The Jewish "Declaration of War" on Nazi Germany

The fact that Israel is an apartheid state oppressing Palestinians for pathological reasons does not mean that the holocaust of European Jewry did not happen or should be minimized with slaughterhouse statistics. Some things need to be rebutted with obvious facts and we do a little of that here.

Re: The Jewish "Declaration of War" on Nazi Germany

Postby admin » Thu Apr 26, 2018 8:34 pm

Severity Order
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/26/18

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The Severity Order or Reichenau Order was the name given to an order promulgated within the German Sixth Army on the Eastern Front during World War II by Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau on 10 October 1941.[1]

The order said, in part:

...The most important objective of this campaign against the Jewish-Bolshevik system is the complete destruction of its sources of power and the extermination of the Asiatic influence in European civilization. ... In this eastern theatre, the soldier is not only a man fighting in accordance with the rules of the art of war, but also the ruthless standard bearer of a national conception. ... For this reason the soldier must learn fully to appreciate the necessity for the severe but just retribution that must be meted out to the subhuman species of Jewry. ...[2]


This infamous order paved the way for mass murder of Jews.[3] All Jews were henceforth to be treated as de facto partisans, and commanders were directed that they be either summarily shot or handed over to the Einsatzgruppen execution squads of the SS-Totenkopfverbände as the situation dictated.[3]

Upon hearing of the Severity Order, Reichenau's superior Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt expressed "complete agreement" with it, and sent out a circular to all of the Army generals under his command urging them to send out their own versions of the Severity Order, which would impress upon the troops the need to exterminate Jews.[4] During the Nuremberg trials, however, Rundstedt denied any knowledge of that order before his capture by the Allies, although he acknowledged that Reichenau's orders "may have reached my army group and probably got into the office".[5] The order, along with the Commissar Order, was rescinded on 6 May 1942.[6]

References

1. Das Verhalten der Truppe im Ostraum
2. Craig, William. Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad. (1973)
3. von Reichenau, Walter (October 10, 1941). "Secret Field Marshal v.Reichenau Order Concerning Conduct of Troops in the Eastern Territories, 10 October 1941". Stuart D. Stein, The School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences, University of the West of England. Retrieved 2009-12-18. The soldier in the eastern territories is not merely a fighter according to the rules of the art of war but also a bearer of ruthless national ideology and the avenger of bestialities which have been inflicted upon German and racially related nations. Therefore the soldier must have full understanding for the necessity of a severe but just revenge on subhuman Jewry. The Army has to aim at another purpose, i.e., the annihilation of revolts in hinterland which, as experience proves, have always been caused by Jews
4. Mayer, Arno J. Why Did The Heavens Not Darken?, New York: Pantheon, 1988, 1990 page 250.
5. The Trial of German Major War Criminals, Nüremberg, 9 August to 21 August 1946, p. 102
6. Jacobesn, Hans-Adolf "The Kommisssarbefehl and Mass Executions of Soviet Russian Prisoners of War" pages 505-536 from Anatomy of the SS State, Walter and Company: New York, 1968 page 512.
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Re: The Jewish "Declaration of War" on Nazi Germany

Postby admin » Thu Apr 26, 2018 8:43 pm

Secret Field Marshal v.Reichenau Order Concerning Conduct of Troops in the Eastern Territories
Translation of Document UK-81. Source: Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Volume VIII. USGPO, Washington, 1946/pp.572-582
Dated 10 October, 1941

SECRET

12th Infantry Division, Int. Sec. No. 607/ 41 Secret

Int 54/ 816/ 41 Secret
Received 27th November, 1941.
Div. H. Q. 26th Nov. 1941

Subject: Protection of troops against Partisans and Sabotage.
To: The General Command of H. Q. 2nd Army Corps-Ic.

Enclosed the divisional intelligence section sends a secret order dated 17th November, 1941 concerning combatting of partisans. For information.

For Div. H. Q.

Chief of the General Staff
(Signed) WEISER [ ?]
Adj.

1 enclosure.

SECRET

12th Infantry Division, Section Ic/ Ia/ Adj. No. 607/ 41 sch.
Div. H. Q. 17th Nov., 1941

Subject: Protection of Troops against Partisans and Sabotage.
Reference: C.-i-C. Army-Gen. Staff of the Army. "Ausb." section (Ia) No. 1900/ 41 dated 25th October, 1941.

I. The conduct of the troops in the Eastern territories (see enclosure: secret order by Field Marshal .v. Reichenau, dated 10th October, 1941)

II. Herewith enclosure 1, a blueprint of a captured map l: l00,000 Sheet no. 0-36-XI (West) Demjansk (the original was not sent to H. Q. 2nd Army Corps)

This print contains the defense areas allotted to regiments and independent detachments of the Division.

The Commanders of the units in question are responsible for the carrying and of the cleaning up of partisans in these areas and their permanent control. They regulate the employment of troops at their disposal in the area. In case of the appearance of partisans, Ic and neighbour will be notified. The antitank company in Igoghewo and 12 Detachment of the field military police --excluding the squad attached to the Adjutant will be at the disposal of Quartermaster Section in their area.

2. The surrounding area of Villages, paths and roads will be kept under control also at night by patrols and occasional snap controls.

3. The Commanders will consider the employment of local commanders in the occupied villages and will submit their names to the division.

In all places of their defense area even when not occupied, after scrutinizing the local conditions, village elders [natschalniks] will be installed, if this has not yet been done. The notifications handed out by the Ic Section of the division will be hung up even in places which are not occupied. The exhibition of these notifications must be constantly checked.

4. The village-elders will be directed to compile lists of the population in which all strangers-with the date of their arrival -will be shown particularly. The houses of every place are to he numbered in an easily visible manner, and the number of their inhabitants to be listed with special columns for men, women and children. Check through snap roll calls. Strangers will be reported to the competent Command by the village elders. Collective punitive measures will be carried out immediately for non-compliance with these orders (in serious cases the shooting of the responsible inhabitants, in lighter cases their arrest and the confiscation of foodstuff, etc.) For this the order of a Commander (CO. BN) is necessary.

5. The traveling of Russians-men, women or children-on roads will be stopped. The leaving of villages is allowed only in exceptional cases (of economic nature) with the written ap-proval of the Garrison Commander. Such permits must bear the date of the day, the route to be covered and place to be visited. The validity of the pass will on principle be not longer than one day. A record of issued permits is to be kept. The permits will be returned on the day of expiration. Threat of penalties for the non-returning of permits. All persons found on the high roads without a permit will be arrested. Every soldier has the duty of arresting civilians. Caution when approaching. Every suspected civilian in the battle area will be ruthlessly shot.

6. Civilians living in dug-outs in the woods will. be accommodated in inhabited localities or in certain cases in dugouts in the immediate vicinity of inhabited localities.

7. The following will be shot as partisans: Russian soldiers in uniform and mufti who did not report to the nearest garrison command or to the military authorities by 20.11. and those civilians who are found on the high roads without a permit and who do not belong to the nearest village. Apart from that, those civilians found in possession of arms of any kind or explosives.

8. The population is to be encouraged to cooperate-by rewards. (See special orders concerning supplies No. 60 dated 30 August 1941.)

9. The shooting or hanging of partisans and such elements who support partisans and who are in possession of arms will take place in the locality where they have been encountered. If possible, persons concerned should be interrogated first-about their organization and leaders. Special distribution 39.

Appendix to 12 Inf. Div. I. c/ Adj. No, 607/ 41 Secret date 17.11. 1941.

Copy of a Copy

High Command of the Army Gen. Staff of the Army/ Quarter Master General Branch Admin.
(Qu. 4/ B) II. 7498/ 41 g.

H. Qu. High Command of the Army
28.10.41.

SECRET !

Subject: Conduct of Troops in the Eastern Territories

By order of the C. in. C. Army, an enclosed copy of an order by GOC 6th Army on the conduct of the Troops in eastern terri- tories which has been described by the Fuehrer as excellent, is being forwarded with the request to issue corresponding instruc- tions on the same lines if this has not already been done.

By order.

(Signed) Wagner

SECRET !

Army H. Q., 10.10.41

Army Command 6., Sec. Ia-A. 7
Subject: Conduct of Troops in Eastern Territories.

Regarding the conduct of troops towards the bolshevistic system, vague ideas are still prevalent in many cases. The most essential aim of war against the Jewish-bolshevistic system is a complete destruction of their means of power and the elimination of asiatic influence from the European culture. In this connection the troops are facing tasks which exceed the onesided routine of soldiering. The soldier in the eastern territories is not merely a fighter according to the rules of the art of war but also a bearer of ruthless national ideology and the avenger of bestialities which have been inflicted upon German and racially related nations.

Therefore the soldier must have full understanding for the necessity of a severe but just revenge on subhuman Jewry. The Army has to aim at another purpose, i.e., the annihilation of revolts in hinterland which, as experience proves, have always been caused by Jews.


The combating of the enemy behind the front line is still not being taken seriously enough. Treacherous, cruel partisans and unnatural women are still being made prisoners of war and guerilla fighters dressed partly in uniforms or plain clothes and vagabonds are stiil being treated as proper soldiers, and sent to prisoner of war camps. In fact, captured Russian officers talk even mockingly about Soviet agents moving openly about the roads/ and very often eating at German field kitchens. Such an attitude of the troops can only be explained by complete thought-lessness, so it is now high time for the commanders to clarify the meaning of the present struggle.

The feeding of the natives and of prisoners of war who are not working for the Armed Forces from Army kitchens is an equally misunderstood humanitarian act as is the giving of cigarettes and bread. Things which the people at home can spare under great sacrifices and things which are being brought by the Command to the front under great difficulties, should not be given to the enemy by the soldier not even if they originate from booty. It is an important part of our supply.

When retreating the Soviets have often set buildings on fire. The troops should be interested in extinguishing of fires only as far as it is necessary to secure sufficient numbers of billets. Otherwise the disappearance of symbols of the former bolshevistic rule even in the form of buildings is part of the struggle of destruction. Neither historic nor artistic considerations are of any importance in the eastern territories. The command issues the necessary directives for the securing of raw materials and plants, essential for war economy. The complete disarming of the civil population in the rear of the fighting troops is imperative considering the long and vulnerable lines of communications. Where possible, captured weapons and ammunition should be stored and guarded. Should this be impossible because of the situation of the battle so the weapons and ammunition will be rendered useless. If isolated partisans are found using firearm in the rear of the army drastic measures are to be taken. These measures will be extended to that part of the male population who were in a position to hinder or report the attacks. The indifference of numerous apparently anti-soviet elements which originates from a "wait and see" attitude, must give way to a clear decision for active collaboration. If not, no one can com-plain about being judged and treated a member of the Soviet System.

The fear of the German counter-measures must be stronger than the threats of the wandering bolshevistic remnants. Being far from all political considerations of the future the soldier has to fulfill two tasks:

1. Complete annihilation of the false bolshevistic doctrine of the Soviet State and its armed forces.

2. The pitiless extermination of foreign treachery and cruelty and thus the protection of the lives of military personnel in Russia.

This is the only way to fulfil our historic task to liberate the German people once forever from the Asiatic-Jewish danger.

Commander in Chief
(Signed) von Reichenau
Field Marshal.

Certified Copy :
[signature illegible]
Captain.
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Re: The Jewish "Declaration of War" on Nazi Germany

Postby admin » Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:24 pm

Directives for the Treatment of Political Commissars (“Commissar Order”)
(June 6, 1941)
Volume 7. Nazi Germany, 1933-1945
by Germany History in Documents and Images

That Hitler did not see the pending invasion of Russia as a conventional war of territorial conquest was clear, not least from the following “Commissar Order” of June 6, 1941. As early as the 1920s, Hitler had identified the Soviet Union as the Bolshevist command center of the alleged Jewish world conspiracy. His intention now was to crush this supposed racial-ideological archenemy of the German Volk through a war of annihilation that would involve the extermination of the Jews as well as the decimation and enslavement of “inferior” Slavic peoples. The following order, the so-called Commissar Order, which instructed the German military leadership – in clear violation of international law – to engage in the systematic persecution and murder of Soviet political commissars, sealed the cooperation of the Wehrmacht with the annihilation campaign of the SS. Hitler’s formal repeal of the order on March 6, 1942 – partly an attempt to accommodate the opposition of some military commanders – did not change anything about the way Germany conducted war during “Operation Barbarossa.”

***************************

Fuehrer Headquarters, 6 June 1941

High Command of the Armed Forces
WFSt. (Armed Forces Operational Staff) Department L (IV Q) (“Intelligence”)
No 44822/41 Top Secret for general officers only

In addition to the Fuehrer’s decree of 14 May regarding Military jurisdiction in the “Barbarossa” zone (Supreme Command of the Armed Forces/Armed Forces Operational Staff/Department L (IV Q) (Intelligence) No 44718/41, (Top Secret, for General Officers only), the enclosed “directives for the treatment of political commissars” are being transmitted herewith:

You are requested to limit the distribution to Commanders in Chief of Armies or of Air Commands, respectively, and to inform the Junior commanders by word of mouth.

The Chief of the Supreme Command
Of the Armed Forces
By Order.
Signed: Warlimont

Enclosure to Supreme Command of the Armed Forces/Department L IV Q (Intelligence)
No. 44822/41 Top Secret
For General Officers only.

Directives for the treatment of political commissars.

When fighting Bolshevism one can not count on the enemy acting in accordance with the principles of humanity or International Law. In particular it must be expected that the treatment of our prisoners by the political commissars of all types who are the true pillars of resistance, will be cruel, inhuman and dictated by hate.

The troops must realize:

1.) That in this fight it is wrong to trust such elements with clemency and consideration in accordance with International Law. They are a menace to our own safety and to the rapid pacification of the conquered territories.

2.) That the originators of the asiatic-barbaric methods of fighting are the political commissars. They must be dealt with promptly and with the utmost severity.

Therefore, if taken while fighting or offering resistance they must, on principle, be shot immediately.


For the rest, the following instructions will apply:

I. Theatre of Operations.

1) Political commissars who oppose our troops will be dealt with in accordance with the “decree concerning jurisdiction in the “Barbarossa” area”. This applies to commissars of any type and position, even if they are only suspected of resistance, sabotage or instigation thereto.

Reference is made to “Directives on the behavior of troops in Russia.”

2) Political commissars in their capacity of officials attached to the enemy troops are recognizable by their special insignia – red star with an inwoven golden hammer and sickle on the sleeves – [ . . . ]. They are to be segregated at once, i.e. while still on the battlefield, from the prisoners of war. This is necessary in order to deprive them of any possibility of influencing the captured soldiers. Those commissars will not be recognized as soldiers; the protection granted to prisoners of war in accordance with International Law will not apply to them. After having been segregated they are to be dealt with.

3) Political commissars who are not guilty of any hostile act or are not suspected of such will remain unmolested for the time being. Only in the course of a deeper penetration into the country will it be possible to decide whether they are, or should be handed over to the “Sonderkommandos”. The latter should preferably scrutinize these cases themselves.

As a matter of principle, when deliberating the question of “guilty or not guilty”, the personal impression received of the commissar’s outlook and attitude should be considered of greater importance than the facts of the case which may not be decisive.

4) In cases 1) and 2) a brief report (report form) on the incident is to be submitted:

a) to the Division (Ic) (Field Intelligence Officer) by troops subordinated to a Division.

b) to the Corps Command or other respective Commands, as follows (Ic) by troops directly subordinated to a Corps Command, an Army High Command or the Command or an Army group, or Armored Group.

5) None of the above mentioned measures must delay the progress of operations. Combat troops should therefore refrain from systematic rounding-up and cleansing measures.

II. In the Rear Areas.

Commissars arrested in the rear area on account of doubtful behavior are to be handed over to the “Einsatzgruppe” or the “Einsatzkommandos” of the SS Security Service (SD) respectively.

III. Restriction with regard to Court Martials and Summary Courts.

The Court Martials and Summary Courts of regimental and other commanders must not be entrusted with the carrying out of the measures as under I and II.

Distribution:

Sector Staff Silesia 1st copy
Army Group B 2nd copy
Sector Staff East Prussia 3rd copy
High Command 16th Army 4th copy
Sub-sector East Prussia I 5th copy
Fortress Staff Blaurock 6th copy
High Command 4th Army 7th copy
Sector Staff Staufen 8th copy
Labor Staff Gotzmann 9th copy
High Command 11th Army 10th copy
High Command 2nd Army 11th copy
Chief Construction Group South 12th copy
Fortress Staff 49 13th copy
Fortress Staff Wegener 14th copy
Armoured Group 4 15th copy
High Command of Army in Norway 16th copy
Army High Command/ Adjutants Office 17th copy
Army C.i.C.
Army High Command/ Adjutants Office 18th copy
Army General Staff
Army High Command/ Department: 19th copy
Foreign Armies East
Army High Command/ Operational 20th copy
Section (without OKW decree)
Army High Command/ Quartermaster- 21st copy
General (without OKW decree)

In reserve copy 22-30

Source of English translation: Directives for the Treatment of Political Commissars [Commissar Order] (June 6, 1941), U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD, Nuremberg Trial, National Archives Record Group 238m, Entry 175, Box 27, NOKW-1076.

Source of original German text: Richtlinien für die Behandlung politischer Kommissare [Kommissarbefehl] (6. Juni 1941), U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD, Nuremberg Trial, National Archives Record Group 238m, Entry 175, Box 27, NOKW-1076.
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Re: The Jewish "Declaration of War" on Nazi Germany

Postby admin » Sat Mar 30, 2019 11:40 pm

The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses [Excerpt]
by Stephen H. Norwood

1. Germany Reverts to the Dark Ages: Nazi Clarity and Grassroots American Protest, 1933-1934

As soon as Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933, the American Jewish press compared him to Haman, and the plight of Germany's Jews to those of ancient Persia, whom Haman had threatened with extermination. Boston's Jewish Advocate declared on March 7 that Germany's entire Jewish population of 600,000 "is under the shadow of a campaign of murder which may be initiated soon." It drew its readers' attention to an article published a few days before in the London Daily Herald that predicted that the Nazis would initiate a pogrom "on a scale as terrible as any instance of Jewish persecution in 2,000 years." [1] At Purim in mid- March 1933, the festival celebrating the Jews' deliverance from Haman, many rabbis devoted their sermons to condemning the rise of Nazi antisemitism in Germany. Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan indicated that Hitler was even more threatening than Haman in that he was attempting to make the whole world unsafe for Jews. Kaplan predicted that Nazi Germany could ultimately destroy modern civilization and thrust all of humanity "back to the days of ancient barbarism." [2]

On March 20, 1933, shortly after the Nazis assumed power in Germany, the New York Times declared that testimony from Americans returning home from visits to Germany left no doubt that to be Jewish there "now constitutes a crime." It reported the declaration of Prussian high commissioner Hermann Goering and minister of propaganda Josef Goebbels that the "Jewish vampire" was responsible for "all the troubles from which the Reich is suffering." The Nazi leaders proclaimed that it was "the duty of all Germans to persecute and harass" the Jews. [3] No Jew was exempt from such treatment. The Nazis physically attacked Jews; forcibly shut down Jewish businesses; drove Jewish professors from their lecture halls; barred Jews from practicing law, medicine, and other professions; and embarked on a campaign to prevent them from finding gainful employment in nearly any field. The Manchester Guardian noted that by shutting down Jewish-owned stores and savagely beating Jews in the streets, the Nazis had graphically demonstrated that they were immediately putting into effect a sweeping antisemitic doctrine. [4]

That same month German Jewish refugee Lion Feuchtwanger, whose home had been ransacked by Nazis while he was abroad and his manuscripts destroyed, told the New York Times that the Nazis had initiated "pogroms such as Germany has not seen since the Jewish persecutions of the fourteenth century," which were precipitated by the ludicrous accusation that Jews had caused the Black Death that destroyed one-third of Europe's population. Feuchtwanger had spoken with Jewish refugees in Paris, who told him of acts of antisemitic violence they had experienced or witnessed in Germany compared to which "the atrocities during the war paled." These refugees had insisted to Feuchtwanger that "[elvery Jew in Germany must expect to be assaulted in the street or to be dragged out of bed and arrested, to have his goods and property destroyed." Jews were dragged from automobiles and beaten, just because they were Jews. "Day after day," the corpses of Jews slain in antisemitic attacks were found "mutilated beyond identification." [5]

An American just returned from Berlin told the New York Times that he had cut short his trip there after witnessing a platoon of Nazi storm troopers brutally beat Jewish businessmen at a restaurant who had refused to purchase Goebbels's newspaper Der Angriff. Seizing the Jews, the storm troopers formed a double line and forced them to pass through a gauntlet to exit the restaurant. As each of the Jews attempted to make his way to the door, every storm trooper, "first on one side and then on the other, smashed him in the face," with brass knuckles and "kicked him with heavy boots," turning his face into "beef steak." [6]

A British visitor to the German capital described a similar anti-Jewish atrocity to the London Daily Herald not long afterward. As he sat in a cafe, five Nazis entered and without any provocation repeatedly beat the Jewish proprietor with rubber truncheons. They left the premises shouting, "Get out, you cursed Jew!" As the proprietor lay unconscious on the floor in a pool of blood, his wife rushed to his side and cradled his battered head in her lap. When the British visitor asked her to call for an ambulance, she replied, "What good is that? There are only Nazi doctors ... and they will not attend to anyone attacked by the Nazis." [7]

The American and British press provided extensive coverage of such incidents of antisemitic violence, which occurred with great frequency during the early months of Nazi rule. On March 25, 1933, the Manchester Guardian emphasized that the Nazi terror "did not consist of sporadic excesses [and] was not a series of disorders" but was "systematic and integral" to the Nazi system of government. [8]

The Nazis delighted not only in beating defenseless Jews, including the elderly and women, but in publicly degrading them. On April 4, 1933, the Manchester Guardian published a photograph, taken at Chemnitz in Saxony, that a Social Democratic refugee had smuggled out of Germany, showing grinning Nazis parading a Jew through the streets in a refuse cart. At Worms in late March 1933, the Nazis arrested three Jews, took them to a Sturmabteilung (SA) headquarters, and subjected them to a terrible beating. The storm troopers then entertained themselves by forcing the Jews to strike each other with cudgels. [9] Several days later in the same city, theNazis confined arrested Jews in a pigsty. [10]

On April 1, 1933, the Hitler government staged a nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses and professional establishments, signaling the Nazi intention of making it impossible for Jews to earn a living. Fully half a million Nazi storm troopers enforced the boycott, forming squads in front of Jewish stores and offices that warned customers not to enter them. H. R. Knickerbocker, Pulitzer-prize winning Berlin correspondent of the New York Evening Post, reported that storm troopers had forcibly prevented his Evening Post colleague Albion Ross from entering a Jewish-owned department store in the Rosenthalerstrasse, and beat him after they ejected him from the doorway, shouting, "Damn dog!" while a policeman looked on indifferently. [11]

After reading Knickerbocker's dispatches from Berlin in the Evening Post, John Haynes Holmes, minister of New York City's Community Church, wrote to him that Germany had reverted to the Dark Ages. [12] Particularly frightening was the symbol that the storm troopers pasted over the entrance to every Jewish-owned store and physician's and lawyer's office as a "badge of shame": a yellow circle on a black background. This was the mark Christians had required Jewish businessmen, lawyers, and physicians to use during the Middle Ages to identify themselves, and it indicated a reversion to the vicious antisemitism of that era. [13]

James G. McDonald, League of Nations high commissioner for refugees from 1933 to 1935, stated that the boycott, which he observed in Berlin, was effective because it demonstrated "that Jewish trade could be completely stifled." McDonald noted that although the Nazis had scheduled the boycott to last only a day, "an equally destructive discrimination against all Jews in law, medicine, school, civil service, shops, and industry ... continue[d] unabated." [14]

The day after the boycott, the National Socialist Women's Federation in Berlin called on German women to never again patronize a Jewish store, physician, or attorney, and to ensure that their families did not "until Jewry has been destroyed." It reminded German women that they were "fighting a holy war." [15]

On April 7, 1933, the Hitler government enacted a law discharging Jews from the civil service. Professors were included because universities in Germany were administered by the state. Jews were defined as persons with at least one Jewish grandparent, and non-Jews married to Jews were included in the decree. Only those who were war veterans or had been appointed to their posts prior to 1914 were exempted, because of pressure from President Paul von Hindenburg. As a result, many of Germany's leading academics and intellectuals were forced into exile. [16]

As succeeding chapters will show, Germany's institutions of higher learning quickly deteriorated to the point that they could not properly be called universities. Martha Dodd, daughter of William E. Dodd, U.S. ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1938, who had served as president of the American Historical Association, stated that when she lived with her father in the Third Reich, Germany's universities were just "elevated institutions of Nazi propaganda." She recalled that Ambassador Dodd, a longtime professor who had studied in Germany at the University of Leipzig around the turn of the century, "was so shocked and sickened" by the damage the Nazis inflicted on higher education that "he dreaded even passing through a university town." He refused to accept any honorary degree from a German university. [17]

On April 24, 1933, Frederick T. Birchall, New York Times correspondent in Berlin, wrote that the Jews in Germany were facing an impending catastrophe. The Nazis had relegated them to a position even lower than second-class citizens - they were "to be like toads under the harrow." [18] Thousands of them had been deprived of homes and driven from employment but lacked the funds necessary to leave. American reporter Dorothy Thompson wrote in Berlin in May 1933 that Germany's Jews were "truly in a hopeless state," because they were no longer permitted to earn a living. [19] Those Jews with the means to escape Germany were required by the Hitler government to leave behind nearly everything they had. The New York Times reported in early May that Jewish refugees were arriving in Paris at a rate of 200 a day, and that nearly all were "reduced to a state of poverty." [20]

During the spring and summer of 1933, American and British journalists continued to publish alarming reports about Nazi persecution, drawn from their own observations and investigations, and from refugees able to flee to France, the Saar, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. By April 1933, the Nazis had confined an estimated 45,000 political opponents and Jews in newly established concentration camps and in SA headquarters, known as Brown Houses, that the Manchester Guardian called "nothing less than torture chambers." [21] (SA members were known as Brown Shirts, and brown was the Nazi color.)

A Manchester Guardian correspondent, reporting from Germany, declared that "[t]he inquirers by digging only an inch below the surface, will in city after city, village after village, discover such an abundance of barbarism committed by the Brown Shirts that modern analogies fail." He considered the storm troopers far more dangerous and sadistic than American gangsters, professional killers whom they somewhat resembled. The American gangster at least led a life of danger, confronting far more powerful armed government forces. By contrast, the German government's armed police and military forces were allied with the storm troopers. The Brown Shirts, carrying revolvers and pistols, and in some places armed with carbines and steel helmets, confronted as adversaries "helpless Jewish shopkeepers" and "defeated and unarmed Republicans." [22]

American newspaper reporters posted in Berlin emphasized to James G. McDonald on his visit there in the spring of 1933 the horror of Nazi brutality and antisemitism. Charles Elliot of the New York Herald Tribune told McDonald that "the degree of violence and intolerance was unprecedented in Western Europe." McDonald found Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter Edgar Ansel Mowrer, Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, "highly overwrought" when he met with him on March 30, 1933. Mowrer "could talk of little but terror and atrocities" and described the Nazi leaders as "brutes [and] sadists," McDonald noted in his diary. [23]

McDonald also found very ominous Adolf Hitler's remarks to him about what he planned to do to Germany's Jews in a personal conference with the Fuehrer in Berlin on April 8, 1933. When McDonald returned to the United States later in the month, he reported that Hitler had told him: "I will do the thing that the rest of the world would like to do. It doesn't know how to get rid of the Jews. I will show them." McDonald told James Warburg, son of prominent Jewish banker Paul Warburg, that Hitler had said at their meeting, "I've got my heel on the necks of the Jews and will soon have them so they can't move." In his conversation with Warburg, McDonald "predicted that German Jews would retrogress to medieval ghetto status." [24]

Because no country allowed any significant number of Jewish refugees to enter, Germany became, as Lord Melchett stated in May 1933, "an absolute death trap" for its 600,000 Jews. Lord Melchett emphasized that "there was no escape of any kind" for them. [25] New York Times correspondent Otto Tolischus wrote from Berlin in September 1933 that, if other countries including the United States lowered their immigration barriers, there was no doubt that "the vast majority" of Jews would leave Germany immediately. But unfortunately, "few of those seeking to emigrate entertain any hope of finding room in the other western countries." [26]

Tolischus stated that the majority of Jews in Germany were doomed. Because under the Hitler regime "Jews are in practice barred from all higher schooling and all the 'academic' professions," they had no prospects other than manual laborer. He noted that German Jews already referred to the older members of their community as "the lost generation," fated to struggle for a short time living on handouts "and then die out." [27]

Michael Williams, editor of the Catholic magazine The Commonweal, returning in June 1933 from a trip to Germany to investigate Nazi persecution, also considered the plight of Jews in Germany so desperate that they could not survive there. Williams stated that the Nazis' intention was to "absolutely eliminate the Jewish portion of the German nation." Williams asserted in the New York Times that the Nazi oppression of Jews "probably surpasses any recorded instance of persecution in Jewish history." He called the situation of Jews in Germany "deplorable beyond words." Williams appealed to the League of Nations to "come quickly and strongly to the rescue!" to prevent "the worst crime of our age" from proceeding: "the deliberate extinction of nearly 1,000,000 men, women, and children." [28]

That same month, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) published the 112-page White Book, designed to provide the American public with as complete an account as possible of the Hitler government's antisemitic laws and regulations, and of Nazi brutality and threats against Jews, from 1923 until May 1933. The AJC White Book, whose publication was announced in the New York Times, presented translations of the complete text from the official German law gazette, of "the numerous decrees promulgated under Chancellor Hitler prohibiting the employment of Jews in the professions, State services, [and] the schools." This was followed by eyewitnesses' reports of "the acts [of] oppression and violence" against Germany's Jews. [29]

American Jewish leaders observing developments in Germany during the summer and fall of 1933 concluded that Jews had no future there. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, honorary president of the AJCongress, who spent time in Europe that summer speaking with refugees from Germany, wrote that "the Jews of Germany are finished." Judge Julian Mack stated that the Jews in Nazi Germany faced a fate worse than they had in Inquisitorial Spain, [30] Alexander Brin, editor of Boston's Jewish Advocate, one of America's leading English-language Jewish weeklies, on his return to the United States in October 1933 after a trip to Germany, called the Hitler government "the most barbaric and savage movement since the Dark Ages." [31]

In September 1933, Germany's most eminent novelist, Thomas Mann, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, expressed the deepest pessimism about the impact of Hitler's rule. Mann had chosen to go into exile in France because of his anti-Nazi convictions. Emphasizing that Nazi rule was not an ephemeral phenomenon but would have long-term impact, he declared that Nazi policies would transform Germany into a place "intellectually so barren" that it would take "centuries before she can regain something of her former intellectual and cultural prestige." [32]

Albert Einstein, the most renowned exile from Nazi Germany, publicly condemned the Hitler regime from the beginning. Outside the country when the Nazis assumed power, Einstein declared that he would never return to Germany, and stated: "I do not desire to live in a country or belong to a country where the rights of all citizens are not respected and where freedom of speech among teachers is not accorded." [33] He appealed for world protest against Nazism. Shortly after the Nazis came to power they ransacked Einstein's weekend home at Caputh, outside Berlin, and confiscated his belongings. They also seized his bank account and securities. [34] In March 1933, Einstein resigned from the Prussian Academy of Sciences, to which he had belonged since 1913, in protest against Nazi policies. He expressed disgust with German scientists who had "failed in their duty to defend intellectual values." [35] Einstein sailed permanently for the United States in October 1933 and never went back to Germany. He became a faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, a center for research and postgraduate training organized by Jewish educator Abraham Flexner on an endowment by Jewish department store magnate Louis Bamberger and his sister, Caroline Bamberger Fuld. [36]

Because of Einstein's stature as one of the most eminent scientists of modern times, the American press gave particular attention to his denunciations of Nazi persecution of Jews and political opponents. The Hitler government's abusive and insulting treatment of such a highly respected man of learning was further confirmation to many in the West that Germany had lapsed into barbarism.

When the Hitler government arrested British journalist Noel Panter of the London Daily Telegraph in late October 1933 on charges of transmitting "atrocity reports" abroad and espionage, the American press speculated that the Nazis were attempting to extend to the foreign press the censorship it enforced on German newspapers. Panter was charged with espionage because, in reporting on a speech Hitler made in Kelheim, Bavaria, he had noted the military character of the massive storm troopers' demonstration that accompanied it. Panter described 20,000 uniformed storm troopers goose-stepping past SA chief of staff Ernst Roehm, "with rifles at the slope and with steel bayonets," and noted participation by the Reichswehr (German army) in the demonstration. Germany had recently withdrawn from a League of Nations disarmament conference, and the SA's display of military equipment raised fears in the West that the Hitler government was preparing for a significant military buildup. [37]

The American press, like the British, voiced grave concern about Panter's arrest and the Nazis' refusal to allow him counselor any contact with British consular officials, although academia remained silent. The New York Times reported that British public opinion was "thoroughly aroused" over Panter's imprisonment. The Nazis held Panter incommunicado for three days, denying him even a toothbrush or razor, while the British cabinet met to discuss its options and the British press expressed "the strongest editorial indignation." Panter faced at least two years in prison under the charges. British emissaries managed to gain access to Panter after three days, and six days later the Hitler government expelled the British journalist from Germany. Arriving in Britain, Panter declared in a radio address that liberty had completely vanished from Germany. [38]

Summing up eleven months of Nazi rule in late December 1933, the New York Times concluded that the calendar year was ending with Germany's Jews in a dismal situation. They had been degraded to "pariahs." The Hitler regime had shut down a large proportion of Jewish-owned businesses and forced a great many others to "replace Jewish directors, managers, and other important employees with Nazis." The minister of finance had decreed that tax and customs officials refuse contact with "non-Aryan" representatives of businesses, even if they were war veterans. The New York Times noted that many marketplaces and fairs prohibited Jews from engaging in any business, and that some of Germany's towns now forbade Jews from entering them. [39] Jews were virtually barred from the professions and from higher education.

The New York Times also reported that the Nazis had made life miserable for Jewish children in the common and intermediate schools. They were ostracized and harassed by their fellow pupils and teachers. The Times cited the account of the twelve-year-old daughter of an American diplomat in Germany, who described how the teacher on a class excursion had separated the Jewish pupils from the rest of the class and ordered them to keep their distance from the" Aryans" on their walk. School curricula gave significant emphasis to the propagation of Nazi antisemitic doctrines. [40] Alexander Brin wrote in October 1933 that Germany's public schools had promulgated so much antisemitism in the classrooms that were the Hitler regime to be "overthrown tomorrow," it would probably take generations to repair "the damage that has been done by the poison instilled into the minds of the children." [41]

During late 1933 and early 1934, some of the journalists in the West best informed about German affairs, who had visited Nazi Germany for extended periods during the early phases of Hitler's rule, astutely warned about the very real possibility of a large-scale genocide of Germany's Jews. Writing in November 1933 in the Jewish magazine Opinion, edited by Stephen S. Wise, Belgian journalist Pierre van Paassen, drawing on interviews with Jews that he had recently conducted in three widely separated cities in Germany, stated that "the position of the German Jews is getting worse every day" and called for international action to save the German Jewish community "from physical extinction." He endorsed Rabbi Wise's call for the settling of 150,000 German Jews in Palestine. But van Paassen warned that unless such a plan were carried out at once, "there will be no 150,000 German Jews left to be settled in Palestine." [42]

Dorothy Thompson wrote in Opinion in March 1934 that the Nazis' aim was "to eliminate the Jews." Thompson, wife of novelist Sinclair Lewis and a non-Jew, had served as Berlin correspondent for theNew York Evening Post and had published a series of articles in May 1933 on Nazi atrocities against Jews in the Jewish Daily Bulletin and for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. In her Opinion article, entitled "Germany Is a Prison," Thompson stated that because the Nazis were unable "to assassinate half a million Jews in cold blood," they had launched a "cold pogrom," forcing the Jews to leave Germany "by closing down one by one opportunities to earn a living or educate their children beyond the elementary grades, and by social ostracism." This "campaign of persecution" had caused a large number of Jews in one year of Nazi rule to leave Germany, despite the enormous difficulties of stiff immigration barriers everywhere in the world. Those Jews remaining in Germany, driven by the Nazis from their businesses, jobs, and schools, faced economic catastrophe. [43]

By the spring of 1934, the American reading public had access to books in which prominent journalists, politicians, and Jewish leaders described Nazi Germany as barbaric and detailed Nazi atrocities. In March a symposium entitled Nazism: An Assault on Civilization was published that included passionate denunciations of the Hitler regime by former New York governor and presidential candidate Al Smith, Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and writer Ludwig Lewisohn. AFL president William Green and reformer Alice Hamilton analyzed and forcefully condemned Nazi labor and women's policies, respectively. Dorothy Thompson described the "wanton cruelties" inflicted by the Nazis. In the concluding article, Governor Smith wrote that if Nazism prevailed, those who had fought "for spiritual and political freedom have fought in vain." [44] Germany Unmasked by Robert Dell, veteran Manchester Guardian correspondent, appeared at the same time. It opened with a statement by a diplomat stationed in Berlin: "The conditions here are not those of a normal civilized country and the German Government is not a normal civilized Government and cannot be dealt with as if it were one." [45]

That spring, the American and British press reported yet another ominous development in Germany: the Nazis' revival of the medieval blood libel accusation, which they aggressively disseminated throughout the Reich using official party newspapers. The blood libel, which had no basis in fact, charged the Jews with kidnapping Christian children, torturing and murdering them to mock Jesus, and draining their blood to mix with matzoh at Passover (Pesach) and with Purim pastries. On May 1, 1934, Julius Streicher, Nazi gauleiter of Franconia and political commissar of the Bavarian state government, published a special May Day edition of the Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer of 130,000 copies, devoted to documenting 131 alleged Jewish ritual murders from 169 B.C.E. to 1929 C.E. The May Day ritual murder issue contained two heavily underscored red banner headlines declaring "Jewish murder plot against non-Jewish humanity exposed." The cover depicted two Jews, one holding a bloodstained knife and the other collecting in a dish streams of blood gushing from the slashed throats of "Aryan" women. Other illustrations showed "children being done to death in the most revolting circumstances by Jews." [46]

The London Times called Der Sturmer's ritual murder issue "a crudely horrible production" that was "designed to excite racial fanaticism to a bloodthirsty pitch." [47] Besides the "obvious incitements to violence" against Jews, the Times editorialized that reviving the ludicrous and long-discredited blood libel accusation "did grave damage to the intellectual reputation of the new Germany." [48]

Western journalists believed that the publication of Der Sturmer's special ritual murder issue placed all of Germany's Jews in immediate physical danger because, as the London Times noted, the person responsible was no less than Julius Streicher, "one of the most prominent members of the Nazi 'inner circle.'" The New York Times reported that succeeding issues of Der Sturmer were "as full of anti-Jewish hatred as their predecessors" and that they published "the usual caricatures and epithets." [49]

Indeed, belief in the blood libel accusation against the Jews was sufficiently widespread in Germany that it had inspired a pogrom shortly before the appearance of Der Sturmer's May Day issue. During the night of March 25-26, 1934, residents of the town of Ellwangen, Mittelfranken (Central Franconia), in Bavaria smashed the windows of Jewish homes, while onlookers shouted in chorus: "In this Pesach there flows no Christian but Jewish blood." [50]

The publication of the ritual murder issue of Der Sturmer coincided with the Hitler regime's opening of a series of special performances of the intensely antisemitic Oberammergau Passion Play, discussed in Chapter 4, which was highly popular among American exchange students studying in Germany and visiting American academics. The Nazis believed that exposing Americans to the passion play's images of the Jews as a race forever cursed for their crime of deicide would help them spread antisemitism abroad. In May 1934, they decided to exploit Der Sturmer's ritual murder issue in the same manner. The New York Times reported that Julius Streicher, in a storm trooper's uniform, had in Nuremberg personally presented a copy of the issue to each of the nineteen members of a delegation of British journalists on their way to attend the passion play at Oberammergau. [51]

In the latter part of the month the Berlin periodical Fridericus and Der Deutsche, organ of the German Labor Front, also put forward the blood libel accusation. Fridericus warned that "[t]hrough the Jews, peoples and their culture die" and predicted that there no longer would be any more room for Jews in Germany. How the Jews' removal was to be accomplished, by expulsion or by extermination, it did not say. [52]
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