Photograph: Mother and child passing smashed shop windows after Kristallnacht in Magdeburg, November 1938. Photograph: The Weiner Library/REX
In Germany, all Jews are expelled from high schools and universities. Jews may no longer trade stocks; all brokers are to refuse their orders.
In the press conference of 14 November 1938, Hans Fritzsche makes reference to the statement Goebbels had made the previous day “that from now on, the antisemitic demonstrations against Jewish shops must come to an end.” This is largely because the Jewish owners are being forced out and the shops will go forward under non-Jewish ownership.
Fifteen hundred desperate Jews and Jewesses today besieged the American consulate in Berlin. They begged the consular staff to hasten investigations of applications for visas made by their relatives who are languishing in Nazi prisons. Lawyers told wives and mothers of arrested Jews the imprisoned men have a chance of being freed if they can produce documentary evidence that they plan to enter a foreign country. There were persistent reports that steadily increasing numbers of Jews are being transported to the dreaded concentration camps of Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald. Even Nazi women leaders have protested against the alleged horrors of these camps.
While Jews were making their appeals to American officials a rumor spread that the Argentine consulate was issuing 500 visas. Crowds rushed there and filled the entire building. The rumor was not confirmed. However, Jewish women still were standing in front of the consulate at a late hour in hopes they might obtain the necessary papers for their fathers and husbands. At Vienna Jews besieged the British consulate all night long in quest for visas which would permit them to leave the country. Adolf Hitler’s government acted to collect the $400,000,000 fine imposed on German Jews as a penalty for the murder of a German diplomat by a Polish Jew. The diplomat, Ernst von Rath, secretary of the German embassy in Paris, was shot last Monday, and died Wednesday.
The police served notices on 300 Jews concerning the sums they must pay as their share of the levy. They were given twenty-four hours in which to pay up. If they fail to do so they face immediate arrest. It was assumed that imprisoned Jews also were ordered to sign over part of their fortunes to the government. Jewish families said they were willing to sacrifice every penny they own to buy the freedom of their men “even if we must go and dig the soil and feed on what we can raise with our own hands.” Some Jews declared the sums they were ordered to pay correspond to 18 to 20 percent of the value of the property they were ordered to list in a questionnaire last spring. Police officials said the payments correspond to 11 percent of the property of the Jews.
Due to bad weather, Czech authorities allow some Sudeten Jews to enter and receive shelter for 48 hours. They will then be taken back to the no-man’s-land between borders.
Spanish rebels were reported today to have lost more than 300 men killed in an unsuccessful attack on the Toledo front, southwest of Madrid. The rebels attacked near Miradero de las Nieves, four miles northeast of Toledo. As the rebels crossed a “no man’s land” they were caught in a loyalist cross fire and suffered heavy losses. The engagement broke a month’s silence on that front and apparently was another rebel attempt to find weak spots in the loyalist lines. On the Ebro front in northeastern Spain the rebels captured the town of Fatarella, ten miles northeast of Gendesa, then fanned out to menace Asco and Flix, the remaining loyalist strongholds on the west bank of the Ebro. The British freighter Stratford, which was hit by shrapnel in a rebel air raid on Valencia last September, was heavily damaged in another bombardment there today. None of her crew was injured.
The Vatican reveals that protests from the Pope regarding Italy’s new “Aryan-only” marriage laws have been ignored by Premier Mussolini and King Victor Emmanuel.
A KLM Royal Dutch Airlines DC-3 crashes near Schiphol Airport. Four crew members and two passengers were killed. There were thirteen survivors. While on approach the airplane flew into terrain at cruise speed. It skidded 125 meters before coming to rest across a ditch. The passengers were reportedly Jewish refugees fleeing Germany.
Senator William H. King (D-Utah) proposed tonight that the United States sever diplomatic relations with Germany if the Reich continues abuse of Jews. He and five other leaders in politics and religion protested in a radio broadcast against what they called the barbarism of the Nazis. Former President Herbert Hoover declared Nazi leaders are “bringing to Germany moral isolation from the entire world.” Alf M. Landon, former governor of Kansas and 1936 Republican nominee for President, added a warning that “there is a real danger of the growth of intolerance here in America.” Bishop Edwin H. Hughes of the Methodist Episcopal church, the Rev. Robert I. Gannon, S.J., president of Fordham university, and Harold L. Ickes, secretary of the interior, voiced their indignation against Germany.
The United States recalls its Ambassador from Germany. U.S. Secretary of State Hull today instructed Hugh R. Wilson, American ambassador to Berlin, to come to Washington for report and consultation. Officials said this was in connection with recent developments in Germany, meaning the intensive campaign against the Jews unleashed there within the last few days. Officials said they did not know when he would leave. The action does not mean a break in diplomatic relations between the two countries, but was characterized by informed persons as an unusual step taken only in very unusual circumstances.
In the year preceding the outbreak of World War II this procedure of Presidential initiative was employed by Mr. Roosevelt to meet a situation made much worse by the Munich Pact. On 14 November 1938 he summoned his principal military and civilian advisers to the White House and laid his views before them, 1 and on that occasion the effective rearming of the nation’s ground and air forces took its start. Despite the hasty and unshaped character of the President’s proposal, which went through many changes, and despite the countless interruptions and alterations and delays which the nation’s rearming as a whole was to encounter in the years to come, this Presidential proposal must be regarded as far transcending — in its importance as an impulse to actual acquisition of weapons — the recommendations of the War Department officials, civilian and military, which antedated the November 1938 meeting.
On this occasion President Roosevelt abruptly set aside for the time being the Army’s carefully considered plans for the rearming of the ground forces. He concentrated his attention wholly upon the air forces, which up to this time had been of secondary consideration in Army planning. Expansion of the air establishment had been reinitiated in 1936 when Congress approved the Baker Board recommendations to the extent of authorizing an increase from a nominal 1,800 planes to an equally nominal 2,320 planes and thereupon, in 1936-38, doubled the average Air Corps appropriations of 1933-35.
But authorization does not produce airplanes immediately. By the autumn of 1938 the number of planes on hand was still only 1,600, which was well short of even the pre-Baker objective. The airplane factories engaged on Army contracts still were not up to the necessary production rate, their combined total being figured by the Chief of the Air Corps in October 1938 at 88.2 planes per month. And two years later, in the realm of combat planes acceptable for the new battle conditions, the chief of WPD was to report on hand only 49 bombers “suitable for daylight bombing” and 140 suitable pursuit planes.
The president confers with WPA Administrator Hopkins, Secretary Morgenthau, and military leaders about shifting manpower from relief jobs to defense work.
General Motors announces new plans to stabilize employment through slow periods, guaranteeing employees with over two years’ seniority a percentage of income all year.
Zygmund Dobrzynski, an organizer for the United Automobile workers, testified before the house committee on un-American activities today that communist members of the union had diverted auto workers’ funds into organizations controlled by the communist party. He said they accomplished this by a well-planned strategy at meetings as the result of which contributions were made to various groups. Dobrzynski expressed fear that some punishment would be meted out to him as the result of his testimony. He stressed the point that he appeared under subpoena.
Homer Martin, president of the automobile workers, had been scheduled to testify today, but, as upon several past occasions, failed to appear. Chairman Martin Dies (D-Texas), said, however, that there was no conflict between Martin and the committee. The U.A.W. leader was again excused because of urgent business, Dies added, and would appear Wednesday. Dobrzynski, director of the drive to unionize workers at the Ford plant in Detroit, testified that he had been in open conflict with communist elements within the U.A.W. for some time. Early in the history of the organization, he said, William Weinstone, then secretary of the communist party in Michigan, approached him with a view to obtaining his cooperation for the communist cause. At that time, the witness continued, Weinstone named to him a list of U.A.W. officials who were communists or working with the communists.
As the CIO’s annual convention opens, President Franklin Roosevelt sends a note asking the warring factions to try to get along.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co.
The Lions Gate Bridge opened in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Hunan province, south of Hankow, becomes the new battleground as Chinese forces entrench near Siangtan, south of the capital, Changsha. All of Changsha is burning, though Japanese troops are still over 80 miles away. Fires which started Sunday and spread unchecked until early today, virtually razed Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. The city is the next objective of the Japanese invaders. Extensive American holdings, including the Yale-in-China University and hospital two miles down the Siang River from the center of Changsha, escaped damage. All Americans were assembled in the Standard Oil installations just across the river. Chinese forces were reported to have retired from Yochow, eighty miles north of Changsha, taking up new positions at Matang, ten miles to the south. Reports said armed peasants joined members of the Chinese Red and Yellow Spear societies in recapturing the town of Cheho, twenty-four miles west of Yinshan, from the invaders.
The fire will rage for five days and take 2,000 lives. Large areas of Hankow are still in flames.
Japan refuses to open the Yangtze River to shipping, in spite of protests from the United States and European countries.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 155.61 (-2.80).
Born:
Johnnie Seale, MLB pitcher (Detroit Tigers), in Edgewater, Colorado.
Dennis Remmert, AFL linebacker (Buffalo Bills), in Traer, Iowa (d. 2020).
Naval Construction:
The Regia Marina (Royal Italian Navy) Soldati-class destroyer Artigliere is commissioned.
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