The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism:From Ancient Times to the Present Day by Laqueur Walter

Author:Laqueur, Walter [Laqueur, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2008-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

HITLER HAD BECOME an antisemite during his early years in Vienna, where antisemitism was rampant at the time both in the mainstream of Austrian politics and as the ideology of a variety of racialist sects. Hitler was familiar with the ideas of the antisemitic sectarians and to a large extent shared them; he also understood that while antisemitism was of great potential importance in the mobilization of the masses, the traditional abstruse theories he had come to know in Vienna would be of little use in the political struggle.

Since the personality of Hitler was crucial to the rise of his party as well as to the policy of the Third Reich, it would be of great importance to know when he actually became a confirmed antisemite. But this cannot be established with any certainty; during his years in prewar Vienna some of his close associates were Jews or of Jewish extraction, and there are no indications that he was anti-Jewish at the time. In Mein Kampf he writes that he became an antisemite as the result of a spiritual crisis, but this is a cryptic reference and nothing is known about the specific reasons and circumstances of this crisis. All we know is that in later years his antisemitism became more and more radical. In the end, Albert Speer, who served as his adviser and minister, wrote that the hatred of the Jews was Hitler’s main driving force, perhaps even the only element that moved him.

A variety of factors made antisemitism politically very attractive in Germany when Hitler appeared on the Munich political scene after the war had ended. The general upheaval after World War One had opened the door to all kinds of extreme movements on the left and the right, the economic crisis culminated in hyperinflation, and Jews had leading roles in revolutionary Communist parties. This made it possible to attack the Jews as capitalist exploiters and war profiteers, as well as agents of Germany’s enemies, and as a mortal danger to all established values—family, fatherland, traditional culture. Paragraph 4 of the program of the Nazi party of 1920 stated that a Jew could not be a member of the community of the German people (Volksgenosse). The program also mentioned the removal of foreigners from Germany, though the details were left vague.

During the fight for power in Germany, Nazi storm troopers attacked Jews in the streets, but by and large physical attacks were rare and the propaganda was limited to threats that the day of reckoning with “Juda” was near. This quickly changed after Hitler seized power in January 1933. On April 1, a general one-day boycott of Jewish shops was declared, which was accompanied by street violence; during the months that followed a series of laws made it impossible for Jewish lawyers to practice and for Jewish physicians to treat patients covered by state insurance.

According to a law of April 1933, Jews were removed from state and local administrations; there were initially a few exceptions, such as World War One veterans, but these were quickly eliminated.

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