The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (19 page)

The people in Wurzburg were probably impressed with the Nazis' success in curing unemployment. According to the official statistics, unemployment fell by 50 per cent in Bavaria in the first two years of the new regime."'
Even if the figures were exaggerated, and many people were forced into unsuitable labour or compelled to cease registering for unemployment benefits, the aimless drift of the last days of the Weimar Republic was clearly over."

One person who lived through the times believed that Wurzburg in general went over to the support of Nazism, or at least of Hitler:

The city on the Main willingly offered a home to the Hitler cult. Already on his birthday, on 20 April, almost all of Wurzburg hung out the flag, and in the evening there was an elaborate musical celebration in the public hall. At the beginning of May Hitler and the old Reich President Hindenburg were named honorary citizens of the city."7

Hitler was honoured in other ways, and on 2 z August, during a brief stopover in town, the 'cult' was given a shot in the arm. One local paper (the General Anzeiger) wrote in hushed tones as follows:

No one knew it, but it was heard: The Chancellor is in Wurzburg!' And, because on an occasion earlier this week the same rumour went from mouth to mouth, no one at first wanted to believe it. But the cry grew louder: The Fuhrer is in Wurzburg!' And ever greater grew the circle, which heard the call, until a desire for certainty arose. And so, quietly, in the high summer sun, people moved off to see the Fuhrer, to greet him, to cheer him. So it was around 5.00 in the afternoon that the Julius promenade and the Place in front of the 'Wurzburg Hof grew black with people who all wanted to see and greet the Fuhrer. It did not take long before the Chancellor of the German people showed himself at the window of the hotel, and the jubilation broke all bounds. For minutes at a time, there resounded tumultuous calls of 'Heil' up to the Fuhrer, who smilingly appreciated the greeting spontaneously brought to him by the enchanted mob of people. Already by 5.3o, after a short pause for a rest (the Chancellor was en route from Bad Godesberg to Munich), the Fuhrer had left Wurzburg once again, accompanied by a 'Heil' greeting of many thousands of voices from the grateful Wiirzburgers, who were happy to be able to greet Adolf Hitler once more within the walls of their city. Even if it was only for a few minutes."

His next visit to the city, in July 1937, was organized in detail, and he reviewed the troops before the Residenz, standing in the front seat of a Mercedes. The throngs which gathered overflowed Wurzburg's largest square.

Religious issues continued to be important. It would take some time before Catholics could adjust to the dissolution of their organizations, and many were disgusted that BVP's representatives were not only expelled from office, but frequently taken into 'protective custody' and beaten.89
Nor did Catholics appreciate being under the thumb of Nazi Gauleiter Otto Helmuth, a man known as a 'Catholic-gobbler' (Katholikenfresser). That reputation was fuelled by onslaughts against the Catholic Party, the editor of the Catholic Sunday newspaper, the Frdnkisches Volksblatt, and local priests who caused the slightest irritation. In small ways Hellmuth deliberately provoked Catholics, such as by naming his daughter Gailana after the Franconian duchess who, legend had it, was the person responsible for murdering the Irish missionaries Kilian,
Kolonat, and Totnan. The height of it, though, was that he named his dog after Kilian, patron saint of the city!90

However, the concordat of late July 1933 between the Papacy and Hitler's Reich helped ease acceptance of the regime by Catholics. Though Wurzburg's distinguished Bishop Matthias Ehrenfried had little time for Nazism, the local Church, here as elsewhere, did little to discourage Catholics from participating in the public life of the regime. Gauleiter Hellmuth did his part in establishing a modus vivendi by not arresting Ehrenfried, despite his hatred of him; he did not want to create a martyr. Nevertheless, individual Catholic priests, if they stepped out of line, had the full weight of the regime descend upon them. Ehrenfried himself, who was no defender of Weimar and is usually regarded as a staunch monarchist, was protected up to a point by his office, but he was in trouble throughout the regime. On at least three separate occasions his palace was stormed by `spontaneous demonstrations of the public'.

Bishop Ehrenfried had warned, in a message to his flock back in June 1931, of the dubious religious and moral teachings of Nazism, and insisted that clerics could not participate in any form of National Socialism; nor, for that matter, were Party members as a group, and with flags, permitted to attend church. On 6 July 1933 Ehrenfried said that the Church and its followers had, and would continue, to obey legal authority; in the `new circumstances' it was not the job of individual priests to make condemnations. Where appropriate, he said, the higher authorities of the Church would become involved. What this last statement signifies is a mystery, but it shows that, privately as well as in public, priests were advised to be circumspect and to avoid provocations.91

While the hierarchy of the Church and the Papacy generally refrained from challenging the regime, individual members of the clergy were not entirely docile. In the bishopric of Wiirzburg, over the course of the twelve-year Reich, some 425 Catholic clerics of all ranks-for any number of different reasons, some very small, others more serious-had a brush with Nazi authorities. Some were simply kept under surveillance, some were fined, while others were barred from religious instruction or prevented from speaking from the pulpit. A priest could be sent to a concentration camp,and two from Lower Franconia died in Dachau
.12

7. CONCLUSION

Wurzburg was a 'university and civil-servant city (Universitdt- and Beamten- Stadt) which identified with cultured, civilized, middle-class values, and with the poets' and thinkers' Germany. The district as a whole, and the city in particular, gave Nazism a cooler reception than in many other places. From the Nazi standpoint, both Wurzburg and Lower Franconia left much to be desired. Gauleiter Hellmuth called it the 'blackest district in all of Germany', by which he meant that, unfortunately, it clung to its religious faith and practices. And yet there were currents of opinion here which favoured National Socialism; in the elections of March 1933, which admittedly made it difficult for some on the Left to vote, nearly one third of all the voting adults in the city (31.5 per cent) voted Nazi. There was no landslide victory in this city or in Lower Franconia, but there was a significant degree of support.

Lower Franconians were generally unenthusiastic about the Nazi cause before 1933, and the district contrasts with the predominantly protestant Middle Franconia, centred around Nuremberg, which was more 'on side', especially when it came to anti-Semitism. Lower Franconia should not be identified-as it is sometimes-with Franken (Franconia), the latter almost a byword for Protestant, rural support for the NSDAP and for Nuremberg Gauleiter Julius Streicher's rabid anti-Semitism.13
Lower Franconians' political attitudes and responses to Nazi policies and teachings diverged sharply from the norm associated with Franken. It is therefore particularly important to study their behaviour after 1933 because a surprisingly abrupt transformation occurs, whereby a sizeable number of people came to be prepared to accept the regime, its laws and teachings, and to co-operate with the Gestapo. Evidence in the Gestapo case-files indicates a not insignificant degree of willingness to co-operate, accommodate, adjust, collaborate, or merely comply. There were probably many parts of Germany which were more cooperative or collaborated to a greater extent than was the case in Lower Franconia.

IN a letter written after the war Paula Eppstein, a young Jewish Gymnasium student in Wurzburg in 1933, wrote as follows:

My family and I had no doubt that anti-Semitism, once legal, would have catastrophic consequences for the Jews in Germany, that, utterly regardless of how long Hitler would be in power, the fanaticism of his followers would not dissipate so fast, that also the property, the existence, and the life of many Jews, particularly in smaller areas, were deeply threatened. We really had tremendous anxiety, but we did not know offhand whether we could do anything in order to protect or rescue ourselves.'

This statement may be taken as a general indication of the experiences of Jews in Wurzburg and Lower Franconia. Having settled in tiny communities in the countryside around Wurzburg, they stood out because of the public nature of their occupations and were hence more vulnerable to attack than those who lived in big cities like Berlin or Frankfurt, where a degree of anonymity provided a modicum of protection. Jews residing in the sleepy villages that dotted the rural landscape became immediately aware of their defencelessness against the assaults of local Nazis who regarded Hitler's appointment as the beginning of a revolution, one that gave them a free hand to deal with opponents, especially the Jews. While the first months after the 'seizure of power' were devoted primarily to the pursuit of political opponents on the Left (SPD and KPD), Nazi leaders out in the provinces exercised sufficient authority to persecute the Jews in their area even before orders came from above. Periodic beatings, confiscation of property, especially of motor-vehicles owned by Jews, took place in many areas across the country, including Wurzburg, after the last 'free' election on 5 March 1933.

Reconstruction of the information available to 'ordinary' citizens concerning the anti-Semitic actions in Lower Franconia down to the outbreak of the war shows that actions against the Jews in Lower Franconia were widely publicized, and therefore unmistakably coloured the context in which the Gestapo operated. All in all, it was virtually impossible to live in the district and avoid bearing witness. It is clear that there, as elsewhere, not everyone simply gave in to the 'teachings of contempt' and complied with the letter and spirit of Nazi anti-Semitic laws and regulations, although there was
remarkably little criticism. The Gestapo was well aware that 'one is everywhere "informed", has his "opinion", but one does not show it and is practised in being silent', especially in public.2
Against the background of silence, 'indifference",
or 'passive complicity','
a minority, but not an insignificant one, took anti-Semitism as seriously as did some of the Nazi leaders.

I. EARLY ANTI-SEMITIC ACTS

Within a week of the election of 5 March 1933, boycotts of Jewish businesses, especially the hated department stores, were in evidence in at least a dozen German cities.'
In response to pleas for assistance against the confiscations and boycotts, the police said nothing could be done. The slightest criticism, or even a question regarding the legality of what was happening, was met with arrest under the 'protective custody' orders. It did not make much difference that on 14 March a specific instruction came from the Reich Minister of the Interior Frick that such excesses must cease, nor that there was another to the same effect, ten days later, from the Party.'

By 26 March Hitler had decided to institute an officially inspired boycott. Called for i April 1933, the nation-wide boycott of Jewish firms, including not only retail outlets but lawyers and doctors as well, met with mixed responses across Germany. The organizing committee had planned for two SA men to be stationed at the entrance of each Jewish business to dissuade customers from entering. In Berlin there was something of a carnival atmosphere, although in Frankfurt and elsewhere excesses were committed.'
According to one Nazi insider, the crowds gathered in Berlin around the stores, many of which were closed for the day, more out of curiosity than to demonstrate their disdain."
From working-class districts in particular came word that some people had made a point of shopping in Jewish firms that day. But in distant Wiirzburg apparently no one dared such gestures, and
the boycott, announced with great fanfare at a mass rally the night before in the central market-place, was observed.9