A Jewish man clearing broken glass after Reichkristallnacht
Whilst this physical brutality is certainly horrific, it is on a much smaller scale than other terror regimes of the era, such as Stalin’s Russia, where hundreds of thousands of innocent soviet citizens were sent to work camps and worked to death. Due to this, it could be argued that Nazi policy towards Jews was not remarkably brutal however the brutality of Nazi Germany also took on a much more extreme psychological dimension against Jewish citizens.
These incidents of ‘legal anti-Semitism’ were common in Nazi Germany, an example of which being the 1933 book burning, where, in a state organised affair thousands of Jewish-authored books were burned in public. This was immensely psychologically cruel, as firstly it served to oppress and destroy Jewish culture by burning sacred texts such as the Talmud. The book burning also created an immense atmosphere of fear in the German-Jewish community best surmised by German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine when he said:
"Where they have burned books,
they will end in burning human beings."
The Shops boycott, organised by Julius Streicher had a similarly intimidating effect on Jews in Germany, who now felt their businesses to be under threat, as well as feeling ostracised in their own homeland.
The Nuremburg laws were one of the main areas in which Nazi Anti-Semitism took on a particularly cruel psychological dimension. The laws served mainly to exclude Jews from all areas of German life, even going as far as saying ‘A Jew cannot be a citizen of the Reich,’ and denying them the right to stand in office or work as a civil servant. These laws were particularly intimidating due to the manner in which they single out Jewish Germans as a group, which would have revealed to them exactly how unwelcome they had become in their own country. The Blutschutzgesetz or ‘blood protection law’ was an intensely cruel law which prevented the marriage between Jews and Aryans under the guise of preventing the defilement of the Aryan race. This law carried with it the premise that Jews were racially inferior to Aryans, and were thus unclean, and this would have been intensely insulting to Germany’s Jews. The laws passed after Reichkristallnacht such as the yellow star law requiring all Jews to wear a yellow star on their clothes to identify themselves was another example of psychological brutality, and this particular law also incited a huge rise in random Anti-Semitic attacks as Jews became an visibly identifiable group.
The treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, for all its brutality, was hugely inconsistent for many reasons. Many of its policies seem to have been devised in a rushed manner, with, for example, the Nuremberg laws having to be altered after their original release to add a definition of the would ‘Jew’. As well as this, a number of competing policies comprised Nazi treatment of Jews, a number of which contradicted each other in such a way that a workable policy was indiscernible.
The way in which Nazi Anti-Semitism seemed to react to outside factors, rather than enforcing its policies on the outside factors made policies hugely changeable. An example of this is the way that the shops boycott was organised in an attempt to quell the acts of random Anti-Semitic violence, as it was feared that such high levels of public violence were damaging the countries image, and the boycott was an attempt to organise the Anti-Semitic feeling in the country into a workable plan. The plan was quickly called to a halt after only one day after a counter-boycott was launched by the U.S. This reveals that the boycott plan was not particularly well planned, and gives a further example of the changeability of Nazi policies.
After the initial outburst of Anti-Semitism following the Nazi’s assertion of power in Germany, Anti-Semitism lost the attention of the Nazi party, as internal dissent became Hitler’s main focus. This meant that the SA troops who were previously attacking Jews at random were now more focused on cruelty towards political opponents, and thus the situation for Jews in Germany improved slightly. This indicates a highly erratic policy towards Jews which would have probably left both the Jewish and non-Jewish German public with little idea of the Nazi’s real intentions.
Anti-Semitism was also briefly extinguished in Nazi Germany with the event of the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936. When Jews had previously been excluded from all areas of German life, during the Olympics they were allowed brief respite, and 2 Jewish athletes were even allowed to compete in the Olympic Games for Germany (A country which legally they were no longer citizens of). It was also ordered that all Anti-Semitic bans such as the ban from restaurants and other public areas were to be lifted immediately. This completely contradicted the government’s earlier policies of exclusion and violence, and showed the spontaneity and ill-planning of Nazi Anti-Semitic policy.
In 1937 and 1938 Nazi policy towards Jews seemed generally to be progressing towards a more radical approach, with the passing of further discriminatory laws, and some element of consistency is thus shown, however these years were punctuated with the event of Reichkristallnacht, which was another reactive government plan this time the result of the Von Rath murder.
Anti-Semitic policy adopted this erratic nature mainly because of the style in which Hitler governed, allowing his subordinates, each with radically different opinions on how to approach Anti-Semitism to compete with one another and impose different policies on Germany. Hitler took a ‘Hands-off’ approach to governing as he was more interested in central ideologies than actual policies, seeing himself as too important to involve himself with domestic issues. This led to the emergence of three separate Anti-Semitic policies spearheaded by Goebbels, Himmler and Goering, which amounted to a confused, inefficient and above all erratic overall policy.
Goering, being the Economic minister of Germany favoured an approach of expropriation, in which Jews would be stripped of their economic assets, which would be sold on to Aryan businessmen in a process known as ‘Aryanisation’. This he claimed would help to create a state of Autarky, in which Germany would no longer rely on foreign investment or imports for its economy to be successful.
Himmler, who was head of the SS division of the police, was primarily concerned with the expansion of the SS and its power Himmler therefore favoured a policy of forced emigration, in which Jews were forced to leave Germany through specialised emigration centres which would be set up. This policy had been worked successfully by Eichmann in Austria, who had forced over half of Austrian-Jews to leave the country for other areas of Europe.
The chances of either of these plans being successful in solving ‘the Jewish question,’ was severely jeopardised by Goebbels’ organisation of Reichkristallnacht (completely unbeknown to Himmler and Goering), as the rampant vandalising of Jewish businesses made it very difficult for a policy of Aryanisation to be remotely successful. It also contradicted Himmler’s beliefs in violence ‘behind closed doors,’ as Reichkristallnacht was blatant Anti-Semitic violence and intimidation which attracted much negative foreign attention.
In conclusion, Nazi Anti Semitic policy, whilst physically brutal, was more significantly brutal in a psychological sense through the acts committed against Jews and the discriminatory laws passed against them. The policy was erratic on a number of levels, including both its reactive approach to outside circumstance, and its internal dispute and lack of direction.