THE Leader’s charismatic power has to derive from somewhere, from God or the tribe. In National Socialist theory its source is in the racial people. Rare is the National Socialist utterance that does not claim that all power is derived from the people. We have seen that Carl Schmitt’s ‘tripartite’ political scheme aroused sharp criticism because it deviated on this point, assigning an inferior, unpolitical part to the people.
What, then, do the German National Socialists understand by the ‘racial people’ and why do they stress its supremacy? Why do they so deliberately avoid using the current term ‘nation’?
Races exist, there is no denying it, and a race may be defined as a group of individuals possessing in common certain traits transmitted by heredity, which are sufficiently clear to mark off one group from others.1 As we are not concerned with anthropological problems, we can pass over the question what these distinctions are and when they are sufficiently marked. Nor are we interested in adopting any specific classification of races; we agree with the large majority of anthropologists that there are no superior or inferior races, and that there is no scientifically determinable connection between racial and cultural attributes. The so-called racial explanation of differences in human performance and achievement is either an ineptitude or a fraud.’2 We also agree that there are no pure races, that ‘every civilized group of which we have record has been a hybrid group, a fact which effectively disposes of the theory that hybrid people are inferior to purebred ones.’3
Scientific arguments contribute little to an understanding of German racism. It is of little avail, for example, to attack racism by pointing out that the term ‘Aryan’ does not denote a common bone structure or blood composition, or any other physical or biological similarity, but merely a common linguistic origin. Even the discoveries of National Socialist anthropology are not to any great extent incorporated into the body of National Socialist philosophy, which merely speaks of Aryan races or of Nordic and Germanic superiority. Instead of refuting the racial theory, we shall try to understand its social, political, and cultural significance. The attempt has already been made. Scholars have drawn attention to the intimate connection between racism and the persecution of minorities, that characterized the Inquisition, the Albigensian crusade, and the campaign against the French Huguenots, and have interpreted race persecution as a modern form of religious intolerance and heresy-hunting. On this basis, racism has been described as an ideology designed to defend and justify ‘unequal citizen rights.’4 This theory is certainly correct, but does it help us to understand why racism supersedes nationalism and why Anti-Semitism, which is the German form of racism, is accepted not merely as a device for persecution but as a genuine philosophy of life pervading the whole National Socialist outlook? We shall be able to solve the problem only by analyzing the functions of the various concepts involved.
Race is an entirely biological phenomenon: the concept of ‘the people’ contains an admixture of cultural elements. Common descent, common geographical location, common customs, common language and religion—all play a part in the making of a people, although the particular significance of the various elements may vary according to the historical situation.5 The concept of a racial people, a term the Germans are fond of, is, however, based primarily on biological traits; the cultural elements serve only to distinguish various groups within one race.
In contrast, the nation is primarily a political concept. It involves the idea of the state, without which the nation cannot be conceived. A people becomes a nation if it possesses a consciousness of common political aims, if it is capable of achieving and maintaining a unified political will. As eminent a political leader as Disraeli rejected the very concept of the people. ‘The phrase “the people” is sheer nonsense. It is not a political term. It is a phrase of natural history. A people is a species; a civilised community is a nation. Now, a nation is a work of art and a work of time.’6
Nation and nationality are intrinsically connected with the state.7 The modern state, however, has not been created by the nation, but resulted from the introduction of commodity production, which has preceded the appearance of modern nations. When the product of labor is a commodity convertible into money, this money can be used to build the state and to establish a bureaucracy and standing army. The first modern states were the Italian city-states, created not by national feeling and national striving but by capitalists who hired soldiers and bureaucracies to build up a centralized machine. In Italy, France, and Germany these states were even established by foreigners with whose help the French kings, the Italian podeste, and the German princes broke down the feudal opposition.8 Seen in this light, the early modern state was not only not national, but profoundly anti-national. Its governments had no legitimacy. The political theory evolved during this period, if it was not oppositional, was concerned solely with devising arcana dominationis, techniques with which to establish and maintain the rule of the absolutist dictators. Machiavelli’s Prince is the prototype of them all.
In its decisive function, the nation is the ideological ground that justifies a central coercive authority over the feudal, local, and ecclesiastical powers. It serves as a mechanism for unifying the vast network of individual and group interests—this in the period when the middle classes become conscious of their own objectives and succeed in impressing them upon the whole people.
The social-contract theory, as Hobbes had developed it, was inadequate to satisfy the need for a unifying mechanism and ideology, and Rousseau quickly detected its deficiencies. Hobbes had held that selfish interest could somehow keep society together and that the state, as an aggregate of individual wills, could exist even though no common aim pervaded its individual members. In opposition to this doctrine, Rousseau declared that society must be ‘a moral, collective body.’9 The transition from natural society to political society, he said, must produce ‘a very remarkable change’ in man ‘by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct and giving his actions the morality they formerly lacked.’10 The right of the stronger, so fundamental for Hobbes’s and Spinoza’s political doctrine, could not provide a basis on which society might rest; such right, Rousseau declares, is either superfluous or nonsensical.11
The nation creates common aims and common loyalties; it makes the general will concrete and renders the state independent of divine sanction, establishing exclusive links between the individual and his secular community. The nation, moreover, gives every state a legitimate basis, differing in this respect from the universalism of medieval doctrine. Finally, it does away with the dynastic principle of legitimation that identified the state with the ruler.
It was during the French Revolution that the nation revealed itself as the decisive political force. At that time, the subjective factor, national consciousness, the will to political unity, turned into an objective reality,12 and one class, the bourgeoisie, constituted itself as the nation, so that the nation became the property, so to speak, of that class. Through the nation the bourgeoisie impressed its system of values on all of the people.
The fusion of the theory of nationalism with the much older doctrine of popular sovereignty had revolutionary implications,13 permitting the emergence of an essentially secular society with a universally accepted system of values. The French Revolution illustrates the revolutionary impact of the new concept. Abbé Sieyès was the first to propound the view that the third estate, the middle class, was the nation, because it was the sole productive sector of society. The nation, in his view, was the aggregate of those individuals who stand under a common law and are represented through the same legislative assembly. The nation is sovereign, its existence its complete justification, and its will the supreme law. The state is in its service; state power is legitimate only through and by it. Such a conception, directed against the aristocracy and the monarchy, was clearly revolutionary. Its influence was so strong that even the counter-revolutionaries did not deny the existence of the nation but tried painstakingly to turn it to the advantage of the monarchy or of the alliance between the monarchy and the aristocracy (de Maistre and Montlosier).14
The French Revolution determined the entire course of ideological discussion among European states before Hitler’s advent to power: the nation as an entity composed of free and equal citizens, the Jacobin concept of the nation. According to Ernest Renan, the nation is a plebiscite, daily renewed, established by the free decision of free men.15
The sociological function of this new concept is self-explanatory. Large, thickly populated economic regions emerged, unified by common currency, tariffs, and transportation; annihilating, or at least weakening, intermediate autonomous powers; and demanding a new allegiance. The French revolutions of 1791, 1793, and 1848 all declared that the nation’s sovereignty is indivisible and inalienable. The new nation jealously guarded its rights; deputies were elected in its name and not in that of any group or class, and no one was allowed to come between the individual and the nation. This was dramatically and drastically demonstrated in the Lex Le Chapelier passed during the French Revolution, a law that forbade the organization of unions. ‘The individual,’ Le Chapelier declared, ‘owes allegiance solely and exclusively to the state and to no one else.’
The concept of the nation, furthermore, serves to individualize a society by marking it off from all others. This can occur only when societies confront one another, each with specific traits that can be readily distinguished. After the breakdown of medieval universalism, the dynastic principle offered a basis for individualization. But when this principle broke down and was succeeded by the liberalist state, no integrating or individualizing factor was at hand. The liberalist state itself could perform this function. Its aim was only negative: the protection of life, liberty, and property. States, that is to say bureaucratic, police, and military machines, show more similarities than differences. Consequently, the national concept had to fill the gap left by the dynastic principle. It supplied the individualizing factor in a world of competing states.
In contrast to France, the German development never stressed national sovereignty. In fact, the concept of the nation never took hold in Germany. It is true that Fichte, one of the forerunners of racial nationalism,16 formulated the idea of a German nation, but this concept referred to ‘the people’ and stressed the racial and biological affinities produced by common descent at the expense of the political affinities or the conscious, free decision of equal citizens. Even Wilhelm von Humboldt, a great liberal, denied the sovereignty of the nation,17 while Heinrich von Treitschke regarded the national principle as a mere ‘abstraction,’ a ‘Napoleonic phrase,’ ‘an empty figure.’18
The national idea usually goes hand in hand with the democratic principle and popular sovereignty, and both were extremely distasteful to German theorists and politicians. German disunity and the rivalries among the various states and their princes may have had much to do with this distaste. In any case, whenever German theorists and political figures did speak of the nation, they divorced it from any Jacobin, democratic, or political implications, that is, from any doctrine of popular sovereignty. A biological race theory replaced the political theory of nationality. Long before Hitler, the political bond among free men tended to give way to the natural bond among racial Germans.
There is another reason why the national idea did not play a decisive part in imperial Germany. Emphasis on the sovereignty of the nation as such equalizes all nations and constitutes a barrier against the assertion of national superiority. If the nation rests on the free decision of free men, no nation is superior to any other. National sovereignty handicaps imperialist expansion. Indeed, whenever democratic states resort to such expansion, they almost invariably abandon the national concept and glorify racial and biological traits that allegedly make them superior to the conquered. The doctrine of the white man’s burden illustrates this point, and is true of the United States. We need only cite the writings of Josiah Strong. ‘It is manifest,’ he declared, ‘that the Anglo-Saxon holds in his hands the destinies of mankind, and it is evident that the United States is to become the home of this race, the principal seat of its power . . .’19 This racial theory was as much a foundation for imperialist expansion as it was a spurious solution of class antagonisms.
Still, racial theories have had no basic significance in shaping the ideology of the English and American people. The rapid growth of such theories in England and America during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries served as an aid to the conquest of colonial, semi-colonial, or very weak states, but their services were never required to organize the total power of the nation for war. Not so in Germany. German expansion was and is directed against powerful states. When Germany came forward as an active imperialist force, it found the earth divided among the various military machines. Redistribution, where it could not be achieved peaceably, required the force of arms and an enormous outlay in blood and money. It required an ideology that could justify the huge effort in the eyes of the people. The alleged superiority of the German Nordic race performed this function.*
As a result, the belief in German racial supremacy is deeply embedded in the history of German thought. Herder, the first outstanding philosopher of history, wrote of ‘a people, who, by their size and strength of body, their enterprising, bold, and persevering spirit in war . . . have contributed more than another race to the weal and woe of this quarter of the globe. It was the Germans who defended Christianity against the incessant invasions of Huns, Hungarians, Mongols, and Turks. By them, too, the greater part of Europe was not only conquered, planted, and modelled, but covered and protected.’20 The same view is held by a large number of Germany’s historians, philosophers, and economists. Friedrich von Schlegel invoked racial qualities to explain the superiority of the Germanic tribes over the Romans.21 Heinrich von Treitschke, the historian of the Bismarck period, though he held a somewhat equivocal position on the race question, interpreted history as a process characterized by the emergence and decay of races,22 and made a comparison between the racial attributes of the Germans, and those of the Dutch, English, Russians, Italians, and Americans, showing all non-Germans to be inferior in generosity, feeling for beauty, and the ‘simple fidelity’ of nature. In brief, Treitschke made a catalogue of German virtues, which is still the stock-in-trade of all German propagandists. At the same time he fought against the racial Teutonic philosophy of the student unions (Burschenschaften).23 He idolized state power, denied that it could ever be wrong, and asserted that the most healthy and vigorous expression of that power was war.24
The influence of the so-called state or Katheder socialists upon the ultimate development of National Socialist racism seems far more important. The writings of Friedrich List and Adolph Wagner clearly show the factors that contributed to the triumph of racial ideas. These men† were attempting to counteract socialist theories of class struggle by repudiating liberal political thought and by setting up a state capitalist scheme that would ‘incorporate’ the working classes and imbue the whole people with the spirit of their racial superiority. The aim was to organize society for imperialist adventures. Adolph Wagner recognized that Prussian efforts to annihilate the political and industrial labor movement were insufficient and doomed to failure. He also thought that the Western concept of Nation was dangerous for Germany, since it implied giving the working classes equal rights, thereby delivering to them the fate of the nation and of the state.
Friedrich List, the first articulate National Socialist—he was not just a forerunner but a full-fledged National Socialist—urged the establishment of a system of state capitalism. His National System of Political Economy25 outlined the plan, and his Memorandum on the Value and the Conditions of an Alliance between Great Britain and Germany gave it further elaboration.26 The latter work clearly reveals the reasons underlying the acceptance of racial theories and state capitalism.
The ruling section of the peoples of this earth has for some time been segregating itself according to descent . . . One speaks of a German, a Romanic, a Slavonic race in a political aspect. This distinction alone seems destined to exercise great influence upon the practical politics of the future. At the head of the three races stand England, France, and Russia . . . There is hardly any doubt that the Germanic race has, by virtue of its nature and character, been preferentially selected by Providence for the solution of the great task—to lead the affairs of the world, to civilize the wild barbaric countries, to populate those still uninhabited, for none of the others has the capacity to emigrate en masse and to found more perfect communities in foreign lands . . . and to keep free of the influences of barbaric and semi-barbaric aborigines.
England, inhabited by a Germanic race and equipped with a mighty fleet and vast empire, has the mission of reorganizing the world. But she can do so only with Germany’s aid. ‘Alliance with Germany will remain the only true means whereby England can make Asia and Africa serviceable for her future greatness, alliance with Germany not as she is today but with Germany as she ought to be and as she could become, with England’s help.’27 England must recognize, List declares, that Germany cannot become strong on the basis of free trade. Free trade is a fit doctrine only for a nation that is already powerful. Germany is disunited and weak, and only protective tariffs can assure her political unity and economic power. Germany has to become so strong that she is able to keep England’s competitors, France and Russia, at bay. Besides, as the past has amply demonstrated, Germany’s industrial growth is to the benefit of England, because England supplies the German market.
List was thus the first to develop the theory that Hitler brought to full flower in Mein Kampf and that National Socialist foreign policy attempted to realize during the years preceding the German-Russian non-aggression pact of 1939: a redivision of the earth between Germany and England on the basis of German racial doctrines of superiority.
Similar motives appear in the writings and political activity of Adolph Wagner, leader of the academic socialists.28 The fundamental problem he sets himself is: how can Germany become powerful? It cannot be done, he thinks, by accepting the British system of economics, that is, free trade and free competition. Nor can Germany become great by accepting Marxist socialism, which is a materialist doctrine that incites class warfare and negates the right of property.29 Wagner is willing to admit, however, that there is a grain of truth in the Marxist critique of liberalism. The solution lies in building German economy along the lines suggested by List.30 The economy must be subordinated to the community, and all egoistic interests must be subordinated to the state. The community that acquires supremacy in this way is racial, conceived on the model outlined by Herder and Schlegel.31 German culture, as created by the Germanic race, is superior to all others. Wagner put his aggressive doctrine of racial imperialism to practical use during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, when he bitterly denounced France as a once powerful but now decadent state, which would finally succumb because its Gallic race was biologically inferior to the Germanic.32 Germany cannot win the place she deserves if she adheres to the principles of Manchester liberalism. The Verein für Sozialpolitik (1872) offered Wagner a powerful medium for denouncing liberalism and socialism alike and for indoctrinating the academic world (and through it the civil service) with his state-socialist idea. State regimentation, as he foresaw and acclaimed it, would utilize and enhance the productive power of industry and thereby weaken the industrial and political might of the proletariat.
It was but a step from this racial imperialism to Anti-Semitism, which we shall discuss later.
The great popularity of the racial doctrine dates from the publication of Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s dilettante concoction, the Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,33 which was an adaptation of Count Gobineau’s Essay on the Inequality of Human Races,34 published in 1854. Gobineau’s work repudiated the French revolutions of 1789 and 1848 and all they stood for. His doctrine was designed to combat political liberalism and the labor movement, and the book in which he stated it was dedicated to the king of Hanover, who had only recently abolished the liberal constitution by unconstitutional means. Gobineau sought an ideological basis for a state form that would exclude the proletariat from political rights and insure a stable foundation for aristocratic rule, and that would also improve upon the French counter-revolutionist theories of Bonald and de Maistre. Gobineau regards aristocracy as racially conditioned. He develops a hierarchy of races in which the Negro represents the lowest type and the white race the only civilized, with the fair, blond, Germanic race holding a special position of leadership. Again it is England, not Germany, that typifies the characteristics of the Germanic race. A special Gobineau association was established and did much to propagate the teachings of the master.35 Gobineau, however, was not concerned with justifying any kind of imperialism, French, German, or English. His primary interest was to preserve, or rather to restore, the privileges of an aristocracy whose political power had been shattered by a series of revolutions and whose rule could no longer be justified by tradition.
Gobineau’s doctrine was re-worked by Houston Stewart Chamberlain and his father-in-law, Richard Wagner; in their hands it became a powerful instrument for racial imperialism and Anti-Semitism. It would be wearisome to repeat Chamberlain’s arguments. In brief, he held that the Teutonic race comprises those who genuinely shape ‘the destinies of mankind, whether as builders of the state or as discoverers of new thoughts and of original art . . . Our whole civilization and culture of today is the work of one definite race of men, the Teutonic’36 Chamberlain went far beyond Gobineau, criticized him, in fact, for having accepted the creative function of mixed races. Pure races, he held, would evolve through a long historic process that would ultimately create a race of supermen.
Richard Wagner had met Gobineau in Rome in November 1876 and had been deeply impressed by him,37 becoming an ardent advocate of his theories. When Chamberlain joined the Wagner circle and later married Wagner’s daughter, his father-in-law’s enthusiasm for Gobineau was soon transferred to Chamberlain. Letters that passed between him and his mother-in-law, Cosima Wagner,38 clearly show the evolution of the racial doctrine and the influence of Gobineau’s personality and thought upon the Wagner circle. Strangely enough, Chamberlain refutes the idea that a pure race is superior to a hybrid one (letter of 15 November 1893). He ascribes the opposite thesis to Gobineau and even declares that ‘the shadow of Gobineau’s teaching would hang like a cloud over some discussions [of Richard Wagner] in the tenth volume [of Wagner’s works].’39 The correspondence, moreover, makes it increasingly clear that the entire elaborate structure of the Foundations was sheer embellishment of Chamberlain’s Anti-Semitism, the central thesis of which was his assertion of a Jewish conspiracy to defeat the Germanic races.40 In a letter of 11 November 190241 he insists that ‘the chapter on Semitism is for me the most important one.’ This idea of a Jewish conspiracy recurs over and over in the discussions of the Wagner circle, especially in Richard Wagner’s own statements. Wagner held to the idea with amazing tenacity, in spite of the fact that one of his most influential champions in the musical world was Hermann Levi, the Jewish conductor of the Royal Munich Opera Company, who devoted all his energies to Wagner’s operas. Wagner, however, was always suspicious of Levi, invariably imagining a Jewish conspiracy whenever something went wrong in the performance of his works. This is especially clear in the correspondence between him and King Louis II.42
Racism, then, increasingly became unadulterated Anti-Semitism, so that as the doctrine of German racial superiority developed, Anti-Semitic sentiment developed with it. Here again scientific discussion of the truth of National Socialist Anti-Semitic utterances would be futile, for Anti-Semitism has had deep roots in German history. The whole history of German intellectual life is shot through with Jew-baiting, and Anti-Semitic organizations played a leading part even during the imperial period.
With the exception of Lessing, Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel, nearly all the great poets and thinkers of Germany, even if they were not outspoken Anti-Semites, often unconsciously betrayed Anti-Semitic sentiments that contrasted sharply with the humanitarian philosophies they advocated.
Martin Luther was the first outspoken and passionate Anti-Semite. Christians, he warns, should not debate with Jews over the Articles of Faith. Better, he declares, drive the Jews from Germany. His ironical remarks on how they should be expelled sound much like those of Der Stürmer, Streicher’s Anti-Semitic sheet, in which advertisements appear offering the Jews one-way tickets to Palestine. ‘Country and streets,’ Luther says, ‘are open to them so they might move to their country if they like. We shall give them gifts, with pleasure, in order to get rid of them, because they are a heavy burden like a plague, pestilence, misfortune in our country.’ This statement is followed by others expressing bitter hatred and resentment. When the Jews go, they should be deprived of ‘all their cash and jewels and silver and gold.’ ‘That into the hands of the young, strong Jews and Jewesses be placed flails, axes, mattocks, trowels, distaffs, and spindles, and they are made to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their noses as it is put upon the shoulders of the children of Adam.’ ‘That their synagogues or schools be set on fire.’ ‘That their houses be broken up and destroyed . . . and they be put under a roof or stable, like the gypsies . . . in misery and captivity as they incessantly lament and complain to God about us.’43
The two special treatises in which these outbursts of fanatic hatred appear typify the sentiments of a small section of the German middle classes throughout modern German history and have formed the basis for Anti-Semitic acts up to the time when National Socialism made them part of official policy.
Fichte was an avowed Anti-Semite, and his Anti-Semitic feelings took sharpest form during the period in which he was developing his near-anarchist theory of the state. It is important to realize that these Anti-Semitic statements occur during the liberal period of his development. The connection was not accidental, as we can recognize when we remember that in the period following the French Revolution and the wars of liberation, it was the liberal movement that took up and carried forward Anti-Semitism. Napoleon’s rule had brought legal emancipation to the Jews in Germany, and the fight against Napoleon there became a struggle against all that his reforms had achieved. Under liberal and patriotic slogans, mobs destroyed Jewish homes and synagogues, and maltreatment of Jews became an almost daily occurrence.
Anti-Semitism has been a political force in Germany ever since the wars of liberation. The Bismarck period made it a popular movement. The Jews were blamed for the financial crisis that terminated the economic upswing of the years following the War of 1870. In 1873 Wilhelm Marr, a Hamburg journalist, published a pamphlet called The Victory of Judaism over Germany,44 which incited violent Anti-Semitic hatred. In the same period, an aggressive imperialism justified by racial arguments joined hands with the Anti-Semitic wave.
The two last-mentioned trends merged when Adolph Wagner joined Court Chaplain Stöcker in the Christlich Soziale Arbeiterpartei, founded in 1878.45 This organization, whose original aim was to enlist the workers’ support for the imperialist program, soon became an out-and-out Anti-Semitic party that carried on widespread propaganda and gained representation in the Reichstag. A whole stream of Anti-Semitic writers marks the period: Eugen Dühring, the famous critic of liberal capitalism whom Engels attacked in his Anti-Dühring; Max Stirner, the anarchist; Hermann Ahlwardt, who incited pogroms and succeeded in staging a ritual murder trial at Xanten, near Düsseldorf. Ultimately, the movement entered into political alliance with the Conservative party.
Although Anti-Semitism was nowhere so actively propagated as in Germany, it failed to strike root in the population; the agitation became so vigorously fanatic that it defeated itself. The workers’ movement remained immune from it, and Bebel, pre-war leader of the German Social-Democratic party, was acclaimed when he denounced Anti-Semitism as the ‘socialism of fools.’ In 1885 the Conservatives dropped Anti-Semitism from their platform and severed their connections with the Anti-Semitic party, causing its parliamentary defeat.
Anti-Semitism was also the basic policy of the Pan-German Union, which raised the demand for a greater German empire, especially for a Middle Europe under German hegemony.*
Three major themes recur in these Anti-Semitic writings. First, the identification of capitalism with Judaism, especially in the writings of Adolph Wagner. This thesis has been submitted to scientific investigation in Werner Sombart’s famous book, The Jews and Economic Life. The second thesis is that the Jews are also the leaders of Marxist socialism. Both themes are incessant in the National Socialist propaganda scheme and thoroughly pervade Hitler’s autobiography.46 The third and most potent theme combines the two others: the leaders of world Jewry (the Elders of Zion) have organized a Jewish world conspiracy for the destruction of ‘Aryanism.’ In the conspiracy, some Jews have been singled out to lead world capitalism, others to conduct the operations of the international socialists and bolsheviks. The evidence for this conspiracy consists of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the history of which is too well known to require discussion here.47
National Socialism is the first Anti-Semitic movement to advocate the complete destruction of the Jews. But this purpose is only part of a wider plan defined as ‘the purification of German blood,’ in which barbarism and a few progressive features combine to form a repellent whole. Prophylactic measures have been enacted to insure the propagation of Nordics in sufficient number.48 Marriage is permitted only after thorough medical and eugenic examination. S.S. men must have special permits for marriage. Even more important are the measures intended to prevent the propagation of physically and biologically unfit persons: the castration of habitual criminals and the sterilization of hereditary defectives. The term ‘habitual criminal’ refers to persons over twenty-one years old who have been twice sentenced to prison terms of six months each for sex crimes, or to persons sentenced for murder or manslaughter committed to incite or satisfy sexual lust. The agency that orders the castration is the criminal court.
The basic text of eugenic legislation is a statute ‘to prevent hereditarily diseased offspring’ (issued 14 July 1933). It permits sterilization in cases of (1) hereditary imbecility, (2) schizophrenia, (3) manic depression, (4) hereditary epilepsy, (5) Huntington chorea, (6) hereditary blindness, (7) hereditary deafness, (8) extreme physical malformation. The patient, the medical officer, or the director of the institution in which the patient is confined may apply to a special sterilization court (Erbgesundheitsgericht), which is composed of a judge, a medical officer, and a medical practitioner. Appeal from its decision may be taken to an appeals court (Erbgesundheitsobergericht), which has a similar composition and whose decision is final.49
The courts have given an exceedingly broad and brutal interpretation to the sterilization statute.50 If we are to believe the statements of Mr. William Shirer in his articles in Life magazine,51 Himmler, chief of the German police and leader of the S.S., has ordered the execution of about 50,000 mental deficients during this war alone. Since Himmler is a most articulate racial fanatic and is master of life and death in Germany, Shirer’s report has a prima facie probability.
The National Socialist population policy—part of which is discussed in the chapter entitled The Grossdeutsche Reich—is, perhaps, the most revolting of National Socialist policies. It is so completely devoid of Christian charity, so little defensible by reason, so fully opposed to pity and compassion, that it appears as a practice of men utterly pagan. It centers around the two commandments issued by the National Socialist leaders: to the German women, whether married or not, the commandment to produce children; to the S.S., the commandment to kill those who are not fit to live. Produce as many children as possible so that the earth can be ruled by the master race; kill the unhealthy so that the masters need not be burdened by the care of the weak.
In this respect, National Socialism and bolshevism are utterly divergent. Not the persecution of political opponents—which is practiced in both countries—but the extermination of helpless individuals is the prerogative of National Socialism.
The same spirit pervades the entire anti-Jewish legislation, which we can here consider only in its broad outlines. The process of urbanization, which had affected the whole population, was accentuated among the Jews, especially during the Hitler regime. For years before the advent of Hitler, however, the Jewish population had been on the decline because of the falling birthrate among Jews, frequent mixed marriages, and many desertions from the Jewish community.52
Jewish influence was unquestionably strong in the free professions and in big cities. Outside the free professions, Jews were engaged mainly in trade and transport, though their share in industry was not inconsiderable. In agriculture they played a very small part, if any. Most of the department stores were owned by Jews; Jews were also predominant in the metal trades (57.3 per cent Jewish), though the influence of the free-metal trades had declined rapidly as a result of the monopolist process mentioned in a previous chapter. Jews controlled 18.7 per cent of all the banks and most of the clothing industry. The economic significance of the banks was on the wane, however, since financial capital had long been declining in favor of industrial capital.53
In industry proper, Jewish influence was not very significant. Only one of the electro-technical concerns can be said to have been Jewish. Of course, there were Jewish members of boards of managers and of supervisory boards in a few giant industrial enterprises. Where Jews held high positions in the field of industrial management, however, they did so by virtue of their efficiency and ability; otherwise they would not have been tolerated by the industrial leadership, which was thoroughly Anti-Semitic. Paul Silverberg, for example, was the organizer of the Rhenish lignite industry, and Oscar Oliven was outstanding in the field of electrification. Most of the so-called Jewish industrial leaders, however, had in fact severed their connection with the Jewish community and, more often than not, were active and ardent Catholics or Protestants and political reactionaries, who would gladly have joined the National Socialist party had that party not been so overwhelmingly Anti-Semitic.
The Anti-Semitic laws affect the position of Jews as citizens. The so-called Nuremberg laws of 15 September 1935, which were promulgated to ‘maintain the purity of German blood,’ prohibited marriages between Jews (including persons having one Jewish grandparent) and German citizens of German ‘or racially similar blood.’ Non-Aryans who had one or more Jewish grandparents were permitted to marry among each other only with the consent of the federal minister of the interior and the deputy leader. Marriages performed against the law, as well as extra-marital sexual relations, were made punishable by hard labor. Jews were not permitted to display official flags or to exhibit their colors in any way. They could not employ any female servant of German blood unless she was over forty-five years old.
These ‘blood purification’ laws are among the most infamous in the repertory of National Socialism. They not only play into the hands of blackmailers but they have completely shattered the last vestiges of legal protection previously granted by the penal code. Though the statute clearly prohibits only extra-marital cohabitation, and though Section 3 of the penal code affirms the principle of territoriality, according to which only crimes committed in German territory are punishable in Germany, the courts extended the act far beyond the original wording and today race betrayal and race defilement are punishable even if committed by Germans living outside Germany.54 The new interpretation was based upon Section 2 of the penal code, as amended by act of 28 June 1935, which provides that ‘any person who commits an act which the law declares to be punishable or which is deserving of penalty according to the fundamental conceptions of a statute and sound popular feeling, shall be punished. If no penal law exists that directly covers the act, it shall be punished under that statute the fundamental conception of which applies most nearly to the act.’ Drastic as it is, this section is clearly not applicable to the matter under discussion, and an old, highly reputable professor of criminal law at once denounced the decisions based upon this section.55 He pointed out that the federal supreme court’s decision contained not a word of proof and that Section 2 did not permit it to abandon the territorial principles upon which the very structure of the penal code depended.
Increasing cruelty has been shown in the decisions dealing with extra-marital sex relations between Jews and non-Jews. The federal supreme court, for example, deemed it an aggravating rather than an extenuating circumstance that an old Aryan living with a Jewish woman, whom he was prepared to marry, continued the relation after the enactment of the ‘blood purification’ act. Such behavior, the court declared, was expressive of ‘a specially stubborn rebellion against National Socialist legislation.’56 The same rigor has been applied in cases where the unmarried couple had a child for whom they were fully providing.57
The complete abandonment of legality by the courts is even more clearly revealed in their interpretation of the term of ‘impermissible cohabitation.’ A large number of acts that in no way constitute sexual cohabitation have been declared to be punishable,58 and even an oral request to cohabit has been construed and punished as ‘attempted racial defilement.’59 It is a mystery how such decisions could be reconciled with the aim of the statute, which according to a definition by the federal supreme court is ‘to protect the blood as a living organism circulating in the German people.’60 The decision has with equal cruelty been applied to racial defilements (committed by Jews and non-Aryans) and to race betrayal (committed by Germans).
A systematic effort was made to create a legal Ghetto, and many enactments and court decisions have pared away the political rights of Jews and non-Aryans. The decree of 17 August 1938 and the executive order of the federal minister of the interior of 23 August 1938 concerned Jewish first names. Every Jew, unless he had a name which was listed as permissible, was compelled to add ‘Israel’ or ‘Sarah.’ Jews born after the enactment of the law could be given only such names as were provided for in the minister’s ruling. Names like David, Abraham, Jacob, Daniel, Gabriel, Judith, Eve, and Ruth, all of which have historical or religious significance, were not listed and were therefore forbidden to Jews; the names permitted were spelled in the Yiddish manner so as to stamp them as foreign and ridiculous in the eyes of Germans. Unintentional or negligent violation of the ruling was made punishable by fine or imprisonment up to one month. On 5 October 1938, a decree imposed special Jewish stamps on passports issued to Jews. An earlier ruling (23 July 1938) compelled Jews to apply for special identification papers, which they were to carry on their persons at all times and which they had to attach to applications they made to an official or party agency.
Expulsion of the Jews from the German commonwealth began with the nationality act of 15 September 1935, which made a distinction between ‘state subjects’ (Staatsangehörige) and citizens (Reichsbürger). State subjects were those who belonged to the protective association of the German Reich; and citizens were those ‘of German or racially similar blood who by their behavior demonstrate that they are willing and able faithfully to serve the German people and the Reich.’ Citizenship was to be acquired by means of a citizen’s charter, and only citizens possessed political rights. An executive decree of 14 November 1935 made without charter every national of German or racially similar blood a citizen, provided he possessed the right to vote or was granted citizenship by the federal minister of the interior. The same citizenship act expelled all the remaining Jewish civil servants.
This step was the last in a series of legislative measures aiming to expel non-Aryans from the civil services, free professions, and all cultural fields. The opening piece was an act promulgated 7 April 1933, for the purpose of ‘restoring the civil services,’ according to which only those Jews who were war veterans, or whose parents or sons had been killed in the First World War, or who had already been employed in the service in August 1914 could remain at their posts. By the end of 1938, however, Jews were completely eliminated from the civil services and free professions, and the destruction of the economic position of the Jews was ready to begin in full force. The occasion for this next step was the murder of vom Rath, counsellor at the German Embassy in Paris. The assault on the economic position of the Jews coincided, significantly enough, with the purge of ‘inefficient’ personnel from retail and handicraft business: that is to say, with the repudiation by National Socialism of its pledge to protect the old middle classes. It is virtually certain that the vom Rath murder was merely a pretext and that the economic persecution of the Jews was a mere diversion intended to conceal the assault on the middle classes as a whole.
The elimination of Jews from economic life was carried out in three forms: contractually, illegally, and by statute. ‘Legal’ elimination took the form of forced sales, especially of small Jewish businesses, thus satisfying the appetites of National Socialist officials and small Aryan competitors. One of the methods used was that of handing over the Jew’s share of a business to his Aryan partner—the National Socialist district leader often put pressure on the Aryan partner to get rid of his Jewish associate.61 Jews were increasingly denied the protection of German labor legislation.62 The practices, which have little economic significance, merit attention only in a study of the methods of National Socialist persecution and their so-called ‘purity in business.’ On 8 May 1935 the Frankfurter Zeitung was forced to admit that far from benefiting the German middle classes, Aryanization chiefly served the interests of the giant enterprises, which used the opportunity to ‘round off and extend’ their holdings by buying out Jewish owners. Small concerns had neither the capital nor the equipment required to take over Jewish concerns. Thus Aryanization became a powerful stimulant to capital concentration and monopoly, a development we shall discuss below.*
Monopolist growth by way of Aryanization was particularly marked in the banking field. Between 1932 and 1939 the number of private banks decreased from 1350 to 520.63 Aryanization not only assisted the interests of powerful banking institutions; it also became a means for industry to acquire banks of its own and extend its activities in the banking field.64 For example, the powerful banking firm of S. Hirschland of Essen, which had played such a considerable part in the industrial development of the Ruhr basin and which had given financial support and aid to Thyssen, was Aryanized by a group controlled by Thyssen and Flick. (The same process probably contributed to Thyssen’s downfall, since it made his most powerful rival a part-owner in a bank that had formerly served Thyssen’s interests.)
We lack the space to tell the whole story of the Aryanization of Jewish business. Wherever powerful Jewish firms could not be swallowed by competing Aryan enterprises, they were taken over by banks, as was the Schocken department store, a family enterprise that is now a joint stock corporation owned by banks; or the machine shops and wagon factory of Orenstein and Koppel. Aryanization strengthened ‘predatory’ capital at the expense of ‘productive’ capital. It also harmed retail business as a whole. For example, a number of Jewish factories, among them the three largest shoe factories, all of which had retail outlets of their own, were consolidated, and the hold of the monopolists over the retailers and the entire field was thereby strengthened. The huge increase of power and profits that Aryanization brought to the big banks and big business was further enhanced when Austria, the Sudetenland, the protectorates, and France were acquired.
The German material on which the contents of this book are based does not supply documentary proof of illegal seizures, although the testimony of refugees offers ample evidence that the practices were widespread. We do, however, find a great deal in the documents pertaining to legislative expropriations. In Germany, there are a number of professions the practice of which requires a license. A number of lawyers and administrative tribunals held that the Jew per se was not unreliable and that for this reason the administrative agency could not refuse a license to a Jew solely because of his race.65 Consequently, the factory code, in which most of the provisions on this point appeared, was amended by a statute of 6 July 1938, so as to make Jews ineligible for licenses in a number of trades (watchmen, information and inquiry agents, real-estate agents, real-estate administrators, loan-commission agents, marriage agents, guides, etc). From this statute German lawyers now deduce that the principle of freedom of trade no longer applies to the Jew.
Legislative and administrative acts endeavor everywhere to make the concealment of a Jewish business impossible. Any merchant may request an injunction against any Jewish firm that even allows the impression that it is Aryan,66 and every Aryan has the right to warn a customer against buying from a Jewish competitor if such warning is in the interests of the public.67 Slowly and reluctantly, the courts have granted Aryans the right to withdraw from long-term contracts with Jews.68
Complete legislative exclusion of Jews from economic life was initiated by a decree of 26 April 1938, which compelled Jews to ‘register and evaluate their total domestic and foreign properties’ and (by executive decree of the same date) forbade them to acquire by purchase or lease any industrial, agrarian, or forestry enterprise; at the same time, Jews were prohibited from establishing any new business without permit. The fact that an inventory of Jewish property was ordered as early as April 1938 again makes it extremely unlikely that the expropriating legislation of November of that year was simply a retaliatory measure against vom Rath’s murder or a response to the ‘spontaneous anger of the enraged populace.’ It was rather part of a long-nurtured plan. The discontent among small businessmen because of their elimination from business had to be diverted.
A decree of 12 November 1938, enacted about a week after vom Rath’s death, forbade Jews to carry on retail, handicraft, or mailorder business, or to sell their goods at fairs and markets. It eliminated Jews from plant management (1 January 1939) and authorized employers to dismiss more important Jewish employees; it also authorized co-operatives to expell all their Jewish members. The executive decree of 23 November took great pains to insure that compulsory liquidation of Jewish business would not profit the Jewish owners. Goods could not be sold out to consumers, but had to be handed over to the group in industry or trade for safekeeping. Such goods had to be appraised by officially appointed persons, and liquidators for the business were often appointed.
This enactment, which struck only at retail and handicraft businesses, was supplemented by another, dated 3 December 1938, which affected every Jewish industrial and trade enterprise that could be put up for compulsory liquidation or sale. Trustees could be appointed for such enterprises so that the owner lost all authority to dispose of his enterprise or any part of it. The decree also authorized the government to order any Jew to sell his agricultural or forest land holdings and real estate within a period to be designated. It forbade Jews to acquire such holdings, by purchase or auction. Jews could not dispose of their holdings without special consent; they could not mortgage them. The last provision was so broadly interpreted that in the end Jews had no security whatever for their claims. For example, a Jewish beneficiary of a will could not secure his claim to an estate by placing a mortgage on it.69
The Jews were further denied protection by being excluded from the benefits of a decree regulating the maturity of old mortgages (22 December 1938), although the wording of the decree did not discriminate against them.70 Trustees appointed to liquidate or sell Jewish businesses completely replaced the owner, so that he was not even permitted to delete his firm from the commercial register. (The name of the firm often enjoyed wide repute and thus constituted a considerable asset.)71 The same decree compelled Jews to deposit all stocks and bonds with a recognized bank. These could not be disposed of without special permission of the federal minister of economics. Gold, platinum, silver, jewels, and similar possessions had to be surrendered to special purchasing agencies established by the Reich (executive decree of 21 February 1939). The basis of appraisal was fixed by the government.
The vom Rath murder was made the occasion for a special assessment of 1,000,000,000 marks to be paid by all Jews of German nationality whose property exceeded 5,000 marks. The levy was to be raised by a tax of 20 per cent on all property belonging to such Jews, and was made payable in four equal instalments running to 15 August 1939 (decree of 12 November 1938 and executive decree of 21 November 1938). As a further reprisal, a special decree (12 November 1938) compelled the Jews to pay costs for all damages to Jewish businesses and houses resulting from the riots of 8, 9, and 10 November 1938, staged by the National Socialist party. The tax and the other laws were of course linked to one another. The liquidation of Jewish business, real estate, stocks, and bonds was hastened by the need to pay the levy; the value of Jewish holdings was depreciated and many holdings were wiped out.
Even the anti-Jewish economic legislation cannot be reviewed in detail here. Taxation exemptions enjoyed by charitable organizations were not extended to Jews, and laws intended to alleviate the debtor’s burden were made inapplicable to them. Tax exemptions allowed to people with children were suspended if the children were Jewish (citizen tax law of 31 October 1938). Jewish tenants do not enjoy any protection against notice from the landlord (30 April 1939). Thus, segregation, political enslavement, economic extinction, and the cultural ghetto go hand in hand.
This enslavement was not accomplished at one stroke. There are a number of reasons for the so-called official leniency shown until 1938 regarding the economic position of Jews. Foreign pressure was undoubtedly very important. The speech which Federal Minister of the Interior Dr. Frick,72 gave before the diplomatic corps and the foreign press on 15 February 1934, justifying the anti-Jewish legislation, clearly shows how much Germany cared for public opinion. The insistence upon legality instead of outright expropriation is also to be explained by purely economic reasons. A precipitate liquidation of Jewish holdings would have disrupted German economic life.
Political and psychological factors in the anti-Jewish economic legislation seem to have played a decisive part. The economic legislation against the Jews was one of the most important methods for distributing spoils; it performed the same function as the expropriation of ecclesiastical property under Henry VIII and during the French Revolution. It redistributed property among those strata of the population whose support is vital for the regime: the powerful financial and industrial capitalists.
Expropriation of Jewish property is also a method of satisfying the anti-capitalistic longings of the German people. Since property has generally been left untouched by National Socialism, it is vital for the regime to show that it has the power of taking it away. In the eyes of the anti-capitalistic masses, the expropriation of one section of the people makes it appear possible that some day the regime may resort to outright and wholesale nationalization, an expectation shared by many foreign observers who are prone to denote the National Socialist regime as an anti-capitalist one.
Instead of exterminating Jewish economic life at one blow, the National Socialist administration proceeded gradually. The reasons for this were political. The administration kept a number of anti-Jewish measures up its sleeve and enacted them one by one, whenever it was necessary to stimulate the masses or divert their attention from other socio-economic and international policies. Spontaneous, popular Anti-Semitism is still weak in Germany. This assertion cannot be proved directly, but it is significant that despite the incessant propaganda to which the German people have been subjected for many years, there is no record of a single spontaneous anti-Jewish attack committed by persons not belonging to the Nazi party. The writer’s personal conviction, paradoxical as it may seem, is that the German people are the least Anti-Semitic of all.
To understand the roots of Anti-Semitic terrorism requires a distinction between the various types of Anti-Semitism and a brief discussion of prevalent Anti-Semitic theories.
Anti-Semitism can be totalitarian or non-totalitarian. For the totalitarian Anti-Semite, the Jew has long ceased to be a human being. He has become the incarnation of evil in Germany, nay, in the entire world. In other words, totalitarian Anti-Semitism is magic and beyond discussion.
Non-totalitarian Anti-Semitism preserves remnants of rationality and can, therefore, be analyzed. It exists in four forms: religious, economic, political, and social.
Religious Anti-Semitism derives its strength from the accusation leveled against the Jews that they were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ. Such feeling, still powerful in certain Catholic countries (for instance, Catholic Canada and South America) had very little influence in Germany. It could be found among the impoverished Catholic masses, particularly in Upper Silesia, but even there religious Anti-Semitism was fused with Polish nationalism. It largely expressed the opposition against the Germanization of the province during the imperial period, a process in which German Jews played an important, perhaps the most important part. Polish nationalism was directed against the Prussian bureaucracy, who represented political power, and against the German Jews, who represented cultural Germanization. And since Polish nationalism was largely carried on by the lower ranks of the Catholic clergy, the fusion of religious Anti-Semitism and Polish nationalism was inevitable. The Catholic Church, as a whole, is not Anti-Semitic. On the contrary, it recognizes that Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the spiritually Semitic origin of Christianity.73 Anti-Semitism within the church is far more a matter of political expediency than a basic element of faith or politics.
Anti-Semitism in its other forms was restricted to the new and old middle classes: the free professions, university teachers, farmers, white-collar workers, artisans, shopkeepers, and civil servants. Their Anti-Semitism certainly had an economic basis: it was both competitive and anti-capitalistic. That the competitive position of the Jewish lawyers, doctors, bankers, retailers, university teachers, and civil servants caused Anti-Semitism requires an explanation. Jews occupying primarily intermediary positions were, so to speak, the concrete manifestation of capitalism for the old and new middle classes. The small farmer went to the Jewish banker, to the Jewish grain or cattle dealer, or to a Jewish mortgage agent. The retailer who resented the existence of Jewish department stores still had to buy from a Jewish wholesaler and still had to obtain loans from a Jewish pawn shop or a Jewish banker. His creditors were Jews. The average German did not and could not see that the Jewish middlemen were, in fact, merely middlemen—representatives of an impersonal and anonymous power that dictated their economic activities. The recognition that the middlemen acted on behalf of a non-Jewish financial and industrial capitalism would have driven the farmers, retailers, and handicraftsmen into the socialistic camp, a step they could not take without abandoning their traditions. Moreover, the socialist program disregarded the interests of these groups. The Anti-Semitic white-collar worker employed by a Jewish retailer or wholesaler, a Jewish banker or a department store, could have joined forces with the manual workers to attack, improve, or overthrow capitalism. But he refused to be proletarized. He rejected the claim of the industrial proletariat to leadership and tried to work out his own Standesbewusstsein, a consciousness of his own calling. Industry and labor legislation supported him in this endeavor. His anti-capitalist longings were thus concentrated in his hatred for and resentment against the Jewish employer, no matter how good his conditions of employment might be.
For these groups, Anti-Semitism created ‘an outlet for resentment arising from damaged self-esteem,’74 and also made possible a political collaboration of the old and the new middle classes with the landed aristocracy. In addition, anti-Jewish hatred expressed the anxiety of those groups whose traditional patterns of culture were threatened by the intellectual vanguard that was to a considerable extent composed of Jews. The modern theater, atonal music, expressionism in painting and literature, functional architecture, all these seemed to constitute a threat to the conservatives whose cultural outlook was basically rural, and who thus came to identify the city and its culture, its economics, and its politics with the Jew.
Anti-Semitism is also a means of throwing the guilt for the last war upon ‘alien enemies so that self-accusation was no longer necessary.’75 The Jews are to blame, and the German sacred ego is spared.
Anti-Semitism in present-day Germany is, however, more than a mere device utilized when necessary and discarded when it has fulfilled its aims. We must not forget that National Socialism re-writes German history and even world history in terms of fighting, exposing, and destroying Jewish influence. The Federal Institute for the History of the New Germany has demanded the re-writing of history in all its aspects. Wilhelm Grau76 has drawn up the program and has already begun to apply the new postulates in his study of Wilhelm von Humboldt,77 the founder of the Berlin University, who is, for Grau, one of the arch pro-Jews. Walter Frank, the president of this institute, is concerned almost exclusively with the Jewish question. He is the author of the leading biography of Adolf Stöcker. He has denounced the Jewish character of the Third French Republic.78 His latest book79 deals exclusively with Jewish figures of the Weimar Republic, such as Walter Rathenau and Maximilian Harden (Harden was a Jewish journalist and advocate of the imperial expansionist policy, who, as may be readily admitted, was not exactly an ornament to his profession).
The National Socialist lawyers’ organization has already published nine pamphlets dealing with the influence of Jews upon legal theory and legal practice and holding them responsible for the rationalism in legal theory.80 There is an enormous number of contributions showing the perversion of Germanic institutions by Jewish influence, and there is hardly a book, a pamphlet, or an ideological pronouncement that does not attack Jewish conspiracy, Jewish immorality, the Jewish disintegrating spirit, Jewish capitalism, Jewish rationalism, Jewish pacifism, and Jewish militarism. There is almost no vice that is not attributed to Jews. It is scarcely surprising that National Socialism should do this. But the almost complete moral corruption of the German intelligensia, especially of the academic world, is a depressing fact.
How seriously National Socialism takes the ‘scientific research’ in the Jewish problem is illustrated by the opening in Frankfort on 26 March 1941 (Frankfurter Zeitung, 27 March 1941) of the Institute for Jewish Research, the first outside agency of the party (Hohe Schule der Partei). Slovak, Hungarian, Rumanian (Cuza), Italian, Bulgarian, Norwegian (Quisling), and Dutch (Mussert) guests, as well as party, army, and civil service officials, attended the ceremony. Alfred Rosenberg again dwelt on his favorite theme, ‘Science and Party.’ The party university would create new room for science—especially for the natural sciences—but must concentrate on the ‘biological laws . . . of peoples and races’ and lay bare the poisonous influence of the Jews. The new director, Wilhelm Grau, explained the task of the new institute in the same terms as he had done before—the figure of the Jew thus becomes the dominating figure of German, nay, European history. The institute disposes of the greatest European Jewish libraries that the conqueror had confiscated: the Rothschild library in Frankfurt a. M., the library of the Warsaw Theological Seminary of the Tlomacky synagogue, the library of the Yiddish-Scientific Institute, and that of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (Paris). Publications and speeches made it clear that the institute regards Anti-Semitism as the fundamental ideology of German imperialism. According to one expert, Dr. Gross, the term Anti-Semitism should be avoided, for the Jews are not Semites, but a mixed race and cannot be settled either in Europe or in Arabic countries outside Europe (Frankfurter Zeitung, 28 March 1941). The servility of that ‘scientific organization’ to German imperialism is obvious. German racism has never given serious consideration to the findings of their own anthropologists. If it is necessary to win over the Near East, Jews will not be Semites, and the name of Semites will again be reserved for a friendly nation of Arabs.
Three factors seem to play a fundamental part in the present all-pervading Anti-Semitism.81
First, racism and Anti-Semitism are substitutes for the class struggle. The officially established peoples’ community superseding the class struggle needs an integrating element. Carl Schmitt has maintained that politics is a struggle against a foe who must be exterminated.* The theory is true if the society is aggressive. The new enemy is the Jew. By heaping all hatred, all resentment, all misery upon one enemy who can easily be exterminated and who cannot resist, Aryan society can be integrated into a whole. The internal political value of Anti-Semitism will, therefore, never allow a complete extermination of the Jews. The foe cannot and must not disappear; he must always be held in readiness as a scapegoat for all the evils originating in the socio-political system.
Secondly, Anti-Semitism provides a justification for eastern expansion. Both Hitler’s autobiography82 and the party program demand a liberation of all racial brethren from the foreign yoke (Articles 1 and 2 of the party program), and this implies foreign eastern expansion. Though the party program also demands the restoration of the colonial possessions, Hitler himself, in his autobiography, advocates Friedrich List’s foreign policy—that is, collaboration with England; consolidation of the European empire, especially by acquiring eastern territories; and rejection of colonial expansion. But it is precisely in the east and the southeast that Jews form compact minorities.83 Were there no racial theory, the incorporation of these territories would have meant giving the Jews, who have a much closer affinity to German culture than have Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Rumanians, and Bulgars, a status equal to or even superior to the non-Jewish inhabitants. The theory of German racial superiority and Jewish racial inferiority permits the complete enslavement of the eastern Jews and thereby the playing off of one minority against the other. It actually establishes a hierarchy of races—giving no rights to the Jews, a few to the Poles, a few more to the Ukranians (since they, too, live in Soviet Russia and must be flattered), and full rights to Germans.
The administration of the General Gouvernement (of German-occupied Poland) cleverly distinguishes between the various minorities.84 The racial-Germans, i.e. those who ‘by descent, language, attitude, education or other circumstances are Germans,’ are on top, although they do not acquire German citizenship. They receive identification cards (decree of 26 January 1940) describing them as German Volkszugehörige. They are employed in the administration and are to a large extent placed on the same footing as German citizens. Their children can be educated only in German schools. Only they and German citizens may receive hunting licenses. They enjoy the collective wage regulations for German workers and salaried employees, and receive social insurance benefits although they have no legal claim. Finally, they have formed a Volksdeutsche community, an organization endowed under public law with legal personality by a decree of 19 April 1940.
Next to these Germans are the Ukranians, the Gorales, and the White Russians, who all receive preferential treatment. They may, although they have not yet done so, establish judicial administrations of their own (decree of 19 February 1940). They are even allowed to keep their radio sets.
Next to them are the Poles and next to the Poles, at the bottom of the scale, are the Jews. The cultural, economic, legal, and political ghetto has been gradually transformed into a physical ghetto, as in Warsaw and Cracow. German Anti-Semitic legislation is largely applied in Poland. By a decree of 28 November 1939, every Jewish community has to set up a Jewish council, which is to collaborate with the German authorities. While Poles have merely a duty of work (Arbeitspflicht), all Jews between 14 and 60 years old are subject to compulsory labor (Arbeitszwang), i.e. to convict labor under orders of the higher S.S. and police officials. They have to wear a white arm-band bearing the star of Zion (decree of 23 November 1939). Their property (1 April 1941) has been or will be confiscated.
Finally, Anti-Semitism in Germany is an expression of the rejection of Christianity and all it stands for.85 Anti-Christian trends in Germany have two roots and two opposite directions. One rejects Christianity because it is Christian; the other because it is not Christian enough. The free thinkers’ movement rejected Christianity not only as scientifically untenable, but also because, in their view, the churches had betrayed the Sermon on the Mount. The free thinkers did not substitute race hatred, leadership veneration, or terrorism for Christian love, caritas, and the brotherhood of man, but the evolution of a scientifically tenable rational theory of justice and morality. Christian socialism in Germany (Protestant and Catholic) tried to integrate socialism with Christian morality.
The second anti-Christian trend does not reject the churches because of their alleged betrayal of Christian principles, but rejects the Christian principles themselves because they seem incompatible with the specific tasks that Germany has to undertake, or because those principles mutilate and fetter man.
Religious Anti-Semitism is, then—and to this extent I share Maurice Samuel’s view—the articulate rejection of Christian morality, but is restricted to the Semitic origin of Christ because Christianity is too deeply rooted in the German people and the uprooting of Christianity would be so gigantic a task that National Socialism can only fulfil it by the long process of education.
The most powerful ideological anti-Christian influence in imperial Germany was that of Nietzsche. But Nietzsche was no Anti-Semite and every attempt to stamp him as such must end in failure. Even the National Socialists finally admitted that his pro-Semitic statements are too numerous to be neglected.86 Nietzsche denounced Anti-Semitism as mere jealousy against spirit and against money and the Anti-Semites as the most recent ‘speculators in idealism.’87 Nietzsche’s work is a most powerful attack upon the philosophy of the nineteenth century. His hatred is concentrated on Christianity, liberalism, democracy, and socialism, i.e. on those trends which, in his view, had initiated and accomplished the enslavement of man. According to Nietzsche, only a total revolution of values can remedy the situation. The will to power is the vehicle of the new order. The old order implies the enslavement of man’s healthful and vital instincts, initiated by Judaism and Christianity, but far more by the New than by the Old Testament. Religion has introduced the idea of equality, has taught man to ‘stammer the words of ‘equality’;88 democracy is merely a secularized Christianity, ‘a kind of return to nature.’89 ‘The poison of the teaching, equal rights for all, Christianity has sowed it.’90 ‘The equality of souls before God, this lie, this screen for the rancunes of all the base-minded, this anarchist bomb of a concept, which has become the last revolution, the modern idea and principle of destruction of the whole social order—this is Christian dynamite.’91 St: Paul, Rousseau, and socialism all express the same perversion. ‘The gospel that the low and the poor have equal access to happiness, that one has nothing to do but to free one’s self from the institutions, the tradition, the authorities of the higher estates, in this respect the rise of Christianity is nothing but the typical teaching of the socialist.’92
But just as much as he rejects democracy, liberalism, socialism, and Christianity, he also denounces nationalism and imperialism. So deep was Nietzsche’s conviction that Christ had mutilated the healthy instincts of men that he never forgave his friend Richard Wagner the opera Parsifal, in which Wagner returned to Christianity. His hatred of Christianity shows, especially in his Zarathustra, sadistic features. Christianity, as a negation of nature, is unnatural and therefore contemptible.
Though Nietzsche’s philosophy and the National Socialist ideology contain a good many similarities, there is an unbridgeable gulf between the two, since Nietzsche’s individualism transcends the pattern of any authoritarian order.
Whatever the ultimate meaning of Nietzsche may have been, his reception in Germany favored the growth of National Socialism.93 It provided National Socialism with an intellectual father who had greatness and wit, whose style was beautiful and not abominable, who was able to articulate the resentment against both monopoly capitalism and the rising proletariat. It was especially the Free Youth Movement, the so-called bündische youth, which protested against the mustiness of the bourgeois culture, against the complacency of the protestant clergy, against the traditional forms of nationalism, against the rule of the bureaucrats and desk-generals, trade-union bosses, industrial barons, financial jobbers—in short, rejected the whole world of bourgeois culture. But just as Nietzsche was unable to replace this condemned reality and the Christian teachings by anything but a more refined naturalism, a Darwinian doctrine of natural selection, so the Free Youth Movement, which furnished a good many National Socialist leaders, failed to elaborate any new philosophy except a moral and religious nihilism that, as does any nihilistic movement, ultimately leads to the acceptance of any power strong enough to crush all opponents. It was again the middle classes who were most deeply affected by Nietzsche’s anti-Christianity. The protest against a world that did not satisfy their ambitions and against a value system that imposed moral restraints upon them is expressed in the anti-Christian and anti-Jewish movement.
* See pp. 184-218.
† See also pp. 195, 209.
* On the Pan-German Union, see below, pp. 204-7.
* See pp. 275, 289-90.
* See p. 45.