K&W

Kristallnacht

By 1935, Hitler’s efforts to rebuild the German military forces (which had begun in 1933 in violation of the Treaty of Versailles) became public, and Germany began taking steps toward expanding the Third Reich across all of Europe. The first steps included annexing Austria (an act known as the Anschluss) and the part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland, territories inhabited by so-called “true Germans” who Hitler believed ought to be part of the Reich. Fearful of igniting a new world war, the leaders of other countries were unwilling to oppose with military force Hitler’s demands for these territories. As a result, Germany expanded into Austria and Czechoslovakia without firing a shot. 

The German takeover of Austria and the Sudetenland increased the number of Jews affected by Nazi restrictions, while at the same time discrimination intensified to the point where Jews were effectively removed from German public life. This meant that Germany’s aggressive steps to expand its borders touched off both an international political crisis, as world leaders scrambled to avoid war, and a humanitarian refugee crisis, as hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Jews, sought safety from the Nazis.

The ineffective international response deepened the peril in which Jews in the Reich found themselves. The danger became even more dire on November 9–10, 1938, in what was called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)—the worst outbreak of terror and violence against Jews all over Germany since the Nazis came to power.

On that night, according to the Nazi propaganda, “the German people” spontaneously took revenge on the Jewish people for the murder of a Nazi diplomat in Paris by a young Jewish man named Herschel Grynszpan. In reality, the violence had been planned and organized by the Nazis, and carried out by the SS, SA, Hitler Youth, and other Nazi groups.

By the morning of November 10, they had destroyed thousands of Jewish homes and businesses, and they had set fire to 191 synagogues, the centers of Jewish social and spiritual life, in every part of Greater Germany. Fire departments were instructed not to put out the fires but merely to stand by and make sure that adjacent property did not go up in flames. Although the exact figure is not known, it is likely that anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 Jews died as a result of the violence and 30,000 others were afterward sent to concentration camps. Two days later, the German government fined the Jewish community one billion marks for “property damaged in the rioting.

Weimar Republic

After World War I ended in 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm fled to the Netherlands, and Germany became a republic, a government that is accountable to its people. The Weimar Republic was characterized by contrasts and conflicts. The new constitution granted significant new rights and freedoms to individuals and groups, beginning an era in which creativity and experimentation flourished. At the same time, the republic struggled to convince many Germans, accustomed to monarchy, to accept and trust its authority. The people’s confidence in the republic was especially damaged as the country faced economic crises as well as challenges from political parties that were hostile to democracy.