Why They Wore Stars: Assessing the Hatred of the Jews in Germany Long Before the Nazis

This post is a little longer than usual. It is a paper I wrote for a Modern European History class in college. It started with a question: where did the roots of the Holocaust begin? Through my research, I learned that events in history do not spring up on their own. There are causes years and years in the making that have lasting affects. This is where my desire to write a historical fiction book about the Holocaust began.

Even before the six million Jews were killed due to the Holocaust, anti-Semitism had been prevalent throughout the world for centuries. Specifically in Germany, anti-Semitism spread due to longstanding stereotypes, propaganda, lies and blame placed on the Jews for Germany’s ills. Hatred of the Jews did not come about when Adolf Hitler came to power; he just continued spreading an ideology that had been there for many, many years.

There were stereotypes that had been around for centuries that only made it easier for Hitler to spread his anti-Jew propaganda. Historian Albert S. Lindemann in his work, Esau’s Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews goes as far as to say that anti-Semitism dated back to “…to the very origins and structures of western civilization. It predated the advent of Christianity and may be found in the earliest texts of the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible” such as the Israelites slavery in Egypt. Anti-Semitism spread because Jews were commonly linked to a group of individuals that moved from one country to another. This, more times than not, caused uneasiness in the countries they did migrate to because the natives worried that these newcomers would not adhere to their culture. Moreover, a rift between natives and Jews would emerge as the Jews strived to keep their identity, specifically their worship of the one true God. Allegedly, this was the case when the Jews were exiled to Babylonia in 597 B.C. and continued on throughout the centuries in numerous countries. Therefore, Jews were certainly not given the same privileges and were forced to live in ghettos.

The father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, which began in Germany in the sixteenth century, hated the Jews. After Luther’s eyes were open to what the Scripture really taught, he attempted to reach out to the Jews and he firmly believed that they would readily convert. However, this was not to be. Because the Jews did not want to turn to Christianity, Luther concluded that they were devil worshipers and enemies of Jesus Christ. He once stated, “’I cannot convert the Jews. Our Lord Christ Himself did not succeed in doing so; but I can close their mouths so that there will be nothing for them to do but lie upon the ground.’" He also found them liars, self-righteous and arrogant and felt the only ways to rid Germany of them was to ban Judaism, take their property and their wealth, burn their schools, synagogues and houses and execute their rabbis. Little did Luther realize that this and much worse would be done nearly four hundred years later with the Nazi regime.

During the Enlightenment, many of the philosophers claimed that Jews were not God’s chosen people anymore and, taking it a step further, believed that they never were. Indeed, “For Enlightened thinkers the crude and contradictory images of the deity in the Old Testament reflected the mental processes of a primitive people who conceived a God as a ‘cruel and capricious tyrant’…” Therefore, the philosophers disregarded any indication that the Jews should be treated with respect because they were a special people. The philosophers also planted a seed in individuals’ minds stating that the world would be a better place if Judeo-Christian religion was no where to be found. Immanuel Kant, who even favored religious freedom, declared that Judaism was not a religion; it was a collection of laws.

In even more modern German times, anti-Semitism spread in this country during Napoleon’s regime. When he took over Germany, he brought many changes that shocked and infuriated many of the inhabitants. However, one of the most controversial aspects involved Napoleon destroying ghettos and giving Jews freedom to worship and the ability to own land and

practice trade, which had been intensely restricted before. Nevertheless, according to historian John Weiss, the deep seed of racism that had been cultivated for many, many years had sprung up into a plant of hatred. Indeed, “Napoleon’s cannons might blast open ghetto walls, but they could not conquer the German mind." Napoleon’s attempts to completely alter Germanic culture had a hand in ushering in the German’s obsession with finding their pride in only and all things German and the Volk was strengthened. As a result, conservative nationalism was widespread, which, in this instance, was a love for anything German and a hatred for anything that was not. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) had a major hand in cultivating this mindset. He spoke out against French ideology and spurred on his fellow countrymen to embrace the German spirit. He also had an intense dislike for the Jews. He was one of the first Germans to argue that Jesus was not Jewish. He believed that only the Germans could embrace true Christianity. In turn, if Jews even converted to Christianity, they could never be German. Fichte’s anti-Semitic ideology continued to be held by many Germans for centuries.

When Otto Von Bismarck, liberal Chancellor and famous for his part in the unification of Germany, established a new constitution, it called for the liberation of the Jews. Jews all over Germany rejoiced as they were able to go to universities and establish new trades. Anti-Semitism looked as if it was dying away. However, many conservatives disregarded the constitution and continued to make life difficult for the Jews. For example, Jews were kept from serving in the military and in the countryside they were only allowed to be middlemen and moneylenders. Anti-Semitism regained strength when, by the late 1870s, Bismarck had reached out to the conservatives. They then had more influence in government and were given ample opportunity to spread their anti-Semitic ideals. Therefore, anti-Semitism had deep age old traditions and stereotypes that passed on from generation to generation and became more established throughout the years.

Propaganda certainly had a hand in cultivating racism in Germany, which aided solidification in the people’s minds that Jews were a dangerous and unwanted race. The written word was a powerful tool utilized to defame the Jews. One of the most well known anti-Semitics, who is actually given credit for coining this phrase, was Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904). Through his pamphlet Der Sieg des Judenthums uber das Germanethum (the Victory of Jewry over the Germans), Marr argued the rising popular notion that the Jews could not become Germans and they were part of dangerous race. His faulty logic included the fact that Jews controlled everything in Germany, but they were unwilling to do real work, which mainly meant agriculture. He believed that the Jews would rise up and take away Germany’s authenticity.

This book was a best seller even though it had major errors including the fact that the Jews did not own the press. However, the damage was done and many Germans believed that they had justification for their hatred of the Jews because they threatened their very livelihood.

Stoecker (1835-1909) founded the Christian’s Socialist Worker’s Party and perpetuated Marr’s belief that the Jews were part of a separate race. He argued that science vindicated discrimination. Otto Glagau (1834-1892) coined the famous phrase, “the Jewish question” in 1876. This slogan continued to be popular even until the Nazi regime. Through this, anti-Semitic groups arose and anti-Semitic literature flooded Germans’ minds with primarily false information about the Jews. One example of this was Glagau’s magazine the Gardenhouse. It had 400,000 subscribers, which was extremely dangerous because, according to one source, “Ignoring the distinction between honest promotion and fraud, Glagau used false statistics to claim that 90 percent of business promoters were Jews. He wasted no words on the thousands of ruined Jewish investors or aristocratic speculators." Books also slandered Jews. In 1885 Otto Boeckel (1859-1923) published The Jews: The Kings of Our Times. This work sold 1.5 million copies by 1909. Boeckel is also known for publishing anti-Semitic newspapers and he wove in racist propaganda around weather reports, agriculture news and price variations. As was the case with Glagau, Boeckel twisted information to push the agenda he wanted to advance. He declared that Jews had a hand in maneuvering credit and mortgage rates to take land from farmers who were now bankrupt. This, once again, spoke to the Germans’ livelihood. Jewish stereotypes also flourished in novels as can be seen in Felix Dahn’s (1834-1912) popular book published in 1867 where he made the villain a weak and wicket Jew.

Children were also indoctrinated with anti-Semitic propaganda through the fairy tales they read. Many of the Grimm Brothers’ stories spoke to the German Volk and made the evil characters Jewish. Anti-Semitic propaganda continued on through the years as can be seen when Adolf Hitler selected Goebbels head of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda department to ensure that films, radio programs, books, magazines, pictures and music demonstrated that Hitler was the preserver of the German Volk and that the Jews were shown as enemies of Germany. The Nazis certainly recognized the power of words in penetrating their ideology into the hearts of the people. This was seen with Julius Streicher and his story by Randall L. Bytwerk called, Julius Streicher: The Man Who Persuaded a Nation to Hate Jews. Indeed, much of the Nazis’ energy was spent on spreading anti-Semitism. Streicher published a weekly newspaper, Der Sturmer. The newspaper main objective, through cruel cartoons, photographs and articles, was to spread hatred toward the Jews. It was successful.

Anti-Semitics certainly utilized one of the best possible avenues to infiltrate individuals’ minds with their rhetoric. Now, “For the Jews there was no escape from the Jewish stereotype; there were no more plans for Jewish assimilation. That avenue of escape had been finally closed” and the entity that had shut the door was German hate literature.

What caused these anti-Semitic works of literature to emerge and influence the German people? The answer to that is the German Volk and many individuals’ obsession to keep Germany pure and away from outside, evil influences, namely the Jews. One source describes the Volk as “…a spiritual ideal based on a nationalistic mystique. The soil, the native landscape, provided constant inspiration, and the inner-directedness of man’s individual soul was thought to be analogous to the soul of the Volk. Through such ideas many Germans rejected materialism in any form and envisaged man and society as filled with irrational and spiritual drives." Germans were extremely proud of anything German and this is why the Jews were looked to with contempt. Moreover, Germans believed that Jews were uncultured individuals who could only live in cities and ghettos. Indeed, “…the Jew came to stand for all these men feared: materialism, progress, the big city, and the sober rationalistic mind that could have no sense of the beautiful.” The Jews did not fit the German ideal and authentic German feelings. It was also believed that Jews could only be loyal to one another and not the countries where they lived. Therefore, this heightened the Volk ideology and many Germans believed that Jews were not useful to Germany. It was mainly the youth that embraced guiding a pure Germany into the future. They spread the stereotypes of Jews and German Volkish thought saying that Jews were individuals did not have roots in their country and only wanted to spread dreaded capitalism.

With these stereotypes that had been around for centuries, the Jews were the ones that were looked to when things in Germany went wrong. The humiliating defeat of World War I is no exception. World War I was certainly a monumental defeat for Germany that brought about immeasurable changes that had been fought against by conservatives since 1871. It appeared that almost over night the Kaiser was overthrown and a democratic republic that was run by socialists came into power. In addition, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken apart and Slavs now ruled where Germans used to dominate. Hungary was now a Soviet republic under the power of a man of Jewish origins. The once glorious Vienna was now only the capital of an irrelevant republic that was prohibited to unite with Germany. This was also directed by socialists. Bolshevik outsiders infiltrated Germany causing a communist revolution to occur in Berlin in 1919. Now, “Numbed by defeat, revolution, and an Allied blockade threatening starvation, Germany became a pariah nation through a draconian treaty forced upon her in the name of war guilt." Henry Buxbaum, who was a Jew that served the German army, described the feelings surrounding the country after World War One:

You could taste anti-Semitism everywhere; the air of Germany was permeated by it. All the unavoidable consequences of military defeat, revolution, a ruinous inflation, the Versailles [peace treaty], the loss of the territories in the east and west, the unsettling social changes following in their wake—each and every thing was blamed on the Jews and or/the Communists, who for the convinced Jew-hater were interchangeable.

However, how did hated Communism link to the hatred of the Jews even though over 100,000 of them served valiantly for the cause of Germany? First, surprisingly, before the war, Jews had been doing rather well in business and were becoming wealthy. This angered many Germans and gave them another reason to blame the Jews for Germany’s misfortunes. Even though Jews did serve in the war angry individuals would make claims that they did not do anything. Indeed, “After Germany’s defeat, General Ludendorff angrily wrote of how Germans had ‘fought for their freedom, with weapons in hand, while Jews did business and betrayed.’" According to one source, “Blaming the Jews had the advantage of diverting attention from the genuine causes of distress” and anti-Semitism continued. Communism and its link to anti-Semitism involved a misguided and false notion that the Bolsheviks, who Germans despised, were mainly Jewish. The anti-Semitics/anti-Communists hinged their reasoning on the fact that Leon Trotsky, the leader of the first Red Army, was Jewish when, in reality, he was not a practicing Jew. Furthermore, Vladimir Lenin’s ancestor was Jewish, but he actually had converted to Christianity. Even with these loose claims, the cry that being a Jew was interchangeable with being a Communist spread throughout Germany. As a result, horror heightened as Germans feared that Jews, who had too much power in Germany, would turn their beloved country into a Communistic state. The Volk, anger and fear merging all together caused Fascism to arise.

Outraged nationalism and profound fear of Communism were central to the fascist temper, but its traits were shifting and elusive, evolving in sometimes astonishing directions from 1919 to the outbreak of World War II. Fascists in all countries were more easily distinguished by what they were against than what they were for. It is commonly said, “No Hitler, no Holocaust.” However, in reality, historian Albert S. Lindemann argues, if World War I had not taken place, the Holocaust would not have been. Indeed, “…Hitler’s own experiences as a front-line solider had much to do with his later successes and program. Similarly, the Bolshevik Revolution provided him with one of his most effective propaganda tools, the threat of ‘Jewish’ Communism." Therefore, anger over the outcome of World War I and fear about the spread of Communism both were linked to the rise of anti-Semitism.

Adolf Hitler began his anti-Semitic regime because of fear and anger as well. Hitler did not grow up being a Jew hater. Indeed, he admired Jewish art and was fond of his Mother’s Jewish doctor. In his autobiography, Mein Kampf, he attempted to show his readers the struggles he went through to finally see who he believed the Jews really were. He confessed that it took him quite some time to come to an understanding of what he believed to be the truth of Judaism. Nevertheless, slowly his Jewish hatred emerged as he began to see how different they were and the fact they were foreigners. Indeed, “He began to notice Jews on the street. He ‘suddenly encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black hairlocks’; he noted the ‘foreign face’ and the ‘generally unheroic appearance.’ The Inner City ‘swarmed with a people which even outwardly had lost all resemblance to Germans.’ Their filth was unbearable.” Hitler’s hatred of the Jews grew as he compared their presence to the Black Death as they infected Germany. Therefore, like those before him, Hitler grouped all Jews together and categorized them as evil aliens capable of destroying the purity of Germany. This is when he considered only the Aryan race the master race and began to spread this propaganda. By 1937 it is recorded that 17,000 Polish Jews were deported. One of the most horrific early examples of Nazi anti-Semitism was the Crystal night in 1938. It was a night of intense fear and devastation. Two hundred synagogues were burned, 7,500 Jewish businesses were annihilated and 91 Jews were murdered. These events were the precursor to hundreds of thousands of Jews being sent to concentration camps in 1942.

Anti-Semitism did not just spring up during the Nazi regime. In reality, the hatred toward the Jews that the Nazis spread was able to gain so much support because anti-Semitism was so deep in German history. Indeed, it could be argued that the Holocaust would have happened regardless of the Nazis because anti-Semitism was deep rooted. It was just a mater of time as to when this hatred would explode into such serious and tragic consequences.

Bibliography

Briggs, Asa & Clavin, Patricia. Modern Europe 1789-Present, 2nd ed. Essex: Pearson Longman, 2003.

Bytwerk, Randall L. Julius Streicher: The Man Who Persuaded a Nation to Hate Jews.

Briarcliff Manor: Scarborough House, 1983.

Goldstein, Phyllis. A Convenient Hatred: The History of Anti-Semitism. Brookline: Facing History and Ourselves, 2012.

Lindemann, Albert S. Anti-Semitism Before the Holocaust. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2000.

Lindemann, Albert S. Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Mosse, George L. Germans and Jews. New York: Howard Fertig, 1970.