German Jewish Immigration to the USA Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

German Jewish Immigration to the USA - Essay Example Since he was guided not by principles but by expediency, he was able upon occasion to moderate his tactics, if not his Jewish policy, when diplomatic or economic considerations made it advisable to do so. Von Hindenburg, the aged president; von Neurath, the Foreign Minister; and Dr. Schacht, the president of the Reichsbank and later Minister of Economics, could occasionally win some concessions. But then came Hitler's evil spirits, such as the demonic Dr. Joseph Goebbels, his Minister of Propaganda; the sadist Julius Streicher, his pornographer; and the enemy of mankind, Heinrich Himmler, his executioner. All of these men served to fan the flame of his hatred. The baseness and the villainy, the lying and deception which were concentrated upon the Jews beggar description. Never was so intense and persistent a drumfire directed towards the destruction of a mighty army as these strategists found it necessary to use in order to make it impossible for 550,000 Jews to exist in the midst of 65,000,000 Germans. "Even 'Aryan' children were stirred to spy upon Jews and Christian non-Aryans and to attack them, and to incite their own parents to extirpate the Jews altogether." From this specimen the world might have learned whither the destructive spirit of the Nazis was leading, but they were gullible and were persuaded that this treatment of the Jews was solely a matter of internal German policy. It was fatal to the world at large (and to the Jews) that the world relied upon the promises of the Reich Chancellor and Reich Leader, of which he kept not one, and did not rather refer to the conclusions of his Mein Kampf, in which the true nature of the revolutionary Hitler was expressed. (Hans W. Gatzke, 1973) The overall aim of Nazi policy in the 1930s was to pressure Jews to leave Germany, but there was no unanimity in the party on how this was to be accomplished. One faction, largely concentrated in the SA and typified by the fanatical Nuremberg Gauleiter Julius Streicher (1885-1946), editor of the bi-weekly anti-Semitic tabloid, Der Strmer, pressed for violent methods to oust the Jews from German society. Almost immediately after Hitler became chancellor, SA-sponsored street terror and hooliganism began, with Jews as primary targets. It was mainly to appease the disgruntled SA militants that Hitler authorized the national boycott against Jewish-owned stores, lawyers, and physicians in April 1933. Streicher was appointed by Hitler to head the committee planning the nationwide boycott, the announced purpose of which was to retaliate against Jewish-sponsored boycotts of German goods abroad. After the end of the official boycott physical assaults against individual Jews and Jewish business es continued sporadically without official sanction. Perpetrators, however, almost always escaped arrest or prosecution. (Hans W. Gatzke, 1973) Some Nazis criticized the SA's campaign of physical violence, not on humanitarian grounds, to be sure, but because it undermined discipline and order, caused property damage, provoked Western charges of human rights abuses, invited retaliatory measures, and seemed an ineffective and counterproductive way of ridding Germany of its Jewish population. Hjalmar Schacht and later HermannGring in his capacity as chief of the Four-Year Plan deplored the adverse impact on the German economy of vandalism