1938: Hitler's Gamble

by MacDonogh, Giles

  CANARIS, THE WILHELMSTRASSE AND GOERDELER

  Protest over the treatment of General Fritsch had given birth to a new Opposition within the old German elite. Its two most important recruits were Admiral Canaris in military intelligence and Ernst von Weizsäcker in the German Foreign Office. Although Canaris had little questioned Hitler’s government at first, with time he became increasingly anti-Nazi. When he recruited the Austrian military intelligence man Erwin von Lahousen-Vivremont after the Anschluss, he warned him, ‘You may not, under any pretext, admit to this section . . . or take on your staff any member of the NSDAP, the Storm Troopers or the SS, or even an officer who sympathizes with the Party.’204

  Canaris communicated with the Chief of Staff, Beck, through Oster, a Christian monarchist who had fallen foul of the army after a bedroom scandal. He was outspoken in his attitude to Hitler, whom he referred to as ‘the pig’, and made no bones about the fact that he needed to be slaughtered. It was Oster who recruited Beck – again, probably as a direct result of the Fritsch affair. Many rallied to the cause for similar reasons, even some who on the face of it seemed unlikely opponents of the regime, such as the Berlin police chief Helldorf, a one-time antisemitic thug and playboy. Helldorf had access to all sorts of useful material from the police files.

  Another of Oster’s key contacts was Hans von Dohnányi, the son of the Hungarian composer Ernő, and a departmental chief in the Abwehr. Dohnányi was part of the legal team defending Fritsch at his ‘court of honour’. Dohnányi painstakingly assembled material on the crimes of the Nazi state, which he stored in an old filing cabinet in the corner of his office. Neither he nor Oster took much care to conceal their activities. Dohnányi was also instrumental in bringing in a host of like-minded contacts, starting with his own relatives by marriage, the Bonhoeffers.205

  Ernst von Weizsäcker was the Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the German Foreign Office in the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin. His concern led him to secure appointments for like-minded persons in German embassies and legations, and to maintain contacts with Canaris. Two of his most trusted diplomatic sources were the Kordt brothers, Erich and Theo.206 Ulrich von Hassell, the sacked ambassador to Rome, was another foreign policy expert. He was sponsored by Krupp’s son-in-law, Thilo von Wilmowsky, and his position as advisor to a European economic think-tank afforded the cover he needed to travel. Both Hassell and Beck were brought together by the venerable Mittwochsgesellschaft or Wednesday Society, together with other opponents to the regime such as the Prussian Economics Minister Johannes Popitz and the economist Jens Jessen.

  That spring, the former mayor of Leipzig, Carl Goerdeler, went to London. Goerdeler had been suggested as a successor to Brüning as Chancellor in the Weimar Republic, and was a universally respected politician. He served the Third Reich as a Commissar for Price Control, and managed to tolerate the regime inasmuch as it furthered his own causes.207 He was not enamoured of the left and lived in profound fear of Soviet Russia. As a former deputy mayor of Königsberg he wanted to see a revision of the Polish border drawn at Versailles, and Danzig regain its place in the Reich. He had resigned from Leipzig town hall in 1937 over the removal of the statue of Mendelssohn and the failure to place a church at the centre of a new housing estate. He was kept in funds by the Stuttgart industrialist Robert Bosch, which allowed him to carry out his work abroad.

  Goerdeler’s ‘grand tour’ started in June 1937, taking in various parts of Europe and the Americas. In March and April 1938 he was off again, this time travelling only to France and Britain. In August he went on another trip, to Switzerland and the Balkans.

  His problem, however, was discretion – or lack of it. He was distinctly verbose, and insisted on writing extensive reports which were copied to hosts of people. While he was in London he revealed the fact that he had had some assurance from Brauchitsch that the general would confront Hitler after the court of honour dismissed the case against Fritsch. The loose talk proved too much for the fickle Brauchitsch, who ran to Hitler to clear his name of involvement with the frondeurs. The gaffe threatened to blow Goerdeler’s cover too, as his mission was under the aegis of Canaris and Weizsäcker.208

  Goerdeler had made the trip with former Chancellor Brüning. Brüning had thought Chamberlain a non-starter, but was anxious to put Goerdeler together with Churchill, and a talk was arranged in Sussex on 3 April at the house of some English friends. At the last moment a suspicious telephone call scotched the meeting. It eventually transpired that there was a Gestapo agent in the household. The lunch went ahead without Goerdeler. Brüning was able to fill Churchill in on recent events in Germany.

  At the same time as Goerdeler emerged as the civilian leader of the Opposition, Ludwig Beck moved into the position of military chief. Beck was opposed to Hitler’s military ‘adventures’, but he was probably less outraged by some of the border revisions that Hitler was to make: few if any Germans believed that the Versailles settlement was just. Beck’s chosen weapon was the memorandum. Examples were despatched to Brauchitsch and mocked by Hitler. In the first half of 1938, Beck must have believed that Hitler could be made to see the light. In one famous paper written at the time he informed officers of the limits to their oath of obedience, when their consciences and responsibility would not allow them to carry out orders.xxiv Beck feared the growth of the paramilitary elements in the Third Reich and called for a new programme ‘for the Führer, against war, free expression, and end of secret police practices, the return of law to the Reich, the halving of all levies, the end of palace building, the construction of homes for the people and Prussian cleanliness and simplicity’.209

  Another who joined the ranks of the Opposition was the President of the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht, encouraged by his wounded vanity as his importance declined in the Third Reich. Schacht could see better than anyone that autarky was leading the German boat on to the rocks. The country was pathetically short of foreign currency, which merely encouraged the gangsterlike Göring to steal it from the enemies of the regime, the Jews. Schacht’s impatience cannot have been helped by the Anschluss, which had required him to rescue his sister and her non-Aryan husband, then ferry them to Holland together with their money.210

  Some of the opponents of the regime were monarchists, which did not go down well in Britain, where some felt they should have finished the First World War by hanging the Kaiser. One was Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin, a Pomeranian squire and a member of the right-wing DNVP. He was connected to the plotters in the Abwehr through his brother-in-law, Ulrich von der Osten.211 In March he approached the British journalist Ian Colvin in the Casino Club in Berlin’s Bendlerstrasse and revealed details of Hitler’s aggressive programme. The message from the Opposition was always the same: that Hitler needed a firm approach that was the very reverse of the policy of appeasement pursued by the British government. Colvin took the message to Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes, the Chargé d’Affaires at the British embassy. By the time Kleist set out for London in August, his credentials had been properly screened on both sides of the North Sea.212

  RED TAPE

  Hitler had made it plain from the start: the Jews had to go.213 Göring had added that they should leave their Gerstl (dough) behind. There were a dozen or so methods of transferring money abroad, but in almost every case the sums involved were pitifully small. Any emigrant who had satisfied all the requirements could leave with ten marks, or twenty Schillings, or double that amount if going to a country with no common border with Germany. They could also bring 1,000 RM worth of goods. Personal belongings could also be removed, providing the emigrant had submitted a list for approval.xxv Jewels generally had to be smuggled, as the state was particularly interested in impounding them.

  One-way tickets could be paid for in RM. Travelling – for example, to South America – would require a huge sum. Until 1938 there had been Altreu,xxvi which had permitted Jews to transfer anything up to 50,000 RM to Palestine. This had been created to encourage trade between the two countrie
s, like the Ha’avara Agreement, which allowed for a complicated system of exchange whereby the emigrant paid his money into a closed account in RM and received it in sterling once he had landed in Palestine. It amounted to a favoured trading status for Germany in the Mandate: an extraordinary situation in the circumstances, and one that allowed German Jews numerous commodities from the old country.

  Jews with foreign nationality could sell interests in a foreign company. Money that was not exported by one of these methods had to be paid into a closed account that could not be touched, which was later raided by the Ministry of Finance. Smuggling was a possibility, but German currency was virtually worthless on foreign exchanges. There were various schemes whereby the money could be given to a poor Jew and recouped from a rich friend or relative at the other end.214

  On 26 March the IKG in Vienna was dissolved, together with all the other organs of the Jewish congregation,215 greatly adding to the panic among the Jews ‘who were besieging the various foreign consulates in an effort to get out of the country’.216 One of those trying to obtain a visa from the British was the writer George Clare. He was refused.217

  The process was Ulyssean. The first paper required was the Steuerunbedenklichkeitsbescheinigung,xxvii a certificate proving that all taxes were paid. The process of obtaining it was as long and clumsy as the word itself. It involved visits to and payments to the Bezirkshauptmannschaft – the directorate of the applicant’s district – where the Kleiner Meldenachweis, a certificate of domicile, was to be obtained; the next stop was the Magistratsabteilung, the District Commissioner’s department in the town hall; this was followed by the Accountancy Department or the central tax office; and the tax office of the district where the applicant lived. If the forms had been filled in properly and the right sums paid, the applicant received his Steuerunbedenklichkeitsbescheinigung and could proceed to stage two.

  That is, if he had enough money to pay for emigration tax or could raise it by selling off his goods. Jewish assets were technically worthless and many people were reduced to borrowing money to finance their departure, when a few weeks before they had figured among the richest inhabitants of the city.

  Stage two consisted of a visit to the Devisenstelle, where the Jews’ assets were released and the department granted certificates of good conduct. The long queues outside both offices provided a means of making a little money for both the Nazis and unscrupulous Jews. The corruption did not abate. In December Gertrude Löwenhek complained that she had spent six nights camping outside the British consulate in the Wallnerstrasse while Nazis with swastika armbands took 100 RM bribes to issue numbered passes.218

  Doing a little business on the side was not restricted to the consulates. Certain Jews styling themselves ‘documentation experts’ stood outside offices and offered to obtain papers for you for a fee. ‘They knew every back door. It was the poor Jews who queued for hours outside the front doors.’219 Those waiting in the queues were sitting ducks: they could be picked out and sent off to clean up a barracks by SA-men or Hitler Youth boys. When they reached the top of the queue they were told the form was incorrectly filled in, and that they had to do it all again.220

  Stage three was the passport itself from the emigration office. You first went to the police station of your district, where you had to answer questions as to the nature of the passport: new, for all lands, a passepartout, and extension of an existing document. Then the applicant went off to the emigration office in the Herrengasse, then to the Passamt in the Wehrgasse, where the appropriate visas had to be obtained.

  The passport office in the Wehrgasse in the Fifth District was one of the most feared stations of abuse and humiliation. One witness recounted, ‘How frightful this Wehrgasse was! A much too narrow room in an old Viennese house, a narrow suburban street, in which thousands pushed, shoved, sweated and cursed . . .’ On average, people waited for a day and a half before receiving their papers.221

  The applicant still needed some money. ‘The only foreign exchange he can obtain is that put at the disposal of the community by outside refugee organization, which is completely reserved for the purpose. In return for his last Marks he obtains the necessary dollars or pounds: if he has none, he receives an advance from the community.’222

  For many countries a certificate of moral probity was required as well as proof of residence. For the moral certificate two witnesses were necessary. From 23 July a new ordeal was established: the applicant had to provide a photograph with an exposed left ear, and register his or her fingerprints. Once the Ausreisebewilligung (exit visa) was granted, the applicant had to promise never to darken Austria’s doors again.

  It would be hard to argue that there was no element of sadism in the long-drawn-out business of obtaining the relevant papers to leave, even if Eichmann could justify it by saying that it ensured that the Jews left their money behind. The crucial interrogations of would-be immigrants took place in the Palais Rothschild in the Prinz-Eugenstrasse. Queues gathered several hundred metres away on the Schwarzenberg Platz at nightfall in order to make sure of being seen the following day. There were two queues: one for ‘normal’ Jews and the other for those who had been bought out of Dachau and were recognisable by their shaven heads. The Dachauer took precedence.

  By the end of September Eichmann could boast that he had rid Austria of 50,000 Jews.223 It was much tougher for Austrians to find a safe haven than it had been for the Germans after 1933. Visas had been abolished for Germans and Austrians in 1927, but the Home Office in London changed the rules in response to the Anschluss, reinstating the restrictions. The new rules came into force on 21 May. The British government did not want to see the country flooded with poor Central European Jews; once they were in, it would prove very difficult to send them back. There was even a suggestion that MI5 had warned the government that the whole thing was a Nazi plot to flood Britain with Jews and create a ‘Jewish problem’ in the United Kingdom.224

  At first discretionary powers were left with the Passport Control Officers, who were often more sympathetic to the cases before them than the government would have been. The argument behind this was that they had the ability to find out more about individual cases than an immigration officer at the ports; and by then it would be too late. It also shifted the onus of guilt from the Home Office to the Passport Control Office, which was nominally under the control of the Foreign Office.

  Later the Home Office changed its mind, perhaps because too many Jews were being let in. The PCO had to forward all applications to the Home Office for their approval. The Home Office clearly did not trust the PCO. There were accusations of favouritism, and the Consul-General in Vienna, Gainer, admitted that all his officials seemed to have some ‘pet Jew’ they wanted to see admitted.225 In December the Home Office finally proposed that all applications be made in Britain, provided that the persons in question give the right assurances that they can maintain themselves. The distrust might have been occasioned by the occasionally pragmatic approach of MI6 and the PCO.226

  FURTHER ADVENTURES OF EICHMANN

  Adolf Eichmann was the model Nazi civil servant, ‘a totally obedient receiver of orders’.227 Hitler intimated the broad lines of policy; the Nazi satrap filled in the detail in such a way as to please his master. Austrian Jews were to be treated with a good deal more savagery than had been experienced in Germany up to then. Despite rough handling, however, Eichmann had yet to advocate the ‘final solution’. For the time being his policy was an ‘economic solution’: fleeced first and driven into exile.

  Eichmann was to create the ‘Viennese model’ for forcing Jews out, preferably to Palestine. His concern was how that could reasonably be funded. Rich Jews could get themselves out, but not the poor. The Ha’avara Accords of August 1933 were defunct by the time of the Anschluss.228 Of the 170,000 Jews who left German lands between 1933 and 1939, 50,000 of them found their way to Palestine,229 taking their home comforts with them, furniture, household equipment, paintings and objets d’art.230<
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  At the beginning Eichmann wanted emigration to Palestine to be carried out according to the rules. A Palestinian journalist called Mosche Krivoschein, codename ‘Galili’, had a plan to assist Revisionist Jews to Palestine. He had won round Dr Kagan, the president of the Makkabi. Money would be found to get round the quotas imposed by the British. Galili had contacts with Greek ship owners who had formerly been involved in gun-running during the Spanish Civil War. Now that it had become legal, there was no money to be made any more and they were looking for new business. They were prepared to transport Jews for a price, in small and not particularly seaworthy vessels.

  Galili’s organization Af-Al-Pi (‘Despite everything’) brought together the services of the Viennese lawyer Willi Perl and the industrialist Hans Perutz, together with an ‘extremist’ called Paul Haller. They operated transports in 1937 and 1938, of which the last to leave was on 25 April 1938. Perl went to see Eichmann to suggest ways of shipping Jews to Palestine illegally. He drew attention to the risks involved, for the British were liable to compensate for illegal entries by docking their number from the number of legal entry visas. Eichmann was scandalized by the suggestion: he did not wish to create ‘centres of crime’.231 He was apparently so angry that he told Perl, ‘I’ll put you up against a wall and shoot you!’ Perl replied, ‘We need your cooperation for a more important matter.’ In time Eichmann was convinced.232