Hitler's Hangman (34 page)
molested’. Furthermore, the SD was to ensure that important archival
sources from synagogues were confiscated rather than destroyed. Finally,
the telegram stated,
as many Jews in all districts, especially the rich, as can be accommodated
in existing prisons are to be arrested. For the time being only healthy
male Jews, who are not too old, are to be detained. After the detentions
have been carried out the appropriate concentration camps are to be
contacted immediately for the prompt accommodation of the Jews in
the camps. Special care is to be taken that the Jews arrested in accord-
ance with these instructions are not ill-treated.54
Later that night, Heydrich sent out a further telegram, reiterating that
looters were to be arrested immediately, but that generally participation in
the pogrom would not give rise to criminal investigations against the
perpetrators.55
The hectic sequence of orders transmitted by Müller and Heydrich
indicates that the SS leadership had been surprised by the beginning and
the extent of the pogrom. Throughout the Reich, Nazi activists had begun
destroying synagogues and Jewish shops, demolishing the interiors of
private homes, stealing their belongings and forcibly pulling Jews out of
their houses, in order to humiliate, abuse and, in many cases, murder them.
The official number of Jewish deaths was later estimated to be ninety-one,
but the real figure is likely to be much higher. In addition, numerous
desperate Jews committed suicide, and of the approximately 30,000
Jewish men who were arrested and shipped to concentration camps that
128
HITLER’S HANGMAN
night, more than a thousand died, either during their imprisonment or as
a result of its long-term effects. Furthermore, an estimated 7,500 Jewish
businesses, 117 private houses and 177 synagogues were destroyed,
inflicting material damage of several hundred million Reichsmarks.56 The
pogrom also spread to the recently annexed Sudetenland and Austria.
Forty-two synagogues were burned down in Vienna alone and nearly
2,000 Jewish families were evicted from their houses and apartments.57
In some ways, Kristallnacht – as the pogrom came to be known in Nazi
Germany – was a frustrating event for Heydrich, partly because it under-
mined his attempts to organize the systematic expulsion of the Jews and
partly because he was aware through SD reports that a majority of
Germans did not approve of open violence against Jews. Public support
for discrimination and enforced emigration did not necessarily extend to
murder and mass destruction of property.58 Furthermore, the pogroms
unnecessarily aroused international protests at a time when Hitler needed
calm for his expansionist foreign policy plans.59
Yet, while Heydrich was concerned that the pogrom had disrupted the
‘orderly’ conduct of emigration, he was also aware of a positive side-effect:
its acceleration of the speed of emigration of frightened Jews. After
inspecting Eichmann’s Central Office in Vienna in November 1938,
Hagen reported to Heydrich on the advantages of the policy adopted in
Austria:
The establishment of the Central Office guarantees the speedy issue of
emigration visas to Jews, usually within 8 days. Furthermore, the Central
Office knows the exact numbers of those who wish to emigrate, their
professions, wealth etc., which will enable it to assemble the necessary
emigration transportation . . . According to our assessment approxi-
mately 25,000 Jews have so far been made to emigrate by the Central
Office so that the overall number of Jews who have left Austria is now
approximately 50,000. The establishment of the Central Office does not
put an extra financial burden on the SD Oberabschnitt Donau [the SD
office responsible for former Austria] because it and its employees are
self-financed by the tax levied on every Jewish emigrant. In view of the
success rate of the Central Office regarding Jewish emigration, it is
recommended – with reference to the recent proposal of 13 January
1938 concerning the establishment of an emigration office – that the
possibility of such an office is considered for the whole of the Reich
as well.60
Hagen’s report landed on Heydrich’s desk at a critical time. On
10 November, one day after the Kristallnacht pogrom, Heydrich added a
R E H E A R S A L S F O R W A R
129
handwritten note to the report to the effect that the SD should draft
a proposal for the establishment of a Central Office for Jewish Emigration
in the Old Reich, based on Eichmann’s Vienna model. While the SD’s
Jewish experts frantically worked on the proposal requested by their boss,
Heydrich had little difficulty convincing Göring of the economic point-
lessness of the mob anti-Semitism that had erupted on 9 November. He
informed Göring that, according to early estimates, at least 815 Jewish
businesses had been destroyed and that twenty-nine department stores
had been set on fire. Of the 191 synagogues set alight, seventy-six had
been completely destroyed. Göring was outraged by the damage the
pogrom had done to the economy.61
Only two days after the pogrom, on 12 November, the future Nazi
Jewish policy was discussed during a high-level conference convened by
Göring in the Reich Ministry of Aviation, which he had directed as
minister since 1933. Apart from Heydrich, more than one hundred
representatives of various state and party agencies participated in the
conference, many of them more senior than Heydrich. Fol owing long
discussions about the economic implications of the pogrom, Heydrich
cal ed for an accelerated emigration of Jews from Germany. He
pointed to the previous success of his Central Office for Jewish Emigration
in Vienna and recommended the creation of a similar office for the
entire Reich. Heydrich maintained that by the end of October about
50,000 Jews had been expel ed from Austria, a figure that was, in
fact, lower than that subsequently established by historians: more
recent research shows that about half of the approximately 190,000
Austrian Jews had left their country by May 1939.62 If implemented,
Heydrich insisted, similar success rates could be expected for the Old
Reich. When Göring enquired how such an expensive process would
be paid for, Heydrich pointed out that the wealthier Jews could cover
the expenses for the less wel -off emigrants through compulsory
contributions. The envisaged time-frame for the complete emigration of
German Jews was ‘at least ten years’. Göring approved Heydrich’s
proposal.63
The fact that his suggestion of an organized expulsion of German Jews
met with general approval at this meeting was the decisive enabling factor
for Heydrich’s future role as
the
leading figure in Nazi Germany’s anti-
Jewish policies. The comprehensive expulsion programme developed by
the SD’s Jewish department over the preceding years now became the
official policy of the Nazi regime, sanctioned by Hitler himself.64 Göring
would continue to claim overall responsibility for the Jewish question, but
the power to act had effectively been handed over to Heydrich’s Security
Police and SD apparatus.
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HITLER’S HANGMAN
On 24 January 1939, Göring ordered that the emigration of the Jews
from the Reich, particularly of poor Jews, should be advanced by every
possible means. A Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration, based on
the Vienna model, was to be established under Heydrich’s leadership.
Only a few days later, on 31 January, Heydrich directed that, with the
exception of a few particularly ‘dangerous’ left-wing intellectuals, Jews
held in protective custody should be released
provided
that they were
willing to leave Germany for ever.65
In late January, Heydrich successively informed the heads of all
German ministries that the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration
had now been set up and asked for co-operation and consultation in all
matters relating to the issue of Jewish emigration from Germany.66
Simultaneously, he proposed the creation of a new umbrella organization
for all Jewish societies and associations, the
Reichsvereinigung der Juden in
Deutschland
(Reich Association of Jews in Germany), whose main task it
would be to co-operate with the Central Office in ensuring an orderly
emigration of Jews from Germany.67 From 4 July 1939 onwards, all Jews
living in Germany had to become members of the Reich Association, thus
ensuring comprehensive records on each and every Jew in the country.
This allowed Heydrich the direct supervision of all Jewish organizations
in Germany, while enabling him to keep a closer watch on the Jews them-
selves and also to bring about a remarkable simplification of the adminis-
tration and processing of Jewish assets.68
Although he had not initiated it, the pogrom of November 1938 thus
proved to be a major turning point in Heydrich’s career, resulting in
considerably more power for him and the police apparatus he controlled.69
Goebbels, who had instigated the pogrom on the evening of 9 November,
had hoped that this action would allow him once again to set the tone
with regard to Jewish policies. But the initiative backfired. It resulted in
millions of Reichsmarks of damage to the economy, severe international
criticism and a negative response from large sections of the German
population.70 Göring, like Himmler and Heydrich an opponent of the
pogrom, openly confessed to leaders of the party at the beginning of
December that he was ‘extremely angry about the whole affair’.71 Heydrich
agreed – partly out of conviction and partly for tactical reasons. In
December 1938, during a speech to Wehrmacht officers, he maintained
that the pogrom constituted ‘the worst blow to state and party’ since the
Röhm ‘revolt’ of 1934.72
The pogrom of November 1938 was followed by a further wave of anti-
Semitic laws: Jews were widely excluded from economic life in Germany,
their companies were forcibly Aryanized and the insurance pay-outs for
the damage they suffered in the pogroms were confiscated. In a particu-
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131
larly cynical move, they were forced to pay a ‘redemption fee’ of 1 billion
Reichsmarks for the damage caused during Kristallnacht.73
Already during the meeting of 12 November, Goebbels and Heydrich
had argued in favour of further measures to exclude German Jews from
the rest of society. New discriminating legislation was to ban them from
theatres, cinemas, public swimming pools and ‘German forests’; to separate
Jews from Aryans in hospitals and railway carriages; and to confiscate
privately owned cars. Most of these suggestions were implemented over
the fol owing months, either by national laws, by police orders or on the
initiative of local communities.74 Although arguing against ‘ghettoization’,
Heydrich further proposed that in order to ‘assist their identification’
Jews should wear a distinguishing mark on their clothing: a yel ow star.
His suggestion was turned down by Hitler in light of both public opinion
and the ‘predictable recurrent excesses’ against Jews. Although disappointed
by his failure to secure Hitler’s backing, Heydrich would return to his
proposals for the introduction of the yel ow star during the Second World
War.75
Kristallnacht and the increasingly threatening chicanery that followed
in its wake had a profound impact on Germany’s Jewish community. The
panic unleashed by the November pogrom and the loosening of immigra-
tion regulations in several countries persuaded more and more Jews to
leave the Reich: in 1938 alone, 33,000–40,000 escaped Nazi Germany,
and in 1939 a further 75,000–80,000 German Jews left the country.
Despite the often extraordinary hardships that they experienced during
their exodus, future developments would show that they were right to
leave while they still had the opportunity to do so.76
The Death of Czechoslovakia
Following the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938, Hitler turned his
attention to the Sudetenland, giving increasingly inflammatory speeches
and demanding that the largest ethnic minority in Czechoslovakia, the
roughly 3.1 million Sudeten Germans living in the western, north-
western and south-western border areas of the country, should be
reunited with their homeland. The success of the Anschluss had made
