The Transfer Agreement (13 page)

Turning to Jewish leaders in Germany and their advocates in America, Wise disqualified their pleas for an end to the protest as "panic and terror" from those who had failed to fight Nazism before the NSDAP came to power. He vowed the anti-Hitler protest would escalate, even if pseudoameliorations appeared: "Even if life and human rights are to be safeguarded, there must not be a substitution of the status of helotry [serfdom] for violence. Such substitution will not satisfy us"—the throng interrupted with cheers of encouragement—"nor satisfy the aroused conscience of humankind." The crowd offered their own punctuation as Wise declared, "Every form of economic discrimination is a form of violence. Every racial exclusion is violence. To say that there will be no pogroms is not enough. A dry and bloodless economic pogrom remains violence and force."
¹⁶
Above the cheering he warned the Third Reich, "And if things are to be worse because of our protest, if there are to be new penalties and new reprisals in Germany ... then humbly and sorrowfully we bow our heads in the presence of the tragic fate that threatens." But, "Hear the word of a great English statesman: 'Providence would deal good or
ill
fortune to nations according as they dealt well or
ill
by the Jews.' This is not a warning, but a prophecy!"
¹⁷

Rabbi Stephen Wise paused to speak the final words of his oration. The crowd hushed. "To this mighty protest Germany cannot fail to give heed and to answer." Then he pointed dramatically to the members of the audience and in a firm voice said,
"I
ask you by rising to signify to us and to all the world that you agree with us in our stand to bring about justice ... from Germany to the Jew."
¹⁸

In a thunderous motion, 20,000 Americans rose as one to their feet. The immense noise of the act and the rising voices created a sound that must have seemed like a massive sleeping animal suddenly awakening. That moment of solidarity was shared by the 20,000 in Madison Square Garden, the 35,000
more standing outside the Garden, a million others in supportive rallies in other cities, and millions more in their homes hearing the protest live on radio throughout America and in thirteen nations.
¹⁹
The world was warned. Germany was on notice.

Rabbi Wise stood down, ready to accept whatever was Germany's re
sponse to his plea, challenge, and warning. Without question, the struggle against Hitler was now in the open.

N
O
DIRECT WORD
about a boycott against Germany was actually mentioned at Madison Square Garden. Neither was the budding Jewish
War Veterans' boycott or the Polish boycott encouraged at the rally, even though it was an opportunity to expand those movements vastly. The decision was Stephen Wise's. To those who disagreed, Wise would reply, "We have the means and the will to boycott when we want. But now is not right. Let's wait just a little longer."
¹

What Wise was waiting for—strong diplomatic action—was a mirage. President Roosevelt wasn't concerned. And the State Department, B'nai B'rith, and the American Jewish Committee were not going on the offensive. They were simply stalling, hoping the anger on both sides of the Atlantic would dissipate. It wouldn't.

One reason was that the Madison Square denunciations were heard throughout Germany: Der Fuhrer and the NSDAP were termed criminals and barbarians; Germany was accused of rampant tortures and atrocities. As the Nazis saw it, Jewish propaganda was again disabling Germany before she could achieve success, as in World War
I.

Although the boycott was not declared then and there as Goering and Hitler had feared, it was threatened indirectly by people with official government titles and authority, by Catholic bishops, and by labor leaders who could start a boycott at the snap of a finger. In the Nazi view, the boycott was already under way. The Congress rally seemed to be the master switch activating a new world movement.

Mass meetings throughout Poland—coordinated to the Congress' rally—had voted to expand the Vilna boycott to all of Poland. The three most important Warsaw Jewish commercial organizations—the Central Association of Merchants, the Central Association of Small Tradesmen, and the Central Association of Jewish Artisans—passed binding resolutions to "use the most radical means of defense by boycotting German imports."
²

In London, almost all Jewish shops in the Whitechapel district were displaying placards denying entry to German salesmen and affirming the anti-Nazi boycott. Teenagers patrolled the streets distributing handbills asking shoppers to boycott German goods. And a newsreel showing der Führer was ceremoniously rejected by a London moviehouse.
³

In the United States, the withholding of the actual word
boycott
did not dampen the spontaneous grass-roots boycott led by the 15,000-man Jewish War Veterans. Within days of the JWV's boycott announcement, the group established a permanent office to raise funds, and even more importantly to connect American merchants with eager alternative suppliers in Czechoslovakia, Rumania, England, France, and of course the United States itself. Thousands of boycott letters were mailed by the JWV to businessmen throughout the East Coast. Pickets were thrown around East Coast stores carrying German goods. And a steady publicity program was being well received by the U.S. media. For example, when two Hoboken, New Jersey, companies, Pioneer Paper and City Chemical, rescinded orders for hundreds of thousands of dollars of machinery and pledged to buy no more German products, the cancellations were accompanied by press conferences and newspaper articles. Such announcements produced a chain reaction, and within days of the JWV's boycott declaration the Veterans showed the press well over
$2
million in lost German orders.
⁴

Here was the real threat to the Nazis: lost sales. Once lost, many were lost forever. And when enough buyers actually turned to other sources of supply, entire markets could be lost as well. Spoken or unspoken, a mushrooming, even if uncoordinated, anti-German boycott movement was spreading throughout Europe and America.
It
was only moments from becoming a worldwide economic weapon if only the Congress and the other leading Jewish organizations would give their official support.

Above all of the Nazi dogma, revitalization of the German economy was the single indispensable feature of Hitler's program. Without a strong economy, the Reich could not rearm and could never begin its conquest of Europe. The Nazis were justifiably convinced that if the National Socialist revolution brought more unemployment and economic chaos, the German masses would turn away from the sixty-day Reich. To the Nazis, it seemed that only the Jews and their boycott were now standing between Germany and greatness. No wonder Goering had said that Stephen Wise was one of Hitler's "most dangerous enemies."
⁵

Hitler was in his Berchtesgaden retreat Sunday, March 26, 1933, when he learned that efforts to abort the Congress rally were unsuccessful. He summoned Goebbels from Berlin for an emergency conference. The two men held a long discussion of how the boycott and atrocity campaign could be arrested. Goebbels had been working on the problem. He had just finished a denial of the atrocities for
The London Sunday Express,
but admitted that such articles were "inadequate."
⁶

Hitler and Goebbels concluded that a preemptive anti-Jewish boycott
was the only answer. Longtime anti-Jewish boycott vanguard Julius Streicher would coordinate the action. The party faithful had long awaited this development. Goebbels excitedly hurried back to his Berlin office to polish a statement declaring that Germany's organized anti-Jewish campaign would now begin.
⁷

The morning of the March 27 Madison Square Garden rally, Goebbels released a statement warning that "drastic legal proceedings" lay ahead for the German Jews if the New York- and London-centered anti-Reich campaign continued. Goebbels then wired a short party bulletin to Hitler for approval. In his diary that day, Goebbels admitted, "We work through [newspaper] interviews as much as possible; but only a really extensive movement can now help us out of our calamity." By the end of the afternoon, Hitler had approved Goebbels' party bulletin. The Propaganda Minister released it over German radio even before Rabbi Wise's protest broadcast was complete. The bulletin proclaimed that a national boycott against Germany's Jews was to be organized.
⁸

The next morning, March
28,
German and Nazi party newspapers carried an expanded declaration. The national anti-Jewish boycott was to commence April
1
, in order to halt the accelerating Jewish-sponsored anti-German boycott movement and atrocity campaign. The foreign press was told that Hitler was moving to stymie "the anti-German atrocity propaganda which interested Jews have started in England and the United States." Der Führer held Germany's Jews responsible for the foreign agitation, and these "defensive measures" were only the beginning. Officially mandated economic ousters of Jews would commence as well.
⁹

The decision was technically made by Hitler in his capacity as chief of the Nazi party, not in his capacity as chancellor of the Reich. For appearances, therefore, the boycott was officially unofficial, to be organized and executed by the party and not the government. To emphasize that the action was in response to the failure of Washington and London to halt the protests in their countries, the announcement specified: The German government would not interfere with the party's boycott "so long as foreign governments do not take steps against atrocity propaganda in their countries."
¹⁰

The NSDAP's preemptive boycott would not begin officially until April
1
, but the announcement itself set off a rash of boycotting and expulsions. German medical and juridical societies immediately expelled their Jewish members. In Darmstadt, Mannheim, and numerous other German cities, local SS contingents surrounded Jewish stores, smashed windows, and lobbed stench bombs. Frequently the police themselves demanded the stores close.
¹¹

The Jewish community in Germany reacted with terror. Previous outbursts had been sporadic, unorganized acts of intimidation and violence against individual families and businesses. But this boycott would be a sys
tematic economic pogrom that would plague every Jewish business and household. No one would be spared. What professional could survive if he could not practice? What store could survive if it could not sell?

At first, Jews and non-Jews, whether in Germany or outside, could not believe that such an official national outrage could occur. No one seriously distinguished between Hitler's party capacity and his role as chief of state. This, then, was the beginning of the fulfillment of
Mein Kampf,
Hitler's explicit forecast of Jewish persecution in Germany, the document all believed—hoped—would never be put into force. The world was shocked. Hitler was going to keep his promises.

Within hours of the Tuesday-morning proclamation, Nazi party headquarters in Munich had formulated precise plans. Under boycott regulations, "no German shall any longer buy from a Jew." The boycott would commence at
10:00 A.M.,
April
1,
a Saturday morning, and continue until the anti-German boycott protest movement in New York and London "ended."
¹²

On March
2
8,
the boycott promised to be a long ruinous confrontation for the Jews. In Munich, a hastily formed Central Committee for Defense Against Jewish Atrocity and Boycott Propaganda issued strict guidelines. All local party units were to be involved in both boycotting Germany's Jews and maintaining Nazi discipline. There was to be no violence, no basis for further atrocity stories. But an anti-Jewish boycott, violent or disciplined, would be disastrous for Germany's fragile economy, and virtually everyone in Germany with realistic business sense knew it. Non-Nazi members of the cabinet—a majority—demanded that Hitler cancel the anti-Jewish boycott. He refused.
¹³

The next morning, March
30,
newspapers in Germany and abroad confirmed that the anti-Jewish boycott proclamation was not just another vague Nazi threat, but a real and organized action. Terrified German Jews now redoubled their panicky campaign to disavow foreign protests and newspaper reports. They pleaded with their New York brethren to cancel any further protest activities, and especially any talk about boycotting German goods. Noted Hamburg banker Eric Warburg cabled his cousin Frederick in New York:
"TODAY'S BOYCOTT THREATS AGAINST JEWISH FIRMS IN GERMANY WILL BE CARRIED OUT IF ATROCITIES NEWS AND UNFRIENDLY PROPAGANDA IN FOREIGN PRESS MASS MEETINGS ETC. DOES NOT STOP IMMEDIATELY."
¹⁴
Frederick Warburg upon receipt immediately telephoned Cyrus Adler, president of the American Jewish Committee, who composed a paragraph disavowing atrocity stories and any boycott. The statement was forwarded to Committee secretary Morris Waldman for approval.
¹⁵

Waldman quickly approved the statement: "The American Jewish Committee declares that to its knowledge most of the so-called atrocity stories which were reported from Germany to have appeared in the American press did not so appear. No threats of boycott in America have been made by any responsible Jewish bodies. They were irresponsible sporadic outbursts. It is impossible to tell what would happen, however, if the threatened boycott against all Jews in Germany is carried out on April 1st."
¹⁶