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

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 recognized. 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.

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction: The Search for Archival Evidence Part I: Violence against Foreign Jews 1: Violence against 'Ostjuden' in the Winter and Spring of 1933 2: 'Ostjuden' as Predetermined Targets - a History of Marginalization 3: Attacks against American and West European Jews, among Others Part II: Violence against German Jews 4: Violent Attacks 5: Pillory Marches and the Perfidy Decree 6: Murder 7: Boycott 8: Legal and Economic Discrimination Part III: Reactions to Anti-Semitic Violence 9: The Protestant Church and the 'Jewish Question' 10: Protestant Church Leaders and the 'Jewish Question' 11: The Protestant Church between Action and Silence 12: The Reaction of the Catholic Church 13: Reactions of the German Bureaucracy 14: The Reaction of Hitler's Conservative Coalition Partner Epilogue: How could it happen?

About the Author :
Hermann Beck is Professor of History at the University of Miami. He received his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles after studying Germanistik and ancient and modern history at German universities (Mannheim, Freiburg, and Berlin), 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. In addition to his book publications, he has published more than twenty articles in edited collections and in American, British, and German journals, including the Historische Zeitschrift and the Journal of Modern History.

Review :
5* review: "...It is a book all students of the Nazi regime should read..." Relentlessly concise and nigh monumental within its outstanding sphere of research...nothing less than an astonishing achievement. an important book... a major contribution to readers' understanding of the beginnings of the Third Reich. The initiation of Hitler's violence against the Jews has long been neglected in the massive literature on the Holocaust. Hermann Beck's Before the Holocaust fills this lacuna with a monumental study of its very first months. The book fully contextualizes and also describes in thorough detail the initial phase of what became a policy of "cumulative radicalization," as well as the very muted reaction to it. An indispensable preliminary to Holocaust studies. Based on extensive archival research, Beck's outstanding book accomplishes something that surprisingly has never been done before: a great piece of erudite and original research, Before the Holocaust charts out anti-Semitic violence and other acts of Jew-hatred in the months following Hitler's takeover of power in 1933. In doing so, the book investigates the transition of pre-Nazi German anti-Semitism to National Socialist persecution of the Jews in Germany. Beck accomplishes something extraordinary, namely, to say something genuinely new about the origins and the emergence of the Shoah. Hermann Beck's Before the Holocaust is a powerful book. Using extensive new research, the study throws a glaring light on the extent and murderous brutality of antisemitic persecution from the very outset of Hitler's accession to power. Moreover, it demonstrates how the Protestant and Catholic churches, as well as the conservative elites, united in their enthusiastic support for the "national revolution", abstained from immediate protest, whatever initial or later misgivings there may have been. For any student of Nazi Germany, Beck's study is a must. Hermann Beck has painstakingly uncovered a whole range of antisemitic violence that began during the first weeks of Hitler's dictatorship. He discovered these events by working through over a dozen national and regional archives in Germany, as well as numerous collections of published documentary material and newspapers. The appalling terror he reveals often occurred in full public view in cities and towns across the country - horrendous attacks that have been overlooked, ignored, or neglected by generations of historians. In what is sure to become the standard work on the topic, Beck shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Nazi-led violence rained down on the Jews during the Nazi takeover. Without question, this early and vicious brutality signaled the beginning of the inhumane process that would culminate in the Holocaust. This is an important book...This book is a major contribution to readers' understanding of the beginnings of the Third Reich. Before the Holocaust is a smart, important, deftly constructed book that pushes a rethinking of 1933, the Nazi consolidation of power, and the role of groups such as the DNVP, the churches, and the judiciary in allowing for the stigmatization and brutal assault of Jews in Germany. This book would be a great resource for future historians as well as graduate students in other humanities and social sciences because it provides a good model for how to present an effective argument. Hermann Beck compiles many new details regarding the acts of violence to which the Jewish population was exposed in the early months of the "Third Reich" and attempts to better grasp their sheer extent and appropriately place them within the larger political and social context. Brilliant and comprehensively researched book.