Read Online Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 by Saul Friedländer - Free Book Online

of Jews from the civil service, limited himself to the regular middle-of-the-road anti-Jewish arguments of the moderate breed of conservatives to which Hindenburg belonged. It was in fact Hitler’s first lengthy statement on the Jews since he became chancellor.
    In his April 5 letter, Hitler started by using the argument of a Jewish “inundation.” With regard to the civil service, the Nazi leader argued that the Jews, as a foreign element and as people with ability, had entered governmental positions and “were sowing the seed of corruption, the extent of which no one today has any adequate appreciation.” The international Jewish “atrocity and boycott agitation” precipitated measures that are intrinsically defensive. Hitler nonetheless promised that Hindenburg’s request regarding Jewish veterans would be implemented. Then he moved to a strangely premonitory finale: “In general, the first goal of this cleansing process is intended to be the restoration of a certain healthy and natural relationship; and second, to remove from specified positions important to the state those elements that cannot be entrusted with the life or death of the Reich. Because in the coming years we will inevitably have to take precautions to ensure that certain events that cannot be disclosed to the rest of the world for higher reasons of state really remain secret.” 121
    Again, Hitler was utilizing some of the main tenets of conservative anti-Semitism to the full: the over-representation of Jews in some key areas of social and professional life, their constituting a nonassimilated and therefore foreign element in society, the nefarious influence of their activities (liberal or revolutionary), particularly after November 1918. Weimar, the conservatives used to clamor, was a “Jewish republic.” Hitler had not forgetten to mention, for the special benefit of a field marshal and Prussian landowner, that in the old Prussian state the Jews had had little access to the civil service and that the officer corps had been kept free of them. There was some irony in the fact that a few days after Hitler’s letter to Hindenburg, the old field marshal himself had to answer a query from Prince Carl of Sweden, president of the Swedish Red Cross, about the situation of the Jews in Germany. The text of Hindenburg’s letter to Sweden was in fact dictated by Hitler, with the early draft prepared by Hindenburg’s office significantly changed (any admission of acts of violence against Jews was omitted, and the standard theme of the invasion of the Reich by Jews from the East strongly underlined). 122 Thus, over his own signature, the president of the Reich sent a letter not very different from the one Hitler had addressed to him on April 4. But soon Hindenburg would be gone, and this source of annoyance would disappear from Hitler’s path.
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    The city of Cologne forbade the use of municipal sports facilities to Jews in March 1933. 123 Beginning April 3 requests by Jews in Prussia for name changes were to be submitted to the Justice Ministry, “to prevent the covering up of origins.” 124 On April 4 the German Boxing Association excluded all Jewish boxers. 125 On April 8 all Jewish teaching assistants at universities in the state of Baden were to be expelled immediately. 126 On April 18 the party district chief (Gauleiter) of Westphalia decided that a Jew would be allowed to leave prison only if the two persons who had submitted the request for bail, or the doctor who had signed the medical certificate, were ready to take his place in prison.” 127 On April 19 the use of Yiddish was forbidden in cattle markets in Baden. 128 On April 24 the use of Jewish names for spelling purposes in telephone communications was forbidden. 129 On May 8 the mayor of Zweibrücken prohibited Jews from leasing places in the next annual town market. 130 On May 13 the change of Jewish to non-Jewish names was forbidden. 131 On May 24 the full Aryanization of the German