Gun Control in the Third Reich (23 page)

During September, anti-Semitic actions combined with the official economic policies to seize Jewish assets caused the Nazi hierarchy to perceive the need to nip in the bud any resistance from Jews by disarming them. Reichmann wrote about related events and talks in Bavaria:

As I had feared, during and after the September crisis, pogromlike riots had taken place in the villages of Franconia. My colleague, Dr. Otto Weiler, went and talked to the State Secretary of the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior and to Freiherr von Eberstein, police president of Munich, who was also Bavaria's highest-ranking SS leader. Both were polite and disapproved of the riots, but approved of the economic takings. Although so far no victim had been able to defend him- or herself, weapons in the hand of Jews were deemed extremely dangerous. Therefore, the Nazis ordered [the Jews] in the entire Reich to turn in their weapons.
⁴³

The “September crisis” he refers to concerned the aftermath of the negotiations cumulating in the Munich accord in which England and France agreed to Germany's taking of the Sudeten German territory from Czechoslovakia. Hitler used international tension to stir up the German people. There were disturbances in the Bavarian region of Franconia, including the smashing of windows of Jewish houses and shops and the burning of synagogues.
⁴⁴

Dr. Otto Weiler seems likely to have represented the CV in the meeting described by Reichmann. Like his counterpart Helldorf in Berlin, Munich police president Eberstein would have been the official to administer the weapon confiscations. The mantra about arms in the hands of Jews being dangerous was Gestapo policy that had been in existence since Werner Best's 1935 directive. The time had now come to confiscate all arms from all Jews.

Reichmann proceeded to explain how the confiscated arms included anything that might be used as a weapon, including his own recently-acquired Browning firearm: “Old sergeants at police stations grudgingly accepted Chinese
daggers so far used to peacefully open letters, admired colorful student sabers and regretted that they had to take my new Browning without paying me for it. The Reich Association of Jewish War Veterans (Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten) requested that the War Ministry let Jewish reserve officers keep their officers' swords. We did not know why the Nazis were so eager in their collection of letter openers and blunt officers' swords.”
⁴⁵
The Association's petition to the War Ministry is another example of a Jewish organization attempting to communicate rationally with a Nazi government agency, but usually without success. Although the response, if there was any, is unknown, Jewish officers' swords would be confiscated in the coming November pogrom. Along with other Jewish organizations, the Association would be banned shortly after Reichskristallnacht.
⁴⁶

Although a shooting by a foreign Jew in a foreign country could not have been anticipated, the Nazis were ready for any reaction to their own aggressive policies. Writing about the happenings of mid-October, Reichmann commented: “We did not suspect that three weeks later one Jew by the name of Grynszpan would deliver a shot and that the German people would take spontaneous revenge for that assassination. The SS, however, clearly had a presentiment that this would happen and therefore preventively disarmed the dangerous future victims of the spontaneous action.”
⁴⁷

As events would have it, the coming pogrom was anything but a spontaneous reaction by the populace. It was carefully ordered and orchestrated by Hitler and Goebbels and was executed by the SA and other Nazi thugs. Having in Reichmann's words “preventively disarmed” the Jews, the Nazis rendered them defenseless.

When Reichskristallnacht finally descended, Reichmann would be imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. As it was for thousands of others, his arrest was a pretext because he had surrendered his Browning
firearm in October and thus was not in violation of November decrees banning possession of firearms by Jews. Shortly after the pogrom, the CV was banned. Reichmann and his wife, Eva Gabriele, a prominent historian and sociologist, were able to immigrate to England.

It was only when the November pogrom erupted that the events of the previous weeks and months could be put in perspective. Newspapers in Paris and Geneva carried an article under the headline “The Anti-Semitic Measures of the Reich”: “To illuminate the recent events, one now better understands the special liabilities imposed on the Jews in recent times. Events since last June make clear the obvious methods of their measures. They have simplified the destruction. One method was to confiscate their arms from them, rendering the operation without danger. The other demanded from them a formal declaration of assets (currency, jewelry, pieces of furniture, carpets), which facilitated the confiscation thereof. All was ready.”
⁴⁸

1
. Bericht über einen polit. Vorfall, Oct. 4, 1938, Alfred Flatow, A Rep Pr. Br. Rep. 030/21620 Bd. 5, Haussuchungen bei Juden 1938–39 (FB Bd. 5), Landesarchiv Berlin.

2
. Hajo Bernett, “Alfred Flatow—vom Olympiasieger zum Reichsfeind” (Alfred Flatow—from Olympic Victory to Reich Enemy),
Sozial- und Zeitgeschichte des Sports
, 1st ed. (1987), 2:94. See also Arnd Krüger, “‘Once the Olympics Are Through, We'll Beat Up the Jew': German Jewish Sport 1898–1938 and the Anti-Semitic Discourse,”
Journal of Sport History
26, no. 2 (Summer 1999), 353, 367; Joseph Siegman,
Jewish Sports Legends: The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
(Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1997), 92.

3
. Bericht über einen polit. Vorfall, Oct. 4, 1938, Alfred Flatow.

4
. Unless otherwise indicated, all facts in reference to the Flatow arrest are from Bericht über einen polit. Vorfall, Oct. 4, 1938, Alfred Flatow.

5
. See the map of police precincts in the central districts of Berlin for 1930 in Hsi-Huey Liang,
The Berlin Police Force in the Weimar Republic
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 12–13.

6
. Unless otherwise indicated, all facts about Flatow's life other than the arrest report are from Bernett, “Alfred Flatow.”

7
. Gerd Steins, “Gustav Felix Flatow: Ein vergessener Olympiasieger” (Gustav Felix Flatow: Forgotten Olympic Champion), in
Sozial- und Zeitgeschichte des Sports
, 2:103, 109.

8
. Ergänzungskarten der Volkszählung von 17.05.1939, Bundesarchiv R2/GB. This source also shows: RAD: J. Datum: 22091941 [Sept. 22, 1941].

9
. Michael Stolleis,
The Law under the Swastika
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 134; Edward Crankshaw,
Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny
(London: Greenhill Books, 1956), 89.

10
. Police Station 106 was located in Luisenstrasse 37 Kreuzberg, as indicated in
Berlin Adressbuch 1938
. In 1938, the street was renamed “Curthdamm,” and the station's new address was Curthdamm 16, as indicated in
Berlin Adressbuch 1939
. More precisely, Luisenstrasse became Curthdamm on May 20, 1937, and was renamed “Segitzdamm” on July 31, 1947. Hans-Jürgen Mende,
Lexikon. Alle Berliner Strassen u. Plätze. Von der Gründung bis zur Gegenwart Bd. 1 A-Fre
(Berlin's Streets and Squares – from Foundation to Present) (Berlin: Luisenstadt, 1998). Curthdamm was named for Udo Curth, an SA man who was killed in street riots in 1932.

11
. Betr.: Erteilung von Waffenscheinen an Juden, Preußische Geheime Staatspolizei, B.Nr. I G–352/35, Dec. 16, 1935, DCP 0072, BA R 58/276.

12
. Crankshaw,
Gestapo
, 89.

13
. See map in Liang,
The Berlin Police Force in the Weimar Republic
, 12–13.

14
. Richard L. Miller,
Nazi Justiz: Law of the Holocaust
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), 52.

15
. Ingo Müller,
Hitler's Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich
, trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 175.

16
. Wannsee Protocol, Jan. 20, 1942,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/wannsee.asp
(visited Feb. 9, 2013).

17
. Bernett, “Alfred Flatow,” 2:94, 99. See also Siggi Emmerich, “Olympische Geschichte(n): Alfred Flatow,”
Unsere Zeit—Zeitung der DKP, Aug. 13, 2004
,
http://www.dkp-onlin.de/uz/3633/s0302.htm
(visited Feb. 9, 2013); “Flatow Alfred,” in the Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names, Yad Vashem,
http://db.yadvashem.org/names/search.html?language=en
(visited Feb. 9, 2013).

18
. Karin Schmidl and Jens Weinreich, “Auch zum 80. Geburtstag Stefan Flatows ist die Umbenennung der Reichssportfeldstraße noch nicht vollzogen Die unendliche Geschichte der Flatowallee,”
Berliner Zeitung
, Oct. 4, 1996,
http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/newsticker/auch-zum-80--geburtstag-stefan-flatows-ist-die-umbenennung-der-reichssportfeldstrasse-noch-nicht-vollzogen-die-unendliche-geschichte-der-flatowallee,10917074,9186642.html
(visited May 15, 2013).

19
. Bericht über einen polit. Vorfall, Oct. 4, 1938, Julius Ignatz Gold, A Rep Pr. Br. Rep. 030/21620, Bd. 5, Haussuchungen bei Juden 1938–39 (FB Bd. 5), Landesarchiv Berlin. Unless otherwise indicated, all references to the Gold arrest are from this document.

20
. Berlin streets may be located at
http://www.berlin.de/stadtplan/
(visited Feb. 9, 2013).

21
. See Yad Vashem, Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names,
http://db.yadvashem.org/names/search.html?language=en
(visited Feb. 9, 2013).

22
. Bericht über einen polit. Vorfall, Sept. 4, 1938, Alois Adler, A Rep Pr. Br. Rep. 030/21620 Bd. 5, Haussuchungen bei Juden 1938–39 (FB Bd. 5), Landesarchiv Berlin. Unless otherwise indicated, all references to the Adler arrest are from this report.

23
. See map in Liang,
The Berlin Police Force in the Weimar Republic
, 12–13.

24
. Arnold Paucker and Konrad Kwiet, “Jewish Leadership and Jewish Resistance,” in
Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941
, ed. David Bankier (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), 390.

25
. Ergänzungskarten der Volkszählung von 17.05.1939, Bundesarchiv R2/GB. This source also shows: RAD: J. Datum: 25101941.

26
. See Yad Vashem, Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names,
http://db.yadvashem.org/names/search.html?language=en
(visited Feb. 9, 2013).

27
. Der Amtsgerichtspräsident, Strafmaß bei Bestrafung von Juden Auftrag vom 16 Dezember 1938, Jan. 13, 1939, Bundesarchiv (BA) Lichterfelde, R 3001/alt R22/1129.

28
. Vierte Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zur Sicherung von Wirtschaft und Finanzen und zum Schutze des inneren Friedens vom 8. Dezember 1931, Achter Teil, Kapitel I,
Reichsgesetzblatt
1931, I, S. 699, 742.

29
. John R. Angolia and Hugh Page Taylor,
Uniforms, Organization, & History of the German Police
(San Jose, CA: R. James Bender, 2004), 129.

30
. Wolfgang Finze and Philip Pai, “Mangel-Erscheinungen” (Symptoms of Deficiency),
Visier: Das Internationale Waffen-Magazin
, July 7, 2006, 136, 142.

31
. For more on these models, see the Walther website at
http://www.waltheramerica.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CustomContentDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10002&catalogId=13102&content=10002
(visited Feb. 9, 2013).

32
. See Gerald Schwab,
The Day the Holocaust Began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan
(New York: Praeger, 1990), 24–25; Anthony Read and David Fisher,
Kristallnacht: The Unleashing of the Holocaust
(New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1989), 68.

33
. A comprehensive search of the literature in English and German on Reichskristallnacht did not reveal any source that mentions the disarming of Jews in October, before the pogrom. One source misreads the date the disarming began, but otherwise correctly observes: “The police had, in fact, already taken precautions to ensure that the Jews could not fight back effectively. On November 8, they had begun disarming Jews, removing anything that could be used for protection from every Jewish household.” Read and Fisher,
Kristallnacht
, 64, 260, citing the
Völkische Beobachter
, Nov. 9, 1938 (noting statistics of weapons seized).

34
. See Schwab,
The Day the Holocaust Began
, 1–6, 59–76.

35
. “Razzia auf Judenwaffen,”
Der Angriff
, Nov. 9, 1938, 14; “Bewaffnete Juden,”
Fränkische Tageszeitung
, Nov. 9, 1938, 2; “Berlins Juden wurden entwaffnet,”
Berliner Morgenpost
, Nov. 9, 1938, 2; “Entwaffnung der Berliner Juden,”
Der Völkische Beobachter
, Nov. 9, 1938, 11; “Waffenabgabe der Juden in Berlin,” Berliner
Börsen Zeitung
, Nov. 9, 1938, 1.

36
. “Waffenabgabe der Juden in Berlin.” As on other topics preceding the pogrom, documents concerning the pre-Reichskristallnacht action to disarm Berlin's Jews have been difficult to locate, and most may have been destroyed. Landesarchiv Berlin includes extensive police president records dating to the 1920s, many relatively insignificant, but no records on this subject could be found under that category in initial searches. Eventually, the documents related to Flatow, Gold, and Adler were discovered there. These may be the tip of the iceberg—no pretense is made that all potentially-relevant record groups and archives have been examined.

37
. Vierte Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zur Sicherung von Wirtschaft und Finanzen und zum Schutze des inneren Friedens, Achter Teil, Kapitel I,
Reichsgesetzblatt
1931, I, S. 699, 742, § 1(2).d

38
. Arnt Cobbers,
Architecture in Berlin: The Most Important Buildings and Urban Settings
(Berlin: Jaron, 2002),
http://www.berlin.de/international/attractions/index.en.php
(visited Feb. 9, 2013).