Why Hitler Came to Power/One Rabbi's Explanation/in 1933/vulgar principle: "What one does not want, one does not believe." /BARNES REVIEW

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THE BARNES REVIEW
... To Bring Into Accord With The Facts

Why Hitler Came to Power

One Rabbi's Explanation
By Rabbi Dr. Manfred Reifer

Although Jewish writers and historians have offered many explanations as to how and why Adolf Hitler came to power, most of them have addressed the topic from a biased point of view. However, one rabbi created quite a stir in 1933 when he offered an objective analysis as to what led to the rise of anti-Semitism not just in Germany but throughout Europe. His reflections are worth consideration as The Barnes Review begins this special look at the period known as "The Holocaust."

The present situation of the German Jews is the conclusion of an historical process. It is a development the beginning of which can be traced back to the time of Bismarck. It had to come this way, if one understands the deep historical import of this anti-Semitic movement, of which Adolf Hitler is the strongest exponent. Anyone who did not foresee that was afflicted with blindness. One tried to close one's eyes to the events and acted according to the vulgar principle: "What one does not want, one does not believe." That was a convenient way to avoid fundamental questions, to look at the world through rose-colored glasses. The advocates of assimilation attempted to throw a veil over things and to play liberalism -- long dead --as their last card. They did not understand the course of history, and believed they could evade it by declaring themselves Germans of the Mosaic faith, by denying the existence of a Jewish nation, by severing all threads that bound them to Jewry, by striking out the word "Zion" in their prayer books and introducing Sunday Service. They looked upon anti-Semitism as a passing phenomenon which would be eliminated through intensive propaganda, through organization of a society for fighting it. Such were the thoughts of a great majority of German Jews. And hence the disappointment, the deep resignation in connection with Hitler's victory, hence the nameless despair, the spreading psychosis that culminated in suicide, the complete loss of morale.

But he who judges the events in Germany according to the principle of causality will have to judge the Nazi movements as the culmination of a natural development; he will also understand that history knows no accidents, that every epoch is the result of the preceding one. And here lies the key to the understanding of the present situation. The fight against Jewdom has been conducted in Germany for half a century intensively and with German thoroughness. Scientific anti-Semitism has taken root in German soil.

All this the German Jews refused to see. They fed themselves on false hope, overlooked reality and dreamed of cosmopolitanism of the time of Dohn, Lessing and Mendelssohn. The uprooted Jews gave themselves fantastic ideas and nourished cosmopolitan dreams. And this expressed itself in two fold manner. Either they acclaimed the general liberalism or they became banner carriers of socialism. Both fields of activity furnished new food to anti-Semitism.

In all good faith, to serve themselves and humanity, the Jews began to reach actively into the life of the German people. With characteristic passion they threw themselves upon all fields of knowledge, they took hold of the press, organized the working masses, and strove to influence the whole spiritual life in the direction of liberalism and democracy. This of course would necessarily cause a deep reaction on the part of their host people. When the Jews, for instance, took hold of the so-called international disciplines, whenever they achieved distinction in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, astronomy, and to a certain extent in the field of philosophy, they might at most cause envy among their Aryan colleagues, but not general hatred of the whole nation. One did not like to see Jews become bearers of Nobel prizes, but accepted it silently. But in the fields of national disciplines things are quite different. Here every nation strives to develop its own original powers and to transmit to the present and coming generation the fruits of the spiritual labors of the race. It is not a matter of indifference to the people who write its Christmas articles, who celebrate mass, who urge going to church. The people of every nation wish that their young be educated in their own spirit. But while great parts of the German people fought for the maintenance of their kind, we Jews filled with our clamor the streets of Germania. We posed as world reformers and sought to influence public life through our ideas. We rang the bells and called to silent prayer, we prepared the "Lord's supper" and celebrated resurrection.

We played with the most holy possessions of the people and at times made fun of all that was sacred to the nation. We trusted to the imperishable rights of democracy and felt ourselves as equal citizens of the state within the German community. We posed as censors of the morals of the people, and poured out full cups of satire upon the German Michel. We wanted to be prophets in the pagan fields of Germania and forgot ourselves so far that all this had to draw destruction upon us.

We made revolutions, and ran as eternal God seekers, ahead of the masses of the people. We gave to the international proletariat a second Bible, one that was adequate to the times, and we roused the passions of the third state. The Jew Marx from Germany, declared war on capitalism and LaSalle [also Jewish -- Ed.] organized the masses of the people in Germany itself. The Jew Eduard Bernstein popularized ideology, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg [also Jewish -- Ed.] called the Spartacist movement to life. The Jew Kurt Eisner created the Bavarian Soviet Republic and was her first, and last, president. And against that the German nation rose up, rebelled. She wanted to forge her own destiny, determine the future of her own children -- and she should not have been blamed for it.

What we objected to first of all was the world citizenship, the cosmopolitanism, which had Jews as its front fighters. These uprooted persons imagined they possessed the power to transplant the ideas of Isaiah into the alleys of Germania, and to storm Valhalla with Amos. At times they succeeded in that, but they bury themselves and the Jewish people under the ruins of a world that has collapsed.

One must look at the struggle of the Hitler regime from a different viewpoint, and learn to understand. Have we Jews not rebelled, and conducted bloody wars against everything foreign? What else then were the wars of the Maccabees but protests against a foreign, non-Jewish way of life? And of what consisted the eternal fight of the prophets? Surely of nothing else than eliminating foreign elements, the foreign gods, and of the keeping scared the original nature of Jewdom. Have we not rebelled against the racially related kings of the house of the Idu maeens? And have we not excluded the Samaritans from our community because they practiced mixed marriages? Why should not the German nationalists do the same, when a Kurt Eisner appropriates to himself the prerogatives of the Wittels bachers? We must learn to look truth in the face and to draw last consequences.

We should not want to be false prophets, but to dodge facts does not mean solving the problem. What is occurring today in Germany will come tomorrow in Russia. For all crimes which were the consequences of the Communistic system, the Jews in Soviet Russia will have to suffer some day. We shall have to pay dearly for the fact that Trotsky, Joffe, Sinojew, had leading posts in Soviet Russia.

Was there not more sin against the democratic form in Soviet Russia than in Germany? While in Germany Hitler obtained in the election campaign a majority, in Russia there was no such thing. There a small minority -- today after 15 years an organization of barely four millions -- proclaimed the dictatorship of the proletariat. . . . The Jews' attempt in Soviet Russia also to be announcers and pronouncers of the new absolute truth, they strive to interpret the Bolshevist Bible and to influence the ways of thinking of the Russian people. A process that calls forth sharpest resistance and even today leads to anti-Semitic disruption. What will happen when the Soviet government will have fallen and democracy in Russia will celebrate its solemn entrance? Will the Jews fare better than today in Germany? Will not the Russian people behind the Trotskys, the Kamenevs, Sinojews, etc. discover their old Jewish names and let the children suffer for the sins of their fathers? Or will it not even last that long, so that even the father's turn will come yet? Are there not examples for that? Did not thousands of Jews lose their lives in Hungary because Bela Kun [a Jew -- Ed.] erected a Soviet republic on the soil of Stephan the Holy? The Hungarian Jews have paid very dearly for their prophetdom. . . . Within the[communist] Internationale the Jews appear as the most radical element. Germans, French, Poles, Czechs have a home and their internationalism lives itself out in Germany, France, Poland, Czechia. They are autochthonous, under home right. That shows itself in practical life. The Germans in 1914 burned their red flags in the Tiergarten at Berlin and went with the Deutschland on their lips, forth to war. The Polish socialist Das zinski stood in the forefront of the fight for the resurrection of Poland and the Czech socialists sang with enthusiasm their Hatikwah "Kdedomov muj."

Only the Jews would hear nothing about home and fell as ostensible prophets on the field of liberty. Karl Liebkneckt, Rosa Luxem burg, Kurt Eisner, Gustav Landauer: "No Kaddosh will be spoken, no mass read. . . "

They, and in the same measure, the children of liberalism, all those poets, authors, artists, journalists, prepared the present time, nourished Jew hatred, furnished the grounds, the material for the era of National Socialism. They all surely desired the best, but attained the opposite. They were cursed with blindness, they saw not the approach of catastrophe., they heard not the footfall of time, the heavy footfalls of time, the heavy footfalls of the Nemesis of History. v

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