Hitler's Reichstag Speech of 30 January 1939

The international press's reaction to these statements was both supportive and tremendously naive. Thus, the Rublee-Wohlthat agreement, which became public on 14 February, was quite favorably received by the New York Times whose headline "Orderly Migration of Germany's Jews Envisaged in Plan" reflected the wishful thinking of the international community was possible to a peaceful agreement that it reach with the Reich.(14) Yehuda Bauer has shown that the deal was regarded by President [Franklin D. Roosevelt] as a serious attempt to achieve a solution and that he put pressure on Jewish representatives in the U.S. to carry out the agreement.(15) This took place, however, when appeasement was beginning to lose its appeal. Both examples clearly demonstrate that the threat of eventual annihilation of the Jews was perceived as sheer propaganda.(16) Indeed, the domestic and international reception of [Adolf Hitler]'s speech did not pay serious attention to his prophecy. As Ian Kershaw convincingly shows, neither the Sopade reports nor the reports of the Bavarian Government Presidents took notice of its specific anti-Semitic dimension, and the same applies to Goebbels' remarks on Hitler's speech in his diaries. Hitler's prophecy, Kershaw points out, "was at the time probably taken much for granted by most `ordinary' Germans in the context of the ever more overtly radical anti-Jewish policy of the regime."(17) More complex is the question of what induced Hitler to use this somewhat unusual language in January 1939.
It is in this context that Hitler's remarks in the Reichstag should be understood. The Führer referred indirectly to the pending Rublee-Wohlthat negotiations, complaining that "third countries suddenly refuse to receive Jews, using all possible excuses," and asserting that there was "enough space for settlement" in the world to dispose of the Jews and that an understanding between the nations on this issue was long overdue because Europe could "not become pacified before the Jewish question has been settled." At least, he declared, the German government was ultimately resolved to get rid of the Jews, who would have to learn to make their living like all other peoples through ordinary work.(9) It was after these declarations, which were targeted at the Western governments and sought to gain their support for the emigration of German Jews, that Hitler made his much-quoted threat against "the Jewish race in Europe." His formulations should be perceived in the context of the vÖlkisch anti-Semitism that had been virulent in Germany since the Wilhelmine period. The notion of using the Jews as hostages in order to prevent the Western powers from inflicting damage on Germany was familiar to the fanatical anti-Semites of that era. A striking illustration of this theme is provided by Hermann Esser, a member of the fanatical anti-Semitic wing of the NSDAP who had originally belonged to the Deutsch-vÖlkische Schutz und Trutzbund (German-VÖlkisch Protection and Defense League). In 1922, having referred to the Nazi slogan that the German people's inner unity had priority over the looming problems of foreign affairs, Esser was asked what the National socialists would do if the French actually occupied the Ruhr. If but a single French soldier set foot on German soil, he responded, 500,000 Jews should be taken into custody and killed.(10) Hitler employed the same kind of logic in his Reichstag speech, exploiting the Jews' predicament to pressure foreign governments into compliance.(11)