Beyond Belief (10 page)

This confusion regarding Hitler's responsibility for the campaign of terror was reflective of a broader debate then being conducted in the United States and Europe. Many people, including those responsible for formulating policy, could not decide how committed Hitler was to realizing his threats to nullify the Versailles treaty, rearm Germany, expand its borders, and fulfill his numerous other objectives. During these years there were many optimists who counseled that once the Nazi leader solidified his rule, eased Germany's economic crisis, and redressed the balance of power, he would moderate his tone, abandon his extremist and hyperbolic rhetoric, and assume a respected role as a head of state.

The isolationist
Chicago Tribune
and some other papers, including the
New York Times
, were optimistic about Hitler's ability, in the words of the
Christian Science Monitor
, to act like the month of March—“come in like a lion” and soon become a “lamb.” Once Hitler “becomes more used to his job,” the
Los Angeles Times
predicted, he would surely become less “theatrical.”
³³
In his frontpage column “March of Nations,” the
Monitor's
Rufus Steele reassured readers that “power tempers the Chancellor's ready tongue.” Steele reached this conclusion in the same column in which he cited Hitler's Reichstag announcement that the German government “will attempt to exterminate communism, . . . ruthlessly punish treason . . . not tolerate adherence to a religion or race that [was not] lawful,” and give the German people a “moral purging.” Somehow Steele managed to extrapolate from this that Hitler was becoming more moderate.
³⁴
In mid-March 1933 Frederick Birchall, who was then serving as
New York Times
Berlin bureau chief, was in the United States. In a nationally broadcast CBS radio speech he denied that Hitler was a dictator. He described him as a “bachelor and a vegetarian and he neither drinks nor smokes. His whole life, his whole thought are given to this National Socialist movement and he has taken upon himself the hardest job that ever a man could undertake.” He also urged
listeners to dismiss the thought that the Nazis would engage in “slaughter of the[ir] enemies or racial oppression in any vital degree.”
*
On March 12 the
Times
ran an editorial complimenting Hitler for urging his followers to “refrain from acts of individual terrorism.” In July
Times
columnist Anne O'Hare McCormick offered readers a benign, almost enraptured description of her interview with the Chancellor. She described his “curiously childlike and candid” blue eyes, his voice which was “as quiet as his black tie,” and his frequent smile, and concluded that when he talked he was “undubitably sincere.” In his conversation with her, Hitler declared that acts of discrimination were not directed primarily against Jews, but “against the Communists and all elements that demoralized and destroyed us.”
³⁵

Shortly after the Nazis' nationwide boycott against Jews, Hitler's speeches were interpreted by many editors as showing “an unexpectedly moderate tone.” His claim to be interested only in “peace” and “reconciliation” was described by one midwestern paper as “fine and conciliatory words.” The
St. Louis Post Dispatch
believed that Germany would soon return to democracy. The
Detroit News
argued that the world “in fairness must wait and see what the new regime accomplishes before it hastens to condemn it.”
³⁶

In the fall of 1933 Kurt Schmitt, Minister of the Economy, censured the boycott of Jewish business establishments.
New York Times
reporter Guido Endreis believed that Schmitt's remarks were an indication that more “responsible elements in the Hitler government are taking sane counsels on this issue.” In a reversal of the norm, the
New York Times
's editorial board took a somewhat more skeptical stance than its reporter and argued that the recurring cycle of terror in Germany raises doubts about acts of seeming moderation such as Schmitt's promises or Goebbels's statements to the foreign press that “Jews had not been treated as inferiors.” The
New York Times
observed that “hitherto . . . . any sign of relaxation in one place has been counterbalanced by an outburst of unreason along another section of the anti-Jewish front.” The
Times
wondered whether these developments would not be followed by a “new display of spiritual ferocity against the Jews.”
Newsweek
, which also doubted the genuineness of Schmitt's statement, suggested that his comments be understood as a German
attempt to “further its reemployment program” since, as Schmitt acknowledged, the boycotted stores and businesses employed too many people to be “simply wiped out.”
³⁷
But much of the press continued to hope that moderation was in the offing and that Germany was on the verge of abandoning its violent behavior.

This expectation of impending moderation persisted even after the Berlin riots and the 1935 Nuremberg Laws. It was part of a broader set of expectations regarding Germany's policies and symptomatic of the attitude which led Neville Chamberlain to the disastrous Munich agreement. Until
Kristallnacht
, and even to a small degree thereafter, much of the press continued to be optimistic regarding Nazism's treatment of the Jews. It condemned the violence and then predicted that this particular act—whatever it might be—marked the end of the terrorist campaign against the Jews. It never did; in fact, the following act usually escalated the degree of brutality. After the July 1935 riots, when German authorities announced that those who engaged in individual actions against Jews would be subject to arrest, AP claimed that the “Nazi chieftains had called off their drive on ‘state enemies.'” Newspapers which a few weeks earlier had lamented the madness prevailing in Germany now hailed Germany for “show[ing] sense.” The
Washington Star
believed that “reason” had returned to the Teutonic state.
³⁸
There was satisfaction that Germany seemed to be responding to foreign opinion.
³⁹
The optimism may have been a reflection of the American desire to stay out of the cauldron of European problems. As long as it could be argued that Germany might eventually adopt a rational and respectable path, then it could also be argued that the world would remain at peace and America would not become entangled in foreign battles as it had less than two decades earlier.

Some papers found a different reason for hope in the outbreaks. Their interpretation was indicative of the degree to which they were anxious to view the situation in a positive light. They argued that the Berlin riots as well as other antisemitic incidents reflected Hitler's weakness, not his strength, and were signs of the imminent collapse of his rule.

In some circumstances this argument would have had a certain logical foundation. Violent upheavals in the capital of a nation—particularly when the authorities attributed them to enemies of the regime—could be indicative of a threat to the government's stability. But these were not such circumstances.

The
Troy
(New York)
Record
concluded after the Berlin riots that “Nazi rule is crumbling,” and a southern paper, convinced that the handwriting was on the wall, declared that “the days of the Hitlerite rule are numbered; there can be no doubt about that. Any regime which makes its appeal for popular favor on the basis of a philosophy of hate cannot survive.” The
Washington Post
believed that the riots were a “precedent” to Germany's imminent collapse.
⁴⁰
A New York paper believed the riots proof that things were “going badly” for the Nazi regime. According to the
Oakland Tribune
the Berlin riots revealed the existence of movements which “endanger the regime” and rendered Nazi leaders' positions precarious at best. The
Cleveland Plain Dealer
concluded that Hitler's opportunity “to create the Teutonic new age [is] fast slipping way.” The
Syracuse Post Standard
found the riots a cause for celebration, for the “fact that violent measures are undertaken prove [sic] that censorship and the iron fist cannot crush for long the spirit of free men.”
⁴¹
Such interpretations transformed the riots into a revolt against persecution rather than an expression of it.

Even the
New York Times
, whose front-page headline proclaimed “Antisemites Firmly in the Saddle” and whose reporters had been arguing that it was Hitler and his followers' power, not vulnerability, which led them to this new radical offensive, fell prey to the “weakness, not strength” interpretation. In an editorial it surmised that “all is not going well” within Hitler's regime and the
Reichsführer's
“power seems to be waning.”
⁴²

Similar interpretations had been offered in the wake of the murder of Hitler's chief lieutenant, storm troop leader Ernst Roehm, and many of Roehm's followers in 1934, which Hitler had engineered.
*
After that and a futile Nazi attempt to precipitate
a civil war in Austria which would lead to imposition of Nazi rule, there was speculation in the press that Hitler's position of power had become more symbolic than real. Actually his power was realer than ever.
Chicago Daily News
correspondent Wallace R. Duel subsequently characterized repeated reports that Hitler was weakening as part of the “nightmare” with which he and other journalists had to contend. Every crisis or upheaval in Germany produced such reassuring claims from those far from the scene, and each time they proved “more false . . . than before.”
⁴³

Of course not everyone associated with the press succumbed to this optimism. Skeptics pointed to the increasing power of Julius Streicher, publisher of the pornographic antisemitic weekly
Der Stürmer
, the persistent spread of antisemitic violence in Germany, the appointment of a known antisemite, Wolf von Helldorf, as Berlin police chief, and the rumors of forthcoming antisemitic legislation and argued that these developments did not augur well for improved treatment of Jews and were no cause for optimism.
⁴⁴
The
Milwaukee Journal
interpreted German actions as a change in tactics and not policies. Germany might shun overt physical violence but would relegate Jews to a “living death” and “slow starvation” by cutting them off “entirely from [their] place in the community.”
⁴⁵
The
Baltimore Sun
was also unconvinced that any amelioration was in the offing. It cautioned readers against being blinded by maneuvers designed for foreign consumption and pointed out that German leaders claimed they wanted to “halt or at least ‘modify' ” the drive against the “‘enemies of the state' . . . but every dispatch from Germany brings fresh tales of coercion and repression [and] of new attacks upon Jews, Catholics and other groups.” This view was echoed by the
New York Post
, the
Washington Post
, and the
Chattanooga Times
. The latter, which was owned by the Sulzberger family, as was the
New York Times
, had previously been rather optimistic about Germany's ability to return to a path of reason. Promises of a change in policy notwithstanding, statements by Nazi leaders indicated to the
Washington
Post
that the country was “within striking distance of . . . complete terrorism.”
⁴⁶

All of the various explanations in the press about who precisely was responsible for and what were the ulterior motives behind the antisemitic violence were attempts to make sense of a situation that seemed fraught with irrational behavior. Such efforts to explain and rationalize antisemitism spring out of what has been termed the “nothing but” theory of antisemitism.
⁴⁷
It is a theory that defines antisemitism as
nothing but
a means of accomplishing something else, e.g., a smokescreen designed to divert attention from other more complex problems, a means of uniting disparate groups, or a pressure valve for venting social or political discontent. Such an interpretation made it difficult, if not impossible, to understand that for the Nazis antisemitism was a, if not
the
, keystone of their ideology.

This is not to suggest that the Nazi leadership had no ulterior motives when it pursued its antisemitic campaign or that there were no variations of opinion among Nazi leaders. The struggles of 1934, including the murder of Ernst Roehm and his followers, revealed the volatility of such differences of opinion. During the early years of Nazi rule, Germany, in many respects, was still in the throes of an internal revolution as different segments of the party and government hierarchies jockeyed for power. The press was correct in arguing that antisemitism sometimes did serve as a smokescreen and that Jews were often useful as convenient scapegoats. Certain antisemitic acts
were
timed to divert attention from other problems, and some reflected divisions of opinion between competing Nazi factions. For example, there was serious debate in the Nazi ranks about the efficacy of actions such as the April 1, 1933, boycott of Jewish stores. There were officials, such as Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht, who were opposed to precipitous measures that might both “inflame opinion abroad” and “create economic and financial disturbances,” and who were upset by the Berlin riots and the vulgar and
public
tactics of individuals such as Julius Streicher. At the other end of the spectrum there were Streicher and others who sought the “complete subordination” of the Jew, including citizenship restrictions, loss of
property rights, and prohibitions upon business and social relations with non-Jews.
⁴⁸
The press did not totally misread the situation; different factions were jockeying for position. However, its inclination to attribute outbreaks of antisemitism to
nothing but
the Nazi leadership's desire to placate one side or another or to divert attention from other problems obscured the degree to which antisemitism was central to Nazi ideology.
⁴⁹