Why did the Association of German National Jews support Hitler? What happened to them during and after the war?

by Tatem1961
HiggetyFlough

The Verband Nationaldeutscher Juden was a relatively small right-wing ultranationalist league of German Jews, though they preferred the term "Germans of Jewish descent." The Verband was founded in 1921 by a Jewish WW1 officer, Max Naumann, and essentially advocated for the complete assimilation (and thus termination) of Jewish culture and ethnicity into the German identity. The members of the Verband saw themselves as Germans first and Jews second and espoused a very similar ideology as other right-wing groups in post-war Germany: supporting a "blood and soil" ideology, seeking a revival of Germany's honor and reputation, railing against Bolshevism and liberalism, and espousing a cultural chauvinism against Eastern Europeans and other non-Germans. The Verband especially resented Eastern-European Jews within Germany, whom they viewed as uncivilized and "half-Asian" due to their roots in the Middle East and preservation of Jewish culture.

With this extremist ideology in mind, it should be no surprise that the Verband and Naumann would have supported National Socialism, although not without recognizing the skepticism that many Jews would have for the explicitly antisemitic movement. Naumann and many other fascist Jews implored their peers to overlook Nazism's discrimination against them in favor of the other facets of the ideology, frequently lamenting that the National Socialist movement would have more support had it dropped antisemitism from its platform.

Once Hitler rose to power, Naumann and the Verband primarily focused on two goals: Rebutting Jewish opposition to Nazi Germany and advocating for the rights of Germans of Jewish descent. Naumann frequently claimed during the early days of Nazi Germany that Jews were not being discriminated against, while also applauding the attacks against Eastern-European and non-assimilated Jews. The Verband opposed Jewish-led boycotts of German products and any other actions that sought to weaken the National Socialist state. However, Naumann and his colleagues were also troubled by the Nazi's racial definitions of Judaism and increasing legal restrictions against racial Jews. In 1933, Naumann even rebutted Goering's claims that no violence was being enacted against Jews by the Nazis. By 1935 the Verband was even protesting German laws such as the ones that banned Jews from flying the German flag and refused their admittance into the Wehrmacht, which would have been especially offensive to an ultra-nationalist like Naumann.

By 1935 the Nazi regime's patience for Naumann and the Verband had run out. Naumann's criticism of Nazi racial laws, even if from a right-wing point of view, irritated the Nazi party and its press attacked the Verband's existence. Furthermore, the ultimate outcome of Naumann's assimilationist goals would have been a nightmare to Nazi racial ideology. Far from allowing for a "Jew-free" Germany, the total assimilation of German Jews would create a large portion of the population that were indistinguishable from the Aryan Race in all but blood, essentially infiltrating and tainting the German people. Thus, in 1935 Naumann was arrested by the Gestapo and the Verband was dissolved. He would be briefly interned before dying of cancer in 1939, though the fates of other members of the Verband would mimic those of any other German Jew in Germany post-1933. Many would have fled the country once they realized the potential dangers they would face under an increasingly oppressive Nazi regime, others would perish during the Holocaust, and a few may even have survived to the end of the war.

While I don't know the specific post-war activities of former members of the Verband, I can give the example of another pro-Nazi German Jew, Hans-Joachim Schoeps. Schoeps headed a much smaller pro-assimilationist Jewish fascist group known as the German Vanguard, however he fled to Sweden after Kristallnacht and avoided the worst persecutions of the Nazi regime, although his remaining family in Germany was not so lucky. After the war he returned to academia in West Germany, and continued to espouse far-right politics, frequently associating with other former Nazis in post-war national conservative organizations and political groups.