WEEK 2 Prewar Persecution of “Enemies of the State” and Other Targeted Minorities in the Third Reich Prepared by Tony Joel and Mathew Turner Week 2 Unit Learning Outcomes ULO 1. evaluate in a reflective and critical manner the consequences of racism and prejudice ULO 3. synthesise core historiographical debates on how and why the Holocaust occurred Introduction This learning module is divided into a series of seven mostly short sections all of which are linked by the common theme of German victim groups who were ostracised and persecuted by their own government when living under Nazism. We start this week by examining the Nazi concept of supposed “Aryan” superiority and the creation of a national socialist “people’s community” or what the Nazis termed their ideal Volksgemeinschaft. Section 2 explores theories of Nazi “racial hygiene” and eugenics, which provided a pseudoscientific framework for Nazi racial theories including the identification of “undesirables” (Jews and others) who were classified as not belonging to the Volksgemeinschaft. Section 3 (the lengthiest this week) investigates the persecution of Jews living in the Third Reich, particularly in the prewar period 1933-39 but also up to 1941. Section 4 considers how German Jews responded to this persecution, both “officially” and privately. Section 5 outlines the Nazi system of concentration camps, used to intimidate and imprison political opponents and other individuals considered to be “enemies of the state.” The section reinforces the important point that, although they were included among the targets, Jews were by no means the main priority during the prewar period. Section 6 looks at the Nazi program of forced sterilisation introduced as early as July 1933, which provided Nazi doctors with the legal means to carry out the sterilisation of individuals who, according to racial “science,” threatened the purity of the “Aryan race.” Sterilisation victims included Germans with hereditary illnesses, mental illnesses, or perceived physical and intellectual disabilities. Finally, Section 7 probes the Third Reich’s “euthanasia” programs — the state-sanctioned killing of tens of thousands of German citizens the Nazis deemed to be “life unworthy LEARNING MODULE 2. Introduction 2 of life” (“lebensunwertes Leben”) on the basis of perceived physical and intellectual disabilities. It was a systematic, secret program that required organisation on a national scale, and the wholesale corruption of morally bankrupt legal and medical professionals. Though a point of rigorous historiographical dispute, the “euthanasia” programs may be seen as a precursor to the mass extermination of Jews subsequently carried out in Nazi death camps during wartime. (PLEASE NOTE: Throughout this weekly topic, qualification will be used whenever there are references to the “euthanasia” programs because what the Nazis euphemistically termed “euthanasia” in no way qualifies as a case of what properly constitutes mercy killing with consent.) After completing this learning module, you will continue to evaluate, in a reflective and critical manner, the consequences of racism and prejudice. Furthermore, you will begin to grapple with and synthesise a core historiographical debate on how and why the Holocaust occurred. Section 1. The Nazi Concept of “Aryan Superiority” and Creation of the German Volksgemeinschaft One message that featured prominently in Nazi election campaigns, speeches, and propaganda as the NSDAP became more electorally popular during the Weimar era was the notion that Hitler, in becoming national leader, would unite Germany as a special “people’s community” (Volksgemeinschaft). For many disaffected Germans — growing tired of lurching from one economic crisis to another, unconvinced by a polarised and thus ostensibly paralysed political system, and frustrated by their disunited country — the message of coming together in a national cause resonated. The establishment of this new Volksgemeinschaft would form the basis of the national socialist revolution that Hitler promised would follow the establishment of national socialism. Of course, not every individual or group in Nazi Germany was included in the newly-conceptualised Volksgemeinschaft. Germans with opposing political views, or perceived physical or intellectual deficiencies, habitual criminals, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, so- called “Gypsies” and many others all belonged outside of the Volksgemeinschaft as they did not conform to the Nazi concept of creating a superior “Aryan race.” PRESCRIBED TEXT: Please read Thomas Kühne’s chapter entitled “The Claims of Community,” pp. 129-35 (up to the sub-heading “Their Comrades Are Their Conscience”). LEARNING MODULE 2. Section 1: The Nazi Concept of “Aryan Superiority” 3 According to Kühne, the exclusion of Jews from the Nazis’ Volksgemeinschaft was an essential element in maintaining what he calls a “fabricated… sense of national belonging,” one that crossed political and economic divides. Kühne observes that this “new social order” was a work-in-progress. On page 140, he concludes: “Who was in and who was out, who was above and who was below, what was to be done and what was to be left out — all of this was to be redefined.” Underpinning this process of exclusion were Nazi concepts of racial antisemitism and eugenics. Section 2. Nazi Racial Hygiene Theories and Eugenics From the outset, we must stress that racial hygiene and eugenics were not exclusive to Germany. Indeed, such themes were immensely popular among certain sectors of the scientific communities of many countries from the late nineteenth century onwards. The German eugenics scene, then, was just one aspect of a much wider movement before and after the First World War. In Germany, medical scientists played a central role in promoting and developing eugenic theories, and the movement gained in status and legitimacy. During the Weimar period, eugenics research institutes proliferated. They reflected the growing popularity of ideas about racial hygiene. German eugenics emphasised the importance of heredity as opposed to environment in determining the outcome of “natural selection.” Consequently, it was assumed that the “protection” of the “Aryan race” could be guaranteed only by direct interference in the process of biological reproduction. The mentally handicapped confined to institutions were the subject of a significant work co-published in 1920 by Karl Binding, a legal academic, and psychiatrist Alfred Hoche. As Henry Friedlander points out, in their work entitled Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens (Approval of the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life) Binding and Hoche advocated the killing of the “feebleminded” who were characterised as unproductive parasites on postwar German society.1 READING EXCERPT: Hugh Gregory Gallagher, in ”Scientific and Economic Origins of the Killing,” discusses the cultural context of Approval of the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life. Gallagher comments that Hitler read this controversial work by Binding and Hoche. 1 See chapter 1 in Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill & London, 1995). LEARNING MODULE 2. Section 2: Nazi Racial Hygiene Theories and Eugenics 4 The psychiatrist Alfred Hoche (l) and the legal scholar Karl Binding (r). Sources: “Die Schreibtischtäter,” Badische Zeitung. http://www.badische-zeitung.de/deutschland-1/die- schreibtischtaeter--17782862.html [Accessed 1 February 2017]. “Prof. Dr. jur. Karl Ludwig Lorenz Binding” Professorenkatalog der Universität Leipzig. https://www.uni- leipzig.de/unigeschichte/professorenkatalog/leipzig/Binding_736/ [Accessed 1 Feb. 2017]. German popular culture in the 1920s and 1930s was peppered with novels and films justifying on racial grounds the killing of the mentally and physically handicapped. Furthermore, a number of studies appeared advocating “euthanasia” on economic grounds. Clearly, then, the groundwork had been laid for future action to exclude the handicapped from the Nazis’ Volksgemeinschaft. Section 3. Prewar Persecution of German Jews On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. His powers still were restricted until, in response to the March 1933 burning down of the Reichstag (the federal parliamentary building, in Berlin), president Paul von Hindenburg signed the Enabling Act. Henceforth, Hitler could pass laws without parliamentary support. Although the Enabling Act originally was intended as a temporary measure to restore order, it was never rescinded. Lack of parliamentary restriction facilitated Hitler’s “legal” seizure of power (Machtergreifung) of all aspects of the state. The persecution of German Jews at the hands of the Nazis, from 1933 through to the early years of the war, can be understood to have taken place in three stages: unsystematic measures (1933-34); formalisation or legalisation of measures (1935-37); and economic expropriation and increasing violence (1938-41). As the Second World War neared, German Jews came under greater physical threat, culminating in the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938. Propaganda was used to remind the German public of the alleged threat posed by Jews in their midst, and German Jews found themselves increasingly isolated and persecuted. LEARNING MODULE 2. Section 3: Prewar Persecution of German Jews 5 a) Anti-Jewish Policy in Germany, 1933-41 Once in power, the Nazis were in a position to implement measures against Germany’s Jewish