The Transfer Agreement (79 page)

Nor did Stephen Wise want to be abandoned. For Wise, there was no existence outside his devotion to the cause of Jewish dignity and rights. Jewish leadership was his air, his salt, his bread.

In a moment of choice, his supporters stood to demand a resolution of full confidence for Stephen Wise. Finally, even his detractors could not abstain. The resolution was carried unanimously.
²⁵

The next day, September
24,
at a Congress press conference, Wise announced the immediate pursuit of German Jewish emigration, with a special provision whereby emigrants to Palestine could take part of their capital, along the lines of the Ruppin plan introduced at the Eighteenth Zionist Congress.
²⁶

As for the boycott, Wise was confronted by acerbic questions from reporters about cooperation with Untermyer, Wise's sabotage of the London boycott conference, and Wise's stance on the boycott altogether. Wise answered that he would cooperate with Untermyer's League for the Defense of Jewish Rights (American alter ego of Untermyer's Federation) if Untermyer would cooperate with the American Jewish Congress. "The boycott began long before the American League for the Defense of Jewish Rights was dreamed of," Wise said. "When I was pressed to declare a boycott, my position was this:
A
boycott, yes, by all means, the stiffest, sternest kind of boycott against German wares, products and goods, but there were ... considerations that moved me, and I am not in the last ashamed of having been governed by them.
²⁷

"Some of you [reporters] may not have thought it important ... but in March and April, a rather well-known citizen of the United States whose name is Franklin Delano Roosevelt was preparing to convene . . . a World Economic Conference .... I confess that I felt as an American that I did not wish to ... [facilitate] a conference to be called in London for a boycott against Germany ... at a time and in a place at which ... the president of the United States had summoned a World Economic Conference."
²⁸
With his customary flair, Wise defiantly told them, "Whether that was an error of judgment will be decided, not by you, ladies and gentlemen, but by the times that are to be."
²⁹

Fall was approaching and the Reich was unsure whether they had broken the boycott. The Eighteenth Zionist Congress had adjourned on September 4 with a guarantee that the boycott would be smothered, but the ensuing days revealed a continued drama of major boycott developments. On September 6, the 600,000-member Federation of Swedish Trade Unions adopted the boycott—as their British and Dutch counterparts had in prior weeks. Sweden was among Germany's most vital customers, and because the Stockholm government openly endorsed the action, the move was seen as semiofficial. In America, Untermyer was proving unstoppable as he began constructing a nationwide boycott infrastructure to snuff out Germany's last large markets in the United States. Since so many prominent Zionists were at Geneva when Stephen Wise's conference promulgated its "spontaneous" boycott resolution, the Reich again wondered if the Zionists were not playing a duplicitous game.
³⁰

On September
13, 1933,
Hitler's news organ,
Volkischer Beobachter,
published a threatening notice. "It is clear that the Zionists are responsible for the boycott resolution presented to Geneva. With Rabbi Wise and other Geneva boycott leaders being directly drawn from the Zionist Organization, it could not be otherwise .... Boycott of this sort would be equivalent to a declaration of war! . . . The Board of Deputies is playing a double game with Germany. With one hand it is holding in check the boycott movement and with the other it is inciting the British government to act against Germany."
³¹

Nazi Germany could take no chances. They would have to be ready for the worst. On September
13,
Chancellor Hitler and Propaganda Minister Goebbels entered a Berlin reception room where the foreign and domestic press was waiting. As Hitler appeared, an honor cadre of tall, muscular black-shirted guards snapped to attention with a forceful click of heels, a powerful raised-arm salute, and a unison shout of "Heil Hitler." Der Führer, dressed in a dark blue double-breasted suit, acknowledged the ritual with his customary return gesture—arm casually bent at the elbow, palm facing forward.
³²

Goebbels walked to the front and announced a comprehensive Winter Relief program to keep starvation from the German people during the coming bitter months. Beginning at once, all Germans would be expected to make the Sunday midday meal—traditionally the elaborate family meal—a one-pot affair costing no more than fifty pfennigs. This cost limit would restrict the fare to varieties of puddings, porridge, stew, and soup. The savings was to be donated to Winter Relief to feed the unemployed. National meatless days were to be observed once weekly, with fish being recommended to help the ailing fish industries. All public restaurants, hotels, and railway dining cars would be expected to serve model one-pot meals as an example to the rest of the country.
³³

Farmers would be required to donate foodstuffs. Retailers were to contribute warm clothing. Fuel companies were to donate coal and oil. Relief goods would reach the smallest dorf via an immense distribution network manned by transport employees, the army, police, fire brigades, and Nazi volunteers. The railroads would carry all goods free of charge, the bus companies would provide vehicles. The hardest-hit towns and rural areas were to be "adopted" by more fortunate locales.
³⁴

A second phase of Winter Relief revolved around a fund-raising effort that Goebbels termed "unparalleled" and "grandiose." A house-to-house donation drive was to canvass every urban and rural dwelling. Any German with an active bank account was instructed to make an immediate deduction. Workmen were to donate one hour's wages each month. All those donating once for the month would receive a special tag or home plaque making them immune from street collectors. Special donations were encouraged from all commercial concerns and individuals, especially Jews and foreign-relief organizations if they expected to keep Jews from starvation that winter. Arrangements were made for exemplary large contributions: RM
100,000
from
NSDAP headquarters in Munich and
Volkischer Beobachter;
various banks and manufacturing firms donated RM
30,000
to RM
50,000
each;
I.
G.
Farben outdid them all with a RM
I
million contribution.
³⁵

The fact that Hitler appeared in person for Goebbels' announcement and the fact that the foreign press was invited was significant. This was to be the first big, decisive battle, the battle for survival. Would Germany crack that winter? Adolf Hitler was boldly telling the world his answer: nein
!

The one man who most embodied the potential death blow to Germany was Samuel Untermyer. Upon learning of the Transfer Agreement and the Eighteenth Zionist Congress' refusal to join the boycott, Untermyer dispatched organizers throughout America to commence a massive fund-raising campaign for his new boycott organization. By the time the shock of Geneva's inaction registered, Untermyer's American League for the Defense of Jewish Rights had called an emergency meeting of
250
national civic, business, and interfaith leaders.
³⁶

On September 10, standing before his boycott leaders at New York's Hotel Astor, Untermyer issued a warning to Hitler: "The day of reckoning is at hand!" In a matter of hours, a national strategy had been formulated. The United States was divided into twelve boycott zones. Nonsectarian coordination committees would work on an industry-by-industry basis to replace German products with substitutes of equal quality, preferably American products. Boycott offices were to act as clearinghouses to "reduce imports from Germany to the vanishing point."
³⁷

Much ofthe appeal would be "strictly business," involving entrepreneurs whose sole interest was ousting their German competitors. Shielded from publicity, a great numer of major U.S. corporations could then quietly take a leading role in the boycott. The movement would be brought into every neighborhood via posters, plaques, filmstrips, and radio talk shows, all of it dovetailing with the National Recovery Act, making
it
a patriotic duty to switch to American goods. An international liaison office would coordinate with the commercial attachés and trade sections of foreign embassies and consulates, introduce foreign chambers of commerce to American sources, and publish weekly trade bulletins.
³⁸

Women, the greatest commercial power in America, would be the front line of offense. In addition to organizing consumers, women by the thousands were to go from store to store, identifying remnant German stock and convincing merchants to return or withdraw them.
³⁹

Leading the war alongside Untermyer would be a "committee of
100"
located in all major cities. The top fifteen of this committee would function as the decision-making body. The assembled delegates expeditiously elected J. George Fredman of the Jewish War Veterans; Elias Ginsburg, America's topranking Revisionist; outspoken Zionist leader Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland;
Max
Korshak of Chicago; Philadelphia publisher J. David Stern, and ten others.
⁴⁰

To blanket the nation with boycott required half a million dollars at once. An inaugural dinner was held that night, September
10,
to launch the fund-raising campaign. Over
1,500
guests were encouraged by former U.S. Ambassador to Germany James W. Gerard, former secretary of state Bainbridge Colby, and former New York governor Al Smith. The major speeches congratulating U ntermyer and advocating boycott were once again broadcast live on national radio. And newspapers devoted prominent coverage to the new boycott organization.
⁴¹

During the days and weeks to follow, Untermyer's hundred disciples set off to bring the nation to boycott. Donations poured in. Offices opened. Printing presses began rolling. Women took to the avenues with their banners and their clipboards.
⁴²

Industrial experts were tapped to identify alternate sources for the 7,000 German products still sold in America. The boycott had been well received in the more populated East, the North, and the West, but remained relatively
undeveloped in the South and the Southwest. For instance, 25 percent of the sugar beets used by southern sugar-beet refineries came from German farms in Westphalia. But swift action was seen when by September
16,
the Kansas City boycott committee enlisted the cooperation of sixteen regional food wholesalers in gathering the signatures of
8,000
retail grocers demanding
southern beet refineries replace German beet sugar with crops grown in America and elsewhere.
⁴³

A whirlwind tour by the seventy-five-year-old Untermyer was scheduled at once for Philadelphia, Hartford, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco and other cities.
⁴⁴

And he built a national organization, or at least the skeleton of one. It took several months, but there were official district offices throughout the country, and informal grass-roots offices in dozens of cities. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had been raised nationally to pay for the trains and cabs, the posters and stamps, the telephones and telegrams, the rents and the little miscellaneous things like coffee and doughnuts for the December picket lines.

But it was too late.
It
was just too late.
It
had all taken too long. By the time Untermyer's organized boycott was skeletally in place, winter had arrived. Too much time had been lost. The crucial late-summer, fall, and earlywinter German exports had not been sufficiently disrupted to have an impact during the brunt of the cold winter months. Untermyer's people tried. But they just couldn't do it in time. Many had perceived the coming defeat even before the final campaign began on September
10.
But they had to try. They
were ultimately forced to accept the awesome reality: Germany did not crack that winter.

Germany did not crack that winter, but the anti-Nazi boycott continued. Month after month, and indeed year after year, Samuel Untermyer tirelessly worked toward the economic downfall of the Third Reich. There were periodic showdowns with major department stores, with American industries buying German commodities, and even with the U.S. Postal Service, which awarded lucrative transatlantic contracts to German shipping lines. The Reich was able to regularly foil the boycott's full effectiveness by exporting via third countries and by mislabeling German merchandise as "Made in Switzerland," "Made in Saxony," or "Made in Austria."

The American and world masses grew tired of incessant boycott pleas, key workers became too
ill
to continue, and funds dried up. Thus, vital boycott bastions often crumbled from apathy or neglect. Constant vigilance was required to rebuild the breaches. Boycotting became a
cause célèbre
among a dedicated core of volunteers, who were often a few hours too late to stop a German delivery, or a few dollars too short to achieve a regional victory.

For Germany, the boycott was a constant harassment, denying the Nazis the economic recovery they sought. Each autumn, the Reich would announce a Winter Relief program to undo the economic damage of the previous spring and summer. Winter Relief became institutional and the Nazis turned it into a gala patriotic season of struggle. The hated one-pot meals were popularized by a gamut of gimmicks—from circus elephants lugging one-pot posters through town squares, to staged extravaganzas featuring Germany's finest chefs, bedecked in white uniforms, each with his gourmet rendering of a fifty-pfennig, one-pot meal. Door-to-door relief collections became a celebrity affair, with Hermann Goering and Magda Goebbels jingling their tin collection boxes on street corners along with the rank and file. Even when Winter Relief was only marginally necessary, the Reich maintained it to keep morale high.