Abstract
Until the 1960s most studies of the Nazi Party and National Socialism argued that antisemitism was an essential factor in explaining Nazi success before 1933.1 But in recent decades, numerous studies have shown that antisemitism was probably somewhat underrepresented in Nazi Party activity and propaganda in the period before 1933, particularly in the last years before Hitler became Chancellor. Today, most studies agree that although a hardcore of radical antisemites existed within the party, most members avoided engaging in antisemitic activity. Millions of Nazi voters did not cast their vote for the party because they were antisemites. They were prepared to accept the Nazi Party’s 1920 programme, including the antisemitic paragraph, only if the party offered them bread, jobs and hope for the future.
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Notes
For this early period a good survey can be found in I. Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (London: Arnold, 2000), chapter 5; O.D. Kulka, ‘Major Trends and Tendencies of German Historiography on National Socialism and the “Jewish Question” (1924–1984)’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 30 (1985), 215–42.
U. Herbert, ‘Extermination Policy: New Answers and Questions about the History of the “Holocaust” in German Historiography’, in National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies, ed. U. Herbert (Oxford: Berghahn, 2000), p. 27.
D.J. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996).
O. Heilbronner, ‘From Antisemitic Peripheries to Antisemitic Centres: The Place of Antisemitism in German History’, Journal of Contemporary History, 35 (2000), 559–76; H. Poetzsch, Anti-Semitismus in der Region. Antisemitische Erscheinungsformen in Sachsen, Hessen, Hessen-Nassau und Braunschweig 1870–1914 (Darmstadt, 2000).
A. Kauders, German Politics and the Jews: Dusseldorf and Nuremberg 1910–1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
The terms come from M. Sturmer, Das ruhelose Reich. Deutschland 1866–1918 (Berlin: Severin und Siedler, 1983); J. Radkau, Das Zeitalter der Nervosität. Deutschland zwischen Bismarck und Hitler (Munich: Hanser, 1998).
H. Hagenlucke, Deutsche Vaterlandspartei. Die nationale Rechte am Ende des Kaiserreiches (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1997); H.P. Muller, ‘Die Deutsche Vaterlandspartei in Wiirttemberg 1917/18 und ihr Erbe. Besorgte Patrioten oder rechte Ideologen?’ Zeitschrift fir Wurttembergische Geschichte, 59 (2000), 217–24.
The best account of this association is still U. Lohalm, Völkischer Radikalismus. Die Geschichte des Deutschvölkischen Schutz- und Trutzbundes, 1919–1923 (Hamburg: LeibnizVerlag, 1970); see also M. Greschat, Protestanten in der Zeit. Kirche und Gesellschaft in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Kohihammer, 1994), chapter 5; W. Jochmann, ‘Die Ausbreitung des Anti-Semitismus’, in Deutsches Judentum im Krieg und Revolution 1916–1923, ed. W. Mosse (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1971), pp. 409–510; idem, ‘Die Ausbreitung des Anti-Semitismus in Deutschland 1914–1923’, in Gesellschaftskrise und Judenfeindschaft in Deutschland 1879–1914 (Hamburg: Christians,1991), pp. 99–170; G.L. Mosse, Die deutsche Rechte und die Juden’, in Entscheidungsjahr 1932. Zur Judenfrage in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik, ed. W. Mosse (Tubingen: Leo Baeck Institute, 1965).
T. van Rahden, Juden und andere Breslauer. Die Beziehungen zwischen Juden, Protestanten und Katholiken in einer deutschen Frossstadt von 1860 bis 1925 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2000), p. 14.
J. Bergrnann and K. Megerle, ‘Protest und Aufruhr der Landwirtschaft in der Weimarer Republik (1924–1933). Formen und Typen der politischen Agrarbewegung im regionalen Vergleich’, in Regionen im historischenVergleich. Studien zuDeutschland im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, eds. J. Bergmann and K. Megerle (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989), pp. 200–67.
D. Walter, Antisemitische Kriminalitat und Gewalt: Judenfeindschaft in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn: Verlag J.H.W. Dietz Nachfolger, 2000); Kauders, German Politics and the Jews; J. Borut, ‘Antisemitism in Tourist Facilities in Weimar Germany’, Yad Vashem Studies, 28 (2000), 7–50; M. Wildt, ‘Der muss hinaus! Antisemitismus in deutschen Nord- und Ostseebäden 1925–1935’, Mittelweg, 36, 10 (2001), 2–25.
P. Pulzer, Jews and the German State: The Political History of a Minority (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
M. Kittel, Provinz zwischen Reich und Republik. Politische Mentalitäten in Deutschland und Frankreich 1918–1933/36 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2000); U. Baumann, Zerstörte Nachbarschaften. Christen und Juden in badischen Landgemeinden 1862–1940 (Hamburg: Dolling und Galitz, 2000); M. Gailus, Protestantismus und National-Sozialismus. Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Durchdringung des protestantischen Sozialmilieus in Berlin (Cologne: BOhlau Verlag, 2001); O. Heilbronner, Catholicism, Political Culture, and the Countryside. A Social History of the Nazi Party in South Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999); G. Muller, ‘Der “Katholische Akademikerverband” im Uebergang von der Weimarer Republik ins “Dritte Reich”’, in Modeme und Nationalsozialismus im Rheinland, ed. D. Breuer (Paderborn: F. Schoningh, 1998), pp. 551–76; K.-U. Merz, ‘Die Germania: Der Anti-Bolschewismus des katholischen Zentrums’, in Das Schreckbild. Deutschland und der Bolschewismus 1917 bis 1921 (Berlin: Propylaen, 1995), pp. 225–84; K. Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, Vol. I: Preliminary History and the Time of Illusions, 1918–1934 (London: SCM Press, 1987).
H.A. Winkler, ‘Die deutsche Gesellschaft der Weimarer Republik und der AntiSemitismus’, in Die Juden als Minderheit in der Geschichte, eds. B. Martin and E. Schulin (Munich: DTV, 1981), pp. 271–89; D.L. Niewyk, The Jews in Wehnar Germany (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), pp. 61–81.
Kauders, German Politics and the Jews; P. Nolte, Die Ordnung der deutschen Gesellschaft. Selbstentwurf und Selbstbeschreibung im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2001), pp. 127–58; Gailus, Protestantismus und National-Sozialismus.
C. Striefler, Kampf um die Macht. Kommunisten und Nationalsozialisten am Ende der Weimarer Republik (Berlin: Propylaen, 1993); R. Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism: The Storm Troopers in Eastern Germany 1925–1934 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984); for hatred of the French, see most recently C. Fischer, The Ruhr Crisis 1923–1924 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
O. Heilbronner, ‘Weimar Society and the Image of Soviet Russia’, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch fiir Deutsche Geschichte, 24 (1995), 3–17; G. Feldman, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation 1914–1924 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); N. Ferguson, Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897–1927 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); R. Bessel, Germany after the First World War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); M. Geyer, Verkehrte Welt: Revolution, Inflation und Moderne: Miinchen 1914–1924 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1998); B. Weisbrod, ‘Gewalt in der Politik. Zur politischen Kultur in Deutschland zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 7 (1992), 391–404; M.-L. Ehls, Protest und Propaganda. Demonstrationen in Berlin zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997).
B. Widdig, Culture and Inflation in Weirnar Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 223–34; Geyer, Verkehrte Welt.
U. Herbert, Best. Biographische Studien fiber Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernuft 1903–1989 (Bonn, J. Dietz Nachf., 1996); idem., ‘To Eliminate the Enemy without Hating Him: Jew Hatred in the World-View of the Intellectual SS Commanders in the 1920s and 1930s’, in German Anti-Semitism Reconsidered, eds. J. Borut and O. Heilbronner (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2000), pp. 174–87.
G. Giles, Students and National Socialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 51–2; R. Koshar, ‘Contentious Citadel: Bourgeois Crisis and Nazism in Marburg/Lahn, 1880–1933’, in The Formation of the Nazi Constituency 1919–1933, ed. T. Childers (London: Croom Helm, 1986), p. 26.
M. Kater, ‘The Nazi Physicians’ League of 1929’, in The Formation, ed. Childers, p. 163; Herbert, ‘To Eliminate the Enemy without Hating Him’, 176.
O. Heilbronner, ‘The Role of Nazi Anti-Semitism in the Nazi Party’s Activity and Propaganda’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 35 (1990), 397–439; idem, ‘Where Did Nazi Antisemitism Disappear To? A Historiographical Study’, Yad Vashem Studies, 21 (1991), 263–86; idem, ‘Wohin verschwand der nationalsozialistische Anti-Semitismus? Zum Charakter des Anti-Semitismus der NSDAP vor 1933’, Menora, 6 (1995), 15–44; S. Volkov, ‘The Written Matter and the Spoken Word: On the Gap Between Pre-1914 and Nazi Anti-Semitism’, in Unanswered Questions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews, ed. F. Furet (New York: Schocken Books, 1989), pp. 33–53.
See note 8 above, and E. Reichmann, Hostages of Civilization. The Social Sources of National SocialistAnti-Semitism (London: Victor Gollancz, 1950), pp. 218–35.
Heilbronner, ‘The Role of Nazi Anti-Semitism’; W. Blessing, ‘Diskussionsbeitrag: Nationalsozialismus unter regionalem Blick’, in Nationalsozialismus in der Region. Beitrage zur regionalen und lokalen Forschung und zurn intemationalen Vergleich, eds. H. M011er, A. Wirsching and W. Ziegler (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995), 47–56.
Winkler, ‘Die deutsche Gesellschaft’; T. Childers, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); I. Kershaw, ‘Ideology, Propaganda and the Nazi Party’, in The Nazi Machtergreifung, ed. P. Stachura (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983); R. Koshar, Social Life, Local Politics and Nazism, Marburg 1880–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986); Childers, ed., The Formation of the Nazi Constituency 1919–1933.
R.F. Hamilton, Who Voted for Hitler? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 370–1, 605–7; idem, ‘Braunschweig 1932: Further Evidence on the Support for National Socialism’, Central European History, 1 (1984), 24, n. 20; Childers, The Nazi Voter, pp. 67–9, 267; J. Falter, Hitlers Wdhler. Der Aufstieg der NSDAP im Spiegel der Wahlen (Munich: Beck, 1991); M. Kater, The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of Members and Leaders 1919–1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983); D. Muhlberger, Hitler’s Followers. Studies in the Sociology of the Nazi Movement (London: Routledge, 1990).
E. Nolte, ‘Between Myth and Revisionism? The Third Reich in the Perspective of the 1980s’, in Aspects of the Third Reich, ed. H.W. Koch (London: Macmillan, 1986), pp. 17–38; Kershaw. Nazi Dictatorshid. nn. 248–51.
For the debate around the Goldhagen thesis in the US, see G. Eley, ed., The Goldhagen Effect (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001); for Germany, see Herbert, ed., National Socialist Extermination Policies; for Israel, see German Anti-Semitism, ed. Borut and Heilbronner. All the books above and many others argue against Goldhagen and some provide new evidence which reveals the weakness of his thesis. But none touches on Goldhagen’s arguments about Nazi and German antisemitism during Weimar.
See, for example, E. Nolte, Der europaische Burgerkrieg 1917–1945. Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus (Berlin: Propylaen, 1987); Striefler, Kampf urn die Macht; Richard Bessel, in his study on the SA in eastern Germany, argues that ‘the lion’s share of Nazi violence was aimed against the Left’. R. Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism, p. 80.
T.W. Mason, Sozialpolitik irn Dritten Reich. Arbeiterklasse und Volksgerneinschaft (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1977), chapter 2; R. Kuhnl, ‘The Rise of Fascism in Germany and its Causes’, in Towards the Holocaust. The Social and Economic Collapse of the Weimar Republic, ed. I. Wallimann and M. N. Dobkowski (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), pp. 101–10.
H.A. Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power (Reading, MA: Harlow, 1996); W. Patch, ‘Heinrich Bruning’s Recollection of Monarchism: The Birth of a Red Herring’, Journal ofModern History, 70 (1998). 340–70.
See recently P. Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), chapter 4; Heilbronner, Catholicism, Political Culture and the Countryside.
S. Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Vol. 1: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997); see also D. Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion under Nazism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
I would like to thank Jacob Borut for bringing this event to my attention; it is referred to in E. Mais, Die Verfolgung der Juden in den Landkreisen Bad-Kreuznach und Birkenfeld 1933–1945 (Birkenfeld: Heimatkundliche Schriftenreihe des Landkreis Bad Kreuznach, 1988), p. 328.
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Heilbronner, O. (2004). German or Nazi Antisemitism?. In: Stone, D. (eds) The Historiography of the Holocaust. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524507_2
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