General, latent prejudice was concentrated into active hatred, which drew in more Germans as it combined with elite military and professional acceptance of the overall Nazi project for
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Himmler, and other leading Nazis General, latent prejudice was concentrated into
active hatred, which drew in more Germans as it combined with elite military and
professional acceptance of the overall Nazi project for Germany, then being
im-plemented by an expansive and ruthlessly rationalist bureaucracy German Jews
thus faced ever-diminishing choices of desperate fl ight, personal resistance (which
would likely bring immediate death), or clinging to a fading hope of somehow
waiting out events and thereby surviving Street violence against Jews by the
Stur-mabteilung (SA), Sicherheitsdienst (SD), and Schutzstaffel (SS) began even before the
Nazi Party’s full ascent to power
The radicalism of Nazi anti-Semitism escalated in stages once the Party
achieved control of the apparatus of the state It began ominously with passage of
the Nuremberg laws, legally separating Jews from other Germans Persecution
deep-ened and progressed through social and legal ostracism; confi scation of Jewish
property; economic boycott; and fi nally the orchestrated violence of Kristallnacht
Jews were initially encouraged to “voluntarily” leave the Reich lands of Germany
and Austria, with every coin possible extorted from any who could afford to pay the
bribes necessary to fl ee After 1936 Britain limited Jewish immigration to Palestine
and most other countries shut their doors as well: the Great Depression was
under-way and unemployment everywhere was at shatteringly high levels Anti-Semitism
was at work as well: Jewish refugees were denied entrance to Canada and the United
States due to intense antiSemitism of several top diplomats and immigration offi
-cials Some refugee ships were forced to return to Germany after being turned away
from European, Canadian, or American ports Jewish passengers were seized from
these ships by German offi cials and deported to concentration camps There
fol-lowed forcible ghettoization for the whole Jewish population, daily brutality, and
more frequent murders Finally, it was made a capital offense for any Jew to even
set foot on German soil, which by then included annexed Austria With early
Ger-man military victories from 1939 to 1941, these horrifi c conditions pursued Jews
across occupied Europe, varying in application with the depth of local hatreds and
collaboration with Nazi policies of persecution and deportation Treatment grew
ever more harsh, and death squads moved into areas conquered by the Wehrmacht
to begin systematic “extermination” of Jews and other populations unwanted in
the New Order the Nazis were confi dently preparing in Europe
The Nazi plan for Europe’s Jews was genocidal even before Red Army resistance
blocked the initial “territorial solution” of deporting Germany’s and Europe’s
Jews into conquered lands in western Russia: once there, they were to be worked
to death as slaves As the war began to go badly for Germany from the Moscow
offensive operation (December 5, 1941–January 7, 1942), Hitler and the SS returned
to their earlier emphasis of the war in the east as a Vernichtungskrieg (“war of
an-nihilation”) against the “greatest servant of Judaism,” the Bolshevik-Soviet state
The Wehrmacht was instructed—it obeyed almost without question, and in many
cases with real enthusiasm—to segregate and allow immediate killing of identifi ed
Jews, along with Communists, among millions of Soviet prisoners of war Hitler
and his closest Nazi co-conspirators also viewed American hostility toward Nazi
Germany as part of a plot by “international Jewry.” None of that means Hitler’s