Don't make Charlie Kirk a Martyr
Straight Out of the Goebbels Playbook
By John Flood
On November 7, 1938, in Paris, a 17 year old Jewish refugee named Herschel Grynszpan took a desperate step. His parents and thousands of other Polish Jews had just been expelled from Germany and stranded at the Polish border in miserable conditions. Outraged and feeling powerless, Grynszpan walked into the German Embassy, pulled a revolver, and shot a young diplomat named Ernst vom Rath.
Vom Rath died two days later, on November 9. He was a minor diplomat in the German Foreign Office, not a major political figure, but in his death the Nazi regime saw an opportunity.
Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, moved swiftly. Vom Rath’s body was returned to Germany, where the regime staged an elaborate funeral. Hitler, Göring, Himmler, and all the Nazi elite attended. Vom Rath was elevated from an ordinary diplomat to a “martyr” of the German people, supposedly slain by the hand of an international Jewish conspiracy. The truth, that Grynszpan was a desperate teenager acting alone, was irrelevant.
Ernst vom Rath
Goebbels used the funeral and the atmosphere of outrage to set the stage for violence. Speaking to party leaders gathered in Munich on the evening of November 9, he said:
“The Führer has decided that demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the Party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.”
“The Jews must be hit where they are most sensitive, in their property and in their livelihoods.”
“The German people will no longer tolerate this international Jewish conspiracy. The Jews will pay.”
This was not a call for justice. It was a coded order for violence. Goebbels, who had built his career on lies, hate, and manipulation, knew exactly what he was unleashing.
That night and into the following day, Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, swept across Germany and Austria. Nazi stormtroopers, Hitler Youth, and ordinary citizens smashed the windows of Jewish shops, looted businesses, and set synagogues ablaze. Cemeteries were desecrated. Homes were invaded. At least 90 Jews were murdered outright, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps like Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen.
The world looked on in shock, but the Nazis shrugged off criticism and blamed the victims. Vom Rath’s name was invoked over and over, his death twisted into proof of a Jewish threat that demanded vengeance.
In reality, vom Rath had been a minor diplomat with little influence. His murder was tragic, but it did not reveal a grand conspiracy. What it revealed instead was how totalitarian regimes weaponize grief and death. His funeral was not about mourning. It was a spectacle of power, a carefully staged pageant designed to sanctify violence and feed the Nazi myth of racial struggle.
From that moment forward, the persecution of Jews in Germany escalated to an entirely new level. Kristallnacht was a turning point, the moment when discrimination turned into open terror, and the machinery of the Holocaust began to move at full speed.
Goebbels’ words lit the match. Vom Rath’s coffin was the stage. And the shattered glass of November 9 and 10, 1938, was the first great storm of destruction that would lead directly into the fire of genocide.
Editor’s Note: This was first posted on Facebook after research conducted by a member of 50501 Veterans.