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The “Logic” of Hitler Anti-Semitism, As Explained in Its Leaders’ Books

August 27, 1933
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The Jewish Daily Bulletin considers of interest to its readers these extracts from the books of German National Socialist leaders, for they throw light upon the rationalization of the anti-Semitic drive, especially in Germany. As will appear from these extracts, there is a logic to German anti-Semitism, however mad it may appear to non-Nordics’, and this logic renders it even more dangerous

The anti-Semitic action of the National Socialist Government of Germany differs from all previous anti-Semitic action in that its basis is political, social, biological and philosophical, rather than religious or economic. Nothing can better lead to an understanding of the Aryan psychosis than the study of the documents of the leaders of the National Socialist party, such as Hitler’s “My Struggle”, Rosenberg’s “Myth of the Twentieth Century,” Feder’s “Program of the National Socialists” and Darre’s “The Peasantry, Vital Stronghold of Nordic Blood.” Hitler’s theory of races is a popular simplification of the elaborate theories of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, author of “Foundations of the Nineteenth Century.” Hitler has developed Chamberlain’s theory that all our modern culture is due to the Teutonic Aryan, heroic altrustic warlike freeman, who is destined to be the Siegfried, the deliverer from degenerate “Syreo-Judeo-Catholic” culture. To maintain this race in all its purity, imaginative, creative and invincible, is the mystical aim of the Leader and his henchmen. The great obstacle to the free self-expression of the Teutonic Aryan is the Jew. The political and social destruction of the Jew is, for Hitler, a biologic necessity. Let us turn to Chapter XI, Part I of “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle” and summarize Hitler’s arguments upon the necessity of race purity.

WHAT NATURE DOESN’T PERMIT

Nature does not permit variations in species. Among human races, “those who preserve the purity of their blood dominate bastard races. All cross-breeding between different races has for its result, the degeneration of the superior race. It brings about a physical and moral decadence and a gradual diminution of the race and its culture.” (p. 314). To allow or to seek the mixture of races is to oppose nature. It is “a sin against the will of the Creator.” (p. 314). “All the great cultures of humanity have perished because the race, at first creative, degenerated following the poisoning of its blood.” (p. 316).

Races, according to this dogma, may be classified as “Founders of Culture”, “Agents of Culture” and “Destroyers of Culture.” The Aryan race, superior in its very essence, is the only founder of cultures, believe it or not. Other races, following contact with an Aryan race, can disseminate culture, as has Japan following her contact with England and America. As for the third category, the “Destroyers of Culture”, the Jewish race is the best example of it. When the Aryan permits his race to be adulterated his culture loses its creative force and cannot resist the destructive power of the Jew. (Compare with this the assertion made by Streicher, official organizer of the boycott of the Jews, that there are probably 3,000,000 Jews in Germany, not a few hundred thousand, “because many of them hide their origin” and to them must be added 25% of the population of Germany, “infected through Semitic alliances.”

It is also directly in harmony with the accusation constantly made by Rosenberg against France, the “Judeo-Negro Empire”, “who had the Rhineland, the very cradle of European civilization, occupied by colored soldiers…. We can hardly consider France as a European state; it is rather as the immense port of Africa, headed by Jews, that France must be considered.”

FORMS OF SELF-PRESERVATION

Hitler gives the characteristics of the Aryan as opposed to the Jew, so that all can see how impossible it is for the Aryan to develop himself side by side with him. The Aryan, he says, possesses, in its most noble form, the instinct of self-preservation, in that he subordinates himself sacrifices himself, too, if circumstances exact it. He works for the collectivity and freely accepts discipline. He is fundamentally idealistic and died willingly for an idea in the Great War. He would never die merely for his daily bread, for he seeks a heroic death. (p. 164).

The Jew, on the other hand, would never seek a heroic death; he has no land to defend, he is only a parasite slipping from one race to another and sucking up the life-blood of all like a pernicious sponge. The Jew’s instinct of self-preservation is fundamentally selfish, he has no idealism and therefore has never created anything. He is only a marvelous imitator, a comedian. When the Jews show a spirit of solidarity, it is for egotistical ends. “The effects of their existence are like those produced by parasites. Whatever people is their ‘host’, dies sooner or later.” (p. 334). The Jew is fundamentally a liar; he has always formed a people and he pretends to be only a religious sect; the turn of his expression is indubitably Jewish, but he pretends to be European in language. The Jews are incapable of religious idealism, although they claim to be a religious people.

ANOTHER DEEP-LAID PLOT

Hitler then traces the history of the gradual domination of the Jews over commerce, money-lending, Government banking, the Stock Exchange, international finance. “It is the Jews,” says Hitler, “who brought about the calling of Negro troops to the Rhineland (at the time of the French occupation) with their eternal secret intention of destroying the white race which they hate, by delivering it over to an inevitable mongrelization, precipitating it from its cultural and political level, and thus of becoming masters of it themselves.” (p. 357).

Now, upon this racial theory Hitler bases a political doctrine which is exposed in the second part of “My Struggle.” This doctrine, with all the exaggerations which we now see in action, has as its end, the regeneration of the German masses. By the destruction of the Jews who form an alien race, pernicious to Aryan Germanic culture, the German State will be able to be the “popular and racial (voelkische) organism” which it must be. For the State is and always will be the result of the will to survive of the race and of nature.”

The religion of the Nazis, as Rosenberg says, has become the consecration of “the mystery of Nordic blood,” the sacrifice of self to the will of the race. Given the one-sided Teutonophile interpretation of history which is perceptible in every line of “My Struggle” and every line of political propaganda which Rosenberg produces, it is evident why there can be no place in Germany for any Jews but the lowliest. Once freed, they appear to the Aryan as the bloodsuckers, the poisoners of the wells of their sacred Germanic cuture.

HOW HE GOT THE IDEA

One of the most curious passages in “My Struggle” is Hitler’s recital of the beginnings of his anti-Semitism. As a small boy in the little town of Linz he had no idea of the nefarious activity of the Jews. It was only when Hitler came to Vienna that he saw how 200,000 Jews could corrupt a city of 2,000,000. Up to this time he had believed that it was only for religious reasons that Jews had ever been persecuted, and his tolerant Aryan soul had always been offended by such an idea. But in Vienna he realized how alien were the Jews. He saw an “apparition with black curls and dressed in a long caftan.” “Can he, too, be a German?” was Hitler’s horrified reaction.

Then he discovered how morally sullied they were. It was the Jews and only the Jews who led a decadent art, a pornographic theatre and cinema, a low press; only the Jews who were panderers and white-slavers, “presiding with a commercial zeal of shameless coolness over the revolting traffick in vice.” Perhaps he did not see Aryans when he did not wish to see them, for there is no doubt that he had fixed the idea of Jewish inferiority and was selecting only that data which would substantiate his “theory”. When the future “leader” realized that the Jews were the leaders of Marxism, the scales fell from his eyes ! Then he realized what was the activity of the Jews. His conclusion was: “The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of nature and puts in place of the eternal preeminence of force and power the mass of the great number and its dead weight. It denies the value of the personality in man, contests the importance of the people and of the race, and thus deprives humanity of the conditions necessary to its existence and its culture…. But eternal nature is implacably avenged for any transgression of its commandments. And thus, I, today believe I am acting for the purpose of the all-powerful Creator: in defending myself against the Jew, I struggle for the work of the Lord.”

THE ROOTS ARE MYSTIC

The profound effects of these doctrines upon Germany are visible to the whole world today. Every economic step of the Hitlerite Government has its roots in race mysticism. Darre’s plan for the “colonization” of East Prussia whence must commence the ominous “Drive to the East”, is based upon the relation of pure blood to the soil of the fatherland. No Jew could form a part of the new “noble peasantry of Prussia” because the Jew lacks that in his blood which would make him cultivate the land for love of his blood-brothers instead of for gain.

Finally, it must be recognized, after study of the documents, that National Socialism is a world menace for Jewry because it pretends to bring salvation to all Teutonic Europe and Asia. It would strive to bring France back to a domination by its “Frankish” or “Germanic” element. In the “Myth of the Twentieth Century”, Rosenberg says: “It is very important to realize from the racial point of view that the men who have first place in French life today, Doumergue, Herriot or Briand, etc., have nothing in common with the type of old France. They are the descendants of another race, an Oriental, round-headed race which is opposed to the first longheaded race of the North-West. Catholicism is, of course, opposed in its essence to the “civilizing ideals of the Nordic race: honor, liberty (!) and duty.” It is not a Teutonic product, but Syrian, Jewish and Oriental in origin. Finally, according to Rosenberg, the United States must be saved from extinction by a systematic repatriation of the Negroes into Central Africa.

It would be folly to underestimate the attraction which these doctrines of race superiority, “civilizing” militarism and “blood mystery” can have for the masses of the world. Their might must be fought like the might of all the fanatical movements which have risen against the Jew from time immemorial.

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