1938: Hitler's Gamble

by MacDonogh, Giles

  Such policies found favour in Poland, where successive governments had been trying to steal a march on the National Democratic or Endek Party, with its antisemitic policies and calls for ghettoes and boycotts of Jewish businesses. There was a certain rapport between Göring and Jozef Beck, the Polish Foreign Minister. Beck had served in the German cavalry in the First World War and liked the Germans, but disliked both the French and the Russians. His policy was anti-Bolshevik, intending to maintain an equal distance between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. The timing of the Polish move was clumsy, however, as Göring was still trying to woo the Poles into approving an alliance directed against Russia, where Germany later intended to create its empire, and was dangling the Ukraine at Poland as compensation for border changes in the west.

  The acquisition of the Teschen pocket with its quarter of a million Poles and the railway knot at Oderberg made the Germans more popular in Poland too. Indeed, there had been cries of ‘Long live Hitler!’ in Warsaw after the Polish incursion.49 Ribbentrop stormed in and held talks with the Polish ambassador, Lipski. On the 24th Lipski was invited to Berchtesgaden. In return for a railway line or motorway to link Germany with its estranged province of East Prussia, and possibly some border changes around Posen-Poznan, Germany was prepared to create a free port for Poland somewhere near Danzig. There would also be a sweetener of a non-aggression treaty lasting twenty-five years guaranteeing the present frontiers. Danzig itself would naturally return to Germany under the same arrangements.

  While such treaties were not worth the paper they were printed on, it is an indication that the Germans were not seeking radical border changes in Poland for the time being; but Ribbentrop was unable to sell the deal. Under his tenure at the Wilhemstrasse, the Poles changed from friends to enemies. They took no interest in the offer, which betrayed a certain degree of pragmatism on the part of the Germans, as any revision of the Polish-German border was bound to be popular with the German people and the Wehrmacht. As far as Memel was concerned, things were coming to a head with mass protests against Lithuanian rule.

  Meanwhile, the official Foreign Minister of the Third Reich, Ribbentrop, was in Rome at Hitler’s behest, trying once again to make the Italians sign a tripartite military pact with Germany and Japan. The Japanese alliance was meant to deter America from coming to the aid of Britain and France, his enemies in the west. He told Mussolini that Germany would be ready for war with Britain and France from the beginning of 1939. Neither Mussolini nor his son-in-law Ciano appreciated the visit. Mussolini told Ciano, ‘You only have to look at his head to see that he has a very small brain.’50 Ciano, for his part, thought Ribbentrop ‘vain, lightweight, loquacious . . . He has fixed in his head the idea of war, he wants war, his war.’51 Whether Mussolini and Ciano despised Ribbentrop or not, they signed on 6 November.

  THE EXPULSION OF THE POLISH JEWS

  German-Polish relations were declining ever further. On the 6th the Polish government had announced that 30 October was the last date for the renewal of passports for Polish Jews. On 24 October Ribbentrop demanded the return of the city of Danzig and free access to East Prussia through the Polish Corridor. On the 27th and the 28th the Gestapo, working with the German Foreign Office, took the decision to expel the Ostjuden and some 17,000 Polish Jews were pushed over the Polish border. A memo from Best dated the 29th justified the policy, saying that the Poles were foisting 70,000 Jews on Germany.52 Those selected for expulsion came from Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. The Gestapo entered schools in Berlin and dragged Jewish children away from their lessons.53 One of those expelled at the time was the later literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki, who had just finished school in Berlin. On the morning of the 28th he was woken by a policeman bringing him a document telling him to leave Germany within a fortnight. When Reich-Ranicki objected that he had two weeks, the policeman said, ‘No, come along at once.’

  He was allowed to take five marks and a briefcase. He put in a Balzac novella and a handkerchief. Everything else had to be left behind. Reich-Ranicki had no idea why he was receiving this treatment, and felt someone must have borne false witness. It became clearer at the police station.

  Here I immediately found myself among ten or perhaps twenty fellow victims. They were Jews, all of them older than me . . . They were speaking perfect German and not a word of Polish. They had either been born in Germany, or had come to Germany as small children and attended school there. But like me they all, as I soon discovered, had Polish passports.

  Only men were expelled from Berlin, although other cities had sent the women away too. When it was dark later that afternoon, they were transferred to a siding at the Schlesischer Bahnhof where a train was waiting. Everything was done quietly and mostly by night. No one was supposed to see. At the frontier they had to form up in columns. There were shouts and shots fired. Then they were driven into a Polish train, where the doors were sealed from the outside. It was packed, and many of the women were wearing nightgowns under their coats: they had not been given time to dress.54

  The German plan was to get rid of the Jews before they finally ceased to be Poles and became their responsibility. As the Poles were not willing to take them back, around 8,000 of them sat in gypsy camps in no-man’s-land from November 1938 until August 1939, while Polish Christians and Jews administered aid. Of the 4,000 who arrived in Gdynia by ship from Danzig, only 1,500 were allowed to land. The rest had to remain on board. In revenge the Poles expelled Germans from the former German areas of Poznan and Pommerelen. Later the expulsions were limited to German Jews.55 The German expulsions, and the brutal way they were carried out, provided the Gestapo with what was for them valuable experience in rapid deportation. The Polish Jews were allowed to take the very minimum with them, and often had to put up with nights of imprisonment before they were taken to the border. At the beginning of November ‘Fips’ wallowed in the Jews’ despair in Der Stürmer: ‘Three simple questions for Hebrews – What can I do against the Nazis? How do I get my money out of the country? Where oh where can I – a proper Talmud Jew – settle in peace?’56

  The tug of war over the Jews had been a bad omen for future good relations between the two countries. When Canaris met Weizsäcker on 12 December, the diplomat thought war with Poland unavoidable, despite Ribbentrop’s best efforts to maintain the strongest ties with the Poles, while pursuing his war against the West.57

  11

  NOVEMBER

  More frontiers were being redrawn. On 2 November the German and Italian Foreign Ministers met in Vienna to arbitrate between the Czechs and the Hungarians over the Slovakian border. Ciano ran into Göring in the Imperial. He was wearing a flashy grey suit, a ruby tie-pin and more large rubies on his fingers. In his buttonhole was a large Nazi eagle with diamonds. The Italian found ‘a slight suggestion of Al Capone’.1 Ribbentrop surprised Ciano by being pro-Czech, which he found inconsistent with the attitude towards the country he had espoused just a month before. Ciano thought Hàcha should give Ribbentrop a medal. Largely as a result of Ciano’s superior preparation, the Hungarians recouped 12,000 square kilometres of territory but failed to regain their city of Pressburg (Bratislava). It spelled more bad news for the Jews, as the newly autonomous Slovak government also wanted to see the back of them. Klepper quoted a distressing report from Pressburg: ‘Without interruption, entire goods trains filled with Jews are rolling through Pressburg and into the area ceded to Hungary.’ The number of Jews was estimated at between 3,000 and 4,000, but it was thought the number from all over Slovakia was far higher. They had all been ejected from Czechoslovakia without a penny ‘in compensation for the damage that Jews had wrought in Slovakia’.2

  There was a lull in the impending storm on 4 November, when Edda Göring was christened by Reich Bishop Müller. She received some fine presents: a Cranach from Milch, and another from the city of Cologne. The Luftwaffe subscribed to build a miniature copy of Frederick the Great’s palace at Sanssouci in an orchard at Carinhall, where she might pla
y with her dolls. There was shock and horror when it was discovered that Edda Göring’s nanny was not a Party member. Emmy confessed that she wasn’t one either. Hitler put the matter right at Christmas by sending her a gold Party badge and investing her with the number of a member who had conveniently expired.3 Göring’s star was in the ascendant again. Goebbels wrote, ‘He goes his own way, and does not allow himself to be waylaid by the hyper-radicals in the Party.’4 The Propaganda Minister was still down in the dumps. Despite Hitler’s ukase at Berchtesgaden, he was finding Magda hard to take. He went to the theatre with her on 26 October. Three days later it was his birthday, the saddest of his life. It was not helped by a telegram from Hitler that was ‘short and frosty’. He needed to find a way back into his master’s favour.5

  Hitler was also enjoying Berlin’s cultural life. He went to see Werner Egk’s new opera based on the tale of Peer Gynt. Critics found a good deal of the degenerate composer Kurt Weill in the music, but either Hitler didn’t notice or he didn’t care. He invited Egk to his box and gave him a commission worth 10,000 RM. Peer Gynt became standard repertory for the opera houses of the Third Reich. It was almost certainly superior to some of the new music composed that year, such as Cesar Bresgen and Heinrich Spitha’s three-movement cantata SA Lives for Ever, which was based on the Horst-Wessel-Lied.6

  HERSCHEL GRYNSZPAN

  Two of the Polish Jews expelled from Germany were Sendel and Ryfka Grynszpan. They had been herded into a barracks in the town of Zbaszyn with 500 others. Twenty Jews died on the first day alone. Their seventeen-year-old son Herschel was living illegally in Paris helping his uncle Abraham, a tailor. Here he received word of their situation on 3 November. After an argument with his uncle on the 6th, he left his flat and spent the night in the Hôtel de Suez. He had been told that his request to remain in France had been declined. The next day he purchased a revolver for 245 FF and loaded it at ‘Tout va bien’, a homosexual bar. He went to the German embassy, where he told reception he had a document to give to a ‘secretary’. A Frau Mathes showed him the door to the office of the Secretary to the Legation, Ernst vom Rath, while an embassy servant called Nagorka asked if he could have the document to take to Rath. Grynszpan, however, insisted on seeing Rath in person. The latter, hearing Grynszpan’s name, ordered him shown in. Nagorka heard screams: Grynszpan had fired five bullets, two of which inflicted serious wounds. He was later arrested by the French police. Rath was operated on at once, the surgeons removing his pancreas. Hitler sent his personal surgeon Karl Brandt assisted by Georg Magnus and there was hope for a while, but his injuries turned out to be too grave. Grynszpan later admitted killing Rath to avenge his family.7

  The official version still leaves many questions unanswered, especially as the evidence was falsified in 1942 and a story inserted that Grynszpan had originally intended to kill the ambassador, Graf Welczek. The Nazis caught Grynszpan after the fall of France and put him in Sachsenhausen concentration camp while they concocted a show trial for treason (he was not a German and could not have committed such a crime). He was said to have confessed to having had a passionate affair with Rath and that he had been able to afford his lifestyle – the hotel, the revolver – from the money he earned as a homosexual prostitute. Rath was a prominent homosexual who frequented louche bars such as ‘Le Boeuf sur le toit’ and was known in their circles as ‘Madame Ambassadeur’ or ‘Notre Dame de Paris’. He had just returned from the German consulate in Calcutta with a dose of anal gonorrhoea. One of the men who claimed to have been aware of the relationship was André Gide.8 Grynszpan is supposed to have shot Rath because he had failed to secure papers for him allowing him to remain in France – hence the ‘document’. The revelation of the relationship led to the indefinite postponement of the trial. Grynszpan’s ultimate fate is uncertain. He was officially declared dead in 1960 but some people believe that he survived the war and was living in Paris in the sixties, working as a car mechanic.9

  Was it a Nazi plot intended to be used as a pretext to launch a pogrom against the Jews? An attack on a German diplomat abroad, as a pretext for some action within the Reich, was one of the Nazis’ standard tricks. Heydrich had planned to sacrifice Papen in Vienna and Eisenlöhr in Prague in just this way. On the other hand, not all putative assassinations of Germans by Jews were Nazi fakes. In 1936 Wilhelm Gustloff, head of the Swiss Nazi Party, was gunned down in Davos by David Frankfurter, a Jewish student; no one has suggested that Frankfurter was an unwitting Nazi agent. The Gustloff case had been frustrating to the Nazis, as any attempt to punish the Jews might have resulted in an international boycott of the Olympic Games.

  There were reports that the hue and cry over Rath’s attempted assassination extended as far as the non-Czech areas of Czechoslovakia.10 All the German newspapers had to cover the story. The Völkischer Beobachter was supposed to voice the attitudes of right-thinking Germans:

  It is clear that the German people will draw their own conclusions from this new deed. It is an impossible situation, that within our borders hundreds and thousands rule over whole streets of shops, occupy places of pleasure and as ‘foreign’ householders pocket the money paid to them by German tenants, while the racial comrades abroad call for war against Germany and gun down German public servants . . . These shots fired in Paris will not just mean the beginning of a new attitude to the Jewish question, we hope that they will be a signal for those foreigners who up to now have failed to understand the only person who stands in the way of a closer cooperation between peoples is the international Jew.11

  On the 8th the first outrages took place against the Jews. Two synagogues were set on fire and Jewish shops attacked in Vienna. That same day Himmler gave one of his pithiest definitions of the nature of political and ideological antisemitism. He noted with appreciation that increasing numbers of people were opposed to the Jews:

  We must be clear that in the next ten years we face unprecedented conflicts of a critical nature. It is not only the battle of the nations . . . it is the ideological battle against all Jews, freemasons, Marxists and the churches of the world. These forces, behind which I assume to be the Jews . . . are clear that if Germany and Italy are not destroyed, it will be them that are eliminated. That is elementary. In Germany the Jew cannot hold out. It is a matter of time. We will drive them more and more by unrivalled ruthlessness. Italy is going the same way and Poland does not want its Jews . . .

  The other states, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland and Belgium, are not naturally antisemitic today but they will go that way with time. We are sending our best propagandists in there. The moment Jewish emigrants to Switzerland and Holland etcetera begin to go about their usual business, patriotic antisemitism will suddenly begin. If three out of ten barristers in a Swiss town are Jews the Swiss ones will have nothing left to eat, and when his purse begins to pinch he will have reason to become an antisemite.

  Furthermore, Czechoslovakia has become antisemitic, all the Balkan states are antisemitic, all Palestine is engaged in a desperate struggle against the Jew, so that some day there will be no place left in the world for the Jew. [The Jew] will come to the conclusion that the danger can only be removed if the country that originated antisemitism [sic], Germany is turned to scorched earth and eliminated.

  You mark my words, in the decisive battle to come, if we are defeated we will be given no quarter, they will be allowed to starve to death or butchered. That will be the fate of every man, whether he be an enthusiastic supporter or not, it will be enough that German is his mother tongue.12

  Himmler fairly accurately predicted the first weeks of the Allied occupation in 1945.13

  Himmler’s ideology was inspired by the need to preserve his Volk. It was a dispassionate view. People needed to be kind and decent but when it came to preserving a race, there was to be no pity. Himmler would kill a hundred people in a town, and he would expect his men to do so without qualms.

  THE POGROM

  One reason to dismiss the idea of Rath’s death a
s an SD plot is the fact that the pogrom that occurred on the night of 9–10 November was almost entirely the brainchild of Joseph Goebbels, and Goebbels was not connected to the Heydrich–Himmler machine. This magnificent opportunity to worm his way back into his master’s affections dawned slowly on the Gauleiter of Berlin. His diary does not allude to the expulsion of the Polish Jews and it is only in his entry for the 8th that he finally records the wounding of Rath, together with sporadic outbreaks of violence against the Jews, notably in Hessen. It was then that the penny dropped: this was the chance to expand the largely unsuccessful programme he had conceived for Berlin to cover the whole Reich. ‘Now we want to be blunt. In Hessen big antisemitic projects. The synagogues are going to be burned down. If we could only let rip with the fury of the people once and for all!’14

  Goebbels needed to bend Hitler’s ear first. That evening was the annual re-enactment of the 1923 Putsch that began on 8 November in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich. Hitler returned to the theme of attacking his British enemies, Churchill, Eden and Duff Cooper. After the speech, the leading Nazis went to the Führerbau where Bormann addressed them on the plans for celebrating Hitler’s fiftieth birthday on 20 April 1939. They proceeded to the ‘Café Heck’, where Goebbels and Hitler sat until 3 a.m. He may have had a chance to talk over his plans, but nothing is recorded in the diary.