1938: Hitler's Gamble

by MacDonogh, Giles

  The first Kindertransport left on 2 December, and another was despatched from Vienna on the 10th. There were 700 children under fourteen on the train, including a third non-Aryan Christians who had been assembled by the Quakers and Gildemeester. The children had been tested, medically examined and issued with passports. Their luggage had been examined. Eichmann bent the rules to allow collective passports for children under the age of eighteen. They left Vienna from Hütteldorf railway station. The scene was predictably tearful. In general only the mothers were there to see them off, as the fathers were often already in concentration camps.i That month the Quakers in Vienna successfully despatched 300 non-Aryan children as part of a 1,000-strong transport, and 900 more were to follow. Of these 711 went straight to London and fifty-five to Sweden. Another eighty-three stopped in Holland and thirty-three remained in Belgium. Priority was given to those with parents who were already dead or in concentration camps, or who were manifestly in danger themselves. When war broke out there were still 650 cases that had yet to be placed on transports.2 The children were looked after in Britain by the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany run by Lola Hahn-Warburg. The honorary president was Bentwich. A ‘children’s market’ was established in London. Gentile foster parents mopped them up with alacrity.3

  For non-IKG Jews, one-third of the places on the trains were assigned by the Quakers and another by Gildemeester. The last third was divided in two and managed by the Swedes and Caritas. Jewish emigration had been self-funding from the first. This had been Eichmann’s aim all along. When the Quakers Ethel Houghton and David Hodgkin went to see Engel at the IKG in February 1939, he explained:

  Since the money obtained from the sale of foreign currency was used either for emigrating Jews or for giving them material relief, the government benefited in the first instance by getting rid of some undesirables and in the second by being saved from having itself to give relief to starving people since it is by law bound to relieve even Jews when they are absolutely destitute.4

  The 4th was the Day of German Solidarity and a curfew was imposed on the Jews between midday and eight that evening. The leading Nazis were out on the streets shaking their Winterhilfe boxes. Goebbels and some of his children took up position in front of the Adlon Hotel on Unter den Linden. There was another campaign occupying their minds: elections in the Sudetenland. Hitler had been in the region on the 2nd. Maybe the incorporation of many pious Catholics led Hitler to issue instructions to postpone the attack on the Churches until after a solution had been found for the Jews. By the end of the day they had collected 15 million RM. Later, results came in from the Sudetenland: 99 per cent were in favour of joining the Reich.

  A last nail was driven into the coffin when all Jewish firms were to be taken over by trustees prior to sale. The trustees in these cases were named by the Ministry of Economics. The decree also allowed the government to force the sale of Jewish property. All stocks, bonds and securities had to be deposited at the regional offices of the Ministry. It was the culmination of the ‘economic solution’ to the Jewish problem. By the end of the year the Jews had been removed from business life throughout the Reich.5 There were still exceptions: the decree was not yet applicable in Bohemia and Moravia, nor did it apply to foreign nationals. When an attempt had been made to register the fortunes of foreign Jews on 26 April, it led to a storm of protest from abroad and the government was forced to step down. Now every acquisition was to be made to enrich the state, rather than the purchaser. A tax was levelled on buyers equal to the difference between the price paid and the value of the business. The Jewish names and trademarks were also to be removed – a considerable disincentive to the purchaser. One Aryanized company that complained vigorously was Rosenthal porcelain, which had a significant export business. The Justice Ministry was prepared to make an exception, as there were no Jews left in the business.

  Nazi diplomacy was still sending out contradictory signals. On 6 December Ribbentrop went to Paris to sign the Franco-German Declaration guaranteeing their present frontiers. The French were ready to massage the Germans for the time being, as there was no knowing where they would spring next. Ribbentrop, for his part, was pursuing his own dream of driving a wedge between the hated British and the French.6 There was a comic scene in the Gare des Invalides when Ribbentrop stuck his nose so high in the air that he all but fell backwards on to the tracks.7 On 9 December the RAM and Bonnet had another meeting at which Bonnet brought up the question of the Jews. France did not want any more. They were about to promulgate measures to keep them out and had plans to shift 10,000 of them to Madagascar. Ribbentrop conceded that no one wanted the Jews.8

  At the beginning of December the Nazi leaders were forced to admit that, although they wanted the Jews to go, they could find nowhere that would take them. Extreme violence between Jews and Arabs made Palestine less and less tempting and the other doors were shut and bolted. In mid-November the German Foreign Office had decided to arrange a meeting with Rublee to work on the idea of creating a fund that would promote German exports. In exchange a degree more protection was to be accorded to the Jews. Under direct orders from Hitler, Hjalmar Schacht arrived in Britain as the guest of Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England. He met George Rublee, Lord Winterton and Sir Frederick Leith-Ross in London on the 14th.9 The following day he saw Halifax and also had a meeting with Chamberlain. Schacht rightly saw that his days were numbered. In the event of his losing his plenipotentiary powers, he urged them to make contact with Funk.10

  Schacht’s scheme provided for the export of 150,000 Jews over the next three years. In exchange German Jews would create a fund amounting to 1.5 milliard RM to be matched by the same sum invested by Jews outside the Reich. This was to be used as credit for the purchase of German exports. The Germans would pay an annual interest of 4 per cent and amortize the sum at 2 per cent annually. The persecution of the Jews would cease during that period. Schacht was still prepared to run errands for Hitler to find a way back into his favour. Both Hitler and Göring had endorsed this scheme, the so-called Warburg Plan. Schacht reported back to Hitler on 2 January 1939.

  The project did not find much favour among the Jews themselves, particularly in America. The Secretary of State Cordell Hull, pointed out that the boycott was not official and the Jews preferred the idea of a loan that was not linked to German exports. Rublee still hoped to be able to do a deal, and for that reason he went to Berlin on 13 January. A week later Schacht was relieved of his duties. It seems that a jealous Ribbentrop had finally had his way. Rublee was able to see Göring, who thought it would be possible to continue negotiations through his economic advisor Helmut Wohltat. German acceptance of the scheme remained conditional on a relaxation of the boycott.11

  On 14 December local elections in the Memelland showed as many as 87.1 per cent had voted for Germany. In Britain, a debate in the House of Lords revealed the extent of immigration to date. There was concern about the transit of refugees and children in particular. Tallies were limited by the number of voluntary workers prepared to deal with them. Some 15–16,000 had landed in Britain, but 4–5,000 had left again. There were around a thousand children under eighteen who were granted right of asylum. Equally, people over the age of sixty were allowed to stay. There was evidence of a softer attitude: refugees were allowed to apply for visas in Britain and remain there for two years without papers provided they had some means of support. Those aged between sixteen and thirty-five could submit to further training with a view to finding work in another country. Employment was only to be granted in the case of no Briton wanting to do the work.12

  The United States had already taken in 40,000, and there were 45,000 German refugees in France, 25,000 in Holland (8,000 had already moved on) and 100,000 in Czechoslovakia. It was not apparent at the time, but all those remaining on the Continent were at great risk.13 There were ninety-four Austrian refugees in Albania.

  The British government was exerting pressure on the colonies. The
Australian government was still claiming it would take 15,000. One S.C. Leslie of the Gas, Light and Coke Co. was to go to Austria to interview candidates to work in Australia on 28 December.14 Tanganyika and British Guiana were seen as good bets.15

  The heat was being turned up in Italy: on 7 December Jewish refugees were told they had until 12 March to leave or face imprisonment.16 The Dutch closed their borders to Jews on 17 December, but sent no children back if they had been placed in the carriages by their parents.17 The Swiss too were being increasingly pettifogging in their attitude to the tide of refugees, many of whom had made their way over the green border from the Austrian Vorarlberg. On 17 December the Swiss tally was estimated to be between 10,000 and 12,000. ‘Permission to enter Switzerland will be given to near relatives of Swiss if in danger and if their onward journey is certain within a reasonable time. Elderly persons will be admitted and arrangements are being made to take about 300 children temporarily.’18 That very day Hitler issued a Führerbefehl: rump Czechoslovakia was to be liquidated as quickly as possible.

  The British Legation in Berne reported directly to Halifax. Jews required visas to enter Switzerland, in direct response to the Austrians: ‘In the course of July there was a great influx of Austrian Jews, mainly from Vienna.’ The German attitude was largely one of ‘good riddance’: ‘German frontier authorities . . . facilitated this illegal crossing of the Swiss frontier. This had, however, been stopped, on diplomatic representations being made to the German government’ The policy now was to send back Jews who had entered illegally. Germans had no need of visas to cross the frontier: ‘The federal government has entered into communication with the German government. The latter announce that all passports would in future bear a special sign (a large J).’ Since 4 October, German non-Aryans had to possess a visa too,19 so only racially pure Germans were allowed to enter Switzerland freely.

  It was not just the Jews that were feeling the heat. On 8 December Himmler decided he would clamp down on gypsies, issuing a ‘Decree for the Struggle against the Gypsy Plague’. Henceforth gypsies were to be issued with papers for easier identification: brown for pure-bred, light-blue for Mischlinge and grey for Aryan nomads. The aim was to prevent any congress between gypsies and Aryan folk.20 The text darkly hints at the ‘final solution of the gypsy problem’.21

  The knives were also out for the Church. A cartoon in Der Stürmer showed a priest pelting the regime with muck, but succeeding only in fouling the Cross.22 For extreme Nazis, the SS and members of Himmler’s circle, Christmas was already a dead letter anyway. Stürmer mocked the idea of Christmas in the ruins of Bethlehem and showed Father Christmas with a sack of Jews that no one wanted in their stockings. Germans celebrated the Winter Solstice on the 21st instead. On 10 December the Nazis once again showed their fangs towards the Christian churches. The singing of carols and school Christmas concerts were banned that year. The Christmas tree, being German, was permissible, but shorn of its Christian associations. Klemperer noted that the newspapers had been muzzled for the first time. Christ had been banished from Christmas. The feast celebrated the Great German soul, the rebirth of the light and the reawakening of the German Reich. The Jew Jesus, everything spiritual as well as anything generally human has been thrown out.’23 All traditions were under attack, and that included the conservative-minded among the Germans. On 21 December Keitel emitted an ukase that no officers might congratulate the ex-Kaiser on his eightieth birthday. This was signed by a former Imperial officer,’ wrote Groscurth. ‘God forbid! And my, how little certain of itself this regime is.’24

  The execution laid on in Buchenwald that Yuletide was not just a warning – it was a gift. Peter Forster had managed the unimaginable: he had escaped from the camp, killed a guard and crossed the Czech border; but the Czechs had handed him back. His execution was to be a lesson to them all. The executioner was none other than the senior prisoner. The entire camp was assembled by night. Spotlights lit up the scaffold, as well as the prisoners. No one was allowed to avert his sight. The senior appeared before the prisoner, twisting the rope – to what end, they couldn’t say.

  Then Forster was strung up, but when this happened, the senior jumped up and grasped him by the knees. The extra weight broke Forster’s neck. The senior jumped down, and it was then that they realized why the rope had been twisted: the corpse proceeded to spin faster and faster on the rope lit up by the spotlights. It was a grotesque scene. Only then were the men allowed to return to their huts. A few days later it was discovered that alcohol had been smuggled into the camp for a New Year’s party. Fifty men were made an example. They were stripped and tied to wooden horses and beaten until the flesh hung from their backs. A drunken Commandant Rödl meandered around, and the Buchenwald band was on hand to play the camp song.25

  On Christmas Day Kurt von Schuschnigg was still in the Metropole, but he had the solace of a small radio furnished after Himmler’s visit on 11 December. He could listen to the Coronation Mass from the Steffl, and took solace in the Agnus Dei.26 On 31 December 1938 Austrian passports became invalid. Now Austrians had to seek new papers, and fresh humiliations along the way. On 30 December Helmuth Groscurth recorded a story about Goebbels, who had attempted to rape a young actress in Schwanenwerder. She was able to flee with the help of her fiancé. The Gestapo had learned of the incident and sent the girl a bunch of flowers with the message ‘for the brave little lady’.27 This may have explained the minister’s mood as he donned his pyjamas that night. ‘And so to bed. A new year! It is spinechilling! The best thing to do would be to hang myself.’28

  CONCLUSION

  By the end of the year the national conservatives and the Nazis had parted ways. National government had been abandoned in favour of an ideologically correct Nazi one. At first Hitler’s causes had also been theirs, but there were clear indications in 1938 that this was no longer so. Hitler had already dropped the nationalists from his ranks with the January crisis. The Prussian generals were no longer leading the army; the old-school diplomats no longer controlled the Wilhelmstrasse; the voices for a sensibly managed economy had been thrust out into the cold. Göring, a Nazi with national credentials, was increasingly sidelined as the year went on.

  Apart from a few diehard Prussians like Kleist-Schmenzin, no one objected much to the merger with Austria or the redemption of the Sudetenländer: they were national causes that signified the end of the Versailles settlement and Germany’s return to glory. A liberal German like Peter Bielenberg affirmed this:1 Czech security, the maintenance of their efficient chains of forts – such arguments meant very little: the Sudetenländer had been given a rough deal and they were better off in the bosom of the Reich. People at the time did not possess the benefit of hindsight, and did not know what we know now: that Chamberlain’s choosing not to fight – although utterly practical – was a disaster for the world.

  Many of Hitler’s decisions in 1938 were purely pragmatic and neglected to take stock of the national view, like the abandonment of 250,000 German South Tyroleans to Italy to gain Italian support, or the failure to come to a deal with the Poles to revise the border in return for a common stance against Bolshevik Russia. The fact that Vansittart was suspicious of Goerdeler’s demand for the return of Danzig and the Polish Corridor is a sign that the diplomat was also incapable of telling the difference between Nazism and Nationalism.

  On the domestic side, the Reichskristallnacht was no crowd-puller, and for many Germans it was either an embarrassment or a reason for distancing themselves from a regime they had tolerated up to then. The conspiracy around Goerdeler, Weizsäcker, Canaris, Witzleben and Halder is the clearest indication that Hitler had now gone too far, but the Opposition was increasingly distant from the source of power, and had problems removing him.

  It had lost its chance after the failure of the putsch in September but there was a new generation in the wings that would eventually join forces with the older men and get the ball rolling again. Adam von Trott went to Berlin in November a
nd stayed with Wilfred Israel in his flat in the Bendlerstrasse. He learned of the attempt to remove Hitler from Schacht. Schacht would keep him and others informed of moves within the Nazi elite. Through mutual friends, Trott was also able to meet some of the military leaders of the Opposition: Beck, whom he encountered at the house of the former chief of staff, Hammerstein-Equord, Alexander von Falkenhausen and Fritsch.2

  During the year the balance of power within the Party and its organizations shifted. Himmler and Heydrich gained influence, touting a state based on a racial model too radical for nationalists. Eichmann’s ‘Viennese model’ was copied to the Altreich, as Heydrich intended when Eichmann went to Berlin in February 1939 to accelerate the emigration of the Jews there. His solution was increasingly restricted by the decreasing number of countries ready to take in Jews. When the war started in September, most of these lands were no longer an option. When America joined the Allies in 1941 the last haven disappeared. By that time the Nazis had adopted the ‘final solution’.

  Palestine was closing the door to new immigrants and the Zionists took matters into their own hands. In Vienna Mossad was run by Mosche Averbruch or Agami. He worked with the Gestapo agent and wine merchant Giuseppe Matossiani and a Nazi ‘old-fighter’ called Wilhelm Karthaus to ship Jews to Palestine. They produced 20,000 Jugoslav visas to be used from Susak or Fiume. The Mexican consul had issued visas to imply that they were heading his way. This was the standard method of disguising the fact that the final destination was Palestine. Mexico, San Domingo, Liberia and China were the most common target destinations given. A Greek captain sailed under Panamanian colours. Nearly 2,000 Jews escaped from Constanza in Romania to Palestine before February 1940.3 The hundreds of thousands of German and Austrian Jews who either stayed put or escaped to countries on the Continent were mopped up and despatched to the murder machines in the east.