History of Berlin - Home Page
History of Berlin - the Nazi Period until 1939
At the beginning of this period 31% of German Jews were living in Berlin.
1933
- February 27 Reichstag Fire
- early March Elections
: 31% vote for Nazis (in Berlin).
Local elections a week later, received less than the Communist Party
and the SPD. Two days later, City Council (and the Prussian
government) was abolished.
Voting for the Nazis 1928 2.8% 1930 18.3% July 1932 37.4% November 1932 33.1%
- March 9 SA started attacking Jews, including murder.
Windows smashed on the Leipziger Strasse.
Extract from 'Mr. Norris Changes Trains' by Christopher Isherwood : Early in March, after the elections. it turned suddenly mild and warm. "Hitler's weather", said the porter's wife; and her son remarked jokingly that we ought to be grateful to van der Lubbe, because the burning of the Reichstag had melted the snow. "However could he go and do a dreadful thing like that ? , the porter's wife snorted.Our street looked quite gay when you turned into it and saw the black-white-red flags hanging motionless from windows against the blue spring sky. On the Nollendorfplatz people were sitting out of doors before the cafe in their overcoats, reading about the coup d'etat in Bavaria. Göring spoke from the radio horn at the corner. Germany is awake, he said. An ice-cream shop was open. Uniformed Nazis strode hither and thither, with serious, set faces, as though on weighty errands. The newspaper readers by the cafe turned their heads to watch them pass and smiled and seemed pleased.
They smiled approvingly at these youngsters in their big, swaggering boots who were going to upset the treaty of Versailles. They were pleased because it would soon be summer, because Hitler had promised to protect the small tradesman, because their newspapers told them that the good times were coming. They were suddenly proud of being blonde. And they thrilled with a furtive, sensual pleasure, like schoolboys, because the Jews, their business rivals, and the Marxists, a vaguely defined minority of people who didn't concern them, had been satisfactorily found guilty of the defeat and the inflation, and were going to catch it.
The town was full of whispers. They told of illegal midnight arrests, of prisoners tortured in the S.A. barracks, made to spit on Lenin's picture, swallow castor-oil, eat old socks. They were drowned by the loud, angry voice of the Government, contradicting through its thousand mouths.
......
The whole city lay under an epidemic of discreet, infectious fear. I could feel it, like influenza, in my bones.
- April 1 Boycott of Jewish businesses started.
- May 10
20.000 books burnt in Opernplatz. Thomas Mann, Stefan Zwieg,
Erich Maria Remarque, Heinrich Mann, Albert Einstein, H.G. Wells, Jack London,
Upton Simclair, Helen Keller, Andre Gide, Marcel Proust, Emil Zola,
Sigmund Freud.
1934
- 1934 Night of the Long Knives - the SA was bringing disorder to the streets of Berlin. President Hindenburg and the army commander had warned Hitler that if he did not do something, they would. Hitler took action on 30. June. In Berlin, the operation was directed by Göring. SA leaders were taken to Gestapo HQ in Albrechtstrasse or the SS barracks in Lichterfelde (the former army cadet school). Over 100 SA were shot.
1938
- November 9-10 Kristallnacht. This started at exactly 2.00 in the morning. Nine of the cities 12 synagogues were set alight. All active Jewish males were shipped off to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg. Göring declared that the Jews should make good all damage caused. The immediate excuse for these actions was the assassination of A German diplomat in Paris by Herschel Grynszpan, from Hannover.