Hitler's Beneficiaries by Götz Aly

Author:Götz Aly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2005-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Subsidies to and from Germany’s Allies

Slovakian Equity

The Reich also took in significant revenue from its allies, usually in the form of contributions to help underwrite Germany’s military campaign in World War II. The countries in question raised that money, in turn, by dispossessing their Jewish populations. Yet often, German financial demands put the economies of allied countries under such strain that the Reich was forced to intervene with subsidies of its own—paid for with the proceeds from the dispossession of German Jews and Jews in occupied countries. In terms of financial exploitation, however, it ultimately made little difference whether a country was occupied by or allied with Nazi Germany. Where defeated enemies were compelled to pay occupation costs, Germany’s allies were forced to make so-called contributions to the German war effort.

A case in point was Slovakia. Slovakia owed its existence as an independent country of 2.65 million inhabitants to Hitler’s Germany, which between 1938 and 1939 divided Czechoslovakia into two states. The ideology of the Slovakian People’s Party, which dominated the new nation, was a mixture of anti-Semitic and class-warfare propaganda. Alexander Mach, the country’s interior minister, who managed to maintain contact with communist functionaries, exemplified this ideology. Shortly after the nation was formed, he declared: “Everywhere else, Jews who possess gold, gemstones, and riches have been swept out, and we will do the same. Slovakia’s strength is labor. People here who don’t work don’t eat. Wealth that has been accumulated by theft will be taken away! That’s the practical solution to the Jewish question.”1 The newspaper Slovenska Politika echoed these sentiments in July 1940: “The issue here is, above all, the Jewish question. Without a radical solution to this question, we cannot improve basic social conditions.”2

A Slovakian government ordinance defined who was to be considered a Jew. In general the law barred those who matched the legal description from public employment and partially or completely banned them from certain academic professions.3 In 1939, in an attempt to improve conditions for the rural poor, the Slovakian government issued a decree requiring Jews to register property used for agriculture or forestry. A few months later, a law was passed that nationalized those properties and stipulated how they were to be divided up and allocated in the interests of social “equity.” The legislation subjected 101,423 hectares (250,000 acres) owned by Jews to nationalization—enough land to provide 20,000 landless Slovaks with small farms. (At an average family size of six, that meant that 120,000 people—or almost 5 percent of the total population—stood to benefit.) On April 25, 1940, a law explicitly aimed at creating “a strong Slovakian middle class” ordered the Slovakization of Jewish-owned businesses.4

In the summer of 1940, following the passage of laws that had dispossessed Jewish farmers, merchants, and business owners, a plan was conceived to deport Slovakian Jews to Madagascar. The government in Bratislava was the only one among Germany’s allies to support the idea, which had originated in Berlin. Slovakia’s support of the proposal was largely due to

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