Before the Holocaust Antisemitic Violence and the Reaction of German Elites and Institutions during the Nazi Takeover

by Beck, Hermann

• ISBN13: 9780198985730
• ISBN10: 0198985738
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-10-31
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

As the Nazis staged their takeover in 1933, instances of antisemitic violence began to soar.

While previous historical research assumed that this violence happened much later, Hermann Beck counteracts this, drawing on sources from twenty German archives, and focussing on this early violence, and on the reaction of German institutions and the elites who led them.

Before the Holocaust examines the antisemitic violence experienced in this period - from boycotts, violent attacks, robbery, extortion, abductions, and humiliating 'pillory marches', to grievous bodily harm and murder - which has hitherto not been adequately recoqnized. Beck then analyses the reactions of those institutions that still had the capacity to protest against Nazi attacks and legislative measures - the Protestant Church, the Catholic Church, the bureaucracies, and Hitler's conservative coalition partner, the DNVP - and the mindset of the elites who led them, to determine their various responses to flagrant antisemitic abuses. Individual protests against violent attacks, the April boycott, and Nazi legislative measures were already hazardous in March and April 1933, but established institutions in the German State and society were still able to voice their concerns and raise objections. By doing so, they might have stopped or at least postponed a radicalization that eventually led to the pogrom of 1938 (Kristallnacht) and the Holocaust.

Author Biography

Hermann Beck

Hermann Beck is Professor of History at the University of Miami. He received his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles after studying literature and history at German universities, the London School of Economics, and the Sorbonne. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, a Fellow at the Berliner Historische Kommission, and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. His publications include books on the Nazi seizure of power and nineteenth-century Prussia, as well as numerous articles in American, British, and German journals and in edited collections. His latest book, Before the Holocaust, was awarded the 2024 Yad Vashem International Book Prize.

Table of Contents

PrefaceIntroduction: The Search for Archival EvidencePart I: Violence against Foreign Jews1. Violence against 'Ostjuden' in the Winter and Spring of 19332. 'Ostjuden' as Predetermined Targets - a History of Marginalization3. Attacks against American and West European Jews, among OthersPart II: Violence against German Jews4. Violent Attacks5. Pillory Marches and the Perfidy Decree6. Murder7. Boycott8. Legal and Economic DiscriminationPart III: Reactions to Anti-Semitic Violence9. The Protestant Church and the 'Jewish Question'10. Protestant Church Leaders and the 'Jewish Question'11. The Protestant Church between Action and Silence12. The Reaction of the Catholic Church13. Reactions of the German Bureaucracy14. The Reaction of Hitler's Conservative Coalition PartnerEpilogue: How could it happen?