1938 (44 page)

Apart from a few diehard Prussians like Kleist-Schmenzin, no one objected to the merger with Austria or the redemption of the Sudetenländer much. They were national causes that signified the end of the Versailles settlement and Germany’s return to glory. A liberal German like Peter Bielenberg affirmed this. Czech security, the maintenance of their efficient chains of forts—such arguments meant very little. The Sudetenländer had been given a rough deal, and they were better off in the bosom of the Reich. People at the time did not possess the benefit of hindsight; they did not know what we know now: that Chamberlain’s choosing not to fight—although utterly practical—was a disaster for the world.

Many of Hitler’s decisions in 1938 were purely pragmatic and neglected to take stock of the national view: like the abandonment of 250,000 German South Tyroleans to Italy to gain Italian support, or the failure to come to a deal with the Poles to revise the border in return for a common stance against Bolshevik Russia. The fact that Vansittart was suspicious of Goerdeler’s demand for the return of Danzig and the Polish Corridor is a sign that the diplomat was also incapable of telling the difference between Nazism and nationalism.

On the domestic side, the Reichskristallnacht was no crowd-pleaser, and for many Germans it was either an embarrassment or a reason for distancing themselves from a regime they had tolerated up to then. The conspiracy around Goerdeler, Weizsäcker, Canaris, Witzleben, and Halder is the clearest indication that Hitler had now gone too far, but the opposition was increasingly distant from the source of power and had problems removing him.

It had lost its chance after the failure of the putsch in September, but there was a new generation in the wings that would eventually join forces with the older men and get the ball rolling again. Adam von Trott went to Berlin in November and stayed with Wilfred Israel in his apartment in the Bendlerstrasse. He learned of the attempt to remove Hitler from Schacht. Schacht would keep him and others informed of moves within the Nazi elite. Through mutual friends, Trott was also able to meet some of the military leaders of the opposition: Beck, whom he encountered at the house of the former chief of staff, Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord; Alexander von Falkenhausen; and Fritsch.

DURING THE year the balance of power within the party and its organizations had shifted as well. Himmler and Heydrich gained influence, touting a state based on a racial model too radical for nationalists. Eichmann’s “Viennese model” was copied for the Altreich, as Heydrich intended when Eichmann went to Berlin in February 1939 to accelerate the emigration of the Jews there. His solution was increasingly restricted by the decreasing number of countries ready to take in Jews. When the war started in September, most of these lands were no longer an option. When America joined the Allies in 1941, the last haven disappeared. By that time the Nazis had adopted the “final solution.”

As for the Führer himself, Hitler’s style of despotism had become increasingly oriental. He rose at lunchtime and spent much of the day reading thrillers, watching films, and delivering rambling monologues to his secretaries and adjutants. Cabinet meetings had ended in February 1938, and now only the closest members of his clique had the right of access to their Führer. His satraps were there to interpret the All Highest’s will.

At the end of the year, Hitler’s new Chancellery was well enough advanced for him to invite the press to revel in his glory. It was as if Hitler was now Wotan in the final bars of
Das Rheingold
, inviting his gods into the new Valhalla. The man who had made the dream come true was Albert Speer, who had been appointed general inspector for the Reich capital on January 30, 1937. He had been given a mere nine months to build the Führer’s new palace. In November he had summoned the sculptor Breker to the Prussian Academy on the Pariser Platz and told him to make two three-meter-high heroic figures to flank the entrance from the courtyard: “The subject is up to you, we’ll meet again in a week.” The meeting had taken all of five minutes.

Money was no object. He later commissioned five bronzes and two lifesized reliefs for the circular saloon that was created by the slight bend in the Vossstrasse. The Mosaic [
sic
] Saloon was decorated with work by Hermann Kaspar. As Hitler told one of his adjutants, “when these gentlemen [the press] enter the Mosaic Hall they must immediately sense the whole sublime nature of the Greater German Reich. The long corridors will reduce my visitors to humility.” Beyond the granite hall with its cupola stretched a hall of mirrors lined with red marble and modeled on that of Louis XIV at Versailles, except that at 146 meters it was a little under twice as long. The goal of the visitor was Hitler’s study. Its proportions were just as generous: 27 meters by 14.5, and nearly 10 meters high. At one end a portrait of Bismarck hung over a massive fireplace, while on the white marble table rode a statue of Frederick the Great on horseback. The whole edifice had cost just under 90 million marks. The wraps would come off the new palace on January 12, 1939—Göring’s birthday.

With the imprisonment of thousands of Jewish men following Reichskristallnacht, the Nazis had thrown down the gauntlet to the relief organizations. Their message was clear: The Jews needed to be bought out, either using their own assets or by finding money from interested parties abroad. It was going to be a long, grueling winter for those who had been sent to concentration camps, but most of the Jewish prisoners were released by the following spring, having sworn they would leave Germany by the next available train or transport.

The Philadelphia-based industrialist Robert Yarnall was in Vienna in December looking specifically to help non-Aryans and
Mischlinge
who counted as Jews under the Nuremberg Laws. The IKG was still in funds and continuing the work of getting Jews out. Engel told him that 55,000 Jews had left to date, out of the total of 165,000, and 20,000 of a supposed figure of 120,000 nonconfessional Jews. Yarnall paid a call on Gildemeester, “the mystery man of Vienna”: “He has a Gestapo man at his side all the time to check his work.” Yarnall acknowledged, however, that Gildemeester was good at getting children out and Jews released from Dachau and other camps. Yarnall saw some of Heydrich’s staff in Berlin and was granted authority to continue in his own task.

The first kindertransport left on December 2; another was dispatched from Vienna on the 10th. There were seven hundred children under fourteen on the train, including a third non-Aryan Christians, who had been assembled by the Quakers and Gildemeester. The children had been tested, medically examined, and issued with passports. Their luggage had been examined. Eichmann bent the rules to allow collective passports for children under the age of eighteen. They left Vienna from Hütteldorf railway station. The scene was predictably tearful. In general only the mothers were there to see them off, as the fathers were often already in concentration camps.

That same month the Quakers in Vienna successfully dispatched 300 non-Aryan children as part of a 1,000-strong transport, and 900 more were to follow. Of these 711 went straight to London and 55 to Sweden. Another 83 stopped in Holland, and 33 remained in Belgium. Priority was given to those with parents who were already dead or in concentration camps, or who were manifestly in danger themselves. When war broke out, 650 cases had yet to be placed on transports. The children were looked after in Britain by the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany, run by Lola Hahn Warburg. The honorary president was Bentwich. A “children’s market” was established in London. Gentile foster parents mopped them up with alacrity.

For non-IKG Jews, one-third of the places on the trains was managed by the Quakers and another by Gildemeester. The last third was divided in two and managed by the Swedes and Caritas. Jewish emigration had been self-funded from the first. This had been Eichmann’s aim all along. When the Quakers Ethel Houghton and David Hodgkin went to see Emil Engel at the IKG in February 1939, he explained “that, since the money . . . obtained from the sale of foreign currency was used either for emigrating Jews or for giving them material relief, the government benefited in the first instance by getting rid of some undesirables and in the second by being saved from having itself to give relief to starving people since it is by law bound to relieve even Jews when they are absolutely destitute.”

The 4th was the Day of German Solidarity, and a curfew was imposed on the Jews between midday and eight that evening. The leading Nazis were out on the streets shaking their Winterhilfe boxes. Goebbels and some of his children took up position in front of the Adlon Hotel on Unter den Linden. There was another campaign occupying their minds: elections in the Sudetenland. Hitler had been in the region on the 2nd. Maybe the incorporation of many pious Catholics led Hitler to issue instructions to postpone the attack on the churches until after a solution had been found for the Jews. By the end of the day they had collected 15 million RM. Later, results came in from the Sudetenland: 99 percent were in favor of joining the Reich.

Some Jewish businesses had contrived to function, despite the various statutes issued in Berlin, but a last nail was driven into the coffin when it was announced that all Jewish firms were to be taken over by trustees prior to sale. The trustees in these cases were named by the Ministry of Economics. The decree also allowed the government to force the sale of Jewish property. All stocks, bonds, and securities had to be deposited at the regional offices of the ministry. It was the culmination of the “economic solution” to the Jewish problem. By the end of the year, the Jews had been removed from business life throughout the Reich. There were still exceptions; the decree was not yet applicable in Bohemia and Moravia, nor did it apply to foreign nationals. When an attempt had been made to register the fortunes of foreign Jews on April 26, it led to a storm of protest from abroad, and the government was forced to step down. Now every acquisition was to be made to enrich the state, rather than the purchaser. A tax was levied on buyers equal to the difference between the price paid and the value of the business. The Jewish names and trademarks were also to be removed—a considerable disincentive to the purchaser. One Aryanized company that complained vigorously was Rosenthal porcelain, which had a significant export business. The Justice Ministry was prepared to make an exception, as there were no Jews left in the business.

NAZI DIPLOMACY was still sending out contradictory signals to its neighbors. On December 6 Ribbentrop went to Paris to sign the Franco-German Declaration guaranteeing the present frontiers. The French were ready to massage the Germans for the time being, as there was no knowing where they would spring next. Ribbentrop, for his part, was pursuing his own dream of driving a wedge between the hated British and the French. There was a comic scene in the Gare des Invalides, when Ribbentrop stuck his nose so high in the air he all but fell backwards onto the tracks.

At the beginning of December the Nazi leaders were forced to admit that, although they wanted the Jews to go, they could find nowhere that would take them. On December 9 the RAM and the French foreign minister, Bonnet, had another meeting in which Bonnet brought up the question of the Jews. France did not want any more. They were about to promulgate measures to keep them out and had plans to shift 10,000 of them to Madagascar. Ribbentrop conceded that no one wanted the Jews. Extreme violence between Jews and Arabs made Palestine less and less tempting, and the other doors were shut and bolted. In mid-November the German Foreign Office had decided to arrange a meeting with George Rublee to work on the idea of creating a fund that would promote German exports. In exchange a degree more protection was to be accorded to the Jews. Under direct orders from Hitler, Hjalmar Schacht arrived in Britain as the guest of Montagu Norman, the governor of the Bank of England. He met Rublee, Lord Winterton, and Sir Frederick Leith-Ross in London on the 14th. The following day he saw Halifax and also had a meeting with Chamberlain. Schacht rightly saw that his days were numbered. In the event of his losing his plenipotentiary powers, he urged them to make contact with Funk.

Schacht’s scheme provided for the export of 150,000 Jews over the next three years. In exchange German Jews would create a fund amounting to 1.5 billion RM to be matched by the same sum invested by Jews outside the Reich. This was to be used as credit for the purchase of German exports. The Germans would pay an annual interest of 4 percent and amortize the sum at 2 percent annually. The persecution of the Jews would cease during that period. Schacht was still prepared to run errands for Hitler to find a way back into his favor. Both Hitler and Göring had endorsed this scheme, the so-called Warburg Plan. Schacht reported back to Hitler on January 2, 1939.

The project did not find much favor among the Jews themselves—particularly in America. Secretary of State Cordell Hull pointed out that the boycott was not official, and the Jews preferred the idea of a loan that was not linked to German exports. Rublee still hoped to be able to do a deal, and for that reason he went to Berlin on January 13. A week later, Schacht was relieved of his duties. It seems that a jealous Ribbentrop had finally had his way. Rublee was able to see Göring, who thought it would be possible to continue negotiations through Wohltat. German acceptance of the scheme remained conditional on a relaxation of the boycott.