Gilbert’s Kritalnacht & Gellately’s Backing Hitler

Gilbert’s Kritalnacht & Gellately’s Backing Hitler: Martin Gilbert. Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction. Harper Perennial 2006. Robert Gellatately. Backing Hitler: Consent & Coercion in Nazi Germany. Oxford University Press 2002.

In the later part of the 1930s the National Socialist Government of Hitler and his associates stepped up their campaign of anti-Semitism through a system of trial and error. Among these trials were the events of November 10th, 1938. On this night Germans from all over the Reich joined in with only few exceptions in the vandalizing and destruction of Jewish homes, businesses, and places of worship. This night was referred to as Kristallnacht. It was named such since the smashing of shop windows left broken glass in the streets. According to Martin Gilbert, author of the authoritative text on the subject, “no event in the history of the fate of the German Jews between 1933 and 1945 was so widely covered”.1 The two authors Gellately and Gilbert both outline the events of the day.
In Gellately’s book Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, he sets out to discuss “the social and political sides of the dictatorship rather than what went on behind closed doors”.2 He hopes his book can provide answers as to how “the rationalizations the Nazis provided (...) were an integral and essential part of the discrimination and persecution.”3 Gellately, due to the scope of his book does not too deeply delve into the matter of Kristallnacht, but is willing to briefly discuss it.
In his sixth chapter, Gellately addresses the causes of Kristallnacht. The Nazi government had begun a policy of expulsion of Polish Jews who had not obtained German citizenship. Most of the refuges were trapped at the border since Poland would not admit them because of a new law requiring that passports be renewed with a government stamp. The son of a family of these refuges was living in Paris at the time. He received an urgent letter from his sister concerning the events. The seventeen year old boy, Herschel Grynszpan, shot a minor German official at the German embassy. The official, Ernst vom Rath died shortly after of his wounds. For Gellately, the assassination of vom Rath marked “the beginning of a new German attitude on the Jewish question.”4 The “new question” would usher in alarmingly new trials in which the Nazi government would push the limits of the public’s perception of anti-Semitism.
When the news of vom Rath’s death reached the Nazis, they were celebrating the anniversary of the failed Beer Hall Putsch. The orders were given that the police were not to disturb the demonstrations, and the Gestapo should expect to arrest around 20,000 Jewish men.5 Furthermore, Gellately goes on to say, the Gestapo was to coordinate local actions, and where there was not enough party support, trucks of traveling Nazis would be employed to sow destruction on Jewish property.6 Added to that order, Gellately adds that the Gestapo made sure that “no warrants of arrest would be issued” on that night against Germans who participated in the pogrom.7 He adds that the three reasons the pogrom was able to succeed was that “the Jews were socially isolated, unarmed, and easy targets”.8 The pogrom had succeeded in proving that the German people would, will relatively little coaxing engage in or at least witness large scale violence, with very little dissent.
The aftermath of the pogrom was catastrophic for the Jews that remained in Germany. Gellately says that historians put the figures at around 30,000 arrested (all men, over the age of 16), over 100 killed, and at least 300 took their own lives. The Jews who were arrested were sent to Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. On top of all that Gellately notes that the Reich fined the Jews that remained in Germany around 1 billion marks for all the destruction of that night.9 The aftermath of the pogrom left a general sense of confusion and fear in Germany. Gellately closes his section on Kristallnacht by saying “for the fist time, non-Jews sensed a real danger of being the next victim of Nazi terror.”10
In Martin Gilbert’s authoritative text on the subject, Kritallnacht: Prelude to Destruction, he uses interviews, records, and newspapers from the time to document the events that took place on that night. As his sources Gilbert goes on to cite some of the hundreds of foreign journalists who witnessed the night. Gilbert argues that according to the way diplomats and journalists, of other countries responded to the events of November 10th, 1938, caused a dramatic upheaval in the way the west would view Nazism.11
The first half of Gilbert’s book is devoted to eye-witness accounts of the brutality of Kristallnacht. The initial shock of the veterans of the 1914-1918 War was intense. According to Gilbert 12,000 Jews had died for Germany in that war and many Jews were feverishly patriotic Germans.12 In Berlin eleven synagogues were burnt. Gilbert argues the premeditation of the attack in two places. The first he explains that the government had passed a law shortly before the pogrom requiring Jewish businesses to mark the outside of their shops as such. Later an eye-witness reports “we could not give a description of the vandals since they were all strangers to us, probably not even citizens of our town, and the argument the pogrom been spontaneous was negated by this fact.”13 The witnesses were caught off guard by the sudden and coordinated movements of the attack on the Jewish community. Another witness says, predicting the fire bombing of Dresden, as he watches a synagogue burn in that city, “this fire will return! It will make a long curve and then come down to us.”14 Though not all Germans participated, or even agreed with the pogrom, Gilbert in the next part of the book goes into depth about the foreigners who resisted the anti-Semitism, and did everything they could to save as many lives as possible.
In the second part of his book Gilbert addresses the refuges who seeing the terror of Kristallnacht, and knowing it was only going to get worse, desperately tried anything to escape the Reich. All the consulates of the world were packed with Jews trying to flee Germany. The United States allowed 200,000 German Jews to immigrate to America as a result of Nazi policy.15 Turkey opened its doors to Jewish scholars. Even China allowed Jews to escape Germany, even with the flimsiest fake passports. Dr. Feng Shan Ho, was a member of the Chinese consulate in Vienna, and he allowed many Jews to emigrate to Shanghai.16 In Gilbert’s account of British Secret Agent Captain Frank Foley, he was estimated to have helped around 10,000 Jews escape for Palestine.17 The combined efforts of selfless foreigners saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews, but many could not escape.
Those who could not escape by the start of the war became victims of the German mechanisms for death. In Gellately and Gilberts work a common thread is seen. Both authors definitely see Kristallnacht as a watershed in Germany’s policy. The terrible violence, the obvious biases of the police, and the citizens allowing it to go on, all foreshadow the events to come. Gilbert venerates the few people who were willing to risk so much to save the victims of this persecution, but it was never enough. It is very fitting that Gilbert’s book begins with a critique of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s infamous quote, “peace in our time.”18 Both works give a nice well researched account of the events that occurred. Gellately’s book does lack on giving more concrete reasons and results, but since the scope of the text is so large it might be excusable. Gilbert’s book is strong in factual assertions, but the text again only presents the case with little regard to the whys, and whats. Together the two books provide a deeply factual, by shallowly analytical account of the events of November 10th, 1938.