Anti-Semitism in Europe and Hitler's Rise to Power

Anti-Semitism came on the rise in Europe in the early 1900s. In France, Prime Minister Leon Blum was prepared to take a surplus of Jews from Poland but backed out, although he was initially accepting of the idea of taking in Polish Jews. Leon Blum had also served as the party chairman for the Socialist Party. Blum was born the son of a Jewish manufacturer and entered the intellectual world at a very early age. Blum became a public attorney in France and was engaged in the Dreyfus Affair in France. In 1904 Blum was appointed as the editor of the Socialist Party newspaper called "L'Humanite." Blum soon became the leader of the party. Using his crafty diplomacy, he soon campaigned to be the French Prime Minister and won. During his 1936 campaign, Blum faced violent anti-Semitism including getting mugged and beaten up. This incident appealed to the French people as sympathetic toward Blum and he was able to win the prime minister position. In 1936 when Blum became the prime minister, he acted in similar fashion as U.S. President FDR and Blum passed many legislative bills for workers including paid vacations, a 40 hour workweek, collective bargaining, unemployment insurance, and many others.

However, elsewhere in the country of France, anti-Semitism spread with the growing membership of two political parties called the "Parti Populaire Francais" and had 170,000 members by 1938. The party was anit-communist, anti-Jew, and anti-parliament. In June of 1937, his own Communist Party split into two factions called the Popular Front. They no longer supported Blum because of his failure to act to support the communist rebels in Spain. Blum submitted his resignation as he felt his country no longer supported him.

In France, Anti-Semitism rose within the government as they believed that Jews were infiltrating the country and that quotas needed to be established to control the Jewish population. There was even a plan to move all of the Jews into Madagascar. The Catholic Church also held Anti-Semitic views and viewed the Jews as ritual murderers and an impure race of people. These views had a profound affect on France.

In Germany, Hitler's rise to power came gradually. He joined the German Labor Party shortly before 1920 and quickly became a party leader. The party was led by Gottfried Feder and stood for a type of capitalist economy. Hitler soon managed to be the party leader and changed the party name to the Nazi Socialist German Workers' Party. He put the swastika symbol as the logo of the party. Hitler created a document of 25 points that the party stood for and 6 of them were against the Jews. Hitler gave out uniforms to all of the Party's followers and soon the party rose in members. Around 1923 Hitler attempted an uprising against the government that failed and he was arrested. In February of 1924 he was put on trial in which he was sentenced to 30 months in jail. There he wrote Mein Kampf.

When the Great Depression hit Germany, the Nazi Party grew in members and had 9 million members by 1932. In 1930 it had 107 delegates in Parliament. The German president General Paul von Hindenburg was a supporter of the rights of the Jews and praised the Jewish people for their efforts in the war. Hindenburg supported the equal rights of the Jewish people. It was Hindenburg who tried everything in his power to prevent the rise of the Nazi Party and Hitler's rise to power. By 1932 the Nazi Party had received 12.7 million votes in the election and had won 230 seats in the Reichstag. Hitler was able to create a party platform that stood against the Jews and viewed them as Bolsheviks, store owners, and criminals.

On January 20, 1933 Hitler came to power as the German chancellor in a form of provisional leadership in a coalition government. As chancellor he moved to gain even more power by preventing and breaking up political meetings of other parties. The Reichstag Parliament building was also destroyed by a fire which some people say was the work of the Nazi Party. Hitler convinced President Hindenburg to pass a series of acts that limited free speech, press and assembly, leading to the arrests of many Communist and opposition party leaders. In the next series of elections, the Nazi Party won 44 percent of the vote. In March Hitler signed an agreement with the Catholic Centralists, giving him 2/3 of the vote in Germany. He was able to pass the enabling Acts which allowed him to pass legislation at will. When President Hindenburg died in August of 1934, Hitler assumed power by combining the office of chancellor and president into a position he called the fuhrer.

Anti-Jewish policies began almost immediately as Hitler's alliance called the SA was a group of men who took delight in beating and destroying Jews and their property. On March 26 Hitler passed a national boycott of Jewish businesses and professionals. More legislation was passed in Germany which prevented Jews from having jobs in any public sector. Hitler started to define what a Jew was in terms of ancestry. He defined Jews as having 3 Jewish grandparents and half Jews were also said to have 3 Jewish grandparents. Under the Nuremberg Laws, Jewish citizenship was revoked. Jews were stripped of all of their political rights. Jews were not allowed to marry non-Jews. Jews could not be doctors with the exception of a small minority of doctors who could only treat Jewish patients. Jews were not allowed to go into public places like parks and public pools. Funding was taken away from Jewish organizations and therefore, they could not hold Jewish programs. Jewish males had to have the name "Israel" and women had to have the name "Sarah." In 1937 and 1938, Jewish businesses were told to close and all Jewish homes outside of the main cities had to be sold. Jews were prohibited from being in any trained professional career.

The German Jews tried to create an organization called the Reich Representative Council of German Jews but the group had essentially very little power and although initially the group tried to move people to Palestine, Hitler also limited the group's power and maintained that the only functions of the organization could be to clarify the official German laws against the Jews. Jews tried to organize in synagogues and seminars to talk about what was happening to them in German society. Jews tried to increase Jewish education, culture and seminars and were determined not to let the Nuremberg laws affect them.

In 1938 when Hitler moved his troops into the Rhineland, he dismisses all moderates in the government and brought full radical Nazis to power in the government. In 1938, Jews were expelled from their home in Austria after Germany and Austria reached an agreement. Jewish businesses were closed down in Austria and property was seized. Adolf Eichmann was put in charge of the Central Office for Jewish Immigration in Vienna. Eichmann had been a Gestapo secret police officer and officer in the SS German secret force. From Eichmann's policies, Jews were rounded up and thrown out of Austria. 50,000 Jews were expelled from Austria. When Hitler took of Czechoslovakia in 1939, Jews were expelled from their homes and businesses were closed. Jews were being routinely rounded up and transported across the borders of countries and kicked out.

In 1938, Hitler found out that a young Jewish boy had killed a German official and used this opportunity to wreck havoc upon the German Jewish community. In the night known as Kristallnacht, or night of the broken glass, Jewish synagogues and other Jewish places were desecrated. 30,000 Jews were rounded up and put in concentration camps. Jews were also charged a 250 million dollar fee by the German government for cleaning up the mess.