To what extent did Hitler control anti-semitic policy in the period 1933-9 and to what extent was the policy erratic and improvised

Structuralists (such as Mommsen), believe Hitler was a weak dictator, and deny there was ever a set plan for Nazi anti-Semitism. In 1933, the Boycott of Jewish firms and the Law for the Restoration of the professional civil service show Jewish policy as being not well planned during this time. The aim of the discriminating measures against Jews as late as 1938 was to encourage Jews to leave Germany ‘by every possible means’. If the Nazi’s had a clear plan of the final solution, why did they then bother with immigrating Jews to places such as Madagascar? The fact that Hitler and the Nazis couldn’t decide where to actually emigrate the Jews (Israel, Madagascar or Poland), and then came up the final solution, shows evidence of Hitler without any clear plan, and just responding to the then-current circumstance.

Synthesis’s have suggested the Holocaust was a result of a dynamic that came from both above and below, with Kershaw saying that Nazis and their supporters were working together and ‘working towards’; which asserts that Hitler engineered the party to such an extent, that the people below him knew what he wanted without him having to say. Hitler needed to do no more then offer his tacit approval for Goebbels to unleash a frenzy of hatred that turned into Kristallnacht. He had done little in a direct sense, but did bring about the dramatic sharpening of the persecution of the Jews. Hitler also conceded that for a long time he had been forced to be inactive towards the Jews so as to keep up international relations. For much of the period 1933-9 Hitler had shown that he was prepared to be pragmatic, taking into account internal and external pressures, in pursuing his ends. For much of the period 1933-9 Hitler had shown that he was prepared to be pragmatic, taking into account internal and external pressures, in pursuing his ends. The marked increase in anti-Semitic activity after 1937 may well have reflected Germany’s growing power, Hitler’s growing contempt for International opinion and the fact that the Conservative old guard within Germany had gone.

Hitler’s control during this period can be heavily argued from both intentionalist and structuralist viewpoints; and for this precise reason, Synthesism was the sum up the way Nazi’s produced increasingly extreme policies. Hitler’s ultimate aim in 1938 was forced emigration; it seems very unlikely that he was considering mass murder. Yet, the radical nature of Nazi anti-Semitism was such that completion of one stage would most often lead to the beginning of another, more radical than before. Whilst the thought of genocide almost certainly entered his mind, it is impossible to prove that his main aim in 1938 was to exterminate all Jew’s in Europe.