Source: Saul Friedlaender, Chapter 3 in: Nazi Germany and the Jews , Vol. I - The Years of Persecution 1933-1939, (New York 1997), p. 73-112.
More ominous, however, than cultural modernity was left-wing culture in all its aspects. Within months of the end of the war, Jewish revolutionaries were easy targets of the counter-revolution. After Rathenau's murder no Jew (with the exception of the Socialist Finance Minister Rudolf Hilferding) played any significant role in Weimar politics. On the other hand, left-wing political, social, and cultural criticism and innovation were often ΓÇ£JewishΓÇ¥. If cultural contributions by Jews were far out of proportion to their numerical state,' Deak writes, their participation in left-wing intellectual activities was even more disproportionate. Apart from orthodox Communist literature where there were a majority of non-Jews, Jews were responsible for a great part of the leftist literature in Germany. (The periodical] Die Weltbuehne was in this respect not unique; Jews published, edited, and to a great part wrote the other left-wing intellectual magazines. Jews played a decisive role in the pacifist and feminist movements, and in the campaigns for sexual enlightenment.' 154
Polemics regarding the role of Jews on the cultural scene raged and became more virulent as the Nazi movement grew in strength and as the republic approached its end. One of the most extreme forums of the Right was the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg's Kampfbund fuer deutsche Kultur (Fighting League for German Culture), established in 1928; it achieved wide influence by opening its ranks to a variety of anti-republic, anti-Left, anti-Jewish elements - from members of the Bayreuth Circle to conservative Catholics like Othmar Spann, from fanatic anti-Semitic literary specialists like Adolf Bartels to Alfred Heuss, publisher of the Zeitschrift fuer Musik. But sometimes the debates took place in more neutral contexts or were even initiated by Jewish organisations. Thus, in 1930, Max Naumann's Association of National German Jews invited the right-wing literary critic Paul Fechter to lecture on ΓÇ£The Art Scene and the Jewish Question.ΓÇ¥ Fechter did not mince words. He warned his listeners that the ΓÇ£anti-GermanismΓÇ¥ of left-wing Jewish intellectuals was a major source of rising anti-Semitism and that the Germans would not tolerate for long the continuation of this state of things. National Jews and national Germans, Fechter suggested should act in common to oppose such anti-national Jewish intellectual attacks. In a more roundabout way, he hinted at the excessive presence of Jews in German art, literature and theatre. This to, although unsaid, could be understood as a source of growing anti-Jewish feelings: I feel obliged to express,' declared Fechter, that a great number of German authors, painters, playwrights go around today with the feeling that it is much more difficult to find a place in German theatres, on the German book market, in the German art business, for things German than for others.' 155
Fechter's lecture was published in the January 1931 issue of Rudolf Pechel's Deutsche Rundschau, with the following editorial comments: We reproduce [the lecture] as it indicates one of the sources of the dangerous growth of anti-Semitism clearly confirmed during the second half of 1930 and as it indicates some ways that still may allow us to counter this danger.' 156 A bitter debate followed. It is in this context that the novelist Jakob Wassermann, whose autobiographical essay, ΓÇ£My Way as German and Jew,ΓÇ¥ was possibly the strongest expression of the anguish German Jews felt in the face of the growing tide of anti-Semitism, addressed his question to Rudolf Pechel: Do the rules of good behavior help against Perish, Jew!'?' 157
One of the more remarkable Jewish contributions to the debate was that of Arthur Prinz, published in the periodical's April 1931 issue under the title ΓÇ£Toward Eliminating the Poison from the Jewish Question.ΓÇ¥ After asking why radical Jewish journalists and literati could provoke such furious anti-Semitic rage in Germany, Prinz ventured an answer that probed deeply into the relations between Germans and Jews: That sort of journalism and literature would be impossible without that deep and old insufficiency of a healthy state and national feeling in Germany, which threatens to become fatal since the sad outcome of the war and can certainly not be compensated for' by the excessive nationalism of the extreme right. The agitation of rootless Jews is poison in a body particularly receptive to it, and precisely this is the main reason for boundless anti-Jewish hatred.' 158
When one turns to the wider reaches of German society as it approached the political turning point of 1933, there is no way of assessing clearly the strength of its anti-Jewish attitudes. For example, the League of Jewish Women (JuFrauenbund) found its allies in the much larger Federation of German Women's Associations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, or BDF) in their common struggles on feminist issues, but any indication of Jewish identity was not more acceptable to the German women's organisation than it was to the surrounding society. In the words of a historian of the league, the attitudes in the BDF ranged from liberal impatience with Jewish distinctiveness to cover over anti-Semitism.' 159 As for the nature of this anti-Semitism, one of its most nuanced evaluations remains the most plausible: More common and widespread than outright hatred or sympathy for the Jews was...moderate anti-Semitism, that vague sense of unease about Jews that stopped far short of wanting to harm them but that may have helped to neutralise whatever aversion Germans might otherwise have felt for the Nazis.' 160
In early August 1932 Hitler was negotiating with the consummate schemer and not yet the short-lived last chancellor of the Weimar Republic (November 1932-January 30, 1933) Gen. Kurt von Schleicher, at the time still a close confidant of President Hindenburg, the conditions for his being named to the chancellorship. On the tenth of that month, five SA men forced their way into the home of Konrad Piczuch, a pro-Communist worker in the small town of Potempa in Upper Silesia, and trampled him to death. Such brutality once again put a serious obstacle on the path of the Nazi march to power.' 161 Hitler had apparently believed that the top position would now be offered to him; what Hindenburg proposed when they finally met was a mere vice-chancellorship. The meeting had been cool, and the official communique dismissive of the Nazi leader. Hitler was utterly humiliated and furious. It was exactly then, on August 22, that the court in Beuthen sentenced the five SA men to death. The announcement of the verdict led to tumultuous scenes in the courtroom, outside, Jewish and ΓÇ£socialistΓÇ¥ shops were attacked. Hitler reacted with an outburst of rage. He wired the convicted murderers: My comrades! In view of this incredible criminal verdict I feel myself tied to you in unlimited fidelity. From this moment on, your freedom is our honour, the fight against a government under which such a thing was possible, our duty.' 162
THE JEWS ARE GUILTY! Goebbels thundered in Der Angriff : The Jews are guilty, the punishment is coming.... The hour will strike when the state prosecutor will have other tasks to fulfil than to protect the traitors to the people from the anger of the people. Forget it never, comrades! Tell it to yourself a hundred times a day, so that it may follow you in your deepest dreams: the Jews are guilty! And they will not escape the punishment they deserve.' 163
In a moment of sheer frustration, Hitler had abandoned his carefully constructed facade of respectability and given vent to relentless and murderous rage. Nonetheless, during those same weeks of the summer and fall of 1932, Hitler continued to oppose the use of force for toppling the regime and went on negotiating and manoeuvring in order to reach his goal 164 . What emerges here with uncanny clarity is a personality in which cold calculation and blind fury co-exisand could find almost simultaneous expression. If a third ingredient Hitler's ideological fanaticism - is added, an insight into the psychological makeup that led to the Nazi leader's most crucial decisions may be possible, also with regard to the Jews.
Ideological fanaticism and pragmatic calculation constantly interacted in Hitler's decisions. The ideological obsession was unwavering, but tactical considerations were no less compelling. Sometimes, however, the third element, uncontrolled fury, would burst into the open - triggered by some obstacle, some threat, some defeat - sweeping away all practical considerations. Then, fed by the torrent of ideological fanaticism, the murderous fury would in an unlimited urge for destruction and death.
References:
154 Deak, Weimar Germany's Left-Wing Intellectuals , p. 28.
155 Quoted in Anton Kaes, ed., Weimarer Republik: Manifeste und Dokumente zur deutschen Literatur , 1918ΓÇô1933 (Stuttgart, 1983), pp. 537ΓÇô39.
156 Ibid., p. 539.
157 Jakob Wassermann, Deutscher und Jude: Reden und Schriften 1904ΓÇô1933 (Heidelberg, 1984), p. 156.
158 Kaes, Weimarer Republik , p. 539.
159 Marion Kaplan, ΓÇ£Sisterhood Under Siege: Feminism and Anti-Semitism in Germany, 1904ΓÇô1938, in Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan, eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York, 1984), pp. 186ΓÇô87.
160 Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany , p. 80.
161 Fest, Hitler , p. 355. On the unfolding of these events, see also Winkler, Weimar 1918ΓÇô1933 , pp. 508ff.
162 Ibid., p. 513.
163 Ibid., pp. 513ΓÇô14.
164 Broszat, Hitler and the Collapse of Weimar Germany , p. 126.
