Dr. F.K. Wiebe: Germany and the Jewish Problem

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Germany and the Jewish Problem

by

Dr. F. K. Wiebe

Published on behalf of the Institute for the Study of
the Jewish Problem, Berlin

"No man will treat with indifference the principle of race. It is the key of history, and why history is often so confused is that it has been written by men who were ignorant of this principle and all the knowledge it involves."
    "Language and religion do not make a race -- there is only one thing which makes a race, and that is blood."
    (Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield in "Endymion", Vol. 11, pp. 18 and 20)

   Ever since the day when the National Socialists came into power in Germany, thereby placing the solution of the Jewish problem in the forefront of German politics, public opinion the world over has become increasingly interested in that problem. Anti-semitism has been frequently described as a phenomenon exclusively confined to Germany, as a National Socialist invention which must necessarily remain incomprehensible to the rest of the world. But to-day it is evident that the Jewish question is by no means a purely German question, that it causes on the contrary grave anxiety to statesmen in many countries, and that in many lands a pronounced anti-Jewish reaction has already set in. We do not propose to enquire, for the moment, whether these phenomena are a result of the example set by Germany. It is sufficient to register the fact that the Jewish question has, or is about to become everywhere acute, and that there is scarcely a country nowadays which does not find itself compelled to contribute in some way or other to its solution.
   Hence everyone who discusses Germany's attitude towards the Jewish question is at the same time dealing with an important problem of contemporary international politics, and, having regard to its far-reaching significance, is in duty bound to carefully investigate that question.
   It is a mistake to believe that the Jewish question has only arisen within the last few years, or, indeed, that its
origin is to be sought in modern times. The Jewish question is not an invention of National Socialism, nor is it derived from the antisemitic movements that marked the close of the nineteenth century. If National Socialism can lay claim to any originality in the matter, then only because the National Socialist Party was the first to deduce the logical conclusions from a historical fact. The present German attitude towards the Jewish question is based on the experience made by Europe in the course of two thousand years. And this experience has been a particularly bad one for Germany, especially during the last few decades.
   The Jewish question undoubtedly dates back some two thousand years. Strictly speaking it is even older -- namely, as old as the history of the Jews. The Jewish question arises everywhere where the nomadic Jewish race comes into contact with other peoples having a settled abode.
   This historical fact is admitted by the Jews themselves. The Judische Lexikon, which is the standard work of the German Jews -- published long before the advent of National Socialism to power-confirms the historical continuity of the Jewish question throughout the centuries when it writes (vol. III, column 421): "this Jewish problem is as old as the association of the pronouncedly differentiated and dissimilar Jewish people with other peoples."
   It is a unique, and in the last resort inexplicable phenomenon, that on the one hand the Jews have never been able to find a permanent home in which to develop a political and social existence "sui generis," while on the other hand they have never proved capable of being absorbed by any of the innumerable countries in which they have sought hospitality.
   This peculiar destiny of the Jews is, however, subject to variations. But these variations, in their turn, are only the perpetual ebbing and flowing of an unbroken tide. There were times in which the Jewish problem appeared definitely solved, in which the foreign immigrants appeared to have become completely assimilated and to have lost their distinct ethnical personality. In such halcyon days no Jewish problem seemed to exist. But sooner or later the illusion was dispelled, and after many years of comparative rest and quiet Ahasuerus was compelled to again resume his eternal wanderings.
   The first expulsions of Jews on a large scale occurred al­ ready in the earliest history of Palestine. 700 years before the Christian era the Assyrian King Sarrukin forced the Jews to leave the country, and his example was followed in 586 B. C. by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Persecutions in Alexandria and the destruction of Jerusalem 'by the Romans in A. D. 70 opened a period in which the Jewish question was not less acute than it is to-day. Further milestones in the eternal wanderings of the Jews are the crusades, the expulsion of the Jews from England under Edward I in 1290, and their expulsion from Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic in 1492. There is not a single century in which an expulsion of Jews has not taken place. Every nation in Europe has sought to preserve itself 'against Jewish domination by all the means at its disposal.
   It is an incontrovertible historical fact that those peoples with a settled abode who throughout the ages afforded hospitality to nomadic Jewish tribes, invariably regarded the latter as an essentially dissimilar. race and not merely as a different religious community. Hence hospitality was only granted to the Jews under special conditions. It is interesting to observe in this connection that in every case where a European State Was weak and financially impoverished, the restrictions imposed on the Jews were greatly relaxed and eventually abrogated. The numerical preponderance of the Jews in Eastern Europe -- which has become the reservoir of Jewry in modern times -- is to a large extent attributable to the Political and financial weakness of the former Kingdom of Poland.
   The opening of the so-called "modern era" seemed nevertheless to herald a period of permanent peace and rest for the hitherto restless wandering Jew. It was the era of enlightenment, of liberalism, of belief in the ideals of progress and the rights of man. Conformably with the principles in vogue in this era, the Jews only differed by their religion from other citizens and as .such enjoyed equality with the adherents of other religious bodies. They were no longer considered as appertaining to a different race, in other words as strangers. Differentiation on ethnical grounds between the Jews and the native population was on principle abolished by the French Revolution, and this principle was adhered to alike by the legislation and the social custom of ensuing decades.
   The nineteenth century was thus dominated by the tenet of the emancipation and assimilation of the Jews. It was considered best not even to mention the Jewish question and to 'act as if such a question did not exist. In the countries of Western Europe the Jews themselves were animated by an intense desire for assimilation. Conversions and mixed marriages were the principal means employed by the Jews for acquiring, in the words of Heinrich Heine, himself a Jew, an "admission ticket to European culture", and thereby acquiring a preponderating influence in political, cultural, and economic life. It should be added that a number of Jews were inspired by a sincere desire to throw-off their skin and obliterate as far as possible their hereditary tracks.
   This process of assimilation reached its culminating point in the first three decades of the twentieth century, during which Israel became King of the Western world. But it cannot be ·reasonably doubted that this epoch has come to an end. The most farsighted among the Jews had clearly perceived the inevitability of a reaction. Forty years ago a leading German Jew, Dr. Walther Rathenau, in a book entitled Höre, Israel! had criticised the policy of assimilation and uttered a warning for the benefit of those of his co-racists who occupied, or were about to occupy, prominent positions in Germany. "They apparently do not even dream." wrote Rathenau, "that only in an epoch in which all the forces of Nature are artificially enchained, can they be protected against that which their fathers endured."
   That modern Jewry did not heed the many warning voices in its own ranks affords another proof of the fact that the Children of Israel have not learnt, or wished to learn, the lessons taught by their own fate -- that they are blind to the errors so often committed by themselves in their self­ complacency. It is also typical of the Jewish mind that even Walther Rathenau himself failed to draw the logical consequences from his own perception of ultimate events.
 
   Some forty years ago a comparatively small number of Jews, headed by Dr. Theodore Herzl, founded what is known as the Zionist movement in the conscious recognition of the uselessness -- nay, harmfulness -- of the "assimilation policy," and of the consequences that were bound to follow. The Zionist movement represented an effort to avoid those consequences.
   Influenced by the antisemitic movement that arose in France at the close of the nineteenth century in connection with the Dreyfus case, Herzl proclaimed to his co-racists the doctrine: "return to Palestine." Such a doctrine, although backed by an energy inspired by Herzl's lofty persuasive idealism, appeared nothing short of astounding at a time when the so-called "assimilation policy" had reached its zenith. Hence it was explicable that Herzl's exhortation found a resounding echo chiefly among the great mass of East European Jews, in Jewry's immense reservoire in Poland, Lithuania, and Rumania. These Jews had never had any share in the benefits of emancipation and "assimilation." Their economic and social position was as a general rule unsatisfactory, and their political situation was such as to render them particularly susceptible to an appeal to found their own national home in an independent Jewish State.
   But despite their numerical superiority, these East European Jews were of minor importance from the point of view of the realisation of Herzl's ambitious plans, for they lacked both economic and political significance. Economically and politically, the influence of the West European and North American Jews was decisive, and for these the novel doctrine preached by Herzl was like unto the seed sown on rocky and hence unfruitful ground. Blinded by the alluring glitter of an artificial "golden age," the Western Jews had only an ironical smile for what they considered as the vagaries of Zionism, to which, moreover, they were profoundly hostile. And even after this much derided Zionism had assumed a more or less concrete shape in the following decades, the participation of Western Jews in the movement was almost exclusively confined to financial support. Practical Zionists among them were very few in number.
   On the other hand, Herzl's plan to establish a Jewish National Home soon awakened great interest among Western nations which had the questionable privilege of harbouring the descendants of Abraham. Already in 1903 Joseph Chamberlain -- the father of the present Prime Minister ­ in his capacity as Colonial Secretary, submitted, on behalf of the British Government, a 'plan for establishing a Jewish settlement on a large scale in Uganda. The realisation of this .practical plan, which was laid before the Zionist Congress in Bale, was frustrated by the doctrinaire attitude of the Zionists, who insisted on an exclusive settlement of the Jews in Palestine.
   It will thus be seen that the British Government recognised expressly the existence of a Jewish question, and the necessity of its solution, at a time when belief in the blessings of an "assimilation of the Jewish race" prevailed without contestation in Germany.
   In 1917 Zionism won a decisive victory with the publication of the Balfour Declaration, by the British Government which promised unreserved British support of the endeavour to create a Jewish National Home in Palestine. The fulfillment of this promise began shortly after the Great War. But after the lapse of twenty years the failure of the effort is obvious. In the light of experience, Herzl's scheme has been proved impracticable. Herzl did not foresee the wave of antisemitism which is now sweeping over Europe -- or, at any rate, did not calculate its rapidity.
   It is not necessary to discuss here recent events in Palestine, which are not the first of their kind, since Palestine has been in a condition of chronic unrest from the first day when the Jews entered the country. Even if the existing difficulties in Palestine were to be surmounted, the objections which have invariably been raised against the utopian theories of Zionism would continue to retain their validity, if only for the following reasons, which are best enumerated seriatim:
   1. In the mandated territory of Palestine, Jewry would necessarily be dependent on the Mandatory State. It would depend on the favour of the Mandatory State, i.e. on the alternating currents of political evolution.
   2. Up to now, the Zionist movement has only succeeded ,in settling some 400,000 Jews in Palestine. On the other hand, Palestine counts over 900,000 Arab inhabitants, whose fore­ fathers have lived in the country for more than one thousand years. The Arabs contest -- and rightly contest -- the Jewish claim to regard Palestine as a Jewish National Home. And behind the Palestinian Arabs are 32000000 Arabs in the Near East and Egypt. Whatever agreement may be reached regarding a delimitation of the respective rights, it is safe to say that under existing circumstances the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine of any dimensions worth mentioning, or, indeed, of any viable Jewish State at all, is more than hypothetical.
   3. The exodus of the Jews from Palestine began 2000 years ago. Since then the Jews have had no contact whatsoever with the country in which they now seek to establish their domination.
   4. The Jews who are now endeavouring to create a Jewish State in Palestine have long since ceased to have any common culture. In the course of its wanderings, the Jewish race has lost its cultural autonomy -- if exception be made of the Jewish religion, which has also been abandoned by the hundreds of thousands of "assimilated Jews." On the other hand it has absorbed any amount of heterogeneous cultural elements. The Jews are not even united by the tie of a common language, since only a small minority has a knowledge of Hebrew, whilst Yiddish is spoken almost exclusively by the East European Jews.
   5. The utopian character of the proposal to constitute a Jewish State in Palestine is, perhaps best proved by a study of the structure of Jewish communities in other lands, which shows that the Jews are solely adapted to certain conditions of urban life, and that they lack, in general, all capacity for agriculture or manual labour.
   Having regard to these circumstances, it cannot be seriously doubted that the plan of creating a Jewish State in Palestine is entirely utopian. Only a more or less insignificant fraction of the sixteen million odd orthodox Jews in the world could ever hope to find a home in Palestine. Theodore Herzl's plan for enabling the Jews to escape the threatening peril of anti­ semitism has proved impracticable and has not succeeded in solving the Jewish problem.

   Thus what we may call the "assimilation era" has come to an end after about 150 years, without any possibility for the Jews to escape in time the inevitable consequences of an unavoidable reaction.
   There can be no doubt whatever that the counter-current of antisemitism is rapidly increasing in strength the world over. Even a cursory glance at the papers of many lands suffices to show that the responsible leaders of states in all corners of the globe are compelled in varying degrees to take account of this phenomenon. Foreign critics who maintain that antisemitism is limited to Germany may be reminded of the well known words of the Zionist champion Dr. Chaim Weizmann that the world is divided into two groups: namely, those countries which desire to expel the Jews, and those which do not desire to receive them.
   The first of these groups includes not only Germany but also Italy. In the latter country comprehensive legislative measures have been directed alike to excluding Italian Jews from public life rand to getting rid of foreign Jews. Mention may also be made of Poland with a Jewish population of over three millions, or over 10% of the entire population. Not only have various specified professions already been entirely closed to the Jews in Poland, but it has been officially stated in Warsaw that the problem of the Polish Jews can only be solved by emigration. In Hungary, a Bill, originally brought in by the Daranyi Cabinet and reintroduced by the Imredy Cabinet, aims at restricting Jewish participation in economic and cultural life. In Rumania, which has some 1,500,000 Jews, the antisemitic movement has by no means come to an end with the collapse of the Goga ministry, as is shown by the extensive measures since adopted and by aiming at the deprivation of their recently acquired Rumanian nationality of all Jews who have immigrated into Rumania since the Great War. There can be no doubt that antisemitism is constantly progressing in Rumania and will sooner or Later become the dominating factor in that country.
   The above mentioned countries are those whose Governments have already adopted pronouncedly antisemitic measures. It would lead too far were we to enumerate the countries -- such as Holland, France, and Great Britain -- which have not adopted similar measures, but in which antisemitic movements are none the less noticeable and the influence of antisemitic organisations on public opinion is none the less increasing.
   The second group of countries -- those who do not desire to receive the Jews -- comprises the States into which Jewish immigrants have poured as a result of the growing antisemitic peril. They are mostly oversea countries, first and foremost among them being South American republics and the Union of South Africa.
   These countries had at first opened their doors wide to Jewish immigration and offered the immigrants a wide field for the exercise of their activities. But they have had meanwhile every reason to regret their hospitality. The consequence is that they have been compelled to restrict ever more and more the extremely liberal regulations originally enacted by them concerning immigration, so that to-day there is practically no country in which Jewish immigrants can hope to find adequate means of subsistence.
   This was clearly shown at the international conference at Evian, convened in the summer of 1938 for the purpose of dealing with the problem of Jewish emigration, but which failed to achieve any concrete result for the reason that none of the numerous States represented at the conference was willing to declare its readiness to admit Jewish refugees.
   It has been proved beyond any possibility of a doubt that Jewish refugees, fleeing before the menace of antisemitism in the lands in which they were formerly domiciled, bring with them the deadly antisemitic bacillus into the promised land in which they had fondly hoped to found a new home. Thereby is once more proved the fact, solidly established by the experience of millenniums, that Jewry and Antisemitism are interchangeable terms, that the Wandering Jew is him­ self the carrier and transmitter of the antisemitic germ. Hence it is explicable that in countries in which antisemitism was formerly unknown, and to which Jewish emigrants have recently flocked, antisemitic currents should have been created, sufficiently strong for no Government to be able to ignore them.
 
   Thus no one who is far removed from the overheated contemporary political atmosphere, and who seriously and with
a due sense of :responsibility studies the Jewish question, can conscientiously maintain that antisemitism is exclusively confined to Germany. Such an objective study must also lead to a negation of the proposition occasionally formulated, that the spread of antisemitism is exclusively attributable to the example set by Germany. As a matter of plain fact, can anyone really believe that such a doctrine could be artificially fostered in a country fundamentally unreceptive to it? Or was it not really the case that the seed had already been sown on ground so fertile, that it only needed a certain chain of circumstances to cause it to bear fruit?
   Indeed, it is scarcely surprising that Germany's policy towards the Jews should have had such a resounding echo throughout the world. Germany is suffering the fate of all those, who, whether nations or individuals, have sufficient courage and sense of responsibility to practise and defend a conviction fundamentally opposed to the dominating principles of the times. No great human achievement has been accomplished, save at the cost of struggle and sacrifice. Everyone who revolts against the tyranny of antiquated dogmas brings upon himself the odium which inevitably falls on the revolutionary innovator. The protagonists of the French Revolution were confronted by the solidarity of the whole of the rest of Europe when they sought to substitute the great slogans of liberalism for the worn-out tenets of absolutism.
   Germany's attitude towards the Jewish question can be rightly understood only if we consider it from the standpoint of a philosophy of history based on the conception of the race as fundamental factor of social evolution -- i.e. of the philosophy which from the outset has inspired the National Socialist effort to reconstruct and reorganise the entire life of the German nation. According to this philosophy, the differentiation and variety of the heterogeneous human races, as well as of the peoples who descend from them, constitute an essential element of the Divine creative purpose. Providence has assigned to each people the task of freely and fully developing its own specific characteristic traits. Hence it is contrary to the Divine purpose if a people allows its destiny to be shaped by extraneous forces; and such a 'people will assuredly perish in the struggle for existence. The question of the intrinsic value of such forces is irrelevant. The sole thing that matters is that they are extraneous -- that they have no part in or relation to the hereditary structure, biological and traditional, of the people among whom they operate.
   No clearer demonstration of this truth has been furnished in the history of the world than by the downfall of the Roman empire, which was doomed from the moment when the ancient Roman element that formed its nucleus began to be stifled by the inroad of foreign influences. The whole life -- political, social, economic, military -- of the Roman Empire was finally dominated by alien influences, the result being a racial and cultural syncretism which could not but prove fatal to the Empire in the long run.
   The family, as the cell of the social community, is naturally subject to the same law of heredity as the aggregate. Those peoples who are derived from the Germanic race, to cite only this particular example, have a strongly developed family instinct. They know, thanks to instinctive intuition fortified by hereditary experience, that the destiny of every family is determined throughout successive generations by the predominance of certain biological and traditional factors. Hence in all families where the consciousness of this truth has not been obliterated, the greatest possible care is invariably taken that there shall be no admixture of new blood susceptible of adulterating the racial composition or debasing the traditional standard of the family. A number of families illustrious in history have consistently maintained this standard by a rigorous adherence to the principle of consanguinity.
   Germany, starting from a philosophy of history based on the principle of racial differentiation, is the first country to have consistently drawn the conclusions resulting from the lessons of the past two thousand years in regard to the Jewish question. Those lessons have taught us the reason why the attempt to solve that question by means of the abortive attempt to assimilate the Jews was pre-doomed to failure. Those lessons have proved to the hilt the utter dm­ possibility of assimilating the Jews, and have shown the inevitability of the periodical 'recurrence of antisemitism in consequence.
   The lessons taught by the past two thousand years may be resumed as follows:-
   1) The Jewish question is not a religious, but exclusively a 'racial, question. The Jews, the overwhelming majority of whom are of Oriental, i.e. Near Eastern descent, have no racial 'affinity whatever with the peoples of Europe. It should be observed that the attitude of the German Government towards the Jewish question is dictated solely by the fact that the Jews are an 'alien race, without 'any consideration of the intrinsic value of the specific qualities of that race.
   Even in the era of emancipation, during which the Jews were on principle incorporated in the national communities of the Western world, and which was characterised by the "conversion" of millions of Jews to Christianity, it proved impossible to blot out the traces of their ineradicably alien nature. Sufficient evidence of this fact is forthcoming from Jewish sources. In his book Höre, Israel, the late Dr. Walther Rathenau wrote: "In the life of the German national the Jews are a clearly differentiated alien race... In the Marches of Brandenburg they are like unto an Asiatic horde." The well known Jewish author Jakob Klatzkin ex pressed himself with refreshing can dour in his work Krisis und Entscheidung im Judentum (1921) as follows: "Everywhere We are strangers in the lands in which we live, and it is our inflexible resolve to maintain our racial idiosyncrasy." Both testimonials were furnished at a time when the emancipation of the Jews in Germany hat reached its culminating point.
   2) For the past 2000 years the Jewish race has been perpetually on the move. The whole world is its home, conformably with the motto ubi bene, ibi patria. True to their destiny, the Jews will never admit being bound by any national ties. The abnormal structure of the Jewish community, in which neither peasants nor handicraftsmen find a place, renders it impossible for the Jews to adapt themselves to the conditions of life in the countries which give them hospitality.
   3) Racial predisposition and historical destiny combine to incline the Jews to certain categories of activity, whose sphere of influence is, by their very nature, international. It is consequently explicable that, during the era of emancipation, the Jews should have successfully sought to obtain control of a) public opinion, b) the stock and share markets, c) wholesale and retail trade, d) certain influential cultural organisations, and -- last, but not least -- e) political life. At the close of the emancipation era in Germany, the Jews enjoyed a practical monopoly of all the professions exerting intellectual and political influence. This enabled them to stamp their entirely alien features on the whole public life of the country.
   4) One of the results achieved by the policy of "assimilation" during the era of emancipation was the release of the Jews in Eastern Europe from their ghettos, and their emigration to the more liberal-minded States of Western Europe and North America. Between 1890 and 1900, some 200,000 East European Jews found their way into Great Britain. The number of Jews who emigrated to the United States between 1912 and 1935 is computed at upwards of 1,500,000. If the Jewish question has to-day attained such vital importance, this is to a large extent due to those migrations of Jews ­ migrations which, on the one hand, demonstrated the illusory nature of the theory of the Jews' capacity for assimilation, and, on the other, hastened the process of the domination of West European and North American States by Jewish elements.
   The process in question had been practically completed in Germany before the advent of National Socialism to power. An alien race, without roots in German soil and without even the most remote affiliation with the German people, had taken possession of Germany. The poison of an alien spirit, of an alien manner of thinking, had been instilled, cunningly and systematically, into the German mind. Hence the whole German organism necessarily conveyed a totally misleading impression to an observer from outside. National Socialism was therefore faced by the urgent necessity of solving a problem which vitally affected the very existence of the German nation.
   Impartial foreign observers had long since recognised the inevitability of a radical solution of the Jewish question in Germany. Already in December, 1910, the Times, in a review of Houston Stewart Chamberlain's book "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century," remarked that nearly everything in Germany had come under Jewish control- not only business life, but the Press, the theatre, the film, etc., in short, everything susceptible of influencing German spiritual life, and that it would be inconceivable that the Germans could tolerate such a slate of affairs in the long run. A clash must sooner or later inevitably occur, in the view of the Times.
   Since a solution of the Jewish problem by means of the assimilation of the Jewish race, of its absorption in German national life, had proved wholly impossible, there remained to the National Socialists but the single alternative of solving the Jewish question by the elimination of that unassimilable race from Germany.

   Foreign critics take particular exception to this view. Even objective observers, fully aware of the consequences of Jewish ascendency and of the resulting inevitability of an antisemitic reaction, condemn the methods adopted by
National Socialism for the solution of the Jewish question in Germany as inhuman and barbarous when pushed to their only logical conclusion.
   Whether considered from a purely psychological, or from a concrete political, point of view, this criticism of Germany's attitude is bound to exert great influence on Germany's relations with other countries. It is therefore necessary to carefully examine the grounds on which that criticism is based.
   It is incontestable -- in fact no attempt has been made to deny or even to minimise the fact -- that the policy of the German Government towards the Jews has entailed numerous hardships -- amounting in certain individual cases to a positive miscarriage of justice. It cannot be denied that a number of Jews affected by recent legislative measures directed against their race honestly felt themselves to be thorough­ going Germans. Such Jews had done their best to render service to the State as functionaries, artists, men of letters, scientists, and -- last but not least -- as soldiers in the Great War.
   In order to understand why Germany has proceeded to such a radical solution of the Jewish problem by means of methods of such relentless severity, it is necessary to make abstraction of individual cases, however interesting they may be intrinsically, and to bear in mind that no legislative measure, nor indeed any farreaching political action, can be conceived which does not inevitably entail more or less numerous individual hardships. It is the same as with surgical operations, when the surgeon, in order to extirpate the germs of disease, must resort to the excision Q1f healthy tissue surrounding the infected parts. Only in this way can he hope to save the sick organism.
   But in order to understand the German attitude towards the Jewish question it is necessary to go still farther -- to remember (as has already been indicated) that the unceasing encroachment of the Jews on the entire public life of Germany within the last few decades finally resulted in a terrible national catastrophe. The disastrous end of the Great War for Germany, followed as it was by complete political and economic collapse, by cultural and moral deterioration, by unemployment on a colossal scale with its consequent impoverishment of all social classes to a degree hitherto undreamt-of in modern times -- this epoch of Germany's greatest and most cruel humiliation coincided with the final triumph of Jewish emancipation, with the culminating point of Jewish ascendency in Germany, just as the aforementioned writer in the Times had prophesied in 1910.
   Already more than a generation ago, one of the most sincere and farsighted minds in international Jewry, the late Zionist leader Theodore Herzl, described this interdependence of general distress and Jewish ascendency in a passage of his Zionistische Schriften (vol. 1, pp. 238/9), which is by no means applicable solely to Germany, but which has, on the contrary, universal validity. Therein Herzl characterised as follows the part played by the Jews:-
   "There are among them a few persons who hold in their hands the financial threads that envelop the world. A few persons who absolutely control the shaping of the most vitally important conditions of life of the nations. Every invention and innovation are for their sole benefit, whilst every misfortune increases their power. And to what use do they put this power? Have they ever placed it at the service of any moral ideal -- nay, have they ever placed H at the disposal of their own people, who are in dire distress? ... Without those persons no war can he waged and no peace be concluded. The credit of States and individual enterprises are 'alike at the mercy of their rapacious ambition. The inventor must humbly wait at their doors, and in their arrogance they claim to sit in judgment on the requirements of their fellow beings."
   Nothing could be better calculated to clear Germany from the reproach of sinning against the laws of humanity, than a detailed enumeration of the facts which prove to what an appalling degree Germany herself experienced the truth of Herzl's words -- of the facts which incontestably show what immeasurably bitter experiences have forced Germany to seek a radical solution of the Jewish problem, as far as she is concerned, by the ruthless elimination of all Jewish influence in German Life.

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[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Thus what we may call the "assimilation era" has come to an end after about 150 years, without any possibility for the Jews to escape in time the inevitable consequences of an unavoidable reaction.
   There can be no doubt whatever that the counter-current of antisemitism is rapidly increasing in strength the world over. Even a cursory glance at the papers of many lands suffices to show that the responsible leaders of states in all corners of the globe are compelled in varying degrees to take account of this phenomenon. Foreign critics who maintain that antisemitism is limited to Germany may be reminded of the well known words of the Zionist champion Dr. Chaim Weizmann that the world is divided into two groups: namely, those countries which desire to expel the Jews, and those which do not desire to receive them.
   The first of these groups includes not only Germany but also Italy. In the latter country comprehensive legislative measures have been directed alike to excluding Italian Jews from public life rand to getting rid of foreign Jews. Mention may also be made of Poland with a Jewish population of over three millions, or over 10% of the entire population. Not only have various specified professions already been entirely closed to the Jews in Poland, but it has been officially stated in Warsaw that the problem of the Polish Jews can only be solved by emigration. In Hungary, a Bill, originally brought in by the Daranyi Cabinet and reintroduced by the Imredy Cabinet, aims at restricting Jewish participation in economic and cultural life. In Rumania, which has some 1,500,000 Jews, the antisemitic movement has by no means come to an end with the collapse of the Goga ministry, as is shown by the extensive measures since adopted and by aiming at the deprivation of their recently acquired Rumanian nationality of all Jews who have immigrated into Rumania since the Great War. There can be no doubt that antisemitism is constantly progressing in Rumania and will sooner or Later become the dominating factor in that country.
   The above mentioned countries are those whose Governments have already adopted pronouncedly antisemitic measures. It would lead too far were we to enumerate the countries -- such as Holland, France, and Great Britain -- which have not adopted similar measures, but in which antisemitic movements are none the less noticeable and the influence of antisemitic organisations on public opinion is none the less increasing.
   The second group of countries -- those who do not desire to receive the Jews -- comprises the States into which Jewish immigrants have poured as a result of the growing antisemitic peril. They are mostly oversea countries, first and foremost among them being South American republics and the Union of South Africa.
   These countries had at first opened their doors wide to Jewish immigration and offered the immigrants a wide field for the exercise of their activities. But they have had meanwhile every reason to regret their hospitality. The consequence is that they have been compelled to restrict ever more and more the extremely liberal regulations originally enacted by them concerning immigration, so that to-day there is practically no country in which Jewish immigrants can hope to find adequate means of subsistence.
   This was clearly shown at the international conference at Evian, convened in the summer of 1938 for the purpose of dealing with the problem of Jewish emigration, but which failed to achieve any concrete result for the reason that none of the numerous States represented at the conference was willing to declare its readiness to admit Jewish refugees.
   It has been proved beyond any possibility of a doubt that Jewish refugees, fleeing before the menace of antisemitism in the lands in which they were formerly domiciled, bring with them the deadly antisemitic bacillus into the promised land in which they had fondly hoped to found a new home. Thereby is once more proved the fact, solidly established by the experience of millenniums, that Jewry and Antisemitism are interchangeable terms, that the Wandering Jew is him­ self the carrier and transmitter of the antisemitic germ. Hence it is explicable that in countries in which antisemitism was formerly unknown, and to which Jewish emigrants have recently flocked, antisemitic currents should have been created, sufficiently strong for no Government to be able to ignore them.
 
   Thus no one who is far removed from the overheated contemporary political atmosphere, and who seriously and with
a due sense of :responsibility studies the Jewish question, can conscientiously maintain that antisemitism is exclusively confined to Germany. Such an objective study must also lead to a negation of the proposition occasionally formulated, that the spread of antisemitism is exclusively attributable to the example set by Germany. As a matter of plain fact, can anyone really believe that such a doctrine could be artificially fostered in a country fundamentally unreceptive to it? Or was it not really the case that the seed had already been sown on ground so fertile, that it only needed a certain chain of circumstances to cause it to bear fruit?
   Indeed, it is scarcely surprising that Germany's policy towards the Jews should have had such a resounding echo throughout the world. Germany is suffering the fate of all those, who, whether nations or individuals, have sufficient courage and sense of responsibility to practise and defend a conviction fundamentally opposed to the dominating principles of the times. No great human achievement has been accomplished, save at the cost of struggle and sacrifice. Everyone who revolts against the tyranny of antiquated dogmas brings upon himself the odium which inevitably falls on the revolutionary innovator. The protagonists of the French Revolution were confronted by the solidarity of the whole of the rest of Europe when they sought to substitute the great slogans of liberalism for the worn-out tenets of absolutism.
   Germany's attitude towards the Jewish question can be rightly understood only if we consider it from the standpoint of a philosophy of history based on the conception of the race as fundamental factor of social evolution -- i.e. of the philosophy which from the outset has inspired the National Socialist effort to reconstruct and reorganise the entire life of the German nation. According to this philosophy, the differentiation and variety of the heterogeneous human races, as well as of the peoples who descend from them, constitute an essential element of the Divine creative purpose. Providence has assigned to each people the task of freely and fully developing its own specific characteristic traits. Hence it is contrary to the Divine purpose if a people allows its destiny to be shaped by extraneous forces; and such a 'people will assuredly perish in the struggle for existence. The question of the intrinsic value of such forces is irrelevant. The sole thing that matters is that they are extraneous -- that they have no part in or relation to the hereditary structure, biological and traditional, of the people among whom they operate.
   No clearer demonstration of this truth has been furnished in the history of the world than by the downfall of the Roman empire, which was doomed from the moment when the ancient Roman element that formed its nucleus began to be stifled by the inroad of foreign influences. The whole life -- political, social, economic, military -- of the Roman Empire was finally dominated by alien influences, the result being a racial and cultural syncretism which could not but prove fatal to the Empire in the long run.
   The family, as the cell of the social community, is naturally subject to the same law of heredity as the aggregate. Those peoples who are derived from the Germanic race, to cite only this particular example, have a strongly developed family instinct. They know, thanks to instinctive intuition fortified by hereditary experience, that the destiny of every family is determined throughout successive generations by the predominance of certain biological and traditional factors. Hence in all families where the consciousness of this truth has not been obliterated, the greatest possible care is invariably taken that there shall be no admixture of new blood susceptible of adulterating the racial composition or debasing the traditional standard of the family. A number of families illustrious in history have consistently maintained this standard by a rigorous adherence to the principle of consanguinity.
   Germany, starting from a philosophy of history based on the principle of racial differentiation, is the first country to have consistently drawn the conclusions resulting from the lessons of the past two thousand years in regard to the Jewish question. Those lessons have taught us the reason why the attempt to solve that question by means of the abortive attempt to assimilate the Jews was pre-doomed to failure. Those lessons have proved to the hilt the utter dm­ possibility of assimilating the Jews, and have shown the inevitability of the periodical 'recurrence of antisemitism in consequence.
   The lessons taught by the past two thousand years may be resumed as follows:-
   1) The Jewish question is not a religious, but exclusively a 'racial, question. The Jews, the overwhelming majority of whom are of Oriental, i.e. Near Eastern descent, have no racial 'affinity whatever with the peoples of Europe. It should be observed that the attitude of the German Government towards the Jewish question is dictated solely by the fact that the Jews are an 'alien race, without 'any consideration of the intrinsic value of the specific qualities of that race.
   Even in the era of emancipation, during which the Jews were on principle incorporated in the national communities of the Western world, and which was characterised by the "conversion" of millions of Jews to Christianity, it proved impossible to blot out the traces of their ineradicably alien nature. Sufficient evidence of this fact is forthcoming from Jewish sources. In his book Höre, Israel, the late Dr. Walther Rathenau wrote: "In the life of the German national the Jews are a clearly differentiated alien race... In the Marches of Brandenburg they are like unto an Asiatic horde." The well known Jewish author Jakob Klatzkin ex pressed himself with refreshing can dour in his work Krisis und Entscheidung im Judentum (1921) as follows: "Everywhere We are strangers in the lands in which we live, and it is our inflexible resolve to maintain our racial idiosyncrasy." Both testimonials were furnished at a time when the emancipation of the Jews in Germany hat reached its culminating point.
   2) For the past 2000 years the Jewish race has been perpetually on the move. The whole world is its home, conformably with the motto ubi bene, ibi patria. True to their destiny, the Jews will never admit being bound by any national ties. The abnormal structure of the Jewish community, in which neither peasants nor handicraftsmen find a place, renders it impossible for the Jews to adapt themselves to the conditions of life in the countries which give them hospitality.
   3) Racial predisposition and historical destiny combine to incline the Jews to certain categories of activity, whose sphere of influence is, by their very nature, international. It is consequently explicable that, during the era of emancipation, the Jews should have successfully sought to obtain control of a) public opinion, b) the stock and share markets, c) wholesale and retail trade, d) certain influential cultural organisations, and -- last, but not least -- e) political life. At the close of the emancipation era in Germany, the Jews enjoyed a practical monopoly of all the professions exerting intellectual and political influence. This enabled them to stamp their entirely alien features on the whole public life of the country.
   4) One of the results achieved by the policy of "assimilation" during the era of emancipation was the release of the Jews in Eastern Europe from their ghettos, and their emigration to the more liberal-minded States of Western Europe and North America. Between 1890 and 1900, some 200,000 East European Jews found their way into Great Britain. The number of Jews who emigrated to the United States between 1912 and 1935 is computed at upwards of 1,500,000. If the Jewish question has to-day attained such vital importance, this is to a large extent due to those migrations of Jews ­ migrations which, on the one hand, demonstrated the illusory nature of the theory of the Jews' capacity for assimilation, and, on the other, hastened the process of the domination of West European and North American States by Jewish elements.
   The process in question had been practically completed in Germany before the advent of National Socialism to power. An alien race, without roots in German soil and without even the most remote affiliation with the German people, had taken possession of Germany. The poison of an alien spirit, of an alien manner of thinking, had been instilled, cunningly and systematically, into the German mind. Hence the whole German organism necessarily conveyed a totally misleading impression to an observer from outside. National Socialism was therefore faced by the urgent necessity of solving a problem which vitally affected the very existence of the German nation.
   Impartial foreign observers had long since recognised the inevitability of a radical solution of the Jewish question in Germany. Already in December, 1910, the Times, in a review of Houston Stewart Chamberlain's book "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century," remarked that nearly everything in Germany had come under Jewish control- not only business life, but the Press, the theatre, the film, etc., in short, everything susceptible of influencing German spiritual life, and that it would be inconceivable that the Germans could tolerate such a slate of affairs in the long run. A clash must sooner or later inevitably occur, in the view of the Times.
   Since a solution of the Jewish problem by means of the assimilation of the Jewish race, of its absorption in German national life, had proved wholly impossible, there remained to the National Socialists but the single alternative of solving the Jewish question by the elimination of that unassimilable race from Germany.

   Foreign critics take particular exception to this view. Even objective observers, fully aware of the consequences of Jewish ascendency and of the resulting inevitability of an antisemitic reaction, condemn the methods adopted by
National Socialism for the solution of the Jewish question in Germany as inhuman and barbarous when pushed to their only logical conclusion.
   Whether considered from a purely psychological, or from a concrete political, point of view, this criticism of Germany's attitude is bound to exert great influence on Germany's relations with other countries. It is therefore necessary to carefully examine the grounds on which that criticism is based.
   It is incontestable -- in fact no attempt has been made to deny or even to minimise the fact -- that the policy of the German Government towards the Jews has entailed numerous hardships -- amounting in certain individual cases to a positive miscarriage of justice. It cannot be denied that a number of Jews affected by recent legislative measures directed against their race honestly felt themselves to be thorough­ going Germans. Such Jews had done their best to render service to the State as functionaries, artists, men of letters, scientists, and -- last but not least -- as soldiers in the Great War.
   In order to understand why Germany has proceeded to such a radical solution of the Jewish problem by means of methods of such relentless severity, it is necessary to make abstraction of individual cases, however interesting they may be intrinsically, and to bear in mind that no legislative measure, nor indeed any farreaching political action, can be conceived which does not inevitably entail more or less numerous individual hardships. It is the same as with surgical operations, when the surgeon, in order to extirpate the germs of disease, must resort to the excision Q1f healthy tissue surrounding the infected parts. Only in this way can he hope to save the sick organism.
   But in order to understand the German attitude towards the Jewish question it is necessary to go still farther -- to remember (as has already been indicated) that the unceasing encroachment of the Jews on the entire public life of Germany within the last few decades finally resulted in a terrible national catastrophe. The disastrous end of the Great War for Germany, followed as it was by complete political and economic collapse, by cultural and moral deterioration, by unemployment on a colossal scale with its consequent impoverishment of all social classes to a degree hitherto undreamt-of in modern times -- this epoch of Germany's greatest and most cruel humiliation coincided with the final triumph of Jewish emancipation, with the culminating point of Jewish ascendency in Germany, just as the aforementioned writer in the Times had prophesied in 1910.
   Already more than a generation ago, one of the most sincere and farsighted minds in international Jewry, the late Zionist leader Theodore Herzl, described this interdependence of general distress and Jewish ascendency in a passage of his Zionistische Schriften (vol. 1, pp. 238/9), which is by no means applicable solely to Germany, but which has, on the contrary, universal validity. Therein Herzl characterised as follows the part played by the Jews:-
   "There are among them a few persons who hold in their hands the financial threads that envelop the world. A few persons who absolutely control the shaping of the most vitally important conditions of life of the nations. Every invention and innovation are for their sole benefit, whilst every misfortune increases their power. And to what use do they put this power? Have they ever placed it at the service of any moral ideal -- nay, have they ever placed H at the disposal of their own people, who are in dire distress? ... Without those persons no war can he waged and no peace be concluded. The credit of States and individual enterprises are 'alike at the mercy of their rapacious ambition. The inventor must humbly wait at their doors, and in their arrogance they claim to sit in judgment on the requirements of their fellow beings."
   Nothing could be better calculated to clear Germany from the reproach of sinning against the laws of humanity, than a detailed enumeration of the facts which prove to what an appalling degree Germany herself experienced the truth of Herzl's words -- of the facts which incontestably show what immeasurably bitter experiences have forced Germany to seek a radical solution of the Jewish problem, as far as she is concerned, by the ruthless elimination of all Jewish influence in German Life.
   The following chapters endeavour to present a resume of the importance of the part played by the Jews at the peak of the era of emancipation--i.e. up to the advent to power of National Socialism.

1. Population and the Social Structure of German Jews

   It is essential, in the first place, to get an accurate picture of the numerical significance of German Jews in those days, as well as their regional distribution within the Reich and their social structure.
   The result of the census in 1925 -- the last to be held before national socialism took over power -- showed that out of a total population of 62.5 millions there were 546,379 professing the Jewish faith. In other words, this was just less than 1 % of the total population.
   It must be noted however that this statistic merely embraced those Jews professing Jewish faith and not those who were Jews by blood and race but who for some reason or another had accepted a Christian faith. No method whatsoever existed for compiling statistics in respect of this latter category. All that one could do was to set up a statistic for those who were orthodox Jews. Only in recent times the authorities in Germany have set themselves the task of ascertaining how far Jewish blood has penetrated into the German race. These investigations have not yet been concluded; they involve a vast amount of detail work. Hence all statistics that follow are necessarily still based on the figures for orthodox Jewry.
   In spite of this we have at our disposal some very reliable research data by the Jews themselves. We refer in this connexion to the works of Heinrich Silbergleit Die Bevölkerungsverhältnisse der Juden im Deutschen Reich -- The Jewish Population Problem in the German Reich -- (Berlin 1931). By basing our statistics to a large extent on these research figures, we are placing ourselves beyond criticism as prejudiced antisemitics.

   We have shown that the total percentage of German confessional Jews in 1925 was just below 1%, to be exact, 0.90 %. But this did not mean that the regional distribution within the Reich was on the same scale. Whereas the purely rural districts of Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, Thuringia or Anhalt possessed only a very sparse Jewish population (0.16 to 0.32 %), the majority of Jews were heavily concentrated in the large urban areas, particularly in Prussia, Hamburg or Hessen (1.05 to 1.72 %). In Prussia, the largest of the German federal states, the census showed that nearly 73 % of the total number of Jews were concentrated in the large cities with a population of more than 100,000 -- whereas the corresponding ratio for the non-Jewish population reached barely 30 %.
   A comparison with the results of the various census since 1871 shows that the status of Jews in the rural districts of Germany has consistently decreased, whereas all urban districts have shown a constant increase.
   This can be ascribed to a veritable and phenomenal domestic migration of German Jews within the last 50 years towards the large urban areas. The main reason for this migration is to be found in the rapidly increasing Jewish emancipation in those days consequent upon a German victory in the Franco-Prussian war.
   One of the main objectives of this Jewish migration was Berlin, the capital of the Reich, where the number of Jews had become trebled between 1871 and 1910, (36,000--90,000). In this metropolis, the centre of national, political and cultural activity, Jews bad established their headquarters. Here they were able to develop unhampered their own peculiar racial characteristics.
   The 1925 census returns for Berlin showed that there were 172,500 Jews or 4.25 % out of a total population of approximately 4 millions. This percentage is four times greater than the percentage of Jews in the whole German population. Berlin, the capital of Prussia, the largest of the federal states, therefore possessed 42 % of the 400,000 Prussian Jews.
   Twenty-five percent of these 172,500 Berlin Jews were aliens. This fact alone illustrates clearly the total lack of Jewish affinity for national ties and national sentiment. Nearly one-quarter or 18.5 % of the 400,000 Jews in Prussia possessed foreign nationality.
   To be able to appreciate the true significance of these figures, one must bear in mind that Jewry in the large cities was able to attain such numerical significance despite the fact that it was subject to a number of restrictive factors. These could only be made good by a constant immigration from the East, particularly during and after the Great War. It is this Eastern immigration of low-class, mean and morally unscrupulous Jews which has given the German Jewish problem its particular harsh note.
   Another aspect of Jewish life is the comparative infertility of Jewish marriages when compared with the rest of the population; further, the evident and constantly increasing tendency to contract marriage with Christians.
   Statistics in regard to cross-marriages in Germany reveal the fact that between 1923 and 1932, two male Jews out of every three married Jewesses, -- the third marrying a Christian. The statistics in regard to Jewesses were hardly less. In 1926 there were 64 cross-marriages for every hundred purely Jewish marriages, in other words, there were two cross-marriages for every three Jewish ones. At the same period in Germany as a whole, there were 50 cross-marriages against
100 purely Jewish ones that is, two Jewish marriages to one cross- marriage.
   It is self-evident that the complete one-sided distribution of German Jews and their systematic migration to, and concentration in, the large urban areas was an unsound policy and disastrous not only for the Jews but also for the national life of Germany.
   But the structure of professional life also suffered from this morbid one-sidedness. Here statistics show that Jewry was a tree without roots, without. any anchorage whatsoever in social life. This abnormal social composition was responsible for the fact that the Jews exclusively preferred the commercial professions and steered clear of all manual work.
   These facts can be checked by the results of the trades records established in the various German federal states in 1925. In Prussia, Württemberg and Hessen, these census gave the following results in regard to the percentage of Jews employed in the various groups:

Group
   

Prussia
   

Württemberg
   

Hessen

Trade & Commerce  
Industry   . . . . . . . .
Agriculture . . . . . . .
   

58.8%
25.8%  
1.7%
   

64.6%  
24.6%  
1.8%
   

69%  
22%  
4%

   It is often asserted that external pressure, political and social considerations, as well as ghetto and boycott have squeezed the Jews out of handicraft trades and forced them into commercial spheres. Here however we must reply by stating that in rural districts, particularly in the former province of Posen and in Hessen-Nassau, the Jews had every opportunity of working as farmers or craftsmen. There were certainly no restrictions placed on them. But they preferred to deal in cattle, corn or fertilizers and especially in money which brought them rich reward.
   Felix A. Theilhaber, the well-known Jewish economist, reporting his observations on the causes of Jewish disintegration in Der Untergang der deutschen Juden -- The Decline and Fall of Germany Jewry -- (Berlin 1921), confirms the fact that so-called primitive production is not in keeping with Jewish characteristics. He admits, primarily, that racial talents force the Jews into the so-called business professions as they are more easily able to guarantee commercial success and material security. Theilhaber finally arrives at the following conclusion:
"Agriculture has little material attraction for German Jews. .. Racial instincts, traditions and economic pre­ conditions compel them to choose other professions. .. Hence it is natural that certain types dominate in German Jewry, for example, clothiers, agents, lawyers and doctors. Jewish characteristics and peculiarities are also evident in other branches (departmental stores, furs, tobacco and even the press). One peculiar Jewish feature is the craving for individualism, the urge to become independent and wealthy."
   Among the intellectual professions named by this Jewish author, that of medicine and law were the two most attractive. They were the professions that offered most material gain. Jewish influence in these professions was therefore most marked and finally assumed a dominating character.
   In 1932 there were approximately 50,000 German medical practitioners of which 6,488, -- 13% -- were Jews. That is to say, a figure ten times greater than that to which they were entitled on the basis of population ratio. It is noteworthy to mention in this connexion that the majority of these Jewish doctors classed themselves as specialists in venereal diseases.
   In Berlin, the capital of the Reich, the percentage of Jewish doctors was still greater. The figure was 42 % and 52 % for the panel doctors. In the leading Berlin hospitals 45 % of all the doctors were Jews.
   An abnormal and disproportionate state of affairs also existed in the legal professions as compared with the population ratio. In 1933 there were 11,795 lawyers practising in Prussia of which 3,350 or nearly 30 %  were Jews; 2,051 or 33 % of the total number of 6,236 public notaries were Jews. In Berlin itself the percentage was much higher, -- bordering between 48010 and 56 %.
   Further consideration must be given to the fact that the administration of justice was chiefly in the hands of orthodox Jews. The position was similar in regard to the professor­ ships at various leading German universities. The table below furnishes the statistics of three of these universities in 1931. Not only the law and medical faculties are quoted but the philosophical as well in order to show the abnormal Jewish penetration:

Faculty
   

Berlin
   

Breslau
   

Frankfurt a. M.

 

Law  .  .  .  .  .
 

Medicine  .  .  

 

Philosophy  .

 
   

 

44 teachers  
15 Jews=34%

265 teachers  
118 Jews = 43%  

268 teachers  
85 Jews=31%  
 
   

 

23 teachers  
6 Jews=26%  

101 teachers  
43 Jews =43%  

107 teachers  
26 Jews=25%  
   

 

Jewish teachers  
total 33%  

Jewish teachers  
total 28%  

Jewish teachers  
total 32%  

   Two of the most important phases of public life viz. law and public health were thus in danger of coming under complete Jewish control.

2. Jews in German Economic Life

   Jewish penetration into German economic life was still more pronounced. In strict accordance with the objectives referred to in the previous chapter, trade and commerce were the principle spheres in which Jews centred their attention. Their peak activity in this respect, be it noted, was reached
during the currency inflation from 1919 to 1923. In that particular period very little material benefit accrued to anyone engaged in productive and strenuous work. An instinct for speculation and commercial shrewdness was the ruling factor in those days. It is no wonder therefore that Jewish business concerns sprang up like mushrooms over­ night in that period. We need only recall such well-known Jewish names as Jakob Michael, Richard Kahn and Jacob Shapiro or the corrupt business concerns associated with the Austrian Jewish speculators, Siegfried Bosel and Castiglioni, two names that became notorious far beyond Germany's frontiers. At huge cost to the national budget all these concerns finally collapsed when German currency was stabilized.
   In 1931, Dr. Alfred Marcus, the Jewish statistician previously referred to, carefully examined Jewish participation in individual branches of German trade in his book Die wirtschaftliche Krise des deutschen Juden, -- The Economic Crisis of German Jews. -- His investigations led to the following remarkable results:
   In 1930, 346 or 57.3 % of the total of 603 firms in the metal trades were in Jewish hands; in scrap-metal there were 514 firms of which 211 or 41 % were Jews; grain merchants totalled 6,809 of which 1,543 or 22.70f0 were Jews; textile wholesalers numbered 9,984 of which 3,938 or 39,4% were Jews; in the ladies dress branch there were 81 Jewish firms out of a total of 133, or 60.9 %. In the art and booksellers trades, both of which possess an extremely cultural value, many of the most important firms were Jewish. We need only mention S. Fischer, Cassirer, Flechtheim, Ullstein and Springer.
   Still more important is the financial or banking business. Here well-nigh every leading business was in the hands of Jews. A few individual instances can be quoted. Both the governing directors of the Deutsche Bank und Discontogesellschaft (1929) and four of its twelve board members were Jews. The chairman, two vice-chairmen and three of the five governing members of the board of the Darmstädter und Nationalbank were Jews. The chairman, vice-chairman and three of the seven members of the governing board of the Dresdner Bank (1928) were Jews. Finally, everyone of the three owners of the Berliner Handelsgesellschaft were also Jews.
   The big private banks were also nearly all in Jewish hands.  We need only recall such well-known firms as Arnhold, Behrens, Warburg, Bleichröder, Mendelsohn, Goldschmidt, Rothschild, Dreyfuss, Bondi and Maron, Aufhäuser, Oppenheim, Levy, Speyer-Ellissen, Heimann, Stern.
   By means of these key positions in the financial world Jewish influence penetrated by way of the boards of directors to every section of German industry. The Adress Buch der Direktoren und Aufsichtsräte -- A Guide to Company Directors & Boards of Management -- published in 1930, i. e. long before the national socialists assumed power -- proves the alarming influence of Jewish capital or capital controlled by Jews on German economic life.
   Outstanding among Jewish financiers in this respect was Jacob Goldschmidt, a member of the boards of no less than 115 companies. He was closely followed by Louis Hagen, a Jewish banker, with 62 appointments. Third on the list was a Christian lawyer, followed successively by four Jewish bankers who together held 166 ,positions on the boards of various companies. Further down this list Jews continued to play a very prominent role.
   This concentration of business-company authority in the hands of a small group of Jewish financiers was certainly not compatible with a conscientious fulfilment of the exacting duties of a company director. On the other hand no effort or work was necessary in producing extraordinary handsome returns. This was one of the most important factors that led to discrediting the political and economic systems of that period, and also formed one of the causes which led to a widespread growth of anti-semitism among the broad masses in Germany.
   The domination of German industry by a system of Jewish boards of business directors certainly went hand in hand with direct Jewish penetration and subsequent control of industrial production. The complicated nature of this vast field and its complex structure makes it possible to give only a few illustrations which, however, by no means exhaust the real extent of Jewish expansion.
   In the electrical branch for example, mention must be made of the AEG, -- the German General Electric Company. This company was established by the Jew Emil Rathenau and after the Great War, was controlled by two Jews. The whole of the metal market was controlled by the Jew Merton, head of the Frankfurt Metal Bank. The Osram Company, the leading electric globe concern, was controlled by Meinhardt, a Jew. The Continental Rubber Company in Hannover, Germany's largest productive plant, and the Calmon Rubber Company at Hamburg were established and controlled by Jews. Adler, Oppenheim, Salamander and Conrad Tack & Co., four Jewish firms, dominated the entire German leather industry. The iron market was controlled by the Jew Ottmar Strauss, Hugo Herzfeld, a Jew, exercised a decided influence in the potash industry. In the mining industry section, Paul Silverberg dominated the Rhenish lignite or brown coal industry whilst two co-religionists, the Petschek brothers had a similar function in the Central German lignite district.
   Jewish participation was also extraordinarily large in industrial organisations and in official organs of German economic life. This influence was particularly pronounced in the Chambers of Commerce and Industry. To quote one example: The Berlin Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the largest of its kind in Germany, had 98 members in 1931 of which no less than 50 were Jews or half-caste Jews. Four­ hundred of the 1,300 members attached to the Chamber as advisory experts were Jews, whilst 131 of ,the 209 commercial judges appointed by the Chamber were also Jews. The
Chamber itself was presided over by a President and five vice-presidents. The president himself and three of his deputies were Jews.
   The position was far worse on the exchanges. We need do no more than give the Berlin Exchange, the most important one in Germany, as an example. Twenty-five of the 36 committee members of the Securities and Bonds Exchange were Jews, Twelve of the 16 committee members of the Produce Exchange were Jews and ten of the 12 committee members of the Metal Exchange were also Jews. The committee of the whole Exchange was composed of 70 members of whom 45 were Jews. Attendance at the Exchange was also more or less a Jewish monopoly. In 1930 for example, the attendance at the Securities and Bonds Exchange totalled 1,474 of which number approximately 1,200 were Jews. The Produce Exchange had an attendance of 578 of which 520 were Jews, and at the Metal Exchange out of an attendance of 89 there were 80 Jews.
   It is obvious that the Reichsbank, the official bank for the issue of paper money, was in no position to resist perma­ nently this well-nigh Jewish monopoly of capital and economic interests. The result was that in the period between 1925 and 1929 four of the six members of the controlling board of Reichsbank directors were Jews or half-caste Jews. All three members of the Central Council of the Reichsbank and two of their deputies were Jews.
   It is necessary now to supplement the aforementioned quantitative analysis of Jewish participation in German economic life by a qualitative one in which the following facts must be borne in mind:
   When compiling the aforementioned statistics in regard to certain professions in the various German states since 1925 it was ascertained that in Prussia, the largest State, out of a total of approximately 3 million employed in the professions -- either independently or in leading capacities -- approximately 92,000 were orthodox Jews. This means that 48 % of all Jews professionally employed held leading positions, whereas the corresponding ratio for the remainder of the population amounted to only 16 %.
   If we compare this with the Jewish share in the non­ independent manual work branch, then the whole abnormal social structure of Jewry stands revealed in its true light: Whereas Prussia in 1925 employed approximately 8.5 million ordinary workers (i. e. 46,9010 of the sum total of all in employment). Jews totalled only 16,000 i.e. (8.4010 of all Jews in employment). The percentage of Jews (which in the leading positions was three times greater than that of the whole population) dropped therefore in the manual trades to one­ sixth of the figure for the rest of the population, and for all practical purposes had reached zero.
   This supplementary qualitative assessment makes it perfectly plain that prior to the national socialist regime the whole of German economic life had reached that alarming stage where it was under foreign domination by Jews and principally by Jews in leading key positions.
   It is not surprising that this powerful domination of German economic life should express itself in abnormally high incomes for members of the Jewish community. It is difficult of course to give accurate figures in this respect. We will, however, limit ourselves to the statistics furnished us by the Jewish statistician, Dr. Alfred Marcus, to whom reference has already been made. Marcus estimates the average Jewish income for 1930 as 3.2 times greater than the average income of the rest of the population.
   Summarizing the aforementioned particulars, it must be emphasized once more that the Jews concentrated themselves exclusively on commercial and financial undertakings and assumed therein absolute leading positions. Agriculture and other manual work were severely left alone. Abnormal concentration of Jews in large cities, particularly in Berlin, must I not be forgotten.
   It does not require much intelligence to realize that such an abnormal social and regional structure must ultimately lead to a state of severe tension, if not to serious disturbances in public life. This would have taken place in any case even if the Jews had wisely adapted themselves to the requirements of the country which was giving them shelter. These tensions had to lead to an explosion one day if Jewry, blinded by the lustre of its fortunes continued to exercise no restraint in displaying its foreign racial characteristics. But nowhere have Jews been more downright unrestrained than during the era of economic and political corruption which Germany experienced after the Great War.

3. Jews and Corruption

   It is no exaggeration to say that public life in those days was governed by an epidemic of corruption. This was by no means confined to Germany. Europe and the United States of America were similarly affected. Jews played a leading part in corruption scandals everywhere. In France it was Hanau, Oustric and Stavisky; in the United States of America it was Insull and in Austria, Bosel, Berliner and Castiglioni were the outstanding figures.
   Fundamentally it is not surprising that this plague of corruption became most widespread and acute in the period which followed the disastrous World War. On the other hand, however, it is typical of the Jew and his character that he should be the bearer and the principal beneficiary of this process of disintegration.
   It is understandable that Germany, as the loser of the war, became infected to a particularly acute degree with the germ of corruption. During its most distressful period of trial and tribulation -- the result of the Dictate of Versailles ­ Germany therefore became acquainted with Jewry as the exploiters and beneficiaries of its national misfortunes. No other country can point to a similar experience.
   The list of Jewish profiteers in those years of national distress who veritably swamped the crumbling structure of German economic life and finally were responsible for its total collapse and ruin -- ranges from the company promoter type and inflation profiteer to all the various types of soldiers of fortune and large-scale swindlers. In no other national economy has Jewish nature with its selfishness, its unscrupulousness and its urge for quick profits developed itself so unrestrictedly as in Germany throughout that particular tragic period.
   Even the war companies, which during the Great War attended to the supplies of raw materials, were allowed to come more and more under Jewish influence. The largest concern of its kind, the Zentral Einkaufsgesellschaft -- the Central Buying Company -- for example, was controlled by a Jew. The important Kriegs Metall Company -- the War Metals Company -- was in charge of 14 governing men of whom 12 were Jews. A public scandal as the result of the business methods of this company was avoided for the simple reason that the political and military developments of the war confronted Germany with other and more pressing tasks.
   Jewry's great and triumphant hour of corruption came with the end of the Great War, The liquidation of the armaments. factories and the sale of military stores and equipment offered splendid opportunities for handsome profits and the Jews were not backward in exploiting this state of affairs. The Jew, Richard Kahn, to mention an example, made a contract with the Deutsche Werke -- the largest state-owned armaments plant -- whereby the whole of its valuable stock was sold to him at scrap-metal price. Kahn was not the only Jew who profiteered enormously as the result of Germany's downfall. Felix Pinner, a Jewish author, in his book entitled: Deutsche Wirtschaftsführer -- German Leaders of Economy -- (Berlin 1924) has characterized the innumerable Jewish profiteers as follows:
   "Many of them . . . started business as army suppliers. In a number of cases it was difficult to say whether their chief motive was a desire to deal in military supplies or an excuse for shirking military duties. In many cases their big opportunity came when military stores and equipment were finally sold. Others again firmly established themselves financially with the advent of the currency inflation period."
   Business in deflated currency in the years 1919 to 1923 brought many outstanding triumphs to corruptive and speculative dealers. The Jews in particular were prominent in floating large companies as the result of shady transactions on the exchange. These concerns, which were none too securely established, paid out large dividends in the early stages before finally crashing. The most well-known names in this respect are the Jews Jakob Michael, Richard Kahn and the Eastern Jew Ciprut and his brother. These two brothers are referred to by Pinner, the Jewish author, in his book from which we have already quoted. He states: "The Ciprut brothers are of the breed that comes from the south-eastern plains of Roumania or Persia; soldiers of fortune attracted by the decomposing stench of German currency."
   All these cases however were not the deciding factors that turned the Jewish question in Germany into a most burning problem for the whole nation. No. They took place at a time when all phases of economic and political law and order were extremely lax. To a certain extent they even passed unnoticed in the general chaotic state of affairs during the first post-war years. But nothing was more calculated to open the eyes of the general public in Germany and fan the flame of anti-semitism than the huge wave of Jewish corruption which had assumed such a criminal character that one public scandal followed another in rapid succession.
   We refer in particular to the five Sklarz brothers, the three Barmat, the three Sklarek and the two Rotter brothers as well as the scandals associated with Michael Holzmann and Ludwig Katzenellenbogen. All these Jewish past-masters in corruption were, with the exception of Katzenellenbogen, Easterners i. e. Galician or Polish Jews who had migrated to Germany either during or after the Great War.
   The first of the big corruption cases was the one in connexion with the five Sklarz brothers. With the help of influential connexions in the social-democrat party they succeeded, shortly after the war, in obtaining a monopoly for supplies to those troops that had been commissioned with the task of restoring domestic law and order. These contracts led to enormous profits within a short space of time. These brothers increased their wealth considerably by further shady manipulations and by discreet bribes to leading government officials. All this helped these unscrupulous Jewish black­ guards materially when they subsequently came up for trial. Very little light could be thrown on their shady conduct and after a well-nigh endless trial, only one of the five brothers was convicted in 1926.
   These five brothers were ably assisted by a Russian Jew, Parvus-Helphand, one of the most unscrupulous blackguards and swindlers produced by the war. He utilized the millions he made out of war supplies in order to establish good relations with the social-democrats in power at that time. As a principal wire-puller he remained in the background of many corruption scandals. No one dared to institute proceedings against a man who had successfully bribed so many leading government officials.
   The three Barmat brothers were artists in corruption on a more imposing scale. Their home was at Kiev and during the war they were engaged in business in Holland as food merchants. With the help of Heilmann, the Jewish politician, the five Sklarz brothers and Parvus-Helphand these three Barmat brothers ultimately received permission to settle in Germany. By means of ruthless exploitation of human weaknesses, small and large favours which culminated in direct bribes, these brothers were able finally to win the confidence of influential friends and members of the government. In this way they soon became the owners of ten banks and a great number of industrial concerns. With the help of fraudulent balance sheets they procured a loan of 38 million Marks, partly granted by the Prussian State bank and partly by the Reich Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. When finally this inflated Barrnat concern crashed, its debts were estimated at 70 million gold Marks, and half of this sum had to be covered by the savings of small investors.
   The subsequent court proceedings against these Barrnat brothers ended in very small terms of imprisonment. Herr Bauer, the social-democrat Reich Chancellor at that time, who had become involved in the proceedings was forced to resign.
   After the crash, Julius Barmat went abroad again. In his new surroundings he applied with great success the methods which he had adopted in Germany. By bribing influential politicians he was able to obtain loans and finally defrauded the Belgian National Bank of 34 million gold francs. He evaded the law by committing suicide in 1937.
   The three Jews, Iwan Baruch, Alexander Kutisker and Michael Holzmann were less successful in their efforts than their predecessors. Nevertheless they are worthy of mention. They turned their attention to the Prussian State Bank which Barmat had previously defrauded. They also succeeded in defrauding this institution to the extent of 14 million gold Marks.
   By far the largest scandal however was brought about by the Sklarek brothers of whom there were three. The case is certainly unparalleled in the history of crime, politics, business and bribery. The principle sufferers were the city authorities in Berlin.
   By a clever and crafty system of favours, presents and bribes of every description these three Jews had literally purchased goodwill in various civic quarters in Berlin -- where social-democrats and communists were chiefly in power. In this way they secured an absolute monopoly for the supply of clothing either to the police force, traffic department, social aid depots or public works department. All municipal officials were systematically bribed who might in any way prove useful to the Sklareks in obtaining and keeping their monopoly. Even the Oberbürgermeister, Berlin's Lord Mayor, was bribed. In this way, therefore, it was possible to obtain payment from the Stadtbank -- the Berlin Municipal Bank -- for all faked invoices in respect of goods never supplied. The sums paid on this account ran into enormous figures. When the firm of Sklarek finally suspended payments, the municipal bank had been defrauded of 12,5 million Marks. An enquiry to ascertain the whereabouts of a further 10 million Marks brought no results.
   The legal proceedings against these three Jews commenced in 1932 and lasted nine months. In accordance with public feeling the sentences were more severe than in previous cases. Two of the brothers (one had died in the meantime) were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment with hard labour.
   Mention must still be made of the Jewish Director-General Katzenellenbogen. He was head of the Schultheiss-Patzenhofer concern, one of the largest industrial undertakings in Germany with a share capital of 75 million Marks and a pre­ ferential capital of 15 million Marks. By means of disreputable speculation with a view to personal enrichment at the expense of the company, Katzenellenbogen brought this vast concern to the verge of bankruptcy. The shareholders were defrauded to the extent of thirty million Marks. Part of his dishonest profits Katzenellenbogen used for the purpose of financing Erwin Piscator, the bolshevik theatrical director. Katzenellenbogen was finally convicted for fraud and for issuing false balance sheets and sentenced to imprisonment.
   The final case in this long series of corruption scandals was the one dealing with the Rotter brothers. These two Jewish speculators had formed a combine embracing seven of the largest Berlin theatres. The work of exploiting these theatres was considerably facilitated by the flotation of several companies whose affairs were placed in the hands of an ignorant though willing person acting as a mere figure head. In one single year, 1932, these two adventurers were able to squeeze no less than 300,000 Marks clear profit out of these under­ takings after all expenses had been met. Their monthly salaries, which they themselves had fixed at 2,000 Marks each were not included in this figure. A further 400,000 Marks accrued to them as the result of a fraudulent contract respecting two cultural undertakings. While Christian actors in these theatres were badly underpaid, the Jewish "stars" on the other hand received fantastic salaries, as much as 1,000 to 2,500 Marks per evening being no rare occurrence. The Rotter brothers lived a life of splendid luxury and the day came in 1932 when their concern also finally crashed with debts amounting to 3.5 million Marks. The two brothers declined all responsibility for the crash and decamped to Liechtenstein for which country they had taken care to obtain papers of naturalization.
   We have already stated that Austria also had its Jewish corruption scandals on a large scale. Apart from Castiglioni and Bosel mention must be made of Berliner, the large-scale Jewish swindler. As Director-General of the large Phönix Life Insurance Company, he utilized the funds of this company for political purposes. Berliner maintained excellent relations with all political parties in Austria and paid out a total of three million schillings in bribes in respect of elections and the occupation of certain important positions. He influenced the press in his time by payments amounting to 170 million schillings. The trade unions and the military Heimwehr organization were also supported by him from funds fraudulently appropriated from his company. In this way, the debts of the Phönix Company finally totalled the mammoth sum of 670 million schillings. 330,000 policy holders of the company, chiefly of the non-wealthy middle class type, were the principal sufferers and had to foot the bill by means of increased premiums and reduced benefits.
   This list of Jewish corruption by no means lays claim to being complete. Attention has only been drawn to those cases which in Germany and elsewhere have focussed particular public attention by reason of their magnitude. But the instances quoted suffice to deny the oft -- repeated Jewish charge that Jews were in no way more involved in corruption than Christians. Here it can be said that during the period which has been referred to, only two great corruption scandals by Christians have taken place. These are the Raiffeisen Bank and the Lahusen cases. Jewish participation in corruption is therefore not only greater on a percentage basis -- that is when compared with the Jewish population ratio ­ but also totally dominant in every respect.
   A decisive factor in judging Jewish corruption is that legal punishment of this crime was either invariably a long-winded affair or no charge was subsequently preferred against the criminals. When a conviction did take place punishment was invariably mild. The reason for this was to be found in the very friendly and mutually profitable relations existing between these Jews and various influential personages in the government and other public bodies. And here again, Jews were always to be found in highly-placed and important key positions.
   This inter-connexion of interests has already been referred to above. Reference has already been made to Heilmann, the Jewish social-democrat Reichstag member who paved the way for the Barmats. The Jewish Secretary of State Abegg has also been mentioned as acting in a similar capacity. As further examples of Jewish corruption in the Prussian Civil Service, mention must be made of Dr. Weismann, Secretary of State and State Commissar for Public Law and Order in Prussia. Further, Dr. Weiss, Deputy Chief of Police in Berlin. Both were officially responsible for law and order; Dr. Weismann himself was classified as the senior official in Prussia, the largest of the federal states.
   Dr. Weismann played a particularly shady part in the proceedings against the Sklarz brothers. It is characteristic of him that he attempted to bribe Herr Gutjahr, the leading state prosecutor, with a sum of three million Marks with a view to having the charge modified. Gutjahr refused to be bribed and subsequently Weismann was responsible for this trusted official being officially reprimanded.
   Weismann and Dr. Weiss were both heavy gamblers in private life. The Jewish periodical Die Weltbühne even criticized Weismann in 1920 as "one of the most notorious gamblers in Berlin." Dr. Weiss -- the deputy chief of police ­ was frequently surprised in 1932 in various illicit gaming dens. Before the national socialists came into power the Court of Appeal in Berlin even confirmed that he had committed an offence against the law and that he "did not possess the moral qualities necessary for such a responsible position."