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Provocateurs appear in border
towns
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On 8 November 1938, one day before the
Crystal Night, strange persons who had never been seen there before
suddenly appeared in several small towns in Hessen near the
French-German border. They went to mayors, Kreisleiters (district
Party leaders) and other important officials in these towns and
asked them what actions were being planned against the Jews. The
officials were rather startled by these questions and replied that
they didn't know of any such plans. The strangers acted as if they
were shocked to hear this. They shouted and complained that
something had to be done against the Jews and then, without further
explanation, they disappeared. |
| They usually regarded the
strangers as crazy anti-Semites and promptly forgot about the
incidents - until the next evening. Some of these apparently crazy
individuals really outdid themselves. |
Provocateurs dress as SS
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In one case two men, dressed as members
of the SS, went to an SA Standartenfuehrer (Colonel) and ordered him
to destroy the nearby synagogue. To understand the absurdity of this
one must know that the SS and SA were completely separate
organizations. A real SS member would never have tried to give
orders to an SA unit. This case shows that the strangers were
foreigners who did not even understand the distinctions of German
authority. The SA Standartenfuehrer rejected the demands of the
self-styled SS men and reported the incident to his superiors.
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Strangers giving
speeches
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When the provocateurs realized that
their efforts were not working with local officials, they changed
their tactics. Instead they tried to incite directly the people in
the streets. In another town, for example, two men appeared at the
market place and began making speeches to the people there, trying
to incite them against the Jews. Eventually some people did indeed
storm the synagogue, but by then the two provocateurs had, of
course, disappeared. Similar incidents occurred in several towns.
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| Unidentified strangers
suddenly appeared, gave speeches, started throwing stones at
windows, stormed Jewish buildings, schools, hospitals, and
synagogues, and then disappeared. |
These unusual incidents had already started on the 8th of
November, that is, before Ernst vom Rath was dead. His death was only
reported late on the evening of the 9th. The fact that this strange
pattern of incidents had already begun one day earlier proves that the
death of vom Rath was not the reason for the Crystal Night outburst. Vom
Rath was still alive when the pogrom began.
These were methodical thugs and not enraged
citizens
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Well organized and widespread incidents
began on the evening of 9 November. Groups of generally five or six
young men, armed with bars and clubs, went down the streets smashing
store windows. They were not Jew-hating SA men, enraged over the
murder of a German diplomat. They operated too methodically to have
been motivated by anger.
They carried out their work without any apparent
emotion. Nonetheless, it was their destruction |
| that encouraged certain
other individuals from the lowest social classes to become a mob and
continue the destruction. |
All one can learn from history writers is that "all"
synagogues were demolished and that "all" shop windows were destroyed.
Aside from this vague description, one is given almost no details.
Jews fought off attacks
History writers tell us that during the Crystal Night
all the Jews were frightened, meekly accepted whatever happened to them
and watched the destruction of their property with no resistance. The
contrary is true. While going through the files on this subject, I found
many documents which report precisely just the opposite of what is
claimed. The fact is that in many cases Jews and their German neighbors
fought together against the attackers, pushing them down staircases.
Street mobs were beaten up and chased away in more than one case.
| Police on side of
Jews |
SA officers stood watch preventing
attacks
Police and Party officials were generally on the
side of the Jews. Some Jewish community leaders went to police
stations the next morning and asked the police to investigate the
damage done to their synagogues. The resulting police reports are
still available in the files today. |
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Jews weren't phased by
attacks
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Also contrary to what we
have been told, most Jews were not directly affected by these
events. In Berlin, for example, all of the teachers and pupils of
the city's largest Jewish school, which served the entire Berlin
area, appeared in their classes the next morning without having
noticed anything unusual during the previous night.
Heinemann Stern, the Jewish principal of that
school, wrote in his postwar memoirs that he noticed a burning
synagogue on his way to the school on the morning after the Crystal
Night, but he thought it was just an accidental
fire. |
It was only after he arrived at the school that he
received a telephone call informing him of the destruction of the previous
night. He then went on with his classes of the day and only during the
first recess did he take the trouble to inform the entire student body
about what had happened.
Jewish historians rewrote
history
Historians wrote: "Every single Jew was beaten, chased,
robbed, insulted and humiliated. The SA tore the Jews from their beds,
mercilessly beat them in their apartments and then ... chased them almost
to death ... Blood flowed everywhere."
[9] Is it conceivable that thousands of Jewish children
would be have been sent to school by their parents on the morning after
that fateful night if the attacks against Jews had been so horrific or
extensive? Would any parents have let their children go to school if they
had thought there was even the slightest danger of them being attacked by
roving gangs of SA men? I think the answer is clearly no!
Who Could the Provocateurs Have Been?
In the wake of the Crystal Night, almost everyone wanted
to know who the culprits were. Dr. Goebbels expressed his suspicion that a
secret organization must have instigated the entire affair. He simply
could not believe that anything so well organized could have been a
spontaneous popular outburst.
Apparently to avoid internal wrangling and the harm that
this would do to their public image, an investigation to determine the
instigators never took place. Hitler believed that Dr. Goebbels, his
closest confidant and the one man he could never abandon, had been the
instigator.
The only persons actually punished were individual SA
men who had participated directly in the pogrom and been accused in German
courts of murder, assault, looting or other criminal acts by Jewish or
German witnesses to these crimes. But before any of these cases ever
actually came to trail, Hitler issued a special decree ordering the
postponement of all such cases until after the accused individuals were
first prosecuted by the Supreme Party Court, an internal court concerned
with discipline within the National Socialist Party organization.
Mystery phone calls to local town
officials
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Several district and local Party
leaders (Kreisleiters and Ortsgruppenleiters) were awakened from
their sleep in the middle of the night by telephone calls. Someone
claiming to be from the regional Party headquarters or the regional
Party propaganda bureau (Gauleitung or Gaupropagandaleitung) would
ask what was happening in the official's town or city. If the Party
official answered "Nothing, everything is quiet," the telephone
caller would then say in German slang that he had received an order
to the effect that the Jews were going to get it tonight and that
the respective official should carry out the
order. |
In most cases the Party leader, disturbed from his sleep,
did not even understand what had happened. Some simply dismissed the call
as a joke and went back to bed.
Others called back the office from where the telephone
voice had pretended to be calling. If they managed to reach someone in
charge, they were often told that nobody knew anything about such a call.
But if they reached only a lower official they were often told: "Well, if
you got that order, you'd better go ahead and do what you were told."
These telephone calls caused considerable confusion. All this came out
months later during the trials conducted by the Supreme Party Court. The
Chief Judge concluded that in every case a misunderstanding had arisen in
one link or other of the chain of command. But when they were confronted
with apparently genuine orders to organize demonstrations against the Jews
that night, most of the Party leaders had simply not known what to do.
Obviously a group of centrally organized
thugs
The pattern of seemingly sporadic anti-Jewish
incidents in small towns, followed only later by a carefully planned
outburst in many large cities throughout Germany, clearly suggests the
work of a centrally organized group of well-trained agents. Even shortly
after the Crystal Night, many leading Party officials suspected that the
entire affair had been centrally coordinated. Significantly, even Hermann
Graml, the only West German historian who has written in detail about the
Crystal Night, carefully distinguished between provocateurs and people who
were simply carried away by their emotions and spontaneously took part in
the riot and destruction.
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The timing was
perfect
Most party officials were at a commemoration at
the Alte Rathaus in Munich
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Munich on the Ninth of
November
| While all this was happening
across the Reich, a special annual commemoration was being
held in Munich. Fifteen years earlier, on 9 November 1923, a
movement led by Adolph Hitler, Erich von Ludendorff (a leading
First World War General), and two major figures in the
Bavarian government tried to depose the legal government and
take responsibility themselves as a new national
government. |
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| Feldherrnhalle |
|
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The uprising or putsch was put down and
16 rebels were shot down next to the Feldherrnhalle, a famous old
monument building in central Munich. Accordingly, the 9th of
November had been commemorated every year since 1933 as the memorial
day for the martyred heroes of the National Socialist movement.
Adolph Hitler and the Party veterans, as well as all of the
Gauleiters (regional Party leaders) met every year in Munich for the
occasion. Hitler would usually deliver a speech to a select audience
of Party veterans at the famous Buergerbraeukeller restaurant on the
evening of the 8th. |
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| Hitler and veterans reenact
On the morning of the 9th Hitler and his
veteran comrades would reenact the 1923 "March to the
Feldherrnhalle." |
| |
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SS ceremony
On the evening of the 9th the Fuehrer always held an
informal dinner at the Old Town Hall ("Alte Rathaus") with old
comrades as well as all the Gauleiters. At midnight young men who
were about to enter the SS and the SA were sworn in at the
Feldherrnhalle.
All of the Gauleiters and other guests participated
in this very solemn ceremony. After it was over they left Munich and
returned to their homes throughout the Reich. |
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Gaulieters not at posts
It is clear that the 9th of November date was
chosen very cleverly. The annual commemoration ceremony of that day
insured that almost all of the Gauleiters would be away from their
home offices when the anti-Jewish demonstrations began. In other
words, the actual decision-making responsibilities that were
normally carried out by the Gauleiters were temporarily in the hands
of lower-ranking individuals with less experience.
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Between 8 and 10 November, subordinate officials stood in
for the Gauleiters who were either in Munich or en route to or from the
annual commemoration there. This temporary transfer of decision-making
authority is very important because it contributed to much of the
subsequent confusion and thus helped the provocateurs. Another
contributing factor was the fact that no one expected any trouble. At that
time Germany was one of the most peaceful countries in the world.
There was no reason to expect any kind of unrest. It
was only during dinner at the Old Town Hall that the first sporadic
reports of riot and destruction reached Munich from some of the
Gauleiter's home offices. At the same time it was learned that Ernst vom
Rath had died in Paris from his wounds.
What Was Goebbels Doing?
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After the dinner was over, the Fuehrer
left at about 9 p.m. and returned to his apartment. Dr. Goebbels
then stood up and spoke briefly about the latest news. He informed
the audience that vom Rath had died and that, as a result,
anti-Jewish demonstrations had spontaneously broken out in two or
three places. Goebbels was renowned for his passionate and inspiring
speeches. But what he gave that evening was not a speech at all but
only a short and very informal announcement.
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He suggested that the Gauleiters and the head of
the SA, Viktor Lutze, should contact their home offices to make sure that
peace and order were being maintained.
You may have heard the widespread allegation that
Goebbels started the Crystal Night pogrom with a fiery speech on that
evening of 9 November. This widely accepted story is false. The following
facts will clarify this point:
As Gauleiter for Berlin, Dr.
Goebbels had no authority outside of his Berlin district. Although he was
also the Propaganda Minister of the German government, this did not give
him any authority over Party officials. Furthermore, he had no authority
whatsoever over the SA or the SS.
| Goebbels understood
this damaged the Reich international standing |
| Of all the National
Socialist leaders, Dr. Goebbels would have understood better than
anyone else the immense damage that an anti-Jewish pogrom would
cause for Germany. On the morning of 10 November, when he first
learned about the extent of the damage and destruction of the
previous night, he was furious and shocked at the stupidity of those
who had participated.
How could a speech given after 9 p.m. on the evening
of 9 November have possibly incited a "pogrom" which had already
begun the day before when the first provocateurs appeared at
municipal and Party offices to persuade officials to take action
against the Jews? |
| Gauleiters telephoned subordinates to maintain
peace |
| The Gauleiters and the SA
commander went to the telephones and called their respective
home offices to order their subordinates to do everything necessary
to maintain peace and order. They emphasized that under no
circumstances must anyone take part in any demonstrations. These
telephone instructions were written down at the home offices by
whoever was on duty. The orders from each Gauleiter were then passed
on by telex to other offices within the Gau or district. These telex
messages are still in various records files and are available to
anyone who wishes to examine them. |
Orders to Stop the Pogrom
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While the Gauleiters were calling their
home offices, the head of the SA, Viktor Lutze, ordered all of his
immediate subordinates, the SA Gruppenfuehrers, who were together
with him in Munich, to call their home offices as well. Lutze
ordered that under no circumstances could SA men take part in any
demonstrations against Jews, and that furthermore the SA was to
intervene to stop any demonstrations already in progress.
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| SA, Viktor Lutze gives orders
to protect Jews
As a result of these strict orders, SA men began to
guard Jewish stores that very night wherever windows had been
broken. There is no doubt about this order by Lutze because we have
the postwar court testimony of several witnesses confirming it. The
SS and the police were given similar orders to restore peace and
order. |
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Heydrich orders SS to protect
Jews
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Himmler ordered Reinhard Heydrich to
prevent all destruction of property and to protect Jews against
demonstrators. The telex communication of this order still exists.
It is in the files of the International Military Tribunal in
Nuremberg.
| However, during the
Nuremberg trial this telex order was presented in three
different forms, with forged amendments to change the original
meaning.
In my book Feuerzeichen I undertook to restore
the original text. |
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Hitler was furious
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Adolf Hitler joined the midnight
celebration at the Feldherrnhalle. It was only after he returned to
his apartment about one o'clock in the morning that he learned about
the demonstrations which had been taking place in Munich, during
which one synagogue had been set on fire. He was furious and
immediately ordered the police chief of Munich to come see him.
Hitler told him to immediately stop the fire and to make sure that
no other outrages took place in Munich. He then called various
police and Party officials throughout the Reich to learn the extent
of these demonstrations |
Finally, he ordered a telex message sent to all Gauleiter
offices. It read: "By express order from the very highest authority, arson
against Jewish businesses or other property must in no case and under no
circumstances take place." Synagogues were not specifically mentioned,
apparently because Hitler was still unaware of the burning of synagogues,
apart from the one in Munich.
How Did the SA Get Involved
Despite the Orders From Its Own Leaders?
According to the
records, at least three of the 28 SA Groups did not obey the orders of SA
chief Lutze. Instead, they sent out their men to destroy synagogues and
Jewish buildings. In effect they did precisely the opposite of what Lutze
had ordered. What actually happened is clear from the testimony and
evidence presented at postwar trials against former SA men accused of
participating in the riot.
Provocateurs sent messages to SA
Brigade
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The trials, held between 1946 and 1952,
were based to a large extent on the report of SA Brigade 50 chief
Karl Lucke and begins with these words: "On 10 November 1938, at 3
o'clock in the morning, I received the following order: 'By order of
the Gruppenfuehrer, all Jewish synagogues within the Brigade
district are to be immediately blown up or set on fire'." Lucke then
included in his report a listing of synagogues which had been
destroyed by members of his Brigade. |
This report has been cited by the prosecution at the
Nuremberg Tribunal and by practically all of the consensus historians ever
since as proof that the SA was given orders to destroy Jewish stores and
synagogues.
Lutze ordered the Group leaders to contact their home
offices to stop all anti-Jewish demonstrations, Fust, along with the other
SA leaders, did just that. He called his office in Mannheim and passed on
the orders he had received from Lutze. The man who was on duty that night
at the Mannheim SA office telephone and who received Fust's order
confirmed that he understood it and then hung up. But he never passed on
the order he had received. Instead, he transmitted precisely the opposite
order.
Fritsch gets bogus orders
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The normal procedure would have been
for the man on duty at the telephone to immediately call the deputy
group leader, Lucke, who was in nearby Darmstadt. But instead he
called SA Oberfuehrer (senior colonel) Fritsch and asked him to come
to the office. Fritsch had a reputation for not being particularly
clever. When he arrived, the man who had received the telephone call
showed him a small paper slip with a few notes on it which said that
the synagogues within the Mannheim SA Group district were to be
destroyed. |
The man who had received the call explained to Fritsch
that the order had just arrived from Munich. Slow-minded as he was,
Fritsch did not know what to do and called the local Kreisleiter (district
Party leader) and his deputy. These two men then arrived at the SA office
and discussed the situation, while at the same time the telephone duty man
notified other SA leaders, but still not the deputy Group leader Lucke. In
the meantime the small paper slip disappeared and the SA men now arriving
at the headquarters met only the Kreisleiter, who told them about the
order which he thought had come from Munich. No one asked for any further
confirmation. The SA men then left to begin the destruction. Hours later,
when the whole action was almost finished, the telephone guard finally
called Deputy Group Leader Lucke and passed on the false order. He also
informed Lucke that the action had already been going on for several
hours. Since it was almost all over by this time, Lucke also neglected to
ask for confirmation of the order. It was already 3 o'clock in the
morning. Lucke then alerted the Standartenfuehrer of his Brigade and
carried out the destruction within the Darmstadt district.
Mysterious telephone call
At 8 o'clock the next morning Lucke sat down and wrote
the report which was later cited at the Nuremberg Tribunal. In fact, as
already shown, there was no order to commit arson or carry out destruction
against any Jewish property from the Gruppenfuehrer in Munich, but only
from the telephone guard. Who he was remains a mystery. During the postwar
trials against members of this SA unit, none of the judges asked for the
name or identity of this telephone guard. This mysterious man was very
probably an agent for those who were actually behind the entire Crystal
Night Affair.
The Fine Imposed on the Jews
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German government and Party
officials were furious about what had happened. Hermann Goering, who
was responsible for Germany's economy, complained that it would be
impossible to replace the special plate glass of the broken store
windows because it was not manufactured in Germany. It had to be
imported from Belgium and would cost a great deal of precious
foreign currency. |
Reason for fine
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Because of the Jewish boycott against
German goods, the Reich was short of foreign exchange currency.
Goering therefore decided that because this shortage was caused by
the Jews, it was they who would have to pay for the broken glass. He
imposed a fine of one billion Reichsmarks on the German Jews.
It was certainly unjust to force Jews to pay for
damage which they had not caused. Goering understood this. However,
in private he justified the fine by citing the fact that the 1933
Jewish declaration of war against Germany was proclaimed in the name
of the millions of Jews throughout the
world. |
Therefore they could now help their co-religionists in
Germany bear the consequences of the boycott. It should also be pointed
out that only German Jews with assets of more than 5,000 Reichsmarks in
cash had to contribute to the fine. In 1938, when prices were very low,
5,000 Reichsmarks was a small fortune.
The Reich confiscated all insurance payments
that were to have been paid to Jews whose businesses and homes were looted
or destroyed and the Jewish owners were made personally responsible for
the cost of all repairs.
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