1933 anti-Nazi boycott

Events in Germany Following Adolf Hitler's appointment as German Chancellor in January 1933, an organized campaign of violence and boycotting was undertaken by Hitler's Nazi Party against Jewish businesses. The anti-Jewish boycott was tolerated and possibly organized by the regime, with Hermann Göring stating that "I shall employ the police, and without mercy, wherever German people are hurt, but I refuse to turn the police into a guard for Jewish stores". Prominent Jewish business leaders wrote letters in support of the Nazi regime calling on officials in the Jewish community in Palestine, as well as Jewish organizations abroad, to drop their efforts in organizing an economic boycott. The Association of German National Jews, a marginal group that supported Hitler in his early years, also argued against the Jewish boycott of German goods. US and UK: Plans for a boycott to advertise the boycott In Britain the movement to boycott German goods was opposed by the conservative Board of Deputies of British Jews. In the United States a boycott committee was established by the American Jewish Congress (AJC), with B'nai B'rith and the American Jewish Committee abstaining. At that point, they were in agreement that further public protests might harm the Jews of Germany. In a meeting held at the Hotel Knickerbocker on March 21 by the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America, former congressman William W. Cohen advocated a strict boycott of German goods, stating that "Any Jew buying one penny's worth of merchandise made in Germany is a traitor to his people." The Jewish War Veterans also planned a protest march in Manhattan from Cooper Square to New York City Hall, in which 20,000 would participate, including Jewish veterans in uniform, with no banners or placards allowed other than American and Jewish flags. March 27, 1933: A National Day of Protest A series of protest rallies were held on March 27, 1933, with the New York City rally held at Madison Square Garden with an overflow crowd of 55,000 inside and outside the arena and parallel events held in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia and 70 other locations, with the proceedings at the New York rally broadcast worldwide. Speakers at the Garden included American Federation of Labor president William Green, Senator Robert F. Wagner, former Governor of New York Al Smith and a number of Christian clergymen, joining in a call for the end of the brutal treatment of German Jews. Rabbi Moses S. Margolies, spiritual leader of Manhattan's Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, rose from his sickbed to address the crowd, bringing the 20,000 people in the arena to their feet with his prayers that the antisemitic persecution cease and that the hearts of Israel's enemies should be softened. Jewish organizations — including the American Jewish Congress, American League for Defense of Jewish Rights, B'nai B'rith, the Jewish Labor Committee and Jewish War Veterans — joined in a call for a boycott of German goods. ==Boycott==

The boycott began in March 1933 in both Europe and the US and continued until the entry of the US into the war on December 7, 1941. By July 1933, the boycott had forced the resignation of the board of the Hamburg America Line. German imports to the US were reduced by nearly a quarter compared with the prior year, and the impact was weighing heavily on the regime. Joseph Goebbels expressed that it was a cause for "much concern" at the first Nuremberg party rally that August. German pharmaceutical companies were particularly hit hard. As one example, nearly two-thirds of the 652 practicing Jewish doctors in Mandatory Palestine stopped prescribing German medicines. However at the same time, Zionists were brokering the Haavara Agreement with Germany to open trade in exchange for sending German Jews to Palestine. When German emigrants arrived in Palestine, they would receive a portion of their capital in the form of goods and the rest in pounds sterling. Both parties benefitted. For the Nazis, the agreement would drastically increase German Jewish emigration, fulfilling a central plank of their platform, while the capital purchases of German imports would help redeem the regime's promise to return the depression-ravaged economy to economic prosperity. For the Zionists, it would further their goals by helping populate Palestine with prosperous immigrants whose money could vastly improve the struggling economy. A significant event in the boycott took place on March 15, 1937, when a "Boycott Nazi Germany" rally was held in Madison Square Garden in New York City. Both inside and outside of Germany, the boycott was seen as a "reactive [and] aggressive" reaction by the Jewish community in response to the Nazi regime's persecutions; the Daily Express, a right-wing British newspaper, ran a headline on 24 March 1933 stating that "Judea Declares War on Germany". By the time the Second World War began, tens of thousands of Germans had emigrated to Palestine under the Haavara and more than 35 million dollars’ worth of Jewish capital had been transferred from Germany to Palestine. ==Nazi counter-boycott==

Nazi officials denounced the protests as slanders against the Nazis perpetrated by "Jews of German origin", with the Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels proclaiming that a series of "sharp countermeasures" would be taken against the Jews of Germany in response to the protests of American Jews. Goebbels announced a one-day boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany of his own to take place on April 1, 1933, which would be lifted if anti-Nazi protests were suspended. The Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses threatened by Goebbels occurred. Brownshirts of the SA were placed outside Jewish-owned department stores, retail establishments and professional offices. The Star of David was painted in yellow and black on retail entrances and windows, and posters asserting "Don't buy from Jews!" () and "The Jews are our misfortune!" () were pasted around. Physical violence against Jews and vandalism of Jewish-owned property took place, but the police intervened only rarely. ==Aftermath and legacy==

The boycott was not successful in ending the harassment of Jews in Germany, which instead continued to build towards the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the boycott campaign continued into 1939. ==See also==