With respect to Jews, Hitler’s regime is best divided into three peri-
ods:1933 to November 1938; November 1938 to June 1941; and June 1941
to 1945. From 1933 to 1935, Hitler enacted a series of anti-Semitic laws that
in effect de-emancipated German Jewry. Jews were excluded from most pro-
fessions, the civil service, and the universities. A state-wide boycott of Jewish
businesses was implemented. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws de-Germanized
the Jews and separated them from the rest of the population by requiring
them to wear a yellow badge and outlawing most intimate relationships
between Jews and non-Jews. In addition, the Nuremberg Laws defined which
Mischlinge, or persons of mixed blood, were legally Jews.
Jews responded to these policies in two ways. First, many German Jews
embraced Zionism. For the first time, Zionism became more than a small
minority movement within German Jewry. Second, more than half of German
Jewry emigrated between 1933 and 1938, most to neighboring countries:
France, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and Austria.
By 1938, the situation of German Jewry had deteriorated enough for the
Great Powers to convene the Evian Conference from July 6 to 15 of that year to
discuss the problem of Jewish refugees. Little came of this meeting. Indicative
of the conference’s inability to take serious action was the absence of any high-
level American official. Indeed, President Roosevelt sent Myron C. Taylor, a
personal friend and businessman, to represent the United States. After Evian,
Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann noted despairingly, “The world seems to be
divided into two parts – those places where the Jews cannot live and those
where they cannot enter.” The one tangible result of the conference was the
organization of the International Committee on Refugees, which would come
to the assistance of Jews during the waning days of the Second World War.
Nazi policy turned more aggressive after November 9, 1938 following
Kristallnacht, the night of shattered glass, a massive state-sponsored attack on
Jewish synagogues and stores. More than one hundred synagogues and thou-
sands of Jewish shops were destroyed. During the days that followed, the
Nazi regime blamed the Jews for inciting the attacks, and fined them more
than 1 million marks. In addition, hundreds of Jews were deported or sent to
concentration camps such as Dachau or Matthausen that had been built sev-
eral years earlier to incarcerate political dissidents.
The immediate impetus for this event was the assassination of a Nazi offi-
cial in Paris by Hershel Grynszpan, a Polish Jew whose parents had been
deported to Poland. In the longer term, this attack on Jews reflected the
growing confidence of the Nazi regime following the occupation of
the Sudetenland and Austria with little real resistance by the Great Powers.
In addition, historian Saul Friedlander suggested that this event grew out of
tension between two ministries, those for war and propaganda; that
Propaganda Minister Goebbels orchestrated Kristallnachtto make up for his
propaganda failure over the Sudentenland. In any case, from this point on,
Nazi policy toward Jews would turn increasingly violent.
222 From renewal to devastation, 1914–45