Cultural Marxism Roots Weimar Germany Book

An Eyewitness in Germany, by Fredrik Book. 1933

Hitler’s First Year (1933). Two Sides on Jews. Nazi Book Burning: A Long German Tradition: Symbolism Rather Than Censorship

Author Frederik Book, a Dane, had lived in Germany in 1933. He provides a wealth of first-hand information. This book was originally published in Swedish, and is now in English.

The author expresses his horror at the privations of the Jews under the Nazi regime, but, at the same time, has a deeper understanding of the issues than is the case with most commentators. He warns the English against being high-minded about German anti-Semitism, as the English, in modern times, did not have to deal with Jews to the extent that other Europeans did. In addition, the English were hardly saints. They refused to treat distinguished Hindus, even Nobel Prize winners, as their equals. (pp. 136-137).

DID GERMAN JEWS BETRAY GERMANY?

The “stab in the back” thesis of the Nazis had some basis in fact. The author writes, “It has not been easy to forget Kurt Eisner who, when he proclaimed himself chief of the state of Munich, used Bavarian separatism as a battering ram against German patriotism…And how forget Maximilian Harden, who in fair weather appeared as a zealous patriot…and, after the catastrophe, in the hour or tribulation, ranged himself among the victors by malignant, lying accusations against his fellow countrymen—for a bribe in hard cash…It is deplorable that a German-Jewish patriot like Rathenau—whose sincere love of his country was unjustly called in question in VOLKISCHER BEOBACHTER—found it compatible with his honor to maintain good personal relations with a traitor like Maximilian Harden, even after the latter had left no doubt as to the peculiarities of his character.” (pp. 122-123).

As for the biggest financial scandals in Weimar Germany, Book comments, “That the immigrant Eastern Jews, Barmat, Kutisker, Sklarek, and their like, played a disastrous part for the Social Democratic leaders in Germany is unfortunately an inescapable historical fact, and among the masses hatred of the Jews grows luxuriantly.” (p. 43).

IN WHAT WAY WAS THERE A JEWISH DOMINANCE OF WEIMAR GERMANY?

The fact that German Jews did not dominate all the leading fields over all of Germany does not overcome the fact that they often did in the most important location—the German Capital. For instance, the majority of lawyers in Berlin were Jews (p. 124). Jews were predominant in the departments of various universities, such as faculty of the school of medicine in Breslau. (p. 124).

However, the question of Jewish privilege goes much deeper. Nowadays, we hear a lot about social justice. We are frequently told that “white privilege” developed out of the advantages that white people had and, even if not, it is still inherently unjust that whites have more than non-whites. Thus, according to social justice, the inequities between groups are fundamentally unjust, even if the more successful group acquired its advantaged status entirely through legitimate means (as by working harder and making better choices than the less-successful groups.) The very same construct of social justice is evidently applied to the Jews of Weimar Germany by Frederik Book. He quips, “The Jews are practically never peasants or workmen; they seek with success the most influential economic, cultural, and political places.” (p. 123).

Do German Jews become just like any other Germans? Author Book joins those who do not think so, as he remarks, “…not even the most orthodox liberal rationalist, not even the most estimable advocate of Jew assimilation can well assert that there is no difference between the German and the Jewish spirit, that their manner of thinking, feeling, and reacting is identical.” (p. 126).

EARLY VERSIONS OF CULTURAL MARXISM IN WEIMAR GERMANY

Author Book writes, “Hitler’s contempt for the intellectual Bolshevism [nowadays called cultural Marxism] which seeks by mockery and cynicism to disintegrate all civic conceptions, especially all moral values, has also led him to anti-Semitism, for he early made this observation, ‘that nine-tenths of all literary filth, artistic rubbish and dramatic nonsense can be laid at the door of a people who number scarce one-hundredth part of the total population of the country.’” (pp. 100-101). [The Hitler quote is from MEIN KAMPF.]

GERMAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS HAD BEEN BURNING BOOKS LONG BEFORE THE NAZI ERA

Modern history textbooks won’t tell you this, but the burning of books at German universities, including for secular reasons, had long preceded the Nazis. Frederik Book personally attended the book burning and rally, on the night of May 10-11, 1933, at Berlin (the Opern Platz, opposite the University at Unter den Linden). The atmosphere was festive. Dr. Goebbels spoke, focusing on the purification of the German spirit by the fires.

Author Book and his colleagues tried to calm down an agitated American banker, who was in the audience, with the following words, “We explained to him that the solemn burning of objectionable writings was a time-honored tradition in the German student world; in the eighteenth century aesthetic fanatics burned Wieland’s less pious and more classical works; and, at the beginning of the nineteenth, Kotzebue’s popular plays were committed to the flames—the whole thing was only a spirited demonstration, a symbolic action, and no terrible practical results were to be feared. (pp. 225-226).

NAZI BOOK BURNING: A SYMBOLIC PROTEST RATHER THAN CENSORSHIP

Is Nazi book burning best understood as a form of thought control? Hardly. Author Frederik Book continues, “The demand for pornography, for piquant problem novels, for expressionist and Bolshevistic plays, for anti-national historical concoctions, turned out by the hundred thousand copies for the book trade, could certainly be met even in the future, since what had been destroyed before our eyes was merely a small collection of samples.” (p. 226).

THE DECADENT WORKS OF SIGMUND FREUD AND MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD: NO GREAT LOSS

Why such a big deal about the objectionable works of these Jewish authors? The author answers, “But if one wants a gauge of the vulgarization and imbecility that the Liberalistic age brought with it in the sacred and abused name of liberty of thought, liberty of speech, and liberty of judgment, one may take the simple fact that Freud’s curious speculations have been transmuted into a sort of popular gospel for dirty writers and have become the focus for half the world’s attention.” (p. 227).

Author Book continues, “When National Socialist criticism is directed against all these absurdities, one can only hail it with heartfelt sympathy…When it decides that the age which counts Freud’s sexual philosophy among its great enlargement of territory is unsound and deranged, it is right…” (p. 228).

As for the burning of the works of the eminent Jewish sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, Frederik Book remarks, “If by this means the knowledge of a few peculiarly interesting sexual aberrations has been lost—so much the better.” (p. 229).

The foregoing emphasis on pansexualism must be put in the context of the situation in Weimar Berlin. Eyewitness Book comments, “Scarcely any other capital was so flooded with pornography, verbal and pictorial, as that of Germany, and anyone in the habit of stopping in front of bookstalls might easily in recent years have got the unpleasant impression that the German people concentrated all their attention upon the sexual life and especially upon its abnormalities.” (p. 41).