Demands for a “Blood Protection Law” which would prevent marriages between Jews and Germans continued to grow. The Minister of the Interior, Frick, instructed registrars to stop performing ‘racially mixed marriages’, and implied that in the near future this would become a law. But still by September 1935 this had still not been realised. At the “Nuremburg Rally” Hitler made it official. Marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Germans were forbade, and Jews were not allowed to display the national flag or employ young German females as domestic servants. Jews were now officially second-class citizens. The Nuremburg Laws symbolised the exclusion of Jews from the German national community. At this time penalties were set for violation and ranged from fines to hard labour. This set the tone for punishments in the future.
On 7 November, a German embassy official in Paris was shot by a Polish Jew. Their was a massive public reaction of violence and mistreatment of Polish Jews in Germany, which was allowed to happen without intervention by the authorities. But when the news reached Hitler that the official had died from his wounds, Goebbels was instructed to spread the message to the public that the ‘spontaneous demonstrations’ which had been happening already would not be opposed in the future. On the night of 9-10 November, which came to be known as “kristallnacht” (the night of broken glass), the public, and surprisingly not the S.S., ‘looted, destroyed and burned down’ thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues. Their was no intervention by either the fire brigade or the police, clearly showing that the Nazis were happy to let their feelings of anti-Semitism become public. It also showed that German feelings about Jews were of complete hatred.
The German conquest of Poland was to have dire consequences for Poles in general and for Polish Jews in particular. A special task force, “einsatzgruppen”, was set up to “combat all anti-German elements in enemy territory”. They followed behind the German army, killing anyone in possession of authority, even doctors and teachers. By the terms of the “Nazi-Soviet pact” Germany acquired a large amount of the Poland, and this was soon governed by Himmler as the “Reich Commissar for the Consolidation Of German Nationhood”. The RFKD settled Germans in conquered territories and made sure that the Jews had no way of retaliating against their new masters. Hitler at this time gave his permission to the S.S. and police to carry on with their atrocities. A “General Government” area was set up also, which soon became a dumping ground for Poles, Jews and Gypsies, where they were made to do forced labour for the Germans. Himmler believed that his task was to ”ensure that only people of pure German blood inhabit the East.” Polish schools were closed, and families were forced onto trains after having only a few minutes to gather their belongings and were removed to the General Government. There the S.S. had control over everyone and could put people in concentration camps or execute them without trial.
Leading Nazis were realising the possibility of making a huge reservation for all European Jews in the General Government. Leaders like Eichmann started transporting Jews from all Occupied areas to the “Lublin” district, cramming them into freight trains. Although disrupted by the German invasion of Russia, transportation on this scale was the beginning of the end for Jews all over Europe. This was also the time when the ‘star of David’ armbands came into general usage, and ‘ghettos’ came into being (although whether or not they were for disease containment originally is not certain).
The German invasion of Russia was intended to be the opportunity to destroy ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ and win “lebenstraum” for the German ‘master race’. The advance was similar to what had happened in Poland, with police units going in directly behind the troops to kill Communist and Jewish officials. It was a preface to the Holocaust, a systematic extermination of all European Jews, and was dubbed the “final solution”. Although some army leaders had opposed the brutality in Poland, because of the more military context behind the actions as part of “Operation Barbarossa” the atrocities here went by inconspicuously. Again the S.S. and Einsatzgruppen were largely involved. By August 1941 it was not just potential enemies getting liquidised, but all Jewish men, women and children, in a shockingly systematic way. Meanwhile, in September 1941 the first gassing experiments took place at Auschwitz on Russian prisoners of war. The officials were obviously pleased with the results, as gassing became a widespread means of execution.
Now that mass execution was becoming widespread, diligent co-ordination of the various agencies involved was essential. In November 1941 Heydrich invited many department heads together to discuss these logistical matters.
The Wannsee conference was finally held on 20 January, 1942. Lasting only a short time, common procedures were decided on about the ‘resettlement of Jews in the East, involving forced labour and extermination plans. Eichmann said later that the “talk was of killing, elimination and liquidation”. The conference effectively gave endorsement of the government to the existing annihilation program, and set into motion a much thought about industrial process.
Throughout the years of 1935 to 1942, the Nazi’s Jewish policies were slowly built up from small scale ideas, into the large scale implemented actions which could have, if they had been allowed, guaranteed the destruction of all Jews in Europe.
