After Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), Rudolf Hess issued an order, Ordinance No. 174/38, to all Gauleiters, the regional administers, saying, “On explicit orders from the highest level, no incendiary actions against Jewish businesses or similar are to be taken for any reason.” Hess further said, “Pillages and desecrations of places of cultural interest are unworthy of a German citizen.” In a speech in 1933, he said that it was unworthy of a National Socialist to harass those of a Jewish-Bolshevik persuasion. 586
People have readily accepted distortions and fabrications without evaluating the evidence. Many maintain that Hitler ordered Goebbels to initiate the widespread violence against the Jewish population. However, Goebbels lacked the authority to expedite such a program. On the morning of November 10, Goebbels, angry about the violent outbreaks, ordered those involved to immediately stop all aggression against the Jews. Hitler also ordered an immediate cessation of the violence. To set the record straight, German author Ingrid Weckert examined all of the available documents in order to ascertain what actually occurred and who might have instigated it. She submits that Kristallnacht may have been a part of the continuing warfare that influential Jewish organizations in New York, Paris and London declared soon after Hitler came to power. One must ask—who benefited? It was not Germany and it certainly was not Hitler or the NSDAP. 587
After that eventful night, the world’s media waged a lengthy anti-German campaign. The media would repeatedly refer to it as a night of violence and mass extermination. FDR broke off all diplomatic relations with Germany by recalling the ambassador. It destroyed Hitler’s opportunity to reach an agreement with France. Officials at Nuremberg introduced one document that they claim is evidence linking Goebbels to Kristallnacht. It is the statements of one of Himmler’s staff, Luitpold Schallermeier, who supposedly took dictation from Himmler. Yet, it was actually SS-Group Leader Wolff who dictated a memo in which he stated that Himmler surmised that Goebbels had initiated the actions against the Jews. Given the inconclusive origin of this document, one cannot with absolute certainty testify who was responsible for the Kristallnacht. 588
Dr. Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda in Germany was personal friends with Friedrich Christian, Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe, who in November 1938, was in Sweden attempting to acquire support for Germany. The events of November 9 undermined all of those efforts. Yet, some people claimed that Goebbels was behind the events of that night. When Christian returned to Germany, he spoke with officials within the propaganda ministry, as witnessed by the Norwegian Consul General in Berlin, Elef Ringnes, who wrote about these circumstances in a book in 1962. While there were pogroms in other European countries, none had occurred in the very civilized Germany since the middle ages. Revolutionaries in Russia used terrorism, organized pogroms, killing, plundering, and burning. 589
Goebbels was personal friends with Friedrich Christian, Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe, who was in Sweden attempting to acquire support for Germany. Kristallnacht undermined all of those efforts. 590 They did not need a brutal pogrom to demonstrate their justifiable position. The Jews blamed Goebbels for the unexpected violence. Prince Schaumburg arrived at Goebbels office to determine whether or not he had ordered such activities, apparently orchestrated throughout Germany. The Prince waited in the ante-room as Goebbels and Count Helldorf, the President of the Berlin Police were deeply engrossed in conversation about the situation. The Prince, who knew Goebbels very well, could ascertain that he was extremely angry about the night’s events. 591
Goebbels said, “The whole business is outrageous. That is not the way to solve the Jewish problem, not by any means… That only makes martyrs out of them… I am expected to hail us out of this idiocy, to iron everything out again with propaganda… We become unbelievable when we do things like that… They have cut the ground out from under me. They have made me a laughing stock.” Further, he said, “We could not possibly have done the opposing propaganda a greater service. Our people have killed a dozen Jews, but for this dozen we may have to pay some day with a million German soldiers.” Reportedly, crowds of angry people assaulted Jews in their homes, broke the windows of Jewish-owned shops, looted stores, destroyed property, severely beat some Jews while murdering others and burned synagogues. If the Germans were not the culprits behind the terrorist activities, then who perpetrated the events on Kristallnacht? What organization or agencies had that much influence and apparently the extensive network to pull off such a synchronized event? That night supposedly represented the beginning of the “final solution?” 592 No one except Weckert has undertaken any investigation of the event.
Following Kristallnacht, David Ben-Gurion decided that the Jews should instigate their own war, an “Aliyah war.” He expected that the American Jews would be alarmed over what had happened in Germany and would be willing to cooperate with him. He told his associates, “Millions of Jews are confronted now with physical extinction.” He felt that it was time for mass immigration to Palestine and believed that American Jews and the U.S. government should participate in the creation of a Jewish state. He arrived in America on January 2, 1939, hoping to obtain support and persuade Jewish leaders to call a “world Jewish conference,” to shame London into supporting the Jews, and “help shape Israeli foreign policy.” 593
Ben-Gurion was utterly disappointed in the lack of support from America’s Labor Zionists. Louis D. Brandeis conveyed his compassion for Aliyah but yet others, such as AJCm leader Cyrus Adler opposed Ben-Gurion’s plan. The AJC feared the possibility of anti-Semitism because it might appear that Jews were trying to engage America into foreign conflicts. B’nai B’rith and the Jewish Labor Committee also opposed the Aliyah war idea. Ben-Gurion persuaded the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) to endorse the idea of a world Jewish conference, but ZOA leader Rabbi Wise refused to engage in public criticism of British policies. Wise, who still supported Weizmann, did not attend Ben-Gurion’s speech in Washington nor did he meet with him while he was in America. Weizmann refused to confront British officials after Woodhead and Kristallnacht. Later, in London, Wise told Ben-Gurion that Americans should work with Britain even if it created a disadvantage for the movement. Ben-Gurion was furious and left the United States on January 21. While Kristallnacht failed to ignite American Jewish sympathy, the reports of the mass slaughter of European Jews in 1942-1943 would surely catch the attention of most of the American Jewish leaders. 594
Ben-Gurion exploited the deaths of hundreds of Jews for political objectives. On November 25, 1940, the Haganah sank the Patria, a French-built ocean liner, with 1,800 Jewish refugees from Europe aboard. The bombing killed 267 people and injured 172. The British would not allow the refugees to exit the ship and were deporting them to Mauritius. Moshe Sharett, in charge of the Jewish Agency in the temporary absence of Ben-Gurion authorized Haganah officer, Yitzhak Sadeh to plant a bomb to disable the ship so that it would not leave Haifa. Instead, the explosion sank the ship in less than sixteen minutes. On February 24, 1942, a Soviet submarine torpedoed and sank a Jewish refugee ship, with 786 passengers, including 101 children, from Romania, on its way to Palestine. All but one person perished in the coldest winter in generations.
At the Conference of Zionist Leaders and the World Jewish Congress in New York City, Rabbi Wise, ostensibly speaking for all of the Jewish people, declared war against Germany. Author Reb Moshe Shonfeld indicated that it was relatively easy for Wise, who was safe from the tribulations and collateral damage of warfare, to jeopardize European Jews on the “front lines.” The Zionists, anticipating further settlement in Palestine, were purportedly willing to sacrifice their potential future constituents. 595
Even before the war, Yitzchak Greenbaum, chair of the “rescue committee,” located in Eretz Yisroel, actually declined any opportunities to send money from the United Jewish Appeal to assuage the hunger and distress of the ghetto Jews in Europe. He said, “One goat in Eretz Yisroel is more important than an entire communit
y in the Diaspora.” The Zionist leaders not only would not assist their fellow Jews, they did everything they could to prevent other organizations from assisting those in such desperate need. In 1941 the Zeirei Agudas Israel with hundreds of yeshiva students, sent thousands of packages of food to needy Jewish families in Poland who responded with letters of deep gratitude. Then Rabbi Wise of the Committee to Boycott Germany, associated with the World Jewish Congress demanded that the group immediately stop sending assistance because it violated Britain’s boycott policies against Germany. 596
Jewish leaders organized a strike against the Zeirei Agudas Israel with demonstrators carrying signs which read, “Stop sending food to the lands of the Nazi enemy” or “Don’t break the boycott against Hitler.” The gentiles were amazed that the local Zionists appeared to be lending their support to Hitler in his warfare against the Jews. Zeirei Agudas Israel continued to send food but others, confused about the boycott, quit sending food. Wise had a more secular attitude and was willing to help the Allied war effort under any circumstances in order to acquire an independent state. Wise felt that the Zionists should not interfere even if it meant the lives of thousands of Jews. In 1943, the Jews had the chance to send food parcels via the International Red Cross working with the U.S. government. However, the Zionists even blocked this proposal despite that fact that it did not violate any allied regulations. 597 Given the Jew’s declaration of war against Germany, German Jews would be the last people to receive any available food.
Dr. Chaim Weizmann, apparently worried about other issues, was unconcerned about the Jews allegedly starving in Europe. On the other hand, maybe he knew that those stories were mere rumors. His American associates, like Rabbi Wise, were merely facilitating the prediction he uttered at the Zionist Congress in London in August 1937, “The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They were moral and economic dust in a cruel world… Only a branch shall survive… They have to accept it…” The Zionists argued that they were not responsible for helping their starving fellow Jews. He said, “Every nation has had its dead in the fight for its homeland, the sufferers under Hitler are our dead in our fight.” 598 Yet, one of the basic teachings of Jewish tradition is “All Israel is responsible for one another.” 599 Was Rabbi Wise unaware of this basic Jewish tenet?
Two groups of young Jews organized to battle the hundred thousand British soldiers in Palestine—the Irgun and the Stern Gang, which together amounted to fewer than three thousand men and women. Ben-Gurion and Weizmann, because they criticized Irgun and the Stern Gang, encouraged others to view them with shame. The Marxist Jews and the Zionist Jews assured the British that they had nothing to do with the Irgun and actually told British Intelligence where members of Irgun were hiding. Officials arrested them and seized their weapons. 600
Despite the Balfour Declaration, Britain limited Jewish immigration to Palestine, even when it appeared that the Jews were in mortal danger in Europe. In 1944, the Irgun and the Haganah joined forces to engage in anti-British attacks to change policy. The Haganah, between 1945 and 1948, began transporting Holocaust survivors to Palestine. However, British officials intercepted the majority of the sixty-four ships and interned the passengers in detention camps in Cyprus. The world’s Jewish-controlled media castigated the British which increased pressure on them to amend their immigration policies. In July 1947, British officials sent the ship the SS Exodus carrying 4,500 passengers back to France but the passengers refused to leave the ship. 601
This struggle between Britain and the Jews impacted British and American relations because of the general sympathy of the population of the United States as a result of the Holocaust stories. The Truman administration was concerned about its Jewish supporters. Consequently, in April 1946, an American-British commission endorsed the admission of 100,000 DPs to Palestine but the British rejected the idea. 602 Irgun, based on Jabotinsky’s philosophy, operated in Mandate Palestine from 1931 to 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. Irgun orchestrated the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on July 22, 1946, and the Deir Yassin massacre, with the Stern Gang’s help on April 9, 1948. In 1939, Jabotinsky wrote, “. . . the Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Israel. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs.” 603
In 1948, according to John F. Kennedy, many of Truman’s supporters abandoned him because he supported the Morgenthau Plan and other questionable issues. On his whistle-stop campaign train during the presidential race, an avid Zionist delivered a suitcase containing $2 million in cash which gave him the financial boost he needed to win. 604 Truman believed, as a result of the Holocaust, that the oppressed Jews deserved a homeland. The British relinquished the problem of a shared Arab-Jewish state to the UN on April 2, 1947 because of Jewish terrorism in Palestine. Truman instructed a reluctant State Department to endorse the UN’s partition plan of November 29, 1947. At midnight on May 14, 1948, Israel’s Provisional Government announced the new State of Israel. On that same day, like Roosevelt’s recognition of the Soviet government, Truman officially recognized the Zionist government in Palestine against the advice of many people. He did not tell leading State Department officials who became angry when they heard about it. On May 15, 1948, the Arab states responded by invading Israel which began the first Arab-Israeli war. 605
Menachem Begin, former Irgun commander, spoke to a crowd of people during a special dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel where he attacked British policies and the Bernadotte Plan regarding Palestine and praised the efforts of Ben-Gurion, Israel’s Premier. Ben Hecht, another speaker, praised Irgun and its underground force. Peter Bergson, Irgun’s agent in America, was with Hecht. Arthur Szyk also praised the efforts of Ben-Gurion for his efforts. 606
Dangling the Czechoslovakian Carrot
After Hitler came to power, he looked to Britain as an ally. This was inconceivable as Germany’s new non-usury economic system and Britain’s debt-based, high interest economic structure were diametrically opposed to each other. While Germany was eliminating and lowering taxes, Britain, enslaved by the Jewish bankers, was imposing new taxes and raising old ones to fund their warfare, a method of enforcing her foreign policy. They had also enslaved other industrial countries but noncompliant Germany eliminated their high-interest credit. Germany, a model for other countries, immediately paid their obligations and did not purchase items it could not pay for with goods and services. They based their currency on the nation’s productivity. It was either Germany’s total destruction, along with Hitler, or other nations would adopt the sound economic ideas and release themselves and their citizens from the bondage of perpetual usury and debt.
Hitler, striving to befriend Britain, maintained that he would concentrate on Europe and not attempt to develop any competitive foreign colonies. Germany would limit its navy to one/third the size of Britain’s navy. Hitler felt that Britain could be an international beacon of stability. He wanted to reclaim the lost ethnic Germans that the Versailles Treaty relegated to newly-created, hostile countries. Other dastardly, divisive treaties, forced Germany, the most densely populated European nation, to relinquish resource-rich territory. Hitler was concerned about having sufficient living space to accommodate German citizens. They had to forfeit overseas colonies, which, before the war, solved part of their food production dilemma. Britain’s bankers disapproved of Germany’s development of foreign resources. 607
The newly-created Czechoslovakia formed a large swath of land in the middle of Germany. Karel Kramář, an anti-Bolshevik, nationalist closely connected to the political elite in Prague and Vienna, was Czechoslovakia’s first Prime Minister under President Thomas Masaryk. Edvard Beneš, Czechoslovakia’s Foreign Minister (1920-1935), craftily created a network of alliances that would later determine the republic’s international stance. Beneš, who had represented his nation in the negotiations for the Versa
illes Treaty, was a member of the League of Nations Council. He viewed the League as a guarantor of the postwar status quo and as the biggest defender of the newly created states, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia, resulting from the disbanding of Austria-Hungary. The League was the governing entity designed to impose treaty stipulations. Beneš negotiated the Little Entente, on August 14, 1920, the initial alliance to prevent the resurgence of Hungarian power and the restoration of the Habsburg Monarchy and to halt any encroachments on the member countries by other European powers.
On April 23, 1921, in Bucharest, Beneš negotiated and signed an alliance with Yugoslavia and Romania to thwart Hungarian revanchism, the efforts of a country to reverse territorial losses incurred by a war or social movement, and Hapsburg restoration. He tried to negotiate treaties with Britain and France, in an effort to gain their support and assistance in the event of hostility against Czechoslovakia. Britain remained inflexibly isolationist. Beneš negotiated a separate agreement, the Treaty of Alliance and Friendship between his nation and France, signed on January 25, 1924. He was also an influential voice at the international conferences, such as Genoa (1922), Locarno (1925), The Hague (1930), and Lausanne (1932).
Another pact, the Czechoslovak-Soviet Treaty of Alliance, signed on May 16, 1935, between the Soviets and Czechoslovakia, both allies of France. However, officials in Czechoslovakia insisted that the treaty was only valid if France agreed to give assistance to the victim of aggression. France was the strongest European country immediately after World War I. Beneš, a Member of the Czechoslovakian Parliament (1929-1935) belonged to the Czechoslovak NS Party. He did not regard the Slovaks and Czechs to be separate ethnicities. On December 18, 1935, he became president of Czechoslovakia, composed of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia, founded in October 1918.
The Ruling Elite Page 22
