Nights of Broken Glass, 1938 and Today
On the night of November 9, 1938, the streets of German cities exploded into an epic orgy of anti-Jewish violence. Rioters destroyed over 1,000 synagogues and many thousands of Jewish-owned businesses, many of the neighborhood “mom and pop” variety. Hundreds of Jews were murdered during the night or subsequently died from injuries received — or from suicide in the aftermath of experiencing how their friends and neighbors either stood idly by or even joined in the violence.
Some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. This was accomplished under the legal rubric of Schutzhaft, or “protective custody.” In the Nazis fanciful reinterpretation of long-established German law, this massive roundup was justified in order to “protect” these men from the widespread anger of ordinary Germans, infuriated at the fact that a young Jewish man had assassinated a German diplomat in Paris.
We’ve suffered a massive setback, and the road ahead has just gotten harder. But the longer we wait, the harder it will become.
The actual instigators and perpetrators were members of Nazi paramilitary organizations like the SA and SS, abetted by members of the Hitler Youth, mad dogs who were immediately brought to heel when the destruction became an international embarrassment and an economic liability. Rather than the spontaneous protest portrayed by the Nazis, the entire event was carefully orchestrated and controlled.
This week marks the 88th anniversary of what came to be called the Kristallnacht, or “the night of broken glass.” The name comes from the thousands of storefronts and shop windows destroyed, with broken glass strewn down the main shopping streets of all the major German cities. The cost of cleanup was covered in fines levied on the Jewish communities, while many of the businesses were taken over by Germans, either immediately or when their Jewish owners fled abroad carrying nothing but a couple of suitcases.
The Kristallnacht represented a pivotal event on the road to Auschwitz and the Holocaust. Previously, the Nazis had concentrated on the exclusion of Jews from normal German life, largely through the mechanism of the Nuremberg laws, which virtually eliminated Jewish participation in government and academia and severely restricted the participation of Jews in the economic life of the country.
The Nazis had also used the five years prior to November 1938 to spread a pervasive message demonizing Germany’s Jewish population. Prior to 1933, Jews in Germany were targeted by hate crimes, but overall were highly assimilated into the everyday life of the nation. Many Jews thought of themselves as more German than Jewish, living a largely secular lifestyle with only nominal participation in things Jewish.
It’s scarcely surprising, for example, that on the morning following Kristallnacht, when Jewish World War I veterans finally braved the streets to come to terms with the damage, they prominently displayed their Iron Crosses and other wartime medals. Although these veterans had been cut off from veterans benefits shortly after the Nazis came to power, they still believed that having fought in the trenches alongside other Germans, they’d earned some measure of respect — and protection from Nazi hatred.
Ironically, the officer who recommended Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler for the Iron Cross, First Class — a signal honor for such a lowly soldier — had been his Jewish company commander, Hugo Gutmann. And sometimes, the Kameradenschaft, the “comradeship” of the trenches did prove to be a difference maker. Hugo Gutmann was one of those arrested by the Gestapo in 1938, but influence — perhaps a word from Hitler himself — saw him released and allowed to fle the country.
The Kristallnacht was not yet the Holocaust, but it was a turning point on the path to Jewish annihilation. Before November 9th, 1938, Germany’s Jews were stigmatized and marginalized and subjected to an ever-increasing regimen of petty — and sometimes not so petty — indignities and mistreatment. But many Jews, particularly the ones who’d embraced the secular liberal values and party affiliations of the Weimar Republic, had allowed themselves to believe, in the face of massive evidence to the contrary, that this, too, would pass.
The evidence of the streets on the morning of November 10th fully disabused all but the most willfully delusional of such notions. Not only did the Nazis hate them and hate them past all real or imagined concepts of tolerance; most ordinary Germans had become so desensitized to this hatred — or fearful of standing athwart the Storm Trooper mobs — that there was no longer any hope for Jews anywhere in Germany.
The wisest Jews drew the only rational conclusion and fled, and this despite the fact that flight meant leaving behind everything — the Nazis were very insistent that, while Jews could still leave, nothing of value could leave with them. They fled in the face of a hostile or indifferent world, where in many instances the doors of asylum remained fully closed. One of the darkest pages of U.S. history was written during this era, but the U.S. was far from alone in its reluctance to grant admission to Jews fleeing the Nazis.
The Nazis were quite content to watch them flee. They wanted a country, ultimately an empire, wholly free of Jews, Judenfrei in the terminology of the time. But when the outbreak of war closed all the pathways to freedom, the extermination camps of the “final solution” would soon follow. SS guards even made jokes of this, laughing that Jews could now flee up the chimneys of Auschwitz and the other camps.
Sadly, it doesn’t seem much of a stretch to see parallels between November 1938 and November 2026. For years now, across western Europe but also very much in the United States, a monstrous Jew hatred has taken hold, largely, but not exclusively, on the left. And because it has emerged on the left, it has readily seeped into the institutions long dominated by the left, the universities, the media, and the manufacturers of popular culture.
Hollywood, once a bastion against such hatred, now quails in the face of Islamist pressure. We’ve not yet seen such horrors as the vile anti-Semitism of the German film industry under Josef Goebbels, but neither do we see movies or TV shows that stand up against the most obvious locus of anti-Semitism, the communities where radical Islamism has gained purchase. Instead, and even at the height of post 9/11 portrayals of Islamic terrorism, we were always subjected to disclaimers — not all Muslims support terrorism, Islam is “the religion of peace,” just tainted by a few bad apples.
And even if one wished, in fairness, to make such a case, the evidence kept getting in the way. Rape gangs in Britain, churches burned in France, guards posted outside synagogues almost everywhere, the list of threatened or perpetrated atrocities has continued to grow. This all culminated in the aftermath of October 7th, 2023, another and even more horrific version of Kristallnacht, when the streets were captured by the purveyors of anti-Semitic hatred. And even as the Nazi action of 1938 was carefully orchestrated and controlled by those in power, much the same might be said of many of these demonstrations. The printed protest signs and the paid instigators speak to a similar orchestration.
Most recently, we’ve seen repeated “nights of broken glass” in France and other parts of Europe. It’s scarcely accidental that Jewish shopkeepers were almost always targeted, and Muslim ones largely spared. Frighteningly, the recent mid-term elections have shown that many Americans have become inured to much of this hatred, even if only a relative handful have completely gone over — as yet — to the dark side.
But left unchecked, it can only be a matter of time before darkness prevails. And unchecked it will likely remain so long as delusions about the threat continue to gain purchase. In the aftermath of the elections, many of the most radical anti-Semites seem no longer constrained by the norms that once demanded that they pretend to be merely “anti-Zionist.” Sadly, the “moderates” and “independents” who drove the Democrats “blue tsunami” seem not to understand that they’ve merely created a shield behind which hatred can fester unchecked.
Perhaps, as some conservatives wishfully think, the radicals and the moderates will end up eating each other. For my part, this seems the worst kind of naivete. Even if that proves ultimately to be the case, in the meantime we will see no end of evil, even when it comes dressed as AOC or Abdul el Sayed dressed up in a Santa Claus suit, throwing goodies in every direction.
If we stand aside, the “mostly peaceful protests’ will come again, and the broken glass will litter the streets of our cities. When this happens, it will not be just the Jews who suffer, but also Christians and even secular conservatives. We’ve also seen the harbingers of this in the widely published threats to punish Trump supporters.
So, as we mark the 88th anniversary this week of Kristallnacht, let’s take a moment to reflect before girding ourselves to the long hard task of taking back our country. We’ve suffered a massive setback, and the road ahead has just gotten harder. But the longer we wait, the harder it will become.
READ MORE from James H. McGee:
JD Vance Is Absolutely Right and Completely Wrong
The War Iran Chose: Remembering the Beirut Bombing
James H. McGee is a retired nuclear security and counter-terrorism professional. His most recent novel, The Zebras from Minsk, was featured among National Review’s favorite books in 2025. His next novel, The Cathedral of Sorrows, will directly focus on the plight of Africa’s Christians. You can find The Zebras from Minsk and his previous thriller, Letter of Reprisal in paperback and Kindle editions at Amazon. The Cathedral of Sorrows will appear at Christmas.