Abstract
World War I was begun by the great powers without ideals or clearly defined interests, and it ended with a continent in ruins. Beyond the 38 million dead and maimed, beyond the previously unimaginable devastation, its victims included those upon whom the learned elders of Zion had promised to wreak their vengeance. Four empires were destroyed whose roots reached back more than a thousand years: the Austro-Hungarian, the German, the Ottoman, and the Russian. The war decimated the ancien régime. Established traditions were overturned and a corrosive cynicism was generated among much of the population. In an epoch marked by chaos and transition, it was little wonder that the Protocols should have gained such popularity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Stephen Eric Bronner, Moments of Decision: Political History and the Crises of Radicalism 2nd Edition (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 1ff.
- 2.
Pierre Charles, S.J., “The Learned Elders of Zion” in The Bridge: A Yearbook of Judaeo-Christian Studies (New York: Pantheon, 1955), 1: 164.
- 3.
Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, trans. T. W. Hulme and J. Roth (New York: Collier Books, 1950), 124ff.
- 4.
Otto Ernst Schueddekopf, Linke Leute von Rechts: National Bolsschwismus in Deutschland von 1918 bis 1933 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960), 89.
- 5.
Note the second volume in the magisterial work by Leszek Kolakowsi, Main Currents of Marxism, 3 vols., trans. P. S. Falla (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).
- 6.
Albert S. Lindemann, Esau’s Tears: Modern Antisemitism and the Rise of the Jews (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 175ff.
- 7.
Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 106ff.
- 8.
George L. Mosse, Confronting the Nation: Jewish and Western Nationalism (Hanover, MA: Brandeis University Press, 1993), 7.
- 9.
Rosa Luxemburg, “The Russian Revolution” in Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, ed. Mary-Alice Waters (New York: Pathfinder, 1970), 387–95.
- 10.
Nikolaus Markow, Der Kampf der dunklen Mächte: Jahr 1 u. Ztr. Bis 1917: Historische Übersicht über die menschenfeindliche Tätigkeit des Judentums, vor allem in Russland übersetzt von W. Klingelhoefer (Frankfurt am Main: Welt-Dienst Verlag, 1944).
- 11.
Lucien Wolf, The Myth of the Jewish Menace in World Affairs: The Truth About the Forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion (New York: Macmillan, 1921), 36.
- 12.
Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1967), 116–17.
- 13.
Alexander Borschtschagowski, Orden fur einen Mord: Die Judenverfolgung unter Stalin (Berlin: Propylaen, 1997).
- 14.
“One of my friends told me this characteristic anecdote: He was in Kiev during the fighting. … He escaped in disguise, but was later arrested by the [White] soldiers of Petlioura who mistook him for a Jew and wished to shoot him. One of the chiefs whom he asked the reason for this said: ‘You wish to give us a king with a head of gold. So it was stated at the sessions of your Wise Men of Zion.’” Chayla , “Sergey Alexandrovitch Nilus et le Protocols des Sages de Sion” in La Tribune Juive, 9.
- 15.
Neumann, “Protokolle,” in Tribune, 9:34 (1970): 3637.
- 16.
Neumann, “Protokolle,” in Tribune, 9:34 (1970): 3637.
- 17.
Agatha Christie, The Big Four (New York: Berkeley Books, 1984 ed.), 100, passim.
- 18.
Stephen Eric Bronner, “Persistent Memories: Jewish Activists and the German Revolution of 1919,” New Politics 5, 2 (Winter 1995): 83–94.
- 19.
There is a huge literature on the Weimar Republic, but perhaps the most politically incisive rendering of events is still provided in the classic study by Arthur Rosenberg , Geschichte der Weimarer Republik (Mannheim: Europaische Verlagsanstalt, 1961).
- 20.
Helmut Berding, “Der Aufsteig des Antisemitismus im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Vorurteil und Völkermord: Entwicklungslinien des Antisemitismus, ed. Wolfgang Benz and Werner Bergmann (Freidburg: Herder, 1997), 286.
- 21.
Helmuth Plessner, Die Verspätete Nation (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1959).
- 22.
Mosse, “Community in the Thought of Nationalism, Fascism, and the Radical Right,” in Confronting the Nation, 42.
- 23.
Note the expanded discussion in Stephen Eric Bronner, Ideas in Action: Political Tradition in the Twentieth Century (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 108ff.
- 24.
Gerhard Czermak, Christen Gegen Juden: Geschichte eines Verfolgung (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1997), 167ff.
- 25.
Paul J. Kingston, Antisemitism in France During the 1930s: Organisations, Personalities and Propaganda (North Umberside: University of Hull Press, 1983), 66.
- 26.
Note the letter of June 26, 1946, in Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers, Briefwechsel 1926–1969, eds. Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner (Munich: Piper, 1985), 81ff.
- 27.
Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996).
- 28.
Note the biographical sketch by Joachim Fest, “Alfred Rosenberg—The Forgotten Disciple,” in The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership, trans. Michael Bullock (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), 163ff.
- 29.
Konrad Heiden, Der Führer: Hitler’s Rise to Power, trans. Ralph Mannheim (Boston: Beacon, 1944), 4.
- 30.
Werner Masur, Der Sturm auf die Republik: Frühgeschichte der NSDAP (Dusseldorf: Econ Verlag, 1994), 148–52.
- 31.
Walter Laqueur, Deutschland und Russland (Berlin: Ullstein, 1966), 99–121.
- 32.
Charles Bracelen Flood, Hitler: The Path to Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989), 132.
- 33.
Lucy S. Davidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933–1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1975), 71.
- 34.
Rathenau also served as the model for the main character in the great novel, The Man without Qualities, by Robert Musil. On the extraordinary life of the former foreign minister, see Count Harry Kessler, Walther Rathenau: His Life and Work (New York: Harcourt, 1930).
- 35.
Martin Sabrow, Der Rathenaumord: Rekonstruktion einer Verschwörung gegen die Republik von Weimar (Munich: Piper, 1994).
- 36.
David Carroll, French Literary Fascism: Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, and the Ideology of Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
- 37.
Albert S. Lindemann, The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs (Dreyfus, Beiliss, Frank) 1894–1915 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 277.
- 38.
Gerhard Czermak, Christen Gegen Juden, 165ff.
- 39.
David G. Goodman and Masanori Miyazawa, Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses of a Cultural Stereotype (New York: Free Press, 1995), 76ff.
- 40.
Note the discussion regarding the South African version, which maintained that the Talmud and Torah commanded Jews to make non-Jews drink their urine and eat their vomit, by Hadassah Ben-Itto, Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1998), 260ff.
- 41.
The tale of the oath goes back to the Rutlischwur in 1291 when representatives of the three forest communities in Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden are said to have sworn to eternal unity. Hence the official name of Switzerland is still the “Swiss Confederation” (Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft). Note the famous play, Wilhelm Tell, by Friedrich Schiller, in which this event is described.
- 42.
This trial serves as the framework for Ben-Itto’s study, Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion, to which the following discussion is indebted; 226ff, passim.
- 43.
A pamphlet claiming that the trial actually proved the assertions made by the defendants about the Jews was published by Karl Bergmeister, Der jüdische Weltverschwörungsplan: Die Protokolle der Weissen von Zion vor dem Strafgerichte in Bern (1937). (First postwar edition, September 1977, distributed by Liverpool, West Virginia: White Power Publications, 1977.)
- 44.
Ibid., 370.
- 45.
Ernst Bloch, Erbschaft dieser Zeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), 65.
- 46.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland: Meridian, 1958), 7.
- 47.
Ibid., 358.
- 48.
Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, 194ff.
- 49.
Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 266ff, passim.
- 50.
Stephen Eric Bronner, “Making Sense of Hell: Three Meditations on the Holocaust,” Political Studies 47, 2 (June, 1999): 314–28.
- 51.
Cf. Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 87.
- 52.
Joachim Kohler, Wagners Hitler: Der Prophet und sein Vollstrecker (Munich: Karl Blessing Verlag, 1997).
- 53.
Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, 193.
- 54.
Franz Alfred Six, Freimaurer und Judenemanzipation (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlag, 1938).
- 55.
Cited in Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism: Action Français, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, trans. L. Vennewitz (New York: Holt, Rhinehardt, Winston, 1965), 459.
- 56.
Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 358–60.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bronner, S.E. (2019). Spreading the News: The Protocols Triumphant. In: A Rumor about the Jews. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95396-0_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95396-0_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-95395-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-95396-0
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)