Kristallnacht and the Iranian Peace Talks

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry discussing the since
aborted bombing of Syria, August 30, 2013
 (Fox New Screen Shot/Dick Bergeron)

THE BACKGROUND:  Saturday marked the 75^th anniversary of the beginning of a series of nightmarish atrocities that would not end until years later when, towards the end of World War II, allied troops led by United States Armed forces opened the gates and walked into the horror of Nazi concentration camps in Europe to liberate the emaciated remnants of Jews, gypsies, and other ethnicities of Hitler’s failed attempts at “the final [Jewish] solution.”

An estimated 11 million people were eliminated in killing centers such as Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, and others across Europe.  At least 6 million of those were Jews exterminated in these places of unimaginable revulsion. 

Holocaust survivor and author Elie Weisel stated that "while not all victims were Jews, all Jews were victims."


The violence of Kristallnacht, commonly known as the “Night of Broken Glass” commemorates the “animalistic” rampage of Nazi storm troopers who began by kicking in the windows of store fronts made notorious with the white letters of “JUDE” painted on them.  Easily goaded, thousands of others joined in.

After the assaults subsided in the overnight hours between November 9^th and 10^th, 1938, dozens of Jews had been killed.  Tens of thousands would be rounded up like animals.

Destination:  concentration camps. 

When dawn came, smoke curled up from the ruins of Berlin’s “Neue Synagoge” and from thousands of other businesses and synagogues destroyed in “Germany, Austria and the occupied region of Czechoslovakia.”

It signaled to the world the onset of a carnage that would be the destiny of Jews under Hitler’s domination.

THE CONNECTION:  Everything in the world of war and peace is linked in some way, some of it obvious, some of which isn’t, but should be.

There is one thing certain about Kristallnacht and the now-failed peace talks with Iran:  It is the inability of the Obama Administration to recognize the association of the former with the latter.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vociferously made known to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and to the U.S. Administration that the proposed agreement between the West and Iran was a “a very bad deal,” and that the Iranians “got everything and paid nothing.”

The egregiously bad timing and hollow content of those peace talks, the aim of which was to convince Iran to drop its weapons-grade nuclear development program, could not have been more muddled, shortsighted or untimely.

Did anyone in the Oval Office, the West Wing or the State Department ever consider how the memory of the events of November 9^th and 10^th, 1938, may have been rekindled 75 years later, evoking a visceral distrust and backlash by Netanyahu of the give-all, get-nothing deal with the Islamist leadership of Iran?

Last week, France came around to Netanyahu’s understanding of this matter, reversed course with the other five Western powers, stating that “the proposed measures did not go far enough,” and pulled out of the talks. 

On Sunday morning, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry put on the brakes, and negotiations collapsed.

I am appalled at how little background knowledge of modern social, military and diplomatic history this Administration seems to have or chooses to ignore. 

It appears to have no clue of how powerful a role – like it or not – that the religiously influenced cultural forces of The Middle East have on the contemporary world stage.