Hitler hated Jews because in fact he considered them superior not inferior to Germans

State-enforced dress codes, and entirely novel ones like that, are absolutely no indicator of subjective identity

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Why are they not such indicators ??? If not them, then what is ???

You say, that "subjective identity" is such an indicator. But there is one problem...

You don't have statistics on "subjective identity". You only have statistics on state-enforced identities, which are reflected in population censues.

Look. For example Poland in its 1931 population censuses, counted people as "Poles" basing on their self-declared primary language (mother tongue).

This is why during the 1931 population census for example 371,821 believers of Judaism were counted as Poles.

Number of "Judaistic Poles" increased to some 415,000 by 1939 (strangely they are still counted as Jews not Poles in modern data on WW2 losses).

That was a "state-enforced" identity, as in reality perhaps some people who didn't speak Polish identified as Poles, and some people who spoke it didn't.

Such situation was in Galicia, where some people spoke Ukrainian but identified as Poles and some spoke Polish but identified as Ukrainians.

But the same "linguistic" method of counting nationality / ethnicity was not the case in Nazi Germany. Not at all.

In Nazi Germany they had categories of people like "Halbjuden" (1/2 Jews) and "Vierteljuden" (1/4 Jews).

In pre-war Poland all Jews - no matter 1/4 or 1/2 or 1/1 - were counted as Poles if only they spoke Polish as mother tongue.

On the other hand, Polish Jews who spoke Yiddish or Hebrew as their mother tongue / primary language, were counted as Jews in 1931 census. In Poland also Atheists, Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox people were counted as Jews, if only they spoke Yiddish or Hebrew as main language.

And in Germany "1/2 Jews" and "1/4 Jews" were counted as Jews, even if they spoke only German and even if they were not believers of Judaism.

So as you can see the method of counting and the method of classifying really matters (at least when it comes to statistical data).

Today it is hard to establish the estimated number of "ethnic Polish losses" in WW2, because historians still argue who was Polish and who was not.

There are less problems with establishing the estimated number of citizens of Poland who died during WW2.

Traitorfish said:

What reason do we have to believe that most Jews in early 20th century German wished to be seen as resident foreigners, rather than as Germans?

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Because most (or at least many) Jews in early 20th century Germany were descendants of recent 19th century immigrants from the Pale of Settlement.

And this is why many Germans perceived them as foreigners. I am not sure if most Jews also considered themselves as non-Germans.

Domen said:

Because most (or at least many) Jews in early 20th century Germany were descendants of recent 19th century immigrants from the Pale of Settlement.

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Well, in the first place, that's flatly untrue. There were many Jews of recent Polish and Lithuanian origin in Germany, yes, but they were never a majority of the population. The majority of German Jews were of ancient Rhenish origin and still lived in the Western parts of Germany, while many Jews in Eastern Prussian (were most Jews of Polish and Lithuanian origin were located) were either of Western ancestry, or Eastern ancestry dating to the 18th or early 19th centuries. By the Weimar period, more than three quarters of German Jews were citizens, which given the restrictive nature of German and Prussian citizenship law is a fairly reliable indicator that the greater majority thus had origins in German before 1850 at least. What's more, most of those of resident non-citizen status were by this period native-born, often second or third generation native-born, so there's no self-evident grounds to assume that they saw themselves as foreigners simply because they lacked German passports.

Secondly, that isn't actually relevant, because your claim is that the foreignness of Jews was a product of their Jewishness, not of Polish or Lithuanian origins. A Jew of ancient German origins and a Jew who just stepped across the Polish border are, in this model, both equally foreign to Germany, because both are eternal members of the "Jewish nation", distinguished from each other not by nationality but by duration of residence.

And this was the view typical of German anti-Semites, so when you state that:

[t]his is why many Germans perceived them as foreigners.

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You ignore the substantial body of literature dating back to the late 18th century which develops an anti-Semitic position on "national" terms, arguing that the Jews are perpetual foreigners, even in territories with Jewish populations of overwhelming ancient German origin.

And the crux of it is,

I am not sure if most Jews also considered themselves as non-Germans.

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Because, like these German anti-Semites of the early 20th century, you simply do not seem interested in what Jews thought or think of themselves, only in how they slot into your own map of "nations". So you can see why this whole line of thinking is, for me, deeply problematic, why I should think it bizarre that an argument posed as a criticism of the Nazis and a defence of the Jews should accept so uncritically the Nazis' premise that the Jews' expense.

From the perspective of an other source (Kafka's diaries) it would seem that anti-jewish sentiment became pronounced only following the defeat of the central powers in WW1. While Kafka barely mentions semitism or anti-semitism before 1918, he often refers to it later on, including names of papers and periodicals who run articles against the jewish population.

Not saying it did not exist prior to 1918, but it surely expanded very rapidly in a few years after it.

Also worth to note that the "jewish question" was around before 1914, also in the various yiddish theatre plays noted in that diary as well. But it seems that actual open violence was far more sporadic, and the jewish population enjoyed at least second-tier citizen level (next to third-tier for the local Czechs, for example).

The origin of Rhenish Jews is not "ancient German" but rather "ancient Roman" because first Jews arrived to that area during the times of the Roman Empire, most likely after the mass expulsions of Jews from Italy which took place in the 1st century AD. After a few hundred years (321 AD), Colonia Agrippina at the Rhine River was already a home for one of the most numerous and one of the most well-organized Jewish communities in the Roman Empire.

The majority of German Jews were of ancient Rhenish origin and still lived in the Western parts of Germany

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I seriously doubt this, considering how much persecutions, pogroms and expulsions striked the Jews of Germany - including those from Rheinland - during several centuries of the Middle Ages and of the Early Modern Era. Most of them fled gradually eastward during those centuries, ultimately to Poland. According to historian Iwo Pogonowski, only before 1495 Jews were being expelled from Rheinland in 1096, 1159, 1192 and 1394. And these are only the dates of expulsions of Jews from Rhineland until 1495. After 1495 - if there were still any Jews remaining there after that year - there were perhaps more expulsions.

even in territories with Jewish populations of overwhelming ancient German origin.

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I doubt there were any such territories when it comes to parts of Germany located to the West of the Oder River.

Original Jews who settled in Colonia Agrippina and in Roman provinces along the Rhine River, were later expelled and emigrated to Eastern Europe.

The existence of a large Jewish community in Germany in early 1900s was the result of immigration from the East during the 1700s and the 1800s.

Remember, that the Medieval Western Yiddish language got extinct, and only the Eastern Yiddish language which evolved in Poland survived.

One of reasons for that fact, was the annihilation of Medieval Jewish communities in Western Germany and Eastern France.

while many Jews in Eastern Prussian (were most Jews of Polish and Lithuanian origin were located) were either of Western ancestry, or Eastern ancestry dating to the 18th or early 19th centuries.

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Before the Partitions of Poland, the Kingdom of Prussia had only a very insignificant number of Jewish population.

And in East Prussia number of Jews was for a long time very, very small - because the Teutonic Order prohibited them from settling there.

Vast majority of Jews who lived in the Kingdom of Prussia in year 1796, was population acquired by the Kingdom of Prussia during the Partitions.

Moreover - majority of Jews acquired by Prussia during the Partitions, were acquired during the 2nd and during the 3rd Partitions.

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Below data from "Policies of the Prussian government towards Polish Jews 1793 - 1806", published in "Judaistic Review" No. 1 to 6, in Poznań, 1923:

In territory annexed by Prussia during the 3rd Partition (1795) there lived 76,088 Jews (according to a Prussian report dated 22.12.1802).

In territory annexed by Prussia during the 2nd Partition (1793) there lived around 74,000 Jews.

In areas annexed by Prussia during the 1st Partition (1772) and in all other parts of the Kingdom of Prussia number of Jews was 60,000-70,000.

Vast majority of those 60,000-70,000 still lived in areas which were Polish until 1772, as well as in parts of Silesia located to the East of the Oder River.*

*Jews were expelled and forbidden to return to parts of Silesia located to the West of the Oder River by King Frederick II of Prussia in 1746.

Let me remind you, that Silesia was captured by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1740. So Frederick II expelled Jews just 5-6 years after capturing it.

is a fairly reliable indicator that the greater majority thus had origins in German before 1850 at least.

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Indeed they had origins shortly before 1850 - they were people acquired by Prussia between 1772 and 1795 during the Partitions of Poland.

However, they started to massively emigrate westward from lands annexed by Prussia in 1772, 1793 and 1795 only after these dates.

And since in years 1919-1921 Poland regained most of lands annexed by Prussia (Germany) during the Partitions in 1772-1795, it is fair to assume, that whatever Jews remained in Germany after 1921, were mostly descendants of Jews who emigrated from those territories during the late 1700s and the 1800s.

In addition to them, there were also Jews who emigrated westward from other zones of Partitions - namely from Austrian and Russian zones.

Most of modern American Jews are also descendants of Jews who lived in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before 1772.

If the German Jews were supposedly so un-Germanically alien, why did the Nazis have enforce legislation that changed their names, and included large numbers of Protestants and Chatholics?

The majority of the German Jews were incredibly well assimilated and integrated. It was part of what triggered German antisemtical paranoia. Anybody could be Jewish. Name, language, looks, religion — nothing was a reliable guide to who was Jewish and who wasn't. They just looked, sounded, behaved, and quite often believed, exactly the same as the German majority population. Scary stuff...

It's why Nazi racial policies were obsessed with family history research. And legislation tailored to forcibly MAKE the German Jews discernible. It was that, or accept that they were Germans, except occasionally with a somewhat peculiar religion — when they weren't standard Christians like everyone else of course.

Nazis used religion to identify Jewishness, which is weird, since they were clear that Jewishness was a racial qualifier. If you had a Jewish mother but you were a Christian, you be Half-Aryan. If you had Aryan parents but were a practising Jew, you were Jewish. If your great-grandparents who did not live anymore were all ethnically Jews but religiously Christian, you likely be identified as an Aryan still.

Kaiserguard said:

Nazis used religion to identify Jewishness, which is weird, since they were clear that Jewishness was a racial qualifier. If you had a Jewish mother but you were a Christian, you be Half-Aryan. If you had Aryan parents but were a practising Jew, you were Jewish. If your great-grandparents who did not live anymore were all ethnically Jews but religiously Christian, you likely be identified as an Aryan still.

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Christianity wouldn't save. Unless someone missed something about your ancestry. But that would be incompetence, not policy.

Kaiserguard said:

Nazis used religion to identify Jewishness, which is weird, since they were clear that Jewishness was a racial qualifier. If you had a Jewish mother but you were a Christian, you be Half-Aryan. If you had Aryan parents but were a practising Jew, you were Jewish. If your great-grandparents who did not live anymore were all ethnically Jews but religiously Christian, you likely be identified as an Aryan still.

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Actually this isnt true, to my knowledge they were more interested in ancestory. i dont think the issue was ever fully resolved even until the end of the war. The 'Mischling' were the subject of much debate amongst Nazi Racists. By the end of the war there were literally millions whose fates were not decided (I think political realities would have trumped racism in this instance, because you were talking about a fairly sizable chunk of the population (at least a million, maybe more). Removing these people from essentially German families and carting them off east would have caused a great deal of controversy.

Thats not to say that Mischling were totally exempt from persecution. But it largely depended on other external factors like your political beliefs, your physical wellbeing, your propensity to break the law, to avoid work etc. I suppose you could add religious views into this. But why on earth would would exhibit outward displays of being Jewish if you were in an environment that was persecuting Jews.

So i guess in essence you could say that religiosity was as much a factor as physical health was. But both were only one factor amongst many.

Why do I get the impression that Domen deliberately emphasises secondary details so he can avoid confronting primary issues? Like, here, he wants to contest the exact proportion of German this origin or that origin, but is unwilling to confront the central issue of my posts, which is the relation any of this has to the Germanness or foreignness of Jews in Weimar-era Germany. Which suggests to me that he doesn't really have anything to say beyond reiterations of his original volkisch position, that Jews represent an enduring and discerete "nation", thus, exist as perpetual foreigners regardless of their century- or even millenia-long residence in a given location. A position which sits uncomfortably close, as I've observed, to that of the NSDAP itself.

Nazis used religion to identify Jewishness, which is weird, since they were clear that Jewishness was a racial qualifier. If you had a Jewish mother but you were a Christian, you be Half-Aryan. If you had Aryan parents but were a practising Jew, you were Jewish. If your great-grandparents who did not live anymore were all ethnically Jews but religiously Christian, you likely be identified as an Aryan still.

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It is not weird if you recognize, that people from the Nazi leadership were just smart enough to recognize the obvious fact that "pure races" don't exist, but cunning enough to keep this knowledge only for themselves, while using racism and racist propaganda as tools to instigate anti-Jewish hatred among other people and among the masses of population. I don't think the Nazis sincerely believed in the Aryan race, given that most of people from the top Nazi leadership did not even look like the stereotypical "Aryan German" they promoted. Did people like Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Goering consider themselves as "non-Aryans"?

is unwilling to confront the central issue of my posts, which is the relation any of this has to the Germanness or foreignness of Jews in Weimar-era Germany.

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Well - I agree with you and with Verbose that many Jews in Germany were very-well assimilated with the rest of society by early 1900s.

However, when they started to experience persecutions by their German neighbours, they stopped associating themselves with Germannness.

So during the 1930s I really don't think that German Jews any more considered themselves Germans or associated themselves with Germanness.

This is why many of them (including Einstein) - feeling that the worst was coming - emigrated from Germany before it was too late.

So the "state-enforced" policy towards Jews, unfortunately did create the new reality and did change the previous reality.

Verbose said:

Christianity wouldn't save. Unless someone missed something about your ancestry. But that would be incompetence, not policy.

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True, but the Christianity of your forebears definitely could save or break you. It's basically trying to identify America's blacks by checking whether your forebears were practising Muslims.

BTW:

volkisch position, that Jews represent an enduring and discerete "nation", thus, exist as perpetual foreigners regardless of their century- or even millenia-long residence in a given location.

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Hasn't this also been the position of many Jews ???

Domen said:

Hasn't this also been the position of many Jews ???

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Safe for the most religious of Jews that rejected the Enlightenment, not that many. Most Jews that saw themselves as a distinct nation were coming from a religious angle. Zionism represented an attempt to secularise the distinctiveness of the Jewish nation and it makes me always kind of impatient when I see people coming with arguments "no religion should have its own state" when talking about Israel, because frankly, Israel is not more a Jewish state (in the religious sense) than the Netherlands is a Calvinist state.

Depends on what you mean by "foreign"... Are the Tatars of Kazan "foreigners" in Russia?

They are a national minority who share a history with the majority group, comparable to Iroquois, Huron in the US and Armenians and Greeks in Turkey. Most Jews in Europe would qualify.

Domen said:

Hasn't this also been the position of many Jews ???

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You'd be hard pressed to argue as much. The separatism of Orthodox Jewry is not easily expressed in terms of national and ethnic identity, and until 1945 most Reform and secular Jews had much more complex understandings of the relationship between nationality and ethnicity. It's only after 1945 that most European Jews start to draw that sort of direct relationship between ethnicity and nationality, and even then it's not clear how many of them believed this to be objectively true, rather than a project that was in the historically-specific interest of European Jewry to pursue.

A translation of that poster would be great for non German speaking peoples.

classical_hero said:

A translation of that poster would be great for non German speaking peoples.

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Die Nürnberger Gesetze: The Nuremberger Laws
Deutschblütiger: One of pure German Blood
Mischlinge 2.Grades: (Jewish-Aryan) halfbreed, more Aryan than Jewish
Mischlinge 1.Grades: (Jewish-Aryan) halfbreed
Jude: Jewish (though in this case, it is an ethnic category)

A black circle means someone who is Jewish, while a white circle means Aryan. The mixed circles denote mixed ancestry. There are also several marriage scenarios presented, in which case Jewish-Aryan marriages are forbidden ("verboten"). Children born from mixed relations may be considered Jewish if the text denotes "Kindern werden Juden" (children shall be Jewish). In some cases, marriages between people of partial Jewish descent and Aryans is permitted or "zugelassen".

Not a ground-breaking view, neo nazis consider Jews to be possess superhuman abilities. For instance some believe Jews invented Christianity to weaken Europe (although they backpedalled when pressed and said the Roman Empire) which shows an incredible amount of foresight on the jews part.