Adolf
Hitler's First Anti-Semitic
Writing
September 16, 1919
Hitler
returned from a military hospital to Munich in early 1919. There he underwent a
Reichswehr sponsored course of systematic political education for demobilizing
soldiers that featured Pan- German nationalism, anti-Semitism, and
anti-socialism. These same themes were prominent in Bavarian politics following
the repression of the Munich revolution of 1918-19. Because anti-Semitism had
not played a notable part in Bavarian politics prior to the revolutionary
disturbances, a Herr Adolf Gemlich was prompted to send an inquiry about the
importance of the "Jewish question" to Captain Karl Mayr, the officer
in charge of the Reichswehr News and Enlightenment Department in Munich. Mayr
referred him to Hitler, who had distinguished himself in the above-mentioned
course by the vehemence of his radical nationalist and anti-Semitic views, and
by his oratorical talents. Hitler was already feeling his way toward a
political career; four days before responding to Gemlich in the letter
translated below, he had paid his first visit to the German Workers' Party
(eventually renamed, the National Socialist Workers' Party) as a confidential
agent of the Reichswehr. In the letter to Gemlich he appears anxious to establish
his credentials as a knowledgeable and sober anti-Semite. Compared to the
inflammatory mass-meeting oratory that he was soon to make his specialty,
Hitler's rhetoric here is quite tame, stressing the need for a
"rational" and "scientific" anti-Semitism. Some historians
have interpreted the letter's call for the "irrevocable removal [Entfernung]"
of the Jews from German life as a prefiguring of the Holocaust. But it is clear
from the context and from
later
statements that, at this point, Hitler meant segregation or expulsion rather
than systematic liquidation. The letter, Hitler's first explicitly political
writing, impressed his Reichswehr superiors and he soon gained a reputation
among radical rightist and socially respectable nationalist conservative groups
as a man who could help inoculate the masses against revolution and whose anti-Semitic
rhetoric could help discredit the democratic Weimar Republic. The letter may
thus be seen as the launching of his political career.
Source: Eberhard
Jckel (ed.), Hitler. Smtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905-1924 (Stuttgart,
1980), pp. 88-90.
Translated by Richard S. Levy.]
[September 16, 1919]
Dear Herr Gemlich,
The danger posed by Jewry for our
people today finds expression in the undeniable aversion of wide sections of
our people. The cause of this aversion is not to be found in a clear
recognition of the consciously or unconsciously systematic and pernicious
effect of the Jews as a totality upon our nation. Rather, it arises mostly from
personal contact and from the personal impression which the individual Jew
leaves--almost always an unfavorable one. For this reason, anti-Semitism is too
easily characterized as a mere emotional phenomenon. And yet this is incorrect.
Anti-Semitism as a political movement may not and cannot be defined by
emotional impulses, but by recognition of the facts. The facts are these:
First, Jewry is absolutely a race and not a religious association. Even the
Jews never designate themselves as Jewish Germans, Jewish Poles, or Jewish Americans
but always as German, Polish, or American Jews. Jews have never yet adopted
much more than the language of the foreign nations among whom they live. A
German who is forced to make use of the French language in France, Italian in
Italy, Chinese in China does not thereby become a Frenchman, Italian, or
Chinaman. It's the same with the Jew who lives among us and is forced to make
use of the German language. He does not thereby become a German. Neither does
the Mosaic faith, so important for the survival of this race, settle the
question of whether someone is a Jew or non-Jew. There is scarcely a race whose
members belong exclusively to just one definite religion. Through thousands of
years of the closest kind of inbreeding, Jews in general have maintained their
race and their peculiarities far more distinctly than many of the peoples among
whom they have lived. And thus comes the fact that there lives amongst us a
non- German, alien race which neither wishes nor is able to sacrifice its
racial character or to deny its feeling, thinking, and striving. Nevertheless,
it possesses all the political rights we do. If the ethos of the Jews is
revealed in the purely material realm,
it is even clearer in their thinking and striving. Their dance
around the golden calf is becoming a
merciless struggle for all those possessions we prize most
highly on earth.
The value of the individual is no
longer decided by his character or by the significance of his achievements for
the totality but exclusively by the size of his fortune, by his money. The
loftiness of a nation is no longer to be measured by the sum of its moral and
spiritual powers, but rather by the wealth of its material possessions.
This thinking and striving after money
and power, and the feelings that go along with it, serve the purposes of the
Jew who is unscrupulous in the choice of methods and pitiless in their
employment. In autocratically ruled states he whines for the favor of "His
Majesty" and misuses it like a leech fastened upon the nations. In
democracies he vies for the favor of the masses, cringes before the
"majesty of the people," and recognizes only the majesty of money.
He destroys the character of princes
with byzantine flattery, national pride (the strength of a people), with ridicule
and shameless breeding to depravity. His method of battle is that public
opinion which is never expressed in the press but which is nonetheless managed
and falsified by it. His power is the power of money, which multiplies in his
hands effortlessly and endlessly through interest, and which forces peoples
under the most dangerous of yokes. Its golden glitter, so attractive in the
beginning, conceals the ultimately tragic consequences. Everything men strive
after as a higher goal, be it religion, socialism, democracy, is to the Jew
only means to an end, the way to satisfy his lust for gold and domination. In
his effects and consequences he is like a racial tuberculosis of the nations.
The deduction from all this is the
following: an anti-Semitism based on purely emotional grounds will find its
ultimate expression in the form of the pogrom.[1] An anti-Semitism based on
reason, however, must lead to systematic legal combating and elimination of the
privileges of the Jews, that which distinguishes the Jews from the other aliens
who live among us (an Aliens Law). The ultimate objective [of such legislation]
must, however, be the irrevocable removal of the Jews in general.
For both these ends a government of
national strength, not of national weakness, is necessary. The Republic in
Germany owes its birth not to the uniform national will of our people but the
sly exploitation of a series of circumstances which found general expression in
a deep, universal dissatisfaction. These circumstances however were independent
of the form of the state and are still operative today. Indeed, more so now
than before. Thus, a great portion of our people recognizes that a changed
state-form cannot in itself change our situation. For that it will take a
rebirth of the moral and spiritual powers of the nation. And this rebirth
cannot be initiated by a state leadership of irresponsible majorities,
influenced by certain party dogmas, an irresponsible press, or internationalist
phrases and slogans. [It requires] instead the ruthless installation of
nationally minded leadership personalities with an inner sense of
responsibility.
But these facts deny to the Republic
the essential inner support of the nation's spiritual forces. And thus today's
state leaders are compelled to seek support among those who draw the exclusive
benefits of the new formation of German conditions, and who for this reason
were the driving force behind the revolution--the Jews. Even though (as various
statements of the leading personalities reveal) today's leaders fully realized
the danger of Jewry, they (seeking their own advantage) accepted the readily
proffered support of the Jews and also returned the favor. And this pay-off
consisted not only in every possible favoring of Jewry, but above all in the
hindrance of the struggle of the betrayed people against its defrauders, that
is in the repression of the anti-Semitic movement.
Respectfully,
Adolf Hitler
The
Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and
Race: September 15, 1935
The Reich Citizenship Law of September
15, 1935
THE REICHSTAG HAS ADOPTED by unanimous
vote the following law
which is herewith promulgated.
ARTICLE 1.
(1) A subject of the state is one who
belongs to the protective union of the German Reich, and who, therefore, has
specific obligations to the Reich.
(2) The status of subject is to be acquired in accordance with
the provisions of the Reich and the state Citizenship Law.
ARTICLE 2.
(1) A citizen of the Reich may be only one who is of German or
kindred blood, and who, through his behavior, shows that he is both desirous
and personally fit to serve loyally the German people and the Reich.
(2) The right to citizenship is obtained by the grant of Reich
citizenship papers.
(3) Only the citizen of the Reich may enjoy full political
rights in consonance with the provisions of the laws.
ARTICLE 3. The Reich Minister of the Interior, in conjunction with the
Deputy to the Fuehrer, will issue the required legal and administrative
decrees for the implementation and amplification of this law.
Promulgated:
September 16, 1935. In force:
September 30, 1935.
First Supplementary
Decree of November 14, 1935
On the basis of Article III of the
Reich Citizenship Law of September 15, 1935, the following is hereby decreed:
ARTICLE 1.
(1) Until further provisions concerning citizenship papers, all
subjects of German or kindred blood who possessed the right to vote in the Reichstag
elections when the Citizenship Law came into effect, shall, for the present,
possess the rights of Reich citizens.
The same shall be true of those upon whom the Reich Minister of the
Interior, in conjunction with the Deputy to the Fuehrer shall confer
citizenship.
(2) The Reich Minister of the Interior, in conjunction with the
Deputy to the Fuehrer, may revoke citizenship.
ARTICLE 2.
(1) The provisions of Article I shall apply also to subjects who
are of mixed Jewish blood.
(2) An individual of mixed Jewish blood is one who is descended
from one or two grandparents who, racially, were full Jews, insofar that he is
not a Jew according to Section 2 of
Article 5. Full-blooded Jewish grandparents are those who belonged to
the Jewish religious community.
ARTICLE 3. Only citizens of the Reich, as bearers of full political
rights, can exercise the right of voting in political matters, and have the
right to hold public office. The
Reich Minister of the Interior, or any agency he empowers, can make exceptions
during the transition period on the matter of holding public office. The measures do not apply to matters
concerning religious organizations.
ARTICLE 4.
(1) A Jew cannot be a citizen of the Reich. He cannot exercise the right to vote;
he cannot hold public office.
(2) Jewish officials will be retired as of December 31, 1935. In the event that such officials served
at the front in the World War either for Germany or her allies, they shall
receive as pension, until they reach the age limit, the full salary last
received, on the basis of which their pension would have been computed. They shall not, however, be promoted
according to their seniority in rank.
When they reach the age limit, their
pension will be computed again,
according to the salary last received on which their pension was to be
calculated.
(3) These provisions do not concern the affairs of religious
organizations.
(4) The conditions regarding service of teachers in public
Jewish schools remains unchanged until the promulgation of new laws on the
Jewish school system.
ARTICLE 5
(1) A Jew is an individual who is descended from at least three
grandparents who were, racially, full Jews...
(2) A Jew is also an individual who is descended from two
full-Jewish grandparents if:
(a) he was a member of the Jewish religious community when this
law was issued, or joined the community later;
(b) when the law was issued, he was married to a person who was
a Jew, or was subsequently married to a Jew;
(c) he is the issue from a marriage with a Jew, in the sense of
Section I, which was contracted after the coming into effect of the Law for the
Protection of German Blood and Honor of September 15, 1935; (d) he is the issue of an extramarital relationship with a Jew, in the sense of Section I, and was
born out of
wedlock after July 31, 1936.
ARTICLE 6.
(1) Insofar as there are, in the laws of the Reich or in the
decrees of the National Socialist German Workers' Party and its affiliates,
certain requirements for the purity of German blood which extend beyond Article
5, the same remain untouched....
ARTICLE 7. The Fuehrer and Chancellor of the Reich is empowered
to release anyone from the provisions of these administrative decrees.
Law for
the Protection of German Blood and
German
Honor - September 15, 1935
Thoroughly convinced by the knowledge
that the purity of German blood is essential for the further existence of the
German people and animated by the inflexible will to safe-guard the German
nation for the entire future, the Reichstag has resolved upon the following law
unanimously, which is promulgated herewith:
SECTION 1
1. Marriages between Jews
and nationals of German or kindred blood are forbidden. Marriages concluded in defiance of this
law are void, even if, for the purpose of evading this law, they are concluded
abroad.
2. Proceedings for
annulment may be initiated only by the Public Prosecutor.
SECTION 2
Relation outside marriage between Jews
and nationals for German or kindred blood are forbidden.
SECTION 3
Jews will not be permitted to employ
female nationals of German or kindred blood in their households.
SECTION 4
1. Jews are forbidden to
hoist the Reich and national flag and to present the colors of the Reich.
2. On the other hand they
are permitted to present the Jewish colors. The exercise of this authority is protected by the State.
SECTION 5
1. A person who acts
contrary to the prohibition of section 1 will be punished with hard labor.
2. A person who acts
contrary to the prohibition of section 2 will be punished with imprisonment or
with hard labor.
3. A person who acts
contrary to the provisions of section 3 or 4 will be punished with imprisonment
up to a year and with a fine or with one of these penalties.
SECTION 6
The Reich Minister of the Interior in
agreement with the Deputy of the Fuehrer will issue the legal and
administrative regulations which are required from the implementation and supplementation
of this law.