The Transfer Agreement (16 page)

No one believed the assurances. None of the spontaneous boycotts and professional expulsions already sweeping Germany could be characterized as "disciplined." In one case, no more than a letter from a German-American claiming that the founder of the Woolworth's department store chain was a Jew, prompted SA troops to surround six of the stores in Germany and prohibit customers from entering. Even as the cabinet was convening on March 31
,
Munich Nazis unilaterally declared that their boycott would begin at once. Brownshirts armed with carbines took up positions outside the city's Jewish stores.
⁵³

Still, Hitler refused to stop the action, now claiming that it had gone too far to be canceled—whether or not the foreign agitation was suspended. Von Neurath exploded and demanded that Hitler as head ofthe Nazi party call off the boycott.
If
not, von Neurath would resign. Hitler would not change the plans, and with that von Neurath formally resigned.
⁵⁴

At that moment it appeared that the brittle coalition running Germany would collapse. Von Neurath was Germany's last respectable link to the outside world. Von Papen and Hindenburg's personal representative both pleaded with the foreign minister to rescind his resignation.
⁵⁵

Von Neurath was despondent and physically weakened over the crisis. He saw his Germany approaching another abyss. He had always felt it his duty to elevate his nation while abiding by a personal moral code. He could no longer be
part
of a government that would countenance April First. He refused to withdraw his resignation. It was known around Berlin that if von N eurath left, in all likelihood Hindenburg would resign as well. He was the president's favorite and for Hindenburg, perhaps the only redeeming factor in the entire Hitler cabinet.
⁵⁶

Without Hindenburg, what? Would the generals take over? Would Hitler and the Nazis be deposed or thrown into civil war? No one could predict. Therefore, it was unacceptable that von Neurath leave the government. Some compromise was necessary. True to form, Hitler agreed not to a compromise, but an ultimatum. He would cancel the Nazi party's boycott if von Neurath could supply explicit public assurances by Jewish leaders and the governments of the United States, France, and England that they would not participate in any anti-Reich boycott.
⁵⁷

The German foreign minister accepted the compromise
cum
ultimatum. He took back his resignation and promised to provide the official foreign assurances Hitler demanded. What was the deadline for producing the statements?

Hitler specified midnight, less than twelve hours away.
⁵⁸

The rush began. Von Neurath hurriedly explained the crisis to his senior staff, who set about to secure the impossible. Senior official Hans Dieckhoff was to meet shortly with U.S. chargé Gordon to receive Hull's carefully worded protest of the night before. When they did meet, Gordon dutifully relayed Hull's message threatening a rupture in German-American relations. As instructed, Gordon stressed Hull's desire to do anything diplomatic that might ease the crisis. Dieckhoff immediately answered that an official U.S. statement, published in the American press, repudiating the atrocity reports and denouncing any anti-Nazi boycott could stop April First-if issued in time to meet Hitler's deadline.
⁵⁹

Gordon quickly telephoned Undersecretary Phillips in Washington and passed on Dieckhoffs request. The charge recommended that Hull formulate such a statement. He emphasized that all speed was necessary, that the chances of calling off the Nazi campaign were diminishing with each minute, and that "an eleventh hour breakdown" would be tragic.
⁶⁰

Even as chargé Gordon was speaking to Washington, German officials were telephoning their embassies in London, Washington, and Paris, urging similar declarations from Jewish leaders as well as the governments of England and France.
⁶¹
The diplomatic telephone and telegraph lines in Washington, London, Paris, and Berlin stayed busy for tense hours. Additional emergency German cabinet meetings assessing the progress were convened throughout the day. But most Reich officials were doubtful. Hitler was demanding the very sort of domestic control that the Western democracies were not empowered to engage in.

As the French, British, and American governments struggled to compose public statements that would not outrage their citizenry and yet satisfy Hitler, popular Jewish leaders were escalating their calls for economic confrontation. In Paris, the newly formed International League Against Anti-Semitism was consolidating French protest groups and announced a unified anti-German boycott to commence at
10:00 A.M.,
the moment Germany's boycott against Jews started. Merchants throughout France had pledged their cooperation, and efforts were under way during those very hours to force French ministries to join the effort.
⁶²

In London, the antiboycott placards in shops became more numerous. And trade unionists began to target crucial industries, especially big foreigncurrency earners, such as the German fur industry. One estimate projected Germany's total
I933
loss from this lucrative industry alone at $100 million.
⁶³

Eleven of the world's leading musicians began drafting a cable to Hitler announcing a boycott of Germany's lucrative cultural enterprises. Led by Arturo Toscanini and Fritz Reiner, the musicians threatened a business that would hurt not only Germany's pocketbook but, perhaps more importantly, her pride. Toscanini, who demanded his name be placed at the top of the protest list, targeted the upcoming Wagner Festival as the first casualty. German tourism, a big foreign-currency earner, was already suffering drastically, because of sympathy with the Jews and the public fear of traveling in a nation besieged by street hooligans. Cancellations had emptied German ocean liners and hotels. Even the great German spas were bemoaning the loss of an elite clientele who were switching summer reservations en masse to rival spas in Czechoslovakia and France. And leaders of the German fur industry, centered in Leipzig, were already nervously discussing an appeal to convince foreigners to halt the cutoff of purchases.
⁶⁴

By the close of business, March
31, 1933,
German stocks had again tumbled badly. Die Trust fell
IO
percent in value. Siemens had dropped 12 percent in value the day before.
⁶⁵

Now frenzied, the anti-Jewish boycott machine in Germany continued to make ready. Boycott coordinator Julius Streicher's posters were hurriedly pasted all over Berlin. The posters again cried out for Germans to refrain from buying or associating with Jewish business people because the Jews "excite the world against Germany .... They agitate for a boycott of German goods. The Jew thus wants to increase the misery of unemployment in Germany and ruin the German export trade." New orders circulated calling for all Aryan employees of Jewsh firms in Berlin to walk off their jobs at precisely 3:00 P.M. on April First and picket their own establishments in protest of the international anti-German boycott.
⁶⁶

By the end of the afternoon, the Nazi leadership began to look forward to the next day with increasing desperation and fear. Germany might begin to disintegrate, perhaps even by fire, if Jewish political agitation provoked international military intervention.
I
n
the privacy of his diary, Goebbels felt compelled to write, "Many are down-hearted and apprehensive. They believe that the boycott might lead to a war. We can gain nothing, however, but universal esteem by defending ourselves."
⁶⁷

As the sun set, the prospects were increasingly dangerous. Someone had to stop the anti-Jewish boycott. So Benito Mussolini stepped in.

Mussolini was the man Hitler mimicked from the beginning even though Mussolini's Facism was not fundamentally racist or anti-Semitic. Italian Jews were, in fact, influential in Mussolini's philosophical development. Five Jews
were among the founders of the original Fighting Fasci in March
1
919.
Three other Jewish activists were commemorated in Fascist history as "martyrs." Mussolini certainly believed in many of the commonly held Jewish conspiracy theories, but he considered the Jewish presence in Italy an asset, assuming all the stereotypical traits in Jews would accrue to the state. As such, several Jews were among his closest advisers.
⁶⁸

Hitler deliberately overlooked Mussolini's relationship with Italian Jewry when he patterned National Socialism after Italian Fascism. Hitler's aborted rebellion of
1923,
the Beer Hall Putsch, was in fact a bad imitation of Mussolini's successful
1922
takeover by threatening Rome with a nonexistent Revolutionary Legion. And in
1926,
Hitler required his followers to give the Roman salute, the trademark of Nazism that was again just an emulation of Mussolini.
⁶⁹

Yet Mussolini had repeatedly ridiculed Hitler's anti-Semitic and racist orientation. On March
30,
Mussolini had ordered Vittorio Cerruti, the Italian ambassador in Berlin, to register a strong complaint with the Foreign Ministry about the coming April First boycott.
⁷⁰
Now, with precious few hours remaining, Mussolini instructed Cerruti to try again, this time by going directly to der Fuhrer. Hitler granted an immediate interview to Cerruti, who beseeched him in the name of Mussolini to call off the April First
aktion
and halt Nazi anti-Semitism forever. To make certain der Führer understood Il Duce's feelings precisely, Cerruti read a long telegram from the Italian dictator. Hitler was devastated that II Duce could take so pro-Jewish a stance. He flew into a rage, screaming, "I have the most absolute respect for the personality and the political action of Mussolini. Only in one thing I cannot admit him to be right and that is with regard to the Jewish question in Germany, for he cannot know anything about it." Hitler continued that he alone was the world's greatest authority on the Jewish question in Germany, because he alone had examined the issue for "long years from every angle, like no one else." And, shouted Hitler, he could predict "with absolute certainty" that in five or six hundred years the name of Adolf Hitler would be honored in all lands "as the man who once and for all exterminated the Jewish pest from the world."
⁷¹

While the diplomats struggled to appease Hitler late on March
31,
important Jewish protest leaders were likewise struggling with the emotional question. After much agonizing, two Anglo-Jewish leaders finally agreed to accede to the urgent pleading of the Zionist delegation dispatched to Great Britain several days before. The first was Lord Reading, who one day earlier had lashed out in Parliament at German atrocities. The second was Lord Herbert Samuel, former British high commissioner of Palestine and a great friend of the Zionist movement. Together, they would release a declaration that read: "While sharing ... the deep feeling aroused in this country at the announcement of the discriminatory action intended to be taken in Germany
against Jewish professional men, tradesmen, and others, we deprecate exaggerated reports of occurrences there or any attempts to boycott German goods. Such attempts hitherto made have been unauthorized and spasmodic, and their cessation would in our view conduce to the alleviation of the situation in Germany." British Foreign Secretary John Simon agreed at the same time to hand the German ambassador in London a letter endorsing the Jewish declaration.
⁷²

Popular protest leaders in America, led by Stephen Wise, however, were unwilling to accede to Germany's threats. Wise's silence, originally intended to allow the State Department to negotiate unhampered, now became a strong refusal to appease Hitler. Even hostile messages from fellow Jews in Germany would not force him to acquiesce. One cable in particular sent that day struck a nerve. Sent by the editors of a prominent Jewish newspaper in Hamburg, it declared:
"GERMAN JEWS ACCUSE YOU AND ASSOCIATES TO BE TOOLS OF OUTSIDE POLITICAL INFLUENCES STOP YOUR SENSELESS OVERRATING OF OWN INTERNATIONAL IMPORTANCE AND LACK OF JUDGEMENT DAMAGE LARGELY THOSE YOU PRETEND TO WANT TO PROTECT ... BETTER SHUT OFF YOUR OWN LIMELIGHT AND USELESS MEETINGS AS SUREST MEANS AGAINST ANTI-SEMITISM ... THIS IS YOUR MOST IMPORTANT DUTY TO REPAIR YOUR CRIMES AGAINST US."
Wise was certain such cables were written under great duress and obviously for NSDAP consumption.
⁷³

Although popular Jewish leaders refused to appease, the American Jewish Committee was willing. Committee president Cyrus Adler received an impassioned plea the night before from his friend Oscar Wasserman, a prominent banker, informing:
"THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT THREATENED BOYCOTT AGAINST ALL JEWS WILL BE CARRIED THROUGH WITH FULL SEVERITY IF SOMEWHERE PROTEST MEETINGS WILL BE HELD OR BOYCOTT AGAINST GERMAN GOODS WOULD BE RECOMMENDED BY JEWS OR WITH JEWISH ASSISTANCE STOP AS GERMAN JEWS ARE FACED WITH UTMOST POVERTY AND DISTRESS IF JEWS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES CONTINUE TO INTERFERE I REQUEST YOUR HELP SO }"AR AS YOU CAN."
⁷⁴

On March 3
1
,
as the Third Reich was eagerly awaiting a public assurance that American Jews would not fight back with economic weapons or even verbal protests, Adler issued just such a statement, emphasizing his position of authority: "The American Jewish Committee, of which I am president, has taken no part in protest meetings. No responsible body in America has suggested boycott. We have been and are doing all in our power to allay agitation."
⁷⁵