The German Foreign Ministry played a role
akin to what Reichsbahn played in the sense that it was helpful in the process
of carrying out the "Final Solution". But it wasn't causal. It did not determine the direction of
events or the decisions that were made. There's an adage in English. It's said in various different forms,
but it goes something like this. A diplomat is a person who is
paid to lie for his country. Now, most diplomats don't
see their job as lying. What they see is their job is pu
tting the best face on the
actions of their country. And German diplomats, almost from
the moment Hitler came into power, decided that was their job, that was
their professional responsibility. The German ambassadors to Washington,
London, Paris, Moscow and Oslo, five of them, actually communicated among
themselves in the spring of 1933, asking, do you think we should resign? Adolf Hitler had just
been made prime minister. They had a sense that Adolf Hitler was
a loose cannon, was a dangerous ma
n, was not a well educated man, might do
radical things that they thought would not be in the German national interest, and they said, should we resign? Should we quit? Should we, you know, make a
demonstration that this is not okay? And only one of them did,
a man named von Prittwitz. I think his first name was Friedrich,
von Prittwitz und Gaffron, which is a very aristocratic German name. He was the ambassador to Washington. He resigned. The rest of them did not. And the ambassador Oslo, which
is a much
smaller capital than these others, was particularly important in this decision. And he's later particularly important,
he becomes the number two man, Ernst von Weizsacker, the number two man
in the German Foreign Ministry. At the same time, as they decide not to
resign, to basically go along, continue to represent the country and so forth, a man named Bernhard von Bulow, who
is and that name, incidentally, von Bulow is probably the most famous
aristocratic name in the history of Pruss
ia, the main part of Germany. Von Bulow family produced prime
ministers, generals, so on and so forth. This is a man who was the state
secretary, the principal professional diplomat in the Foreign Ministry. Bernhard von Bulow did not like the
Nazis, had not voted for the Nazis, but in the spring of 1933, when
the Nazis start persecuting Jews, they organize the boycott against
Jewish owned shops and so forth, Bernhardt von Bulow is the
principal author of a document, sent around to all the German
embassies justifying Nazi policy, explaining that...
and what he did, he used a lot of trumped up figures
to show that Jews occupied a disproportionate share of major
positions in German economic life and professions and so on and so forth. The figures were wildly exaggerated. He took all of this and
this was his message. Now, this is not a Nazi. This is a professional diplomat, not
appointed by Hitler, not close to the Nazi party and his first official act
under the new regime is to say that t
he antisemitism, the government is
perpetrating, is okay and is justified. And you can draw a straight line from
that moment in 1933 to 1944, when the Nazis are clearly losing the war. When the Soviets have already advanced to
the gates of Warsaw and the United States has invaded the continent in Normandy, and the leaders of the German Foreign
Ministry get together at a little village called Krummhübel and they talk about
how to send the message out to all the countries where they're still repre
sented, and they're very delicate about
how they choose their words, they are not going to say, we
have killed the Jews of Europe. But they know what they're doing
is sending out instructions as to how to justify the way in which
the Nazi regime has treated Jews. So this is the straight line. And what is the role of the German
Foreign Ministry in all of this? It is to excuse. And even the officials within the
ministry, who are not Nazis, who are not appointed by Hitler after 1933,
because there
were some of these and so forth, they all conform to that message.
Comments