The Jewish Trail of Tears The Evian Conference of ... - Haruth.com

egulations had been introduced slowly and incrementally due to concerns about adverse
domestic and foreign public opinion. The Government also feared that the sudden
expulsion of Jews from the national economy would have disruptive effects on German
economic recovery from the Depression and Hitler’s plans for military rearmament.
Between 1933 and 1937 135 anti-Jewish laws were enacted, marked especially by the
1935 Nuremberg Racial Laws. Many Jews, as noted earlier, hoped that the latter
promulgations would lead to an inferior but stable position within German society; a
situation reminiscent of previous events in Jewish history. Hitler, however, had issued a
warning during a 1935 speech in Nuremberg that if this arrangement for a “separate
secular solution” collapsed then it would become necessary to grant to the Nazi Socialist
Party the legal authority to devise a “final solution” to the Jewish Question. 20
Hitler undoubtedly had long hoped for the failure of such a “secular” solution.
Reflections within Mein Kampf, as well as a discussion held with a journalist and retired
Major, Josef Hell, in 1922, revealed that the would-be Fuehrer predicted the slaughter of
German Jewry if he acquired the reins of national authority. His “first and foremost task”
would be the “annihilation” of Jews by public hanging. Jews would be executed
“indiscriminately…until the last Jews in Munich has been exterminated.” Such a
program would continue until the Fatherland had “been entirely cleansed of Jews.” 21
Anti-Jewish laws and regulations were enacted rapidly within Austria over the
course of two to three months. The seizure of Jewish monies and other assets were
20 Max Domarus, ed., Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932-45 (Würzburg, 1962), I 537, Institut für
Zeigeschichte, Munich, cited in Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
1987), 483, 484-5.
21 Josef Hell, Aufzeichnung, 1922, ZS 640, 5, Institut für Zeitgeschichte cited in Gerald Fleming, Hitler
and the Final Solution (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), 17.
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