"Give us our husbands back!"

Gerry wants to discuss theorectical aspects of Pacifism. In his imagination. all things are possible. However, a Marxist must study reality. I recently found an article in "The Big Issue" (Issue #230 (06.06.05)) about a movie (Rosenstrasse) about a peaceful protest that got the Nazis to change their mind (Defiant Housewives by Rochelle Siemienowicz, p.32, ibid.).

In Resisting the Holocaust, Ruby Rohrlich (Ed), Berg, New York:2000, Nathan Stoltzfus writes in Protest and Silence: Resistance Histories in Post-War Germany: the Missing Case of Intermarried Germans (pp.152-153):

During the following fifteen months, as intermarried couples for the most part remained together even under the new terrors, the regime repeated its decision to defer intermarried Jews from the Final Solution "temporarily." The battle of wills between intermarried Germans and the Gestapo over the fate of intermarried Jews came to a dramatic climax on February 27, 1943, as Joseph Goebbels, the Party Gauleiter of Berlin, unleashed a massive surprise action intended to make Berlin "free of Jews." The Gestapo's code name for this massive surprise arrest, often known as the "Factory Action," was the "Final Roundup of the Jews," and for thousands, this was the beginning of the end. A battalion of SS men in uniforms with machine guns, along with local Gestapo agents and Berlin street policemen, fanned out across Berlin to capture the city's remaining Jews. Every truck in the city–some 300 in all–was requisitioned for the hunt. Goebbels, the Reich Minister charged with preventing public displays of dissent, hoped that the protests of intermarried Germans would be silenced by the "brute force" displayed in this arrest action.

As news of the massive arrest pulsed through the city German family members of arrested Jews began gathering on Rosenstrasse in front of the Jewish Community Center where intermarried Jews were imprisoned separately, in preparation for deportation. Gathering by the hundreds these "Aryans," who were overwhelmingly women, began to call out together "Give us our husbands back." Again and again, the police scattered the women with threats to shoot them down in the streets, but each time they advanced again, resumed their solidarity and called out together. Day by day the protest grew; as many as 600 or more came together at once, and as many as 6,000 had joined in by the protest's end. Normally people were afraid to show dissent, but on the street they knew they were among friends. "At first it was as if I was paralyzed," recalled Johanna Löwenstein de Witt. "It was a feeling of solidarity with one another that drove us on and gave us courage." Another protester recalled that she had begun her protest as an act of desperation but that as the protest continued, and as the Gestapo was unable to dispel it, she began to view the protest as a means of gaining the release of their husbands.

On March 6, following a week of noisy disturbances on Rosenstrasse, Goebbels relented, and ordered the release of all intermarried Jews and their children. Hitler gave his approval. For Propaganda Minister Goebbels success, based on mass conformity, lay in making it appear as though dissent did not exist, especially in Berlin. Releasing the intermarried Jews was the best way to dispel the open protest, visible not just to Germans but to foreign diplomats, journalists and spies in the German capital. To him the crowd of women calling out for Jewish family members was a "disagreeable scene."

Rosenstrasse is the only incident of mass German protest against the deportation of German Jews, and as a result of it at least 1,700 to 2,000 Jews survived. German "Aryans" married to Jews succeeded in rescuing thousands of Jews because of their own actions and identity, and not just due to circumstances. First, by the time of their desperate street protest, their non-compliance had already divided the Nazi leadership on how to handle intermarried Jews. Also, they had hard-earned reputations as persons willing to put their lives on the line; thus, unlike other Germans, they were guaranteed to cause the kind of social unrest the regime feared, especially following its first wartime debacle at Stalingrad just prior to the protest. Finally, they did not overplay their cards, demanding collectively just the release of their family members, and doing so in a daring, awkward street protest, rather than conspiratorially (and hopelessly) attempting to overthrow the regime as a whole with arms that would make them look to most Germans like criminals, in an area the regime was in any case greatly superior. So regardless of whether the success of intermarried German opposition in rescuing Jews is dated to Rosenstrasse or before, their non-compliance and protest produced a conflict between Nazi ideology and perceived policy options, influencing Hitler and the Gestapo to hesitate and repeatedly decide to "defer temporarily" deporting intermarried Jews–until the war ended.

Emphasis Mine

In summary,

• The numbers were relatively small (600) at any one time
• The protest lasted a short time (a week)
• The protestors were seen as being capable of causing social unrest
• The reputation of the Nazi regime had suffered because of a military disaster (Stalingrad)
• The protestors' aims were simple and straightforward: Give us our husbands back
• The protestors did not expand their demands to overthrow the Nazi regime
• The Nazi leadership was divided over this issue

In other words, this protest was a trial of strength between the protestors and the Nazi leadership. It was not a quiet protest but it would appear to have been peaceful (this is not a contradiction). The protest was spontaneous without any leadership. The publicity surrounding it appears to be minimal (even after 60 years!). And most importantly, the protest achieved its aims without any lives being lost.

Even against the most brutal of regimes, peaceful protests by ordinary people can achieve results. But this was not achieved in a political vacuum. There was a crisis of confidence within the regime after the Stalingrad debacle. The protest was staged in the political centre of the regime making the impact more visible. And the protest did not seek to overthrow the regime. This last point, I believe, is important for planning peaceful protests.

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