This source is largely reliable because the civil servant who wrote it works for the government so he would know what was going on and was sent after the 12th November 1938 so he would know what had happened. It could be unreliable because it was signed anonymously so it could have been by someone who was unduly biased against the Nazis, which would give him reason to criticise them wherever he could.
It makes Source C seem more accurate because it says it was the Nazis, like Source C, and it was very reliable.
Overall, Source D and E make it more likely that Source C is accurate. Source D does hint at blaming the people but it is unreliable so one cannot use it to strengthen or weaken the accuracy of another source because that source it most likely to contain wrong information. Source E is reliable and it blames the Nazis. Because it is reliable, it can be used to alter the accuracy of a source. Because it blames the Nazis, like Source C, it increases Source C's accuracy.
Question Four
Source F is a warning to the Nazis about their anti-Semitic views by the last Tsar of Russia and how he suffered as a result.
One can tell that the bottom figure is a Nazi soldier because he is dressed in the Nazi uniform; and that the attacks he has made are recent and violent because he uses weapons – there is a sword in his right hand and another in his left to indicate violence; the sword has blood dripping to indicate recentness.
The attacks that he made must have also been very destructive because he is standing next to, or on top of, a pile of broken furniture and murdered people, amongst other things, which are as tall as his knees – there must have been lots of destruction for it to be so high.
One can tell the figure in the cloud is an old tsar of Russia because he is still wearing the emperor's uniform. He is situated in a cloud, which gives him a Gold-like figure and he has a message. This must be a good message because it comes from 'God'. It also glorifies their old leader by putting him in heaven but the Communists (the current government) hated their old leader, which is why he was murdered in July 1918. This shows that they put their old, despised leader above the Nazis (as the Nazis are not only among death and destruction but causing it – like the Devil would do in hell) so they must really hate the Nazis.
Source G is a message to the British people that the German public did not want Kristallnacht to happen – the German government caused these events and the people could not stop them.
It shows this by having a Nazi soldier with a sword in his hand, standing over a dead citizen. A women, representative of all German people, is sitting and tied up in ropes. Some material is covering her mouth, preventing her from speaking.
One call tell the figure with the sword in his hand is a Nazi because he is dressed in Nazi uniform. He has a sword in his hand and a dead person lying on the ground between his legs so presumably, he has murdered him with the sword.
The man is looking away from the burning and destruction behind him and away from the dead man below him and the female prisoner. This could either show that that Nazis are ignorant of the effects their action are actually having or that they just do not care and are ignoring it. It could also demonstrate a combination of the two.
The burning and destruction occurring in the background and the murder victim between the soldier's legs show that attacks are violent.
The fact that the woman is sitting down out of view of the Nazis shows that the Nazis are not taking any notice of the German public (as the woman is representative of all German people). The Nazis have prevented the people from telling them what they think because they have prevented them from doing so by covering their mouths. The ropes show they have been stopped from being able to do anything to prevent this, although not necessarily by force, as fear was often the Nazis greatest weapon.
The similarities between these two sources are many. They both show the Nazis armed and dangerous causing lots of destruction to their own citizens' property. Source F shows this by a Nazi figure, standing next to or on top of rubble and carrying a sword dripping with blood. Source G shows this by a Nazi figure in front of a backdrop of material destruction.
However, in Source F there is hope, which is given by the ex-Tsar Nicholas II. It is only a warning but it is enough to stop the Nazi soldier destroying and murdering. The warning by him says “Attacking the Jews did not do me any good my Fascist friend” Amidst all the pain the Nazis are causing, the threat that they must be murdered and succeeded by Communists, their political enemies, is enough to halt the most important thing on their political agenda. Maybe, that suggests, in the future, this might cause the Nazis to reconsider their ways for the better.
Another similarity is that in Source F the citizens under all the damaged property is not being given a proper burial or generally treated with any respect. Likewise, in Source G, the murder victim is also being left to rot. They both depict the lack of respect for the Kristallnacht, which shows that they must really have a hatred for them.
Question Five
Source H blames Goebbles because the person who said the account, Goering, claimed that “it was not acceptable to me [Goering] that he [Goebbles] should upset my difficult economic tasks by destroying so much property of economic value”. This claims that Goebbles destroyed the property so it was not the fault of the German public but his.
The source is quite reliable because Goering would have had a good idea of what was going one inside the Nazi party because he was a chief Nazi. Therefore he would have been round the other Nazi leaders a lot and they would have told each other their plans and the like.
However, he was on trial for his life in Nuremberg for war crime so he would have tried to cover the truth up a bit to clear himself and make others look more guilty.
If one were to cross-reference this source with Source A, one would find out that one point this source makes looks wrong. Source A says that “'Hitler squealed with delight and slapped his thigh with enthusiasm'” but Source H claims that Hitler “on the whole agreed that such events must not be allowed to take place”. Source A is reliable because the historian who wrote this was at the dinner and it was written after 1945, when they were no governmental pressures to make the Nazis look either really good or really bad. The person quoted in Source H, Goering does have pressures – he will most likely die if he does not say the right things to clear himself! Because of these contradictions, and Source A is more reliable than Source H, the latter source now seems less reliable and more likely to be wrong.
Source I blames the “people” for the event. However, it does not say which people are to blame. It could be the German public, people who are representative or in the Nazi party or another country's people.
It clears the Nazi party of all blame by saying that their leader, Adolph Hitler, “was about to come to an understanding with France”. This is obviously an incorrect statement because in 1940, he invaded France and succeeded in taking them over. With this knowledge in mind, the reliability of the source is already questionable – if the person quoted, Hitler, lied about this, what else is he not saying?
This was reported by Frau Troost, whose husband was one of Hitler's favourite architects. Hitler would have wanted to keep the Troost family on his side for that reason. If he did not, then his buildings would no longer be as he liked them, which Hitler would not want, so it was in his interests to keep him. If Hitler had told Troost it was an organised attack, which he supported, Troost's husband might not have wanted to work with him so much; Hitler could not take that risk. This makes the source more unreliable.
Source I does not immediately seem to back up Goering because they blame different people. However, they both show that Hitler was sorry for what happened. Source I says Hitler thought “Kristallnacht was terrible” and H that “Hitler made some apologies for Goebles.”
Both sources have proven to be unreliable, especially Source I, so the question about trusting either of what these sources say remains. Discounting reliability, Source I backs up Source H nicely.
Question Six
Source A claims that the events were not caused by the public but by Goebbles. A historian said a Nazi journalist, Fritz Hesse “could hear Goebbles explaining about a mass attack which he and the SA were going to launch against the synagogues and Jewish shops”. It was also not spontaneous; it was planned. One can tell this because the historian states that Goebbles said it would be launched “in a few hours' time”. Therefore, it does not agree with the statement in question.
However, over the nine years since the event, Hesse might have forgotten some of the things that happened, which means what he wrote may not have been a full account; this makes the source seem unreliable and therefore not as useful to a historian.
It is also a summary written by another historian, who, in his summary might have missed some important points out, which might be useful to us. This might not give a clear, full picture what happened making the source more reliable.
As stated earlier, Source A said Goebbles organised the attack. Source C cites one reliable source which states that the violence was “carried out by SS men and Stormtroopers, not in uniform”. This explains why there is some debate as to who started the events – because Goebbles made the SS men and Strormtroopers look like the German public. This allowed the Nazi party to lie that the public caused the riots to confuse people, without it looking too obvious that they had lied.
Source B implies that it might have been the German public who started the events. It says that on the ninth of November there had “been anti-Jewish demonstrations in parts of Munich during which Jewish shops had been destroyed and synagogues set on fire”. No names were mentioned as to who started them. However, it does say that “The Fuhrer, at Goebbles suggestion, had decided such demonstrations were not to be organised by the party.” As it is claimed that Goebbles and Hitler were against Kristallnacht, it is presumed that the people did it. It does not say if it was organised or started spontaneously – it could have been planned by the people without the Nazis knowing.
This source is unreliable. Despite the fact that it was a secret document, the Nazis must have known that when their party collapsed, all their secret documents would be opened, giving Nazi accounts to try and make them look good, in the hope a new Nazi party would form and seize power.
Source I like Source B, was written by top Nazi officials and is also very unclear. It does not state specifically who did it. This makes it seem like the Nazi party was trying to cover up something – maybe they did plan it after all.
Source C blames the SS men and the Stormtroopers and to do so cites “one reliable source”, which makes this source immediately questionable – why will he not name the source he has cited?
Introducing the topic of spontaneity, the source provides a list of weapons with which they had been given: “hammers, axes and fire bombs”; it says that “the activity of the fire brigade [had been] confined to spraying water on adjoining buildings” and that there “was ... arrest and transportation to concentration camps”. These three things all need lots of organisation – for instance, someone would need to collect and find the vehicles to transport the Jews to concentration camps. This list of activities mentions that the fire brigade had been restricted from spraying water on Jewish houses. Ordering the fire brigade could also have only have been done by a Nazi official, which further suggests Nazis did it.
This source is reliable because it was written by an American – the Americans at that time were not on any country's side so he would have probably written an unbiased account. He was writing this account “at the time” so his memory could not have enough time to forget what happened. He wrote it “from what he had seen himself” and “from interviews he carried out” so there have been no “middle-men” who might have edited the interviews to support their views (i.e. bias).
Source E supports Source C's idea on who caused these attacks. It says that “most German people have [had] nothing to do with these attacks.” Two sources claim that the Nazi party were responsible for these attacks and both sources are generally reliable – Source E's reliability is explained later.
Source D does not say for definite who caused the attacks although it suggests that it might have been the people by saying that there had “already for a few weeks ... been signs of unrest amongst the masses”. It does not specifically mention what the unrest was about. It could have been that people did not like the idea the “Jews not wanted” messages on certain shop windows were appearing as opposed to hating the Jews. Such messages could have been put there by government seeing as the source describes the shops where they were put as “various” so the shops were unrelated. If the government were anti-Semitic then they could have started the attacks – they had the resources to.
The source does not mention whether or not the attacks were planned.
This source is unreliable as there is room for bias. The description was written by a German Jew, who were all likely to exaggerate the severity of the events to provoke sympathy for their race. For instance, yes, there might have been some anti-Semitic unrest, but not so much to cause Kristallnacht.
Furthermore, it was written about events before Kristallnacht and although the events before may suggest who caused them, they will not tell you for definite.
Source E blames the NAZI party, largely. It says that “most German people have nothing to do with these attacks” - so some might have something to do with it. It also states that the “police supplied SA men with axes, housebreaking tools and ladders”. This means that bothe the SA men and police were involved. “A list of the name and addresses of all Jewish shops and flats were provided”. Someone would have had to research all these so it must have been planned. Furthermore, the person who researched the information would have to have access to data owned by the government so would have had to be involved in the Nazi party in some way. This supports the idea that the Nazis were heavily involved in Kristallnacht.
This is quite reliable because the civil servant would know what was going on. It was sent just three days after the event so he could not have forgotten that much about what happened. What does make it unreliable is that it was signed anonymously so one does not know who wrote it – it could have been written by someone who was really supportive of the Allies and only wanted to make the Nazis look bad.
Source H supports the claim that the Nazi party was responsible, which Source E makes. In Source H, Goering, a Nazi official, blames another Nazi party member. Source H, like E, is quite reliable. However, Goering in Source H says that Hitler was not fully supportive of Kristallnacht and made some apologies for Goebbles, who Goering claimed was responsible.
Source F blames the Nazis. It shows this by showing a Nazi soldier in uniform with weapons in his hands. The knife in his right has blood dripping from it, showing that it has been recently used. This source does not say anything about spontaneity.
This source is not reliable because the cartoon was published by a Russian newspaper. The Russians were government by the political ideology, Communism. The communists are the political enemies of Fascism, which is how Germany was run at the time. Therefore, their newspapers would have tried discredit them wherever possible – making them seem responsible for massacre was one way to do this. It would be biased in the Soviet's favour.
However, the newspaper was published just one day after the reporter would have been able to interview people who had the event fresh in their minds to create a reliable cartoon.
Source G portrays a similar image and is just as unreliable because of the room for bias. It does not say if it was spontaneous but what it does show is the German public were helpless and could not stop the government.
Source G blames the Nazis. It shows this by showing a Nazi soldier in uniform with a weapon in his right hand, standing in front of burning and destruction, which is presumably caused by him.
In a corner of a building is a woman representative of the German public tied up and sitting on a stool. This shows that the German public have been prevented from stopping, or for that matter, causing, Kristallnacht. This only affirms the idea that it was not the public's fault because they have been tied up so they could not have had anything to do with it because they are immobile.
This source is not reliable because it was published by a British newspaper in the tension before the war. Thus, they, the British, would tried to have discredit the Nazi party and their ideas - making them seem responsible for massacre was one way to do this. It would be biased in the Allies' favour.
Source A, like Source G, states that the Nazi party were responsible but Source A is largely reliable. This means that perhaps the information portrayed in Source G might be true but it definitely makes it seem more reliable. Source A gives more information than G, that it was planned, at least a few hours before.
Source H blames Goebbles by saying that “he [Goebbles] should upset my difficult economic tasks by destroying so much Jewish properly of economic value”. This is an obvious admission by a Nazi party official that is was Goebbles' (another party member's) fault.
It also says that they were organised. It shows this by stating that Goebbles was responsible. It could not have just been him alone who caused so much destruction in a country – he would have needed to employ the help of an army of people; to round up all these people would take organisational skills, which means the attacks must have been planned.
Source H is reliable because Goering was a Nazi official so he would have had a good idea of what was going on in the Nazi party, enabling him to give an accurate and reliable account of what was happening.
However, he was on trial for his life so he would have probably exaggerated in favour of the Nazi party, or himself, to clear either the Nazis altogether, or himself.
Source A says that “'Hitler squealed with delight and slapped his thigh with enthusiasm'” after hearing about the plans for Kristallnacht. However in Source H it says that had “made some apologies for Goebbles”. The information is conflicting. Source A is more believable and therefore more reliable for several reasons: firstly, it is very easy for one to remember someone as important as the head of state squealing and, secondly, Hitler would most likely have apologised in front of Goering for Goebbles to keep Goering happy so that he does not become demotivated and affect the party's performance. This would hinder plans for war, which Hitler did not want. Couple this with the fact that Source A has proven to be reliable anyway, Source A makes Source H seem less reliable.
Source I blames no-one specifically just “the people responsible”. People is the plural form of person, which means that more than one person was responsible for the event, which means he probably does not blame Goebbles. However, he could be referring to the SS men or Stormtroopers, which sources such as A, C and E say that he used. Either way, it does not blame Hitler, otherwise he would have used the first person pronoun, “I” as he is writing the source. (He would also not blame himself for such an unpopular event as this in front of someone so important as the wife of his favourite architect – he has more sense than this.)
It does not say anything about the spontaneity of the event.
The source is totally unreliable. For three reasons: Hitler was the original person who said these words, who is extremely biased in favour of his own party because he wanted to make them look good to win support; the husband of the person whom he is talking to, Frau Troost, was Hitler's favourite architect so he would have wanted the Troost family to stay on the Nazi side because of the architectural skills they can offer the party; thirdly, it was reported 33 years after Kristallnacht so, if the author had not kept a transport, there was plenty of time for things to be forgotten, making the conversation incomplete and and all the less reliable.
Source D describes how notices reading “'Jews not wanted' appeared”, which were probably put there by the Nazi party. This means the Nazi party must have been trying to cause some anti-Semitism, tempting an uprising. Perhaps “people” does refer to the German public and maybe Hitler had never intended it to go that far. After all, as Goering points out in Source H, it did disrupt plans for rearmament, which were really important to the Nazis.
To conclude Sources B, D and I all either state or imply that the public were the cause. That said, the conclusion for Sources D and I can only be reached by inference. All these three sources have one things in common – they are all unreliable.
Six of these sources blame the Nazi party or Goebbles. These are sources A, C, E, F, G and H. Four of these are either quite or fully reliable: A, C, E and H. With four reliable sources backing up the idea the public were not to blame and none to say that they were, it is safe to assume that they were not to blame.
Of all the sources, only four mention the spontaneity so only these can be used to comment on the final part of the statement in question. All four sources A, C, E and H say that it was planned. Of these, C and H are fully reliable whereas A and E are quite reliable. It is safe to assume that it was not a spontaneous attack.
As a consensus, the sources support neither part of the statement:
“Kristallnacht was a spontaneous event
caused by the German people.”