Killing Hitler

In 1933 some American Jews made plans to kill Hitler. The American authorities, who learned of this, were worried, thinking it could be an international scandal for the German leader to be killed by Americans.

On 23 March 1933 a certain Daniel Stern wrote this letter to the German ambassador in Washington DC:

'Dear Sir,

I have asked President Roosevelt to protest to your government about the indignities being inflicted on the Jews in Germany and to end this persecution immediately and completely. In case the President makes no declaration, I inform you that I shall go to Germany to kill Hitler.

Cordially,

Daniel Stern.'

The Ambassador took this letter to the American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, and the Secretary passed the letter to the Attorney General, Homer Cummings. Although the German Ambassador, Friedrich Wilhelm von Prittwitz, resigned his post in April 1933 in protest at Hitler's becoming Chancellor, the German diplomats demanded that this threat be treated seriously.

On the one hand, President Roosevelt, newly elected to power and with the problem of the American Depression of those years on his mind, had no interest either in the persecution of the Jews of Germany or in Hitler's having become Chancellor. On the other hand, militants of the Jewish community held rallies in front of the German consulates in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and elsewhere. In this atmosphere the American Government took the threat seriously. So Attorney General Cummings turned to J. Edgar Hoover, then director general of investigations and later the founder of the F.B.I., the Federal Bureau of Investigation. To find Daniel Stern, who was an unknown gangster, they contacted the famous Jewish gangsters such as Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Dutch Schultz and Lepke Buchalter, but none of them had heard of Daniel Stern; on the contrary, they were quite eager to take part in this plot, but backed off because a plot of this kind could harm their clandestine activities.

In the F.B.I. archives, file no. 65-53615 explains very well and in great detail this plot, which was smothered by the American Justice Department, thereby saving Hitler's life until the end of the Second World War.

Source: Robert Rockaway, Claire Levenson