blue-eyed humans in peak physical fitness.
Anti-Semitic propaganda in Worms, 1933
Bundesarchiv, Bild 133-075 / CC-BY-SA
Such nationalistic pride became intrinsically linked to racism and was also manifested in organizations such as the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls, which became obligatory for young Germans from 1936. All members had to prove their racial purity and were thereafter moulded into fledgling National Socialists. State-controlled education and physical training programmes impressed upon Germany’s youth the superiority of their nation and culture, the importance of upholding Aryan glory, and the inferiority of other races. An entire generation was indoctrinated and mobilized against purported enemies of the state through Nazi youth movements and the propaganda machine.
Anti-Semitic films, including The Eternal Jew (1940), also drew on nationalistic themes, with frequent cuts between footage of Jews and footage of rats enforcing the notion of Jews as societal parasites. Other propaganda films alluded to Darwinism and the ‘survival of the fittest’ theory, showing weaker creatures inevitably being killed by stronger species in the natural struggle for dominance. In one such film a student observes that the animal kingdom has ‘a proper racial policy’. The idea that breeding practices should be extended to humans in order to weed out supposedly degenerate factions was a stalwart of Nazi ideology which would, as the 1930s progressed, lead to violent discrimination against homosexuals and the mentally and physically ill, as well as Jews.
A fleeting reprieve in the negativity directed at the Jewish community came during the 1936 Berlin Olympics, as the Nazis did not want to attract international criticism about the treatment of Jews in the Third Reich. Throughout the Games, anti-Semitic propaganda was minimized, but almost all Jewish athletes were nevertheless prohibited from competing in the German team. Among those unable to represent her country was Gretel Bergmann, who had equalled a German high jump record only one month previously. With the close of the Berlin Olympics, the open tirade against Germany’s Jewish population resumed.
Hitler had never made any secret of his desire for Lebensraum: living space for the German people. Nineteen thirty-six saw the remilitarization of the Rhineland, and in March 1938 the Anschluss (union) of Germany and Austria was announced. Once under Nazi control, it became increasingly difficult for Jews in these territories to lead lives that were not tainted by anti-Semitic persecution.
The Austrian Jewish community was subjected to appalling treatment in the immediate aftermath of the Anschluss. Anti-Semitism was already common in Austria, but discrimination now escalated as many Jews were forced to scrub pavements with toothbrushes, while others were humiliated by being made to crudely hack off their beards. Such public degradation was a forewarning of the suffering that would soon engulf Jews across Europe, and in November 1938 the situation was dramatically exacerbated.
On 7 November in Paris, a young Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan shot and fatally wounded Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat. In retribution for vom Rath’s death, Goebbels instigated an anti-Jewish pogrom across Germany. Such was the ferocity of the pogrom that the night of 9–10 November, on which it took place, became known as Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass.
Nearly two-thirds of Jewish businesses in Germany had been Aryanized (transferred to gentile ownership) by April 1938, but well over 7,000 Jewish-owned stores were nevertheless pillaged throughout Kristallnacht, the shattered glass from their windows covering the streets. One hundred and ninety-one synagogues were destroyed, many burned to the ground, and around 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps. Many were only detained temporarily in Dachau, Sachsenhausen or Buchenwald, but the Nazi precedent of rounding up and deporting people en masse had been set.
A synagogue burns on Kristallnacht
The material damage perpetrated on Kristallnacht was enormous, and to add insult to injury the Jewish community was declared liable and ordered to pay a fine of 1 billion Reichsmarks to the treasury. Physical violence was also rife and ninety-one Jews were killed on 9–10 November, although the ultimate death toll was significantly higher: fearing that subsequent persecution on a similar or worse scale was inevitable, many Jews committed suicide in the months following Kristallnacht, thereby becoming indirect victims of the pogrom.
Thousands of Jews had left Germany before Kristallnacht due to increasing intolerance, but the unprecedented violence of 9–10 November prompted another wave of immigration. Some left for neighbouring countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium or France, while those with the good fortune to be permitted entry to America journeyed across the Atlantic. The Nazis had no objections to Jews leaving; indeed, in 1938 Adolf Eichmann established an Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna which ultimately forced 145,000 Austrian Jews to leave the Reich.
Outraged by Kristallnacht, the British Jewish Refugee Committee facilitated the Kindertransport programme, whereby thousands of Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland were evacuated on sealed trains to Britain. These children were among 320,000 Jews who fled Nazi-controlled territories to build new lives elsewhere between January 1933 and September 1939.
For those Jews who did not or could not leave, numerous decrees that had been passed since the Nazis came to power meant they were continuously segregated, restricted and demeaned. All Jewish passports were stamped with a conspicuous red ‘J’, and the middle names ‘Israel’ for men and ‘Sara’ for women had to be adopted as a further mark of identification. Landlords had the legal right to evict Jewish tenants, young Jews could not attend state schools, and places of entertainment such as the theatre and cinema were forbidden. Over 400 decrees that discriminated against Jews in the Third Reich were ultimately passed by the Nazis.
As anti-Semitic persecution in Germany continued, the probability of continued peace in Europe was fading rapidly because of Hitler’s determination to further extend his empire. Already the Führer had pushed his luck, with the Rhineland remilitarization, the Anschluss, and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939; but when Nazi troops invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, it was finally a step too far. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany.
With the outbreak of war, the borders closed. Jews could no longer freely leave Nazi-governed countries and the Kindertransport programme came to an end. Around 10,000 Jewish children had arrived safely in Britain, but most of these evacuees would never see their parents or wider families again. Hitler’s territorial ambitions had ignited a conflict that would last until 1945 and that would result in the genocide of millions.
From the late 1930s, senior Nazis had discussed the possibility of completely expelling the Jewish population from Germany, thus ridding the nation of the perceived threat that Jews posed to German hegemony. The Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration, based on Eichmann’s Austrian model, was established to ensure areas of the country became judenfrei: purged of Jews. Where the expelled Jews would go, however, was another matter, one on which the outbreak of war impacted greatly.
One location suggested for Jewish resettlement was Madagascar, which was under French colonial rule. Although France fell to Nazi Germany in the summer of 1940, continued fighting with Britain rendered the African island an impossible option on which to establish a Jewish colony. Some German Jews had emigrated to Palestine during