On November 7th, 1938, a slight, 17-year-old German speaker appeared at the opulent German Embassy in Paris.
Herschel Grynszpan was looking for the German ambassador, the suave and virulently anti-communist Johannes von Welczeck.
In fact, Grynszpan had just brushed past von Welczeck at the giant revolving doors leading into the embassy – the ambassador heading one way, the assassin the other. At the reception, Grynszpan was met by Ernst vom Rath, a middle-ranking, Nazi-appointed diplomat.
Realising that he had missed the ambassador, his real target, Grynszpan pulled out a revolver and, content to kill any Nazi, shot vom Rath. As he fired, he shouted: “This is for the 12,000 Polish Jews.”
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When the news reached Berlin, Adolf Hitler immediately promoted the deceased vom Rath to the position of German hero as his minister for propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, set about a plan. For years, the Nazis had spoken of a giant worldwide Jewish conspiracy against Germany and here was his evidence.
Grynszpan, the teenage killer, was Jewish. His family, like thousands of Polish Jews, had emigrated to Germany in the early part of the 20th century. These so-called Ostjuden, were Yiddish-speaking and poor, which distinguished them from German-born Jews and, because they were not born on German soil, Grynszpan’s parents didn’t have passports.
When the Nazis came to power, these stateless Jews were an easy target. Herschel’s parents and friends, mostly working as tailors in Hanover, were rounded up and dumped on the Polish border in filthy, overcrowded camps without sanitation or adequate food and water. As many as 12,000 undocumented Jews languished there.
At the age of 15, Grynszpan managed to flee Germany to live with an uncle in Paris, which is how he ended up walking the streets outside the German Embassy.
Goebbels had his evidence. An innocent German diplomat had been murdered by a deranged German-speaking Jew, in a foreign capital where the diplomat should have been protected by the French police. This must be a conspiracy of international Jewry, in cahoots with Germany’s traditional enemies.
[ Kristallnacht marked in Germany and AustriaOpens in new window ]
As Grynszpan has been born in Germany and spoke like a German, Goebbels implied that no Jew could be trusted – they were all potential conspirators, part of an international, cosmopolitan Jewish plot against Germany. They were the enemy within and the killer Grynszpan was only the first of many violent Jewish killers, lurking inconspicuously among the honourable but largely gullible Germans. Grynszpan was all the evidence Goebbels needed.
The next two nights would become known as Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) when Jews all across Germany were attacked, and their synagogues and properties burned down. About 30,000 Jews were rounded up and the road to the Holocaust was paved.
As I walked along Fifth Avenue in New York last week, the traffic gridlocked by the annual UN General Assembly, I thought of Herschel Grynszpan. The city is at a standstill, many roads are completely closed off, tempers are flaring: the UN really messes with moody New Yorkers’ already volatile heads. To escape the horns, sirens and general mayhem, any barstool offers sanctuary. Over the counter, TV news channels showed wall-to-wall coverage of the memorial for assassinated political activist Charlie Kirk.
Speaker after speaker describe his murderer, Tyler Robinson, as a member of a global woke conspiracy against America. The argument goes that this is not a lone killer; this sedition is the work not of one man, but is evidence of a well-armed radical left army that is out there and getting ready to destroy America.
Something stronger than Coors Lite is needed. The US president described Kirk as a “martyr for American conservatism”, calling his killer a “radicalised cold-blooded monster”, a creation of the “other side” or the “radical left”. The president vowed to avenge his killing.
[ Charlie Kirk memorial: Half of the US is in raptures, the other indifferentOpens in new window ]
This week, I find myself in the middle of America’s culture war. It’s hard to appreciate the depth of the struggle unless you are here. Political conversations with the normally voluble New Yorkers are hushed. You can actually hear yourself. One side is on the ascendancy, united; the other on the run, in disarray.
President Trump himself is emboldened while his base is inflamed and energised for a long war. The Charlie Kirk murder could be the turning point that he spoke about so often. There is little doubt that various civil liberties – from free speech to judicial independence and institutional impartiality – are not simply being chipped away, they have been smashed down.
Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, is talking about censoring what she calls “hate speech” and what most Americans call the First Amendment. In addition, egregious conflicts of interest between the Trump family and American national security are being overlooked on a daily basis, the most recent example being the UAE investing billions in a Trump family run crypto investment scheme in return for UAE tech companies gaining access to America’s most advanced microchip technology.
At home, liberals are on the back foot, the Maga movement is almost triumphant and the Democratic Party is pathetically divided. Kamala Harris’s new book is an exorcising screed, pointing the finger at almost every one of the Democratic grandees who presided over her failed presidential bid. Filthy liberal linen is being washed in public and the America First gang are loving it.
Next year, the political debate will be framed against the backdrop of the American Revolution and the 250th anniversary of July 4th, 1776. It will be a battle about who owns the flag or who owns the Revolution.
Trump and Maga will claim that the Revolution was a bottom-up rebellion of fed-up patriotic Americans who, like them, were fighting the tyranny of elitism and an out-of-touch regime. They will claim they are the real Americans, each one the 21st century incarnation of Paul Revere. The liberals will accept the patriots’ argument but will add that the patriots were enlightened liberals driven by the foundational notion that “all men were made equal” implying that the font of the American Republic is tolerance and acceptance and that liberal America is the true descendant of Washington and Jefferson.
Every event and commemoration will be fought over by both sides using means that many of us thought impossible in modern America.
On November 17th, 1939, vom Rath was given a state funeral in Düsseldorf. Hitler and foreign minister von Ribbentrop attended, claiming that “the Jews had fired the first shot” in a war against Germany. Ribbentrop concluded his oration with the chilling warning: “We understand the challenge, and we accept it.” No one could have imagined where that would lead.
In America, the enemy within for today’s republicans is the radical, antifa-driven woke left; for Democrats it’s the radical, Maga-fuelled authoritarian right. Trump’s side is ascendant and can sense victory.
Each event, each crisis pushes people closer to the edge. History tells us that faceless institutions cannot be relied upon when the people are inflamed. Let’s hope exceptional America is the exception, but don’t bet on it.
