The Nuremberg Laws effectively banned the Jews from any citizen rights. The ‘Blood Law’ or Reich’s Citizenship Law banned Jews from marrying Germans, it banned them from sexual relations with Aryans, it banned the Jewish people from displaying the National flag and effectively stripped them of their rights to citizenship. The debate about what defined a Jew tested Hitler in the weeks following the Nuremberg Rally eventually creating the ‘mischlinge’ category of 1st or 2nd degree half Jews, all of which were subject to less but varying degrees of discrimination.
The two years that followed were also relatively quiet as far the Jewish question was concerned although the agitation and terror of the party rank and file in the summer of 1938, followed by the expulsion of 17,000 polish Jews living in Germany led to the explosion of violence, during what became known as Kristallnacht, over the 9th and 10th of November, with the SA – SD – Gestapo smashing and burning synagogues and businesses resulting in the immediate arrest of 30,000 Jews, an action most believed was led by Goebbels. Evidence from the David Buffum, the American Counsel in Leipzig reported that many German felts benumbed, repulsed and “an precedented fury” against the Nazis for the events they had witnessed on the 10th of November. Those that voiced any concerns faced arrest and immediate imprisonment in the many concentration camps. A young 17 year old boy, Hermann Bremser, recorded in his diary that “History will remember this day as one of barbaric behaviour by the German population.” Whilst many thought Kristallnacht to be another propaganda failure, the Nazi anti Jewish polices had steadily hardened and whilst there is plenty of evidence of the revulsion felt by the German people, it might be fair to assume that they were also becoming increasingly conditioned to the violence, perhaps fearing for themselves to the extent that little was done to prevent the slide towards the ‘Final Solution.’
The following 2 years during 1939 and 1940 mapped a period in which the anti Jewish polices gained momentum, with the twin steps of ghettoisation and forced labour as the blueprint for what became known as the ‘Final Solution’. But the problems of forced emigration of 3 ½ million Jews forced Heydrich into seeking a ‘territorial solution’. The situation in the ghettos had worsened and Germany had already experienced the ‘benefits’ of mass murder with the ‘liquidation’ of 70,00 mental patients and the mass shootings of Russian Jews by the SS. And by early 1941, there is sufficient evidence to show that Hitler had approved the plans for the Final Solution, a plan which would involve labour and concentration camps through Germany and Eastern Europe, touching the lives of everyone, regardless of their role in society.
In 1942, Sobibor camp was cut off from the rail link and because the Nazis were short of manpower they wanted someone to take care of the Jews. Members of 101 Battalion from Hamburg, a reserve police unit made up of relatively old, second rate police officers, most of which were former SPD members, were sent to Josefow to exterminate the Jews. Despite being given the opportunity to opt out, only one member of the unit chose not to take part, but also Von Trapp the commander did not take part himself, instead lay sobbing in a hotel room. And this unit took part in a systematic murder of men, women and children with over 1400 Jews murdered in just one day. It is difficult to judge the conditions and pressures placed upon the men of unit 101 but it would also be difficult to justify their actions without the anti-Semitic sentiment that had been part of their lives for so long. Daniel Goldhagen, the Jewish historian believed that the Holocaust was only possible because of the rampant anti-Semitism of the German people who saw the Jewish people as “parasites”. He examined not only what they did but more importantly what they didn’t do. Others like Kimel, a holocaust survivor differs in this view but acknowledges that anti-Semitism played a key role. But Kimel blames the simultaneous development t of Hitler, the Nazi state, the impact and effect of WW2 and the SS as other key factors.
The Nazi racial policy would not have developed in the way it did without the intervention and support of Adolf Hitler. I believe it to be impossible to generalise the attitudes of Germans towards anti-Semitism. But there is strong evidence to show that the early stages of anti Jewish policy were forced by the lower party elements of the SA and then by the SD, Gestapo and SS. Many German people would have been horrified by the anti-Semitic violence and the racial policies leading towards the Final Solution. Many would have feared for their lives and there is evidence to show that many did indeed suffer for voicing their concerns. But there is also evidence of a strong anti Jewish sentiment in Germany, a feeling that was sufficiently strong enough to be exploited by the SA thugs and those that later followed, that allowed the policies of racial exclusion to develop to the point of genocide. Perhaps the German people were conditioned to accept the point of anti-Semitism? Either way, the blame cannot be borne by Hitler alone.
