8 Chapter 8: Antisemitism in Nazi Germany

Antisemitism was central to the ideology of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement. Hitler’s own antisemitism became explicit in his political writings soon after World War I, with his earliest known written statement on the “Jewish Question” coming in September 1919 in the form of a letter to a German soldier. The ideas first expressed in that letter became central to Mein Kampf (1925–1926) and to the Nazi Party’s political program. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, antisemitism moved from political rhetoric into government policy. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 transformed Nazi racial ideology into law by defining Jewish identity according to ancestry and stripping Jews of German citizenship. The violence of Kristallnacht in November 1938 marked another escalation.

World War II radically expanded the scope and intensity of Nazi persecution. Following the invasion of Poland in 1939, German authorities established ghettos and forcibly concentrated Jewish populations. After the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, German SS and police units carried out mass shootings of Jewish communities. Nazi leaders subsequently developed the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” a systematic program to murder Europe’s Jews. The Wannsee Conference of January 1942 coordinated the implementation of this policy among German government and Nazi agencies. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany, together with its allies and collaborators, murdered approximately six million Jews through mass shootings, starvation and forced labor, deportations, and killing centers.

The defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 brought the crimes of the regime before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which opened on November 20, 1945. The prosecution presented extensive documentary and photographic evidence of the Nazi persecution and murder of European Jews. The trial concluded in October 1946, with 19 of the 22 defendants convicted and 12 sentenced to death. The proceedings established important precedents in international criminal law and made the systematic persecution and murder carried out by the Nazi regime a central subject of international legal judgment.

We are going to be using these sources differently than we have in the past chapters. Rather than exploring a common theme between two time periods or two societies, we will be using these sources to trace the development of antisemitism in Nazi Germany starting with Adolph Hitler’s earliest known writing on the subject through UN Resolution 260 on genocide. The sources begin with the letter mentioned above, from Hitler to Adolf Gemlich. Next up is an excerpt from Mein Kampf. This is followed by one of the Nuremberg laws, showing antisemitism being put into the law of the land. The second to last source is the sworn testimony of the commandant of Auschwitz, matter-of-factly explaining what went on at the death camp. The chapter concludes with UN Resolution 260 giving definition to and punishment for the crime of genocide.

8.1 Adolf Hitler: Letter to Adolf Gemlich (September 16, 1919)

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) became the central figure of the fascist movement in Germany, but his antisemitic ideas emerged publicly before the Nazi Party came to power. In the political turmoil following World War I, Hitler worked with the Bavarian military’s political education and intelligence apparatus, where he developed a reputation as an effective speaker. In September 1919, he was asked to respond to a soldier, Adolf Gemlich, who had inquired about the government’s position on the so-called “Jewish Question.” Hitler’s response became his first known written statement of antisemitic beliefs.

The following is replicated in its entirety from Eberhard Jäckel (ed.), Hitler. Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905-1924 (Stuttgart, 1980), pp. 88-90. Translated by Richard S. Levy.

Dear Herr Gemlich,

The danger posed by Jewry for our people today finds expression in the undeniable aversion of wide sections of our people. The cause of this aversion is not to be found in a clear recognition of the consciously or unconsciously systematic and pernicious effect of the Jews as a totality upon our nation. Rather, it arises mostly from personal contact and from the personal impression which the individual Jew leaves–almost always an unfavorable one. For this reason, antisemitism is too easily characterized as a mere emotional phenomenon. And yet this is incorrect. Antisemitism as a political movement may not and cannot be defined by emotional impulses, but by recognition of the facts. The facts are these: First, Jewry is absolutely a race and not a religious association. Even the Jews never designate themselves as Jewish Germans, Jewish Poles, or Jewish Americans but always as German, Polish, or American Jews. Jews have never yet adopted much more than the language of the foreign nations among whom they live. A German who is forced to make use of the French language in France, Italian in Italy, Chinese in China does not thereby become a Frenchman, Italian, or Chinaman. It’s the same with the Jew who lives among us and is forced to make use of the German language. He does not thereby become a German. Neither does the Mosaic faith, so important for the survival of this race, settle the question of whether someone is a Jew or non-Jew. There is scarcely a race whose members belong exclusively to just one definite religion.

Through thousands of years of the closest kind of inbreeding, Jews in general have maintained their race and their peculiarities far more distinctly than many of the peoples among whom they have lived. And thus comes the fact that there lives amongst us a non- German, alien race which neither wishes nor is able to sacrifice its racial character or to deny its feeling, thinking, and striving. Nevertheless, it possesses all the political rights we do. If the ethos of the Jews is revealed in the purely material realm, it is even clearer in their thinking and striving. Their dance around the golden calf is becoming a merciless struggle for all those possessions we prize most highly on earth.

The value of the individual is no longer decided by his character or by the significance of his achievements for the totality but exclusively by the size of his fortune, by his money.

The loftiness of a nation is no longer to be measured by the sum of its moral and spiritual powers, but rather by the wealth of its material possessions.

This thinking and striving after money and power, and the feelings that go along with it, serve the purposes of the Jew who is unscrupulous in the choice of methods and pitiless in their employment. In autocratically ruled states he whines for the favor of “His Majesty” and misuses it like a leech fastened upon the nations. In democracies he vies for the favor of the masses, cringes before the “majesty of the people,” and recognizes only the majesty of money.

He destroys the character of princes with byzantine flattery, national pride (the strength of a people), with ridicule and shameless breeding to depravity. His method of battle is that public opinion which is never expressed in the press but which is nonetheless managed and falsified by it. His power is the power of money, which multiplies in his hands effortlessly and endlessly through interest, and which forces peoples under the most dangerous of yokes. Its golden glitter, so attractive in the beginning, conceals the ultimately tragic consequences. Everything men strive after as a higher goal, be it religion, socialism, democracy, is to the Jew only means to an end, the way to satisfy his lust for gold and domination.

In his effects and consequences he is like a racial tuberculosis of the nations.

The deduction from all this is the following: an antisemitism based on purely emotional grounds will find its ultimate expression in the form of the pogrom. An antisemitism based on reason, however, must lead to systematic legal combatting and elimination of the privileges of the Jews, that which distinguishes the Jews from the other aliens who live among us (an Aliens Law). The ultimate objective [of such legislation] must, however, be the irrevocable removal of the Jews in general.

For both these ends a government of national strength, not of national weakness, is necessary.

The Republic in Germany owes its birth not to the uniform national will of our people but the sly exploitation of a series of circumstances which found general expression in a deep, universal dissatisfaction. These circumstances however were independent of the form of the state and are still operative today. Indeed, more so now than before. Thus, a great portion of our people recognizes that a changed state-form cannot in itself change our situation. For that it will take a rebirth of the moral and spiritual powers of the nation.

And this rebirth cannot be initiated by a state leadership of irresponsible majorities, influenced by certain party dogmas, an irresponsible press, or internationalist phrases and slogans. [It requires] instead the ruthless installation of nationally minded leadership personalities with an inner sense of responsibility.

But these facts deny to the Republic the essential inner support of the nation’s spiritual forces. And thus today’s state leaders are compelled to seek support among those who draw the exclusive benefits of the new formation of German conditions, and who for this reason were the driving force behind the revolution–the Jews. Even though (as various statements of the leading personalities reveal) today’s leaders fully realized the danger of Jewry, they (seeking their own advantage) accepted the readily proffered support of the Jews and also returned the favor. And this pay-off consisted not only in every possible favoring of Jewry, but above all in the hindrance of the struggle of the betrayed people against its defrauders, that is in the repression of the antisemitic movement.

Respectfully,
Adolf Hitler

Source: Eberhard Jäckel (ed.), Hitler. Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905-1924 (Stuttgart, 1980), pp. 88-90. Translated by Richard S. Levy.

This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history. Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use.

8.2 Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf (1925)

Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (My Struggle) was written largely during and after his imprisonment in 1924 following the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. Published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926, the work combined autobiography with a political and ideological program. It articulated many of the central ideas that would become associated with Nazism, including racial antisemitism, extreme German nationalism, opposition to democracy and Marxism, and the pursuit of territorial expansion.

In the section describing his years in Vienna, Hitler presented his supposed “discovery” of antisemitism as a decisive turning point in the formation of his worldview. He described encountering Jews and Jewish culture in Vienna and claimed that his observations gradually led him to adopt a racial conception of antisemitism. Vienna at the time was a major center of Jewish cultural and intellectual life but also of organized political antisemitism, particularly under Mayor Karl Lueger. Hitler later credited figures such as Lueger and the antisemitic politician Georg von Schönerer with influencing his political outlook. Historians, however, caution against accepting Hitler’s retrospective account as a straightforward autobiography: evidence indicates that his fully developed racial antisemitism emerged more clearly after he left Vienna in 1913.

The following is adapted from Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (14th ed., Munich, 1932). Translated by Richard S. Levy.

It is difficult today, if not impossible, to say when the word, “Jew,” first occasioned special thoughts in me. In my father’s house, I cannot recall ever having heard the word, at least while he lived. I believe the old gentleman would have regarded special emphasis on this term as culturally backward. He had succeeded over the course of his life in becoming more or less cosmopolitan, an outlook that survived alongside a quite rough and ready nationalistic sentiment and which even colored my own.

In school, too, I found no cause which would have led me to change this received image. In high school I did learn to know a Jewish boy, whom we all treated cautiously, only because various experiences had taught us to doubt his reliability. But we didn’t care all that much one way or the other [about Jews].

Not until I was fourteen or fifteen did I bump into the word, “Jew,” more frequently, mostly in the context of political discussions. I felt slightly averse [to this practice] and could not fend off a feeling of unpleasantness which always came over me when religious squabbles were unloaded in front of me.

But at that time I did not see the question as something special.

Linz possessed very few Jews. In the course of centuries their exteriors had become Europeanized and human-looking. Indeed, I even took them for Germans. The nonsense of this conception was not clear to me because I saw just a single distinctive characteristic, the alien religion. Since they had been persecuted because of it, as I believed, my aversion toward prejudicial remarks about them became almost detestation.

I did not yet so much as suspect the existence of a systematic opposition to Jews.

Then I came to Vienna.

Caught up by the fullness of impressions in the architectonic realm, downcast by the difficulty of my own lot, I did not at first grasp the inner stratification of the people in this gigantic city. I did not see Jews, despite the fact that Vienna already counted two hundred thousand of them among two million people at this time. My eyes and my senses could not keep pace with the flood of values and ideas of the first few weeks. Only when calm gradually returned and the agitated image began to clear did I look at my new world in a more fundamental way and also come upon the Jewish question.

I don’t wish to assert that the way I got to know them was particularly pleasant. I still saw only the religion of the Jews and for reasons of human tolerance held aloof from attacks on this religion, as any other. Consequently, the tone struck by the antisemitic press of Vienna appeared to me as unworthy of the cultural heritage of a great nation. The memory of certain occurrences in the Middle Ages oppressed me; I would not wish to see them repeated. Since the papers in question were not generally well thought of (for reasons I had not yet fathomed), I mainly saw them as products of anger and envy, more than as the results of a systematic, albeit false, perspective.

I was strengthened in my opinion by what appeared to me as the immeasurably more worthy form in which the really big newspapers answered these attacks or, what occurred to me as still more praiseworthy, how they simply failed to mention them at all, that is, condemned them through silence.

I zealously read the so-called world-press (Neue Freie Presse, Wiener Tageblatt, etc.) and was amazed by the scope of what it offered its readers as well as the objectivity of its individual articles. I respected the aristocratic tone but was often somewhat uncomfortable with the overstated style. Yet this might have been in keeping with the verve of the whole metropolis.

Since I then regarded Vienna in this way, I thought of this explanation of mine as a valid excuse….

[The Viennese press’ fawning treatment of the Habsburgs and hypercritical treatment of the German Empire and Wilhelm II undermined Hitler’s respect.]

It was this that gradually made me observe the big papers more cautiously.

When, on one such occasion, one of the antisemitic newspapers, the Deutsches Volksblatt, behaved more respectably, I was forced to recognize it.

Another thing that got on my nerves at this time was the way the big papers pursued an obnoxious cult of France. You would have to be ashamed to be a German when these sweet hymns of praise to the “great culture-nation” came before your eyes. More than once, this miserable truckling to the French caused me to drop these “world-papers.” I then often picked up the Volksblatt which, while it was certainly smaller, appeared nonetheless somewhat purer in these matters. I was not in agreement with the sharply antisemitic tone, but once in awhile I read arguments which gave me cause to think.

In any case, I slowly came to know from these causes about the man and the movement which determined Vienna’s destiny at that time: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party.

When I came to Vienna, I stood opposed to both.

The man and his movement seemed “reactionary” in my eyes.

My common sense of justice, however, moderated this judgment in proportion to the opportunity I received to get to know the man and his work. Slowly, my just judgment grew into unabashed admiration. Today I see the man, even more than before, as the greatest German mayor of all times.

How much of my basic outlook was changed by this altered position toward the Christian-Social movement!

If by this experience my views with regard to antisemitism also fell to the passage of time, then this was surely the most significant transformation of all for me.

It cost me the greatest inner struggles of the soul, and only after months of wrestling between sentiment and reason did reason begin to emerge the winner. Two years later sentiment fell in line with reason and from then on became its most reliable guardian and sentinel.

During this period of bitter wrestling between inner education and cold reason, the visual observation of Vienna’s streets had rendered invaluable services. There came a time when I no longer as before wandered blindly through the mighty city. Now with eyes opened I looked at people as well as buildings.

As I was once strolling through the inner city, I suddenly happened upon an apparition in a long caftan with black hair locks.

Is this a Jew? was my first thought.

They surely didn’t look like that in Linz. I observed the man stealthily and cautiously. But the longer I stared at this alien face, examining it feature for feature, the more my first question was transformed into a new conception:

Is this a German?

As always in such cases I began to try to remove my doubts with books. For a few hellers I purchased the first antisemitic brochures of my life. Unfortunately, they all proceeded from the standpoint that in principle the reader was conversant with or even understood the Jewish question to a certain degree. Moreover, their tone was in most cases sufficient to recreate doubts in me, particularly because of the shallow and extraordinarily unscientific support for their assertions.

I had a relapse for weeks, on one occasion for months.

The matter seemed so monstrous, the indictment so immoderate, that, tortured by the fear of doing an injustice, I again became anxious and uncertain.

But, certainly, I could no longer be in doubt that it did not concern Germans of a peculiar religion but rather a people in itself. For since I had begun to concern myself with these questions and become aware of the Jews, Vienna appeared to me in a different light than previously. Wherever I went, I now saw Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they were distinguished from other men in my eyes. Especially the inner city and the areas north of the Danube Canal swarmed with a people who even externally no longer bore a similarity to Germans.

However, if I still had doubts, these hesitations were finally removed by the position of a segment of the Jews themselves.

A great movement among them, which was quite extensive in Vienna, came out most emphatically for the confirmation of the racial character of Judaism: Zionism.

It might look as though only a section of Jews approved this position and that the great majority condemned such an affirmation, indeed inwardly rejected it. But upon closer examination this appearance dissolved in an evil vapor composed of pure expedience and pretext, not to say lies. For the so-called Jewry of liberal disposition did not reject the Zionists as non- Jews, but only as Jews of an impractical stamp, whose public confession of their Jewishness might even be dangerous.

In their inter-relatedness nothing had changed.

In a short time this phoney struggle between Zionistic and liberal Jews nauseated me. It was thoroughly false, based on lies, and little in keeping with the always asserted moral superiority and purity of this people.

The cleanliness of this people, moral and otherwise, is a point in itself. Just looking at their exteriors, even with your eyes closed, you can tell they are not lovers of water. Later the odor of these caftan wearers often sickened me. Added to this were their unclean clothes and less than heroic appearance.

All this is far from appealing. But you must be even more offended when you look beyond the physical uncleanliness to discover the moral stains upon the Chosen People.

Nothing affected me in so short a time as the slowly mounting insight into the kind of activity carried on by Jews in specific areas.

Was there any kind of filth or brazenness, particularly in cultural life, in which there was not at least one Jew participating?

As soon as you cautiously cut into such an abscess, you would find, like a maggot in a rotting body, blinded by the sudden light, a little Yid!

Jewry had much to answer for in my eyes when I got to know its activity in the press, art, literature, and the theater. All their unctuous reassurances were no longer of any use. It was sufficient to observe a billboard, to study the names of the intellectual producers of the horrible trash they advertised for the movies and theater, to become hardened for a long time. This was the pestilence, intellectual pestilence, far worse than the Black Death of long ago, with which the people were being infected. And in what quantities was this poison being produced! Naturally, the lower the intellectual and moral level of such art fabricators, the greater his fertility until the rogue like a garbage sorter splashes his filth in the face of humanity. Just think, for every Goethe, Nature can easily come up with ten thousand such polluters of the environment, who now poison the soul like germ carriers of the worst sort.

It was horrifying, but undeniable, that just the Jew in abundant numbers seemed chosen by Nature for this shameful destiny.

Is this the chosenness of the Jews?…

I now began to examine my beloved “world press” from this viewpoint.

The more fundamentally I probed the object of my erstwhile admiration, the more it withered. Its style became ever more unbearable. The content I had to reject as inwardly corrupt and superficial. The objectivity of the reporting seemed to me now to partake more of lying than the honest truth. Ah, but the authors were–Jews.

Thousands of things I had scarcely noticed before now appeared noteworthy to me; other things that I had thought about I now learned to grasp and understand.

I now saw the liberal slant of this press in a different light. Its aristocratic tone in the answering of attacks as well as their condemnation to silence were revealed to me now as clever and shabby tricks. Encomiastic theater criticism was always reserved for Jewish authors, and their rejections never fell upon any but the Germans. In the needling of Wilhelm II could be discerned the constancy of its methods, exactly in the same way as the commendation of French culture and civilization. The kitschy contents of the novellas now became unacceptable [to me], and in their language I detected the sounds of an alien people. However, the sense of the whole was so inimical to Germandom that it could only have been intentional.

But in whose interest was this?

Was it all an accident?

Gradually, I became unsure.

However, the process was accelerated by insights which I gained in a series of other events. I refer to the general conception of ethics and morals, as openly exhibited by a large part of Jewry and which could be visibly substantiated.

Here again the streets offered a frequently and truly evil instructional lesson.

The relationship of Jewry to prostitution and still more to the white-slave traffic could be especially well studied in Vienna, as in no other city of Western Europe, with the possible exception of the ports of southern France. Walking of a night the streets and alleys of Leopoldstadt, you witness everywhere, whether you want to or not, encounters which remained hidden from the greatest part of the German people until the war presented soldiers on the Eastern Front occasion to see similar things, or, more aptly put, forced them to see such.

The first time I recognized the Jews directing this disgusting traffic in vice, shamelessly and in ice-cold business fashion, a cold shudder ran down my back.

But then it inflamed me.

Now, I no longer avoided discussion of the Jewish question. No, now I welcomed it. But as I had learned to look for the Jew in all the areas and manifestations of cultural and artistic life, I suddenly happened upon him in a place where I least expected to do so.

When I discerned the Jews as leaders of the Social Democrats, the scales fell from my eyes. The long struggle of the soul thereupon concluded.

Even in the daily relations with my fellow workers I saw an astonishing adaptability, how within the space of a few days or even a few hours they adopted altered positions on the same question. It was difficult for me to understand how men, who when spoken to privately still had some reasonable views, immediately lost them as soon as they came under the spell of the masses. This happened often enough to make me despair. When, after hours of persuasion, I was convinced that this time I had finally broken through the ice or that I had cleared up some nonsense and rejoiced in having done so, I would on the next day, to my grief, have to begin all over again. It had all been in vain. Like an eternal pendulum, their views seemed to swing back again and again to madness.

This much I could comprehend: they were dissatisfied with their lot and damned the destiny which hit them so often and so cruelly. They hated the employers who seemed to be the heartless executioners of that destiny. They cursed the authorities who, in their eyes, possessed no feeling for their situation. They demonstrated against the price of necessities and carried their demands into the streets. All this could be understood without reflection. What remained inexplicable, however, was the boundless hate which they laid upon their own nationality. They defamed the greatness of the nation, sullied its history, and dragged its great men into the gutter.

This struggle against their own kind, this [fouling] of their own nest and homeland was equally senseless and incomprehensible. It was unnatural.

It was possible to cure them of this vice, but only temporarily, for days or, at most, weeks. If, however, you met the same supposed convert a little later, he had returned to what he was.

He was again possessed by the Unnatural.

Gradually, I realized that the Social Democratic press was conducted predominantly by Jews. But I did not put any special significance on this circumstance because the conditions were exactly the same in the other papers. Only one fact was obvious: there was not a single paper with Jews present on it that could be designated as truly national, at least according to my education and conceptions.

When I mastered myself enough to read these kinds of Marxist press productions, the aversion grew to such proportions that I now sought to get to know about the manufacturers of these thrown together villainies.

From publishers on down, they were all Jews.

I gathered all the obtainable Social Democratic brochures and sought out the names of their authors: Jews. I noted the names of almost all the leaders: they were in by far the greatest part also members of the “Chosen People,” whether acting as members of the parliament or in the secretariats of the trade unions, heads of organizations, or street agitators. It was always the same uncanny picture. The names Austerlitz, David, Adler, Ellenbogen, etc. will remain eternally in my memory.

One thing had become clear to me: the leadership of the Party, with whose petty members I had been carrying on a violent battle for months, lay almost exclusively in the hands of an alien people. For that the Jew was no German I now knew to my inner satisfaction and with finality.

Only now did I learn to know the seducers of our people completely.

A year of my sojourn in Vienna had sufficed for me to become convinced that no worker could be so stubborn as to be beyond better knowledge and better explanations. Slowly I mastered their doctrine and employed it as a weapon in the struggle for my own inner convictions.

Almost always now I was victorious.

The great mass was to be saved but only after the heaviest sacrifices of time and patience.

Never, however, was a Jew to be freed from his viewpoint.

I was still childlike enough at that time to want to make the madness of their doctrine clear to them; I talked my tongue sore and my throat hoarse and thought that I must succeed in convincing them of the harmfulness of their Marxist insanity. In fact, I achieved just the opposite. It seemed as though the mounting insight into the nihilistic effect of Social Democratic theories and their realization only served to strengthen them in their determination.

The more I argued with them the more I learned their dialectic. At first they calculated on the stupidity of their adversary. Then, when they could find no other way out, they played stupid themselves. …Whenever you attacked one of the apostles, your hand closed around slimy matter which immediately separated and slipped through the fingers and the next moment reconstituted itself. If you struck such an annihilating blow that, observed by the audience, he had no choice but to agree with you, and thus you thought you had taken one step forward, the next day your amazement would be great. The Jew knew nothing at all about yesterday and repeated his same old twaddle as though nothing had happened; if you angrily challenged him on this, he could not remember a thing other than he had demonstrated the correctness of his assertions on the previous day.

Many times I stood there astonished.

I didn’t know what to be more amazed at: their verbal agility or their art in lying.

Gradually, I began to hate them.

All this had but one good side, that to just the extent I identified the actual bearers or at least the disseminators of Social Democracy, so the love for my own people had to increase. Who could curse the unhappy victims of these devilishly skillful seducers? How difficult was it for even me to master the dialectical lying of this race! And how vain was such a success against people who twisted the truth in your mouth, who brazenly denied the words they had just spoken and in the next minute took credit for it anyway.

No, the more I knew the Jews, the more I had to pardon the workers….

…It was the duty of every thinking man to push himself into the forefront of the cursed [Marxist] movement, in order to perhaps avert the worst….But the instigators of this disease of the peoples must have been real devils. For only in the brains of monsters–not men–could such a plan and organization assume palpable form, the actions of which would have as their final result the collapse of human culture, thereby leading to the desolation of the world.

In this case the only salvation remaining was war, war with all the weapons the human spirit, reason, and will could muster, without regard to which side of the scales destiny might throw its blessing.

Thus I began to familiarize myself with the founders of this doctrine, in order to study the principles of the movement. That I came to the goal more quickly than I had at first perhaps dared to think, I owed to my newly won, though still superficial, knowledge of the Jewish question. It alone enabled me to compare the reality with the theoretical sham of the founding apostles of Social Democracy; it taught me to understand the language of the Jewish people which speaks in order to hide its thoughts, or at least to veil them. Its real objective is not to be found in the lines but rather slumbering, well hidden, between the lines.

It was for me the time of the greatest inner upheavals I had ever had to endure.

From a weak cosmopolitan I had become a fanatical antisemite.

Just one more time–it was the last–I was visited by the deepest anxiety and oppressive thoughts.

As I scrutinized the effects of the Jewish people over long periods of human history, suddenly there arose the fearful question: did an unknowable destiny, for reasons unbeknownst to us poor men, perhaps wish with eternal and immutable decision that the final victory go to this little nation?

Could it be that this people, which lives only for the earth, will be granted it as a reward?…

As I calmly and clearly deepened my knowledge of Marxism and thus the effects of the Jewish people, destiny itself gave me the answer.

The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and sets in its place the eternal privilege of power and strength of the mass and the dead weight of its numbers. It therefore denies the value of the human personality, contests the significance of nationality and race, and therewith withdraws from humanity the basis of its existence and culture. As a foundation of the universe this [doctrine] would bring about the end of any intellectually comprehensible order. And thus as in this the greatest recognizable organism, the realization of such a law could result only in chaos and, ultimately, death for the inhabitants of this planet.

If the Jew with the help of his Marxist creed is victorious over the peoples of this world, then his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity; then this planet will travel through the ether as it did millions of years ago, devoid of men.

Eternal Nature avenges itself mercilessly on the transgression of its commandments.

Thus I believe today that I am acting according to the will of the almighty Creator: when I defend myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

Source: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (14th ed., Munich, 1932), pp. 54-70. Translated by Richard S. Levy. As accessed through Internet Modern History Sourcebook.

This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history. Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use.

8.3 Nuremberg Laws: Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor (September 15, 1935)

Nuremberg held a special place in the political culture of the Nazi Party. Beginning in the 1920s, the city became the site of the Party’s enormous annual rallies, where thousands of Nazi supporters gathered for speeches, military-style demonstrations, ceremonies, and displays of political unity. The rallies transformed Nuremberg into a powerful symbol of the Nazi movement and its vision of a unified German Volksgemeinschaft, or “national community.” Nazi propaganda used the spectacular gatherings to demonstrate the Party’s growing power and to reinforce loyalty to Adolf Hitler.

It was therefore significant that some of the most consequential racial legislation of the Nazi regime was announced at the Nuremberg Party Rally in September 1935. The Nuremberg Laws consisted primarily of the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. The first stripped Jews of full German citizenship and defined citizenship according to Nazi racial criteria; the second prohibited marriages and sexual relations between Jews and people classified as having “German or related blood.” Subsequent regulations defined Jewish identity according to ancestry rather than religious belief, making racial persecution a matter of law. It is clear that Hitler used the Jim Crow segregation statutes of the United States as his model for defining Jews in the Third Reich. This 1935 legislation established the legal framework for systematically separating Jews from the rest of German society.

The following is replicated in its entirety from the Nuremberg Laws, Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor (September 15, 1935) as accessed on the Internet Modern History Sourcebook.

Thoroughly convinced by the knowledge that the purity of German blood is essential for the further existence of the German people and animated by the inflexible will to safe-guard the German nation for the entire future, the Reichstag has resolved upon the following law unanimously, which is promulgated herewith:

SECTION 1

1. Marriages between Jews and nationals of German or kindred blood are forbidden. Marriages concluded in defiance of this law are void, even if, for the purpose of evading this law, they are concluded abroad.

2. Proceedings for annulment may be initiated only by the Public Prosecutor.

SECTION 2

Relation outside marriage between Jews and nationals for German or kindred blood are forbidden.

SECTION 3

Jews will not be permitted to employ female nationals of German or kindred blood in their households.

SECTION 4

1. Jews are forbidden to hoist the Reich and national flag and to present the colors of the Reich.

2. On the other hand they are permitted to present the Jewish colors. The exercise of this authority is protected by the State.

SECTION 5

1. A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of section 1 will be punished with hard labor.

2. A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of section 2 will be punished with imprisonment or with hard labor.

3. A person who acts contrary to the provisions of section 3 or 4 will be punished with imprisonment up to a year and with a fine or with one of these penalties.

SECTION 6

The Reich Minister of the Interior in agreement with the Deputy of the Fuehrer will issue the legal and administrative regulations which are required for the implementation and supplementation of this law.

SECTION 7

The law will become effective on the day after the promulgation, section 3 however only on 1 January, 1936.

Nuremberg, the 15th day of September 1935 at the Reich

Party Rally of Freedom.

The Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor: Adolph Hitler

The Reich Minister of the Interior: Frick

The Reich Minister of Justice: Dr. Goertner

The Deputy of the Fuehrer: R. Hess

Source: Nuremberg Laws, Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor (September 15, 1935) as accessed from the Internet Modern History Sourcebook.

This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history. Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use.

8.4 Rudolf Höss: Testimony at Nuremberg (1946)

The Nuremberg Trials emerged from the Allied decision to bring leading Nazi officials to justice rather than simply execute them after Germany’s defeat in 1945. The International Military Tribunal (IMT), established by the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, opened in Nuremberg on November 20, 1945. Twenty-two leading German officials were tried on charges including crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Rudolf Höss (1900–1947) was a senior SS officer and the first commandant of Auschwitz, serving from May 1940 until November 1943. Under his command, Auschwitz expanded from a concentration camp primarily for Polish political prisoners into a vast camp complex that included Auschwitz-Birkenau, which became the largest killing center in the Nazi system. Höss was deeply involved in the administration of the camp and later provided testimony describing the mass murder carried out there. His testimony became an important piece of evidence documenting the operation of the Nazi killing program. Although Höss was not himself a defendant in the principal Nuremberg trial, his April 1946 testimony provided firsthand evidence about the mass murder of Jews at Auschwitz. The IMT’s proceedings established a substantial documentary record of Nazi crimes and helped establish crimes against humanity as a category of international law.

The following is adapted from Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess, “Affidavit, 5 April 1946,” in Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945­1 October 1946 (Nuremberg: Secretariat of the International Military Tribunal, 1949).

I, RUDOLF FRANZ FERDINAND HÖSS, being first duly sworn, depose and say as follows:

1. I am forty-­six years old, and have been a member of the NSDAP (Nazi Party) since 1922; a member of the SS since 1934; a member of the Waffen­SS since 1939. I was a member from 1 December 1934 of the SS Guard Unit, the so­called Deathshead Formation (Totenkopf Verband).

2. I have been constantly associated with the administration of concentration camps since 1934, serving at Dachau until 1938; then as Adjutant in Sachsenhausen from 1938 to 1 May, 1940, when I was appointed Commandant of Auschwitz. l commanded Auschwitz until 1 December,1943, and estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total dead of about 3,000,000. This figure represents about 70% or 80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder having been selected and used for slave labor in the concentration camp industries. Included among the executed and burnt were approximately 20,000 Russian prisoners of war (previously screened out of Prisoner of War cages by the Gestapo) who were delivered at Auschwitz in Wehrmacht transports operated by regular Wehrmacht officers and men. The remainder of the total number of victims included about 100,000 German Jews, and great numbers of citizens (mostly Jewish) from Holland, France, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Greece, or other countries. We executed about 400,000 Hungarian Jews alone at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944.

4. Mass executions by gassing commenced during the summer 1941 and continued until fall 1944. I personally supervised executions at Auschwitz until the first of December 1943 and know by reason of my continued duties in the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps WVHA2 [the Nazi agency that controlled the administration and forced-labor utilization of the German concentration camp system during World War II] that these mass executions continued as stated above. All mass executions by gassing took place under the direct order, supervision and responsibility of RSHA [office that unified the security police and the SS intelligence service]. I received all orders for carrying out these mass executions directly from RSHA.

6. The “final solution” of the Jewish question meant the complete extermination of all Jews in Europe. l was ordered to establish extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time there were already in the general government three other extermination camps; Belzek, Treblinka and Wolzek. These camps were under the Einsatzkommando of the Security Police and SD. I visited Treblinka to find out how they carried out their exterminations. The Camp Commandant at Treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of one­ half year. He was principally concerned with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. He used monoxide gas and I did not think that his methods were very efficient. So when I set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, l used Zyclon B, which was a crystallized Prussic Acid which we dropped into the death chamber from a small opening. It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people in the death chamber depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about one­ half hour before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies were removed our special commandos took off the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses.

7. Another improvement we made over Treblinka was that we built our gas chambers to accommodate 2,000 people at one time, whereas at Treblinka their 10 gas chambers only accommodated 200 people each. The way we selected our victims was as follows: we had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the Camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated since by reason of their youth they were unable to work. Still another improvement we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost always knew that they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we endeavored to fool the victims into thinking that they were to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they realized our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under the clothes but of course when we found them we would send the children in to be exterminated. We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz .

8. We received from time to time special prisoners from the local Gestapo office. The SS doctors killed such prisoners by injections of benzine. Doctors had orders to write ordinary death certificates and could put down any reason at all for the cause of death.

9. From time to time we conducted medical experiments on women inmates, including sterilization and experiments relating to cancer. Most of the people who died under these experiments had been already condemned to death by the Gestapo.

10. Rudolf Mildner was the chief of the Gestapo at Kattowicz and as such was head of the political department at Auschwitz which conducted third degree methods of interrogation from approximately March 1941 until September 1943. As such, he frequently sent prisoners to Auschwitz for incarceration or execution. He visited Auschwitz on several occasions. The Gestapo Court, the SS Standgericht, which tried persons accused of various crimes, such as escaping Prisoners of War, etc., frequently met within Auschwitz, and Mildner often attended the trial of such persons, who usually were executed in Auschwitz following their sentence. l showed Mildner throughout the extermination plant at Auschwitz and he was directly interested in it since he had to send the Jews from his territory for execution at Auschwitz.

I understand English as it is written above. The above statements are true; this declaration is made by me voluntarily and without compulsion; after reading over the statement, I have signed and executed the same at Nuremberg, Germany on the fifth day of April 1946.

Source: Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess, “Affidavit, 5 April 1946,” in Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945­1 October 1946 (Nuremberg: Secretariat of the International Military Tribunal, 1949), Doc. 3868­PS, vol. 33, 275­79.

This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history. Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use of the Sourcebook. (c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997

8.5 United Nations: Resolution 260 – On Genocide (1948)

The adoption of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 260 (III) on December 9, 1948, marked a major development in the international response to the mass atrocities of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The resolution approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which had been developed through negotiations within the newly established United Nations. The concept of genocide had been articulated by the jurist Raphael Lemkin, whose work helped establish the need for an international legal definition of the deliberate destruction of human groups. Although the term had been used in discussions surrounding the Nuremberg proceedings, genocide was not a separate charge in the International Military Tribunal’s final judgment.

The General Assembly adopted the Convention unanimously, with 56 participating states voting in favor. It entered into force on January 12, 1951. Resolution 260 therefore represented an important transition from documenting and prosecuting the crimes of Nazi Germany to establishing an international legal framework intended to prevent and punish future acts of genocide.

The following is replicated in its entirety from the United Nations, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, UNTS, No. 1021, vol. 78 (1951).

CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE

Adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948.

The Contracting Parties,

Having considered the declaration made by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its resolution 96 (I) dated 11 December 1946 that genocide is a crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations and condemned by the civilized world;

Recognizing that at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity; and

Being convinced that, in order to liberate mankind from such an odious scourge, international co-operation is required;

Hereby agree as hereinafter provided.

Article 1. The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

Art. 2. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Art. 3. The following acts shall be punishable:

(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.

Art. 4. Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.

Art. 5. The Contracting Parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3.

Art. 6. Persons charged with genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction.

Art. 7. Genocide and the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall not be considered as political crimes for the purpose of extradition.

The Contracting Parties pledge themselves in such cases to grant extradition in accordance with their laws and treaties in force.

Art. 8. Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations.

Source: United Nations, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, UNTS, No. 1021, vol. 78 (1951), p. 277

This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history. Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use. (c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997