There was a considerable outflow of Germans during the Third Reich and it began almost as soon as the Reichstag Fire decrees and then followed through in waves afterwards. Such waves were often connected to various benchmarks in the Nazi dictatorship, especially for German Jews.

The most identifiable and consistent cohort of emigres were German Jews. The Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden (an umbrella organization for German Jews) estimated that 37000 German Jews emigrated in 1933. But after this initial 1933 crest, Jewish emigration ebbed and flowed with 23000 in 1934, 21000 in 1935, 25000 in 1936, and 23000 in 1937. After 1938, the numbers jumped precipitously from the 1937 levels to around 36000 in 1938 and 77000 in 1939. These jumps were not only due to Kristallnacht, but also due to the Anschluß and the approach of war. Additionally, the Munich Pact and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia added to the total of Jews fleeing Germany, even if German Jewish organizations did not count them. Those who left might have had the alacrity to see the implications of Hitler's policies, but they also had the resources to leave. Otto Klemperer, for example, was one of the 1933 cohort and was already an accomplished conductor and had a network of social elites that allowed him to easily emigrate to the US. Other Jews were not so fortunate. Anne Frank's family had enough resources and inheritance to move to the Netherlands, but found emigration to Cuba or the US a much harder bureaucratic maze and the war closed off this option. The overall pattern of German Jewish emigration follows the trajectory of the Nazi seizure of power. The 1933 outflow came with the Hitler's ascent in January and government purging of Jews from state professions. Afterwards, there is a leveling off in the 1934 and 1935 levels, but emigration gets an uptick after the passing of the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935.

The writings of German Jews at the time back up these raw numbers in that many did recognize the nature of the state early on. Max Liebermann, the President of the Prussian Academy of Arts famously said when watching the NSDAP march through Brandenburg Gate,"I could not possibly eat as much as I would like to throw up." Otto Klemperer's cousin Victor, kept a diary during these years and often noted that the reality of the emerging dictatorship. Two days after of President Hindenburg's death, Klemperer wrote:

The offices of the President and the Chancellor are united in Hitler’s person, the army will give its oath to him, and at half past six the troops in Dresden swore their oath and everything is completely calm. Our butcher says indifferently: “Why vote first? It just costs a lot of money.” The people hardly notice this complete coup d’état, it all takes place in silence, drowned out by hymns to the dead Hindenburg. I would swear that millions upon millions have no idea what a monstrous thing has occurred.—Eva [Klemperer's wife] says, “And we belong to this band of slaves.”

It is also noticeable that despite perceiving correctly the import of Hitler's dictatorship, both Liebermann and Victor Klemperer stayed in Germany. Liebermann was quite old and died in 1935, but his wife remained in Berlin until the final round of deportations in 1943 when she committed suicide rather than end up at Theresienstadt. Klemperer survived the Third Reich by virtue of his Aryan wife and slipping through the bureaucratic cracks.

Leaving the Third Reich was easier said than done. The Frank family illustrates one of the key obstacles German Jews had in leaving either Germany or neighboring territories: bureaucracy. The 1920s was a period of more stringent clamping down on global emigration across the board for many countries. The US Immigration Act of 1924 established a convoluted quota scheme that was pretty much designed to eliminate emigration into the US from undesirable areas like Southern Europe. Australia had already established a white-only immigration policy in 1901, but tensions with Japan post-Versailles over the Japanese proposal for a racial-equality clause in the League of Nations made defense of "white Australia" a major political issue. While these racist immigration laws did not explicitly target Jews, they could be easily adjusted to exclude Jews as they provided a clear mechanism and legality for restricting access to the country to entire groups. The Depression only accentuated these exclusionary tendencies. The British response to Jewish emigration the the UK was typified by obfuscation and red tape as nativist concerns mingled with imperial geopolitics after the Arab Revolt in Palestine. So in this environment, resources not only meant monetary or other form of capital to finance the move, but the sundry human resources like personal, familial, or professional connections in the intended host country that could navigate this maze of regulations. This was part of the reason why the international settlement at Shanghai became one of the destination points for around 20000 Jews. The Nationalist Government of China had little control over emigration, especially after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, and the bureaucratic hoops were significantly less than areas with strong central governments.

German Jews were of course not the only ones to flee the Third Reich. There was a smaller, ca. 30000, number of political emigres that left the country. The most prominent and organized of these groups were members of the SPD and KPD parties. These left-wing parties were outlawed with the Enabling Act and their leaders were among the first targets in the wave of violence unleashed by the seizure of power. While some political leaders remained in German jails, most notably the KPD leader Ernst Thälmann, low- and mid-level members were released as both a warning to others and because the waves of violence and protective custody overwhelmed the existing prison infrastructure of Germany. According to figures in the 1993 anthology Deutsche im Ausland: Fremde in Deutschland: Migration in Geschichte und Gegenwart, there were around 30000 political emigres.

Of course, within this figure were considerable number of intellectuals, artists, and other creative types. Among gentile emigres, there were two broad types: those who saw emigration as more or less permanent, and those who saw it as a temporary affair. There was considerable overlap between these two, but especially for KPD and SPD exiles, the idea of emigration was not to make a new home, but to form the nucleus of a resistance. SPD networks in Britain, the Low Countries, and Paris often kept contacts within Germany and the internal SPD reports on German public opinion are a useful tool for historians as a window into Germany in this period. The KPD often used existing Comintern networks and channels to find a home abroad and many ended up in Moscow. Even some of the literati saw their exile as continuing the fight and saw their work in places like the US as showing the world the "good Germany" that Hitler was in the process of destroying.

These activities highlight one of the major points of departure between the postwar experience of Jewish and gentile German emigres. Gentiles often saw emigration as a temporary interlude in which they would return to a new Germany after Hitler had fallen. Reemigres became a facet of postwar life as many flooded back into Germany after the war. German Jewish emigration was much more permanent in nature. Part of this was material, as the Nazis fleeced German Jews of most of their belongings as part of an emigration tax. It was difficult for German Jews postwar to get back stolen property because such transfers often had a paper-thin veneer of legality to them and had to confront the growing disinterest of the Allied occupation governments towards Jewish restitution. But the Holocaust and mass murder of Jews represented a Rubicon for many Jewish emigres that inhibited a return to Germany or Germanness. Einstein was one example of this process and made it quite clear that it was the Holocaust that pushed him to a caesura with Germany. When the German peace group Weltstaatliga invited him to join in 1948, Einstein curtly responded:

I acknowledge receipt of your letter of January 5 and wish your efforts the greatest success. After the Germans bestially murdered more than half of my Jewish brethren, it is impossible for me to participate in any German public endeavor. Therefore, I cannot accept your offer to become an honorary member of your league.

Although some German Jews did return to Germany such as the jurist Fritz Bauer, emigration for German Jews tended to be more permanent than it was for gentiles.

Sources

Caestecker, Frank, and Bob Moore. Refugees from Nazi Germany and the Liberal European States. New York: Berghahn Books, 2010.

Palmier, Jean-Michel. Weimar in Exile: The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America. London [u.a.: Verso, 2006.