Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 Read Online Free PDF Page A

it. A few days later, on March 23, the Reichstag divested itself of its functions by passing the Enabling Act, which gave full legislative and executive powers to the chancellor (at the outset new legislation was discussed with the cabinet ministers, but the final decision was Hitler’s). The rapidity of changes that followed was stunning: The states were brought into line; in May the trade unions were abolished and replaced by the German Labor Front; in July all political parties formally ceased to exist with the sole exception of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP). Popular support for this torrential activity and constant demonstration of power snowballed. In the eyes of a rapidly growing number of Germans, a “national revival” was under way. 37
    It has often been asked whether the Nazis had concrete goals and precise plans. In spite of internal tensions and changing circumstances, short-term goals in most areas were systematically pursued and rapidly achieved. But the final objectives of the regime, the guidelines for long-term policies, were defined in general terms only, and concrete steps for their implementation were not spelled out. Yet these vaguely formulated long-term goals were essential not only as guidelines of sorts but also as indicators of boundless ambitions and expectations: They were objects of true belief for Hitler and his coterie; they mobilized the energies of the party and of various sectors of the population; and they were expressions of faith in the correctness of the way.
    Anti-Jewish violence spread after the March elections. On the ninth, Storm Troopers (Sturmabteilung, or SA) seized dozens of East European Jews in the Scheunenviertel, one of Berlin’s Jewish quarters. Traditionally the first targets of German Jew-hatred, these Ostjuden were also the first Jews as Jews to be sent off to concentration camps. On March 13 forcible closing of Jewish shops was imposed by the local SA in Mannheim; in Breslau, Jewish lawyers and judges were assaulted in the court building; and in Gedern, in Hesse, the SA broke into Jewish homes and beat up the inhabitants “with the acclamation of a rapidly growing crowd.” The list of similar incidents is a long one. 38 There were also killings. According to the late March (bimonthly) report of the governing president of Bavaria, “On the 15th of this month, around 6 in the morning, several men in dark uniforms arrived by truck at the home of the Israelite businessman Otto Selz in Straubing. Selz was dragged from his house in his nightclothes and taken away. Around 9:30 Selz was shot to death in a forest near Wang, in the Landshut district. The truck is said to have arrived on the Munich-Landshut road and to have departed the same way. It carried six uniformed men and bore the insignia II.A. Several people claim to have noticed that the truck’s occupants wore red armbands with a swastika.” 39 On March 31 Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick wired all local police stations to warn them that Communist agitators disguised in SA uniforms and using SA license plates would smash Jewish shop windows and exploit the occasion to create disturbances. 40 This could have been standard Nazi disinformation or some remaining belief in possible Communist subversion. On April 1, the Göttingen police station investigating the damage to Jewish stores and the local synagogue on March 28, reported having caught two members of the Communist Party and one Social Democrat in possession of parts of Nazi uniforms; headquarters in Hildesheim was informed that the men arrested were the perpetrators of the anti-Jewish action. 41
    Much of the foreign press gave wide coverage to the Nazi violence. The Christian Science Monitor , however, expressed doubts about the accuracy of the reports of Nazi atrocities, and later justified retaliation against “those who spread lies against Germany.” And Walter Lippmann, the most