Gun Control in the Third Reich (14 page)

The year 1933 ended with the triumph of Nazism, which from the beginning used the threat of communism to create a dictatorship that was equally, if not more, oppressive. This fact was captured concisely in the December 31 diary entry of German Jewish war veteran Victor Klemperer: “I equate National Socialism and Communism: both are materialistic and tyrannical, both disregard and negate the freedom of the spirit and of the individual.”
³⁶

1
. Hajo Bernett,
Der Weg des Sports in die nationalsozialistische Diktatur
(The Way of Sports in the National Socialist Dictatorship) (Schorndorf, Germany: Hofmann, 1983); Hajo Bernett,
Sportpolitik im Dritten Reich. Aus den Akten der Reichskanzlei
(Sport Policy in the Third Reich: From the Acts of the Reich Chancellery) (Schorndorf, Germany: Hofmann, 1971).

2
. See in general Jonathan Sperber,
Rhineland Radicals: The Democratic Movement and the Revolution of 1848–1849
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).

3
. See Walter M. Plett,
Die Schützenvereine im Rheinland und in Westfalen 1789–1939
(The Shooting Clubs in the Rhineland and in Westphalia, 1789–1939) (Cologne: Rheinischer Verein für Denkmalpflege und Landschaftsschutz, 1995); Michael Schwartz, “Schützenvereine im ‘Dritten Reich': Etappen der Gleichschaltung traditioneller Vereinskultur” (Shooting Clubs in the “Third Reich”: Stages of the Forcing into Line of Traditional Club Culture),
Archiv für Kulturgeschichte
79 (1997), 439. See also Hendrik Schulze Ameling,
Schützenvereine im westlichen Münsterland in der NS-Zeit 1933–1939
(Shooting Clubs in Western Münsterland in the National Socialist Period, 1933–1939) (Münster, Germany: Magisterarbeit (Master's Thesis, unpublished) , 2004).

4
. Schwartz, “Schützenvereine im ‘Dritten Reich,'” 441–42.

5
. Bernett,
Sportpolitik im Dritten Reich
, 25–32.

6
. Staatsarchiv Nürnberg, Vereinsregisterakte DSB 1933, p. 138, cited in Stefan Grus, “Allgemeines Verhältnis des Naziregimes zu den Schützenvereinen” (General Relationship of the Nazi Regime to the Shooting Clubs), unpublished manuscript, Wiesbaden, Oct. 2005, 1.

7
.
Deutsche SchÅ°tzen Zeitung
, 1933, No. 31, S. 2, cited in Grus, “Allgemeines Verhältnis,” 1.

8
. Schwartz, “Schützenvereine im ‘Dritten Reich,'” 444–45.

9
. Der Reichsverband Dt. Büchsenmacher, Waffen- u. Munitionshändler eV to Reichskanzler Hitler, Mar. 18, 1933, Bundesarchiv (BA) Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 284–88.

10
. Der Reichswehrminister to Reichsminister des Innern (RMI), Nov. 27, 1933, transfer of letter by Verband Zella-Mehliser Waffenfabrikanten eV, BA Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 442.

11
. Der Reichsminister des Innern, Betrifft: Einfuhr von Schusswaffen, I A 8310/24.4, May 31, 1933, BA Berlin, R 43 II/399, Fiche 1, Row 1.

12
. Der Reichsminister des Innern, Betrifft: Einfuhr von Schusswaffen, I A 8310/24.4, May 31, 1933, citing
Reichsgesetzblatt
1928, I, 143, § 22.

13
. Verordnung über ein vorübergehendes Verbot der Einfuhr von Faustfeuerwaffen (Decree of a Temporary Prohibition on Importation of Handguns),
Reichsgesetzblatt
1933, I, 367.

14
. Des Reichsminister des Innern, Betrifft: Einfuhr von Faustfeuerwaffen, I A 6310/24.5.II, June 13, 1933, BA Berlin, R 43 II/399, Fiche 1, Row 2.

15
. Raphaël Lemkin,
Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress
(Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), 15–16.

16
.
Reichsgesetzblatt
1931, I, 699, 742.

17
. Der Reichsminister des Innern, Betrifft: Schußwaffengesetz, I A 6310/19.6, July 7, 1933, BA Berlin, R 43 II/399, Fiche 1, Row 2.

18
. Der Reichsminister des Innern, Betrifft: Schußwaffengesetz, I A 6310/19.6, July 7, 1933.

19
. Der Reichsminister des Innern, Betrifft: Schußwaffengesetz, I A 6310/19.6, July 7, 1933.

20
. Thür. Min.d.Inn. to RMI, July 24, 1933, Schusswaffengesetz, BA Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 500–502.

21
. Der Landes-Polizeipräsident u. Leiter der Abt. Ia des Hess Staatsmin. to RMI, Schusswaffengesetz,July 27, 1933. BA Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 503–504.

22
. Der Landes-Polizeipräsident u. Leiter der Abt. Ia des Hess Staatsmin. to RMI Schusswaffengesetz, July 27, 1933.

23
. Der Pr. MindInn, July 28, 1933, BA Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 470–74.

24
. Württ. Innenmin. to RMI, Aug. 3, 1933, Schusswaffengesetz, BA Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 492–94.

25
. Sächs. Min. d. Ausw. Angelegenheiten to RMI, Aug. 23, 1933, BA Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 489–90.

26
. Staatsmin. d. Inn. Munich to RMI, Aug. 26, 1933, Schusswaffengesetz, BA Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 484–87.

27
. Aufzeichnung über die beabsichtigten Änderungen des Schusswaffengesetzes, Aug. 31, 1933, BA Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 526–29.

28
. Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Min.d.Inn. to RMI, Sept. 12, 1933, Schusswaffengesetz, BA Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 522–23.

29
. RMI Vermerk, Oct. 5, 1933, BA Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 530–34. For the decree, see Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutze des deutschen Volkes,
Reichsgesetzblatt
1933, I, 35.

30
. RMI to Reich Minister der Justiz (RMJ), Oct. 12, 1933, Schusswaffengesetz, BA Lich terfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 535–36.

31
. Zu I A 6310/16.10, Oct. 20, 1933; RMI to RMJ, Oct. 24, 1933; Min.Rat. Dr. Hoche to RMJ, Nov. 7, 1933—all in BA Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 538–49.

32
. RMJ to RMI, Nov. 4, 1933, Schusswaffengesetz, BA Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 543–46.

33
. For the draft of the amendment and the letter, see RMI to Staatssekretär in der Reichskanzlei, Nov. 21, 1933, Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Änderung des Schusswaffengesetzes, BA Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 574–78; quotations from both letter and draft come from this source. The draft of the amendment can also be found in BA Berlin, R 43 II/399, Fiche 1, Row 3.

34
. For the memorandum in support of the draft, see RMI to Staatssekretär in der Reichskanzlei, Nov. 21, 1933, Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Änderung des Schusswaffengesetzes, BA Lichterfelde, R 1501/125942, Gesetz über Schußwaffen und Munition Bd. 6, 1932–33, S. 579–85.

35
. “ Artikel 48, 102 der Reichsverfassung” (Article 48, 102, of the Reich Constitution),
Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung
, Jan. 15, 1934, S. 150.

36
. Victor Klemperer,
I Will Bear Witness 1933–1941
, trans. Martin Chalmers (New York: Modern Library, 1999), 45.

CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN
Nazi Germany were basically unknown to the outside world until the 1935 publication in Switzerland of a personal account by Wolfgang Langhoff, who was interned for thirteen months.
¹
The English version was entitled
Rubber Truncheon
, referring to the clubs used to beat inmates.
²
His work revealed the aggressive repression of intellectuals and politically incorrect persons that would increasingly target the German Jews as “unreliable,” particularly regarding gun ownership. Police used force, and the Nazi authorities painted a veneer of legality and normalcy over the increasingly brutal and aggressive practices. Some of this was clear to Langhoff, whose account of his nightmarish incarceration between March 1933 and April 1934 includes numerous references to the Nazi obsession with disarming anyone who might not support their regime.

A producer and actor in Düsseldorf and a moderate leftist intellectual, Langhoff was denounced for political reasons. On February 28, 1933, police burst into his home and ordered him to put his hands up. As his pockets were searched, he said, “I don't carry weapons about with me!”
³
The police ransacked his house and carried him off to prison.

As he learned from his wife, his home was searched again. “For two hours a gang of six to eight S.S.-men turned the flat upside-down. Ostensibly they were searching for weapons. They put revolvers against my father's and secretary's
foreheads, to force them to make some kind of statement.” The goons had no sooner left when another squad of SS arrived to smash up the place. They found no arms, but took money, clothing, a typewriter, and a diamond ring.
⁴

Incarcerated for more than a year, one day Langhoff was led into a cold, empty cell. The half-dozen SS men who interrogated him beat him mercilessly with rubber truncheons. An SS man waved his revolver in his face, demanding: “Speak out, where did you hide the weapons?” They pummeled and kicked him, finally leaving him for dead. Having beaten several other inmates horribly as well, the SS men departed. News of the maltreatment spread throughout the prison and the town by the auxiliaries who were recruited from the SA and the Stahlhelm, the latter—rivals of the Nazi military organizations—horrified at what had taken place.
⁵

Langhoff was next taken to the Prussian State Concentration Camp at Börgermoor. An SS man played a joke by putting revolver cartridges in and then pulling them out of a prisoner's knapsack, holding them up to the terrified prisoner's face, who denied any knowledge of them. Langhoff wrote: “The discovery of the ammunition would have the most terrible consequences for all of us.” Several inmates shouted that they saw a ruse. The SS man grinned and left.
⁶

Prisoners craved salvation, and a rumor spread: “Hitler is at his last gasp…. In the Ruhr the workers are arming themselves.” Further, “You wait, the workers, weapons in hand, will fetch us out of here”—that is, “[i]f the S.S. hasn't shot us down first.” Langhoff recognized that the longing for freedom was too powerful to defeat these fantasies.
⁷

Langhoff was eventually transferred to Lichtenburg Castle, which was being used as a prison. He described an interrogation of an inmate there on Christmas Day 1933:

Somewhere in Central Germany arms had been found. He was suspected of knowing something about it. The Commander conducted the cross-examination himself.

Two hours later the man was carried to the medical room. The walls in the Commander's room were spattered with his blood. The stains could still be seen long after Christmas.
⁸

After thirteen months incarceration, Langhoff was finally released, which would have been in about April 1934. Back in Berlin, he was under “police control,” making him subject to police interrogations at his home. He was excluded from the actors' union and thus unemployable. When he received an offer from the Zurich Schauspielhaus (Theater), his application for a passport to Switzerland was refused for political reasons.
⁹
Langhoff nonetheless crossed the border secretly and found refuge in Switzerland.

The SS, or Elite Guard, of the National Socialist Party originally protected party speakers at rallies. In 1929, Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler as Reich leader of the SS. Between March 1933 and April 1934, he was appointed chief of the State Police (Gestapo) in each of the states outside Prussia, giving him the title Reichsführer der SS und Chef der deutschen Polizei. Hermann Göring, the Prussian interior minister, controlled the Prussian police and created the Prussian Gestapo.
¹⁰

Police types included the Public Order Police (Ordnungspolizei) and the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei). The Public Order Police included uniformed regular police (Schutzpolizei), the Gendarmerie, and the administrative police. The Security Police included the criminal police and the Gestapo. There was also the Security Service of the Reich SS Leader (Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers SS), which conducted espionage for the state and the party.
¹¹

The first anniversary of Hitler's chancellorship was marked by the passing of the Law for the Reconstruction of the Reich of January 30, 1934, which basically finalized the liquidation of the Länder (states) and consolidated power in the Reich.
¹²
Local police were thereby brought under central control.

The growing police state induced fear, but incipient opposition pervaded society. Victor Klemperer wrote in a February 7, 1934, diary entry: “It does one good, that these completely ‘Aryan' people from quite different circles of society…hold on to their vehement hatred of the regime and to their belief that it must fall in the foreseeable future.”
¹³

Sporadic attacks on Jews during this period, observes historian Michael Wildt, consisted of “attacks against defenseless persons who had been declared a threat, a ‘cancer in the body of the German people.'…Violence against Jews met unarmed civilian victims, whose possibilities of defending themselves were increasingly limited due to state disenfranchisement.”
¹⁴

The growing purge of non-Nazi groups by summer of 1934 included the Stahlhelm, the Great War veterans' organization whose members previously had special privileges to possess firearms. Their increasing criticism of the regime was met with attacks. According to Hans Gisevius, an anti-Hitler conspirator, “The Stahlhelmers tried to defend themselves, and bloody battles resulted between SA and Stahlhelm men. The SA always had the advantages because they could call in the police, which were commanded by their own SA leaders, to protect them against these new ‘enemies of the state.'”
¹⁵

But then came the SA's turn in the Night of the Long Knives (Nacht der langen Messer) on June 30, 1934. At Hitler's orders, Ernst Röhm and the other SA leaders were murdered. This action nipped in the bud a “second revolution” and won Hitler the loyalty of the Reichswehr, which ostensibly regained its monopoly of armed force. The ultimate effects were the substitution of the SS for the SA as the ultimate power and the consolidation of the dictatorship.
¹⁶

Hitler thereafter gave speeches to the Reichswehr, U.S. ambassador William Dodd reported, in which he “expressed his confidence in the army which alone bears the arms of the state.”
¹⁷
When President Hindenburg died on August 2, Hitler combined the offices of president and chancellor and became both fürhrer and Reich chancellor, allowing him to rule by decree.
¹⁸
On that same day, all members of the armed forces swore unconditional obedience to Hitler instead of to Germany. In speeches thereafter to the National Socialists and the German people, Dodd reported, “Hitler also publically thanked the Reichswehr for its oath of allegiance and again upheld its inviolability as the sole bearer of arms in the Nation.”
¹⁹

That fall Dodd took note of a speech by Göring to the Academy for German Justice (Akademie für Deutsches Recht ) that emphasized “the absolute dependence of every German citizen upon the Fuehrer. There was to be no sort of resistance at any time.” Dodd commented, “At one place the fat general said heads will simply be chopped off if men do not obey the inspired Hitler and submit to his decrees.” Such statements did not appear in the published versions of the speech, but the judges and lawyers present “were instructed emphatically what they must do.”
²⁰
Such strict instruction allowed no conflict with enforcement of many laws, including the firearm laws, which delegated to the authorities complete discretion to grant or deny a license to possess a gun. After all, no legal or constitutional right to keep and bear arms existed.

The campaign to disarm all enemies and to supply confiscated arms to police agencies and concentration camp guards to repress further such enemies continued. On July 30, Göring's Prussian Interior Ministry ordered that confiscated firearms be sent to Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. “I request that confiscated nonmilitary arms, as well as appropriate ammunition and accessories, except hunting arms, even if in need of repair, that are being stored, be sent
to the Geheime Staatspolizeiamt SW.11 Prince Albrechtstr. 8.”
²¹
Arms needed for evidence or involved in cases not adjudicated were to be sent in after the cases were over.

As usual, the targets of firearm confiscations were described as Communists. The Political Police Commander (Politische Polizeikommandeur) of the Bavarian Interior Ministry reported that on August 24 “a large weapons cache of the KPD” consisting of thirty-five infantry rifles in a chest was found buried underground at a place where old railroad tracks were stored in Munich-Obergiesing. Communists had stolen the arms in 1930 and were keeping them for an armed uprising. Two were arrested, another was already in protective custody, and two others were fugitives. Treason charges were being filed.
²²

Attached to the report was the “Memorandum on the Subversive Activity of the Communists in the Winter of 1932/1933.” A section entitled “The Arming of the Proletariat” explained the preparation of the armed uprising through “the accumulation of arms of all kinds, of ammunition and of explosives.” It recited the fact of numerous criminal convictions by the Reich Court against KPD functionaries in the period 1923–30 for the procurement of arms for violent revolution. These procurement efforts had allegedly intensified:

The thefts in gun shops, break-ins into ammunition depots, transfers of weapons, requests for handgun ammunition in gun shops, all observed in recent times all over the Reich and attributable to the Communist influence, and the discovery of Communist weapons' caches make it clear that the KPD is attributing increased importance to the procurement of weapons and is trying systematically to arm its followers so that they will be sufficiently equipped with handguns and explosives when the armed uprising begins.
²³

Then Hitler came to power and saved Germany, or so went the mythology. But aside from dramatic searches, the Nazis only needed to compare their blacklists with police records on firearm owners to disarm their enemies and to do so legally under the 1928 Firearms Law. The leading legal journal noted in November 1934: “If the police consider a person dangerous and if such person, because of concerns about his reliability under §16(1), should not have received a firearm or ammunition acquisition license or carry license, then the police may prohibit such person from possession of arms and ammunition.”
²⁴
This section of the Weimar law allowed the police to decide who was “reliable” and who could or could not possess a firearm.

However, the Firearms Law also provided that if a firearm was seized, the owner could designate an eligible person to have the firearm, and otherwise the government must pay market value to the owner if it forfeits the firearm.
²⁵
In early 1935, the police commissioner of Stettin sent an inquiry to the Gestapo about whether these provisions were to be followed in light of the 1933 emergency decrees against subversives.
²⁶

This query prompted Reinhard Heydrich, second in command to Heinrich Himmler in the Gestapo and a key player in the Night of the Long Knives, to write a broader memorandum asserting Gestapo authority over matters involving the firearms laws. Reciting a maze of Gestapo orders, Heydrich wrote:

Matters regarding the substantive Firearms Law are in accordance with the Secret Police Law of November 30, 1933, Gs.S.413.
²⁷
Previously, the Political Group of the Prussian Interior Ministry prepared them according to standing orders. Now these duties are transferred to the Prime Minister in his role as Chief of the Secret State Police [Gestapo] and are in turn delegated to me as the deputy independent command in
accordance with the order of November 20, 1934, St.M.P.1317. Though this change of jurisdiction occurs at the central level, still lower-level organizations of the General and Interior Administrations' jurisdiction have not changed and, as the Police Commissioner of Stettin has pointed out, no regulations have yet been changed, either. The acquisition of new, unforseen duties by the State Police (Staatspolizei, or Stapo) authorities is thus out of the question. Furthermore, I refer to the directive of the Prussian Prime Minister, Chief of the Secret State Police, of July 6, 1934, St.M. I 70 22, especially section IV. It goes without saying that State Police authorities will participate in an extensive way when political concerns are touched by the issuance of firearm licences etc.
²⁸

In short, whereas firearm license matters would be administered at the state level, apparently by the Public Order Police, the Stapo and Gestapo would make the decisions if a political angle were found in the applicant or application.