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In the initial hours after German troops entered Austria, the violence against Jews on the streets of Vienna exceeded anything that had occurred in the “old Reich” after 1933.
All the hateful, sick, dirty fantasies that had been conceived in nocturnal orgies of the imagination were rampantly visible on the streets in broad daylight.”17 The uncontrolled terrorising of Jews reached such proportions that on 17 March
Once again, administrative measures “from above” and violence “from below” combined to hasten radicalisation. Anti-Semitic rioting broke out in many parts of the “old Reich” in the spring of 1938 in the wake of the pogrom in Vienna.
“We want to force Jews out of economic and cultural life, indeed out of public life altogether,” Goebbels wrote in his diary.
The Jews leave Berlin. And the police are going to help me.”33
But there was an internal contradiction within the policy of forcibly driving away Jews. By doing everything in its power to rob Jews of the basis of their economic existence, the Nazi regime restricted their ability to emigrate.
“that the chances for emigration have decreased just as much as the pressure to emigrate has grown.”
the readiness of Western countries to take in Jews was by no means rising as quickly as the persecution of Jews in Germany was intensifying.
“No one wants them,”
In his concluding speech at the Nuremberg rally in 1938, Hitler made fun of the hypocrisy of Western democracies that complained, on the one hand, about the “boundless cruelty” with which the Third Reich was trying to “rid itself of its Jewish element” while shrinking back, on the other, from the burdens connected with accepting such a large number of Jewish immigrants. “Plenty of morality,” Hitler scoffed, “but no help at all.”
“Where to with the Jews?” It summarised the mains points of the debate. First: “Palestine is out of the question as a large centre for immigration.” Second: “The states of the world do not consider themselves in a position to take in the Jews of Europe.” Third: “We will have to look around for a closed territory not settled by Europeans.”
the island of Madagascar off the eastern coast of Africa began to play a role in Hitler’s calculations.
both he and the other advocates of the idea knew that conditions on the island were so forbidding that the majority of Jews deported there would die.
“He was considering the use of additional laws to so restrict Jewish life in Germany that the vast majority of the Jewish population simply would not want to stay in Germany.
Once again it was Hitler who gave the decisive signal for Germans to give free rein to their hatred and destructive desires.
All party leaders had understood the message “to be that to outsiders the party should not appear to be the originator of the demonstrations but that in reality it should organise and carry them out.”65
Hitler agreed with Heinrich Himmler that the SS would not participate in the pogrom.
In the meantime the pogrom had already commenced in many parts of the Reich. Everywhere SA men and party activists, mostly out of uniform, marched with canisters of petrol to the nearest synagogues, where they ransacked and set fire to the buildings.
As ordered, local police did nothing, and fire brigades only intervened to prevent the flames from spreading to neighbouring buildings.
This was intended to maintain the illusion that he had had nothing to do with the pogrom.76
“It was a chain of endless physical and emotional suffering,” one of the misfortunates wrote about the reality of Buchenwald.
All of a sudden the pogrom had made Jews realise that they were without legal protection of any kind. They could be beaten, robbed and killed without the custodians of law and order lifting a finger or the perpetrators being threatened with any form of punishment. A line had been crossed: Germany had left the community of civilised nations.
the Nazi Party press never ceased depicting the pogrom as a spontaneous expression of popular outrage, it was clear to everybody that this was a fictional narrative. Given the fact that the violence had obviously been organised, a state police office in Bielefeld concluded in late November 1938, the constant repetition of the propaganda version of events was “almost laughable.”
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“It cannot be determined what people’s inner feelings about the events were since it is publicly known that the regime does not permit or tolerate criticism of the actions of party members and those working for them.”
Significantly, Hitler as the main instigator again remained exempt from criticism. Various reports registered remarks such as “The Führer surely did not intend this.”96 The dictator’s strategy of passing himself off as the disengaged statesman far above any such unpleasantness, while delegating responsibility to his underlings, was a complete success.
the completely unrestrained language, free from any sort of moral scruple, that they used. “I would have preferred it if you had killed 200 Jews and not destroyed so many things of value,” Göring declared
the introduction of the notorious yellow star in September 1941.
Hitler’s laughter always had an undertone of mockery and sarcasm, betraying traces of past disappointment and suppressed ambition. By contrast, Mussolini was able to laugh his head off without constraint. It was a liberating laugh demonstrating that the man had a sense of humour.48
Hitler avoided making decisions. Instead, he used the opportunity to hold a more-than-two-hour monologue
‘If a German field marshal can marry a whore then anything is possible in this world.’ ”77
