Were there Jewish fascists in Weimar Germany? What happened to them when Hitler came to power?

by rastadreadlion
Jan_van_Bergen

Yes, there were.

One of the most famous was Emil Maurice, an early Party and SS member who was a fellow prisoner of Hitler's during the latter's imprisonment in Landsberg. He was at different times a body guard and chauffeur for Hitler. He eventually collided with Himmler, especially after Himmler instituted the racial purity rules for SS members. Himmler wanted to expel him from the SS, but Hitler personally intervened and appointed Maurice an Ehrenarier or "Honorary Aryan". During the war he served in the Luftwaffe. He survived the war and ended up dying in the 70s.

There were lots of others, probably more than most would expect. Although it's usually incorrectly attributed to Hermann Goering, the phrase "Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich" (I determine who is a Jew) accurately reflects the fact that Hitler, on many occasions, would declare that individuals who met the legal definition of being a Jew or a "Mischlinge* (mixed race), were "honorary Aryans".

Source: "Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich": "Ehrenarier" im Nationalsozialismus

commiespaceinvader

In short: No.

Edit: I was mistaken. Please refer to /u/Jan_van_Bergen 's correction resp. his post here

In order to assess this question, it is imperative to understand that by the late 1920s and really throughout all the 1920s, the German fascist right was inherently anti-Semitic. Due to the heavy identification of Jews and Bolshevism on the fascist (and large swaths of the non-fascist) right in Germany that came with the "stab-in-the-back" myth and with the experience of the German revolution and especially the Munich Soviet Republic, it was not possible for Jews to join any of these movements and by virtue of that, they did not attract any Jews with anti-communist leanings. Basically, Jews were not interested in joining the fascist movements of Germany and these fascist movements had no interest in having Jews join.

A different thing would be if there were any Jews who sympathized with fascist Italy in the 1920s and the answer to that must unfortunately remain: possibly. It is possible that there were Jewish Germans with anti-communist and strong nationalist leanings that sympathized with a Mussolini version of fascism and rejected democracy. Similarly, there were a couple of Jews who had served in the Freikorps which while not being conclusive proof suggests a certain sympathy for ultra-nationalist and authoritarian political ideologies.

However, in the end, that would not have mattered to the Nazis. Even if you'd have supported their ideas politically, being a Jew would have meant discrimination and persecution. A good example for this are Jewish German WWI veterans who had fought for Germany and were not hit with the full measure of discrimination immediately but were still deported and killed in large swaths in the end.

An example for a Jewish fascist being killed by the Nazis is Ettore Ovazza. Ovazza came from a wealthy Jewish banking family in Turin and did support the Italian fascists and Mussolini with money and political connections He was a committed fascist from the start and while he was uncomfortable with some of the anti-Jewish measures that Italy enacted in the 30s and 40s, he stayed such a committed fascist that he decided to stay in Italy after the Germans marched in in the strong believe that because he was a good fascist, nothing would happen to him. He died in 1943 hunted down by the Waffen-SS near the Swiss border.

Sources:

  • Lutz Klinkhammer: Stragi naziste in Italia. La guerra contro i civili (1943–1944). Donzelli, Rom 1997.

  • Pulzer, Peter G.J. The rise of political anti-Semitism in Germany & Austria (2nd Harvard University Press, 1988).

  • Pulzer, Peter. Jews and the German State: The Political History of a Minority, 1848-1933 (Oxford, 1992).