The night of violence dubbed Kristallnacht initiated the deliberate, government-sanctioned extermination of the Jews in Germany now known as the Holocaust. Subdued reaction to the anti-Semitic violence from both the international community and “ordinary” Germans opened the door to the Nazi policies of extermination that soon followed.
German anti-Semitism did not suddenly materialize with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933; it was already entrenched among many in Germany’s non-Jewish population. Hitler, however, fomented anti-ethnic sentiments and promulgated the myth of “Aryan” superiority to consolidate his power, establishing policies and laws against German Jews from the beginning of his rule. In 1933, he announced a daylong boycott against Jewish businesses, legislated against kosher butchering, and set in motion a policy prohibiting Jewish children from attending public schools. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws
On November 7, 1938, a seventeen-year-old Polish-Jewish student, Herschel Grynszpan, assassinated German diplomat Ernst vom Rath
Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made the best of the opportunity, organizing “spontaneous” demonstrations against Jews that erupted in violence in cities and villages across the country. According to Goebbels, Hitler had received the news of vom Rath’s death on November 9: “[T]he Führer,” Goebbels reported in an address to the Nazi leadership, “has decided that . . . demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.”
In fact, the riots were initiated by members of the Gauleiters, the Sturm Abteilung (SA), and the Schutzstaffel (SS), who for the most part wore civilian garb. German citizens eventually joined them. What followed was a orgy of violence that lasted for two days. The rioters administered axes and sledgehammers to Jewish storefronts, shattering window panes—hence the name Kristallnacht, meaning “crystal night,” in reference to the broken glass. The term was a euphemism, however. The destruction went well beyond the smashing of glass. Thousands of homes and stores were looted, damaged, or burned, and the destruction extended to more than fifteen hundred synagogues and several Jewish cemeteries. Police and firefighters stood idly by, their only mandate being to protect “Aryan” property.
Estimates vary on the number killed in the rioting, from as few as three dozen to as many as two hundred. The deaths were mainly the result of bludgeoning. In the aftermath of the rioting, thirty thousand Jewish men were arrested and transported to concentration camps:
On November 11, Goebbels called for an end to the violence, which went unheeded in the camps. The number of deaths that followed as an immediate result of Kristallnacht—by suicide and in the camps—ran into the thousands. The London News Chronicle reported that at Sachsenhausen, for example, sixty-two men were beaten until they fell: “Twelve of the sixty-two were dead, their skulls smashed. The others were all unconscious. The eyes of some had been knocked out, their faces flattened and shapeless.”
On November 12, a meeting of Nazi leaders was convened by Field Marshal Hermann Göring to hear the official anti-Jewish policy. As Göring put it: “I implore competent agencies to take all measures for the elimination of the Jew from the German economy, and to submit them to me.” Göring concluded the meeting by noting that he “would not like to be a Jew in Germany.”
Incredibly, the Jews were seen as the instigators of the riots and were forced to clean the rubble of their ruined businesses and places of worship. Those who had survived the violence of the riots were now subjected to increasingly oppressive policies, fines, and restrictions on their movements—including the Judenvermoegersabgabe, a collective fine for the murder of vom Rath which today would be the equivalent of several billion U.S. dollars. The Nazis began to confiscate Jewish property as part of their program of “Aryanization.”
Most striking, however, was the relatively mild reaction on the part of those Germans not directly in the path of Nazi violence. Even the international response—though outrage was expressed—was measured. Newspapers condemned the pogroms, but no immediate action was undertaken by the international community. In its November 11 issue, for example, The New York Times reported only that Goebbels had called a halt to the violence, not mentioning the undisguised fact that he had instigated it. The silence of the German people was tantamount to complicity: Whether they were cowed by fear, shared the Nazis’ ethnic hatreds, or simply were indifferent, their passivity in the face of the events of Kristallnacht made it clear to Nazi leaders that they faced little resistance. Hitler and his henchmen proceeded to excise the Jewish “threat” in the form of increasingly transparent atrocities that eventually constituted the Holocaust.
At the same time, Kristallnacht—to be followed four months later by the German invasion of Czechoslovakia (March 15, 1939)—made it clear to world leaders that the Nazi regime would stop at nothing to appropriate Lebensraum (living space) by incorporating central Europe into an Aryan empire. Support for the policy of appeasement was coming to an end as visionary politicians began to foresee a second world war.
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Gilbert, Martin. Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. Prolific historian and Holocaust scholar Gilbert identifies Kristallnacht as the moment when the Nazi regime consolidated its momentum toward genocide. Eyewitness accounts from those in Berlin, Vienna, and other cities who endured the crime spree testify to the violence and personal terror experienced by the victims. Newspaper accounts and the reactions of ordinary people record the inadequate response. Photos and maps. -
Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. 3d ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003. Comprehensive account of the Nazi treatment of the Jews of Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. Bibliography and index. -
Johnson, Eric A., and Karl-Heinz Reuband. What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany —An Oral History. Cambridge, Mass.: Basic Books, 2005. In answer to the conventional wisdom that the non-Jewish German public was unaware of the anti-Semitic atrocities growing in the Nazi state, Johnson and Reuband, using hundreds of interviews reproduced here, document that regime’s popularity and the ease with which it took advantage of rampant anti-Semitism. -
Laqueur, Walter, and Judith Tydor Baumel, eds. The Holocaust Encyclopedia. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001. Surveys all aspects of the Holocaust. Includes more than two hundred photos and many helpful research tools. -
Read, Anthony. Kristallnacht: Unleashing the Holocaust. New York: Random House, 1989. Examines the Nazis’ exploitation of German anti-Semitism on Kristallnacht and the international reaction, which the authors describe as “mere squeaks of indignation.” A scholarly and complete examination of the Nazis’ institutionalization of their policy of Jewish extermination. Photos. -
Rubenstein, Richard L., and John K. Roth. Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and Its Legacy. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987. Analyzes the emergence and development of the concentration and death camps, focusing on both the victims and the perpetrators.
Racist Theories Aid Nazi Rise to Political Power
Beer Hall Putsch
Mein Kampf Outlines Nazi Thought
Hitler Comes to Power in Germany
Nazi Concentration Camps Begin Operating
Great Blood Purge
Pius XI Urges Resistance Against Nazism
Nazi Germany Hosts the Degenerate Art Exhibition
The Anschluss
Nazi Extermination of the Jews
Gypsies Are Exterminated in Nazi Death Camps