The Origins of the German Boycott of Jewish Businesses in 1933

The Historical Truth is Different from the Propaganda

You often see references to the German boycott of jewish businesses, which began in Germany on 1st April 1933 in the literature. However the presentation offered of this boycott is myopic at best.

It was indeed organized and orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels with Julius Streicher acting as his point man as the chairman of the 'Central Committee to Combat Jewish Lies about Atrocities and Boycotts'. (1)

But why did they do it?

Just because they were anti-Semites and hated the jewish people?

According to many authors – writing for a popular and/or an academic audience – this was the only reason behind the boycott.

To illustrate this I quote a selection of academic and popular narrations of these events. To wit:

'Hitler made good his word regarding the Jews. Their businesses were boycotted and their possessions confiscated for the benefit of so-called Aryans; stealing, like lying, became a matter of national policy.' (2)

'After the Nazi rise to power in Germany the government publicly announced a general anti-Jewish boycott. Nazi agitators urged boycotting the Jews at mass meetings. On Saturday, April 1, 1933, uniformed Nazi pickets appear in front of Jewish shops, attacked their clients, and wrote anti-Jewish slogans on their windows. The offices of Jewish doctors, lawyers, and engineers were also picketed.' (3)

'Two months after the Nazis took over, they scheduled a boycott of Jewish business for April 1, 1933. The paramilitary SA force – the Brown Shirts – which had previously devoted itself to marching, singing, aggressively collecting funds for the party and beating up opponents, now sprang up everywhere in full uniform to jeer at those who dared enter Jewish stores.' (4)

Therefore if we follow these synopses of the history of the German boycott of jewish businesses in 1933: it looks like the Germans were just being nasty irrational jew haters. The problem, as is true of much to do with modern historiography of the Third Reich era, is that is only half of the story.

The real story behind the boycott goes back to February 1933 and just after Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP had been invited form a government by German President Paul von Hindenburg on 30th January 1933. Continuing on from the politically unstable 1920s and early 1930s: there was escalation in the amount of political violence.

In days after the accession to power there had been several isolated instances of jews being beaten and even killed – allegedly by supporters of the NSDAP – across Germany. (5)

This is hardly surprising given that the entire period before February 1933 had been extraordinarily violent with targeted killings of enemies performed by most political groups. (6) Perhaps the most obvious example of the political assassinations that marked the era was the murder of the Berlin SA Sturm leader Horst Wessel by local members of the German Communist Party (the KPD) in February 1930. (7)

What is perhaps remarkable given the scope and scale of political violence in Germany in the 1920s/early 1930s is how restrained the NSDAP were in their conduct towards their political opponents.

There were no mass killings of the type orchestrated by Lenin and then Stalin's secret police in the former Russian Empire, but rather the worst that occurred in the Third Reich were the 'wildcat' camps of the SA and some politically-motivated revenge attacks that occasionally resulted in deaths. In addition to the only example of widespread political assassination undertaken by the security services of the Third Reich: 'The Night of the Long Knives' in 1934.

Even then 'The Night of the Long Knives' primarily targeted dissident leaders of the NSDAP (such as Ernst Rohm) and members of the nationalist right opposed to the NSDAP (such as Edgar Julius Jung) not jews or the members of the political left.

We can thus see that a small number of jews being beaten up – resulting in death in but a fraction of these cases – is hardly significant. However stories of German atrocities against both jews and political opponents quickly began circulating thanks to lurid reports by foreign journalists stationed in Germany.

As Irving notes:

'Emigre journalists published lurid reports from Berlin. One said that Hitler had ordered Torgler's ears cut off; another that the body of Hirsch, the editor of the Red Flag, had been found floating in a canal; a third that Ernst Thalmann had been tortured to death.' (8)

That Torgler, Hirsch and Thalmann were merely imprisoned and hadn't been tortured let alone murdered (9) didn't matter as the damage had been done. It was now in print and although Goebbels was furious there was little he could do about the lies being printed by foreign journalists. (10)

This vicious campaign of half-truths and lies in the foreign media fed by their correspondents within the borders of the Third Reich. This sorry state of affairs lead to the unofficial boycotts of jewish businesses by local groups of the NSDAP small businesses organization, the 'Combat League of Small Business', being portrayed as an orchestrated boycott in the foreign press of the time. (11)

These originated in the Rhine-Ruhr district (on 7th March). They then spread to Berlin and Central Germany (on 9th March), Hamburg/Mecklenburg/Frankfurt-am-Main (on 11th March) and then into South-Western Germany (on 13th March). (12)

That there was plenty of foreign pressure being applied to Germany to put a stop to these locally organized small-scale (and not very effective) (13) anti-jewish actions is suggested by Goering's remark on 10th March that the German police shouldn't act as a 'protection agency for jewish department stories'. (14)

Now as this remark is interpreted by Longerich as being a coded 'okay' for these actions, which is based on no actual evidence by the way. (15) I should point out by way of counter-argument that what Goering is actually saying here is: it isn't the German government's job to specially protect jewish businesses.

He isn't saying – as he doesn't even imply it – that the German populace should go and loot jewish shops – which is the logical end result of Longerich's claim which unsurprisingly didn't actually happen (because it simply isn't what Goering said) - but rather that the jews were not about to get special treatment in the new Germany (pun intended).

We can see this in the timing of Goering's statement, which Longerich doesn't deign to mention. Goering was at this time the Prussian Minister of the Interior – having been appointed such by Hitler on 30th January 1933 – and as the unofficial boycotts had reached his jurisdiction on 9th March. It is therefore unsurprising that he issued a statement on 10th March that said in effect: jews will get no special treatment.

What Goering's statement does necessarily imply however is that he had received requests/petitions/demands (probably from jewish businessmen and communal organizations) to 'do something' about the unofficial boycotts as Prussian Minister of the Interior.

It also fits nicely in with the fact that when the unofficial boycotts had spread over pretty much the whole of Germany by 13th March. The Third Reich government issued an official communique discouraging such actions and effectively using the NSDAP party machinery, in addition to that of the state, to prevent further disorder. (16)

However by then the story of the boycotts – as already mentioned – had been picked up by the foreign news media and the result had lead to angry jewish demonstrations around the world. Most notable among these was the American Jewish Congress holding a 'mass protest rally' at Madison Square Garden in New York City on 12th March against the boycotts in Germany. (17)

A week later on 19th March – six days after the boycotts had ceased in Germany due to the intervention of the NSDAP central party organization and the government - an emergency meeting of jewish organizations was held. This then resolved to hold another rally against the boycotts on 27th March – two weeks after they had actually ended – in Germany.

At this rally J. George Fredman, the Commander-in-Chief of an organization called 'Jewish War Veterans', called for an American boycott of German products due to the unofficial local boycotts of jewish goods and services two weeks earlier. (18)

This call to action was echoed by the influential Rabbi Stephen S. Wise who asserted that the time had come for jews to act against Germany. (19)

What is interesting – and completely ignored by Longerich and others – is the timing of these events in America and the planning of the official German boycott of jewish stores and goods.

Remember that on 19th March an emergency council of jewish organizations had voted for a mass meeting to be held in Madison Square Garden on 27th March.

On 26th March Goebbels, after visiting Hitler at Berchtesgaden, began drawing up a proclamation for the boycott of German jews. (20) On the same day the 'Central Committee to Combat Jewish Lies about Atrocities and Boycotts' is set up with Julius Streicher as its chairman (21) with Robert Ley, Heinrich Himmler and Hans Frank (among others) as members of the committee. (22)

This is the day before the huge collective jewish meeting that was voted for by 1,500 delegates from jewish organizations on 19th March. (23) Yet on the 27th March the 'Central Committee to Combat Jewish Lies about Atrocities and Boycotts' in Germany says and does nothing.

In other words: it was waiting for what the big American Jewish Congress is about to say as Kershaw notes. (24) Then after the German committee hears of the jewish demand for an American boycott of German goods at the mass meeting on 27th March. It issues Goebbels' pre-prepared proclamation on 28th March calling for a German boycott of jewish goods and businesses. (25)

The boycott was to theoretically be of infinite duration from 1st April, but after pressure from influential German political figures such as Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath and Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht (who feared the respective foreign and economic fall out of such an action). It was decreed to end on 4th April if, and only if, the British and American governments publicly opposed the jewish boycott of German goods. (26)

After a flurry of diplomatic activity between the German foreign ministry and the British and American governments: the complex web of jewish groups and lobbies in Great Britain and the United States were forced to to publicly distance themselves from the boycott. (27)

This was clearly a diplomatic triumph for the Third Reich as by playing brinkmanship and channelling popular radicalism within Germany itself; the Reich had forced the powerful jewish lobbies in the United States and Great Britain to publicly back down.

Kershaw asserts that the 'boycott itself was less than the success that Nazi propaganda claimed'. (28) The problem with this statement is that Kershaw is basing it off of the fact that many jewish stores simply did not dare to open their doors during the boycott. This somehow translates into the boycott being a 'failure' in Kershaw's eyes, but the whole point of the boycott was to prevent jewish economic activity.

Therefore wouldn't forcing many, if not the majority, of jewish-owned businesses in Germany to cease trading for several days make the boycott a runaway success?

I rather think it would.

Predictably it was the foreign press who were most outraged by the anti-jewish boycott (29) and once again atrocity propaganda about how the 'barbaric German treatment of the jews' did the rounds on an almost industrial scale. (30)

Later overtly anti-Nazi (and often left-wing and/or jewish) authors then took this propaganda – which ignored or at least downplayed the role of the jewish decision to boycott Germany and their subsequent public humiliation at the hands of the Third Reich's foreign ministry – and entwined it into a linear narrative of jewish innocence and the irrational 'Nazi persecution' to which they were subjected. (31)

The reality on the ground however was that the German boycott of the jews of 1933 was triggered by a unified jewish decision and public declaration of a mass boycott of German products and services outside of the Third Reich. This resulted in the German government's diplomatic service outmanoeuvring, and then forcing, the jews into a corner. Where they had to publicly rescind their demands and advice to their membership to boycott German goods and services.

Meanwhile the anti-jewish boycott within the borders of Reich itself was a runaway success and forced jewish businesses to cease trading for several days in April 1933 without even a drop of blood being shed.

Thus we can see that contrary to population wisdom and the assertions by some modern historians: the Germany boycott of jews in April 1933 was an extraordinary success and is an example that can be looked to and emulated in the future.

References

(1) Peter Longerich, 2010, 'Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews', 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, p. 36

(2) Solomon Grayzel, 1953, 'A History of the Jews', 1st Edition, Jewish Publication Society of America: Philadelphia, p. 772

(3) Pavel Korzec, 1974, 'Anti-Jewish Boycotts', pp. 154-155 in Anon. (Ed.), 1974, 'Anti-Semitism', 1st Edition, Keter: Jerusalem

(4) Ruth Gay, 1992, 'The Jews of Germany: A Historical Portrait', 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New York, p. 255

(5) Toby Thacker, 2009, 'Joseph Goebbels: Life and Death', 1st Edition, Palgrave MacMillan: New York, p. 145

(6) Cf. Enzo Traverso, 2003, 'The Origins of Nazi Violence', 1st Edition, The New Press: New York

(7) Daniel Siemens, 2013, 'The Making of a Nazi Hero: The Murder and Myth of Horst Wessel', 1st Edition, I. B. Tauris: London, p. 4

(8) David Irving, 1996, 'Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich', 1st Edition, Focal Point Publications: London, p. 163

(9) Ibid.

(10) Ibid.

(11) Ibid.; Longerich, 'Holocaust', Op. Cit., p.33

(12) Longerich, 'Holocaust', Op. Cit., p. 33

(13) Eric Johnson, 1999, 'The Nazi Terror: Gestapo, Jews & Ordinary Germans', 1st Edition, John Murray: London, p. 89

(14) Longerich, 'Holocaust', Op. Cit., pp. 33-34

(15) Ibid.

(16) Ibid., p. 34

(17) https://web.archive.org/web/20090116052255/http://www.ajhs.org/publications/chapters/chapter.cfm?documentID=230

(18) Ibid.

(19) Ibid.

(20) Peter Longerich, 2015, 'Goebbels: A Biography', 1st Edition, The Bodley Head: London, p. 218

(21) Longerich, 'Holocaust', Op. Cit., p. 36

(22) Longerich, 'Goebbels', Op. Cit., p. 218

(23) https://web.archive.org/web/20090116052255/http://www.ajhs.org/publications/chapters/chapter.cfm?documentID=230

(24) Ian Kershaw, 1998, 'Hitler', Vol. 1, 1st Edition, Penguin: New York, pp. 472-473

(25) Longerich, 'Goebbels', Op. Cit., p. 218; Idem, 'Holocaust', Op. Cit., p. 36

(26) Kershaw, Op. Cit., p. 473

(27) Ibid.

(28) Ibid., p. 474

(29) Ibid.

(30) For example: http://europe.newsweek.com/empire-hatred-nazis-462809

(31) See for example: Edgar Mowrer, 1937, 'Germany Puts The Clock Back', 2nd Edition, Penguin: London, pp. 173-187