How did Jewish population numbers change in Nazi Germany and annexed territories from 1933 to 1939?

1. 1933: A small but established community at the moment of Nazi takeover

When Hitler assumed power in January 1933, roughly half a million Jews lived in Germany—estimates range around 523,000 to 525,000 in early 1933—amounting to less than one percent of the total population and concentrated in cities such as Berlin ^{[1] [4] [5]}. Contemporary censuses in June 1933 recorded figures just under that, for example about 505,000 including the Saar or 499,682 in another count, reflecting immediate post‑takeover flux and the first emigration responses to Nazi policies ^{[1] [6]}.

2. 1933–1938: Emigration accelerates as legal and social exclusion bite

The initial years of Nazi rule produced substantial outbound movement: official dismissals from public service, economic boycotts, and legal disabilities spurred many to leave, with an estimated 37,000–38,000 emigrating in 1933 alone and tens of thousands more in subsequent years ^{[2] [7]}. The regime at first encouraged emigration as policy, even negotiating mechanisms such as the Haavara arrangements with Palestine, but then increasingly extracted assets from émigrés and restricted transfer of funds, making flight harder even as it continued ^{[8] [2]}.

3. Kristallnacht and 1938–1939: A turning point that increased departures and sharpened statistics

The November 1938 pogrom known as Kristallnacht marked a dramatic escalation of state‑sponsored violence that pushed more Jews to seek exit despite growing international barriers; targeted expulsions, arrests, and economic dispossession after 1938 raised the urgency of emigration for many ^{[8] [4]}. Austria, annexed in March 1938, saw especially rapid decline: Austria’s Jewish community—estimated around 192,000 in 1937—lost more than half its members to emigration by May 1939 under active Nazi programs to force Jews out, leaving roughly 57,000 in annexed Austria by the end of 1939 according to major Holocaust reference works ^{[6] [5] [2]}.

4. By September–December 1939: How many remained? competing tallies and the weight of emigration

By the outbreak of war scholars and archival summaries converge on a large reduction: sources cite that over half of German Jews had emigrated by September 1939 and put remaining German Jewish counts in the low hundreds of thousands—U.S. sources give about 202,000 Jews remaining in Germany at the end of 1939 with a further roughly 57,000 in annexed Austria, while other contemporary compilations estimate around 215,000 Jews in Germany by September 1939 after “something over 200,000” had emigrated ^{[3] [2] [6]}. Historians also note broader demographic trends—low birthrates and prior long‑term decline in German Jewry—that the Nazis accelerated through persecution and forced displacement, which helps explain why some prewar estimators projected steep declines even before mass murder began ^[9].

5. Interpreting the numbers: emigration, coercion, and source caveats

These numerical shifts reflect policy choice as much as population dynamics: Nazi authorities alternated between encouraging and constraining emigration, taxing émigrés and seizing assets while making legal exit the regime’s preferred early solution to the so‑called “Jewish question,” which produced large outward flows but left many—disproportionately the elderly and those without visas—stranded by 1939 ^{[2] [8]}. Exact tallies vary between contemporary censuses, later archival reconstructions, and scholarly summaries; the principal stories are consistent across sources cited here: an initial community of roughly a half‑million in 1933, large emigration during 1933–39 that removed well over half of that population, and by the war’s outbreak only on the order of 200,000 Jews in Germany plus tens of thousands in annexed territories such as Austria ^{[1] [2] [6] [3]}.