The Ruling Elite Read online

  On April 3, the German consul general to the governor of Polish Upper Silesia protested the burning of an effigy of Hitler in the marketplace at Katowice by a group of Polish students. They also destroyed German newspapers and magazines that they had seized from shops. Jews asked the public to join them in their boycott. Officials in Germany denied that there was any persecution of Jews in their country. Jews living in Germany informed their Polish relatives that people had greatly exaggerated such stories.500

  On the same day, the New York Times reported that Jewish businesses in Germany were recovering from the one-day boycott. It said that crowds of people had reentered stores in Munich on Monday morning, April 3.501 However, under the new German welfare laws, Jewish doctors, dependent on the administration of health insurance and public welfare, anticipated that the government would no longer pay them for their services after April 1. Officials of the Berlin municipal insurance system also ousted Jewish physicians from the boards of many hospitals. The authorities allowed only thirty-five of the two thousand Jewish lawyers, also dependent on public-provided “free” legal aid, to practice within the court system. The same laws also applied to Jewish labor leaders.502

  On April 3, the Polish legation in Berlin confirmed a report that the Polish minister had filed with the Foreign Office charging “mistreatment of Polish Jews in Germany.”503 On the same day, four Jewish organizations in Paris—the International League against Anti-Semitism, the Committee for Jews Persecuted in Germany, the French Committee for the Jewish World Congress, and the Association of Jewish Former Volunteer Combatants—sent a telegram to Hitler promising reprisals if “all facilities are not given to German Jews for the resumption of their normal life” and “until their rights as German citizens have been integrally restored.”504

  On April 3, the JDC held a meeting at Temple Emanu-El, with more than seven hundred members attending to open a campaign to raise funds to aid German Jews “suffering from political persecution and economic discrimination.” Judge Irving Lehman, Joseph Proskauer, Dr. Cyrus Adler, Dudley Sicher, and Walter Brown entreated the crowd to raise money and to repudiate any movements that called for an economic boycott. The officers of the JDC were Felix M. Warburg, Paul Baerwald, Herbert Lehman, James N. Rosenberg, Joseph Hyman, and Marco Hellman, whose father, Isaias, a banker, left an estate of $20 million. Lehman told how the JDC, since its founding, had distributed about $80 million, most of it in Germany. He said, “We Jews do not fight hatred by hatred, but we must give until the giving hurts to relieve those who suffer from hatred.” Further, he said, “Ours is the task of bringing help to the distressed in many lands. In that task, we are united.” Adler described the conditions of Jews abroad as “worse than at any time since the World War.”505

  On April 3, at least seventy thousand Greek Jews protested against Hitler in Salonika, Greece.506 In The Times History of the War, David Pidcock wrote that the Spanish Jews, or Sephardim, many of whom became Freemasons, settled in and controlled key commercial centers such as Constantinople, Sarajevo, and Salonika, supplanting the area’s citizens.507 In Panama, on the same day, fifteen Jewish firms said they would no longer sell German products. On April 4, in Bombay, Jews protested against Hitler. On April 5, in New York, fifteen thousand people demonstrated against the German government and even against Jews who resisted criticizing Hitler. In Poland, on April 6, mob violence against Germans occurred during the national boycott. Reich Ambassador Hans von Moltke spoke with the Polish undersecretary of state, trying to halt the violence surrounding the boycott. The request was futile since the Polish government did not intend to cooperate with the Germans.508

  Reich business firms in numerous cities received order cancellations from Holland and France while groups boycotted German goods in Belgium, Egypt, Denmark, and Finland. Retail stores displayed signs denouncing German products. German leaders ascertained that the Jewish effort could destroy the Third Reich either through bankruptcy or through claims that Germany was preparing to invade its neighbors. On April 6, Cyrus Adler and B’nai B’rith president Alfred Cohen received a cable about the “Nazi horrors” that repudiated the report that German Jewish leaders had previously sent categorically stating that the Germans were not persecuting the Jews. Adler and Cohen sent a copy of the cable to Secretary of State Cordell Hull.509

  By April 9, London and Manchester police attempted to have storeowners remove “Boycott German Goods” signs from their windows. Members of Parliament heatedly debated the boycott while Home Secretary John Gilmour insisted that police acted on their own and not for the government. On April 15, the Daily Herald reported that Germany’s fur industry would lose $100 million a year. On April 13, the Romanian National Bank began declining all foreign currency for German imports. Protesters planned boycotts against German goods throughout Europe, stimulated by an organized network and supported by the press. The Berlin press reported the “dangerous decline” in Germany’s foreign trade. To strengthen Germany’s credibility and decrease its indebtedness, Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht presented a check for $70 million to the international bankers in Basel.510

  The National Socialists were making other changes that annoyed the Jews in Germany. On April 21, the government banned kosher slaughter, which Germans viewed as an incredibly inhumane ritual in which the qualified shochet severs the animal’s throat. During World War I, Germans united behind the political ideal of Volksgemeinschaft, meaning the “people’s community,” as a means of eliminating elitism and class divisions.

  In April 1933, Untermeyer launched a pro-war campaign at a dedication ceremony for the memorial theater at the Hebrew University in Palestine. In the summer, he presided over the World Jewish Economic Federation in Amsterdam. The purpose of the conference was to “rescue 600,000 Jews residing in Germany” who suffered “fiendish torture, cruelty and persecution that are being inflicted day by day upon these men, women and children.” He said that the program was “fearful in its barbarous cruelty… devilishly, deliberately, cold-bloodedly planned and already partially executed campaign for the extermination of a proud, gentle, loyal, law-abiding people.” The Red Cross refuted the allegations as political propaganda.511

  While Germany did not intend to initiate war, the nation certainly responded to the economic war that the Jews were conducting against it. The government implemented nationalist and deportation policies aimed at the people who had targeted Germany for destruction. Germany also incarcerated state enemies in camps, just as the United States would do to the Italians, Germans, and Japanese during World War II. The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of April 27 said, “A self-respecting nation cannot, on a scale accepted up to now, leave its higher activities in the hands of people of racially foreign origin… Allowing the presence of too high a percentage of people of foreign origin in relation to their percentage in the general population could be interpreted as an acceptance of the superiority of other races, something decidedly to be rejected.”512

  In May, worldwide boycott activity increased, particularly in influential commercial centers where Jews predominated. The League against German Anti-Semitism demanded that Egyptian Jews organize an anti-German boycott. One thousand Jewish merchants in Gibraltar joined the boycott. In Paris, disorderly Jewish youths interrupted a German film. In London, Jewish passengers selected British and Italian vessels instead of German ships. Argentinian Jews destroyed German commercial interests, goods, and services in Buenos Aires. They requested that depositors shift their accounts from German to Argentine banks. The French League against Anti-Semitism called for a boycott and established offices in Lyons, Nice, and Marseilles. Groups in Amsterdam printed thousands of stamps featuring a swastika for use on envelopes and packages. Groups in other countries followed that example, making it international. The JWV disseminated its version, mailing an estimated ten million each week.513

  Prior to the projected May 10 march, a vast majority of American Jews pressured Rabbi Wise to announce
an official boycott. Alternatively, the smaller faction of German-American Jews, in association with the AJCm and B’nai B’rith, wanted moderation. On May 9, Albert Einstein wrote to Wise, complaining about the lack of Jewish unity in America, which he said would hinder the ability of those attending the upcoming London Economic Conference to apply pressure on the Roosevelt Administration. On May 10, thousands of Americans gathered to denounce Germany while Hjalmar Schacht was in the United States for talks at the White House. An article in the New York Times that day quoted someone as wishing Schacht “good luck” in his attempts to revitalize Germany’s thrashed economy.514

  Prior to the May 10 parade, Untermeyer stole some of Wise’s thunder when he delivered a speech, printed by the local papers, urging Americans to shun all German products and services. A vast number of Americans, harkening to the propaganda, became insistent that everyone unite against Hitler. On May 10, at noon, New York Jews halted all business, dismissing employees and customers so they could prepare for the parade that afternoon. The event was more spectacular than the March 27 rally, with a hundred thousand attendees.515

  According to the Global Jewish News of May 24, Senator Gerald P. Nye approved a congressional propaganda plan against Hitler. He said, “The only plan I know of in this emergency, is one which is painfully slow in the accomplishment of results. The plan is to educate and to help create an example that all the world can ultimately see and profit by. Educate people away from prejudices.” Congressman Adolph Sabath, a Jewish immigrant, emphasized the Roosevelt administration’s friendship for the Jews.516

  Former Congressman Meyer Jacobstein challenged Hitler’s right to appeal to the nations of the world for fair play. He said, “The Chancellor resents and resists the effort of nations to degrade Germany to an inferior status. Yet he, in his fury and with one stroke of the pen, has disqualified, degraded and declassed 600,000 Jews.” Jacobstein said, “In the face of this greatest calamity that has befallen the Jews in centuries, we must present a united front and make a courageous attack on the common foe. To remain silent, or to submit to this degradation would not be only unfair to ourselves as Jews, but would be a desertion of the highest values in civilization. Ours is a battle, not merely for Jews but for common justice.”517

  Bernard Ridder and William Margreve interviewed Hitler, who said, “The future of Germany, a nation of sixty million, is at stake and we’re not going to let this picayune issue hamper us. This new persecution aimed at Germany is as incomprehensible to us as, it seems, Germany’s awakening is to the outside world. We have excoriated Jewish Communism and we will never again let Bolshevism raise its hydra head. As far as freedom of the press for the Jewish-Marxist press is concerned, we are determined to rid Germany of this cancerous growth.” He asked his interviewers if the press would print the truth. Ridder replied that America did not have “complete freedom of the press.”518

  Hitler asked, “Why does the world weep crocodile tears at the richly deserved fate of these criminals? Where was the conscience of the world when millions of Germans suffered hunger and death, when more than 200,000 Germans were driven to despair and suicide? I ask President Roosevelt and the American people who believe themselves justified, because of the atrocity stories, in sympathizing with these Jewish Bolshevist demons, I ask them, I say, are you prepared to harbor among you those who have poisoned the wells of Germany, of the whole Christian world? Gladly would we give each and every one of them a railroad pass and a thousand-mark note for pocket money to be rid of them.”519

  “What does the world know of the misery of intellectual German youth during the last fifteen years?” Hitler asked. “On completion of their studies, they have for years had to accept the fate of beggars. There were no Jews in that vast army of unemployed, whereas a hundred thousand German academicians died on the streets or committed suicide. Shall I allow thousands of Germans to be destroyed so that all Jews may continue working undisturbed, to live and grow fat while millions of Germans may be driven to despair and Bolshevism by hunger? Should the German youth be sacrificed to these foreigners? No, never!”520

  Four months after the Jews had proclaimed an economic war against Germany in London’s Daily Express, Untermeyer spent two weeks in Europe organizing forces against Germany. In July 1933, he founded the International Jewish Economic Federation to Combat the Hitlerite Oppression of Jews in Amsterdam.521 After his return from Europe, he spoke on a radio broadcast on WABC on August 6, reported in the New York Times the next day, saying, “Each of you, Jew and Gentile alike, who has not already enlisted in this sacred war, should do so now and here. It is not sufficient that you should buy no goods made in Germany. You must refuse to deal with any merchant or shopkeeper who sells any German-made goods or who patronizes German ships or shipping… we will undermine the Hitler regime and bring the German people to their senses by destroying their export trade on which their very existence depends.”522

  Untermeyer said, “It is a war that must be waged unremittingly until the black clouds of bigotry, race hatred and fanaticism that have descended upon what was once Germany, but is now medieval Hitlerland, have been dispersed.” He said that America “has escaped the curse that has descended upon benighted Germany, which has thereby been converted from a nation of culture into a veritable hell of cruel and savage beasts.” He claimed that he had talked with “terror-stricken refugees” who were “forced to leave their property behind.” He said that if America allowed Germany to continue, “the world will confront a picture so fearful in its barbarous cruelty that the hell of war and the alleged Belgian atrocities will pale into insignificance as compared to this devilishly, deliberately, cold-bloodedly planned and already partially executed campaign for the extermination of a proud, gentle, loyal, law-abiding people.” He then added, “But why dwell longer upon this revolting picture of the ravages wrought by these ingrates and beasts of prey, animated by the loathsome motives of race hatred, bigotry and envy. For the Jews are the aristocrats of the world.”523 One should listen to the whole speech.

  The New York Times reported that on August 27, 1933, in Youngstown, Ohio, Untermeyer predicted that Hitler would not last more than twelve months. He also said, “The more Jews the Hitler regime can outlaw, as it is now doing, the more money it will be able to steal to replenish its bankrupt treasury. And it is indeed mad for resorting to such desperate, despicable means, for Germany is literally ‘hanging by the eyelids’ on the brink of an economic crash. It has an infinitesimal gold reserve of only 11 percentwith which to support its camouflaged pretense of maintaining the gold standard for the present mark, which it issued when the now worthless billions upon billions of hard-earned money had been thrown by it into the junk heap without a penny of compensation to the holders.”524

  German Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick issued orders prohibiting any persecution of Jews at the polls, contradicting the deceptive Comintern propaganda coming from Soviet agents. The Times, on November 7, added to the confusion by quoting Protestant theologian and Marxist ideologue Reinhold Niebuhr, who said that “Hitlerism” represented the first organization of the middle class in modern times. Niebuhr expected a left-wing revolt in Germany that would eradicate Hitler and his party. Meanwhile, Lion Feuchtwanger, a writer in Weimar Germany, a Stalin apologist and a Hitler critic, spun tales of Nazi brutality. The German middle class was conservative, respected law and order, and would never participate in or endorse mass murder at the hands of political thugs.525

  By mid-June 1937, the AJCm, which previously opposed the AJC and denied German atrocities, published a booklet titled The Jews in Nazi Germany. In this booklet, which the New York Times popularized, the AJCm presented its report on the Reich’s anti-Jewish campaign and its brutality. The Times counseled the public to discount every single German denial.526 On July 27, 1935, in the Jewish Daily Bulletin, Vladimir Jabotinsky said, “There is only one power which really counts—the power of political pressure. We Jews are the most
powerful people on earth, because we have this power, and we know how to apply it.” With their communications network and political influence, the Jews subtly controlled perceptions, casting doubt on the spontaneity of the numerous worldwide boycott rallies of 1933.

  Apprehending Dangerous Aliens

  World War II was not the first time that the United States incarcerated Germans during warfare. In World War I, American officials authorized the internment of 2,048 Germans at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia and at Fort Douglas in Utah. They did not release all of these internees until a year after the signing of the Versailles Treaty on June 28, 1919, when they freed the remaining two hundred inmates. During World War II, the Roosevelt Administration carried out the forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans, particularly those residing in the West. The US government has apologized to and compensated these people. However, there has been little or no publicity about the forced relocation, deportation, and incarceration of ten thousand to twelve thousand German Americans in sixty camps across the United States and Hawaii from 1941 to 1948—yes, three years after the war ended. Many of those Germans were born in the United States or were naturalized citizens. The US government targeted people who retained their culture and their language and spoke with a German accent, ignoring the length of time that a person had lived in America.527 Naturally, the selective sweep of people who met this description did not include people like Henry Kissinger or Robert Kempner.

  The government arbitrarily deemed certain Germans as national security threats. The government and the broadcast and entertainment industry have concealed information about these people. Three government entities were involved in this operation: the State Department, the Justice Department, and the FBI. Although they have declassified some records regarding these events, certain records remain classified and unavailable. Naturally, textbook publishers do not include this information in their books. Although newspapers of the time offered details, they were certainly not objective in their reporting, justifying the relocations as necessary for American security.528