Gun Control in the Third Reich (19 page)

The Nazi Party itself wanted more than just a file memorandum when it came to an ambiguity regarding who must be “personally reliable” in the firearms industry—a code word for political reliability. A party official noted that “both the commercial and the technical manager of the operation need to be personally reliable,” that the Interior Ministry “specialist” (Dr. Hoche) “agreed to change the statement of reasons to read that all persons concerned need to be reliable,” and that the revision must “be made before the draft is submitted to the Führer and Reich Chancellor.”
²³

Dr. Hoche immediately changed the explanation of the draft to reflect this adjustment. “He said that the intention was not to issue a permit to manufacture firearms and ammunition if either the requestor or the person contemplated as commercial or technical manager of the operation was reliable, but that of course all three would have to be reliable.”
²⁴

The draft was now final, and Frick announced: “None of the Reich Ministers has filed an objection against the proposal submitted to the members of the Reich Government…by way of circulation. The Führer and the Reich Chancellor has approved it and the following is herewith adopted.”
²⁵
It was decreed and signed by Hitler and Frick pursuant to the Enabling Act passed in 1933, which stemmed from the provision of the Weimar Constitution allowing rule by decree. Indeed, the Reichstag, the legislative body, passed only seven
laws during the entire Third Reich (1933–45).
²⁶
The official publication date of the Weapons Law was March 13, 1938.
²⁷

The new Weapons Law was enacted only four days after the Anschluss of Austria, in which a triumphant Hitler returned to his homeland to occupy it. The repression was immediate. Victor Klemperer wrote in his diary: “Some time before the occupation of Austria there were careful investigations (books and periodicals) on behalf of the Gestapo as to who among the Austrian professors and writers had published anti-Fascist work. These people were immediately arrested.”
²⁸
Austrian police records on firearm owners would have been another obvious source for Gestapo investigation.

As adopted, the Hitler–Frick Weapons Law combined many elements of the 1928 law with National Socialist innovations. A license was required to manufacture, assemble, or repair firearms and ammunition and even to reload cartridges. “A license shall not be granted if the applicant, or the persons intended to become the commercial or technical managers of the operation of the trade, or any one of them, is a Jew.”
²⁹
Firms with licenses under the 1928 law had to comply with this provision within a year, or the license would be revoked.
³⁰

A license was also required to sell firearms as a trade. Again, Jews were excluded.
³¹
Trade in firearms was prohibited at annual fairs, shooting competitions, and other events.
³²
This would have included traditionally popular events such as shooting festivals and gun shows.

Acquisition of a handgun required a Waffenerwerbschein (license to obtain a weapon).
³³
That stipulation did not apply to transfer of a handgun to a shooting range licensed by the police for sole use at the range. Exempt from the law's provisions were “authorities of the Reich,” various government entities, and “departments and their subdivisions of the National Socialist German Workers' Party designated by the deputy of the Führer.”
³⁴

Carrying a firearm required a Waffenschein (license to carry a weapon). The issuing authority had complete discretion to limit the validity of the license to a specific occasion or locality.
³⁵
The decree further provided:

1. Licenses to obtain or to carry firearms shall only be issued to persons whose reliability is not in doubt, and only after proving a need for them.
   
2. Issuance shall especially be denied to:…
   
3. Gypsies, and to persons wandering around like gypsies;
   
4. Persons for whom police surveillance has been declared admissible, or upon whom the loss of civil rights has been imposed, for the duration of the police surveillance or the loss of civil rights;
   
5. Persons who have been convicted of treason or high treason, or against whom facts are under consideration that justify the assumption that they are acting in a manner inimical to the state….
   
6. Persons who have received final sentence to a punishment of deprivation of liberty for more than two weeks…for resistance to the authorities of the state.
   ³⁶
   

It is noteworthy that, on the face of the law, Jews were not named as automatically disqualified. Gypsies were the only ethnic group that did not qualify. It might be that the Nazi leadership did not feel confident of the support of enough Germans to disarm Jews at this time. Many Jewish men had fought in
the Great War and had retained their sidearms.
³⁷
This reluctance would change later that year.

For officially supplied firearms, a license to acquire or carry firearms was not required of members of the armed forces, the police, “members of the SS reserve groups, and the SS Totenkopfverbände [Skull and Crossbones units],”
³⁸
as well as the following: “lower echelon leaders of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, from local group leaders upwards; of the SA, the SS, and the National Socialist Motor Corps from Sturmführer upwards as well as the Hitlerjugend from Bannführer upwards, to whom the Deputy of the Führer or an office designated by him, granted the right to carry firearms.”
³⁹

Possession of any kind of weapon could be prohibited where “in individual cases a person who has acted in an inimical manner toward the state, or it is to be feared that he will endanger the public security.”
⁴⁰
Such cases could include any opponent of Nazism or simply any disfavored person. No compensation would be paid for the confiscation.

It was forbidden to manufacture or possess “firearms that are adapted for folding or telescoping, shortening, or rapid disassembly beyond the generally usual extent for hunting and sporting purposes.” Firearms with silencers or spotlights were prohibited. Also, .22-caliber rimfire cartridges with hollow-point bullets were outlawed.
⁴¹

The penalty for willfully or negligently violating the provisions of the law related to the carrying of a firearm was up to three years imprisonment and a
fine.
⁴²
A fine and indeterminate imprisonment was imposed on anyone who violated other provisions of the law or implementing regulations.
⁴³

The primary Hitler–Frick innovations to the 1928 Weimar law were the exclusion of Jews from firearms businesses and the extension of the exceptions to the requirements for licenses to obtain and to carry firearms to include various National Socialist entities, including party members and members of military and police organizations. Although the 1938 law no longer required an acquisition license for rifles and shotguns, but only for handguns, any person could be prohibited from possession of any firearm based on the broad discretion of authorities to determine that a person was “acting in a manner inimical to the state” or had been sentenced “for resistance to the authorities of the state,”
⁴⁴
or “it is to be feared that he will endanger the public security.”
⁴⁵
The Weimar law had provided for compensation for a confiscated firearm, whereas the Nazi law prohibited compensation. An innovation of the 1938 law was to ban .22-caliber rimfire cartridges with hollow-point bullets, which were used mostly for small-game hunting but could be lethal to humans.

The major features of the Weimar law were retained as particularly suitable for Nazism's goals: the requirement of licenses to make and sell firearms, including record keeping on transferees and police powers to inspect such records; the requirements of licenses to obtain and to carry weapons and of the retention by police of the identities of and information on such licensees; the provision that “licenses to obtain or to carry firearms shall be issued only to persons whose reliability is not in doubt, and only after proving a need for them”; the denial of licenses to “persons for whom police surveillance has been declared admissible” or who presumably “are acting in a manner inimical to the state”; the prohibition on possession of any weapon by a person “who has acted in an inimical manner toward the state, or it is to be feared that he will endanger the public security”; and the prohibition on firearms with certain features not generally used “for hunting and sporting purposes.”

Again following the Weimar law, the Hitler–Frick law directed the Reich minister of the interior to issue implementing regulations.
⁴⁶
Pursuant to that power, on March 19, 1938, Frick promulgated extensive regulations governing the manufacture, sale, acquisition, and carrying of firearms.
⁴⁷
The regulations began by entrusting the higher administrative authority in the hands of the presidents of the governments or highest officials in the various states, except that in Berlin the power was in the hands of the police chief.
⁴⁸

Extensive record keeping was required. A manufacturer—the definition of which included not only the original producer, but also a person who assembled firearms in his shop from parts made by others—was required to keep a book with each firearm identified and its disposition. A handgun seller was obliged to keep books on the acquisition and disposition of each handgun. Once a year, the book for the previous year was submitted to the police authorities for certification. All records were subject to police inspection on demand. The records were to be kept for ten years and on discontinuance of business were required to be turned over to the police.
⁴⁹

Licenses to obtain or carry firearms, the form of which was prescribed, were issued by the district police authority where the applicant lived. A firearm acquisition permit was valid for one year, and a license to carry a specific firearm was valid for three years.
⁵⁰
When a person obtained the handgun authorized by an acquisition permit, the transferor, whether a dealer or a private person, submitted to the police the permit showing the acquisition.
⁵¹
Muzzle-loading pistols and revolvers as well as blank and gas firearms were exempt.
⁵²
“Individual exceptions” were continued to be permitted to the 1933 ban on importation of handguns.
⁵³
Apparently because the law itself covered the subject in detail, the
regulations did not mention the prohibition on Jews being licensed as manufacturers or sellers or the numerous exceptions for government and National Socialist party members.

The
Völkische Beobachter
, Hitler's newspaper, had this to say about the revised Weapons Law the same month it was decreed:

The new law is the result of a review of the weapons laws under the aspect of easing the previous legal situation in the interest of the German weapons industry without creating a danger for the maintenance of public security.

In the future, the acquisition of weapons will in principle require a police permit only when the weapons are pistols or revolvers. No permit will be required for the acquisition of ammunition.

The restrictions on the use of stabbing and hitting weapons, restrictions that originated at the time of emergency decrees, have basically been revoked. Compared to the previous law, the statute also contains a series of other alleviations. From the remaining numerous new provisions, the basic prohibition to sell weapons and ammunition to adolescents below the age of 18 should be emphasized. Further, the issuing of permits for the production or commerce with weapons is linked to the possession of German citizenship and to the personal reliability and technical fitness. No permits may be issued to Jews.
⁵⁴

Although this description makes the new law sound as if it were deregulatory, the Nazis were masters of propaganda. The
Berliner Börsenzeitung
produced identical commentary but added the following rather ominous language that had been a premise of the discussion since 1933:

The prerequisite for any easing of the applicable weapons law had to be that the police authorities would remain able ruthlessly to prevent any unreliable persons from acquiring or possessing any weapons. The new law is meant to enforce the obvious principle that enemies of the people and the state and other elements endangering public security may not possess any weapons. It does so by authorizing the police to prohibit such persons from acquiring, possessing or carrying weapons of any
kind. Because it is possible in this way to prevent any weapons possession that the police considers undesirable, the authorities were justified to ease the previous restrictions.
⁵⁵

In short, the police determined who could and who could not possess firearms. Aryans who were good Nazis could acquire some firearms with relative ease. Any possession of firearms by a person considered “undesirable” by the police was prohibited. The Nazis thereby imposed on the German people a firearms “law”—a law in name only—based on totalitarianism and police-state principles.

The 1938 Weapons Law was the subject of two legal commentaries, one by Fritz Kunze and the other by Werner Hoche, both of whom had published commentaries on the 1928 Firearms Law.
⁵⁶
The top legal experts who explained the intricacies of the Weimar Republic's firearm prohibitionist laws continued to fulfill the same service to the Nazi dictatorship, with complete details on the amendments banning Jews from the firearms industry and the special exceptions for Nazi Party members.

Hoche was a legal technician whose expertise extended far beyond advising whoever was in power on how to limit firearms possession to the populace and then rendering detailed commentaries on the meaning of the resultant laws. He was a leading legal expert in the Interior Ministry of both the Weimar Republic and the Hitler regime. He edited a quarterly series on the Hitler regime's decrees, including the various anti-Semitic measures.
⁵⁷