Drucker sets the stage: “Frankfurt had a science faculty distinguished both by its scholarship and by its liberal convictions; and outstanding among the Frankfurt scientists was a biochemist–physiologist of Nobel-Prize calibre and impeccable liberal credentials.”
The Nazi commissar wasted no time taking charge of the meeting. Drucker remembers the commissar telling the faculty, “Jews would be forbidden to enter university premises and would be dismissed without salary on March 15.”
“Despite the Nazis’ loud anti-Semitism,” the faculty didn’t see that coming.
Vulgarity and threats followed as the commissar “pointed his finger at one department chairman after another and said, ‘You either do what I tell you or we’ll put you into a concentration camp.’”
Silence filled the room; everyone waited for the distinguished scientist and “great liberal” to speak. The liberal rose and said: “Very interesting, Mr Commissar, and in some respects very illuminating: but one point I didn’t get too clearly. Will there be more money for research in physiology?”
The faculty were easily bought with “the commissar assuring the scholars that indeed there would be plenty of money for ‘racially pure science.’” The faculty did not push back. (Anyone who’s spent time in academia shouldn’t be surprised.)
A few men of courage walked “out with their Jewish colleagues, but most kept a safe distance from these men who only a few hours earlier had been their close friends.”
In a state of shock, Drucker resolved to depart Germany within 48 hours, which he did.
Shortly after Drucker left Nazi Germany, Gellately reported, “The distinguished physicist Max Planck was asked whether he would like to get involved in a meeting to discuss the treatment of Jewish professors.” Planck answered “meekly that if thirty professors did that, there would be [in Planck’s words] ‘150 people ready to declare their solidarity with Hitler tomorrow, because they want to have those jobs.’” (Planck was not a Jew.)
Gellately concluded, “In their silence the establishment professoriate might be viewed as coming close to complicity.”
The long-term ruin of their lives was the price German professors paid for short-term benefits.
Hayek instructs, “Civilization largely rests on the fact that the individuals have learnt to restrain their desires for particular objects and to submit to generally recognized rules of just conduct.”
It was not just academics who lined up to fill jobs held by Jews. Gellately reported that “medical doctors rushed to join the Nazi Party” as they “coveted the positions of Jewish physicians.”
In short, before murdering Jews, Nazi Germany ran a proto-DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) program for “Aryans.”
“Not one social group, not one religious community, not one scholarly institution or professional association in Germany and throughout Europe declared its solidarity with the Jews. ... Many power groups were directly involved in the expropriation of the Jews and eager, be it out of greed, for their wholesale disappearance.”
Sadly, Friedländer concluded,
“Nazi and related anti-Jewish policies could unfold to their most extreme levels without the interference of any major countervailing interests.”
Government coercion is required for anti-Semitism to reach its most damaging consequences.
Childers tells the story of an April 1, 1933, government-supported boycott of Jewish businesses:
“Storm Troopers stationed themselves in front of Jewish shops, department stores, and professional offices, menacing anyone who wanted to go inside. They carried anti-Semitic placards and scrawled slogans on Jewish shop windows.”
Among the slogans was “Germans, defend yourselves. Don’t buy from Jews.”
The Nazis, however, were not pleased with the public response to the boycott. Childers reported, “Many customers ignored the boycott, brushing past the SA pickets to shop at Jewish businesses and department stores.” Worse for the Nazis, “some shoppers had even tried to enter a Jewish business by force,” and other “customers had been feverishly stocking up on merchandise from Jewish shops for days prior to the boycott.”
The next day, the boycott was canceled. The Nazis waited to implement more extreme actions.
Childers also reported that in 1933, Germans “still visited their Jewish doctors and lawyers.” Not long after, new edicts resulted in Jewish doctors’ being allowed to treat only other Jews, a situation that led Jewish doctors to flee Germany or eventually be murdered in concentration camps.
At first, the bonds of commerce proved stronger than Nazi hatred. Yet the Nazis worked tirelessly to eliminate commercial connections—the bonds on which our lives depend.
Hume called such an order an “inestimable blessing” that must be maintained by “the practice of justice and humanity, by which alone the social confederacy can be maintained, and every man reap the fruits of mutual protection and assistance.”
Our choice is to support politicians who promise the impossible freedom from scarcity or those who promise freedom from coercion, which is possible. Freedom from coercion comes with all the choices and responsibilities we bear under a liberal form of government.
