Nazi AntiSemitic Platform Not Christian Wiehe

Germany and the Jewish Question, by Friederich Karl Wiehe, Francis Dupont. 2014

Do Not Blame Christianity: A Detailed, Scholarly Nazi Analysis of the Jews of Weimar Germany

Nowadays, academics (most of whom are leftists), and many Jews, are prone to blame the Nazi movement in general, and the Holocaust in particular, on centuries of Christian teachings about Jews (e. g, deicide). Ironically, author Wiehe, a Nazi, and author of this book, though presenting a considerable variety of arguments against Jews, never once accuses Jews of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

In modern history books, the Weimar-era antagonisms between Germans and Jews are usually not examined objectively, if at all, much less held responsible for the popularity of Nazism. This work, though not pleasant reading and definitely not politically correct, helps fill in the gap. I review this book solely for its historical interest.

Was author Friederich Karl Wiehe simply a Nazi ideologue, or was he also a thinker? Consistent with the latter, Wiehe rejects some of the standard anti-Semitic tropes. However, he eventually slips into openly-racist Nazi thinking, and I discuss some of it towards the close of my review.

This late-1930’s work complements an earlier one from just when Hitler had come to power: [See my review of Jewish Domination of Weimar Germany, which was posted March 4, 2016]. Because the content of the two books overlaps, I focus, in this review, on facts specific to this work. [Also see my earlier review, for links therein, to non-Nazi sources that corroborate the Nazi-quoted facts and figures.]

My review is based on an unpaginated typecript of this book. For this reason, I use chapters for purposes of reference in my review.

UNIVERSALITY OF ANTI-SEMITISM: JEWS EXPELLED FROM MANY NATIONS

Wiehe begins with the ways that Jews had worn out their welcome in many nations, and quotes Barnard Lazare, a Jewish author who published the book, L’SEMITISME (Paris 1934): “By what virtues and by what faults has the Jew attracted this universal hostility? Why was he alternately mistreated and hated by the Alexandrinians and the Romans, by the Persians and the Arabs, by the Turks and the Christian nations? Because the Jew everywhere and right up until this day has been an antisocial creature”. (Chapter 8. The Share of the Jews in Criminality).

The author stops short of accusing Jews of being all-powerful and of exerting a PROTOCOLS-style shadow government over nations. Rather, he sees Jewish influence and misdeeds as things that increase whenever a nation is weak. (Introduction).

SKEWED JEWISH OCCUPATIONS

Wiehe rebuts the argument that Jews gravitate to certain occupations because they are barred from farming. Those Jews living in Hessen-Nassau and Posen [Poznan] were settled in rural districts, and had been in a position to become farmers, but had chosen to eschew farming in favor of jobs that offer effortless gain, such as traders of cattle, grain, fertilizer, and money. (Chapter 1. Population figures…).

The author parts ways with the anti-Semitic trope that posits that Jews seek parasitic occupations so that they can live off the hard-earned wealth of others. Instead, he quotes the Jewish theoretic Felix A. Theilhaber, who suggests that Jews are disinclined to work in primary production because the intermediary positions are the ones that offer the Jews individuality, independence, occupational success, and material security. In recent years, the Jews of Germany had dominated the world of doctors and lawyers because these occupations are so lucrative. (Chapter 1. Population Figures…).

Wiehe elaborates on the overall Jewish dominance of the German economy. For instance, he notes that the big private banks are in Jewish hands. The best-known of these are: Arnhold, Behrens, Warburg, Bleichroeder, Mendelssohn, Goldschmidt-Rothschild, Dreyfuss, Bondi and Maron, Aufhauser, Oppenheim, Levy, Speyer-Elissen, Heimann, and Stern. (Chapter 2. Jews in the German Economy).

MASSIVE FINANCIAL SCANDALS IN WEIMAR GERMANY

Wiehe (Chapter 3. The Jews and the Corruption) takes issue with those who argue that Germans and Jews were equally prone to such scandals. He states that there were only two high-profile Germans involved in the major scandals (Raifeissen-Bank and Lahusen), in contrast to numerous Jews involved in the high-profile scandals (the Sklarz brothers, the Barmat brothers, the Sklarek brothers, the Rotter brothers, Ludwig Katzenellenboggen, Michael Holzmann, and others).

JEWISH PROFITEERING FROM GERMAN INFLATION

The German hatred of Jews owed not so much to the amount of money that Jews had made off Germans during the Inflation, but the fact that Jews were taking advantage of Germans, (Quote) The list of Jewish profit-makers who, during these terrible days of misery, fell upon the German economy, which was breaking down, and who thereby brought about its complete decay, reaches from the smart entrepreneur and inflation speculator over all kinds of corrupt soldiers of fortune to the outright grand-scale criminals. In hardly any other place has Jewish nature with its distinct selfishness, its unscrupulousness and its desire for quick earnings unfolded itself so unrestrained as in German economy during these years. (unquote). (Chapter 3. The Jews and the Corruption).

THE STAB IN THE BACK

Adolf Hitler often accused Jews of stabbing Germany in the back in the War (WWI). Though Wiehe does not quote Hitler or use this terminology, he makes it easy to deduce what Hitler was thinking. There were numerous Jewish voices of defeatism and pacifism, and Wiehe holds them responsible for the collapse of the German will to defend itself. In addition, the Jewish-led attempted Communist takeover of Germany in 1918-1919 caused the final collapse of the German front. Wiehe asserts that all this shows the Jews’ boundless ingratitude towards the German people. (Chapter 4. Jews in German politics.)

THE JEWS IN MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT

The author does not portray Jewish influence as something that is agenda-driven towards the degradation of society (e. g, as by the Frankfurt School). Rather, Wiehe sees the degradation as an outcome of Jewish ways in general, and of the Jewish profit motive in particular. He writes, (quote) If one observes the German press, which has been under Jewish influence during the last few decades, it can be demonstrated that it served the purpose of material gain, hunger for sensations, vanity and the lower instincts of the masses, that the numbers printed were driven upwards by alarmingly undermining law and moral. (unquote). (Chapter 5. Jews in the German Press).

In an analysis that anticipated the American “Jews in Hollywood” situation, Wiehe wrote about Jews gravitating to the film industry because artistic and financial elements are more closely connected there than anywhere else. (Chapter 6. The Jews in German Culture).

Let us put all this in broader context. According to Wiehe, what the German people objected to was not so much the fact and the magnitude of Jewish influence in German culture, but the pronounced JEWISH SPIRIT, with its tendency to negation of all handed-down values, its rationalism, its lack of sense of duty, and its speculating to the lower instincts. (Chapter 6. The Jews in German Culture).

WHAT ABOUT ALL THE GOOD JEWS?

Wiehe realizes that many German Jews were upstanding citizens. They had been German in every sense, and some of them had fought for Germany. However, he explains (or rationalizes) the harm done to them, by Nazi policies, using the analogy of surgery: The healthy tissue must be removed in order to eradicate the unhealthy tissue. (Introduction).

THE NEED FOR A JEWISH STATE

Throughout this work, Wiehe portrays Jews as a problem not only for Germany but for the whole world. He considers assimilation bankrupt, and thinks that Jews should have to move into their own nation. He quotes English Zionist Dr. Chaim Weizmann, who said that the nations of the world can be divided into two groups—those that want to expel Jews and those that do not want to receive Jews. (Introduction).

Wiehe contends that a Jewish state in Palestine would only incur insurmountable Arab enmity. (Introduction; Chapter 8. The Share of the Jews in Criminality). For this reason, he favors a Jewish state in some other place, including previously-proposed places such as Uganda. [Madagascar had also been suggested.]

NAZI RACISM IN ACTION

Wiehe considers the German people a family–wherein there is a tradition and a special way of life. He also considers the Jews an Oriental and Middle Eastern race that is strange to, and not related to, Europeans. This, itself, is unremarkable. In fact, Wiehe quotes the Jews, Walther Rathenau and Jakob Klatzkin, who held similar views. (Introduction). [This list could be greatly expanded.]

The author cites several sets of statistics that purportedly show that, even when other differences are taken to account, Jewish trade-related criminality is many multiples that of non-Jews in comparable occupations. (Chapter 8. The Share of the Jews in Criminality). From this, he jumps to the racist conclusion that Jews are innately of lower moral character than the Germans. He even considers the Nuremberg Laws as ones that had laid the foundation for peaceful coexistence between Germans and Jews.

Of course, this is not the worst of it. The reader should remember that this book was written before the Nazi movement (or at least its top leadership) had radicalized to the point of contemplating the physical extermination of the Jews.