Being Savage # 17 - The Myth of the 6 Million - Part4

[Anonymous]

Chapters 5 and 6

Being Savage #17

David Irving claims he has a copy of Goebbels' Diary, the article has some interesting info that contradicts Ingrid Weckert's Flashpoint
he also has info on the Boycott as well.

Revelations from Goebbels' Diary
Bringing to Light Secrets of Hitler's Propaganda Minister
David Irving

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v15/v15n1p-2_Irving.html

'Crystal Night'

The key event in this whole story was, of course, the "Crystal Night" ("Kristallnacht"), or "Night of Broken Glass" in 1938. Here the Goebbels diary must be treated with the utmost caution. It began on November 7, 1938, with the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris by a Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan. News of the shooting triggered a number of small scale anti-Jewish outbreaks all over Germany, which Goebbels noted in his diary without at first paying any special attention to them. However, when news reached him of the young diplomat's death, two days later, it truly outraged him. It came while he was with Hitler at a meeting in Munich, commemorating the annual Nazi party anniversary of the failed "Beer Hall Putsch" of November 9, 1923.

After Hitler had left the meeting, Goebbels came to the podium to announce the death of the German diplomat. He also reported to the assembled Gauleiters on the anti-Jewish incidents that had already broken out, describing them as manifestations of a "spontaneous" public outrage. Goebbels said, in effect: "A Jew has fired a shot. A German has died. Obviously our people will be outraged about this. This is not the time to rein in that outrage." We have two or three independent sources for what he said that evening, including the report by the British consul in Munich, who very quickly learned of the speech and reported it to London. This report is now in the British archives.

Describing the evening's events, Goebbels writes in his diary that, after his brief speech: "Everyone makes a beeline for the telephones." He adds: "Now the public will take action." An interesting turn of phrase, he creates an image of men in brown uniforms and swastika arm bands reaching out to telephones to relay orders all over Germany.

The orders were that the Aktion (operation) was to be carried out by SA men in plain clothes, and the police were not to intervene. There was to be no bloodshed and no harm done to anyone unless, of course, Jews offered armed resistance, in which case they should expect short shrift. "There is to be no looting," stormtroopers in Kiel were told. "Nobody is to be roughed up. Foreign Jews are not to be touched. Meet any resistance with firearms. The Aktion is to be carried out in plain clothes and must be finished by five a.m."

The result was the Night of Broken Glass, one of Germany's darkest nights. Hundreds if not thousands of Jewish shops were destroyed. About 150 synagogues were burned to the ground, including six or seven in Berlin. The following morning the news was that 38 Jews had been murdered. On Hitler's orders, 20,000 Jews were rounded up and temporarily held in concentration camps.

After the overnight reports had come in, Goebbels sums up the object of the exercise in a heartless, unrepentant diary entry: "As was to be expected, the entire nation is in uproar. This is one dead man who is costing the Jews dear. Our darling Jews will think twice in future before simply gunning down German diplomats."

In the archives I found a document dated the next day, November 10, which shows quite clearly that some kind of order had actually been issued. That morning Goebbels sent the following message to all 42 Nazi party propaganda officials (Gaupropagandaleiter) at the provincial level: "The anti-Jewish Aktionen [operations] must now be called off with the same rapidity with which they were launched. They have served their desired and anticipated purpose." These are the key lines in this document, I think, because they do imply that an order had been issued the day before. We don't have that earlier document, but references to it were made during the postwar interrogation of one or two of the Gauleiters, and there's also a hint in his diary that he had given certain orders the previous day.

Goebbels had to issue this second order calling off the Aktionen because, as we now know (a member of Hitler's private staff confirmed it to me), Hitler was furious when he heard, during the night, about the anti-Jewish outbreaks. Throughout the night, telephone calls came in reporting synagogues blazing across Germany. Hitler sent for Himmler and asked: "What the hell is going on here, Reichsführer?" Himmler replied: "Send for Goebbels, he knows." Hitler summoned Goebbels and raked him over the coals. The following morning Goebbels wrote in his diary: "I went to see the Führer at 11 o'clock, and we discussed what to do next." You can just imagine what kind of conversation took place between Hitler and Goebbels. Of course, Goebbels isn't going to write in his diary "the Führer called me a bloody idiot for having started what I did last night" -- that's not the kind of diary he kept. Instead, he wrote a one-line entry to remind himself that he did have to go to see the Führer. What he did next was to issue the November 10 order calling for an immediate stop to all the anti-Jewish Aktionen.

Here, I'm afraid, I have to disagree with our colleague Ingrid Weckert; but if a revisionist can't revise another revisionist, I don't know what a revisionist is. Weckert rather exonerates Dr. Goebbels from any blame for the "Crystal Night." [See Weckert's book, Flashpoint, published by the IHR, and her article, "'Crystal Night' 1938," in the Summer 1985 Journal.]

However, there is no doubt in my mind that on that night, having gotten the news that the German diplomat died, Goebbels -- incautiously, imprudently, and out of a sheer sense of mischief -- ordered the Gauleiters to go out and start raising hell against the Jews. And, of course, it got out of hand.

Even then, Goebbels didn't realize the extent to which the world's press would seize on this incident. Few of the top Nazis had ever travelled outside of Germany. They didn't realize what the foreign press was like. They didn't realize that outside Germany, then as now, there are societies that look on German actions with a certain degree of wonderment and bafflement. The foreign press seized on this extraordinary incident, which in the over-heated political climate of 1938 Germany might have seemed little more than an extension of a street fight. But in peaceful democracies this kind of thing just didn't go on. From Berlin, reporters sent back horrific accounts to England, to the United States and to the other free countries.

Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, was one of those most scandalized by what Goebbels had done. Himmler was furious. Göring went to Hitler and demanded that Goebbels be dismissed for this outrage. Goebbels had an appalling time trying to repair the damage that he had done. It is baffling why Hitler tolerated what Goebbels had done. Hitler told Ribbentrop, "I need this man because I have other things in mind, and I am going to need a propaganda minister of the caliber of Dr. Goebbels." This can be the only explanation why he turned a blind eye to Goebbels' blooper, and it doesn't speak very highly of Hitler.

Years later, in July 1944, when he was pleading to be put in charge of Germany's "total war" mobilization effort, Goebbels wrote this mea culpa to Hitler: "I know that I've caused you many a private worry in the 20 years I've been with you, particularly in 1938 and 1939." Although Hitler does appoint him commissioner of total war, this is a very important admission. Obviously between Hitler and Goebbels at that time there was colossal personal strain. It wasn't just because of his affair in 1936-1938 with Lida Baarova, the Czech actress. (She is now 80 years old, still a lady of great beauty, and living in Salzburg. I went to interview her a few months ago.) Rather, it was undoubtedly the grief that Goebbels had caused Hitler by Kristallnacht.

'Crystal Night' 1938: The great Anti-German spectacle
Ingrid Weckert

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p183_Weckert.html