Reinhard Heydrich: Memorandum concerning Kristallnacht

On the night of November 9–10, 1938, Jews in Nazi Germany were victimized by widespread acts of vandalism and terrorism. Because the destruction of so many Jewish businesses that night left broken glass scattered on the streets, the event is referred to as Kristallnacht, or “Crystal Night,” that is, “Night of Broken Glass.” The Memorandum concerning Kristallnacht from Reinhard Heydrich, at the time the head of the nation's Sicherheitspolizei (“security police”), an organization that included the feared Gestapo (or Geheime Staatspolizei, “state secret police”), outlines in chilling detail the Nazi government's backing of this reign of terror against German Jews.

Kristallnacht was the latest event in the efforts of the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler to trample on the civil liberties of Jews and other groups he regarded as undesirable. In the 1920s Hitler's National Socialist German Workers Party, the Nazis, had been a fringe group, but in 1932 the Nazis won 230 of 608 seats in the Reichstag (Germany's parliament), making it the nation's largest political party. No one party held a clear majority, though, so the Reichstag remained deadlocked. Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher proved ineffective and resigned after just fifty-seven days. On January 30, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg, eager to put an end to the political instability that had rocked the country since the end of World War I, appointed Hitler, who still controlled a major voting bloc in the Reichstag, to the post of chancellor.

Hitler consolidated power through terrorist acts. The first was a fire at the Reichstag building on February 27, 1933, which was likely set on Hitler's orders. The next day, Hitler, fanning the fear of Communism, persuaded Hindenburg to issue an order called “Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State” (sometimes referred to as the Reichstag Fire Decree), suspending civil liberties. Two weeks later he persuaded the Reichstag to suspend the German constitution and grant him sweeping powers to deal with the crisis. In one terrorist act designed to consolidate his power, the Night of the Long Knives on June 29–30, 1934, Hitler, eager to secure the loyalty of the regular German army, purged the Sturmabteilung (or “storm troopers,” the Nazis' paramilitary organization whose members were commonly called the Brownshirts) and ordered the arrest of up to a thousand of its leaders, some eighty-five of whom are known to have been executed.

Meanwhile, beginning in 1933, assaults, boycotts, and vandalism against Jews were becoming commonplace; a major boycott of Jewish businesses and professionals—affecting doctors, lawyers, bankers, shopkeepers, among others—was called for April 1 of that year. Days later, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was passed to prevent Jews and others of “non-Aryan descent” from filling government posts, and in May legislation was passed to bar Jews from the German military. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws forbid “pure” Germans from intermarrying with Jews and denied them citizenship in the German state. In 1936 Jews were banned from all professional jobs in Germany. In 1938 a law was passed stipulating that government contracts could no longer be awarded to Jewish businesses. That year, too, a law was passed to prevent “Aryan” doctors from treating “non-Aryan” patients. Violence against Jews culminated on the night of November 9–10, 1938, when thousands of Jewish businesses were vandalized. Some two hundred synagogues were burned or ransacked, and thirty thousand Jews were deported to concentration camps.

The logical conclusion of the denial of civil rights to Jews was the plan for their annihilation. This plan would later be formulated at the infamous Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942. There it was announced to senior Nazi officials that Hitler had given Heydrich the task of implementing the “final solution to the Jewish question.” The plan called for the deportation of Jews to concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, where they would work on road-building projects or be put to death.