History HomeWork

Primary Sources on Nazi Germany, the Jewish Holocaust, & Its Relation to Israel-Palestine

HIST 105/305, RCI, © 2015 - RC Weller

Excerpts from… Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies (1543)

“However, it all coincides with the judgment of Christ which declares that they are venomous, bitter, vindictive, tricky serpents, assassins, and children of the devil who sting and work harm stealthily wherever they cannot do it openly. ...these venomous serpents and young devils. ...next to the devil, a Christian has no more bitter and galling foe than a Jew. There is no other to whom we accord as many benefactions and from whom we suffer as much as we do from these base children of the devil, this brood of vipers... these venomous serpents and devil's children, who are the most vehement enemies of Christ our Lord and of us all.

What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. ...I shall give you my sincere advice: First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom,…

Moses writes that any city that is given to idolatry shall be totally destroyed by fire, and nothing of it shall be preserved. If he were alive today, he would be the first to set fire to the synagogues and houses of the Jews. ...I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. ...I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. ...I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. ....I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. ...

My essay, I hope, will furnish a Christian...with enough material not only to defend himself against the blind, venomous Jews, but also to become the foe of the Jews' malice, lying, and cursing, and to understand not only that their belief is false but that they are surely possessed by all devils. May Christ, our dear Lord, convert them mercifully...”

Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 12, pp. 316-317 ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH DAY

Monday, 29 April 1946 (Morning Session) http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/04-29-46.asp

“DR. MARX: Yes. With the permission of the Tribunal, I shall then continue with my examination.

Witness, what aims did you pursue with your speeches and your articles in [your official Nazi propagandist journal] Der Stuermer?

[Julius] STREICHER [chief editor of Der Stuermer]: The speeches and articles which I wrote were meant to inform the public on a question which appeared to me one of the most important questions. I did not intend to agitate or inflame but to enlighten.

DR. MARX: Apart from your weekly journal, and particularly after the Party came into power, were there any other publications in Germany which treated the Jewish question in an anti-Semitic way?

STREICHER: Anti-Semitic publications have existed in Germany for centuries. A book I had, written by Dr. Martin Luther, was, for instance, confiscated. Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants' dock today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the Prosecution [in this trial]. In the book The Jews and Their Lies, Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent's brood and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them...”

Note: Luther’s Lies of the Jews was also displayed at the 1934 Nuremburg Rally (and probably other places) as an official piece of Nazi propaganda.

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C.J. Probst, Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany (Indiana University Press, 2012). “In this book, Christopher J. Probst demonstrates that a significant number of German theologians and clergy [in Nazi Germany] made use of the 16th-century writings by Martin Luther on Jews and Judaism to reinforce the racial antisemitism and religious anti-Judaism already present among Protestants.”

Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf [My Struggle] (1924-26) Excerpts on the Jews

Translated by James Murphy, edited by RC Weller

http://www.greatwar.nl/books/meinkampf/meinkampf.pdf

From pp 49-54: In the course of centuries the Jews who lived there [in Linz, Austria] had become Europeanized in external appearance and were so much like other human beings that I even looked upon them as Germans. The reason why I did not then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that the only external mark which I recognized as distinguishing them from us was the practice of their strange religion. As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their Faith, my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence. I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic anti-Semitism. …

In the Jew I still saw only a man who was of a different religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I was against the idea that he should be attacked because he had a different faith. And so I considered that the tone adopted by the anti-Semitic Press in Vienna was unworthy of the cultural traditions of a great people. The memory of certain events which happened in the Middle Ages came into my mind, and I felt that I should not like to see them repeated. …

My ideas about anti-Semitism changed also in the course of time, but that was the change which I found most difficult. It created a great internal conflict within me, and it was only after a struggle between reason and sentiment that victory began to be decided in favor of the former. …

Once, when passing through the inner city [of Vienna], I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I watched the man stealthily and cautiously; but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?

As was always my habit with such experiences, I turned to books for help in removing my doubts. For the first time in my life I bought myself some anti- Semitic pamphlets for a few pence. But...the tone of most of these pamphlets was such that I became doubtful again, because the statements made were partly superficial and the proofs extraordinarily unscientific. For weeks, and indeed for months, I returned to my old way of thinking. The subject appeared so

enormous and the accusations were so far-reaching that I was afraid of dealing with it unjustly and so I became again anxious and uncertain.

Naturally I could no longer doubt that here there was not a question of Germans who happened to be of a different religion but rather that there was question of an entirely different people. For as soon as I began to investigate the matter and observe the Jews, then Vienna appeared to me in a different light. Wherever I now went I saw Jews, and the more I saw of them the more strikingly and clearly they stood out as a different people from the other citizens. …a people who, even in outer appearance, bore no similarity to the Germans.

But any indecision which I may still have felt about that point was finally removed by the activities of a certain section of the Jews themselves. A great movement, called Zionism, arose among them. Its aim was to assert the national character of Judaism, and the movement was strongly represented in Vienna. …

Cleanliness, whether moral or of another kind, had its own peculiar meaning for these people. That they were water-shy was obvious on looking at them and, unfortunately, very often also when not looking at them at all. The odor of those people in caftans often used to make me feel ill. Beyond that there were the unkempt clothes and the ignoble exterior.

All these details were certainly not attractive; but the revolting feature was that beneath their unclean exterior one suddenly perceived the moral mildew of the chosen race.

What soon gave me cause for very serious consideration were the activities of the Jews in certain branches of life, into the mystery of which I penetrated little by little. Was there any shady undertaking, any form of foulness, especially in cultural life, in which at least one Jew did not participate? On putting the probing knife carefully to that kind of abscess one immediately discovered, like a maggot in a putrescent body, a little Jew who was often blinded by the sudden light.

In my eyes the charge against Judaism became a grave one the moment I discovered the Jewish activities in the Press, in art, in literature and the theatre. All unctuous protests were now more or less futile. One needed only to look at the posters announcing the hideous productions of the cinema and theatre, and study the names of the authors who were highly lauded there in order to become permanently adamant on Jewish questions. Here was a pestilence, a moral pestilence, with which the public was being infected. It was worse than the Black Plague of long ago. And in what mighty doses this poison was manufactured and

distributed. Naturally, the lower the moral and intellectual level of such an author of artistic products the more inexhaustible his fecundity. Sometimes it went so far that one of these fellows, acting like a sewage pump, would shoot his filth directly in the face of other members of the human race. In this connection we must remember there is no limit to the number of such people. One ought to realize that for one, Goethe, Nature may bring into existence ten thousand such despoilers who act as the worst kind of germ-carriers in poisoning human souls. It was a terrible thought, and yet it could not be avoided, that the greater number of the Jews seemed specially destined by Nature to play this shameful part.

And is it for this reason that they can be called the chosen people?

I began then to investigate carefully the names of all the fabricators of these unclean products in public cultural life. The result of that inquiry was still more dis-favorable to the attitude which I had hitherto held in regard to the Jews. Though my feelings might rebel a thousand time, reason now had to draw its own conclusions.

The fact that nine-tenths of all the smutty literature, artistic tripe and theatrical banalities, had to be charged to the account of people who formed scarcely one per cent. of the nation--that fact could not be gainsaid.

From pg. 59 Should the Jew, with the aid of his Marxist creed, triumph over the people of this world, his Crown will be the funeral wreath of mankind, and this planet will once again follow its orbit through ether, without any human life on its surface, as it did millions of years ago. And so I believe to-day that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. In standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of the Lord.

From pp. 268-270: [The Jewish Press] aims its attack especially against all men of character who refuse to fall into line with the Jewish efforts to obtain control over the State or who appear dangerous to the Jews merely because of their superior intelligence. …

The Jewish instinct…readily discerns the true mentality of those whom the Jew meets in everyday life; and those who are not of a kindred spirit with him may be sure of being listed among his enemies. Since the Jew is not the object of aggression but the aggressor himself, he considers as his enemies not only those

who attack him but also those who may be capable of resisting him. The means which he employs to break people of this kind, who may show themselves decent and upright, are not the open means generally used in honorable conflict, but falsehood and calumny.

He will stop at nothing. His utterly low-down conduct is so appalling that one really cannot be surprised if in the imagination of our people the Jew is pictured as the incarnation of Satan and the symbol of evil.

The ignorance of the broad masses as regards the inner character of the Jew, and the lack of instinct and insight that our upper classes display, are some of the reasons which explain how it is that so many people fall an easy prey to the systematic campaign of falsehood which the Jew carries on.

While the upper classes, with their innate cowardliness, turn away from anyone whom the Jew thus attacks with lies and calumny, the common people are credulous of everything, whether because of their ignorance or their simple- mindedness. Government authorities wrap themselves up in a robe of silence, but more frequently they persecute the victims of Jewish attacks in order to stop the campaign [against them] in the Jewish Press. To the fatuous mind of the government official such a line of conduct appears to belong to the policy of upholding the authority of the State and preserving public order. Gradually the Marxist weapon in the hands of the Jew becomes a constant bogy to decent people. …

The Jewish domination in the State seems now so fully assured that not only can he now afford to call himself a Jew once again, but he even acknowledges freely and openly what his ideas are on racial and political questions. A section of the Jews avows itself quite openly as an alien people, but even here there is another falsehood. When the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the new national consciousness of the Jews will be satisfied by the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine, the Jews thereby adopt another means to dupe the simple-minded Gentile. They have not the slightest intention of building up a Jewish State in Palestine so as to live in it. What they are really aiming at is to establish a central organization for their international swindling and cheating. As a sovereign State, this cannot be controlled by any of the other States. Therefore it can serve as a refuge for swindlers who have been found out and at the same time a high-school for the training of other swindlers.

As a sign of their growing presumption and sense of security, a certain section of them openly and impudently proclaim their Jewish nationality while another section hypocritically pretend that they are German, French or English as the

case may be. Their blatant behavior in their relations with other people shows how clearly they envisage their day of triumph in the near future.

The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspecting girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew uses every possible means to undermine the racial foundations of a subjugated people. In his systematic efforts to ruin girls and women he strives to break down the last barriers of discrimination between him and other peoples. The Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate. For as long as a people remain racially pure and are conscious of the treasure of their blood, they can never be overcome by the Jew. Never in this world can the Jew become master of any people except a bastardized people.

That is why the Jew systematically endeavors to lower the racial quality of a people by permanently adulterating the blood of the individuals who make up that people.

In comparing the different versions of anti-Semitism in Martin Luther’s “The Jews and Their Lies” and Adolph Hitler’s “Mein Kampf (My Struggle),” match the following. Use each number as often as needed; if both numbers apply to the same point, mark them both:

1. Martin Luther 2. Adolph Hitler

__ Considered the Jews liars and deceivers who were untrustworthy and a threat to society, sources of social suffering and breakdown. __ Associated the Jews with Satan and/or the devil, those engaging in evil, low-down, immoral conduct, explicitly identified as enemies. __ Located the primary source of the Jewish problem in their false religious beliefs. __ Located the primary source of the Jewish problem in their corrupted racial identity (i.e. blood). __ Highlights the Jewish claim of their own alien nature. __ Believed the Jews could be forgiven and restored to proper social standing by conversion to Christianity through the mercy of Christ. __ Believed the Jews were unredeemable, inherently evil by nature. __ Claimed their opposition and condemnation of the Jews was the will of God, for God’s sake and honor.

Questions for Comparative Study: 1- What evidence shows that the ideas which Luther stated in his book in 1543 were not new within the history of European Christian thought at that time?

2- In what ways do Luther’s attitudes resemble and in what ways do they differ from current Western Christian attitudes towards Muslims?

3a- In connection with the importance of Martin Luther within Western European and Christian thought, how significant and far-reaching was his choice to publish his booklet On the Jews and Their Lies?

3b- Did Luther’s book influence or was it used by Nazi Germany? If so, in what ways?

3c- Did Hitler clearly quote or draw from Luther’s book in any way?

4- How are Luther’s and Hitler’s approaches to ‘The Jewish Question’ similar? In what ways do they different?

5- Compare/contrast the approaches which Luther and Hitler respectively use to try and persuade their readers of their views? What forms of evidence do they cite/appeal to?

6- Do Hitler’s ideas resemble or relate to the ideas and attitudes expressed towards the Syrian Arabs following World War I within Woodrow Wilson’s 14-points and/or the 1922 League of Nations Covenant in any way? If so, how?

7- How do these primary source documents help us understand the historical roots of:

a) The relationship of the Holocaust to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?

b) Western European and Christian anti-Semitism?

c) Nazi German anti-Semitism in particular?

d) Contemporary (current, continuing) anti-Semitism?

8- How do these primary source documents help us understand other contemporary as well as historical forms of discrimination? (Cf. racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious, national-political, gender, sexual, class, etc.)

9- In what ways, if any, does a study of these primary sources change or provide new perspective on our understanding of history, particularly Luther and the Protestant movement, Hitler and Nazi Germany, and the relation between the two? What is the importance of studying these materials?