44: Boycotts and Discrimination

By Ian Kershaw

Apart from the all-out assault on the Left in the first weeks of Nazi rule, many outrages had been perpetrated by Nazi radicals against Jews. Since antisemitism had been the "ideological cement" of the National Socialist Movement from the beginning, offering at one and the same time a vehicle actionism and substitute for revolutionary leanings threatening the fabric of society, this was scarcely surprising. The takeover of power by the arch-antisemite Hitler had at one fell swoop removed constraints on violence toward Jews. Without any orders from above, and without any coordination, assaults on Jewish businesses and the beating-up of Jews by Nazi thugs became commonplace. Countless atrocities took place in the weeks following Hitler's assumption to power.

Many were carried out by members of the so-called Fighting League of the Commercial Middle Class (Kampfbund des gewerblichen Mittelstandes), in which violent antisemitism went hand in hand with equally violent opposition to department stores (many of them Jewish owned). The extent of the anti-Jewish violence prompted Jewish intellectuals and financiers abroad, especially in the USA, to undertake attempts to mobilize public feeling against Germany and to organize a boycott against German goods -- a real threat, given the weakness of the German economy. Beginning in mid-March, the boycott gathered pace and was extended to numerous European countries. The reaction in Germany was led by the Fighting League, was predictably aggressive. A 'counter-boycott' of Jewish shops and department stores throughout Germany was demanded. The call was taken up by leading antisemites in the party, at their forefront and in his element the Franconian Gauleiter and pathological antisemite Julius Streicher. They argued that the Jews could serve as 'hostages' to force a halt to the international boycott.

Hitler's instincts favored the party radicals. But he was also under pressure to act. On the "Jewish Question," on which he had preached so loudly and so often, he could scarcely now, once in power, back down in the face of the demands of the activists without serious loss of face within the party. When, on 26 March 1933, it was reported through diplomatic contacts that the American Jewish Congress was planning to call the next day for a world-wide boycott of Germans goods, Hitler was forced into action. As usual, when pushed into a corner he had no half-measures.

Goebbels was summoned to the Obersalzberg. "In the loneliness of the mountains," he wrote, the Führer had reached the conclusion that the authors, or at least the beneficiaries of the 'foreign agitation" -- Germany's Jews -- had to be tackled. "We must therefore move to a widely framed boycott of all Jewish businesses in Germany."

Streicher was put in charge of a committee of thirteen party functionaries who were to organize the boycott. The party's proclamation of 28 March, prompted by the Reich Chancellor himself and bearing his imprint, called for action committees to carry out a boycott on Jewish businesses, goods, doctors, and lawyers, even in the smallest village of the Reich. The boycott was to be of indefinite duration. Goebbels was left to undertake the propaganda preparations. Behind the entire operation stood pressure from the Fighting League of the Commercial Middle Class.

Led by Hjalmar Schacht and Foreign Minister Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath, counter-pressures began to be placed on Hitler to halt an action which was likely to have disastrous effects on the German economy and on its standing abroad. Hitler at first refused to consider any retreat. But by 31 March, Neurath was able to report to the cabinet that the British, French, and American governments had declared their opposition to the boycott of German goods in their country. He hoped the boycott in Germany might be called off. It was asking too much of Hitler to back down completely. The activists were now fired up. Abandonment of the boycott would have brought no only loss of face for Hitler, but the probability that any order cancelling the "action" would have been widely ignored.

However, Hitler did indicate that he was no ready to postpone the start of the German boycott from 1 to 4 April in the event of satisfactory declarations opposing the boycott of German goods by the British and American governments. Otherwise, the German boycott would commence on 1 April, but would then be halted until 4 April. A flurry of diplomatic activity resulted in the western governments and, placed under pressure, Jewish lobby groups distancing themselves from the boycott of German goods. Hitler's demands had largely been met. But by now he had changed his mind, and was again insisting on the German boycott being carried out.

Further pressure from Schacht resulted in the boycott being confined to a single day -- but under the propaganda fiction that it would be restarted the following Wednesday, 5 April, if the "horror agitation" abroad against Germany had not ceased altogether. There was no intention of that. In fact, already on the afternoon of the boycott day, 1 April, Streicher announced that it would not be resumed the following Wednesday.

The boycott itself was less than the success that Nazi propaganda claimed.  Many Jewish shops had closed for the day anyway. In some places, the SA men posted outside "Jewish" shops were largely ignored by customers. People behaved in a variety of fashions. There was almost a holiday mood in some busy shopping streets, as crowds gathered to see what was happening. Groups of people discussed the pros and cons of the boycott. Not a few were opposed to it, saying they would again patronize their favorite stores. Others shrugged their shoulders.

Even the SA men seemed at times rather half-hearted about it in some places. In others, however, the boycott was simply a cover for plundering and violence. For the Jewish victims, the day was traumatic -- the clearest indication that this was a Germany in which they could no longer feel "at home," in which routine discrimination had been replaced by state-sponsored persecution.

Reactions in the foreign press to the boycott were almost universally condemnatory. A damage-limitation exercise had to be carried out by the new Reichsbank President Schacht to assuage foreign bankers of Germany's intentions in economic policy. But within Germany -- something which would repeat itself in years to come -- the dynamic of anti-Jewish pressure from party activists, sanctioned by Hitler and the Nazi leadership, was not taken up by the state bureaucracy and channeled into discriminatory legislation. The exclusion of Jews from state service and from the professions had been aims of Nazi activists before 1933. Now, the possibility of pressing for the implementation of such aims had opened up.

Suggestions for anti-Jewish discriminatory measures came from various quarters. Preparations for overhauling civil service rights were given a new anti-Jewish twist at the end of March, possibly (though this is not certain) on Hitler's intervention. On the basis of the notorious "Aryan Paragraph" -- there was no definition of a Jew -- in the hastily drafted "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" of 7 April, Jews as well as political opponents were dismissed from the civil service. An exception was made, on President Hindenburg's intervention, only for Jews who had served at the front.

The three further pieces of anti-Jewish legislation passed in April -- discriminating against the admission of Jews in the legal profession, excluding Jewish doctors from treating patients covered by the national insurance scheme, and limiting the number of Jewish schoolchildren permitted in schools -- were all hurriedly improvised to meet not simply pressure from below but de facto measures which were already being implemented in various parts of the country. Hitler's role was largely confined to giving his sanction to the legalization of measures already often illegally introduced by party activists with vested interests in the discrimination running alongside whatever ideological motivation they possessed.

The seismic shift in the political scene which had taken place in the month or so following the Reichstag fire had left the Jews fully exposed to Nazi violence, discrimination, and intimidation. It had also totally undermined the position of Hitler's political opponents. There was not little fight in oppositional parties. The readiness to compromise soon became a readiness to capitulate.

Source:

Kershaw, I. (2008). Hitler: A Biography. London: W. W. Norton and Company.