1938: Hitler's Gamble

by MacDonogh, Giles

  Groscurth accompanied Admiral Canaris on his tour of inspection of the new German Gaue. Canaris was anxious to avoid the Gestapo, who had made as many as 200 arrests by the 3rd of the month. He did not wish to be seen shaking hands with either Himmler or Heydrich.8 In the regular army there was resentment against the SS too. General Bock complained about Heydrich but Groscurth noted that they confined themselves to grumbling: ‘No general dares show this criminal the door.’9 Groscurth nonetheless noted the excitement of the Sudetenländer: ‘There is a marked contrast with Austria. The people there were more or less drunk; here, however, you note a real liberation and a sigh of relief from people who have been freed of a heavy load.’10

  Hitler went on a tour of the Czech defences on the 3rd and 4th. SS bands played his favourite Badenweiler March. He recognized Canaris and stopped his car to greet him. In his cavalcade of thirty-odd cars there were just three Wehrmacht men; the rest were SS or Sudetenländer. The RAM was with him, in the grey diplomatic uniform with ‘lots of gold’.11 Groscurth discovered a boorish Reichenau knocking back Sekt, infatuated with Hitler. He repeated some of his hero’s remarks on Chamberlain and Daladier. The latter he called a ‘master baker’. Groscurth remarked that this was a case of the pot calling the kettle black.12 Rundstedt had a different view: ‘Canaris, how long do we have to put up with this foolish performance?’13

  Groscurth was sent on a second tour of duty, this time on Henlein’s staff. Contrary to the rumours running riot in the SS, the Sudeten leader revealed himself as a family man with a fondness for burgundy. He had set up his HQ in a deserted Jewish villa. While Groscurth explored the new Gaue he noted the misery of the 40,000 or so Czech coalminers around Dux and Brux, who had now become German citizens. In a fish factory he was greeted with shouts of ‘Heil Hitler’ by the 500 chiefly women staff but was told that a few days before they would have cried, ‘Heil Moskau!’14 Elsewhere Hitler observed the Czech fortresses were built in the same style as France’s Maginot Line. He then turned them over to the Wehrmacht for gunnery practice. He was still sulking.15 Armed with his experiences of the Czech defences, he toured his own West Wall before returning to Munich on 14 October. He saw the new Czech Foreign Minister, Frantisek Chvalkovsky, and uttered furious threats about how quickly he could crush them were they ever to transgress. On 21 October Hitler issued plans to take the port of Memel.

  The Slovaks declared themselves an autonomous region on the 7th just as Göring took off for a tour of the new German Gaue centred on the town of Reichenberg, where Henlein had established his headquarters. Göring was convinced that the rest of Bohemia and Moravia would fall like ripe fruit into German hands. There were drawbacks for the Nazis: eventually Germany would acquire all those Czech Jews who had failed to flee, just as they had gained a further 200,000 Jews in Austria. These disadvantages would become all the greater when Germany invaded Poland a year later. It was relatively easy to find homes for lawyers and doctors from the sophisticated assimilated Jews of Vienna and Prague, who had contacts abroad who could issue them with guarantees. There would be few if any takers for the shtetl Jews. As Germany mopped up more and more land to the east, the likelihood of a ‘radical’ solution to the ‘Jewish problem’ became all the greater.

  Yet more doors were closing. On 1 October Argentina threatened to revoke 600 visas it had granted to Jews from the Reich. This would also affect those travelling through Argentina to the landlocked South American states. George Rublee, the director of the committee concerned with Jewish emigration, quickly made them reconsider.16 On 5 October the Swiss Police President, Dr Rothmund, finally succeeded in putting pressure on the German authorities to stamp Jewish passports with a large red J, the better to identify would-be Jewish immigrants and turn them back at the frontier. Otherwise they would interpret the passport as invalid. This was the final stage of a long process of trying to make Jewish passports distinct from those of Gentiles.17 The Swiss authorities had clearly had enough: 7,000 Jews had settled in the country since 1933, 2,000 of them arriving illegally from Austria.18 The Polish government adopted the same policy the very next day.19

  On the 6th a letter went out from the SS-man Peworezky to the SD in Vienna: an operation was planned in the suburb of Wieden for the 10th which would encourage as many Jews as possible to hurry up and leave. The first to be evicted were Czech Jews. Any Jews who did not possess the requisite papers would simply be pushed over the Czech frontier. If they were penniless they were to be given 40 RM. It was to be dressed up to look like a ‘spontaneous demonstration’, as the Party was not meant to be behind it. Force would combat resistance. Jews were cleared from houses in the prosperous areas of Ottakring, Hernals, Währing and Döbling and boarded on trains. No passports were required. The next day Jews in the suburbs of Mauer, Atzgersdorf, Liesing, Percholdsdorf and Mödling were accorded the same treatment. They had to hand over their keys.20

  On the 7th the Nazis celebrated their victory in the Sudetenland by intimidating Jews in the plush Viennese suburb of Döbling, threatening them with ‘Dachau or worse’. The Times actually reported that Jews were being released from Dachau and alluded to the interest in baptism among the assimilated Jews of the city:

  It is reliably reported that besides Mr Frederick Richter, the verger of the Anglican Church in Vienna (who is a British subject of Austrian birth), eighteen sextons, registrars, and other officials of various Roman Catholic churches in Vienna have been arrested during the past three months on charges of forging or falsification of baptismal certificates for Jews.21

  The Nazis were also closing the Catholic associations, bringing them into line with their own and taking away their flags and banners. Religious instruction in schools was being discontinued, and schools closed while the regime helped itself to the treasures of Austria’s monasteries. Hundreds of priests had been packed off to Dachau. Religious symbols and holidays came under fire too.22 The Nazis had enjoyed some success in luring Austrians away from the Church, but for many the Anschluss was not looking as attractive to pious Austrians or south Germans as it had done in March. It was high time for Cardinal Innitzer to make a stand. On 7 October he addressed some 6–8,000 young Catholics in the cathedral in what Goebbels called a ‘cheeky homily’: ‘My beloved Catholic youth of Vienna, we will affirm our faith from now on and in these times, with yet more strength and resolution . . . Christ is our Führer and king!’ he told them. ‘Guard your belief and stand firm! For only belief can bring happiness!’23

  The homily resulted in a demonstration of support outside the Archbishop’s palace: ‘Lieber Bischof, sei so nett: zeige Dich am Fensterbrett.’i The youths also cried, ‘Innitzer command, we will obey!’ – mocking the Nazi formula – and ‘Christ is our Führer!’24 A crowd of 200 Hitler Youths tried unsuccessfully to disperse them and were scattered in their turn. Some of the demonstrators were arrested. The storming of the Archbishop’s palace the next day poured cold water on any remaining enthusiasm for Hitler there might have been among the Austrian clergy.25 Around fifty members of the Hitler Youth aged between fourteen and twenty-five spent forty minutes breaking and burning everything they could, including 1,245 window-panes. What they did not break they stole. They also defenestrated Father Johann Krawarik, breaking his thigh-bone.26 Goebbels did not want the foreign press to make too much of the story, and played it down.

  Goebbels might have hoped to conceal the new persecution of the Church in Austria but Bürckel answered Innitzer in his speech on the Heldenplatz in Vienna on the 13th. He denounced the Church, and the crowd carried banners with the legend ‘String up the priests!’27 At 10 p.m. that day a mob of twenty or thirty people attacked the Cistercians in Lilienfeld, breaking 487 panes of glass while they claimed to be searching for weapons. One of the men told the monks: ‘You have Innitzer to thank for this.’28 On 17 October all religious schools were closed, including Austria’s oldest academy, the monastic Gymnasium in Kremsmünster. In rural Württemberg there was still confusion as to the level of
participation in business life allowed to the Jews. Since February it had been unclear as to whether the Jews were allowed to trade in local markets. As far as farmers were concerned, as long as they came to market, they were happy to carry on doing business with them. A formal prohibition was only issued in October.29

  SAARBRÜCKEN

  Hitler’s anger over Munich had not abated. Prompted by the opening of the Westmark Gau’s new theatre, he made what Hassell called an ‘incomprehensibly rude’ speech in Saarbrücken on the 9th. He attacked Duff Cooper, who had resigned from the Cabinet over Munich, and Eden and Churchill as warmongers and expressed his resentment at Munich and foreign interference in the question of the German Jews. He accused his British critics of behaving like ‘governesses’ and revelled in their problems in Palestine.30 After the speech there was a performance of The Flying Dutchman.

  Outside Germany it was thought that the speech was a signal he would soon be on the march again. Goebbels had been present and found the reaction to the speech in the foreign press hard to understand: ‘It wasn’t at all aggressive and most of it was given off the cuff.’31 He reported that his master had arrived ‘tired and weary’ and full of his impressions of the Sudetenland. Hitler told his minister that having seen the Czech bunkers, he now realized that they would have cost much blood, and he believed he had done the right thing, ‘and we will swallow this Czecho one day. We have to free the road to the Balkans.’32

  The one consolation for Hitler was the new theatre, a representative Nazi-style building designed by Paul Baumgarten. He promptly decided that Baumgarten should draw up the designs for the theatre in his city of Linz. Hitler retired to Bad Godesberg, where he met up with the RAM on the 12th. The German Foreign Office was to issue a statement that the country had no further territorial demands in Bohemia and Moravia. Hitler declined to help the Hungarians over Pressburg, as the Hungarians had not helped him over the Sudetenland.33

  He travelled from there to the Berghof. Goebbels was still in the doghouse and Hitler was arbitrating between him and Magda. On the 23rd Goebbels was summoned to his master, where the couple’s heads were knocked together. He resigned himself to his fate like a chastened cur: ‘ . . . I submit and arrange my personal wellbeing and happiness in the interests of the state and the people.’34 It was the Führer who ‘remade the marriage’ and the Führer, not his humiliated propaganda chief, who ordered photographs to be taken for the press of the happy reconciliation. A picture on the front page of the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung showed the three of them together. Only Hitler was smiling.35

  When he wasn’t too cross with Goebbels, he spoke to him about future plans. ‘In the distant future he sees a really difficult fight ahead, probably with England [sic].’36 At a birthday party Hitler told guests that all Germans were behind him. ‘Only the ten thousand in the upper stratum have any doubts.’37 The French ambassador François-Poncet went to Berchtesgaden to say farewell to Hitler on the 17th. The French had been alarmed by the Saarbrücken speech and were now seeking a Franco-German declaration that would tie Hitler’s hands. There must have been a worry in the Quai d’Orsay that Hitler would snatch Alsace-Lorraine. From the German side, it was thought that the moment might be ripe to split the French from the British. Saarbrücken had been rude about the latter: the French had been let off the hook. François-Poncet was very impressed by the setting, and the amazing piece of engineering that was the so-called ‘Eagle’s Nest’: Hitler’s tearoom 1,900 metres up, which put the Frenchman in mind of Knights of the Holy Grail at Monsalvat. François-Poncet was struck by what a baffling person Hitler was. Goebbels held the diplomat in high esteem, and regretted his going to Rome.38

  Hitler returned to Austria, slipping back across the old border on 20 October into his new Moravian territories, where Groscurth listened to a speech he made to a small circle. He described it as ‘dangerous’: ‘it was peppered with attacks on the English [sic], French, and above all the Hungarians, whom he characterized as cowards and wet rags’. He did imitations of the Hungarian minister and heaped praise on the Poles and Jugoslavs. The Polish were ‘a great people’, ambassador Lipski ‘a statesman and towering intellect’. Stojadinovich was also acclaimed.39 Hitler was back on form.

  NEW PLANS FOR THE JEWS

  Maximilian Reich was released from Dachau on 12 October after more than six months of servitude. His wife in Vienna had learned that six was standard for Jewish journalists with exit papers. As a Gentile reminded him before he left, there was no such hope for the many communists; they were there until the end. A guard showed him the way to Weimar and respectfully called him ‘Sie’. He had time to kill at the station, but was not prepared to be seduced into the buffet by well-wishers who recognized him as a former inmate. One man enquired whether he had money; another called him Kumpel (mate) and wondered whether he needed help. He realized that it was true what they said in the camp: there were human beings out there.40 He arrived at the East Station in Vienna. The family had been alerted by telegram, but his wife failed to recognize her husband: he was wearing a worn-out suit that had been lent to him; his head had been shaved, and he had lost his moustache; he was also emaciated. The second time she entered the station she spotted him. She had a shirt and a suit in a case for him to change into; they had to buy a hat in the Mariahilferstrasse on the way home.41 Some, at least, of his dignity had been restored.

  On 14 October there was a significant meeting chaired by Reichsmarschall Göring at the Air Ministry in Berlin, in the course of which the minister intimated that Hitler had big plans. He almost certainly meant war. The economy was in a parlous state; foreign currency reserves had been used up, and work performance had dwindled; he, Göring, was now going to produce some radical solutions. Once again it was Henry VIII’s technique he was suggesting: rob the richest part of the community. In good King Harry’s time it had been the Church, but Göring was going to get the money from the Jews by ‘eliminating them from the German economy’. The next day all Jewish passports were rescinded in the Altreich. This meant that they had to apply anew. It was a further measure to prevent their money from leaving the country. It also provided an opportunity for the police to make a little money on the side.

  There were also changes in the administration of the Ostmark. Vienna was to be reduced to a purely administrative entity. New areas to the south were made part of a ‘Greater Vienna’, a city of two million souls. A minor pogrom also took place on 14 October, and the windows of seven synagogues were broken. The next day seven more were profaned in the Jewish Second District. On the 16th a synagogue was torched in the Tempelgasse, and on the 17th two prayer houses were destroyed in the Second District. The destruction continued until the 19th.42

  Later that year, the IKG in Vienna produced figures for emigration up to 15 October. Of the 165,000 members before 11 March, 40,000 or so had already left. The largest number (2,000) had reached the US, followed by Palestine (1,384) and Britain (1,321); 681 had gone to Switzerland and 480 to Czechoslovakia. A total of 444 had reached Argentina, 155 Australia, 136 Greece, 88 Cyprus (these last two were stage-posts for Palestine), 47 Bolivia and nine Canada.43 On 22 October The Times reported that there were 5,000 illegal Jewish immigrants in Belgium without visible means of support. The Belgian government had decided to intern 1,400, rather than expelling them.44 The British were having considerable problems with Palestine at the time, with the Arabs rioting and striking against the increasing numbers of Jews. Not only were many of Germany and Austria’s Jews knocking on the door but measures against them introduced by the Second Republic in Czechoslovakia meant that Czech Jews were also looking for asylum.

  It wasn’t only the Jews who were suffering as outlaws; Germany was now doing away with most vestiges of the rule of law. On 22 October Hitler spoke to proclaim that ‘. . . every means adopted for carrying out the will of the Leader is considered legal, even though it may conflict with existing statutes and precedents’.45 In June that year all security police – the Ge
stapo and the Kripo (criminal police) – were enrolled in the SS, and therefore became subservient to the Party through the SD. It was a process that reached its inevitable end when the police were taken away from the Ministry of the Interior and placed under the control of the SS. There were now no legal controls on the police and divergent political opinion was ipso facto a crime.

  Meanwhile other parts of Central Europe were playing games with their Jewish citizens. Responding to the pressure exerted by their neighbours, the Germans made moves to expel all their Ostjuden – generally Russian Jews who had settled as a result of the pogroms and the Russian Revolution. At the beginning of 1938 they were given weeks to get out or face imprisonment and the confiscation of their belongings. The next move was against the Romanian Jews. After the Germans moved into Austria and the Sudetenland it was the moment to oust Czech and Slovak Jews. Camps were established for them in no-man’s-land, as their countries of origin were very reluctant to take them back.46

  POLAND

  A shared antipathy to Jews led to the end of the ‘benevolent neutrality’ that existed between Germany and Poland.47 There were around 3.3 million Jews in Poland: just under 10 per cent of the population. Their movements were restricted and antisemitism was endemic. Earlier that year Ciano had defined the relationship between the two countries, which managed to coexist despite the fact that Poland had been recreated out of the rib of Prussia: ‘The Polish Corridor is accepted for an indefinite period by Germany, which actually desires to see the power of Poland increased as a means of strengthening the anti-Bolshevik barrier.’48 The sticking point was the very large number of Polish Jews living in Germany and smaller groups in Austria. Despite Polish citizenship, the Poles refused to readmit them; nor did they want to return, as many of them had fled to Germany in the first place to escape from pogroms and persecution in Poland or the Ukraine. In 1936 the Poles had produced plans to make all Jews emigrate and on 31 March 1938 they rescinded the citizenship of all Polish Jews who had lived abroad for more than five years. Nearly 40 per cent of these expatriate Polish Jews had been born in Germany.