Page 194 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

The American Diplomats 181

Nuremberg laws in late september 1935, which, among other things, de-
prived Jews of civic and political rights and formally defined the category of
“non-aryan,” dodd predicted that the “last word” on anti-Jewish measures
had not yet been said. 93
Virtually all of the numerous reports on the Jewish question contained
interesting and little-known details, but there was one that stood out for
its intellectual depth and sweep. it was a dispatch written in august 1935 by
samuel W. Honaker, the consul general in stuttgart. in the Foreign ser-
vice for over twenty years, Honaker was an experienced diplomat, but he
also had a scholarly bent. His report, entitled “the Jewish Problem in the
stuttgart Consular district: a Political survey of the social, economic, and
General Cultural situation,” ran to twenty-four pages and focused on the
plight of the Jews in the city of stuttgart and in the states of Württemberg
and Baden, both of which formed the consular district served by the ameri-
can consulate in stuttgart. But it also paid considerable attention to the his-
tory and sociology of the Jewish communities in those localities. Honaker
intended to counteract the “recent propaganda concerning the menace pre-
sented by Jews in criminal matters,” and he therefore included a “supple-
ment” listing forty-eight different types of crime reported in Germany in
1913 that demonstrated that the charge was baseless. For instance, 35 people
were convicted of high treason and only 1 of them was a Jew; 4,987 had
committed offenses against conscription laws and only 50 of them were
Jews; 801 were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and 3 of them were
Jews. all told, 414,301 crimes were committed that year, and of these only
2,833, roughly 0.5 percent, were ascribed to Jews.
these statistics supported the larger point that Honaker was making,
that the Jews made up a respected group of communities with their own
religious and welfare institutions, and that, on the whole, relations between
Jews and Gentiles in Württemberg and Baden had been reasonably friendly.
the communities were small, 10,823 people out of a total of 2,713,150 in
Württemberg and 20,619 out of 2,429,977 in Baden, and before 1933 they
had not generally been looked upon as in any way a threat. the Jews made
their living in many different economic fields, but were notably success-
ful in the professions and fine arts. in Baden, they virtually monopolized
medicine and the law and played a prominent role in banking. But because
of their small number, they occupied very few positions in “public life.”
Honaker found that since the advent of National socialism, relations
between the religious groups had changed, but not as much as might have
been expected under the stressful circumstances. Catholics and Jews had