VOLUME I The Years of Persecution, 1933 1939

SAUL FRIEDLANDER

Harper Collins Publishers

Chapter 9: The Onslaught

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"On the morning of November 10, 1938, at eight A.M., the farmer and local SA leader of Elberstadt, Adolf Heinrich Frey, accompanied by several of his cronies, set out for the house of the eighty-one-year-old Jewish widow Susannah Stern. According to Frey, the widow Stern took her time before opening the door, and when she saw him she smiled "provocatively" and said: "Quite an important visit, this morning." Frey ordered her to dress and come with them. She sat down on her sofa and declared that she would not dress or leave her house; they could do whatever they wanted, Frey took his pistol and shot Stern through the cest. "At the first shot, Stern collapsed on the sofa. She leaned backward and put her hands on her chest. I immediately fired the second shot, this time aiming at the head. Stern fell form the sofa and turned. She was lying close to the sofa, with her head turned to the left, toward the window. At that moment Stern still gave signs of life. From time to time she gave a rattle, then stopped. Stern did not shout or speak. My comrade C.D. turned Sterns’s head to see where she had been hit. I told him that I didn't see why we should be standing around; the right thing to do was to lock the door and surrender the keys. But to be sure that Stern was dead I shot her in the middle of the brow from a distance of approximately ten centimeters. Thereupon we locked the house and I called Kreisleiter Ullmer form the public telephone office in Elberstadt and reported what had happened." Proceedings against Frey were dismissed on October 10, 1940, as the result of a decision of the Ministry of Justice.

In the course of the prewar anti Jewish persecutions, the pogrom of November 9 and 10, the so called Kristallnacht, was in many ways another major turning point. The publication in 1992 of Goebbels's hitherto missing diary accounts of the event added important insights about interactions among Hitler, his closest chieftains, the party organizations, and the wider reaches of society in the initiation and management of the anti Jewish violence. As for the reactions of German and international opinion to the anti. Jewish violence, these raise a host of questions, not least for their relation to events yet to come.

The idea of a pogrom against the Jews of Germany was in the air. "The SD not only approved the controlled and purposeful use of violence, but explicitly recommended it in a memorandum ofjanuary 1937.' ' Early in February 1938 the Zionist leadership in Palestine received Information from "a very reliable private source one which can be traced back to the highest echelons of the SS leadership, that there is an intention to carry out a genuine and dramatic pogrom in Germany on a largre scale in the near future."' In fact, the anti Jewish violence of the early summer of 1938 had not entirely died down; A synagog ,ue had been set on fire in Munich on june 9, and another in Nuremberg on August 10. For the American arnbassador, the anti Jewish incidents of the early summer of 1938 indicated, as had been the case in 1935, some forthcoming radical anti Jewish legislation.' Finally, shortly before the pogrom. during an inspection journey to Vienna at the end of October 1938. Hagen discussed the "jewish situation in Slovakia" with his Vienna colleague SS Obersturmfährer Polte. Hagen instructed Polte to indicate to the representatives of the Slovak government that "this problem had to be solved, and that it seemed advisable to stage an action of the people against the Jews.'

By then Hitler's hesitations of June 1938 had disappeared. His totally uncompromising position on Jewish matters found another expression in early November. On November 4, in a letter addressed to Frick, Lammers indicated that due to repeated requests for exemption from diverse antijewish measures (such as additional first names, identification cards, and so on), he himself had raised the fundamental aspect of the issue with Hitler. "The Führer is of the opinion,"wrote Lammers, "that exemptions from the special regulations valid for the Jews have to be rejected without any exception. Nor does the Führer himself intend to grant any such marks of personal favor.'

On November 8 the Völkischer Beobachter published a threatening editorial against the jews, closing with the warning that the shots fired in Paris would herald a new German attitude regarding the Jewish question. In sorne places local anti Jewish violence had started even before the Nazi press brandished its first threats. Am SD report of November 9 described events that had taken place in the Kassel and Rotenburg/Fulda districts during the night of November 7 8, presumably as an immediate reaction to the news. In sorne places Jewish house and shop windows had been smashed. In Bebra a number ofjewish apartments had been "demolished," and in Rotenburg the synagogue's farniture was "significantly damaged" and "objects [were] taken away and destroyed on the street."'

One of the most telling aspects of the events of November 7 8 was Hitler's and Goebbels's public and even "private" silence (at least as far as Goebbels's diaries are concerned). In his November 9 diary entry (relating events of November 8), Goebbels did not devote a single word to the shots fired in Paris, although he had spent the late evening in discussion with Hitler." Clearly, both had agreed to act, but had probably decided to wait for the seriously wounded Raths death. Their unusual silence was the surest indication of plans that aimed at a "spontaneous outburst of popular anger," which was to take place without any sign of Hitler's involvement. And, on that same evening of November 8, in his speech commemorating the 1923 putsch attempt, Hitler refrained from any allusion whatsoever to the Paris event.

Rath died on November 9, at 5:30 in the afternoon. The news of the German diplomat's death was officially brought to Hitler during the traditional "Old Fighters" dinner held at the Altes Rathaus in Munich, at around nine o clock that evening. An "intense conversation" then took place between Hitler and Goebbels, who was seated next to him. Hitler left the assembly immediately thereafter, without giving the usual address. Goebbels spoke instead. After announcing Rath's death, he added, alluding to the anti Jewish violence that had already taken place in Magdeburg-Anhalt and Kurhessen, that "the Führer had decided that such demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the party, but insofar as they erupted spontaneously, they were not to be hampered." As later noted by the chief party judge Walter Buch, the message was clear.

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endangering German life or property were to be taken, in particular when synagogues were burned down; Jewish businesses or apartments could be destroyed but not looted (looters would be arrested); foreigners (even when identified as Jews) were not to be molested; synagogue archives were to be seized and transferred to the SD. Finally, "inasmuch as in the course of the events of this night the employment of officials used for this purpose would be possible, in all districts as many Jews, especially rich ones, are to be arrested as can be accommodated in the existing jails. For the time being only healthy men not too old should be arrested. Upon their arrest, the appropriate concentration camps should be contacted immediately, in order to confine them in these camps as fast as possible. Special care should be taken that the Jews arrested in accordance with these instructions are not mistreated."

The November 10 telephone report from SA Brigade 151 in Saarbrücken was concise and to the point: "During the past night, the synagogue in Saarbrücken was set on fire; the synagogues in Dillingen, Merzig, Saarlautern, Saarwilfingen, and Broddorf were also destroyed. The Jews were taken into custody. The fire brigade is engaged in extinguishing the fires. In the area of Brigade 174, all synagogues were destroyed..'

On November 17 Hitler attended Rath's funeral in Düsseldorf.

Only a few hundred Jews lived in the Gau Tyrol Vorarlberg. Like all other Jews of the Austrian province, they had to leave the country by mid-December or move to Vienna. In October, Eichmann had arrived in Tyrol's main city, Innsbruck, and issued a personal warning to the community's three leading Jews: Karl Bauer and Alfred and Richard Graubart. Gauleiter Franz Hofer and the local SD office meant to fulfill Himmler's orders and have the Gau judenrein within weeks. The night of November 9 to 10 offered an unexpected opportunity. Hofer rushed back from the Alte Kämpfer dinner in Munich and set the tone: "In response to the cowardly Jewish assassination of our embassy counsellor vom Rath in Paris, in the Tyrol too the seething soul of the people should, this night, rise against the Jews."

The SS had been put on alert by Heydrich's message. After the midnight swearing in ceremony of the new SS recruits which on that same night had taken place in Innsbruck as in all other major cities of the Reich, the men reassembled in civilian clothes around 2:30 in the morning, under the command of SS Oberführer Hanns von Feil. Within minutes a special SS murder commando, divided into three groups, was on its way to No. 4 5 Gänsbacherstrasse, where some of the more prominent Jewish families of Innsbruck still lived. According to SS Obersturmführer Alois Schintlholzer, he "received instructions at the Hochhaus in Innsbruck from regional leader Feil to kill the Jews on Gänsbacherstrasse silently."

At No. 4 Gänsbacherstrasse the engineer Richard Graubart was stabbed to death in the presence of his wife and daughter. On the second floor of the same building, Karl Bauer was dragged into the hall, stabbed, and beaten with pistol butts; he died on the way to the hospital. On Anichstrasse, the turn of Richard Berger, the president of the Jewish community in Innsbruck, came approximately at the same time. Berger was taken out in pajamas and winter coat and pushed into an SS car that was supposedly taking him to Gestapo headquarters. But the car started off in a different direction. According to SS Untersturmführer Walter Hopfgartner: "We drove west through Anichstrasse, over the university bridge, in the direction of Kranebitten. During the trip, Berger asked where we were going, since this was not the way to the Gestapo. Berger, who, understandably, was somewhat nervous, was calmed down by the men in the back of the car... Suddenly Lausegger announced, in a voice sufficiently loud so that all could hear him, that 'no firearms are to be used.' This upset Berger again and he asked what we wanted from him, but he was quieted down again.... After Lausegger's statement, I realized immediately that Berger was to be killed."

At a bend of the Inn River, Berger was dragged out of the car, battered with pistols and stones, and thrown into the river. Against instructions he was shot at, but the subsequent Gestapo investigation established that by then he was already dead.

All the SS men involved in the Innsbruck murders were old timers fanatically devoted to Hitler, extreme anti Semites and exemplary members of the order. Gerhard Lausegger, the man in charge of the squad that killed Berger, had been a member of a student corporation and had "headed the federation of all dueling companies at the University of Innsbruck." On March 11 he had been among the men who, just before the arrival of the Wehrmacht, seized the provincial administration hall of the City.

Heydrich's report of November 11 indicated that thirty six Jews had been killed and the same number seriously injured throughout the Reich. "One Jew is still missing, and among the dead there is one Jew of Polish nationality and two others among those injured."" The real situation was worse. Apart from the 267 synagogues destroyed and the 7,500 businessees vandalized, some ninety one Jews had been killed all over Germany and hundreds more had committed suicide or died as a result of nüstreatmeni in the camps." "The action against the Jews was terminated quickly and without any particular tensions," the mayor of Ingolstadt wrote in his monthly report on December 1. "As a result of this measure a local jewish couple drowned themselves in the Danube."

For the Würzburg Gestapo nothing was self evident. In an order issued on December 6 to the heads of the twenty two administrative districts of Gau Main Franken (Franconia) as well as to the mayors of Aschaffenburg, Schweinfurt, Bad Kissingen, and Kitzingen, the secret police demanded immediate details about Jews who had committed suicide "in connection with the action against the Jews"; question no. 3 required information about "the presumed motive."

In a secret letter addressed on November 19 to the Hamburg Prosecutor General about the events of November 9 11, the Ministry of Justice stated that the destruction of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, as well as of Jewish shops and dwellings, if not committed for purposes of looting, were not to be prosecuted. The murder of Jews and the infliction of serious bodily damage were to be prosecuted "only if committed for selfish reasons."

The decisions of the courts and the various administrative decrees regarding the (lack of) culpability of the murderers were given their adequate "conceptual framework" in the report prepared by the Supreme Court of the NSDAP of February 13, 1939. The report stated that on November 10, at 2 A.M., Goebbels had been informed of the first killing, that of a Polish Jew. He was told that something had to be done to stop what could become a dangerous development. According to the report, Goebbels's answer was in terms of "not getting upset because of a dead Jew." The report then adds the following comment: "At this point in time, most of the killings could still have been hindered by an additional order. As it was not given, this very fact as well as the remarks expressed [by Goebbels] lead to the conclusion that the final result was intended or at least taken into account as possible and desirable. This being the case, the individual perpetrator has put into action not merely what he assumed to be the intention of the leadership, but what he rightly recognized as such, even though it was not clearly stated. For this he cannot be punished."

Was the Nazi action perceived by its perpetrators as a step that could hasten the emigration of the Jews from the Reich or possibly as an initiative aimed at furthering some other, more encompassing policy? After the pogrom Göring, on Hitler's orders, would make the most of the Paris shooting. But despite prior SD plans about the use of violence, nothing systematic seems to have been considered before the unleashing of the action of November 9. At that moment total, abysmal hatred appears as the be all and end all of the onslaught. The only immediate aim was to hurt the jews as badly as the circumstances allowed, by all possible means: to hurt them and to humiliate them. The pogrom and the initiatives that immediately followed have quite rightly been called "a degradation ritual."" An explosion of sadism threw a particularly lurid light on the entire action and its sequels; it burst forth at all levels, that of the highest leadership and that of the lowliest party members. The tone of Goebbels's diary entries was unmistakable; the same tone would suffuse the November 12 conference.

An uncontrollable lust for destruction and humiliation of the victims drove the squads roaming the cities. "Organized parties rnoved through Cologne from one Jewish apartment to another," the Swiss consul reported. "The families were either ordered to leave the apartment or they had to stand in a corner of a room while the contents were hurled from the windows. Gramophones, sewing machines, and typewriters tumbled down into the streets. One of my colleagues even saw a piano being thrown out of a second floor window. Even today [November 131 one can still see bedding hanging from trees and bushes." Even worse was reported from Leipzig: "Having demolished dwellings and hurled most of the movable effects to the streets," the American consul in Leipzig reported, "the insatiably sadistic perpetrators threw away many of the trembling inmates into a small stream that flows through the Zoological Park, commanding the horrified spectators to spit at them, defile them with mud and jeer at their plight.... The slightest manifestation of sympathy evoked a positive fury on the part of the perpetrators, and the crowd was powerless to do anything but turn horror stricken eyes from the scene of abuse, or leave the vicinity. These tactics were carried out the entire morning of November 10 without police intervention and they were applied to men, women and children."

The same scenes were repeated in the smallest towns: the sadistic brutality of the perpetrators, the shamefaced reactions of some of the onlookers, the grins of others, the silence of the immense majority, the helplessness of the victims. In Wittlich, a small town in the Moselle Valley in the western part of Germany, as in most places, the synagogue was destroyed first: "The intricate lead crystal window above the door crashed into the street and pieces of furniture came flying through doors and windows. A shouting SA man climbed to the roof, waving the rolls of the Torah:'Wipe your asses with it, Jews,' he screamed while he hurled them like bands of confetti on Karnival" Jewish businesses were vandalized, Jewish men beaten up and taken away: "Herr Marks, who owned the butcher shop down the street, was one of the half dozen jewish men already on the truck. ... The SA men were laughing at Frau Marks who stood in front of her smashed plate glass window [with] both hands raised in bewildered despair. 'Why are you people doing this to us?' She wailed at the circle of silent faces in the windows, her lifelong neighbors. What have we ever done to you?'"

Soon the Jewish masses of occupied Poland would offer the choicest targets to the unquenchable rage that, stage by stage, propelled the Greater German Reich against the hapless European Jews.

Once again Hitler had followed the by now familiar pattern he had displayed throughout the 1930s. Secretly he gave the orders or confirmed them; openly his name was in no way to be linked with the brutality. Having refrained from any open remark about the events on November 7 8, Hitler also avoided any reference to them in his midnight address to SS recruits in front of the Feldherrnhalle on November 9. At the time of his address, synagogues were already burning, shops being demolished, and Jews wounded and killed throughout the Reich. A day later, in his secret speech to representatives of the German press, Hitler maintained the same rule of silence regarding events that could not but be on the mind of every member of the audience; he did not even speak at Rath's funeral. The fiction of a spontaneous outburst of popular anger imposed silence. Any expression of Hitler's wish or even any positive comment would have been a "Führer order." Of Hitler's involvement the outside world - including trustworthy party members was, at least in principle, to know nothing.

However, knowledge of Hitler's direct responsibility quickly trickled out from the innermost circle. According to the diaries of Ulrich von Hassell, the former German ambassador to Rome and an early opponent of the regime, many conservatives were outraged by the events, and the minister of finance of Prussia, Johannes Popitz, protested to Göring and demanded the punishment of those responsible for the action. "My dear Popitz, do you want to punish the Führer?" was Göring's answer.

At the low end of the party hierarchy some justifications were rapidly concocted. On November 23 a Hüttenbach Blockleiter (block leader), who was also the chronicler of party history in his town, was ordered by his district party leader to collect incriminating evidence against the local Jews. Only two days later he had completed his research and could report that the task had been accomplished: "Herewith," the Blockleiter wrote, "I am sending some material about the Jews in Hüttenbach. I don't know whether I hit upon the right things. I couldn't do it more quickly, if what was wanted was an overview of these racial foreigners and about how they behaved in Hüttenbach." At that point the Blockleiter, with engaging openness, voiced some doubts about his own qualifications as a full fledged historian: I may have more material here, but I cannot become a historian along with my professional work and in any case the necessary documentation is missing."

Incidentally, the same local historian had not yet exhausted his efforts, or his worries, regarding the events of November 9 and 10. On February 7, 1939, he announced to his district party leader that he had completed the chronicle for the year 1938. The November events he memorialized as follows: "During the night of November 9, 1938, Party member v. Rath died in Paris as a result of the cowardly aggression perpetrated by the Jew Grünspan. During the same night all the Jews' synagogues went up in flames all over Germany; Party member Ernst v. Rath was avenged. Early, at 5 in the morning, District Party Leader Party Comrade Waltz and Mayor Party Comrade Herzog, District Propaganda Leader Party Comrade Büttner and Sturmführer Brand, arrived and set the Jewish temple on fire. Party members from the local section gave energetic help. But this sentence was criticized by a few Party members. it should not be written that Party members Walz, Herzog, and Büttner/Brand set the synagogue on fire, but the people did it. That's right. But as the writer of a chronicle I should and I must report the truth. It would easily be possible to take this page out and to prepare another entry. I ask you, my District Party Leader, how should I prepare this entry and how should it be worded? Heil Hitler.

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Himmler made no mention of the Paris shooting the day before, and most of his speech dealt with the organization and tasks of the SS. But the Jewish question was ominously there. Himmler warned his audience that, within ten years, the Reich would face unprecedented confrontations of a critical nature." The Reichsführer referred not only to national confrontations but, in particular, to the clash. of worldviews in which the Jews stood behind all other enemy forces and represented the "primal matter of all that was negative." The Jews and the forces they directed against the Reich knew that "if Germany and Italy were not annihilated, they themselves would be annihilated." "In Germany," Himmler prophesied, "the Jew will not be able to maintain himself; it is only a matter of years." How this would be achieved was obvious: "We will force them out with an unparalleled ruthlessness." There followed a description of how anti Semitism was intensifying in most European countries, as a result of the arrival of Jewish refugees and the efforts of Nazi propaganda.

Then Himmler launched into his own vision of the final Phase. Trapped, the Jews would fight the source of all their troubles, Nazi Germany, with all the means at their disposal. For the Jews the danger would be averted only if Germany were burned down and annihilated. There should be no illusions, said Himmler, and repeated his warning that in case of a Jewish victory, there would be total starvation and massacre; not even a reservation of Germans would remain: "Everybody will be included, the enthusiastic supporters of the Third Reich and the others; speaking German and having had a German mother would suffice." The implicit corollary was clear.

In October 1935, in the immediate wake of the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, Goebbels had issued a decree according to which the names of fallen Jewish soldiers would not be inscribed on any memorial erected in Germany from then on." It so happened, however, that when on June 14, 1936, a memorial was unveiled in the small town of Loge, in Eastern Friesland, the name of the Jewish soldier Benjamin was inscribed among those who had fallen in 1915. Loge's Gruppenleiter took the initiative

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of having Benjamin's name deleted and replaced (to fill) the conspicuous void) by that of a local soldier who had died of his wounds soon after the war's end. Local protests, including those of Dutch citizens living in this border town, such as the retired ambassador Count van Wedel, led to the removal of the new name. Was, then, the Jewish soldier Benjamin to be reinscribed? The Gauleiter of Weser Ems decided that such a move would be "intolerable."

The overall Problem remained unsolved until the pogrom of November 1938. On November 10 Paul Schmitthenner, rector of Heidelberg University, wrote to the Baden minister of education in Karlsruhe: "In view of the struggle of world Jewry against the Third Reich, it is intolerable that the names of members of the Jewish race remain on plaques of the war dead. The students," Schmitthenner continued, "were demanding the removal of the plaque, but this was not done out of respect for the German dead." The rector therefore asked the ministry to find an immediate solution to the problem in cooperation with the Reich student leader: "I consider removal of the Jewish names necessary," Schmitthenner concluded. "It should take place in an orderly and dignified way in the spirit of the regulations I am asking for."

The minister of education of Baden forwarded Schmitthenner's letter to the Reich minister of education with the following comment: "In my opinion, as the question is of fundamental significance, it should be submitted to the Führer for decision.' Rust did so, and on February 14 he was able to announce Hitler's decision: Names of Jews on existing memorials would not be removed. Newly erected memorials would not include names of Jews.

Schmitthenner's resolve to eliminate the names of fallen Jewish soldiers from the halls of Heidelberg was echoed by the no less determined action of Friedrich Metz, the Freiburg University rector, who thereby preempted a decision that would be taken in Berlin on December 8. "1 have been informed," Metz wrote to the university library director on November 17, "that the library of the university and the academic reading room are still being visited by Jews. I have already instructed former members of the faculty Professor Jonas Cohn and Professor Michael, who are in question in this matter, to abstain from using any services of the Albert Ludwig University in order to avoid unpleasantness. I authorize you herewith to act in the same spirit if the university library or the academic reading room are visited by other Jews."

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110. Conseil Fédéral, "Proces verbal de la séance du 28 mars 1938," Documents Diplomatiques Suisses, vol. 12 (1.1.1937 31.12.1938), ed. (under the direction of Oscar Gauye) Gabriel Imboden and Daniel Bourgeois (Bern, 1994), p. 570.

111. For all these details and for relevant documents see Ludwig, Die Flüchtlingspolitik der Schweiz, pp. 124ff.

112. Documents Diplamatiques Suisses, vol. 12, p. 938n. 5.

113. Quoted in Ben Elissar, La Diplomatie, p. 286.

114. Reproduced in Arad, Guttman, Margalioth, Documents on the Holocaust, pp. 101 2

115. See mainly Toury, "judenaustreibung," pp. 173ff.

116. Maier, District Office Überlingen, to the mayors of the district, 20.9.1938, Unterlagen betr. Entrechtung der Juden in Baden 1933 1940, ED 303, IfZ, Munich.

117. Milton, "Menschen zwischen Grenzen7; Trude Maurer, "Abschiebung und Attentat. Die Ausweisung der polnischen Juden und der Vorwand für die Xristallnacht," in Pehle, Der Judenpogrom 1938, pp. 52ff.

118. Maurer,"Abschiebung und Attentat," pp. 59 66.

119. Sauer, Dokumente, vol. 2, pp. 423ff.

120. For the agreement berween Germany and Poland on this matter see DGEP, series D, vol. 5 (Washington, 1953), p. 169.

121. Arndt and Boberach, "Deutsches Reich," p. 34.

122. Michael R. Marrus, "The Strange Story of Herschel Grynszpan," American Scholar 57, no. 1 (Winter 1987 88): 70 71.

123. Ibid., pp. 71 72.

Chapter 9 The Onslaught

1. Sauer, Dokumente, vol. 2, pp. 25 28.

2. Kulka, "Public Opinion in Nazi Germany and the 'Jewish Question,'" Jerusalem Quarterly 25 (Fall 1982): 136.

3. Georg Landauer to Martin Rosenblüth, 8 February 1938, in Friedlander and Milton, Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 3, Central Zionist Archives, ed. Francis R. Nicosia (New York, 1990), p. 57.

4. Drobisch, Juden unterm Hakenkreuz, pp. 159 60.

5. Hugh R. Wilson to Secretary of State, June 22, 1938, in Mendelsohn, The Holocaust, vol. 1, p. 144.

6. II112 to I111, 31.10.1938, SD Hauptamt, mircrofilm MA 554, IfZ, Munich.

7. Friedlander and Mitton, Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 20, p. 113.

8. Adam, "Wie spontan war der Pogrom?" in Pehle, Der Judenpogrom 1938, p. 76. Graml, Anti Semitism, p. 8.

9. Friedlander and Milton, Archives of the Holocaust, vol.20, p.374.

10."50, dann 75 Synagogen brennen: Tagebuchschreiber Goebbels über die Reichskristallnacht", Der Spiegel, July 13, 1992, p. 126.

11. Walter Buch to Göring, 13.2.1939, Michaelis and Schraepler, Ursachen, vol. 12, p. 582.

12. Dieter Obst, "Die 'Reichskristaänacht' im Spiegel westdeutscher Nachkriegsprozessakten und als Gegenstand der Strafverfolgung, "Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht ", no. 4 (1993): 212.

13. Goebbels, "50, dann 75 Synagogen brennen," pp. 126 28.

14. Carl Östreich, "Die letzten Stunden eines Gotteshauses" in Lamm, Von Juden, p. 349.

15. Graml, Anti Semitism, p. 13.

16. Goebbels, "50, dann 75 Synagogen brennen," p. 128.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Adam, "Wie spontan war der Pogrorn?" p. 89. For the orders given on November 9 and 10, s. Walk Das Sonderrecht, pp. 249 54.

20. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (Washington, D.C., 1946), vol. 5, doc. no. 3051 PS, pp.799 800.

21. Michaelis and Schraepler, Ursachen, vol. 12, p. 584.

22. The sequence of events in Innsbruck is taken from Michael Gehler, "Murder on Command: The Anti Jewish Pogrom in Innsbruck 9th lOth November 1938," LBIY 38 (1993): 119 33. The details about Eichmann's trip have been corrected.

23. Michalka, Das Dritte Reich, vol. 1, p. 165.

24. Heinz Lauber, Judenpogrom «Reichskristallnacht» November 1938 in Grossdeutschland (Gerlingen, 1981), pp. 123 24.

25. The Mayor of Ingolstadt to the Government of Upper Bavaria, Munich, 1.12.1938, Monatsberichte des Stadtrats Ingolstadt, 1929 1939 (Stadtarchiv Ingolstadt No. A XVI/142), IfZ, Fa 411.

26. Gestapo Würzburg to .... 6.12.38 (Himmler Archives, Berlin Document Center, microfilm No. 269, Roll 1) LBI, New York, microfilm 133f

27. Mendelsohn, The Holocaust, vol. 3, p. 301.

28. Pätzold, Verfolgung, Vertreibug, Vernichtung, p. 221. A precise inquiry into the events in Schleswig Holstein and in North Germany more generally indicates that the concrete murder orders were often decided upon by local middle ranking SA officers. Thus in Kiel, SA Stabführer Carsten Vorquardsen of the SA Group Nordmark organized a meeting with delegates from the party district, the SS, the SD, and the Gestapo in which the decision was taken that at least two of the citys Jewish businessmen, Lask and Leven, were to be put to death in reprisal for Rath's assassination. The two were severely wounded but survived. In Bremen five Jews (three men and two women) were killed by members of the SA Group Nordsee after receiving their orders from Munich from the leader of their group and mayor of Bremen, Heinrich Böhnker. See Gabriele Ferk, "Judenverfolgung in Norddeutschland,» in Frank Bajohr, ed., Norddeutschland im Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg, 1993), pp. 291 92. It seems therefore that rather than individual initiatives of low level SA or SS men, the murders were perpetrated after orders were given by regional SA or SS leaders, who "translated" in their own way the orders they received from Munich. The Innsbruck case confirrns the same pattern.

29. Peter Loewenberg, "The Kristallnacht as a Public Degradation Ritual", LBlY32 (1987): 309ff.

30. Gauye, Imboden, and Bourgeois, Documents Diplomatiques Suisses, p. 1020.

31. Alfons Heck, The Burden ofHitler's Legacy (Frederick, Colo., 1988), p. 62.

32. Some historians have nonetheless attempted to reinterpret the events of November 9 and 10 in terms of a process of chaotic radicalization in which anti Jewish hatred as such played a minor role, once the initial orders had been given. For such an interpretation, see in particular Dieter Obst, «Reichskristallnacht", Ursachen und Verlauf des antisemitischen Pogroms vom November 1938 (Frankfurt am Main, 1991).

33. Hitler, Reden und Proklamationen, pp. 971, 973ff.