Nazi Germany and the Jews Volume I The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 Saul Friedländer To Omer, Elam, and Tom I would not wish to be a Jew in Germany HERMANN GÖRING, NOVEMBER 12, 1938 Contents Epigraph Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: A Beginning and an End One: Into the Third Reich Two: Consenting Elites, Threatened Elites Three: Redemptive Anti-Semitism Four: The New Ghetto Five: The Spirit of Laws Part II: The Entrapment Six: Crusade and Card Index Seven: Paris, Warsaw, Berlin—and Vienna Eight: An Austrian Model? Nine: The Onslaught Ten: A Broken Remnant Notes Bibliography Searchable Terms About the Author Praise Other Books by Saul Friedländer Copyright About the Publisher Acknowledgments In my work on this book I have been assisted in many different ways The Maxwell Cummings Family of Montreal and the 1939 Club of Los Angeles have endowed chairs, at Tel Aviv University and at UCLA, that facilitated the implementation of this project Short stays at the Humanities Research Institute at UC Irvine (1992) and at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in Los Angeles (1996) provided me with the most invaluable of all privileges: free time Throughout the years, I have greatly benefited from the vast resources and the generous help offered by the Wiener Library at Tel Aviv University, the University Research Library at UCLA, the Leo Baeck Institute Archives in New York, and the library and archives of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich Friends and colleagues have been kind enough to read parts or the totality of the manuscript, and some have followed it throughout its various stages From all of them I received much good advice At UCLA I wish to thank Joyce Appleby, Carlo Ginzburg, and Hans Rogger; at Tel Aviv University, my friends, colleagues, and coeditors of History & Memory, particularly Gulie Ne’eman Arad, for her remarkable judgment and constant assistance in this project, as well as Dan Diner and Philippa Shimrat I also wish to express my gratitude to Omer Barton (Rutgers), Philippe Burrin (Geneva), Sidra and Yaron Ezrahi (Jerusalem), and Norbert Frei (Munich) Moreover, I am very much indebted to my research assistants: Orna Kenan, Christopher Kenway, and Gavriel Rosenfeld Needless to say, the usual formula holds: Any mistakes in this book are my own The late Amos Funkenstein unfortunately could not read the entire manuscript, but I shared with him my many thoughts and doubts until nearly the end He gave me much encouragement, and it is infinitely more than a usual debt of gratitude that I owe the closest of my friends, whom I miss more than I can say Both Aaron Asher and Susan H Llewellyn contributed to the editing of this book, which is the first I wrote entirely in English Aaron, my friend and former publisher, brought his intellectual insights and linguistic skills to bear on a manuscript studded with gallicisms; Sue applied her own stylistic sensibility to a deep understanding of the text My editor at HarperCollins, Hugh Van Dusen, was a highly experienced and attentive guide whose expert eye followed every phase of this process The assistant editor, Katherine Ekrem, demonstrated an impressive efficiency, always in the kindest way And, from the first book I published in the United States, Pius XII and the Third Reich (1964), I have been represented by Georges and Anne Borchardt, who became friends For thirty-seven years now, Hagith has given me the warmth and the support that are vital to everything I This support has never been more decisive than during the long time spent in the preparation of this book Years ago I dedicated a book to our children, Eli, David, and Michal; this book is dedicated to our grandchildren Introduction Most historians of my generation, born on the eve of the Nazi era, recognize either explicitly or implicitly that plowing through the events of those years entails not only excavating and interpreting a collective past like any other, but also recovering and confronting decisive elements of our own lives This recognition does not generate any agreement among us about how to define the Nazi regime, how to interpret its internal dynamics, how to render adequately both its utter criminality and its utter ordinariness, or, for that matter, where and how to place it within a wider historical context Yet, despite our controversies, many of us share, I think, a sense of personal involvement in the depiction of this past, which gives a particular urgency to our inquiries For the next generation of historians—and by now also for the one after that—as for most of humanity, Hitler’s Reich, World War II, and the fate of the Jews of Europe not represent any shared memory And yet, paradoxically, the centrality of these events in present-day historical consciousness seems much greater than it was some decades ago The ongoing debates tend to unfold with unremitting bitterness as facts are questioned and evidence denied, as interpretations and commemorative endeavors confront one another, and as statements about historical responsibility periodically come to the fore in the public arena It could be that in our century of genocide and mass criminality, apart from its specific historical context, the extermination of the Jews of Europe is perceived by many as the ultimate standard of evil, against which all degrees of evil may be measured In these debates, the historian’s role is central For my generation, to partake at one and the same time in the memory and the present perceptions of this past may create an unsettling dissonance; it may, however, also nurture insights that would otherwise be inaccessible Establishing a historical acccount of the Holocaust in which the policies of the perpetrators, the attitudes of surrounding society, and the world of the victims could be addressed within an integrated framework remains a major challenge Some of the best-known historical renditions of these events have focused mainly on the Nazi machinery of persecution and death, paying but scant attention to the wider society, to the wider European and world scene or to the changing fate of the victims themselves; others, less frequently, have concentrated more distinctly on the history of the victims and offered only a limited analysis of Nazi policies and the surrounding scene.2 The present study will attempt to convey an account in which Nazi policies are indeed the central element, but in which the surrounding world and the victims’ attitudes, reactions, and fate are no less an integral part of this unfolding history In many works the implicit assumptions regarding the victims’ generalized helplessness and passivity, or their inability to change the course of events leading to their extermination, have turned them into a static and abstract element of the historical background It is too often forgotten that Nazi attitudes and policies cannot be fully assessed without knowledge of the lives and indeed of the feelings of the Jewish men, women, and children themselves Here, therefore, at each stage in the description of the evolving Nazi policies and the attitudes of German and European societies as they impinge on the evolution of those policies, the fate, the attitudes, and sometimes the initiatives of the victims are given major importance Indeed, their voices are essential if we are to attain an understanding of this past.3 For it is their voices that reveal what was known and what could be known; theirs were the only voices that conveyed both the clarity of insight and the total blindness of human beings confronted with an entirely new and utterly horrifying reality The constant presence of the victims in this book, while historically essential in itself, is also meant to put the Nazis’ actions into full perspective It is easy enough to recognize the factors that shaped the overall historical context in which the Nazi mass murder took place They determined the methods and scope of the “Final Solution”; they also contributed to the general climate of the times, which facilitated the way to the exterminations Suffice it here to mention the ideological radicalization—with fervent nationalism and rabid anti-Marxism (later anti-Bolshevism) as its main propelling drives—that surfaced during the last decades of the nineteenth century and reached its climax after World War I (and the Russian Revolution); the new dimension of massive industrial killing introduced by that war; the growing technological and bureaucratic control exerted by modern societies; and the other major features of modernity itself, which were a dominant aspect of Nazism.4 Yet, as essential as these conditions were in preparing the ground for the Holocaust—and as such they are an integral part of this history—they nonetheless not alone constitute the necessary cluster of elements that shaped the course of events leading from persecution to extermination With regard to that process, I have emphasized Hitler’s personal role and the function of his ideology in the genesis and implementation of the Nazi regime’s anti-Jewish measures In no way, however, should this be seen as a return to earlier reductive interpretations, with their sole emphasis on the role (and responsibility) of the supreme leader But, over time, the contrary interpretations have, it seems to me, gone too far Nazism was not essentially driven by the chaotic clash of competing bureaucratic and party fiefdoms, nor was the planning of its anti-Jewish policies mainly left to the cost-benefit calculations of technocrats.5 In all its major decisions the regime depended on Hitler Especially with regard to the Jews, Hitler was driven by ideological obsessions that were anything but the calculated devices of a demagogue; that is, he carried a very specific brand of racial anti-Semitism to its most extreme and radical limits I call that distinctive aspect of his worldview “redemptive anti-Semitism”; it is different, albeit derived, from other strands of anti-Jewish hatred that were common throughout Christian Europe, and different also from the ordinary brands of German and European racial anti-Semitism It was this redemptive dimension, this synthesis of a murderous rage and an “idealistic” goal, shared by the Nazi leader and the hard core of the party, that led to Hitler’s ultimate decision to exterminate the Jews.6 But Hitler s policies were not shaped by ideology alone, and the interpretation presented here traces the interaction between the Führer and the system within which he acted The Nazi leader did not take his decisions independently of the party and state organizations His initiatives, mainly during the early phase of the regime, were molded not only by his world-view but also by the impact of internal pressures, the weight of bureaucratic constraints, at times the influence of German opinion at large and even the reactions of foreign governments and foreign opinion.7 To what extent did the party and the populace partake in Hitler’s ideological obsession? “Redemptive anti-Semitism” was common fare among the party elite Recent studies have also shown that such extreme anti-Semitism was not unusual in the agencies that were to become central to the implementation of the anti-Jewish policies, such as Reinhard Heydrich’s Security Service of the SS (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD).8 As for the so-called party radicals, they were often motivated by the kind of social and economic resentment that found its expression in extreme anti-Jewish initiatives In other words, within the party and, as we shall see, sometimes outside it, there were centers of uncompromising anti-Semitism powerful enough to transmit and propagate the impact of Hitler’s own drive Yet, among the traditional elites and within the wider reaches of the population, anti-Jewish attitudes were more in the realm of tacit acquiescence or varying degrees of compliance Despite most of the German population’s full awareness, well before the war, of the increasingly harsh measures being taken against the Jews, there were but minor areas of dissent (and these were almost entirely for economic and specifically religious-ideological reasons) It seems, however, that the majority of Germans, although undoubtedly influenced by various forms of traditional antiSemitism and easily accepting the segregation of the Jews, shied away from widespread violence against them, urging neither their expulsion from the Reich nor their physical annihilation After the attack on the Soviet Union, when total extermination had been decided upon, the hundreds of thousands of “ordinary Germans” (as distinct from the highly motivated SS units, among others) who actively participated in the killings acted no differently from the equally numerous and “ordinary” Austrians, Rumanians, Ukrainians, Baits, and other Europeans who became the most willing operatives of the murder machinery functioning in their midst Nonetheless, whether they were conscious of it or not, the German and Austrian killers had been indoctrinated by the regime’s relentless anti-Jewish propaganda, which penetrated every crevice of society and whose slogans they at least partially internalized, mainly in the context of the war in the East.9 By underscoring that Hitler and his ideology had a decisive impact on the course of the regime, I not mean in anyway to imply that Auschwitz was a preordained result of Hitler’s accession to power The anti-Jewish policies of the thirties must be understood in their context, and even Hitler’s murderous rage and his scanning of the political horizon for the most extreme options not suggest the existence of any plans for total extermination in the years prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union But at the same time, no historian can forget the end of the road Thus emphasis is also placed here on those elements that we know from hindsight to have played a role in the evolution toward the fateful outcome The history of Nazi Germany should not be written only from the perspective of the wartime years and their atrocities, but the heavy shadow cast by what happened during that time so darkens the prewar years that a historian cannot pretend that the later events not influence the weighing of the evidence and the evaluation of the overall course of that history 10 The crimes committed by the Nazi regime were neither a mere outcome of some haphazard, involuntary, imperceptible, and chaotic onrush of unrelated events nor a predetermined enactment of a demonic script; they were the result of converging factors, of the interaction between intentions and contingencies, between discernible causes and chance General ideological objectives and tactical policy decisions enhanced one another and always remained open to more radical moves as circumstances changed At the most basic level, in this two-volume account the narration follows the chronological sequence of the events: their prewar evolution in this volume, their monstrous wartime culmination in the next That overall time frame highlights continuities and indicates the context of major changes; it also makes it possible to shift the narration within a stable chronological span Such shifts result from the changes in perspective my approach demands, but they also stem from another choice: to juxtapose entirely different levels of reality—for example, high-level anti-Jewish policy debates and decisions next to routine scenes of persecution—with the aim of creating a sense of estrangement counteracting execution of members of, 111 murder of leaders of, 114–15, 137, 147, 206, 207 St Louis, 299–300 Salengro, Roger, 223 Salzburg Festival, 252 Sarrault, Albert, 178 Schacht, Hjalmar, 24, 25, 69, 139, 140, 146, 179, 224, 236, 288, 315, 350 Schiff, Jacob, 230 Schillings, Max von, 11, 12 Schlatter, Adolf, 165–66 Schlegelberger, Franz, 29, 341 Schleicher, Hugo, 231 Schleicher, Kurt von, 110–11 Schlösser, Rainer, 67, 134 Schloss Wetterstein (Wedekind), 108 Schmitt, Carl, 54, 55, 192–93, 212, 374 Schmitthenner, Paul, 293 Schmitz, Oskar A H., 44 Schnitzler, Arthur, 81, 130 Scholder, Klaus, 42, 47–48 Scholem, Gershom, schools, Jews in, 30–31, 38, 149, 157, 168, 227, 256–57, 284–85, 298, 379 Schröder, Kurt, 198 Schüler, Winfried, 89 Schuschnigg, Kurt von, 239, 242 Schwarz, Ernst, 26 Schwarze Korps, Das, 122, 193, 195, 206, 209, 292, 312, 313, 314 schweigsame Frau, Die (Strauss), 131–32 Schweitzer, Hans, 104 Schwörer, Victor, 53 scientific research, 374 SD (Sicherheitsdienst), 3, 48, 63, 133, 139, 140, 167, 195, 233, 235, 255, 266, 270, 271, 291, 295, 304, 317, 318, 327, 359, 387 card index project of, 199 Jewish organizations investigated by, 199–201 reorganization of, 187–98, 374–75 Section II 112 (Jewish section) of, 135, 198–202, 210, 244, 245, 254, 261, 313 Second Reich, see Germany, Imperial Security Police (Sipo), 195 Selz, Otto, 18 Senator, Werner, 61 Senger, Valentin, 323 Seraphim, Peter-Heinz, 186–87 Sereny, Gitta, 296 Serkin, Rudolf, 10 Seton-Watson, R W., 93 sexual intercourse, definition of, 158–59 Sherrill, Charles, 181 Shirer, William L., 169 Siedler, Wolf Jobst, 296 Simon, Ernst, 75, 169 Simon, Hans, 296 Simon, Sir John, 68 Singer, Kurt, 65–66, 136 Sipo (Security Police), 195 “Situation of the Jews in Russia from the Revolution of March 1917 to the Present, The” (Heller), 191 Six, Franz Albert, 198, 199, 255, 313 Slawoj-Skladkowski, Felician, 218 Social Democratic Party, German, 74, 75, 76, 93, 106, 338, 356 socialism, 93 Socialist Party, German, 115, 138 SOPADE reports of, 138, 139, 253, 295, 302, 323 Solmssen, Georg, 33 Sommer, Walther, 225 SOPADE reports, 138, 139, 253, 295, 302, 323, 383–84 Soviet Union, 4, 185, 263, 265, 330 anti-Semitism in, 103, 186, 214 see also Russia, Imperial; Russian Revolution Spanish Civil War, 178, 183, 184 Spartacists, 91 Spectator (London), 248 Speer, Albert, 260–61, 296 Spinoza, Baruch, 54, 256 Spitzemberg, Baroness Hildegard von, 79–80 Spotts, Frederic, 14 SS, 4, 17, 76, 122, 125, 126, 137–38, 147, 166–67, 187, 193, 202–3, 205, 207, 209, 244, 246, 278, 292 Kristallnacht and, 273, 274–75, 387 racial purity in, 195–96, 197 Security Service of, see SD SS-Leitheft, 196–97 Stabel, Oskar, 56 Stahlecker, Franz, 244, 245, 305 Stalin, Joseph, 103, 186, 214, 330 Starhemberg, Prince Ernst Rüdiger, 242 State Department, U.S., 21 Stavisky affair, 221 Steed, Harry Wickham, 80 sterilization law, 39–40, 207–10 Stern, Fritz, 81 Stern, Hermann, 41 Stern, Kurt, 197 Stern, Susannah, 269 Stöcker, Adolf, 191 Storm Troopers, see SA Strasser, Gregor, 19 Strauss, Leo, 54 Strauss, Richard, 9, 67, 108, 131–32 Stresemann, Gustav, 106 Stuckart, Wilhelm, 148, 152, 158–59, 224 Sturmabteilung, see SA Stürmer, Der, 118, 123–25, 127, 128, 135 Sudetenland, 214, 249, 255, 262, 263, 265, 267, 272, 280, 311 suicide, 12, 37, 42, 73, 114, 173, 224, 239, 276, 305, 318 Supreme Court, German, 159, 276 swastika, 18, 64, 142, 238–39 swimming facilities, 122–23, 127, 138, 161, 229, 230–31, 285 Switzerland, 9, 24, 26, 114, 181, 206, 236, 245, 263–65, 266, 303 Szamuely, Tibor, 93 Thannhäuser, Ludwig, 117 Three Speeches on Judaism (Buber), 118 Thule Society, 92 Times (London), 80, 95, 103, 246, 300 Tivoli program, 34 Toscanini, Arturo, 9–10, 252 “Toward Eliminating the Poison from the Jewish Question” (Prinz), 110 trade unions, abolition of, 17 Tramer, Hans, 14–15 Tübingen, University of, 50, 157–58, 165, 205 Tuchler, Kurt, 63 Tucholsky, Kurt, 172–73 Turkey, 368 Udet, Ernst, 37 Ullstein, Leopold, 65 Ullstein publishing empire, 24–25, 65, 79, 138 Umfried, Hermann, 41–42, 59 United States: boycott of German goods in, 139 isolationism in, 213 Jewish organizations in, 21, 339 Jewish refugees and, 248, 299–300 relations between Nazi Germany and, 20, 300–301, 309, 310 universities, Jews in, 30–31, 36–37, 49–60, 145, 149, 157–58, 218, 228–29, 285, 293, 345–48, 379– 80 Vallat, Xavier, 222 Vatican: Concordat signed between Hitler and, 46–47, 48–49, 69, 70 see also Catholic Church, Catholics Verschuer, Otmar von, 32 Vichy government of France, 220, 222, 302 Vienna, 11, 80, 96, 239, 241, 243, 244, 245, 255, 266, 353–54 Völkischer Beobachter, 22, 30, 141, 143, 246, 249, 271, 280 Wagener, Otto, 19, 359 Wagner, Adolf, 139–40 Wagner, Cosima, 88, 89, 90 Wagner, Gerhard, 20, 148, 149 Wagner, Richard, 67, 87–89, 90, 252, 355, 372 Wagner, Robert, 51 Wagner, Winifred, 14 Walter, Bruno, Warburg, Max, 26, 65, 74–75, 170, 321 Warburg, Otto, 51–52, 153 Wasserstein, Bernard, 304 Wassermann, Jakob, 109–10, 130 Wassermann, Oskar, 25, 42 Webster, Nesta, 90–91 Wedekind, Frank, 108 Wehrmacht, 115, 117, 137, 153, 177, 236, 241, 265, 291, 304, 330 Weise, Georg, 50 Weiss, Bernhard, 104 Weissler, Friedrich, 190 Weizmann, Chaim, 170, 313 Weizsäcker, Ernst von, 238, 316 Weltsch, Robert, 129–30, 349 Wenn ich der Kaiser wär (Class), 34 Werfel, Franz, 11–12 Westdeutscher Beobachter, 122, 219 Wiedemann, Fritz, 117, 143 Wiese, Benno von, 55 Willstätter, Richard, 347 “Will the Jew Be Victorious Over Us?” (Schlatter), 165–66 Wilson, Hugh R., 261, 299, 316 Winter, Karl, 256 Wise, Stephen, 180–81, 217 Wisliceny, Dieter, 198 Wohlthat, Helmut, 315 women, victimization of, 369 World of Yesterday, The (Zweig), 81 World Revolution (Webster), 90–91 World War I, 2, 90, 309 Jewish military service in, 15, 16, 28, 29, 55, 58, 61, 73–75, 117, 292–93 World War II, 366 outbreak of, 330–31 prelude to, 177–78, 304–5, 311 World Zionist Organization, 170, 313 Wurm, Alois, 43 Würzburg, 104–5, 161 Yiddish, 37, 217, 218 Yishuv, 63, 65, 170 Zionist Federation for Germany, 21 Zionist Organization, 61, 63, 64 Zionist Pioneer, 61 Zionist Rundschau, 244 Zionists, Zionism, 15, 61–65, 78, 93, 119, 141, 151, 165, 167–68, 170, 198, 201, 217, 270, 304 Zionist Youth Emigration Organization, 55 Zöberlein, Hans, 122 Zschintsch, Werner, 252 Zweig, Arnold, 9, 65, 171, 172 Zweig, Stefan, 81, 131–32 About the Author Born in Prague, SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER spent his boyhood in Nazi-occupied France He now divides his time between professorships at Tel Aviv University and UCLA He has written many other books on Nazi Germany and World War II, including a moving personal memoir, When Memory Comes Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author MORE PRAISE FOR NAZI GERMANY AND THE JEWS “Saul Friedländer announces at the beginning of this first of two volumes on Nazi Germany and the Jews that he hopes to preserve a ‘sense of estrangement’ rather than to present a ‘seamless’ historical explanation To achieve this end, he consciously adopts a strategy of shifting perspectives, disruptive juxtapositions and layered analysis… The result is an elegant, sophisticated and nuanced account of the years leading up to the Holocaust.” —Christopher R Browning, Times Literary Supplement (London) “The merits of this work are many: it is easily the best book of a distinguished historian It is based on a great variety of sources, published and unpublished, and the judgment of the author cannot be faulted on any major issue It is a much-needed book at a time when this specific field has been subjected to a considerable amount of charlatanism, uniformed and wholly subjective writing This is a very good, very important book.” —Walter Laqueur, Los Angeles Times “In this superb volume [Friedländer] shows that, even today, a rational, measured and many-sided reinterpretation of the evidence can help us take one small step closer toward comprehending the nearly incomprehensible Holocaust.” —Istvan Deak, New Republic “An eminent Holocaust historian gives voice to both the perpetrators and victims of Nazi Germany’s prewar persecutions… Eloquent, richly documented… The exhaustive spadework makes this the richest, fullest study of its kind The reader comes as closes as one would ever want to get to the Nazi Germany of the 1930s.” —Kirkus Reviews “Nazi persecution of the Jews is compellingly reenacted here in human terms as Friedländer draws on a wealth of primary source documents and unpublished archival material… A masterful, scholarly study.” —Publishers Weekly “Friedländer’s ambitious and scholarly work is an important contribution to understanding why Germany, one of the most advanced nations in Europe, would embark on a systematic attempt to destroy the Jews.” —Booklist “A work of remarkable lucidity and authority which will undoubtedly be referred to for years to come… A thoughtful, detailed, responsible and readable account of a subject crucial to our understanding of the period.” —Neil Gregor, Jewish Chronicle “Friedländer brings perceptive interpretation to anti-Semitic persecution from 1933 to 1939 This is an authoritative book, lacing new material with the testimony of victims Dispassionate, it still reveals a depth of understanding that only a survivor—as Friedländer is—possesses.” —Hella Pick, The Guardian “A remarkable synopsis of the latest research enriched by reference to a breathtaking range of documents, diaries, letters, and memoirs, that nevertheless remains anchored in the searing experience of individual men and women…it sets a benchmark for scope, lucidity and balance.” —David Cesarani, Financial Times “There have been many books about Nazism’s persecution of the Jews, but none as magisterial or comprehensive as this new account Based on a wide reading of the almost unmanageable scholarly literature, and incorporating a great deal of original research, Friedländer’s book…interweaves a narrative of events with the stories of individual victims, perpetrators and bystanders.” —Richard Evans, Sunday Telegraph “A work whose eloquence lies in its self-control and whose strength is the calm intelligence of its approach to subject matter.” —Anne McElvoy, The Spectator “This will be the standard work for many years to come Calmly, it tells its tale of horror without once hinting at the fact that the author was, as a youth, one of the Nazis’ victims The material is so voluminous that Friedländer is selective But it is clear to anyone familiar with his sources that he nowhere distorts his evidence.” —Daniel Johnson, The Times (London) “The best book now on its subject, riveting in its narrative, analysis, and details.” —George L Mosse, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Wisconsin “Saul Friedländer is the most astute, sophisticated, and stylish historian of the Holocaust working in any language today His is a calm, rational voice in a field increasingly dominated by acrimony and unedifying publicity campaigns Long after the latter are forgotten, Friedländer’s book, based as it is on a lifetime’s research and reflection, will be remembered as a milestone of contemporary scholarship.” —Michael Burleigh, Distinguished Research Professor in Modern European History, University of Wales; author of The Racial State and Death and Deliverance “Through a compelling narrative, based on a myriad of vivid, sharp-focused episodes, Saul Friedländer raises a series of crucial questions—both theoretical and historical—which will have a deep impact on the current debate concerning the history of the extermination of the Jews A thoughtful, innovative, sophisticated approach; a major historiographical achievement.” —Carlo Ginzburg, Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles Also by Saul Friedländer PIUS XII AND THE THIRD REICH KURT GERSTEIN PRELUDE TO DOWNFALL: HITLER AND THE UNITED STATES HISTORY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS REFLECTIONS OF NAZISM WHEN MEMORY COMES MEMORY, HISTORY AND THE EXTERMINATION OF THE JEWS Copyright NAZI GERMANY AND THE JEWS: VOLUME I: THE YEARS OF PERSECUTION, 1933–1939 Copyright © 1997 by Saul Friedländer All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books Mobipocket Reader November 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-177699-1 10 About the Publisher Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd 25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321) Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au Canada HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900 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would not wish to be a Jew in Germany HERMANN GÖRING,... recognize the factors that shaped the overall historical context in which the Nazi mass murder took place They determined the methods and scope of the “Final Solution”; they also contributed to the