1938 (22 page)

In Vienna, Eichmann was tightening his grip. On May 7, it was announced that Austrian civil servants would be required to furnish baptismal certificates going back to their grandparents. On the 20th the Viennese were warned that the Nuremberg Laws would take effect on June 28.
Der Stürmer
celebrated the purification of blood in a brace of cartoons, which showed the appropriation of Moritz Kohn’s dress shop by a proper Aryan Fritz Schulz. The transition was not as easy as that.

All over the Reich, Jewish businesses were proving hard to sell. They were expensive, and they had run out of buyers. The German economy was suffering from Nazi mismanagement—there was not a lot of money about. The easiest method was to allow the firm to be bought out by a conglomerate. Buyers would then dictate prices. That meant that they sold at between two-thirds and three-quarters of their market price. Some Jews were tempted to hang on and hope that the situation improved, often with disastrous results.

The Jewish-owned papers in Vienna were now shut down. These included
Die Stimme
,
Die Neue Welt
,
Die Wahrheit
,
Der Jude
,
Jüdische Front
, and
Der Legitimist
. They were to be replaced by just one—the
Zionistische Rundschau
—edited by Emil Reich. Twenty-five issues appeared between May 20 and November 4, 1938, bringing welcome morale to a humiliated and despairing people. Eichmann was able to write to his old comrade Herbert Hagen on May 8. He was on top of the work and looking forward to the first issue of the Zionist
Rundschau
, which he had the “boring” job of censoring. It was to be
his
paper. He was also getting on with the business of forcing Jews into emigration; he had told the Jews that 20,000 indigent members of their community had to go before May 1939. The physical pressure was to be exerted by the SD, while the gauleiter was to deal with the economic issues.

The institutions of the Jewish congregation had been re-created as Lauterbach had requested, but from now on they were ruled by Eichmann with a rod of iron. In agreement with his Berlin boss, Dr. Six, Eichmann had authorized the relaunch of the IKG, the Zionist National Union, and the orthodox organization Agudas Jisroel. The IKG was reopened on May 2 and the Palestine Office the day after. After a hiatus of six weeks, Eichmann’s desire to see the Jews go to Palestine could begin. In theory at least, this would be a legal form of emigration. His first task was to see that 20,000 poor Jews would leave in the following year. The IKG was instructed to create a Central Emigration Office to deal with all other countries. For Palestine there was the Zionist National Union. Eichmann’s aim was to create a self-funding expulsion. To the end of his days he insisted that what he was doing was not personal: “I was no Jew-hater. I have never been an antisemite; I have never made any bones about that.”

On May 11 Monty Waldman of the American Jewish Committee in New York got wind of a bit of horse-trading at the British Passport Control Office in Vienna.

I learn from a reliable but indirect source that 300 young Jews will leave in the next few days secretly Vienna in order to travel
without passports
by sea to Palestine. . . . Representatives of these Jews have approached the authorities in Berlin and got their consent for leaving the country and even for the export of the money necessary for the travelling expenses (some 700 Schillings per head). I am informed that the
British Consulate of Vienna
is aware of the illegal activity, but instead of hindering them the Consulate has so far rather been
helpful
, though of course not one of the Jews will get a regular visa.

If the attempt of those Jews should succeed another transport will follow immediately. I may add the leader of this adventurous enterprise is known to have already succeeded three times in bringing secret transports of young Jews from Austria to Palestine. The importance of those news would not consist in the fact of 300 Jews leaving a town of 160,000 but the silent encouragement of the Nazis as well as the British Consulate which should be obliged to hinder them.

On May 16, Weisl reported tensions: “Practically every European country [has] hastened to close its doors to Jews from Austria . . . especially
France
.” He pointed out that the French were considering new legislation that would affect up to 250,000 foreign Jews who were planning to enter the country. The premier, Edouard Daladier, had already threatened to expel 10,000 Jews, including 2,000 Austrians.

A note of Schadenfreude creeps into the correspondence between Weisl and Waldman in a document written at this time: “The Nuremberg Aryan Laws have been introduced formally in Austria, not withstanding grave apprehensions due to the fact that practically the whole of the Viennese bourgeoisie and a good part of the Austrian aristocracy too, has Jewish blood. Exclusion from auctions means Jews can’t sell property at a reasonable price. He has to give away whatever he owns, for a song—for the Horst Wessel Song.” Weisl gloated: “Most of the victims being converted or even half-Jews. The sacrament of baptism did not save them.”

The sacrament was not recognized anyhow. The Jews and the Nazis had that in common: As far as they were concerned, Christian converts were still Jews. Only the Christian churches had the power to change that, when there was a will. On May 18, Catchpool wrote to Alice Nike after a meeting with Sir Alan Holderness of the Aliens Department of the Home Office. There had been no deviation from official policy as far as the bureaucrat was concerned, and faked references by Jews were causing problems. “The greatest difficulty of all, however, is that advice given in Vienna is not a guarantee that the individual who has received it will be allowed to enter this country. The last word is always the immigrant officer at the port of landing.”

On May 20 Keitel finally sent Hitler an outline of Operation Green for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The slowness might have been a reflection of the German Military High Command’s lukewarm feelings about it. After his success in Austria, Hitler was keener than ever to lay his hands on the western parts of Czechoslovakia. He wanted to achieve his mission in his own lifetime. The new foreign minister Ribbentrop lusted to prove himself and would be his accomplice.

If possible, Hitler was going to wait for “provocation” rather than risk naked aggression. This meant exploiting “increasing diplomatic controversies and tension linked with military preparations so as to shift the war guilt onto the enemy” or by waiting for a “serious incident which will subject Germany to unbearable provocation” and “affording the moral justification for military measures.”

Hitler was well aware that the Versailles settlement had given him two potential allies in the rape of Czechoslovakia. Hungary wanted to redeem the Magyars of Slovakia, while the Poles felt that they also had a right to Teschen in the north. Hitler realized that France would be unlikely to rescue Czechoslovakia if they were going to unleash a European war in the process. The only danger, felt Hitler, was from the Soviet Union.

The pot came to the boil that very weekend of May 19–20. The contents of Keitel’s plan were possibly leaked, although this was probably no more than a device used to make the Czechs tense. German troops were reported to be on the move near the Czech border. Local elections loomed, and a worried President Beneš ordered a partial mobilization. Two Germans were killed by Czech police and a hundred hurt during a demonstration in Eger. The British ambassador at Berlin, Sir Nevile Henderson, sent his military attachés to report on the situation, and he demanded assurances from Keitel, thereby further infuriating the already bitterly Anglophobic Ribbentrop.

Goebbels agreed with Ribbentrop for once, gladdened by the way the Czechs seemed to be hastening their own downfall. Ribbentrop made unseemly threats against the Czech people during a stormy meeting with Henderson and convinced him that Germany would fight. Henderson responded by telling his staff to start packing. The British and the French took the opportunity to warn Germany of the consequences of invading Czechoslovakia, and the French and the Russians promised immediate military assistance. Halifax was relieved to be communicating with Ribbentrop’s undersecretary of state, Weizsäcker, whom he warned of the consequences of precipitate action, which might put an end to European civilization.

Hitler was forced to back down, putting him in a foul mood. Ribbentrop’s impotent rage continued. He ran to his master at the Berghof; Hitler was yet more hardened in his desire to do away with the Czech state. Germans felt certain that they were on the verge of war. On May 23 the Czech ambassador in Berlin was informed that Germany had no designs on Czechoslovakia. On the 25th Chamberlain made it clear to the Commons that on the basis of the report from the military attaché, Colonel Mason-Macfarlane, there was no cause for alarm.

In the aftermath of the crisis Hitler spent a week sulking at the Berghof before returning to Berlin on May 28 and summoning a conference of the service chiefs in the Chancellery. Göring was still dragging his feet; his Research Bureau had tapped various reports that indicated that the French would not let this one pass. On the table was a map of the offending Czechoslovakia, and they were to hear how it was to be eliminated. “I am utterly determined that Czechoslovakia shall disappear from the map of Europe,” Hitler told them. On the 30th he voiced his intention to smash the Czechs in the immediate future. Keitel’s plans needed to be effected by October 1.

The Sudeten Party leader Henlein was still charged with the role of refusing any offer that might alleviate the position of the German minority. The German government was not to be officially implicated. Hitler wanted the boil to get bigger so that he could lance it by the Nuremberg Rally in September. The British were losing sympathy with the Czechs and sent the former president of the Board of Trade, Lord Runciman, to investigate. Beneš was urged to make concessions to the Sudetenländer on the basis of Henlein’s Karlsbad Program.

At this time Hitler was also watching the Russians, who were, with the French, guarantors of the Czech state. He asked the Romanians to refuse permission for them to cross their frontiers to intervene and was pleased to hear from his ambassador in Warsaw that the Poles had no intention of accommodating the Soviet Union either. The Polish foreign minister, Colonel Beck, still had his eyes on Teschen. Hitler hoped that the British and the French would be reluctant to act in concert with the Soviet Union. He was unimpressed by the Hungarians dithering about committing themselves: “He who wants to sit at the table must at least help in the kitchen.”

Hitler’s plans alarmed his chief of staff, General Beck, who feared an “adventure” of this sort would lead to war with the Western powers. The military planners saw that any attack on Czechoslovakia would entail the heavy risk that Germany would be dragged once again into world war. It was a view largely shared by Göring, who was now losing favor as a foreign policy advisor. Beck wrote a series of memoranda beginning on May 5, in which he tried to bring in Brauchitsch over to his way of thinking. The memoranda were intended for Hitler too, but Brauchitsch did not even dare show him the more contentious parts. Hitler already believed the general staff were sabotaging his plans.

Beck’s reaction to the service chiefs’ meeting of the 28th was to pen two more memos on May 29 and June 3. He was little concerned about legitimacy; he was worried that Germany would ultimately lose a war against the British and the French and was aware that the United States was prepared to back them. Göring shared his doubts but continued producing weapons at a rate that had set off an arms race with the Western powers. It was obvious to French and British intelligence that Germany saw them as potential enemies in a future conflict caused by German aggression toward Czechoslovakia. Göring had ordered 7,000 Ju 88s, medium-range bombers capable of hitting targets in France and Britain. He had turned over half the workforce of the aeronautics industry to their manufacture, but progress was still slow. Germany also had an alarmingly low supply of explosives, with production at only half the total for 1918. On July 12 a New Military Economic Production Plan was launched, which placed the German economy on a war footing.