violent assaults against Jews hardly ever occurred before the Reichkristallnacht, – even if Allied propaganda suggested this37
Germar Rudolf, Ed., Dissecting the Holocaust (Castle Hill Publishers, 3rd Edition, 2019), Pp. 244
The source is:
The German historian A. Schickel published a fine article about the hysteria and false propaganda by western media in the early years of the NS Government in Germany: “Notizen zur Zeit,” in Freiheitliche Akademie der FPÖ (ed.), Freiheit und Verantwortung, Jahrbuch, publ. by ed., Vienna 1995; cf. “The Jews under the Nazis: Public Perception and Reality,” in Anglo-Hebrew Publishing (ed.), Holocaust Denial: New Nazi Lie or New Inquisition?, InfoText, London, undated, pp. 17-22.
Ibid.
So I went to look for the English version of this article. I found it easy enough through the CODOH shop.
This section is only 6 pages long and contains many references to news articles found in the Jewish Chronicle that document the nuanced treatment of Jews in pre-war National Socialist Germany. This topic I think deserves it's own thread as the Jews in pre-war Germany were "persecuted" but never illegally, and never were they treated in a way that was cruel, violent, or genocidal.
Antisemitism was initially soft-pedalled, not only because depriving the Jews of making a living would hurt the economic recovery, but as I show in the book, also because most Germans in 1933 did not feel as strongly and as negatively about the Jews as did Hitler and the Nazis. Therefore, the first targets were not the Jews, but individuals and groups long regarded as threats to the social order (like the Communists) or to the moral universe, like criminals, ‘asocials’, and other ‘problem cases’. As I make clear, during the first years of the new Reich, racist policies in general were formulated and implemented quite cautiously.
Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler (Oxford University Press, 2001), Pp. 4
Gellately through the usual sophistry implies that the reason Jews weren't kicked out of the country entirely, if not just murdered, is because many Germans weren't as "antisemitic as the Nazis". This claim, if true, contradicts much of the consensus regarding Hitler, in particular his rise to power. Namely that the popularity of the Nazis was based on their Anti-Semitism. Of course, this isn't true anyway (see the book: 'Why Hitler Came to Power' by Theodore Abel for many testimonies regarding why Germans were National Socialists), but Gellately sets the orthodox narrative straight in a way, making sure that people do not generally believe that Anti-Semitism was all there was to the dynamism and popularity of National Socialism. What's wrong with what Gellately said, is that it implies harsher measures would've been implemented had the Germans been more antisemitic, which there is no reason to believe.
The book shows how antisemitism changed and slowly spread after 1933. Indeed, until the late 1930s, as many Jews who lived through those times have testified, antisemitism was not the primary concern of the public, most Germans were not rabidly antisemitic, and pushing out the Jews was not the top priority of the German state.16 At the start of the Third Reich, as many Jews who lived there have testified for years on end, they were not social outsiders, certainly not in comparison with pre-emancipation times, and things changed slowly for many of them
Ibid.
In fact Hitler made such little effort and spent so little time on the Jews that historian R.H.S. Stolfi wrote that antisemitism was really much further in the background for the National Socialist movement, despite it's exaggerated emphasis today, particularly by Jews, because of the much more Jewish focus during the Second World War of the German government, and their desire to rid Europe of Jews entirely. Not murdered, but deported beyond the realms of Europe where they could no longer exploit her peoples.
we are almost forced to claim Hitler's total preoccupation with anti-Semitism from 1919 through 1942.
Yet this tendency to do history backward can readily lead to an interpretation of Hitler that may be easily digestible but not necessarily real—Hitler emerges as a raging, visceral anti-Semite. It must nag at the reader that Norman H. Baynes, in his two-volume, 1,980-page collection of Hitler's speeches, could annotate: “It is surprising to observe how little the Fuehrer has said on the treatment of the Jews by the National Socialist state. It would seem that the following brief collection of abstracts exhausts the material on the subject so far as the printed reports of Hitler's speeches.”88 And Speer could comment that it had repeatedly surprised him, in later years, that “scarcely any anti-Semitic remarks of Hitler have remained in my memory.”89 The great biographers have noted ad infinitum Hitler's prewar years of never-ending monologues at supper. In them, they note the recurring themes of history, art, Hitler's experiences of war, and the development and success of National Socialism. Neither the great biographers as researchers nor Speer as eye witness have noted anti-Semitic subjects in his prewar supper monologues. In contrast, in his collected wartime monologues Hitler spent more time discussing the Jews, but still only a miniscule amount compared with other subjects.
Perhaps the above picture is not surprising. Hitler faced numerous enemies and challenges early from 1923 through late 1934 in which the Jew disappeared into the background as concerns his success and survival.
R.H.S. Stolfi, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny (Prometheus Books, 2011), Pp. 397-398
And of course, Jewish Emigration out of the Third Reich was slow and not at all ongoing up until the war years. Germany had problems getting the Jews to leave as they certainly didn't wish to:
The scale of Germany’s Jewish problem is revealed by an unpublished manuscript by Hitler’s predecessor as chancellor, Dr. Heinrich Brüning. Writing in American exile in 1943 he stated that after the inflation there was only one major German bank not controlled by Jews, some of them 'utterly corrupt.’ In 1931 he had brought the banks under government supervision, and had had to keep the government’s findings of dishonesty in the banks secret ‘for fear of provoking antisemitic riots.’ Brüning blamed foreign correspondents for exaggerating the ‘occasional ill treatment of Jews’ at the beginning of the Nazi regime:
In the spring of 1933 foreign correspondents reported that the River Spree [in Berlin] was covered with the corpses of murdered Jews. At that time hardly any Jews except for leaders of the Communist party . . . had been attacked. . . . If,’ he pointedly added, ‘the Jews had been treated so badly from the beginning of the regime, it could not be explained that so very few of them left the country before 1938.’
David Irving, Hitler's War and the War Path (Focal Point Publications, 2002), Pp. xxv
Now I'm going to reproduce each news article as it was written in Holocaust Denial: New Nazi Lie or New Inquisition? accompanied with a scan of the original Jewish Chronicle Newspaper article for verification of the claims.
Having gone through these articles, there's just tons and tons of atrocity stories in here. It's basically atrocity porn. One finds it very hard to believe. I'll also provide a link at the end of every entry to download and read these articles in full. Apologies if the search terms are highlighted. It just did that when I was acquiring the articles.
Jewish Chronicle Articles
March 17, 1933, pages 22-4, the paper reported: ANTI-JEWISH TERROR IN GERMANY... which said that a number of outrages had occurred, including the murder of a Jewish lawyer and a wholesale merchant. Nazis were said to be picketing Jewish shops. But page 22 reported the case of three Nazis in Cologne who robbed a Jew of HIM) Marks at gunpoint, were apprehended and expelled from the party.
Full Article: https://ia601407.us.archive.org/22/items/17-march-1933/1933-1-%20-%200423.pdf
January 12, 1934, pages 14-15: GERMANY DISMISSAL OF JEWS... reports that the courts did not always rubber-stamp Party decisions
Full Article: https://ia601407.us.archive.org/20/items/january-12-1934_202009/1934-1-%20-%200034.pdf
February 9, 1934, pages 14-5: Fined for Insulting a Jew reports that a National Socialist in Bavaria was lined 25 Marks for sending a Jewish lawyer an official communication addressed 'To the Jew lawyer..." The Jew sued him and won! This is the sort of thing you most definitely will not read about in the hate propaganda churned out by ANAL and their fellow travellers
Full Article: https://ia601407.us.archive.org/8/items/9-february-1934/1934-1-%20-%200136.pdf
February 23, 1934, pages 12-3: Imprisoned for Threatening a Jew reports that two nineteen year old artisans were jailed, each for a month, for demanding money with menaces from a Jewish merchant.
Full Article: https://ia601505.us.archive.org/18/items/february-23-1934/February%2023%201934.pdf
August 10, 1934, page 12, a Hamburg court ruled that a Jewish pauper was entitled to free legal defence, which begs the question: why was he a pauper? On the same page, Nazis were said to have condemned the desecration of 54 tombstones which were smashed when a Jewish cemetery was vandalised. "Our movement wars only against living people, not against the dead, who are at peace”, one Nazi publication is said to have reported. Three drunkards were later jailed, one for one year, one for six months, one for four months. The incident appears not to have been political; the culprits were jailed in accordance with the guidelines laid down by Hitler himself.
(Also of note, below this article are two other instances of National Socialists being tried for discrimination and or alleged murder of Jews)
Full Article: https://ia601401.us.archive.org/1/items/august-10-1934/August%2010%201934.pdf
November 16, 1934, page 19, Court Decisions in Favour of Jews reports that a Nazi stormtrooper who attacked two Jews for no reason was jailed for six months. And that when a Jewish firm sued an Aryan firm for drawing attention to the ethnic ownership of the former, the court ruled that it was not permissible to do so. The Jewish firm was awarded damages!
Full Article: https://ia601505.us.archive.org/29/items/november-16-1934/November%2016%201934.pdf
November 15, 1935, page 16, a story Sentences for Blackmailing Jews, reported that a man named Wankerl had been sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment for blackmailing a Jew, The accused had been connected for a considerable period with a Jewish textile firm in Augsburg, but the connection had been severed following a sentence imposed on Wankerl for embezzlement. Subsequently, be wrote to the proprietor stating that the latter had been guilty of telling "atrocity" stories and of planning an evasion of currency laws; and asked for a sum of money. The court found that there was no proof that the Jew had been guilty of these offences, and considered that the crime was aggravated by the fact that it was a German who was attempting to blackmail a Jew. (Emphasis added)
Another newspaper reported a similar story, A certain Karl Heber, who claimed to be a member of the Nazi Party, asked a local Jew for a sum of money, promising to secure him various privileges, Heber was subsequently arrested, A story Compensation for Dismissed Jew reported the passing of a Jewish firm in Frankfort on-the-Main into Aryan hands and the immediate dismissal of a Jewish employee because the owner contended that he did not want to keep Jews in his employ. The Jewish employee sued, and the court ordered the owner to pay the discharged employee three months' salary as compensation, declaring that he should have considered the question of the Jew's continued employment while the transfer of the business was being negotiated.
Full Article: https://ia601408.us.archive.org/1/items/november-15-1935-part-1/1935%20-%201036.pdf
September 6, 1935, GERMANY "Fight Jewry Legally" NAZI LEADERS URGE DISCIPLINE Individual Terrorism Denounced reported that rogue elements were being brought to heel. The Jewish Chronicle dismissed this as window-dressing. Hitler was said to have strongly disapproved of violence against the Jews. A leading Nazi, District leader Telschow, said that "All individual action against Jews was forbidden once and for all. If a Jew violated the law, he must be handed over to the State powers.”
I Could not find this article. Nothing other than the front page was available online, it looks to have been purged
See: https://ia601501.us.archive.org/13/items/1935-09-06/1935-09-06.pdf
However, I did find a similar article from the Jewish Telegraph Agency from September 3, 1935:
Nazi District Leaders Urge Peaceful Methods
Echoes of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht’s recent denunciation of “extra legal” acts against Jews began to make themselves heard in various parts of Germany today as Nazi district leaders made obvious gestures to check the most offensive features of the anti-Jewish campaign.
Thus, Gauleiter Sprenger speaking at Giessen, a town of 34,000 inhabitants, urged a peaceful solution of the Jewish question by “every German abstaining from business and social intercourse with the Jews.”
Gauleiter Telschaw, addressing the district leaders of Marburg and Wilhelmsburg, appealed for discipline, declaring that laws were being enacted to handle the Jewish problem.
At Fulda, the authorities issued a statement attacking “saboteurs” for allegedly interfering with Jewish trade last week and warning that the police have been instructed to jail all rowdies caught in extra legal activities against Jews irrespective of whether they possess Nazi party cards.
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20200903132806/http://pdfs.jta.org/1935/1935-09-03_027.pdf?_ga=2.133126286.1678855708.1599139406-68827084.1599139406
25 October, 1935, page 18, Five Years for Blackmailing a Jew reported that an ex-Storm Trooper in Cassel was sentenced to such a term for demanding money from a Jew who had relations with his fiancee seven years previously. The judge said that "the solution of the Jewish question was the task of the State and not of private individuals."
Full Article: https://ia601402.us.archive.org/4/items/october-25-1935/1935%20-%200869.pdf
November 22, 1935, page 17 carried the story PRISON FOR SLANDERING JEWS A Rare Case At Karlsruhe INVITATION TO THE FOREIGN PRESS in which anAryan was said to have been sentenced to 8 months imprisonment for making false charges against the Jewish employer of his unmarried niece, and the man's two sons.
Full Article: https://ia601502.us.archive.org/26/items/november-22-1935/1935%20-%201099.pdf
December 13, 1935, page 14, DISMISSAL OF JEWS Another Court Decision, reported that the Supreme Court had ruled in favour of a man of non-Aryan descent dismissed by a private firm.
Full Article: https://ia601508.us.archive.org/31/items/december-13-1935/December%2013%201935.pdf
January 3, 1936, page 17, "INDIVIDUAL ACTION" PUNISHED A Welcome Exception reported that two Nazis were sentenced to 3 months in jail for blackmailing and attacking a Jew. As the above articles have demonstrated clearly, this was not such an exception. The same page announced a three month sentence on an 18 year old Jew for kissing an Aryan girl.
Full Article: https://ia601500.us.archive.org/21/items/january-3-1936/January%203%201936.pdf
January 17, 1936, Jewish Flag Officially Recognised reported that the Zionist banner was recognised and "entitled to police protection under the Nuremberg laws and the national flag regulations."
On page 18 of the same issue, it was reported that an official had called on a Jewish widow of 77 to tell her that the names of her two sons who were killed in the {First World) War were to be erased from the local war memorial. As no names were given, this may have been a black propaganda story, the sort Organised Jewry has become notorious for. But, if it is true, then this is as sordid an act as any of the "individual acts" ofterror carried out against Jews by hotheads and zealots.
Full Article: https://ia601503.us.archive.org/8/items/janaury-17-page-17/1936-01-17-pages-10-11.pdf
March 13, 1936, page 17 reports "For sullying the purity of the fight against the Jewish people" a Nazi blackmailer was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment and three years loss of civil rights. He had threatened to denounce a Jewish tradesman for an alleged offence against German school¬ girls in 1926. The Jewish Chronicle’s tone was mocking. On page 18, it was reported that two youths at Cologne were sentenced to 18 months and one year respectively tor blackmailing Jews
Full Article: https://ia601504.us.archive.org/17/items/march-13-1936/1936-1-%20-%200527.pdf
March 20, 1936, , page 20 reports A WELCOME RARITY Court Supports Jewish Claim. A Jewish commercial traveller brought an action against a firm which had engaged him for three years in January 1935. He was dismissed for being a Jew. (This was after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws!) The firm paid him 5,000 murks in an out of court settlement. Was this really such a rarity?
Full Article: https://ia601406.us.archive.org/26/items/march-20-1936/March%2020%201936.pdf
March 27, 1936, page 22 reported that two Aryans were jailed for 17 mouths and 12 months respectively for Rassenschande (race pollution). Both men were deprived of their civil rights for three years. A 28 year old Jew was acquitted of the same offence for insufficient proof.
Full Article: https://ia601504.us.archive.org/32/items/march-27-1936/March%2027%201936.pdf
The Jewish situation in Pre-war Germany wouldn't have necessarily been a good one, but they were treated much more fairly under the Third Reich than is known or accepted. One could say "well how can that be? Look at all those other examples of Jewish persecution". To that I would agree with them, that there was Jewish persecution, but it was legal. Whether you think it should have been legal or not isn't the point, the fact is, Germany was deciding it's own future and the Jews, as a racially foreign element, as Dr. Walter Gross said in the November 22nd 1935 article. Thus, the other examples you see of persecution, say in the paper of January 3rd is equally as legal, but showcasing what occurs when Jews break the law or are no longer going to have their prestigious positions guaranteed as foreigners. The point being that Jews and non-Jews were subjected to the same laws, whether you like those laws or not.
