Chapter 9

Antisemitic Propaganda

To most of the western world, the knowledge of antisemitic sentiment in Germany during Hitler’s Third Reich and the ensuing Holocaust is a familiar historical fact. Yet how did Hitler manage to impress upon the German people that “Jewry” was secretly planning not only to undermine but to exterminate the Germans. According to him, any action taken against Jews in Germany, or elsewhere in the world, was not a wanton act of aggression but, rather, a justifiable act of self-defense.

In this chapter, we will examine the historical background of anti-Jewish sentiment and pogroms both internationally and in Germany. Understanding the past instances of Jewish persecution highlights the reality that the mistreatment, theft, and even murder of Jewish communities long existed prior to the National Socialist regime. We also take a look at the National Socialist regime’s deceitful efforts to portray everyday Germans as innocent victims and Jews as cunning and dangerous perpetrators. Additionally, we’ll demonstrate that Hitler’s form of antisemitism was based on racial animosity rather than the conventional religious intolerance.

Antisemitism in Antiquity

From the Assyrian Captivity around 740 BCE, the Jewish people’s harassment, persecution, relocation, expulsion, and massacre can be documented in Persia, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Greece, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, Arabia, North Africa, Yemen, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, England, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Hungary, Bohemia, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, and Austria.

There is evidence that Semitic peoples were forced to work as slaves in ancient Egypt,1 and a clear example of anti-Jewish sentiment can be traced back to Alexandria in the third century BCE.2 The Ancient Greek ruler Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem and banned Jewish religious practices, such as circumcision, Shabbat observance, and the study of Jewish religious books. Relations between the Jews in Judea and the occupying Roman Empire were antagonistic from the very start and resulted in several rebellions. It has been argued that European antisemitism finds its roots in Roman policy.3 When Christianity became the state religion of Rome in the fourth century, Jews became the object of religious intolerance and political oppression. This hostility was reflected in the edicts both of church councils and state laws. In the early fourth century, under the provisions of the Synod of Elvira, intermarriage between unconverted Jews and Christians was prohibited.

European Antisemitism in the Middle Ages

While Venice is renowned for its timeless charm and romantic canals, it also has a dark history for the Jewish community. It was here that the world’s first ghetto was established, and the quality of life for Jews in Venice was subject to the whims of those in power.4 Although Jewish merchants and moneylenders had been working in the city as early as the tenth century, Venetian captains were forbidden from accepting Jews on their ships in 945 and 992, respectively. Due to restrictions on where they could live, Jews established a community on the island of Spinalunga, now known as Giudecca, in 1252.5

In 1516, Venice’s ruling council, after debating whether Jews should be allowed to remain in Venice, decided to let them stay, but their residence would be restricted to Ghetto Nuova, a small, dirty island: the world’s first ghetto. The moniker ghetto stems from the Italian getto, signifying “casting,” or Venetian geto, meaning “foundry.” In February 2016, Venice marked the five hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the world’s first Jewish ghetto with a year-long commemoration including keynote speakers, concerts, exhibitions on Jewish life in Venice, workshops, art installations, conferences, and more.6 The program was aimed at bringing about world awareness of the historical persecution of the Jewish people and other minorities.

During the Middle Ages, Jewish people in Europe were subject to persecution, including forced conversions, expulsions, and killings. In the twelth century, some Christians believed that Jews possessed magical powers obtained from making deals with the devil, and this belief led to the appearance of Judensau (Jewish pig) images in Germany. The Crusades also resulted in the persecution and banishment of Jews from England, Spain, France, and Germany. In 1290, all Jews were banished from England, and in 1396, approximately one hundred thousand Jews were expelled from France. Similarly, in 1421, thousands of Jews were expelled from Austria. Many of those who were forced to leave their homes sought refuge in Poland.

German imperial authority, which was traditionally responsible for the protection of the Jews, temporarily collapsed during the period of dispute between two contenders to the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, King Adolf of Nassau and Duke Albert of Austria. During that time, in 1287, the unexplained death of a sixteen-year-old boy in the Rhineland was blamed on Jews, and in retaliation, some five hundred Jews were killed, followed by a series of blood libels.

Jews in the Franconian town of Röttingen were accused of having desecrated a consecrated host from the church. The local lord, a brute named Rintfleisch, assembled a mob and burned Röttingen’s Jews on April 20, 1298. Rintfleisch claimed to have been given a mandate from heaven to avenge the sacrilege and to decimate the Jews. Contemporary sources contend that the local lord of Röttingen was, in fact, burdened with debts to Jewish lenders. Rintfleisch and his mob traveled from town to town killing all the Jews they came upon, subsequently destroying the Jewish communities in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Würzburg, Bamberg, Dinkelsbühl, Nördlingen, and Forchheim. Nuremberg’s six hundred some Jews7 took refuge in the castle and were aided by Christian citizens, but Rintfleisch overpowered their defenses and slaughtered the Jews on August 1. The pogroms continued to spread from Franconia to Bavaria and on to Austria, resulting in the annihilation of 146 Jewish communities and the murder of about twenty thousand Jews.8

Ethnic Cleansing in the Fourteenth Century

The devastating plague known as the Black Death in Europe lasted from 1348 to 1351 and killed an estimated fifty million people, about 60 percent of Europe’s population.9 In the fourteenth century, people had no medical understanding of this devastating disease and were searching for an explanation. For centuries, Jews had often been targeted as scapegoats for society’s ills, and in the face of the growing pandemic, the rumor spread that Jews had caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells.10 This conclusion was possibly reached because Jews were less affected than others. The reason for their relative immunity was because Jews chose not to use the cities’ common wells11 or, in some cities, were isolated in ghettos with their own source of water.12 In addition, a number of Jewish rules promote cleanliness, such as washing hands before eating bread and after using the bathroom, as well as bathing once a week.13 Despite the lack of any evidence, Jews were often tortured until they “confessed” to having poisoned the wells.14

Now that “the culprits” for the Black Death had been found, massacres of Jews began in April 1348 in Toulon, southern France, followed by reprisals in Barcelona, Spain,15 and in Nuremberg, where 582 Jews were burned alive.16 The next year, persecution and massacres swept across Europe like wildfire, mainly in Germany, Switzerland, Northern Spain, and Flanders.17 Some two thousand Jews were burned alive in Strasbourg, even though the plague had not yet reached the city.18 During this period, over five hundred Jewish communities were destroyed in cities that included Frankfurt am Main, Cologne, and Mainz, where in the latter alone some three thousand Jews were murdered.19

By the end of 1349, the Rhineland pogroms subsided, but the bloodbaths of Jews continued near the Hansa townships of the Baltic coast as well as in Eastern Europe. By 1351, about 350 anti-Jewish pogroms had been carried out in these regions and over two hundred Jewish communities wiped out. The widespread persecution of Jews in Northern Europe forced many to migrate to Poland and Lithuania, where their descendants remained for the next six centuries.

During the Black Death period and its Jewish persecutions, Pope Clement VI attempted to protect the Jewish communities by issuing two papal edicts in 1348, stating that those who blamed the plague on the Jews had been “seduced by that liar, the Devil.”20 The pope urged the clergy to protect Jews and even offered them papal protection in the city of Avignon. Clement’s efforts, however, were opposed by the newly elected Holy Roman emperor, Charles IV, who decreed that the property of Jews killed in riots was forfeit, a ruling that resulted in local authorities viewing oppressive action against the Jewish communities as a means to financial gain.21

The period of the Black Death was not unique in history for the mass killing of Jews: just twenty years later, the Brussels massacre (1370) wiped out the Belgian Jewish community.22 Following the genocide of the Black Death period, Jews in all German towns continued to live in constant fear of persecution as many civil authorities implemented a plan of expulsion in their efforts to “solve the Jewish question.” By the end of the fifteenth century, only three major communities were left in the whole of Germany.23

In Europe, throughout the centuries, local rulers, as well as church officials, forbade the practice of numerous professions to Jews, forcing them into marginal roles considered socially inferior, such as tax and rent collecting or moneylending, occupations only tolerated as a “necessary evil.” Catholic doctrine maintained that lending money for interest was a sin and hence was a trade forbidden to Christians. Not being subject to this restriction, insofar as loans to non-Jews were concerned, Jews made this business their own, despite possible criticism of usury in the Torah and later sections of the Hebrew Bible. Sadly, this led to many negative stereotypes of Jews as insolent, greedy usurers, and the understandable tensions between creditors (typically Jews) and debtors (typically Christians) added to social, political, religious, and economic strains. Peasants who were forced to pay their taxes to Jewish tax collectors could see them as personally taking their money while remaining unaware of those on whose behalf these Jews worked.

While one generally associates the historic series of Inquisitions with Spain and Portugal, by 1255, with the exception of England and Scandinavia, these often violent inquiries were also actively implemented throughout Central and Western Europe. To start with, the Inquisition targeted only supposed Christian heretics, such as the Albigensians (aka Cathars) and did not affect the Jews. However, doctrinal disputes provided a pretext for persecuting Jews, and in 1242, the Inquisition condemned the Talmud and burned thousands of books. In 1288, the Inquisition’s first mass burning of Jews at the stake took place in Troyes, France.24

In 1481, the Inquisition arose in Spain and ultimately surpassed the medieval Inquisition, in both scope and intensity. Conversos (Secret Jews) and New Christians were targeted because of their close relations to the Jewish community: many of them were Jews in all but name. In hopes of destroying ties between the Jewish community and Conversos, the Jews of Spain were expelled in 1492 and fled to Portugal. However, a Spanish-style Inquisition was soon instituted in Portugal, and courts were set up in Lisbon and other cities. It was not until 1808, during the short reign of Joseph Bonaparte, that the Inquisition was finally abolished. An estimated 31,912 “heretics” had burned at the stake, 17,659 were burned in effigy, and 291,450 made reconciliations in the Spanish Inquisition. In Portugal, about forty thousand cases were tried, though “only” 1,800 were burned, the rest making penance.25

From the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries, the maligning of Jews and pogroms against the Jewish citizens of many European countries persisted. In Russia, for instance, a mix of pogroms and repressive legislation resulted in the mass emigration of Jews to Western Europe and the United States. Between 1881 and the outbreak of the First World War, an estimated two and half million Jews left Russia—one of the largest mass migrations in recorded history.

Vilifying the Jew in Art, Folklore, and the Press

For hundreds of years, anti-Jewish hatred permeated western art, politics, and popular culture. Throughout history, a biased perception of Jews and their culture was manifested in objects—from fine arts and crafts for the elite to everyday toys, knickknacks, and household items. A large number of these objects fostered damaging attitudes toward Jews and created deprecating stereotypes of them. Prejudiced views and discriminatory treatment of Jews have a shameful Europe-wide past and can be documented in countries from England to Italy and from Spain to Russia.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum mentions a few of the antisemitic themes used in various parts of Europe over the centuries. One of the recurrent myths was that of the “martyrdom” of Simon of Trent, which supposedly took place in Italy in the fifteenth century. In 1475, a two-year-old Christian boy named Simon was found dead. Shortly before Simon went missing, an itinerant Franciscan preacher had delivered a series of sermons in Trent in which he vilified the local Jewish community. After pinning Simon’s murder on the Jews, a myth soon became popular within the Catholic community according to which Jews were blamed for killing Christian children in a religious ritual. Over the centuries, the propagation of such “blood libel” accusations resulted in expulsions, executions, and mob attacks against Jews.

From the Middle Ages to the modern era, the dehumanization of Jews frequently portrayed them as vermin and various other animals—pigs in particular, probably because Judaism considers pigs unclean and forbids the consumption of pork. In the nineteenth century, European artisans commonly adorned everyday items such as ceramics, toys, and even walking sticks with caricatures of Jewish faces. Such walking sticks, of which the handle represented an exaggeratedly long nose, are examples of racial antisemitism becoming accepted as part of everyday life.

After medieval expulsions, Jews were only gradually readmitted to England starting in 1656. In 1753, Jews gained naturalization only to lose it the following year due to fierce public protest. In a move to malign England’s Jews, an eighteenth-century illustration in England featured a Jew holding some dentures in hopes of extracting a gold tooth from his patient.

In France, from 1892 to 1924, a rabidly antisemitic and racist illustrated newspaper was published with the slogan “La France aux Français!” (France for the French!). The paper was founded by the journalist Edouard Drumont, who claimed in an 1896 book, La France Juive (Jewish France), that Jews were responsible for everything that had gone wrong in France and were a threat to all good Frenchmen. In 1889, Drumont founded the Ligue Nationale Antisémitique de France (National French Antisemitic League), and he was elected to the national legislature in 1898.26

In Vienna in 1848, an antisemitic and antirevolutionary leaflet read,

There can be no mistaking the partiality of some Jews for a republican government form so as to come into unlimited possession of all civil rights (emancipation) and hence to achieve all the more certainly the most complete domination over you and even greater control of the state treasury and of the more lucrative positions. The Jew twists and turns, allows himself to be taunted and trodden on, deceives and pretends to be harmless and even supports a good cause merely to surreptitiously acquire popular favor so as to obtain profit and the customary interest from the victim of his cringing humility and with his innate arrogance to dominate and exert even greater pressure.27

Early Discrimination in the United States

During the late nineteenth century, Jews, along with Italians, Irish, and Eastern and Southern Europeans, encountered discrimination in employment, education, and social advancement in the United States. Organizations like the Immigration Restriction League labeled these new arrivals, along with Asian immigrants, as culturally, intellectually, morally, and biologically inferior. Despite facing these attacks, very few Eastern European Jews returned to Europe because their situation in the United States, despite the challenges they encountered, was still a marked improvement compared to their life in the Old World.

Beginning in the early 1880s, declining farm prices also prompted elements of the Populist movement to blame the perceived evils of capitalism and industrialism on Jews because of their alleged racial and religious inclination for financial exploitation and, more specifically, because of the perceived financial manipulations of Jewish financiers such as the Rothschilds.28 Antisemitism in the United States reached its peak from the 1920s to the 1930s but had strongly diminished by the time the United States entered World War II.

“Eastern” Jews

Prior to the First World War, popular antipathy and disdain toward Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, and particularly Eastern Jews was deeply ingrained in Germany. The country’s working-class population viewed these eastern neighbors as primitive and uneducated, and the pogroms against Jews in Russia under the tsars only served to reinforce this perception and engender a growing fear of invasion by these perceived “barbaric” easterners. A significant portion of Germans, including a notable number of educated Jews of the upper class, regarded Eastern Polish Jews as even more backward than their counterparts in other eastern states.29

The resentment toward Eastern Jews increased dramatically when a number of them fled to Germany to escape the pogroms during the Russian Civil War. From 1918 to 1920, a surge of mass killings decimated Jewish civilians, primarily in Ukraine, as a result of approximately 1,500 pogroms in over 1,300 localities, leading to the deaths of 50,000 to 250,000 Jews. By the 1930s, National Socialist propaganda only intensified the already existing xenophobia toward Slavs and Eastern Jews, causing many Germans, particularly among the younger population, to view them as subhuman.

The United States and the Holocaust

In the 1930s, the United States and other countries in the Western Hemisphere had the potential to save numerous Jews from Hitler’s Holocaust. Although the United States was not yet fully aware of the impending genocide, they were cognizant of the acts of violence and vandalism committed against Jews by Hitler’s regime, particularly following Kristallnacht in 1938, an outrage that prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue a statement of condemnation. Despite this, public opinion was not yet moved enough to allow Jews to find refuge in the country.30

In May 1939, 935 refugees, almost all of them German Jews, embarked on a voyage from Hamburg on the ship named St. Louis. While the vessel was bound for Cuba, the majority of Jewish passengers aimed to secure safety in the United States. Although most of them had already applied for U.S. visas, their intention was to relocate from Cuba to the United States once their visas became available. However, U.S. immigration laws during that time were strictly regulated, particularly for immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. Germany was granted a relatively generous quota, permitting up to twenty-seven thousand immigrants to be admitted annually. Despite this, the United States was much less generous in actually granting visas to German immigrants, most of whom were Jews, during the early years of the National Socialist dictatorship. Between 1933 and 1938, approximately thirty thousand German Jews emigrated to the United States, but the government issued only 30 percent of the visas that were legally available for Germans.31

Just prior to the departure of the St. Louis from Hamburg, Cuba suddenly altered its visa policy and declared that the previous admission documents would no longer be accepted, effective immediately. Jewish organizations in the United States attempted to negotiate with the Cuban government to allow the passengers in, but their efforts were unsuccessful. By early June, negotiations had broken down and the St. Louis was instructed to leave Cuban waters, leading it to sail toward Miami. However, U.S. officials had already announced that the ship would not be permitted to dock, leaving the St. Louis with no option but to return across the Atlantic Ocean. The refugees were then divided among various European countries, with only a few fortunate individuals being granted asylum in Great Britain. The rest went to the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, all of which would later be invaded by Germany and their Jews sent to concentration camps. Tragically, 254 of the passengers on the St. Louis perished in the Holocaust.32

The “Night of Broken Glass,” also known as Kristallnacht, was a shock to the world, and some countries, including Great Britain, took swift action to aid German Jews fleeing the National Socialist pogroms. With an estimated sixty thousand Jewish children in peril, the world looked to the United States, a nation founded by immigrants, to save thousands of these children from the brutality and persecution of the National Socialist regime. A few months later, a bipartisan bill was proposed to provide shelter to twenty thousand of these children, with thousands of American Jewish families offering to provide support and private funding covering the costs. However, the American public strongly opposed the proposal, with a Gallup poll in January 1939 showing that two out of three Americans were against bringing even ten thousand German refugee children into the country.33

Many people adopted an “America first” mentality when refusing refugees, believing that the country should prioritize helping its own needy and homeless citizens instead of accepting new arrivals. However, this attitude often blurred the line between “America first” and outright xenophobia. The wife of the U.S. immigration commissioner, who was also a cousin of President Roosevelt, stated that “20,000 charming children would all too soon grow into 20,000 ugly adults.” The bill passed out of committee on June 30, 1939, but there was no further interest in making it a law, and it was never acted on. After World War II, attitudes toward Jews changed, and the United States and the international community recognized the importance of assisting refugees.34

Lesson from a Franco-German

Among the nationalist writers who are believed to have had a formative influence on Hitler’s antisemitism is Paul Bötticher (1827–1891), later known as Paul de Lagarde (his mother’s family was French). Lagarde’s writings laid the foundations for many aspects of National Socialist dogma, in particular that of Alfred Rosenberg, the National Socialists’ ideologist. Lagarde contended that Germany should create a “national” form of Christianity purged of Semitic elements and maintained that Jews were “pests and parasites” who should be destroyed “as speedily and thoroughly as possible.” According to historian Timothy Ryback, Hitler left notes and markings in his personal copy of one of Lagarde’s works. In an essay titled “The Current Tasks of German Politics,” Lagarde anticipates the emergence of a “singular man with the abilities and energy” to unite the German peoples and calls for the “relocation of the Polish and Austrian Jews to Palestine.” This latter phrase was underlined and flagged by Hitler with two bold strikes in the margin.

Post–World War I: New Myths about the Jews

Prior to World War I, while Russia and Romania experienced anti-Jewish pogroms, there is no evidence of open violence against Germany’s Jewish population. However, German society had a strong sense of “insiders and outsiders,” with Jews often seen as the quintessential “other.” Despite having had equal rights since 1871, Jews were becoming increasingly successful in business, the arts, the press, law, and medicine during the Weimar Republic (1919–1933). Although the Jewish population in Germany was relatively small and primarily from the middle class, they were blamed for controlling the economy and were subject to severe prejudice, even being excluded from certain university fields of study. In the post–World War I years, antisemitism was widespread among many judges, army officers, conservative and radical right-wing politicians, teachers, and Protestant and Catholic clergy.35

The term “Judeo-Bolshevism” emerged in the early twentieth century to describe a purported Jewish-Communist conspiracy. The notion was popularized by National Socialists and other far-right groups as a justification for the persecution and murder of Jews and other minority populations. The concept alleged that Jews were disproportionately represented in the leadership of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and that they were using Communist ideology as a guise for a Jewish plot to rule the world.

National Socialist ideology portrayed Jews as the driving force behind the spread of Bolshevism and Communism and used this to justify the persecution and extermination of Jews. Hitler’s regime also spread this notion to other countries as a means of justifying Germany’s actions to the public and to mobilize support. The Judeo-Bolshevik myth was used not only to demonize Jews but to cast them as a threat to the nation and global society. Taken to its extreme, the concept was used as a justification for the Holocaust. Far-right and antisemitic groups in other countries also used the Judeo-Bolshevik fantasy to advance similar ideologies.

Throughout the twentieth century, the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism, as historian Paul Hanebrink notes, loomed over Europe. Despite the AudioVolumeDownunfounded and irrational belief that Communism was a Jewish scheme to destroy European nations, fears of a Jewish Bolshevik conspiracy gained traction during the Russian Revolution and spread throughout Europe. During World War II, Fascists, National Socialists, conservative Christians, and others across Europe who were terrified by Communism viewed Jewish Bolsheviks as enemies who crossed borders to subvert order from within and introduce harmful foreign ideas. Even in the years that followed, the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism remained a potent political weapon.

Walter Laqueur attributes the widespread dissemination of the Jewish Bolshevik conspiracy theory to Alfred Rosenberg, the ideological leader of the National Socialists. Rosenberg viewed Bolshevism as a rebellion of the Jewish, Slavic, and Mongolian races against the German (Aryan) element in Russia. According to Rosenberg, the Germans were responsible for Russia’s historical accomplishments and had been marginalized by the Bolsheviks, who did not act in the interest of the Russian people but instead represented the ethnic Jewish and Chinese populations.36

Growing Jewish Paranoia in Germany

Following his service in World War I, Hitler, like many others in Germany and Austria, was shocked by the defeat of the German Empire. The military high command began spreading the myth that the armed forces had not lost the war on the battlefield but rather due to a “stab in the back.”37 This was part of a series of new, frequently repeated antisemitic legends that circulated during and after the devastating loss of World War I, an unprecedented catastrophe that had claimed the lives of over three million Germans and Austrians, not to mention tens of millions of deaths worldwide. In the aftermath of the war, along with older prejudices, new stereotypes associated with the “behavior” of Jews were deliberately propagated. These myths included the following absurd contentions.38

A Race, Not a Religious Community

Under the guidance of Karl Mayr in the summer of 1919, Hitler was given the platform to express his antisemitic views, which until then had been rarely voiced. Unlike traditional anti-Jewish sentiment rooted in religious differences, Hitler introduced the idea that “Jewry is absolutely a race and not a religious community.” He argued that Jews were a “non-German, foreign race” living among Germans and infecting Germany with their materialism. While Hitler’s antisemitic opinions were not entirely new in nature, they did not align with the most prevalent form of antisemitism at the time, which was anti-Bolshevik Jew hatred, but instead were principally directed against “Jewish finance capitalism.”39 From the outset, Hitler would employ these beliefs as the foundation for his campaign against Jews, ultimately justifying the Holocaust with these xenophobic convictions.

During Germany’s inflation years, when the Reichsmark’s value steadily plummeted, the country became inundated with fake paper money that carried political criticism of the Weimar Republic’s ineptitude. In September 1923, one-thousand-mark notes were widely distributed bearing a decidedly hateful text: Der Jude nahm uns Silber, Gold und Speck / Und gab uns dafür den papiernen Dreck! (The Jew took our silver, gold, and bacon in exchange for this paper filth). Ahead of the elections, another version of the same message was printed, again on fake one-thousand-mark bills, that translated as “Gold, Silver, and Bacon were once taken from us by the Jew who left us this filth. Comrades, how long do you want to let yourself be plundered and cheated by the Marxists and Jews? No votes for the Marxist and Jewish Parties: Vote List 1.” The counterfeit money’s message was intended to scare voters into choosing Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Worker’s Party.40

The National Socialists considered the creation of the Weimar Republic to be the work of the Jews and to be alien to the German Reich and even detrimental to its interests. Perceptions of Jewish conspiracy of this type found their roots in late nineteenth-century European and Russian literature such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which portrayed the Jews as having crafted an international league that was secretly plotting to control the world.41

Among the accusations made against Jews, allegations of sexual misconduct were particularly harmful. Detractors have claimed that such behavior has its roots in the Old Testament, particularly through the sexual exploits of ancient Jewish kings like David and Solomon. During the Weimar Republic, however, the focus shifted to the supposed involvement of Jews in the sex trade, including brothels and the white-slave trade, as well as in the seedy world of nightclubs, cabarets, and light operetta. Furthermore, Jews were accused of propagating what was considered pornography in literature, with works by authors such as Schnitzler, Sternheim, and Wedekind being cited as examples. As a result, one of the central fictional narratives presented in National Socialist literature after 1933 was the notion of Jews being driven by insatiable lust and their desire to impregnate young Aryan women through any means of seduction, which was depicted as ritualistic.42

Germany’s Jews in 1933

A significant portion of Jewish Germans resided in major cities, with nearly one-third of Germany’s Jewish population or an estimated 160,000 to 180,000 individuals residing in Berlin. Of the Jewish population in Germany, four out of five held German citizenship, while the remaining individuals were Polish or held citizenships of other Eastern European countries. Similar to their counterparts in Austria, the majority of Jews in Germany were well educated and had achieved financial success in professions such as law and medicine. They also pursued careers in fields such as education, the arts, the press, finance, civil service, and as shop owners, among others.

Only a few months after coming to power, the National Socialists enacted a law allowing the firing of Jewish civil servants, but President Hindenburg managed to include a clause protecting Jewish war veterans as well as those appointed by the emperor before 1914. Although the majority of Jews in Germany belonged to the middle class and held moderate to conservative political views, Hitler falsely believed that they were subversive and parasitic. Blaming the Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I, he sought revenge by commanding the SA to assault the Jews in Berlin. Jewish professionals such as judges and lawyers, and any other Jews the brownshirts could round up, were beaten with rubber truncheons, while synagogues were vandalized and Jewish-owned businesses were boycotted. By the end of June 1933, about forty Jews had been killed by the SA.43 These overt acts of violence carried out by the National Socialists garnered significant international attention and motivated about thirty-seven thousand Jews to flee Germany in 1933 alone.44

National Socialism versus Jewry

Blaming the Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I was a building block that Hitler set in place in his subsequent construction of an edifice of imaginary evidence he would present to incriminate the Jews. In the 1920s and early 1930s, Germany still found itself in the throes of a major economic crisis and, according to the National Socialists, expelling the Jews was the solution to the nation’s problems. In February 1920, Hitler announced his party’s twenty-five-point plan, number four of which clearly predicted National Socialist intentions: “Only a national comrade can be a citizen. Only someone of German blood, regardless of faith, can be a citizen. Therefore, no Jew can be a citizen.”

Though in the ensuing years Hitler’s rhetoric often identified the Jews as the cause of Germany’s problems, he toned down his antisemitic diatribes during the year preceding his appointment as chancellor. Again in the mid-1930s, in an aim to show himself in Germany and abroad as a man of peace, Hitler kept in check his public tirades against the Jews. This comparative moderation came to an end with the 1937 Nuremberg rallies, during which he revived his vicious Jewish threats. For the first time, he declared before a large audience that “Jewry” was intent on “exterminating” Germany’s “national intelligentsia.” At the 1938 Nuremberg rallies, he alleged that “the Jewish world enemy” was attempting to “annihilate the Aryan states.” By the time World War II began a year later, the National Socialist regime had flooded the nation with antisemitic propaganda and legislation.45

“Educating” Germany’s Youth

Within months of Hitler’s rise to power, by April 1933, no Jewish teachers remained in Germany’s public schools and universities. After segregation, however, some schools were opened for Jewish children and led by Jewish teachers, and with each passing year, more Jewish schools were constructed and more Jewish families emigrated, so that by 1938 only 27 percent of the 27,500 Jewish children in Germany attended public schools.

Within the education system, Jewish children became an object of ridicule, from both their fellow schoolmates and their teachers. They were sent to the back of the classroom to emphasize their inferiority to Aryan children.46 Instruction on “racial purity” became compulsory in German schools, and teachers would often single out Jewish students to use as examples during “biology classes” that focused on “racial hygiene.”

In Third Reich Germany, schools applied propaganda to brainwash children with National Socialist ideology. Textbooks and posters relayed to German youth the importance of racial consciousness and the premise that Jews were aliens in Germany. They reiterated the message of the racial inferiority of Jews as well as the superiority of the German peoples.47 As outlined in the National Socialist newspaper Der Stürmer, the “teacher’s manual” detailed the instruction of racial theory, including the topic of the so-called Jewish problem. Intermarriage between Germans and Jews was portrayed as unnatural because it did not follow the natural biological order, which does not allow for intermixing: storks mate with storks; swallows mate with swallows, and so on.48

The teacher’s manual essentially dictated a policy of aversion to Jews. In order to make the status of the Jew as the “deadly enemy of everything German” as concrete as possible to German children, the manual suggested that pictures of Jews (who must appear ugly or distorted) be displayed on the board side by side with pictures of ideal German stereotypes. From the visual differences, other differences were inferred. “The Jews walk differently than we do. They have flat feet. They have longer arms than we do. They speak differently than we do.”49

From denigrating the Jew to projecting him as an enemy of the German people is a short and easy step. The Jew was conveyed as an infiltrator who, once he was established in German society and had seized both political and economic power, was now set on the annihilation of the German people. In view of the ever present and imminent Jewish threat to the “unsuspecting” German population that, according to the National Socialists, had been tricked and deceived by the Jews, the Nuremberg Laws could be perceived as a reasonable act of self-defense.50

Germans being of Christian faith, another powerful propaganda tool for use in the classroom was the introduction of religious elements. The teacher was to propagate the idea that being Jewish is, by extension, to be a Christ-killer and, therefore, deemed criminal. In this light, Jesus is viewed as a hero who waged war against the Jews until he was ultimately killed by them. Children were provided with blatantly hateful slogans to learn and recite, such as, “Judas, the Jew, betrayed Jesus the German, to the Jews.” The teacher’s manual closes with a perspective of world history that denounces Jews as contributors to the destruction of major civilizations such as Egypt, Persia, and Rome.51

Throughout Germany, children’s books were twisted in such a way as to instill hatred for Jews at a young age. These books contained disparaging and clichéd illustrations of Jewish people, who were usually depicted as stocky, with a bent posture, dark hair, an abundance of coarse body hair, dark and bulging eyes, a large crooked or bent nose, drooping eyelids, a hanging lower lip, and a heavy beard.52

In 1936, National Socialist organizations distributed one hundred thousand copies of a perfidious children’s picture book, mainly to kindergartens and schools. Produced by Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer publishing house, the text, written in rhyme, displays images of strong, hardworking, clichéd “Aryan” Germans as opposed to stereotypical “ugly and evil” Jews whose only goal is to profit from the nation. The text states that the Jew’s father is the devil, attempts to vilify the Jew as a profiteer and manipulator, recommends no longer buying from Jewish shops, claims that the Jews’ departure from Germany is the solution, promotes a glorious image of the Hitler Youth, and claims that (we children) should love the Führer, fear God, and despise the Jew. The last picture in the book depicts a line of Jews on the road passing below a sign that reads “One Way Street,” “Hurry, Hurry,” and “The Jew is our Misfortune.” The book’s title, Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud bei seinem Eid (Trust No Fox on His Green Heath and No Jew on His Oath), was a play on Martin Luther’s rhyme in his 1543 anti-Judaic treatise On the Jews and Their Lies: “Don’t trust a Jew’s oath or a wolf on a green heath.”53

In 1938 another Der Stürmer children’s book, often actively employed in schools, was Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom). The content alludes to how, just as it is difficult to tell a poisonous mushroom from an edible mushroom, it can be tough to tell a Jew apart from a Gentile. The book is camouflaged as a warning to German children about the dangers purportedly posed by Jews to them personally and to German society as a whole.

Figure 9.1. Children’s book: The Fox and the Jew (1936). Courtesy of USHMM
Figure 9.2. Children’s book: The Poisonous Mushroom (1938). Courtesy of USHMM

In some instances, it is implied that Jews will try to molest children, Communism is led by Jews who wish to sacrifice Germany to Russia’s power, wealthy Jews abuse their German servants, Jewish butchers torture animals to death, Jews kidnap Christian children to use their blood in the making of matzohs, the Talmud discourages Jews from performing manual labor (they should engage in trade instead), non-Jews are meant to be slaves, and Talmudic law allows Jews to cheat non-Jews and requests Jews to enslave the non-Jewish population.

In the story, the main character—a young boy called Hans—is required by his mother to learn the following poem by heart:

A devil goes through the land,

It’s the Jew, well known to us

as a murderer of peoples,

a race defiler, a child’s horror in all lands!

Corrupting our youth

stands him in good stead.

He wants all peoples dead.

Stay away from every Jew,

and happiness will come to you!54

Der Pudelmopsdachelpinscher (The Poodle-Pug-Dachshund-Pincher) was another picture storybook written by the same author as The Poisonous Mushroom. Using animals and insects, Hiemer created stories in which contemptible behavior in animals and insects is applied to Jewish people. The book’s title refers to a repugnant mix of breeds (races) that exemplifies the Jew as opposed to the German’s pure-bred heritage. In Hiemer’s book, again published by Julius Streicher, Jews are the drones of society because they live from the labor of others; like the cuckoo, they steal other peoples’ homes and, like the hyaena, they prey on the wounded or weak. Other creatures, such as the locust, the bedbug, the viper, and the tapeworm, also serve to describe Jews’ behavior.

The vile narrative escalates to compare the Jews to a deadly bacteria that must be eliminated before it wipes out the human race. The author’s narrative concludes by exhorting young Germans, as Germany’s last hope, to save a world under siege by a Jewish plague.55 This highly repugnant work, aimed at poisoning children’s impressionable young minds, was distributed in 1940, a time when the Third Reich began its unrestrained persecution of Europe’s Jewish population—in Poland in particular.

The National Socialist indoctrination program’s highest priority was to target Germany’s young. By 1937, 97 percent of all teachers had become members of the National Socialist Teachers’ Union.56 In addition to the brainwashing of children and adolescents carried out in school, both boys and girls were required to participate in extracurricular programs of Hitler Youth from the ages of ten through eighteen, by the means of which National Socialist ideology and racism could be further instilled into these youths’ minds and emotions.

Beginning in 1937, twelve elite boarding schools of the SS were in operation—three for girls and nine for boys aged fourteen to eighteen. These institutions’ goal was to indoctrinate young people into National Socialist ideology above and beyond that which was taught in regular public schools. Students were carefully selected according to their physical fitness, as well as their political convictions, rather than for their intellectual strengths, and the curriculum revolved around political indoctrination as opposed to academic subjects. Many of the pupils were singled out by the SS staff as future officers.57

Another similar educational institution here was the network of boarding schools called the National Political Institutes of Education, or “Napola.” These institutions operated independently from all other German secondary schools and their pupils were meant to aspire to Germany’s future leadership. They were given political, administrative, and military education in the guidelines of National Socialism and were to become “efficient in body and soul for the service to the people and the state.” Until the beginning of the war, the thirty-seven established Napolas served as strong politically and racially focused preparatory schools. During the war years, they gradually transformed their mission into training schools for future Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS.

The name Ordensburg, meaning “order castle” and borrowed from the historical Teutonic Order, was used to designate three castle-like educational institutions for postsecondary students who had already completed one of the Adolf Hitler schools, six months of compulsory labor-service training, two years of military service, and had chosen their profession. Reminiscent of medieval times and the valor of knighthood, these schools were designed to produce future elite National Socialist Party leaders through three to four years of rigorous physical, ideological, and racial-bias training.58 Many of the graduates were later deployed to German-occupied territories in Eastern Europe, where they assumed high-ranking political positions. In these roles, they were responsible for expropriating the native inhabitants of those territories and resettling them with new German occupants. They were effectively fulfilling the mission that they had been trained for during their years of indoctrination: establishing and expanding the realm of the “master race.”59

Delivering the Message through the “News”

“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth,” is a rule of propaganda often ascribed to Joseph Goebbels. Among psychologists, a phenomenon like this is known as the “illusion of truth” effect.60

The National Socialist propagandists dramatically stepped up antisemitism in Germany by raising the traditional, age-old denunciation of the Jews from a national to a global level. The new centralized high command of hate now presented its belief that the Jews were an interconnected politically active group, united on a global scale by racial bonds that transcended adherence or loyalty to individual nations. International Jewry, as the National Socialists saw it, was a formidable and self-governing entity that manipulated the world’s leaders like puppets, in order to achieve their selfish and evil goals. These so-called world leader “stooges” included Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin.61

The National Socialist propaganda machine was not just geared to exclude Jews from Germany but presented to the nation, and the rest of the world, the notion that the German people represented the saviors of humanity. Thanks to their bravery in confronting this “world threat” and their dedication to the noble and necessary mission of eradicating the entire world’s Jewish population, the Germans would not only succeed in doing the human race a favor but should be thanked for their services. A great difference between traditional antisemitism and the National Socialists’ worldview was their inculcation of an element of urgency and the need to act swiftly in the face of the imminent danger of being overcome and destroyed by world Jewry.

As already explored, expounding this “urgent” message was implemented first and foremost through racially biased education of children and young people. The press served as the next mass medium through which Hitler could establish and proliferate his National Socialist ideology. This belief was not solely one of racial hatred but emphasized the salvation of the German people from the edicts of the Versailles Treaty, as well as from the misguidance and dangers they had experienced during the fourteen topsy-turvy years of the Weimar government. The wrongs were being redressed, safety and long-lasting peace would be ensured through the rebuilding of Germany’s armed forces, and the National Socialists promised long-term goals of employment, social welfare, and wealth for the nation. Above all, the pride that the German people had lost after the Great War was rapidly being restored. Plainly speaking, solving the “Jewish Question” was part of an all-inclusive package deal offered to the German people by the National Socialist Party.

As the National Socialists controlled all media in Germany and most Germans were literate, publications were their easiest instrument of mass deception. Even though Goebbels directed the Reich’s Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, it was Reich’s Press Chief Otto Dietrich who worked in Hitler’s office on a daily basis, relaying to his boss an account of the international news first thing each morning. Dietrich then transmitted Hitler’s recommendations to the press staff in Berlin as to what altered and filtered version should be printed for the German reader. During the war years, tens of thousands of such “press directives” were passed along orally or in writing to the daily press conference in Berlin and, subsequently, to thousands of newspapers and periodicals.62

In a period when freedom of the press did not exist, several large National Socialist newspapers prevailed. Julius Streicher’s viciously antisemitic Der Stürmer reached a circulation ceiling of four hundred thousand, whereas Das Reich rose to become the foremost journal read by Germany’s political and intellectual strata. Der Völkische Beobachter, with a circulation of 1.4 million in 1944, was the National Socialists’ principal newspaper from 1920 till the end of the war. As a prolific antisemitic writer, Goebbels produced hundreds of articles that regularly featured on the paper’s front page.

Visual Antisemitic Propaganda

AudioVolumeDownThe National Socialist Parole der Woche Wandzeitungen (Word of the Week wall newspapers) was perhaps the most effective propaganda medium of all. This combination of text, imagery, and photographs was distributed weekly in hundreds of thousands of copies and posted in the most frequented public locations.63 It was a unique blend of news editorial, political pamphlet, intrusive poster, and tabloid journalism aimed at shaping the opinions of Germany’s society on a daily basis. In the Third Reich, one could choose not to read a paper, listen to the radio, or watch a movie, but the “Word of the Week” was an ever-present opinion-shaping onslaught that could not be avoided. Market squares, subway stations, bus stops, hospital waiting rooms, factory cafeterias, hotels, restaurants, post offices, train stations, schools, and streets were plastered with a modified version of the news, particularly during the war years, as well as the leadership’s message of racial hatred.64

As early as 1928, National Socialists embraced antisemitic elements as components of their electoral campaigns. A 1928 electoral poster depicted a fisted arm, bearing a swastika armband, knocking down a naked red man that corresponded to their concept of a standard Jewish caricature. The text translates as “Vote List 10. Strike a blow! National Socialist German Workers’ Party (swastika symbol) Hitler Movement (swastika symbol).”65

A 1932 electoral poster featured an industrial structure in the shape of a monumental swastika and a larger-than-life muscular man with rolled-up sleeves and Aryan features. The man looked down at a Jew who was whispering in the ear of a Marxist, among other opposing party caricatures. The text translates as “We workers have awakened. We vote for List 2, National Socialists.”66

A poster promoting the “Aryanization” of German businesses (1936–1937) depicted a shopkeeper in the doorway of his store, kicking out a long-bearded, hat-wearing Jewish peddler. The shop front was marked Deutsches Geschäft (German store) and the text translates as “Out, with Jewish haggling.”67

To advertise Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), a 1937 antisemitic “art” exhibition in Munich that attracted some 412,000 visitors, a poster depicted an “eastern” Jew wearing a kaftan and holding gold coins in one hand and a whip in the other.68

Antisemitic propaganda and the systematic persecution and mass murder of Jews greatly increased during the war years. The new archenemy became “the Jew” who, according to the media, directed “Bolshevism” and “western plutocratic” nations. The evil nemesis—world Jewry—aimed at destroying civilization, enslaving Germans among other Europeans, and ensnaring the entire world in its scheming web. A 1942 poster depicted a wealthy Jew wearing a bowler hat and peeking out craftily from behind a curtain made of the assembled flags of Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union.69

Figure 9.3. Propaganda poster: “The Eternal Jew” (1937). Courtesy of USHMM

In 1941 Goebbels seized the opportunity of an event that would even further legitimize the Reich’s act of “defense” against the Jewish attacks. A self-published book written by an American Jewish theater ticket salesman in New Jersey called Theodore Kaufman and titled Germany Must Perish recommended the slow genocide of the entire German population through the forced sterilization of all Germans. The 104-page book also advocated the territorial dismemberment of Germany at the close of World War II, assuring that this would achieve world peace.

Though the book received relatively little attention in the United States, its very existence was used by the Third Reich as the driving force for a new campaign by which the Jews were allegedly plotting the genocide of the German people. Kaufman’s single-handed attack on German wrongdoing was blown completely out of proportion by the Reich, resulting in new measures directed against Germany’s Jews. All Jews were now forced to wear a yellow armband with the Star of David and the word Jude (Jew), while posters were pasted up on which the armband symbol was represented and which read, “Whoever wears this symbol is an enemy of our people.”70

Figure 9.4. Propaganda poster: “Behind Enemy Powers: the Jew” (ca. 1942). Courtesy of USHMM

Hitler, resolute in his paranoid belief in a Jewish conspiracy that aimed to wage a war of genocide against the supposed “innocent Germans,” expressed his delusion through two posters. Produced and distributed in 1943, one of them depicts a sinister-looking Jewish man hiding behind a curtain that is being pulled aside by a muscular hand and arm, surrounded by angry fists in a landscape of flames. The poster’s text reads, “The Jew: Instigator and Prolonger of the War,” emphasizing the supposed truth about the true cause of the conflict. The other poster featured a giant finger pointing down accusingly at a cowering Jew in a top hat, wearing the Star of David badge, with the text, “He bears the guilt for the war!” This image aimed to place the blame for the conflict solely on the Jewish people.71

Easy Reading and Easy Listening

With a similar mission, leaflets and pamphlets also served to convey National Socialist doctrine to the masses. Widely distributed antisemitic flyers or booklets bore titles that are self-explanatory as to the nature of the content: “Why the Aryan Law” (1934), “Our Battle against Judah” (1935), “When You See This Symbol” (1941), “The Jews in World Politics” (1942), “The Jewish World Parasite” (1943), and “Germany Overcomes Jewry” (a training guide for girls of the Hitler Youth) (1944).72 In addition, countless racially biased booklets and antisemitic articles in periodicals were published and distributed by a number of National Socialist–related organizations.

Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess, Robert Ley, and numerous Gauleiters exploited large gatherings, such as the Nuremberg party rallies among other mass events, to disseminate their anti-Jewish ideas through hundreds if not thousands of speeches. To easily reach an even larger audience, the radio served as an ideal medium of mass indoctrination of the German people while in the comfort of their home, in their workplace, or even in public squares where loudspeakers were set up for “special broadcasts” delivered by the leaders.

Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels realized the great indoctrination potential of the relatively new medium of the radio and requested the development of an affordable radio receiver, the Volksempfänger. It was to be mass-produced and sold at very affordable prices—even in installments—so that just about everyone in Germany would soon own one. By 1934 Germany could boast the largest number of radios per capita in the world.

In Albert Speer’s last speech during the Nuremberg trials, he stated:

Hitler’s dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made the complete use of all technical means for domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and loudspeaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man.73

Vilifying the Jew on the Silver Screen

During the twelve years of the Third Reich, Germans were enthusiastic cinemagoers. Well over a thousand films were produced during that time, all of which were thoroughly controlled for ideological content by Goebbels’s Ministry of Propaganda. Many of the movies and documentaries were commissioned or even produced by the National Socialist Party and geared to legitimize and justify the regime’s actions.

In Hitler’s war against what he perceived as the slayer of civilizations, an unimaginable amount of energy and resources was spent on instilling hatred for the Jew in German public opinion. For a perceived Jewish threat that represented less than 1 percent of Germany’s population at the time of his accession to power, it would seem that the National Socialists’ tidal wave of antisemitic propaganda was overkill. Its effectiveness, however, helped to present the war as justifiable defense measures and the expulsion—later “elimination”—of Jews as a necessary evil.

Notes

1. Philippe Bohstrom, “Were Hebrews Ever Slaves in Ancient Egypt? Yes,” Haaretz, March 25, 2021, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2021-03-25/ty-article/were-hebrews-ever-slaves-in-ancient-egypt-yes/0000017f-f6ea-d47e-a37f-fffeebef0000.

2. Edward H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Anti-Semitism (New York: Macmillan, 1965).

3. Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations (London: Penguin, 2007).

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Martin Schieber, Nuremberg, the Medieval City: A Short Guide (Nuremberg: Sandberg Verlag, 2009), 44.

8. Haim Beinart, Carta’s Atlas of the Jewish People in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem: Carta, 1981).

9. Ole Benedictow, “The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe Ever,” History Today, March 2005.

10. Gabriel Wilensky, “Blaming the Jews for the Black Death Plague,” https://sixmillioncrucifixions.com/blaming-the-jews-for-the-black-death-plague/.

11. Diane Zahler, The Black Death (Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century Books, 2009), 64.

12. Joseph Byrne, Encyclopedia of the Black Death (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012), 1:15.

13. “The Black Death,” JewishHistory.org, https://www.jewishhistory.org/the-black-death/.

14. Zahler, Black Death, 64.

15. Ibid., 13.

16. Schieber, Nuremberg, the Medieval City, 44.

17. Máttis Kantor, Codex Judaica: Chronological Index of Jewish History (New York: Zirchon Press, 2005), 203.

18. Robert S. Gottfried, The Black Death (New York: Free Press, 1983), 74.

19. Ibid.

20. Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1991), 1:1404.

21. Howard N. Lupovitch, Jews and Judaism in World History (London: Routledge, 2009), 92.

22. Mordecai Schreiber, The Shengold Jewish Encyclopedia, 4th ed. (Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade, 2011).

23. Richard Gottheil and Joseph Jacobs, “Black Death,” JewishEncyclopedia.com, https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3349-black-death.

24. “Christian-Jewish Relations: The Inquisition,” Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-inquisition.

25. Ibid.

26. “500 Years of Antisemitic Propaganda: The Katz Ehrenthal Collection,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/collections-highlights/500-years-of-antisemitic-propaganda.

27. Permanent exhibit, Vienna Jewish Museum, November 2020.

28. Peter Knight, Conspiracy Theories in American History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003).

29. Evans, Third Reich at War, 103.

30. Dara Lind, “How America’s Rejection of Jews Fleeing Nazi Germany Haunts Our Refugee Policy Today,” Vox, January 27, 2017, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/27/14412082/refugees-history-holocaust.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid.

35. “The Weimar Republic,” FacingHistory.org, https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/weimar-republic-0.

36. Walter Laqueur, Russia and Germany: A Century of Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1990), 33–34.

37. “Antisemitism: Why Did Hitler Hate the Jews?,” AnneFrank.org, https://www.annefrank.org/en/topics/antisemitism/why-did-hitler-hate-jews/.

38. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Antisemitism in History: World War I,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism-in-history-world-war-i.

39. Weber, Becoming Hitler, 119–21.

40. Uli Röhm, Das Große Buch vom Geld (Halle: Projekte-Verlag Cornelius, 2010).

41. Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 59–60.

42. Kater, Culture in Nazi Germany, 153–54.

43. Evans, Third Reich in Power, 15.

44. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Germany: Jewish Population in 1933,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/germany-jewish-population-in-1933.

45. Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006), 49.

46. Mary Mills, “Propaganda and Children during the Hitler Years,” Nizkor Project, https://web.archive.org/web/20170501233300/http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/m/mills-mary/mills-00.html.

47. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Antisemitism in History: Indoctrinating Youth,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/indoctrinating-youth.

48. Ibid.

49. Mills, “Propaganda and Children.”

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid.

53. “Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid,” Moopenheimers Museum, https://moopenheimer.com/2017/03/11/trau-keinem-fuchs-auf-gruener-heid/.

54. Ernst Hiemer, Der Giftpilz (Nuremberg: Verlag Der Stürmer, 1938), 31.

55. Mills, “Propaganda and Children.”

56. Ibid.

57. Rita Steinhardt Botwinick, A History of the Holocaust: From Ideology to Annihilation, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001), 106.

58. Lisa Pine, Education in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Berg, 2010).

59. Klaus Ring and Stefan Wunsch, eds., Bestimmung Herrenmensch: NS-Ordensburgen zwischen Faszination und Verbrechen (Dresden: Sandstein Verlag, 2016), 288.

60. Tom Stafford, “How Liars Create the Illusion of Truth,” BBC, October 26, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161026-how-liars-create-the-illusion-of-truth#:~:text=Repetition%20makes%20a%20fact%20seem,to%20the%20Nazi%20Joseph%20Goebbels.

61. Herf, Jewish Enemy, 7–10.

62. Ibid., 13.

63. Ibid., 12–21.

64. Ibid., 14.

65. Luckert and Bacharach, State of Deception, 43.

66. Ibid., 44.

67. Ibid., 68.

68. Ibid., 89.

69. Ibid., 102–103.

70. Ibid., 128–29.

71. Herf, Jewish Enemy, 222–23.

72. Randall Bytwerk, “Nazi and East German Propaganda: Guide Page,” https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/.

73. “Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Volume 22,” Avalon Project, Yale Law School, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/08-31-46.asp.