The increasingly totalitarian regime that Hitler imposed on Germany allowed him to control the actions of the military . On November 7 , 1938 , a young Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan attacked and shot German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in the German embassy in Paris . Grynszpan 's family , together with more than 12,000 Polish-born Jews , had been expelled by the Nazi government from Germany to Poland in the so-called " '' Polenaktion '' " on October 28 , 1938 . Joseph Goebbels ordered retaliation . On the night of November 9 , the SS and SA conducted " the Night of Broken Glass " ( " '' Kristallnacht '' " ) , in which at least 91 Jews were killed and a further 30,000 arrested and incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps . After the start of the war , and the conquest of numerous European countries , the Jewish population was put into ghettos , from which they were shipped to death camps where they were killed
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Racial policy of Nazi Germany