1939 German census
The 1939 German census was a national census carried out in the German Reich. Originally planned for 1938, it was postponed to 17 May 1939 because of the annexation of Austria. The Security Service (SD) and the Secret State Police hoped to obtain data for a Jewish register that had been planned since 1935.
Previous censuses
See also: Census in GermanyThe first census during the Weimar Republic took place on 8 October 1919 and did not include a question on religious affiliation. In the same year, Article 136 of the Weimar Constitution created a constitutional basis for such questions. On 16 June 1925, a combined population, occupational and business census was conducted. The next such count was planned for 1930 but was repeatedly postponed because of the Great Depression and the German banking crisis of 1931. It ultimately took place on 16 June 1933, four and a half months after the Nazi seizure of power.
The 1933 population, occupational and business census also asked about religious affiliation; at the insistence of Achim Gercke, the place of birth was also recorded "for the purpose of investigating population-biological questions". For tabulation, Dehomag used 60-column punch cards, noting that it was still unclear whether additional household-list information might later be transferred to punch cards for reasons of state policy. Evaluation of the full dataset was completed only in 1936.
Preparation
As early as spring 1936, the Statistical Office of the Reich promoted another combined population, occupational and business census in 1938, arguing that earlier results had been overtaken by economic restructuring and that new data were required for the war economy and military strength. The office referred only briefly to the so-called "Jewish question", asking whether "the registration of all Jews and persons of mixed Jewish ancestry, including those not belonging to the Mosaic religion, is still necessary".On 12 July 1937, in the presence of Adolf Eichmann, the SD and Gestapo discussed cooperation between party and state agencies in compiling a comprehensive Jewish register. They demanded additional "supplementary cards" for the planned census, on which the religious affiliation of all four grandparents would be stated so that "racial status" could be determined. Prison penalties were to be threatened for false information. In this way, all those defined as "full Jews", "Jews by legal validity" and persons of mixed Jewish ancestry under the Reich Citizenship Law could be recorded. To avoid duplicating work, completion of the comprehensive Jewish register was to be postponed until the census.
After the annexation of Austria, the census was postponed to 1939. Evaluation of the collected data continued until March 1941.
Contested interpretations
Scholars dispute whether, and when, the statistical secrecy practiced before 1933 was breached under Nazi Germany, and whether the statistical administration became implicated in the persecution of Jews. The supplementary card containing personal data on "blood ancestry" had to be submitted in a sealed envelope that, according to its inscription, could be opened only by the statistical office.Kurt Horstmann, then a department head at the Federal Statistical Office, considered it unlikely that these details could have reached the Gestapo before the end of 1941; he argued that the SD could more easily have obtained comparable data elsewhere via residents' registration files, civil registry records, wage-tax files and similar sources.
By contrast, Götz Aly argued that information on the religious affiliation of the four grandparents, collected under threat of punishment and under the "supposed protection" of statistical secrecy, was immediately transferred by German officials into the "ancestry" column of police population registers. Saul Friedländer described local police as ensuring that the census cards of Jews and persons of mixed ancestry were marked with the letter "J", with copies of local census lists sent to the SD and forwarded internally.
In her dissertation, Jutta Wietog rejected this account and suggested it may have been confused with the Volkskartei established shortly afterward. According to Wietog, evaluation of the supplementary cards continued until March 1941; before then, the Statistical Office provided only case-by-case information. From April 1941 the supplementary cards were sent to local registration authorities, and from late 1941 they were forwarded to the Reich Genealogical Office. Wietog therefore considered it unlikely that the census data were used on a large scale for deportation transport lists, though the possibility of misuse via cross-checking with residents' registers is not regarded as conclusively clarified in the literature.
For Austria, Exner and Schimany argued it is highly probable that census data were not misused for transport lists, since in autumn 1939 the Israelite Religious Community in Vienna was compelled—apparently under Eichmann's influence—to register Jews with addresses, dates of birth and names, and an additional "special count" of so-called non-believing Jews was also carried out.
A publication of the Bavarian statistical authority left open whether, and to what extent, supplementary-card data were misused from April 1941 onward to supplement existing Jewish registries, while also describing the 1933 and 1939 censuses as emblematic examples of the abuse of official statistics by a totalitarian regime.
Historian Edwin Black argued in IBM and the Holocaust that the census was a major data source for identifying, in particular, highly assimilated persons of mixed Jewish ancestry under the Nuremberg Laws, and emphasized the role of IBM tabulating machines and its German subsidiary Dehomag in accelerating data processing.
Results
All figures refer to the territorial status of 16 May 1939, but exclude the Memel Territory.Population totals
Detailed population totals :Note: The original German-source table continues with a full state/province breakdown. It can be carried over 1:1 into an English draft if desired; the formatting is already compatible with enwiki tables.
Administrative units
There were five levels: "state", "province", "government region", "district/county" and "municipality". Names for intermediate levels were not uniform; the table assigns them by level regardless of terminology.| Level | Name | Number |
| 1 | States | 15 |
| 2 | provinces | 10 |
| 3 | Government regions | 53 |
| 3 | Berlin and Hamburg | 2 |
| 4 | Districts | 670 |
| 4 | Rural districts | 223 |
| 4 | Districts + rural districts | 893 |
| 4/5 | Urban districts | 225 |
| 4 | All districts | 1,128 |
| 5 | Small towns | 410 |
| 4/5 | Cities of all sizes | 637 |
Data on Jews
The census recorded persons classified as "Jewish" under the First Supplementary Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law.| Classification | German Reich |
| Total population | 69,316,526 |
| "Full Jews" | 233,846 |
| of whom "religious Jews" | 213,930 |
| "Jews by legal validity" | c. 6,000 or 8,500 |
| "Mischlinge of the first degree" | 52,005 |
| "Mischlinge of the second degree" | 32,669 |