The Holocaust: A Warning From History

"In war," writes Ian Kershaw, "Nazism came into its own. The Nazi Movement had been born out of a lost war. As with Hitler personally, the experience of that war and erasing the stain of that defeat were at its heart. 'National renewal' and preparations for another war to establish the dominance in Europe which the first great war had failed to attain drove it forwards. The new war not brought the circumstances and opportunities for the dramatic radicalization of Nazism's ideological crusade. Long-term goals seemed almost overnight to become attainable policy objectives. Persecution which had targeted usually disliked social minorities was now directed at an entire conquered and subjugated people. The Jews, a tiny proportion of the German population were not only far more numerous in Poland, but were despised by many within their native land and were now the lowest of the low in the eyes of the brutal occupiers of the country." But I am getting ahead of ...

The open brutality of the November Pogrom, the round up and incarceration of some 30,000 Jews that followed, and the draconian measures to force Jews out of the economy had, as is made clear by Goebbels' diary entries, all been explicitly approved by Hitler, even if the initiatives had come from others even, above all, the propaganda minister. himself. When Hitler had consented to Goebbels' suggestion to "let the demonstrations continue," Hitler knew full well what those "demonstrations" amounted to. Still, during the days that followed, the Führer took care to remain equivocal, neither praising Goebbels or what had happened, nor condemning the "actions" either in public or private. Goebbels believed that his policy against the Jews met with Hitler's full support. It seems, however, that the Führer was embarrassed when it became clear to him that the pogrom he had approved was meeting with condemnation, even in the highest circles of the regime...

The propaganda line that "Crystal Night" was a spontaneous expression of anger by the people was believed by no one. "The public knows to the last man," the party's own court later admitted, "that political actions like that of 9 November are organized and carried about by the party, whether this is admitted or not. If all the synagogues burn down in a single night, that has somehow to be organized, and can only be organized by the party." Ordinary citizens, affected by the climate of hatred and propaganda appealing to base instincts, motivated too by sheer material envy and greed, nevertheless followed the party's lead in many places and joined in the destruction and looting of Jewish property. Sometimes individuals regarded as the pillars of their communities were involved. At the same time, there is no doubt that many ordinary people were appalled at what met them when they emerged on the morning of 10 November. There was a mixture of motives; s...

Joseph Goebbels had little trouble persuading Hitler in April 1938 to support his plans to "clean up" Berlin (the city being the seat of Goebbels' Gau). The propaganda minister had already discussed his aims on the "Jewish Question" with the city's police chief: "We'll remove the character of a Jew-paradise from Berlin. Jewish businesses will be marked as such. At any rate, we're now proceeding more radically. The Führer wants gradually to push them all out." Whatever the line of policy being favored, the "final goal" remained indistinct, and as such compatible with all the attempts to further the "removal" of the Jews. This eventual "removal" was conceived as taking a good number of years to complete. Even following "Crystal Night,' Reinhard Heydrich was still envisaging an "emigration action" lasting from eight to ten years. Hitler himself had already inferred to Goebbels in July 1938 that ...

The ideological dynamic of the Nazi regime was by no means solely a matter of Hitler's personalized "world view"; the party and its numerous sub-organizations were, of course, important in sustaining the pressure for ever-new discriminatory measures against ideological target-groups. But little in the way of coherent planning could be expected from the central party office. The key agency was not the party, but the SS. Buoyed by their successes in Austria and the Sudetenland, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and the top echelons of the SS were keen to extend -- naturally, under Hitler's aegis -- their own empire. Already in August 1938, a decree by Hitler met Himmler's wish to develop an armed wing of the SS. It provided in effect a fourth branch of the armed forces -- far smaller than the others, but envisaged as a body of ideologically motivated "political soldiers" standing at the Führer's "exclusive disposal." The leaders of the SS ...

Hitler told Goebbels in the late summer of 1937 that eventually Austria would have to be taken "by force". On 5 November 1937, Hitler called a meeting with the Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath, the War Minister Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, the Army commander General Werner von Fritsch, the Kriegsmarine commander Admiral Erich Raeder and the Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring recorded in the Hossbach Memorandum. At the conference, Hitler stated that economic problems were causing Germany to fall behind in the arms race with Britain and France, and that the only solution was to launch in the near-future a series of wars to seize Austria and Czechoslovakia, whose economies would be plundered to give Germany the lead in the arms race. Robert Leckie writes: "The year 1938 was fateful for Europe and the world. Only nineteen year previously Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Britain had warned his Versailles colleagues of the folly of ringing Germany with small b...