Hitler

triumph – and experienced, he said, the happiest day of his life. For the German people, Hitler seemed to be achieving the unimaginable. The world, meanwhile, looked on in astonishment. Great Britain, party to the condemnation of Germany for breach of treaties, had wholly undermined the Stresa Front, left its allies in the lurch, and assisted Hitler in tearing a further large strip off the Versailles Treaty. Whether peace would be more secure as a result already gave grave cause for doubt.
    Within little over three months, European diplomacy was plunged still further into turmoil. Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia – an atavisticimperialist adventure designed to restore Italy’s status as a world power and satisfy national pride and a dictator’s ambitions – was launched on 3 October. The invasion was unanimously condemned by the members of the League of Nations. But their slow and half-hearted application of economic sanctions – which left out the key commodity, oil – did little but show up once more the League’s ineffectiveness. Divisions were once more exposed between the two western democracies.
    Mussolini’s action had plunged the League into crisis once more. It had blasted apart the accord reached at Stresa. Europe was on the move. Hitler could await rich pickings.
    III
    While events on the diplomatic front were turning Hitler’s way in the spring and summer of 1935, the new wave of anti-Jewish violence – after a relative lull since the later months of 1933 – that swept across the land between May and September spurred further radicalization in the area of his chief ideological obsession. Heavily preoccupied with foreign policy at this time, Hitler was only sporadically involved in the months before the hastily improvised promulgation of the notorious Nuremberg Laws at the Party Rally in September. ‘With regard to the Jews, too,’ Hitler commented at a much later date, ‘I had for long to remain inactive.’ His inactivity was tactical, not temperamental. ‘There’s no point in artificially creating additional difficulties,’ he added. ‘The more cleverly you proceed, the better.’ There was little need for him to be active. All he had to do was provide backing for the party radicals – or, even less, do nothing to hinder their activism (until it eventually became counter-productive) – then introduce the discriminatory legislation which the agitation had prompted. Knowing that actions to ‘remove’ the Jews were in line with Hitler’s aims and met with his approval largely provided its own momentum.
    Chiefly on account of foreign-policy sensitivities and economic precariousness, the regime had during 1934 reined in the violence against Jews which had characterized the early months of Nazi rule. Barbarity had merely subsided – and far from totally. Ferocious discrimination continued unabated. Intimidation was unrelenting. In some areas, like Streicher’s Franconia, the economic boycott remained as fierce as everand the poisonous atmosphere invited brutal actions. Even so, the exodus of Jews fleeing from Germany slowed down markedly; some even came back, thinking the worst over. Then, early in 1935 with the Saar plebiscite out of the way, the brakes on antisemitic action began to be loosened. Written and spoken propaganda stoked the fires of violence, inciting action from party formations – including units of the Hitler Youth, SA, SS, and the small traders’ organization, NS-Hago – that scarcely needed encouragement. The Franconian Gauleiter, Julius Streicher, the most rabid and primitive antisemite among the party leaders, was at the forefront. Streicher’s own quasi-pornographic newspaper,
Der Stürmer
, which had never ceased dispensing its poison despite frequent brushes even with Nazi authorities, now excelled itself in a new and intensified campaign of filth, centring upon endless stories of ‘racial defilement’. Sales quadrupled during 1935, chiefly on account of the support from local party organizations.
    The tone was changing at the very top. In March 1934, Heß had banned anti-Jewish propaganda by the NS-Hago, indicating that Hitler’s authorization was needed for any boycott. But at the end of April 1935, Wiedemann told Bormann that Hitler did not favour the prohibition, sought by some, of the anti-Jewish notice-boards – ‘Jews Not Wanted Here’ (or even more threatening versions) – on the roadside, at the entry to villages, and in public places.