1938: Hitler's Gamble

by MacDonogh, Giles

  Göring didn’t like Goebbels and he was furious about the destruction. Hitler nonetheless mediated between his two princes. In a telephone conversation with Hitler, Göring was won round with the idea of a fine: 1 milliard marks for his Four Year Plan. Göring was strapped for cash and it may well have been he who suggested it. Besides a huge armaments programme and no money to pay his civil service, there was a near total lack of reserves of foreign currency. Even if he could make some money from it, the effect on foreign trade was disastrous – this would not make international Jewry call off its boycott. Göring managed to win an assurance from Hitler that such methods would not be used again.53

  Of the 7,800 Jews arrested in Vienna, 1,226 were already in the process of effecting their departure through the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. There were 4,083 businesses closed down and 1,950 buildings confiscated. Jews who were still in the possession of their flats and houses were obliged to hand over the keys. They were given no time to pack up their belongings. Their remaining valuables were predictably stolen. It provided another chance for some informal plunder, and the police had to step in again to dampen the ardour of the Viennese Gentiles.54

  Across the Reich, official figures listed seventy-six synagogues destroyed and a further 191 set on fire. Twenty-nine Jewish-owned department stores had also been demolished, including the provocatively named Nathan Israel in Berlin, which had been protected until then. At a conservative estimate, the thugs had also destroyed a further 815 shops and 117 private houses. The real figure is probably far higher.55 Even the Party condemned the action, calling it destructive, expensive and misguided.56 The SD reports spoke of Party members saying, This is no longeranything todowith cultureor decency.’57 They wanted to know if the perpetrators of the destruction were to be punished too. That Sunday there was a tellingly small amount contributed to the boxes that collected money for the Nazi Winterhilfe (Winter Aid) charity. No one seems to have been too concerned for the Jews themselves, although 200 of them were beaten up, and officially thirty-five were killed, though the tally is more likely to have been between 100 and 200. The approximately 30,000 who had been rounded up were taken to Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, where they were encouraged to think about emigration.

  The SS promulgated new measures as soon as Rath’s death was announced. In Buchenwald the prisoners were deprived of food, and there was no more talk of early release. The Manchester Guardian said that as many as seventy Jewish prisoners had been executed. Bruno Heilig, who was there at the time, reported a number of deaths from savage punishment.58 Some of the Aryan prisoners saved their food and hid it in the woods for the Jews. Buchenwald was so full that there was no more room and the transports had to be stopped. Himmler gave orders for the release of all Jews over the age of fifty, to accommodate new arrivals. On 14 November more places were secured by Heydrich’s order releasing all Jews having papers allowing them to emigrate. They were to leave within three weeks.

  On the night of 9–10 November Eichmann received a summons to Berlin by telegram. The Nazi leadership took stock of what they had achieved or destroyed through Goebbels’ ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations. Heydrich insisted on Eichmann being there to ‘communicate his experiences of practical procedure’. Eichmann was to tell them how things should be done. This was the background to the conference on the progress of the ‘Jewish Question’ that took place in the Air Ministry in Berlin on 12 November.59 There were over a hundred persons present including Göring, Goebbels and Heydrich. Himmler was absent: he had taken himself to Italy for a five-week break.

  Hitler had requested a coordinated solution to the Jewish question. As such, this was a forerunner of the better-known Wannsee Conference. The host, Göring, was unimpressed by the weekend’s demonstration. He feared for his own credibility, as he had exhorted the German people to hang on to every scrap of material for the Four Year Plan, and now this wanton destruction had come. He wanted to know who was going to pay for the damage, particularly insurance bills of between six and ten million RM for the 7,500 businesses destroyed. The Berlin jeweller Margraf in Unter den Linden was presenting a reckoning for 1.7 million RM;v the bill for the glass alone came to 6 million RM. The replacements had to be brought in from Belgium, meaning a payout of 3 million RM in foreign exchange; the loss amounted to half of Belgium’s annual production in plate glass. The total bill was estimated at 220 million RM.60 ‘I have had enough of these demonstrations,’ Göring told the meeting. ‘In the end they don’t damage the Jews, they damage me, as in the last resort, I am the economy … I would be happier if you had beaten 200 Jews to death and not destroyed so much of value.’61 Göring issued orders to catch the pillagers and some 800 others. No charges were brought against the men who murdered Jews that night, but four who assaulted women were expelled from the Party and handed over to the courts.62

  Instead of ‘spontaneous demonstrations’, Eichmann’s Viennese model was recommended for the Altreich, ‘where they had yet to achieve so much’ and where emigration had stagnated to 20,000 Jews a year. The Reich could not afford to finance the transfer of Jewish assets, and the taxes they had imposed on the Jews were failing to bring in enough money. Heydrich argued that the most important thing was to get rid of the Jews and drew the others’ attention to Eichmann’s success. Heydrich then had a brainwave: the insurers should pay the Jews and at that point the money would be confiscated. There was discussion as to what to do with the damaged synagogues. Goebbels suggested that the Jews should demolish them themselves. He seemed much exercised by the question of Jews sharing cinemas, theatres and circuses with Gentiles, or even breathing the same open air in public parks and woods. Jews had been seen freely walking around the Grunewald in Berlin. The Reich’s Master of Hunts, Göring, clearly saw it as a matter of little importance and made light of it: he would have reservations made for the Jews and all those animals that resembled them – for example elks, which had similarly hooked noses – could come and join them there.63

  In his diary, Goebbels interpreted his role in a heroic light, and failed to mention Göring’s ribbing. (On 22 November he claimed that he and Göring were wholly of the same mind when it came to the Jews.64) ‘A hot debate over the solution,’ he wrote. ‘I represent the radical point of view’ He dismissed Funk as ‘soft’ and claimed, ‘I work splendidly with Göring’, and ‘the radical opinion won the day’.65 He did not mention the fact that he had Hitler’s blessing and they did not.

  In six months Eichmann had produced a tally of emigration that was two and a half times as great as that of the Altreich. The method was explained: the rich Jews had to pay for the poor. ‘The problem was not getting the rich out, but the Jewish mob.’ Göring expressed his fear that they would take their money with them. Heydrich was able to reassure him: ‘In Vienna the Gerstl [dough] stayed in the country.’66 In reality Goebbels’ pogrom had actually slowed down the process of emigration and Heydrich had every reason to be angry with the propaganda chief. Once Göring had been shown the colour of the money he could hope to receive, he conferred with the Austrian Economics Minister, Fischböck, about the fate of 17,000 Jewish businesses in Vienna. It was decided that only between 3,000 and 3,500 would stay open, and the rest would be either closed or taken over by the state and awarded to trustees.67

  In the aftermath of the pogrom in Vienna, the police had instructions to arrest the richest Jews, and a total of 6,547 were taken into custody and 3,700 were shipped out to Dachau. At the end of the year the Gestapo totted up their figures and estimated that they had packed 20,793 Austrians off to concentration camp since 13 March.68 When the Jews arrived in Dachau, the guards were delighted to find that they had a number of rabbis under their roofs and singled them out for special punishments.69 Urns filled with ashes began to arrive a few days later: 350 of the Jews detained after Reichskristallnacht died in Buchenwald that winter, and the combined total for the three camps – Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Dachau – exceeded 5,000, of whom nearly 3,000 were
Austrian.70 Sachsenhausen had the reputation of being the mildest of the three, Buchenwald the worst.71 After the RathAktion the oldest inmate was ninety, the youngest twelve.72

  Many of the Jews in Dachau and Buchenwald were released before June 1939. The former front-line soldiers were the first to be liberated. A large number of those were allowed to go as a celebration of Hitler’s fiftieth birthday on 20 April. The condition imposed on all of them was that they should leave the Reich and never return. They had also to promise that they would say nothing of their experiences in the camps.73 Even Jews who had not been through this mill were advised to keep quiet about what they had seen and heard. When Arnold Schoenberg’s son-in-law, Felix Greissle, arrived in the United States, the composer told him:

  Don’t say anything you don’t have to say about your experiences of the last few weeks. Especially not to newspapermen or to people who might pass it on to them. You know the Nazis take revenge on relatives and friends still in their power. So be very reserved and don’t get mixed up in politics. I have kept to this strictly, always refusing to tell any stories, out of consideration for my friends and relatives in Germany. And people completely understand this.74

  In Dresden, Victor Klemperer was lucky. On 11 November two gendarmes appeared at his door to search his house for weapons. He had the impression that the search was pure torture to one of them. They eventually found the sabre he carried as an officer in the First World War. They took him down to the police station but he was quickly released. Stubborn though he was, he decided it was high time to emigrate and on 28 November he visited the Advice Bureau for Emigration in the Pragerstrasse. A very humane Major Stübel told him he could be as frank as he liked. Stübel made it clear that if he sold his house he would be able to leave Germany naked, with 7.5 per cent of its value. Even then he would have had to obtain a berth on a ship and all the places were taken. Klemperer decided to stay put.75

  Following the pogrom there were audible rumbles from abroad. The former Kaiser in Dutch Doorn echoed the feelings of many members of the old military caste: ‘What is going on at home is certainly a scandal. It is now high time that the army showed its hand; they have let a lot of things happen … all the older officers and all decent Germans must protest.’ Of course he was hoping that an army coup would place him back on his throne. His son, August Wilhelm, or ‘Auwi’, who had been an early and enthusiastic member of the SA, took the opposite line, incensing his father with his support for the pogrom. ‘When I told him that any decent man would describe these actions as gangsterism,’ wrote the former Kaiser, ‘he appeared totally indifferent.’76

  The pogrom took away the regime’s last vestiges of credibility. Hitler and Goebbels had ‘unconditional’ support from the Duce, who worked himself up into a lather against the Jews, but elsewhere they found little sympathy.77 In many places the embargo on German goods was reinforced and doors were shut to German trade. The Manchester Guardian in England was not taken in by Goebbels’ ‘spontaneous demonstrations’ and attributed the action to Hitler’s ‘old guard’. Goebbels’ own newspaper, Angriff, riposted by making out that the assassination of Rath had been instigated by Churchill and Attlee.78 Der Stürmer presented a gallery of ‘Jewlovers’: Mayor [sic] Attlee, Anthony Eden (who, they had already pointed out, had Jewish cousins), Winston Churchill, Lloyd George, Duff Cooper, Stalin and Roosevelt.79 The weekly left it to ‘Fips’ to celebrate the actions that night. In one cartoon a Jew is complaining of the cold draught; in another he runs into the arms of the Church, the Nazis’ other bugbear.80

  The United States was particularly virulent in its condemnation. Hitler and his men saw all too quickly that it was not the 20 million German Americans who led public opinion. There were formal protests in Britain and France, and in Rome the Pope spoke out against racialism and the destruction of lives and property. This led to a demonstration against Jews and Catholics in Munich when the Gauleiter, Adolf Wagner, warned His Holiness that his utterances constituted an incitement to the Jews to agitate against the Germans. On the 10th the Cardinal’s palace was wrecked as a response to his kindness towards the rabbi.81 Pius XI was not to be put off and continued to attack the Nazis, challenging their claim to racial superiority. There was, he said, just one human race. He wanted to break diplomatic ties with Germany but was dissuaded by Eugenio Pacelli, the former German nuncio, and the man who would succeed him as Pius XII three months later.82 Archbishop Lang wrote to The Times to express his disgust:

  Whatever provocation may have been given by the deplorable act of a single irresponsible Jewish youth, reprisals on such a scale, so fierce, cruel, and vindictive, cannot possibly be justified. A sinister significance is added to them by the fact that the police seem either to have acquiesced in them or to have been powerless to restrain them.83

  The letter annoyed Goebbels so much that he had The Times withdrawn from sale. The pogrom proved a watershed: the Church of England would now be united in its desire for the British government to assert itself in Germany.

  Even within Germany the pogrom marked a change of course. It is said that among the conservative elite there was a fear that the left were now back in the saddle with the end of Goebbels’ disgrace, and that they could now expect an attack on the churches as well as on the capitalists, not to mention the nobility.84 Certainly Hitler appeared to have forgiven Goebbels. On 16 November the Gauleiter was proud to note, ‘The Führer wholly approves my and our policies.’ Hitler showed his solidarity by coming to stay with the Goebbels family in Schwanenwerder after a performance of Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe. The next day Uncle Adolf played with the children before heading off to Düsseldorf for Rath’s state funeral.85

  There were numerous small acts of personal courage in which Germans showed their sympathy for the Jews. The industrialist Robert Bosch in Stuttgart put half a million RM in a Dutch bank to help out Jews lacking funds to continue their journeys to freedom.86 For Peter and Christabel Bielenberg in Hamburg, it made up their minds for them that they were going to leave Germany and go and live in Ireland. It was only their friend Adam von Trott who held them back: he argued that the evil needed to be fought from within.87

  For many Germans there was an all-pervading sense of shame. Major Groscurth said, ‘You have to feel ashamed to remain German,’ but thought Göring and Hitler innocent of the outrage.88 Another who disapproved was Heydrich, who believed it had been ‘the heaviest blow against the state and Party since 1934’.89 Klepper noted there was a desire among rich Gentiles to emigrate, and that both churches were muzzled by flagrant attacks on them in the Nazi organs: they were not to speak out for non-Aryan Christians.90 Eleanor von Trott, the widow of a former imperial minister and mother of Adam, went into Bebra, where one of the ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations had occurred before those unleashed by Goebbels. Leaving her driver at a safe distance she went into each Jewish shop in turn and personally apologized for the damage to their property.91 Smallbones, the British consul in Frankfurt, talked of ‘passionate resentment’ among Christian Germans and in the army and civil service, while Vansittart’s informant, Group Captain Christie, overheard similar views expressed in Berlin and Essen, talking of ‘universal horror’ and ‘general abhorrence’.92

  In Württemberg, responses to the action ranged from ‘childish’ to ‘inhumane’. In Stuttgart glaziers sold glass at a reduced rate ‘because it was not the Jews who had caused the damage’. A Party member sent flowers to a Jew to show his support. Another Nazi in Creglingen helped an arrested Jew to escape with the support of the local leader of the Nazi War Veterans’ Association. The ordinary clergy were highly vocal in their condemnation, particularly the Protestants. The Catholics tended to be more cowed after the expulsion of Bishop Sproll.93

  In Nuremberg the public outcry was so great that Julius Streicher had to make a speech to protest against sympathy being shown for the Jews. Pity for the Jews might have induced relative silence from Der Stürmer, which did not formally celebrate the pogrom until
issue 48 came out at the end of the month. On the other hand, the more likely cause was Goebbels, who had once again gagged the press.94 Ernst Hiemer wrote Der Stürmer’s cover story, entitled ‘Has the Jewish Question been solved?’ The previous issue, number 47, however, did include a poignant image by ‘Fips’ entitled ‘November Storms’ and showing a Jew being levelled by a huge fist.

  The rounding up of the Jews had proved an excellent source of wealth for corrupt German officials. Göring did not see all of it by any means. In Streicher’s Nuremberg the Jews had to sign away the rights to their property before they went into concentration camps. The taxable value of the estate was calibrated at 10 per cent of its real worth. In Vienna the corruption was so flagrant that Bürckel was obliged to pack a number of Aryan administrators off to Dachau to join their victims.95 In response Jews north of the Inn laid siege to the consulates to obtain visas to leave. Few found what they wanted. Of 300 who queued at the Argentinian and Paraguayan consulates in Berlin only two were able to proceed to making a formal application.96 On the 19th it was decreed that no one could leave until the milliard-mark fine or Atonement Contribution had been paid.

  The Contribution was based on the data accumulated since the enforced registration of Jewish property after 26 April. The sum total for Jewish property was set at 7,538,500,000 RM, of which nearly two-thirds was estimated to be in the form of liquid assets. Every Jew liable had to make over 20 per cent of his property in four instalments: the first on 15 December, and thereafter at intervals of three months.97 Together with the Emigration Tax, the Atonement Contribution yielded 2 milliard RM. Using the Jews as a cash cow to fund rearmament and other projects was short-sighted, because they had already given away so much, and their milk was soon to dry up altogether: income from the beleaguered Jews amounted to some 5 per cent of tax revenue.98 Even the takeover of Jewish businesses only altered German economic life in small areas such as textiles and department stores. There was still no alleviation of the Reich’s finances, which continued to cause grave concern.