50: Pogrom Aftermath

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; some felt human revulsion at the behavior of the Nazi hordes and sympathy for the Jews, even to the extent of offering them material help and comfort. Not all motives for the condemnation, however, were noble; just as often it was the shame inflicted by "hooligans" on Germany's standing as a "nation of culture." Perhaps the most common motivation was enormous resentment at the unrestrained destruction of material goods at a time when people were told that every little that was saved contributed to the efforts of the Four-Year Plan.

Anger regarding the material damage was also present among leading Nazis responsible for the economy. Walter Funk, who had replaced Hjamlar Schacht as Economics Minister early in the year, complained directly to Goebbels, but was told, that Hitler would soon give Göring an order to exclude the Jews from the economy. Göring himself was furious when he found out what had happened. His own credibility as economics supremo was at stake since he had exhorted the people to collect discarded toothpaste tubes, rusty nails, and every bit of cast-out material, but now valuable property had been destroyed recklessly.

Hitler met with Goebbels at lunchtime and explained to him that he intended to introduce draconian measures against the Jews who would be made to foot the bill for the destruction of their own property. In other words, the victims were guilty of their own persecution and they would have to repair the damage without any contributions from German insurance firms. Whether, as Göring later claimed, Goebbels was the initiator of the suggestion to impose a fine of 1,000 million Marks on the Jews is uncertain; it is more likely that Göring, as head of the Four-Year Plan, had come up with the idea in phone conversations with the Führer in order to maximize the economic exploitation of the Jews.

In 1936, Hitler had stated, in connection with accelerating the economic preparations for war, his intention to make the Jews responsible for any damage to the German economy. With this decided upon, Hitler decreed "that now the economic solution should also be carried out," and "ordered by and large what had to happen."

In a meeting held at the Air Ministry on 12 November, Göring said he had received directions from Hitler, via Martin Bormann regarding a coordinated solution to the "Jewish Question." The Führer had informed him that the decisive steps were now to be synchronized centrally. According to Göring, the problem was an economic one, and he criticized the method of "demonstrations," which had damaged the German economy. He then focused on ways of confiscating Jewish businesses and maximizing the possible gain to the Reich from the Jewish misery.

Goebbels raised the need for numerous measures of social discrimination against the Jews, which he had been pressing for in Berlin for months: exclusion from cinemas, theaters, parks, beaches and bathing resorts, "German" schools, and railway compartments used by "aryans." Reinhard Heydrich suggested a distinctive badge to be worn by Jews, which led on to discussion of whether ghettos would be appropriate. In the event, the idea of establishing ghettos was not taken up, though Jews would be forced to leave "aryan" tenement blocks and were also banned from certain parts of the cities, compelling them to congregate together. The suggestion on badges was rejected by Hitler soon afterwards.

Even so, "Crystal Night" had spawned completely new openings for radical measures. This was most evident in the economic sphere. Insurance companies were told that they would have to cover the losses, if their foreign business was not to suffer. But the payments would be made to the Reich and not to the Jews. Göring also announced the "atonement fine" that was to be imposed on the Jews, and later in the day he issued decrees which imposed the billion-Mark fine, excluded Jews from the economy by 1 January 1939, and stipulated that Jews were responsible for paying for the damage to their own property. "At any rate now a tabula rasa is being made," said Goebbels with satisfaction. "The radical view has triumphed."

--

The November pogrom had in the most barbaric way imaginable cleared a pathway through the impasse into which Nazi anti-Jewish policy had maneuvered itself by 1938. Emigration has been reduced to little more than a trickle; moves to remove the Jews from the economy were still proceeding far too slowly to satisfy party fanatics; and anti-Jewish policy had suffered from a lack of complete coordination. Hitler himself had been little involved. Goebbels had recognized the opportunity presented by the assassination of vom Rath, having sniffed the climate he knew the conditions were ripe.

One consequence of the night of violence was that the Jews were no desperate to leave Germany. Some 80,000 fled, in the most traumatic circumstances, between the end of 1938 and the beginning of the war. By whatever means, tens of thousands of Jews were able to escape the clutches of the Nazis and flea across neighboring borders, to Britain, the USA, Latin America, Palestine, and to distant refuge in Japanese occupied Shanghai. The aim of the Nazis to force the Jews out had been boosted massively.

Beyond that, the problem of their slow-moving elimination from the economy had been tackled. Whatever his criticism of the propaganda minister, Göring had wasted no time in ensuring that the chance was taken to fully "aryanize" the economy, and to profit from "Reichskristallnacht." When he spoke a week later, regarding the "very critical state of the Reich finances," he added that "Aid first of all through the billion imposed on the Jews and through the profits to the Reich from the aryanization of Jewish concerns."

Others, too, in the Nazi leadership seized the chance to push through a flood of new discriminatory measures, intensifying the hopelessness of Jewish existence in Germany. Radicalization fed on radicalization, which encountered no real opposition. Ordinary people who expressed their anger, sorrow, distaste, or shame at what had happened were powerless, while those who might have articulated such feelings -- such as church leaders -- kept quiet.

With the regime's leadership, those, like Schacht, who had used economic or otherwise tactical objections to try to combat what they saw as counterproductive, wild "excesses" of the radical antisemites in the party, were now politically impotent. In any case, such economic arguments lost all forces with "Crystal Night." The leaders of the armed forces, scandalized though some of them were at the "cultural disgrace" of what had happened, made no public protest. Beyond that, the deep antisemitism running through the armed forces meant that no opposition worth mentioning to Nazi radicalization could be expected from that quarter.

Almost a year after his dismissal as commander in chief of the army, and only a month after the November Pogrom, Werner von Fritsch wrote in which he expressed outrage at "Crystal Night." But, as with so many, it was the method not the aim that appalled him. He said in his letter that after the previous war he had concluded that Germany had to succeed in three battles in order to become great again. Hitler had won the battle against the working class. The other two battles, against Catholic Ultramontanism, and against the Jews, still continued. "And the struggle against the Jews is the hardest," he noted. "It is to be hoped that the difficulty of this struggle is apparent everywhere."

--

"Crystal Night" marked the final fling within Germany of "pogrom antisemitism." Willing though he was to make use of the method, Hitler had emphasized as early as 1919 that it could provide no solution to the "Jewish Question." The massive material damage caused, the public relations disaster reflected in the almost universal condemnation in the international press, and to a lesser extent the criticism leveled at the "excesses" by broad section of the German population ensured that the ploy of open violence had had its day. It should be noted, that the draconian anti-Jewish legislation that followed the pogrom did not receive criticism from the people.

In place of the violence there came something even more sinister: the handing over to the SS of practical responsibility of a coordinated anti-Jewish policy. On 24 January 1939, Göring established -- based on the model which had functioned effectively in Vienna -- a Central Office for Jewish Emigration under the aegis of the Chief of Security Police, Reinhard Heydrich.

The policy was still forced emigration, now transformed into an all out, accelerated drive to expel the Jews from Germany. But the transfer of overall responsibility to the SS nevertheless began a new phase of anti-Jewish policy. For the victims it marked a decisive step on the way that was to end in the gas chambers of the extermination camps.

Source:

Kershaw, I. (2008). Hitler: A Biography. London: W. W. Norton and Company.