The Antisemite's Vade Mecum : Theodor Fritsch's Handbuch der

Judenfrage

Martin Kitchen

Antisemitism Studies, Volume 2, Number 2, Fall 2018, pp. 199-234 (Article)

Published by Indiana University Press

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/718392

Access provided at 2 Mar 2020 20:04 GMT from Nypl Research

 The Antisemite’s Vade Mecum

Theodor Fritsch’s Handbuch der Judenfrage

Martin Kitchen

This article examines Theodor Fritsch (1852–1933), a leading figure among

the radical antisemites in Germany during the 1880s, who promulgated a
“scientific” and “racial” form of antisemitism radically different from tra-
ditional Christian Jew-hatred. From 1907 until his death, Fritsch edited the
Handbook of the Jewish Question (Handbuch der Judenfrage), which was
published by his publishing house Hammer-Verlag in 49 editions until 1944.
The Handbook was a compendium of extremist antisemitic reflections on top-
ics such as the Bible and the Talmud, the Jewish roots of Christianity with par-
ticular emphasis on the toxic Jewish influence on the Catholic Church, and the
relationship between Judaism and Freemasonry. At the time, sundry financial
crises from the Berlin stock exchange collapse in 1873 to the Great Depression
were blamed on Jewish manipulation. Germany’s defeat in the First World War
and the subsequent peace agreements were seen as the result of a Franco-Jewish
conspiracy. Germany is presented as the sole stronghold against a world Jewish
conspiracy, thereby combining radical antisemitism with a virulent nation-
alism, which for all its threadbare scholarship and muddled thinking, was to
provide the foundations of National Socialist “Racial Studies” (Rassenkunde).

Introduction

In 1935, a group of Berlin Zehlendorf’s most distinguished res-

idents, among them Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg, and
Gertrud Scholtz-Klink assembled in what is now the Lindenthaler

Antisemitism Studies Vol. 2, No. 2 • DOI 10.2979/antistud.2.2.02

Copyright © Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism
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 Martin Kitchen

Allee to witness the unveiling of a statue dedicated to the memory

of the antisemitic mastermind Theodor Fritsch. Leni Riefensthal
and Ernst Udet were also present when the local mayor Walter
Helfenstein pulled the cord to reveal a statue by Arthur Wellmann, a
local sculptor of modest talent, in the form of a naked muscle-bound
Germanic youth wielding a huge hammer. A repulsive amalgam of
the reptilian and the feline cowered at his feet. In Germany’s first
public monument to antisemitism, Siegfried is shown slaughtering
the Jewish Fafner. In 1943, this horrific statue was melted down to
make weapons. Two years later the Theodor-Fritsch-Allee resumed
its former name.1
Emil Theodor Fritsche was born on his father’s farm in
Wiedemar, Saxony, in 1852, the sixth of seven children, four of
whom died in childhood. He trained as a mechanical engineer and
die caster, first in nearby Delitzsch and gained a diploma in the Royal
Technical Institute in Berlin Charlottenburg in 1875.2 In 1879 he
formed his own engineering company, which included printing
presses and a publishing house. In 1898, he formed the Royal Saxon
Middle Class Association (Mittelstandsvereinigung des Königreichs
Sachsen), which furthered the interests of artisans and small busi-
nesses. The following year, he founded the German Millers’ Alliance
(Deutscher Müllerbund), a splinter group of the German Milling
Association (Verein Deutscher Mühlenindustrieller). He was the
editor of the Alliance’s journal The German Miller (Der Deutsche
Müller), and at some point he changed his name to Fritsch.3
In these early years, Fritsch was greatly impressed by Bruno
Wilhelmy’s experiment in communal living and vegetarianism in the
Eden Colony (Eden Gemeinnützige Obstbau-Siedlung), founded in
Oranienburg, north of Berlin, in 1893. This rejection of city life
was also reflected in his first major publication of 1896, The Town
of the Future (Die Stadt der Zukunft), which was a precursor to
Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City Movement, whose Tomorrow: A
Peaceful Oath to Real Reform was published two years later.4
From the outset, Fritsch had been deeply involved in the
antisemitic movement. This comes as no great surprise as the arti-
sans and small businessmen whose interests he championed in these

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 The Antisemite’s Vade Mecum

difficult economic times, after the Berlin stock exchange collapse of

1873 and the onset of a lengthy depression, found it easy to blame
their misfortune on the Jews.5 Similarly, the Eden experiment soon
became infected with a virulent anti-modernism, ultra-nationalism,
and antisemitism. It was Wilhelm Marr, whom we have to thank for
the concept of “antisemitism,” who opened Fritsch’s eyes to the
need “to set the racial struggle on fire.”6 He immediately offered to
assist Marr in organizing the Antisemites League (Antisemitenliga)
in 1879, which was designed to act as “a beacon for the racial
struggle.”7 Henceforth, his aim was to win broad popular support
for his radical form of antisemitism. To this end, he published a
series of pamphlets and in September 1882 he took part in the
First International Anti-Jewish Congress in Dresden, which was
attended by such prominent Jew-baiters as Adolf Stoecker, Max
Liebermann von Sonnenberg, Ernst Schmeitzner, Hans von Bülow
and Ernst Henrici. This, as Jacob Katz reminds us, was the moment
when antisemitic ideas “entered the phase of active realisation.”8
In 1885, Fritsch published the journal Antisemitic Mail
(Antisemitische Correspondenz) in an attempt to reach common
ground for diverse antisemitic groups. In 1890, he tried his hand
at practical politics, and with Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg
he formed the German Social Antisemitic Party (Deutschsoziale
Antisemitische Partei). The same year, Liebermann von Sonnenberg
was elected to the Reichstag, and in the 1893 elections the party
succeeded in electing 16 members. It allied with the 11 deputies
from the German Reform Party (Deutsche Reformpartei) to form a
parliamentary faction. In the following year, the two parties united
in the German Social Reform Party (Deutschsoziale Reformpartei),
but were so riven with rancorous debate, personal rivalries, and
unseemly scandals that Fritsch came to the sorry conclusion that it
was virtually impossible to form a united front of antisemites and
that the Reichstag was not a suitable forum for them. He gave the
editorship of Antisemitic Mail to Liebermann von Sonnenberg in
1894, who made it into the official organ of the party.
Countless groups and sub-groups of antisemites found it
impossible to find common ground. Stoecker was court preacher

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to Kaiser Wilhelm I, a Lutheran theologian and social reformer.

Conservatives viewed him with mistrust, while many fervent
antisemites felt that he was blind to the toxic Jewish foundations
of Christianity. Liebermann von Sonnenberg was a staunch reac-
tionary, who soon broke with his associate Otto Böckel, who was
also a radical reformer. Henrici was a rowdy agitator from the Left.
His Soziale Reichspartei was anti-conservative, anti-capitalist, anti-­
liberal, and given to mob violence. Schmeitzner is best remembered
as Nietzsche’s publisher, but whose firm also produced the works
of a number of prominent antisemites, much to the philosopher’s
disgust. Hans von Bülow seems to have lost interest in the cause
and concentrated on his career as a conductor and virtuoso pianist.9
Whereas Stoecker, the leading figure in pre-war politi-
cal antisemitism, stressed the irreconcilable differences between
Christians and Jews, Fritsch insisted that the fundamental issue
was the racial war between Germans and Jews.10 To this end, he
published a Catechism for Antisemites (Antisemiten-Catechismus)
in 1887, with Hermann Beyer’s publishing house. The book was
updated and re-issued 26 times. Paul de Lagarde’s disciple Friedrich
Lange, who combined antisemitism, romantic nationalism, anti-­
Catholicism, anti-socialism, colonialism, and “Aryan” racism in a
heady mixture that he labelled “national socialism,” enthusiastically
supported Fritsch’s views. He demanded that to ensure a “purely
Germanic race” (reines Deutschthum) every German should pro-
duce a family tree (Ahnentafel) to prove that there was no trace of
“non-Aryan blood” in one’s ancestry. It was a standard that would
eventually prevail with unbelievably horrific effects. In 1894, Fritsch
joined Lange’s German Union (Deutschbund), an organization that
called for radical eugenics to render Germany racially pure by the
eradication of its “inferior elements.” The Union was to amalgam-
ate with the Nazi Party in 1930.11
Many antisemites were reluctant to attack the Old Testament
on the grounds that many Christians were mindful of the bibli-
cal foundations of their faith, and would find this highly offen-
sive. Fritsch had no such compunctions. He unleashed a series of
broadsides against the Bible and the Talmud and was one of the

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 The Antisemite’s Vade Mecum

first to make the preposterous suggestion that Jesus was of Aryan

descent.12
In 1902, Fritsch founded the publishing house Hammer-
Verlag in Leipzig and it was soon churning out antisemitic propa-
ganda on an industrial scale. It published such classics of the genre
as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and all four volumes of Henry
Ford’s The International Jew, along with articles from The Dearborn
Independent. Fritsch concentrated on denouncing what he was
pleased to call the “Jewification” (Verjudung) of Christianity, the
baneful influence of the aristocracy, the landowners, the press, the
judiciary, and assorted professions. Fritsch’s extremist views led to
several confrontations with the law and earned him a series of fines
and prison sentences, which in turn served to further radicalize
him. The Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish
Faith (CV) launched three major lawsuits against his books My Case
Against Yahweh and The False God, resulting in two jail sentences
for blasphemy, insulting a religious organization, and causing a
public disturbance.13

Handbook of the jewish question

In 1907, the 26th edition of Fritsch’s Catechism for Antisemites

was renamed the Handbook of the Jewish Question (Handbuch der
Judenfrage) which went through 49 editions until 1944 and became
a best-selling standard work on “Racial Studies” (Rassenkunde).
There were numerous contributors, who wrote on various topics
such as the Bible and the Talmud, music and literature, and the
“fundamentally Jewish” Catholic Church. Statistics on the num-
ber of Jews in certain professions and social groups were provided.
Extracts from the writings of prominent antisemites were lavishly
quoted along with the demands of various antisemitic groups.
Earlier editions listed Jewish businesses that should be avoided,
while recommending certain newspapers and journals for their
informed views on the “Jewish Question.” Fritsch, who acted as
editor of the Handbook, was in no sense an original thinker, but he

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produced a devil’s brew extracted from the fulminations of Ernst

Moritz Arndt, Eugen Dühring, and Paul de Lagarde that charac-
terized Jews as “proliferative vermin,” “trichinae,” and “bacteria”
that needed to be destroyed so that the Germanic race could be
rendered healthy and strong. Fritsch found enthusiastic support
for his intemperate views from Ernst Haeckel’s assistant, the “racial
hygienist” Willibald Hentschel, whose magnum opus Varuna was
published by Fritsch’s publishing house in 1901.14 The book called
for the “purification” (Veredelung) of Germany by means of “racial
breeding” and “racial hygiene.” The two men joined together to
form yet another antisemitic splinter group, the “German Renewal
Association” (Deutsche Erneuerungs-Gemeinde). Hentschel, who
died in 1947 at the age of 89, made frequent contributions to
the Handbook and published a number of antisemitic tracts with
Fritsch’s Hammer-Verlag.
Theodor Fritsch died in September 1933. His son, also named
Theodor, took over the Hammer-Verlag and played a leading role
in Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda. Ludwig Gengler, a fanatic
so obsequious than even Goebbels described him as “slimy brown-
nose,” took over editorship of the Handbook. He made sure that
it was purged of views that contradicted National Socialist ideol-
ogy, but this was often a challenging task. Since there was never
a rigid National Socialist orthodoxy there was plenty of room to
manoeuvre.15
The Handbook begins with the bold assertion that the Jewish
people are not a religious community but an economic and polit-
ical association. Quotations from Luther, Fichte, Wagner, Johann
Andreas Eisenmenger, H. Naudh (Johannes Nordmann), and
Wilhelm Marr are used to support this claim.16 In a remarkable aside,
Charles Maurras takes Hitler to task for being more anti-Bolshevik
than antisemitic. But at least, thanks to his friend Dietrich Eckart’s
influence, he had seen the importance of rescuing workers from the
“Jewish Communist Party.”17 Praise is unreservedly heaped upon
Édouard Drumont, Henry Ford, and Henry Hamilton Beamish.
Then comes the astonishing revelation that the Ku Klux Klan was a
Jewish organization designed to cause general disruption.18

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 The Antisemite’s Vade Mecum

The blanket assumption of the Handbook that the Jews formed

a race was not quite so straightforward on second thought, in part
because the word “race” is so hard to define. Usage of the term
race is varied: “the human race,” “the white race,” “the race of
Englishmen,” and “the island race,” or individuals as in “the last of
his race.” What then is the distinction between a race, a nation, and
a tribe? For most racial antisemites the Jews were a race—whatever
that meant—but with an admixture of other races, such as found
in the Ashkenazim and Sephardim, plus those of “host countries.”
Some vague references to Mendel’s peas do not help to clarify the
situation, and the contention that Jews are bound together by cul-
tural similarity does nothing to strengthen the claim that there
is such a thing as a Jewish race.19 With a feeling of regret, the
authors admit that much of the popular prejudice against Jews has
no basis in fact. Although, it is widely believed that Jews are par-
ticularly skilled in financial matters: we are told that in this respect
it takes seven Jews to match a Greek and seven Greeks to match an
Armenian. Generalizations about physical characteristics are also
open to question: not all Jews are fat, or have flat feet and thick
lips. Not all Jewish women are broad in the beam and even the
characteristic Jewish nose is not as common as most imagine. To
top it all, 25 percent of Jews in Galicia are blonde.20 An analysis
of other physical characteristics comes to similarly disturbing con-
clusions. The Jew as portrayed in Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer
was thus admittedly nothing but a crude caricature. Perhaps the
answer is that the Jews form a “psychological race,” but that is
somehow not very convincing.21 Almost shamefacedly the author
has to admit the importance of religion. Assimilated German Jewry
would disappear were it not regularly replenished by observant
Jews from the East.22 The case for “scientific racism” is thus far
from compelling, so the remaining 534 pages of the Handbook rest
on singularly feeble foundations.23
The section on the Bible and Jewish history is the work of
Heinrich Wolf, whose antisemitic tracts were widely used for instruc-
tional purposes in German schools during the Third Reich. It is lit-
tle more than a compilation of profanity, unfounded assertions, and

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biblical misquotations, such that it is impossible to tell whether they

result from deliberate misinformation or sheer ignorance.24
Judaism, we are told, is not a religion but a business contract,
which by skillful bookkeeping and cunning calculation, provides
mutual benefits. Its true nature is concealed behind a mechanical
religion with a mummified priesthood, whose absurd beliefs prop
up a fraudulent theocracy. Whereas the Germanic race is one of
farmers and settlers, Orientals are nomadic and parasitic usurers.
The notion of “Ex oriente lux” is pure rubbish.25 This fraudu-
lent eastern religion and its offshoots brought with it imperialism,
mammonism, and rationalism, along with the destruction of mar-
riage and the family. It was directly responsible for the downfall of
Greece and Rome, thereby from the outset undermining the basis
of European civilization. 26
After such a bewildering introduction, the fact that Wolf’s
reading of the bible is somewhat distorted comes as no surprise.
What, we are asked, can we make of a religion whose founder offers
up his wife on two occasions in order to save his own skin? First
Abraham palmed off Sarah as his sister and offered her to Pharaoh
as a concubine, then he did it a second time to Sarah giving her to
Abimelech, the King of Gerar.27 Other leading biblical figures are
similarly dismissed: Jacob was a typical con-artist, Joseph brought
his entire parasitic family to Egypt, and Moses stole everything
in sight before fleeing the country. Saul died, not because he was
unfaithful to the Lord and for seeking the counsel of the Witch of
Endor, but fell in battle with the Philistines, thereby giving David
the opportunity to seize the throne. We are told that although
David murdered Uriah, having seduced his wife, God ordered him
to build the temple. No mention is made of Nathan’s condemna-
tion of the King’s misdeeds and his prophecy that one of his sons
would build the temple. Solomon is simply remembered as a sexual
reprobate, despot, sadist, and founder of Freemasonry.28
The prophets Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah are awarded good
marks for standing up to the priests, who were merely heathen
worshippers of Baal. But they are also condemned for laying down
the elaborate set of rules and regulations laid out in Deuteronomy.

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 The Antisemite’s Vade Mecum

They were not interested in cultivating the spiritual life, but simply
in enforcing the law. The Jews were never able to do things on their
own and had to instead exploit the help of others. Cyrus allowed
them to return home, Darius helped them build the temple, and
Artaxerxes completed the work of establishing the high priestly
caste and banning mixed marriages.29
Such were the foundations of “a universal priestly state that
aspires to world domination.”30 Ferocious rules were enforced
against foreigners and non-believers, even to the point of genocide
in the case of the Moabites.31 Contrary to the biblical account, the
Jews are said to have prospered during the Babylonian Captivity.
Wolf had something of a soft spot for the Maccabees, thanks to
their robust nationalism, but he regretted their religious fanati-
cism.32 The last remnants of moderate Judaism disappeared after
the Kitos War and the Bar Kokhba Revolt. All that was left was
“rabbinical stubbornness” and a literal interpretation of the law.
The result was a parasitic people that had a sense of national iden-
tity but no state of their own. In Theodor Mommsen’s words they
followed the winners “like the miasma on a quagmire.”33 As a result
the Roman Empire fell prey to an “Asiatic theodicy” resulting in a
bastardized “Roman-Jewish mixed culture.”34
Contrary to other passages in the Handbook, Jesus is praised
for his valiant stand against the Pharisees and their literal inter-
pretation of the law, rationalism, mammonism, and—this comes
as something of a surprise—their Jewish concept of the Messiah.
Since his kingdom is not of this world, he is our staunchest ally
against a Judaism that seeks world domination and the enslave-
ment of the Gentiles. Equally surprising is the assertion that there
is a symbiotic relationship between Christianity—at least in Wolf’s
heterodox apocryphal version—and the Germanic world. This was
a view that was hotly contested by hard-line antisemites. Strong
objection was raised against the Catholic Church on the grounds
that “the throne of Moses came to Rome as Peter’s throne.” The
Codex Juris Canonici is the equivalent of the Mosaic Law, and Jews
and Catholics rival one another in the struggle for world domina-
tion.35 “Puritans,” which here seems to mean Calvinists, are also

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condemned for their distinctly Jewish show of outward piety and

their covetousness.36 In order to remove all remaining traces of
Judaism from the Evangelical Church an Institute for the Study
(and Exclusion) of Jewish Influence from German Church Life
(Institut zur Erforschung [und Beseitigung] des jüdischen Einflusses
auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben) was founded in Jena in 1939.37
Whereas Theodor Fritsch felt that Christianity in all its forms
was irredeemably infused with Jewish ideas, and was thus to be
condemned out of hand, Heinrich Wolf argued that once purged
of its “Jewish-materialistic spirit” there was something left of
value, which Alfred Rosenberg called “positive Christianity.” For
practical political reasons the National Socialists abjured Fritsch’s
militant denunciation of Christianity. The party’s 25-point pro-
gramme of 1920 called for religious freedom and in Hitler’s
speech on January 31, 1933, he announced that “our entire moral
code is based on Christianity.” The whole notion of “positive
Christianity” could never be clearly defined and remained conve-
niently vague. Since National Socialism and Christianity, in what-
ever form, were irreconcilable the attempt to find some common
ground was bound to fail.38
Catholic antipathy to Freemasonry, formalized by their
excommunication by Pope Clement XII in 1738, ran parallel to the
church’s hostility toward Jews. Gougenot des Mousseaux expanded
on the fact that a number of Masonic Lodges, particularly in France,
opened their doors to Jews to argue that Freemasons were infused
with a Jewish spirit.39 The Handbook did not see fit to mention
any of the earlier exponents of this contention, but boldly claimed
that Solomon was the first Grand Master thereby, by some inscru-
table and unspecified means, making Freemasons “artificial Jews.”
By an equally arcane metamorphosis, the Anglo-Saxons are closely
allied to Jews through Freemasonry. The Handbook reminds us that
Werner Sombart stated that “in all its parts America is a Jewish con-
tinent” and that “Americanism is distilled Jewish spirit.”40 Lessing
and Moses Mendelssohn’s belief that Jews and non-Jews could live
peacefully together is dismissed as an idle fantasy. The emancipa-
tion of the Jews in Germany did not result in the Jews becoming

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 The Antisemite’s Vade Mecum

Germans, but in the Germans becoming infected with Jewishness.

Conservatives made the cardinal mistake of accepting converted
Jews as Christians and agreeing to an alliance with Rome. Liberals,
by accepting the principals of democracy, surrendered to Jewry.41
Unable to find any factual basis for such assertions, the
Handbook’s authors resorted to the wildest conspiracy theories.
The fact that there were a few Jews among the leadership of the
Young Turks, for example, is taken as proof that the movement was
a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy. The same sinister forces were behind
the revolutions in Russia in 1905 and 1917. The Prussian spirit
of Bismarck’s Reich, regardless of the Kulturkampf, was demoral-
ized by an alliance between Jews and Catholics. The same sinister
combination of theocratic Catholic and capitalist democratic Jewish
ideologies led to Germany’s defeat in 1918.42
After these intemperate outbursts our attention is brought
back to the bible and the depiction of God. It is confidently averred
that the Jewish God was humanized. He is moody, capable of error,
vengeful, dishonest, and brutal. As the private God of the Jews he is
a materialistic liar, a cheat and a thief. He condones promiscuity, he
is sly, anti-social, and cruel.43 After pages of such blasphemous invec-
tive, we are treated to an equally grotesque and offensive treatment
of the Talmud. This vast body of Jewish argumentation is reduced
to nothing but a concentrated attack on Jesus and on all Gentiles,
that is full of gross obscenities and reduces non-Jews to animals.44
The familiar claim that Jacob ben Asher’s Choshen Mishpat provides
ample evidence for a world Jewish conspiracy is once again trot-
ted out. Similarly, Joseph ben Ephraim Karo’s Shulchan Aruch is
charged with calling for strict apartheid between Jew and Gentile.45
Was this not something that was devoutly propounded throughout
the Handbook?
The erroneous view that the renunciation of vows in the Kol
Nidre applies to all forms of vows, oaths, and pledges is unasham-
edly affirmed. Although murder is forbidden in the command-
ments, and in spite of biblical injunctions against the consumption
of blood, the charge that ritual murders were regularly performed
is once again leveled against Jews. The orientalist Erich Bischoff’s

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claim to have found proof of this in the Thikunne Zohar is gleefully

presented along with a claim that reference to ritual murder was
expunged from the Babylonian Talmud because it had become an
embarrassment.46
The practice of misquoting from an impressive pile of Jewish
law, homiletics, Biblical, Talmudic and Mishnaic regulations, phi-
losophy, and polemics was first systematized in the more than
2,000 pages of Johann Andreas Eisenmenger’s Judaism Unmasked
(Entdecktes Judenthum), published in 1700.47 He was the first to
produce a mound of spurious Talmudic and Rabbinical litera-
ture in support of the startling claim that many a child had been
slaughtered in order to meet ritual exigencies. For Eisenmenger
biblical injunctions against the Amalekites and the seven nations of
Canaan now applied to Christians and ultimately to all non-Jews.48
Supported by an overload of quotations taken out context, this pro-
vided rich humus out of which many toxic offshoots could flourish.
It is hardly surprising that at this point we are presented with
that magnum opus of antisemitism—The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion. Although The Protocols are given praise, more emphasis is
placed on Jakob Brafman’s two volume Book of Qahal, published in
Saint Petersburg in 1869.49 It was based on a study of the minutes
of the Jewish self-governing community (Qahal) in Minsk between
1794 and 1833. The work is peppered with tendentious annota-
tions, mistranslations, and deliberate errors, in an effort to prove
the existence of a world Jewish conspiracy. The Jewish community
in Minsk is presented as just one link in a worldwide network whose
headquarters were the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris. In this
fantasy world, Jewry and France were combined in an effort to
dominate the world, thereby completing Napoleon’s work when he
convened the Grand Sanhedrin in 1806.50
The Alliance Israélite Universelle was formed in Paris in 1860
as a response to the ritual murder charges in the Damascus Affair of
1840 and the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara in 1858.51 Its motto
“All Jews bear responsibility for one another” was taken by conspir-
acy theorists as clear indication of its sinister intent.52 We are spared
an analysis of how other Jewish defence organizations such as B’nai

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 The Antisemite’s Vade Mecum

B’rith or the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish

Faith fit into this ominous network.53
The Handbook pays little attention to French antisemitism.
Édouard Drumont is praised en passant, but his La France Juive:
Essai d’histoire contemporaine, published in 1886, is largely ignored.
Just like the Handbook, it is a compendium of Christian, liberal, and
socialist forms of antisemitism, spiced with Wilhelm Marr’s obses-
sion with the “Jewish conquest” of native civilization and Ernest
Renan’s denunciation of the morally irredeemable and culturally
inferior Jewish race. Contrary to the teachings of the Catholic
Church, Drumont insisted that Jews who converted remained
Jews. By means of all manner of spurious arguments and with sub-
lime disregard for the truth, he skilfully attributed all the problems
in contemporary society to noxious Jewish influence. A solution
to the “Jewish Problem” would thus provide a panacea to all of
society’s ills. Drumont’s influence reached its apogee during the
Dreyfus Affair, but for all the success of his writings the net effect
of his work was minimal.54
The Handbook concentrated on German affairs and never
thought in terms of forming an antisemitic international along the
lines of their socialist rivals. Internationalism was after all a Jewish
aberration, and the French could hardly be taken seriously. Proust’s
Swann was a member of the Jockey Club and Drumont and his
confederates were happy to grant Jews the satisfaction of fighting
duels. By the same token, Drumont’s successors, Charles Maurras
and Léon Daudet, were ignored. Prominent antisemites like Karl
Lueger in Vienna and Gyözö Istoczy in Budapest were discounted.
In part this was due to Fritsch’s belief that for the moment little
could be done to counter Jewish influence. With vast amounts of
capital at their disposal, and their control of much of the press, Jews
were virtually unassailable.55
Early editions of the Handbook held a positive view of Zionism
as a convenient way of ridding Europe of its Jewish population.
However, by 1933 it claimed that there was no future for the Jews
in Palestine and all that Zionism had achieved was to earn the undy-
ing hatred of Arabs. Far richer pickings were to be found at home.

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Jews had full control over the vodka monopoly in Russia.56 Jews are
charged with making hay during the Berlin stock exchange crash
in 1873 and the Portuguese bankruptcy of 1892. The widely held
belief that the Bolshevik Revolution was financed by Jacob Schiff
and Kuhn, Loeb & Co. is presented as gospel truth. The Weimar
Republic was dismissed as a “Jewish grifters’ republic” in which
slippery swindlers such as Iwan Baruch Kutisker, the Barmat broth-
ers, and the Sklarek clan had a field day.57
This approach continues in a brief survey of German his-
tory beginning with the undermining of Moroccan policy by the
Alliance Israélite Universelle.58 Alfred Hermann Fried, who was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1911, is held responsible
for undermining Germany’s will to fight with his pacifism, his
enthusiasm for Esperanto, and his Freemasonry.59 High praise is
heaped on Wilhelm Meister (Paul Bang) for his Judas’ Register
of Debt (Judas Schuldbuch. Eine deutsche Abrechnung) for point-
ing out that the “Jewish election” of 1912 resulted in the defeat
of the antisemitic splinter groups. The Social Democrats (SPD)
became the largest party in the Reichstag, resulting in a “Jewish
war,” a “Jewish victory,” a “Jewish revolution,” and “Jewish dom-
ination.”60 The League of Nations was of course a Jewish construct
based on Isaiah’s ludicrous prophecy that swords would be turned
into ploughshares.
The German Peace Society (Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft)
is condemned as a treacherous Jewish organization for revealing
Germany’s secret rearmament programme in defiance of the Treaty
of Versailles and for propagating the “war guilt lie.” The Society
was closely associated with another Jewish organisation—the Social
Democratic paramilitary organisation Schwarz-Rot-Gold.61
At this point the Masons appear once again on centre stage
as the right hand of world Jewry, and the astonishing claim that
the word “lodge” comes from the Hebrew is used to clinch the
argument. Ludendorff is applauded for exposing an ominous
Judeo-Masonic-Jesuit conspiracy, while Léon de Poncins, although
regrettably a staunch Catholic, is given high praise for warning of
the Jewish-Masonic menace. Alfred Rosenberg’s associate Gregor

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Schwartz-Bostunitsch, a man who suffered from chronic paranoid

delusions, made his contribution by writing about a Judeo-Masonic-
Bolshevik conspiracy with links to Rudolf Steiner and the anthro-
posophists.62 Jews were not content with controlling the German
press and therefore politics, subjecting the country to “interest
slavery,” and manipulating the legal system. They also combined
with the Freemasons to form the League of Nations and supported
Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-European movement, which
would have resulted in a Europe dominated by “Judeo-Masonic
France.” In the distant future, Pan-Europe would be populated
by an “Eurasian-Negroid race, probably similar to that of ancient
Egypt” with the Jews, as a “new aristocratic race thanks to their
intellect,” acting as the “leading nation.”63
Successive editions of the Handbook are increasingly hos-
tile towards Christianity. Catholics were always beyond the pale,
but Protestants are all too often pictured as dangerously close to
Judaism. Protestants might have slightly more licence than their
Catholic counterparts, but they remain uncomfortably close to the
“Jewish bible.” They should take Treitschke’s warning seriously
and distance themselves from the “archetypically prurient Jewish
dotard Abraham” and the “trickster Jacob.”64 Both the Catholic
and Protestant churches had become systematically undermined
by Jews who had converted to Christianity. There are already 500
Jewish ministers among German Protestants, one of whom seduced
a 17-year old girl in Gross Karzenburg in 1928.65
Alfred Miller—Alfred Rosenberg’s expert on Christianity and
the author of the relevant section in the Handbook—insisted that
the greatest threat came from the Catholic Church. Totally ignor-
ing the lamentable history of the Catholic Church’s attitude toward
the Jews and throwing logic to the wind, he argued that although
both strive for world domination, both “Pharisaic sects” are in a
symbiotic relationship.66 This can clearly be seen by the fact that the
Code of Canon Law of 1917 removed all restrictions on dealings
with Jews.67 In fact, no significant change was made in the Catholic
Church’s attitude to Jews until the charge of deicide was dropped
in 1965 with the publication of Paul VI’s Nostra Aetate.

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Although the Catholic Church is severely reprimanded for not

being sufficiently antisemitic, high praise is heaped upon the Jesuit
bi-monthly magazine La Civiltà Cattolica for a three-part article in
1890 on “The Jewish Problem in Europe.”68 These articles, which
are still regarded as benchmark texts in antisemitic circles, speak of
the “Jewish invasion” and “Jewish arrogance.” The battle against the
Jews is said to be the “legitimate defence of Christian people against
a foreign nation,” because they are “the sworn enemy of [Christian]
well-being.” Jews should be “rendered harmless” by seizing their
property and expulsion. Jews are described as a “depraved race” and
the “enemy of mankind” who should be denied all civil rights. The
“Judaic religion is profoundly corrupted” and seeks “world dom-
ination.” Miller suggested that La Civiltà Cattolica’s was a lone
voice, warning of the deadly danger posed by world Jewry. In fact,
the journal was always very close to the teachings and directives of
the Holy See.69
The Handbook was oblivious to the fact that there was a power-
ful group of Jesuits in Rome who were unreservedly antisemitic and
pro-fascist. Included among them was the Jesuit Superior-General
Włodzimierz Ledóchowski, Mussolini’s enthusiastic supporter
and architect of the Lateran Treaty. Pietro Tacchi Venturi and the
Gregorian University theologian Gustav Gundlach railed against
“assimilated Jews in international plutocracy and Bolshevism.” They
set out to frustrate Pius XI’s intent to issue an encyclical denouncing
racism. Their attempt failed and Pius XI’s encyclical Mit brennender
Sorge was read from all German Catholic pulpits on Palm Sunday
1937. The letter attacked racism and defended baptized Jews, but
retained the charge of deicide.70 La Civiltà Cattolica’s editor Father
Enrico Rosa, S. J., gave a favourable review to this edition of the
Handbook, but felt that Nazi measures against the Jews, however
justified, were too harsh.71
The mysterious death of the immensely wealthy financier
and industrialist Alfred Loewenstein in 1928 was followed by the
collapse of his highly leveraged empire. He was a devout Catholic
who was eulogized by the Church, but for antisemites like Alfred
Miller this was yet another example of the connivance between the

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 The Antisemite’s Vade Mecum

Catholic Church and corrupt Jewish embezzlers, stock exchange

confidence swindlers, and shady financial moguls.72
German Jews who converted to Catholicism found their
political home in the Centre Party (Zentrumspartei ). In 1928,
Chancellor Wirth let the cat out of the bag when he announced
that Germany needed the Jews because of their international con-
nections and their devotion to the cause of peace. This was precisely
what the antisemites thought was wrong with them.73
Charles Taze Russell and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are anath-
ematized for announcing in 1879 that God’s favour had been
restored to the Jews. His favour had been transferred from Jacob
to Jesus, but was returned to Jacob in 1878 in what Russell called
“Christian Zionism.” Jews should no longer be permitted to con-
vert to Christianity, because God had called upon them to return
to Palestine, which was their exclusive territory and would become
God’s kingdom on earth. The year 1914 marked the end of the
earthly authority of the Gentile nations. The Jehovah’s Witnesses
described the Catholic Church as the “great whore” and the “mother
of all whores” opposed to this mission, which Miller claimed was
financed by “Judeo-Masonic” groups.74 Similar treatment is meted
out to the Salvation Army, which was also an underhanded part of
a seditious Jewish-Masonic conspiracy. William Booth, with “his
head like Aaron, his nose like Elijah,” was contrary to all evidence, a
fabulously rich Jewish Mason. The fanciful claim is made that John
Wilkes Booth was his brother and the murder of Lincoln was thus
also part of a Jewish-Masonic plot.75
The German press was firmly under Jewish control, which was
proof that they were intent on dominating the entire country. The
national liberal press such as the Frankfurter Zeitung, the Berliner
Tageblatt and the Vossische Zeitung were all under the aegis of omi-
nous Jewish financial interests. Ullstein, Germany’s foremost pub-
lishing house was Jewish. So was its closest rival Mosse. The Social
Democratic and Communist presses were also firmly under Jewish
control.76 The Catholic press spread a toxic “Roman-Jewish” ideol-
ogy and even accepted advertisements from Jewish firms. The Press
agency Wolffs Telegraphisches Büro (WTB) was totally Jewish, while

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Hugenberg’s Telegraphen-Union (TU) was “indifferent towards

the Jewish question.” The one notable exception to this lamentable
state of affairs was an obscure journal Heimdall that described itself
as “a magazine for Germanic purity and Pan-Germanism.” Things
at last began to change in 1933 with the dismissal of Jews from the
Hugenberg press and the UFA film studios.77 In order to show that
Jews controlled the press throughout the world, Northcliffe and
Beaverbrook are made into honorary Jews. The Corriere della Sera
was “particularly friendly towards Jews” and the Soviet press was
firmly under Jewish control.78
The section on Jews and finance begins with Deuteronomy
15:6, “If Yahweh your God blesses you as he has promised, you will
be creditors to many nations but debtors to none: you will rule over
many nations, and be ruled by none.” Although the bible gives us
ample examples to the contrary, we are assured that Jews were never
farmers or manual workers but from the outset a parasitic race that
even managed to exploit their Egyptian and Babylonian captors.
The entire capitalist system is merely “Mosesism in practice.” Jews
realized from the outset that real money is made in banking and
the stock exchange not in industry, which is anyway controlled by
Jewish banks. The false statement that the Berlin stock exchange is
closed for the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur is ample proof that
it is wholly in Jewish hands.79
Overlooking the uncomfortable fact that neither Printemps
nor Karstadt were Jewish, it is asserted that department stores were
a Jewish monopoly.80 This claim was made to add extra weight to
the Nazi Party’s programme that called for the “immediate con-
version of the big department stores to public ownership and let-
ting them at low rents to small businessmen.” In 1933, there were
a series of attacks on department stores, regardless of whether or
not they were Jewish-owned. Oscar and Leonard Tietz’s depart-
ment store chain was “Aryanized” in 1933 at bargain basement
prices, enabling major German banks to make windfall profits and
businessmen like Georg Karg and Josef Neckermann to reap spec-
tacular benefits. The result was the formation of the Kaufhof and
the Hertie chains. The Wertheim stores were “Aryanized” in 1937,

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the Schocken chain in the following year, and their names were
changed to AWAG and Merkur. How exactly these differed funda-
mentally from their “Jewish” antecedents remains a mystery. The
Handbook informs us that department stores forced suppliers to
lower their prices and cut their employees’ wages in order to meet
the horrendous costs of elaborate buildings, decorations, and light-
ing. Furthermore, they exploit women by inducing “department
store hypnosis.” No claim is made that “Aryanization” did anything
to change this unfortunate state of affairs.
The nefarious machinations of Jewish department stores were
apparently a modern form of the countless Jewish robber bands
that roamed throughout Germany in the 17th and 18th centuries.
They specialized in robbing churches and used part of the swag
to decorate Torah scrolls. The fact that there is precious little sup-
porting evidence for this contention is attributed to the deliberate
destruction of almost all books on the subject.81 Excluded from the
guilds, denied residence permits, and subject to limitless restric-
tions, hordes of Jewish beggars (Betteljuden) joined the swarms of
other vagrants common at that time. By contrast, the stereotyp-
ical Jewish crooks (Schacherjuden) were dishonest moneylenders
and merchants.82 The claim made here that German criminal slang
derived exclusively from Yiddish is equally false.83 One of the wild-
est assertions in this unpardonable book is that the depression-era
Chicago gangsters were a bunch of Jews. Alas, even Hymie Weiss
was a Catholic, who was never seen without a rosary and a bible.84
Elsewhere it is claimed that Jews are far too cowardly to indulge
in violent crime. Fearing bodily harm they specialize in unlawful
financial dealings. The wild claim that both Jews and Blacks have an
exceptional proclivity for criminal activity is taken as ample proof of
the similarity between the two.85
Richard Wagner is predictably presented as the key witness
for the evil influence of Jews on music, but we are given little indi-
cation of his convoluted musings on the subject. Mendelssohn
is given credit for reviving Bach, but admonished for causing
the “Jewification” of music academies and musical journals.86
Meyerbeer was merely a second-rate copycat. Mahler had a certain

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talent, but his work is tainted by his habit of sneaking Hassidic

melodies into compositions.87 Hindemith and even Stravinsky, in
spite of his antisemitism, were influenced by Jews. Operetta is an
inferior Jewish art form. It was not difficult for Dr. Erich H. Müller
to produce pages of distinguished Jewish musicians and compos-
ers, but he hardly needed to include Arthur Sullivan and Erik Satie
among them. Nor was he able to show how they differed from their
non-Jewish colleagues.
Max Reinhardt and his fellow Jews dominated the theatre in
Germany, where they produced degenerate, perverse, unhealthy,
and disgusting works. Noses are held at the mention of Arthur
Schnitzler, Georg Kaiser, Ernst Toller, Carl Zuckmayer, and Franz
Werfel. Frank Wedekind is included as a titular Jew.88 The movie
industry is also exclusively Jewish: Hollywood is owned by Jews;
Eisenstein is made out to have controlled Sowkino and Amkino;
and cinema chains and distribution companies are Jewish-owned.
To top it all off, the “Jewish-Masonic B’nai B’rith” managed to
censor Cecil B. DeMille’s “King of Kings.”89 Jews also have exces-
sive influence over radio in Germany.
The Handbook is particularly troubled by the increasing influ-
ence of Jews in the world of sport. “Turnvater” Jahn, the founder of
“German gymnastics” had insisted that the race should remain pure
and that Jews should be excluded from sports, along with Poles,
Frenchmen, priests, and aristocrats.90 The rot set in when Jews
were admitted to the German Gymnastic Association (Turnverein)
in 1848. The presence of Jews in sporting clubs rendered them
colorless and un-German. It also seriously weakened the antisemitic
cause. Austrians are praised for taking more rigorous measures to
exclude Jews from various sports, such as skiing and mountaineer-
ing. Social Democratic sporting clubs were a particular problem
in Germany, in that they were packed with Jews. High hopes were
raised by the appointment of Hans von Tschammer und Osten as
a sporting tsar in 1933, who immediately set about excluding Jews
from sporting clubs and associations.
After this brief excursion into the world of sport the
Handbook returns to literature. The systematic undermining of

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 The Antisemite’s Vade Mecum

German literature by Jews apparently began with Lessing’s friend

Moses Mendelssohn. Lessing was an inferior writer and his creation
Nathan was no wiser than Mendelssohn.91 Heine is dismissed as a
minor writer who was in the pay of France. There follows a long
list of minor Jewish writers until we get to Arthur Schnitzler, who
at least tackled the “Jewish Question” but “lacked the courage to
tell the truth.”92 Heinrich and Thomas Mann are disqualified for
having married Jews and whose Brazilian mother was written off
as a “creole.”93 Neither Jakob Wassermann nor Franz Werfel had
anything to do “with our concept of art.” Hugo von Hofmannsthal
was “not without German blood,” but merely embroidered the
works of others. Stefan Zweig, Alfred Döblin, Walter Hasenclever,
and Kurt Tucholsky are simply mentioned in passing. The literary
historian Adolf Bartels’ remark that “a Jew cannot be a German
writer” is given enthusiastic endorsement. Jews, after all, are not
interested in the truth; they simply set out to undermine the morals
and culture of their host countries.94
In a desperate attempt to prove the lamentable influence of
Jews on literature, it is claimed that Mark Twain was “obviously
Jewish” as was Émile Zola. George Sand was “not without Jewish
blood.” The same was true of Gabriele D’Annuncio, Alexander
Herzen, and Tolstoy. Alexander Dumas the younger was Black,
George Eliot was married to a Jew, and George Bernard Shaw “has
not yet been proven Jewish,” but it is implied that he would soon
be added to the list.95
The medical profession had become simply a business opera-
tion thanks to the pervasive influence of Jewish doctors. They pass
their patients on to Jewish specialists so that it is impossible to escape
from their clutches. Admittedly, Jews have made certain contribu-
tions to medical science, but no significant harm would be done
were they to be excluded from the profession.96 Jewish influence is
particularly noxious in the field of sex therapy, because Jews have
a different attitude toward the topic than do Germans. Freud, for
example, reduces human beings to their sexual organs. Jewish sex
therapy aims to undermine German civilization, because Germans
form the last remaining obstacle to Jewish world domination. Thus,

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Magnus Hirschfeld finds scientific excuses for homosexuality, and

Max Marcuse preaches against monogamous marriage and sings the
praises of free love. Jewish physicians are abortionists and encour-
age contraception.97
Some 50 pages are then devoted to listing prominent figures
who made antisemitic statements: Seneca, Tacitus, Mohammed,
Erasmus, Luther (a rich source), Giordano Bruno, Frederick the
Great, Maria Theresa, Voltaire, Kant, Herder, Goethe, Schiller,
Napoleon, Fichte, Helmuth von Moltke, Ludwig Feuerbach,
Bismarck, Gibbon, Schopenhauer, Wagner, Treitschke, Theodor
Mommsen, Eugen Dühring, and Paul de Lagarde.98
The final section of the Handbook is devoted to the history of
modern antisemitism, which was a response to the gradual emanci-
pation of the Jews in the course of the 19th century, culminating in
the law on religious freedom in the North German Confederation
in 1869 and included in the German Constitution of 1871. Earlier
forms of antisemitism are discounted because they were based on
religious differences, not on “scientific” and “racial” grounds.
There is some argument here as to who founded modern antisem-
itism.99 Was it perhaps the journalist and travel writer Johannes
Nordmann in a book written in 1861?100 Or was Theodor Fritsch
correct in claiming that the book was written by Bismarck’s close
associate Lothar Bucher, in conjunction with the conservative jour-
nalist Hermann Wagener?101 There are no such questions as to the
authorship of Eugen Dühring’s The Jewish Question of 1881, which
soon gained canonical status among antisemites.102
The journalist Otto Glagau, who lost his shirt in the stock
exchange crash of 1873, which he attributed to Jewish speculators
leading him to adopt a radical antisemitic outlook, was far more
influential than the stodgily academic Dühring, Paul de Lagarde,
or Wilhelm Marr. He was a fiery publicist and practical organizer
who coordinated the Second International Anti-Jewish Congress
in Chemnitz in 1883.103 In 1879, he coined the powerful slogan:
“The social question is simply the Jewish question.” Finding a solu-
tion to the “Jewish Problem” would solve all social problems, espe-
cially the challenge posed by Social Democracy. For Glagau, the

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“Jewish Problem” was not confined to their nefarious manipulation

of the economic system, but also to their systematic undermining of
autochthonous German culture.104 The works of his contemporar-
ies, the philosopher Eduard de Hartmann and the orientalist Adolf
Wahrmund were highly regarded by some, but remained obscure.105
Far more influential than any of these was Julius Langbehn’s
Rembrandt as Educator published in 1890, which soon became a
runaway best-seller.106 Cultural pessimism reaches its nadir in this
mind-numbingly confused rehashing of Nietzsche’s early writings.
Langbehn contrasts all that is wrong with the modern world—
rationalism, science, materialism, liberalism, urbanization, and
cosmopolitanism—with the mythical figure of Rembrandt, as symbolic
of northern German racial purity. Theodor Fritsch was enormously
impressed by the book and corresponded garrulously with the
author. As a result, subsequent editions emphasized its antisemitic
aspects. By contrast, Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s dolefully
influential The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, published in
1899, is only mentioned in passing, even though Fritsch was in reg-
ular contact with the sage of Bayreuth. The reason for this is prob-
ably because there were fundamental differences between them.
Whereas Fritsch, and most other antisemites before him, made a
clear distinction between the coarse and contemptible Jews and the
noble and talented Aryans, Chamberlain was a trifle more inge-
nious. He asserted that each and every race had its virtues and its
vices—everything depended on the racial mixture. The superiority
of the Germanic peoples was due to a felicitous admixture. By con-
trast, the Jews were a bastardized people, the embodiment of the
worst aspects of its component parts.107 Maybe Fritsch was jealous
of the phenomenal success of this pile of specious pseudo-scholar-
ship, the high praise offered to it by Kaiser Wilhelm II and the fact
that Hitler and Goebbels paid homage to the great man shortly
before he died.
The most effective antisemite in Germany in the 1890s was
Adolf Stoecker, but his long-term influence was minimal.108 The
Handbook awards him the accolade “Father of German Antisemi-
tism,” but at the same time states that he was not an antisemite “in

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the conventional meaning of the term.” Stoecker was a Protestant

minister and arch-conservative, whose ideal was a Christian state,
hierarchically ordered according to the estates. This was something
that had no appeal to populist antisemites. Stoecker’s view that the
Jews should simply be knocked down a peg or two did not go nearly
far enough for them. Finally, his outspoken criticism of Bismarck was
widely considered to be unacceptable.109 Otto Boeckel, the “Farmer
King of Hesse” waged a campaign against “Junkers and Jews” who
rendered small farmers prey to big landowners, “Jewish usurers,”
and “Jewish cattle markets,” but his success was only local. He soon
came unstuck because of various scandals involving an illegitimate
child and the misappropriation of funds.110
Stoecker’s antipathy toward Jews was grounded in the
Christian tradition that saw Judaism at “its most internal core an
atrophied form of religion, a lower grade of revelation, an outlived
spirit still to be revered but annulled by Christ and for the present
no longer truth.”111 The modern form of antisemitism was styled
as a defence against the material, spiritual, and political menace of
an alien and inscrutable race. Eugen Dühring, although still influ-
enced by traditional Christian antipathy toward Jews, by empha-
sizing “race, morals and culture,” was the major proponent of this
view.112 He and his supporters demanded the revocation of Jewish
emancipation and the introduction of draconic anti-Jewish mea-
sures. Dühring, the self-styled socialist, was the living embodiment
of the claim, often attributed to August Bebel, that antisemitism
was the “socialism of fools.”113
In the Handbook’s view, the principal weakness of the antise-
mitic movement in the pre-war period was that it concentrated on
speeches and propaganda, thereby overlooking the importance of
organization and the “scientific basis of antisemitism.”114 It was
here that Theodor Fritsch played a critical role. He announced that
“mankind’s mission is to trample upon the Jews,” who formed a
“foreign race” bent on world domination. A new era began in 1907
with the first edition of the Handbuch der Judenfrage.
The First World War was a disappointing time for antisem-
ites and it was left to a few small groups to carry the torch.115

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 The Antisemite’s Vade Mecum

No mention is made of the “Jewish Census” of October 1916 in

which the war minister, in response to widespread rumours and the
antisemitism of the officer corps, ordered a counting of the number
of Jews serving on the frontline. In spite of a considerable amount
of fudged evidence, the result showed that the numbers were pro-
portionally equal to non-Jews; but this evidence of Jewish patri-
otism was kept secret until after the war, so that rumours of Jews
avoiding their duty to Kaiser and fatherland were widely believed.116
The section in the Handbook dealing with the Weimar Republic
acknowledges Dietrich Eckart, Gottfried Feder, and Anton Drexler
as pioneers who paved the way for Adolf Hitler, who in turn was
ably assisted by Alfred Rosenberg, Hermann Esser, Julius Streicher,
and Captain Göring. Gregor Strasser and Captain Röhm, both of
whom were murdered in 1934, are also mentioned as staunch allies.
Figures like Himmler and Goebbels were yet to win their spurs in
the struggle against world Jewry.117
Since “scientific antisemitism” was an amalgam of hare-
brained notions, prejudice, and conspiracy theories, it proved
totally inadequate as a litmus test to assess the relative merits of
various antisemitic groups. There was no question that the German
Aristocrats’ Association (Deutsche Adelsgesellschaft), the veter-
ans’ association Stahlhelm, the paramilitary Wehrwolf, the Young
German Order (Jungdeutscher Orden), and most youth groups
such as the Wandervogel, were absolutely correct in excluding Jews
from their ranks; but, it was a different matter when judging sun-
dry extremist groups on the wilder shores of antisemitism.118 Some
prominent antisemites, such as Bruno Bauer and Heinrich Class,
are not even mentioned.
Theodor Fritsch, who was much smitten by Jörg Lanz von
Liebenfels’ “Ariosophy,” which sought a religion appropriate for
the Aryan race, had no quarrel with the various little groups such as
Mathilde Ludendorff’s German Association for Divine Knowledge
(Bund für Deutsche Gotterkenntnis), Norbert Seibertz and Wilhelm
Kusserow’s Nordic Religious Working Group (Nordisch-Religiöse
Arbeitsgemeinschaft), or Artur Dinter’s Spiritual Christian Religious
Association (Geistchristliche Religionsgemeinschaft), the latter calling

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for the “de-Jewing” of religion and the representation of Jesus as a

“heroic Aryan.”119 Two Jews, Otto Weininger and Arthur Trebitsch,
were welcomed among the antisemites’ ranks. Weininger’s hetero-
dox antisemitism and gynophobia may have impressed Ludwig
Wittgenstein, but his definition of Jewishness as a state of mind
instead of a racial or religious category did not appeal to the “sci-
entific antisemites.” Hitler was impressed by Trebitsch, but he did
not heed his warning that Robert Ley, Hans Frank, Otto Strasser,
Rosenberg, and Streicher were “smart-alecky Zionist snakes.”120
But as the NSDAP grew to become a powerful political movement
there was no place for such outlandishly bizarre notions and they
were soon swept aside.121

Conclusion

Kurt Tucholsky’s review of the vicious antisemite Adolf Bartels’

two-volume History of German Literature applies equally to
the Handbook. It is the work of a “Jew-sniffer,” a Germanic car-
icature and a “Swastika-Pulcinella,” who delights in showing his
“lack of education, sloppiness and superficiality that is actually very
un-­German.”122 Theodor Fritsch made the mistake of sending a copy
of his Anti-Semitic Correspondence to Nietzsche. His masterly reply
could also be used to describe the Handbook. He railed against “this
nauseating craving of tiresomely boring dilettantes to join in the
discussion of the value of human beings and races; this prostration
in front of ‘authorities’ who are disdainfully rejected by anyone of
a sound mind (i.e. Dühring, R. Wagner, Ebrad, Wahrmund, P. de
Lagarde—who among them is the least qualified and the most biased
in questions of morals and history?), these consistently absurd forg-
eries and primping of vague concepts such as ‘Germanic,’ ‘Semitic,’
‘Aryan,’ ‘Christian,’ ‘German,’ etc..”123
“Scientific antisemitism,” based on racial rather than religious
grounds, as adumbrated in the Handbook confronted the intrac-
table problem of defining a Jewish race. It had to admit that this
was impossible and the assertion that Jews were a mixed race held

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 The Antisemite’s Vade Mecum

together by a sense of cultural similarity and a “parasitical instinct”

did not sound very convincing. As a result the Handbook’s authors
had to take recourse to familiar conspiracy theories that had no
basis in reality. In Nazi Germany, institutions were founded to
invent conspiracies ex nihilo. This included Rosenberg’s Institute
for Research into the Jewish Question (Institut zur Erforschung der
Judenfrage) in Frankfurt; The Institute for the Study of the Jewish
Question (Institut zum Studium der Judenfrage) under Eberhard
Taubert, who was affectionately known as “Dr. Anti;” and, Section
II/112 of the Security Service Main Office (SD-Hauptamt) under
Reinhard Heydrich. The fact that this ill-defined menace was so
hard to pin down made it all the more sinister and threatening.
Jews were seen as a negative stereotype, representative of an unfo-
cused feeling of disgruntlement and disquiet.124 Antisemitism
became an essential component of anti-modernism, with Jews seen
as the motive force behind capitalism, cosmopolitanism, social-
ism, and communism. Liberalism and democracy as offshoots of
the French Revolution presented a bit of a problem. Not even the
wildest conspiracy theorist attributed this to a Jewish plot. It was
thus classified as an uprising of the racially inferior. The Handbook
provides a foretaste of the antisemitism that would become part
of the common sense of Hitler’s Germany. It clothed antisemitism
with a threadbare mantle of scholarship, and provided simple expla-
nations for Germany’s present woes, particularly the “stab in the
back” that brought the country to its knees in 1918, and for the
subsequent economic crises. It may not have made many converts,
but it strengthened the convictions of those who had already seen
the light. Although it offered no clear prescription for the future, it
provided ample fuel for the murderous evil that was to come.
In his masterly reflection on the Spanish Civil War, Joan Sales
writes: “Our great-grandsons will laugh when they discover how
we did the same as proletarians against bourgeois or Aryans against
Semites: yet Stalin’s and Hitler’s concentration camps were created
in the name of these empty derisory words . . . Point the hatred of the
multitudes towards the villain and they will follow; what does it mat-
ter that villain is but a word? Aristocrat, bourgeois, priest, Semite,

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 Martin Kitchen

fascist, red, no matter! As he is the villain, he is to blame. To blame

for what? For everything!”125 The mythical Jew of the Handbook is
a paranoid chimeric construct, a code word that unlocks the secret
sources of the ills that beset the modern world.126 Redemption can
only come through its extirpation.127 We are confronted here with
a book “about the insurmountable and sickening lie in which an
entire people has become enveloped and which no analysis, no sacri-
fice, no amount of tenderness, no evidence can undo.”128

Notes

1. See Thomas Irmer, “Das ‘erste antisemitische Denkmal

Deutschlands’—zur Errichtung eines Denkmals für Theodor Fritsch im
kommunalen öffentlichen Raum in Berlin 1935–1943,” in Gideon Botsch,
Christoph Kopke, Lars Rensmann, Julius H. Schoeps, eds., Politik des
Hasses. Antisemitismus und radikale Rechte in Europa (New York: Olms,
2010), 153–170; and, Peter Fasel, “Ein Vordenker der Judenhasser”, Die
Zeit (November 7, 2013).
2. The Königliches Technisches Institut was the forerunner of the
present Technical University Berlin. A school-leaving certificate (Abitur)
was required for admission.
3. He also wrote under a number of other pseudonyms such as the
Nordic “Fritz Thor” or the upper-class “Ferdinand Roderich-Stoltheim.”
4. In 1902, the second edition of Howard’s book was entitled Garden
Cities of Tomorrow.
5. Hans Rosenberg, Große Depression und Bismarckzeit.
Wirtschaftsablauf, Gesellschaft und Politik in Mitteleuropa (Berlin, 1967);
and, Shulamit Volkov, The Rise of Popular Anti-Modernism in Germany.
The Urban Master Artisans, 1873–1896. (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1978).
6. Wilhelm Marr, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum
(Bern, 1879).
7. “den Rassenkampf befeuern.”
8. Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti-Semitism, 1700–
1933 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 242. For an excellent
overview of antisemitism in Germany, the Handbook’s main focus,

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 The Antisemite’s Vade Mecum

see Shulamit Volkov, Die Juden in Deutschland 1780–1918 (Munich:

Oldenbourg Verlag, 1994).
9. Richard S. Levy, The Downfall of the Antisemitic Parties in Imperial
Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975); and, Günter Brunstädt,
Adolf Stoecker als Antisemit, Part I and II (Walltrop: Spenner, 2004). For
Schmeitzner’s antisemitism and his relationship to Nietzsche, see Thomas
Mittmann, Vom “Günstling” zum “Urfeind” der Juden–die antisemitische
Nietzsche-Rezeption in Deutschland bis zum Ende des Nationalsozialismus
(Würzburg, 2006).
10. For a balanced account of the fundamental differences between
Judaism and Christianity, see Jacob Neusner, A Rabbi Talks With Jesus
(New York, 1993).
11. Lange’s views are summarized in his collection of essays Reines
Deutschthum. Grundzüge einer nationalen Weltanschauung (Berlin, 1893).
See Stefan Breuer, Die Völkischen in Deutschland. Kaiserreich und Weimarer
Republik (Darmstadt, 2008); and, Dieter Fricke, “Der Deutschlandbund”
in Uwe Puschner, ed., Handbuch der völkischen Bewegung 1871–1918
(Munich, 1999).
12. Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction, 306
13. Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens. Fritsch’s
books are Mein Beweis Gegen Jahwe (1911) and Der Falsche Gott (1916).
14. Hentschel had made a fortune manufacturing indigo, but lost it all
in the First World War. He founded a rural community near Cuxhaven and
the youth movement “Artamanen” to which Himmler and Walther Darré
belonged. He was much admired by Ludendorff and Hitler (even though
he resigned from the NSDAP in 1931.) See Uwe Puschner, “Hentschel,
Willibald,” in Wolfgang Benz, ed., Handbuch des Antisemitismus:
Judenfeindschaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Vol. 2:1 (Berlin, 2009),
351–353.
15. Theodor Fritsch, junior, died in a Soviet internment camp on
December 31, 1946. Gengler worked for the infamous Institut zum
Studium der Judenfrage connected to the Ministry of Propaganda and also
for the Security Service of the SS. He died on October 20, 1946, and was
probably executed by the Soviets.
16. Handbuch der Judenfrage, 10. All quotes are from the 35th edition
of the Handbook published in 1933. The title and publication date of
Eisenmenger’s Judaism Unmasked (Entdecktes Judenthum) is quoted
incorrectly.

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 Martin Kitchen

17. Handbuch, 13. Dietrich Eckart, Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis
Lenin. Zwiegespräch zwischen Adolf Hitler und mir (Munich, 1925). Hitler
and Goebbels were to be faced with a dilemma on this issue. When “Karl
Radek, etc.” were placed on trial in Moscow they began to wonder whether
Stalin was an antisemite. The Red Army was also strongly antisemitic.
Goebbels, Tagebücher, 25 January 1937.
18. Handbuch, 14. The viciously antisemitic Klan is here spelled Cu-
clux-Clan.
19. Ibid., 22, 28.
20. Ibid., 26.
21. Ibid., 28.
22. Ibid., 30.
23. This section is based on Hans F. K. Günther, Rassenkunde des
Jüdischen Volkes (Munich, 1930). From 1935 Günther ran the Institut
für Völkerbiologie, ländliche Soziologie und Bauerntumsforschung at Berlin
University. His views remained unchanged after the war, and he was a
vigorous Holocaust denier.
24. Heinrich Wolf, Deutsche Geschichte. Eine Einführung in das
Verständnis unserer vaterländischen Geschichte (Hannover, 1921) provides
an excellent summary of his hair-raising ideas.
25. The extreme Right took up Theodor Körner’s slogan “ex
septentrione lux”—light comes from the north.
26. Handbuch, 42–45.
27. Ibid., 46. Based on Genesis 12 and 20.
28. Ibid., 46–50.
29. Ibid., 51.
30. The idea that the Jews sought world domination originates from
Christian misreadings of Talmudic and medieval visions of the Messianic era.
See Hanna Emmrich, Das Judentum bei Voltaire (Breslau, 1930), 144–146.
31. Handbuch, 54. The Moabites are one of the few peoples not
destined for destruction in Deuteronomy 20:17.
32. Ibid., 59.
33. Ibid., 58.
34. Ibid., 63.
35. Ibid., 66.
36. Ibid., 80.
37. The words “and Removal” were struck out shortly after the
foundation of the Institute for fear that tender souls might find it offensive.

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 The Antisemite’s Vade Mecum

38. Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch, Die Politische Religion des Nationalsozialismus:

die Religiösen Dimensionen der NS-Ideologie in den Schriften von Dietrich
Eckart, Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg und Adolf Hitler (Munich, 2002).
39. Jacob Katz, Jews and Freemasons in Europe, 1723–1939 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1970), 18–19; 153–159; 219–220. This theme
is also hammered home in Eduard Emil Eckert, Der Freimaurer Orden in
seiner wahren Bedeutung (Dresden, 1852); and, Leo Meurin, La franc-
maçonnerie. Synagogue de Satan (Paris, 1893).
40. Handbuch, 82. See Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern
Capitalism (New York, 1913).
41. Ibid., 100. Even the liberal Theodor Fontane shared this concern
about the noxious effects of Jewish emancipation. See Michael Fleischer,
“Kommen Sie, Cohn.” Fontane und die Judenfrage (Berlin: M. Fleisher,
1998).
42. Ibid., 100–108.
43. Ibid., 112–125.
44. Ibid., 129.
45. Ibid., 133.
46. Ibid., 141. Erich Bischoff, Rabbinische Fabeln über Talmud,
Schulchan Aruch, Kol Nidre usw. Ein Gerichtsgutachten (Leipzig, 1922).
The internet is cluttered with references to ritual murders, often referred
to as JRMs. Human sacrifice is expressly forbidden in Deuteronomy 12:31
and 2 Kings 16:3 and in a number of other passages. The Torah forbids the
consumption of blood in Leviticus 3:17 and 17:10, and in Deuteronomy
12:16.
47. Johann Andreas Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum oder
Gründlicher und warhafftiger Bericht, welcher gestalt die versteckte Juden die
hochheilige Drey-Einigkeit, Gott Vater, Sohn und Heil. Geist erschrecklicher
Weise lästern und verunehren, die Heil. Mutter Christi verschmähen, das
Neue Testament, die Evangelisten und Aposteln, die Christliche Religion
spöttisch durchziehen, und die gantze Christenheit auff das äusserste
verachten und verfluchen: dabei noch viel andere, bißhero unter den Christen
entweder gar nicht oder nur zum Theil bekannt gewesene Dinge . . .; alles aus
ihren eigenen und zwar sehr vielen mit grosser Mühe und unverdrossenem
Fleiß durchlesenen Büchern mit Ausziehung der hebräischen Worte und
derer treuen Ubersetzung in die Teutsche Sprach kräfftiglich erwiesen und
in zweyen Theilen verfasset, deren jeder seine behörige, allemal von einer
gewissen Materie außführlich handelnde Capitel enthält; allen Christen

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zur treuhertzigen Nachricht verfertiget und mit vollkommenen Registern

versehen (Frankfurt, 1700).
48. Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction, 13–22.
49. Handbuch, 149. Das Buch vom Kahal was reprinted by Theodor
Fritsch’s Hammer Verlag with a new translation from the Russian by the
Hamburg University “racial geographer,” Dr. Siegfried Passarge. For a
laudatory commentary, see Arno Franke, Staat im Staate: das Wesen des
jüdischen Geheimbundes, auf Grund der Brafmannschen Kahal-Akten
(Hammer Verlag, 1930).
50. For Branfman, see Wolfgang Benz, ed., Handbuch des
Antisemitismus, vol. 2 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009); and, Esther Webman
ed., The Global Impact of the Protocols and the Elders of Zion: A Century-Old
Myth (New York: Routledge, 2012). Branfman also appears as a character
in Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery.
51. See Jonathan Frankel, The Damascus Affair: “Ritual Murder”
Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997); and, David Kertzer, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (New
York: Random House, 1997).
52. Handbuch, 159.
53. B’nai B’rith was founded in the United States in 1843. The
Zentralverein Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens was founded in
1893.
54. See Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction, 292–299; and Shmuel
Almog, Nationalism and Antisemitism in Modern Europe, 1815–1945
(Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1990), 45–47.
55. Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction, 305.
56. Handbuch, 152.
57. Ibid., 170, 173, 180. Deuteronomy 6: 10–11 is quoted as a biblical
sanction for such behaviour (152): “When the Lord your God brings you
into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to
give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses
filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not
dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat
and are satisfied.” Stephan Malinowski, “Politische Skandale als Zerrspiegel
der Demokratie. Die Fälle Barmat und Sklarek im Kalkül der Weimarer
Rechten”, Jahrbuch für Antisemitismus Forschung 5 (1996): 46–64.
58. Handbuch, 160.
59. Ibid., 198.

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60. Ibid., 200. Wilhelm Meister (Paul Bang), Judas Schuldbuch. Eine
Deutsche Abrechnung (Munich, 1919).
61. Ibid., 218.
62. Ibid., 220.
63. Ibid., 229–232. Coudenhove-Kalergi was doubly suspect because
his mother was Japanese.
64. Ibid., 236.
65. Ibid., 239.
66. Ibid., 245.
67. Ibid., 249.
68. Ibid., 252. These articles are still widely reproduced by antisemitic
groups.
69. For a detailed view, see David Kertzer, The Unholy War: The
Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism (London: Macmillan,
2003).
70. The encyclical states that “Jesus received his human nature from
a people who crucified him.” Thus Jesus’ Jewishness is affirmed, but the
charge of deicide remained.
71. He describes the Jews as “relentless and irreconcilable enemies of
Christ” Civiltà Cattolica (November 3, 1935).
72. Handbuch, 256.
73. Ibid., 262.
74. Ibid., 267. The charge that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were financed
by Freemasons and Jews became the subject of a libel suit tried in St. Gallen
(Switzerland) in 1924. Dr. Fehrmann, who had made these charges, was
awarded 1,313.55 francs in damages. Manfred Gebhard, Geschichte der
Zeugen Jehovas: mit Schwerpunkt der deutschen Geschichte (Berlin, 1999),
145.
75. Handbuch, 269.
76. Ibid., 276.
77. Ibid., 281.
78. Ibid., 286.
79. Ibid., 288. The fact that Jews were forbidden to own farms or work
on the land by decree in September 1933 suggests evidence to the contrary.
80. Handbuch, 295. For a more nuanced view, see Heidrun Homburg,
“Warenhausunternehmen und ihre Gründer in Frankreich und Deutschland
oder: Eine diskrete Elite und mancherlei Mythen,” Jahrbuch für
Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1 (1992): 183–219.

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81. Handbuch, 307. One surviving book on the topic is the highly
suspect Specification deren im Lande hin und wider herum vagierenden
erzdiebische Judenbande (Mannheim, 1736).
82. See Amos Elon, The Pity of it All: A History of Jews in Germany,
1743–1933 (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2002), 29–31; and, Peter
Trawny, Heidegger und der Mythos der Jüdischen Weltverschwörung
(Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 2015), 35.
83. See Hartmut Friesen, Räuberbanden. Diebestouren, Gaunerzinken
und Bockreiter (Duisburg, 1992); and, Udo Fleck, Diebe-Räuber-Mörder:
Studie zur kollektiven Delinquenz rheinischer Räuberbanden an der Wende
vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert (Thesis, Trier, 2003).
84. Handbuch, 323.
85. Ibid., 407. Walter Pötsch, Die Jüdische Rasse im Lichte der
Straffälligkeit: Zuchtstätten der Rassenminderheit (Vienna, 1932) is quoted
as a reliable source for these allegations.
86. Ibid., 324.
87. This probably refers to the klezmer theme in Symphony No. 1.
88. Handbuch, 335.
89. Ibid., 342.
90. Ibid., 354.
91. Ibid., 363.
92. Ibid., 374.
93. Ibid., 78.
94. Ibid., 389.
95. Ibid., 391.
96. Ibid., 395–399.
97. Ibid., 400.
98. Ibid., 418.
99. Ibid., 508.
100. H. Naudh (Johannes Nordmann, née Rumpelmayer (1820–1887).
Die Juden und der Deutsche Staat (1861).
101. Wagener was the author of Das Judenthum und der Staat. Eine
historisch-politische Skizze zur Orientierung über die Judenfrage (Berlin,
1857). For further details on Wagener and Nordmann, see Katz, From
Prejudice to Destruction, 211–214.
102. Eugen Dühring, Die Judenfrage als Racen-, Sitten- und Culturfrage
mit einer weltgeschichtlichen Antwort (1881).
103. The first such Congress, with Adolf Stoecker in the chair, was
held in Dresden in 1882. See Paul de Lagarde, Juden und Indogermanen

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 The Antisemite’s Vade Mecum

(1887); and, Wilhelm Marr, Der Sieg des Judentums über das Germanentum
(1879).
104. Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction, 261–263.
105. See Eduard von Hartmann, Das Judenthum in Gegenwart und
Zukunft; and, Adolf Wahrmund, Das Gesetz des Nomadentums und die
Heutige Judenherrschaft (1900).
106. See Julius Langbehn, Rembrandt als Erzieher (1890). For a classic
study, see Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1961).
107. Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction, 307.
108. Günter Brakelmann, Adolf Stoecker als Antisemit, 2 vols. (Waltrop,
2004).
109. Handbuch, 512.
110. Ibid., 514.
111. Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction, 264.
112. Eugen Dühring, Die Judenfrage als Racen-, Sitten- und
Culturfrage mit einer weltgeschichtlichen Antwort (1881).
113. “Der Antisemitismus ist der Sozialismus der dummen Kerle.”
114. Handbuch, 519.
115. Ibid., 521.
116. Michael Berger, Eisenes Kreuz–Doppeladler–Davidstern. Juden in
Deutschen und Österreich-Ungarischen Armeen (Berlin: Trafo Verlagsgruppe,
2010).
117. Handbuch, 523.
118. Ibid., 536.
119. To this end, the Institut zur Erforschung (und Beseitigung) des
Jüdischen Einflusses auf das Deutsche Kirchliche Leben was founded in
Eisenach in 1934. Hitler firmly believed that Jesus was an Aryan. See Werner
Jochmann and Heinrich Heim, eds., Monologe im Führer-Hauptquartier
1941–1944 (Munich: Orbis, 2000), 99, 412.
120. Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a
Young Man (London: Tauris Parke, 2010), 230–233.
121. Dinter, the author of the best-selling 1917 antisemitic novel Sin
Against the Blood (Die Sünde wider das Blut: Ein Zeitroman), broke with
Hitler in 1927—a fact that is overlooked in the Handbook.
122. Kurt Tucholsky, “Herr Adolf Bartels,” Die Weltbühne 18:12
(1922), 291–294.
123. Letter to Fritsch (March 29, 1887). Nietzsche told a friend that
he had given Fritsch “a few friendly kicks.”

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 Martin Kitchen

124. Gavin Langmuir, “Prolegomena to Any Present Analysis of

Hostility Against the Jews,” in Michael Marrus, ed., The Nazi Holocaust,
vol. 2 (Boston: De Gruyter, 1989), 133–171.
125. Joan Sales, Uncertain Glory (London: Quercus, 2016), 385.
126. On antisemitism as a code, see Shulamit Volkov, “Anti-Semitism
as a Cultural Code,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 23 (1978), 25–46.
127. Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. I. The Years of
Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York: Harper, 1997), 73–112.
128. Jakob Wassermann, Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude (Munich:
dtv Verlag, 1994), 65.

Martin Kitchen is Professor Emeritus of History at Simon Fraser

University in British Columbia, Canada. Educated at Magdalen
College, Oxford, and the School of Slavonic and East European
Studies at the University of London, he is a specialist in modern
European history, with an emphasis on the history of Germany. His
most recent books are The Dominici Affair: Murder and Mystery in
Provence (Nebraska, 2017), Speer: Hitler’s Architect (Yale, 2015), A
History of Modern Germany: 1800 to the Present (Wiley-Blackwell,
2011), and Rommel’s Desert War: Waging War II in North Africa,
1941–1943 (Cambridge, 2009).

234 Antisemitism Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2 (October 2018)