The Transfer Agreement (26 page)

Adler's friend beseeched the Committee to "not take the slightest notice of assurances . . . whether they come from Jewish or non-Jewish sources, from within Germany or from without. The real truth is only known to those Jews who are condemned to live in Germany under the present government, and they dare not breathe a word about what is going on, because they would pay for such information with their lives."
²²

In a final insistent paragraph, the refugee begged Adler, "You free Jews in free countries, demand restoration to German Jews of their civic, social and economic rights. The only practical way to attain this end is to boycott all German goods except where they come, without a doubt, from a Jewish manufacturer or producer."
²³
But Adler would not change his position.

Unshakable evidence about Nazi horrors arrived on April 6, when Adler and B'nai B'rith president Alfred Cohen received a cable completely invalidating the denials of German atrocities that German Jewish leaders had issued and the Committee had earlier published. But instead of making the information public to expose the truth, Adler and Cohen wired the news verbatim to Secretary of State Cordell Hull:
"
APPEAL OF GERMAN JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS TO AMERICAN JEWS TO CEASE PROTESTS DEFINITELY MADE UNDER INTIMIDATION STOP GOERING INVITED FOR SECOND TIME JEWISH LEADERS STOP . . . HE WAS EXTREMELY ABRUPT DEMANDED IMMEDIATE INTERVENTION THAT JEWS ABROAD DISCONTINUE HORROR LEGEND/BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN OTHERWISE GERMAN JEWS WOULD BEAR CONSEQUENCES STOP . . . JEWISH LEADERS OBLIGED OUTLINE PLAN TO GOERING TAKE UP CONTACT WITH JEWISH LEADERS ALL COUNTRIES FOR DENYING HORRORS/DISCRIMINATION/BOYCOTT."
²⁴

Adler and Cohen assured Hull that the facts would be temporarily "with-held from publication." Hull acknowledged in kind within hours:
"I HAVE RECEIVED YOUR TELEGRAM . . . SHALL BE GLAD TO FIX A TIME FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION OF THE SITUATION."
²⁵

Adler and the Committee continued to deprecate publicly Jewish efforts to boycott Germany or even organize protest. Committee people would always point to the instructions of German Jewish leaders to stop all protests and boycotts and not believe the exaggerated stories of Nazi brutality. Yet Adler and his colleagues knew those German Jewish admonitions to be false, spoken under the truncheon, and, in fact, no more than tools of Nazi propaganda.

At first, the Committee was partly successful in muzzling Jewish protest. For example, on April 2, while many were still trying to determine the truth about German atrocities, the Joint Distribution Committee held a relief conference. The Joint traditionally avoided political controversy to protect its internationally recognized status as a neutral relief agency, analogous to the Red Cross. Officiating at this April 2 meeting were Committee leaders Cyrus Adler and Joseph Proskauer. Quickly, the Joint's position at the conference was seen not as neutral, but committed
against
anti-Hitler activism. The rostrum speakers openly repudiated efforts by Jewish organizations to boycott German imports. Finally, Rabbi Jacob Sunderling from Hamburg rose to recite the truth about Nazi tortures in Germany. Proskauer and another gentleman cut short the rabbi's remarks, arguing that such speeches had no place in a relief conference. The crowd objected loudly. One person shouted, "We don't want to hide anything. Let him go on!" Rabbi Sunderling tried to make himself heard, his eyes welling with tears as his words were being ruled out of order. Finally, since Rabbi Sunderling would not be muffled and the audience demanded he be heard, the chairman summarily adjourned the meeting. But the audience would not leave, so Proskauer stepped to the platform to emphasize the point: The meeting was over. Rabbi Sunderling would not be heard.
²⁶

On April
6,
Adler wrote to a leader of the Jewish War Veterans accusing the JWV of having "furnished a pretext for the German [anti-Jewish] boycott." A copy of Adler's letter reached J. George Fredman, commander in chief of the JWV and head of its boycott committee. Fredman bluntly answered Adler: Our action "needs no apology. . . . Our organization was the only one which started right, kept straight and is still right on the situation. . . . Jewry should be united in this movement—it is the only weapon which will bring the German people to their senses." Adler, in an April 19 reply, lectured back, "I wish to reiterate and even strengthen the statements I made heretofore. The American Jewish Committee, in objecting to boycotts, demonstrations, parades, etc. was acting in accordance with the wishes of leading Jews in Germany as directly conveyed to them over the long distance phone from Paris where they were entirely free to talk. . . . I cannot use language sufficiently strong to indicate my hope that you will discontinue the form of agitation which you started."
²⁷

Soon the Committee's reluctance was no longer seen by the great masses of American Jews as wisdom and behind-the-scenes tactics. Instead, the Committee—together with B'nai B'rith—was viewed merely as meek and silent; or worse, a saboteur of the anti-Nazi movement. So although the Committee and B'nai B'rith retained some element of "establishment" recognition and access, the American people opposed to Hitler—Jewish or not—rejected them.

The rejection soon became public. In conjunction with an early-May protest action, an editorial in the leading Yiddish daily,
Der Tog,
bitterly attacked the Committee and B'nai B'rith for their "policy of fear and silence." In a stunning rebuke, the editorial asked, "What do Messrs. Adler and Cohen propose? . . . Silence and nothing else! . . . [Our] people are determined to fight for their very life. . . . The voice of the masses will be heard."
²⁸

Their voices were indeed heard, not only in America, but in Nazi Germany.

B
ECAUSE
German foreign policy included supervising exports, the Reich Foreign Ministry became the clearinghouse for all the disheartening
boycott news regularly transmitted by German consulates and trade missions throughout the world. These reports invariably came across Foreign Minister von Neurath's desk and were distributed to Schacht, Hindenburg, and Hitler as von Neurath thought necessary.
¹
During April
1933,
Berlin's most important in-boxes were brimming with frightening boycott and protest news from around the world. Some boycotters were clever enough to increase the Reich's anxiety by sending their boycott announcements directly to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.

Those business leaders who found Hitler's financial policy suicidal also sent their bad news to the Foreign Ministry. Munster's Chamber of Commerce reported canceled orders from Holland and France. Offenbach's Chamber of Commerce reported boycotts of their goods in Belgium, Egypt, Denmark, and Finland. There could be no mistake, according to the Offenbach report. Many retail establishments, such as those in Copenhagen, prominently displayed signs reading "No German Bids Accepted."
²

Matters worsened. Quickly, the leaders of Germany realized that the anti-Hitler boycott was threatening to kill the Third Reich in its infancy, either through utter bankruptcy or by promoting an imminent invasion of Germany by its neighbors. When the Nazis consolidated power in early March, Polish officials openly reinforced troop strength along the Polish Corridor. This'was in response to der Führer's bellicose threats to seize the Versailles-created territorial bridge.
³
In late March, the anti-Nazi boycott helped push Poland from a heightened defensive posture to a near-hysterical readiness to invade Germany.

On April 7, von Neurath, Schacht, and other key officials briefed Hitler about the Reich's perilous condition in the wake ofthe accelerating anti-Nazi backlash. Emphasizing that various neighbors were actively contemplating a preventive war with Germany while she was still weak, von Neurath told Hitler, "The gravity of the dangers threatening us should not be underestimated." Foremost among the potential invaders was Poland, determined to preempt any territorial compromise. Other neighbors to the east—Rumania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia—would have to be kept on friendly terms, principally through trade, to preclude any anti-German alliance with Poland. The West was also threatening. Von Neurath reminded Hitler that when German Chancellor Brüning told a newspaper in early
1932
that Germany would consider stopping all reparations, France mobilized for pos
sible invasion. The foreign minister warned that France might resume her
threatening posture if the Reich persisted in its policies.
⁴

Von Neurath did not have to remind Hitler what happened when Germany defaulted on reparations payments in
1923.
France did invade. The political chaos resulted in cyclonic inflation.

The foreign minister was plain about the Reich's absolute military vulnerability. He assumed that France was the strongest military power in the world. Germany could not challenge her in the least, and lagged five years behind the might of even her lesser enemy, Poland. Moreover, Europe vigorously opposed Germany's efforts to rearm. And Hitler's cabinet knew that the Jewish protest and boycott movement was in the forefront of political agitation to keep Germany a weaponless nation. So von Neurath was forced to list Germany's main defensive assets not as guns and bombs but as international goodwill and her value as a trading partner.
⁵
Von Neurath's military statement to Hitler concluded, "We shall first have to concentrate our political activity on economic questions, in order to avoid in all circumstances warlike complications with which we cannot cope at the present time."
⁶

Then Schacht told Hitler the dismal economic truth. Things were far worse than in
1
930.
Then, foreign exchange reserves totaled RM
3.3
billion, which Schacht considered dangerously low. Current reserves had dwindled to merely RM
450
million. Therefore, the end of foreign exchange and, hence, viable international commerce was now in sight. Every last sum of foreign currency was being gathered, even from German banks overseas. Within months—perhaps sooner—"foreign exchange would no longer be available." Some way must be found to prepare the nations trading with Germany for the abrupt cessation of payments, said Schacht, stressing his hope that hostile reactions—like those feared from the French—could be avoided.
⁷

But Schacht had an idea, perhaps the only idea capable of saving trade relations. Massive blocked accounts—that is, frozen bank accounts—would create a giant pool of blocked reichmarks, called
Sperrmarks,
which Germany could use to pay obligations. Debtors would have no choice but to accept the reich marks, and they would be usable almost exclusively in Germany.
⁸
The true owners of such blocked accounts—foreigners and emigrants—presumably could not all use their sperrmarks at once, especially since they could not be removed from the country. Thus, the Reichsbank could trade them freely.

Schacht's idea was to elevate this shell game to a pseudolegitimate financial technique to save the German economy. During the April 7 conference, Schacht predicted that so many new blocked accounts could be generated that there would be money left over for "the new needs of the Reich." Hitler ended the April 7 conference by insisting that Schacht's plan get under way at once.
⁹

But the situation deteriorated rapidly. On April
12,
German Ambassador Moltke in Warsaw reported that the anti-Nazi boycott was inciting the Polish
people and their leaders to military edginess. "Everywhere the slogan is: destruction of everything in Poland which is still German, and boycott of everything which comes from Germany," wrote a distressed Moltke. "Everywhere straw men labeled Hitler are being burned." He added that the Polish government's open support for the "boycott against German goods as legitimate and useful" was incontestable. Moreover, reported Moltke, the Polish foreign minister had warned him that any retaliation against Polish Jews or any others of Polish extraction living in Germany would be met with dangerous Polish countermeasures, the "consequences [of which] were unforeseeable."
¹⁰

On April 22,
German Ambassador to Italy Ulrich von Hassell reported worse news from Rome. In a one-sentence telegram, Hassell relayed highly reliable information from circles close to Czech President Thomas Masaryk that Prague was planning to support "Polish intentions of preventive military action at the German eastern border." No longer confined to preemptively occupying demilitarized zones in the Polish Corridor, Poland's military threat now included an actual invasion of Germany proper. And as feared, Czechoslovakia was primed to join her. Von Neurath passed Hassell's telegram directly to President von Hindenburg.
¹¹

The next day, April 23,
Ambassador Moltke responded to an urgent inquiry from Berlin seeking his confidential assessment of the chances of a Polish invasion. Moltke answered with the known arguments circulating in Poland. Persuasively in favor was the growing feeling that Germany under Hitler would one day attack Poland. Since war was inevitable, Polish leaders were convinced they should conquer the East Prussian region of Germany at once while Germany was still weak and unarmed. The arguments against such a preemptive invasion were Poland's exaggerated fears of nonexistent German weapon stockpiling, the financial cost, and Poland's doubts about her own military capability. In balancing the pros and cons, Moltke concluded that the chances of an invasion were even.
¹²