Anti-Semitism or in other words hatred towards the Jews can
be considered as a key element towards the rise of the Nazi Ideology in
Germany. We know how the Jews were
treated in Nazi Germany and we also know the stories of the concentration camp
or the Jewish Holocaust as a whole. But to trace the origin of this sentiment
we need to go back in history in the 19th century. In this article I
shall talk about how the anti-semitic sentiments corrupted the minds of the
Germans and played a key role towards the rise of the Nazi Ideology. I shall
use references from the book The Coming of the Third Reich written by Richard
J. Evans.
ANTI-SEMITISM : HATRED TOWARDS THE JEWS
The rise of anti-semitism in Germany has a very close
relation with rise of nationalism and pan-germanium. After Bismarck’s unification
of Germany there was a rise of nationalism among the people. Also there was a
rise in Pan-Germanic sentiments i.e. an idea of political unification of the
German speaking people. These nationalist sentiments are natural with regards
to any nation in the world, but in Germany this sentiments gave birth to
religious and racial discrimination. It started off in a small scale where
there were individuals who blamed the Jews in different aspects. People used to
criticize the Jews and sometimes the criticisms were personal.
Anyways the
administration didn’t pay much attention and chose to ignore it. Slowly but
steadily these sentiments grew and more and more people stared criticizing the
Jews. The Jewish population was not considered as Germans and they were viewed
as an obstruction for Germany’s rise as the best nation in the world. These
didn’t happen in a day or in a year. It was a gradual process which involved
various factors. There was time when the Jewish population was viewed as
anti-national elements and a person how call himself a nationalist would be an
Anti-Semite. The events that we shall discuss are the events before Hitler rose
to power. Hence, I shall not talk about the incidents happened to the Jews in
Nazi Germany but I shall try to explain how the Germans stated hating the Jews
on the first place.
SMALL SCALE DISPLAY THROUGH INDIVIDUALS
Anti-Semitism had its history in Europe but things got worse
in Germany. Anti-Semitism which had already prevailed took a new turn. It
started off in a very low scale after the German unification of Bismarck. Some
individuals started to blame the Jews for their own incompetency. These people
were not competent enough to earn their own bread so when then situations got
worse they blamed the Jews. Back in 1880s the Jewish population in Germany was
well to do; they were economically successful and were associated with the
modern developments of the society. The author in his book said “…the Jewish
story in the late nineteenth century was a success story…”
Also most of them
were strongly identified with the German nationalism. But that wasn’t enough;
they faced discrimination on regular basis and were denied from the army and
the top ranks of social services.
Also there were Jewish-Christian marriages taking place. So
the Jewish were not a small religious minority rather they had become more of a
racial or ethnic minority. This race, as you may call, was quite
well to do; they were doing great towards the development of the economy and towards the state as a whole. These developments in the minority population grabbed the
attention of people like Hermann Ahlwardt and they started blaming the Jews
because of their own incompetency. Talking about Ahlwardt, he was a headmaster
of a primary school in Berlin. He was dismissed from his post as he stole money
from the funds which was collected for children’s Christmas party. He found his
income too low and so committed such a crime. A man in his position would be
expected to be filled with guilt but Ahlwardt had no guilt, rather he blamed
the Jews for his misfortunes.
Ahlwardt dedicated his life towards the anti-Semitic
campaigns and spreading his propaganda among people. He accused the German
government to be paid by Jewish banker Gerson von Bleichroder. But to his great
misfortune the documents he provided in favour of his claim was found to be
written by Ahlwardt himself. For that he was sentenced to four month in prison.
After his return from prison he started his campaigns, soon it took a political
turn and he got elected in the Reichstag which provided him parliamentary
immunity. He made another claim that a Jewish arm manufacturer had deliberately
supplied faulty equipments to the army. As expected these claims were also
false and he was sentenced to prison for five months but he didn’t serve that,
thanks to his political position. There were many such individuals who blamed
the Jews in various aspects and the worst part was that people believed them.
The Government also didn’t pay much attentions to all those and soon people
like Otto Bockel started exploiting these sentiments for political benefits. Another
anti-Semite Adolf Stocker founded the Christian Social Party and fought the
elections explicitly on an anti-Semitic platform.
Adolf Stocker
These sentiments were raised
by individuals and soon gained political momentum which gave rise to a gradual
series of events that ultimately led to the rise of the Nazi Ideology.
A WIDESPREAD ACCEPTANCE AMONG THE COMMON PEOPLE
The anti-Semitic sentiments as we saw were popularized by
certain individuals in the German society. This gained a political momentum
within a short time and was ready to corrupt the minds of the people on a large
scale. An important development in this course was identifying the Jewish population
as a different race and separating them from the Germanic culture. Earlier I
talked about the Christian-Jewish marriages which made the Jews an ethnic
minority rather than a religious minority. There was an assimilation of the
Jews in the German society. Many people had different views towards this
assimilation. People like Richard Wagner believed that this sort of
assimilation was progressive towards the nation’s interest and the complete
assimilation of the Jews would be a solution to the Jewish problem. But later
Wagner and people like him changed their views and started to advocate for the
total exclusion of the Jews rather than assimilation. This meant that they
wanted to eliminate the Jews completely and not accept them even if they wanted
to get accepted. Wagner was believed to be influenced by the writings of
Wilhelm Marr.
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Richard Wagner |
More and more people started advocating these ideas and these
kinds of radical views would change the form of anti-Semitism that existed in
Europe. This was going to divide the German society not on the basis of
religion but on the basis of culture and race. The society at once didn’t
accept these radical views. Even back then the Social Democratic Party; which
had the most seats, didn’t agree with such ideas and considered it to be
backward and undemocratic. Also the people had no problem to work with their
Jewish colleagues. But some were hell-bent to inject the ideas of Anti-Semitism
in the minds of the common people. The Anti-Semitic authors contributed a lot
through their writings and a regular dose to Anti-Semitism was given to the
people through music and art in the name of culture. There took place a
domestication of these ideas where the Germanic culture and traditions were
promoted among the people stating that the Jewish culture had nothing to do
with the Germanic culture and hence it shouldn’t exist in Germany. An example
may be cited as the plays and song where Nordic Heroes fought against the evil
Jewish. The Jewish were viewed as a complete different race that was an evil in
the society. And this form of racial discrimination gave rise to the concept of
a superior race; the Aryan or the Germanic race.
MISINTERPRETATION AND MISUSE OF SCIENCE
The concept of the superior Aryan race was popularized among
the people with a scientific approach. Various authors, philosophers,
anthropologists etc. tried explaining the concept by interpreting scientific
theories in a way where the interpretation itself had no scientific grounds. A
philosopher, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, interpreted Charles Darwin’s theory
to portray history in terms of struggle between the Germanic race and Jewish
race. Here instead of dismissing the Jews as an inferior group he rather
represented them as a threat to the human society.
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Houston Stewart Chamberlain |
Another anthropologist,
Ludwig Woltmann, argued that the Aryan race represented the height of human
evolution and was the superior race. He also claimed that the Germanic race was
selected to dominate the earth but the other races were preventing this from
happening. The superior race concept was not directly associated with Anti-Semitism but the idea of Anti-Semitism gave birth to such a radical
concept which in turn gave birth to various other radical concepts. There were
people who advocated the idea that a group of doctors should attend all births
and determine whether the baby would be strong and fit and incase if the baby
would be suspected to be weak in future it should be killed. Alexander Tille advocated
the killing of mentally and physically unfit people. Also there was the idea
that fit people would be allowed to breed more and the unfit would be allowed
to breed less. These gave rise to the concept of racial hygiene where the
superior Aryan race needed to maintain its racial hygiene. Though they claimed
that their ideas were progressing with a scientific approach but this was a
complete misuse and misinterpretation of science. These concepts of racial
superiority and racial hygiene and with the concept of Anti-Semitism became the
key features of the Nazi Ideology.
In my opinion whatever happened to the Jews back then was a
complete shame on the face of humanity. Everyone deserves to be treated nicely
and with dignity. We cannot change the history but we can surely learn from it.
There is no such thing as a superior race and at the end of the day we are all
human beings. And as humans it is our moral duty not to discriminate anyone
based on religion, caste, colour or sex. We should be progressive and should
work together for a better tomorrow.
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