Fashion, Boycotts and War
An Analysis
Carrying on from last week’s newsletter, I thought I would discuss the boycotts on German goods undertaken by American and British merchants in response to the actions of Nazi Germany during the 1930s. This is a companion piece to that newsletter, rather than any kind of response to current economic sanctions and actions. Whereas last week I looked into how fashion magazines ignored the threat of war—even going so far as to write travel puff pieces about Nazi Germany—this is an analysis of how trade publications covered the real situation. From the moment that Hitler took office as chancellor, there were people aware of what he was doing and what he was capable of. Businesspeople tried to sound the alarm, using what was available to them—boycotts.
From their development in the 1870s, in Germany, the majority of department stores or Warenhaeuser were owned by Jews. Antisemitic attacks against the Warenhaeuser were common throughout their history—their success believed to be stealing customers away from smaller retailers. These antisemitic tendencies ramped up after 1927 when Joseph Goebbels began publishing anti-department store propaganda on the front page of his newspaper Der Angriff (The Attack). Nazis physically attacked department stores in Berlin and Vienna in the years leading up to 1933; during the holiday shopping season in 1932, “A group of national-socialists, the socalled ‘Nazis,’ in connection with their propaganda threw stink bombs and tear gas into various crowded store” in Vienna. Hitler was sworn in as chancellor on January 30, 1933. Emboldened by his leadership, young Nazis stepped up their anti-Jewish attacks.
On March 23rd, Women’s Wear Daily published this on their front page:
Most of the German department store men with whom I have talked consider relatively trivial the bankless day problems from which American retaildom is emerging, compared with the Hitler reign of terror. America's stores may have temporarily lost sales, they argue, but in Germany, in addition, lives of its retail executives still are at stake. At this writing the heads of numerous owners of long established German stores have fled the fatherland until the fanatic violence and persecution of their Jewish owners, so long identified with this country's commercial progress, have spent their force. Nazi enthusiasts are, for the most part, young men without employment and amok with power, brown-shirted, leather leggined and generally obnoxious in manner of approach. Without authority, other than the influence of Hitler's seizure of power, they have been smashing windows of the big stores here and elsewhere in Germany, maltreated customers, ransacked uni-price stores, which they condemn as enemies of small, independent retailers, and have, in affect, hurried to the nearest frontiers money-spending tourists who have been attracted by cleverly planned advertising propaganda overseas of an earlier regime to come to the peace and quiet of an orderly Germany.
The writer went on to describe how Nazis stood outside Jewish stores, stopping anyone who wanted to go in—demanding passports and refusing them entry, then turning to violence: “My questioner was occupied two minutes later applying a blackjack to the skull of the unfortunate whose papers and arguments didn’t seem to satisfy the pickets.” After weeks of these actions, Jewish groups began to come together. On March 20, 1933, fifteen-hundred representatives of various Jewish organizations met to consider a proposal by the American Jewish Congress to hold a protest meeting at Madison Square Garden on March 27, 1933. There was contention regarding whether or not a boycott of German goods would cause more trouble for German Jews, but both the boycott and the protest went forward. A series of protest rallies were held on the 27th, with the Madison Square Garden rally hosting an overflow crowd of 55,000 inside and outside the arena alongside parallel events in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and 70 other locations. The New York rally was broadcast worldwide. A boycott against German goods was also spreading across Britain and France. By the 28th of March, Jewish-owned department stores across the US had canceled “orders in Germany for millions of German steins intended for use in celebrating the return of beer” following the proposal of the 21st Amendment.
Nazi retribution was swift—Goebbels announced a one-day boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany to take place on April 1, 1933, which would be lifted if anti-Nazi protests were suspended. Goebbels then warned that if the anti-Nazi protests did not end, "the boycott will be resumed... until German Jewry has been annihilated.” The anti-Jewish boycott went forward and, now with authority, Nazi storm troopers stood menacingly outside department stores and posting signs on doors and windows emblazoned with slogans like "Don't Buy from Jews" and "The Jews Are Our Misfortune.” Though it only lasted one day officially, gentile German retailers were quick to take advantage of the situation—hanging signs “bearing the legend ‘Pure German.’” Jewish retailers found their bank accounts blocked as Nazi Germany began the process of nationalization and Aryanization, “a systemic program to replace their Jewish directors with Nazi committees…for the purpose of depriving Jewish owners of control of their businesses…” All of this was front-page news in Women’s Wear Daily, which also closely documented the retailers and manufacturers who fled.
In the early 1930s Leipzig was the center of the world fur trade—representing one-third of the world trade in furs, with the majority of those working in fur being Jewish. Many of the most important fur dealers—including Lassner, Gottfried, Siedelberg, Maly and Hubner—left Leipzig in April 1933. In 1929 Leipzig was importing 252 million marks of raw fur; in 1937, that was down to less than 40 million marks. By 1938 all Leipzig furriers were in Nazi hands. With fur in America being an equally Jewish-run industry, American furriers took action early in 1933 against Nazi actions—in addition to refusing to purchase fur imported from Germany, joint protests were held by the New York Fur Trimming Manufacturers Association, the Fur Dressers Factor Corp., the Fur Dyers Trade Council, and the Fur Trimming Salesmen’s Associations. The International Fur Workers’ Union adopted a resolution in 1935, condemning “every manifestation of Nazi government” and calling for all labor unions to boycott German goods. Fur dealers who went against the boycott and purchased skins from Germany were held accountable and forced to donate funds towards the assistance of victims of Nazi persecution.
In the summer of 1933, Hitler’s regime had consolidated all of the unions in Germany into fourteen basic unions, all under Nazi control. According to the former president of the German Clothing Workers’ Federation—who fled to the US and gave an interview to WWD—“Complete strangers now dominate the clothing unions, men who never worked in the trade.” Additionally, the Nazis banned all union meetings and abolished the right to strike. American unions and associations across all aspects of the fashion industry declared resolutions against Nazi Germany, universally calling for boycotts of German goods. The American Socialist Party held a mass picketing demonstration outside of Macy’s in January 1934, urging them to stop “selling goods of German manufacture” due to anti-Semitism as well as “the destruction of the labor movement in Germany.” Similar pickets occurred outside stores across the country.
Due to the widespread support for a boycott of German goods, American retailers sent scouts to Czechoslovakia, Belgium and Austria to look for replacements for the fashion products (primarily gloves) Germany was known for. Many German Jewish manufacturers who left early in 1933 had been able to move some machinery into Czechoslovakia, allowing them to restart their glove-making businesses there.
By 1937 WWD was reporting that “American business with German exporters continues at distressingly low ebb, finances of numerous manufacturers who once did a substantial trade with American retailers are shaky… Nazi manufacturers who were earlier inclined to belittle the effect of the boycott imposed by many American retailers against German merchandise, now openly admit its seriousness.”
As I wrote last week, on 12 March 1938, Hitler announced the unification of Austria with Nazi Germany in the Anschluss. Within two days WWD wrote that American buyers were cabling cancellations of $20,000 worth of orders (primarily of knitwear) to Vienna; taking inflation into account, each of these orders would be worth over $400,000 today. Buyers looked to Italy and Czechoslovakia but had “considerable difficulty locating in these countries merchandise to replace the goods of typical Viennese type… handmade knit goods, petit point bags, string gloves, wall tapestries and Viennese novelties…” British stores launched a similar boycott. Sir Frederick Marquis, the chairman of the department store group Lewis’s Ltd., announced to the press that “We have withdrawn our buyers from Germany and Austria, because we will not support a nation whose leader persecutes a peaceful and innocent people for no other reason that they belong to a certain faith.” He continued, “I am convinced that the economic factor is the only one that will bring the German nation to its sense, and if other large buyers of their goods would take similar action, I am sure that it would have a salutary effect on the policy Germany is now adopting.” Other stores refused to come out and announce they were boycotting—“on the argument that they don’t want to be involved in anything they broadly describe as politics”—but had stopped all orders.
With Hitler encroaching on Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia—under the guise that Czechoslovakia was slaughtering the Sudeten Germans—in the summer of 1938 Americans buyers began to cancel their orders. There were mixed feelings about whether these kinds of boycotts, taken before an act of war had occurred, would have a positive effect on the situation. As with the Nazi takeovers of Germany and Austria before, some retailers canceled in response to threats and rumors; other buyers believed that lower international orders (and therefore less money for workers) helped foment the ideal circumstances for Nazi takeovers. One source told WWD in July 1938, “Those Czechoslovakian linen manufacturers who had most of their export eggs in the American basket are complaining the loss of business from houses in the United States due to the uncertain political conditions surrounding Czechoslovakia may incur so much dissatisfaction among the workers in the linen centers that the cause of the German minority there is likely to be helped… The way it looked to me up there was that in withholding orders from Czechoslovakia because of some fear something or the other may happen, Hitler is being helped.” At that time the great majority of gloves, wood bead, and evening bags brought into the US from Europe were coming from the Sudeten district—these exports were believed to make up seventy percent of the area’s output. Manufacturers (if they could afford it) moved their factories from Sudetenland to more central Czech districts, while American buyers started to seek out Polish counterparts to Czech (and Austrian and German) merchandise. The Munich Agreement on September 30th gave Hitler the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia. Within days he had appointed Nazi commissars to take over non-Aryan factories there.
The boycott of Italian goods by American retailers in the pre-war period was significantly less than that of German. In December 1938, WWD shared: “One New York store which has not handled German goods for many years is understood to still be placing orders for Italian gift articles, gloves, and the like, but stipulating quick deliveries, apparently as a precaution against carrying over too large stocks if any strengthening of opposition by the American consumer to Italian merchandise develops. Buying agents just returned here from Florence and Milan are anything but optimistic regarding Italian commercial conditions and their feeling is that as the two totalitarian states, partners in the axis, are following the same policy, that it may only be a question of time before American purchases are substantially curtailed.”
The boycott of German, Austrian and Sudeten goods continued throughout 1939. On September 1, Germany invaded Poland; on the 3rd, France and Britain declared war on Germany.
All of the above boycotts and business choices were decided and taken by retailers, unions and associations, not by governments. No sanctions, no laws—simply people trying to do what was morally right, and through that having an impact on international economies. The loss of international trade and the lack of money to purchase raw materials had a large effect on the German economy. Within fashion, cotton gloves exports to America had gone from $4.4million in 1932 to less than $240,000 in 1937. In August 1936 Hitler instituted the Four Year Plan, a series of economic measures meant to provide for the rearmament of Germany and to make it self-sufficient within four years. Part of this was an increase in synthetic fiber production (for use in garments as well as things like tires), to make it no longer necessary to purchase natural fibers from other countries. These measures were funded primarily through deficit financing before the war—the plan was to cover these debts by conquering and plundering nations during and after the war.
Returning to last week’s newsletter: I can’t help but find it interesting that all of the above business decisions and machinations were occurring with the world of fashion retail, yet the major fashion magazines never alluded to them. Boycotts were never discussed, nor were the sudden changes in the availability of goods. I won’t guess at the reasons for this but am more pointing out the multitude of layers that exist within any one industry—similar to the complexity of what is occurring now with the Russia-Ukraine War and its fallout within fashion and the media. As Fiona Hill says at the end of this interview, these conflicts are something that we will be thinking about, talking about, grappling with for years to come.
I promise to return to lighter subjects for Friday’s newsletter and next week!
Great research, fascinating reading.