After the Nazi Kristallnacht in Germany , November 1938 : Hentig ... expressed his shame , and willingly used his influence , at great personal risk , to protest a fresh action from starting ... . Hentig interceded with Under-Secretary of State Ernst von Weizsäcker , pointing out the detrimental effects of the riots on German foreign policy ... . Hentig ... did secure the release of ... arrested ... Jewish functionaries from concentration camps . As the Middle East historian Wolfgang G. Schwanitz of New Jersey proved in his research , Hentig did cultivate a bitter rivalry with another leading German envoy to the Middle East , Dr Fritz Grobba , because they did not share the same ideological opinions . This shaped the German Middle Eastern policy : Hentig obstructed the expansion of the Second World War to the Middle East . Whereas Grobba , an ardent Nazi , belonged in both world wars to the Foreign Office faction that favored the massive incitement of Muslims to jihad in the colonial hinterland of Britain , France , and Russia , Hentig and Niedermayer rejected it . During the First World War they both underwent a professional transformation in the German officer corps , and nationalist ideas spreading across the region played a part in the conduct of Hentig 's secret mission to Kabul , Afghanistan ; the Turkish declaration of war escalated racial tensions among the Ottoman-German conspiracy , seeking to launch a Holy War to counter the so-called Allied powers
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Werner Otto von Hentig