More repressive legislation against Jews: swastika to be national flag
From our own correspondent
16 September 1935
Berlin
Herr Hitler’s eagerly awaited speech to the first Reichstag to meet in the city of Nuremberg for 440 years was one of the briefest he has ever made, lasting hardly 10 minutes. After almost every sentence there were either roars of approbation or indignant cries of shame from the Nazi deputies. Two points were of great importance in the speech, the one dealing with foreign affairs and the other with domestic, and both had been anticipated by observers here. A warning was given to the signatories of the Memel statute, and a threat was made to Lithuania herself. The robbery of Memel had, be said, been legalised by the League. For years the Germans of Memel had been mishandled by the Lithuanian state, their only crime being that they were Germans.
The second and domestic major point was in regard to the previously uttered dictum that “The Nazi party commands the state, and not the state the party.” This dictum is to be implemented and given legal form. It was also announced that the swastika is to be the national flag, in place of the black, white, and red flag.
“Jewish problem”
Upon the Jewish question Herr Hitler’s declaration showed an intransigence which will probably be regarded as a mandate for the extremists and Jew-baiters like Herr Streicher, who has sat at Herr Hitler’s right had during the party congress.
Herr Hitler spoke of alleged internal and international provocation by Jewry. He referred to the alleged provocation of the Jews during the showing of a Swedish film during the summer in Berlin, which was followed by the anti-Jewish riots in Kurfürstendamm, hinting clearly of a world Jewish plot. Herr Hitler suggested that these events at home and abroad had the appearance of being systematically planned.
This is an edited extract.
The new German ‘Blood and Honour’ law
From our own correspondent
17 September 1935
Berlin
Although the law passed by the Reichstag last night dealing with German citizenship was forecast months ago, and though also the law forbidding marriage or intimate relations between Jews and “Aryans” – the law for “the protection of German blood and honour” – has been expected, their proclamation in this sudden way has come as a surprise.
The citizenship law was promised by Dr Frick, minister of the interior, in a public statement in April. It corresponds, of course, to the principles laid down in My Struggle, Herr Hitler’s gospel of National Socialism, which divides those living within Germany’s borders into citizens, state subjects, and foreigners, with full civic rights for citizens only. It differs in its present form from the outline given by Dr Frick in at least one striking particular, for he said that an oath of allegiance to Herr Hitler would be one of the conditions of German citizenship, and this is not in the law.
The law explained
The German semi-official news agency points out to-day that only people of completely Jewish blood, and not “non-Aryans”, or persons with some Jewish blood, are reckoned as Jews under the new statute. The agency, in a commentary, compares the status of the Jews in Germany to that of a national minority. The “blood and honour law”, it is claimed, shows that the German people do not object to the Jews so long as they intend to keep to their own race and to act accordingly.
Germans, however, refuse to regard the Jews as fellow-citizens and to give them the same rights and duties as Germans. The Zionist Conference in Switzerland, it is added, has confirmed the belief that the Jewish question is not one of religion but of race. Germany has drawn the obvious conclusions and has complied with the claims of the Zionist Conference by making the Jews a national minority.
The writer of this commentary has overlooked the great differences between the status of the Jews in Germany and that of a national minority at least in any European country. Many minorities have their rights guaranteed by international treaties, even if the guarantees are not fully effective, and have also the right of appeal to an international body against discrimination and ill-treatment.
This is an edited extract. Continue reading.
Persecution in Germany: Manchester protest demonstration
16 September 1935
One of the most remarkable meetings held in Manchester within recent years took place at the Free Trade Hall, last night, when 3,000 people attended a demonstration against the Nazi persecution in Germany. Every part of the hall was crowded.
Death for free speech
Mr GHC Bing, a barrister, who attended the Penal Reform Congress in Berlin, described the German penal system. When he read out a section which stated that anyone who made political speeches could be hanged as an agitator, a murmur rose from the vast crowd. Their duty, be said, was not so much to condemn the guilty as to find some practical means of saving those who yet lived.
He wanted to urge upon them the great value of protesting. There was no doubt that a protest was of immense value in Germany. They were afraid of such protests as had been made in the foreign press. He must, he felt, pay tribute here to the Manchester Guardian. (Applause.) He thought that the Manchester Guardian, and in a less degree other papers, had done an immense amount in saving the victims of German fascism. The fight in which they were engaged was the fight for civilisation. Fascism was indivisible and the fascism they were fighting in Europe was the same fascism as was a power in other countries of Europe. In this country people were often separated by bitter political feelings, but it was generally possible to find some bridge. “Between us and fascism,” concluded Mr Bing, “a chasm is fixed over which no bridge is possible. If we arc to defeat fascism we must defeat it together. There is no other way.”
German Jews refused marriage licences
17 September 1935
In consequence of the new German marriage laws the Dutch municipal authorities have already refused to license the marriages of several German Jews with German or Dutch women. Such marriages are no longer legal in Germany, and under existing treaty arrangements between Holland and Germany, German and Dutch subjects are bound by the laws of their own country, whichever side of the frontier they live.
Editorial: Hitler marks time
17 September 1935
Those who believe that Germany is returning to “decent reaction” and that Conservative or Moderate forces will, with the help of the Reichswehr, triumph over “Nazi radicalism” will have found little comfort in Hitler’s speech in the Reichstag on Sunday night.
The new legislation announced by General Göring, after Hitler had made what is probably the shortest public speech in his career, gives legal effect to what is in effect becoming the reality. The German Jews are now, as in the middle ages, being confined to the ghetto. That in itself would be a relatively humane solution of the “Jewish problem.” What is happening to the German Jews, and is now being legalised, is that they are being put into a permanent quarantine. They are treated as a source of moral and physical contamination and are being at the same time segregated and slowly exterminated. Hitler’s ferocious verbal attack on the Jews – such attacks are frequently the prelude to new waves of physical persecution and are intended to be such – was accompanied by the usual abuse of Soviet Russia. Hitler’s ideas, like those of all Nazis, are not in the least new. They can only be made to seem new because they are so out of date that there has been ample time for them to have been forgotten.
This is an edited extract. Continue reading.
Nazi concentration camps not improved
From our special correspondent
20 September 1935
Dachau was one of the worst of the German concentration camps, but neither there nor in any others, except one or two that came to be used as “show places,” has there been any improvement in the lot of the prisoners. All the publicity and protest in the outside world has made no difference whatever.
Some of the prisoners have been in Dachau for two and a half years. The hope that their internment was merely provisional and would come to an end as soon as things had “settled down” in Germany has been abandoned. To their often unendurable physical torments is added the despairing conviction that there will never be any help from abroad and that there will be no release as long as the Third Realm lasts.
The prisoners number about 1,600. They are made up of Communists, Social Democrats, “oppositional” SA men (that is to say, Brownshirts who turned against Hitler, especially after 30 June last year), tramps, and ordinary criminals, of whom some are used as informers amongst the political prisoners. The Jews include 30 who returned to Germany this year, thinking it to be safe, and were sent to Dachau.
Editorial: German Christians and Jews
21 September 1935
One of the minor products of the new German nationalism is the sect known as the “German Christians”; while unimportant in themselves, they have received an artificial importance because they are being used by the Nazi dictatorship to break up the Protestant churches in the hope that the pieces could be reunited in one national Church that would propagate National Socialism while pretending to propagate Christianity. The “German Christians” are particularly truculent and bigoted sectarians and have been rejected by innumerable congregations all over Germany. In fact, they are only able to survive because they have the help of the secular arm and, more especially, of the secret State police. They have now come into prominence again by taking a particularly odious part in the renewed persecution of the Jews.
Continue reading.
The Jews in Germany: Hitler interpreted
From our own correspondent
21 September 1935
Some light is thrown upon what Herr Hitler meant on Sunday when he declared to the Reichstag at Nuremberg that if the German blood and honour law for the settlement of the Jewish question failed the solution of the problem would devolve upon the Nazi party, by General Göring’s organ the National Zeitung in an article entitled, A Resolution in the Philosophy of the State.
In his statement Herr Hitler said, “This law is an attempt to settle by law a problem which, if legal methods should fail, will be left to the party for a definite solution,” and this is interpreted as authority for putting into practice the Nazi maxim that the party commands the State and not the State the party. The present opposition from the civil service to the party’s will may have to be brought to an end, it is stated, through direct action by the party itself.
Party or state
While previously legislation, the execution of legislation, and the supervision of its execution, has been in the hands of organs of the state (the article states), there may be an occasion when the continuation of the fight against the power that had been held by the Jews and against the attempts of the jews to get the new influence in Germany, can no longer be carried out by the state, but will have to be taken over by the organisation which forced its political will upon the state when power was assumed by Adolf Hitler. In this case the Jewish people would have to be prepared for the Nazi party’s taking things into its hands within the framework of the party organisation. The fight against Jews the would then be taken up and carried out by the regional, district, and local organisations of the party. The measures the party would take would be of a legal character, and the state would have to assist through its official organs.
The article then points out that it has been remarked that there is a “certain reticence” on the part of a section of the civil service to certain of the aims of the party, which has caused its leaders anxiety from time to time. Perhaps, therefore, one fine day the state machinery which was not working sufficiently rapidly and intensely might be steered by the party with a speed and direction which would liven it. Perhaps, too, the civil service might be excluded altogether from the solution of some problems, and the party might directly carry out its political will on them.
This course, it is stated, is not desired, but the party cannot tolerate opposition to its will from civil servants, high or low.
