Why did the Nazis bother distinguishing Jews on the basis of statehood and citizenship (if they saw a "world of races" and not of states)?

Question

All quotes below from Snyder (Black Earth, 2015, bold font added by me):

When the survival of the state was in question, Antonescu slowed the persecution of Jews. Hitler, who actually believed in a world of races rather than a world of states, did the opposite.

Further elaboration:

Any abstract idea of the state was also Jewish. “There is no such thing,” wrote Hitler, “as the state as an end in itself.” As he clarified, “the highest goal of human beings” was not “the preservation of any given state or government, but the preservation of their kind.” The frontiers of existing states would be washed away by the forces of nature in the course of racial struggle: “One must not be diverted from the borders of Eternal Right by the existence of political borders.”

If states were not impressive human achievements but fragile barriers to be overcome by nature, it followed that law was particular rather than general, an artifact of racial superiority rather than an avenue of equality. Hans Frank, Hitler’s personal lawyer and during the Second World War the governor-general of occupied Poland, maintained that the law was built “on the survival elements of our German people.” Legal traditions based on anything beyond race were “bloodless abstractions.” Law had no purpose beyond the codification of a Führer’s momentary intuitions about the good of his race. The German concept of a Rechtsstaat, a state that operated under the rule of law, was without substance. As Carl Schmitt explained, law served the race, and the state served the race, and so race was the only pertinent concept. The idea of a state held to external legal standards was a sham designed to suppress the strong.

States did not matter but races did; conventions did not matter but the personal decisions of the Führer did.

I am puzzled by the above claim in bold. If it be true, then why were Hitler and the Nazis

• so careful to strip Jews of statehood and citizenship before persecuting and exterminating them?
• so respectful of statehood and citizenship--especially of Jews who held Western passports?

Substantiation of above bullet points:

in spring 1933, his followers carried out pogroms and organized a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. The fifty thousand or so Polish Jews in Germany were not subject to these repressions; their Polish citizenship protected them, as it would for the next five years, from Nazi oppression.

The emphasis on citizenship also obfuscated a more subtle but central fact: that the Jews who were killed were first separated from their states.

In Denmark, about 99 percent of Jews who had Danish citizenship survived.

the logics of survival were everywhere the same: citizenship, bureaucracy, and foreign policy.

Citizenship in modern states means access to bureaucracy. Bureaucracy has the reputation of killing Jews; it would be closer to the truth to say that it was the removal of bureaucracy that killed Jews.

Romanian Jews in central Romania had never lost their citizenship; there was no cover of war, nor any blame for communism to allocate. Of the 280,000 or so Jews killed as a result of Romanian policy, some 15,000 had lived in prewar Romania on territories that had not changed hands during the war. This was, of course, a significant number, but only about six percent of the total. Just as 97 percent of the Jews killed by Germany had lived beyond prewar Germany, so 94 percent of the Jews killed by Romania lived on territories Romania had lost to the USSR or had gained from the USSR.

Jews who maintained their prewar citizenship usually lived, and those who did not usually died.

The Germans did not contemplate murdering Jews who held American and British passports, and, with few exceptions, did not do so.

Crucially, Nazi malice stopped at the passport: As much as Nazis might have imagined that states were artificial creations, they did not proceed with killing Jews until states were actually destroyed or had renounced their own Jews.

(Me: But why?)

The importance of documentation and citizenship was perfectly clear at the time. In the eastern Polish city of Lwów, ... a certain lapidary bit of wisdom made the rounds: “The passport is what holds body and soul together.”

If Hitler and the Nazis saw the world as a "world of races" rather than a "world of states", then why didn't they just persecute and exterminate all Jews they found without caring about statehood and citizenship? Why did they bother distinguishing Jews on the basis of statehood and citizenship?

Answer 1

I feel that Snyder is answering this and the only problem is in the interpretation.

If Hitler and the Nazis saw the world as a "world of races" rather than a "world of states", then why didn't they just persecute and exterminate all Jews they found without caring about statehood and citizenship?

It was because Hitler was largely wrong and the world was actually organized by national states to a great degree.

It wasn't the case that Nazis were "careful to strip Jews of statehood and citizenship before persecuting and exterminating them" but rather that destroying effective citizenship protections was a necessary prerequisite. It wasn't that they were "respectful of statehood and citizenship", but simply that national states were effective at protecting their citizens as long as they had the will and capacity to do so.

The basic facts in the Danish case make this quite clear. It isn't that the Nazis didn't try to exterminate Jews there; they absolutely tried but couldn't succeed. Why? The national bureaucracy and related institutions remained in tact (just enough) to effectively evacuate most Jewish citizens to safety in Sweden. The other cases mentioned are a little less clearly cut but consistent with the general argument that Snyder is making.

Answer 2

Several factors come into this. They are mutually contradictory, which was part of the Nazi leadership approach.

• The Nazis did not always have coherent policies. Ranking officials were in competition for the favor of the Führer by implementing his wishes and goals in their sphere, by their own style. Those who impressed Hitler were promoted, those who did not were demoted. Influence could depend on who had the most recent audience at the Berghof or in the Reichskanzlei.
• The Nazis did not respect the rule of law, but they tried to utilize the mechanisms of law and administration. Many German officials who were no fervent Nazi supporters were nevertheless willing to give their 'professional best' to implement Nazi orders once those had been published in writing.

Look at the minutes of the Wannsee Conference to see those factors interacting.

• The Nazis were very concerned with German civilian morale. Their propaganda pointed out that WWI was lost when the home front crumbled, not an accurate assessment but still heavy on their minds. This shows in such things as rationing (or not rationing), worker mobilization, roles for female citizens, and also some restraint when it came to German Jews. Typical Germans who would shrug at mass atrocities in the East would still want to make exceptions for their neighbours and relatives. They wanted to avoid events like the Rosenstrasse Protests at all costs.
• The Nazis had more immediate plans for ethnic 'cleansing' in the East. By contrast, they were more likely to try and co-opt states in the West and North. The fate of the Jews in those areas would probably have been the same on the long run (a counterfactual given how the war turned out), but the Nazis were prepared to wait while they tried a different style of extracting labor from the West.
• Some Nazis considered negotiating with the Western allies to focus on the war in the East. Western Jews were bargaining chips in this.

So while the Nazis were willing to compromise military efficiency in the murder of Jews, they were also willing to be opportunistic about how they went about it.

Answer 3

I'm for France and this question is heavy controversial here. Because in France, the governement of Vichy that had signed a truce with Germany and had kept in theory part of its sovereignety, had managed to spare French Jews from German laws, at least partially, while foreign Jews were not that much protected.

As an other answer said, despite what Hitler and the Nazis thought was fair, they had to count with the de facto sovereignty of a state : they can't just kill a foreign Jew without facing retaliation from the foreign country. Similarly, you could say that they thought fair that Soviet territories went to German farmers, so why didn't they just go in these territories? Because there was a state there. And the reason they started the war is precisely because at some point they wanted to perform what they thought fair, despite the reality of borders: namey, they had annexed Austrian and Czech lands, but they had to declare war to do the same with Polish lands.