Hitler

meeting at the Ministry of Propaganda, filled with party hacks, attempted to persuade representatives from other ministries of the need to introduce identification for the Jews. Eichmann, the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office) representative, reported that Heydrich had already put a proposal to this effect to Göring a short while earlier. Göring had sent it back, saying the Führer had to decide. On this, Heydrich had reformulated his proposal, which would be sent to Bormann, for him to speak to Hitler about it. The viewfrom the Propaganda Ministry embroidered upon the remarks Goebbels had entrusted to his diary a few days earlier. The Jews of Berlin, it was alleged, were a ‘centre of agitation’, occupying much-needed apartments. Among other things, they were responsible, through their hoarding of food, even for the shortage of strawberries in the capital. Soldiers on leave from the east could not comprehend that Jews were still allowed such licence. Most of the Jews were not in employment. These should be ‘carted off’ to Russia. ‘It would be best to kill them altogether.’ On the question of ‘evacuation of the Jews from the Old Reich’, Eichmann commented that Heydrich had put a proposal to the Führer, but that this had been refused, and that the Security Police Chief was now working on an amended proposal for the partial ‘evacuation’ of Jews from major cities. Given the alleged urgency of the need to protect the mood of the front soldiers, Goebbels, it was announced, intended to seek an audience with the Führer at the earliest opportunity.
    This was the purpose of the Propaganda Minister’s visit to FHQ on 18 August. He encountered a Hitler recovering from illness, in the middle of a running conflict with his army leaders, in a state of nervous tension, and highly irritable. In this condition, Hitler was doubtless all the more open to radical suggestions. Eventually raising the ‘Jewish problem’, Goebbels undoubtedly repeated the allegations about Jews damaging morale, especially that of front soldiers. He was pushing at an open door. Hitler must have been reminded of the poor morale which had so disgusted him in Berlin and Munich towards the end of the First World War, for which he (and many others) had blamed the Jews. He granted Goebbels what the Propaganda Minister had come for: permission to force the Jews to wear a badge of identification. According to Goebbels, Hitler expressed his conviction that his Reichstag ‘prophecy’ – that ‘if Jewry succeeded in again provoking a world war, it would end in the destruction of the Jews’ – was coming about with a ‘certainty to be thought almost uncanny’. The Jews in the east were having to pay the bill, noted Goebbels. Jewry was an alien body among cultural nations. ‘At any rate the Jews will not have much cause to laugh in a coming world,’ Goebbels reported him as saying.
    Next day, Goebbels wrote that he would now become immediately active in the ‘Jewish Question’, since the Führer had given him permission to introduce a large, yellow Star of David to be worn by every Jew. Once the Jews wore this badge, Goebbels was certain they wouldrapidly disappear from view in public places. ‘If it’s for the moment not yet possible to make Berlin into a Jew-free city, the Jews must at least no longer appear in public,’ he remarked. ‘But beyond that, the Führer has granted me permission to deport the Jews from Berlin to the east as soon as the eastern campaign is over.’ Jews, he added, spoiled not just the appearance but the mood of the city. Forcing them to wear a badge would be an improvement. But, he wrote, ‘you can only stop it altogether by doing away with them. We have to tackle the problem without any sentimentality.’
    On 1 September, a police decree stipulated that all Jews over the age of six had to wear the Star of David. A week later, preparing the population for its introduction, Goebbels ensured that the party Propaganda Department put out a special broadsheet, with massive circulation, in its publication
Wochensprüche
(Weekly Maxims), emblazoned with Hitler’s ‘prophecy’.
    According to SD reports – echoing in the main no doubt hardline feelings in party circles – the introduction of the Yellow Star met with general approval but, in the eyes of some, did not go far enough, and needed to be extended to
Mischlinge
as well as full Jews. Some said the Yellow Star should also be worn on the back. Not