page_title: Hitler's prophecy
section_title: Kristallnacht
hierarchical_section_title: Hitler's prophecy / Background / Kristallnacht
caption_attribution_description: English: see title
context_page_description: During a speech at the Reichstag on 30 January 1939, Adolf Hitler predicted "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe" in the event of another world war. These words, which were similar to comments that Hitler had previously made to foreign politicians in private meetings, came towards the end of a long speech that dealt with several topics. They were made in the context of Nazi attempts to increase Jewish emigration from Nazi Germany, before the outbreak of World War II.
  Allusions to Hitler's prophecy by Nazi leaders and in Nazi propaganda were common from 30 January 1941, when Hitler mentioned it again in a speech. The prophecy took on new meaning with the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the German declaration of war against the United States that December, accelerating the systematic mass murder of Jews and leading to the globalization of World War II. In late 1941, Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels stated that the prophecy was being fulfilled while justifying the mass deportation of Jews from Germany.
context_section_description: In November 1938, the Nazi leadership organized and incited the Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews, in part to bleed off excess antisemitic sentiment from party activists that had been suppressed for diplomatic reasons during the Munich crisis.  The pogrom involved unprecedented public violence against German Jews, including the burning of synagogues, looting of Jewish-owned stores and residences, and assaults on Jews which (according to official figures) caused 91 deaths. Hitler personally approved the arrest of 30,000 Jews and their incarceration in concentration camps. Kristallnacht evoked disgust among many Germans, although few engaged in overt opposition to the regime's actions. It also aroused considerable international criticism and endangered the German government's efforts to organize and facilitate the emigration of German Jews.
  Kristallnacht radicalized the anti-Jewish discourse in German society. A propaganda campaign conducted from November 1938 to January 1939 aimed at justifying the pogrom to the German people and blaming it on the Jews. The idea of exterminating Jews became more common. On 12 November, Hermann Göring convened a meeting of Nazi leaders in Hitler's name. Göring stated that "it goes without question that we in Germany also will in the first place think of carrying out a great reckoning with the Jews" if Germany went to war. Historian Yehuda Bauer writes that this statement is "very similar to that quoted from Hitler's speech" given on 30 January 1939. On 24 November, the SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps, reflecting on the meeting of 12 November, printed the following statement: "This stage of development [of the Jews] will impose on us the vital necessity to exterminate the Jewish subhumanity as we exterminate all criminals in our law-abiding state: with fire and sword! The outcome will be the actual and final end to Jewry in Germany, its total annihilation." This language reflected the radicalization in party circles, and, according to Bauer, "was written with at least the knowledge that it fitted in with Hitler's views".
caption: Old synagogue in Aachen [de] after Kristallnacht
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