Beyond Belief (11 page)

Of course the press was not alone in its optimism or it adherence to “nothing but” explanations. Many Germans, Jews and non-Jews, and foreigners, including diplomats and journalists, believed that the Jews were simply serving as scapegoats. Many German Jews themselves believed that each antisemitic act marked the culmination of the Nazi campaign against them. At the time of the Nuremberg Laws some German Jews argued that because their status was now formalized by law, the situation would stabilize and improve.
⁵⁰

Yet it remains difficult to justify the press's failure to understand Nazi antisemitism. It might have required a quantum leap of the imagination to comprehend that Nazism was fundamentally different from other conventional systems of government particularly in its policies and conduct regarding the Jews. But Nazi leaders constantly reiterated their antisemitic ideology, openly promised to rid Germany of its Jews, and made no attempt to hide their visceral hatred of Jews and Judaism. In June 1932
Literary Digest
unequivocally observed that “antisemitism is an outstanding feature of the Hitler philosophy.” In 1933 Edgar Ansel Mowrer argued in his book
Germany Puts the Clock Back
that the aim of the Nazis' “barbarous campaign was the extermination, permanent subjugation or voluntary departure of the Jews from Germany.”
⁵¹
But as the reaction to the 1935 Nuremberg Laws would demonstrate, few, particularly among those viewing the situation from afar, shared Mowrer's understanding.

When the Nuremberg Laws, which officially disenfranchised Jews and classified them as noncitizens, were issued in September 1935, the press tried to make meaning of them in the same way that it had tried to interpret many antisemitic acts during the preceding two and a half years. It explained, rationalized, and interpreted
them as the Nazi
quid pro quo
for the actions of others and rarely understood their true significance.

The laws divided the German population into two classes—Reich citizens, who had to be of “Aryan” ancestry, and state subjects, i.e., Jews, who could no longer secure employment in government positions, serve in the army, vote, marry non-Jews, engage in extramarital sexual relations with “Aryans,” hire female non-Jewish domestic workers, or fly the German flag, which, as a result of the laws, was now the swastika. Shocked by the laws, many papers condemned them as the embodiment of “the bigotry of the Middle Ages.” Jews were commonly described as a “people without a country.”
⁵²

Adhering to a pattern that we have seen was established as early as 1933, the press not only condemned but tried to explain the reasons why the Nazis issued the laws. Once again, the way the press explicated the laws revealed its perception of conditions in Germany. One common interpretation was that the decrees constituted the German response to an incident that had occurred in New York City on July 26, when demonstrators boarded the German ship the SS
Bremen
, which was anchored in the harbor, and ripped down the swastika from its mast. German authorities demanded an apology from the State Department and punishment of the perpetrators. They were infuriated when Louis Brodsky, the New York magistrate who heard the case against the demonstrators, admonished them for their actions but dismissed the charges on the grounds that the sight of this “pirate” flag would naturally incense them. Press interest in events in this New York City courtroom was heightened by the fact that a few days earlier the colorful mayor of the City of New York, Fiorello LaGuardia, had refused to renew the license of a German masseur on the grounds that Americans doing business in Germany were being treated unfairly and that he was reciprocating Germany's policy toward them. Brodsky's and LaGuardia's forays into the arena of foreign relations were severely criticized by the press. Many papers, including the
New York Herald Tribune, New York Sun
, and
Washington Post
, reminded the mayor that treaty rights were outside the bounds of his authority. In addition to criticizing the mayor and the magistrate, the press hastened to interpret the laws as
nothing but
Germany's response to the magistrate's “unnecessary” remarks and a
quid pro quo
for the desecration of the Nazi flag.
⁵³

Many papers featured the change of flag in their headlines
and relegated the Jews' loss of citizenship to a secondary or even tertiary item of interest.
Newsweek's
heading said this:

HITLER DECREES SWASTIKA REICH FLAG;

Bars Intermarriage;

Relegates Jews to Dark Ages
⁵⁴

Los Angeles Times
readers were confronted with a headline that truly obscured the issue and made it sound as if citizenship rights had been “limited” in some oblique fashion.

DEFIANCE TO JEWS OF ENTIRE WORLD
HURLED BY HITLER

SWASTIKA MADE SOLE GERMAN FLAG BY SPECIAL
REICHSTAG SESSION;

Citizenship Limited
⁵⁵

The
Washington Herald
was mute regarding the Jews' change of legal status:

HITLER ASSAILS
LEAGUE AND JEWRY AS EUROPE SEETHES

German-Jew Marriage Banned;

Swastika Made Official Flag
⁵⁶

The
New York Times
interpreted the laws as instigated and motivated by the New York City incident:

REICH ADOPTS SWASTIKA

AS NATION'S OFFICIAL FLAG;

HITLER'S REPLY
TO ‘INSULT'

Anti-Jewish Laws Pa
ssed

‘Non-Aryans' Depriv
ed of Citizenship and Right to Intermarry.

Forbidden to Show
Flag

They are Warned by Hitler
Further ‘Provocative' Acts Will Draw Reprisals.
⁵⁷

There were headlines that stressed the deprivation of citizenship rights and did not portray the action as a response to the Bremen incident or focus primary attention on the adoption of the swastika as a state emblem.

Baltimore Sun:

HITLER DEPRIVES JEWS OF CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS,
BANS INTERMAR
RIAGES

THREATENS OT
HER STEPS TO SOLVE RACE PROBLEM

Laws Restricting Rights of Hebrews

Voted By Special Session of Reichstag—

Swastika Proclaimed Only Reich Flag
⁵⁸

Christian Science Monitor:

REICH BANS JEW
S FROM CITIZENSHIP

Hitler's Reichstag S
peech Prelude to Enactment of Three New Laws Swastika Adopted
⁵⁹

Readers who read past the headlines in any of these and numerous other American papers were generally given enough information to understand the laws. However, the presentation of them as a
quid pro quo
for the
Bremen
incident and the stress on the swastika obscured the fact that the laws represented the embodiment of Nazi ideology.
⁶⁰

Some papers acknowledged that the decrees were a new step in severity but still reverted to the “nothing but” approach. They interpreted the laws as a means of deflecting the attention of the German people from their domestic problems. The
Cleveland News
declared them an “escape mechanism for tyrants who seek to divert the minds of their subjects.”
⁶¹
In fact, however, the laws were quite different from earlier proscriptions. The Jews' unprotected and permanent second-class status was now “formally rooted in law,” and, as Ambassador Dodd reminded Secretary of State Hull, law was regarded with great “sanctity” and observed with much “discipline” in Germany.

Other papers, intent on finding a rational explanation for the laws, argued that the decrees were nothing but an attempt by Hitler to pacify extremist Nazis. Because the laws did not completely exclude Jews from Germany's economy and did not physically subjugate them, some press analysts optimistically argued that the moderate elements in the party had prevailed.
⁶²
J. E. Williams, editorial columnist for the
Christian Science Monitor
, typified those who recognized the laws' severity but found them cause for optimism because “radical” Nazis had been forced to surrender their freedom to conduct “individual isolated actions against Jews.”
⁶³
This interpretation made it seem as if Jews and extremists had each been forced to make some concessions.

In an editorial the
Boston Transcript
interpreted the laws as indicative of the “failure of measures already taken to keep the
German Jews in subjection.”
⁶⁴
What indication the paper had of the failure of Jews to be kept in “subjection” it did not reveal. It ignored the numerous documented reports of Streicher's increasing strength and autonomy, the spread of antisemitic boycotts and rioting, the expulsion of Jews from German schools, and the mass migration from towns and villages where persecution was unbearable to places such as Berlin where it was often barely tolerable.
⁶⁵
This editorial conveyed the impression that the Jews were managing to cope successfully with Hitler's rule.

Some papers reverted to the “weakness, not strength” approach and argued that Hitler needed the laws to bolster his precarious position. The laws, they concluded, were symptomatic of internal difficulties.

It is hardly possible to explain the drastic laws on any broad basis except the assumption that Hitler's domestic situation must be extraordinarily precarious and shaky.
⁶⁶

These interpretations—those that saw compromise between extremists and moderates and those that saw Nazi weakness, not strength—reflected the failure of the press to see the Nuremberg Laws as an inherent expression of antisemitic ideology. The editorial boards that offered these interpretations ignored the observations of reporters on the scene such as Otto Tolischus of the
New York Times
, who even before the laws were issued dismissed the discussion of moderates versus extremists as “largely academic” because the campaign against the Jews was in “such an advanced stage” that all that remained to be done was to “legalize what is already accomplished.” American officials in Berlin also dismissed the idea that moderation could be anticipated. They looked in vain for any sign of a tempered attitude toward Jews and found no “opposition to the swing towards radicalism.” Ambassador Dodd confidentially reported to the Secretary of State, a few days after the 1935 Nuremberg rally, that things seemed to be getting even worse for the Jews and that there was “a tendency in the direction of severer measures” in order to ensure “complete separation of the Jews from the German community.”
⁶⁷

Press failure to grasp that antisemitism had become official state policy was exemplified by the reaction of the
Los Angeles Times
, which did not believe the laws made that much difference. The paper argued in a rather matter-of-fact tone that Jews had simply been deprived
de jure
of what all other Germans had lost
de facto
. It noted that “generally speaking, nobody has any civil rights in Germany, . . . and nobody votes in the sense in which voting is understood in democratic countries,” so that the laws did not entail any real change in the Jews' situation. In a similar vein, after decrying the Jews' loss of citizenship, the
St. Louis Post Dispatch
argued that there “are no citizens of Nazi Germany . . . whose rights are unimpaired” and that Jews were really being treated no differently from most other Germans. According to the paper this was a case of a dictatorship treating one segment of its population somewhat more harshly than others. The “penalties imposed on the Jews, official scapegoats of the Nazi regime, are only a part of the burdens borne by all the people under their Fascist dictatorship.”
⁶⁸
*
This argument—that the persecution of the Jews was not qualitatively different than that of a multitude of other groups—would be repeatedly expressed by press, public, and policy makers during the course of the next decade.

In a way, the
Los Angeles Times
and the
Post Dispatch
were correct. Democracy in Germany was no longer extant. Many Germans had lost their rights and were subject to physical attack. But while much of what had previously occurred could be dismissed as unauthorized actions or individual laws designed to make life difficult for Jews, these Nuremberg decrees were different. They took Nazi ideology and made it the law of the land.

Despite its condemnations most of the press did not grasp that this legal program for the “blood and honor” of the German Reich was categorically different from previous antisemitic acts; the ultimate effect of these 1935 laws was to be more profound and ominous than Nazi efforts to force Jews out of certain professions or to prod them to leave Germany.
⁷⁰
The Nuremberg Laws were the point of departure for the terror that followed. Those who interpreted them as “nothing but” a response to a minor incident in New York, a concession to extremists, or a smokescreen for other woes made it almost impossible for the American public to understand their full import: they constituted the basic legalization of Nazi hatred of the Jew. In 1935 biological criteria became the determining factor for citizenship. In 1941 they would become the determining factor for survival.

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