On Solving the Jewish Question (May 1941)

Shortly before the invasion of the Soviet Union, Walter Groẞ, the head of the Nazi Party's Racial Policy Office, wrote an article titled “On Solving the Jewish Question.” His proposed solution is to expel all Jews from Europe, though he makes no suggestion as to where they should be sent.

Völkischer Beobachter Front Pages

I've gotten a start on a long-term project: Posting the front pages of the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party’s daily newspaper, for the war years. It is an interesting way to follow the trajectory of the war, beginning with victories in Poland and ending in disaster.

Since there are 1500 or so issues this will take me a while, but if you check the page occasionally new months will be added.

On Nazi Speaking Guidelines

The Nazi Party had a large speaker corps.  They needed regular instruction on what to say in meetings throughout Germany.  There is a fair amount of material on the system on the GPA.

Recently, I added to my collection of the Aufklärungs- und Redner-Informationsmaterial issued by the party’s central propaganda office in cooperation with the  German Labor Front, although I am not sure how much of a contribution the latter organization made

I am adding some anti-Semitic instructions from March and April 1943.

That got me to review material on the GPA issued during the anti-Semitic campaigns of spring 1943.  There are general campaign guidelines, speaker information, articles by Joseph Goebbels, and directives for magazine editors.  Since it might be interesting to compare what was said in various places, here is a list of the material available on the GPA.

• Directives for the Anti-Bolshevist Propaganda Action: 20 February 1943
• Goebbels’s essay “The European Crisis”: 28 February 1943
• What Does Bolshevization Mean in Reality?: March 1943
• Speaker Express Information (“The Jewish Question as a Weapon at Home and Abroad”): 5 May 1943
• Goebbels’s essay “The War and the Jews”: 9 May 1943
• Speaker Express Information (“Twilight of the Jews”): 18 May 1943
• Anti-Semitic directives for magazine editors: 21 May 1943
• Goebbels’s essay “Driving Forces”: 6 June 1943

I don’t know of a complete set of this material.  I have most, but all of it.  For those who might find it useful, I provide an index to my collection.

1942 Stuermer Article

Julius Streicher was convinced that there was an international Jewish conspiracy involving every single Jew on the planet.  Today I’m adding a 1942 article that asserts a Jewish gathering in Moscow provided proof of that conspiracy.  The orders from Jews in Moscow allegedly would be followed by their racial comrades wherever they might be.

  

The cover is by Fips (Phillipp Rupprecht), the regular Stürmer cartoonist. Its title: “Checking the Devil.”

Nazi Advice on Racial Questions

Nazi racial laws got complicated, sometimes  leaving people in distressing situations.  Today I’m adding a Q & A column from Der Hoheitsträger, a Nazi monthly for party officials at the local group leader level and above.

It deals with such awkward issues as what to do if a city employee discovers that his wife is half Jewish. The answer: divorce her or resign the job.  

Goebbels on the Success of Nazi Propaganda Abroad (1943)

The Nazis began a major anti-Semitic propaganda campaign in May 1943. Anti-Semitism was to be incorporated in as many ways as possible.  A few weeks after the start of the campaign Goebbels’s weekly article in Das Reich titled "Driving Forces” focussed on the alleged influence of Nazi propaganda abroad and on supposed Jewish attempts to limit its success.

My Recent Lecture on Nazi Anti-Semitism

I gave a lecture at Oregon State University on April 9, 2018 on Nazi anti-Semitism.  It is available on YouTube:

Instructions for a 1943 Nazi Anti-Semitic Campaign

Even though much of the killing of the Holocaust was finished by May 1943, the Nazis still promoted anti-Semitism. They feared that Germans might decide that anti-Semitism was no longer  relevant. In May 1943, as part of a broader anti-Semitic campaign, the Deutscher Wochendienst, a confidential newsletter for magazine editors, provided a catalog of anti-Semitic argument that editors were to use in their publications.

I am adding a full translation of that issue. And although I rarely include the German original of material on the site, I am including a pdf of the original, since it is such a rare and illuminating document.

1933 Anti-Semitic Poster

A friend of the site provided this poster from March 1933. It’s not clear if it was issued before or after  the 28 March 1933 call by the Nazi Party for a nation-wide boycott.

A translation is available.

Nazi Uses of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”

Holocaust and Genocide Studies just published my article “Believing in ‘Inner Truth’: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Nazi Propaganda, 1933-1945.” Here’s the abstract:

Although most leading Nazis realized that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a spurious document, they found it useful in promoting belief in the international Jewish conspiracy of which they were already convinced. Authorship and other details were irrelevant, they averred, if the book expressed “inner truth.”

The GPA includes the introduction to a Nazi edition of the Protocols.

Julius Streicher Meeting Posters

I’m adding a collection of eight posters advertising meetings addressed by Julius Streicher between 1922 and 1933.  After joining Hitler’s Nazi Party in 1922, Streicher began speaking extensively outside his home city of Nuremberg.

This poster promotes an August 1923 meeting in Vienna.

Julius Streicher and Vaccinations

Given all the recent controversy involving those who doubt the wisdom of vaccinations, I recalled this cartoon I came across from a 1932 issue of Der Stürmer.  It shows a Jewish doctor immunizing a child.  The caption translates as:  “It seems to me that poison and Jews seldom do good things.”

Vaccination

Now, most Nazis realized that vaccinating children was a good idea — but Streicher was a dangerous crackpot in more ways than one.

Anti-Semitic Poster from the November 1932 Election

While looking through Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer for something else, I came across this poster from the November 1932 Reichstag election.

It translates loosely as “Get rid of misery, get rid of the Jews.”   I’ll added it to the pre-1933 poster page.

An Anti-Semitic Poster from 1932

A friend of the site provides me with this interesting image that I have added to the poster page:

Death to Marxism

Join Us!

It probably was issued for one of Reichstag elections of 1932, since the snake has the three-arrow symbol of the “Iron Front,” an anti-Nazi coalition established in December.  It could also be from the Prussian elections that year.  It looks to be something produced by a regional party organization, since posters produced by the Reichspropagandaleitung were generally more polished.

International Ethnic Mush (1941)

I particularly like to add ephemera to the GPA — pamphlets and other items that were produced in large numbers, but not intended to grace library shelves for coming generations.  Today’s addition is a remarkable pamphlet titled International Ethnic Mush or United National States of Europe?  It was published in the first half of 1941 by Robert Ley, head of the Nazi labor organization and a person unsavory even by Nazi standards.

The print run was 2,000,000, and I assume it was widely distributed.  It is filled with crude anti-Semitism and a fair amount of Germanic pride.  Ley tells his readers that they are the master race that has earned the right to rule Europe.

Julius Streicher Speech: 31 October 1939

Today I’m adding what was probably Julius Streicher’s last major speech, delivered on 31 October 1939.  He was in considerable difficulty at the time, and was shortly afterward exiled to his country estate outside Nuremberg.

World War II was in its “phony war” stage.  Poland was defeated, but little was happening on the battlefields.  Streicher includes his usual anti-Semitic arguments and encourages his audience to have faith in Hitler.

New Site on Anti-Semitic Propaganda

An interesting new site on German propaganda includes a wide range of images of anti-Semitic material from 1930-1945.  It’s based on the remarkable collection of material held by the site’s owner.

Anti-Semitic Material for Girls (1944)

Although most Jews had already been killed by February 1944, the Nazi continued their anti-Semitic propaganda.  Today I am adding training material to be used in meetings with girls.  Although most  girls would have had no direct experience with Jews, they are told that Jews remain a deadly threat to Germany.

A 1927 Nazi Caricature: Killing Jews with Poison Gas

In Mein Kampf, Hitler writes that Germany would not have lost World War I if 12,000 - 15,000 “Hebrew corruptors of the people” had been killed with poison gas.

There were not a lot of such suggestions in Nazi propaganda before 1933 of killing Jews en masse, but Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer did run occasional cartoons like this one that I am today adding to the page on pre-1933 cartoons from Der Stürmer.

A Nazi is pumping poison gas into a tunnel beneath an oak tree representing Germany. Dead Jewish rats are strewn about.  The caption: “When the vermin are dead, the German oak will flourish.”

New Cartoons from Der Stuermer

I’ve been adding caricatures to the Der Stürmer page. Some provide a clear prediction of where Nazism was headed.  Take this cartoon from 1935, for example.

It is titled “Don’t Let Go!” The doggerel verse beneath says that it is better to strangle the Jewish serpent to death rather than allow Germany’s misery to return.

A similar theme shows up in September 1944.

Titled “The Jewish Beast,” it suggests that Germany is defending itself against the Jewish threat.  By September 1944, most of the mass murders of the Holocaust had already occurred.