Gun Control in the Third Reich (9 page)

An arrest record might state simply that the accused possessed a firearm. A sample arrest form later used in a Gestapo training manual identified the accused, a locksmith from Bavaria, and alleged: “Cause of Arrest: Was today at 14.10 [2:10 p.m.] found in House No. 17a with rifle Model 98.”
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The Mauser Model 98 was the military bolt-action service rifle.

Police reported the seizure by German customs officers in Igel of three boxes from Antwerp, Belgium, addressed to an arms dealer in Hesse-Nassau. The
boxes contained ninety-nine Model 08 service pistols with Erfurt factory markings. “The public prosecutor of Trier has ordered an investigation to determine whether this arms dealer really exists or whether these weapons were perhaps meant for a Communist organization.” He would also investigate how they disappeared from the Erfurt factory and were thereafter sent to Belgium and then back to Germany.
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There followed the searches of houses of alleged Communists and the seizure of weapons and subversive materials, together with numerous arrests and the shooting of two Communists who were allegedly fleeing.
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On March 17, Christian Daniel Nussbaum, a Jewish SPD deputy in the Baden state parliament who had received death threats, fatally shot with a 7.65-mm pistol two intruders who were breaking into his dwelling in Freiburg. He feared that they were there to kill him, although they turned out to be policemen who were allegedly there to search his house. He was indicted for murder.
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This “Marxist crime” served the Nazis as the occasion for a campaign of terror, including the arrests of SPD elected officials and trade unionists.
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Press accounts made the most of the facts that “the SPD Murderer Nussbaum” was Jewish and “had received a firearm license from the police headquarters.”
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“The political consequences of the bloodbath” included the dissolution of the Reichsbanner, various leftist organizations, and the “Marxist shooting clubs” (marxistische Schuetzenvereine), whose property would be confiscated.
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Nussbaum explained to his attorney that he knew about numerous cases “where people sharing my political convictions were murdered.” He stated,
“When I consulted with the director of police, where I asked for a weapons permit, I showed him two letters with threats against me, where even the police director alerted me to the suspicious handwriting.” Had he thought that the persons were police, he “would have never made use of the weapon.”
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Perhaps because the Nazis wanted no trial in which such evidence would be presented, Nussbaum was held in the prison's psychiatric ward, where he died of mysterious causes in 1938. Nussbaum's fate remained of interest decades later, and in 1978 a hospital official reported that “the psychiatrists only said he was mentally ill so that they could save him.”
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Repression continued unabated. In Saxony, police launched a vast action against alleged Communists, supposedly seizing numerous rifles, a thousand cartridges, and a bomb.
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Throughout Germany, the leftist presses were shut down, and centrist and neutral presses were subject to immediate suppression. Germans were forbidden to reveal information to foreigners; telephones were tapped; informants lingered in cafes; and Jews fled persecution.
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“Nazis Hunt Arms in Einstein Home,” ran a March 21
New York Times
headline, but the subtitle smirked, “Only a Bread Knife Rewards Brown Shirts' Search for Alleged Huge Cache.” Reporting from Berlin on March 20, the article stated:

Charging that Professor Albert Einstein had a huge quantity of arms and ammunition stored in his secluded home in Caputh, the National Socialists sent Brown Shirt men and policemen to search it today, but the nearest thing to arms they found was a bread knife.

Professor Einstein's home, which for the present is empty, the professor being on his way back to Europe from the United States, was surrounded on all sides and one of the most perfect raids of recent German history was carried out. The outcome was a disappointment to those
who have always regarded Professor Einstein's pacifist utterances as a mere pose.
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A campaign of assaults against Jews under the guise that they might possess firearms was described in Lion Feuchtwanger's
The Oppermanns
, a true-to-life historical novel by a German Jewish emigre published the year the assaults began.
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In the novel, which Hitler ordered to be burned, anti-Nazi lawyer Dr. Bilfinger and Jewish author Gustav Oppermann find sanctuary and meet in Switzerland. The novel tells of a fictitiously named but real village in southern Germany:

On March 25, while in Künzingen, Dr. Bilfinger observed the occupation of the city by Nationalist [Nazi] troops. He saw the troops surround a synagogue, which was full as it was a Saturday. The women were locked inside and the men dragged to the town hall where they were searched for weapons. Dr. Bilfinger pointed out the ridiculousness of the weapons search because there was no reason the men would have taken weapons with them to the synagogue. The Jewish men were energetically beaten with steel rods and rubber truncheons before they left the town hall.

The novel describes other places where “a number of the population were searched for weapons” and mistreated. In one incident, an elderly Jewish woman dies in her bed when Nazis “searched the house ‘for weapons.'”
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Historian William Allen describes the Nazi disarming campaign as experienced in the town of Northeim in Lower Saxony. The town had several traditional shooting societies that held competitions and festivals. A club member commented: “The ‘Gun Club of 1910' was for the broad masses; the ‘Hunters' were mostly middle class; the “Free-hand Shooters' were the upper 10 percent.”
The town's Jews, being assimilated, participated in the shooting clubs until the Nazis took power.
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No real Communist threat existed in the sleepy village to justify the repression, but “Northeim's Nazis provided this by finding various arms and weapons in and around Northeim and by publishing these findings in the local newspapers.” Northeim's citizens found “that it was extremely unhealthy to have any sort of weapon around the house.”
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To be sure, Reichsbanner members “took the threat of a Nazi
Putsch
seriously enough to gather guns and ammunition for the counterstrike.” But no organized resistance would be ordered. Professor Allen opines that the Social Democrats were “the only defenders of democracy in Germany, the men who should have been gathering guns and calling the general strike,” but instead their homes were being raided for midnight arms searches, and they were being hauled off to concentration camps.
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The Enabling Law—the popular name for the euphemistically-worded Law to Remove the Distress of the People and the State—of March 24, 1933, was the last nail in the Weimar Republic's coffin driven in by the Nazi coup d'état. Passed by the Reichstag, which then dissolved itself, the act provided that the cabinet could decree laws without consulting the Reichstag or the president. The chancellor—Hitler—was empowered to draft the laws, which could deviate from the Constitution.
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The confiscation of arms, in particular “military” firearms, was stepped up. The Bavarian interior minister's Decree for the Surrender of Weapons set a deadline of March 31. Although persons with “well-founded requests” could apply to the local police for a permit to possess a handgun, military firearms were confined to Nazi-approved organizations: “The units of the National Revolution, SA, SS, and Stahlhelm, offer every German man with a good reputation the opportunity to join their ranks for the fight. Therefore, whoever does not
belong to one of these named units and nevertheless keeps his weapon without authorization or even hides it, must be viewed as an enemy of the national government and will be held responsible without hesitation and with the utmost severity.”
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Of the three listed organizations, the SS (Schutzstaffeln or Elite Guard) of the National Socialist Party, headed by Heinrich Himmler (who was also Munich police president at this time), emerged as the most powerful Nazi police organization.
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The SA (Sturmabteilung or Storm Troopers), headed by Ernst Röhm, carried out many of the excesses of the Nazi revolution until its leadership was eliminated in the 1934 Night of the Long Knives.
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Before long, Hitler would abolish the Stahlhelm, or Steel Helmets, the veterans' organization with its honorary commander, President Hindenburg, because it included too many non-Nazis, even former Reichsbanner members and other leftists.
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Searches of the houses of alleged “Communists” continued unabated, resulting in the reported seizure of numerous arms and “confessions” by the subjects.
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Reich interior minister Wilhelm Frick would play a decisive role in ordering the disarming of alleged enemies of the state, especially the Jews, over the coming years. Hitler had endorsed Frick, chief of Munich's political police in the 1920s, in
Mein Kampf
.
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On being appointed Reich interior minister by Hitler in 1933, Frick wrote police stations that Communists dressed like SA members were rioting and smashing Jewish shop windows.
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On March 28, 1933, Interior Minister Frick wrote to the state governments that firearm manufacturers' records must be strictly inspected by the police:

Among the shady arms deals that were planned last year by Suhler arms companies, it has become known that seven of the arms trade books include columns showing foreign companies that do not exist. It is further known in preparation for a criminal case for high treason…that over 400 pistols of an arms dealer have been transferred, without entry into his arms record book, to a number of Communists who had no arms acquisition permits. The responsible Interior Minister for this area therefore recommends that the arms records of firearm and ammunition manufacturers be inspected preferably by officials of the state criminal police departments and simultaneously that all conspicuous transfers, especially larger arms orders through small unknown companies, be inspected by the police in the districts of the recipients for discrepancies from the manufacturer's arms records to verify the deliveries.
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In addition to higher sentences, Frick urged the police to enforce controls strictly and to inspect closely the arms orders of small, unknown companies. Prosecutors should seek the highest penalties for arms offenses and should appeal low sentences.

Directives were issued to the government units, police, municipal commissars, and special commissioners of the highest SA leaders regarding the execution of the March 1933 Decree for the Surrender of Military Weapons. It began: “Despite all of the measures taken so far, parts of the population opposed to the national government and the national movement behind it are still in possession of military weapons and military ammunition.” It ordered the police “immediately to order the population to surrender any military weapons in a timely manner to the special commissars listed in the official gazettes as well as in the local press.” Weapons to be surrendered included not just heavy weapons, but also “military rifles” (which were bolt actions) and “army revolvers.” The directive continued:

Pursuant to § 4, paragraph 2, of the decree the Special Commissar of the Highest SA Leader may exempt members of the SA, SS, and Stahlhelm units as well as members of veterans' associations by confidential order to the pertinent leaders of those units/associations. Under no circumstances may the public, especially the press, be informed about this exemption, given the fact that the provisions on disarmament of the Versailles Treaty are still in effect. Further, upon request, the Special Commissar may allow reliable persons to keep a rifle together with the necessary ammunition for the protection of house and farm. The same applies to army revolvers that are the personal property of the owner. Only such persons can be considered reliable from whom a loyal attitude toward the national government can be expected. These approved exceptions must also be treated as confidential.
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The surrendered arms were to be stored with the SA, SS, and Stahlhelm. These groups in turn would assist the police “to conduct weapons searches in places where military weapons and military ammunition are still suspected.”
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The net result of this decree was the disarming of all opponents of National Socialism and the general populace, but the arming of the members of the SA, SS, and Stahlhelm.

On March 29, municipal governments such as Bad Tölz were urgently informed about the directive to surrender military weapons. It “assumed that the population is adequately informed through the official proclamations and through the daily press about the duty to surrender military weapons. The surrender deadline is March 31.” After defining “military weapons,” it concluded: “Whoever does not surrender his weapons on time or does not surrender all weapons may become subject to a weapons search. Severe penalties may be imposed for the concealment of weapons.”
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A terse newspaper announcement by authorities about the directive began: “We would like to point out one more time that all military weapons and
ammunition in private possession have to be surrendered by March 31, 1933.” It warned that “if we find military weapons or ammunition after” that deadline, “we will be forced to proceed ruthlessly.”
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Not encompassed in the order were nonmilitary revolvers such as that possessed by Frau Bella Fromm, the Berlin Jewish socialite mentioned earlier. She was invited to a reception by Vice Chancellor and Frau von Papen on the evening of March 29. None other than Adolf Hitler made his first social appearance there since becoming chancellor. The führer spoke to Bella and kissed her hand, giving her a “slight nausea.” She confided to her diary: “Weird ideas flashed through my mind. Why did I not have my little revolver with me?” After polite conversation about Bella's Red Cross decorations from the Great War, Hitler kissed her hand again and moved on to other guests. Not having her revolver with her and being a polite lady, she could not shoot Hitler, but she wiped off her hand on a friend's sleeve, joking, “He's supposed to be able to smell a Jew ten miles away, isn't he? Apparently his sense of smell isn't working tonight.”
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