1938-40 - Reichkristallnacht, 9-10 November 1938

What was the Reichkristallnacht

• The Night of the Broken Glass

• 9-10 November

• Jewish homes and businesses were looted and vandalised, synagogues were set ablaze

• Thousands of Jews were arrested, beaten up and killed

Reichkristallnacht pogrom

• Pogrom - an organised massacre of an ethnic group

• The Reichkristallnacht pogrom can be viewed as an uncontrolled outporing of radical anti-Semitism, partly supported by German public opinion

• Nazi propaganda anounced that the ‘National Soul has boiled over’

• In the days after the pogrom, Hitler gave Goering a coordinating role to ‘sort things out’

Orchestrating of the Reichkristallnacht

• Was orchestrated by the Nazi leadership

• The majority of those involved in the violence and vandalism were in reality SA and SS men who were instructed not to wear uniforms

• Chief instigator was Goebbels

• Gave instructions to Nazi officials in the regions to organise the violence and vandalism - but to make it appear that it wasn’t organised by the Nazi party

The role the murder of Ernst vom Rath

• The Nazis seized the opportunity presented by the murder of vom Rath on November 9th

• Rath was a minor German official in Paris who was killed by a Polish Jew angry at the treatment of his parents by the Nazi regime

• The killing of vom Rath was more an excuse for unleashing anti-Jewish terror than the real cause

Violence of the Reichkristallnacht

• 91 Jews were killed and thousands were injured

• There was looting of cash, silver, jewellery and artwork

• Damage to shops and businesses amounted to millions of marks

• Orders from the SS to the police was to not intervene against demonstrators

• Ordered to place 20,000-30,000 Jews in ‘preventive’ detention

• Fire brigades did nothing and watched as synagogues burned to the ground - but ensured these fires spread to other buildings

Views of the Reichkristallnacht in Germany

• The anti-Jewish violence of November 1938 was not met with universal approval in Germany

• Some citizens joined in with the violence and looting alongside SA thugs who were equipped with weapons

• However many Germs were horrified by the destruction

• In Leipzig - American consul reported that silent crowds of locals were ‘aghast’ at the sights of burning synagogues and looted shops the next morning

• A British official in Berlin claimed ‘he had not met a single German from any walk of life who does not disapprove to some degree’

• Germans understood that the violence was not spontaneous but organised by the state

Aftermath of the Reichkristallnacht

• Marked a turning point for Jews in Nazi Germany

• Goering pronounced ‘now the gloves are off’

• In the aftermath, Goering prevented insurance companies from paying out compensation to Jewish victims

• the ‘Decree for the Restoration of the Street Scene’ in relation to Jewish business meant that the Jews had to pay for repairs

• The Jewish community were also made to make a 1 billion Reichsmark payment in compensation for the disruption to the Jewish economy

• The Decree Excluding Jews from German Economic Life was issued on 12 November

• The Aryanisation of Jewish businesses was accelerated