Germany and the Jewish Question

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This is a primary source material for the intellectual world that National Socialist party members, and, honestly, a lot of non-members, inhabited during the 1930s. This is a text written in 1938 by Friederich Karl Wiehe of the Institute for Studies of the Jewish Question. As such, this text offers some insights for understanding Germany in the 1930s, World War II and the Holocaust.

Introduction:

Wiehe frames the issue of the “Jewish Question” as being the issue arising from the fact that, apparently, Jews did not assimilate because for 2,000 years they had had no county but were still around as a distinct population group living among other populations. Wiehe claims that the “Jewish Question” was not invented by the Nazis or the anti-semitic parties of the 19th century, but had been around for two thousand years: “The Jewish question arises everywhere where the nomadic Jewish race comes into contact with other peoples having a settled abode.” Wiehe cites the expulsion of the Jews from Assyria 700 years before the Christian era as evidence of this point.

Wiehe was aware of the movement towards assimilation during the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century. Wiehe declares this period closed on the basis of Zionist writings by Theodore Herzl and Walther Rathenau. This actually correlates with observations made by Hannah Arendt in https://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-Classics-ebook/dp/B001RHOJSE/ref=cm_cr-mr-title that the Zionists were one of the rare groups to profit from National Socialism in that the Nazis confirmed the Zionist anti-assimilationist arguments. It appears that the Nazis benefited in a complementary way.

Wiehe claims that England recognized the “Jewish Question” with the Balfour Declaration. Wiehe argues that this solution is problematic – in fact, “utopian” - in light of the far larger Arab population that was resolutely opposed to a Jewish state and the facts that Jews had had no contact with their homeland for two thousand years and had mutually conflicting cultures. (It is interesting that the former problem remains, while Wiehe's latter two predictions were wrong.)

Wiehe therefore questions the solution of the establishment of Israel for the Jewish Question. He also argues that there is an increasing anti-semitic tide throughout the world. (Wiehe claims that there are three million Jews in Poland and that although anti-semitic parties have been banned in Rumania, anti-semitism is “constantly progressing.”) Wiehe points strongly to the liberal states who were closing their doors to Jewish refugees, i.e., South Africa and South American republics. Wiehe claims “Thereby is once more proved the fact, solidly established by the experience of millenniums, that Jewry and anti-Semitism are interchangeable terms, that the Wandering Jew is himself the carrier and transmitter of the anti-Semitic germ.” Wiehe credibly argues that Germany's policy towards the Jews has “a resounding echo throughout the world.” Wiehe offers a philosophical basis for this policy:

// 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 reorganize 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.//

This seems to be a mash-up of Hegel and Kant and Darwin. Thus, we have a kind of 19th century “liberalism” – the liberalism of national self-determination – imposed onto “race” with Jews being identified as “extraneous forces” who shape the destiny of the host nation. There is a reference to the “struggle for existence” that gestures toward Darwinism, but then there is the placement of racial differences on the level of an axiom defined by providence. Also, lest atheists seize on that language to make this a kind of “Christian position,” what was the “cultural syncretism” that proved fatal to the Roman Empire if not Christianity (according to Rosenberg, at least)?

Wiehe puts Germany's approach to the Jewish Question on the grounds of a “philosophy of history,” pointedly eschewing any effort to make the issue “religious”:

// 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 characterized 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.//

The cognitive dissonance of anti-Semitism is not explained, namely how can unassimilated Jews be inferior to Germans but so superior at the same time:

// 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 organizations, 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.//

The answer presumably had to do with the belief that the Jews were cheating or rigging the game.

1. Population and the Social Structure of German Jews 2. –
The 1925 census showed 546,379 professing Jews out of a population of 62.5 million, or less than 1% of the population. Wiehe confesses that statistics were not compiled for converts. Jewish populations were more concentrated in large urban areas, particularly Hamburg, Prussia and Hessen, where they might be as much as 1.05 to 1.72% of the population. The Jewish population of Berlin was 4.25% of the total population. 13% of German medical doctors were Jewish, with the percentage running to 42% to 52% of “penal doctors” in Berlin. 30% of Prussian lawyers were Jewish, with 48% to 56% of Berlin lawyers being Jewish.

2 Jews in German Economic Life

Wiehe's examination of German economic life, likewise showed that Jews were in an inordinate leading position in economics, e.g., “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.”

3. Jews and Corruption

According to Wiehe:

“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,[48] Oustric[49] and Stavisky;[50] in the United States of America it was Insull[51] and in Austria, Bosel,[52] Berliner[53] and Castiglioni[54] were the outstanding figures.”

Wiehe, Friederich Karl. Germany and the Jewish Question (Kindle Locations 649-661). Unknown. Kindle Edition.

4. The Jews in German Political Life

According to Wiehe:

“Among the six so-called “Representatives of the People”[64] who formed the first Reich Government after the collapse, there were two Jews, Hugo Haase[65] and Otto Landsberg.[66] Kurt Eisner,[67] a Jew, headed the list as Minister-President in Bavaria; in Prussia the Jew Paul Hirsch[68] assumed a similar function. The first Reich government established in 1919 on a parliamentary basis contained five Jews. Many of the most important departments in the Reich ministries were controlled by Jews.”

And:

“Jews also took a prominent part in the work of planning the 1918 revolution in Germany which finally, led to the collapse of the entire western front. It was Dr. Oskar Cohn,[75] the Social Democratic deputy, who early in November 1918 accepted the sum of four million gold rubles from M. Joffe,[76] the Soviet-Russian ambassador to Berlin in those days, and also a Jew. This money was intended to finance the German revolution.”

Wiehe, of course, points out that Karl Marx was the member of a rabbinical family, and Wiehe spends a lot of time pointing out Jewish Communists in order to show the “closely allied interests between Jewry and Bolshevism which had brought Germany to the brink of communism.”
5. The Jews in the German Press

Jews had an inordinate role in the press.

6. Jews in German Art and Literature

Jews had an inordinate role in the arts. Of course, this was not due to any superiority on their part:

“This Jewish preponderance was by no means the result of an intellectual superiority, of greater talents or creative powers on the part of the Jewish race. On the contrary, it was mainly the Jewish economic ascendency described above which led to the establishment of their dominant position in German cultural life. This economic domination was the instrument to attain the practical application of their intellectual and cultural influence. In this connection it is even more important to bear in mind that the characteristic Jewish intellectual attitude, which manifested itself in all spheres of cultural life, decisively favored the realization of their craving for predominance. Their lack of national sentiment, their egoism, their absolute rationalism, their absence of scruples and their characteristic habit of speculating upon the basest instincts, — traits which have already been mentioned in the chapter devoted to Jewish journalism, — were the foundation for their economic success, upon which their intellectual domination was based.”

7. The Jewish Share in Immorality

It is interesting how Wiehe finds the source of Jewish immorality in the Bible, which also a Christian book. In addition, the end of censorship permitted Jews to give into their penchant for obscenity:

The original Jüdische Lexikon was even compelled to admit a marked racial sexuality in its co-religionists. Cautiously it stated: “The Bible itself contains many references to the fact that the sensual element in sexual intercourse was often very pronounced . . . The words of the Prophets resound with complaints and threats in regard to adultery of which one hears so much.” (Vol. V, p. 384.) With the advent of emancipation this Jewish urge, restrained by the ghettos of the middle ages, poured forth into the public life of the state. A clear field however was only given to it when, as the result of the revolution in Germany in 1918, all barriers of law, order and censorship were broken down. A veritable storm flood of Jewish immoral literature, obscene films and plays then broke over Germany. Cinemas and theatres have already been exhaustively dealt with. It remains to be said that in literature all authors of obscene works were Jews in every case.

8. The Jewish Share in Crime

Wiehe reported that Jews were responsible for an inordinate percentage of business crimes.

Wiehe also offered the German perspective on the Jewish reaction to the Nuremberg laws:

//The Nuremberg Laws of 1935[155] formed the basis of a peaceful and orderly settlement of the Jewish question in Germany. But the Jews themselves were not prepared to reckon with the incontestable fact that their era of emancipation in Germany was definitely at an end. They were not willing to abandon their usurped supremacy without a struggle, and since this was no longer possible in Germany itself, they deliberately stirred up an agitation abroad, hardly less dangerous than an openly proclaimed war.
By means of a consistently carried out poisoning of the sources of public opinion, they have succeeded in creating a caricature of National Socialist Germany and inflaming international opinion against the latter.
By organizing a boycott of German goods,[156] they have endeavored to throttle Germany economically. They have even gone so far as to reply to the measures of the National Socialist Government by the assassination of Wilhelm Gustloff[157] and Ernst vom Rath.//

Conclusion: What should be done with the Jews?

Wiehe writes:

//It has already been said that the projected creation of a National Home for Jews in Palestine will not afford a solution of the Jewish problem.[159] What is needed, is to find territories, the ownership of which is not, as is the case in Palestine, claimed by others — territories which by virtue of a general agreement shall be allotted exclusively to the Jews. This need is reflected in the fact that even in England, the Mandatory Power, herself, the possibility of settling Jews in overseas territories is envisaged. Germany, having no colonies, is not in a position to make any effective contribution to these international discussions.//

Wiehe concludes that the Jewish Question is to be resolved by Jews themselves if they resolve themselves to exercise their “immense financial power.” In short, it seems that Wiehe expected Jews to subvert some other country or buy their own country.

By turns this book is shrewd and batwings crazy, but that was the intellectual world of pre-War Germany.