Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 01: The Years of Persecution

by Saul Friedlander

  Seiler’s anti-Jewish fury was not shared by the majority of Germans. On November 10 a clear difference emerged from the outset between activists and onlookers on the streets of the large cities: “I myself,” the counselor of the British Embassy reported to his foreign minister a few days later, “and members of the staff were witnesses of the later stages of the excesses in Berlin, which lasted until well into the night of the 10th. Gangs of youths in plain clothes and armed with poles, hammers and other appropriate weapons were visiting the Jewish shops and completing the work of destruction, done in the early morning. In some cases the premises had been entirely looted, in others the stock in trade was only mishandled and scattered. And at one or two places a crowd was gaping in silent curiosity at the efforts of the owners to tidy up the débris. I especially noted the demeanor of the groups which followed each band of marauders. I heard no expression of shame or disgust, but, in spite of the complete passiveness of many of the onlookers, I did notice the inane grin which often inadvertently betrays the guilty conscience.”91

  Whereas the British diplomat recognized the signs of a troubled conscience on the onlookers’ faces, the French chargé d’affaires perceived “silent condemnation” in the attitude of the people on the streets.92

  The SD reports show widespread popular criticism of the violence and the damage caused during the pogrom. Some of the criticism, expressed even by people usually favorable to the regime, was motivated by practical considerations: the wanton destruction of property and the losses thus incurred not only by all Germans but also by the state. When news of the billion-mark fine imposed on the Jews was announced, and when official propaganda stressed the immense wealth still possessed by the Jews, the general mood improved.93 Sometimes, however, the reactions of the population were not negative at all. Thus, according to a SOPADE report of December 1938, “the broad mass of people has not condoned the destruction, but we should nevertheless not overlook the fact that there are people among the working class who do not defend the Jews. There are certain circles where you are not very popular if you speak disparagingly about the recent incidents. The anger was not, therefore, as unanimous as all that. Berlin: the population’s attitude was not fully unanimous. When the Jewish Synagogue was burning…a large number of women could be heard saying, ‘That’s the right way to do it—it’s a pity there aren’t any more Jews inside, that would be the best way to smoke out the whole lousy lot of them.’ No one dared to take a stand against these sentiments…. If there has been any speaking out in the Reich against the Jewish pogroms, the excesses of arson and looting, it has been in Hamburg and the neighboring Elbe district. People from Hamburg are not generally anti-Semitic, and the Hamburg Jews have been assimilated far more than the Jews in other parts of the Reich. They have intermarried with Christians up to the highest levels of officialdom and the wholesale and shipping trades.”94

  How did people closer to Hitler who were neither committed party members nor “old-fashioned” conservatives react? In his memoirs, Albert Speer indicates a measure of unease, if only because of the material destruction and the “disorder”: “On November 10, driving to the office, I passed by the still smoldering ruins of the Berlin synagogues…. Today this memory is one of the most doleful of my life, chiefly because what really disturbed me at the time was the aspect of disorder that I saw on Fasanenstrasse: charred beams, collapsed façades, burned-out walls,…The smashed panes of shop windows offended my sense of middle-class order.”95 But even this lack of any human empathy compounded with later pseudo-candor demands some qualification. According to Speer’s recent biographer, Gitta Sereny, there was nothing about Kristallnacht in the early draft of Speer’s book, and it was only after the proddings of his publisher, Wolf Jobst Siedler, and of Hitler’s biographer Joachim Fest that Speer came up with his feelings of annoyance at the material damage.96 Thus, even a questionable but clever sincerity may have been entirely faked: Speer may simply not have felt anything at all, as was probably the case when he planned the eviction of Jewish tenants from their Berlin apartments. As for Speer’s secretary, Annemarie Kempf, she knew nothing and saw nothing: “I just never knew about it,” she declared, “I remember that someone was shot in an embassy abroad, and Goebbels gave speeches, and there was a lot of anger. But that’s all.”97 Again, however, even among these young technocrats the reactions were not all the same. Consider one of “Speer s men,” Hans Simon. “When [Kristallnacht] happened,” another witness later told Sereny, “Simon said: for people like that, I don’t work. And he resigned from the GBI [Generalbauinspektorat, or Construction Inspectorate General].”98

  No criticism of the pogrom was publicly expressed by the churches. Only a month after the events, in a message to the congregations, did the Confessing Church make an oblique reference to the most recent persecutions, albeit in a peculiar way. After declaring that Jesus Christ was the “propitiation of our sins” and “also the propitiation for the sins of the Jewish people,” the message continued with the following words: ‘We are bound together as brethren with all the believers in Christ of the Jewish race. We will not separate ourselves from them, and we ask them not to separate themselves from us. We exhort all members of our congregations to concern themselves with the material and spiritual distress of our Christian brothers and sisters of the Jewish race, and to intercede for them in their prayers to God.’ The Jews as such were excluded from the message of compassion and, as has been noted, “the only reference to the Jewish people as a whole was a mention of their sin.”99

  Some individual pastors did protest; we know of them mainly from brief mentions in surveillance reports. Thus the monthly report for November 1938 for Upper and Mid-Franconia notes laconically: “Pastor Seggel of Mistelgau, administrative district Bayreuth, expressed himself critically on the Day of Prayer and Repentance regarding the actions against the Jews. The State Police of Nuremberg-Fürth was informed.”100

  The overall attitude of the Catholic Church was no different. Apart from Provost Bernhard Lichtenberg of Berlin’s St. Hedwig Cathedral, who declared on November 10 that “the temple which was burnt down outside is also the House of God,” and who later was to pay with his life for his public prayers for the Jews deported to the East,101 no powerful voice was raised. Quite to the contrary, Cardinal Faulhaber found it necessary to proclaim in his New Year’s Eve sermon, less than two months after the pogrom: “That is one advantage of our time; in the highest office of the Reich we have the example of a simple and modest alcohol- and nicotine-free way of life.”102

  No open criticism (or even indirect protest) came from the universities. Some strong condemnations of the pogrom were committed to private correspondence and, probably, to the privacy of diaries. On November 24, 1938, the historian Gerhard Ritter wrote to his mother: “What we have experienced over the last two weeks all over the country is the most shameful and the most dreadful thing that has happened for a long time.”103 Ritter’s indignation, however, and the initiative that followed, paradoxically shed some light on the anti-Semitism that underlay the attitudes of the churches and the universities.

  Following the pogrom, and certainly in part as a result of it, an opposition group was formed at Freiburg University. The Freiburg Circle (Freiburger Kreis) was composed mainly of university members close to the Confessing Church (and also of some Catholics); Gerhard Ritter, Walter Eucken, Franz Böhm, Adolf Lampe, and Constantin von Dietze were its leading figures.104 The group’s discussions resulted in the drafting of the “Great Memorandum,” which offered a social, political, and moral basis for a post-National Socialist Germany. The fifth and last appendix to the Memorandum, completed by Dietze in late 1942, listed “Proposals for a Solution of the Jewish Question in Germany.”105 Present-day German historians still find it hard to explain these proposals, and refer to the “schizoid atmosphere” that engendered them.106 The Freiburg group—which had come into being after the pogrom and by the time of this last appendix was also fully aware of the extermi
nation of the Jews (which is mentioned explicitly in Dietze s “Proposals”)—suggested nonetheless that after the war the Jews be internationally subjected to a special status. Moreover, although the “Proposals” rejected the Nazis’ racial theories, they recommended caution regarding close contacts and intermarriage between German Christians and other races—the allusion to the Jews is clear.107 It seems that even in one of the most articulate groups of anti-Nazi academics, there was explicit and deep-seated anti-Jewish prejudice. One of the best-informed historians on the subject of the Freiburg Circle, Klaus Schwabe, rejects the conclusion that Dietze was motivated by anti-Semitism.108 Yet, in his program, Dietze accepted and recommended some of the traditional German conservative anti-Semitic positions, despite what he knew of the Jews’ fate. The logical corollary is obvious: If a university resistance group, consisting mostly of members of the Confessing Church or the Catholic Church, could come up with such proposals even though they had knowledge of the extermination, the evidence of prevalent anti-Semitism among Germany’s elites must be taken into account as a major explanation of their attitudes during the Third Reich.

  In an indirect way, however, the pogrom created further tension between the German Catholic Church and the state. On November 10 the National Socialist Association of Teachers decided not only to expel all remaining Jewish pupils from German schools but also to stop providing (Christian) religious education—as had been the rule until then—under the pretext that “a glorification of the Jewish murderers’ nation could no longer be tolerated in German schools.” Cardinal Bertram sent a vigorous protest to Rust in which he stated that “whoever has the least familiarity with the Catholic faith and certainly every believing teacher knows that this assertion [that the Christian religion glorified the Jews] is false and that the contrary is true.”109

  IV

  “The foreign press is very bad,” Goebbels noted on November 12. “Mainly the American. I receive the Berlin foreign correspondents and explain the whole issue to them…. This makes a big impression.”110 Press comments were scathing indeed. “There happen in the course of time,” said the Danish Nationaltidende on November 12, “many things on which one must take a stand out of regard for one’s own human dignity, even if this should involve a personal or national risk. Silence in the face of crimes committed may be regarded as a form of participation therein—equally punishable whether committed by individuals or by nations…. One must at least have the courage to protest, even if you feel that you do not have power to prevent a violation of justice, or even to mitigate the consequences thereof…. Now that it has been announced that after being plundered, tortured and terrorized, this heap of human beings [the Jews of Germany] will be expelled and thrown over the gate of the nearest neighbor, the question no longer remains an internal one and Germany’s voice will not be the only one that will be heard in the council of nations.”111

  The American press was particularly vehement. “In the weeks following Kristallnacht, close to 1,000 different editorials were published on the topic…. Practically no American newspaper, irrespective of size, circulation, location, or political inclination failed to condemn Germany. Now even those that, prior to Kristallnacht, had been reluctant to admit that violent persecution was a permanent fixture in Nazism criticized Germany.”112 President Roosevelt recalled Ambassador Hugh Wilson for consultation.

  But despite such emotional outpourings, basic attitudes and policies did not change. In the spring of 1939, Great Britain, increasingly worried by the pro-Axis shift in the Arab world—a trend with possibly dire consequences for Britain in case of war—reneged on its commitments and for all practical purposes closed the doors of Palestine to Jewish immigration. No alternative havens were even envisaged by the British colonial authorities. As A. W. G. Randall of the Foreign Office stated on June 1: “The proposed temporary solution of Cyprus has, I understand, been firmly rejected by the Governor, it is unthinkable that a miscellaneous crowd of Jews could be admitted to any other part of the Empire.”113

  After slightly liberalizing its immigration policy in 1937, the United States did not even fill the quotas for Germany and Austria in 1938.114 In July 1939 the Wagner-Rogers Child Refugee Bill, which would have allowed twenty thousand Jewish refugee children to enter the country, was not passed by the Senate,115 and, at the same time, despite all entreaties, the 936 hapless Jewish emigrants from Germany who had sailed on the soon-to-become-notorious St. Louis, after being denied entry to Cuba, their destination, were not admitted into the United States.116 Their voyage back to Europe became a vivid illustration of the overall situation of Jewish refugees from Germany. After Belgium, France, and England finally agreed to give asylum to the passengers, the London Daily Express echoed the prevalent opinion in no uncertain terms: “This example must not set a precedent. There is no room for any more refugees in this country…. They become a burden and a grievance.”117

  By then even some relatively well-known Jews had not the least certainty of reaching the the United States. In February 1939 Thomas Mann intervened in favor of Kafka’s friend and biographer Max Brod with H. M. Lyndenberg, the director of the New York Public Library: “Dr. Max Brod, the German-Czechoslovakian novelist and dramatist…is anxious to leave Czechoslovakia and come to the United States. He fears he will not survive the period of fifteen months to two years which he would have to wait to enter this country as an ordinary immigrant…. He writes that he is willing to give his collection of books and manuscripts of Franz Kafka to any institution of repute which would accept it and in return offer him a position to act as assistant or curator of the collection, and so make possible his entry into this country…. Perhaps you will agree with me that the possibility of acquiring the manuscripts and books of so well known a writer as Franz Kafka is an opportunity deserving of consideration quite apart from the human tragedy of the individual for whom the collection represents the one real chance of escape from an intolerable situation.”118 Ultimately Brod managed to escape to Palestine.

  France was neither more nor less inhospitable than other countries, but it did not volunteer even a symbolic gesture of protest against the anti-Jewish pogrom. It was the only major democratic country that did not react.119 Most newspapers expressed their outrage, but neither Prime Minister Édouard Daladier nor Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet did so. On the contrary, Bonnet continued with the planning for Ribbentrop’s visit to Paris, which was to lead to a Franco-German agreement.

  In a way the official French attitude demonstrated that Hitler did not have to worry too much about international reactions when he unleashed the pogrom. But the outcry that immediately followed the events of November and the criticism now directed at the French attitude confirmed that the Munich atmosphere was quickly dissipating. No less a supporter of appeasement than the London Times was taken aback by Bonnet’s eagerness to go ahead with the agreement, the pogrom notwithstanding. The American secretary of state rejected Bonnet’s request that the American government express its approval of the agreement, even if only in the form of a press statement. In view of the strained United States-German relations following Kristallnacht, the secretary deemed such approval entirely inappropriate. Even the Italian government expressed surprise that “the recrudescence of anti-Semitic persecutions in Germany did not lead to the ruin of the project of Franco-German declaration.”120

  The German foreign minister arrived in Paris on December 6. According to the German version of the second discussion between Ribbentrop and Bonnet, which took place on December 7, the French foreign minister told Ribbentrop “how great an interest was being taken in France in a solution of the Jewish problem,” and he added that “France did not want to receive any more Jews from Germany.” Bonnet then supposedly asked whether Germany could not take measures to prevent further German Jewish refugees from coming to France, since France itself would have to ship ten thousand Jews somewhere else. (They were actually thinking of Madagascar for this.) Ribbentrop then told Bonnet, “‘We al
l wish to get rid of our Jews,’ but the difficulty lay in the fact that no country wished to receive them and, further, in the shortage of foreign currency.”121

  Bonnet’s oft-quoted remarks to Ribbentrop were not an isolated occurence. In fact, less than two weeks before the Franco-German meeting, on November 24, the prime ministers and foreign ministers of Great Britain and France met in Paris in order to coordinate their countries’ policies. The problem of the Jewish refugees from Germany was raised. Daladier complained that there were some forty thousand of them in France and that no more could be taken in. The possibility of sending the refugees to the colonies was discussed. It was agreed that the French would ask Ribbentrop if the German measures making it almost impossible for the refugees to take along some of their belongings could be alleviated.122 Whether this issue was mentioned at all during Ribbentrop’s visit to Paris is unclear.

  Yet another sequel to the events of November took place—at least for a time—in the French capital: preparations for the trial of Herschel Grynszpan. The forthcoming event attracted worldwide attention. Hitler dispatched Professor Friedrich Grimm to Paris in order to follow the work of the prosecution, while an international committee headed by the American journalist Dorothy Thompson collected money to pay for Grynszpan’s defense. Grynszpan’s lawyer, Vincent Moro-Giafferi, was one of the most respected criminal lawyers in France and an ardent antifascist.123