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Adolf Hitler's First Antisemitic Writing, 1919Adolf Hitler's First Antisemitic WritingSeptember 16, 1919 [Hitler returned from a military hospital to Munich in early 1919. There he underwent a Reichswehr sponsored course of systematicpolitical education for demobilizing soldiers that featured Pan-German nationalism, antisemitism, and anti-socialism. These samethemes were prominent in Bavarian politics following the repressionof the Munich revolution of 1918-19. Because antisemitism had notplayed a notable part in Bavarian politics prior to therevolutionary disturbances, a Herr Adolf Gemlich was prompted tosend an inquiry about the importance of the "Jewish question" toCaptain Karl Mayr, the officer in charge of the Reichswehr News andEnlightenment Department in Munich. Mayr referred him to Hitler,who had distinguished himself in the above-mentioned course by thevehemence of his radical nationalist and antisemitic views, and byhis oratorical talents. Hitler was already feeling his way toward a political career;four days before responding to Gemlich in the letter translatedbelow, he had paid his first visit to the German Workers' Party(eventually renamed, the National Socialist Workers' Party) as aconfidential agent of the Reichswehr. In the letter to Gemlich heappears anxious to establish his credentials as a knowledgeable andsober antisemite. Compared to the inflammatory mass-meetingoratory that he was soon to make his specialty, Hitler's rhetorichere is quite tame, stressing the need for a "rational" and"scientific" antisemitism. Some historians have interpreted theletter's call for the "irrevocable removal [Entfernung]" of theJews from German life as a prefiguring of the Holocaust. But it isclear from the context and from later statements that, at thispoint, Hitler meant segregation or expulsion rather than systematicliquidation. The letter, Hitler's first explicitly political writing,impressed his Reichswehr superiors and he soon gained a reputationamong radical rightist and socially respectable nationalistconservative groups as a man who could help inoculate the massesagainst revolution and whose antisemitic rhetoric could helpdiscredit the democratic Weimar Republic. The letter may thus beseen as the launching of his political career. Source: EberhardJäckel (ed.), Hitler. Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905-1924(Stuttgart, 1980), pp. 88-90. Translated by Richard S. Levy.]TEXT[September 16, 1919]Dear Herr Gemlich, The danger posed by Jewry for our people today findsexpression in the undeniable aversion of wide sections of ourpeople. The cause of this aversion is not to be found in a clearrecognition of the consciously or unconsciously systematic andpernicious effect of the Jews as a totality upon our nation. Rather, it arises mostly from personal contact and from thepersonal impression which the individual Jew leaves--almost alwaysan unfavorable one. For this reason, antisemitism is too easilycharacterized as a mere emotional phenomenon. And yet this isincorrect. Antisemitism as a political movement may not and cannotbe defined by emotional impulses, but by recognition of the facts. The facts are these: First, Jewry is absolutely a race and not areligious association. Even the Jews never designate themselves asJewish Germans, Jewish Poles, or Jewish Americans but always asGerman, Polish, or American Jews. Jews have never yet adopted muchmore than the language of the foreign nations among whom they live. A German who is forced to make use of the French language inFrance, Italian in Italy, Chinese in China does not thereby becomea Frenchman, Italian, or Chinaman. It's the same with the Jew wholives among us and is forced to make use of the German language. He does not thereby become a German. Neither does the Mosaicfaith, so important for the survival of this race, settle thequestion of whether someone is a Jew or non-Jew. There is scarcelya race whose members belong exclusively to just one definitereligion. Through thousands of years of the closest kind of inbreeding,Jews in general have maintained their race and their peculiaritiesfar more distinctly than many of the peoples among whom they havelived. And thus comes the fact that there lives amongst us a non-German, alien race which neither wishes nor is able to sacrificeits racial character or to deny its feeling, thinking, andstriving. Nevertheless, it possesses all the political rights wedo. If the ethos of the Jews is revealed in the purely materialrealm, it is even clearer in their thinking and striving. Theirdance around the golden calf is becoming a merciless struggle forall those possessions we prize most highly on earth. The value of the individual is no longer decided by hischaracter or by the significance of his achievements for thetotality but exclusively by the size of his fortune, by his money. The loftiness of a nation is no longer to be measured by thesum of its moral and spiritual powers, but rather by the wealth ofits material possessions. This thinking and striving after money and power, and thefeelings that go along with it, serve the purposes of the Jew whois unscrupulous in the choice of methods and pitiless in theiremployment. In autocratically ruled states he whines for the favorof "His Majesty" and misuses it like a leech fastened upon thenations. In democracies he vies for the favor of the masses,cringes before the "majesty of the people," and recognizes only themajesty of money. He destroys the character of princes with byzantine flattery,national pride (the strength of a people), with ridicule andshameless breeding to depravity. His method of battle is thatpublic opinion which is never expressed in the press but which isnonetheless managed and falsified by it. His power is the power ofmoney, which multiplies in his hands effortlessly and endlesslythrough interest, and which forces peoples under the most dangerousof yokes. Its golden glitter, so attractive in the beginning,conceals the ultimately tragic consequences.Everything men strive after as a higher goal, be it religion,socialism, democracy, is to the Jew only means to an end, the wayto satisfy his lust for gold and domination. In his effects and consequences he is like a racial tuberculosis of the nations. The deduction from all this is the following: an antisemitismbased on purely emotional grounds will find its ultimate expressionin the form of the pogrom.[1] An antisemitism based on reason,however, must lead to systematic legal combatting and eliminationof the privileges of the Jews, that which distinguishes the Jewsfrom the other aliens who live among us (an Aliens Law). Theultimate objective [of such legislation] must, however, be theirrevocable removal of the Jews in general.For both these ends a government of national strength, not ofnational weakness, is necessary. The Republic in Germany owes its birth not to the uniformnational will of our people but the sly exploitation of a series ofcircumstances which found general expression in a deep, universaldissatisfaction. These circumstances however were independent ofthe form of the state and are still operative today. Indeed, moreso now than before. Thus, a great portion of our people recognizesthat a changed state-form cannot in itself change our situation. For that it will take a rebirth of the moral and spiritual powersof the nation. And this rebirth cannot be initiated by a state leadership ofirresponsible majorities, influenced by certain party dogmas, anirresponsible press, or internationalist phrases and slogans. [Itrequires] instead the ruthless installation of nationally mindedleadership personalities with an inner sense of responsibility. But these facts deny to the Republic the essential innersupport of the nation's spiritual forces. And thus today's stateleaders are compelled to seek support among those who draw theexclusive benefits of the new formation of German conditions, andwho for this reason were the driving force behind the revolution--the Jews. Even though (as various statements of theleading personalities reveal) today's leaders fully realized thedanger of Jewry, they (seeking their own advantage) accepted thereadily proffered support of the Jews and also returned the favor. And this pay-off consisted not only in every possible favoring ofJewry, but above all in the hindrance of the struggle of thebetrayed people against its defrauders, that is in the repressionof the antisemitic movement.Respectfully,Adolf HitlerEND OF TEXTFOR FURTHER READINGJ. P. Stern, Hitler: The Führer and the People (Berkeley,1975); Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (Berkeley,1984), Chapter 1.NOTES[1] Pogrom in Russian means devastation. Until recently, theterm described exclusively the organized or spontaneous massacresof Jews. In Russia the worst pogroms occurred in 1881, 1903, 1905,and during the civil war following the Revolution of 1917 in areascontrolled by the anti-Bolshevik White armies, especially theUkraine. Jump back to text. |
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