A lot of parallels to this and what happened with Kristallnacht in 1938.
Up to that point, for the last couple of years, since the imposition of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, it was rather a benign period for Jews in Nazi Germany, Hitler was more concerned with building up his war machine. The rabid anti-semites were getting restless, they sensed the anti-Jewish momentum was slowing down, they needed something to ratchet it back up...and then lo and behold in Paris, Herschel Grynszpan, a Jew, who just found out his entire family was deported to Poland from Germany, shoots some flunky, Ernst vom Rath.....Goebbels and his Propaganda Ministry, never wanting to let a crisis go to waste (sound familiar?), ratcheted up the Propaganda machine, and before you know it, the pogroms against the Jews started, and they didn’t stop until the end of the war.
Tyrants can always bank on the fact that many people are VERY easily led