The murder of Walter Rathenau

Judaism, Summer, 1995 by Carole Fink

On the eve of the Genoa Conference the foreign minister met for five hours with Albert Einstein and Kurt Blumenfeld to discuss Palestine, the Jewish problem, and his role as Germany's advocate before the entire world. Rathenau insisted on his right to speak for die entire German people just as Disraeli had represented England. But there were key differences. The baptized Disraeli was a more facile and clever actor; by enlarging the island kingdom's riches with the Suez Canal, by making Victoria the Empress of India, and by expanding British democracy, he had enhanced the pride and prestige of both his peoples. On the other hand, the aristocratic, unbaptized Rathenau, who was about to plead for a defeated, and largely unrepentant Germany, risked disappointment and danger for Germans, for Jews, and for himself. Late in the night Pathenau admitted to Einstein and Blumenfeld that he served a Germany which had never accepted him completely or unconditionally. After bidding the foreign minister farewell, the two Zionists walked the late night streets of Berlin vindicated, and frightened.(26)

And indeed there was an unpleasant, if not unexpected surprise at the Genoa Conference: a stellar, 34-nation summit gathering, the largest European international conference until Helsinki in 1975.(27) After a brilliant opening, when Germany was welcomed virtually as an equal, Rathenau found himself excluded from the secret Allied-Russian negotiations. And so on Easter Sunday, April 16, 1922, he traveled the road to Rapallo and signed the notorious separate treaty with Soviet Russia. Overnight, the Rathenau esteemed abroad was transformed into another ruthless German, who had ruptured western solidarity and signed with the barbaric Soviets. The would-be good European became the cunning Jew with his "underhanded tricks."(28)

His fulfillment policy in shambles, Rathenau's days in office appeared to be numbered, and his very life at stake. Indeed, there had been a four-year wave of murders in republican Germany, mainly of Jews and left-wing figures. Rathenau understood that by assuming the high post of foreign minister he too would be a target of assassins. Since January 1922 German students had chanted: "Strike down Walther Rathenau/The God-damned Jewish sow!" Warned of an actual death threat by Chancellor Wirth, Rathenau had refused to retain a bodyguard.(29)

The actual murder reads like a powerful work of fiction. The plot began in April 1922 when a group of young men formed a conspiracy to kill Rathenau, claiming he was one of the 300 Elders of Zion committed to taking over the world. The night before Rathenau was killed, he was bitterly attacked in the Reichstag by the demagogic Nationalist deputy, Karl Helfferich, who charged: "The Calvary of fulfillment . . . has ruined Germany, crushed our middle class, dragged countless persons into the depths of poverty and others into despair and suicide." Visibly shaken, Rathenau dined that night at the American Embassy and then stayed up until 4 a.m. earnestly conferring with his rival Hugo Stinnes about reparations.(30)