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Nazihatred Mislang
Nazihatred Mislang
much?
DAVID CESARANI: The Nazis werent the only people who hated Jews
during the 20th Century, but they hated Jews in a different way to most
other people. Theres a long history of conflict between Judaism and
Christianity, a millennia of conflict. Theres also a long history of
conflict between Jews and non-Jews because of the social and
economic relations between Jews wherever there have been
substantial communities of the Jewish population and non-Jews around
them. But those historic conflicts were contained within religious
understandings - a conflict between Christianity and Judaism, and they
were social, economic and sometimes political conflicts. What made
the Nazis hatred of the Jews so unusual is that it was racial and it was
biological. They believed that the Jews were not just the followers of an
abhorrent religious doctrine, or that the Jews had grabbed too much
economic influence, or even that they were too intrusive in politics or
culture: what made the Nazis hatred of the Jews so different is that
they believed that the Jews were biologically and racially distinct and
that there was a kind of biological struggle for dominance over the
entire human race between the Jews and everybody else.
This wasnt something that could be solved through religious debate
and argument, the conversion of the Jews, for example, wouldnt do.
The Nazis hated assimilated and converted Jews as much as they
hated orthodox Jews. This was a struggle that was almost zoological,
from the animal world. This was a struggle for survival between the
human race and this Jewish species that the core group of the Nazis
invested with almost a kind of supernatural demonic power, which was
absolutely unprecedented.
LAURENCE REES: How and why did people take that seriously?
DAVID CESARANI: One of the peculiar developments in the middle of
the 20th Century which makes Nazi anti-Semitism so powerful and
ultimately so lethal is not that the Nazis were able to spread their
poisonous fantasies through everybody elses minds, its that there
was a sufficient overlap between a traditional dislike of Jews and the
other people who dislike Jews is that the Nazis believed that the Jews
had acquired vast power, and that they had used this power in a
malign way. It was the power of the Jews that had led to the Bolshevik
revolution, it was the power of the Jews that had led to revolution in
Germany, had stabbed the German Army in the back and had brought
down Imperial Germany. In the Nazis world vision not only were the
Jews a force for evil, a Manichean, demonic force for evil, but they had
vast power, they had their hands on the levers of power. They had to
be eliminated, they had to be deprived of that power, they had to be
broken and then destroyed. To the Nazis the entire course of world
history vindicated that interpretation of Jewish power.
What happened in 1918 was simply one more example of the power of
the Jews, and the level and power of the Jews. One reason that Hitler
was keen to see the Jews segregated in Nazi Germany and subjected to
increasingly harsh measures once the Second World War began, and
why he wanted Jews segregated and eventually destroyed throughout
the Nazi sphere of influence while the Nazis were fighting the war, was
that he believed that if Jews were allowed to exist freely, to hold what
he believed was economic and political power while Germany was at
war, if they were within the German sphere of influence, they would do
what they did in November 1918; they would stab Germany in the
back.
So in Hitlers eyes you had to destroy Jewish community after Jewish
community wherever the Germans conquered, the countries they
occupied, even the Jewish communities that were their allies - those
Jewish communities had to be destroyed otherwise they would subvert
the war effort and stab Germany in the back. That was a lesson that he
had learned from 1918 but it was something that he believed could be
seen throughout the workings of history: the malign power of the Jew.
LAURENCE REES: But there is no real evidence that anyone can point
to of any reality behind any of this?
DAVID CESARANI: Hitlers not unique in believing that there are
mysterious and malign forces at work behind the scenes of history.
Wherever life is complicated, and life is usually complicated, wherever
structured?
DAVID CESARANI: We think of Hitler alone and we think of the great
leaders as alone, but usually they are surrounded by a core or a clique,
and there can be different world views or different ways of seeing
politics amongst these groups. With Hitler you have absolute certainty
and a measure of cynicism, but in a character like Goering you have
absolute cynicism and not much absolutism. Hitler was quite unusual
in that he did have a very rigid world view and a set of policies that he
pursued. He was willing to trim at certain times, but he was fairly
relentless. Other Nazis were much more flexible in their beliefs and
extremely cynical in appearing to be absolutist. Himmler is one of the
most notorious examples of this. You would have thought that Himmler
was actually rigid in his beliefs, but at crucial moments Himmler was
willing and able to be very, very flexible. And I think what makes the
Nazi political machine and certainly its political leadership so
dangerous is that it combined elements of absolute certainty with
other elements of incredible cynicism and flexibility. Thats a very
unusual combination. It enabled them to take power, to hold power
and it almost led to them winning the Second World War.