Swabian cities and towns, such as Ichenhausen, Nördlingen and Fischach, have once more become judenfrei. In Oberstdorf, an elderly Jewish woman poisoned herself out of fear of being evacuated.38

A year later, in April 1943, he reports on the final phase: The few Jews still remaining in the cities have now been deported or at least removed from the cities. In Augsburg, during the course of the last measure, a number of Jews eluded deportation by committing suicide.39

In this connection, there are also reports on attempts to avoid being deported by escaping. Thus, the governor of Upper and Central Franconia wrote from Ansbach on September 7, 1943: The Jew by race and religion Dr. Daniel Leopold Israel, single, Krankenbehandler in Fürth in Bavaria, was arrested because he had attempted to flee on June 18, 1943 so as to elude his evacuation to the East. He was confined in the court prison in Fürth, where he hung himself on August 30, 1943.40

The decision to commit suicide was perhaps the most extreme conclusion inferred from the paradoxical “relative freedom of the outcast and banished” that still existed in the 1930s. In the face of the reality of the Final Solution, it became a last, indeed final and irreversible act of free will, an act of absolute freedom.

36 Ibid., Book, Doc. 599, CD, Doc. 3376. 37 Ibid., Book, Doc. 631, CD, Doc. 3472. 38 Ibid., Book, Doc. 655, CD, Doc. 3521. 39 Ibid., Book, Doc. 671, CD, Doc. 3562. 40 Ibid., Book, Doc. 702, CD, Doc. 3631.

10 The Reichsvereinigung and the Fate of the Jews. Continuity or Discontinuity in GermanJewish History in the Third Reich The paper I have been asked to present at this conference will focus on the central organization of German Jewry during the last tragic chapter of its existence—the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland—based on new, hitherto inaccessible sources. In our discussion however, we will deal also with an aspect ranging beyond the relatively short span of the war years, namely the question of continuity in the status and activities of the two central organizational frameworks that existed from 1933 until the liquidation of German Jewry in 1943—the Reichsvertretung and the Reichsvereinigung. The Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland was established in September 1933 as an umbrella organization of the various unions of communities in the German Länder and of the nation-wide political and religious organizations. In July 1938, the council of the Reichsvertretung decided to change the organization’s name and transform it into a more centralized confederation, called the Reichsverband der Juden in Deutschland. These changes, however, were not implemented immediately because of political developments related to the Munich crisis and the Kristallnacht pogroms. It was only in February 1939 that the Reichsvertretung proclaimed the constitution of the “new” organization under yet another name—Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland—whose legal status was determined by a special law of July 1939. This development partially motivated us to view 1938/39 as a transitional stage between two periods in the history of German Jewry during the Third Reich.1 The historiography dealing with this subject to date has arrived at various controversial appraisals of the first half of the period under the leadership of the Reichsvertretung. These five years between 1933–1938/39 have been described inter alia as “one of the strangest episodes in the history of the Jewish people”; “an internal renaissance of German Jewry”; “revival and defiance under ignominious conditions”; “euphoria before the end”; or “a fools’ paradise between Weimar and Auschwitz.”2 1 This question will be discussed at greater length later in this paper. The whole range of the problem connected with the transition from the Reichsvertretung to the Reichsvereinigung has been brought up in my book Deutsches Judentum unter dem Nationalsozialismus, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1997, 24–31. 2 Viewpoints such as these can be found, for example, in Robert Weltsch’s introduction to Leo Baeck Institute Year Book I (1954), xxx–xxxi, as well as in Max Gruenewald, “Education and Culture of the German Jews under Nazi Rule,” Jewish Review V (1948), 56–83, and Ernst Simon, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-011

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On the other hand, the second five years of the period, between 1938/39 and 1943, have been portrayed consistently and unequivocally as the era presided over by the “Gestapo-appointed” Reichsvereinigung, which acted as the “executive organ of the Gestapo” in the final liquidation of German Jewry.3 The principal

“Aufbau im Untergang, Jüdische Erwachsenenbildung im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland als geistiger Widerstand,” Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts 2, J. C. B Mohr, Tübingen, 1959. For more detailed studies on the Jewish organizations of this period, see the various works of Abraham Margaliot and the somewhat problematic studies of Jacob Boas, The Jews of Germany Self-Perceptions in the Nazi Era as Reflected in the German Jewish Press, 1933–1938, PhD diss., University of California, Riverside, 1977, and idem, “German-Jewish Internal Politics under Hitler 1933–1938,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book XXIX (1984), 3–25. Boas’ most recent assessment (ibid., 12) of the Reichvetretung as “the self-appointed political representative of Germany’s Jews … , the creation of roughly two dozen prominent German Jews … ” an organization, where “no popular elections preceded its formation and the traditional centers of active Jewish life, the Jewish communities, received only token representation in it,” obviously ignores the present stage of research. Actually the establishment of the Reichsvertretung must be seen as the ultimate phase of the continuous efforts to set up a central organization of German Jews going back to the second half of the nineteenth century and culminating in the foundation of the Reichsvertretung der jüdischen Landesverbände in January 1932, which included democratically elected representatives of the communities and the major political organizations. It is more than evident that the Reichsvertretung set up in September 1933 was in principle a direct continuation of its predecessor (the so-called alte Reichsvertretung): this applies to its leadership, representing the equilibrium of the communal and political structure of German Jewry and its internal tensions; to its constitution, its administrative organs and its activities, as they developed between 1933–1938/9. It seems, however, that Boas’ observations derive from his almost exclusive reliance on personal accounts and memoirs, while primary archival material demands a different assessment. 3 The latest assessment of this kind by Ino Arndt in her “Antisemitismus und Judenverfolgung,” in: Martin Broszat und Horst Möller (eds.), Das dritte Reich. Herrschaftsstruktur in Geschichte, C. H. Beck, München, 1983, merely paraphrases similar comments that have appeared in various studies and testimonies since this subject first came under consideration in the early 1950s in the comprehensive works of Hans Lamm, Über die innere und äußere Entwicklung des deutschen Judentums im Dritten Reich, PhD diss., University of Erlangen, 1951; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1961; Lucy Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews, 1933–1945, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1975; concerning Arndt’s article and the German historiography cf. Otto D. Kulka, “Die Deutsche Geschichtsschreibung über den Nationalsozialismus und die Endlösung,” Historische Zeitschrift, 240, 3 (1985), 639, and idem, “Major Trends and Tendencies in German Historiography on National Socialism and the ‘Jewish Question’ (1924–1984),” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 30 (1985), 241; cf. further the particular studies by Shaul Esh, “The Establishment of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland and its Main Activities,” Yad Vashem Studies VII (1968), 19–38; Kurt Jakob Ball-Kaduri, “Berlin wird judenfrei. Die Juden in Berlin in den Jahren 1942–43,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 22 (1973), 196–241; idem, “Aus der Arbeit der jüdischen Gemeinde Berlin während der Jahre 1941–1943. Gemeindearbeit und Evakuierung von Berlin 16. Oktober 1941–16. Juni 1943,”

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grounds for this assessment—which we shall refute in this paper—are derived in part from the basic conceptions of the polemic and research literature dealing with the entire subject of Jewish leadership under Nazi rule,4 and in part from the nature of sources that have been available to scholars.5 Publications dealing with this subject first appeared at the close of the war and during the first years thereafter. In dividing the historiography on the Jews during the National Socialist era into distinct phases, we have defined the peculiar nature of this stage as the “literature assessing guilt and judgment.”6 Its peculiarity is characterized by the fact that under the immediate impact of the harrowing and unprecedented act of systematically annihilating millions, it deliberately avoids examining historical processes and ongoing developments in Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden 9 (1972), 32–52 (based on Hildegard Henschel’s testimony). For further testimonies, see: idem, “Testimonies and Recollections about Activities Organized by German Jewry in the Years 1933–1945,” Yad Vashem Studies IV (1960), 317–340 and similar sources in the archives of the Wiener Library, Tel-Aviv, and the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 4 For the controversy on this subject centering on Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil, Viking Press, New York, 1963, see: F. A. Krummacher (ed.), Die Kontroverse, Hannah Arendt, Eichmann und die Juden, Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, München, 1964; Jacob Robinson, And the Crooked shall be made Straight. The Eichmann Trial, the Jewish Catastrophe and Hannah Arendt’s narrative, Macmillan, New York, 1965 and Richard. Y. Cohen, On the Responsibility of the Jews in their Destruction by the Nazis as seen in the Works of Bruno Bettelheim, Raul Hilberg, Hannah Arendt and in the Public Polemics on their Works, MA thesis, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1972 (in Hebrew). Among the works on German Jewry that deal with the activities of the Reichsvereinigung, note should be paid to H. G. Adler, Theresienstadt, 1941–1945. Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft, J.C.B. Mohr, Tübingen, 1958; idem, Der verwaltete Mensch. Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland, J.C.B. Mohr, Tübingen, 1974 and H. E. Fabian, “Zur Entstehung der ‘Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland’,” in: Herbert A. Strauss and Kurt R. Grossmann (eds.), Gegenwart im Rückblick. Festgabe für die Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin 25 Jahre nach dem Neubeginn, Stiehm, Heidelberg, 1970, 165–179 and Yisrael Gutman and Cynthia J. Haft (eds.), Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe 1933–1945: Proceedings of the Third Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1977. 5 See Otto Dov Kulka, The “Jewish Question” in the Third Reich, PhD Thesis, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1975 (Hebrew), Vol. I, Part One, Chapter II, dealing with sources for research into the Jewish community in the Third Reich. 6 Ibid., Vol. I, Part Two, Chapter II. Literature of this kind first began to appear at the end of the Second World War and during the period of the major war-crime trials, and it witnessed a revival primarily in the wake of the Kastner trial in the 1950s and the Eichmann trial in the 1960s. Examples of periods dominated by works assessing guilt are to be found throughout modern history in the wake of specific historic upheavals or major tragedies, such as the French Revolution and rule of terror, the defeat of France by Prussia in 1870/1871, and especially the First World War. Concerning this stage in German historiography, see my above mentioned article in the Historische Zeitschrift 240, 3 (1985), 609 ff.

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various spheres of life, which it holds to be irrelevant. Its sole relevant standard is a moral—or, to be more precise, moralistic yardstick which proceeds, or even replaces, historical criteria. Thus its description of Jewish society and its leadership through the entire period of National Socialist domination in effect limits itself exclusively to judging the positions assumed in situations in which decisions were categorically irreversible and final, i. e. during the phase of the mass deportations and exterminations. The sole criteria are: “collaboration” versus “resistance” or “participation in the extermination process” versus “attempts at rebellion and rescue”. This approach, which was probably the only understandable and relevant one for its time (i. e. the end of the war and the period immediately thereafter), has for various reasons continued to influence many publications on this subject to the present. As pertains to German Jewry, these remarks are particularly valid for the years of the “Final Solution” proper, which in other countries runs parallel to the period beginning with the expansion of the Third Reich in 1938/39. The general evaluation of the period between 1933–1938/39 and the distinction between that period and the following years is primarily based on the viewpoint propounded in the testimonies of prominent German-Jewish leaders who, as a rule, left Germany in 1938/39. Moreover, due to the abundance of published and unpublished sources that have survived from the period ending in 1938/39,7 some of the works on this earlier period stress—and rightly so—the historical continuity, and even intensification of Jewish communal life that marked this phase. At the same time, however, they seek to emphasize the sharp distinction between the pre-war era and the following period, which was purportedly epitomized exclusively by the extermination process. This impression has gained acceptance primarily because of the total absence of contemporary primary source material on the activities of the Jewish leadership after 1938/39, as well as the death of almost all the leaders who remained in Germany. Yet even in the retrospective testimonies of the few prominent figures who survived the “Final Solution” (e. g. Rabbi Leo Baeck),8 the activities of the Jewish leadership are overshadowed throughout the entire period by the terrible end. This picture changed radically with the discovery of a corpus of primary sources from the Reichsvereinigung archives that covers the entire span of its existence (from 1939 to 1943), plus important documents from other archives 7 Kulka, The “Jewish Question” in the Third Reich (as in fn. 5). 8 See E. H. Boehm (ed.), We Survived. The Story of Fourteen of the Hidden and Hunted of Nazi Germany, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1949; K. J. Ball-Kaduri, “Leo Baeck and Contemporary History: A Riddle in Leo Baeck’s Life,” Yad Vashem Studies VI (1967), 121–129; and Leonard Baker, Days of Sorrow and Pain. Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews, Macmillan, New York, 1978.

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relating among others to the transition from the Reichsvertretung through the Reichsverband to the Reichsvereinigung in 1938/39. The material from the Reichsvereinigung archives was first discovered in the 1960s in East Berlin, after it had been lying for years in the cellar of the half-destroyed synagogue in the Oranienburgerstraße which served as the last headquarters of the Berlin Jewish community and were brought to the Zentrales Staatsarchiv of the German Democratic Republic at Potsdam. It encompasses tens of thousands of pages, and includes minutes of executive board meetings, notes on discussions held with German officials, material on routine activities, and statistical summaries of the organization’s activities regarding the material, social and spiritual affairs of the entire German-Jewish community.9 Unfortunately the material of the Reichsvereinigung at Potsdam has meanwhile become inaccessible to researchers. In order to cope with this situation, a project of reconstructing the Reichsvereinigung’s archives has been initiated, collecting the relevant documents from the archives of numerous German-Jewish communities and organizations, as well as of several authorities of the Reich, which were in contact with the Reichsvereinigung.10 In the light of this material, it appears that intensive activity in all spheres of life did not cease in the 1940s. On the contrary, it continued, and actually gained in importance, until the liquidation of the entire Jewish community of Germany in 1942/43 and even during that very process. Likewise, the sources testify to the resolute stand of the Jewish leadership in its struggle against the Nazi persecutions—including the mass deportations—until the final stage, concurrent with its primary effort to secure the physical and spiritual existence of the remnant Jewish communities of Germany. This new material also apprises us of the ongoing contact with other Jewish communities in Nazi-occupied Europe and, until the autumn of 1941, even with the Jews in countries beyond the bounds of German occupation. Moreover, the archival material from the transitional period of 1938/39, which likewise includes minutes of the Reichsvertretung executive board meetings, clearly indicates that the transformation from the voluntary federative organization of unions

9 For a detailed description of the archives, their structure and content, Otto Dov Kulka and Esriel Hildesheimer, “The Central Organisation of German Jews in the Third Reich and its Archives (On the Completion of the Reconstruction Project)”, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book XXXIV (1989), 187–203. As far as I could examine them while studying the, only in part classified, material brought to the Zentrales Staatsarchiv of the German Democratic Republic at Potsdam, cf. Kulka, The “Jewish Question” in the Third Reich (as in fn. 5), Vol. I, 77–89. I am very grateful to the directors of the Potsdam archives for allowing me then to photocopy the greater part of the historically most important documents. 10 Kulka and Esriel Hildesheimer (as in fn. 9).

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of communities and major organizations (the Reichsvertretung) to the official centralist organization of a nation-wide community (the Reichsvereinigung) was basically the expression of an existent intra-community trend whose motivating factors had been reinforced by the change effected by the March 1938 law abrogating the communities’ former legal status.11 Definite testimony to this effect is also evident in a document from the Gestapo—the body that allegedly created the Reichsvereinigung as an instrument of its own designs—or, to be more precise, the Security Service of the SS, the SD, with its department for Jewish affairs, which was headed, after its amalgamation with the Gestapo in 1939, by Adolf Eichmann. In an internal SD memorandum dated early September 1938, the transitional process that extended over that year and ultimately led to the establishment of the Reichsvereinigung, is described as follows: The Reichsvertretung … is the sole representative body of the Jews in Germany vis-à-vis the Reich government… At this moment discussions and consultations are still being held on the basis of the 28th March 1938 law with the aim of creating a unified framework for the regional unions of communities and the communities… The differences of opinion that arise in the course of these discussions, and that have been unresolved since April, constitute marked proof of sluggishness of the system of democratic rule [my italics—ODK] and the stark failure of the Jews in the administrative field, even when questions pertaining to their very existence are at stake.12

This instructive memorandum and many other external and internal documents that have been preserved from 1938/39 indicate that the transformation from the federative framework of the Reichsvertretung to the centralized organization of the Reichsvereinigung was the product of extended negotiations and internal democratic deliberations between the component bodies—primarily the communities and unions of communities—during which it was finally agreed that the latter would disband as an autonomous framework and merge into a unified national body. According to the detailed regulations of this central body, which were adopted at a meeting of the Reichsvertretung council on 27th July 1938, it was conceived as a centralized national institution embracing all the Jews of Germany on the basis of individual membership, while preserving a measure of the autonomous structure of the large communities and regional concentrations of small communities. It also perpetuated the existing proportional representation allocated to the major political and religious organizations.

11 Kulka, Deutsches Judentum (as in fn. 1). 12 Kulka, The “Jewish Question” in the Third Reich (as in fn. 5), Vol. II, Document No. 35, p. 374.

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It was in this organizational structure that the leadership appeared a year later, with the publication of the State law of 4th July 1939,13 by which the Reichsvereinigung was officially constituted. As before, it was headed by Leo Baeck and Otto Hirsch, and included almost all the other members of the previous representative leadership. The law itself was essentially the realization of the declared intent of the Reichsvertretung to regain recognized legal status as a supra-community organization (and, we may add, as a centralized and united one). The final version of the law published on 4th July 1939 served historiography as all but the sole basis for the discussion of the origin of the Reichsvereinigung. This treatment totally divorces the Reichsvereinigung from the prior developments that the law essentially served to summarize and climax. But even the declaration of the Reichsvereinigung executive that accompanied the publication of the law states emphatically that, with the exception of the clause on obligatory membership according to racial definition, the organization’s legally recognized statutes are based on the charter accepted at the above mentioned meeting of the Reichsvertretung council of 27th July 1938. The documents from the archives of the Reichsvereinigung from the war years testify to the continuity of both the leadership that served in 1938 and the basic direction and objectives of the organization’s activities: in external affairs, resolute representation of the Jewish community in the efforts to safeguard its status, including resistence to local and regional deportations in the years 1939–1940; in internal affairs, a struggle to secure the material, social and cultural existence of the Jewish community, and to organize and finance emigration—albeit limited by objective circumstances— until exit from Germany was unconditionally prohibited in the autumn of 1941. Thus in contrast to the impressions conveyed by descriptions and assessments contained in the testimonies that sum up the period between 1933 and 1938/39, intensive and variegated communal activities did continue throughout this last phase as well. These remarks relate primarily to the continued activities of the Kulturbund; the perpetuation and even expansion of Jewish educational frameworks, including adult education, vocational training—particularly in agricultural collective groups (hachscharah)—and even the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin; the continued activities of the health and welfare institutions; ongoing material and organizational aid and the allocation of funds for emigration; the continuous efforts to ensure funds for the Reichsvereinigung

13 Reichsgesetzblatt, 1939, 1079 and Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, Berlin, February 17, 1939 and July 11, 1939; Arbeitsbericht der Reichsvereinigung der Juden für das Jahr 1939.

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and the individual communities by means of taxation, selling of Jewish communal property (inter alia plots of synagogues that had been destroyed in 1938), internal fund-raising campaigns, and until 1941, soliciting aid from Jewish organizations abroad (out of which funds were even transferred to the PolishJewish community). Data on the budget structure allow us to discern the priorities of the Reichsvereinigung in various spheres and during the various periods of its tenure. The minutes of the executive’s sessions also indicate the persistence of internal ideological and religious friction over the character of the Kulturbund’s activities, the quality of Jewish education in its various frameworks, and the aim of the social welfare policy. These activities continued, for the most part, until the mass deportations and the liquidation of German Jewry. Two examples from the documents of the Reichsvereinigung archives will serve to illustrate the stand and conduct of the Jewish leadership in its relations with the regime—meaning, in practice, Eichmann’s department in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA). The first relates to one of the initial mass deportations executed on a regional scale, in which the entire Jewish population of three provinces in South-west Germany was deported to France in a lightning action in October 1940. This affair, and the related exchange of views between the Vichy government and the German Foreign Ministry, is mentioned in several studies;14 but nowhere had the German-Jewish leadership’s active role in campaigning to stop the deportations and subsequent efforts to return the deportees been noted. Only the archival sources now in our possession indicate that the immediate response of the Reichsvereinigung executive was rather bold—to the point of threatening to tender its collective resignation. Its actions, which were both of practical and demonstrative nature, were expressed on three different levels. 1. On the official level: an attempt on the part of the executive director, Otto Hirsch, to intervene with Eichmann and halt the deportations already in progress by citing assurances that had been given to the Reichsvereinigung during previous deportations. (Among the examples cited were the cancellation of the expulsion of the Breisach community, the cessation of the deportation from Schneidemühl and Stettin in February 1940, and efforts to bring about 14 This matter is discussed, among other places, in: Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (as in fn. 3), 348ff., especially 357–358; Adler, Theresienstadt, 1941–1945 (as in fn. 4), 17, 172; idem, Der verwaltete Mensch (as in fn. 4), 156–167; Helmut Krausnick, “Persecutions of Jews,” in: Hans Buchheim et al. (eds.), Anatomy of the SS State, Walker, London, 1968, 57ff; Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, Vallentine Mitchell & Co., London, 1968, 77–78; Uwe Dietrich Adam, Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich, Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf, 1972, 257–258.

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2.

3.

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the return of deportees from Poland.) Hirsch also made a demand (which can be construed as an ultimatum) to receive information on the destination of the deportations and to discuss how the Reichsvereinigung could act to ensure the return of the deportees. On the practical (semi-clandestine) level: a widespread action during the very time of the deportation to warn the Jews who resided in the three provinces, but were outside the areas at the time, not to return to their homes. (This was carried out by the staff of the Reichsvereinigung and its local offices’ staff, as discovered in the course of a subsequent investigation of the affair by the RSHA.) In addition, the Reichsvereinigung provided aid and shelter to Jews who had taken heed of the warning and gone into hiding. On the public level: the proclamation of a day of fasting, binding for the entire staff of the Reichsvereinigung throughout Germany, as an act of protest and identification with the fate of the deportees, as well as the introduction of special synagogal services devoted to this subject on the following Sabbath. As an additional expression of public protest, it was decided to cancel all cultural and entertainment activities sponsored by the Kulturbund for the following week. These steps, most of which were immediately prohibited by the RSHA, cost the life of a member of the executive, Julius L. Seligsohn, who was identified as the author of the circular to the communities on these measures, even though the members of the executive insisted on their collective responsibility.

It should be noted here that this case was only one link in a chain of similar activities and struggles. Among other goals, it served as an effective means of directing attention to events in Germany by relaying information to the foreign press, mainly of the neutral countries; the punitive actions of the RSHA related, inter alia, to this aspect of the action. The attempts to have the deportees repatriated from France fell into the category of similar efforts to repatriate deportees from Poland and release inmates of concentration camps, which continued until the beginning of the systematic mass deportations to the death camps, and even during that stage. A second, different example of the response of the Reichsvereinigung to the deportation edicts came in June 1940 in the wake of the RSHA disclosure of a “plan for the comprehensive solution of the Jewish problem in Europe by the deportation of Jews from their countries of residence and concentrating them in a reservation (Reservatgebiet) in a colonial area”. (This refers, as we know, to the plan to create a detention area for the Jews of Europe on the island of Madagascar). The Reichsvereinigung was ordered to consider measures to prepare the groundwork for implementing the plan and eventually presenting a plan of its

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own.15 The only concrete response that has been found among the documents of the archives of the Reichsvereinigung in our possession is an outline charting the course of Jewish education (including adult education and vocational training) for their future life in the land to which they would be deported. A circular on this subject has been preserved as an appendix to the minutes of an executive board meeting held at the end of 1940. The version that was approved discloses that intricate negotiations on ideological, religious and practical aspects of the program must have preceded its acceptance. The document reads as follows: Present:

Absent:

Dr. Baeck, Chairman Dr. Cohn Dr. Eppstein Henschel Dr. Hirsch Kozower Dr. Lilienthal Dr. Seligsohn Dr. Berliner Brasch Dr. Fuchs Fürst Karminski Löwenstein Lyon Meyerheim

1. […] 2. Dr. Hirsch reports on the discussions regarding the settler school, and in connection therewith, on the necessity to establish the basic principles guiding educational preparation of group and mass settlement. He recommends for this the following version of a circular letter to be sent especially to our educators: The decline in individual emigration has prompted the Reich Association of the Jews in Germany, the longer this continues the more pressing, to accept as the Association’s solemn obligation to engage in preparing group and mass settlement. As a basis for the educational work requisite in this connection—at school, in occupational training and adult education—crucial is renewed reflection on the essence of the Jewish community. The following principles should undergird this educational work:

15 Kulka, The “Jewish Question” in the Third Reich (as in fn. 5), Vol. II, Document No. 51, pp. 501–503; Eichmann Trial, Document T 1143.

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1. The responsible body for the Jewish community is the Jewish people. For that reason, the consciousness of the common bond we share as a people, particularly by illuminating the coherence and connectivity of Jewish history, must be awakened and strengthened in every way. 2. The Jewish community has received its spirit and shaping imprint through the Jewish religion. For that reason, access thereto must be opened up for every individual and group. 3. Hebrew as the language of the Jewish people and its religion is an essential component of all Jewish education. 4. The tasks of mass settlement demand education for a social community of solidarity within the community of Jews. 5. The goal of education is preparation for life in the Jewish settlement. The locus of that realization is, in accordance with our desire, the Jewish land of Palestine. However, the basic principles are valid for educational preparation for every Jewish settlement, wherever it may be located. Signed Dr. Berliner16

This document clearly demonstrates that the course adopted to cope with the new situation created in the early 1940s was essentially a continuation of, or analogous to, the trends that had forged the character of Jewish education in Germany in the 1930s, when the Jewish community was faced with the rise of the National Socialist regime.17 Although the majority of the members of the executive were not Zionists, we can see the growing influence of the national Jewish concept on its outlook, as expressed by the emphasis placed upon the Hebrew language and historical consciousness. At the same time, the document foresees a central role for the Jewish religion, even for those sectors of the public that had become alienated from it, and notes the need to constitute a society based on the principles of social justice in the land to which they would be deported. In a way, the idea of a land of exile in which all the Jewish communities of Europe would be concentrated, appears in the document as a frightening antithesis of the vision of ingathering of the exiles in the Land of Israel. Yet, the educational objectives of the program are to prepare and educate for a life within a comprehensive Jewish community, wherever it may be. On the surface, this document would appear to indicate that the Jewish leadership was oblivious to both the cruel reality of its situation and the gruesome prospect of the “Solution of the Jewish Question” in the near future. But it also indicates that spiritual and social values still assumed an important role in 16 For a photocopy of the document, see: Kulka, The “Jewish Question” in the Third Reich (as in fn. 5), Vol. II, Document No. 55, pp. 533–534. 17 Compare, for example, this document with the educational program presented in Martin Buber’s articles, “Unser Bildungsziel,” in: Die Stunde und die Erkenntnis. Reden und Aufsätze 1933–1935, Schocken, Berlin, 1936, 89–94 and Ernst Simon, “Jewish Adult Education in Nazi Germany as Spiritual Resistance,” in: Leo Baeck Institute Year Book I (1956), 68–69.

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shaping the direction and priorities of the practical work of the Reichsvereinigung. Further surviving documents make it clear that during 1941, this educational program was actually implemented in Germany in all the various educational frameworks and was followed even during the stage of the mass deportations. We may conclude by saying that a number of important points regarding the basic question of continuity in the status and nature of the work of the Jewish leadership in Germany during the period of the Third Reich have been clarified. As a result, some of the premises that have become established and are repeated in many publications on this subject, must necessarily be rejected. We might add one more comment: this examination has permitted us to discern the course taken by the leadership of German Jewry over the relatively long period of ten years of National Socialist rule. We have seen how the patterns of historical continuity that crystallised in Germany during the 1930s influenced the course adopted by the Jews in the following years. But it appears that analogous examples can be found in the attitudes and activities of the Jewish leadership in other Nazi-occupied European countries during the relatively short period of the war. They too may be understood by viewing them as the continuity of the internal trends characterizing each Jewish community, and not only as attempts to cope with the extreme situation during the ultimate stage of annihilation.18 It is possible that the usage of such an approach may bring to light additional dimensions of unity in Jewish history during this unique era, beyond the common fate of destruction that befell the Jews of Europe.

18 Cf. Otto D. Kulka, “Ghetto in an Annihilation Camp. Jewish Social History in the Holocaust Period and its Ultimate Limits,” in: Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf (eds.), The Nazi Concentration Camps: Proceedings of the Fourth Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1984, 315–330, and esp. 315, 319–322 (Chapter 11 of this book).

11 Ghetto in an Annihilation Camp. Jewish Social History in the Years of the “Final Solution” and its Ultimate Limits I This article deals with a unique case, which, in addition to its significance as a subject in its own right, provides us with opportunities to examine a number of fundamental problems of Jewish history in the era of the “Final Solution” regarding an all but incomparable situation of human and social existence in extremis.1

1 The essential innovation in this article, as compared to the few publications in which the “family camp” of Auschwitz-Birkenau (under its German name Familienlager BIIb) has been discussed to date, extends in two directions: (a) in the attempt to deal with the subject within the framework of research into the history of the Jewish people, with the objective of trying to clarify its role in the history of the“Final Solution”; and (b) in basing the study on documentary material not previously available to researchers of this subject. This new material is of fundamental importance as a key to questions that were unanswerable until now. It relates to following groups: (1) The political sphere, regarding which there emerged for the first time documents of the Jews’ Department of the RSHA (headed by Eichmann) in which the camp is mentioned by name and from which its purpose and special fate became clear. (For details on and a selection of these documents, see below, Part IV, and fn. 20.) To this category also belongs the long cable, dated October 1943, sent to London by the representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva. It reports on the establishment of a camp of Jews from Theresienstadt in Birkenau, based on information from the Jewish leader of the camp. The information was transmitted to Geneva through the auspices of the central organization of German Jewry in Berlin, almost certainly with the knowledge of the RSHA. The document was published by H.G. Adler, Die verheimlichte Wahrheit—Theresienstädter Dokumente, Tübingen, 1958, 307–308 (hereafter: Adler I). It is presented there in the context of the deportations from the Theresienstadt ghetto and until now has not been read in connection with the history of the “family camp” in Auschwitz. (2) Direct contemporary testimonies recorded by inmates of Auschwitz during their stay in the camp or immediately after their escape. The most important of these is a detailed description in the diary of a member of the Sonderkommando, Załmen Gradowski, who worked and died in the crematoria. The diary, written in 1944 in Yiddish and buried by its owner on the camp grounds, was discovered long after the war and published in Israel. See Załmen Gradowski, In Harts fun Geheynem—a Dokument fun Oyshvitser Sonderkomando (In the Heart of Hell—a document of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando), Jerusalem, 1977 (hereafter: Gradowski). The important material for our purposes is found in the second section, on pp. 33–104. To this category of documents belong the postcards that the doomed inmates of the “family camp” sent to Theresienstadt, to their countries of origin under Nazi rule and even to neutral Switzerland (they can be found in the Yad Vashem Archives and the Jewish Museum in Prague); as well as three poems by an anonymous poetess that were smuggled out of the gas chambers (see below, fn. 19). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-012

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The first contemporary evidence about the fate of the camp and the liquidation of half of its inhabitants in March 1944, appeared in mimeographed form in Switzerland in August 1944. See J. Silberschein (ed.), Die Judenausrottung in Polen, Geneva, 1944, 46–108. This report was written by two Jewish prisoners from Slovakia, Rudolf Rosenberg-Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who escaped from Auschwitz in April 1944. (3) A collection of testimonies by survivors recorded during the 1960s by Gershon Ben-David on behalf of the Institute for Contemporary Jewry of the Hebrew University and bearing the name: Cultural Life and Educational Activities in the Theresienstadt Ghetto (1941–45) and in the Special (“Family”) Camp for Theresienstadt Jews at Auschwitz (1943–44) (hereafter: Ben-David Collection). This collection includes twenty-two testimonies from teachers, youth-group leaders, and youngsters in the camp. See the material in Oral Division Catalogue No. 3, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Jerusalem, 1970, 110–116. The camp is also mentioned in the testimonies of some other Auschwitz survivors collected by the Yad Vashem Institute and preserved in its archives. Another important written testimony, placed at my disposal by the author, describes the life and work of the central figure in the history of the camp, Fredy Hirsch. See: Hans Gaertner, Erinnerung an Fredy Hirsch, 1977 (hereafter: Gaertner, Erinnerung; Ms. 8p., now also in the Yad Vashem Archives:3–51/70(3)). (4) Among the publications that included additional sources on this subject, I would note the following: Miroslav Kárný, “Das Theresienstädter Familienlager in Birkenau,” Judaica Bohemiae, XV (1979), 3–26 (hereafter: Kárný 1); idem., “Terezínský rodinný tábor Birkenau, Pokus o rekonstrukci jeho historie,” Sborník historický, 26 (1979), 229–300 (hereafter: Kárný 2). Kárný’s two articles are the only monographic research that exists on this subject. Special emphasis is placed on a painstaking examination of the reports about preparations for a revolt and the contacts of the underground with the inmates of other camps, as well as on a speculative discussion about the presumed role of the camp in Himmler’s policy of placing the Allies toward the end of the war. Of value in its own right is its drawing upon the chronological and statistical data in the publications of the Auschwitz Museum and Archives and employment of the testimonies of survivors preserved at the Jewish Museum in Prague, as well as other testimonies from the trails of former SS personnel in Auschwitz held in Cracow in 1947 and in Frankfurt am Main in 1964. Ota Kraus and Erich Schön (Kulka), Továrna na smrt, Prague, 1946, 151–168. In translation: Ota Kraus and Erich Kulka, The Death Factory, Oxford, 1966, 167–181. Given here is the first comprehensive description of the history of the camp, which integrates testimonies of survivors written specially for this book. See also: Ruth Bondy, Edelstein against Time, Tel Aviv, 1981 (in Hebrew; in a broader historical context, but less exhaustive description regarding the “family camp”); Yehuda Reznichenko (ed.), Theresienstadt, Tel Aviv, 1948 (in Hebrew; includes reminiscence of survivors, members of the He-Halutz movement); Sinai Adler, In the Valley of Death. A Year in the Life of an Adolescent in the Concentration Camps, Jerusalem, 1979 (in Hebrew; hereafter: Sinai Adler; a description of the last stages of the camp’s existence, as the author remembered it, given from his personal viewpoint as a religious youngster in Auschwitz). Among other books and articles containing direct or incidental testimony about the camp are: Filip Müller, Auschwitz Inferno—The Testimony of a Sonderkommando, London, 1979; Rudolf Vrba [Allen Bestic], I Cannot Forgive, London, 1964; Jozef Lánik, Oswienčim, hrobka štyroch miliónov ľudí (Auschwitz—Grave of four million people, in Slovak), Košice, 1945; idem, Čo Dante nevidel (What Dante didn’t see, in Slovak), Bratislava, 1964; H.G. Adler, Theresienstadt

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The following is a summary of the salient facts in the history of the “family camp” at Auschwitz. The camp was established in September 1943 with the arrival of 5,000 Jews who had been deported from the Theresienstadt Ghetto. Contrary to the standard procedure at Auschwitz, they did not undergo the selection process, followed by the liquidation of those declared “unfit for labor,” but were placed in a separate camp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, where—again in contrast to routine practice at other Auschwitz camps—the men, women, and children were allowed to remain within a single framework and were distinguished from the rest of the prisoners by their clothes and the fact that their heads were not shaved. Except for the position of the “Camp Elder” (Lagerältester), which was filled by a veteran German criminal inmate of Auschwitz, the internal administration of the camp was left in the hands of the Jews. Nevertheless, the harsh living conditions in the camp engendered an extremely high rate of “natural death” (more than 1,000 out of the 5,000 people brought in the first transport succumbed during the first six months). In December 1943, and May 1944 two additional transports arrived from Theresienstadt carrying each one 5,000 Jews, who were granted the same conditions and placed in the same camp. The reason for the special status of these deportees wasn’t clear neither to the Jews in the “family camp” nor to the inmates of the other camps in Auschwitz, but everyone assumed that, for whatever reason, they were exempt from the ordeal imposed on all the other Jews deported to Auschwitz. On March 7, 1944, however, six month after the arrival of the first transport, all those who had come to the camp in September 1943, with a few exceptions, were annihilated in the gas chambers in a single night without first being subject to the selection procedure applied to the inmates of the other camps in Auschwitz. A few days before their execution, they were ordered to send postcards to the Theresienstadt ghetto and acquaintances in the Third Reich and neutral countries. These postcards bore the date March 25 1944, that is, more than two weeks after the date on which their senders were already dead. Meawhile, in December 1943 another transport of 5,000 Jews from Theresienstadt arrived. But from March 1944 onward it was clear to all involved that the lifespan of each transport brought to the special camp war predetermined at precisely six months. Indeed, in July 1944, six months after the arrival of the second transport, another liquidation operation was carried out. This one differed from the first, however, in two ways: (1) The selection procedure was applied, and 1941–1945, Tübingen, 1960 (hereafter: Adler 2); Erich Kulka, “Five Escapes from Auschwitz,” in: Yury Suhl (ed.), They Fought Back, New York, 1967,196–218. Incidental mention of the “family camp” appears in most other books on AuschwitzBirkenau, though without any knowledge of its special significance.

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Fig. 12: Postcard sent from the Family Camp, postdated March 25, 1944, almost three weeks after the sender died in the gas chamber, on March 8.

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those declared “fit for labor” were sent for slave labor in Germany; and (2) all of the rest of the camp was liquidated in one stroke. Various theories have been advanced to explain the phenomenon of the special camp, but until recently it has not been possible to substantiate them on the basis of any official document. Now, however, with the discovery of a series of documents of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) that deal with this subject, we are able to determine the reasons behind the establishment of the camp and the circumstances leading to its liquidation.2 Among the relevant documents is an exchange of letters between the Berlin office of the German Red Cross and Eichmann’s office in the RSHA, on the one hand, and the International Red Cross headquarters in Geneva, on the other. An examination of these letters leads to the almost certain conclusion that similar and in addition to the Theresienstadt ghetto, this special “family camp” at Auschwitz was designed to serve as allegedly living proof that reports about the annihilation of the Jews deported to the East were false. The evidence to refute those reports included postcards from Auschwitz confirming that the deportees and their families were alive; the receipt of packages sent through the auspices of the International Red Cross; and the project to visit the Theresienstadt ghetto. It appears, however, that the extremely positive report of the Red Cross commission that visited Theresienstadt ghetto (which, in the words of one of the authors of the RSHA letters, “satisfied all their expectations”) rendered the second part of the proposed visit—to “a Jewish labor camp in Birkenau”3—superfluous. Thus the final liquidation of the special “family camp”—which had also become superfluous—was executed shortly after the Red Cross delegation visited the Theresienstadt ghetto.

II As noted at the opening of this article, the case of the “family camp” in AuschwitzBirkenau enables us to examine a number of basic problems of Jewish history in the era of the “Final Solution”. I am referring first and foremost to the issue of the perpetuation of Jewish society as a social organism4 under the conditions imposed 2 Translated selection from these documents, see below, Part IV. 3 Ibid. 4 In the definitions above, I have based myself, inter alia, on the approaches of Yitzhak Baer regarding “the continuity of Jewish history in its organic essence” and Salo W. Baron’s, Social and Religious History of the Jews. See: Yitzhak F. Baer, The Unity of Jewish History and Problems of Its Organic Development, lecture in Hebr. delivered at the World Congress of Jewish Studies, 1947,

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by totalitarian regime of the Third Reich, or, to be more precise, the question of the continuity and limits of Jewish communal life from 1933 up to and throughout the phase of the mass deportations and annihilation process. As a result of the findings of recent research into Jewish society under the rule of the Third Reich, we are able to state that together with partial manifestations of paralysis and internal disintegration, the dominant trend evidenced from 1933 onward was a surprising intensification of various types of internal activity and the perpetuation of various social and spiritual factions. Especially prominent is the enhanced importance of the community’s existing organizational frameworks and the creation of new structures to deal with education, culture, employment, welfare, and the like. This trend continues to be evident in Germany up to the stage of the mass deportations in 1941–1943 and even while these deportations were going on.5 It can likewise be distinguished among the deportees to the Theresienstadt ghetto, which absorbed as well a substantial portion of Germany’s remaining Jews.6 At the same time, with the expansion of the Third Reich and the concentration of Jews in ghettos, similar trends can be discerned in other countries, and it appears that alongside signs of social disintegration and corruption in the ghettos, Jewish society was further consolidated under these severe conditions in somewhat of an accelerated extensions of this trend.7

Gilyonot, XXIV, No. 5 (1950/ 51), 212ff. (in Hebrew), and Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, Philadelphia, 1937. Cf. also idem., “World Dimensions of Jewish History,” History and Jewish Historians, Philadelphia, 1964, 38. 5 Cf. my article: “The Reichsvereinigung of the Jews in Germany (1938/9–1943). Problems of Continuity in the Organization and Leadership of German Jewry under the National Socialist Regime,” in: Yisrael Gutman and Cynthia J. Haft (eds.), Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe 1939–1945. Proceedings of the Third Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, 1979, 45–58 (hereinafter: Kulka, Reichsvereinigung; as well as several other lectures in the volume. Of the widespread literature on these subjects, I would mention only the following: On Eastern Europe: Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat—The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation, New York, 1972; Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw 1939–1943-Ghetto, Underground, Revolt, Bloomington, 1982. On Germany: articles published mainly in Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, Vol. I, 1956, and other volumes. Cf. notes 2 and 4 in: Kulka, Reichsvereinigung (Chapter 10 of this book). 6 On this phenomenon in Theresienstadt, see Adler 2 (as in fn. 1) as well as Zdeněk Lederer, Ghetto Theresienstadt, London, 1953; Karel Lágus and Josef Polák, Město za mřížemi (A City behind iron bars, in Czech), Prague, 1964. But see also a different approach presented in brief in my article: “Theresienstadt”, Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. XV, Jerusalem, 1971, 1112–1117. 7 See: Kulka, Reichsvereinigung (as in fn. 5); for Czech Jewry, see also my article: “The Munich conference and the Jewish Question in Czechoslovakia in 1938”, Yalkut Moreshet 3 (1965), 51–78 (in Hebrew); and “On the SD Jews’ Policy [Judenpolitik] in the First Occupied Countries”, Yalkut Moreshet 18 (1974), 163–184 (in Hebrew).

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On the other hand, when dealing with the existence of Jews in the concentration camps, it appears that we cannot apply this standard of “continuity,” for here the communal frameworks underwent a process of atomization. I am speaking particularly of the existence of those Jews who remained in the camps after the deportations from the ghettos and the liquidation of the “unfit for labor,” including most of the family members of those last survivors. This situation may perhaps allow us to speak of a continuation of the history of Jews qua individuals, but no longer of the continuity of Jewish history, in the sense defined at the beginning of his section.8 The “family camp” of Jews from Theresienstadt in the heart of the AuschwitzBirkenau annihilation camp, complete with its own leadership and intensive communal activities, provides us with an opportunity to delve into two parallel dimensions of Jewish existence during this period: the perpetuity of the Jews as a society even in face of the mass-extermination process, alongside the survival of Jews as individuals within the multinational prisoner population of the Nazis’ largest concentration and annihilation camp. Among the other issues that may be elucidated by an examination of this subject—but which are not necessarily developed in the discussion below—we should note the following: 1. The efforts of the SS to camouflage the annihilation of the Jews deported to the East—especially in the wake of rising public concern in the free world

8 It should be noted, however, that despite the atomization that began after the transfer to the camp of prisoners who were arrested individually or who had survived the initial selection, under certain conditions new cells of social organization began to coalesce on the basis of common work, political outlooks, etc. The most outstanding example of this among the Jewish prisoners was the group of Sonderkommando, who also bore the major burden of the uprising. See: Tzipora Hager-Halivni, “The Birkenau Revolt—Poles Prevent a Timely Insurrection”, Jewish Social Studies XLI, No. 2 (Spring 1979), 123–154. On groups of prisoners who organized by country of origin, see Kraus-Kulka (as in fn. 1), 250 ff. and Józef Garliński, Fighting Auschwitz—The Resistance Movement in the Concentration Camp, London, 1975. On underground groups of Jewish women who were employed in the military industry in Auschwitz and who organized on the basis of Zionist movement affiliation, see: Yisrael Gutman, People and Ashes—Auschwitz Birkenau Book, Merhavia, 1957, 151–157 (in Hebrew). Another important framework, mainly among the non-Jewish prisoners, was the Communist underground, which concentrated on maintaining mutual aid among its members. See: B. Jarosz, “The Resistance Movement in and around the Camp,” in: Danuta Czech et al., (eds.), Auschwitz Nazi Extermination Camp, Warsaw, 1978, 133–156; Hermann Langbein, … nicht wie Schafe zur Schlachtbank—Widerstand in den nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern 1938–1945, Frankfurt a. M., 1980. These groups, whose existence bore great moral significance for the life of prisoners, were a kind of new cell growth conditioned primarily by the reality of the camp, but they failed to preserve the elements indispensable for the continuity of Jewish society, such as communal leadership, the family, etc.

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over this issue—and the equivocal role of the International Red Cross in this stratagem. 2. The efforts of the Jews in the annihilation camps to warn the inhabitants of the ghettos of the fate of the deportees and to arouse world public opinion (inter alia by escaping from the camp to return to the Theresienstadt ghetto and by passing information about Auschwitz on to neutral countries). 3. The ways in which the Jewish leaders and members of the community coped with the prospect of their inevitable liquidation (including the option of resistance, contacts with the camp underground and the Sonderkommando crematoria workers, and expressions of collective and individual defiance by the inmates as they knowingly went to their deaths). 4. The impact of the way of life and liquidation of the inmates of the “family camp” on their surroundings in Auschwitz—meaning Jews and non-Jews alike—and even on the SS, as manifested in the sources. In this framework, we are naturally unable to enter into all these problems at length and will have to content ourselves with noting the opportunity to study them on the basis of the sources at our disposal.

III Let us now return to the central question of our discussion. Throughout the existence of this special camp, its inhabitants administered their lives in several spheres as a continuation of the communal life activities they had pursued in Theresienstadt. At the center of life in the camp was the educational program, which in turn gave rise to an intensive cultural life.9 As noted above, in contrast to the rule in the rest of the camps of Auschwitz, the internal administrative functions in the “family camp,” such as block leaders (Blockälteste), Capos, and the leaders of labor units, were filled by the Jews themselves. Most of these functionaries were veteran inmates of the Theresienstadt ghetto and some of them came from the ghetto’s leadership echelon.10 However, the foremost authority in the

9 On this aspect, see the collection of testimonies culled by Gershon Ben-David: Ben-David Collection (as in fn. 1). 10 From the list of deportees preserved in the archives of the Jewish community of Prague, it emerges that the nucleus of the first group, which established the camp, was composed of members of the first two groups sent to Theresienstadt in 1941 by the Jewish leadership of Prague in order to take part in preparing the groundwork for establishing the ghetto. According to notes of September 1943 in two diaries found in Theresienstadt after the war, they also included 150

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camp, in the estimation of both the inmates and the SS, though not in any formal sense, was the head of the education and youth center, Fredy Hirsch.11 Until the liquidation of the members of the first transport from Theresienstadt, everyone believed that the special status of the “family camp” protected them from being sent to the gas chambers, which operated only a few hundred yards away and in which hundreds of thousands of Jews brought to Auschwitz from all over Europe and thousands of prisoners singled out in the selections as “unfit for labor” were liquidated during that period. Following the total liquidation of the first transport at the end of its allocated six month,12 the remaining inmates of the special camp apparently continued to run their lives according to the established patterns of activity: the medical staff continued to make every effort to save the lives of the sick and the elderly;13 educational and youth activities went on as before; and concerts and theatrical performances continued to be held.14 Even ideological disputes continued among the various social

members of the “Ghetto guard” unit (Ghettowache), which had been disbanded a short time before. See: Kárný 1(as in fn. 1), p. 4, fn. 4. According to the information transmitted to London in October 1943 by representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, Gerhard Riegner, “the labor camp of Birkenau” was “headed by the director of the Palestine Office in Prague, Leo Janowitz, who was a close associate of Jacob Edelstein” [the head of the Theresienstadt ghetto] and “Fredy Hirsch, head of the Youth Division in Theresienstadt and a member of the regional leadership of Maccabi [Hazair] in Prague. They hoped to use the experience they have gained working with Edelstein in Prague and in the ghetto … ” See: Adler 1 (as in fn. 1), 307–308. 11 This is the view that emerges from all the testimonies on the camp. Hans Gaertner writes in his testimony on Hirsch (Gaertner, Erinnerung; as in fn. 1) that immediately after he arrived at the camp, Hirsch was appointed to the position of “camp Capo” (Lagerkapo), and it was his task to supervise the work in the camp. But within a short time, Hirsch asked the camp command to release him from this task and allow him to establish a center of educational and cultural activities for the youth in the camp. According to this testimony, Hirsch was arrested in the Theresienstadt ghetto shortly before his deportation to Auschwitz for his attempt to extend aid to a group of children from the Bialystok ghetto who were to be held in isolation. His inclusion in the transport to Auschwitz was thus a punishment for this act. See: ibid., 5–7. 12 Actually, few prisoners from this group were left alive. They included twins on whom the notorious SS doctor, Mengele, practiced his experiments, as well as part of the medical staff at the hospital barracks and some of the patients. This was done, most probably, in order to deceive the remainder of those being sent to their deaths, who knew what was going on in Auschwitz; leaving patients in the camp presumably attested to the fact that they themselves were being sent—as the SS explanation had it—to work in Germany. 13 According to the testimony of the physician Dr. Alfred Mílek, who set up the hospital barrack in September 1943 and was among the few who survived. After the war Dr. Mílek returned to Prague. See: Kraus-Kulka (as in fn. 1), 176–177. 14 According to Gaertner, Erinnerung (as in fn. 1), 6; he writes that among the performances characteristic of this period were macabre satirical pieces describing “the only exit from

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and religious factions about everything from their competing visions of the ideal future for mankind to the most desirable form of Jewish settlement in Palestine.15 In contrast to the earlier period, however, all these activities now took place despite the full awareness that all the camp’s inmates were doomed to extinction on predetermined dates. Not even those who would otherwise be classified as “fit for labor” had any chance to evade the common fate—a hope that remained to the rest of the inmates of Auschwitz. One issue that clearly occupied everyone’s thoughts was the way which they would face their death, especially in light of reports about how the members of the first transport had conducted themselves at the end: the last-minute suicide of Fredy Hirsch, attempts at resistance by a number of other leading functionaries,16 and the singing of Hatikvah, the anthem of the Jewish state-in-making, the Czech national anthem, and the Internationale from the depths of the subterranean gas chambers (or, as the member of the “Sonderkommando” Gradowski put it in his diary—discovered buried in Auschwitz—“singing from within the grave”).17

Auschwitz—via the chimney of the crematoria.” In the audience at these performances were even some SS men from the camp staff. Several similar testimonies on this point can be found in the Ben-David collection (as in fn. 1), especially that of Yehuda Bacon. 15 See particularly the testimony of A. Ophir (Fischer), a teacher and youth guide in the camp, as well as several other testimonies in the Ben-David collection (as in fn. 1). 16 There are differing versions of the preparations for the uprising and desperate attempts at resistance by individuals when the truth of their impending fate became evident to them, as well as the circumstances surrounding Fredy Hirsch’s suicide. According to some of them, Fredy Hirsch and other leaders of the camp were tipped off by Jewish prisoners form other camps about the liquidation order received by the camp command. With the help of their contacts with the Polish underground, preparations were made to mount an uprising, which was to serve as a signal for the outbreak of the general uprising in Auschwitz. After the planned cooperation failed, however, Hirsch refused to be a witness to the slaughter of women and children and committed suicide by taking poison shortly before the people were led to the gas chambers. Some of the block leaders who called on their people the resist and not board the trucks were beaten to death on the spot. According to another version, the commander of the Birkenau camp, Schwarzhuber, proposed to Hirsch that he bid farewell to the children, who were doomed to die in the gas chambers, and continue his work together with the people of the second transport who remained in the camp. But he refused and chose to die instead. Some of these testimonies, particularly those of survivors of the “family camp” and of the other camps, were closely examined with extreme skepticism and a fastidiousness bordering on hostility by Kárný (in his two articles quoted in fn. 1). Another approach is represented in Kraus-Kulka (as in fn. 1), 171–173 and Gaertner, Erinnerung (as in fn. 1), 7. But it is worth emphasizing that the facts about the preparations for or attempts at an uprising and Fredy Hirsch’s suicide are mentioned in almost all the testimonies on the “family camp.” On other attempts at resistance by individuals within the gas chambers, see: Gradowski (as in fn. 1). 17 See Gradowski (as in fn. 1) and especially the section “The Singing from the Grave” and “Hatikvah”: 82, 88, whereas a detailed description of the way in which the Jews from the “family

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If I may be allowed to comment here, this act was a kind of “confession of faith” of the three secular movements of political messianism, with which most the Central European Jewry identified at that time: the Zionist movement; the movement that believed the redemption of the Jews lay in their integration within the national movements of the people among whom they lived; and the socialist movement, with its promise of universal salvation. The traditional Jewish confession of faith, of course, was a matter between man and God. Indirectly, from another source, we actually learn of this manner of confronting what seemed to be an unavoidable fate from the memoirs of a survivor of the “family camp,” Rabbi Sinai Adler.18 Yet another unique message was sent from the threshold of the gas chambers—a powerful, poetic, personal statement by an anonymous twentyyear-old poetess who delivered a stinging indictment in the name of the millions who were consumed by the flames and whose ashes were strewn to the winds. Her ostensibly personal message also speaks to, or on behalf of, “a generation of slaughtered European youth” sacrificed on the altar of war as they blindly followed the bewitching but fraudulent slogans of their leaders. Her message, however, also demonstrates her abiding commitment to humanism and, indeed, to the radical moral ideal of an utter rejection, whatever the cost may be, of all violence and bloodshed.19 It seems that throughout its history, this special camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was marked by the extrapolation of a situation generally familiar to us from the earlier stages of the Jewish experience within the Third Reich, namely, the tendency to continue fostering communal life and prevent the disintegration of Jewish society as a way of coping with and adjusting to the new conditions, severe though they may have seemed. The radical difference is that in every other situation, including that of the ghettos during the periods of mass deportations, the prospect of future existence essentially remained an open question, while in the case of the “family camp,” the society and its structures—including the educational program, which by its very nature was designed to inculcate values camp” faced their death in the gas chambers is contained in the chapter “The Czech Transport”: 35–92. 18 Sinai Adler (as in fn. 1). 19 These three poems were brought to the Kraus-Kulka group by one of the Polish Capos recruited by the SS to participate in “taking care” of the smooth liquidation of the first transport from the “family camp” in March 1944. They were smuggled out to Prague by a Czech civilian worker, and after Kraus and Kulka returned from the camp, the poems were returned to them. They were first published in their book in Czech: Kraus-Kulka (as in fn. 1) and in various translations of this book. (English translation in: O. D. Kulka, Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death, Allen Lane, Penguin Books, London, 2013, 51–55.)

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and prepare for the future—continued to function in a situation in which the one incontestable certainty was that of impending death. (This certainty applied not merely in the individual sense but even more so in the sense of a death sentence on the entire community of the special camp as part and parcel of the common destiny of genocide which they themselves witnessed being perpetrated against the Jewish people.) This remarkable phenomenon of sustaining the structures, activities, and values of Jewish society (whose genuine purpose was to safeguard the perpetuation of Jewish life) in a situation that categorically denied any point to purposeful existence can be understood in several ways. One that I believe to be worthy of special consideration is that here historical, functional, and normative values and patterns of life were transformed into something on the order of absolute values.

IV I now wish to turn to what may be called “the political history” of the camp and the official documents that shed light on one of the crudes and most cynical attempts to mislead world public opinion regarding the mass extermination of the Jews by exploiting an international humanitarian organization. The architect and orchestrator of this plan was, most probably, Adolf Eichmann. The documents originated from Eichmann’s department in the RSHA, the German Red Cross in Berlin, and the International Red Cross in Geneva. They have been found in two unclassified packages of papers in the American “Document Center” in West Berlin.20 The first piece of evidence is from March 4, 1943, about half a year before the establishment of the “family camp.” It is an important letter from the representative of the German Red Cross in Berlin to the International Red Cross in Geneva relating to the dispatch of food and drugs to the Theresienstadt ghetto. The section relevant to our discussion states:

20 It is almost certain that the heterogeneous material kept together in these packages and kept among the Nazi personal files in the Berlin “Document Center” was later sorted out in the Federal Archives of West Germany and restored, as far as possible, according to its organic archival origin, to the proper files in the Federal Archives or passed on to the archives of the ministries from which they were originally taken in order to make up the personal files for their trials. In our case, it is probable that some or all of the documents were handed over to the West German Red Cross. In any event, the documentary material in the two packages is on microfilm in Yad Vashem Archives, M.29- JM 1700 3507893.

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Further on you asked me about the possibility of sending parcels to Jews in camps in the East. Herewith I must inform you that for practical reasons no such dispatches are possible for the time being. In the event that such a possibility arises in the future, the German Red Cross will return to dealing with this matter.

The next citation comes from a letter sent by the same representative about a year later, on March 14, 1944 – that is, about half a year after the establishment of the “family camp” in Birkenau. The letter is addressed to the RSHA and is based upon a conversation with Eichmann held shortly before the liquidation of the members of the first transport to the “family camp.” Here the subject is not merely the packages sent from Switzerland to Theresienstadt and the Jewish camp in Birkenau but the possibility of a visit to these two places: Referring to the discussion between the undersigned and Sturmbannführer Günther of the 6th of this month and an earlier conversation with Obersturmbannführer Eichmann regarding the possibility of a visit by a representative of the International Red Cross Committee accredited in Germany to the Old Age Ghetto Theresienstadt, we are now requesting that a date for this visit be set. […] At the same time, we should like to refer to the previously discussed plan to visit a Jewish labor or penal camp on the occasion of an official trip by one of the employees of the RSHA. […] During this visit, it would be appropriate to distribute the parcels of food and medical supplies to the ailing in accordance with your permit 4a, 4b of January 26 […] so that it will be possible to confirm to the United Relief Organization in Geneva receipt of the parcels on the basis of the eyewitness testimony of a representative of the German Red Cross […] Considering the rise in the number of foreign inquiries about the various Jewish camps, these planned visits to the camps seem to be highly advisable.

Indeed, a further letter, dated May 18, 1944, grants permission for a delegation from the International Red Cross to visit the camp, with early June cited as a desirable date. The letter is from the RSHA to the director of External Relations of the German Red Cross, Niehaus, and it states, inter alia: The Reichführer SS [Himmler] consented to conduct a tour of inspection of the Theresienstadt ghetto and one Jewish labor camp [in Birkenau] to be undertaken by you and a representative of the International Red Cross delegation.

The words “one Jewish labor camp” and “a representative of the International Red Cross delegation” are underlined in handwriting, and a note was scrawled to the left: “Transmitted by phone to the Swiss delegation on May 19 at 18.00 in the afternoon.” The letter regarding this matter, sent to Geneva the next day, has also been preserved. Many documents report about the first part of the visit to the Theresienstadt ghetto on June 23, 1944. As an example, we will cite a section from a letter written by a German Red Cross participant in the tour, Heydekampf, to his superior in Berlin, Niehaus:

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Fig. 13 : Letter from Himmler’s office dated May 18, 1944, granting permission for a delegation from the International Red Cross to visit the camp in early June.

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As already reported by phone on Sunday, the undersigned saw the report of [the International Red Cross representative] Dr. Rössel. The undersigned has personally reported to Hauptsturmführer Möhs of the RSHA, who seems to have received [the report] with unqualified satisfaction. The matter thus appears to be settled.

A perusal of the attached selections from the International Red Cross report reveals the main reason for the RSHA representative’s “unqualified satisfaction.” For together with the enthusiastic description of the arrangements in the ghetto, it includes the statement that: “Theresienstadt was portrayed to the members of the delegation as a final camp.” Thus the members of the International Red Cross were explicitly told that there were no further deportations from Theresienstadt to the East. And since, contrary to expectations, the delegation did not raise any further questions, it was clear that the visit to Theresienstadt satisfied all their desires. Thus the answer prepared to satisfy all possible questions regarding the fate of those deported to the East, namely, the “family camp” in Auschwitz-Birkenau, became superfluous. And so, less than three weeks after this visit, during the first half of July, the camp was finally liquidated.

12 Major Trends and Tendencies in German Historiography on National Socialism and the “Final Solution” 1924–1984 The historiography of the “Final Solution” no longer settles for one-dimensional descriptive accounts of prejudice against the Jews, their persecution and destruction, as had been presented in the first comprehensive works on the “Final Solution” in the 1950s.1 Today the historiography is more diversified and deals not only with the political and ideological role of the Jewish question, but also with the attitude of the German population toward the regime’s anti-Jewish policy and the communal life, organization and leadership of Jewish society in the Third Reich. Furthermore, a characteristic of the historiography of the last twenty years has been the development of diverse and opposing methodological approaches, currents and schools. Yet systematic research of the subject reveals that basic methodological approaches, and even seemingly new currents and schools, can be traced back to contemporaries of National Socialism and their attempts to comprehend the nature of the movement from its emergence in the 1920s and its establishment as a political system in the 1930s. With respect to its salient features and the various stages of its development, German historiography2 can be divided into three main periods: 1. From the mid 1920s until close to the collapse of the Third Reich (1924–1944); the political struggle is predominant in the literature of this period. 2. From the collapse of the Third Reich until the beginning of the 1960s (1945–1960). The historiography of this period is characterized by almost total silence on the Jewish question. It concentrates on assessing the “guilt” 1 Léon Poliakov, Bréviaire de la haine. Le Ille Reich et les Juifs, Paris, Calmann-Levy, 1951; Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution. The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe 1939–1945, London, Vallentine Mitchell & Co., 1953; Artur Eisenbach, Hitlerowska Polityka Zagłady Żydów w Latach 1939–1945 (“Hitler’s Policy of Extermination of Jews 1939–1945”), Warsaw, Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 1953; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Chicago, Quadrangle Books, 1961, based on his 1955 dissertation, Columbia University, 1955. The revised edition, published in New York, Holmes & Meier, 1985, remains essentially unchanged, at least with regard to the main aspects dealt with in the present essay. This applies also to the later editions and translations of the standard works of Poliakov and Reitlinger, particularly to their conceptual structure. 2 For the purpose of this paper, the term “German historiography” denotes publications written in Germany, especially before 1933 and after 1945, as well as publications by émigrés that were written outside Germany from 1933 onward. It does not reflect the changed views and attitudes of some German historians which emerged during the recent “Historikerstreit.” This issue is the subject of the next article (Chapter 13 of this book). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-013

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or responsibility for the fall of Weimar and the rise of Hitler and passes gradually to a discussion of the questions of “totalitarianism or Hitlerism.” From the beginning of the 1960s to the beginning of the 1980s. This period is characterized by a critical reexamination of the conclusions of the earlier stages. On the basis of the historical perspective that has developed and the wider range of sources that have become available, this historiography seeks to arrive at an examination of the subject through categories and methods of historical research.

I The Period of Political Struggle The dominant feature of the first stage, the years 1924–1944, is the literature describing the political struggle against the growing influence of the National-Socialist movement in the 1920s and, after 1933, against Hitler’s regime. Although this literature was based on limited sources and its purpose was not research per se, in several cases it produced achievements of lasting research value.3 Most of this literature in the 1920s and 1930s regarded Hitler, and Fascism generally, as an instrument devised to serve the needs of German capitalism in its struggle with Communism, and as a kind of continuation of Prussian militarism and of the frustrated colonial imperialism of the Second Reich. This view was especially characteristic of the anti-Fascist interpretation common to both the left and liberal sectors in Germany. In contrast, in the interpretation of the conservative trends and part of the liberal camp, Hitler appears as a vulgar demagogue devoid of all ideology and principles other than a lust for power. The anti-Jewish aspect is generally overlooked or seen as marginal in both of these interpretations. To the extent that Nazi anti-Semitism is dealt with, it is presented as a demagogical ploy aimed at diverting the masses from their real problems, an instrument to incite passions, or a kind of antinomian irrational outburst. The publications that were devoted especially to the subject of the Jews are, for the most part, descriptive accounts of anti-Jewish incitement, persecution and stigmatization. As typical examples, we may note here the so-called Braunbuch published in 1933, in which there is a special chapter on this subject, called “Juda Verrecke,”4

3 Concerning the problem of historiographical assessment of contemporary interpretations of National Socialism and the Third Reich see, for example: Klaus Hildebrand, Das Dritte Reich, Munich, Oldenbourg, 1980, 123–131. 4 Das Braunbuch über Reichstagsbrand und Hitler-Terror, Basle, Universum, 1933, 222–269.

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Das Schwarzbuch,5 Der gelbe Fleck. Die Ausrottung von 500,000 deutschen Juden6, or Der Pogrom, Dokumente der braunen Barbarei.7 Nevertheless, even before 1933, we find important assessments of the essentially modern character of Fascism, and especially of National Socialism. Such assessments point to these movements as a potentially powerful historical factor, uniting the politicized masses of the era following World War I by means of radical ideas, including radical anti-Semitism. A significant example of this type of analysis are the two brilliant essays by the Jewish Marxist philosopher, Ernst Bloch: “Erinnerung: Hitlers Gewalt” of 1924 and “Ungleichzeitigkeit und Pflicht zu ihrer Dialektik” of 1932.8 As opposed to the schematic Marxist theory of the time, Bloch does not view Fascism simply as a higher stage of capitalism, whose end is foreordained, and as the representative of the disintegrating forces of counter-revolutionary reaction; he also sees it as a force with a modern message and with a decidedly modern praxis. To be sure, he also identifies it with a manifestation of an ancient force, much older than the bourgeoisie and capitalism, and that identification is what gives rise to the new perspective on the nature and power of the movement and its potential to spread and leave its mark on the era. Its revolutionary message appears in the form of the political messianism which is a feature of the revolutionary movements of the Left. Even though, in the end, fascist messianism must lead to destruction and death, on the ascent, its allure is greater than that of the Marxist revolutionary movement which had become institutionalized and had lost its messianic momentum. Bloch was also one of the first to view Germany, and not Italy, as the most important country with respect to Fascism’s possibilities, even before National Socialism came to power.9 As the late Uriel Tal had the occasion to note,10 similar assessments and analyses were presented, but from a theological point of view, by the Catholic Erhard Schlund, in his Neugermanisches Heidentum im heutigen Deutschland of 1924 and by the Protestant, Richard Karwehl, in Politisches Messiastum of 1931. From the Jewish side, this view was given a profoundly pessimistic 5 Das Schwarzbuch. Tatsachen und Dokumente. Die Lage der Juden in Deutschland 1933, Paris, Pascal, 1934. 6 Der gelbe Fleck. Die Ausrottung von 500,000 deutschen Juden, Paris, Editions du Carrefour, 1936. 7 Der Pogrom, Dokumente der braunen Barbarei, Zürich, Verlag für soziale Literatur, 1939. 8 The first article, which has so far gone unnoticed in research literature, appeared in Das Tagebuch, no. 15, Berlin, April 1924. The second one was reprinted in Ernst Nolte (ed.), Theorien über den Faschismus, Cologne, Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1972, 182–204. 9 Erinnerung: Hitlers Gewalt, 38. 10 Uriel Tal, “Political Faith” of Nazism Prior to the Holocaust, Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv University, 1978.

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expression in the apocalyptic presentiments of the German Zionist leader, Kurt Blumenfeld, in 1932.11 A different analysis, which attempts to explain the sources of National Socialism’s power and its influence on the masses in Weimar Germany in terms of sociological processes, was published that same year by a representative of the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens, Eva ReichmannJungmann, in her article “Flucht vor der Vernunft.”12 The most important study on our subject published that year in Germany, the first volume of Konrad Heiden’s Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus. Die Karriere einer Idee,13also attributes a certain role to anti-Semitism and its use as a revolutionary ideology in the new social quality of the post-war nationalism that was sustained by the activation and politicization of the masses. It was his prognosis that whether or not National Socialism would come to power, it would henceforth leave its mark on all areas of public life in Germany and on German society. After Hitler’s rise to power, we find one of the most profound analyses in the literature of the political struggle in the frightful prognosis, written in exile, by Leopold Schwarzschild. Here National-Socialist anti-Semitism is given a central place in a process of universal significance. After stressing the unique role given to the deterministic principle of race by the new regime in Germany, which set it apart from all other authoritarian or totalitarian regimes, Schwarzschild concludes his article by declaring that: …the defense against National Socialism is a completely different type of task which is by far more important than any other political controversy… what is rushing up to us here is not only a matter of politics but something monstrous: the primaeval forest [der Urwald].14

A similar recognition of the epochal significance of the process contributing to the National-Socialist regime’s rise to power was published in 1933, in Germany by Martin Buber. His call to come to grips with the new situation is addressed to the Jew qua individual and to the Jewish community:

11 Jüdische Rundschau, September 16, 1932. For the background and the even more pessimistic original version of the manuscript, cf. his autobiographical account: Kurt Blumenfeld, Die erlebte Judenfrage: Ein Vierteljahrhundert deutscher Zionismus, Stuttgart, Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, 1962, 195 ff. 12 Eva G. Reichmann-Jungmann, “Flucht vor der Vernunft. Kritische Bemerkungen zu neuer Literatur über Soziologie des Nationalsozialismus,” Der Morgen VIII/2 (1932), 116–121. 13 Konrad Heiden, Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus. Die Karriere einer Idee, Berlin, Rowohlt, 1932. 14 Leopold Schwarzschild, “Rückbildung der Gattung Mensch,” Das Neue Tagebuch, July 19, 1933, Paris, 61–64.

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The situation can perhaps be described thus: the history of mankind has once again become “unstable,” and apparently less stable than ever. The “firm relations” which constituted, only two decades ago, the somewhat constant background of all changing events, developments, conflicts and crises, have all lost their equilibrium. The “assurance of all assumptions,” the work of middle-class society brought into power by the French Revolution, has disappeared. Man is exposed. And the most exposed human group is the Jews … Here, the human struggle is being fought in an exemplary way.15

Similarly, three years later he wrote of the far-reaching significance of the stance assumed by the Jews qua community in a situation unprecedented in its severity: If the striking of the old tower-clock is so audible as if it had never struck before, then it is time to interpret the ringing and the clock itself. The interpretation does not have to be invented; should not be invented; one must simply recognize that which has existed since time immemorial, as the truth after all has, and pronounce it. Why pronounce it? In order that the bond which has perceived its fate in that hour and its recognition, stays together although it is torn apart in space. Whether it stays together as a community, nay, whether it becomes one, whether it becomes one again, this will mysteriously determine the next ringing of the chimes. If it breaks up into isolated individuals then it, and perhaps more than it, is lost.16

However important these analyses are, it was only at the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s that a number of comprehensive studies of National Socialism and of the Third Reich were published in which an attempt was made to examine the whole phenomenon with the help of historical categories and tools. Among them mention should be made of the works of Ernst Fraenkel,17 Franz Neumann,18 and additional books by Konrad Heiden19 on the nature of the regime and its practice; and, on Hitler, of the important analytical assessments,

15 Martin Buber, “Unser Bildungsziel,” Jüdische Rundschau, July 7, 1933 [republished in the collection of his articles from the years 1933–1935: Die Stunde und die Erkenntnis, Berlin, Schocken, 1936, 88–94]. 16 Ibid., 7. 17 Ernst Fraenkel, The Dual State. A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship, New York, Oxford, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1941. The book was originally written while Fraenkel was still in Germany, before 1938. Three years later it was published as an English translation. Only later, it was translated back into German and published under the title Der Doppelstaat, Frankfurt a. M. and Cologne, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1974. 18 Franz Neumann, Behemoth. The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, London, New York, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1942 (2nd rev. edition, 1944). 19 Konrad Heiden, Geburt des Dritten Reiches. Die Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus bis Herbst 1933, Zürich, Europa-Verlag, 1934; idem, Adolf Hitler. Das Zeitalter der Verantwortungslosigkeit, Zürich, Europa-Verlag, 1936; idem, Ein Mann gegen Europa, Zürich, Europa-Verlag, 1937; idem, Der Führer. Hitler’s Rise to Power, London, Gollancz, 1944.

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probably the most influential interpretation, by Hermann Rauschning,20 and the first systematic monograph on the Third Reich and the Jews by Gustav Warburg.21 It appears that these authors, precisely because of their position as a combatant and persecuted party, imposed on themselves an exceptional degree of methodological objectivity—perhaps possible only at that stage, which preceded knowledge of the concrete horrors of the“Final Solution”. Indeed, such knowledge eliminated any possibility of dealing with the subject in categories that require distance and abstraction, to which research could return only after the passing of a generation. Fraenkel’s book, The Dual State, using administrative sources and internal publications, examines the heterogeneous structure of the regime and the internal contradictions in its functioning, which he takes to be characteristic of the essence of the Third Reich. Although the Jewish question has only an incidental place in his schematic description and explanations of diversionary classstruggle propaganda, there is no doubt that even today his approach can be a very useful methodological tool for the study of the developments in the policy of the “solution of the Jewish problem.”22 Within the conservative school, Rauschning’s work stands out. Rauschning perceived the connection between National-Socialist anti-Semitism and the struggle against Western cultural heritage and its principles, distinguishing the centrality of the Jews even in Hitler’s foreign political concepts: For Hitler the Jew is downright vicious. He has raised him to the master of his counter world…One may look for explanations for this in personal experiences or one may call Hitler himself a non-Aryan according to the Nuremberg racial laws, however, the persistence of his anti-Semitism only becomes clear through the mythological exaggeration of the Jew to an eternal prototype of man. Strictly speaking Hitler does not even err with that…And did not

20 Hermann Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler, Zürich, Europa-Verlag, 1940 (henceforth: Rauschning, Gespräche). Even before the publication of the first German edition, two French editions had appeared in 1939: Hitler m’a dit, Paris, Coopération, 1939; one English edition: Hitler Speaks, London, Thornton Butterworth, 1939; as well as one Dutch and one Swedish edition. For the significance of this work, see: Theodor Schieder, Hermann Rauschnings Gespräche mit Hitler als Geschichtsquelle, Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1972. As to the recently raised doubts about the authenticity of Rauschning’s conversations with Hitler, see below, footnote 22. Another wellknown book by Rauschning, Revolution des Nihilismus. Kulisse und Wirklichkeit im Dritten Reich, Zürich, New York, Europa-Verlag, 1938, is less relevant to this topic. 21 Gustav Warburg, Six Years of Hitler. The Jews Under the Nazi Regime, London, Allen & Unwin, 1939. 22 See, for example, the excellent article by Wolfgang Scheffler, “Faktoren nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftsdenkens,” in: Gerhard A. Ritter and Gilbert Ziebura (eds.) Faktoren der politischen Entscheidung. Festgabe für Ernst Fraenkel, Berlin, de Gruyter, 1963, 56–72.

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the whole loathed Christianity, the belief in redemption, the moral, the conscience, the term of sin go back to Judaism? Did not the Jew always take the side of the disintegrating, critical activity in political life? Only from here one understands Hitler’s anti-Semitism. The Jew is a principle…You will see in what short a time we shall overthrow the concepts and standards of the whole world entirely with the struggle against the Jews…But we should not be satisfied with this. This is only the beginning of a merciless battle over world domination…

In this context Hitler points to the role of the Jews as controlling hostile regimes in Europe and the United States and adds: Even after we have driven the Jew out of Germany, he will still remain our world enemy.23

In light of these views on the meaning of anti-Semitism in Hitler’s Weltanschauung, the studies from the 1960s in this field, such as those of Nolte, Hillgruber and Jäckel, appear to be a direct continuation of Rauschning’s analysis; similarly, the “structuralist” studies of the regime of the Third Reich clearly continue the course laid out by Ernst Fraenkel. Gustav Warburg’s volume, Six Years of Hitler, published in 1939, should be regarded as the most important study of this period relating to the Jews in the Third Reich. This work was one of the first in the field to be based on the systematic study of official, ideological, administrative and judicial publications. One of his most important achievements is his emphasis on the centrality of the antiSemitic ideology in National Socialism, not merely as an instrument of propaganda but as a central issue for the movement, and especially for its leadership. On the basis of a variety of sources, Warburg also pointed out the lack of uniformity in the attitude of the population to the anti-Jewish policy of the regime and the different factors involved in the government’s anti-Jewish policy. These analyses may be seen as the beginnings of new trends in research, which, however, did not have direct successors in the following stages. In Neville Laski’s preface to the book, the major theses of the work are spelled out with unmistakable clarity: Anti-Semitism is not a side-issue of Nazism. It is the very root of the Nazi creed, particularly in the mind of the Leader, the very essence of his doctrine.24

23 Rauschning, Gespräche (as in fn. 20), 220–223. The recent publication of Wolfgang Hänel’s Hermann Rauschning’s Gespräche mit Hitler. Eine Geschichtsfälschung, Ingolstadt, Zeitgeschichtliche Forschungsstelle, 1984, which casts doubts upon the authenticity of Rauschning’s sources, seems irrelevant here, since the importance of Rauschning’s presentation of Hitler’s views lies in his insight and interpretation of Hitler’s ideas, even if they are based on sources which were generally accessible at that time. 24 Gustav Warburg, Six Years of Hitler, London, Allen & Unwin, 1939, 7.

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This aspect is especially highlighted in the book’s first chapter, “The Creed of Anti-Semitism,” which concludes with the statement: …the racial question, and that is in the main the Jewish question, is one of the fundamental principles, nay, the fundamental principle, of the Nazi creed.25

A special contribution here is the presentation of the internal dynamics of the Third Reich in the search for a practical interpretation of the ideology and its translation into action along the way to the “Final Solution.” It is typical, too, that at about the same time when Minister Frank declared in Rome that the Nuremberg Laws had solved the Jewish question finally, the organ of the Nazi Storm Troopers demanded: “The Jews must be made innocuous for our people. How this is done, whether we establish a concentration colony for the Jews, whether we send them to Moscow, or whether we send them one day to the moon, does not matter very much at the moment.” If this statement, made over two years ago, is considered in the light of recent decrees driving the Jews into a new ghetto, and of some sinister hints in the Schwarze Korps, the organ of the Secret Police, threatening to kill all the Jews remaining in Germany (probably an alternative expression for “sending them to the moon”), the article in the S.A. Mann can hardly be regarded merely as an idle boast.26

In this context it is impossible not to cite a similar, even more far-reaching assertion, from another book by Konrad Heiden, also published in 1939, which for some reason has been entirely forgotten by researchers and is the only one of his books devoted exclusively to the subject of the Jews. In this book, entitled The New Inquisition,27 we find a chapter in which he deals with the most extreme depersonalization of technocratic thinking with regard to the practical possibilities of the “solution of the Jewish question”: the possibility of the physical annihilation of the Jews in Germany: Men high up in the regime are fond of using the term “to push the button,” though their listeners are never quite sure whether the mocking tone should be taken seriously. Often they add the explanation—still in jocular vein; to assemble all Jews in a large hall and then to release the gas by pressing a button.28

25 Ibid., “The Creed of Anti-Semitism,” 26. 26 Ibid., 24. 27 Konrad Heiden, The New Inquisition, New York, Starling Press, 1939. The manuscript had been written in Paris following the events of the Reichskristallnacht, but it only appeared in book form in its English version. 28 Ibid., 148–149.

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Absent from all of these studies is an important dimension of the historical situation of the Jews in Germany in this period, namely, the internal life, culture and organization of Jewish society under the regime of the Third Reich. As we have already seen from Buber’s articles, he regarded the continuation of Jewish communal life and its non-disintegration in the face of historically unprecedented ideology and terror of the racist totalitarian state as being of critical significance. A number of publications of basic importance, including works of Jewish historians such as Koppel S. Pinson’s “The Jewish Spirit in Nazi Germany”29 and Yitzchak F. Baer’s Galut 30—both published in 1936—and another article by Buber “Das Ende der Symbiose,”31 which appeared on the eve of World War II, can be seen as laying the methodological foundations for historical examination and research in this field from the 1960s onwards, both as a sui generis phenomenon and as an inseparable part of the processes that characterize Jewish history in its various periods. The publications of the late 1930s, however, do not belong to the same category of systematic research as the above-mentioned studies of National-Socialist ideology and government from the 1960s onward. It should, however, be mentioned that all interpretative attempts by Jews and non-Jews to understand the situation in the perspective of historical causality came to a halt when, toward the end of the war, the full meaning of the “Final Solution” came to be known. They were resumed only after much time had elapsed.

II The Post-War Period and the 1950s In the fifteen years that followed the fall of the Third Reich, during which the first comprehensive studies on the destruction of the Jews in Europe were published in non-German historiography, the history written in Germany was characterized by almost total abstention from anything dealing with the subject of the Jews. In surveying this astonishing fact, one is tempted to believe that here Himmler’s notorious dictum of 1943 hangs over the historiography of Germany or is engraved in writing on the wall of the study of every German historian. I am referring, of course, to his pronouncement: “This is a page of glory in our history

29 Koppel S. Pinson’s “The Jewish Spirit in Nazi Germany,” Menorah Journal 24 (1936), 228–254. 30 Yitzchak F. Baer’s, Galut, Berlin, Dvir, 1936 (herafter: Baer, Galut), especially the last chapter “Vom alten Glauben zu einem neuen Geschichtsbewusstsein.” 31 Martin Buber “Das Ende der Symbiose,” Jüdische Weltrundschau (March 1939).

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which has never been written and which is never to be written.”32 That, of course, despite, or perhaps because, of the very different meaning that the words “a page of glory” had here. The special studies on National Socialism and the Third Reich that appeared regularly under the aegis of the Munich Institut für Zeitgeschichte deal with the circumstances and the “guilt,” or responsibility, for Hitler’s rise, or seek to explain the processes of the decline and disintegration of the Weimar democracy. To the extent that the subject of the Jews does appear here, it is in the form of documentary testimony, primarily documents from the Nuremberg trials, on the last stage of the “Final Solution.” Thus the testimony of SS officer Kurt Gerstein on the mass gassings in Treblinka appears in the Dokumentation section.33 Another volume published in the 1950s presents documents on Gauleiter Kube, the Einsatzgruppen and the mass murder of Jews in the Soviet Union.34 Even in the case of the publication of Hitler’s secret memorandum of 1936, which we may regard as a key document for understanding the relationship between ideological assumptions, the war aims and the decisive role of the Jewish question in that context, the Jewish aspect merits only an incidental comment in the interpretation supplied by the editor.35 In spite of the secret and operative nature of the document, in his view there is nothing more here than a reiteration of the vulgar phraseology of anti-Semitic propaganda, which of course he regarded as totally irrelevant to the document’s actual political and military content.36

32 From Himmler’s speech to SS-Gruppenführer in Poznan on 4th October 1943, Documents of the International Nuremberg Military Tribunal (IMT), PS-1919. The full speech is available online: http://www.1000dokumente.de/index.html?c=dokument_de&dokument=0008_pos&object=translation&st=REDE%20DES%20REICHSF%C3%BCHRGRS%20SS&l=de 33 “Augenzeugenberichte zu den Massenvergasungen,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (hereafter: VfZ) 1 (1953), 177–194. 34 “Aus den Akten des Gauleiters Kube,” VfZ 4 (1956), 67–92. 35 Wilhelm Treue, “Hitlers Denkschrift zum Vierjahresplan 1936,” VfZ 3 (1955), 184–210. 36 Cf. for example the basic statement on the first pages of Hitler’s memorandum, VfZ 3 (1955), 204–205. For the crucial significance of this part as an ideological starting-point for the memorandum and the central role played in Hitler’s ideology by the historical conflict of the nations with Jewry and the consequences for the “Final Solution,” see: Otto D. Kulka, “The Jewish Problem as a Factor in Hitler’s Policy toward the Soviet Union. Its Place in his Ideological Conceptions and Political Decisions,” in: Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies: abstracts, Jerusalem, 1973, B-75 ff; idem, The “Jewish Question” in the Third Reich: Its Significance in National Socialist Ideology and Politics and its Role in Determining the Status and Activities of the Jews, PhD Thesis, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1975 (in Hebrew), Vol. 1 Part 1, 209–210, Vol. 1 Part 2, notes 40– 41; in this context see: also Jacob L. Talmon, The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution. The Origins of Ideological Polarisation in the Twentieth Century, London, Secker & Warburg, 1981,

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Similarly, Gerhard Ritter, the eminent historian of the postwar period, in the introduction to his edition of another fundamental source for the study of Hitler’s anti-Semitism, treats the subject in an equally dismissive way.37 The first systematic collections of selected documents on the Third Reich and the “Final Solution” were published in the mid-1950s by the Swiss historian Walther Hofer38 and the two Jewish authors, Léon Poliakov and Joseph Wulf.39 The fate of the Jews in the concentration and extermination camps had been dealt with by the Austrian Eugen Kogon in his Der SS-Staat40 written immediately after his liberation from Buchenwald. The only significant contemporary study published in Germany on the life and fate of the Jews during the period of the deportations, ghettos and annihilation was that of the Jewish scholar, H. G. Adler.41 The attempt undertaken immediately after the war by the venerable German historian, Friedrich Meinecke, to deal with the meaning of the “German Catastrophe,”42 using historical categories and applying a broad perspective, does take up the Jewish issue. However, the marginal mention of this problem is but a repetition of conceptions current from the last third of the nineteenth century, which define the “Jewish problem” in Germany as a worrisome phenomenon that requires a “reasonable” solution; but the “shameful” National-Socialist solution has besmirched the name of the German nation and all of German history with an indelible blot. German historiography’s attempts to cope with the National-Socialist period and the Jewish problem in specific studies are confined to the works of émigrés 530–531, and Yehuda Bauer, “Genocide: Was It the Nazis’ Original Plan?”, Annals of the American Academy 450 (July 1980), 35–45. 37 Dr. Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1942, ed. by Gerhard Ritter, Bonn, Athenäum, 1951. The central significance of anti-Semitism in this very source is later proved impressively in Andreas Hillgruber’s introduction to his revised edition of the Tischgespräche, published in 1968. 38 Walther Hofer (ed.), Der Nationalsozialismus. Dokumente 1933–1945, Frankfurt a. M., Fischer Taschenbuch, 1957. 39 Léon Poliakov and Joseph Wulf, Das Dritte Reich und die Juden, Berlin, Arani, 1955. On the role of Joseph Wulf in German post WW 2 historiography and his tragic fate cf. Nicolas Berg, Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker. Erforschung und Erinnerung, Wallstein, Göttingen, 2003, 323–370. 40 Eugen Kogon, Der SS-Staat. Das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager, Frankfurt a. Main, Fischer Bücherei, 1946. 41 H. G. Adler, Theresienstadt 1941–1945. Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft, Tübingen, Mohr, 1955 (hereafter: Adler, Theresienstadt); idem, Die verheimlichte Wahrheit. Theresienstädter Dokumente, Tübingen, Mohr, 1958. 42 Friedrich Meinecke, Die deutsche Katastrophe. Betrachtungen und Erinnerungen, Wiesbaden, Brockhaus, 1946.

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who settled in the West, many of whom were Jews. Most outstanding among these are the books of Eva Reichmann, Hostages of Civilization. The Social Sources of National Socialist Anti-Semitism;43 Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism;44 Eleonore Sterling, Er ist wie Du. Aus der Frühgeschichte des Antisemitismus in Deutschland (1815–1850);45 Paul Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction. A Study of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany;46 Waldemar Gurian, “Antisemitism in Modern Germany;”47 Fritz R. Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair. A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology;48 George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology. Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich and Peter G. J. Pulzer, The Rise of Political Antisemitism in Germany and Austria.49 It should be noted that the common denominator of all these studies is the attempt to investigate the background process, or the early history of National-Socialist anti-Semitism.50 Similarly, only Jews who had emigrated broached the internal aspect of Jewish history under the Third Reich and during the “Final Solution” into the historiography, at this stage mostly in the form of publishing personal testimonies and recollections of central figures in the public life of that period (most of these were printed in the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book in London).51 Publications on 43 Eva Reichmann, Hostages of Civilization. The Social Sources of National Socialist AntiSemitism, London, Gollancz, 1950. The title of the German edition, Flucht in den Hass. Die Ursachen der deutschen Judenkatastrophe, Frankfurt a. M., Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1956, seems to be a variation of Eva G. Reichmann-Jungmann’s “Flucht vor der Vernunft” (June 1932). 44 Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, Schocken Books, 1951. 45 Munich: C. Kaiser, 1956; rev. edition under the title Judenhass, Frankfurt a. M., Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1969. 46 Paul Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction. A Study of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany, New York, Harper, 1949. 47 Waldemar Gurian, “Antisemitism in Modern Germany,” in: Koppel S. Pinson (ed.), Essays on Antisemitism, New York, Conference on Jewish relations, 1946, 218–265. 48 Fritz R. Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair. A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1961 (based on his PhD diss., Columbia University, 1954). 49 Both published in New York in 1964: George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology. Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich, New York, Grosset & Dunlap, 1964; G. J. Pulzer, The Rise of Political Antisemitism in Germany and Austria, New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1964. 50 Cf. Ismar Schorsch’s illuminating historiographical study “German Antisemitism in the Light of Post-War Historiography,” LBI Year Book 29 (1974), 257–271. 51 The summary reports of the most important spheres of internal life, published in LBI Year Book I (1956), are of fundamental importance, for example: Robert Weltsch’s introduction, XIX– XXXI; Max Gruenewald, “The Beginning of the ‘Reichsvertretung’,” 57–67; Ernst Simon, “Jewish Adult Education in Nazi Germany as Spiritual Resistance,” 68–104; Herbert Freeden, “A Jewish Theatre under the Swastika,” 142–162; Margaret T. Edelheim-Muehsam, “The Jewish Press in Germany,” 163–176 and its continuation in vol. V, 1960, 308–329; Werner Rosenstock, “Exodus 1933–1939. A Survey of Jewish Emigration from Germany,” 373–390. Similar contributions have

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this subject in Germany itself, except for the dissertation by Hans Lamm,52 were introduced indirectly only in the wake of Hannah Arendt’s controversial book, Eichmann in Jerusalem53 and these German publications did not extend beyond the polemic about the Jewish leadership’s purported “guilt,” “responsibility” or “collaboration” in the destruction.54 It was only toward the end of this period, in 1960, that Wolfgang Scheffler published a concise general work on the Jews in the Third Reich, which, in its overall conception, resembles the general descriptive accounts of the “Final Solution” that were published outside Germany in the 1950s. It differs from them in that it includes a first rudimentary attempt to deal with the response of the Jewish population in Germany and the way it organized itself internally in the 1930s.55 In the same year, the comprehensive collective work of Bracher, Sauer and Schulz, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung. Studien zur Errichtung des totalitären Herrschaftssystems in Deutschland 1933–1934,56 was published. In this monumental volume, which signified a decisive scientific breakthrough in the treatment of the first formative stages of the Third Reich, few pages of fundamental importance were devoted to the far-reaching role of National-Socialist antiSemitism, particularly in the section written by Bracher. In the proclamation and realization of the racial doctrine, at the center of National Socialist power philosophy, the terrorist character of the new regime was determined most sharply, even in the long run. The further development of the racial doctrine and the idea of Volkstum

appeared in the Hebrew and English editions of Yad Vashem Studies, which have been published in Jerusalem since 1957. Finally, see also the first attempt to summarize this topic by Max Gruenewald, “Education and Culture of the German Jews under Nazi Rule,” Jewish Review V (1948), 56–83, as well as the anthology published by Robert Weltsch, Deutsches Judentum, Aufstieg und Krise. Gestalten, Ideen, Werke, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1963 (publication of the Leo Baeck Institute). Most of the monographs mentioned here were written in the 1950s. 52 Hans Lamm, Über die innere und äussere Entwicklung des deutschen Judentums im Dritten Reich, PhD diss., University Erlangen, 1951. 53 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, New York, Viking Press, 1963; in German: Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen, Munich, Piper, 1964. 54 The most important opinions on this topic are included in A. Krummacher (ed.), Die Kontroverse. Hannah Arendt. Eichmannn und die Juden, Munich, Nymphenburger, 1964; also in German: Council of Jews from Germany, Nach dem Eichmann Prozess. Zu einer Kontroverse über die Haltung der Juden, Tel Aviv, Bitaon Publishing, 1963. 55 Wolfgang Scheffler, Judenverfolgung im Dritten Reich, Berlin, Colloquium, 1960. 56 Karl Dietrich Bracher, Wolfgang Sauer and Gerhard Schulz, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung. Studien zur Errichtung des totalitären Herrschaftssystems in Deutschland 1933–1934, Köln, Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1960 (hereafter: Machtergreifung); the quotations here are from the second edition of 1962.

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into völkisch—biological antisemitism […] led to the most important point of departure for the “ideological” upheavals: to the Jewish policy of the Third Reich.57

Following his previous outstanding work on the disruption of the Weimar Republic,58 Bracher elaborates on the historical roots of National-Socialist antiSemitism.59 At the same time, though, he stresses its uniqueness as “a phenomenon sui generis”:60 Immediately after Hitler’s ascent to power the persecution of the Jews was not only systematically organized and promoted with the help of propaganda in every possible way, but it became at the same time a decisive principle of the whole internal policy…61

These observations within the given framework of the book relate to the initial tendencies of the National-Socialist policy following the assumption of power. They nevertheless lead to conclusions that go beyond this chronological limitation: The basic direction of the National-Socialist Jewish policy was set from the beginning, although only in secret and indirect formulation.62

Similar to Scheffler, Bracher introduces into German historiography the awareness of the existence of internal Jewish life and activities in the Third Reich within the concept of self-defiance: The Jewish self-defiance in Germany […] developed variegated cultural institutions which up to the moment of physical destruction saved the intellectual and human substance of German Jewry from the totalitarian grip and at the same time also from self-disintegration.63

During that same period an attempt was made to examine the nature of the National-Socialist ideology and regime from another aspect by Martin Broszat, who subsequently raised the suggestion that Hitler’s anti-Semitism appeared to be the only invariable and constant element in the whole structure; were the idea itself not absurd, in his view, it could be regarded as a key that solves the contradictions and lack of consistency in all the other spheres, and even serves as

57 Ibid., 274. 58 Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik. Eine Studie zum Problem des Machtverfalls in der Demokratie, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf, Ring-Verlag, 1955, 140–141. 59 Idem, Machtergreifung (as in fn. 56), 275–276. 60 Ibid., 277. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid., 278. 63 Ibid., 282–283.

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a bridge between them.64 A year later, Broszat offered a view in this spirit, but without the reservations, with respect to Hitler’s views as they are expressed in the publication of the German original text of Hitlers zweites Buch of 1928.65 It should be noted that the main thesis here, the presentation of the concept “Jew as a principle” in Hitler’s Weltanschauung, is actually a return to the definitions that appeared in 1939 in Rauschning’s “Conversations with Hitler.” Nevertheless, despite the initial observations of Bracher and the hesitant hypotheses proposed by Broszat, the prevailing view on the interpretation of Hitler and of National Socialism in Germany during this period still reflects the influence of Bullock’s authoritative book on Hitler, which presents the German dictator as an unprincipled tyrannical figure, whose only motives are lust for power for its own sake, and whose anti-Semitism is anything but a “principle.”66

III The Turning Point of the 1960s A National Socialism as Ideology and Political System A distinctly new stage appears at the beginning of the 1960s, and its major tendencies seem to have persisted to the present day. Casting aside several of the tenets of the previous research, this new trend has two major characteristics: (1) A resumption of research of the ideological aspects of National Socialism, placing them within the general historical perspective—an approach which had already been taken in the 1930s, e.g., by Rauschning. Incentive for this research stemmed from the discovery or re-discovery of ideological sources from the beginning of Hitler’s political career, as well as documents from his last years that had not been intended for publication.67 As a result of these

64 Martin Broszat, Der Nationalsozialismus. Weltanschauung, Programm und Wirklichkeit, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1960. 65 Idem, “Betrachtung zu ‘Hitlers zweitem Buch’,” VfZ 9 (1961), 417–429. 66 Alan Bullock, Hitler. A Study in Tyranny, London, Odhams Press, 1952. See also the critical discussion of this view by Hugh R. Trevor-Roper (see fn. 68). In the revised edition of 1962, Bullock reinterprets some significant points, especially key parts of chapter 7, “The Dictator,” in light of new and additional sources. 67 Ernst Deuerlein, “Hitlers Eintritt in die Politik und die Reichswehr. Dokumentation,” VfZ 7 (1959), 177–227; Reginald H. Phelps, “Hitler als Parteiredner im Jahre 1920,” VfZ 11 (1963), 274–330; idem, “Hitlers ‘grundlegende’ Rede über den Antisemitismus,” VfZ 16 (1968), 390–420; Dietrich Eckart, Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin. Zwiegespräch zwischen Adolf Hitler und mir, Munich, F. Eher, 1925, see: Ernst Nolte, “Eine frühe Quelle zu Hitlers Antisemitismus,” Historische Zeitschrift 192 (1961) and the various versions of Hitler’s Tischgespräche from the war years, and

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findings, and, even more, as a result of the changing historical perspective, a re-investigation and re-interpretation of the whole phenomenon of National Socialism began. (2) The second feature is the use of the vast archival material which became available for fresh research into the governmental structure and practice of the Third Reich.68 Here, too, we notice a kind of return to a basic conception already developed in the late 1930s, mainly by Ernst Fraenkel. Obviously notwithstanding the importance of identifying these lines of methodological continuity, it is no less important to note the difference in the historical sense of the research. For what in the late 1930s and early 1940s appeared as research into, and struggle against, the ideology and governmental structure of a totalitarian, racist, terror state establishing itself as a front-rank power, which, apart from being a possible model for the establishment of similar regimes also sought to attain far-reaching political hegemony, appears from the perspective of the 1960s as research into the genealogy of the “Final Solution”. For this reason, it is not surprising perhaps that within these two trends, which gradually developed into opposing schools, the treatment of the Jewish aspect also gradually increases and there is growing awareness of its centrality in the study of the Third Reich. These include, above all, foreign policy, war aims and the internal structure and functioning of state and party bureaucracy, as well as the struggle with the churches (Kirchenkampf). In the following section we will review the development of these two trends from the 1960s onward. The radical shift in the assessment of Hitler’s views and of National Socialism as an ideology possessing an inner logic and an historical conception, and which, as such, is a prime factor in the determination of long-range policy goals, came with the publication of a German-language article by British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper in 1960. His essay became the point of departure for many new studies in this field in German historiography.69 Trevor-Roper pointed out that his diplomatic talks, edited by Andreas Hillgruber, Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler, vols. 1–2, 1939–1944, Frankfurt a. M., Bernard & Graefe, 1967/1970. 68 Cf. Joseph Henke, “Das Schicksal deutscher zeitgeschichtlicher Quellen in Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit. Beschlagnahme—Rückführung—Verbleib,” VfZ 30 (1982), 557–620. 69 Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, “Hitlers Kriegsziele,” VfZ 8 (1960), 121–133 (based on a lecture given in 1959). Of the essays in its wake, cf. for example, Ernst Nolte, “Eine frühe Quelle zu Hitlers Antisemitismus,” Historische Zeitschrift 192 (1961), 584, note 2; Andreas Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie: Politik und Kriegführung 1940–41, Frankfurt a. M., Bernard & Graefe, 1965, 564, note 2 (hereafter: Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie); Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur. Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus, Cologne, Berlin, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1969, 218, note 14 (hereafter: Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur); Eberhard Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung: Entwurf einer

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Hitler’s ideas fused his consciousness of personal messianism with the raison d’être of National Socialism, that is, the destruction of Bolshevism and the creation of the Empire in the East. “He emphasized again and again that his was not a conventional war against the west, but a revolutionary war against Russia.”70 However, Trevor-Roper failed to recognize the central role of “Judaism” within this world view. It was Ernst Nolte, in his article on Hitler’s conversations with Dietrich Eckart,71 published in 1961 in the Historische Zeitschrift, who recognized the far-reaching significance of this centrality and saw its connection with other aspects of Hitler’s thought and political goals. He presented “Judaism” as a focal point and as a key to what I may call the bipolar unity of Hitler’s anti-Christian and anti-democratic view: Judaism is the total enemy and destroyer of the natural state of society—its victory would result in the destruction of Germany and apocalyptic decline. “Only an unprecedented victory can ultimately save nature’s wish, that is the existence of peoples, from the attack of the rotting double figure, whose body is the inferior masses and whose head is the Jewish intellect.”72 Nolte’s major work, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche,73 which appeared in 1963, is outstanding in that he comes to an overall understanding of Fascism as a two-fold revolution whose universal message is the redemption of the world from the religious-conservative (Judeo-Christian) and materialistic-secular (Judeo-Marxist) messianic creeds, denoted by him as the “theoretical” and “practical transcendency.” It has now become evident what fascism actually is. It is not that resistance to political transcendence which is more or less common to all conservative movements. It was only when theoretical transcendence, from which that resistance originally emanated, was likewise denied that fascism made its appearance. Thus fascism is at the same time resistance to practical transcendence and struggle against theoretical transcendence […] in the clear consciousness of a struggle for the world hegemony. That is the transcendental expression of the sociological fact that fascism has at its command forces which are born of the emancipation process and then turn against their own origin.74

Herrschaft, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1981, 30, note 2; Uwe D. Adam, Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich, Düsseldorf, Droste, 1972, 16, note 4 (hereafter: Adam, Judenpolitik). 70 Trevor-Roper, “Hitlers Kriegsziele,” (as in fn 69), 125. 71 Ernst Nolte, “Eine frühe Quelle” (as in fn. 69), 584–606. 72 Ibid., 597. 73 Ernst Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche, Munich, R. Piper, 1963. The quotations here are from the English translation: Three Faces of Fascism, trans. by Leila Vennewitz, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965 (hereafter: Three Faces). 74 Ibid., 453.

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In this context Nolte declares: Indeed, nothing would be further from the truth than to regard National Socialism as a doctrine of world salvation in the sense that all men were to be freed from want, danger or debt for their own sake. The world was to be cured of the Jewish-Christian Marxist doctrine of world redemption and converted to that absolute sovereignty which was to bind the slaves forever to their slave fate. National Socialism can be understood as the expression of a particularity which sees itself threatened as such, and hence, by casting off its historical individuality, emphasizes the natural primitive traits of its existence and endeavors to preserve them forever.75

According to Nolte, Hitler carries forward the anti-Jewish trends inherent in most great ideologies of the nineteenth century, but, lacking their inherent restraints, he consistently strives to realize their ultimate logical consequences.76 “Auschwitz was as firmly embedded in the principles of the National-Socialist race doctrine as the fruit in the seed … ”77 Nolte demonstrated that the anti-Semitic idea occupied a central and unchanging position in Hitler’s mind from 1919 until his will of 1945, and pointed out in this context the uniqueness of the National-Socialist extermination of the Jews, “for Hitler and Himmler as well as for posterity … this process differed essentially from all other extermination actions, both as to scope and to intention.”78 75 Ibid., 418–419. 76 Ibid., 332–333. This view of anti-Semitism has been exhaustively researched during the last decades. Cf. for example Shmuel Ettinger, “The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism,” in: Y. Gutman and L. Rothkirchen (eds.), The Catastrophe of European Jewry, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 1976, 3–39; idem, “The Young Hegelians—A Source of Modern Anti-Semitism?” The Jerusalem Quarterly 28 (Summer 1983), 73–83; Léon Poliakov, Histoire de I’Antisémitisme 3: De Voltaire à Wagner, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1968; Hermann Greive, Geschichte des modernen Antisemitismus in Deutschland, Darmstadt, Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 1983 (hereafter: Greive, Geschichte des modernen Antisemitismus). The epochal though distorted meaning of the historical backdrop to anti-Semitism stressed here by Nolte seems to refer back to Rauschning’s conversations with Hitler (see: Rauschning, Gespräche (as in fn. 20), 6–7). 77 Ernst Nolte, Three Faces (as in fn. 73), 359. 78 Ibid., 399. As indicated in the introductory note to this paper, I could not relate here to Nolte’s diametrically changed views concerning his own thesis of uniqueness of the National-Socialist extermination of the Jews. For his publications of the last few years and the sharp criticism against him, see particularly the Piper-Verlag volume: “Historikerstreit.” Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung, Munich, Piper, 1987. For my own views, in which I sharply renounce Nolte’s recent tendency of far-reaching relativization of National Socialism and the “Final Solution” and his misuse of my critical exchange of letters with him in his book Das Vergehen der Vergangenheit. Antwort an meine Kritiker im sogenannten Historikerstreit, Berlin, Ullstein, 1987, 124–142; see my article published in Frankfurter Rundschau of November 5, 1987, under the title “Der Umgang des Historikers Ernst Noltes mit

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Nolte’s book was generally much appreciated by the reviewers and mentioned in the contemporary works by the German historians. However, due to his unusual style of “philosophic history writing” (philosophische Geschichtsschreibung),79 his dealing with Fascism within the broad European context and in an entire historical epoch,80 it can’t be regarded as a turning point in German historiography on National Socialism and the “Final Solution”. The book that could be regarded as a real turning point was doubtless Eberhard Jäckel’s Hitlers Weltanschauung. Entwurf einer Herrschaft,81 that appeared towards the end of the 1960s and in several further German editions and translations. Jäckel too generally appreciates Nolte’s book, but has chosen another, specific approach in his research: Ernst Nolte has pointed out that every one of the great ideologies of the nineteenth century contained its own brand of antisemitism. […] Within this spectrum of possible anti-Semitic accusations, Nolte assigns Hitler’s antisemitism to the ‘radical-conservative wing’. […] It is by no means sufficient to note the existence of antisemtic convictions in some general way. In the investigation of a Weltanschauung, the point is precisely to be specific.82

Jäckel’s specific research focused, and indeed limited itself to dealing in his book with the ideology and policy of Hitler and his central role in the history of the Third Reich. In his two salient chapters “The Problem of a National Socialist Weltanschauung”,83 and in the central chapter devoted to “The Elimination of the Jews”,84 he convincingly presented the coherence and consistency of Hitler’s unique Weltanschauung both in his self-perception as well as in its realization. Within this context it was the continuous centrality of the Jewish question and Hitler’s consequent pursue of its ultimate “solution” that Jäckel no less persuasively revealed, based on all available source material at that time.

Briefen aus Israel,” as well as my article „Singularity and Its Relativization. Changing Views in German Historiography on National Socialism and the ‘Final Solution’”, Yad Vashem Studies XIX (1988), 151–186 (reprinted in: Peter Baldwin (ed.), Reworking the Past. Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historians’ Debate, Beacon Press, Boston, 1990, 146–170, and also (Chapter 13 of this book). 79 Ernst Nolte, “Philosophische Geschichtsschreibung heute?”, Historische Zeitschrift 242 (1986), 265–289. 80 As indicated in the German title of his book, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche. 81 Rainer Wunderling Verlag, Tübingen, 1969. Second, extended edition: Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, Stuttgart, 1981; Third edition: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1983. 82 Eberhard Jäckel, Hitler’s World View. A Blueprint for Power, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. And London, 1981, 49–50 83 Ibid., 13–26 84 Ibid., 47–66

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A very special aspect at this time was Jäckel’s emphasis on Hitler’s “universalist-missionary element” in his Antisemitism,85 that was later coined in the historiography as the “redemptive Antisemitism”. Jäckel also remained known for his consequent, clear definition of the uniqueness of National Socialist annihilation of the Jews: “What we mean is the event of the intentional and systematic killing by organs of the German government, i.e. the murder of the European Jews. […] We mean the unique high point of the mass murder from 1941 to 1944.”86 And similarly during the so-called “Historikerstreit”: This is not the first time I argue that the murder of the Jews was unique because never before had a state with the authority of its responsible leader decided and announced its intention to liquidate as completely as possible a certain group of people, including the aged, women, children and babies and to implement this decision by means of all the official instruments of power at its disposal.87

But Jäckel, prudent historian that he was, found it necessary to add: “Incidentally, the question of uniqueness is after all not that decisive. Would it change anything had the National-Socialist murder not been unique?”88 The Jewish question as a major issue in National Socialism and the Third Reich, with political significance, is taken up by other works in the 1960s. In 1969, Karl D. Bracher’s Die deutsche Diktatur presented the centrality of anti-Semitism in a broader context as a constitutive element in National-Socialist ideology and politics: The core, however, probably the only “genuine,” fanatically held and realized conviction of his [Hitler’s] entire life, was then already anti-Semitism and race mania. An enormously oversimplified scheme of good and evil, transplanted into the biological and racial sphere, was made to serve as the master key to world history and world politics … The fact that an entire nation followed him and furnished a legion of executioners does demonstrate, however, that we are confronted not merely with the impenetrable personal enigma of one man, but with a terrible susceptibility of modern nationalism, whose need for exclusiveness and destruction of everything “alien” constitutes one of the root causes of anti-Semitism.89

85 Ibid., 53, as well as 64 86 Eberhard Jäckel und Jürgen Rohwer (eds.), Der Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Entschlußbildung und Verwirklichung, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1985, 10 (quotation trans. by William Templer). 87 Eberhard Jäckel, “The Miserable Practice of the Insinuators. The Uniqueness of the National-Socialist Crime Cannot be Denied”, Yad Vashem Studies XIX (1988), 110. 88 Ibid. 89 Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur (as in fn. 69), 67.

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This approach is further developed in the framework of the much disputed biography on Hitler by Joachim Fest in the 1970s.90 Similarly, Klaus Scholder elaborated convincingly on the centrality of anti-Semitism in the National-Socialist attitude to Christianity.91 One of the first to perceive the decisive role played by Hitler’s anti-Semitic ideas in shaping his conceptions in foreign policy from the early 1920s was Günter Schubert, in his dissertation on the Anfänge nationalsozialistischer Aussenpolitik.92 In the monumental work of Andreas Hillgruber Hitlers Strategie, Politik und Kriegführung 1940–194193 and his brilliant and concise study, Deutschlands Rolle in den beiden Weltkriegen,94 both of which are based on administrative, diplomatic and military sources, predominance is given to the central and decisive role of the struggle with Judaism as a factor in Hitler’s crucial decisions. In his list of the four main motives in Hitler’s Ostkriegskonzeption, number one is “To exterminate the ‘Jewish Bolshevik’ leadership, including its presumed source, the millions of Eastern European Jews.”95 In this connection he states in the concluding chapter dealing with the research situation in the mid-1960s: Of greater and even more central importance is the understanding of the strong link between “Judaism” and “Bolshevism” in Hitler’s mythical conception and thus the connection between the “War in the East” and the “Final Solution.” Research has already hinted to this phenomenon, but not with the necessary clarity […] “Antibolshevism” was much more for Hitler than a propagandist “fig leaf” to cover up his own intentions of conquest. Since he considered “Bolshevism” to be the highest expression of the power of “Judaism” (and “democracy” presented the preliminary stage for this), the war of extermination beginning on 22.6.1941 was directed against “Bolshevism” and “Judaism” alike. It represents so to speak the last phase of aggravation of his battle (lead for tactical reasons in stages) since the twenties.96

90 Joachim Fest, Hitler. Eine Biographie, Frankfurt a. M., Propyläen, 1973. For a critical discussion of the book, see: Hermann Graml, “Probleme einer Hitler-Biographie,” VfZ 22 (1974), 76–92. (Not to be confused with the discussion on the extremely irresponsibly produced film; for this see: idem, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht XXVIII (November 11, 1977), 669 ff. 91 Klaus Scholder, “Die Kirchen im Dritten Reich,” Beilage zur Wochenzeitung Das Parlament, B15/71, April 10, 1971; idem, Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich, Vol. I, Frankfurt a. M., Ullstein, 1977, Part I, ch. 7, Part 2, ch. 3. 92 Günter Schubert; Anfänge nationalsozialistischer Aussenpolitik, PhD diss., Freie Universität Berlin, 1961; published: Cologne, Wissenschaft und Politik, 1963. 93 Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie (as in fn. 67). 94 Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Rupert, 1967. 95 Ibid., quoted here from the English translation: Germany and the Two World Wars, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1981, 86. 96 Hillgruber, Hitler’s Strategy (as in fn. 67), 593–594.

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Hillgruber especially stressed this aspect in his examination of Hitler’s attitude to the invasion of the Soviet Union and the decision to initiate the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” It has been further elaborated in a special article on “Die Endlösung und das deutsche Ostimperium als Kernstück des rassenideologischen Programms des Nationalsozialismus”.97 Later, in his article “England in Hitlers aussenpolitischer Konzeption”98 he emphasizes the consistency of Hitler‘s view within the framework of his global aspirations and points out the centrality of the anti-Semitism factor as a criterion of his decisions. Now let us take a look at the developments in the other “school.” Parallel to the changes in the direction of research into the ideological aspects of National Socialism and their relevance to foreign policy, which took place in the 1960s, a change occurred in research into the internal structure, development and practices of the Third Reich’s governmental system.99 These changes were mainly a result of the impact of the abundant archival material that became available.100 As I have already pointed out, in most of the works of this kind the authors were led back to general conceptions found in the basic studies of the late 1930s and early 1940s. In contrast to the monolithic image of the regime in previous years, the picture that now emerges is of “polycracy”101 or “authoritarian anarchy,”102 i.e., a war of all against all in state and party leadership and bureaucracy. The irrelevance or marginality of ideology is reflected in dealing with the major decisions, which are presented as being predominantly pragmatic. Dozens of publications appeared in the 1960s and 1970s describing the structure of the regime, detailing the administrative background of the persecution of the Jews, and dwelling on the contradictions between various groups in the State and the Party.103 These

97 In: VfZ 20 (1972), 133–153. 98 In: Historische Zeitschrift 218 (1974), 65–84. Cf. also the summary of his research report from 1982: Endlich genug über Nationalsozialismus und Zweiten Weltkrieg? Forschungsstand und Literatur, Düsseldorf, Droste, 1982, and references there to further studies of his on the topic. 99 Cf. Martin Broszat’s preface to his Der Staat Hitlers. Grundlegung und Entwicklung seiner inneren Verfassung, Munich, dtv, 1969, 9. 100 Cf. Henke, “Das Schicksal deutscher zeitgeschichtlicher Quellen.” (as in fn. 68). 101 Already in 1969 in the title of chapter 9 of Martin Broszat’s, Der Staat Hitlers; historiographical discussion of the term in Peter Hüttenberger, “Nationalsozialistische Polykratie,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 2 (1976), 417 ff. 102 Adam, Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich (as in fn. 69), 15, 360. 103 The following examples should be mentioned: Hans Mommsen, Beamtentum im Dritten Reich, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1966 (hereafter: Mommsen, Beamtentum); Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Nationalsozialistische Aussenpolitik 1933–1938, Frankfurt a. M., Berlin, Alfred Metzner Verlag, 1968; Reinhard Bollmus, Das Amt Rosenberg und seine Gegner. Studien zum Machtkampf im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1970.

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studies reveal a new conception of internal dynamics, or cumulative developments, leading to successive radicalization of anti-Jewish policy and culminating in the “Final Solution.” The first attempt at this approach was Hans Mommsen’s “Der nationalsozialistische Polizeistaat und die Judenverfolgung vor 1938,” published in 1962.104 In contrast to the previous studies on the “Final Solution” outside Germany— for example, Reitlinger’s or Hilberg’s, which are based on isolated documents brought together for the Nuremberg Trials—here for the first time a systematic reconstruction of the developments has been drawn up from original integral files of archival sources.105 According to Mommsen it emerges that during that phase the anti-Jewish policy of the Third Reich was no less twofaced and dubious than all the other measures concerning internal and foreign politics during the period of strengthening the power of the regime. From the documents it emerges that already in the first phase a policy of oppression characterized by purposeful deliberations and designed for the greatest possible technical and administrative effect began to appear, giving at first the impression of preserving a certain degree of control and restraint with regard to the “wild actions” of the NSDAP and the SA, but at the same time creating the kind of bureaucratic-mechanical mentality that we find in the executors of the “Final Solution” with almost no exception. The persecution of the Jews can also be considered a key to the analysis of the power structure of the Third Reich since the unscrupulousness of the National Socialist leadership lies exposed in this issue as in no other one. Racial antisemitism has to be considered a central part of the ideology of the regime, if one wished to talk about one at all.106

Heinz Höhne’s endeavors in this direction, to reconstruct the history of the SS and its peculiar views on the policy of the “Solution of the Jewish Question,”107 led to an attempt at a reassessment by Mommsen, implied in the question mark of his article “Entteufelung des Dritten Reiches?”108 104 In: VfZ 10 (1962), 68–87. 105 See fn. 1, as well as Henke (as in fn. 68). Although filed material from the Bavarian archives was used, these documents reflect the Jewish policy of the Third Reich as a whole. 106 Hans Mommsen, Beamtentum, (as in fn. 103), 68–69. 107 Heinz Höhne, Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf. Die Geschichte der SS, Gütersloh, S. Mohn, 1967. This study, in many respects a problematic one, was published first in Der Spiegel (1966–1967). 108 Hans Mommsen, “Entteufelung des Dritten Reiches? Ein Nachwort zur SS-Serie,” Der Spiegel 11, March 6, 1967, 71–74. See, for example, the following passages: Page 71: “In Höhne’s description the term of the totalitarian dictatorship and the corresponding image of the monolithic Führerstaat disintegrate … ” “The allegedly ideological consistency turns out to be fictitious; under the empty formula of National-Socialist Weltanschauung a latent struggle between heterogeneous ideological conceptions took place, which correspond only with regard to the negative.” Page 72: “The dreadful crimes of the system did not originate in demonic, destructive drives; they grew out of a mixture

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The most impressive contribution in this direction in the 1960s is the collective work based on the Gutachten of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte by Buchheim, Broszat, Jacobsen and Krausnick, Anatomie des SS-Staates.109 The analytical structuralist tendency seems clearly demonstrated by the choice of the term Anatomie in the title of this work, although the two most important contributions for our subject, Krausnick’s “Judenverfolgung” and Buchheim’s “Die SS—das Herrschaftsinstrument” do not represent an orthodox view of this trend. Concerning the economic aspect of the anti-Jewish policy of the Third Reich, an outstanding work by Helmut Genschel appeared in 1966.110 The most important comprehensive systematic reconstruction of the Judenpolitik of the Third Reich was done by Uwe Adam at the beginning of the 1970s. This study, oriented predominantly on the legal and administrative aspect, presents the whole policy of the “solution of the Jewish question” as a quasi-autonomous process of the state and party bureaucracy in which little place is left for ideological factors. This excellent volume may be regarded up to this day as a most valuable and authoritative presentation in this field.111 At the same time, there also appeared in the German Democratic Republic the first overall description of the persecution and annihilation of the Jews in the Third Reich in the form of a team study by Klaus Drobisch, Rudi Goguel, Werner Müller and Horst Dohle.112 In contrast to Adam, it is not a work of primary research but rather a compilation of the results of the Western research literature in this field, presented from a Marxist viewpoint.113 On the other hand, Kurt Pätzold’s book,114 which concentrated on the first years of the Third Reich, seems to be the only of political delusions, perverted idealism, political inability, moral indifference and specified technical efficiency.” Page 75: “Does this mean a de-demonization (Entteufelung) of the Third Reich?” 109 Hans Buchheim et al., Anatomie des SS-Staates, Vol. 1, Die SS—das Herrschaftsinstrument. Befehl und Gehorsam; Vol. 2, Nationalsozialistische Konzentrationslager 1933–1945; Kommissarbefehl und Massenexekutionen sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener; Judenverfolgung, Olten & Freiburg, Walter, 1965. 110  Helmut Genschel, Die Verdrängung der Juden aus der Wirtschaft im Dritten Reich, Göttingen, Musterschmidt, 1966. 111 Adam, Judenpolitik (as in fn. 69), and the terminology he used in this context for “autoritäre Anarchie”. 112 Klaus Dobrich et al., Juden unterm Hakenkreuz. Verfolgung und Ausrottung der deutschen Juden 1933–1945, Berlin, Röderberg, 1973. 113 Cf. also Konrad Kwiet, “Historians of the German Democratic Republic on Antisemitism and Persecution,” LBI Year Book XXI (1976), 194 ff. 114 Kurt Pätzold, Faschismus, Rassenwahn, Judenverfolgung. Eine Studie zur politischen Strategie und Taktik des faschistischen deutschen Imperialisms 1933–1935, Berlin, Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1975.

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original research carried out so far in the GDR on this topic. Moreover, it is written on the sound basis of archival sources from both parts of Germany. Compared to the works of Adam or Genschel, the ideological aspect of the National-Socialist anti-Jewish policy is taken into consideration here, but in an almost exclusively instrumental interpretation. In domestic affairs anti-Semitism is seen as a means of diverting the broad masses from class hatred to racial hatred, whereas in the domain of foreign political war objectives it is rather a hardening preparation of the German people for the imperialistic war of terror and annihilation against other nations.115 Much more complex are the views developed during the last fifteen years in several works by Broszat—Der Staat Hitlers;116 “Soziale Motivation und Führer-Bindung des Nationalsozialismus;”117 “Hitler und die Genesis der Endlösung”118—which seems to me to strive toward a synthesis between the two methodologically and conceptually opposing approaches. Although the predominance of the ideological background, stressed in his early works (1960–61) receded behind the thick walls of administrative and social structures, it nevertheless seems ever-present, if only in the form of “metaphorical” sign posts which at the end mark the almost predestined road to the ultimate reality of the “Final Solution.”119 It appears that in certain points a similar development, although in 115 Cf. also Kwiet (as in fn. 113), 196–198. It is interesting to note that in the 1970s in other countries as well several general studies on the Jewish policy of the Third Reich and the “Final Solution” were published, for example: Karl A. Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz. Nazi Policy Toward German Jews 1933–1939, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1970; Nora Lewin, The Holocaust. The Destruction of European Jewry 1933–1945, New York, Schocken Books, 1973; Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933–1945, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975; Otto D. Kulka, The “Jewish Question” in the Third Reich. Its Significance in National Socialist Ideology and Politics and its Role in Determining the Status and Activities of the Jews, PhD. diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1975 (in Hebrew with English summary; vol. 2, documents in German; hereafter: Kulka, The “Jewish Question”) and the study by the British author Gerald Fleming, Hitler und die Endlösung, Wiesbaden, Munich, Limes, 1982, first published in German translation. As opposed to the first basic publications of the 1950s, many of the differentiated studies from the 1960s on the ideological and structural-political aspects of the topic could have been used in these works. 116 Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers (as in fn. 99). 117 Martin Broszat, “Soziale Motivation und Führer-Bindung des Nationalsozialismus,” VfZ 18 (1970), 393–409. 118 In response to David Irving’s theory, Martin Broszat, “Hitler und die Genesis der Endlösung,” VfZ 25 (1977), 739–775; see also Christopher Browning, “Eine Antwort auf Martin Broszats Thesen zur Genesis der ‘Endlösung’,” VfZ 29 (1981), 97–109. 119 Cf. for example Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers (as in fn. 99)—summary, 423–442; idem, “Soziale Motivation” (as in fn. 117)., ch. 2: “Hitlers Führertum und die nationalsozialistische Weltanschauung,” 398–409; idem; “Hitler und die Genesis der Endlösung” (as in fn. 118), ch. 2: “Das Problem

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converse order, can be traced in the methodological and conceptual approach of Hillgruber. He started his monumental work with a study of massive military and administrative source material and subsequently attained an overall historical construction of the strategy and praxis of Hitler’s Empire, in which the racial-ideological war of annihilation marks the decisive road toward the strategic goal of world hegemony.120 Nonetheless, the two basically opposed approaches in German historiography on National Socialism and the “Final Solution” still seem to prevail. The most clear-cut example of the conflicting views between the ideological-programmatic conception (“intentionalist”) and the structuralist (in the heat of the controversy frequently dubbed “revisionist”)121 approach is demonstrated in two papers by Klaus Hildebrand and Hans Mommsen, both bearing—when first read and subsequently published—the same title: “Nationalsozialismus und Hitlerismus.”122 It is characteristic of the present stage of research that in spite of the almost diametrically opposed views, both Hildebrand and Mommsen converge in treating the problem of National-Socialist policy regarding

der Genesis der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung,” 746–759 and ch. 3: “David Irving’s ‘Beweise’,” 759–775. Some examples from his theories (quotations from the English version, in: H. W. Koch (ed.), Aspects of the Third Reich, London, Macmillan, 1985, “Hitler and the Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’. Assessment of David Irving’s Theses,” 390–429): “The Jews had to be ‘exterminated somehow.’“ This fatal expression recurs again and again in documents of various origins at this stage (autumn 1941), revealing evidence of the “improvisation” of extermination as the “simplest” solution—one that would, with additional extermination camps in occupied Poland, finally generate the accumulated experience and the institutional potential for the mass murders. It would also be exploited in the course of later deportations from Germany and from occupied or allied countries of Europe.” (408); but also the following “non-revisionist” statement: “ … that there was a widely motivated and powerful link in Hitler’s thinking and will between military operations, particularly the war against the Soviet Union, and his ideological war against the Jews. It is precisely this very obvious connection that robs Irving’s revisionist theses of all conviction, especially since without this ideological-pathological linkage between the war and the annihilation of the Jews (in Hitler’s world-view) the latter could hardly be explained. … Hitler’s prophesied destruction of Jewry, made on 30 January 1939, in the event of a new World War which has subsequently been cited so frequently, was from a psychological point of view not only a ‘warning’ but in itself part of the motivation.” (423–424) 120 See text relevant to fn. 86. The important study of Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungkrieges. Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1938–1942, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1981, offers another valuable example for these methodological possibilities. 121 Cf. also Andreas Hillgruber, “Tendenzen, Ergebnisse und Perspektiven der gegenwärtigen Hitler-Forschung,” Historische Zeitschrift 226 (1978), 603. 122 Hildebrand, 55–61 and Mommsen, 62–71, in: Michael Bosch (ed.), Persönlichkeit und Struktur in der Geschichte. Historische Bestandsaufnahme und didaktischen Implikationen, Düsseldorf, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1977.

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the “Jewish question” as the central issue. This assessment is also borne out in their most recent major studies on the topic of the “Final Solution,” in Mommsen’s extensive article “Die Realisierung des Utopischen. Die ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’ im Dritten Reich,”123 and in the central sections of Hildebrand’s book, Das Dritte Reich,124 which authoritatively summarizes the study of National Socialism as an ideology and a political system. Indeed, the conclusion that anti-Semitism constitutes “the very core” or “the dominant component” of National-Socialist Weltanschauung established itself in the last decade even in the professional handbooks of German history. We can find it in the assessments of Karl Dietrich Erdmann, in Gebhardt’s Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte,125 of Theodor Schieder and Karl Erich Born in Schieder’s Handbuch der europäischen Geschichte,126

123 In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9 (1983), 381–420. It seems, that Mommsen is keener here than in his other works to apply Hannah Arendt’s thesis about the “banality of evil” and the universal character of the danger of totalitarian temptations in modern industrial societies. The last paragraph is particularly noteworthy: “The fact that the Holocaust could become a reality, can only be insufficiently explained by ideological factors—like the impact of antisemitic propaganda and the authoritarian coloring of traditional German political culture. … The development of the Holocaust is a deterrent example for the seductability of usually normal individuals, who live under conditions of a permanent state of emergency, where the legal and institutional structures are dissolved and the public justification of criminal behavior becomes a national deed. Therefore, the Holocaust is not only a warning against racial phobias and social resentments against minorities; but it hints also to the continuous danger for even progressive industrial societies existing in the manipulative deformation of the public and private morale.” (420) 124 Klaus Hildebrand, “Das Dritte Reich,” in: Oldenbourg Grundriß der Geschichte 17, Munich, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1979, especially ch. 1 C2, “Innere Entwicklung, Besatzungs-und Rassenpolitik,” 72–86; “Conclusions,” 86–88; ch. II, 5, “Die Aussen-und Rassenpolitik des Dritten Reiches,” 168–180. Cf. also the two contributions of Mommsen and Hildebrand, in: Gerhard Hirschfeld and Lothar Kettenacker (eds.), Der “Führerstaat”: Mythos und Realität. Studien zur Struktur und Politik des Dritten Reiches, Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1981, (hereafter: Hirschfeld and Kettenacker, Der “Führerstaat”); Mommsen, “Hitlers Stellung im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem,” in: Der “Führerstaat,” 43–70; Hildebrand,”Monokratie oder Polykratie? Hitlers Herrschaft und das Dritte Reich,” in: Der “Führerstaat,” 73–96. 125 Bruno Gebhardt, Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte, Stuttgart, E. Klett, 1976, vol. 20, ch. 1: “Hitler und sein Programm,” 24–36; and in a slightly different version, ch. 9: “Judenvernichtung und ‘Ausmerzung lebensunwenen Lebens’,” 106–115. Though the National-Socialist annihilation program is not denoted here as comparable “with any other form of Jew-hatred” from other nations and other eras, the only explanation for annihilation given is that of “racial inferiority,” while other ideological aspects of National-Socialist anti-Semitism are not taken into consideration here. 126 Theodor Schieder (ed.), Handbuch der europäischen Geschichte 7: Europa im Zeitalter der Weltmächte, Stuttgart, E. Klett, 1979: Schieder, 86, 221, 255 and Born, 553 ff.

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and similarly even in the paperback edition of Pipers Weltgeschichte in Karten, Daten, Bildern,127 as well as in the Grosses Lexikon des Dritten Reiches.128 In a broader context, this conclusion is presented in Bracher’s authoritative volume of the Propyläen Geschichte Europas129 and, as far as Jewish history in its overall perspective is concerned, in B. Martin’s concluding essay in Die Juden als Minderheit in der Geschichte.130 The late Hermann Greive reached a similar conclusion from a different angle. His attempt may be regarded as the first in German historiography to depict National-Socialist anti-Semitism in the overall framework of a history of modern anti-Semitism in Germany, from the enlightenment to the post-war period.131 These results of West German historiography have been summarized in an impressive way, though from a polemical position, by Kurt Pätzold in his latest study on the “Final Solution”:132 In bourgeois historiography that approach depicting racism and anti-Semitism as the starting and the final point of every research of fascism prevailed. The whole fascist policy and World War II are supposed to be understood from the alleged central and highest aim of Hitler’s fascism, that is the annihilation of the “Jews.” All decisions and measures of the regime were apparently geared and subjected to this. Racism and anti-Semitism are purely and simply passed off as the nature and main characteristic of German fascism.

127 Hermann Kinder and Werner Hilgemann, Pipers Weltgeschichte, Munich, Piper, 1970, 539: “National Socialism developed after 1918 as a counter movement to the revolution and the parliamentary-democratic system. Its spiritual roots were heterogeneous and partially distorted … Its dominating characteristic was antisemitism.” 128 Christian Zentner and Friedemann Bedürftig (eds.), Das Grosse Lexikon des Dritten Reiches, Munich, Südwest Verlag, 1985; the entry “National Socialism,” 404: “The racially based anti-Semitism was the center of Hitler’s Weltanschauung … probably the decisive driving force for his political aspirations and actions, the central part of the National-Socialist ‘ideology’ and after 1933 actually the state doctrine of the Third Reich”; cf. also the implicit assessment in the entry “Die Weltanschauung Hitlers,” ibid., 633 and 635. 129 Propyläen Geschichte Europas, vol. 6: Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die Krise Europas 1917–1975, Berlin, Propyläen Verlag, 1980, especially the chapter “Vom Europäischen Konflikt zum globalen Krieg,” 199 ff., 215 ff. 130 Cf. especially the chapter “Antisemitismus als Kern der national-sozialistischen Weltanschauung,” in his essay “Judenverfolgung—und Vernichtung unter der nationalsozialistischen Diktatur,” in: Bernd Martin and Ernst Schulin (eds.), Die Juden als Minderheit in der Geschichte, Munich, dtv, 1981, 294 ff. 131 See Hermann Greive, Geschichte des modernen Antisemitismus (as in fn. 76). 132 Kurt Pätzold, “Von der Vertreibung zum Genozid. Zu den Ursachen und Bedingungen der antijüdischen Politik des faschistischen deutschen Imperialismus,” in: Dietrich Eichholz and Kurt Grossweiler (eds.), Faschismus-Forschung. Positionen, Probleme, Polemik, Berlin, Akademie-Verlag, 1980, 181–208; quote on 181.

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Significantly (and, in my opinion, quite justifiably), Pätzold includes in this category authors who are considered in the West German historiographical controversy as representatives of opposite trends, such as Hillgruber, Broszat and Bracher.133 However, in spite of this introductory statement, it seems that this noteworthy study—unique in the historiography of the GDR—is closer to Broszat’s as well as Hillgruber’s views than the author himself admits,134 and apparently more so than any other publication emanating from the Socialist countries.135 This leads us to the ultimate question in this problematic complex: the historical meaning of defining the centrality of anti-Semitism in the National-Socialist ideology and politics. Clearly, it is not that the Jews in their factual historical proportions gain such central importance here. On the factual level they were but a small minority among the Germans and other European peoples. The matter at issue is the significance attributed in the conceptual world of National Socialism to the ideo-historical concept of Judaism and its promoter—the Jew. It seems that only from this point of view is it possible to make an attempt—to use Kafka’s dictum at “explaining the unexplicable.” In other words, this centrality is the only possible key to a historical understanding of the meaning of the “Final Solution” as the assault of the National-Socialist “revolution” on the very roots of Western civilization, its basic values and moral foundations. For on different levels of the ruling system in the Third Reich, the essence of the National-Socialist counter-revolution was understood as a revolt against the all-embracing idea of the unity of the human race and equality of Men, which was fundamentally opposed to its own value system. In this context Judaism was conceived as the historical source and the continuous driving force of this idea, which was then expanded in the course of universal history through Christianity and later in the democratic and socialist systems. Any attempt to explain the “Final Solution” without taking into account such a significant fact inevitably leads to explanations long-refuted and proven indefensible, concerning its causes—whether these define it as being based on allegedly economic reasons, or as deceptive political manipulation of the masses,

133 Ibid., 181, note 3; 182, note 4; 191, note 19. 134 As to Broszat: see for example his critique on the “Programmologen,” ibid., 190. Concerning Hillgruber cf. his view of close connection between the “Final Solution” and the “war aims,” mainly the imperialistic war of annihilation in the East, 205 ff. 135 Compare also Pätzold’s article, “Der historische Platz des antijüdischen Pogroms von 1938. Zu einer Kontroverse,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte 26 (1982), 193–216, and the introduction to his collection of documents Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung. Dokumente des faschistischen Antisemitismus 1933–1942, Leipzig, Reclam, 1983.

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or an experiment in terror against one group as preparation for an imperialistic war of conquest and annihilation against other peoples throughout the world. Undoubtedly, the two dominant trends in German historiography have contributed to clarifying the ideological and political aspects of the National-Socialist anti-Jewish policy. The research into the ideological concepts of National Socialism and its anti-Semitism has elaborated the historical-political framework of the events, but without analyzing concrete developments in the political, bureaucratic, economic and social spheres connected with the ideological motivation. As a result, this methodological approach easily leads to an unacceptable spiritualization of the history of the Third Reich. On the other hand, the school of structure analysis has contributed enormously to the documentation and reconstruction of the administrative processes, possibly leading to important political decisions. But this approach seems to come dangerously close to creating a new quasi-mystical view, in which out of the “Programmlosigkeit” of the totalitarian chaos, the “Final Solution” ultimately has to emerge as a kind of deus ex machina solution. Moreover, the formation of rival camps of “Intentionalists” versus “Functionalists,” or “Programmologen” versus “Revisionisten,”136 within German historiography seems ultimately to lead to deviation from the search for the essential contents and significance of an unparalleled historical complex, and to run into the tiresome quarrels over dates, signatures and fragmentary statements.

B The Social History of the Third Reich The relatively late start to intensive research in German social history 137 contributed also to the first systematic attempts to understand the Third Reich from a

136 About this controversy and its peculiar terminology, cf. Tom Mason, “Intention and Explanation: A Current Controversy about the Interpretation of National Socialism,” in: Hirschfeld and Kettenacker, Der “Führerstaat” (as in fn. 124), 23–40, as well as Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship. Problems and Perspective of Interpretation, London, Arnold, 1985, ch. 1 and 5 (hereafter: Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship). For a fundamental confrontation with this problem, cf. Saul Friedländer, “From Anti-Semitism to Extermination. Historiographical Study of Nazi Politics Toward the Jews and an Essay of Interpretation,” Yad Vashem Studies XVI (1984), 1–50. 137 Cf. George G. Iggers, Neue Geschichtswissenschaft. Vom Historismus zur Historischen Sozialwissenschaft. Ein internationaler Vergleich, Munich, dtv, 1978, especially ch. 3, “Vom Historismus zur ‘Historischen Sozialwissenschaft’: Die bundesdeutsche Geschichtsschreibung seit der Fischer-Kontroverse,” 97–156, as well as the preface to the German first edition; and particularly the 1983 revised edition of his German Conception of History. The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present, Middletown, CT, Wesleyan University Press, 1983, ch. VIII,

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socio-historical point of view. The problem of National-Socialist anti-Semitism and the attitude of the German population toward it are treated in general terms, or partial aspects of these, in the works of Ralf Dahrendorf, William Alien, David Schoenbaum and Richard Grunberger. However, the conclusions reached by these authors on the basis of their limited source material generally do not go beyond hypotheses.138 Other scholars continue to follow Eva Reichmann’s view that the year 1933 has to be considered as the ultimate chronological limit for a differentiated socio-historical examination of this topic.139 In her argumentation she says: …a strict line is to be drawn between Nazism during the so-called period of struggle, before accession to power and Nazism after this accession…No single word was spoken or written after the 30th of January 1933 which gives any direct indication of the feeling of the masses… The Nazi Party had then ceased to be a people’s movement marshalling the whole nation for or against itself;…none of its utterances any longer expressed the natural reactions of the masses.140

This view now appears outdated, due to the changed situation regarding the sources, since rich archival material in the form of collections of secret reports of the Gestapo and the SD, as well as other governmental and party authorities concerning popular opinion in the Third Reich is now available for research. From these reports emerges, inter alia, a differentiated picture of the attitudes of various sections of the population toward the anti-Jewish policy of the regime from the accession to power to the “Final Solution.”141

“The Impact of Two World Wars and Totalitarianism on German Historical Thought,” ch. IX, “Epilogue,” and the preface to this revised edition, ix–xi. See also: Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship (as in fn. 136), ch. 1 and 7. 138 Ralf Dahrendorf, Gesellschaft und Demokratie in Deutschland, Munich, Piper, 1965; William S. Alien, The Nazi Seizure of Power. The Experience of a Single German Town 1930–1935, Chicago, Quadrangle Books, 1965; David Schoenbaum, Hitler’s Social Revolution. Class and Status in Nazi Germany 1933–1939, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967 and Richard Grunberger, The 12-Year Reich. A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933–1945, New York, Ballantine Books, 1971. 139 Eva G. Reichmann, Hostages of Civilisation. The Social Sources of National Socialist Anti-Semitism, London, Gollancz, 1950. 140 Ibid., 190–191. 141 A systematic edition of these sources, insofar as they pertain to the Jewish topic, is presently being prepared at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in cooperation with the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz. This edition will appear in the Schriften des Bundesarchivs series. [Appeared in 2004: Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel (eds.), Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, Schriften des Bundesarchivs, 62, Düsseldorf, Droste Verlag, 2004; and in 2010 in an extended American edition: idem, The Jews in the Secret Nazi Reports on Popular Opinion in Germany, 1933–1945, New Haven, Mass., Yale University Press, 2010]. On the methodological

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As in the case of the above-mentioned more general attempts to understand the Third Reich from a socio-historical point of view, the analysis of this source material regarding the Jewish question has also been almost exclusively pursued by non-German scholars. Some of these studies deal with the Third Reich as a chronological and geographical entirety;142 others limit themselves to a certain area143 or period.144 problems of analyzing these sources and findings see, in addition to the publications listed below, the two articles: Aryeh L. Unger, “The Public Opinion Reports of the Nazi Party,” The Public Opinion Quarterly XXIX (1965), 565–582, and A. L. Smith, Jr., “Life in Wartime Germany: Colonel Ohlendorf’s Opinion Service,” The Public Opinion Quarterly XXXVI (1972), 1–7. 142 Otto Dov Kulka, “Public Opinion in National Socialist Germany and the Jewish Question,” Zion. Quarterly for Research in Jewish History XL (1975), 186–290 (in Hebrew with English summary, documentation in German, 260–290); additional material in revised, condensed English version in The Jerusalem Quarterly 25 (1982), 121–144 and The Jerusalem Quarterly 26 (1982): 34–45 (Chapter 6 of this book). For a similar conception, though based on limited primary sources (mainly the Deutschland Berichte der Sopade published in exile between 1934 and 1940, press clippings from newspapers of the Third Reich and the Wiener Library collection of “eyewitness reports”), as well as extensive use of published secondary sources, see the still useful meticulous work of Aron Rodrigue, German Popular Opinion and the Jews under the Nazi Dictatorship, B.A. thesis, University of Manchester, 1978 (unpublished manuscript in the Wiener Library, London, and Yad Vashem, Jerusalem). 143 Falk Wiesemann, “Judenverfolgung und nichtjüdische Bevölkerung,” in: Martin Broszat et al. (eds.), Bayern in der NS-Zeit I. Soziale Lage und politisches Verhalten der Bevölkerung im Spiegel vertraulicher Berichte, Munich, Vienna, Oldenbourg, 1977, 427–486; idem., “Juden auf dem Lande: Die wirtschaftliche Ausgrenzung der jüdischen Viehhändler in Bayern,” in: Detlev Peukert and Jürgen Reulecke (eds.), Alltag im Nationalsozialismus, Wuppertal, Hammer, 1981, 381– 396; Sarah A. Gordon, German Opposition to Nazi Anti-Semitic Measures Between 1933 and 1945, with Particular Reference to the Rhine-Ruhr Area, PhD diss., Buffalo University, 1979, substantial parts included in her recent book: idem, Hitler, Germans and the “Jewish Question”, Princeton, Princeton UP, 1984, ch. 5–10; Ian Kershaw, “Antisemitismus und Volksmeinung. Reaktion auf die Judenverfolgung,” in: Broszat et al., Bayern in der NS Zeit II, Munich, Oldenbourg, 1979, 281– 384, English version in idem., Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933–1945, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983, 224–277 and 358–372; as well as his article in LBI Year Book XXVI (1981), 261–289, where additional material relating to other parts of Germany has been used, particularly from the exile periodical Deutschland Berichte der Sopade and the “eyewitness reports” of Jewish refugees in England. 144 Marlis G. Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen. Stimmung und Haltung der deutschen Bevölkerung im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Düsseldorf, Econ, 1970, 236–263; L. D. Stokes, “The German People and the Destruction of the European Jews,” Central European History 6 (1973), 167–191; William S. Alien, “Die deutsche Öffentlichkeit und die ‘Reichskristallnacht’—Konflikte zwischen Werthierarchie und Propaganda im Dritten Reich,” in: Peukert and Reulecke (eds.), Alltag im Nationalsozialismus, 397–411 (based in part on Gordon’s work referred to in note 133); David Bankier, German Society and National Socialist Antisemitism 1933–1938, PhD diss, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1983 (in Hebrew with English summary). Ian Kershaw, “German Popular

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However, in some recent comprehensive studies, an attempt has been made in German historiography to integrate the results of the research into the total historical picture; here the contributions of Hans Mommsen,145 Hermann Greive146 and Conrad Repgen147 are particularly noteworthy. One can sense, though, that the authors are not quite familiar yet with this methodological approach. In applying it they sometimes lack the differentiations made possible today by the present state of research. Thus, for example, they do not distinguish between different assessments and consequences relating to concrete historical issues such as the promulgation of the Nuremberg laws, the excesses of 1938 and, especially, the deportations and mass extermination.148 A unique chapter in religious and social history has been brought up by the research on the struggle between the

Opinion and the ‘Jewish Question,’ 1939–1943: Some Further Reflections,” in: Arnold Paucker (eds.), Die Juden im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, Tübingen, Mohr, 1986: 365–408; idem, “German Popular Opinion During the ‘Final Solution’: Information, Comprehension and Reactions,” in: Y. Gelber et al. (eds.), Comprehending the Holocaust, Frankfurt a. M., Peter Lang, 1988. 145 Hans Mommsen, “Die Realisierung des Utopischen. Die ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’ im Dritten Reich,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9 (1983), 351, note 13, 402, notes 80–81, 404, note 91, 420, note 160. 146 Greive, Geschichte des modernen Antisemitismus (as in fn. 76), 149. 147 Conrad Repgen, “German Catholicism and the Jews: 1933–1945,” in: Otto D. Kulka and Paul R. Mendes-Flohr (eds.), Judaism and Christianity under the Impact of National Socialism (1919–1945), Jerusalem, The Israel Historical Society and Shazar Center, 1987, 197–226 (hereafter: Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism and Christianity). 148 Cf. the different extent of sources and conclusions in the works of Kershaw and Wiesemann on Bavaria (see fn. 142) on the one hand, and Kulka (see fn. 141) and Bankier (see fn. 143) on the whole Reich on the other. Cf. Otto D. Kulka and Aron Rodrigue, “The German Population and the Jews in the Third Reich. Recent Publications and Trends of Research on German Society and the Jewish Question,” Yad Vashem Studies XVI (1985), 421–435, with detailed reference to the work of Ian Kershaw, its importance and limitations; as to the different interpretations of Hitler’s influence, see, in particular, pp. 433 ff. However, it seems that in the above mentioned more recent interpretations of Kershaw (see fn. 143), the approaches have indeed grown very close. Where Mommsen refers, for example, to both approaches without taking these differences into consideration (see fn. 144), all these studies can be easily understood as contributions of a “revisionist” character. Concerning the use of the term “revisionist” for Kershaw’s methodological approach, see: Andreas Hillgruber, Endlich genug über Nationalsozialismus und Zweiten Weltkrieg? Forschungsstand und Literatur, Düsseldorf, Droste, 1982, 19. Hillgruber points particularly to Kershaw’s first, German edition of Der Hitler-Mythos. Volksmeinung und Propaganda, Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980, and it seems that here the differences concerning the Jewish aspect are indeed the most conspicuous. It should be mentioned that in the following English edition of Kershaw’s The ‘Hitler Myth’. Image and Reality in the Third Reich, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987, Kershaw added at the end a special chapter: “Hitler’s Popular Image and the ‘Jewish Question’”.

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Church and the State (Kirchenkampf)149 and on other aspects of resistance.150 The Jewish question is usually not dealt with here in the course of systematic historical research, but rather appears in controversies, as an argument against one side or the other. Here, too, the material found in the secret reports not only enables an examination of the attitude of individual personalities among the church leadership, but also to observe the behavior of broad social strata within the different denominations in their attitude toward the National-Socialist Judenpolitik, be it in the framework of the Kirchenkampf or as part of their adjustment to the regime. The same applies to the possibility of studying the attitude of other population groups toward opposition and resistance against National Socialism, whether on the part of conservative or leftist circles. No doubt a broad field of research has thus been opened, which will perhaps provide more concrete answers to some of the most pressing questions concerning the moral responsibility of German society for the actions of the regime. It will be necessary to trace the extent of common knowledge, an area which until today has been concealed by a haze of apologetic argumentation. Finally, it will be necessary to consider what influence the reactions of the population, as recorded in those reports and presented to the political leadership, had or could have had, on the shaping of anti-Jewish policy and its implementation.151 The question is most 149 Cf. Otto D. Kulka, “Popular Christian Attitudes in the Third Reich to National Socialist Policies Towards the Jews,” in: Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism and Christianity, (as in fn. 147), 251, note 1; for further publications stressing particularly the post-war repercussions, see: J. S. Conway, “Antisemitism and the Conflict in the Churches Since 1945,” Christian Jewish Relations 16 (1983), 21–37. Friedrich Zipfel, Der Kirchenkampf in Deutschland 1933–1945, Berlin, de Gruyter, 1965; Kurt Meier, Kirche und Judentum. Die Haltung der evangelischen Kirche zur Judenpolitik des Dritten Reiches, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968; Hermann Greive, Theologie und Ideologie. Katholizismus und Judentum in Deutschland und Oesterreich 1918–1935, Heidelberg, Lambert Schneider, 1969; Klaus Scholder, Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich, Vol. 1, Frankfurt a. M., Ullstein, 1977, and Vol. 2, Berlin, W. J. Siedler, 1985; Eberhard Busch, Juden und Christen im Schatten des Dritten Reiches, Munich, Kaiser, 1979; Bernhard van Schewick, “Katholische Kirche und nationalsozialistische Rassenpolitik,” in: Klaus Gotto and Konrad Repgen (eds.), Kirche, Katholiken und Nationalsozialismus, Mainz, M. Grünewald, 1980, 83–100; Eberhard Bethge, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer und die Juden,” in: Ernst Feil and Ilse Tödt (eds.), Konsequenzen. Dietrich Bonhoeffers Kirchenverständnis heute, Munich, Kaiser, 1980, 171–214; Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz, Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft vor der Judenfrage, Munich, Kaiser, 1980; idem, “Mitverantwortung und Schuld der Christen am Holocaust,” Evangelische Theologie 42 (1982), 2: Juden und Christen, 171–190. 150 Cf. Christof Dipper, “Der Deutsche Widerstand und die Juden,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9, no. 3 (1983), 349–380, and the revised English version in: Yad Vashem Studies XVI (1985), 51–93. 151 For a more detailed examination of this problem, with respect to the preparation and decision-making process behind the decree of the Nuremberg Laws, see: Otto D. Kulka, “Die Nürnberger Gesetze und die deutsche Bevölkerung im Lichte geheimer NS-Lage- und Stimmungsberichte,” VfZ 33 (1985), 582–624. See also: idem, “Popular Opinion in Nazi Germany

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acute with regard to the last, most horrifying phase of the “solution of the Jewish question”—the complete isolation and ostracism of German-Jewish citizens, their stigmatization, their mass deportations, and, finally, the million-fold extermination of European Jews in the East European areas under German domination.152

C The Internal Jewish Aspect The recently deceased Nestor of historical research in Israel, the German-Jewish historian Fritz Baer, concluded his reflections in his above-mentioned work, published in Germany in 1936, with the following words: In order to understand the fate of a people, one has to know first, how the people itself understood its fate, its relationship to God and to history.153

Whether we regard the internal history of the German Jews in the modern era as a continuity, as did the eminent Jewish historian of the nineteenth century, Heinrich Graetz154 (an opinion rejected as unpatriotic by his German contemporaries Heinrich Treitschke and even Theodor Mommsen,155 but maintained by representatives of the Wissenschaft des Judentums during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, such as Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber and Leo Baeck), or whether we consider the Jewish community under the Nazi regime to be a compulsory

as a Factor in the Policy of the Solution of the Jewish Question’: The Nuremberg Laws and the Reichskristallnacht”, in: Paul Corner (ed.), Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2009), 81–106 (Chapter 7 of this book). 152 One should note here especially the differing reactions of the population to the so-called “Euthanasia,” or the removal of crucifixes from the schools, on the one hand, and the simultaneously executed mass deportations and extermination of the Jews on the other. Cf. O. D. Kulka, “‘Public Opinion’ in Nazi Germany and the ‘Jewish Question’—1933–1945”, Jerusalem Quarterly (1982), No. 25, pp. 121–144, No. 26, pp. 24–35 (Chapter 6 of this book); idem, “The Churches in the Third Reich and the ‘Jewish Question’ in Light of Secret Nazi Reports on German Public Opinion,” Bibliothèque de la Revue D’Histoire Eccléssiatique 70, Miscellanea historiae ecclesiasticae 9 (1984), 490–505. 153 Baer, Galut, 106 (as in fn. 30). 154 Heinrich Graetz, “Die Konstruktion der jüdischen Geschichte,” Zeitschrift für die Religiösen Interessen des Judenthums 3 (1846), 88–89, (new edition, Berlin, Schocken Bücherei, 1936), and especially his Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, vol. 11, Leipzig, Leiner, 1870. 155 Heinrich von Treitschke, “Herr Graetz und sein Judenthum,” Preussische Jahrbücher, December 1879, reprinted in: Walter Boehlich (ed.), Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit, Frankfurt a. M., Insel, 1965, 31–45; Graetz’s replies: ibid., 45–52; Theodor Mommsen, Auch ein Wort über unser Judenthum, Berlin, Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1880, 210–225.

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community (Zwangsgemeinschaft),156 the existence of an independently defined spiritual and social life among German Jews after 1933 remains an undeniable fact. One can even point here to a paradoxical phenomenon. In contrast to the National-Socialist Gleichschaltung of German society in all spheres of life, Jewish society maintained almost all of its own religious and ideological trends and organizations under the racial-totalitarian regime.157 Furthermore, the Jews were even able to deepen and develop activities in their own sphere, since they were excluded from the general process of Gleichschaltung of Germany’s “Aryan” population. So we find in 1933 various major religious and ideological groups united to form a central federative organization. At the same time, there was an unprecedented expansion of the German-Jewish press, in which the different religious and ideological polemics between Liberals and Orthodox, “assimilationists” and Zionists could be continued, and even various Jewish-Marxist and anti-Marxist views could and did polemicize with each other. In a similar vein, we note the foundation of new organizations and associations, the largest and most important of which was the Kulturbund, numbering 80,000 members, as well as an extensive development of the Jewish social-welfare, school and adult-education systems. All this took place, however, under conditions of continuous physical terror against Jews as individuals and under collective discrimination and persecution, conditions which led in the most extreme cases to suicides both within Germany and even among émigrés.158 We are thus dealing here with a pluralisticdemocratic159 society operating within a totalitarian terror state. Contrary to assumptions expressed in testimonies from the 1950s, this paradoxical phenomenon in the history of the German Jews did not come to an end with the general destruction of the Reichskristallnacht in November 1938. The archival material

156 H. G. Adler, Theresienstadt (as in fn. 41). 157 Cf. O. D. Kulka, “Jewish Society in Germany as Reflected in Secret Nazi Reports on Popular Opinion 1933–1943” (Chapter 9 of this book). 158 See one of the most devastating documents of this kind, a letter by Kurt Tucholsky written a few days before his suicide in exile in December 1935, in: Exil-Literatur 1933–1945, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 1966, 43–44. On the topic of Jewish suicide within Germany, see: Konrad Kwiet, “The Ultimate Refuge. Suicide in the Jewish Community,” LBI Year Book XXIX (1984), 135–167. See also: Konrad Kwiet and Helmut Eschwege, Selbstbehauptung und Widerstand. Deutsche Juden im Kampf um Existenz und Menschenwürde 1933–1945, Hamburg, Christians Verlag, 1984, 194–215 (hereafter: Kwiet and Eschwege, Selbstbehauptung und Widerstand). 159 The description of Jewish society in the Third Reich as an organization conducted on democratic principles (“demokratisches Verwaltungsprinzip”) was even put forward by the Security Service of the SS in a secret report for the year 1938. See quotation in: O. D. Kulka, “The Reichsvereinigung and the Fate of the German Jews, 1938/1939–1943 Continuity or Discontinuity in German-Jewish History in the Third Reich”, (Chapter 10 of this book, document quoted and referenced in fn. 12)

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at our disposal today reveals that there was an intrinsic continuity in the basic modes of communal life and the organization of the Jews during the war years up to the time of the mass deportations and extermination.160 We even find such traditional features of Jewish life as education and social welfare in the ghetto161 and in the extermination camp.162 Studying the internal Jewish aspect of the National-Socialist “Final Solution,” we are thus confronted with the phenomenon of a certain “freedom” of thought and action. It is, however, a “freedom” of the outlawed or, rather, a freedom of the doomed. While the ideological-strategical and structural-political aspects of the Third Reich and the “Final Solution” have been extensively examined and the research of the socio-political field has started to expand, the internal aspects of the history of the Jews has remained largely ignored in the present phase of German historiography as well. Compared with the current publications of the Leo Baeck Institute on this topic, mostly written by authors living outside Germany,163 and with the first studies of fundamental importance on the central organizations and on Jewish internal life in the Third Reich carried out in Israel, England and the United States, German scholars have written only sporadically on this aspect and on less central issues. Of the first group, the following studies should be particularly mentioned. In Israel: Abraham Margaliot on the political reactions of the Jewish organizations in Nazi Germany until 1938;164 Joseph Walk on Jewish education;165 Yehoyakim Cohavi 160 See the below-mentioned studies of recent years: Kulka (as in fn. 167), Hildesheimer (as in fn. 168), Cohavi (as in fn. 166). 161 Israel Gutman and Cynthia J. Haft (eds.), Patterns in Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe 1933– 1945: Proceedings of the Third Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, Jerusalem, April 1–7, 1977, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 1979. 162 Otto D. Kulka, “Ghetto in an Annihilation Camp. Jewish Social History in the Period of the ‘Final Solution’ and its Ultimate Limits,” (Chapter 11 of this book). 163 In addition to the articles published in the LBI Year Book and in the Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts, see also some contributions that have appeared under the aegis of the Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen of the Institute, especially the articles by Kurt Loewenstein, Eva G. Reichmann and Robert Weltsch, in: Werner E. Mosse and Arnold Paucker (eds.) Entscheidungsjahr 1932. Zur Judenfrage in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik. Ein Sammelband, Tübingen, Mohr, 1965. 164 Abraham Margaliot, The Political Reaction of German Jewish Organizations and Institutions to the Anti-Jewish Policy of the National Socialists 1932–1935, PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1971, (in Hebrew, with English summary); idem, “The Dispute over the Leadership of German Jewry (1933–1938),” Yad Vashem Studies X (1974), 129–148. 165 Joseph Walk, The Education of the Jewish Child in Nazi Germany, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 1975 (in Hebrew).

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on the cultural life and Jewish adult education;166 Otto D. Kulka on the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland during the war years;167 and Esriel Hildesheimer’s research on the two successive central organizations of the German Jews in the Third Reich, the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden and the Reichsvereinigung (1933–1945).168 In England: Arnold Paucker’s study on the largest political organization of German Jewry, the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens, and its struggle against National Socialism;169 and H.G. Adler’s magnum opus on the German Jews faced with expulsion and annihilation.170 In the United States: Jacob Boas’s study on German Jewry’s self-perception as reflected in the German-Jewish press between 1933 and 1938 and Jehuda Reinharz’s unique documentation on German Zionism in its confrontation with National-Socialist and other anti-Semitic trends and movements up to 1933.171 In the second group, that of German authors, mention should be made of the following studies: Ulrich Dunker on the organization and activity of the former Jewish front-line soldiers;172 the contributions of Margot Pikarski,173 Helmut

166 Yehoyakim Cohavi, Cultural and Educational Activities of the German Jews 1933–1941 as a Response to the Challenge of the Nazi Regime, Jerusalem, 1986 (in Hebrew). 167 Otto Dov Kulka, The “Jewish Question,” vol. 1, 77–98 and 231–268 (as in fn. 115); idem, “The Reichsvereinigung and the Fate of the German Jews, 1938/1939–1943 Continuity or Discontinuity in German-Jewish History in the Third Reich” 45–58 (Chapter 10 of this book). 168 Esriel Hildesheimer, The Central Organization of the German Jews in the Years 1933–1945. Its Legal and Political Status and Its Position in the Jewish Community, PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1982 (in Hebrew with English summary). 169 Arnold Paucker, Der jüdische Abwehrkampf gegen Antisemitismus und Nationalsozialismus in den letzten Jahren der Weimarer Republik, Hamburg, Leibniz, 1969. See also his various essays, including “Jewish Defense against Nazism in the Weimar Republic,” The Wiener Library Bulletin, XXVI, Nos. 1/2 (1972), 21–31; and for a critical bibliography of the entire post-war historiography on the Jewish defense against anti-Semitism and Nazism: idem, “Die Abwehr des Antisemitismus in den Jahren 1893–1933,” in: Norbert Kampe and Herbert A. Strauss (eds.), Antisemitismus. Von der Judenfeindschaft zum Holocaust, Bonn, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1988, 143–171. 170 H. G. Adler, Der verwaltete Mensch. Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland, Tübingen, Mohr, 1974. 171 Jacob Boas, The Jews of Germany: Self Perception in the Nazi Era as Reflected in the German-Jewish Press, PhD diss., University of California, 1977, and his essays in LBI Year Books XXVII (1982) and XXIX (1984); Jehuda Reinharz (ed.), Dokumente zur Geschichte des deutschen Zionismus 1882–1933 (Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts 37) Tübingen, Mohr, 1981, and also the essay by Jehuda Reinharz, “The Zionist Response to Antisemitism in Germany,” LBI Year Book XXX (1985), 105–140. 172 Ulrich Dunker, Der Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten 1919–1938. Geschichte eines jüdischen Abwehrvereins, Düsseldorf, Droste, 1977. 173 Margot Pikarski, “Über die führende Rolle der Parteiorganisation der KPD in der antifaschistischen Widerstandsgruppe Herbert Baum,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen

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Eschwege174 and Konrad Kwiet175 on the subject of the Jewish resistance under the Third Reich; and Volker Dahm on the Jewish publishing house, Schocken, until 1939;176 as well as Monika Richarz’s model edition of collected memoirs of German-Jewish life under the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich.177 Two additional smaller studies touch upon significant aspects of internal Jewish history—one of them refers to the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland during the war, the other deals with the Zionist organization during the Third Reich—but it is precisely in these studies that the limitations of current German research in this field are exposed. In Ino Arndt’s account of the Reichsvereinigung of the Jews in Germany (1939–1943),178 the results of research carried out abroad, although available in Germany,179 have apparently been ignored. Even though Ino Arndt usually distinguishes herself by her careful scholarly treatment of the questions concerning the persecution of the Jews in the Third Reich, the Reichsvereinigung is related to once again as an “executive agent of the Gestapo” (Ausführungsorgan der Gestapo).180 In Alexander Schölch’s depiction of the relationship between National Socialism, Zionism and the Arab-Palestinian national movement,181 the author seems to be influenced rather by current events and political literature of the Near East than by a genuine attempt to interpret the historical reality per se.182 Arbeiterbewegung 8 (1966), 867–881; idem, Jugend im Berliner Widerstand. Herbert Baum und seine Kampfgefährten, Berlin, Militärverlag der DDR, 1984. 174 Helmut Eschwege, “Resistance of German Jews against the Nazi Regime,” LBI Year Book XV (1970), 143–180. 175 Konrad Kwiet, “Problems of Jewish Resistance Historiography,” LBI Year Book XXIV (1977), 37–57; and now the first comprehensive study of all forms of German-Jewish resistance, illegal and non-conformist: Konrad Kwiet and Helmut Eschwege, Selbstbehauptung und Widerstand (as in fn. 158). This remarkable study also includes a chapter on historiography which goes beyond the framework of the book as defined by the title. 176 Volker Dahm, Das jüdische Buch im Dritten Reich, part 2,: “Salman Schocken und sein Verlag,” Frankfurt a. M., Buchhändler-Vereinigung, 1982. 177 Monika Richarz (ed.), Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland. Selbstzeugnisse zur Sozialgeschichte 1918–1945 (Veröffentlichung des Leo Baeck Instituts), Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1982. 178 Ino Arndt, “Antisemitismus und Judenverfolgung,” in: Martin Broszat and Horst Möller (eds.), Das Dritte Reich. Herrschaftsstruktur und Geschichte—Vorträge aus dem Institut für Zeitgeschichte, eds. Munich, Beck, 1983, 209–230. 179 Cf. fn. 151, 156, 158. 180 As in fn. 159. 181 Alexander Schölch, “Das Dritte Reich. Die zionistische Bewegung und der PalästinaKonflikt,” VfZ 30 (1982), 646–674. 182 In addition to the fact that he is familiar with Arabic—but not with the Hebrew language— Schölch for some reason also completely ignored contemporary German source material of primary importance written by such eminent leaders of German Zionism as Martin Buber and Kurt

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In addition, many compilations illustrating the history of Jewish communities up to their destruction under the Third Reich have been published in the Federal Republic of Germany since the 1960s. Some of these collections, especially those on the Jews of Frankfurt, Baden-Württemberg or Hessen,183 also offer an insight into the intense internal life led there within the communal and regional frameworks. In the GDR we can note no similar publication trend,184 except for the two general selections of documents by Helmut Eschwege185 and Kurt Pätzold.186

IV Conclusion It seems impossible to conclude an attempt to deal with the main trends and tendencies in six decades of German historiography on National Socialism and on the last chapter in the history of German Jewry without pointing out the main—unsolved—problems of its present stage. It appears that research in this field not only suffers from a lack of synthesis between opposing methodological approaches, but, more than that, reveals a high unbalanced engagement in the study of the three basic aspects of this historical complex. Perhaps it is due to this fact that so far there have not been even modest attempts to provide an overall description of the Jews in National-Socialist Germany, which would take into account not only Hitler’s Weltanschauung and the Judenpolitik of the regime, but also the social situation of the Jews and the history of their community within the totalitarian-racial power system. The methodological and conceptual framework presented here should make such an enterprise feasible, particularly since important conditions, such as the developing historical perspective and a broad basis of available source material, have by now been established.

Blumenfeld, who represent the humanist, even pacifist, character peculiar to the German brand of Zionism. 183 Dietrich Andernacht, Eleonore Sterling et al. (eds.), Dokumente zur Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden 1933–1945, Frankfurt a. M., Kramer, 1963; Paul Sauer (ed.), Die Schicksale der jüdischen Bürger Baden-Württembergs während der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgungszeit 1933–1945, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1969; and idem, Dokumente über die Verfolgung der jüdischen Bürger in Baden-Württemberg durch das nationalsozialistische Regime 1933–1945, 2 vols. Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1966; Paul Arnsberg (ed.), Die jüdischen Gemeinden in Hessen, 2 vols., Darmstadt, Societäts-Verlag, 1971–1972. 184 Cf. Konrad Kwiet, “Historians of the German Democratic Republic on Antisemitism and Persecution,” (as in fn. 113), 175. 185 Helmut Eschwege (ed.), Kennzeichen J. Bilder, Dokumente, Berichte zur Geschichte der Verbrechen des Hitlerfaschismus an den deutschen Juden 1933–1945, Berlin, VEB, 1966. 186 Kurt Pätzold (ed.), Verfolgung, Verteibung, Vernichtung (as in fn. 135).

13 Singularity and its Relativization. Changing Views in German Historiography on National Socialism and the “Final Solution” I One of the most remarkable developments in German historiography during the 1960s and ’70s appears to have been the gradually reached, overwhelming consensus on the central role of anti-Semitism in National-Socialist ideology and politics. It was identified as the only constant element and as such as a key to the understanding of the inner contradictions of the Third Reich, of Hitler’s unconventional war aims, and the singularity of the “Final Solution”1 During the last few years, however, radically different views have appeared in the works and polemics of several German historians. In this article I shall elaborate on several of the new tendencies to explain the nature of the Third Reich and its place in history. I shall examine the works of some of the most influential scholars and confront their central theses established in the 1960s and ’70s, which stressed the singularity of the Third Reich and the “Final Solution” in German and universal history, with the present tendency of what may be called “relativization” or “historicization” of National Socialism. It seems, however, that not only different methodological approaches but even divergent ethical attitudes led to some parallel conclusions in various spheres. One of them, represented particularly by Ernst Nolte, uses the comparative perspective and identifies various genocidal phenomena in the twentieth century, both before and after the “Final Solution”. He claims there is a “causal nexus” between the “Asiatic” or “Judeo-Bolshevik” precedents of mass annihilation and the Nazi extermination of the Jews. In the light of other post-Holocaust genocidal occurrences in various parts of the world, all these phenomena are explained as a universal norm of our century. Nolte’s theses imply not only the most far-reaching relativization of National Socialism and the “Final Solution”, but also the responsibility of the Jews themselves for their own mass annihilation: following their many “declarations of war” against Germany, the mass executions of millions of Jews are explained as preventive measures of the Third Reich taken during World War II. In an entirely different approach advocated in an impressive way by Martin Broszat, the emphasis is shifted to internal German history and its social aspects. 1 These observations were demonstrated in my study on the major trends and tendencies in German historiography on National Socialism and the “Final Solution” (Chapter 12 of this book). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-014

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Under the term “historicization,” he stresses the need to focus the research on those developments in the Third Reich which seem relevant for the selfunderstanding of the Bundesrepublik as a democratic welfare society. The Third Reich is viewed in the perspective of the continuity of German history and thus, in a way, as a Vorgeschichte (pre-history) of the present German state. In this perspective, National Socialism appears as an expression of, or an answer to, the necessary structural changes in German society and its modernization. The preoccupation of historiography with the Jewish aspect and the problem of the world-historical uniqueness of the Third Reich is regarded as distorting historical reality and an obstacle to further research. The third tendency stresses the overwhelming effect of the totalitarian structure of the Third Reich in which the impersonal bureaucratic machine of the German perpetrators and the Jewish leadership are both victims and at the same time “guilty.” Here, too, the genocidal phenomenon appears as a possible recurrent pattern in the future practically everywhere in modern industrial society, including the State of Israel. It seems that the awareness of the relevance of the dominating power of an impersonal bureaucracy, as a threat to the individual in present-day German society, brought about the almost complete disregard of the ideological factor of National Socialism, including its anti-Semitism, which appears irrelevant for the self-understanding and historical consciousness of this society. These theories were brought forward particularly by Hans Mommsen, most recently in the context of his reevaluation of Hannah Arendt’s views on the “Final Solution”. Notwithstanding all these relativizing tendencies, other important German historians, most notably Eberhard Jäckel and Klaus Scholder, further developed and deepened the understanding of the essential role of anti-Semitism, the uniqueness of the “Final Solution” and its world-historical significance. Their approach, as well as my own, does not a priori exclude the comparative perspective. On the contrary, an examination of the different historical processes and a comparison of various genocidal phenomena with the “Final Solution” only accentuate the truly incomparable singularity of the National-Socialist attempt to exterminate the Jewish people, which implied the far-reaching intention to eliminate the universalist ideologies allegedly emanating from the Jewish spirit, in order to bring about a decisive turn in the course of world history. It is precisely the relevance of this meaning of German history during the Third Reich for the present German historical consciousness that is being emphasized, both for reasons of historical authenticity as well as on account of its ethical significance.2

2 My own views, which partially coincide with those of Jäckel and Scholder, are presented in the excerpts of my exchange of letters with Ernst Nolte, published in the Appendix to this essay.

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II In the following section I shall touch on some crucial points in the development of German postwar historiography up to the 1980s. It is based on part of my article “Major Trends and Tendencies in German Historiography on National Socialism and the ‘Jewish Question’ 1924–1984”.3 In the fifteen years that followed the fall of the Third Reich, during which the first comprehensive studies on Nazi Germany, World War II and the destruction of European Jewry were published in non-German historiography, the history being written in Germany was characterized by almost total abstention from anything dealing with the years after 1933 and the subject of the Jews in particular. Besides the not very influential attempt of the old Meinecke to assess the meaning of the “German Catastrophe,”4 the few initial studies on National Socialism deal with the circumstances and the “guilt” or responsibility for Hitler’s rise to power, or seek to explain the processes of the decline and disintegration of the Weimar democracy. The most comprehensive work to be mentioned here is Bracher’s Auflösung der Weimarer Republik (l955), which briefly dwelt on the historical roots of National-Socialist anti-Semitism. Toward the end of the 1950s, the comprehensive collective work of Bracher, Sauer and Schulz, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung. Studien zur Errichtung des totalitären Herrschaftssystems in Deutschland 1933–1934, was published. In this monumental volume, which signified a decisive scientific breakthrough in the treatment of the first formative stages of the Third Reich, a few pages of fundamental importance were devoted to the far-reaching role of National-Socialist anti-Semitism, particularly in the section written by Bracher. At the same time, an attempt to examine the nature of the National-Socialist ideology and regime from another aspect was made by Martin Broszat. In his small and concise volume Der Nationalsozialismus: Weltanschauung, Problematik und Wirklichkeit (1960), he suggested that Hitler’s anti-Semitism appeared to be the only constant element in the whole structure. Were the idea itself not absurd, in his view, it could have been regarded as a key to the contradictions and lack of consistency in all the other spheres, and even serve as a bridge between them. A year later, in his analysis of Hitlers zweites Buch in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (hereafter: VfZ), Broszat offers a view in this spirit, but without his previous reservations. More or less at the same time, Ernst Nolte, in an article published in the Historische Zeitschrift in 1961, and particularly in his Faschismus in seiner Epoche

3 (Chapter 12 of this book) 4 Friedrich Meinecke, Die deutsche Katastrophe, Wiesbaden, E. Brockhaus, 1946.

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of 1963, further elaborated on the far-reaching significance of this centrality, presenting “Judaism” as a focal point and as a key to what may be called the bipolar unity of Hitler’s anti-Christian and anti-democratic view: Judaism is the total enemy and destroyer of the natural state of society—its victory would result in an apocalyptic decline comparable to the destruction of the ancient Roman Empire by Jewish Christianity. In an overall view Nolte regards Fascism, and National Socialism as its most radical form, as a twofold revolution whose universal message is the redemption of the world from the Judeo-Christian and JudeoMarxist messianic creeds. I quote two of his main theses: 1. “Auschwitz was as firmly embedded in the principles of the National-Socialist race doctrine as the fruit in the seed … ”5 2. “ … for Hitler and Himmler as well as for posterity … this process [i.e. the extermination of Jews] differed essentially from all other extermination actions, both as to scope and to intention.”6 One of the first to examine systematically the role played by Hitler’s anti-Semitic ideas in shaping his conceptions in foreign policy was Andreas Hillgruber. In his monumental work Hitlers Strategic, Politik und Kriegführung 1940–1941 (1965) and his concise study Deutschlands Rolle in den beiden Weltkriegen (1967), both of which are based on administrative, diplomatic and military sources, predominance is given to the central and decisive role of the struggle with Judaism as a factor in Hitler’s crucial decisions. Similarly, Klaus Scholder convincingly elaborated on the centrality of antiSemitism in the National-Socialist attitude to Christianity and the envisaged final solution of the Church Question. I am referring here, inter alia, to his articles in Das Parlament (1971) and to the pertinent chapter in the first volume of his Die Kirche und das Dritte Reich (1977). The most coherent and, to my mind, most convincing study of Hitler’s ideological concepts undertaken in the sixties was Eberhard Jäckel’s Hitlers Weltanschauung. Entwurf einer Herrschaft (1969). Jäckel examines the complex nature of Hitler’s anti-Semitism as a central issue per se, as well as its role in shaping his concepts of domestic and foreign policy, and consequently its place in Hitler’s overall concept of history leading from the apparently most ordinary to the unprecedentedly unique.

5 Ernst Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche, Munich, Piper, 1963. English edition: Three Faces of Fascism, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965, 359 (hereafter: Three Faces of Fascism). 6 Ibid., 399.

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In the same year Bracher’s authoritative volume Die deutsche Diktatur presented a no less convincing analysis of the significance of anti-Semitism as a constitutive element in the singularity of National-Socialist ideology and politics: The core, however, probably the only “genuine,” fanatically held and realized conviction of his entire life, was already then anti-Semitism and race mania. An enormously oversimplified scheme of good and evil, transplanted to the biological and racial sphere, was made to serve as the master key to world history and world politics….7

A different methodological approach, based almost exclusively on the research of the vast archival material produced by the Nazi bureaucracy dealing with the Jewish Question, was introduced by Hans Mommsen already in the early 1960s. In his “National-sozialistischer Polizeistaat und die Judenverfolgung (vor 1938),” published in VfZ in 1962, Mommsen dwells on the fact that contrary to the external monolithic image of the totalitarian regime, the inner contradictions characterize the dynamics of the radicalization leading toward the “Final Solution.” Nevertheless, he concludes: “The persecution of the Jews can be considered a key to the analysis of the power structure of the Third Reich.”Referring to Broszat’s National Socialism, he states: “Racial anti-Semitism has to be considered a central part of the ideology of the regime … ”(68–69). In 1967, following Heinz Hönne’s series in Der Spiegel on the history of the SS,8 which included an extensive chapter on the SD and the “Final Solution,” Mommsen raises the question of a possible reassessment of the Third Reich implied in the question mark of his article “‘Entteufelung des Dritten Reiches?’” The alleged ideological consistency turns out to be fictitious; under the empty formula of “National-Socialist Weltanschauung’” a latent struggle between heterogeneous ideological conceptions took place, which corresponded only with regard to the negative. The dreadful crimes of the system did not originate in demonic, destructive drives; they grew out of a mixture of political delusions, perverted idealism, political inability, moral indifference and specified technical efficiency. Does this mean a de-demonization (Entteufelung) of the Third Reich?9

No less complex are the views developed during the 1960s and ’70s in several works by Broszat, particularly Der Staat Hitlers, “Soziale Motivation und

7 Cologne, Berlin, Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1969; English edition: The German Dictatorship, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970, 67. 8 Heinz Höhne, “Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf. Die Geschichte der SS,” Der Spiegel (1966– 1967). English version: The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s S.S., London, Pan Books, 1969. 9 “Ein Nachwort zur SS-Serie,” Der Spiegel, June 3, 1967, 75–77.

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Führer-Bindung des Nationalsozialismus,” and “Hitler und die Genesis der Endlösung.”10 Although the predominance of the ideological background, stressed in his early works (1960–1961), receded behind the thick walls of administrative and social structures, it nevertheless seems always present, if only in the form of “metaphorical” signposts which at the end mark the almost predestined road to the ultimate reality of the “Final Solution.”11 The conclusion that anti-Semitism constitutes “the very core” or “the dominant component” of National Socialism established itself in the last two decades even in the professional handbooks of German history. We can find it in the assessments of Karl Dietrich Erdmann in Gebhardt’s Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte (1976), or those of Theodor Schieder and Karl Erich Born in Schieder’s Handbuch der europäischen Geschichte (1979), and similarly even in the paperback edition of Pipers Weltgeschichte in Karten, Daten, Bildern (1970), as well as in Christian Zentner and Friedemann Bedürftig’s East German publication Das Grosse Lexikon des Dritten Reiches (1985). These results of West German historiography have been impressively summarized, though from a polemic position, in Kurt Pätzold’s study on the National Socialism and the “Final Solution”, published in East Berlin: In bourgeois historiography that approach depicting racism and anti-Semitism as the starting and the final point of every research of fascism prevailed. The whole fascist policy and World War II are supposed to be understood from the alleged central and highest aim of Hitler’s fascism, that is the annihilation of the “Jews.” All decisions and measures of the regime were apparently geared and subjected to this. Racism and anti-Semitism are purely and simply passed off as the nature and main characteristic of German fascism.12

However, in spite of this introductory statement, it seems that this noteworthy study—unique in the historiography of the German Democratic Republic—is closer to the views of West German authors than Pätzold himself admits, and apparently more so than any other publication in the socialist countries.

10 Martin Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers. Grundlegung und Entwicklung seiner inneren Verfassung, Munich, dtv, 1969. English edition: The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the Third Reich, London, Longman, 1981; idem, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (hereafter; VfZ), 18 (1970), 392–409; idem, VfZ 25 (1977), 73–125. An English version, entitled “Hitler and the Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’: An Assessment of David Irving’s Theses,” was published in Yad Vashem Studies XIII (1979). 11 For details see my above-mentioned article in this volume. 12 Kurt Pätzold, “Von der Vertreibung zurn Genozid. Zu den Ursachen und Bedingungen der antijüdischen Politik des faschistischen deutschen Imperialismus,” in: D. Eichholz and K. Grossweiler (eds.), Faschismus—Forschung. Positionen. Probleme. Polemik, Berlin, GDR, Akademie Verlag, 1980, 181.

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This leads us to the ultimate question: What is the historical meaning of defining the centrality of anti-Semitism in National-Socialist ideology and politics? Clearly, it is not that the Jews in their factual historical proportions gain such a central importance here, and perhaps even not the physical act of their mass extermination, which in many aspects might be compared with the liquidation of other population groups under the Third Reich, or elsewhere. On the factual level, the Jews were but a small minority among the Germans and other European peoples. The matter at issue is the significance attributed in the conceptual world of National Socialism to the ideo-historical concept of Judaism and its promoter—the Jew. It seems that only from this point of view is it possible to make an attempt—to use Kafka’s dictum—at “explaining the inexplicable.” In other words, this centrality is the only possible key to a historical understanding of the significance of the “Final Solution” and of the assault that the National-Socialist “revolution” made on the very roots of Western civilization, its basic values and moral foundations. For on different levels of the ruling system in the Third Reich, the essence of the National-Socialist counterrevolution was understood as a revolt against the all-embracing idea of the unity of the human race, which was fundamentally opposed to its own value system. In this context Judaism was conceived as the historical source and the continuous driving force of this idea, which was expanded in the course of world history through Christianity and later in the democratic and socialist systems. Any attempt to explain National Socialism without taking into account this substantial factor inevitably leads to explanations long-refuted and proven indefensible concerning the causes of the “Final Solution,” whether these define it as being based on allegedly economic reasons, or as a deceptive political manipulation of the masses, or an experiment in terror against one group as preparation for an imperialistic war of conquest and annihilation against other peoples or minorities, and even—more recently—as a more or less accidental by-product of the internally antagonistic “totalitarian anarchy.”

III As indicated in my introductory remarks, radical changes have been introduced or postulated by several German historians during the last few years. Some of these developments were highlighted in the course of the ongoing public dispute, initiated by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas.13

13 Cf. the following volumes of studies and collected essays on the so-called Historians’ Dispute: “Historikerstreit.” Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der

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The most conspicuous case seems to be that of Ernst Nolte. Diametrically opposed to his above-mentioned definitions of the singularity of the “Final Solution” which—and here I quote again from his Three Faces of Fascism—“distinguished itself … from all other mass annihilations,” Nolte now regards this view as “a distortion and even falsification of the historical realities” of the present century. He points to the allegedly equal genocidal events outside German and even European history, including the massacre of the Armenians, the mass annihilations in the Soviet Union, the “Holocaust on Water” in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and the war in Afghanistan. Against his earlier emphasis on the inherent predetermination of Auschwitz in National-Socialist ideology (to quote again: “Auschwitz steckt in den Prinzipien der nationalsozialistischen Rassenlehre so sicher wie die Frucht im Keim” 14) he now claims that the “Final Solution” must be understood in its “causal nexus” to the precedents defined as an “Asiatic action” (asiatische Tat). I am referring to his articles of 1985–1986,15 where the singularity of the “Final Solution” is relativized to the point that it becomes a quasi-“normal” phenomenon of world history in our century, and the responsibility for the “Final Solution” is virtually shifted to the entire world. But I am also referring to Nolte’s article “Marxismus und Nationalsozialismus,” published in VfZ in 1983, which has been generally overlooked by his critics. There he speaks about the formation of racialist and genocidal ideas in Marx’s theories and even denotes Marx’s mentor Moses Hess, the father of the Zionist idea, as “the first National Socialist.”16 Already in my letter to Nolte of July 18, 1986 (see Appendix), I dwelt upon the unacceptability of these general comparisons; I explained the incomparable nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung, Munich, Piper, 1987 (hereafter: Historikerstreit); Ernst Nolte, Das Vergehen der Vergangenheit. Antwort an meine Kritiker im sogenannten Historikerstreit, Berlin, Piper, 1987 (hereafter: Das Vergehen); Dan Diner (ed.). Ist der Nationalsozialismus Geschichte? Zu Historisierung und Historikerstreit, Frankfurt/M, Fischer, 1987; Hans Ulrich Wehler, Entsorgung der deutschen Vergangenheit. Ein polemischer Essay zum Historikerstreit, Munich, Beck, 1988 (includes on pp. 212ff. the most detailed bibliographic notes on the subject); Reinhard Kühnl (ed.), Streit ums Geschichtsbild. Die “Hisioriker-Debatte,” Dokumentation, Darstellung und Kritik, Cologne, Pahl-Rugenstein, 1987 (hereafter: Streit ums Geschichtsbild); Titus Häusermann (ed.), Die Bundesrepublik und die deutsche Geschichte, Stuttgart, Radius, 1987. 14 Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism (as in fn. 5), 359. 15 “Between Myth and Revisionism. The Third Reich in the Perspective of the 1980s,” in: H. W. Koch (ed.), Aspects of the Third Reich, London, Macmillan, 1985, 17–38. Original German version in Historikerstreit (as in fn. 13), 13–35; “Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 6, 1986 (Historikerstreit, 39–47); “Die Sache auf den Kopf gestellt: Gegen den negativen Nationalismus in der Geschichtsschreibung,” Die Zeit, October 31, 1986 (Historikerstreit, 223–231). 16 See particularly pp. 392, 405, 412ff. An earlier version of these ideas appears in Nolte’s Deutschland und der Kalte Krieg, Munich-Zurich, Piper, 1974, 136–137, 307, 331–332, 607.

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uniqueness of the historical meaning of the National-Socialist “Final Solution,” although it is clear that each and every murder and brutality against whichever human being or group, as such, are in the strictly moral sense equal crimes. As to the comparison of Hess’s profoundly humanistic use of the terms “nation” and “race” and his vision of a future universal harmony of races, with the NationalSocialist theory of race and its vision of an eternal war of annihilation between the races as the nature’s order, nothing can of course be more absurd. The monstrous distortion of presenting Marx as the predecessor of Hitler and his racialist ideas of mass annihilation needs no comment. What needs to be explained is Nolte’s possible motivation in his search for the alleged antecedents of the “Final Solution.” The follow-up of Nolte’s theory of the antecedents and the “causal nexus” leads paradoxically from these racial ancestors of the future victims of Auschwitz, to the claim that Hitler’s annihilation of the Jews was actually provoked through their own declarations of a war of annihilation against Germany. In this connection, Nolte refers not only to the much quoted proclamation of Chaim Weizmann of 1939, but also to a certain anti-German pamphlet published by unknown American-Jewish author, Theodore Kaufmann, in 1940.17 Finally, in his article in Die Zeit, he takes out of context a satirical remark in a pacifist article by Kurt Tucholsky (also of Jewish origin) on the future gas war and the fate of the Germans, which Nolte’s revisionist sources compare with Hitler’s notorious proposal in Mein Kampf to annihilate thousands of Jews by gas as a preventive act of self-defense.18 In order to explain why the negative singularity of the Third Reich continues to exist in historiography, Nolte proposes the following intellectual exercise: We need only imagine, for example, what would happen if the PLO were to actually succeed, assisted by its allies, in destroying the State of Israel. After that, the presentation of history in the books, lecture halls and schoolrooms of Palestine would doubtless be fixated on only the negative traits of Israel: the victory over racist, oppressive, even fascist Zionism would then become the state-supporting historical myth. For decades, possibly a century, no one would dare to trace the moving origins of Zionism back to the spirit of resistance against European anti-Semitism.

17 Concerning this absurd allegation of Goebbels, following the German invasion of Russia and the beginning of the mass annihilation of the Jews, see: Wolfgang Benz. “Judenvernichtung aus Notwehr? Die Legenden um Theodore N. Kaufmann,” VfZ 29 (1981), 615–630. 18 On the origins of this distortion of Tucholsky’s article against future wars in the so-called Holocaust-Denial literature and Nolte’s identification with the arguments of those authors, see my article in Frankfurter Rundschau of November 5, 1987, published under the title “Der Umgang des Historikers Ernst Nolte mit Briefen aus Israel,” part of which appears in the Appendix to this article (hereafter: Kulka, FR).

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Many of his critics pointed to the ‘bad taste’ (Geschmacklosigkeit) in using this speculative example, but did not dwell sufficiently on its implications: Namely that we should understand that his own original concept of the centrality of anti-Semitism as a source of the singularity of the Third Reich, so convincingly advocated in the 1960s even against the prevailing views of former Allied historians like Bullock or Trevor-Roper, is presented now as historiography allegedly imposed by the victorious enemy, inspired by the former victims. Hence the call for the revision of the historical picture of the Third Reich implies an ideological emancipatory appeal for a creation of a new authentic national-historical consciousness as a means to regain a sense of the lost national identity. My analysis of Nolte’s changing views to date was based on his above-mentioned polemic articles published in 1985–1986 (see fn. 15), which marked the initial stages of the Historians’ Dispute in the summer of 1986. As a matter of fact, my own critical involvement in this dispute started already with my letter to Nolte of November 24, 1985, which raised—among other points—a question my colleagues and I in Jerusalem were asking then; “Which one of the two Ernst Noltes should we regard as the authentic one?” In his reply, Nolte expressed his astonishment that “this small article [“Between Myth and Revisionism”] is immediately noticed in Jerusalem.” He nevertheless promised to deliver his final answer in a new comprehensive book—then in preparation—on the Soviet Union and Germany.19 This work, Der europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917–1945, Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus, was in the meantime published, and in the chapter “Genozide und ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’” his answer is clear-cut. Here he no longer talks about Auschwitz as inherent in National-Socialist ideology “as the fruit in the seed,” but about the “annihilation of the Jews as a punishment and preventive measure” (Vernichtung der Juden als Strafe und Präventivmassnahme).20 Here Tucholsky’s provocation of 1927 is complemented by the proclamation of the Soviet-Jewish writer Ilia Ehrenburg of 1942; and Weizmann’s declaration of war in 1939, by “a far more passionate appeal of prominent Soviet Jews to Jews all over the world.21 The mass shootings of between 1.3 and 2.2 million Jews (mostly women, children and old people) by the Einsatzgruppen are the “the most radical and sweeping example of a preventive struggle against an enemy.”22 Discussing the mass annihilation of the Jews in the extermination camps, Nolte comments that the use of gas chambers “has been contested by a number 19 Nolte, Das Vergehen (as in fn. 13), 125–126. 20 Ernst Nolte, Der europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917–1945, Nationalsozialismus und Bolchevismus, Frankfurt/M. and Berlin, Ullstein, 1987, 502. 21 Ibid., 509. 22 Ibid., 512–513.

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of authors,” and that “this literature has in no way originated exclusively with Germans or Neo-Fascists …” After a review of the arguments of the “HolocaustDenial” literature, Nolte closes with; “However, even if these arguments lead one to refrain from coming to a conclusion … the fact remains that several hundreds of thousands died … and the further fact that a conspicuously large proportion of these dead were Jews.”23 In the end Nolte returns to the question of original and copy: The Final Solution … as a systematically complete annihilation of a world-nation is the precise mirror image of the systematically complete annihilation of a world-class through Bolshevism, and to that extent it is the biologistically remolded copy of the social original.24

When I first expressed my concern about Nolte’s changed views as expressed in his articles “Marxismus und Nationalsozialismus” (1983) and “Between Myth and Revisionism” (1985), Nolte replied that it was merely a question of “a shift of emphasis.”25 In my answer of May 16, 1986, I claimed that it seemed more like “a shift of responsibility.” In Nolte’s new thesis of the mass murder of millions of Jews as a “preventive measure” following “Jewish provocation,” the responsibility is shifted onto the victims themselves. The same is true for the relationship between the “original” of the Final Solution and its “copy.” According to this “logic,” the clear responsibility for the National-Socialist copy lies with the originator, which is the “Jewish-Bolshevik” prototype. Nolte’s recently published Der europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917–1945 reached me only after my present paper, as well as my article for the Frankfurter Rundschau (see fn. 18), was completed, but my criticism of Nolte could hardly find better justification than the few excerpts I have quoted here. It seems, however, that the significance of Nolte’s attempt to reinterpret the historical meaning of National Socialism extends far beyond the dispute about his various specific arguments, and there remain some further questions to be clarified. In his polemic book, Das Vergehen der Vergangenheit, he states that the Historians’ Dispute should have broken out as far back as twenty-five years ago, or possibly should have continued since then, for “everything which has provoked such excitement in the course of this dispute had already been spelled out in those books, including the thesis that the Gulag Archipelago was more original than Auschwitz, as well as the view that “the simple scheme ‘perpetrators— victims’ reduces the complexities of history much too much (dass das simple ‘TäterOpfer-Schema’ die Komplexität der Geschichte alzusehr reduziert)”.26 If Nolte, after 23 Ibid., 513. 24 Ibid., 516–517. 25 Nolte, Das Vergehen (as in fn. 13), 125. 26 Ibid., 11–12 (my emphasis).

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having presented his provocative theses about National Socialism and the annihilation of the Jews that are so clearly opposed to his initial positions, insists on the alleged unchanged coherence of his views, then I think of two ways to resolve this “antinomy”: 1. In Nolte’s admitted “shift of emphasis,” we are actually facing a total relativization of history, or rather of its basic criteria of value judgment. Nolte refers to this in his letter to me, dated October 22, 1986: “If I pursued my thinking from 1963 on, it was in a way along the line that an over-exaggerated right can equally be an evil, and that an over-exaggerated (historical) evil can again, in some way, be right (dass ein überschiessendes Recht zugleich Unrecht sein kann und ein überschiessendes (historisches) Unrecht in gewisser Weise wieder ein Recht)”.27 As I have already suggested in my letter to Nolte of July 18, 1986, regarding his new contribution to the Historische Zeitschrift, “Philosophische Geschichtsschreibung heute?” his “monocausal, retrospective explanations of universal history, which proceed from the contemporary situation of human society” appear as a classic example of “totalitarian thinking.” Here the relativization is so far-reaching that in any changed historical situation it can easily apply the seemingly unchanged all-inclusive master concept. In this way, Nolte now wishes to ascribe to National Socialism—as an “over-exaggerated evil”—a (historical) “right,” and deny its victims not only their right to life but also their place in history as victims of evil. The farfetched consequences of this relativization, which is, in fact, a re-evaluation and reshaping of history, are evident in the legitimacy which Nolte accords to the argument of the radical right-wing literature, whose main subject and basic objective is the outright denial of the Holocaust. 2. Nolte’s assertions, made in 1963, about the unique nature of “that crime, which is beyond comparison with anything the world has ever seen even including Stalin’s reign of terror against his own people and his own party,”28 must be seen as disguise for his true beliefs. After all, only few writings among those which he designates as “Victors’ Historiography” have presented in such a convincing manner as he did that “negative uniqueness” of German history which he is now out to destroy. Both of these possible explanations refute Nolte’s claim to a genuine, unchanged continuity in his interpretation of National Socialism. To me, and probably to most of his critics among the historians, the importance of his earlier researches

27 Ibid., 136 (my emphasis). 28 Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism (as in fn. 5), 457; see also 425, 453.

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lies in their being the strongest refutation of his present views. His demand for a “retrospective and even retroactive Historians’ Dispute” over his works during the past twenty-five years is, at best, a form of apology for his writings of that earlier period. This apologetic tendency seems to be the real meaning of his present “Aufforderung zur Wissenschaft” (appeal to be scientific) which should see to it that the “negative vitality of the Third Reich does not petrify into a legend.” In the final analysis, the revisionist tendency which is reflected in his totalitarian thinking not only relativizes the historical picture as such, but tends—in its “search for the whole”—toward a nihilistic approach to history and to the present alike. The initial reactions of German historians to Nolte’s plea for a revisionist approach to the history of the Third Reich seemed to be divided between two opposing camps. However, with the ongoing Historians’ Dispute, and particularly after the publication of Nolte’s final theses in his voluminous Europäischer Bürgerkrieg, the voices of criticism became almost unanimous. In the words of Wolfgang Schieder, the Historians’ Dispute, as far as Nolte is concerned, became “a dispute between the historians and Ernst Nolte.”29 One of Nolte’s first and most decisive critics was Martin Broszat in his article “Wo sich die Geister scheiden” (Where the Spirits Part Ways) published in Die Zeit on October 3, 1986. He particularly pointed to Nolte’s tendency of “relativizing the National-Socialist genocide” and his dangerous experimentation with history, disregarding the elementary empirical principles. He saw the gravest danger, however, in the respectability and academic legitimacy given to the arguments of the right-wing revisionists’ pamphlet-literature, particularly to its theory on the “Jewish declaration of war against Germany,” through the support of a leading German historian. His personal concern about the profoundly changed quality and attitudes in Nolte’s recent publications as compared with his previous works is perhaps best expressed in his statement that “it might frighten particularly all those who, like myself, have been stimulated by Nolte’s thinking.” I admit that I myself fully identify with all those. Nevertheless, in spite of the entirely different methodological approach and ethical attitude, the recent views of Broszat, also calling for a revision in German historical research on the Third Reich, depart from his own views which we have dealt with above. In his “Plädoyer für eine Historisierung des Nationalsozialismus,” published in the Munich Merkur of May 1985, he, too, states the following Historiography is still overwhelmingly dominated by the impact of the catastrophic end and end-situation (des katastrophalen Endes und Endzustandes). It was also introduced 29 Frankfurter Rundschau, December 17, 1987.

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a posteriori as a “red thread” to explain the motives, instruments and stages of National Socialism, its development and domination. …the morality of the victims of the NationalSocialist past has meanwhile been considerably exhausted and has lost its singularity through new world-historical violence and catastrophic experiences… (die Moralität der Betroffenheit von der NS-Vergangenheit hat sich mittlerweile stark erschöpft und durch neue wehgeschichtliche Gewalt-und Katastrophenerfahrungen an Singularität eingebüsst…).

Although in the sixties Broszat emphasized more than, and before any other Western or German historian, the central role of anti-Semitism as the only possible key to understand the unique nature and immanent “logic” of National Socialism, he now regards the formerly much admired founders of German postwar historiography—among them “those modern historians who were forced to emigrate after 1933 for racial or political reasons”—as the originators of the distorting interpretation of recent German history. In order to emancipate German historiography from these historical distortions, he now pleads for what he calls “historicization,” or a shift of emphasis, to the more normal aspects of the Third Reich, which, in his opinion, are predominant in its social history. This approach enables a reintegration of the National-Socialist period into the continuity of German history and particularly into the historical self-understanding of the Bundesrepublik. One of Broszat’s most poignant examples is his reference to a recent study of the development of the social policy of the National-Socialist era. He points out that “the National-Socialist social policy during World War II and the basic idea … which recurred later, made the legislation of social insurance passed by the Federal Republic in the 1950s into a significant achievement,” and that “the DAF plan [of 1941–1942] emerged almost simultaneously with the British Beveridge Plan, the ideological foundation of the welfare-state-reform introduced by the British Labour Government after the war.” This comparison serves to inspire the attempts at the historical selfunderstanding of the German Federal Republic, but the world-historical uniqueness of the Third Reich and even of its social policy lies precisely in the duality that alongside the German worker, hundreds of thousands of enslaved human beings “worked” in the National-Socialist welfare-community, after members of their families had been murdered in the most gruesome way, and they themselves, after being worn out, were sent back to Auschwitz and annihilated in an industrially rational way. From this indispensable point of view the comparative perspective of allegedly parallel developments in Britain and Germany might easily conceal the abysmal difference between the two “historicized” examples. Another similar example is Broszat’s emphasis on the contribution of the Führerprinzip to the emergence of a new social elite by creating

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thousandfold major and minor führer-positions … in which young and dynamic elements from the middle class … proved themselves in tough contests with other “Führers” and exercised their energy and capacity to improvise …. They were useful for almost everything, on all levels of society.

This new type of entrepreneur later contributed decisively to the economic miracle of the Bundesrepublik. (“ … der neue hier herausgezüchtete Sozialtyp des nationalsozialistischen “Sonderführers” … brachte dann aber auch gute Voraussetzungen mit für neue Bewährung und Karriere unter den sozusagen frühkapitalistischen Bedingungen des Wiederaufbaus und Gründungsbooms nach der Währungsreform”). This, too, may be an important aspect in exploring the past for the possible “normal” elements in the Vorgeschichte of the Bundesrepublik, but for an understanding of the historical phenomenon of the Third Reich itself one has simultaneously to explore how the same “new social type of the National-Socialist Sonderführer” made possible the creation and the terribly efficient functioning of the mass annihilation machinery and the gigantic slave industry of the Auschwitz complex. In the same way one can relate to Broszat’s high appreciation of the research which portrays the seemingly normal picture of the so-called National-Socialist Alltag (everyday life) in small German communities, which perhaps more resembles than differs from the everyday life of those communities in the Bundesrepublik. Here whole communities are portrayed without, or only marginally, relating to their reaction to the disappearance and fate of their Jewish neighbors. But to understand the unique situation and character of this society of the Third Reich, one has to ask what kind of social ethics made them not react, or react as they did, to the deportations of the Jews from their midst and to the now convincingly proven, quite widespread knowledge about their mass extermination.30 In the overall view Broszat presents National Socialism as an answer to the much needed structural changes and modernization of German society—or in his words: “As an answer to a number of social reforms neglected in the Weimar Republic … and a piece of belated social bourgeois revolution … ” (Als eine Antwort auf manche in der Weimarer Republik unterliebene gesellschaftliche Reform … und ein Stück nachgeholter sozialer bürgerlicher Revolution). In this perspective the racialist aspect of this revolution and particularly the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” seem to be regarded as somehow irrelevant. But here, too, the historian cannot ignore the unique duality characterizing this singular way

30 See O.D. Kulka and A. Rodrigue, “The German Population and the Jews in the Third Reich: Recent Publications and Trends in Research on German Society and the ‘Jewish Question’,” in: Yad Vashem Studies XVI (1984), 421–435. See also Ian Kershaw’s English version, The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987, especially chap. 9.

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(Sonderweg) of German history, and one is tempted to ask: Which needs of structural changes and social modernization of Germany were, or should have been, answered by Auschwitz? (Here, of course, as in the previous examples, Auschwitz figures symbolically, as representing an essential dimension of a whole structure, but also as a concrete reality demonstrated in its most “perfect” example.) Although Broszat does not refer here explicitly to the origins of the theory on the modernizing effect of National Socialism on German society, he obviously reflects the original thesis of Ralf Dahrendorf in his already classic work of the 1960s, Society and Democracy in Germany. In this connection it is worthwhile to refer once again to Dahrendorf’s presentation of the basic methodological and ethical questions, particularly “the first question” he raises again in the chapter “The Path to Dictatorship”: How was Auschwitz possible? Or, more precisely: How was an organized mass murder possible, in which thousands of ‘educated’ Germans participated…? The question how the National-Socialist crimes were possible remains unanswered, unless our observations about humanitarianism and inhumanity in Germany are taken for an answer. Morally, the road to modernity could hardly assume more brutal and inhuman traits than it did in Germany.31

Taking into account this indispensable duality, presented by Dahrendorf as a precondition of research, the question is whether Broszat’s one-dimensional comparative use of the terms “modernization” or “belated social bourgeois revolution,” which point to phenomena or developments in other societies and periods, is more helpful than Nolte’s comparative treatment of Marxism and National Socialism. Although I am convinced that the difference between the approaches of Nolte and Broszat is a substantial one, one cannot ignore here the potentially dangerous historical experimentation. I believe that even if it seems more than self-evident, one always has to try to relate to the question of the world-historical significance of that duality of the Third Reich that transcends the boundaries of German history. As obvious as it may always appear, it seems necessary to return to the awareness of the fact that the existence of the present democratic welfare state of the German Federal Republic, and of the socialist German Democratic Republic, was made possible only due to the military defeat of National-Socialist Germany, and that a possibly victorious Third Reich, with its inherent social “ethics,” would have led to an entirely different reality of Empire based on Social-Darwinist biological selection and annihilation-politics, de-Christianized and definitely de-humanized, at least in regard to the non-German peoples of this Empire.

31 Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany, New York and London, W. W. Norton, 1967, 365, 394.

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There is no doubt that Broszat is conscious of all this, and there is no better way to learn about it than in his article “On the Structure of the National-Socialist Mass Movement.”32 The decisive question is, however, what is the new point of departure or the new historical Fragestellung (posing of a question) Broszat puts forward in his “Plädoyer für eine Historisierung des Nationalsozialismus”? If he postulates the research of the Third Reich with the purpose of discovering the possibly relevant aspects of the Vorgeschichte of the Bundesrepublik in search of the lost German historical identity, this should be declared expressis verbis. This might, no doubt, be a legitimate approach to the study of the emergence of present-day German society. But this is not evident from the definition implied by the title he has chosen for his Plädoyer. This definition gives the clear impression that the “historicization” he proposes should be a new way to understand the essence and historical meaning of National Socialism as such. In other words, it may be understood as a call for a revision of the whole picture of the National-Socialist past in German historiography, including (or perhaps excluding) its world-historical meaning. Now I would like to present another approach: during the 1980s the most actively engaged German historian, with regard to the Third Reich and the Jewish Question, both in research and public discussion, is Hans Mommsen. I am referring in particular to his contribution to the forthcoming volume on The Historiography of the Holocaust Period his two extensive studies: “Die Realisierung des Utopischen. Die Endlösung der Judenfrage im Dritten Reich,” in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 1983 (rev. English and German versions appeared in 1986),33 and his extensive introductory essay to the new German edition of Hannah Arendt’s 32 “Zur Struktur der NS-Massenbewegung,” VfZ 31 (1983), 53–76. See, in particular, the closing part of this excellent study on pp. 74–76, where he concludes: “Apparently the NS-leadership itself had its doubts whether the full knowledge of the crimes initiated by it would find popular support. However, these persecutions could not remain entirely concealed. The underlying inhuman conception, especially with regard to the fanatic hatred of the Jews, was also expressed publicly by the leadership on almost every occasion, and there certainly was a social sounding board (Resonanzboden) for those ideas … The concept of a totally politicized and indoctrinated German society during the NS-period is as wrong as is the concept suggested of late, associated with the term Hitlerism, that the German bourgeois society had been held at bay and controlled completely by the dictatorial NS-regime. The truth is more disconcerting. It lies in between. Only in this way, it seems to me, can one understand the passive and apathetic attitude of the great majority of the German population during the last years of the war, when the integrative power of the regime had already vanished to a large extent … Here apparently the awareness of a shared responsibility for and complicity in the excesses and crimes of the regime played a role as well (Hier spielte offenbar auch das Bewusstsein herein, dass man mitverantwortlich hineinverwickelt gewesen war in die Exzesse und Verbrechen des Regimes).” 33 Hans Mommsen, “Die Realisierung des Utopischen. Die Endlösung der Judenfrage im Dritten Reich,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9 (1983), 381–420. English version: “The Realization of the

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Eichmann in Jerusalem (1986), as well as to his numerous contributions to the Historians’ Dispute.34 As I have already noted, since the early 1960s Mommsen too contributed decisively to the theory of the centrality of the anti-Jewish policy in the National-Socialist terror system and ideology, and the singularity of the “Final Solution.” Moreover, his postulate of “de-demonization” of the Third Reich led, in the last two decades of research, to achievements without which our present understanding of important aspects of the Third Reich and the “Final Solution” would have been impossible. In his latest studies, however, some changes in his views, or emphasis, have appeared, which seem to raise new problems and question marks. Consequently, this postulate, significant in its own right, could be misinterpreted so that it might also lead to a certain kind of relativization of National Socialism and the “Final Solution.” This tendency of Mommsen, similar to that of Broszat, appears notwithstanding his being perhaps the most active and radical critic of Nolte and some other conservative German historians during the present Historians’ Dispute. Mommsen was one of the first to use the term Relativierung des Nalionalsozialismus in his polemic against Nolte’s claim that National-Socialist genocidal anti-Semitism was merely a reaction to Bolshevism. I quote here from his two important articles mentioned above (see fn. 35): For some time things are being presented differently. Suddenly not only the “singularity” of National Socialism is being denied, but also its crimes. The debate revolves around the evaluation of the “Holocaust.” Ernst Nolte pioneered this many years ago when he emphasized that the liquidation of millions of European Jews did not constitute a unique event in world history, but must be “relativized” in the perspective of universal history.35

Although Mommsen considers Nolte’s approach, at least from a methodological point of view, as being in line with the progressive tendency of research, he sharply criticizes its specific implications with regard to the alleged role of Bolshevism: With the demand to place National Socialism within larger historical contexts, Ernst Nolte is in line with historians who have adopted a more pronounced progressive position. When Unthinkable … ,” in: Gerhard Hirschfeld (ed.), The Politics of Genocide, London, Allen & Unwin. 1986, 93–144. 34 The two most important ones—“Suche nach der verlorenen Geschichte,” Merkur 40 (1986) and “Neues Geschichtsbewusstsein und Relativierung des Nationalsozialismus,” Blätter für deutsche und Internationale Politik (October 1986)—were published in Historikerstreit (as in fn. 13), 156–188, and Streit ums Geschichtsbild (as in fn. 13), 80–86, 95–105. 35 Historikerstreit (as in fn. 13), 174.

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he, at the same time, perceives genocide as a mere psychological counter-reaction to Lenin’s “White Terror” which is described as an “Asiatic action,” he moves, however, into a sphere in which all actions in any way directed against Bolshevism appear justified as such, and in which any concrete political responsibility disappears behind era-bound dispositions.36

Mommsen identifies this view as being nothing but the long since outdated “theory of the totalitarian dictatorship” from the period of the Cold War.37 Yet his own analysis of the totalitarian terror system of the Third Reich and the policy of the extermination of the Jews is heavily indebted to Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, written under the overwhelming impact of the last years of the Stalinist terror, and to her Eichmann in Jerusalem. Following Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil,” which in his view covers not only the mental and psychological conditions under which the “Final Soluttion” was implemented, but the process itself, he first of all excludes any decisive role of Hitler’s ideology. Mommsen claims that Hitler perceived the Jewish Question primarily in propagandistic terms and in a specific visionary context, while he did not show much interest, and certainly not much involvement, in the individual steps of the Nazi anti-Jewish policy.38 From here he proceeds to an interpretation of the annihilation process itself which, under the circumstances, may be understood as a farreaching relativization in two different spheres: (1) the genocide in Nazi Germany itself; and (2) the possibility of its recurrence in the future in other societies. With regard to the Third Reich itself, he sees the overwhelming impact of the totalitarian terror system and its impersonal bureaucratic character as inevitably bringing about the dehumanization not only of the Jewish victims but also of the perpetrators. Following Arendt, Mommsen talks about an adjustment in the mentality of the persecutors and the persecuted, particularly their organizations, who all became victims and “guilty” alike.39 As to the other sphere of what may be understood as relativization of the National-Socialist genocide, he foresees its potential recurrence in advanced industrial societies with their bureaucratic structures (cf. the closing passages in his “Realisierung des Utopischen,”, as in fn. 33, 420). However, as the only concrete example of a people presently threatened by genocide, Mommsen singles out the “Palestinian Arabs,” drawing, in a peculiar way, on Hannah Arendt’s 36 Ibid., 166. 37 Ibid., 174. 38 In addition to the above-mentioned recent articles, with regard to this, see also his “Adolf Hitler als ‘Führer’ der Nation,” Nationalsozialismus im Unterricht, Fernstudium Geschichte (DIFF Tübingen) 11 (1984). 39 From Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen, Munich, Piper, 1966. Mommsen’s introductory essay (hereafter: Mommsen, “Introd. essay”), xvii.

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Origins of Totalitarianism, where, in 1949, she dealt with the problem of “displaced persons” in the wake of World Wars I and II.40 In view of the complexities and the dangers of possible misinterpretation of Mommsen’s views elaborated particularly in his introductory essay to the new German edition of Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, a more detailed critical analysis of this stimulating study is called for here.41 The problematic issue actually already appears before Mommsen’s introduction—in the editor’s preface to the book. An excerpt, quoted from a letter by Karl Jaspers, introduces—on an apparently equal level—two central problems of Hannah Arendt’s book: “The subject of the cooperation of the Jews with the Nazis is one. The theme of the Germans carries equal weight.” The representative meaning of this presentation of the central problem of the whole book—as an attempt to interpret the historical process leading to the “Final Solution”—is unequivocally grounded by Mommsen on page ii: “It is obvious that she [Hannah Arendt] was concerned with an overall interpretation of the Holocaust.” Thus, the choice of the quotation can be understood as a declared relativization of the Holocaust, similar, in a way, to the much disputed title selected for Andreas Hillgruber’s Zweierlei Untergang. Die Zerschlagung des Deutschen Reiches und das Ende des europäischen Judentums (Two Kinds of Doom: The Destruction of the German Reich and the End of European Jewry, Berlin, 1986). It could be apprehended as comparing the situation and responsibility of the Jewish victims of the Nazi mass murder with those of the nation and state in whose name this mass murder was committed. The problem becomes particularly grave in Mommsen’s interpretation of Arendt’s central thesis “that through indoctrination and terror the totalitarian rule virtually conditions all the groups of the population so that they are equally fit for the role of the perpetrators as well as for the role of the victims” (p. xvii). As he further elaborates, “the assimilation (Angleichung) of the mentality of the perpetrators and the victims, originally postulated by Arendt, has been confirmed through a series of studies.” Of these studies Mommsen refers solely to Falk Pingel’s book on the concentration camps (Häftlinge unter SS-Herrschaft), which is actually irrelevant to the issue dealt with here, namely the problem of the Jewish organizations—the Reichsvertretung and Reichsvereinigung in Germany and the “Jewish Councils” in Eastern Europe. I think that for purely scientific reasons, as well as out of consideration for the audience of the younger German generation 40 Ibid., XIII. 41 The following remarks are based on an exchange of letters with Mommsen. Although he regarded some of my conclusions as overinterpreted, he nevertheless did not refute any substantial part of my criticism. The essay appears on pp. i–xxxvi of the Piper Series edition of the book (Munich, Piper, 1966).

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addressed by Mommsen at the end of his essay, at least a few of the most important works from the relevant comprehensive research literature published in the last decades should have been mentioned. This is all the more conspicuous when he comes to the other focal point of his essay—Arendt’s theses and arguments pertaining to German resistance—which he treats quite differently, invoking detailed and up to date literature in his thorough critical examination of this issue. Let me also mention in this connection that the subject of Jewish organizations and leadership under National-Socialist rule, which Mommsen terms “taboo,”42 has long ceased to be regarded as such. On the contrary, it has been the theme of open discussion and intense research activity by Jewish and non-Jewish scholars from Eastern and Western Europe and from America, as exemplified by the international symposium on the “Jewish Councils,” held in Jerusalem in April 1977. Out of the numerous, for Mommsen and his audience easily accessible publications, I would like to mention at least the following: Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe 1933–1945, Proceedings of the Third Yad Vashem International Historical Conference;43 Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat. The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation;44 Israel Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1942. Ghetto, Underground, Revolt;45 O. D. Kulka, “The Reichsvereinigung and the Fate of the German Jews, 1938/1939–1943,” in: Arnold Paucker et al. (eds.), Die Juden im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, 1933–1945;46 on Western Europe, for example: Richard I. Cohen, Burden of Conscience. French Jewish Leadership during the Holocaust,47 Relevant in some respects is also the comprehensive volume The Nazi Concentration Camps. Structure and Aims. The Image of the Prisoner. The Jews in the Camps, Proceedings of the Fourth Yad Vashem International Historical Conference;48 here also my article “Ghetto in an Annihilation Camp—Jewish Social History in the Years of the ‘Final Solution’ and Its Ultimate Limits.”49 I would like to add, however, that reference to the above-mentioned works would place the blunt thesis of Hannah Arendt, so persuasively advocated by Mommsen, in quite a different light. Rather than endorsing Arendt’s assumption that under the totalitarian regime the mentality of the perpetrators and the victims became

42 Mommsen, “Introd. essay” (as in fn. 39), xvii. 43 Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 1979. 44 New York, Macmillan, 1972. 45 Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1982. 46 Tübingen, Mohr, 1986, 353–363; see there also references to the Hebrew dissertation of Esriel Hildesheimer. 47 Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1987. 48 Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 1984. 49 Ibid., 315–330, (Chapter 11 of this book).

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unavoidably assimilated, the findings of this literature demonstrate that, even under the extreme circumstances of the totalitarian terror-regime, human society, and in this case Jewish society, retained its own values and dignity. The raison d’être of the Jewish organizations under Nazi rule, in their self-perception, was their effort to safeguard the material and spiritual existence of Jewish society, in all the stages of Nazi rule. Under the harshest conditions of the ghettos this became a desperate struggle to preserve the lives of the inmates and the human face of the community. In the face of the possible danger of distortion or relativization of the historical picture, it might be useful here to return to Broszat’s “Plea for a Historicization,” particularly in regard to the social history of the Third Reich. If we apply his methodological observations to the research into the social history of the Jews under National-Socialist rule, we should equally demand not to proceed here exclusively from the perspective of the “catastrophic end and end-situation,” but to deal with all of its aspects throughout the National-Socialist era and in the perspective of the continuity of Jewish history. In the light of my critical remarks on Broszat’s article, it should, however, not have excluded the need to examine the various quasi-normal aspects of life from their perspective of the unique duality of the historical situation. This duality encompasses the continuity of internal Jewish life and activities in the face of the radically changing social and political status, the gradually emerging prospect of the end of Jewish existence in Germany, in German-occupied Europe, and ultimately the impending total physical destruction. This appears to me to be the necessary corrective of Mommsen’s highly inadequate and even distorting treatment of Jewish communal life, organizations and leadership in the Third Reich, which also implies a corrective of Broszat’s stimulating methodological approach. Let us now turn to another problematic issue in Mommsen’s essay dealing with the prospective future genocide, relating to the possibly reverted roles of victims-perpetrators and deduced from the historical “Final Solution.” On page xiii of the introductory essay to Eichmann in Jerusalem, Mommsen turns to Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism in order to describe its preconditions (die Vorbedingung der späteren Vernichtung): “the gradual outlawing of the expatriated and the stateless who lost not only their citizenship, but also their legal rights and their homeland.” An examination of the pertinent passages (pp. 289–290 in The Origins) reveals that for Mommsen, as well as all other scholars of the Third Reich, including Hannah Arendt, the procedure described there must be regarded as an utterly indefensible explanation for the “Final Solution”: first to reduce the German Jews to a non-recognized minority in Germany, then to drive them as stateless people across the borders, and finally to gather them back from everywhere in order to ship them to extermination camps.

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The policy of emigration definitely had other purposes; the majority of Jews deported from Germany to the extermination camps never emigrated; the same is certainly true for the millions of Jews deported to the extermination camps from other countries, or those murdered without deportation. Hence Mommsen’s attempt to find a parallel in the process of creating the phenomenon of “displaced persons” in the postwar period, “a modern fate which as such carried the danger of a new genocide” (Mommsen’s introdctory essay, p. xiii), is more than questionable. The most disconcerting fact is that from all the examples brought by Arendt of “refugees and stateless people … since the peace treaties of 1919 and 1920” and the post-World War II period, including the millions on the Indian subcontinent (The Origins, p. 290), Mommsen relates only to one case. In his formulation: “The expulsion of Palestinian Arabs appeared to her as a bad omen for a possible continuation of the cycle [of genocide] … ”50 The comparison of Arendt’s original text and Mommsen’s paraphrase clearly indicates that she did not use the term “genocide,” as claimed by Mommsen, and, obviously, did not relate here to this issue at all. She also did not repeat her reflections of 1949 in her book on Eichmann, even though, or perhaps precisely because, it deals with the “Final Solution” as its main topic. However, it becomes clear to all of Mommsen’s readers that the foreseen potential genocide of the Palestinian Arabs would be perpetrated by the nation of the former victims of the National-Socialist “Final Solution.” The “evidence” for the juxtaposition of this nation with that of the perpetrators of the “Final Solution” must be understood as the ultimate relativization of the so far historically unique phenomenon of the “Final Solution”. This was certainly not Mommsen’s intention and therefore one finds it hard to understand why he decided to create this construction, and paraphrase, in his own way, these rather problematic passages from The Origins of Totalitarianism. Parenthetically I wish to mention that a similar comparison of the National-Socialist “Final Solution” with the potential mass murder in Palestine, 50 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, Harcourt, 1951, 290: “ … like virtually all other events of our century, the solution of the Jewish question merely produced a new category of refugees, the Arabs, thereby increasing the number of the stateless and rightless by another 700,000 to 800,000 people. And what happened in Palestine within the smallest territory and in terms of hundreds of thousands was then repeated in India on a large scale involving many millions of people. Since the Peace Treaties of 1919 and 1920 the refugees and the stateless have attached themselves like a curse to all the newly established states on earth which were created in the image of the nation-stale. For these new states this curse bears the germs of a deadly sickness. For the nation-state cannot exist once its principle of equality before the law has broken down.” In Mommsen’s paraphrase (“Introd. essay,” xiii): “She regarded the statelessness as a modern fate, which as such entailed the danger of a renewed genocide (Völkermord). The expulsion of Palestinian Arabs appeared to her to be a bad omen for the possibility of a continuing cycle.”

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made by Nolte in “Between Myth and Revisionism,” was justifiably met by strong criticism and indignation. As we saw, Mommsen himself sharply criticized Nolte for the use of such a juxtaposition and the assumption of a “causal nexus” especially with regard to the “Judeo-Bolshevist” and National-Socialist mass murders. But here there is another point worth mentioning in comparing the essentially incomparable. Nolte’s panopticum of genocidal phenomena throughout the world relativizes the “Final Solution” in the context of past and present events. Mommsen’s totally different methodological approach and ethical point of departure make it possible to take the “Final Solution,” hitherto regarded by him as a unique historical event, and relativize it as a part of the future perspective. He bases his view on the one hand on the assumption of the relevance of a situation in which modern industrial society is threatened by the all-embracing impersonal violence inherent in its bureaucratic structure, which he believes may be deduced from the nature of the Third Reich. On the other hand, he deduces the most far-reaching relativization, or transformation, of the mentality and historical position of the nation of the victims of that hitherto unparalleled genocide, from the hitherto too singular experience undergone by the nation of the perpetrators. I believe that such attempts to experiment with perceptions of the future may involve the danger that their real meaning and motivations may be misconstrued.

IV In order to restore some balance to the historiographical picture, I have to mention at least some of the most important recent works of those German scholars who continued to explore or reestablish meaningful concepts of the historical singularity of National Socialism, in spite of, or along with, the present tendencies of relativization. One of them is the concise study by the late Klaus Scholder, “Judaism and Christianity in the Ideology and Politics of National Socialism.”51 Here, Scholder reexamines and further develops the basic concepts of the centrality of anti-Semitism and its far-reaching significance for the fate of the Churches, elaborated in the monumental first volume of his history of the Churches in the Third Reich.52 In this context he also deals with the complexities and contradictions 51 Appeared posthumously in the comprehensive volume: O. D. Kulka and Paul Mendes-Flohr (eds.), Judaism and Christianity under the Impact of National Socialism 1919–1945, Jerusalem, Shazar Center, 1987. 52 Klaus Scholder, Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich. Vol. 1: Vorgeschichte und Zeit der Illusionen 1918–1934, Frankfurt/M., Propyläen Verlag, 1977. (English edition: The Churches and the Third Reich, London, SCM Press, 1987.)

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of long-term ideological goals and practical politics, and the close link between the “Jewish” and the “Christian Question” in the self-perception of the Christian population of Germany and its leadership under the Third Reich. I limit myself to a quote from his closing lines: On July 11–12, 1941 in a lapidary phrase, Hitler declared; “The hardest blow that humanity has had to bear is Christianity; Bolshevism is the illegitimate son of Christianity; both were born of the Jews …” For Hitler the root of all evil was and remained Judaism. Because of this, the Jews were the first to feel his hate and his will to annihilate. As time went by, however, Christianity followed ever more closely behind, labeled as a Jewish invention. The Jewish and Christian Questions in the Third Reich were thus much more closely linked than the Christian Churches were willing to acknowledge. Only Hitler’s defeat in the war spared the Christians a violent realization of this fact. The second work is the recently published book of Eberhard Jäckel, Hitlers Herrschaft. Vollzug einer Weltanschauung,53 which reexamines and further develops his above-mentioned basic study, Hitler’s Weltanschauung. Entwurf einer Herrschaft (1969). Here too, the basic ideological concepts, explored in the previous work, are examined in a detailed context of their political and administrative realization and social setting, thus reaching a rare synthesis of different methodological approaches. The use of comparative elements throughout the book, and the broad historical perspective of the last chapter, reestablish and re-accentuate the concept of singularity, in which the Jewish aspects dominate perhaps more than before. In Jäckel’s first contribution to the Historians’ Dispute in Die Zeit of September 12, 1986, he proposes a definition of this singularity which has meanwhile been adopted by the majority of German historians as an almost classical epitome of their own credo: This is not the first time I argue that the murder of Jews was unique because never before had a state, with the authority of its responsible leader, decided and announced its intention to liquidate as completely as possible a certain group of people, including the aged, women, children and babies, and to implement this decision by means of all the official instruments of power at its disposal.54

In his attempt to evaluate the results of the first year of the Historians’ Dispute, Jäckel arrives at the following conclusions: This thorough and critical preoccupation with our history and in particular with the Hitler era is not detrimental but rather beneficial, it is no weakness but rather a strength. Precisely

53 Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1986. 54 Historikerstreit, 118 (as in fn.13).

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this benefit and this strength should be taken from us by all those who would have us believe that we should step out of the shadow of the Third Reich, that we have to relativize it, normalize, historicize (historisieren)...55 To take upon oneself the responsibility … means to be honest and true, not to hush up anything, not to embellish, not to repress. Only when we take upon ourselves this responsibility can we walk upright. We then achieve freedom for ourselves and respect throughout the world.56

I wish to close with another, most recent, critical evaluation of the Historians’ Dispute, which, in spite of the different methodological approach of its author— the outstanding German social historian Jürgen Kocka—arrives at similar conclusions: there are certain attempts to achieve a greater acceptability of our past which cannot be permitted in professional terms. Distortions like Nolte’s speculation on the anti-Bolshevik and defensive character of the Holocaust violate the standards of historical scholarship. Comparison must not be misused to relativize and trivialize the Nazi experience…. I would argue that a clear and lively recollection of the most disastrous period of our history does not paralyze us as a political society. It may well be the opposite. For many of us, a critical awareness of the Nazi period has been a major motivation for political, scholarly, and intellectual commitments and activities…. As Habermas and others have argued, one of the basic elements of the political culture of the Federal Republic of Germany (and also of the GDR) is stressing the difference between itself and the National-Socialist past. In this respect, any relativization of the National-Socialist past has the potential of undermining a certain element of the political culture of the Federal Republic.57

Appendix From a letter to Ernst Nolte, Jerusalem, July 18, 198658 (…)Let it be made quite clear that murder and brutality as such, against whichever human beings or groups, are, naturally, murder and brutality, and it is immaterial whether the Jews are the largest group exterminated by the National Socialists or not. The same applies to the atrocities and genocidal actions perpetrated by various other regimes against other population groups.

55 “Die Deutschen und ihre Geschichte,” in: Titus Häusermann (ed.), Die Bundesrepublik und die deutsche Geschichte, Stuttgart, Radius, 1987, 19. 56 Ibid., 20. 57 J. Kocka, “The Weight of the Past in Germany’s Future,” in: German Politics and Society: The Historikerstreit 13 (February 1988), 22–29; quote from 26–27. 58 The original German text of this letter is included in my FR article (as in fn. 18). For Nolte’s preceding letter and his answer, see Das Vergehen (as in fn. 13), 128–135.

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The uniqueness of the National-Socialist mass murder of Jews must be understood in the world-historical sense attributed to it—as an attempt to bring about a change in the course of universal history and its goals. Thus, National-Socialist Antisemitism must be regarded as an expression of perhaps the most dangerous crisis of Western civilization with the potentially gravest consequences for the history of mankind … If I come back, once again, to your explanation of the discrepancy in your studies of Fascism, the Third Reich and the “Final Solution” as a “shift of emphasis,” then the question inevitably arises about the motivation and driving forces of this changed perspective. I think they may be found in your description of the present situation of the Federal Republic, the self-understanding of its society and the need to find a new understanding of German history from this perspective. In this regard, I refer to your following statement [in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of June 6, 1986]: “The more unequivocally the Federal Republic of German and Western society in general develop into welfare societies, the more alien becomes the picture of the Third Reich with its ideology … ” (Historikerstreit (as in fn. 13), 39). The unique nature of the Third Reich and the “Final Solution,” and the centrality of anti-Semitism inevitably appear here as something which on no account explains the normality of present-day society, nor has any meaningful connection with it. It is much easier, by contrast, to make an apparently possible comparison with the genocidal phenomenon in its different manifestations elsewhere, in our day … In one of my letters I asserted that the reexamination of your theses from the sixties does not proceed in a historiographic vacuum. I am thinking of parallel tendencies such as those in Martin Broszat’s “Plädoyer für eine Historisierung des National-sozialismus” (Merkur, May 1985) or Hans Mommsen’s “Adolf Hitler als ‘Führer’ der Nation” (1984) (as in fn. 38). Here, however, we are dealing, rather, with a “shift” in the emphasis on the “normal” aspects of domestic history than with a global perspective which you have outlined. (…)

14 The Historikerstreit from a Personal Retrospective. On the “Case Nolte” and his Generation Introduction I felt much honored, yet at the same time embarrassed, when I was asked to deliver the keynote at this conference of German and Israeli Historians.1 The reason is twofold. First, during the past couple of years I have been occupied largely with my außerwissenschaftliches (extra scientific) book2 and have not kept abreast with current historiographical developments in German history. The second reason is that the subject proposed to me focused on a particular case in which I was personally involved. In the end, though, I decided to accept for yet a third reason. Namely, that of all the historians participating in this conference I am the most senior, and as such represent the generations of historians who have shaped postwar research on National Socialism during more than half a century since its beginnings in the 1960s. Allow me to begin with an extract from the address I gave at the University of Munich on the occasion of the awarding of the Geschwister Scholl Award for the German edition of the book I have already referred to, my Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death. Although in my research I always strictly separated my biographical from the historical past, in this book I explore my personal memory and reflect on it as a historian. I quote from the Munich address: “The Metropolis of Death” and the “Immutable Law of the Great Death” are metaphors used in my book, for what emerged in Auschwitz as the quintessential feature of National Socialist ideology, which threatened at the time to engulf Europe and extend even further. It was an attempt to change the course of human history, in keeping with the core of this ideology—the so-called redemptive anti-Semitism and its teleological goal of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” and the obliteration of the so-called Jewish spirit.

The fundamental idea of Judaism, namely the unity of the world and the equality of all human beings, was a conception that spread within Judeo-Christian civilization and manifested in secular form as the universalistic ideas of democracy, liberalism and socialism. This was diametrically opposed to the National 1 The Annual International Conference of the Richard Koebner Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; 2–3 November 2014: “A Century of War, A Century of Debates: Historians Debate German History.” 2 Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death. Reflections on Memory and Imagination, London, 2013 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-015

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Socialist worldview, with its belief in the inequality of races, their hierarchy, and the eternal struggle of survival and annihilation of the world’s peoples. The historical high point of the aim of the total destruction of the Jewish spirit and its representatives, the Jews, occurred in the Metropolis of the Great Death— Auschwitz—at the time of its existence. Towards the mid-1960s, scarcely more than 15 years after the end of Nazi Germany, I was a young historian and one of the first Israeli researchers who ventured the step, then unusual, of going to Germany, in order to work on my dissertation. I perused numerous archives and libraries in both parts of divided Germany of the time, and began a dialogue with some young historians of the first generation of postwar graduates from West German universities. These included, on the German side, Martin Broszat, Hans Mommsen and somewhat later, Eberhard Jäckel. On the Israeli side, Shlomo Aronson and Saul Friedländer were also a part of that dialogue, and we all worked closely with the somewhat younger British historian Ian Kershaw. Through our joint cooperation, and also independently from one another, we tried to lay the foundations of scholarly research of the Nazi era and the fate of European Jewry. However, German historiography remained for a long time one-dimensional and almost exclusively focused on the persecution and annihilation of the Jews. We Israelis pursued a more multidimensional approach. Along with probing the ideology and politics of the regime, we also investigated the attitudes of the German population toward the regime’s so-called Judenpolitik and toward the Jews themselves. Over and above that, the life and self-perception of the Jewish community and its representative organizations under the Nazi regime were included within the purview of our studies. Over time, an exchange developed in which German historians, including Eberhard Jäckel, Hans Mommsen, Wolfgang Schieder, Michael Wildt, Ulrich Herbert and Susanne Heim, taught at Israeli universities and likewise joined in research at the Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem. In 2004, cooperation with Eberhard Jäckel and our two teams of assistants at the universities in Jerusalem and Stuttgart led to the publication of our extensive documentary edition Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, published in an extended English edition in 2010 as The Jews in the Secret Nazi Reports on Popular Opinion in Germany, (1933–1945). To my mind, the most recent echo of this dialogue is the monumental work Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945, currently being edited and published by Ulrich Herbert, Susanne Heim and their teams of associates. In this documentation project, which is planned to comprise 16 volumes, all the

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dimensions mentioned above are taken into account and applied to the history of all the Nazi-occupied countries in Europe. Those beginnings, which go back to the 1960s, also evidently shaped our shared way in the present.” – So far the excerpt from my address in Munich.

The Case of Nolte from a Personal Retrospective You may be wondering why the event of the Historikerstreit is not mentioned in this address, even though I was one of its initiators and active participants; and why I am not speaking about the role of my longstanding relationship with Ernst Nolte. The reason is that the whole dispute seems to me unproductive from today’s perspective, at least from a historiographical point of view, or for its effect on further research. This, of course, is not the case in regard to the ethical questions it implies. I dwelt upon the various aspects concerning this in my article “Singularity and its Relativization. Changing Views in German Historiography on National Socialism and the ‘Final Solution’”, published in Yad Vashem Studies in 19883 and reprinted in the Harvard Press collection of essays on the historians’ debate.4 In this paper, I wish to go beyond that dispute and reconstruct a strange chapter of personal relations and exchange of views in letters between me and Nolte, stretching across two decades (from 1968 until 1987). It all began while I was developing my central thesis, or even before, during my studies, in 1959. Reading Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, I was struck by one sentence in her introduction: It must be possible to face and understand the outrageous fact that so small (and, in world-politics, so unimportant) a phenomenon as the Jewish question and antisemitism could become the catalytic agent for first, the Nazi movement, then a world war, and finally the establishment of death factories.5

I agreed with her about the paradox—the relative unimportance of Jewish existence as a reality, yet the Jews’ demonization as a threat in the world-historical dimension—but found untenable her historical explanations for this phenomenon. However, much later, while doing the empirical research for my dissertation, I found unambiguous proof (in archival and published sources from Hitler himself, 3 Yad Vashem Studies XIX (1988), 151–186. 4 Peter Baldwin (ed.), Reworking the Past. Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historians’ Debate, Beacon Press, Boston, 1990, 146–170; (Chapter 13 of this book). 5 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, Meridian Books, 1958, viii.

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the SD and other sources) for exactly this centrality of the “Jewish Question” in National Socialist ideology and politics. But at a certain point I began to ask myself whether I had arrived at this understanding, of the centrality of the Jewish Question, for subjective reasons related to my writing and thinking as a Jewish historian. Just then, I encountered a no less persuasive representation of the same thesis in an unexpected source. I refer to Nolte’s book Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche, published in 1963.6 Nolte recognized the far-reaching significance of this centrality and discerned its connection with other aspects of Hitler’s thought and political goals. According to Nolte, Hitler understood “Judaism” as a focal point and as a key to what I may call the bipolar unity of his anti-Christian and anti-democratic view, in which Judaism was perceived as the absolute enemy and destroyer of the natural state of society. Its victory would bring about the destruction of Germany and an apocalyptic decline of peoples: National Socialism … has at its command forces which are born from the emancipation process and then turn against their own origin.7 Indeed, nothing would be further from the truth than to regard National Socialism as a doctrine of world salvation in the sense that all men were to be freed from want, danger or debt for their own sake. The world was to be cured of the Jewish-Christian Marxist doctrine of world redemption and converted to that absolute sovereignty which was to bind the slaves forever to their slave fate.8

According to Nolte, Hitler carries forward the anti-Jewish trends inherent in most great ideologies of the nineteenth century—but lacking their inherent restraints, he consistently strives to realize their ultimate logical consequences.9

6 Ernst Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche, Munich, R. Piper, 1963. The quotations here are from the English translation: The Three Faces of Fascism, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966 (hereafter: Three Faces). 7 Nolte, Three Faces (as in fn. 6), 453. 8 Ibid., 418. 9 Ibid., 332–333. This view of anti-Semitism has been exhaustively researched during the last decades. Cf. for example Shmuel Ettinger, “The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism,” in: Y. Gutman and L. Rothkirchen (eds.), The Catastrophe of European Jewry,Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 1976, 3–39; idem, “The Young Hegelians – A Source of Modern Anti-Semitism?” The Jerusalem Quarterly 28 (Summer 1983), 73–83; Léon Poliakov, Histoire de I’Antisémitisme 3: De Voltaire à Wagner, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1968; Hermann Greive, Geschichte des modernen Antisemitismus in Deutschland, Darmstadt, Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 1983. The epochal though distorted meaning of the historical backdrop to anti-Semitism stressed here by Nolte seems to refer back to Rauschning’s conversations with Hitler (see: Hermann Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler, Zürich, Europa-Verlag, 1940, 6–7 (hereafter: Rauschning, Gespräche)).

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Nolte arrived at an overall understanding of National Socialism as a twofold revolution whose universal message is the redemption of the world from two messianic creeds: the religious-conservative (Judeo-Christian) and the materialistic-secular (Judeo-Marxist). Against this background came the ultimate consequence, encapsulated in his much-quoted sentence: “Auschwitz was as firmly embedded in the principles of the National-Socialist race doctrine as the fruit in the seed … ”10 Nolte’s book was held in high regard by historians in both parts of Germany and abroad. I have included quotations from Nolte in my thesis and in my later publications about German historiography and his place in it.11 It was at this point that the correspondence between us began and possibly contributed to the decision of one of my teachers, the renowned Israeli historian of totalitarianism, Jacob Talmon, to invite Nolte to spend a semester at the Hebrew University’s Institute for Advanced Studies. We held several talks during his stay, and I invited him to lecture in one of my classes. Our correspondence continued for some time afterward, but to my great astonishment I gradually noticed a radical change in his previous views. I expressed my disconcertment at this development to him in a letter from 24th of November, 1985. His response was that his understanding of National Socialism and the “Final Solution” had not changed but had only undergone, as he said, a “shift of emphasis”. I quote here from my above mentioned letter and his answer, from December 18, 1985. In our letters we had discussed his recently published article, “Between Myth and Revisionism.” I wrote: I’d be giving you a false impression if I didn’t tell you about a certain confusion, yes even objection that this essay led to here in Israel. When comparing the essay ‘Between Myth and Revisionism’ with that from the Stuttgarter Zeitung,12 to say nothing of the text ‘Faschismus in seiner Epoche’, one simply must wonder which Ernst Nolte is the one meant here. He responded: in Jerusalem, this short essay appears quite striking. But it’s correct that, as they say in English, it contains an evident ‘shift of emphasis’. ... For that reason, I decided already last summer that proceeding from this essay, I’d present a new analysis. ... The basic thesis won’t change. ... Initially the whole piece has the form of lecture, but in the foreseeable future, a book could spring from this. Only then will it be possible to decide whether there are, so to speak, two ‘Ernst Noltes’.

10 Nolte, Three Faces (as in fn. 6), 359. 11 “Major Trends and Tendencies in German Historiography on National Socialism and the ‘Jewish Question’ 1924–84”, (Chapter 12 of this book). 12  Ernst Nolte, „Kein Halbgott, kein Dämon. Hitler —vierzig Jahre nach dem Selbstmord am 30. April 1945”, Stuttgarter-Zeitung, 20. April 1985.

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And indeed, the book mentioned here developed within only two years into a voluminous work, entitled: Der europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917–1945: Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus (1987). I needn’t go into detail about the well-known thesis elaborated in that book— but what did he mean by “shift of emphasis”? In fact, his exposition of the self-understanding of National Socialism and the centrality of the Jewish Question remained unchanged. What did change, almost diametrically, was his ethical approach and value judgment. What he had previously presented, amid a clear denunciation of Nazi ideology and deeds—namely the imaginary apocalyptical threat supposedly residing in the Jews’ physical existence and in the so-called Jewish spirit within European culture, invoked by Nazism as a pretext to their elimination—he now described as a real threat. In other words, those who were previously seen as the victims of the annihilation, were now blamed for their initial declaration of war of annihilation on Germany and all it represented, directly by the Jews and indirectly by their offspring Bolshevism. In addition, Nolte’s previous understanding of the singularity of the Final Solution was relativized: it now became a copy of the original “asiatische Tat” (Asiatic act) committed by Bolshevism. The extermination of the Jews was categorized as just one case of contemporary mass murder in the twentieth century, be it the war in Vietnam or Afghanistan. I quote now from a later letter to Nolte, of July 1986, in which I made the following observations about this turning point: (...) Let it be made quite clear that murder and brutality as such, against whichever human beings or groups, are, naturally, murder and brutality, and it is immaterial whether the Jews are the largest group exterminated by the National Socialists or not. The same applies to the atrocities and genocidal actions perpetrated by various other regimes against other population groups. The uniqueness of the National-Socialist mass murder of the Jews must be understood in the world-historical sense attributed to it—as an attempt to bring about a change in the course of universal history and its goals. Thus, National-Socialist anti-Semitism must be regarded as an expression of perhaps the most dangerous crisis of Western civilization with the potentially gravest consequences for the history of mankind.... If I come back, once again, to your explanation of the discrepancy in your studies of Fascism, the Third Reich and the ‘Final Solution’ as a ‘shift of emphasis’, then the question inevitably arises about the motivation and driving forces of this changed perspective.13

13 The original German text of this letter is included in my article “Der Umgang des Historikers Ernst Nolte mit Briefen aus Israel”, Frankfurter Rundschau of November 5, 1987 (hereafter: Kulka, FR). For Nolte’s preceding letter and his answer, see: Ernst Nolte, Das Vergehen der Vergangenheit. Antwort an meine Kritiker im sogenannten Historikerstreit, Berlin, Piper, 1987, 128–135.

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At a certain point in our dispute, we agreed upon the publication of our correspondence. However, Nolte in a clear breaking the rules, published his letters to me without my knowledge, while “briefly paraphrasing” mine. Quote: “Und ihre [Briefe] habe ich kurz paraphrasiert.” In his book, Das Vergehen der Vergangenheit. Antwort an meine Kritiker im sogenannten Historikerstreit, I was said to represent Israeli historians, and he selectively paraphrased excerpts from our earlier correspondence while almost completely ignoring my later critical argumentation. The impression that ensued was that my assessment of his views, unlike that of most German historians, was by and large positive. In the wake of this development, I decided to make public the full text of some of my letters, as will perhaps be recalled from my extensive article in the Frankfurter Rundschau at the time.14 Nolte went on writing to me and sending me his books and articles, but I declined to respond.

The Unresolved Question This part of the Historikerstreit is well known, but the unresolved question remains: How was it possible that in his Faschismus in seiner Epoche Nolte had been able to penetrate the self-understanding of Nazi ideology and its goals and to expose them perhaps like no one else before. The answer, I think, is that Nolte, who was born in1923, achieved an understanding of National Socialist ideology in real time, so to speak, internalizing it during his university studies in the first half of the 1940s, particularly under Heidegger at the University of Freiburg. From this point of view, it seems to me that a first “shift of emphasis” already occurred in the immediate postwar period. It took the form of a change in the ethical perspective from which he analyzed and interpreted essentially the same ideology. The “shift of emphasis” which he acknowledged decades later represented an additional stage in his revised ethical approach with its attendant new political implications.

The Generation of Nolte Among the historians, a similarly deep understanding and interpretation of National Socialist ideology and politics, as well as of the centrality of the “Final

14 Kulka, FR (as in fn. 13).

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Solution”, can be found in the work of an outstanding scholar from the same generation. I refer to Andreas Hillgruber, who was born in 1925. In his monumental work Hitlers Strategie, Politik und Kriegführung 1940–1941 (published in 1965), and his concise study Deutschlands Rolle in den beiden Weltkriegen (1967), as well as in the seminal article “‘Die Endlösung’ und das deutsche Ostimperium als Kernstück des rassenideologischen Programms des Nationsozialismus,” published in 1972—all of which are based on administrative, diplomatic and military sources—predominance is given to the central and decisive role of the struggle of annihilation against the Jews and Judaism as a factor in Hitler’s major decisions. I was much impressed to find that Hillgruber’s careful methodology of empirical and philological research has led him to similar conclusions. It is possible that Hillgruber, who has been as well in his intellectually formative age a contemporary of the National Socialist rule, was potentially predisposed to penetrate its essence. But unlike Nolte, he consequently never changed his ethical stand until his untimely death in 1989. His last concise contribution was an article, published at my initiative in Yad Vashem Studies in 1986, independently but simultaneously with the onset of the Historikerstreit: „The Extermination of the European Jews in Its Historical Context—a Recapitulation”.15 I wish to quote from this article, which was based on the lecture Hillgruber was honored to conclude with the great International Conference “On the Murder of the Jews in the Second World War. Decision Making and Realization”16—in May 1984 in Stuttgart: The murder of the European Jews was at the center of Hitler’s ‘racial revolution’ … through the ‘Final Solution’ carried out throughout Europe.17 … The beginning of the war in September 1939 was nevertheless the first turning point and the preliminary to the ‘biological revolution’ which was an integral part of Hitler’s ‘program’ and was regarded by him as his ‘historical,’ pseudo-religious ‘mission.’18 The ultimate aim was … to return to history its meaning, of which it had been deprived by ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ and the Jews in the Western ‘plutocracies.’19

15 Yad Vashem Studies 17 (1986), 1–15 (hereafter: Hillgruber, “The Extermination of the European Jews”). 16 Der Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Entschlussbildung und Verwirklichung, Stuttgart, 1985. 17 Hillgruber, “The Extermination of the European Jews” (as in fn. 15), 14. 18 Ibid., 11. 19 Ibid.

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And he closes with a statement: The obvious ease with which people in the civilized world of the twentieth century could be convinced to commit such crimes, to manipulate people … to kill thousands … is the most disquieting aspect, and the fact that so many of them were university graduates, the most frightening.20

This generation also produced another outstanding German historian who devoted his life work to the study of National Socialism. Martin Broszat, who was born in 1926, encountered the National Socialist reality at a formative period of his intellectual growth. Indeed, he even most probably applied to join the Nazi Party in 1944, at the age of 18, an act that certainly cannot be ascribed to simple opportunism. In his 1960 small book—Nationalsozialismus. Weltanschauung Programm und Wirklichkeit—Broszat tried to prove that no coherent National Socialist world view existed, rather the Nazi movement and its leadership aimed at a propagandistic manipulation of the masses. Here, Broszat followed the well-trodden path of intellectual critics and opponents of Nazism, which was carved out in the Weimar Republic and continued until after the war. In his later works he did not pay much attention to the study of Nazi ideology, focusing mainly on the social history of the Third Reich and the structure and functioning of the regime. We developed a personal friendship and professional collaboration that started during my early research work at the Institute of Zeitgeschichte and actually predated my exchange with Nolte. Our common interest was in discovering and evaluating source material on everyday life in Nazi Germany, in which I focused on the German population’s attitude toward the Jews. This new research perspective was made possible by the discovery of secret Nazi reports on popular opinion, covering all aspects of everyday life. In the 1970s, when Broszat conceptualized his major “Bayern Projekt”21 and paid a visit to Jerusalem, he suggested that I write the chapter Antisemitismus und Volksmeinung. Reaktion auf die Judenverfolgung and another chapter of selected documents on this subject. However, I regretfully had to decline, as I was already committed to my own major project on this subject.22 Along with our shared views, our approaches differed on some points. My project was not limited to Bayern and its archival source material, but encompassed the whole of Germany within the 1937 borders. To that end, I collected

20 Ibid., 15 21 Martin Broszat et al (eds.), Bayern in der NS-Zeit. Soziale Lage und politisches Verhalten der Bevölkerung im Spiegel vertraulicher Berichte, München, 1977 ff. (hereafter: Bayern in der NSZeit). 22 Kulka/ Jäckel (eds.), Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945, Düsseldorf, 2004 (hereafter: Kulka/ Jäckel).

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material from both West and East Germany of that time, as well as from the former German provinces that were now part of Poland. Not only has this marked the difference, but also my concept of studying everyday life as it appeared in this kind of source material. I was interested not only in the reactions of the population to the regime’s anti-Jewish policy, but also documented and researched the so-called “pressure from below” generated by the population’s increasing social exclusion of the Jews, as well as the everyday violence against them. The secret Nazi reports on popular opinion also included rich and detailed information on the everyday life, activities and self-perceptions of the Jews, which became integral to my project. Thus, I was able to follow the creation of an alternative society of the Jews with their own institutions of education, culture, social work, employment services, etc.23 Broszat did not seem much interested in including this aspect in his Bayern Project, and according to his concept, in both articles dealing with the Jews this relevant information in the reports was simply bracketed out.24 Apart from these sources, I discovered as well the presumably lost archives of the “Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland”—the central organization of the Jews in Nazi Germany—and told him enthusiastically about them. This material enabled me to write my book Deutsches Judentum unter dem Nationalsozialismus. Again, Broszat showed little practical interest, with the exception of the first-hand statistical data of emigration and deportations. I pondered this attitude already in 1965, when he published his book: Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik 1939–1945, from which he excluded the part of Nazi policy that was directed against the Jews and their extermination. He circumvented the distinctive, unprecedented nature of the annihilation policy toward the Jews in the following formulation in his introduction: the role and the fate of the Ukrainians, the Jews and the Volksdeutschen … will be only occasionally touched upon, but has to be omitted in its overall context.25

23 Apart of the many hundreds of relevant documents in the book Kulka/Jäckel (as in fn. 22), cf. also the article based on these sources: O.D. Kulka, “Jewish Society in Germany as Reflected in Secret Nazi Reports on ‘Public Opinion’ 1933–1943”, in: Moshe Zimmermann (ed.), On Germans and Jews under the Nazi Regime. Essays by Three Generations of Historians, Jerusalem, The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2006, 261–279. (Chapter 9 of this book) 24 Cf. Falk Wiesemann: “Judenverfolgung und nichtjüdische Bevölkerung”, in: Bayern in der NS-Zeit (as in fn. 21), Volume 1, Chapter 5: Dokumente, 427–486; Ian Kershaw: “Antisemitismus und Volksmeinung. Reaktion auf die Judenverfolgung”, in: Ibid., Volume 2, 281–348. 25 Full quote from the German original: “Die polnische Seite des Geschehens, etwa die Geschichte des polnischen Untergrundes, aber auch die Rolle und das Schicksal der Ukrainer, der

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For Broszat, as for many German historians, the Jews were only regarded as an object of Nazi overall policy, an object of decision making on their persecution and annihilation. Their existence and every-day life in Nazi Germany was not regarded a subject for research at all. It also was not the meaning of National Socialist perception of Jews and Judaism, but rather the dynamic of its bureaucratic implementation that interested him. And perhaps, consciously or unconsciously, he abstained and flinched from exposing himself again and to cope with his own experience in the early stages of his life? At the end it seems impossible to me not to mention a particularly painful matter. I am referring to the public exchange of letters between Martin Broszat and Shaul Friedländer, and Broszat’s regrettable creation of the so-called “mythical Jewish memory”. Through this he ostensibly made Jewish historians an obstacle to the authentic study of National Socialism in German history, and in fact delegitimized them. This would of course exclude not only Friedländer and myself, but also our somewhat younger Jewish colleagues such as Dan Diner and Moshe Zimmermann in Israel, or Michael Meyer and Omer Bartov abroad, and in fact delegitimized any Jewish historian as such. In the framework of this paper I will not be able to go into the details of my high appreciation as well as the critique of Broszat’s life’s work. I have, however, considered his work in two articles, one in the Historische Zeitschrift of 1985, “Die deutsche Geschichtsschreibung über den Nationalsozialismus und die ‘Endlösung’ 1924–1984”,26 and another one in Yad Vashem Studies of 1988.27

The Younger Generation and the Return of the Study of Antisemitism The return of German historiography to the study of the ideological factor in National Socialism, and in particular of the role of antisemitism occurred, indirectly, in the wake of the Goldhagen debate, during the second half of 1996. Goldhagen’s unsustainable thesis of the quasi-determinist drive of German antisemitism from the nineteenth century to the Final Solution was justifiably critiqued. Still, some of the most profiled participants in the dispute, such as Ulrich Herbert (born 1951), noted that his book had the effect of placing this almost Juden und der Volksdeutschen in diesem Raum wird bei unserer Betrachtung nur gelegentlich gestreift, muss aber in ihrem Gesamtzusammenhang außer Betracht bleiben” (8). 26 Historische Zeitschrift 240 (June 1985), 559–640. 27 “Singularity and Its Relativization. Changing Views in German Historiography on National Socialism and the ‘Final Solution’”, Yad Vashem Studies XIX (1988), 151–186 (Chapter 13 of this book).

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forgotten subject back on the agenda. And indeed, Herbert’s seminal study on Best, Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft (1996), appeared exactly, though independently, at the same time. Herbert’s study focused on the role of ideology, and antisemitism as its essential ingredient, within the post-World War I generation of German university students—those right-wing intellectuals who later became the leading echelon of the RSHA, the main responsible institution for the realization of the Final Solution. This view was further developed in Michael Wildt’s (born 1954) collective biography of the Generation des Unbedingten —Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes, published in 2002. A parallel development also took place outside Germany, particularly in the works of the former “moderate Structuralist,” Broszat disciple and longstanding intellectual friend of mine, the British historian Ian Kershaw (born 1943). I need only quote from his 2007 work, Fateful Choices. The Decisions that Changed the World 1940–1941: The Nazi image of the Jew went way beyond conventional hatreds. It presupposed the Jew as nothing less than the supreme existential danger... In fact, the Jew stood for a world which was totally anathema to Nazism, a set of moral values which had filtered through both Judaism and Christianity to form the foundations of the civilization that, as he repeatedly made plain, Hitler wanted to eradicate. In this sense, Nazism amounted to an apocalyptic vision of a renewed nation and society which would arise out of the destruction and eradication of the corrosive values epitomized by the Jew. It was no less than a fundamental attempt to change the course of history, to attain national redemption by eliminating not only all Jewish influence, but the Jews themselves.28

No less impressive was Shaul Friedländer’s Nazi Germany and the Jews, a twovolume work (1997 and 2007), in which he developed and actually coined the term “redemptive antisemitism” and its centrality in Nazi ideology. All these works cannot be categorized simplistically—and artificially –as “intentionalist”, since their approaches are clearly integrative. They devote the same attention to the history of German society under National Socialism and the structure of the regime. In Friedländer’s work the history and structure of Jewish society in that time is reflected as well. I myself have never left the path of my original understanding of National Socialist ideology and the quasi-eschatological meaning of its “Final Solution”, but as initially stated regard it as just one, albeit dominant, historical dimension. (In this regard,) I would like to close with something I said in a recent interview following the publication of Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death:

28 436.

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A very fine, oft-quoted saying addresses the fact that the Holocaust was perpetrated by humans to humans. But this is no more than a truism. The Holocaust was perpetrated by humans who devoted themselves to or were ruled by an ideology. After this ideology and its regime collapsed, these very same humans returned to being liberal, ordinary, decent citizens of a democratic system.

15 In Search of History and Memory. Excerpts from Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death In the last part of this volume, I choose to reprint excerpts from the manuscript of my personal, extra-scientific reflections, which later appeared in my book Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death. I assume that readers of my historical publications identify my way unequivocally with the attitude of the strict and impersonal remoteness of research, which is always conducted within well-defined historical categories, as a kind of self-contained method unto itself. But only few are aware of the existence of a dimension of silence, of the choice I made to sever the biographical from the historical past. And fewer still know that for the past ten years I have been making audiotape recordings of the images that well up in my memory, exploring remembrance of what in my private mythology is called “The Metropolis of Death,” or in deceptive simplicity: “Childhood Landscapes of Auschwitz.” This is neither historical testimony nor autobiographical memoir; it is the reflections of a person between his late-fifties and sixties, turning over in his mind those fragments of memory and imagination that have remained from the world of the wondering child of ten to eleven that I then was. These texts, though anchored in a concrete historical event, transcend the sphere of history. The historical scene was a site called the “Family Camp” (Familienlager) of the Jews from Theresienstadt at Auschwitz-Birkenau, mainly in the children’s and youth block that existed there for nearly a year, until the final liquidation of the camp and almost all its inhabitants in the summer of 1944.1 The last two chapters of the following excerpts are reflections dealing with immanent confrontations between images of memory and the representation of historical research.

1 On the history of the camp, see my article based on the available documentary material on this special camp: “Ghetto in an Annihilation Camp: Jewish Social History in the Holocaust Period and its Ultimate Limits,” in: Yisrael Gutman (ed.), The Nazi Concentration Camps: Structure and Aims, the Image of the Prisoner, the Jews in the Camps, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 1984, 315–330 (Chapter 11 of this book). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-016

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A Prologue that could also be an Epilogue2 The start of this journey – I don’t know where it will lead me – is utterly prosaic, strictly routine: an international scientific conference in Poland, in 1978, at which I was one of several Israeli participants. It was held under the auspices of the International Committee of Historical Sciences, specifically the section on comparative history of religion. Our group consisted of one medievalist, one 18th century specialist, and me, from the modern era, and another historian to whom the Poles refused entry because he was a former Polish citizen and by immigrating to Israel had “betrayed the homeland.” The conference went pretty much as conferences go. True, my lecture was quite innovative and generated considerable interest,3 but that passed. Afterward the conference hosts organized trips to the far corners of the country – to Krakow, to Lublin, and to the beautiful places that are intended for tourists. I told my colleagues that I would not be going with them, but would follow a route of my own and go to visit Auschwitz. Well, a Jew going to visit Auschwitz – there’s nothing unusual in that, though at the time it wasn’t the fashion it is today. One of my colleagues, the medievalist, whom I had known for quite a few years from the field of our academic work, told me, “You know, when you go to Auschwitz, don’t stay in the main camp, which is a kind of museum. If you’re going already, go to Birkenau – that is the real Auschwitz.” He didn’t ask if I had any connection with that place. If he had asked, I would have replied. I would not have denied it. But he didn’t ask, I didn’t reply, and I went.

On the road up to the Metropolis of Death I wanted to take a train but there were no tickets available. So I took a plane to Krakow. In Krakow I got a taxi, a faded antique, and asked the driver to take me to Auschwitz. It wasn’t his first trip there, he had already taken foreign tourists there. I spoke Polish, and not even such a broken Polish, in part what I knew from then and in part what I had learned at the university, and my foundation in Czech helped, too. We drove along, the chatterbox of a driver chattering about his car

2 Transcripts from Tape I (May 1, 1991) and Tape I/1 (February 15, 1993). All of the original tape recordings and their transcripts were deposited in my personal archives at the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem. 3 “The Churches in the Third Reich and the ‘Jewish Question’ in Light of the Secret Nazi Reports on German ‘Public Opinion’” (Congrès de Varsovie, 25 Juin – 1er Juillet 1978, section IV: Les Églises Chrétiennes dans l’Europe dominée par le IIIe Reich), Bibliothèque de la Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 70 (1984), 490–505.

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having been stolen and returned to him, driving along the Wisla [Vistula] River while he told me about “Wisła zła,” meaning the “Wicked Wisla,” which overflows and floods the countryside, sweeping away people and cattle. We traveled along roads that were more or less paved, over potholes, and gradually I stopped replying. I stopped taking in what he was saying. I took in that road. I suddenly had the feeling of having already been in these places. I knew the signs, these houses. True, it was a different landscape, a wintry night landscape – especially that first night, though also a landscape of days – and I understood something I hadn’t planned for: that I was traveling in the opposite direction on the road that led me, on January 18, 1945, and on the days that followed, out of that complex about which I was certain, about which we were all certain, that it was a complex no one ever came out of.

The Night Journey of January 18, 1945 That journey has many faces, but it has one face, perhaps one color, one night color, which was preserved with an intensity that exceeds all the others, one that is identified – that intensity or that night color – with that journey, which was afterward called the “death march.” It was a journey to freedom; it was a journey in which we went out through those gates that no one ever thought we would go through. What I remember from that journey – in fact, I remember everything, but what is dominant – is, as I said, a certain color: a night color of snow all around, of a very long convoy, black, moving slowly, and suddenly – black stains along the sides of the road: a large black stain and then another large black stain, and another stain … At first I was intoxicated by the whiteness, by the freedom, by having left behind the barbed-wire fences, by that wide-open night landscape, by the villages we passed. Then I looked more closely at one of the dark stains – it was a human body, and another black stain – and I saw what they were: the stains multiplied, the population of corpses increased. I was exposed to this phenomenon because as the journey dragged on strength increasingly waned, and I found myself ever closer to the last rows, and in those last rows anyone who faltered, anyone who lagged behind was shot and became a black stain by the roadside. The shots grew more frequent and the stains multiplied until, miraculously, totally unexpectedly – at least for us – the convoy stopped on the first morning. I am not going to describe this death march now, or the escape and all the rest. I have described here only one association that arose from the chatter of the driver from Krakow, from the Wisła zła which overflowed. Which wound its way along all those roads that drew closer and closer to places I recognized. I

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recognized them in some sort of dream way. Maybe I didn’t recognize them and only imagined that I did, but that is of no significance. I fell silent and finally asked him to be silent, too. We arrived there and I asked him if he knew the way – not to the museums – not to Auschwitz I – but to Birkenau.

The Red Brick Gate of the Metropolis. The Landscapes of Silence and Desolation from Horizon to Horizon. The Burial of Auschwitz We arrived at that gate, the red brick gate with the tower, beneath which the trains passed – I knew it so well. I asked him to wait by the side outside the gate. I didn’t want him to go in there. It was a rainy summer day, not pouring, but an annoying drizzle that hovered relentlessly and saturated the air with a mix of fog and a damp, silent visibility. As much as an annoying drizzle like that can be silent. After he parked the car I walked along the track, between the tracks, where grass now grew, through that gate, for the second time – but that day on foot, under my own steam. I went to a place where I was sure of my way. It was one of the camps that should have been there, but in place of the camp, stretching from horizon to horizon, were rows – a forest of brick chimneys that were left from the barracks that were dismantled and disappeared, and tottering concrete pillars, each leaning in a different direction, and rusting shreds of barbed wire on this side and on that side – some lay still, others crept in the damp grass – and the damp wet grass – from horizon to horizon. And the silence. An overwhelming silence. Not [even] the sound of a bird was heard there. There was muteness there, and emptiness there. There was astonishment that these landscapes, which had been so densely crowded with people, like ants, with armies of slaves, with rows of people making their way along the paths – were silent. Were deserted. But everything was there: there was that forest of concrete pillars – one could almost see them proud and erect, with those taut steel wires, as on the day we entered, at night – as in that night illuminated with pageant of lights passing over our faces at the slow entry of the train to that “corridor of lights, to the Metropolis of Death.” But it was no longer the Metropolis of Death that it had been. It was a very melancholy landscape. A landscape fraught with desolation. But everything was there, though at a kind of distance. At a distance of desolation, but very searing. As searing as on that day – no, it wasn’t so innocent. It was no longer a childhood landscape, it was a landscape of – I don’t want to say this word – but it was a graveyard landscape, the burial of Auschwitz. Auschwitz had been buried. Buried

A Prologue that could also be an Epilogue 

Figs. 14–15: The ruins of the annihilation camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, Summer 1978.

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but nonetheless expansive, like a kind of vast grave from horizon to horizon. But everything was there, and I, at least, was able to recognize it.

On the Ruins of the “Youth and Children’s Block” and the “Hospital Block” The first place I went to across that grass was the foundations of the youth and children’s block, the cultural center of that unique camp, about which I will speak elsewhere. I took one moldy brick – a fragment of a brick – I took it with. I went according to the numbering there. I identified the place according to the rows of barracks whose foundations stood in a row, and I knew that this was block thirty one. From there I went to the compound of another place, where the hospital block had stood, the block in which the notorious Mengele carried out his experiments, in which I had been a patient for a certain period and, paradoxically, the very illness which then seemed fatal saved my life. It was there that I also first absorbed a heaping portion of the transmission of the European cultural heritage, from a dying inmate. For the boy that he believed would … might come out of there. And he really did come out of there, and took it with him. (But about that, too, I will talk in another chapter.) So much for the trip to two places in which I had really been, two buildings that I entered back then, in which I lived back then, in which I absorbed what I absorbed, which has remained with me.

The Way to the Third Place of Destruction – “Prometheus in Hades” From here the way to the third place was unavoidable, the place where I seemingly lived and remained always, from that day to this, and I am held captive there as a life prisoner, bound and fettered in chains that cannot be removed. Were it not so grating, I would say, “like Prometheus bound.” But I am after all a child, who was bound with those chains as a child and remained bound by them throughout every stage of growing up. The march and the escape, the liberation and all the things that followed, which I could describe. I say that I was bound and remained bound, or fettered by chains, but that is because I was never there, because my foot never stepped into those courtyards, inside those buildings. I circled them as a moth circles a flame, knowing that falling into it was inevitable, yet I kept on circling outside, willingly or unwillingly – it was not up to me – all my friends, the butterflies, not all of them, but almost all of them, were there and did not come out of there.

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The Circles of Return to (and from) the Metropolis of Death The place I went to was of course the place of the crematoria. The first one I arrived at was No. II, I think. It was blown up by the Nazis, as was No. I, opposite, and both have been partly preserved. There were bushes and trees there, growing wild on those ruins. From there I took a fragment of a second brick, black and sooty. Then I went across the way to crematorium No. I, in which the underground gas chamber was not destroyed when it was blown up. The stairs that lead to it still exist, and the concrete roof that collapsed, like a tiger’s back or an ocean wave, lay upon it. I made my way across the path, which I never crossed before, and I descended, as in those recurrent dreams in which I descend these stairs together with all my friends and all those who are close to me. It’s the dream that always takes me back to there, when I know that there is no way to avoid that place, that everyone is bound to arrive at that place because it is an inalterable law of the place, one from which there is no escape, and there is no chance for the fantasy we conjure up about liberation and an end, like playful childish fantasies, for an iron law leads everyone to there and no one will escape from there. I also knew, because everyone died one night and I remained, I knew that at the last moment I would be saved. Not for any merit of mine, but because of some sort of irreversible fate. That night dream always brings me back to the same immutable law by which I end up back inside the crematorium and by some roundabout way, through canals of dark water, through trenches and hidden openings, I dig beneath the barbed wire and reach freedom and board a train, and at one desolate station at night a loudspeaker calls my name, and I am returned to the place I have to reach – the crematorium. And however much I know that I must be caught, I always know that I must be saved. It’s a kind of circle, a cycle of Tantalus or Sisyphus, or of whatever myth we may invoke that is germane here, which returns in an endless vicious circle to the same place. I decided to descend those stairs. I knew I first had to ascend that broken wave of the roof. I climbed onto it and crossed its entire length, waited there for however long I waited, and finally descended the stairs that led down. I descended stair after stair, in the place where all those whose names and images I remembered had descended, and all those – myriads upon myriads – whom I had seen being swallowed up in endless rows into the crematoria and afterward I imagined how they rose in fire and flames into the illuminated night sky above the crematoria chimneys. Finally I reached the bottom. It was impossible to enter the gas chamber itself, because the roof had collapsed into it and blocked the entrance. So I turned around, finally, and slowly ascended the same stairs.

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The Way Back I emerged from the ruins and made my way to the exit from Birkenau, through the same brick gate by which I had entered. I reached the driver and without a word handed him my old Leica camera, which had accompanied me on my sojourn through these landscapes. He took a picture of the gate with its iron mesh doors, and in front of it, me sliced in two. Afterwards, without saying a word we left that place. In the plane, which tossed back and forth – it was a small plane – I wrote some mad things in the notebook diary that is in my study. I also wrote them in a letter; I don’t know if the letter still exists. Thus I began to cope with my return, not in a dream but consciously, to the Metropolis of Death.

“Ode to Joy”4 […] There were things that were quite extraordinary in that camp, which are part of my private mythology and have remained lodged in some corner of my memory and flutter around there in one form or another. One of them – and I am not talking now about the mass liquidation and the events that determined the fate of everyone, but about myself – one of them, which was particularly bizarre, crystallized in my memory, or took shape, in my memory, entered my memory in two very peculiar stages in the life of that camp. In the children’s barracks there was a choir conductor. His name, as I recall, was Imre. A big man. Quite huge. He organized a children’s choir and we held rehearsals. I don’t remember if we also gave performances as a choir, not as part of the opera, which was another matter. The rehearsals almost always took place in one of the long halls; I mean one of those long barracks that were used as lavatories for prisoners. Pipes with holes drilled in them running along about 50 meters of the structure – an excellent German invention that I came across once later on, after the war, in the public toilet of the Friedrichstrasse station in East Berlin, immediately after I arrived there. Within seconds the sight took me back to that place in Auschwitz. But that is something else. That barrack had exceptional acoustics – when there were no prisoners there, of course. In the morning or in the evening, after work, it was packed with thousands, but during the day it was empty. There, in the fall months – we arrived 4 Transcript from Tapes II-III (May 20, 1991).

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in September – in the fall and winter months of 1943 we held the rehearsals. I remember mainly one work that we sang and I also remember the words. The words had to do with joy and with the brotherhood of man. They made no special impression on me, and I am sure I would have forgotten all this completely had it not been for another incident in which the experience and the melody and the text came back. About half a year later, when the camp no longer existed, when most of its prisoners had already been cremated or sent as slaves across the Reich, and only a few dozen of the youths remained and we had moved to the Männerlager, the large slave camp, a harmonica somehow came into my possession. I learned to play it and I played things that entered my mind, including one of the melodies we sang in the children’s choir. It goes something like this: [the melody is hummed].

I am playing the melody in one of those rare moments of quiet and tranquility in that camp, and a young Jewish prisoner from Berlin comes up to me – I was then a boy of eleven – and says: “Do you know what you are playing?” And I tell him: “Look, what I am playing is a melody we sang in that camp – which no longer exists.” He then explained to me what I was playing and what we sang there and the meaning of those words. I think he also tried to explain the terrible absurdity of it, the terrible wonder of it, that a song of praise to joy and to the brotherhood of man, Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, was being played vis-à-vis the crematoria of Auschwitz, a few hundred meters from the place of execution where the greatest conflagration ever experienced by that same mankind that was being sung about was going on at the very moment we were talking and in all the months we were there. Actually, by then I already knew about Beethoven. Which I hadn’t known when we sung him. Because between that first situation, when we sang, and that surprising situation of the discovery and identification of the melody, I had been

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in the hospital, ill with diphtheria, and above me was one of the young prisoners, about 20 years old. His name was Herbert. I think he did not get well, and if he did get well he ended up where he did at Auschwitz itself. One of our amusements, though mainly his, was to explain to me, or convey to me, something of the cultural riches he had accumulated, as though he were bequeathing me that legacy. The first thing I got from him was a book, the one and only book he possessed, and I would read it. It opens with a description of an old woman and a young man who strikes her with an ax, who murders and is tormented – Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. That was what he took to Auschwitz and that was the first work of great literature I read since I was cut off from my parents’ library in Czechoslovakia at the age of nine. It didn’t stop with Dostoyevsky. We went on to Shakespeare and Beethoven and Mozart and whatever he could cram into me of European culture. And I took in quite a bit. When Schiller and Beethoven were afterward identified, I began to ponder, and I have pondered ever since, the reasons and the meaning of that decision by the conductor, that Imre, whom I remember, as though it were today, as a large, awkward figure in the blue-gray prisoners’ clothes and the big wooden shoes, and the big hands of a conductor, urging on the choir, making it come together and then loosening his hold, and we are singing like little angels, our voices providing an accompaniment to the processions of the people in black who are slowly swallowed up into the crematoria. Naturally, the question I asked myself, and that I keep asking myself to this day, is what drove that Imre – not to organize the children’s choir, because after all one could say that in the spirit of that project of the educational center it was necessary somehow to preserve sanity, somehow to keep occupied – but what he believed; what was his intention in choosing to perform a text like that, a text that is considered a universal manifesto of everyone who believes in human dignity, in humanistic values, in the future – facing those crematoria, in the place where the future was perhaps the only definite thing that did not exist? Was it a kind of protest demonstration, absurd perhaps, perhaps without any purpose, but an attempt not to forsake and not to lose – not the belief – but the devotion to those values which ultimately only the flames could put an end to – only that fire, and not all that preceded it raging around us, that is, as long as man breathes he breathes freedom, something like that? That is one possibility, a very fine one, but there is a second possibility, which is apparently far more likely, or may be called for sometimes. I will not say when I prefer the first and when I am inclined to the other. I refer to the possibility that this was an act of extreme sarcasm, to the outermost possible limit, of selfamusement, of a person in control of naive beings and implanting in them naive values, sublime and wonderful values, while he himself knows that there is no

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point or purpose and no meaning to those values. In other words, this was a kind of almost demonic self-amusement of playing melodies to accompany those flames that burned quietly day and night and those processions swallowed into the insatiable crematoria. The second notion seems more logical on the face of it. The first notion is very tempting to believe in. And maybe I believe in it, maybe it influenced me, maybe it influenced a great deal of what I am occupied with and believe in. But there are many times when I think I bought an illusion and sell it in various ways. Because that abysmal, ultimate sarcasm, beyond any possible limit, could also be a criterion for less extreme variations in the reality of a world where things do not proceed according to the unreserved belief of Beethoven and Schiller as such, but Beethoven and Schiller who were already once sung vis-à-vis the Auschwitz crematoria. That is of course part of my private mythology. I often come back to all that and it also occupies me professionally, even though I never mention the episode directly. But when I come to interpret the continuity of the existence of social norms, of cultural and moral values in the conditions that were created immediately upon the Nazis’ ascension to power and all the way to the brink of the mass-murder pits and the crematoria, here I am very often inclined, perhaps unconsciously, to choose the belief in that demonstration, a hopeless demonstration but the only possible one in that situation, though I think, as I said, that the illusion here is sometimes far greater than the sarcasm or the cynical amusement of a person who was still able to amuse himself with it in the face of that mass death. That approach was perhaps more – I will not say more realistic – but more authentic. The subject remains an open one for me, like his large arms that opened to both sides and remained that way. Whoever chooses the left or the right, or when I choose the left or the right, that is in fact the whole unfolding of my existence or of my confrontation both with the past and with the present from then until today.

Landscapes of a Private Mythology and the “Gate of the Law”5 […] These images of blue skies and columns of people in black being swallowed into the confines of the crematoria and disappearing in clouds of smoke, the corridors of lights to the Metropolis of Death, the terms “Metropolis of Death” and “Homeland of Death,” all these things that are so close to me, landscapes 5 Transcript from Tape V (February 17, 1993).

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 15 In Search of History and Memory. Excerpts

to which I escape as I escape into the landscapes of childhood, feeling there a sense of freedom, protected by that immutable law of the all-pervasive dominion of death, by the beauty of summer landscapes – all these things are part of a private mythology of which I am aware, a mythology that I forged, that I created, which I play with, and – I will not even say I am tormented by it, because it does not torment me – in which I find an escape when other things haunt me, and even when they don’t.

Breaking Down the Barrier that Separates Mythic Landscapes from Communicative Messages This Homeland exists and is available to me always. But it is a myth, it has its own mythological language, and what I am doing here actually runs contrary to all my decisions, all my feelings, my whole recognition of my limitations, or former limitations that I thought of: of language, mostly concerning my ability to integrate these mythological landscapes with landscapes that are amenable to communicative transmission. These doubts, or this avoidance of mixing these landscapes with any other aspect of everyday life, and also rising above, or [making] an intellectual effort to understand the world and explain it, which I do to the best of my ability on an almost daily basis as a teacher in one of our respected academic institutions, one of whose aims is to confer interpretation and meaning on human existence in the past, and in the near past, in my area of specialization – all these things, along with this separation, or this avoidance of mixing one sphere with another, were always a clear awareness and a hard reality: a guiding light.

Mystery of Avoiding an Encounter with “the Holocaust” as Testimony in Artistic Works and in Theoretical Discussion of Such Works Until now it was only the pages of my diary that shared with me the trips to that mythic Homeland, to that Metropolis. I won’t say that I didn’t try to be part – not actively but passively, like any ordinary sincere person anywhere – I won’t say that I avoided entirely an effort at responding to others’ attempts to evoke those landscapes, or those seeming landscapes, those who considered this a mission and did meaningful things and transmitted the message. Here and there I tried, by which I mean – let me put it the other way around – I in fact refrained, and continue to refrain to this day, from reading anything literary or artistic that describes or tries to describe Auschwitz, the concentration camps, this chapter of

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the “Final Solution” or of the history of the Jews within its unfolding, namely the violent end. I have similarly refrained from visiting exhibitions or museums, and however much time I spend in various archives and libraries, including the Yad Vashem Archives and the Yad Vashem library, I have not visited, and probably will not visit – will not be capable of visiting – either the exhibition or this great memorial of Yad Vashem or other [such] exhibitions and memorials. I have not seen the film “Shoah,” which almost everyone has made part of his intellectual property or his experience or his historical awareness. It was not always clear to me why I didn’t go [to see the film] and always put it off, and in the end didn’t see it. Nor do I see other films on these subjects, without giving myself an accounting as to why. It is certainly not – as a popular interpretation might have it – because this would cause me suffering or make me flinch. Of course not. But my attitude of detachment, which I developed in dealing with the history of this period, perhaps made it obligatory to avoid adopting an approach of over-involvement in regard to that final violent stage.

The “Gate of the Law” That was what I thought for a long time, though without ever actually giving myself a convincing explanation. But there is a convincing explanation! I arrived at it a few years ago, and I think it also exists in one of the diary entries, maybe from 1989 – about three years ago or thereabouts. However, even if it is not recorded there, or is formulated differently from the way I see it today, I want to conclude today’s taping session with an attempt to clarify, to interpret things as they came to me in a moment of enlightenment by the light of which I live in these mythic landscapes of my private mythology, these homeland landscapes of Auschwitz, the Homeland of Death, the Metropolis, and all the rest. I will return again to one episode: a colleague from one of the universities invited me to attend a lecture on the subject of the Holocaust in literature. Common courtesy forbade me from declining the invitation, and I heard what I heard. The feeling of alienation was overwhelming. These are two languages: one language, which I don’t understand, and a second through which I live that period. Nevertheless, I went ahead and read one of the books that were mentioned in the lecture. After all, some of the books were written by excellent writers in this country, who are often quoted – and there are excellent writers elsewhere who have obviously confronted the subject and are worthy of scholarly study and discussion. I took one of these books, perhaps one of the finest of them, and started to “read” about Auschwitz: a description of a situation the author experienced.

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 15 In Search of History and Memory. Excerpts

To my appalled astonishment, all I felt, all I read and saw in that evocation, in those descriptions, was utter alienation. Between the description of a world, the description of landscapes, the description of a reality which was divorced from the images, the landscapes, the experiences, the presence of the past that is perpetually part of my present, there are rivers that cannot be crossed. Something else entirely! I find it impossible to connect these things, to integrate them into those landscapes. And here I asked this naive question: After all, for the entire world, or for the entire reading public, this book and many others like it, and many other works of cinema, theater, and so forth, are available to everyone and offer a way to understand and to experience Auschwitz and its world, the ghettos, that stage of things, that reality. And everyone reads them – the fact is that they sell thousands of copies – so they obviously speak in a language intelligible to all those thousands of readers. Yet-I-cannot-find-in-them-what-they-seek-to-convey! It’s a completely different world! The only response to which I feel I can give expression is alienation; only the authenticity of the alienation is authentic. Therefore I ask: In-whatam-I-different? Something is wrong here. And then, as so often, as almost always during periods of distress, I escape to Kafka, either the diaries or his other works. Around that time, I again opened at the ending (I always open without looking where) – I opened at the ending of the wonderful story of the man standing before the Gate of the Law. This man who stands before the Gate of the Law actually asks the same question – and it is one of the last questions he asks, driven by his insatiable curiosity, as the gatekeeper jests. He asks: “Tell me, after all this is the Gate of the Law, and the Gate of the Law is open to everyone.” To which the gatekeeper says: “Yes, that is so.” Then the man says (if I remember the text correctly): “Yet in all the years I have been sitting here no one has entered the gate.” And the gatekeeper nods his head and says: “Indeed.” The man asks him to explain this puzzling fact, and the gatekeeper does him this one last mercy and says: “This gate is open only for you, it exists only for you, and now I am going to shut it.” Accordingly, everything I have recorded here – all these landscapes, this whole private mythology, this Metropolis, Auschwitz – this Auschwitz that was recorded here, which speaks here from these tapes, is the only entrance and exit – an exit, maybe, or a closure – the only one that exists for me alone. As I interpret it, this means that I cannot enter by any other way, any other gate that exists to that place. Will others be able to enter through the gate that I opened here? I don’t know whether this parable is valid here, but this is the only meaning I can find for the puzzle of the preoccupation of my present with that past, which I experience constantly, in which I create constantly, to which I escape constantly,

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where I forge landscapes intermixed with images, reality, and time of childhood and of the onlooker, of the big boy wondering about all this, and who before it is shut – before that gate is shut – asks these questions and seems to have found an answer at last to this perplexing matter, at least. It’s not much, it’s a marginal thing, but it is impossible not to convey these things, not to puzzle over them, not to believe in them, because without that belief the whole memory of those landscapes of my childhood, the landscapes in which I always find my freedom – perhaps the last but one freedom – will be lost.

In Search of History and Memory6 […] All this relates to the question of why I was unable to view, or read, works on the theme of the Holocaust. But as a matter of fact, my direct confrontation with the world of the “Metropolis,” with the immutable law of the great death, occurred also in another channel, which from several points of view can be said to be the central channel of my life’s work: historical scientific research. In regard to it, as well, I have already noted the paradoxical duality of the study of that period, with its systematic, total avoidance of integrating any detail of biographical involvement into the arena of the events of that history; if we like – into the very heart of those historical events. I have dwelt on the duality, the methodological distancing, and all the rest. Yet, as it seems to me now, I only tried to bypass the obstacle of that gate, to enter it with the whole force of my being, in the guise of, or in the metamorphosis of, perhaps, a Trojan horse, which in the end was intended to smash the gate and topple the invisible walls of the fortified city, outside the domain of which I was determined to remain. For that rigorous “pure scientific” writing is charged with enormous, meta-dimensional, tensions, which are somehow time-transcendent. Here, into this safe and well-paved track of scientific discipline, I believed that I would be able to cast a consciousness of the intensity of the experience of those historic events, consciousness of their meta-dimensionality, consciousness of their vast impersonality, which I experienced through the prism of that present  – its memory and its imagining – from which I flinched and feared, perhaps subconsciously, to tackle head-on. Indeed, in all my research I never dealt with the stage, and with the dimension, of the violent end, the murder, the humiliation, and the torture of those 6 Transcript from Tape XVI (March 10, 1997).

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 15 In Search of History and Memory. Excerpts

human beings. I left, or bypassed that dimension – as perhaps I bypassed the piles of skeletons of the corpses that were heaped up behind the blocks in Auschwitz on my way to the youth block – in order to study the broad background of the ideology and the policy underlying it all, the historical implications, the dynamics of society and regime, and the society and leadership of those who were the objects of the “Final Solution” – the Jews – in the period preceding that stage of a violent, ultimate end. I hoped, apparently, that in this way I would be able to cope with the sense of “mission,” of the carrier of the message, that was burned into my being, and without finding that “safe passage” I would not have withstood those tensions and anxieties, when I stood helpless, fearful of the vague awareness that I had no way, and would never attempt to embark on a path of trying to reveal that message and all it implies: that the world, after the “Metropolis” and the Immutable Law of the Great Death have been, can no longer and never will be able to free itself of their being part of its existence. Was that my gate to the law? To the law of the world? One of the two massive iron doors of that gate, a gate that is open day and night? And now, as the gatekeeper said to the man, “I am going to shut it,” etc. Yet it seems to me that he added there, that in those moments it appeared to the man that beyond that gate there shone, or glowed dimly, a new light, which until then he had never before seen in his life. Translated by Ralph Mandel

Annotated References The annotations below provide information beyond the bibliographical details, elaborating the context and circumstances in which each article came into being. Some of the articles, e.g. the first introductory essay, will be published here for the first time and translated from Hebrew. Others, such as the article on “Richard Wagner and the Origins of Redemptive Antisemitism”, appear for the first time in English translation from German. Reflections on Jewish Studies, the Jerusalem School and the Research on the Era of the “Final Solution”: Based on a Hebrew lecture delivered on November 30, 1999, on the occasion of being awarded the Arnold Wiznitzer Prize of the Hebrew University’s Institute for Jewish Studies for 1998, for the book Deutsches Judentum unter dem Nationalsozialismus, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 1997. The lecture was translated into English by Ralph Mandel. In it I attempt to define my position as a historian within the discipline of Jewish Studies.

I German Jewry under National Socialism in Historical Perspective 1.

2.

“German Jewry under National Socialism in Historical Perspective,” in: Israel Gutman (ed. in chief), Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1990, Vol. 2, 557–575. In the late 1980s, I was invited to write the article on “Germany” for the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. The text summarizes in an integrative way all my previous research on the topic during the three preceding decades and includes data from still unpublished source material. Due to the encyclopedia format, the article appears without footnotes. The relevant bibliography is furnished in the research articles which follow in the book. “History and Historical Consciousness. Similarities and Dissimilarities in the History of the Jews in Germany and the Czech Lands 1918–1945,” Bohemia 46, 1 (2005), 68–86. The article appeared in a special issue of the journal devoted to the project “Jewish History in a Multi-Ethnic Network. The German-Jewish-Czech Triangle (1880–1938).” The editors invited my contribution in the light of my research on the Jewish history of the land of my origin, Bohemia. The article is a comparative study of the history of the German and Czech Jews that deals with the period between the end of World War I and the onset of Nazi rule in both countries, and then with the years in which the fate of the Jewish population of Germany and of the “Protectorate

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-017

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 Annotated References

of Bohemia and Moravia” was sealed amid the “Final Solution”. My point of departure is Jewish self-perception in the face of the advent of the Nazi rule in both lands at different points in time.

II Modern Antisemitism and the Ideology of the “Final Solution” 3.

“Critique of Judaism in Modern European Thought: On the Historical Meaning of Modern Antisemitism,” Jerusalem Quarterly 52 (Fall 1989), 126–144. The present English version of the article is dedicated in memoriam to one of my teachers and colleagues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Shmuel Ettinger. It is partially based on an article first published in Hebrew, “The Historical Significance of Modern Antisemitism. Reflections on the Studies of Shmuel Ettinger,” in: Shmuel Almog et al. (eds.), Israel and the Nations. Essays Presented in Honor of Shmuel Ettinger, Historical Society of Israel, Jerusalem, 1987, 245–262. A major field of Prof. Ettinger’s research was the history of modern antisemitism during the two and a half centuries up to World War I. Although he abstained from researching German antisemitism in the Nazi period, his work was indispensible for the development of my understanding of its historical secular roots. In the initial part of this article I present my own views and interpretation of the Nazi ideology leading to the “Final Solution” and its historical meaning. I then examine and evaluate Shmuel Ettinger’s work as published in a volume of his collected articles: Shmuel Ettinger, Modern Anti-Semitism. Studies and Essays, Sifriat Hapoalim, Tel Aviv, 1978 (in Hebrew). 4. “Richard Wagner and the Origins of Redemptive Antisemitism,” first published in German: “Richard Wagner und die Anfänge des Modernen Antisemitismus,” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts 4 (1961), 281–300. Translated from German by William Templer. This was my debut article, written and published during a postgraduate seminar taught by the renowned historian of the origins of totalitarianism, Jacob Talmon. The article can be seen as one of the earliest studies of the secular messianic nature of modern antisemitism, which was an essential component of the redemptive antisemitic ideology of National Socialism. 5. “Uniqueness in Context. Review of Ian Kershaw’s To Hell and Back: Europe 1914–1949,” Yad Vashem Studies 44, vol. 2 (2016), 247–259. Of the many reviews of works on National Socialism and the “Final Solution” that I have published in the course of half a century, this is the only one I have chosen to include among my selected articles for the present volume. My discussion of

III German Society and the Jews under the Nazi Regime 

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the book, which appeared in the “Penguin History of Europe” series, dwells upon and evaluates the significance he ascribes to the Jewish aspect of the events in this fateful historical period. Ian Kershaw regards the developments leading to the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” and its very essence as the epicenter of the catastrophe of World War II. The distinguished British historian, as a rare exception among the non-Jewish scholars of this period, is sensitive as well to the dimension of self-perception of the Jews facing the genocide. This essay on Kershaw’s history of Europe covering the core of the period which I have called “the era of the Final Solution” in Jewish history, could be seen as well as my homage to a great historian.

III German Society and the Jews under the Nazi Regime 6.

“Popular Opinion in Nazi Germany and the ‘Jewish Question’—1933–1945,” Jerusalem Quarterly (1982), No. 25, 121–144, No. 26, 24–35. This article is a partially abridged version, with only a limited scholarly apparatus, of the extensive original Hebrew article “‘Public Opinion’ in National Socialist Germany and the Jews,” Zion, Quarterly of Jewish History 40 (1975), 186–290. English summary: Ibid., XLII-XLIV; Appendix of Documents in German: 260–290. The originally Hebrew article of 1975 and its English version introduced the study of the German population’s attitude toward the Jews, based on the secret Nazi reports, into the research on the entire period and on all parts of Nazi Germany. 7. “German Population in Nazi Germany as a Factor in the Policy of the ‘Solution of the Jewish Question’: The Nuremberg Laws and the Reichskristallnacht,” in: Paul Corner (ed.), Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009, 81–106. I have been invited by the editor of the book to contribute an article based on my previous research on the attitude of the German population in Nazi Germany toward the Jews and on the regime’s anti-Jewish policy. Following the completion of the major project by Eberhard Jäckel’s and myself, involving a comprehensive digitized edition of the secret Nazi reports on popular opinion in Germany, I undertook here a first systematic computerized study to examine the impact of radical anti-Jewish popular opinion on crucial political decisions of the Nazi regime prior to the war. 8. “German Population and the ‘Solution of the Jewish Question’ at the Time of the Wannsee Conference,” appeared as a foreword to Hans-Christian Jasch and Christoph Kreutzmüller (eds.), The Participants. The Men of the Wannsee Conference, Berghahn, New York and Oxford, 2017, xi-xix.

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 Annotated References

On January 20, 2017, I took part in an event in Berlin to mark the 75th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, delivering an address in which I also read from my book, Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death. This event marked also the publication of the German version of The Participants. The foreword, which I was asked to write for the English edition, examines popular opinion in Nazi Germany at the time of the Wannsee conference. It focuses on the reactions to the introduction of the yellow badge and the subsequent deportations and annihilation of the Jews. It also examines the extent of the knowledge among the German population about the mass executions of the Jews.

IV Jewish Society and its Leadership in Nazi Germany 9.

“Jewish Society in Germany as Reflected in Secret Nazi Reports on Popular Opinion 1933–1943,” in: Moshe Zimmermann (ed.), On Germans and Jews under the Nazi Regime. Essays by Three Generations of Historians, The Hebrew University Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2006, 261–279. In all the previous studies based on the secret Nazi reports on German popular opinion, the research limited itself to the attitude of the German population toward the Jews and the regime’s anti-Jewish policy. The detailed sections of the reports, on the activities and self-perception of the Jews in Nazi Germany, were ignored. This article is a first attempt to use this kind of source material for documentation and insight into the Jewish society and its individual members, as it was regularly presented to the regime. 10. “The Reichsvereinigung and the Fate of the German Jews, 1938/1939–1943. Continuity or Discontinuity in German-Jewish History in the Third Reich,” in: Arnold Paucker (ed.), The Jews in Nazi Germany 1933–1943, J.C.B Mohr, Tübingen, 1986, 353–363. The article is based on my earlier paper, “The ‘Reichsvereinigung of the Jews in Germany’ (1938/9–1943),” in: Israel Gutman and Cynthia J. Haft (eds.), Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe 1933–1945: Proceedings of the Third Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1979, 45–58. This paper was delivered at the first international scholarly conference held, in 1977, about the Jewish organizations and their leadership under the Nazi regime. The conference was convened in the wake of the “Hannah Arendt controversy” on the role of the Jewish leadership in Nazi Germany and in the Nazi-occupied lands, in which Arendt based her arguments on Raul Hilberg’s book The Destruction of the European Jews, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1961.

V Historiography of National Socialism and the “Final Solution” 

 331

My paper presented for the first time original documentary material from the presumably lost archives of the Reichsvereinigung from the years 1938– 1945, which shed an entirely different light on the issue and refuted those arguments. The paper was the subject of a subsequent discussion in which Hilberg, who also attended the conference, participated. In this article, published in 1986, the original circumstances and dispute are dealt with only indirectly as a background. 11. “Ghetto in an Annihilation Camp. Jewish Social History in the Years of the ‘Final Solution’ and its Ultimate Limits,” first published in: Israel Gutman (ed.), The Nazi Concentration Camps. Structure and Aims. The Image of the Prisoner. The Jews in the Camps, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1984, 315–332; reprinted, without the scholarly apparatus, as an appendix to my book Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death, Penguin Books, 2013, 105–114. In this article I examine the continuity in extremis of Jewish social values, as reflected in the activities and self-perception of the Jews deported to Auschwitz, to the so-called “Family Camp” of the Jews from the Theresienstadt ghetto. The archival documents published for the first time in this article reveal the Nazis’ purpose in establishing the “Family Camp”—in order to camouflage their extermination policy—and the reasons for the subsequent annihilation of its inmates.

V Historiography of National Socialism and the “Final Solution” 12. “Major Trends and Tendencies in German Historiography on National Socialism and the ‘Final Solution’ 1924–1984,” first published in German under the title: “Die Deutsche Geschichtsschreibung über den Nationalsozialismus und die ‘Endlösung’: Tendenzen und Entwicklungsphasen 1924– 1984” Historische Zeitschrift 240 (1985), 599–640. The present extended English version, reprinted here, appeared in: Israel Gutman and Gideon Greif (eds.), The Historiography of the Holocaust Period, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1988, 1–51. Unlike most of the historiographical studies on the subject, the systematic chronological research in this article reveals that basic methodological approaches, and even new currents and schools, can be traced back to the contemporaries of the early emergence of National Socialism and their attempts to comprehend the nature of the movement, from its origins in the 1920s and its establishment as a political system in the 1930s.

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 Annotated References

13. “Singularity and Its Relativization. Changing Views in German Historiography on National Socialism and the ‘Final Solution’,” Yad Vashem Studies XIX (1988), 151–186. The article is based on two complementary public lectures, delivered at the meeting of the Historical Society of Israel (October 1986) and at the international conference on “Germany’s Singularity? The ‘Sonderweg’ Debate,” at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (March 1987). Reprinted in: Peter Baldwin (ed.), Reworking the Past. Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historians’ Debate, Beacon Press, Boston, 1990, 146–170. The text can be regarded as a further examination and critical evaluation of the developments in German historiography on National Socialism and the “Final Solution” in the years following the period I dealt with in the previous article. 14. “The Historikerstreit from a Personal Retrospective. On the ‘Case of Nolte’ and His Generation,” keynote address at the annual International Conference of the Richard Koebner Center for German History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, November 2–3, 2014, on the theme of: “A Century of War, A Century of Debates: Historians Debate German History.”

IV In Search of History and Memory 15. “In Search of History and Memory. Excerpts from the Manuscript of the Book Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death,” translated from the Hebrew by Ralph Mandel. The book, which appeared in 2013 at Penguin Press, became renowned worldwide. These excerpts appeared first in: Moshe Zimmermann (ed.), On Germans and Jews under the Nazi Regime. Essays by Three Generations of Historians. A Festschrift in Honor of Otto Dov Kulka, Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2006, 401–417. In contrast to the preceding scholarly essays, these non-scholarly texts are of an entirely different nature. In the scholarly articles, my biographical involvement in the historical events never appears, and is even regarded by me as illegitimate. In the excerpts from the manuscript, written in literary, metaphoric language that reflects on my memory and evocation of that period, the historian is in a way ever present. However, the immanent tension between the two is also present here.

Index of Names and Places Aachen 113, 157, 159 Adam, Uwe Dietrich 151, 204, 243, 248, 250, 251 Adelsberg 162 Adenauer, Konrad 150 Adler, Hans G. 58, 199, 204, 209, 210, 211, 214, 217, 237, 262, 264 Adler, Sinai 210, 219 Afghanistan 274, 300 Ahasuerus 89 Alexandria 2 Alien, William 257, 258 Allenstein 113 Almog, Shmuel 328 Almond, Gabriel A. 148 Altman, Alexander 5 Aly, Götz 42 Andernacht, Dietrich 266 Anhalt 118 Ansbach 129 Arendt, Hannah 63, 199, 238, 239, 253, 268, 283, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 297, 330 Arndt, Ino 198, 265 Arnsberg, Paul 266 Aronson, Shlomo 296 Aschaffenburg 162 Aschheim, Steven E. 43 Augsburg 135, 136, 174, 196 Aurich 155 Auschwitz VIII, 29, 42, 58, 71, 100, 138, 139, 140, 148, 197, 209, 210, 211, 213, 215, 216, 217, 218, 244, 251, 270, 274, 275, 276, 277, 280, 281, 282, 295, 296, 299, 311, 312, 314, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 326, 331 Auschwitz-Birkenau 59, 209, 211, 213, 215, 219, 223, 311 Austria 25, 26, 34, 37, 40, 41, 45, 49, 58, 67, 101, 102, 129, 145, 162, 237, 238 Babylon 2 Bacon, Yehuda 218 Bad Alzenau 165 Baden 29, 32, 139, 195, 266 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671438-018

Baden-Württemberg 266 Baeck, Leo 21, 23, 32, 34, 37, 58, 60, 200, 203, 206, 261 Baer, Yitzhak Fritz 2, 213, 235, 261 Bajohr, Frank 42, 147, 148, 149, 177 Baker, Leonard 200 Bakunin, Mikhail 84, 85 Baldwin, Peter 245, 297, 332 Balkans 27 Ball-Kaduri, Kurt Jacob 198, 200 Baltic 101 Bamberger, Ludwig 14 Bankier, David 41, 143, 144, 145, 147, 160, 183, 258, 259 Barkai, Avraham 167, 192 Baron, Salo W. 213, 214 Bartov, Omer 305 Bauer, Bruno 69, 78, 237 Baum, Herbert 264, 265 Bavaria 15, 16, 97, 110, 112, 124, 125, 132, 136, 137, 147, 152, 158, 161, 162, 182, 194, 195, 196, 249, 258, 259 Bayreuth 80, 91, 92 Bechhofen 165 Bedürftig, Friedemann 254, 272 Beethoven, Ludwig van 71, 90, 319, 320, 321 Ben-David, Gershon 210, 216, 218 Beneš, Edvard 48 Berding, Helmut 67 Bergmann, Hugo 47 Berlin 16, 24, 31, 32, 33, 38, 47, 104, 112, 114, 119, 120, 122, 127, 128, 136, 137, 153, 154, 160, 164, 174, 184, 187, 191, 192, 194, 195, 198, 200, 201, 203, 209, 213, 220, 221, 286, 318, 319, 330 Berliner, Cora 206, 207 Best, Werner 42, 171, 176, 306 Bethge, Eberhard 260 Bettelheim, Bruno 199 Bialik, Hayyim Nachman 2 Bialystok 173, 217 Bielefeld 118, 119, 154, 173, 174, 187 Birkenau 58, 209, 210, 213, 215, 217, 218, 221, 312, 314, 318

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 Index of Names and Places

Bleichröder family 14 Bloch, Ernst 229 Blumenfeld, Kurt 230, 266 Boas, Jacob 198, 264 Boberach, Heinz 110, 144, 145 Bodenheimer, Max 14 Boehlich, Walter 261 Boehm, E. H. 200 Bohemia 37, 45, 47, 48, 59, 60, 210, 327 Böhler, Jochen 168 Bondy, Ruth 210 Börne, Ludwig 72, 89 Born, Karl Erich 253, 272 Borut, Jacob 42 Bouverie, Tim 104 Bracher, Karl Dietrich 239, 240, 241, 242, 246, 254, 255, 269, 271 Branig, Hans 110 Brasch, Martin 206 Braunschweig 174 Breisach 204 Bremen 174 Brenner, Michael 43 Breslau 16, 154, 174 Britain 280 Brod, Max 46 Broszat, Martin XI, 110, 151, 182, 198, 240, 241, 248, 250, 251, 255, 258, 265, 267, 269, 271, 272, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 288, 293, 296, 303, 304, 305, 306 Browning, Christopher 251 Buber, Martin 17, 21, 43, 45, 51, 186, 187, 207, 230, 231, 235, 261, 265 Buchenwald 237 Buchheim, Hans 204, 250 Bullock, Alan 241, 276 Burgsinn 162 Burleigh, Michael 65 Busch, Eberhard 260 Čapkovį, Katerina 49 Central Europe 3, 8, 41, 49, 95, 101, 219 Cohavi, Yehoyakim 263, 264 Cohen, Gary B. 47 Cohen, Herman 15 Cohen, Richard Yerachmiel XI, 5, 8, 199, 287 Cohn, Conrad 206

Cologne (Köln) 13, 16, 158, 174 Conway, J. S. 260 Conze, Werner 42 Corner, Paul 261, 329 Czech, Danuta 215 Czech Lands 37, 38, 40, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60, 327 Czechoslovakia 25, 41, 47, 49, 52, 56, 60, 162, 165, 214, 320 Dachau 34, 119, 126 Dagan, Avigdor (Viktor Fischel) 46, 60 Dahm, Volker 265 Dahrendorf, Ralf 257, 282 Darmstadt 174 Dawidowicz, Lucy 198, 251 Dessau 118, 174 Deuerlein, Ernst 241 Diehl, Katrin 185 Diez an der Lahn 155 Diner, Dan 274, 305 Dinur, Ben-Zion 2, 3, 4 Dipper, Christof 260 Dobrich, Klaus 250 Dohle, Horst 250 Domarus, Max 175 Dörner, Bernward 147, 149, 172, 177 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 320 Dresden 78, 84, 85, 174 Drobisch, Klaus 250 Dunker, Ulrich 264 East Asia 27 East Berlin 201, 272, 318 Eastern Europe 8, 13, 15, 29, 41, 45, 95, 101, 102, 103, 104, 140, 214, 247, 286, 287 Eckart, Dietrich 241, 243 Edelheim-Muehsam, Maragret T. 185, 238 Edelstein, Jacob 210, 217 Ehrenburg, Ilia 276 Eichenauer, Richard 81 Eichholz, Dietrich 254, 272 Eichmann, Adolf 30, 32, 37, 116, 150, 199, 202, 204, 206, 209, 213, 220, 221, 239, 284, 285, 286, 288, 289 Einstein, Albert 15

Index of Names and Places 

Eisenbach, Artur 227 Eisner, Kurt 15 Eisner, Pavel 46 Empress Maria Theresa 37 Engels, Friedrich 84 England 2, 53, 68, 80, 248, 258, 263, 264 Eppstein, Paul 32, 206 Erdmann, Karl Dietrich 253, 272 Eschwege, Helmut 262, 265, 266 Esh, Shaul 198 Essner, Cornelia 151 Ettinger, Shmuel 2, 4, 8, 41, 63, 64, 67, 68, 69, 70, 74, 75, 244, 298, 328 Evans, Harold 104, 105 Evian 27 Fabian, H. E. 199 Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) 102, 111, 220, 266, 280, 282, 292, 293 Feil, Ernst 260 Fest, Joachim 247 Feuchtwangen 165 Feuerbach, Ludwig 84, 91 First Czechoslovak Republic 40, 44, 45 Fischach 135, 196 Fischer, Pavel 46 Fleming, Gerald 251 Fraenkel, Ernst 146, 231, 232, 233, 242 France 2, 8, 13, 29, 53, 55, 65, 68, 80, 195, 199, 204, 205 Franconia 125, 129, 134, 161, 162, 164, 165, 193, 194, 195, 196 Frankfurt 16, 155, 169, 174, 210, 266 Frankfurter, David 124 Frankl, Michal 49 Freeden, Herbert 238 Freiburg 250, 301 Freigedank, K. (pen-name of Richard Wagner) 78 Friedländer, Saul 9, 34, 42, 167, 168, 256, 296, 305, 306 Friedmann, František 46 Fröbel, Julius 91 Fuchs, Richard 206 Fürst, Paula Sara 195, 206 Fürth 174, 194, 196

 335

Gaertner, Hans 210, 217, 218 Galicia 101 Ganzer, Karl Richard 81 Garliński, Józef 215 Gay, Peter 41 Gebhardt, Bruno 253, 272 Gelber, Y. 259 Gellately, Robert 104, 151 Gemünden 162 Geneva 209, 213, 217, 220, 221 Genschel, Helmut 250, 251 German Democratic Republic (East Germany) 32, 60, 111, 150, 182, 201, 250, 251, 255, 266, 272, 282, 292, 304 Gerstein, Kurt 236 Glatzer, Nahum 5 Globke, Hans 150 Goebbels, Joseph 22, 124, 145, 167, 275 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 90 Goguel, Rudi 250 Golda, Karl 138 Goldhagen, Daniel 305 Gordon, Sarah A. 258 Göring, Hermann 145 Gotha 128 Göttingen 133 Gotto, Klaus 260 Gradowski, Zalmen 209, 218 Graetz, Heinrich 261 Graml, Hermann 160, 247 Great Britain 65, 280 Greif, Gideon 64, 331 Greive, Hermann 67, 75, 244, 254, 259, 260, 298 Grossmann, Kurt R. 199 Grossweiler, Kurt 254, 272 Gruenewald, Max 197, 238, 239 Grunberger, Richard 257 Grynszpan, Herschel Feivel 26, 123, 161 Gurian, Waldemar 238 Gustloff, Wilhelm 124 Gutman, Israel XI, 5, 8, 9, 59, 64, 147, 199, 208, 214, 215, 244, 263, 287, 298, 311, 327, 330, 331 Haase, Hugo 15 Habermas, Jürgen 273, 292

336 

 Index of Names and Places

Haft, Cynthia J. 199, 214, 263, 330 Hagen, Herbert 116 Hager-Halivni, Tzipora 215 Halle 114, 136, 174 Hamburg 16, 174 Hanau 166 Hanover 188 Häusermann, Titus 274, 292 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 5, 68 Heidegger, Martin 301 Heiden, Konrad 230, 231, 234 Heim, Susanne XI, 42, 296 Heine, Heinrich 14, 72 Henke, Joseph 242, 248, 249 Henschel, Hildegard 199, 206 Herbert (fellow prisoner) 320 Herbert, Ulrich XI, 42, 171, 176, 296, 305, 306 Herrlingen 186 Herrnstadt-Oettingen, Edith 187 Herzl, Theodor 14 Hessen 155, 266 Hess, Moses 274, 275 Heydekampf (of the German Red Cross) 221 Heydrich, Reinhard 58, 117, 144, 167, 171, 172, 174, 191 Hilberg, Raul 146, 150, 198, 199, 204, 227, 249, 330, 331 Hildebrand, Klaus 228, 252, 253 Hildesheimer, Esriel 194, 201, 263, 264, 287 Hilgemann, Werner 254 Hillgruber, Andreas 65, 76, 145, 233, 237, 242, 247, 248, 252, 255, 259, 270, 286, 302 Himmler, Heinrich 22, 210, 221, 235, 236, 244, 270 Hirschfeld, Gerhard 253, 256, 284 Hirsch, Fredy 210, 217, 218 Hirsch, Otto 21, 23, 32, 187, 203, 204, 205, 206 Hitler, Adolf 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 33, 36, 65, 66, 74, 81, 97, 98, 104, 111, 112, 115, 116, 124, 125, 132, 133, 134, 139, 145, 148, 150, 151, 159, 164, 166, 167, 168, 172, 175, 176, 177, 198, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 236, 237, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246,

247, 248, 251, 252, 253, 254, 257, 258, 259, 266, 267, 269, 270, 271, 272, 275, 281, 285, 291, 293, 297, 298, 299, 302, 306, 332 Hobsbawm, Eric 103 Hofer, Walther 237 Höhne, Heinz 249, 271 Holešov 48 Holland 58 Hönne, Heinz 271 Hromádka, Josef L. 54 Hünfeld 155 Hungary 101, 102 Iggers, George G. 256 Imre (Auschwitz choir conductor) 318 Imre (choir conductor) 320 Irving, David 251, 252, 272 Italy 13, 27, 100, 101, 102, 229 Jäckel, Eberhard XI, 65, 76, 143, 169, 172, 174, 175, 181, 233, 242, 245, 246, 257, 268, 270, 291, 296, 303, 304, 329 Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf 248, 250 James, Harold 103, 104 Janowitz, Leo 217 Jarosz, B. 215 Jasch, Hans-Christian 171, 172, 176, 329 Jaspers, Karl 286 Jerusalem 303 Jesenská, Milená 46, 54 Jessnitz 118 Jochmann, Werner 145 Johenhausen 135 Jones, Nigel 104 Kafka, Emil 37 Kafka, Franz 45, 46, 47, 54, 66, 255, 273, 324 Kampe, Norbert 264 Kantorowicz, Ernst 186 Karlsruhe 174, 195 Karminski, Hannah 206 Kárný, Miroslav 59, 210, 217, 218 Karwehl, Richard 229 Kassel 159 Kastner, Rudolf 199 Kattowitz 138, 174

Index of Names and Places 

Katyn 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141 Katz, Jacob 2, 64, 67, 70 Katz, Steven T. 65 Kaufmann, Theodore 275 Kershaw, Sir Ian XI, 34, 64, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 110, 147, 148, 149, 160, 162, 168, 175, 176, 182, 183, 256, 257, 258, 259, 281, 296, 304, 306, 328, 329 Kettenacker, Lothar 253, 256 Kieval, Hillel J. 47 Kinder, Hermann 254 Kleinlangheim 162 Kley, Stefan 166, 167 Koblenz 160, 174, 182, 257 Koch, H. W. 252, 274 Kocka, Jürgen 292 Koebner, Richard 295, 332 Kogon, Eugen 237 Kohn, Hans 72 Königsberg 113, 158, 174 Kovno 29 Kozower, Philipp 206 Krakow 312, 313 Krausnick, Helmut 151, 204, 250, 252 Kraus, Ota 210, 215, 217, 218, 219 Kreutzmüller, Christoph 171, 172, 176, 329 Krummacher, F. A. 199, 239 Krupp 114 Kühnl, Reinhard 274 Kurfürstendamm 153, 167 Kwiet, Konrad 189, 195, 250, 251, 262, 265, 266 Lágus, Karel 214 Lahn 165 Lamm, Hans 198, 239 Landauer, Gustav 15 Landsberg, Otto 15 Langbein, Hermann 215 Langer, František 46 Langer, Georg Jiųķ 45, 46 Lánik, Jozef 210 Lasalle, Ferdinand 14 Lasker, Eduard 14 Laski, Neville 233 Leipzig 16, 87, 116, 174

 337

Levine, Eugen 15 Lewin, Nora 251 Lilienthal, Arthur 206 Linz 174 Loewenstein, Kurt 263 Lohr 162 London 53, 60, 80, 217 Longerich, Peter 147, 149, 151, 152, 160, 161, 166, 167, 177 Lösener, Bernhard 150, 151, 158 Löwenstein, Victor 206 Lowenthal-Hensel, Cecile 110 Lubinsky, Georg 187 Lublin 312 Luft, Robert 44 Luxemburg, Rosa 15 Lvov 45 Madagascar 29, 32, 205 Magdeburg 128 Mainz 13 Mann, Thomas 80, 81 Margaliot, Abraham 198, 263 Marrus, Michael 182 Marr, Wilhelm 74 Martin, Bernd 254 Marx, Karl 14, 66, 69, 84, 274, 275 Masaryk, Tomáš G. 48 Mason, Timothy W. 110 Mason, Tom 256 Massing, Paul 238 Massing, Paul W. 67 Matheson, Peter 145 Maurer, Trude 43 Mayer, Hans 84 Mazower, Mark 103 Meier, Kurt 227, 260 Meinecke, Friedrich 237, 269 Mellrichstadt 164 Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix 89 Mendes-Flohr, Paul 41, 65, 259, 260, 290 Mengele, Josef 217, 316 Merseburg 116, 157 Meyerheim, Paul 206 Meyer, Michael XI, 41, 60, 167, 305 Mílek, Alfred 217 Minsk 29

338 

 Index of Names and Places

Mittelsinn 162 Möller, Horst 198, 265 Mommsen, Hans XI, 148, 151, 248, 249, 252, 253, 259, 261, 268, 271, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 293, 296 Moravia 37, 46, 47, 48 Moscow 45, 161, 182, 234 Mosse, George L. 74, 238 Mosse, Werner E. 263 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 71, 320 Müller, Filip 210 Müller, Werner 250 Munich 15, 26, 49, 52, 57, 81, 91, 109, 110, 115, 119, 123, 124, 125, 127, 132, 136, 137, 144, 151, 153, 158, 161, 163, 164, 174, 197, 214, 236, 279, 295, 297 Nassau 165 Naumann, Max 50 Near East 13, 265 Neumann, Franz 146, 231 Neustadt an der Aisch 165 Neustettin 174 Niederdonau 139 Niehaus (of the German Red Cross) 221 Niewyk, Donald L. 40, 41 Nolte, Ernst XI, 74, 229, 233, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 267, 268, 269, 270, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 282, 284, 290, 292, 295, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 332 Nördlingen 135, 196 Nuremberg 26, 112, 113, 115, 116, 120, 122, 134, 135, 159, 164, 174, 194, 195, 196, 236, 249 Oberstdorf 135, 196 Ophir (Fischer), A. 218 Oppeln 174 Orten, Jiųi 46 Osnabrück 153, 154, 155 Ostmark 129 Paderborn 119, 151 Palatinate 29, 32, 113, 126, 161, 163 Palestine/Land of Israel 3, 4, 5, 21, 26, 27, 32, 51, 54, 117, 118, 187, 188, 190, 195, 207, 217, 218, 275, 289

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) 275 Palestinians 265, 285, 289 Paris 26, 80, 87, 123, 126, 127, 161, 234 Pätzold, Kurt 250, 254, 255, 266, 272 Paucker, Arnold 148, 259, 263, 264, 287, 330 Pehle, Walter H. 160 Persia 2 Peukert, Detlev 149, 258 Pfalz (Palatinate) 113 Phelps, Reginald H. 241 Philo 2 Picker, Henry 145, 237 Pikarski, Margot 264 Pingel, Falk 286 Pinson, Koppel S. 235, 238 Polák, Josef 214 Poland 8, 25, 26, 29, 30, 37, 40, 41, 55, 57, 101, 102, 139, 168, 174, 175, 205, 252, 304, 312 Poliakov, Léon 67, 75, 146, 150, 227, 237, 244, 298 Polįček, Karel 46 Polná 48 Pope Pius XI 24 Portugal 27 Potsdam 201 Prague 37, 38, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 53, 56, 59, 60, 209, 210, 216, 217, 219 Preuss, Hugo 15 Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia 25, 34, 37, 56, 328 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 84, 85 Prussia 14, 110, 112, 113, 116, 136, 145, 152, 199, 228 Pulzer, Peter G. J. 67, 238 Rachamimov, Alon 47 Rakous, Vojtģch 46 Rathenau, Walther 15 Rauschning, Hermann 232, 233, 241, 244, 298 Regensburg 127, 129 Reichmann, Hans 37 Reichmann-Jungmann, Eva 37, 76, 147, 230, 238, 257, 263 Reinhardt, Max 15 Reinharz, Jehuda 264 Reissner, Hanns Günther 5

Index of Names and Places 

Reitlinger, Gerald 146, 150, 204, 227, 249 Repgen, Conrad 259, 260 Reulecke, Jürgen 149, 258 Reznichenko, Yehuda 58, 210 Rheinpfalz 152 Rhine 13, 258 Richarz, Monika 265 Riegner, Gerhard 217 Riga 29, 134, 173, 196 Robinson, Jacob 199 Röckel, August 84 Rodrigue, Aron 97, 143, 147, 258, 259, 281 Rohwer, Jürgen 76, 246 Roman Empire 13, 83, 270 Romania 101 Romani (formerly Gypsies) 30, 100, 140 Rome 234 Roseman, Mark 176, 177 Rosenberg-Vrba, Rudolf 210 Rosenstock, Werner 238 Rosenthal, Jacob 42 Rosenthal, Walther 165 Rosenzweig, Franz 17, 43, 261 Rössel (of the German Red Cross) 223 Rotenstreich, Nathan 69, 78 Rothfels, Hans 150 Rothkirchen, L. 244, 298 Rothschild family 14, 86 Ruhr 136, 258 Ruppin, Arthur 14 Rürup, Reinhard 67 Russia 30, 41, 42, 60, 95, 96, 101, 115, 136, 137, 138, 173, 243, 275 Saf, Avital 208 Sandberg 162 Sauer, Wolfgang 239, 266, 269 Schacht, Hjalmar 19, 24, 158, 159 Scheffler, Wolfgang 232, 239, 240 Schieder, Theodor 42, 232, 253, 272 Schieder, Wolfgang 279, 296 Schiller, Friedrich 319, 320, 321 Schleunes, Karl A. 151, 251 Schlund, Erhard 229 Schneidemühl (now Pila) 28 Schocken, Salman 47, 55, 66, 207, 231, 238, 251, 261, 265

 339

Schoenbaum, David 257 Schoeps, Hans Joachim 50, 189 Schölch, Alexander 265 Scholder, Klaus 65, 247, 260, 268, 270, 290 Scholem 5, 43 Scholem, Gershom 2, 4 Scholem, Gershom (in Hebrew) 4 Schönberg, Arnold 15 Schön (Kulka), Erich 210, 211, 215, 217, 218, 219 Schorsch, Ismar 238 Schrafstetter, Susanna 177 Schubert, Günter 247 Schulin, Ernst 254 Schulz, Gerhard 239, 269 Schwabia 135 Schwarzhuber, Johann 218 Schwarzschild, Leopold 230 Schwerin 174 Seligsohn, Julius L. 32, 205, 206 Sevi (or Zevi), Sabbatai 4 Shakespeare, William 320 Shumsky, Dimitry 47 Siegele-Wenschkewitz, Leonore 260 Siemens 114 Silberschein, J. 210 Simon, Ernst 187, 197, 207, 238 Sinti. See Romani Slovakia 52, 102, 210 Smith, A.L., Jr. 258 Soviet Union 24, 27, 29, 30, 53, 57, 65, 95, 102, 162, 173, 236, 248, 252, 274, 276 Spain 3, 27, 101 Spector, Scott 47 Speyer 13, 113, 126, 129 Spitzer, Moshe Moritz 47 standards.  see also language standards;  see also language standards State of Israel 2, 43, 268, 275, 299, 300 Steinert, Marlis G. 111, 148, 258 Steinherz, Samuel 48 Steinweis, Alan E. 172, 177 Sterling, Eleonore 69, 70, 72, 78, 238, 266 Stern, Fritz R. 238 Stettin (now Szczecin) 28, 153, 174, 204 Stirner, Max 84 Stokes, Lawrence D. 111, 258

340 

 Index of Names and Places

Strauss, Herbert A. 199, 264 Streicher, Julius 22, 26, 116, 164 Stuttgart 174, 181, 186, 187, 296, 302 Sudetenland 25, 26, 49, 52, 57, 59, 162, 163, 165, 193 Suhl, Yury 211 Switzerland 84, 124, 209, 210, 221 Talmon, Jacob 2, 4, 9, 64, 67, 71, 74, 76, 236, 299, 328 Tal, Uriel 67, 229 Thamer, Ulrich 65 Theresienstadt 29, 32, 33, 38, 40, 57, 58, 59, 199, 204, 209, 210, 211, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 220, 221, 223, 237, 262, 311, 331 Thévoz, Robert 110 Thüringen 128 Tietz 114 Tödt, Ilse 260 Toland, John 67 Treitschke, Heinrich 261 Treue, Wilhelm 236 Trevor-Roper, Hugh R. 66, 241, 242, 243, 276 Trunk, Isaiah 214, 287 Tucholsky, Kurt 262, 275, 276 Ucko, Siegfried 5 Ukraine 41, 101, 102, 304 Ulm 186 Unger, Aryeh L. 145, 258 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) 103, 132, 137, 138 United States of America 43, 65, 233, 263, 264, 287 van Schewick, Bernhard 260 Vietnam 274, 300 Vinen, Richard 103, 104 Volavkova, Hana 59 Volkov, Shulamit 42, 43 Vollmer, Bernhard 110 Voltaire 68, 244, 298 vom Rath, Ernst 26, 123, 124, 126, 161, 167 von Blomberg, Werner 25 von Hassell, Ulrich 139 von Hindenburg, Paul 18

von Neurath, Konstantin 19, 25 von Ribbentrop, Joachim 25 Vrba, Rudolf (Alan Bestic) 210 Wagner, Adolf 158 Wagner, Richard 70, 71, 72, 74, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 244, 298, 327, 328 Walk, Joseph 263 Wannsee 133, 171, 174, 176, 329, 330 Warburg, Gustav Otto 150, 232, 233 Warburg, Otto 14 Warsaw 29, 139, 173, 214, 215, 287 Warthegau 139 Wasserstein, Bernard 103, 104 Weber, I. I. 87 Wehler, Hans Ulrich 274 Weimar 84, 128, 174, 197 Weiss, Yfaat 43 Weizmann, Chaim 275, 276 Weltsch, Felix 47 Weltsch, Robert 47, 197, 238, 239, 263 Werfel, Franz 46 Wertheim 114 West Berlin 220 Western Hemisphere 27 Wetzler, Alfred 210 Wiener, Max 5 Wiesbaden 155, 165, 174 Wiesemann, Falk 110, 258, 259, 304 Wildt, Michael 42, 144, 147, 149, 151, 155, 158, 161, 166, 167, 171, 177, 183, 296, 306 Wilhelm, Hans-Heinrich 252 Wilhermsdorf 165 Willems, Susanne 148 Wippermann, Wolfgang 65 Wistrich, Robert S. 74 Witetschek, Helmut 110 Wolffsohn, David 14 Worms 13 Wulf, Joseph 151, 237 Württemberg 161, 186, 187, 193 Würzburg 125, 127, 133, 174 Yahil, Leni 151

Index of Names and Places 

Zentner, Christian 254, 272 Zimmermann, Moshe XI, 74, 175, 304, 305, 330, 332 Zipfel, Friedrich 260

Zunz, Leopold 5 Zurich 78 Zweig, Stefan 101, 102

 341