Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Peter Longerich (grave mercy .TXT) 📖

the social strata who currently lead mankind and

replace them with a network of Jews spread across the whole world. 57

The fact that from the outset the Four-Year Plan was conceived as fulfilling an

important function in the context of a comprehensive anti-Jewish policy was

underlined by those responsible for the Four-Year Plan, at the beginning of

1942, when the ‘Final Solution’ was fully operational. 58

The attacks on Jewish wealth were, moreover, one of the original pillars of the

Four-Year Plan. Hitler himself had used his memorandum to demand a law

‘which would make all Jews liable for whatever damage was sustained by the

German economy and the German people as a result of individual instances of

such criminality’—an intention that was only to be put into practice after the

November 1938 pogroms. The memorandum also contained Hitler’s demand that

hoarding hard currency should incur the death penalty—something he called

‘economic sabotage’—and this too was a demand that future developments would

prove was aimed in the first instance at Jewish ‘economic saboteurs’. 59

On 7 July 1936 Goering, in his role as leader of the ‘raw materials and currency

team’ (the group that preceded the Four-Year Plan) had already given Heydrich the

task of setting up a ‘Currency Investigation Office’ (Devisenfahndungsamt), which

was to be an authority reporting to Goering ‘personally and directly’. This office was

principally designed to make sure that the customs search and currency investigation

authorities applied the complicated currency regulations against Jews with excessive

rigour so as to secure pretexts for the financial authorities to ‘secure’ Jewish money. In taking on his new responsibilities Heydrich thus assumed an important function in

the coordination of the efforts of the Security Police, the Four-Year Plan, and the

financial management of the expropriation of the German Jews. 60

64

Racial Persecution, 1933–1939

It was therefore both an aim and one of the functions of the Four-Year Plan to

intensify the persecution of the Jews, which raises the question of whether this

does not suggest new grounds for reconsidering the role of Goering in NS anti-

Jewish policy development. The letter of appointment that Goering wrote for

Heydrich in July 1936 was the first link in a chain of authorizations issued to the

Head of the Security Police by the Reichsmarschall. It was followed by Heydrich’s

appointment as head of the ‘Central Office for Jewish Emigration’ in January 1939

and ended in the authorization given in July 1941 to make ‘preparations for the

final solution of the Jewish question’. It is not the case that Goering only took on a

central role in Jewish policy after 9 November 1938 in order to clean up the piles of

broken glass that resulted from the pogrom; the history of his active engagement

in the ‘Jewish question’ evidently begins more than two years previously.

The civil service resumed its attempts at excluding Jews from the economic

sphere immediately after the end of the Olympic Games at a conference of senior

government officials that took place on 29 September 1936. 61 Here the representatives of the Reich Ministries of the Interior and of Finance and of the Führer’s

Deputy initially came to an agreement that the common goal of the ‘complete and

total emigration’ of the Jews should mean the ‘emigration of Jews under all

possible circumstances’. According to the Permanent Secretary, Stuckart, ‘all

measures in the area of Jewish policy should be directed at the achievement of

this goal. Economic activity on the part of the Jews should only be permitted in so

far as it constitutes supporting themselves, but their economic and political

situation should not be permitted to suppress their desire to emigrate.’ Walter

Sommer, a senior official on the staff of the Führer’s Deputy, added that ‘rich Jews

will not generally be keen to emigrate. The Jews should therefore not be given very

much room for economic activity. But on the other hand, a Jewish proletariat

should also be prevented from forming.’

This premise—the restriction of Jewish economic activity and the prevention of

proletarianization—was used as the basis for a series of measures. However,

discussion revealed that, because of the general economic situation in Germany,

it was necessary to step back from implementing most of the suggested anti-

Jewish measures: there was no appetite either for imposing on the public purse a

general ban against dealing with Jews or for requiring the enforced dismissal of all

Jewish salesmen active in German firms.

On 1 December 1936 two laws were finally passed that put into practice Hitler’s

demands in the memorandum on the Four-Year Plan. One was a law against

economic sabotage assigning the death penalty to anyone transferring their wealth

abroad, 62 the other was a modification of the law on currency management that included so-called security measures against anyone suspected of transferring currency abroad. 63 Both laws were subsequently to provide the basis for the largely arbitrary confiscation of large sums of money, mainly from Jews, and for condemning

those who had such sums—‘economic saboteurs’—to long periods of detention.

Segregation and Discrimination, 1935–7

65

In addition to this, as 1936 moved into 1937 the civil service produced three

more drafts for anti-Semitic laws. They responded to the plans articulated in the

memorandum on the Four-Year Plan for introducing a ‘special Jewish tax’, for

identifying and labelling Jewish businesses, and for formulating a Reich citizenship

law. 64 All three drafts were put on hold after further consultation in the spring and summer of 1937. In fact, the exclusion of Jews from the economy that began in

earnest at the end of 1936 was at first not achieved by spectacular acts of legislation

but via more subtle policies of exclusion and isolation that took many forms.

In the first of these, the boycott of Jewish retail trade took on such proportions

that the complete economic annihilation of the few Jews remaining in this sphere

could confidently be predicted in the near future. The records of the Centralverein

contain many examples of campaigns against Jewish business activity that were

implemented with renewed vigour during the Christmas period at the end of

1936.65 Above all it was on the rural population that pressure was applied to break off business contacts with Jewish cattle dealers. Gestapo reports for 1937 are

unanimous, however, in suggesting that despite intensive propaganda many

farmers were not prepared to take the initiative in breaking off contact with

Jews. In the face of this situation, the Gestapo undertook an