In the early part of the twentieth century European Jews became scapegoats for the ills afflicting German society. Protestors raged against the assimilation of German Jewry, and Christian writers fulminated against the influence of Jewish values. Even though Germany prospered after the First World War, millions were unemployed between 1930 and 1933. This situation led to the rise of Nazism with its policies of rabid anti-Semitism. To the east, in Russia, Christian anti-Semites accused Jews of espionage and collaborating with the enemy during the war years. During the Revolution Russian authorities criticized what they perceived as an international Jewish conspiracy; as a result, pogroms took place throughout the country. Following the war a series of forgeries was produced, implicating Jewry with the Revolutionary movement and illustrating the existence of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. During this period British authors also vilified Jewry for dishonesty as well as revolutionary activities. Similar attitudes existed in France where Jews were criticized for their alleged influence on world affairs as well as their involvement in revolutionary activity. After the war, the publication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion reinforced the Christian myth of international intrigue. Across the Atlantic, in the United States, Jews were similarly blamed for the Russian Revolution; in response, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League were created to protect Jewish interests.
MODERN JUDAEOPHOBIA
Once the the British abandoned their policy of neutrality in 1914, the German Jewish poet Ernst Lissauer wrote ‘The Hymn of Hate against England’ in which he denounced the British. ‘We will hate you with an enduring hatred,’ he wrote, ‘never is our hatred going to abate. Hatred on the sea, hatred on land, hatred of the head, hatred of the hand, hatred of the blacksmith, hatred of the prince, ferocious hatred of 70 million.’ Despite such patriotism, which caused Wilhelm II to decorate the author, a number of German anti-Semites castigated Lissauer because of his racial origins. Houston Steward Chamberlain, for example, declared that Lissauer belonged to a people who have cultivated hatred through the centuries.
This type of Judaeophobia was characteristic of the age. When the realities of the First World War became evident, the exorbitant costs both in terms of loss of human life and the economic consequences of the reparation requirements of the Treaty of Versailles made Jews the scapegoats for the ills besetting German society. In this environment, the philosopher Max Hilderbert Boehm formulated a bill of indictment in the Jahrbücher protesting against Jewish assimilation. In a later article, ‘Emancipation as Will to Power in Modern Jewry’, he stated: ‘Nowadays, they, the cosmopolitan Jews, hold the universe in the palm of their hands, and they have no intention of letting go.’ Similarly Dostoevski bewailed the growing power of the Jewish people: ‘Like a vast, tightening net, the power of assimilated Jewry stretches over the whole world, and no matter where we set foot, we are caught in it. . . . We must struggle to our last drop of blood against the insidious Judaization of Europe, and especially of Germanism.’
The theme of anti-assimilationism was replicated in the works of other thinkers of the age. Oswald Spengler, in The Decline of the West, argued that there can be no understanding between ‘Faustian nations’ such as Germany, and ‘Magian nations’, which included Jews:
Even when the Jews consider themselves members of the host country and share in its destiny, as was the case in most countries in 1914, in reality, they do not live this event as their own destiny, but they side with it, judge it as interested bystanders, and the ultimate meaning of the struggle must for this very reason remain incomprehensible to them. . . . The belief in the inevitability of this mutual misunderstanding leads finally to a frightening hatred, deeply concentrated in the blood, attaching itself to symbolic signs such as race, lifestyle, profession, language, which leads both sides to bloody explosions.
At the conclusion of the First World War, the assembly at Weimar drafted a new constitution that transformed Germany into a federal republic. This new regime faced opposition from both the right and the left. During 1922 to 1923 there was massive inflation in Germany; however, for the next few years greater stability was achieved, and important intellectual and cultural advances were made. This brief period of prosperity was followed by the Great Depression, when over 6 million were unemployed. As a result the Communists and the Nazis gained considerable support. To cope with this crisis, the government began to rule by presidential decree. After several ineffective conservative coalitions, Field-Marshal Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933.
For Hitler, the Jews were degenerates and parasites. Such a view was the result of deep-seated loathing that had its origins in his early experiences. As he explained in Mein Kampf, in Vienna he had become aware of their presence: ‘Once, as I was strolling through the inner city, I suddenly encountered an apparition in black caftan and black hair locks. Is this a Jew was my first thought. For, to be sure, they had not looked like that in Linz. I observed this man furtively and cautiously, but the longer I stared at this foreign face, scrutinizing feature for feature, the more my first question assumed a new form: Is this a German?’
For Hitler the Jew could never become a German because he was racially and religiously distinct. The difference between Jews and Germans was so vast as to make the former inherently alien. Comparing Jews with vermin, he wrote: ‘Was there any form of filth or profligacy particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in it? If you cast even cautiously into such an abscess you found, like a maggot in a rotting body, often dazzled by the sudden light – a kike!’ The influence of Jews on the press, art, literature and the theatre was pervasive. In addition, he attributed to them responsibility for prostitution and the white slave traffic.
In propounding his opinions, Hitler embraced the belief in a world conspiracy as delineated in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Jews, he maintained, seek to dominate world events; in pursuit of this aim a small group of wealthy and influential Jewish figures meet secretly to devise their plans. By inciting social division, the Jew is able to burrow into a healthy society and thereby prepare for the domination of the world. Such logic led Hitler to conclude that the Jew is a personification of Satan who ravages his victims. Convinced that a people’s greatness depends upon the purity of its blood, he argued that the German people can only recover its strength by eliminating Jews from its midst and preventing them from polluting its true nature. The German state must breed only the most racially pure specimens to ensure a glorious future.
When war was proclaimed, many Russian Jews declared their allegiance to their country even though the Jewish community had previously been subjected to prejudice and discrimination. Thus in 1914 the Jewish deputy Friedmann stated to the Duma: ‘In spite of the discriminatory legislation that governs us, we have always felt like citizens of Russia, and we are faithful sons of the fatherland. No force on earth can separate the Jews from the fatherland, from this land to which they are bound by ancient links. The Jews are going to defend it, not only out of a sense of duty, but also because of deep affection.’
Despite such expressions of allegiance, Jews were accused of espionage and collaboration with the enemy. Traditional Jewish customs were misinterpreted to support allegations of treason. As one report of the period revealed: ‘It is an old Jewish practice to keep in the synagogue of small communities a piece of wire or a rope long enough to surround the whole village on Saturday. When an area is thus roped off, everyone is allowed to carry his usual possessions on Saturday, that is to say, the day of rest. According to a convention of Jewish law, a city surrounded by a rope is considered a courtyard. The soldiers, not understanding the function of that rope, believe that its function was to telephone the enemy.’
Given such suspicion of Jewish motives, it was not uncommon for Russian officers to encourage hatred of Jewry, attitudes reflected, for example, in the instructions given by Lieutenant-General Zhdanovitch, commander of the First Infantry Brigade: ‘During the present patriotic war all the numerous nationalities that settled in Russia, with the exception of the Yids, have united so thoroughly that national differences have been completely forgotten. The Yids could have taken advantage of this exceptional, historical moment to restore the reputation of their people, to give proof of their human dignity, and to obtain equal rights, since they claim to be the object of unfair treatment.’
These, however, were not Jewish aspirations. Instead, Zhdanovitch stated, ‘Russian Yids exhausted every trick to keep from participating in the defence of the homeland. Anger and hatred will then find an outlet infinitely more dangerous for them than the risks that they run by fulfilling their military obligations, and popular resentment will turn not only against those who through their criminal behaviour helped the enemy but also against their relatives and innocent children.’
Determined to denigrate Russian Jewry, the authorities invoked the spectre of an international Jewish conspiracy. When the Revolution of 1917 occurred, pogroms took place in the provincial cities and elsewhere. In Ekaterinodar a ‘Slavic Group’ was formed to carry out an anti-Semitic campaign in the countryside, and the Ukraine witnessed widespread anti-Jewish activity. Alarmed by such an outburst of hostility, the regional prosecutor of Petrograd stressed the need for an anti-pogrom law. ‘According to our information,’ he wrote, ‘there is a growing incitement to riots in the markets and other gathering places of the public. It is in Vitebsk and Petrograd that the calls for pogroms are the loudest. The pogromists insist that the Jews control the militia, the Soviets, and the District Dumas, and threaten to assassinate certain political figures.’ In response, the Soviets accused the counter-revolutionaries of prejudice: ‘This anti-Jewish militancy, often marked by radical rallying cries, constitutes an enormous danger, not only for the Jewish people, but also for the whole revolutionary movement, for it threatens to drown in blood the whole cause of the liberation of the people, and cover the revolutionary movement with an indelible shame.’
In the view of many Russians, the Jews were responsible for the revolutionary struggle. In addition, influential Jewish capitalists were seen as playing a central role in these historical events. In a series of forgeries, it was claimed that the Bolsheviks were controlled by a Rhenish-Westphalian syndicate through the agency of the Jewish banker Max Warburg and the Bolshevik Jew Fürstenberg. Convinced of their authenticity, the American government published these documents in 1918 under the title The German-Bolshevik Conspiracy. It was further alleged that the tsar and his family had been murdered on the order of the Jew Jacob Sverdlov and under the direction of the Jews Yurovsk and Goloshtshekin. As the British military attaché, General Alfred Knox, explained: ‘There were two camps in the local soviet. One wanted to save the royal family. The other was directed by five Jews, two of whom were adamantly in favour of the murder.’ As a result, an anti-Jewish crusade was initiated by the White armies.
In the aftermath of the First World War, a number of forgeries were circulated to implicate the Jews with revolutionary movement activities and to illustrate the existence of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. In an alleged secret report of the French government, for example, a list of Communist leaders – all of whom except Lenin were Jews – described their plans for universal Zionist domination: ‘The Jews have already secured the formal recognition of a Jewish state in Palestine. They have also succeeded in organizing a Jewish republic in Germany and Austro-Hungary. These are but the first steps towards the future domination of the world by the Jews, but it is not their last attempt.’
In another forgery, The Report of Comrade Rappaport, the Zionist manipulation of the Russian masses was described: ‘After the fiasco of national cooperation, Ukrainian nationalism lost its economic base. The discount banks run by our comrades Nazert, Gloss, Fischer, Krauss, and Spindler play the major role in this case. The Russian landowning class, frivolous and stupid, will follow us like sheep going to the slaughter. As representative of the Poale Zion, I must acknowledge to my great satisfaction that our party and the Bund have become centres of activity manipulating the immense flock of Russian sheep.’ Likewise, the most important forgery of this period, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was circulated by propagandists and further intensified fears of Jewish influence. After the defeat of the White armies, Russian emigrés publicized this document in the West, thereby fomenting further hostility towards Jewry.
The British public was highly critical of the French during the Dreyfus Affair. However, with the coronation of Edward VII in 1901, attitudes began to change. The king’s banker, Ernest Cassel, was a German Jew, and British officials sought to undermine his projects, particularly when he travelled to Constantinople to reorganize the Ottoman Empire’s finances. Between 1911 and 1912 a journalistic campaign was launched which alleged that the Turkish revolution was the result of a Zionist conspiracy.
Additional unrest was brought about by the Marconi Affair which concerned two leading Jewish politicians, Rufus Isaacs, the Attorney General, and Herbert Samuels, the first non-Christian member of a British Cabinet. In 1912 Lloyd George and other liberals were accused of mishandling funds, as the magazine Eyewitness reported: ‘Isaacs’ brother is the president of the Marconi Company. Isaacs and Samuels have privately arranged to have the British people pay the Marconi Company a considerable sum of money through the intermediary of Samuels, and for Isaacs’ benefit.’
Even though the Jews involved in this affair were cleared by a parliamentary commission of enquiry, the scandal had a significant impact on British attitudes. In the wake of these events the writer Rudyard Kipling dedicated a hymn of hate to the affair. Based on the biblical story about Naaman’s servant Gehazi, who is portrayed in the Book of Kings as a greedy and crafty figure punished with leprosy for his deceit, the poem was intended to illustrate the cunning of these Jewish politicians.
Such hostile attitudes were exacerbated by a large influx of Jews from Eastern Europe to London; in 1902 the Bishop of Stepney compared these immigrants to a conquering army that would ‘eat the Christians out of house and home’. With the onset of war, suspicions were raised about these foreigners. In 1915 the sinking of the Lusitania led to further Judaeophobia. According to The Times, this war crime was caused by a Jew Albert Ballin, Wilhelm II’s courtier, and in the wake of such media outcry and the fears engendered a campaign was initiated to strip Sir Ernest Cassel of both his citizenship and titles. In response the London Jewish newspapers complained about describing all Jews as Germans. Despite this protest, the British dailies and weeklies continued to incite racial hatred.
The English writer and critic G.K. Chesterton in The New Witness, for example, invoked the medieval image of ritual murder to fuel anti-Semitism. A Mr Thompson in The Clarion maintained that the ‘Prussians, like the Jews, came from a tiny, rocky and arid land, and they, too, conquered the place in the sun through robbery.’ The Prussians, he continued, are like the Jews; they have a tribal God whose principles are based on the fear he inspires. In the National Review, Leo Maxse argued that the international Jew, having been informed of the departure of Lord Kitchener for Russia, informed the German High Command. This Jew, he stated, was a miserable, calculating creature without king or homeland.
Similar animosity was expressed by leading political figures. Despite his support for the creation of a Jewish homeland, Lord Balfour, for example, complained to his mistress about a leading Jewish family:
In Brighton, at the Sassoons, I met Rosebery, Devonshire, and H. Farquhar. We found out, to our profound indignation, that we had been invited under false pretences. The Prince of Wales had dedicated a hospital in the morning, and he stayed at Reuben Sassoon’s until Monday. The two evenings, we were forced to attend a long, hot and pompous dinner, crowded with innumerable Sassoon young ladies. Although I have no prejudices against the race (far from it) I began to understand the point of view of those who are opposed to foreign immigration!
Echoing similar sentiments, Lord Cecil commented that the enthusiasm of Chaim Weizmann ‘overshadowed his rather repulsive, even sordid, physique’. Joseph Chamberlain commented to the Italian minister of foreign affairs that he despised the Jews. ‘They are all physical cowards,’ he stated. Reporting on the events taking place in Russia, the British press accused the Jews of playing a leading role in the Revolution. Thus The Times reported that the soviet leadership was composed of Jewish partisans: ‘The Petrograd soviet is an organism accredited only by itself, composed of idealists, theoreticians, and anarchists . . . most of the time typical international Jews, and including no soldiers or workers. A few of them are known to be in the pay of the Germans.’
Commenting on these events, the Morning Post reported:
From the very beginning, German influence in the soviet was barely disguised. Some time ago, we published a list of the members of this remarkable council who thought it useful to change names, and the number was considerable. These conspirators were obviously Russian Jews of German extraction, and we fear that it will be said that Russian Jews betrayed Russia. It used to be said that the Spanish Jews had been expelled from Spain because they opened the gates to the Moors. Indeed, it would be unfortunate for the Jews of the entire world if it could be said that Russian Jews have opened the gates of Russia to the Germans.
Such allegations led to widespread hostility towards Jewry, and in 1918 the Herald reported numerous outbreaks of violence:
Our attention has been called to the terrorism practised against the Jews and foreigners in some parts of East London. We are informed that all kinds of mean persecutions prevail, that men with long beards are insulted in the streets by having their beards pulled, that shopkeepers are obliged to submit to what is nothing more nor less than organized blackmail. . . . This kind of thing is directly traceable to the free distribution of incitements, which the police allow to be circulated, and to the venomous attacks on foreigners appearing in the yellow press.
Following the war, the distribution of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion evoked considerable controversy. On 8 May 1920, The Times raised questions about its authenticity in terms that suggested that a secret international body might indeed exist: ‘What is this Protocols? Is it authentic? Did a gang of criminals really prepare such a project and gloat over their exposition? Is it a forgery? If so, whence comes the uncanny note of prophecy, prophecy in part fulfilled, in part far gone in the way of fulfilment? Have we been struggling these tragic years to blow up and exterminate the secret German organization of world domination only to find beneath it another more dangerous because more secret?’
Even though Jews were generally accepted in the United States, the traditional stereotype of the Jew continued to play a significant role in the perception of the Jewish community. As thousands of immigrants poured into the country, discrimination became a feature of American life. In 1876, for example, a hotel in New Jersey announced in New York newspapers that it would not admit Jews. In the next year the hotelier John Hilton refused to let the millionaire Joseph Seligman stay in his resort in Saratoga. By the end of the century such discrimination extended to country clubs and Masonic lodges as well as to colleges and universities.
In response, a number of prominent Jews protested publicly against such intolerance. When, for example, the librarian Melvil Dewey established a club in New York that excluded Jews, several important Jewish figures complained to the state:
More than 750,000 Jews reside in this state. The majority are taxpayers who fulfil their obligations for the maintenance of state institutions and the payment of salaries of state employees, including Mr Melvil Dewey as head librarian. They are proud of this state and its administration. They strive to raise its cultural level, to facilitate education, and to promote the arts, science, and literature. They have worked for the cause of education as much as any other group of citizens in this community. They, therefore, feel they have the right to demand that a man, as a public official representing the whole population of the state, be prohibited as a state employee from showing the vile prejudice to which a man can stoop.
It was such antipathy that had led the Jewish community to create organizations to protect their interests, such as the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League.
In the quest to defend and protect the rights of American Jews, the American Jewish Committee fought successfully against attempts to limit Jewish immigration; on the international scene it pressurized the Russian government to issue entry visas to Americans of Jewish descent. In addition, the American Jewish Committee attempted to ensure that Jews be fully accepted as Americans, an undertaking needed to counter the views of writers such as Madison Grant who continued to maintain in The Passing of the Great Race that the Jews posed a threat to the American population.
Once America entered the First World War, Jews were seen as participants in international conspiracy. Thus the report Bolshevism and Judaism, written by a Russian refugee who had served as an official of the Ministry of Justice, which appeared in November 1918 asserted that the decision to overthrow the tsar had been taken in the Jewish section of New York on 14 February 1916 by a revolutionary group headed by one Jacob Schiff. Quoting a section of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, this report stated that the Elders were persuaded that they could stop any rebellion of the ‘goyim’. The report also listed thirty-one Russian Jewish leaders, excluding Lenin, who ruled Russia. The fears evoked by these allegations were compounded by a succession of strikes in the United States in 1919, including that of the garment workers, most of whom were Jewish. In response, the Citizens’ Committees and Patriotic Organizations prospered.
Even though the Russian Revolution was welcomed by a number of Americans, most Americans abhorred Communism. In their view, the Jews had been responsible for the course of events, with some witnesses even maintaining that the ringleaders of the revolution were Jews from New York. Hence in a conversation with American senators, the Revd George A. Simons of the English Methodist Church in Russia stated that the Bolshevik movement was aided by American Jews. ‘We were told,’ he stated, ‘that hundreds of agitators who had followed Trotsky-Bronstein came from the East Side of New York. I was surprised to find a great number of these men going up and down the Nevski. Some of them, when they learned that I was the American minister in Petrograd, stopped me and seemed happy to find someone who spoke English. But their bad English showed that they were not real Americans. Some came to visit me. We were struck by the prominence, from the beginning, of the Yiddish element in this affair, and it soon became evident that half the agitators were Yiddish. . . . I am firmly convinced that this business is Jewish.’
Such allegations encouraged American patriots to defend their country from the influence of Jewry. After a trip to the United States during this period, Hilaire Belloc reported:
[In Great Britain] a certain proportion of Jews had become generally necessary to the ruling circles. Nothing of the sort in the United States. The Jews are barely admitted in major country clubs, and most of the time they are barred. Their talents are rarely used on the General Staff of the army. They have no real civic standing. They are excluded from I don’t know how many hotels. As I have just stated, the major country clubs refuse to admit them. The universities, particularly Harvard, have openly organized their defences against the invasion of Jewish students.
In literary circles a number of writers commented on the evil influence of Jewry. Hence, in the American F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and the Damned, the character Antony Patch describes the Jewish impact on life in New York: ‘Down in a tall, busy street he read a dozen Jewish names on a line of stores. In the door of each stood a dark, little man watching the passers by with intent eyes, eyes gleaming with suspicion, with pride, with clarity, with cupidity, with comprehension. New York – he could not dissociate it now from the slow upward creep of this people. The little stores, growing, expanding, consolidating, moving, watched over with hawk’s eyes and a bee’s attention to detail.’
The most vehement American opponent of Jews during this period was the prominent industrialist Henry Ford, who in an interview recalled the origin of his contempt: ‘On the ship there were two very prominent Jews. We hadn’t travelled two hundred miles [when] these Jews started telling me about the power of the Jewish race and the way they manipulated the world through their control of the gold supply. The Jews, and only the Jews, could stop the war. I refused to believe this, and I told them so. They went into details to describe how the Jews controlled, and how they owned the money.’ Having uncovered this scheme, Ford felt compelled to share his observations. On 22 May 1920, the Dearborn Independent, which Ford owned, denounced the economic power of the Jewish community. Later, Ford’s newspaper began to print sections of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and an American version of this forgery was published in 1921. At the same time a protest against such slurs was launched by leading American figures including Presidents Taft, Wilson and Harding. Nonetheless, anti-Jewish feeling continued to fester beneath the surface of American life.
Even though French Jews had defended their country during the First World War, anti-Jewish sentiment persisted during this period, As elsewhere, the Russian Revolution was perceived in France as having been instigated by Jewish activists. Hence in July 1917 when the Bosheviks sought to gain power, Jews were accused by La Libre Parole for their role in these events: ‘It is impossible to understand anything about the great tremors that are tearing society apart if we neglect the Jewish factor. . . . Austro-Boche or Franco-German Jews will raise the flag of Israel over the ruins of the vanquished.’
Just before the triumph of the revolutionary forces, L’Heure accused Jews of plotting against the tsar: ‘Even those who are not anti-Semitic cannot help making a small observation on the composition of the Petrograd society and the background of its members. The real name of Chernov, the former minister of agriculture, who is now Kerensky’s bitterest opponent, is Feldman. The real name of Steklov, the well-known author of Order Number One to the Russian army, the one that abolished discipline, is Nahinkes, German Jew. . . . As for Lenin, everyone knows that his name is Zederblum.’
Once the Bolsheviks prevailed, the French press blamed the Jews for the revolution. As Maurice Barrès commented: ‘Russia is disappearing because it is infested with Jews.’ The politician Georges Clemenceau similarly attacked the Jews for their involvement: ‘without patriotism, how can there be a homeland?’ he asked. He continued:
What is a people that no longer has a homeland? Alas, we can see it in this mob of German Jews who, unable to keep the land of their ancestors, appeared at the instigation of their brothers in Germany to derussify Russia, whose first reaction was savage pogroms, the supreme aggravation of all barbarisms. One must not kill, for killing is not an answer. Among others, before and after him, the Nazarene proved it. It is sufficient not to be led, that is, misled, by the suggestions of a people that once was great, but now shows itself incapable of creating this homeland that its atavistic concepts considered secondary, the way the fox of the fable convinced others to disdain an appendage of which it had been deprived.
During 1918 condemnation of Jewry intensified. Jewish Bolshevism was seen as a threat to national stability, and Zionism was interpreted as posing a danger to the Christian world. Thus in March 1919 La Documentation catholique argued that the Jewish claim to universal domination does not prevent Jews from pursuing the reconstruction of their own kingdom. Several months later this publication proposed a series of remedies for the Jewish threat:
We must create a public opinion in Christian countries. . . . We must echo the moving complaint of the Holy Father: we must speak to these Christian nations of the Christian ideal, of the disgrace of allowing the cradle of their religion to fall under the domination of the Jews, whether disguised or not. A second remedy . . . persuade the peasants not to sell their land to the Jews by pointing out that this land will increase in value. A bank that would give mortgages . . . would be extremely helpful. Finally (I ought to say, above all), union between Christians and Muslims is required as an essential salvation.
The following year Le Petit Parisien reported on events taking place in Russia: ‘It would be easy to see the organization of the great Asiatic crusade against the British. The Jew Braunstein [sic], known as Trotsky, surrounded by his Semitic or oriental cabal, dreams of becoming the Napoleon of the East. He is the undisputed head of the immense international secret society that aspires to overthrow European civilization and expel the British from their possessions in Asia.’
Commenting on world affairs, the reporter Albert Londres stated in L’Excelsior: ‘The proletarians are led by the nose. Who rules, then? The activities of socialist conventions, the grimy exiles, the moles of the world’s libraries, wasting their youth on books dealing with pauperism to find ways to cope with their material needs, the Siberians, the Mongolians, the Armenians, the Asiatics, and in the labyrinths of hallways, in the police stations, under the wastepaper baskets, the king: the Jew. Ah! the charming little massacre that is brewing on the horizon.’
Nor did this verbal barrage against the Jews let up in following years. In 1921 Roger Lambelin proclaimed in Le règne d’Isräel chez les Anglo-Saxons that Jewry was determined to prevail over those among whom they lived. ‘The documents I have consulted,’ he claimed, ‘the examination of English, American and Jewish newspapers and periodicals, testimonies gathered in Egypt and Palestine, and data furnished by reliably informed correspondents on certain Jewish manoeuvres, have put me in a position to follow rather closely the steps towards the creation of Jewish rule over the Anglo-Saxons.’ Other observers claimed that the Judaeo-German conspiracy had increased its hold on power. Thus André Chéradame observed: ‘The people of the Entente are caught in the formidable pincers held by pro-German leaders. The first branch of this pincer is represented by the international financial activities of the Judaeo-German syndicate operating on the upper strata of the countries of the Entente to recruit accomplices through corruption. The second batch is represented by the activities of the Bolsheviks or Socialists of Bolshevik leanings acting on the labouring classes of the Allied countries.’ Such attitudes served as the background for the rise of Nazism and the systematic extermination of European Jewry.
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN ANTI-SEMITISM
As we have seen, traditional hostilities towards Jews were based on religious convictions; such attitudes persisted through the Reformation into modern times. Yet, the conditions that transformed such sentiments into racial hatred were the consequence of social, economic and political change. Previously European society was based on a feudal order; with industrialization, however, this hierarchical structure was radically altered, causing anxiety, dislocation and resentment. While socialists proclaimed the virtues of revolution, conservatives sought to strengthen pre-capitalist institutions and preserve the old order.
In the years following the revolutions of 1848, traditionalists blamed the Jews for the political upheavals that had spread throughout Europe. Anxious to return to previous patterns of social life, various political parties and interest groups targeted liberalism as the cause of social disruption. In their view, Jewish emancipation was the primary cause of social change. By the 1890s, anti-modernism was widely embraced as the only ideology which could prevent further upheaval. In espousing such a view, conservatives glorified the past, nurturing the collective memory of a Golden Age that celebrated discipline, peace and order.
From the middle of the nineteenth century, Jews had been granted civil rights in all German states, including the Austrian monarchy, yet such a policy inadvertently unleashed fierce opposition towards the Jewish population. Even though many Jews prospered, they faced numerous social and political barriers. It was widely recognized that few would be able to become civil servants, teachers, professors, judges or officers in the military. In time, however, Jews came to play an increasingly important role in economic affairs and had attained prominence in newspaper publishing and the retail trade.
A new stage of anti-Semitism occurred following the financial crash of 1873. In the wake of this event, severe economic dislocation took place, and Jews were blamed for the ensuing social upheaval. Word spread that the crash had been caused by Jews or ‘Jew-like’ Germans. In the opinion of some journalists, such social tumult was the result of the rupture of the bonds between master and apprentice. To combat such pressures, theorists extolled opposition to the Jews as a precondition to the restructuring of society. According to some Christians, a return to traditional values was imperative.
As we have seen, writers and publicists of this period ranged from ultraconservatives to bohemians. Repeatedly they emphasized that Jews were infecting or taking over various aspects of German cultural and economic life. In the 1870s the use of the term ‘anti-Semitism’ by Wilhelm Marr crystallized this process. His book, The Victory of Judaism over Germanism became a best-seller: in this diatribe, he alleged that the Jewish victory over European society permeated all aspects of modern life. Germans, he argued, had become jewified: the Jews had won not with armies, but with their indomitable spirit, which infected every aspect of contemporary German life. Even though he dismissed medieval charges against the Jews, he insisted that Jewishness was determined by racial descent. The League of Anti-Semites which he founded sought to unite Germans against the pernicious influence of Jewry. In the view of its supporters, Jews should be excluded from teaching, the judiciary and other civic positions.
A number of significant political figures exploited anti-Semitism to their advantage. Pre-eminent among these politicians was the Imperial Chancellor and first minister of the Crown, Otto von Bismarck, who argued that Jews posed a threat to Christian society. Unlike Bismarck, who simply used anti-Semitism for his own purposes, the court chaplain to the German emperor, Adolf Stoecker, was ideologically committed to Jew-hatred. In 1878 he founded the Christian Social Party, which was widely popular with middle- and lower-middle-class audiences. Before gatherings of the faithful, he denounced Jews as materialists and enemies of the state.
Even though Stoecker claimed he was not preaching Jew-hatred, he implied that Jews deserve to be despised because of their hard-heartedness. In his view, with the coming of Christ, the Jews had fulfilled their role in history; hence Judaism had been nullified by Christianity. A more extreme position was adopted by Eugen Dühring, an economist and philosopher who argued in The Jewish Question as a Question of Race, Morals and Culture, that Jews had no right to exist at all. Another influential figure of this period was Heinrich von Treitschke who regarded the Jewish people as the root of all misfortune: ‘Year after year,’ he wrote, ‘out of the inexhaustible Polish cradle there streams over our eastern border a host of hustling, pants-peddling youths, whose children and children’s children will some day command Germany’s stock exchanges and newspapers.’ In his German History in the Nineteenth Century, he described Jews in the most negative terms.
In the 1880s, such antipathy served as the background for the emergence of a number of political parties dedicated to solving the Jewish problem. Even though they adopted differing ideologies, these agreed on the need to prohibit Jewish immigration and exclude Jews from positions of authority. Standing on platforms combining nationalism, racism and conservatism, these patriots advocated a return to traditional German values. In 1893 these anti-Semitic political parties won 16 out of 400 seats in the Reichstag. In advocating Jew-hatred these parties sought to recruit to their ranks and garner the votes of small-town dwellers as well as rural inhabitants. Alongside these political organizations, extra-parliamentary pressure groups such as the Agrarian League also embraced anti-Semitic attitudes. Founded in 1893, the Agrarian League represented the interests of impoverished nobility who sought to safeguard what they deemed historical and organic German purity from infection by Jewish aliens.
Chamberlain’s The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century echoed such anti-Semitic attitudes. According to Chamberlain, humanity is divided into distinct races. In his view, the struggle and interaction between these races has served as the propelling force of history. The book’s main theme is the destructive influence of the Jews, and the creative impact of the Aryan race. For Chamberlain, the Jew is identified with predatory economic activity and unearned wealth. In his opinion, the Jew threatens to destroy civilization and culture; the Aryan, on the other hand, is capable of contributing to art and science. This work, which focuses on the Aryan teachings of Christ, provided a basis for national Volkish rebirth.
In Habsburg Austria anti-Semitism was also pervasive throughout the nineteenth century, and capitalism was identified with the Jew; as a result, Jew-hatred became an anti-modernist reaction against the impact of capitalism. The Austrian Christian Social Party, for example, defended Austrian traditionalism, glorifying the pre-industrial world. Peasants were identified with the Volk, whereas the industrial way of life was the result of the pernicious influence of Jewry. In this context the image of the modern industrial order was contrasted with the familiar patterns of traditional rural life. Throughout this period, anti-Semitism flourished in a range of parties, including the Slavic nationalists, the Pan-Germans and the Christian Socialists. Figures such as Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Karl Lueger championed traditional values against the liberal principles of those who were seen as destroying European civilization.
Unlike Western Europe, the world of Eastern Europe had not been affected by the social, political and economic features of Western liberalism, nor had hostility to Jews been associated with racial theories. Yet, former patterns of anti-Semitism continued into the nineteenth century. By the turn of the century Russia contained over 5 million Jews, nearly half the world’s Jewish population. In the Middle Ages, Jews had been expelled, and even itinerant Jewish merchants had been banned until the eighteenth century. However, with the annexation of vast Polish and Lithuanian territories, nearly a million Jews came under Russian rule. Confined to the Pale, Russian Jews were vilified by the ferociously anti-Semitic Orthodox Church.
In general the tsars sought to maximize the benefit of the Jewish community to Russian society while at the same time minimizing the danger they posed to the peasantry, with the result that frequent attempts were made to assimilate this vast population. Alexander I encouraged assimilation in the hope that it would bring about the disappearance of Jewry; Nicholas I instituted military conscription assuming that it would bring about the total integration of Jews into the general populace. Alexander II, however, sought to utilize Jewish resources, and thereby encourage the participation of Jews in the intellectual and cultural life of Russia. Some Jews converted to Christianity; others remained loyal to the Jewish faith while pursuing the opportunities opening up for engineers and entrepreneurs in Siberia and the Caucasus. In some cases Jewish children attended university and subsequently joined an urban elite.
Many Russians perceived Jews as constituting a danger to society because of their modernist attitudes. In this milieu, the Russian intelligentsia sought to save the real Russia from Jewry, identifying Jews as the hated adversary and the embodiment of the changes they detested. For some the image of the Jew as the champion of capitalism was the source of anxiety and fear. By the late 1860s anti-Semitism had become a policy of the Russian autocracy, especially the police; frequently it served as a safety valve and outlet for social discontent. When Alexander II was assassinated in 1881, violent action was taken by Jew-haters and the Jewish question gained national prominence. The commission established by Alexander III blamed these disturbances on Jewish exploitation. In 1882 the government issued a series of regulations that restricted the economic activities of Jews, narrowed the boundaries of the Pale, and deprived Jews of their rights of residence in villages. In the period between 1881 and the end of the civil wars of the Bolshevik Revolution there were three major waves of pogroms: 1881–2; 1903–6; 1918–20. These outbursts were fuelled by Jew-hatred combined with fear of the perceived pernicious influence of Jewry on Russian society.
In France, anti-Semitism was rooted in the Christian past. Even though the Enlightenment had undermined the Christian foundation of Judaeophobia, the theological basis was replaced by a secular perspective. Paradoxically, the Enlightenment reinforced prejudices against the Jews. Such figures as the humanist historian Jules Michelet maintained that the influence of the Judaeo-Christian tradition had to be curtailed in the modern world. Ernst Renan sought to liberalize and humanize Jesus and the Christian tradition. In his view, Christianity is a religion of spiritual love in contrast to the tradition from which it sprung; according to Renan, Judaism was burdened by the legalism of the past. Other writers associated Jews with capitalism and its corrupting influence on the nation. In this environment the Catholic Church fostered Jew-hatred, insisting that the emancipation of Jewry was an evil to be resisted. Between 1870 and 1894 one-third of all anti-Semitic books published in France were written by Catholic priests. During this period a semi-official Vatican publication Civilità Cattolica publicized purported cases of ritual murder, providing lists of victims and coverage of new cases.
With the influx of immigrants to Paris from Alsace as well as German lands, Jews increasingly came to be associated with the vices of capitalism. Critics continually complained that the economic transformation of French life led to the erosion of traditional values. As a consequence, reactionaries extolled the merits of pre-industrial society. Such figures as Alphonse Toussenel idealized the past as unspoiled. In The Jews: King of the Epoch, he blamed the Jews for the ills afflicting society. In his view, Jewish bankers and financiers were a pernicious influence. The French forests, he declared, had been destroyed by the Rothschild railroads. It was time, he believed, to seize the country back from the grip of the tribe of Satan. In a similar vein, Pierre Joseph Proudhon described the Jews as the race that poisons everything.
According to Edouard-Adolphe Drumont in La France juive, the Revolution had benefited only the Jews. Contrasting the Semite and the Aryan, he described Jews as greedy, grasping and scheming. Aryans, on the other hand, were the true founders of French civilization. Aryans were creative and noble; Jews were hook-nosed, with huge ears, soft hands, and arms of unequal length. They were diseased and cunning, determined to subjugate the Aryan race. Such hostility toward French Jewry was intensified by the Dreyfus Affair which gave anti-Semitism in France a particular prominence. In the eyes of many French citizens, Dreyfus’ treason appeared as the latest example of Jewish conspiracies against the French nation. In 1898 violent demonstrations took place throughout the country as mobs screamed: ‘Death to the Jews!’ The fury unleashed by these events was the background to the growth of Fascism in the 1930s and the emergence of Nazi collaborators during the Vichy regime. Arguably, the strength of such anti-Semitic sentiments enabled French officials to collaborate with the Nazi deportation of Jews to the death camps.
As we have seen, rabid anti-Semitism was not confined to Europe. In the New World, hostility to Jews was engendered by commercial and industrial expansion in the middle of the nineteenth century. Over this period American literature repeatedly described Jews in the most unsavoury terms. The migration of millions of Jews to America between 1880 and 1914 engendered suspicion and fear of Jewish foreigners. The case of Leo Frank symbolized growing antipathy towards the Jewish presence on American soil. In 1913 Frank, a Jewish factory superintendent in Atlanta, Georgia, was accused of brutally murdering a thirteen-year-old girl. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. After numerous appeals, the state governor commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. However, in the summer of 1915 a mob broke into the prison and hanged him from a tree.
After the First World War, racism combined with the alleged connection between Jewish interests and Bolshevism evoked fury against the Jewish community. Pre-eminent among modern US anti-Semites Henry Ford, in his newspaper the Dearborn Independent, launched a ferocious campaign against Jews until 1927, attacking and blaming them for the evils afflicting American society. With the hardships experienced by millions during the Depression, anti-Semitism became increasingly virulent. The aviator Charles Lindberg glamorized pro-Nazi attitudes, while Father Charles Coughlin attacked Jews in radio broadcasts. As the Nazis’ plan of extermination for European Jewry gathered momentum, anti-Semitism in America intensified despite US determination to win the war.