The Transfer Agreement (10 page)

The banking boycott and the financing of Japan's victory were only the first rounds. In 1906, Schiff and other influential
Hofjuden
formed the American Jewish Committee. Their first major objective was abrogation of the Russo-American commercial treaty, the legal basis of all friendly relations with Russia. The Committee asserted that the czar's denial of Russian visas to Jewish American citizens was an affront not just to America's Jewish citizens but to the United States itself.
⁴⁶

Although William Taft had issued a presidential campaign promise of abrogation, he refused to honor his pledge once elected. During a February
1911
White House luncheon for Committee leaders, when Taft rendered his final refusal to abrogate, Schiff warned, "We had hoped you would see that justice be done us. You have decided otherwise. We shall now go to the American people." Schiff then stalked from the room, refusing to even shake the president's hand. On the way out, Schiff whispered to fellow Committee leaders, "This means war!"
⁴⁷

Calling upon all friends and resources, the Committee began a widespread public appeal to have Congress force the president to end commercial relations with Russia. Within weeks, House and Senate abrogation resolutions—each personally approved by the Committee—were prepared. On December
13, 1911,
after the House voted
300
to
1
to abrogate, Taft capitulated, and two days later issued instructions to terminate the treaty.
⁴⁸

Despite abrogation, the czar would not yield. Massacres continued, and the Jewish death toll rose. So the banking boycott was tightened. Its effects became most destructive, however, during World War I,
when the czar needed multimillion-dollar military loans. Committee members were widely criticized for the stubborn continuation of their boycott even as it threatened the Allied war effort. But the boycott remained in effect until the monarchy was toppled in
1917.
⁴⁹

Throughout the nearly fifteen years of anti-czar boycott and backlash, threats of retaliation against Russian Jewry never deterred the men of the Committee. And in fact, during the anti-czar crusade, thousands of Russian lives
were
lost and hundreds of thousands more were devastated in pogroms. But the Committee held that the anti-Semitic outrages of one regime could spread infectiously if not quarantined.

Jacob Schiff addressed the issue in a
1905
cable to Russian premier Count Sergei Witte: "No doubt ... your local authorities, seeing the coming of the end of the old regime, . . . have in their rage . . . instigated the populace against the Jews .... Jewry in general will have at least this consolation; that the present awful sufferings of their co-religionists will not have been for naught, nor their blood spilled in vain." A year later, President Theodore Roosevelt warned Schiff that U.S. protests against pogroms might only provoke more harm from an indignant czar. Schiff ignored the warning, determined that such genocidal actions could not go unprotested.
⁵⁰

And in early
191
1
,
Schiff acknowledged in a letter to Taft that as a result of "action on our part, pogroms and massacres of Russian Jews, such as shocked the world in
1905,
might be repeated." But he assured the president
that the world Jewish community and even the Russian Jews themselves knew such risks were unavoidable. The responsibility for bloody reprisals would
be
taken "upon our own shoulders," said Schiff. He added, "it was recognized by our co-religionists that in such a situation, as in war, each and every man, wherever placed, must be ready to suffer, and if need be to sacrifice his life."
⁵¹

The art of economic and political confrontation—public and private—was thus a tested and endorsed tradition of the American Jewish Committee. In
1929,
Committee president Cyrus Adler wrote an authorized biography of the great economic warrior of the Jews, entitled
Jacob H. Schiff, His Life and Letters
.
The book detailed Schiff's and the Committee's tradition of unrelenting economic and political retaliation—regardless of the short-term risks—against those who would threaten Jewish rights. The book's foreword hoped its accounts of staunch Jewish defense would "prove of some value in guiding and inspiring others.
⁵²

For the three and a half decades before Hitler's rise to power in
1933,
the Jews of America were actively engaged in international and domestic boycotts to fight anti-Semitism. They used the backlash weapon to fill newspapers and congressional hearing rooms with the gruesome truths of Jewish oppression. The Jews of America could lead public opinion and marshal government action. They had this power and they used it continuously.

Wielding this power inspired the conspiracy stories. And so Jewish leaders were often reluctant. But what choices did they have? After its expulsion from Israel in the second century, Judaism became a religion without a state and thus without an army.

Papal legions could crush rebellions. Crusaders could invade lands. Islamic armies could conquer and convert. To survive, Jews could only use what they had. And what they had was what they were allowed to have. For centuries, denied lands, denied access to the professions, denied military rank, Jews were forced to deal with money, with trade, with middlemanship, with bargains, with influence, with the portable professions. And so Jews fought fire not with fire but with money, with the media, with access to high position, not in some imaginary conspiracy to dominate the world but in an ongoing effort to stay one step ahead of the blade, the noose, and the burning stake.

Yet the Jewish leaders most skilled in wielding the boycott and backlash weapon would in
1933
refuse, in part because the enemy was now Germany, Fatherland of the Committee.
It
was now German Jewish blood that would be spilled—not Russian Jewish.
It
was now their own uncles and lifetime friends whose lives would be subject to reprisal in any war for Jewish rights.

Those skilled in using Jewish weapons would also refuse because a wholly new tactic would now be used to shape Jewish destiny. Palestine would be the new solution. Hence, the question was now whether to use or
not to use the one weapon Jews had, the one weapon they knew how to use: boycott and protest.

Yet the one weapon Jews had was the one weapon Hitler feared.

B
Y
NAZI DOCTRINE
and their facade of self-confidence, National Socialism should have been un bothered by the Jews of New York parading up and down, waving resolutions and condemnatory posters on March
23.
Adolf Hitler had declared long ago that the Nazis would never negotiate with the Jews—their opinions, their demands, their fury was meaningless in his program of destiny for Germany.
¹
On March
23,
the Reichstag granted Hitler legal dictatorial powers. It was a moment of long-awaited triumph for the Nazis. But in fact, March
23, I933,
was a day that frightened the Reich.

A boycott was being organized by the Jewish War Veterans to enthusiastic approval from a gamut of political and social groups. Dr. Stephen Wise would lead an international day of anti-German protest on March 27. Thousands were scheduled to rally at Madison Square Garden. Supportive rallies would be held simultaneously in eighty other American cities. And the New York rally would be broadcast throughout the United States.
²

European Jewish circles would broadcast the New York rally into Germany itself from stations in neighboring Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. English was widely spoken among the commercially oriented German families owning Germany's more than 5 million radios—approximately one in every four German households.

In Warsaw, a coalition of political, commercial, and religious organizations was debating whether all Poland should follow the lead of the Vilna Jews and the American Jewish War Veterans. Poland's final delibrations on the boycott question were timed to coincide with the Madison Square Garden rally. Boycott movements were also fast developing in Lithuania, France, Holland, Great Britain, and Egypt.
³

Early results were beginning to show. German steamship lines in New York, which were valuable foreign-currency earners, reported a rash of canceled bookings. One German vessel, the
Europa,
lost twenty-five passengers just before sailing; all of them transferred to the U.S.-owned
Manhattan,
citing their displeasure with the Hitler regime. British trade unionists and Labour party leaders began posting
BOYCOTT GERMAN GOODS
notices throughout London, especially the East End. One Jewish-owned firm immediately cancelled orders for £14,000
of German goods, and publicly resubmitted the orders to American suppliers.
⁴

As the first anti-Nazi boycott rumblings were heard in Germany, Adolf Hitler was trying to emphasize Germany's desire for unhampered trade relations. In a major speech to the Reichstag that March
23,
upon receiving his dictatorial powers, der Fuhrer declared: "We need contact with the outside world, and our foreign markets furnish a livelihood for millions of our fellow citizens." The German government followed up Hitler's speech with an immediate appeal to foreign correspondents whose newspapers were publicizing boycott activities.
If
the economic boycott against Germany is executed, "as is agitated by certain American circles," the Reich statement asked, how "is the question of private debts to be regulated properly?"
⁵

By the next day, March
24,
Reich leaders realized that boycott agitation was accelerating, especially in Great Britain. Placards proclaiming
BOYCOTT GERMAN GOODS
spread infectiously throughout London, and were now in the windows of the most exclusive West End shops. Automobiles bannering boycott placards slowly cruised through the retail districts alerting shoppers. Everywhere store signs warned German salesmen not to enter. British Catholics had been urged by the Archbishop of Liverpool to join the protest. London's
Daily Herald
carried an interview with a prominent Jewish leader who admitted, "The [Jewish] leaders are hanging back," but the Jewish people are "forcing its leaders on." Already the boycott had damaged "hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of German trade."
⁶

The volume of German goods sold abroad was already dangerously low. Germany simply could not stand further export reductions.
⁷
By March
24,
enough consular dispatches had been received in Berlin to paint a clear picture. The rudimentary boycott was indeed snowballing, apparently building to a climax when it would be globally proclaimed by Dr. Stephen Wise. Nazi leadership reacted with paranoia and militancy. Hermann Goering, Prussian minister of the interior and president of the Reichstag, summoned the heads of Germany's three major Jewish organizations: Julius Brodnitz, chairman of the Central Verein; Dr. Max Naumann of the fiercely patriotic Union of National German Jews; and Heinrich Stahl, president of the Berlin Jewish Community. They were to appear in Goering's office at noon the next day, Saturday, March 25.
⁸

The Zionists had not been invited. Goering despised the Zionists, as did most Nazis. True, the National Socialists hoped to use Zionism to rid Germany—indeed Europe—of its Jews. But they also distrusted it as one of the three serpentine heads of international Jewry. According to Nazi philosophers, capitalism and Bolshevism were both creations of the so-called Jewish conspiracy. The twisted rationale accused Jews of using either method to topple governments in their quest for world domination. Zionism, in the Nazi view, was the ultimate goal of Jewish international efforts.
⁹
Moreover, the Nazis knew that the German Zionist movement did not really represent German Jewry. Zionist groups themselves estimated their own strength at only
I
or
2
percent of the country's Jews.
¹⁰
The Zionist concept was anathema to the overwhelming majority, who considered themselves assimilated, loyal Germans. Zionism was equally repugnant to orthodox German Jews, who spurned Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land on religious grounds (e.g., that only the Jewish Messiah could reinstate the Kingdom of the Jews). In
I933,
then, Zionism in Germany was a mere Jewish fringe movement.

Though not invited, the German Zionist Federation (ZVfD) did learn of the summit just a few hours before the meeting. ZVfD official Martin Rosenbluth and Federation president Kurt Blumenfeld were mystified about the purpose of the conference, but both men concluded that German Zionism must be present. After frantic telephoning, a Reich contact succeeded in adding Blumenfeld's name to the invitation list.
¹¹

At about noon, the two Zionists entered the anteroom outside Goering's private office. The three other Jewish leaders were surprised to see them. Brodnitz, of the Central Verein, tried to be cordial and make small talk. But staunchly anti-Zionist Naumann, of the Union of National German Jews, angrily lashed out at Rosenbluth. Why, demanded Naumann, should Zionists have any right to attend a meeting between the government and "the legitimate representatives of the German Jews"? Rosenbluth reacted with his own barbed rhetoric, and within moments the two leaders were trading denigrations. The verbal fight ended only when a uniformed Goering aide entered the room.
¹²