NAZI-DEUTSCH/NAZI-GERMAN: AN ENGLISH LEXICON OF THE LANGUAGE OF THE THIRD REICH

by
Robert Ashley Michael Karin Doerr (New York: Greenwood Press, 2002) ©2002 by Rober
t Michael and Karin Doerr
INTRODUCTION TO NS-DEUTSCH
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Nearly two millennia before the Third Reich, anti-Jewish mythsi and images of ev
ilii w
the languages and minds of Europeans. Without this long preparation and the acci
dents o
history, the Holocaust would not have been possible. The process began in the fo
urth cen
vocabulary chosen by the most influential Church Fathers to describe Jews, Judai
sm, and J
Ambrose sermonized that the synagogue was a "place of unbelief, a home of impiet
y, a re
damned by God himself"iii and that Jews "polluted their pretended bodily purity
with the in
their souls."iv St. Jerome identified the Jews with Judas and with the immoral u
se of money
would bedevil later Christian-Jewish relations. The young Goebbels saw the Jews
as Judase
Antichrists.v St. Jerome believed that “If you call [the synagogue] a brothel, a d
en of vice,
refuge, satan’s fortress, a place to deprave the soul, an abyss of every conceivab
le disast
else you will, you are still saying less than it deserves.”vi St. Augustine held t
hat the Jews w Cains than Judases.vii The Jews were to suffer death in life.viii
St. John Chrysostom believed
were not ordinary members of the human race but congenitally evil people who “danc
ed w
The synagogue was for him “the Devil’s house,” as were “the souls of the Jews.”x Just as p
pull the plow are slaughtered, so Jews “grew fit for slaughter.xi
The Church Fathers provided a consecrated attack-language that political leaders
fro
Roman emperors to National-Socialists used to attack Jews, Judaism, and Jewishne
ss. They
Jewish language into public law. For the Christianized Roman Empire, Jews were “sa
crilegio
“polluted with the Jewish disease,” “contaminated with Jewish sacraments,” a “plague tha
widely,” “the abominable and vile,” “enemies of the law,” “monstrous heretics,” “the wors
“blindly senseless.” Judaism was “a deadly and sacriligious sect,” “a brothel,” “an alien a
perversity,” “the mark of Jewish filth,” “an abominable sect and rite,” “frightful and hide
u
In the Middle Ages, Jews were stateless beings who had no legitimate place in th
e so
Christiana, the mystical corpus Christi of the Church. Their status, their very
lives, depend
kindness of the Church or Christianized secular authorities. The fundamental Jew
ish policy
was to degrade Jews and alienate them from Christian society.xiii Many Christian
s, influence
Church’s overt hostility to Jews as “negators and malefactors,” vilified Jews and murd
ered numbers.xiv
Several medieval theologians and popesxv stated that the Jews were, or should be
, p
to Christians.xvi St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that "Jews, in consequence of their s
ins, are or w
perpetual slavery,” and as a result the princes can treat Jewish property as their
own.xvii Th
delighted in the Church’s identification of Jews as slaves, because it justified g
overnmenta
exploitation of the Jewish community.xviii Expropriation of Jews was not new to
the Third Rei Another cause, and consequence, of the miserable and dangerous Jew
ish condition
Christian Europe was the isolation of the Jewish community.xix By the end of the
twelfth cen
ghetto marked most of Christian Europe’s towns.xx Not intended as collecting point
s on the
murder, the medieval ghetto nevertheless led to increased Jewish stigmatization,
and thei
location, overcrowding, and the legal compulsion forcing the Jews to live there
made them
The Nazi stipulation that Jews wear an identifying and stigmatic emblem was comp
ara Church s requirements. Canon 68 of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, decre
ed that the
distinguished from Christians “by the quality of their clothes.” Thus secular author
ities, pr Church, imposed on the Jews the pariah’s hat and badge of shame.
There are many parallels between the Holocaust and medieval violence against Jew
attacked Jews as Europe s “greatest sinners” and despised enemies who must be punish
e exterminatedxxi"down to the last baby at the breast.”xxii Although some medieval
Christian
allowed Jews to escape death by means of conversion, The Jews’ existence tested th
e Chr
identity, just as the Jews presence in Europe between 1933 and 1945 challenged t
hat of th
Medieval synagogues were invaded and burned, often with Jews in them,xxivand Tor
ah scrol into the mud, torn, and set afire, and Jewish cemeteries destroyed.xxv
From the twelfth to the twentieth centuries, Christians fantasized that Jews and
the
involved in a murderous anti-Christian conspiracy and thousands of Jews were mad
e to pa
with their lives.xxvi Jews were perceived as ritual murderers, vampires, desecra
ters of the H
the wells. During certain periods, massacres of Jews became chronic. Christians
acted “as
annihilate the whole of Jewry from the face of the earth.”xxvii None of the events
of the 192 was a historical novum.
The Church and political authorities traditionally sat on their hands during ant
isemit was also not new to the Holocaust period. Public policy was that Jews wer
e never to have
over Christians and were to endure collective punishment for their deicide.xxvii
i The Jews we
public enemies, capable of any crime, a frightful mixture of Cain and Judas, sta
teless bein
who must be punished in this world and the next. Papal language refers to “blind J
ewish p
Faith,” “the sons of the crucifiers, against whom to this day the blood cries to the
Father’s
rejected by God, in whose death they wickedly conspired,” “the perfidia [treachery]
of the "perpetual slavery,” "polluters of the Christian religion,” “Jewish blindness,” “pe
rversity,”
damned perfidy,” “old and corrupt Jewish blindness,""deadly weeds,” “accursed rite,” “ma “d
erous sickness,” “detestable stubbornness.”xxix
During the Reformation, German antisemitism centers around Martin Luther. He was
he have been, a Nazi. His beliefs were profoundly Christological, whereas the Na
zis seem
But Martin Luther helped establish the groundwork and vocabulary for Nazi Jew po
licy. The
read man of his age, by the twentieth century, Luther had become a hero for both
Protest
antisemites in Germany, including prominent Nazis, among them Streicher and Hitl
er. Luth
November, is celebrated in Germany as a national holiday and served as one of th
e two d
the infamous November 1938 Pogrom took place. The rabbi and scholar Reinhold Lew
in, w deported along with his family to their deaths,xxx wrote that
[Luther] profoundly believed that the Jews acted only for the benefit of their o
against the interests of Christianity. He expounded this position . . . as a war
to
he wrote as a religious fanatic himself. The seeds of Jew hatred that he plante
forgotten; on the contrary, they continued to spring to life in future centuries
.
wrote against the Jews for whatever reason believed that he had the right to j t
riumphantly referring to Luther.xxxi
The obscene language of street and field pervaded Luther’s anti-Jewish rhetoric ju
st
Nazis. Luther Deutsch and Nazi Deutsch had much in common. He called the Jews "l
earne
circumcized saints."xxxii The synagogue was “an incorrigible whore and an evil slu
t with wh
to wrangle, scuffle, and fight. . . . It serves them right that . . . instead of
the beautiful face word, they have to look into the devil’s black, dark, lying be
hind, and worship his stench. Jews . . . are not worthy of looking at the outsid
e of the Bible, much less of reading it. You
the bible that is found under the sow’s tail, and eat and drink the letters that d
rop from th
In 1543 Luther was the first to describe in writing the Judensau, which pictured
the J
Talmud by kissing, sucking the teats, and eating the feces of a pig. The Judensa
u linked th
the ritual-murder defamation, and the blood-libel against the Jews. Luther procl
aimed that
know God, in reality they have read this"out of the sow s ass."xxxiv Jews were f
ull of “the dev which they wallow like swine.”xxxv No longer God s elect, they were
now "polluted so full of that it oozes out of them from every pore."xxxvi
Realizing that the Jews would not be converted, Luther implored the German princ
es
policy, actually carried out four hundred years later by a modern German “prince,” A
dolf H
be an accident that both Luther and Hitler advocated the destruction of Jewish r
eligious cu abrogation of legal protection, expropriation, forced labor, expulsi
on.xxxvii First, . . . set fire to their synagogues or schools . . .. Second, I
advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed.
Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which
lies, cursing, and blasphemy are to be taught, be taken from them. . . . also th
. [The Jews] be forbidden on pain of death to praise God, to give thanks, to pra
publicly among us and in our country. . . . [T]hey be forbidden to utter the nam
our hearing. . . . We must not consider the mouth of the Jews as worthy of utte
God within our hearing. He who hears this name from a Jew must inform the a
throw sow dung at him when he sees him and chase him away. And may no on and kin
d in this regard.
Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pa and li
mb. . . .
Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished complete .
Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them and that all cash and tre
taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. . . . Whenever a Jew is sincere h
e should [receive a cash bonus].
Seventh, I recommend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or
the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their brea
their brow . . .. For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim t
oil i
our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, fe
farting . . ..xxxix
The country and the roads are open for them to proceed to their land wh
wish. If they did so, we would be glad to present gifts to them on the occasion
good riddance. For they are a heavy burden, a plague, a pestilence, a sheer m co
untry.”xl
Luther discussed murder as a "Final Solution" if all else failed, and he often b
elieved
would fail. Several elements in Luther’s program contained murderous implications
and he
princes three times to kill Jews who resisted. Another passage indicated that Lu
ther saw th killing some Jews:
I wish and I ask that our rulers who have Jewish subjects exercise a sharp mer
wretched people . . .. They must act like a good physician who, when gangren
proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. pro
cedure must also be followed in this instance. . . . Deal harshly with them,
the wilderness, slaying three thousand lest the whole people perish. [They are p
ossessed . . ..xli
In at least three other passages, Luther approached an advocacy of mass murder o
f
of 1539 argued that “I cannot convert the Jews. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not succ
eed in d stop up their mouths so that they will have to lie upon the ground.”xlii
The Luther Deutsch threat.xliii Luther also wrote that Jews, like usurers and th
ieves, should be executed:
[Today’s Jews] are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel an of c
lothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their
Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robb
thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security. . . . If I had power over
th
princes and cities have, I would deal severely with their lying mouth. . . . For
a
arch-thief and a robber who should rightly be hanged on the gallows seven tim ot
her thieves. The deadly syllogism Luther concocts in this paragraph may be state
d as follows: All thieves and usurers should be executed by hanging. All Jews ar
e thieves and usurers. Therefore, all Jews should be hanged.
In another section of The Jews and Their Lies, Luther clearly stated that all Je
ws shou We are even at fault in not avenging all this innocent blood of our Lord
and of
which they shed for three hundred years after the destruction of Jerusalem, an
the children they have shed since then (which still shines forth from their eyes
We are at fault in not slaying them.xliv
Foreshadowing the Nazi Endlösung der Judenfrage, "Final Solution to the Jewish Pro
b
wrote that "we should step on the heads of these poisonous snakes" and when they
disag
tells them, "shut up you miserable, screaming Jews."xlv Within Germany, Martin L
uther’s wo
authority of Scripture. Because Luther wrote in a stimulating, polemical fashion
and addre
every level of society, he was the most widely read author of his age and has pr
ofoundly i
attitudes and ideas of generations to come, especially the Lutheran clergyxlvi--
ideas that w to roost in the Third Reich.
During his lifetime, Luther successfully campaigned against the Jews in Saxony,
Bra Silesia. The Strasbourg city council forbade the sale of Luther’s anti-Jewish
books when a
in nearby Hochfelden sermonized that his parishioners should murder the Jews.xlv
ii Luthera
and expelled Jews from German Lutheran states through the 1580s.xlviii At the en
d of the si
both the Catholic Elector of Trier and the Protestant Duke of Brunswick set out
to extermin
and Jews. In 1589 the Jews of Halberstadt were charged with being “a peculiar verm
in and
insufferable among the Christians.”xlix In 1596, Laurentius Fabricius, a professor
of Hebrew
University of Wittenberg, argued that the Jews made themselves "unworthy of eter
nal life.
more the name of God. [It] has now turned into . . . ‘dung,’ stinking animal excreme
nt, wh before the blind Jews to drink and eat.”l
A Lutheran pamphlet of 1602 may be the modern starting point of the myth of the
W The publication ran through almost fifty editions within a few years and the G
erman term
made its first appearance in 1694.lii During the nineteenth century, the Wanderi
ng Jew bec
Jew, Der Ewige Jude, symbol of the Antichrist and death.liii Der Ewige Jude late
r served as t Nazi propaganda film that may be the "blueprint" of the Holocaust.
liv
Luther’s ideas were disseminated in 1612 when Vincent Fettmilch reprinted “The Jew L
ies” in order to stir up hatred against the Frankfurt Jews. In 1614 the people of
Frankfurt
Jewish ghetto, where Jewish residences were already marked by insulting signs of
pigs and Nearly three thousand Jews were killed and the rest expropriated and e
xpelled.lv
Luther’s ideas and feelings about Jews and Judaism served as a basis for the essen
ti
Weltanschauung of many German Lutherans well into the twentieth century. Luther
s influ
had no equivalent elsewhere in Europe. In 1972, Johannes Brosseder of the Univer
sity of M
a huge volume, Luthers Stellung zu den Juden im Spiegel seiner Interpreten, incl
uding bot
Nazi authors who used Luther to justify their antisemitism.lvi Years before Hitl
er became Ch
Nazi journal Der Stürmer was citing Luther to justify its antisemitism, hailing Lu
ther s dete
Germany of the Jewish plague. Many Germans were attracted to Luther because of h
is ant
especially when combined with his nationalistic views that German values were su
perior t
unGerman ideas and that government should hold great authority in the secular sp
here.lvii
Houston Stewart Chamberlain concluded that Germany needed a savior, "a brave man
wit lion to write the truth," he was quoting from Martin Luther.lviii
Although Adolf Hitler never acknowledged that the Endlösung der Juden Frage, “Fina
Jewish Problem,” was based on Luther’s ideas, Hitler admired Luther and was quite aw
are
antisemitism. Hitler’s government closely followed Luther’s program for dealing with
the J
segregation and loss of rights, to expropriation and mass murder. On the stand a
t the Nur
Crimes Trials, the Nazi leader Julius Streicher refered to Luther. “Dr. Martin Lut
her,” Streich “would very probably sit in my place in the defendants’ dock today, if t
his book had been
consideration by the Prosecution. In the book, The Jews and Their Lies, Dr. Mart
in Luther w
Jews are a serpent s brood, and one should burn down their synagogues and destro
y them
Hitler was also aware of the history of theological antagonism to the Jews, and
priva
expressed his admiration for the anti-Jewish ideas of “all genuine Christians of o
utstanding
mentioned St. John Chrysostom, Pope Gregory VII,lx St. Thomas Aquinas,lxi Goethe
, Father R
Treitschke, Richard Wagner,lxii and, especially, Martin Luther. Hitler regarded
Luther as “one
Germans,” “the mighty opponent of the Jews,” “a great man, a giant,” who had found him had
, in his antisemitism.
He saw the Jew as we are only now beginning to see him today. But unfortuna
not where he did the most harm--within Christianity itself. Ah, if he had seen t
there, seen him in his youth! Then he would not have attacked Catholicism, bu
it. Instead of totally rejecting the Church, he would have thrown his whole pas
against the real culprits.lxiii
In 1932, Hitler, speaking informally in his Munich flat, observed that “Luther, if
he could be give us [National Socialists] his blessing.”lxiv
Centuries of theological antisemitism, articulated and elaborated by Martin Luth
er in
virulent configuration, argues Christian scholar John Conway, “prevented any large
-scale m
concern for the Jews” during the Holocaust.lxv On 17 December 1941, seven Lutheran
regio
confederations issued a joint statement that indicated their agreement with the
policy of t
identifying the Jews with a star, “since after his bitter experience Luther had al
ready sugg
measures against the Jews and their expulsion from German territory. From the cr
ucifixion today the Jews have fought against Christianity . . ..”lxvi Even Hitler’s
Lutheran opponents,
Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhöffer, were caught up in traditional Lutheran anti
semiti
1933 that the Jews deserved to be punished for bringing the Christ of God to the
Cross. Ni
further than Bonhoeffer in 1935, warning his parishioners that if they kept foll
owing the pa Nazism that someday they would end up as evil as the Jews.
German nationalism and religious antisemitism combined first at the time of the
Fre
and later during the Holocaust into an explosive brew. A former student of theol
ogy, Johan
stirred a hate campaign against the Jews based in great part on religious differ
ences betw
Christians. Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation asserted that only (non-Jewish
) Germ
genuine Christians, since only they were qualified to detect “the seed of truth an
d life of a
Christianity.” After praising Luther and cursing the pope, Fichte noted that “Authen
tic relig
of Christianity, was the germ of the modern world. This [Christian] religion mus
t permeate
culture of antiquity and thereby spiritualize and sanctify it. . . . The German
people have t
His 1793 essay on the French Revolution argued that Judaism comprised a “state wi
hostile to, and at war with, all other states of Europelxviii--a concept hinted
at in Luther and
explicit in Paul de Lagarde.lxix Jews were politically alien primarily due to th
eir religious beli “Within all the nations of Europe the Jews comprise a hostile s
tate at perpetual war
nations [and] founded on the hatred of the whole human race. . . . The Jewish na
tion
from our [German Christian culture] by the most binding element of mankind--reli
gio
He criticized the French for their “loving toleration” of “those who do not believe in
J
is, the Jews, for this in effect means an “open denunciation of those who believe
in Christ, of their civic honor and their honestly earned bread.” Fichte doubted t
hat Jews could ever
justice, mankind, and truth,” no matter how much opportunity they were given. Jews
were
beings.lxxi He argued further--and most notoriously--that Jews should not be awa
rded civil r
night Christians “chop off all their heads and replace them with new ones, in whic
h there w
single Jewish idea.”lxxii Fichte may not have been literally advocating physical a
nnihilation o
Jews, but he clearly wanted to destroy Jewishness. He also suggested expulsion: “I
see no
protect ourselves from the Jews, except to conquer their Promised Land for them
and send there.”lxxiii
Fichte was not alone among his contemporaries in using the language of violence
in
Jews. Other writers applied metaphors of torture and murder to Jews: “beat to deat
h,” “ex
gnawing worms,” “circumcision and castration,” “parasite extermination.”lxxiv The twentiet
see the actualization of Luther s and Fichte s violent rhetoric. The Nazis firs
t attempted to
but when the rest of the world refused to cooperate with this plan, the Nazis th
en execute
alternative, and “chopped off all their heads.” Luther and Fichte’s explosive combinat
ion o
antisemitism and German nationalism, along with racism, would become the fundame
ntal stimulus of the Holocaust.
Despite increasing secularization as in the other European nations, German socia
l, c
economic, and scientific groups all defined themselves as essentially Christian.
This trend
well into the twentieth century.lxxv Even consciously anti-ecclesiastical Christ
ians like Richa
“retained allegiance to Christian notions and doctrines,”lxxvi including Christian a
ntisemitism was widespread in Europe, but the Holocaust had its center in German
y.
After Fichte, Germans of every political stripe and social class argued either t
hat Jew
in order to become full citizens or that they were so soiled by their Jewishness
that they w
aliens. Germans felt that “the Jew was not one of us,” that something was wrong with
bein could never be fully German.lxxvii Indeed, Jews were hardly seen as human.
They were “the
subhuman--sinister, superstitious, backward, irrational, medieval, stubborn, and
filthy.”lxxviii
Most German Christians found ideas of equality and humane treatment for Jews rep
e
February 1832, Ludwig Börne (Judah Baruch) bitterly summed up the predicament of J
ews
making their way into German Christian society: “Some reproach me with being a Jew
, som
because of it, some pardon me for it, but all think of it.”lxxix Heinrich Heine ob
served that C
considered “Jewishness an incurable malady.”lxxx The young Chaim Weizmann observed t
ha
Germans, the Jews were like a splinter in the eye, even if it were gold, it was
still an incapa irritant.lxxxi
Long before the birth of the Nazi Party, generation after generation of Germans
were
into these antisemitic ideas by their Churches, their parents, their education.
Antisemitism long before the First World War. "It was never just Hitler and a fe
w Nazis."lxxxii
Hitler and the Nazis made sympathetic connections with almost every layer of Ger
m
except for the far Left--and with millions not within Germany.lxxxiii This was m
ade possible, e
shared Christian antisemitism. The German political, social, and religious elite
s, the farme
classes made the National-Socialist German Workers Party modern Germany s most
popu From the beginning of the post-World War One period--years before Hitler ca
me to power,
outbreak of the Second World War, years before the death factories of the Third
Reich--Ge
of the violence of Nazi language and of the Nazi promises to save Germany and de
stroy th
nothing to diminish German support for the regime and therefore of the Final Sol
ution of t Problem.
For the Nazis and for most Germans, God’s curse on the Jews was clear, and they wo
the Nazi government’s policy toward the Jews. Yale historian Robert Erickson concl
uded th
Christian theologians felt themselves “on the same side [as Hitler] of the Weltans
chauung
saw themselves and were seen by others as genuine Christians acting upon genuine
Chris
impulses.”lxxxiv Their attitudes toward the Jews were mirrored in those of Dietric
h Bonhoeffe Niemöller--the leading anti-Nazis--in the first few years of the Nazi
regime.
In 1933, Bonhoeffer, who later helped German Jews, defended the Reich s anti-Jew
is
state s measures against the Jewish people are connected . . . in a very special
way with t
Church of Christ, we have never lost sight of the idea that the ‘Chosen People,’ tha
t nailed
the world to the cross, must bear the curse of its action through a long history
of suffering
In a sermon of August 1935--three weeks before the first anti-Jewish Nuremberg D
ec issued--Pastor Niemöller drew a half-dozen parallels between the Nazis and thei
r German
the Jews.lxxxvi He presented the Jews as the paradigmatic evildoers in Christend
om. For him
was “dark and sinister” and the Jewish people could neither live nor die because it
was “u
The Jews are “a highly gifted people which produces idea after idea for the benefi
t of the w
whatever it takes becomes poisoned, and all that it ever reaps is contempt and h
atred bec
the world notices the deception and avenges itself in its own way.”lxxxvii Niemöller’s
observa
close to those of Hitler’s Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who in a speech of
May 19
What will be the solution of the Jewish question? . . . It is curious to note th
at the cou public opinion is rising in favor of the Jews refuse to accept them f
rom us. They call
pioneers of a new civilizaton, geniuses of philosophy and artistic creation, but
when
them to accept these geniuses, they close their borders; ‘No, no. We don’t want the
me to be the only case in the world history where people have refused to accept
ge
The leading Roman Catholic prelate of the period, Munich s Cardinal Michael von
Fau the Jews similarly to his Protestant colleagues. In his Advent Sermons for 1
933, Faulhaber
“Israel had repudiated and rejected the Lord’s annointed, had . . . nailed Him to th
e Cross.
the Temple was rent, and with it the covenant between the Lord and His people. T
he daug received the bill of divorce, and from that time forth Assuerus [Der Erw
ige Jude] wanders,
A broad basic middle-class consensus supported Nazi values.xc The misery and dis
tre
political/economic crisis, the Third Reich’s coercive terror, the brutalization as
sociated with
Nazi promise of great economic gain were crucial factors contributing to the suc
cess of th
But Germans supported the Nazis because they wanted to. They became Nazis becaus
e "t
so well to their interests and inclinations."xci Religious and racist antisemiti
sm prepared, co
encouraged Germans to collaborate with Hitler s regime and to accept Hitler s Fi
nal Solutio
Problem. Without this wide German consensus, the Nazi regime s "antisemitic poli
cies wou remained so many idle fantasies."xcii
Church-going Germans were squeamish about anti-Jewish violence on Germany s st
government solved this "problem" by establishing concentration camps and siting
the dea
Poland, for many Germans the anus mundi.xciii The reluctance of most of the youn
g anti-Na Helmut von Moltke’s Kreisau Circle to concern themselves with the Jews m
ay be traced to
bonds with Christianity, both Lutheran and Catholic, which they regarded ‘as the f
oundatio
and religious revival of our people.’”xciv Most conservative German resisters were a
ntisemit
Jews as unwanted aliens, never to be permitted German citizenship. These resiste
rs wante Fuehrer state without Hitler."xcv
During the 1930s, most German political parties including the National-Socialist
s ha
planks in their platforms. The vast majority of Christian Germans, by their coll
aboration or
government, seemed to agree with the proposition that the Jews should suffer dis
criminat
expropriation, or expulsion as part of “God’s plan” for them. The Reich s antisemitic
legisla
popular and widely supported.xcvi Antisemitism was the norm in Germany during th
e period
German government decided to murder all the Jews and the means established to ca
rry o Endlösung.
Although many Germans feared Hitler, many others admired his use of force agains
“enemies” outside and inside the nation.xcvii Although he planned ultimately to dest
roy Chr
institutions,xcviii Germans believed Hitler when he promised to employ the power
of the Thir
disunity and create a Germanic and Christian nation.xcix Germany did not have a
command voice insisting, “First a human being, then a Christian: this alone is lif
e’s order.”c This was
Denmark s leading Lutheran humanist Nikolai Grundtvig. Instead, the paradigmatic
Germa Martin Luther.
The language of Nazi-Deutsch confirms that there were few Christians who sensed
t part of the German polity, few who felt that Jews were authentic human beings.
RACISM
Long before the Nazis, many Christians found “a horrible and fascinating physical
ot
Jews.ci Several Church Fathers wrote that the Jews were fundamentally and repugn
antly al
Jews transmitted indelibly and permanently evil characteristics to their offspri
ng. The seco
Christian apologist Justin Martyr argued that God had given Moses’ Law to the Jews
in an a
the inherently sinful Jews’ evil in check.cii St. Augustine observed that no Jew c
ould ever lo
his forebears’ denial and murder of Christ.ciii St. Jerome claimed that all Jews w
ere Judas, in creatures who betrayed the Lord for money.civ St. Isidore of Sevil
le declared that the Jews’
never changes. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?”cv St. J
ohn Ch
Jews deicides with no chance for “atonement, excuse, or defense”cvi and “inveterate mu
rd
men possessed by the devil.”cvii In 1134, St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote that “it is
an insult
offspring of a Jew has occupied the chair of Peter.”cviii St. Thomas Aquinas regar
ded the Jew
inherently cruel people.cix It was because of the Jews innate cruelty, he charg
ed, that God
to slaughter animals in a kosher, i. e., relatively painless, way.cx At the end
of the thirteent
"authorities in the hierarchy” refused to admit Jews to conversion.cxi Crusaderscx
ii often see
destroying all the Jews, rather than baptizing them because they were convinced
that Jew inexpungeably evil characteristic
The most prominent development of the Christian racial idea took place in fiftee
nth-
century Spain.cxiii Spanish theologians believed that "Jews had soiled their fur
thest descend
corrupted [them] biologically.”cxiv The major Catholic orders in Spain adopted rac
ist regulat
early seventeenth century, even the Jesuits ordered that no man could become a p
riest un heritage could be traced back five generations.cxvi This “impediment of o
rigin” lasted until Holocaust.
In 1604, Father Prudencio de Sandoval wrote, “Who can deny that in the descendan
there persists and endures the evil inclination of their ancient ingratitude and
lack of unde Jewish ancestor] alone defiles and corrupts him.” In 1623, a Portugu
ese scholar, Vincente
held that “a little Jewish blood is enough to destroy the world.”cxvii Later in the
century, Fr. F
Torrejoncillo warned that “There is no evil the Jews do not desire. . . . To be en
emies of Chr
and of his Divine Law, it is not necessary to be of a Jewish father and mother.
One alone s
children must not “be suckled by Jewish vileness because that milk, being of infec
ted pers engender perverse inclinations.”cxviii
By making the Jews the devil’s people, Martin Luther put them beyond conversion. T
the Jews, he argued, was like “trying to cast out the devil . . ..”cxix “They have fai
led to lear from the terrible distress that has been theirs for over fourteen hu
ndred years in exile. . . propose to convert the Jews, for that is impossible.”cxx
He also wrote:
“Speaking to [Jews] about conversion is much the same as preaching the gosp
“From their youth they have imbibed such venomous hatred against the Goyim
parents and their rabbis, and they still continuously drink it. . . . It has pen
etra blood, marrow and bone, and has become part and parcel of their nature and “D
ear Christian, be advised and so not doubt that next to the devil, you have
venomous, and vehement foe than a real Jew who earnestly seeks to be a Jew linea
ge and circumcision infect them all.”
“It is impossible to convert the devil and his own, nor are we commande this.”cxxi
Just as an “umbilical relationship” exists between Old and New Testaments, so is it
p relationship between Christian and Nazi antisemitism. Hitler’s biological racism
conflicted
antisemitism but always presupposed it.cxxii A purely secular, unChristian racis
m would hav
to the few anti-Christian Nazis who needed a non-religious justification for the
ir antisemiti
racial theories helped give modern antisemitism the scientific veneer it lacked
. . ..”cxxiv Sim
rejecting the Church and imitating its Judaeophobia,cxxv Hitler agreed with the
Church s pos
were an alien anti-people who must be eliminated. Both Hitler and the churches r
egarded
rivals for men’s souls, as scapegoats for social movements, revolutions, wars, and
econom
that violated their world views, and as enemies to be defeated in proof of the v
ictors’ met
over “evil” and political power over life. Hitler kept returning to Christian ideas
that focused on the Jews’ inherent evil and id
the devil. Hitler argued that the Jew “stops at nothing, and in his vileness he be
comes . . .
personification of the devil[;] the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape
of the Jew.”cxx Christian antisemites, Hitler regarded Judaism as the “root of all e
vil.”cxxvii Sometimes Hitler spoke in biological-racial terms about the Jews. In 1
919, he wrote
are unquestionably a race, not a religious community.”cxxviii In Mein Kampf, he wr
ote that “r
lie in the langugage, but exclusively in the blood . . .; [the Jew] poisons the
blood of others
his own”; “the lost purity of the blood alone destroys inner happiness forever, plun
ges ma
for all time, and the consequences can never more be eliminated from body and sp
irit.”cxxi
tabletalk included the observation that the way to free Germany of disease was t
o “dispos the racial germ that corrupts the mixture of the blood.”cxxx
But secular racism, especially that enunciated by the Alfred Rosenberg, was priv
ate
Hitler s inner circle and by most ordinary Germans, although some rank-and-file
Nazis reg
racismcxxxi with an “official awe” second only to that of Mein Kampf. Rosenberg argu
ed that
possessed a race soul manifesting itself in a political state. He contended that
the dialecti
history is blood against blood. In mythic language, Rosenberg describes a world-
determini
between Aryans and Jews, the Jews being the only race worthy of mentioning as a
signific
Aryans. The mystical-magical leadership of the Führer will enable the German Volk
to dest conquer the inferior races by force.cxxxii
But support for Rosenberg s racist ideas was a minority attitude among the Nazis
an
among the German people.cxxxiii The Nazi government refused to issue the Myth (i
t had to b
privately) because Hitler officially stood neutral in matters of religious belie
f, and he want benefits of friendship of the Christian churches.cxxxiv
In his other books, Rosenberg himself argued on the basis of religious prejudice
, not
racism. In an essay,cxxxv he attacked the anti-Christian aspects of the Talmud.
Elsewhere,cxxx
the evil “Jewish spirit” created the Talmud, which in turn aggravated bad Jewish cha
racter
Rosenberg also characterized the Jewish “Law,” form, and materialism as anti-Christi
an. In contrasted authentic German Christianity with perfidious Jesuitism and Ju
daism.cxxxvii In public, Hitler’s inner circle may have expressed anti-Jewish biol
ogical racism, but
ridiculed these racist ideas. Hitler himself dismissed Rosenberg’s book.cxxxviii H
e told Bishop
April 1942, that “I must insist that Rosenberg’s Myth of the 20th Century is not to
be rega
expression of the official doctrine of the party. . . . Like most of the Gauleit
ers, I have myse
glanced cursorily at it.”cxxxix Goering and Goebbels thought Rosenberg s book was
ridiculou
called the Mythus “junk,” and Goebbels described it as “Weltanschauliches Gerülpse,” “ph
belching.”cxli G. M. Gilbert, the psychologist who examined the Nazi Nuremberg def
endants none of them had ever read Rosenberg.cxlii
Many racist antisemites believed that it was the Jewish spirit that was the real
enem
Lagarde wrote in 1853 that being German was “not a matter of blood, but of a spiri
tual sta Gemüt, nicht Geblüt.cxliii Although Lagarde was responsible for a virulent
biological assault Jews--"with trichinae and bacilli one does not negotiate, nor
are trichinae and bacilli to be
are exterminated as quickly and thoroughly as possible"cxliv--he was the son of
a Lutheran m
gravestone is carved with the epitaph, “The way of the cross is the road to salvat
ion.”cxlv A
den Bruck wrote of “a race of the spirit.”cxlvi Edouard-Adolphe Drumont, the foremos
t Frenc the nineteenth century, also defined race as did Hitler. “A race, that is
to say, a collection
who think the same, a totality representing a certain number of feelings, belief
s, hopes, a
traditions . . ..”cxlvii Houston Stewart Chamberlain in part rests his anti-Jewish
diatribe on th
Paul. “We must agree with Paul, the apostle, when he says: ‘For he is not a Jew who
is one flesh, but [a] person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision
is a matter of the
spiritual and not literal.” (Romans 2:28-9.) Chamberlain’s very unracist conclusion
was tha
Jew could overcome his Jewish spirit to become a real German, “a wholly humanized
Jew i
Jew.”cxlviii A few days before Hitler came to power, the bishop of Linz observed t
hat Aryans a together had to fight the “dangers and damages arising out of the Jew
ish spirit.”cxlix Parts of Mein Kampf seem much closer to Christian antisemitism t
han racism. Hitler
Jew’s “spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand y
ears prev
great founder of the new doctrine.”cl Hitler admitted a few months before the end
of his lif
biological racism had been a sham. Instead, he believed in “spiritual” racism. He ha
ted m
biological, Jewishness; he objected to the “Jewish mind” and to the Jewish religious
and cu
permeated Jewish thought and behavior.cli Hitler believed that the only way to e
liminate th
spirit was to destroy their flesh and blood. Jews were reificatons of the Jewish
spirit he des
suggested that beneath the surface of biological racism, a more essential “spiritu
al racism
individual Jews embodied an inherently evil Jewish spirit—an idea as old as Christ
ian trium
1939, Hitler noted “I know perfectly well . . . that in the scientific sense there
is no such th
biological] race.”cliii A few months before his death, Hitler again differentiated
between a ra
and one of the body.cliv He told his last private secretary, close associate, an
d second-in-co Bormann, that
we use the term Jewish race as a matter of convenience, for in reality and from
point of view there is no such thing as the Jewish race. There does, however, e
community. . . . It is [a] spiritually homogeneous group [to] which all Jews thr
o deliberately adhere . . . and it is this group of human beings to which we giv
e race.clv
Denying that the Jews were only “a religious entity,” since Jewish atheists existed,
Hitler d
Jews as “an abstract race of the mind [that] has its origins, admittedly, in the H
ebrew relig
the mind is something more solid, more durable than just a [biological] race, pu
re and sim ideas were consistent with traditional Christian racism.
NAZI DEUTSCH
Our language sets the parameters for our perceptions. Edward Sapir has noted tha
t
hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits
of our c
predispose certain choices of interpretation."clvii Antisemitism ingrained in la
nguage demon "mysterious essential connection" between a thing and its name.clvi
ii
Antisemitic language is not exclusive to Nazism nor to Germany. The historical d
ictio
Western languages reflect and perpetuate negative and hostile stereotypes of Jew
s. Altho
positive meanings associated with the word Jew, it is the negative ones that are
full to the
emotional energy. In the seventeenth century, Littré s French Dictionary defined J
uif as som
at usurious rates or anyone who gains money by means of deceit: "He is a young m
an eag quite a Jew."
The Oxford English Dictionary presents dozens of historical examples broken down
i
categories. Fully half the meanings are offensive, repulsive, if not scurillous,
like the line fr
"the jew is underneath the lot." One group of definitions associates the Jews wi
th money a
applied to a "grasping or extortionate money-lender or usurer, or a trader who d
rives hard deals craftily," whereas to Jew means to cheat. Examples: "the Jew tr
ies to push down the entry price into heaven"
"in medieval England . . . the name of Jew came to be associated in the popula u
sury and any extortionate practice"
Bishop Patrick: "Better we cannot express the most cut-throat dealing, than th l
ike a Jew’" "through the means of a jew-like commerce with the revolted slaves" Je
w carts are "always ready to take stolen goods inland"
Coleridge: "Jacob is a regular Jew, and practises all sorts of tricks and wiles"
W
Irving: "Some mode of screwing and jewing the world out of more interest tha ent
itled to"
"Jew boys go out every morning loaded with counterfeit copper, which they ex sil
ver"
Britannica Book of Year 1943: "there were tirades from Bankok radio against th (
probably Chinese) who were accused of profiteering" BBC, 9 February 1968: "just
like a jew boy heading for bankruptcy."
The Oxford English Dictionary also indicates that Jew has served as a prefix for
a wid negative terms:
Jew-bail is "insufficient bail"; a jewbird has an "ugly, conspicuous beak"; D. H
. "I do hate John’s Jewish nasal sort of style--so uglily moral. . . . Spring does
n’t
moral Jew-boys--for them perhaps least"; jewbush is one "characterized by po
and drastic properties," i.e., it makes one vomit and die; "before ever having s
declared that we were all like little crows and Jew girls"; "Jew girls are the b
est
distorted and crumbling remains of ancient tin-smelting furnaces are called Je
Jews’ letter indicates the mark of Cain, "a fouler blot than a Iewes letter in the
there is a Jew lizard; Ulysses: "I’ll brain that bloody jewman for using the holy
myrtle "in popular belief served as Christ’s crown of thorns"; Jews’ slime refers
bitumen; Jews’ thorn is a synonym for Christ’s thorn; "in 1871 Disraeli overrea
his constituency"; "you’re a dirty, bloomin’ tyke, Jewey"; "I’m told those Jewies
sort of a queer odour coming off them for dogs"; "the Jews have corrupted the
religion, so that it is their vices and free acts we stigmatize when we call che
a "their noses are a bit jewy"; "That mean, Jewy, secretive, petty creature." Th
e Oxford English Dictionary also describes the religious defamations:
"crucify his Saviour worse Than those Jew-Troopers, that threw out, When they
his coat"; "the iowes sloghe crist"; "Charles Grossus was i-poysoned by a jewe s
hould do the Jews out of Englond"; "We preach Iesu Christ crucifeit, sclander
folie to the gentils"; "She shall have skin like a mummy, and the beard of a Jew
the wounds roused amongst the Jew-haters the old story of the blood sacrifice Co
mmon Prayer, "Have mercy upon all Iewes, Turkes, Infidels, and heretikes."
But of all the languages of Europe, German may have possessed the greatest poten
language of the Final Solution. German in particular contains a multiplicity of
words indica
four times as many as in French: Ausrottung, Austreibung, Demolierung, Tötung, Unt
ergan
Verheerung, Vernichtung, Vertilgung, Verwüstung, Zerfall, Zergrunderichten, Zerstöru
ng, Z
To this array of deadly words, the Nazis added more than seventy euphemisms for
murder
absachlachten, abspritzen, Aktionen, arbeitsunfähig, Arrest, aufgelöst, Auflockerung
, ausg
ausgeraumt, ausgerottet, ausgesondert, ausgleichen, auskämmen, auslöschen, Ausmerzu
Ausschaltung, ausserordentliche Befriedung, aussiedlungen, Aussonderung, Auswählen
, B
bearbeiten, behandelt, Beseitigung, Besonderhandlung, betreuen, durchleuchten, e
insatzu
emgelegt, Endlösung, Endziel, Entjudung, entlassen, entlaust, erfassen, erledigt,
erleichte
evakuiert, fertig machen, Gnadentod, Germanisierung, gesonderte, Gewalteinwirkun
g, Ge
Grossbetreib, Grossexekution, Gruppenmord, Himmelfahrt, hingerichtet, Inschutzha
ftnahm
Invalidenaktion, Judenreinigung, Krankenauslese, liquidieren, Massenliquidierung
, Massen
arbeiten lassen, neutralisieren, Nichteinsatzfahig, nichtslebensfähig, räumen, Reini
gung, S
Schädlingsbekämpfung, Schutzhaft, Selbstreinigung, Selektion, Sippenhaft, Sonderakti
on,
Sonderbehandlung, Sonderkost, Sondermassnahmen, Sport, Strafappell, Strafkompani
e, s
bestraft, Sühnemassnahmen, summarische Aburteilung, Transport, Transportunfähig, Übe U
mgelegt, gesonderte Unterbringung, Vernichtung. The most influential German ency
clopedia of the early eighteenth century, Grosses
Universal Lexicon, followed Luther’s lead in its description of Jews.clx Its artic
le on Jews con
the Jews rejected Jesus as the Christ, they became satan’s people. “And how often ha
ve th
Christian children, crucified them, battered them to pieces! They are the worst
thieves, an
their distinctive insignia. . . . Yes, God has marked them in their very natures
. . . . They rou
horror. . . . [T]hey killed the Son of God, and crucified the Lord of Glory, who
se blood still w . . ..”clxi
In the Deutsches Wörterbuch of the Brothers Grimm, Jude indicates offensive, slove
n
deceitful. Their examples are "Dirty as an old Jew; he stinks like a Jew; to tas
te like a dead
like a Jew means worthless; Jew refers to part of a pig s spinal column; to Jew
(jüdeln) mea
bargain, or smell like a Jew. Christians involved in money-lending were called K
risten-Jude usury was termed the Judenspiess, or Jews’ spear. Nazi language follow
ed traditional vocabulary in creating a fictitious Jew. It was this
false and hateful image of Jews, as reflected in language that led to the mass m
urder of re
Aldous Huxley observed that "If you call a man a bug, it means you propose to tr
eat him a
many, if not most, Germans and Europeans, the Jews were not only Christ-killers
but Paras
Schädling, parasites and vermin. There was no mistake that the poison gas, Zyklon-
B, use millions of Jews was an insecticide.
Moreover, there is mounting evidence that from Hitler down to the average German
intimate relationship between their conscious and unconscious religious values a
nd their p
Jews. The Nazis found that their antisemitic propaganda was most effective when
it coinci Christian defamations.clxiii
The pre-existing language of contempt for Jews was expanded upon by the National
literary sense the Nazis may have destroyed "the spirit of the language,"clxiv b
ut they also f
antisemitic linguistic traditions of Martin Luther and other earlier antisemites
. A Nazi sloga
Sind Unser Unglück," is often attributed to nineteenth-century historian Heinrich
Treitschk originated in Luther s Von den Juden und Ihren Lügen," where he wrote th
at the Jews "are
a plague, a pestilence, a sheer misfortune for our country.”clxv Other slogans suc
h as "Deut
erwache!" (Germany Awaken!), "Kraft durch Freude" (Strength through Joy), or "Wo
der Fü
Sieg" (Where the Führer is, there is victory) were used as "ideological leitmotifs
" intended
aspects of National Socialism.clxvi Hitler and other Nazis employed these slogan
s, quotation
and proverbial expressionsclxvii to make their points, because they sensed that
their audien receptive to this language.clxviii
The National-Socialists vocabulary of vainglorius cant, obfuscating euphemisms,
en
"political revolution" with a unique sense of German rebirth. This "utter debase
ment of pu
enabled the leaders of the Third Reich to cut through reason to the emotions, to
express w people mostly already felt, to lend government support to their hates
and prejudices and
smoothed the way for Germans--and others--to see Nazi programs as valid and good
, inde
dying for. Nazi-Deutsch disguised Nazi programs,clxx policies, attitudes, and be
haviors from
world, from their Jewish and other victims, and perhaps from themselves. Later i
n the war
period of Sprachregelung, speech control, the Nazis created terms to disguise th
e true pur
activities, although the insiders knew they referred to the Third Reich s polici
es and action
Jews. Aldo Enzi suggests that the relationship between Nazi-Deutsch and the Thir
d Reich w
one, like the god Janus. To conceal acts of violence that would offend the ordin
ary German
human dignity, the Nazis employed "seemingly innocuous words and expressions suc
h as:
detention, security services, liquidation, final solution, assign to wor
k, scientific expe
Deutsch vocabulary contained words that expressed] two aspects, two malleable me
aning
switched as required--one meaning for the masses . . . and one for the initiated
, the rulers
charge."clxxi The Third Reich used euphemistic expressions that referred to appe
aling ethica
justice, loyalty, and to mythic heroism and racial purity as tools of persuasion
.clxxii This lang what was really happening from the victims and from the Nazis
themselves.
Hitler’s public speechesclxxiii and private conversations indicate that Christian
antisem
many of his anti-Jewish ideas, which paralleled those of his listeners.clxxiv Ge
rmans were rec
language. The cultural historian George Steiner commented that "Hitler sensed in
German
than that of Goethe, Heine, and Mann; a rasping cadence, half nebulous jargon, h
alf obsce
of turning away in nauseated disbelief, the German people gave massive echo to t
he man
The centuries of Judenhass, the additional support of the antisemitic racial the
ories, the co
antisemitism by many political and religious authorities conditioned many if not
most of th people to follow Hitler into the Holocaust. At a party convention in
1934 Joseph Goebbels
the use of such language: "We must speak the language which the folk understands
. Who speak to the folk must, as Luther says, pay heed to folk speech."clxxvi In
Mein Kampf, Hitler
not measure the speech of a statesman to his people by the impression that it le
aves in a professor, but by the effect it exerts on the people" (477).clxxvii
This handbook of Nazi-Deutsch for the first time presents a complete lexicon of
Nazi for American and English readers.
iArthur iiJacob
Cohen, The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition (New York 1963), 52. Katz, "Was
the Holocaust Predictable? in Yehuda Bauer and Nathan Rotenstreich, eds., The
Holocaust in Historical Experience, 34, 36.
iiiWilken, "Insignissima Religio, Certe Licita?" 63. ivAmbrose, "In Expositionem
Evangelii Secundum Lucam," in J.-P. Migne,PL,15:1630. vBaersch, Claus-Ekkehard.
Erloesung und Vernichtung: Dr. phil. Josef Goebbels: Zur Psyche jungen National
sozialisten, 1923-1927. Muenchen, 1987. viQuoted by Friedrich Heer, God’s First Lo
ve (New York 1967), 37. viiAugustine, “Commentaries on Psalms 58 and 59,” in PL, 36-
7:705. viiiRichard Rubenstein, After Auschwitz (Indianapolis 1966), 74. ixHomili
es Against Judaizing Christians, 4.7.4; see also 1.4.1. xApostolic Constitutions
, 2.61.1; Homilies Against Judaizing Christians, 1.3.1, 1.3.5, 1.4.2. xiHomilies
Against Judaizing Christians, 1.2.4-6. See also John Chrysostom, Demonstration
to Gentiles That Christ Is God, 4. PG 48:819. xiiC.T. 3:1:5, 15:5:5, 16:5:44, 16
:7:3, 16:8:7, 16:8:19, 16:8:22, 16:9:4 and Codex Justinianus 1:5:7. xiiiFor a co
ntrary point of view, see Robert Burns, “Antisemitism and Anti-Judaism in Christia
n Catholic Historical Review 20 (1984), 90-3. xivRobert Chazan sees in the First
Crusade’s slaughters of Jews in 1096 the emergence of th Jews. European Jewry, 21
4. xvSimonsohn I, docs. 79 and 82. xviThomas Aquinas, De Regimine principum et d
e regimine Judaeorum (Turin 1924), 117; Op 1927), 1:488. See also his Summa Theo
logiae, 11-11, Q. l0, a. 12, and 111, Q. 68, a. 10. (Als Theologica.) xviiThomas
Aquinas, “Letter to the Duchess of Brabant,” in Chazan, Church, State and Jew, 2 xv
iiiAside from context, there is no way to distinguish between “slave” and “serf” using t
he m servus. xixSimonsohn, History, 139. xxLester Little, “The Jews in Christian E
urope,” in Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in (Ithaca 1978), reprinted in
Jeremy Cohen, Essential Papers, 277. xxiRiley-Smith, “The First Crusade and the P
ersecution of the Jews,” 51-6; Chazan, European xxiiAn anonymous chronicler of Mai
nz in Adolf Neubauer and Moritz Stern, eds., Hebräische B Judenverfolgungen während
der Kreuzzüge (Berlin 1892), 176, 169; Robert Chazan, “The He Chronicles,” Revue des étu
des juives: Historia Judaica 33 (January-June 1974), 249-50, 253; in Monumenta G
ermaniae Historica, Scriptores (Hannover 1826-96), 5:465. xxiiiSee Langmuir, His
tory, Religion, and Antisemitism, 291 and Toward a Definition of Antise xxivAs a
t Monieux, Rouen, and Jerusalem. The Crusaders planned to destroy the Jews at pr
ay in the Speyer synagogue but the Jews anticipated the Crusaders, and so the sl
aughter took p synagogue. Golb, “New Light on the Persection of French Jews at the
Time of the First Crusad xxvRiley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crus
ading, 53; Riley-Smith, The Crusades ( 17. This kind of behavior characterized t
he Nazis as well. xxviFor the psychological motivations behind these charges, se
e Magdalene Schultz, “The Bl the History of Childhood,” in Alan Dundes, ed., The Blo
od Libel Legend (Madison 1991), 273Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism
(Berkeley 1990), 261. xxviiKeller, Diaspora, 237; see also Cohn, Pursuit of the
Millennium, Chapter 7. xxviiiAugustine, “Reply to Faustus, the Manichaean,” F. E. T
almage, ed., Disputation and Dial 1975), 31; and Commentary on Psalms 58 and 59,
in J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae, Cursus Com Latina, 36-7:705.
xxixGrayzel I, Documents 13, 14, 18, 41, 49, 53, 59; Grayzel II, Documents 26, 2
7, 33, 50; Si 379, 434. xxxGuido Kisch, “Necrologue Reinhold Lewin, 1888-1942,” Hist
oria Judaica 8 (l946), 217-9. xxxiLewin, Luthers Stellung zu den Juden, 110. xxx
iiGerhard Falk, The Jew in Christian Theology: Martin Luther s Anti-Jewish Vom S
chem Ham xxxiiiLuther, “Jews,” 277, 288, 264-5, 156-7, 164, 256, 212. The Nazis made
the same assoc Trunk, Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution (New York 1979), 273
. xxxivFalk, 239. xxxvLuthers Werke (Erlangen 1854), 32:298, 282; and in Hartman
n Grisar, Luther (St. Louis 1 5:406. See also the Weimar edition of Luther’s works
[WA], 53:587, 600-01, 619. xxxviFalk, 239-40. xxxviiHans Hillerbrand, “Martin Lut
her and the Jews,” in James Charlesworth, ed., Jews and C 1990), 132. xxxviiiLuthe
r implies that this is impossible. xxxixLuther, “Jews,” 269-72. xlLuther, “Jews,” 265. T
his last phrase was employed likewise by the eminent 19th-c. Germa Treitschke, t
he Pan-German League, and the Nazis. xliLuther, “Jews,” 272, 292. xliiQuoted in Lewi
n, Luthers Stellung zu den Juden, 77. Another advocate of permanently shu mouths
was John Chrysostom. Homilies Against the Jews, 5.1.6; 7.2.3. xliiiSee Robert A
lter, “From Myth to Murder,” The New Republic (20 May 1991), 40. xlivLuther, “Jews,” 242
, 289, 267. xlvFalk, 247. xlviMartin Stöhr, “Martin Luther and die Juden,” in Wolf-Die
ter Marsch and Karl Thieme, eds., (Mainz, Göttingen 1961), 127-9, and Haim Hillel
Ben-Sasson, “Jewish-Christian Disputation in Empire,” Harvard Theological Review 59(
1966), 369-71; Wilhelm Maurer, “Die Zeit der Reform Rengstorf and Siegfried von Ko
rtzfleisch, eds., Kirche und Synagogue (Stuttgart 1968), 1:378 Stellung zu den J
uden, 110; Oberman, The Roots of Antisemitism, 9. xlviiSalo Baron, A Social and
Religious History of the Jews (New York 1952-69), 13:429, n. 26. xlviiiJonathan
Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism (Oxford 1989), 12-3. xlixGeorg
Liebe, Das Judentum in der deutschen Vergangenheit (Leipzig1903), 37. lShachar,
The Judensau, 87-88 n. 239. liR. Edelmann, “Ahasuerus the Wandering Jew: Origin a
nd Background,” in Galit Hasan-Rokem eds., The Wandering Jew: Essays in the Interp
retation of a Christian Legend (Bloomington IN liiPaul Rose, Revolutionary Antis
emitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner (Princeton 1990), 2 liiiSterling, 56. Sti
g Moller s term. livStig Moller s term. lvNicholas de Lange, Atlas of the Jewish
World (New York 1984), 44; Graetz, History of the Jew lviJohannes Brosseder, Lu
thers Stellung zu den Juden im Spiegel seiner Interpreten (Munich 1 lviiSee K. v
on der Bach, Luther als Judenfeind (Berlin 1931), E. Vogelsang, Luthers Kampf Ge
(Tübingen 1938), and Tal, Christians and Jews in Germany. lviiiChamberlain, Deuts
chlands Kampfziel (Munich 1916), 61. lixTrial of Major War Criminals Before the
International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg 1947-194 lxHe forbade "the synagogue
of Satan," itself a quotation from Revelations, and "the enemie having any power
over Christians. Pope Gregory VII, "Epistola II: Ad Alphonsum Regem Caste Latin
a, 148:604-5; in Blumenkranz, Les auteurs chrétiens, Doc. 238. lxiHeer, God’s First
Love, 130. lxiiMosse, Toward the Final Solution, 205.
lxiiiHeer, God’s First Love, 284-6. lxivKurt Ludecke, I Knew Hitler (London 1938),
465-6, in The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, ed. Ba lxvJohn Conway, “Protestant Missio
ns to the Jews, 1810-1980: Ecclesiastical Imperialism or T Aberration?” Holocaust
and Genocide Studies 1 (1986), 135; Robert Ericksen, Theologians Un Haven 1985).
lxviErnst Ehrlich, “Luther und die Juden,” in Kremers, 86. lxviiFichte, Reden an di
e deutsche Nation (1808), Sixth Address, Point 81. lxviiiThe phrase “state within
a state” had been used against the French Huguenot Freemasons. Jacob Katz, “A State
Within a State: The History of an Antisemitic Slogan,” Proc Academy of Sciences an
d Humanities vol. 4, no. 3, and Jews and Freemasons in Europe, 172 MA 1970), 223
-4. lxixLuther, “The Jews and Their Lies,” 137-8, 265. lxxJohann Fichte, Beitrag zur
Berichtigung der Urteile des Publikums über die französische R Sämtliche Werke (Berli
n 1845-6), 6:149-50. lxxiFichte, Beitrag, 6:149. lxxiiFichte, Beitrag, 6:150. lx
xiiiFichte, Beitrag, 6:149-50. lxxivEleonore Sterling, Judenhass: Die Anfänge des
politischen Antisemitismus in Deuts (Frankfurt 1969), 128-9. lxxvUriel Tal, Chri
stians and Jews in Germany: Religion, Politics, and Ideology in the Second R (It
haca 1975), 291-2; George Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of Europea
n Racism esp. 119, 121, 127, and ch. 11. lxxviJacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto (New
York 1978), 87. lxxviiRobert Alter, “From Myth to Murder,” The New Republic (20 May
1991), 34. lxxviiiSterling, 67-8. lxxixHannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitari
anism (Cleveland 1958), 64. lxxxKatz, Out of the Ghetto, 210. lxxxi“When someone h
as something in his eye, he doesn’t care whether it is a piece of gold he wants it
out.” Fritz Stern, “The Burden of Success: Reflections on German Jewry,” in Dream (Ne
w York 1987), 111n. lxxxiiWeiss, Ideology of Death, 142. lxxxiiiadd cite to germ
an book i read last year. lxxxivRobert Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler (New H
aven 1985), 1, 26, 33, 35, 48, 55, 58 lxxxvBonhoeffer, Gesämmelte Schriften, 2:49-
50. lxxxviNiemöller, Here Stand I! pp. 193-8. lxxxviiNiemöller, Here Stand I! p. 195
. lxxxviiiNuremberg Document NG 1531. lxxxixMichael Faulhaber, Judaism, Christia
nity, and Germany (London 1934), 13-14. xcKershaw, Popular Opinion, 154. xciPete
r€Fritzsche,€Germans€into€Nazis€(Cambridge€MA€1998),€8,€2089. xciiGellately, Gestapo and G
iety, 184. xciiiMarcel Ophuls, The Sorrow and the Pity, interview. xcivG. van Ro
on, Neuordnung im Widerstand, (Munich 1967), 561. xcvHermann Graml, et al., Germ
an Resistance to Hitler, 112.ƒ xcviPeukert, Inside Nazi Germany, 60; Gellately, Ge
stapo and German Society, 206, 207, 214 Marcel Ophuls, The Sorrow and the Pity,
interview. xcviiKurt Pätzold, “Terror and Demagoguery in the Consolidation of the Fa
scist Dictatorship in 34,” in Michael Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann, eds., Radica
l Perspectives on the Rise of Fa
(New York:1989). xcviiiHitler, Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 1941-1944 (New York
1962), 159; John Conway, “B Swastika,” in Michael Berenbaum, ed., A Mosaic of Victim
s (New York 1990), 181-2; Ian Kersh Myth” (Oxford 1987), 2, 5, 106, 109, 112; Hitl
er, Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 83-4, 158, 29 xcixRobert Eriksen, “A Radical Mino
rity: Resistance in the German Protestant Church,” in Fra Lawrence Stokes, eds., G
ermans Against Nazism (New York1990), 119. cJaroslav Pelikan, “Grundtvig’s Influence
,” in Leo Goldberger, ed., The Rescue of the Danish J 1987), 174, 176-7, 179-80.
ciRobert
Alter, “From Myth to Murder,” The New Republic (20 May 1991), 34, 37-8.
ciiDialogue with Trypho, 2:23. ciiiGerhart Ladner, “Aspects of Patristic Anti-Juda
ism,” Viator 2(1971), 362; St. Augustine, Ad 10. civSt. Jerome, The Homilies of Sa
int Jerome (Washington, D.C., 1964), 1:255, 258-62. cvRosemary Ruether, Faith an
d Fratricide (New York 1965), 130.
cviHomilies
Against Judaizing Christians, 6.2.10.
cvii8 Orations Against the Jews, I. 4.
cviiiMary cixPope
Stroll, The Jewish Pope: Ideology and Politics in the Papal Schism of 1130 (Leid
en 1987), 166.
Leo XIII in Aeterni Patris, 4 August 1879.
cxSumma Theologiae, 1a 2ae, 102, 6.8. cxiEdward Synan, The Popes and the Jews in
the Middle Ages (New York l965), 120, l34.
cxiiRiley-Smith, cxiiiYosef
“The First Crusade and the Persecution of the Jews,” 51-2.
Yerushalmi, Assimilation and Racial Antisemitism (New York 1982).
cxivLéon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth (New York 1974), 12-13; Albert Sicroff, Les cont
roverses d "purete de sang" en Espange du XVe au XVIIe siecle (Paris 1960), and
Michael Glatzer, “Pablo the Events of 1391,” in Shmuel Almog, Antisemitism Through t
he Ages (Oxford 1988), 127-3 cxvJames Reites, S. J., "St. Ignatius of Loyola and
the Jews," Studies in the Spirituality of Jesu 1981), 15, 16, 32.
cxviJames
Reites, S. J., “St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Jews,” Studies in the Spirituality of
Jesuits (September 1981).
cxviiFriedman, “Jewish Conversion, the Spanish Pure Blood Laws and Reformation,” 16-
7. cxviiiFrank
Manuel, Broken Shaft (Cambridge MA 1992), 223-4, and Yerushalmi, Assimilation an
d Racial Antisemitism, 16.
cxixMartin Luther, “That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew,” in Walther Brandt, ed., Luthe
r’s Works 1967), 45:213; repeated in Vom Schem Hamphoras. cxxLuther, “Jews,” 137-8. Se
e also Lewin, Luthers Stellung, 77.
cxxiMartin
Luther, “The Jews and Their Lies,” in Luther’s Works, transl. by Franklin Sherman (Phi
ladelphia 1971), 170, 216, 267, 217, 268-9, 285, 269, 286, 253.
cxxiiSee Sterling, Judenhass, and Herman Greive, Theologie und Ideologie: Kathol
izmus und Deutschland und Osterreich (Heidelberg 1969). For a secular analysis o
f Hitler’s racism, see Wippermann, ”Hitler’s Racism,” The Racial State, 37-43. cxxiiiSee
George Mosse, Toward the Final Solution, 119, 121, 127. cxxivChristof Dipper, “De
r Deutsche Widerstand und die Juden,” Geschichte und Gesellsc See also Paul Lawren
ce Rose, Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany From Kant to Wagn 14. cxxvFor Hit
ler’s use of the Church as a model for many elements of Nazism having nothing t an
tisemitism, see Waite, Psychopathic God, 32-6. cxxviHitler, Mein Kampf, 324. cxx
viiScholder, “Judentum und Christentum in der Ideologie und Politik des Nationalso
zialism 198. cxxviiiWerner Masur, ed. Hitler’s Letters and Notes (New York 1976),
210. cxxixHitler, Mein Kampf, 312, 316, 327, see also 305.
cxxxHenry Picker, ed., Hitler’s Tischgespräche im Fürerhauptquartier, 1941-1942 (Bonn
1951 cxxxiAs expressed in Rosenberg’s Der Mythus des 20 Jahrhunderts (Myth of the
20th Century Rosenberg, Race and Race History and Other Essays (New York 1974),
198-9, 68-70, 175-90. cxxxiiSee Robert Pois, ed., Race and Race History and Othe
r Essays by Alfred Rosenberg (Ne cxxxiiiPeter Matheson, ed., The Third Reich and
the Christian Churches (Grand Rapids 1981), cxxxivWright, “The German Protestant
Church,” 398. cxxxvUnmoral im Talmud (Munich 1920). cxxxviDie Spur des Juden im Wa
ndel der Zeiten (Munich 1920). cxxxviiJudentum, Jesuitismus, Deutsches Christent
um (Munich 1932). cxxxviiiFranz von Papen, Memoirs (London 1952), 261. cxxxixAdo
lf Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Conversations,194l-1944 (New York 1953), 400. See also “T
Rosenberg’s ‘Mythus,’” in Wiener Library Bulletin, 7: (1953), 33. cxlSimilarly, in Dece
mber 1943 Mussolini called the Fascist Race Manifesto “a piece of pseud (astruseri
a scientifica) . . ..” Renzo De Felice, Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fasci
smo (Turi Bruno Spampanato, Contromemoriale (Rome 1951-2), 2:130-2; in Meir Mich
aelis, Mussolini a 1978), 396-7. cxli“The Story of Rosenberg’s ‘Mythus,’” 33. cxliiG. M. G
ilbert, Nuremberg Diary (New York 1961), 321. cxliiiPaul de Lagarde, Die gegenwärt
igen Aufgaben der deutschen Politik in Deutsche Schri 30. cxlivJuden und Indoger
manen (Göttinger 1887), 339, in Alex Bein, “Modern Antisemitism and Jewish Question,”
Yad Vashem Studies 3 (1959), 14. cxlvRobert Lougee, Paul de Lagarde, l827-l89l:
A Study of Radical Conservatism in Germany 1961), 151-4. cxlviFritz Stern, The P
olitics of Cultural Despair (Berkeley 1974), 201. cxlviiDrumont, La France Juive
(Paris 1885), 2:572. cxlviiiSteven Aschheim, “The Myth of ‘Judaization’ in Germany,’” 230
. cxlixPulzer, The Rise of Political Antisemitism, 312. clHitler, Mein Kampf, 30
7. cliSee Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism, 348. cliiIn the early 1
920s, Hitler stated this idea to Dietrich Eckart. Eckart, Der Bolshewismus, 46 M
yth of ‘Judaization’ in Germany,’” in Jehuda Reinharz and Walter Schatzberg, eds., The J
ewi German Culture (Hanover NH 1985), 240. cliiiHermann Rauschning, Hitler Speak
s (London 1939), 229. clivIn his final Political Testament, after blaming the Je
ws for the war, Hitler would “call upon and the people scrupulously to uphold the
racial laws and mercilessly to oppose the universa nations, international Jewry.”
Nuremberg Document PS-3569. clvFirst published in French by Fayard as Le Testame
nt politique de Hitler: Notes Recueillies p (Paris 1959), it contains an importa
nt monologue of 13 February 1945. Republished in Englis of Adolf Hitler: The Hit
ler-Bormann Documents, February-April 1945 (London 1960). clviHitler, The Testam
ent of Adolf Hitler, 55-6.
clviiJohn
Carroll, ed., Language, Thought, and Reality (Cambridge MA 1956), 134. See also
Haig Bosmajian, The Language of Oppression (1974).
clviiiMargaret Schlauch, The Gift of Language (New York 1955), 13.
clixRose, Revolutionary Antisemitism, 6; James Young, Writing and Rewriting the
Holocaust (B 1988), 4. clxGrosses Vollständiges Universal Lexicon (Grand Complete
Universal Lexicon), published in clxiManuel, Broken Staff, 250-1. clxiiSee ch. 4
.
clxiiiMarlis Steinert, Hitler s War and the Germans (Columbus 1977), 334. clxivH
ans Jacob, "An ihrer Sprache sollt Ihr sie erkennen: Die Gleichschaltung der deu
tschen Wort, 1 (1938), 81-86. Wolfgang Mieder has studied how the National Socia
lists began to cha language. See Wolfgang Mieder, " ... as if I were the master
of the situation : Proverbial Mani Hitler s Mein Kampf," DE PROVERBIO: An Electr
onic Journal of International Proverb Studies, V University of Tasmania, Austral
ia. Many of the following citations derive from Professor Miede clxvLuther, “Jews,”
265. clxviSee Mieder, " ... as if I were the master of the situation, " and Sieg
fried Bork, Mißbrauch Tendenzen nationalsozialistischer Sprachregelung (München, 197
0), 50-51. clxviiKarl Kraus, Die dritte Walpurgisnacht, ed. by Heinrich Fischer
(München: Kösel, 1952), 0 clxviiiBork, Mißbrauch der Sprache, 91-95; Walther Dieckmann
, Sprache in der Politik (Heidelberg, 1969), 108; Sigrid Frind, Die Sprache als
Propagandainstrument in der Publizisti Reiches, untersucht an Hitlers "Mein Kamp
f" und den Kriegsjahrgängen des "Völkischen Beob University of Berlin, 1964), 70-73;
Sigrid Frind, "Die Sprache als Propagandainstrument des Nationalsozialismus," M
uttersprache, 76 (1966), 129-135; Jürgen Henningsen, Bildsamkeit, Sprache und Nati
onalsozialismus (Essen, 1963), 14-16; Ger vom Ende der Sprache des Nationalsozi
alismus ," Diskussion Deutsch, 19 (1974), 445-464. clxixKatherine Powers, "When
Finding the Words Is a Matter of Life, Death, and Sanity," Bo 30, 2000, E4. clxx
See Cornelia Berning, Vom Abstammungsnachweis zum Zuchtwort: Vokabular des Natio
n (Berlin, 1964); Werner Betz, "The National-Socialist Vocabulary," in The Third
Reich, ed. by M John Fried and Edmond Vermeil (New York, 1955), 784-796; Siegfr
ied Bork, Mißbrauch der Sp nationalsozialistischer Sprachregelung (München, 1970); R
olf Glunk, "Erfolg und Mißerfolg de nationalsozialistischen Sprachlenkung," Zeitsc
hrift für deutsche Sprache, 22 (1966), 57-73,1 83-113,178-188; 24 (1968), 72-91, 1
84-191; 26 (1970), 84-97, 176-183; 27 (1971), 113-123 Paechter, Nazi-Deutsch: A
Glossary of Contemporary German (New York, 1944); Wolfgang Sa Sprachgebrauch von
Nationalsozialisten vor 1933 (Hamburg, 1978); Eugen Seidel and Ingeb Sprachwand
el im Dritten Reich (Halle, 1961). clxxi Aldo Enzi, Il lessico della violenza ne
lla Germania nazista (Bologna, 1971), 18. clxxiiAnna-Vera Sullam, "A Name for Ex
termination." clxxiiiAll quotations of Hitler s speeches are cited from the stan
dard edition by Max Domarus Proklamationen 1932-1945, 2 vols (Neustadt a. d. Ais
ch, 1962-1963), vol. 1, 244. All the translations into English are by Wolfgang M
ieder. clxxivRobert Waite, The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler (New York 1977), 3
5-6. Adolf Hitler, M Raoul de Roussy de Sales (New York 1973), 26-7, 597; Adolf
Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston 1943 in The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, ed. Baynes, 240
, 386-7; Lapide, Three Popes and the Jews, 9 Ideology of Death, 390; Friedrich H
eer, God s First Love, 309; Kershaw, “The Hitler Myth,” 10 Germans (New York 1974),
196; clxxvGeorge Steiner, "The Hollow Miracle" (1959) in his Language and Silenc
e: Essays on Lan and the Inhuman (New York, 1967), 99. clxxviCornelia Berning, "
Die Sprache der Nationalsozialisten," Zeitschrift für deutsche Wortfo 109. clxxvii
All numbers in parentheses refer to the English translation of Adolf Hitler, Mei
n Kampf, Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin [Sentry Edition], 1962; 1st ed.
1947). Professor Mieder has provided a more colloquial translation of the Germa
n proverbia language.