Just years after becoming the German dictator, Adolf Hitler orchestrated the Kristallnacht riots in Munich by leading his followers onto the streets of the Bavarian capital.
LONDON: Just years after becoming the German dictator, Adolf Hitler orchestrated the Kristallnacht riots in Munich by leading his followers onto the streets of the Bavarian capital to perpetrate atrocities against Jews.
Newly deciphered passages from the diaries of Josef Goebbels have revealed that on the night of November 9, 1938, Hitler marched Nazis to destroy an important Jewish synagogue, deliberately throwing a match into a tinderbox.
In fact, the incident, known as the "Night of Broken Glass", was sparked by the murder of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris on November 7, 1938, by Jewish teenager Herschel Grynszpan.
And, by morning of the tenth, at least 92 Jews were murdered, more than 200 synagogues destroyed and thousands of Jewish businesses ransacked across Germany.
"We have real evidence now that Hitler pulled the strings, that he personally directed the Kristallnacht," 'The Daily Telegraph' quoted an historian at Munich's Institute for Contemporary History, Angela Hermann, as saying.
Hermann actually decoded a mysterious passage in the diary of Hitler's Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels that had stumped scholars ever since this section of Goebbels' diaries was retrieved from Moscow in 1992.
In fact, the riddle actually revolved around Goebbels' reference to "Hitler's Stosstrupp" or his special troops.
In his diary entry for Nov 9, the Nazi Propaganda Minister recounts a rally at the Munich Town Hall in which Hitler told him, among other things, that the police should let people express anger over the vom Rath assassination.
Goebbels then wrote: "Hitler's Stosstrupp goes out immediately to clean up Munich... and a synagogue is smashed."
This had historians puzzled, as there was no force known as "Hitler's Stosstrupp" in 1938. And by digging through Munich archives, Dr Hermann found letters and documents to show that the term referred to the veterans of Hitler's failed attempt to seize power in 1923, known as the Beer Hall Putsch.
These old street fighters remained loyal to Hitler, taking orders from no one else.
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