Clashing Gears: Jewish Cattle Traders, Farmers, and Nazis in Conflict, 1926–35

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This article seeks to explore how the Nazi policy of excluding Jews from the German economy was challenged in the German countryside by small towns, farmers and Jewish traders. This phenomenon becomes very obvious when we study the cattle dealing business, a predominantly Jewish domain. The essay argues that the antisemitic Nazi policies were threatened in some rural areas by the existing strong business ties between farmers and their Jewish cattle traders. Further, it demonstrates how small towns promoted their cattle markets and how Nazi agitators endangered them with violent attacks against Jewish cattle traders from the late 1920s on.