Persecution of Minorities in Nazi Germany

Law by law

In 1933 around 500,000 Jews lived in Germany, under one per cent of the population, most of them in the cities, many of them doctors, lawyers, shopkeepers and teachers, and around 100,000 of them men who had fought for Germany in the First World War. Within two months of Hitler becoming chancellor the SA stood outside their shops with placards telling Germans not to buy, and a law of 7 April 1933 dismissed them from the civil service. Within three years the Nuremberg Laws had made them subjects rather than citizens and forbidden them to marry Germans. Within six, on the night of 9 to 10 November 1938, 267 synagogues were burned, around 7,500 shops smashed, 91 Jews killed and around 30,000 sent to concentration camps, and the community was then fined a billion marks for the damage. The Jews were the largest target and not the only one. Around 320,000 Germans judged hereditarily unfit were sterilised under a law of July 1933. Around 50,000 men were convicted under a tightened law against homosexuality. Gypsies were put in a camp at Marzahn outside Berlin in 1936 to clear them from the Olympic city, and a decree of December 1938 ordered them registered by race. Vagrants, beggars and the long-term unemployed were rounded up as asocials in 1938 and sent to camps to work. The exam asks what the Nazis believed about race, how the persecution of the Jews developed from the boycott through the Nuremberg Laws to Kristallnacht, why it grew harsher, and what happened to the other minorities. This module gives you the dated evidence and the Paper 3 shapes.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with the moment it mattered, because a bare definition earns nothing in a 12-mark answer.

The persecution of the Jews, in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• The SA pickets Jewish shops in a one-day national boycott and Jews are dismissed from the civil service
• The Nuremberg Laws strip Jews of citizenship and forbid marriage with Germans
• Anti-Jewish signs are taken down for the Berlin Olympics and put back afterwards
• Jews must add Israel or Sara to their names and have a J stamped in their passports
• Kristallnacht: synagogues burned, shops wrecked, 30,000 men sent to camps
• Jews are excluded from the economy and from schools, and the Kindertransport begins

Why did the persecution grow harsher?

In 1933 Jews were boycotted for a day; in 1938 they were beaten in the streets and stripped of everything. Which explanation best accounts for the escalation?

• Racial hatred was the core of Nazi belief and each step made the next thinkable; the regime grew more secure and less concerned with opinion abroad, so the restraint of the Olympic year gave way after the Anschluss of March 1938, which also added 190,000 Austrian Jews to the problem the regime had set itself; party radicals and the SA pressed from below for action against Jews and were rewarded, as Goebbels was on 9 November; and Jewish property became a resource for a war economy short of foreign currency, so that Aryanisation and the fine of a billion marks paid for rearmament.
• Hitler had a written timetable in 1933 setting out every step to 1938.
• The German public demanded harsher measures.
• Foreign governments encouraged the persecution.

The Jews and the other minorities

The question may ask about the Jews or about the others named in the spec. Know how the treatment differed and what it had in common: the same racial theory and the same laws used first on one group and then on another.

Question 1: inference from a source

Source A: a description of a photograph taken in Berlin on 1 April 1933, the day of the boycott. Two SA men in uniform stand in front of a department store with their arms folded. Between them is a placard with the words: Germans! Defend yourselves! Do not buy from Jews! A few passers-by look on from the pavement; a woman in a hat is walking into the shop past the placard. A student infers that the boycott relied on intimidation and did not have the wholehearted support of the public. Tap the TWO details that support that inference most directly.

• Two uniformed SA men stand guard in front of the shop with their arms folded, so that anyone entering must pass them.
• The placard is printed in German and in English.
• A woman is walking into the shop past the placard and the SA men.
• The photograph was taken in Berlin, the capital.
• The photograph is dated 1 April 1933, two months after Hitler became chancellor.

Kristallnacht and after

Select the THREE statements that are true of Kristallnacht and its consequences.

• The trigger was the shooting of the diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris on 7 November 1938 by Herschel Grynszpan, a Polish Jew whose parents had been expelled from Germany the month before; Goebbels used the death on 9 November to order what was presented as spontaneous popular anger.
• In one night 267 synagogues were burned, around 7,500 shops were wrecked, 91 Jews were killed and around 30,000 men were arrested and sent to Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, most of them released within weeks on condition they emigrated.
• The community was fined 1 billion marks for the damage, Jews were excluded from all economic life by decree on 12 November and from state schools on 15 November, and emigration became the policy, with the Kindertransport bringing around 10,000 children to Britain from December.
• Kristallnacht was welcomed by most Germans.
• German insurance companies paid the Jewish shopkeepers for the damage.
• The persecution eased after Kristallnacht because of foreign protests.

Two interpretations of the escalation

Question 3 gives you two interpretations and asks how they differ, why, and how far you agree. The two below were written for this module to show the shape of the argument; the exam will print real historians. Interpretation 1. The persecution of the Jews followed a plan. Hitler had written in Mein Kampf in 1925 that the Jews were a poison in the nation, and from the boycott of April 1933 through the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 to the exclusion decrees of November 1938 each step removed one more right in a sequence that led where he had always meant it to go. The pauses, such as the Olympic year, were tactics; the direction never changed. Interpretation 2. The persecution escalated without a plan. The aim, a Germany without Jews, was constant, but the steps were improvised: the boycott was called off after a day because it hurt trade, the Nuremberg Laws were drafted overnight to give the rally something to announce, and Kristallnacht was a pogrom Goebbels launched to recover favour with Hitler that Goring then complained had wrecked the economy. The regime radicalised because its factions competed to be the most anti-Jewish, and each step created the pressure for the next. Question 3(c) asks why they differ. The answer is what each reads: Interpretation 1 reads the writings of Hitler and the outcome and sees a line; Interpretation 2 reads the files of the ministries and the party and sees improvisation, rivalry and accident. This meant that one asks where the persecution was going and the other how it got there, and the judgement in 3(d) turns on whether a constant aim pursued by improvised means is better called a plan or a process.

In the shoes of the regime, 1933 to 1938

Four decisions about the persecution. Choose what was actually done, and notice what each choice led to.

• Late March 1933. You are the party leadership. The SA is attacking Jewish shops on its own account, foreign newspapers are reporting it, and Hindenburg is still president. What do you do?
• September 1935. You are Hitler at the party rally. The radicals want a law against mixed marriages, the civil servants want a definition of who is a Jew, and the rally needs an announcement. What do you do?
• Summer 1936. Berlin is hosting the Olympics and the world press is arriving. Anti-Jewish signs hang in every town. What do you do?
• 9 November 1938, evening. You are Goebbels, out of favour with Hitler over a scandal, at the annual Putsch commemoration in Munich. News arrives that vom Rath has died in Paris. What do you do?

From cause to consequence

Because Nazi racial theory placed the Jews at the bottom of a hierarchy of races, the regime began within weeks of taking power with a boycott and the _____ law of April 1933. Because the officials needed a legal definition of who was a Jew, the _____ Laws of September 1935 ended Jewish citizenship and defined a Jew by grandparents. Because the world was watching in _____, the signs came down for the Olympics and went back up afterwards. Because Goebbels wanted to recover favour and the SA wanted action, the death of vom Rath became the pogrom of _____ November 1938. And because the regime then wanted the Jews out rather than in, around _____ of the 500,000 had emigrated by the outbreak of war.

Driven out

Around 500,000 Jews lived in Germany in 1933, and around 280,000 had emigrated by September 1939. What percentage of the 1933 community had left?

Question 3(b): the main difference

Question 3(b) asks: What is the main difference between the two interpretations on the callout card? Explain your answer using both. Which answer would score all four marks?

• The main difference is that Interpretation 1 sees the persecution as a planned sequence, pointing to Mein Kampf and the steady removal of rights from 1933 to 1938 as steps towards a fixed goal, whereas Interpretation 2 sees it as improvised escalation, pointing to the boycott called off after a day, the Nuremberg Laws drafted overnight and Kristallnacht launched by Goebbels for his own reasons, with each step created by rivalry rather than design.
• Interpretation 2 says the Nuremberg Laws were drafted overnight and Kristallnacht was the work of Goebbels.
• I agree with Interpretation 1 because Hitler wrote about the Jews in Mein Kampf in 1925.
• They differ because one thinks it was planned and the other thinks it was not.

A 12-mark paragraph, marked

Question 2: Explain why the persecution of the Jews increased in the years 1933 to 1939. One reason the persecution increased was the growing security of the regime and its declining fear of opinion abroad. In 1933 Hindenburg was still president, the army was not yet loyal and foreign trade mattered, so the boycott of 1 April was called off after one day and the laws that followed were dressed as civil service reform; in 1936 the anti-Jewish signs were taken down for the Berlin Olympics because the world was watching. By 1938 Hindenburg was dead, the army had sworn its oath to Hitler, the Rhineland and Austria had been taken without a shot and the Western powers had done nothing. This meant that the restraint of the early years was no longer needed, and the regime could move from law to violence: the pogrom of 9 to 10 November 1938 killed 91 people and sent 30,000 to the camps, and the decrees of 12 and 15 November completed the exclusion of the Jews from the economy and the schools within a week, in the face of foreign protest that the regime now ignored. The persecution increased because the regime had stopped needing to hold back. What earned the marks: a cause named in the first sentence; specific support (1 April, 1936, the oath, Austria, 9 to 10 November, 12 and 15 November); the link phrase this meant that; and a closing sentence that returns to the question. Two more paragraphs, on the racial ideology that made each step the basis of the next and on the pressure from party radicals and the economic gain of Aryanisation, and the answer reaches the top level.

Write the 12-mark answer

Explain why the persecution of the Jews increased in the years 1933 to 1939. You may use the following in your answer: the Nuremberg Laws; Kristallnacht. You must also use information of your own.

• Support that counts: a date, a figure, a law or a name
• Causes of your own: Nazi racial ideology, the growing security of the regime after 1936 and 1938, pressure from party radicals and the SA, or the economic gain of Aryanisation

Question 3(d): how far do you agree?

Question 3(d) asks: How far do you agree with Interpretation 1 that the persecution of the Jews followed a plan? Use both interpretations and your own knowledge. A student has written the case FOR Interpretation 1. Which is the strongest point to set AGAINST it?

• The aim was fixed and the route was not: a regime working to a plan does not call off its first boycott after a day because trade suffered, draft its central race laws overnight to fill a rally programme, or let a propaganda minister in disgrace start a pogrom that its economics chief then condemns for breaking German glass, so the evidence of 1933, 1935 and 1938 shows a constant goal reached by improvisation and rivalry, which means Interpretation 1 is right about the direction and wrong about the mechanism, and a judgement should give it the aim and give Interpretation 2 the steps.
• The Nazis were evil, so it does not matter whether it was planned.
• The Holocaust proves it was planned from 1933.
• Most Germans did not support the persecution, so there cannot have been a plan.