On 7th November 1938, a German embassy official, Ernst von Rath, was shot and eventually dying from his wound on 8th November. The killer was an unnamed seventeen year old polish Jew, his motive was his family and people being abused and mistreated by the Germans. The word of Rath’s death reached Hitler at nine o’clock, the day after the shooting. Unfortunately for him he was at remembrance dinner for those who gave their lives in the Munich Putsch. He was so outraged that he stormed off, before he’d given his annual speech but not after giving a few words privately to his second-in-command at the dinner, Goebbels. Goebbels then took the speech and went on to be racist, Anti-Semitic and making it clear that at least he felt that the Nazi’s should avenge the German official’s death. Plans were immediately set in place for what would be Kristallnacht or ‘Night of Broken Glass’. What happened was that Nazi members and even just the regular German citizen went out and destroyed over 8,000 Jewish businesses and 200 synagogues, killed 90 Jews, injured hundreds while around 30,000 men were imprisoned in concentration camps. However, the aftermath could be seen as the worst part because the Jews were blamed for Kristallnacht, so the government was legally allowed to take all the insurance that the Jewish businesses were owed. Also every Jew was expected to pay their share of the 1,000,000 mark fine to compensate for the death of Ernst von Rath. This action showed how the Nazi’s and Germans felt about the importance of thousands of Jews compared to just one of their people, and that Germany was prepared to hurt the Jews physically and set the Jewish community back economically and physically, just for the stupidity of one man. Then the Jews’ independence started to be queried, and the idea that Jews should not be allowed to own and control their own trading businesses, this set the Aryan and Jewish communities well apart. Around two weeks later the German government started getting generous with segregation laws and policies, blocking out Jews from places of leisure, education and sporting areas. Also Jews were not allowed driving privileges or homing pigeons. So in conclusion, the result of Kristallnacht was what started most of the policies on Jews that were set up in the late 1930’s, because the Night of Broken Glass is what encouraged the majority of the country of Germany into Hitler’s racist ideas and that the Jews have no place in Germany because it would apparently result in violence (Hitler could now back this up by using the von Rath shooting as an example).
