For the Germans, WWII was perceived as a fight for survival. As historian Saul Friedländer noted, Jews were viewed as seeking to destroy the nations of the world by spreading racial pollution, destabilizing the basic foundations of the state, and by leading the principal devastating forces of the 19th and 20th centuries: “Bolshevism, plutocracy, democracy, internationalism and pacifism.”
Jews were also accused of dominating German professional life, noted historian Jeffrey Herf, and international finance (Börsenkapital). Political parties on the left were called “mercenaries of Jewry,” and parliaments and the League of Nations were similarly controlled by Jews, as historian Eberhard Jäckel informed us. By harnessing and exploiting these systems, Jews allegedly attempted to accomplish the disintegration of the fundamental basis of all the countries in which they lived—and especially that of the German Volk (people)—in order to control the world, Friedländer added.
Historian George Mosse said Jews were portrayed as a “spiritually barren people … devoid of profundity and totally lacking in creativity.” In contrast, the Germans, “who live in the dark, mist-shrouded forests, are deep, mysterious, profound.” In peasant novels, which sold in the millions, the image of the “alien Jew” was depicted as having moved from the city to the countryside to strip the peasant of his wealth and property. By depriving the peasant of his land, “he severed his bonds with nature, the Volk, and the life forces,” which would inevitably lead to his death.
At stake, Mosse explained, was “not race alone, nor nationality or religion.” Rather, an entire way of life was threatened by “alien values.” Judaism was “a materialistic fossil devoid of any ethical impulse, which, unlike the Germanic elements of Christianity, could not produce the virtues of honesty, loyalty, and forthrightness present in the German soul.”
An Anti-Jewish Congress
The certainty in their ultimate victory did not wane even as late as February 1944, when the Russians were at the Vistula River in Poland and the invasion of Western Europe was looming. Alfred Rosenberg, Nazi theorist and ideologue, received Adolph Hitler’s permission to convene an anti-Jewish congress, noted the late Max Weinreich, cofounder and research director at YIVO, and author of many scholarly articles and books, including “Hitler’s Professors.” Hans Frank, head of the General Government in German-occupied Poland, who was a keen supporter of the congress, explained his reasoning: “The time for such an anti-Jewish demonstration is particularly advantageous because it underscores at this juncture of the war the unbroken fighting will of Germany, which does not even for a moment think of giving in as an essential point in her war waging.”
Rosenberg’s office expected to invite 402 guests, of which 189 were to be sent to participants from Europe. Invitees from Germany and Europe were to include Nazi luminaries, German political figures, professors, government officials, jurists, physicians, artists, journalists and Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a valued member of Germany’s propaganda operation.
According to German political scientist Matthias Küntzel, The Mufti “acknowledged” that the ability to sustain the 1937-1939 “Arab Revolt” depended on the funds provided by Germany. The Germans also supplied the Arabs with weapons. The Germans established a special office for the Mufti in Berlin, with branches in Germany, Greece, Japan and Italy. Arabic-language broadcasts were transmitted to Turks, Arabs, Persians and Indians from Zeesen, a village south of Berlin, observed Küntzel. The Oriental Service, with a staff of 80, including announcers and translators, had “absolute priority” over all other foreign language service broadcasts. From 1939 to 1945, when most of the Arab world listened to radio broadcasts in cafes and public arenas, the Zeesen shortwave broadcasting service was the most popular. Küntzel added that antisemitic propaganda was cleverly mixed with Arab music and passages from the Koran, all supervised by the Mufti.
Originally July 11-15, 1944, was to have been the date for the congress to begin. Due to the military setbacks, it was postponed until September. With the worsening of the military and political situation, Weinreich said the idea of the congress had to be abandoned.
Very Survival at Stake
In response to Allied bombing of German cities, Alfred Rosenberg bitterly denounced the “infernal warfare which was consciously started by British fliers on orders of Jewish international capitalism and today endeavors to lay in ruins the highest monuments of human creativity,” reported Weinreich. “The present war is a struggle against the foundation of all European nations. A flier sent out by political gangsters who lets down his bombs on the most beautiful cultural places of Europe does not know what he does, he has not the slightest idea of what culture is altogether…”
Aside from condemning the Anglo-American air forces, the Germans were limited to what they could do to thwart Allied attacks. Yet, this did not stop them from exacting revenge from the Jews. Weinreich noted that on December 9, 1942, PM, the New York newspaper, reported that after the first British Royal Air force (RAF) bombing of Cologne, Germany, 258 Jews in Berlin were lined up at the Gross Lichterfelde barracks, the headquarters of Hitler’s bodyguards, and shot “in reprisal.”
By the end of October 1942, the majority of the German Jews were sent to either Auschwitz-Birkenau or Theresienstadt, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia. In May 1943, the Reich was declared Judenrein (“free of Jews”) with less than 20,000 Jews left in the country. Those who remained were married to non-Jews, others were Mischlinge (part Jews) and therefore temporarily exempt from expulsion. Still others lived in hiding and eluded imprisonment and deportation.
Germans had to win the war for, as Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda, pointed out, “… Don’t forget, it is the Jew who fights against us. One has only once to have made the acquaintance of the Jew with his Old Testament hate in order to know what’s going to happen to us if the Jew could take revenge from us. What do you think, what is going to happen to our wives, to your finances, to your daughters?”
With Germany’s very existence imperiled and the fear of retaliation irrefutable in their minds, the Germans were compelled to continue their relentless crusade to destroy the Jews. Bauer notes that despite massive Allied bombing of German cities, they persisted in fighting until the very end of the war. Just as they were not constrained by Allied bombings, they were not deterred from annihilating European Jewry, even when this meant diverting trains desperately needed by the Wehrmacht to bring munitions and other supplies to the front lines.
As the German armed forces expanded their military campaign farther from Germany, political scientist Raul Hilberg described how there were not enough railroad cars and locomotives to meet their needs, causing lines to be congested. Allied bombing and attacks by partisans further interfered with railroad traffic leading to shortages. Yet, in spite of these setbacks, Jews continued to be sent to their deaths.
Dr. Alex Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society and a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. He has an MA and PhD in contemporary Jewish history from The Hebrew university of Jerusalem.
