For part three of this series I will be analyzing the Holocaust Denial on Trial (HDoT) entry “Kristallnacht: Hitler Did Not Try to Stop It“.
HDoT begins by invoking Goebbles’ diary again and claims “Goebbels’ diary entries shows that Hitler did not order him to stop the pogrom.”
Goebbels’ diary reveals that a supposedly enraged Hitler did not send him out to stop the pogrom. Instead, Goebbels was free to revel in his initial progress. Later, after an evening event where he met with Hitler, Goebbels happily recorded the scene he witnessed from his car as he returned to his hotel: “In Berlin, 5 then 15 synagogues burn down. Now the people’s anger rages. Nothing more can be done against it for the night. And I don’t want to do anything either. Should be given free rein . . . As I drive to the hotel, windows shatter. Bravo! Bravo! The synagogues burn in all big cities. German property is not endangered.”[3] Goebbels’ euphoria continued into the next day (November 10). “Yesterday, Berlin. There, all proceeded fantastically. One fire after another. It is good that way. I prepared an order to put an end to the actions. It is now just enough . . . In the whole country the synagogues have burned down. I report to the Führer at the Osteria.”[4]
As I have already covered in part three, nothing in Goebbles’ diary tells us exactly what he told Hitler the night that the demonstrations happened and no one knows what they talked about during their private conversation. The conclusions HDoT draws from Goebbels’ diary are pure speculation.
The remainder of HDoT’s argument that Hitler did not try to stop Kristallnacht comes from three telex messages. A telex (teleprinter exchange) operated similarly to a fax machine. It is important to note that all of these telex messages were sent after Goebbels gave a speech in Hitler’s stead. According to HDoT Goebbels said in this speech that it was Hitler’s wishes that demonstrations be allowed to continue and the audience was made to understand “the Party should not appear to the outside world as the originator of the demonstrations, but should in reality organize them and carry them out.” This is not a quote from Goebbels’ speech. There is no existing transcript of the speech. This is HDoT’s wording based on fabulist authors like Richard Evans.
As I established in part two, there is no way of knowing if these were Hitler’s wishes, or if Goebbels even said this. HDoT also claimed that “after Goebbels’ speech, they rushed to the telephones and issued orders to their subordinates across Germany that they should directly incite and/or encourage the violence.” Keep that bit of info in mind.
The first telex HDoT mentions was sent by Heinrich Müller on November 9, 1938 at 11:55 p.m. After some cajoling I was able to have ChatGPT provide me with a transcript of the telex. Although I cannot be sure this is actually the full text, nor can I be sure that the translation was done in good faith. What is most important here is the heading, specifically who it is addressed to:
In Ingrid Weckert’s book FLASHPOINT Kristallnacht 1938: Instigators, Victims and Beneficiaries (which I am unable to find on archive.org or for purchase), she provides interesting information about this telex message. Fortunately, in an article from Carylon Yeager there is a summary of this information. Weckert points out that Heinrich Müller would not have command authority over all State Police headquarters and Branch offices. At the time of Kristallnacht Müller had significant operational authority within the Gestapo but did not yet have full command authority over all State Police agencies. He was subordinate to Heydrich and Himmler. This message was sent hours before Heydrich’s telex, which we will get to, thus there is the question of the contents of the telex being officially sanctioned. That is assuming the telex is authentic.
Stranger yet, the telex message was part of exhibit 374-PS at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg (IMT), which includes a report disseminated by the Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). You may ask what a report from the PWD was doing with so-called evidence from Kristallnacht. It is not typical for “psywar” departments to prepare documents for a court of law. After all, by definition the job of an intelligence agency dedicated to psychological warfare is deception, not fact.
Interestingly, the PWD was heavily involved in the production of documents for the IMT. They were not only tasked with disseminating propaganda, they were also responsible for analyzing captured German documents and producing intelligence summaries and reports.
I just love the excuse for this obviously corrupt practice generated by ChatGPT (see image below): “There was no clean separation between intelligence, propaganda, and legal documentation in the chaotic final weeks of WWII … Allied command rapidly collected and disseminated captured documents, and the lines between military intelligence, psychological warfare, and war crimes evidence blurred.”
This is further evidence that the IMT was nothing but a show trial. Regular readers will know that in article 21 the IMT took judicial notice that the official Allied reports were factual. When you take the above information into consideration, the IMT’s decision to include article 21 is even more illegitimate. Taken together, all of this casts serious doubt on the authenticity of this telex.
The second telex was sent by Reinhard Heydrich on November 10, 1938 at 1:20 am. It was also submitted by the PWD to the IMT as exhibit 3051-PS. This exhibit also includes other messages that were said to have been sent by Heydrich. Below is a summary of the telex message that HDoT references.
There are a few issues with the narrative presented by this telex. First, allowing synagogues to burn would have been a huge fire risk, even if firefighters were instructed to protect surrounding buildings. Fires are unpredictable and the idea of the German government taking the risk of fires spreading throughout towns and cities is absurd. Second, I find it odd that it was acceptable for Jewish businesses to be destroyed, but looting them was out of the question.
The final telex HDoT brings up is from November 10, 1938 at 2:56 am and was sent by Rudolf Hess. HDoT has this to say about it:
Rudolf Hess sent out a cable to all the party offices throughout Germany. This telex forbade setting fire to Jewish shops: “On express orders issued at the very highest level, there are to be no kind of acts of arson or outrages against Jewish property or the like on any account and under any circumstances whatsoever.”[7] Forbidding the arson of Jewish shops was probably due to the fact that many Jews rented from non-Jews. Thus, burning these shops would actually destroy German property. There was also a risk that the fires would spread to adjacent German property. Finally, it became clear after the pogrom that the Nazis wanted to “Aryanize” the last Jewish-owned businesses in Germany—that is, the Nazis wanted to take them over and provide them to the so-called “Aryan” proprietors. In light of this eventual “Aryanization,” burning the shops and their contents would be counterproductive and wasteful in the long run.[8]
This contradicts the previous two telex messages that HDoT presented. Instead of admitting this, HDoT instead applies a biased interpretation to the motivations of Hess’s orders. HDoT also repeats the concern I brought up about the risk of fires spreading, but according to HDoT logic the risk of fires spreading only applies to Jewish shops, not synagogues.
HDoT’s conclusion is as follows:
The diary entries of Josef Goebbels, a member of Hitler’s inner circle, show that Hitler didn’t order him to stop the pogrom but actually authorized it. Goebbels’ diary reveals that he was thrilled with the progress of the pogrom throughout the night. When he met with Hitler the next day, it was only to conclude the details about wrapping up the pogrom. No other Nazi officials, including others in Hitler’s inner circle, tried to stop the pogrom either. Rather, they sent out instructions throughout the night of Kristallnacht, giving directions on how best to conduct the pogrom. None of these Nazi officials would dare start or encourage major violent action against German Jews without the permission of Hitler.
With the evidence presented by HDoT the only thing that can actually be concluded is that some of Hitler’s inner circle allowed certain anti-Jewish activities to go on, but only if the telex messages and the characterization of Goebbels’ speech are authentic. Goebbels’ sympathies were with the rioters, but there is no good evidence that this translated to policy. Hitler’s involvement is pure speculation. This should lead one to question why Holocaust fabulists are so hell-bent on implicating Hitler when there is no conclusive evidence for it.
Stay tuned for part five where I will cover the odd circumstances surrounding the murder of Ernst vom Rath.