“History has seen many instances of persecution of the Jews—but never a State-inspired persecution planned with such diabolical consistency, and carried through so cold-bloodedly and systematically, and on such a scale and with such terrible consequences, as that persecution set in motion by the National Socialist regime, with all the administrative and technical resources at its command, in the territories under it command” asserts German historian Helmut Krausnick, the former head of the Institute of Contemporary History, a leading German research institute on the history of National Socialism.
To understand why this was “no chance development and that even Hitler was no mere ‘accident’ of German history,” Krausnick suggests that while analyzing antisemitism “as the core of National Socialist ‘ideology,” one should examine the philosophy that lead to the murder of six million Jews, which involved the leaders, supporters, but also segments of the “educated” classes, especially in Germany, who had been subjected for a considerable period, and “to which they finally succumbed.”
Krausnick quotes a number of antisemites, who in a series of publications in German speaking-countries, years before the Nazis came to power, stigmatized Jews as parasites and demanded that, at the very least, they be made to adhere to special laws. An “obscure” German journalist, Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904), whom historian Mosche Zimmermann labeled “the patriarch of antisemitism,” for having introduced the political term Antisemitismus into politics and founding the first “Anti-Semitic League,” wrote a pamphlet in which he pressed for a battle between “Germanism” and the “threatening world of domination” of “Judaism.” Jews, he said, were unequivocally “racially inflexible;” they were incapable of modifying their own behavior and could not be changed by others either. No one could live with them in peace and as equals due their “tribal peculiarities” and “alien essence.”
The terms “anti-Semite” and “anti-Semitism” achieved instant acceptance throughout Europe historian Richard S. Levy opined. They solved a need for new designations, that better expressed a new and, it was believed, necessary method of combatting Jews. Had he not written “The Victory of Jewry Over Germandom” in 1879, and recognized as having coined the term Antisemitismus, he would have “remained forever in obscurity.”
The same year, Berlin historian Heinrich von Treitschke coined the infamous accusation Die Juden sind Unser Unglück (The Jews are our misfortune), which the Germans used as a slogan throughout the Third Reich. Throughout the next 20 years, there were more than 500 antisemitic publications printed during the newly unified Second German Empire, (The Second Reich), founded on January 18, 1871 according to historian Robert S. Wistrich. Before 1914, antisemitism was “politically stronger” in Russia, Austria, and Romania, but only in Germany had hatred of Jews had been “elevated” to a worldview. German intellectuals, artists and university professors provided scientific legitimacy to their Weltanschauung, a broad view or philosophy of human existence and the universe.
A pseudoscientific, anticlerical and racist strand of antisemitism was “inspired” by Eugen Dühring, a Berlin philosopher, economist and ex-socialist and atheists such a Wilhem Marr notes Robert Wistrich. In 1881, Dühring abandoned the “ last vestiges of tolerance—even and perhaps especially, towards baptized Jews ,” Krausnick said. Dühring did not deem “exile,” or “deportation” as a solution. Instead, he considered “more or less seriously,” the idea of “interning” Jews under “international law,” in order to separate and legally restrict them from the general community. Only by annihilating the Jews could the perseverance and spirit of Judaism, be destroyed. He denied that “Christianity was still essentially interwoven with Judaism,” and urged every Christian turn against Judaism with all the force they could muster.
Jews came to represent everything men feared: materialism, large urban cities, progress, and “the sober rationalistic mind that could have no sense of the beautiful,” observed historian George L. Mosse. This is plainly demonstrated, Mosse said, in two of the most popular novels of the century, Gustav Freytag’s Debit and Credit (Soll und Haben, 1855) and Wilhelm Raabe’s Poor Pastor (Hungerpastor, 1862). Both were written by liberals, who were not racists. In the novels, two young men, one Christian and the other Jewish, set out to make their mark in the world. Both fail to achieve their lofty goals, yet that is where the comparison between them ends.
Although the Christian does not succeed, he embarked on his quest in an honest manner, so that in the end, he remains pleased, stable, and “above all, spiritually enriched.” In contrast, the Jew, who succeeds in “his lust for riches” as a provincial merchant, exploits the corruption and “weakness of character” of the world to achieve his objectives.
In Poor Pastor, the Jew is involved in politics, playing both sides, in order “to satisfy his lust for riches,” and power. These novels Mosse said, vividly illustrate that both Jews lacked the ability “spiritual enrichment” or any spiritual emotions. Both end in obscurity. One perishes in a filthy river, and the other, after his aspirations are frustrated, ends in bourgeois incarceration. In other word, the Jews have no feelings.
There were individuals like Paul de Lagarde (1871-1891), a famous oriental scholar and critic, who was not “racially antisemitic” in the conventional meaning and did not attack assimilation unconditionally Krausnick said. Lagarde insisted the spiritual and economic power of the Jews, which posed an ominous danger, should be destroyed. He and many other men asserted the Jews were responsible for “the debasement of morals,” and the “un-German” western concepts of middle-class free-thinking. Jews were also “purveyors of decadence,” who would always be foreign entities within the German State. Therefore, “We simply cannot tolerate a nation within a nation.”
The anti-capitalist and nationalist attacks, which Lagarde levelled at the Jews, were linked to a protest against the overall lowering of cultural norms, leading to the repudiation of tolerance and humanity Lagarde expressed this theme, practically as an aside: “We shall not succeed in subduing Judaism by any form of persecution.” His words, Krausnick said, encouraged ideas about Jews which inevitably were going to “promote and justify” instituting “inhuman measures against them.” He preached animosity and disparagement for those who appealed for “humanitarian principles” in speaking in defense of Jews, and for those who were too faint-hearted to crush these “profiteering vermin.” Under the circumstances Lagarde declared, “One does not have dealings with pests and parasites; one does not rear them and cherish them; one destroys them as speedily and thoroughly as possible.”
