The withdrawal of Germany from the League of Nations is expected to have immediate repercussions on the situation of the Jews in Germany, which will make it more critical than at any time since Adolf Hitler and his brown-shirt cohorts seized supreme power in the Reich.
An immediate effect will be the complete collapse of whatever moderating influences foreign public opinion, as expressed especially at Geneva, has had on Nazi Jewish policies. Only the almost unanimous condemnation of the world beyond the Reich has checked, up to now, the complete extinction of Jewish life in Germany and induced the Nazi leaders to modify their policies.
With Germany out of the League and in a position where she can expect no further favors from the powers, foreign disapproval of the Nazi anti-Jewish program, it is pointed out here, will no longer carry weight and the Jews of Germany may be sacrificed to the virulent anti-Semitism created by fourteen years of unceasing anti-Jewish propaganda carried on by the National Socialist party.
NEW REICHSTAG ELECTION
The calling of new Reichstag elections at this time, when the nationalist and chauvinist spirit is bound to be aroused to its most feverish pitch, constitutes a new element of danger to the Jewish population since Nazi propaganda activities, as in the past, will undoubtedly stir the populace against the Jews as the root of all of Germany’s evils and ascribe Germany’s action in quitting the League as having been necessitated by Jewish manipulations abroad. The gravest fears are therefore entertained among Jewish leaders here regarding the fate of the Jews in Germany in the immediate future.
The withdrawal of Germany from the League is expected here to be accompanied by an intensification of rearmament activities in Germany. Rearmament in Germany, it is an open secret, has been proceeding with the utmost haste ever since Hitler came into power.
It is hardly likely that France and the other nations bordering on the Reich will permit this to continue without an attempt to enforce on Germany the disarmament clauses of the Versailles Treaty. A conflict which might even lead to war has been brought much nearer as a result of the German withdrawal.
Germany’s reiteration of her willingness to disarm providing the other nations also do so, is scouted by the Dutch press as being merely camouflage for Germany’s real intention to rearm. The economic situation in Germany, which has become more and more serious, it is believed, may have influenced the decision to withdraw from the League in order to shift public interest from the economic to the political situation. It is generally considered that Hitler and moderate elements in the party were opposed to the move, with Premier Goering of Prussia and Dr. Goebbels, the propaganda minister, chiefly responsible.
The worst misgivings in case of war are felt here for the Jews of Germany. Deprived of the protection of foreign opinion from which Germany no longer expects to gain anything, the Jews may easily become the victims of the hysteria and excitement of war fever and the unleashed anti-Semitic passions stirred up by propagandists. President von Hindenburg will no longer be in a position, as he was seven months ago, to resist Hitler’s plea for “a night of the long knives” and a faked attempt on Hitler’s life—a danger which German Jews have had to fear for months—would be the signal for a nation-wide massacre which no external public opinion could circumvent.
Another immediate effect of the German withdrawal from the League will concern the Jews in the plebiscite area of Upper Silesia, which Germany administers under the German-Polish convention of 1922. Germany was reluctantly forced to accede to League demands last Spring to remove anti-Jewish restrictions in Upper Silesia and to accord the Jewish population there full minority rights.
With Germany out of the League and no longer feeling itself bound to observe the League’s decisions, the speedy removal of the few rights still held by Upper Silesian Jews is anticipated. Profound misgivings are felt in Jewish circles generally at the fate of the Upper Silesian Jews at the hands of the Nazis there who have had to chafe under League restraint while their colleagues in the Reich proper were able to do almost as they pleased with and to the Jews among them.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
