The Transfer Agreement (17 page)

In between the British capitulation and the Committee's announcement that day, Horace Rumbold, the British ambassador in Berlin, visited von Neurath to discuss the anti-Jewish boycott. Von Neurath briefed Ambassador Rumbold about Hitler's twelve-hour ultimatum and suggested there
was some hope because Jewish and governmental statements from Britain had already been assured. Events were speeding so fast, however, that Rumbold was unaware of his own country's activities in previous hours. Rumbold was, in fact, raising doubts about those British assurances when von Neurath was summoned to the phone. German sources in Washington were calling with the news that American Jewry had issued the announcement Hitler demanded.
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It now appeared that von Neurath's impossible task might be completed. The latest updates from his people working in France and with the American State Department indicated that similar statements would be forthcoming. But aside from the American Jewish declaration, which was already public, the other declarations were wholly contingent upon canceling the April First boycott.

It was now up to the chancellor. Despite the encouraging reports, Hitler still refused to cancel the next day's boycott.
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Von Neurath could scarcely believe Hitler's refusal. Germany's diplomatic honor had been put on the line. Foreign assurances were solicited under the express warranty that if produced, the anti-Jewish boycott would be canceled. Those assurances were either in hand or forthcoming. Von Neurath was so physically shaken he could hardly function. Von Papen was so furious he tried to convince President Hindenburg to declare martial law. At the same time, urgent appeals were lodged by German shipping, manufacturing, and financial concerns to stop the anti-Jewish boycott at all costS.
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Even as last-minute appeals were being made to Hindenburg, the phone rang in chargé Gordon's Berlin office. Undersecretary of State Phillips was calling from Washington with the public statement von Neurath needed. Phillips dictated the declaration: "The situation in Germany is being followed in this country with deep concern. Unfortunate incidents have indeed occurred, and the whole world joins in regretting them. But without minimizing or condoning what has taken place, I have reason to believe that many of the accounts of acts of terror and atrocities which have reached this country have been exaggerated, and I fear that the continued dissemination of exaggerated reports may prejudice the friendly feelings between the peoples of the two countries."
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Phillips continued dictating the statement: "I have been told that protest measures . . . in certain American cities . . . would result in a partial boycott of German goods .... Not only would such measures adversely affect our economic relations with Germany, but what is far more important, it is by showing a spirit of moderation ourselves that we are likely to induce a spirit of moderation elsewhere."
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Hull had caved in, nullifying America's earlier warning of far-reaching repercussions should the anti-Jewish campaign take place. He was prepared to release the new statement to American newspapers Saturday morning. But Phillips qualified the retreat carefully, insisting that Gordon "make it
clear [to von Neurath] that he cannot issue such a statement unless you receive definite assurance that the boycott will be called off. You will readily understand that the Secretary would be placed in a highly embarrassing position if, after issuing this statement, the boycott should commence. We shall therefore await a further message from you to the effect that the boycott will be called off .... How soon can you get a reply back to US,?"
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Gordon answered, "The Foreign Minister told me where to get him at
dinner. I could be there in five or ten minutes. I can call you back in fifteen or twenty minutes hence." Gordon added that von Neurath had assured him that the British foreign secretary would send a similar statement, but the final details had "not yet been settled." Gordon knew that minutes counted. "I will call him [von Neurath] at dinner at once and will call you back in thirty minutes. I will put the call in now while I am going around to see him." Gordon hung up and immediately phoned the German foreign minister.
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At about that time, Hindenburg had undoubtedly contacted Adolf Hitler one last time. Using whatever prestige and influence he could still wield, the president insisted Hitler cancel the April First campaign. All the old arguments were exchanged. Perhaps some new ones. And then for some reason, or perhaps for some combination of reasons, der Führer unexpectedly agreed. The boycott must indeed be stopped.

For whatever reason, Hitler finally agreed the Reich would at this early stage suffer far more than it would gain, and was not yet strong enough to risk the battle. He agreed the tactic of boycotts would be abandoned. Instead, he would proceed against German Jewish economic viability by regulations, legally. Step by step. But Saturday morning's action was now too far gone to be aborted. To do so, admitted Hitler, would probably result in bloodshed at the hands of uncontrollable SA troops outraged by the disappointment.
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Therefore, a reluctant compromise was struck that would enable Hitler tc satisfy Brownshirt demands for an attack against the Jews, yet limit the economic retaliation by world Jewry. The chancellor would declare "a pause" in the boycott late the first day, then a brief moratorium.
If,
by Wednesday April
5,
foreign agitation had receded sufficiently, the boycott would be dissolved altogether. However, the drive to expel Jews from professions and destroy their place in German society would begin at once.
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Hitler then called Goebbels, insisting that SA members loyal to Goebbels and Goering be marshaled and told that the boycott had been curtailed. Goebbels reluctantly prepared a radio announcement suspending the antiJewish boycott at 7:00 P.M., April First until the following Wednesday morning—to observe the drastic reduction offoreign agitation and anti-Reich boycott movements. During the Saturday active boycott hours, no violence could be perpetrated. No Jewish store could even be entered, and no Jew could be manhandled. Jewish banks would be exempted by edict to minimize economic disruption.
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It was now nearly 11:00 P.M. in Berlin. The world still believed that eleven hours hence, the Nazis would stage their violent pogrom throughout Germany. Chargé Gordon reached von Neurath. He read him Hull's statement disavowing the anti-German boycott, but the German foreign minister, in great distress, admitted it was now too late. Von Neurath said Hitler felt too many SA units were awaiting the moment and could not be disappointed. The only consolation von Neurath could relate was the decision to suspend the campaign at
7:00 P.M.,
Saturday. Gordon sadly agreed to pass the news to Washington.
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Within five minutes Gordon was listening to the radio for Goebbels' announcement limiting the boycott to a single day. But Goebbels' remarks were at once both reassuring and ominous. He made clear that "the boycott will be carried out with iron discipline and no one will be bodily in jeopardy .... Every act of physical violence will be punished severely .... Provocateurs who . . . incite violence shall be handed over to the police."
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Then Goebbels, who commanded the personal loyalty of many Storm Trooper factions, added his own threatening postscripts. Instead of downplaying the likelihood of a resumption that next Wednesday, he declared that if atrocity reports and the international anti-Reich boycott movement did not totally subside by Wednesday, the anti-Jewish campaign would be "resumed with unprecedented force and vehemence."
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Goebbels left the studio and drove to a hall on the west side of Berlin, where he addressed an already agitated crowd of Brownshirts. In the hypnotic, demagogic Nazi style, Goebbels worked the crowd into a violent frenzy. To cheers, Goebbels shouted, "Tomorrow not a German man or woman shall enter a Jewish store. Jewish trade throughout Germany must remain paralyzed. We shall then call a three-day pause in order to give the world a chance to recant its anti-German agitation.
If
it has not been abandoned ... the boycott will be resumed Wednesday until German Jewry has been annihilated!"
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Goebbels then admitted to the crowd that the party had not planned on its avowed confrontation with the Jews until Hitler had consolidated more power. "We did not plan to open this question immediately. We had more important things to do." Then, accusing the Jews of "taking bread from German workers" by creating the international anti-Hitler boycott, Goebbels bellowed a stern warning: "We have not hurt one Jewish hair, but if New York and London boycott German goods, we will take off our gloves." The throng exploded with chants of "Hang them! Hang them!"
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At midnight in Berlin, chargé Gordon telephoned Undersecretary Phillips in Washington. Gordon was forlorn that some minuscule delay on the State Department's part had been a factor. "As I told you this afternoon," Gordon said, "it was an eleventh-hour breakdown." Gordon added that Sir John Simon's letter disavowing protest and boycott "did not materialize." Under the circumstances, Hull's appeasement statement would be retracted and withheld from public view.
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In New York, Stephen Wise finally fell asleep well after midnight that Friday, hoping that history would prove that his steadfast activism against Hitler had not precipitated the events to follow. Those events were in fact long planned by Nazi leaders. The American Jewish Congress protests and the growing Jewish-led anti-Reich boycott merely forced the Nazis to execute their plans much sooner than expected. One reassuring letter from a Berlin confidant reached Wise shortly after April First. It explained: "Over here they have made the Jews and everyone else think that this boycott was only a retaliatory measure because of the action of the Jews in England and America and that nothing would have occurred otherwise. Lies—all lies. It was prepared months ago. I know! ... Could any country in 48 hours have a complete list of every Jewish shop in Germany ... including the seamstresses, little shoemakers, tiny shops in basements that sell vegetables, and all this [even] in the smallest hamlets and towns .... This was organized to the nth degree." Stephen Wise also hoped that history would confirm that his steadfastness did more than bring the true Nazi intentions out into the open. Wise hoped to prove he actually prevented a bloody medieval outrage.
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When Jewish merchants in Berlin arrived at their stores the morning of April First, they found cadres of placard-carrying, arm-waving Brownshirts shooing customers away. All Jewish stores were identified by a yellow spot against a black background, reminiscent of the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear in the Middle Ages. In Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, and in every city and most towns throughout Germany, the pickets cried, "Buy German. Don't buy from Jewish stores!" Stink bombs were rolled into Jewish department stores. Judges were hauled off their benches by defendants. Doctors' patients were admonished at the door.
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Many stores had been closed days earlier by regional boycotts under way since the first announcement. Despite the pleadings of "Aryan" insurance companies, exuberant SA units did shatter windows and wreck property. Some German citizens actively opposed to the boycott deliberately shopped at Jewish stores, buying the first object they laid their hands on. These people were filmed by Nazi cameramen for exhibition at local theaters; some of them were set upon and stamped on the forehead with the word
Traitor.
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In the most fashionable sections of Berlin, Brownshirts armed with blackjacks and other weapons staged a day long terror siege that included invading Jewish-owned stores, vandalizing the merchandise, extorting money, and then brutally beating the proprietors.
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One Jewish attorney was murdered by a mob in Kiel after being dragged from a jail where he was being held after he resisted boycotters.
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Throughout Germany, cruel acts of intimidation and destruction formally inaugurated the new era. But much of the outside world was misled about the degree of violence because Goebbels' Government Press Office ordered news
papers
to publish only photographs "which are within the limits of the legal
boycott." Hence, all photographs showed disciplined SA troops impassively standing outside Jewish stores functioning as no more than informational pickets. On March 31, Streicher's boycott office circulated a statement that a "Communist group" was planning widespread window-smashing and looting; hence, vandalism against Jews was in advance declared to be a Communist, not a Nazi, transgression. Strict censorship and German hysteria over even reporting an incident that would be termed "atrocity propaganda" created a quiescent facade that fooled many Western journalists and diplomats and the rest of the world for decades. They would believe the April First antiJewish boycott was essentially nonviolent.
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But Stephen Wise was not deceived. He was convinced that even if the more visible acts of physical violence might now be avoided, the quieter acts of violence—occupational ousters, deprivations of civil liberties, cultural obliteration—would continue, until German Jewry was finished. Wise was determined that the rights of Jews not be sacrificed and vowed to fight bitterly until the Hitler regime was toppled by right-thinking Germans who would realize that Hitler's campaign was national suicide.
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On April First,
Volkischer Beobachter
printed a photograph of the enemy of Adolf Hitler.
It
was a picture of Stephen S. Wise standing beside two Congress supporters. Late the night before, Goebbels wrote privately that the struggle against international Jewry "will be a fight to the finish."
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