Hitler

The notice-boards as a result now spread rapidly. Radicals at the grass-roots gleaned the obvious message from the barrage of propaganda and the speeches of party notables that they were being given the green light to attack the Jews in any way they saw fit.
    The party leaders were, in fact, reacting to and channelling pressures emanating from radicals at the grass-roots of the Movement. The continuing serious disaffection within the ranks of the SA, scarcely abated since the ‘Röhm affair’, was the underlying impetus to the new wave of violence directed at the Jews. Feeling cheated of the brave new world they thought was theirs, alienated and demoralized, the young toughs in the SA needed a new sense of purpose. Attacking Jews provided it. Given a green light from above, they encountered no barrier and, in fact, every encouragement. The feeling among party activists, and especially stormtroopers, summarized in one Gestapo report in spring 1935, was that ‘the Jewish problem’ had to be ‘set in motion by us from below’, and ‘that the government would then have to follow’.
    The instrumental value of the new wave of agitation and violence wasmade plain in reports from the Rhineland from Gauleiter Grohé of Cologne-Aachen, who thought in March and April 1935 that a new boycott and intensified attack on the Jews would help ‘to raise the rather depressed mood among the lower middle classes’. Grohé, an ardent radical in ‘the Jewish Question’, went on to congratulate himself on the extent to which party activism had been revitalized and the morale of the lower middle class reinvigorated by the new attacks on the Jews.
    Despite the aims of the Nazi programme, in the eyes of the Movement’s radicals little had been done by early 1935 to eradicate the Jews from German society. There was a good deal of feeling among fanatical antisemites that the state bureaucracy had deflected the party’s drive and not produced much by way of legislation to eliminate Jewish influence. The new wave of violence now led, therefore, to vociferous demands for the introduction of discriminatory legislation against the Jews which would go some way towards fulfilling the party’s programme. The state bureaucracy also felt under pressure from actions of the Gestapo, leading to retrospective legal sanction for police discriminatory measures, such as the Gestapo’s ban, independently declared, in February 1935 on Jews raising the swastika flag.
    Attempts to mobilize the apathetic masses behind the violent antisemitic campaign of the party formations backfired. Instead of galvanizing the discontented, the antisemitic wave merely fuelled already prominent criticism of the party. There was little participation from those who did not belong to party formations. Many people ignored exhortations to boycott Jewish shops and stores. And the public displays of violence accompanying the ‘boycott movement’, as Jews were beaten up by Nazi thugs and their property vandalized, met with wide condemnation. Not much of the criticism was on humanitarian grounds. Economic self-interest played a large part. So did worries that the violence might be extended to attacks on the Churches. The methods rather than the aims were attacked. There were few principled objections to discrimination against Jews. What concerned people above all were the hooliganism, mob violence, distasteful scenes, and disturbances of order.
    Accordingly, across the summer the violence became counter-productive, and the authorities felt compelled to take steps to condemn it and restore order. The terror on the streets had done its job for the time being. It had pushed the discrimination still further. The radicalization demanded action from above.
    At last, Hitler, silent on the issue throughout the summer, was forced to take a stance. Schacht had warned him in a memorandum as early as 3 May of the economic damage being done by combating the Jews through illegal means. Hitler had reacted at the time only by commenting that everything would turn out all right as matters developed. But now, on 8 August, he ordered a halt to all ‘individual actions’, which Heß relayed to the party the following day. On 20 August, Reich Minister of the Interior Frick took up Hitler’s ban in threatening those continuing to perpetrate such acts with stiff punishment. The stage had now been reached where the state authorities were engaged in the repression of party members seeking to