HIST3025 Hitler and the National Socialist Ideology

1. HIST3025Hitler and the National Socialist Ideology Lecture 8: The Jews 11 April 2013

2. Anti-Semitism in 1920s • Based on anti-Semitic works of late 19th c. • Common pattern to comprehend Germany’s national, social, economic situation after 1918 • Widespread search for scapegoat • Reflected in Hitler’s obsessions in Mein Kampf & speeches  Jews seen as alien elements, parasites, bacillus, enemies of German nation

3. Mein Kampf: The Jews KulturzerstörerDestroyers of culture Seen in sharp contrast to creative Aryans Possess only ‘borrowed’ culture from others Regarded as strongly egoistic: Parasites Judaism not judged as only religion but as race Charged of seeking to destroy Germans & Germany Made responsible for modern evils: Capitalism + Marxism ► Darwin’s biological theory of struggle (‘survival of the fittest’) ► Hitler’s race theory of struggle between Aryans and Jews = Social Darwinism

4. Racial Anti-Semitism • Based on religious & economic Anti-Semitism: • Social-Darwinist ideas + ‘scientific’ race theories • Jews seen as having specific “Jewish” features: Characters, attitudes, habits → Biologically-defined ‘Jewish race’ • And: Jews not permitted to change by confession or adaption to societies = only ‘departure’

5. Jews as agents of modernity • Associated with malign, exploitative forces of capitalism: Cheaters & swindlers • Responsible for all negative manifestations of urban life: Press, cultural criticism, modern theatre & art & literature = Regarded by Hitler as licentious, pornographic, corrosive of healthy traditional values

6. Jews as sexual predator Responsible for prostitution: Traditional anti-Semitic prejudice taken up by Hitler: • Seen as lustful despoilers • Seducing innocent German girls = Undermining ‘purity’ of blood of girls & German nation → Sexual neuroses concerning ‘purity’ of women & nation

7. Jews as animals • Journalists as ‘yelping hounds’, ‘trufflers’ • ‘Octopuses’, ‘vipers’, ‘serpents’ = Crude & often lurid animal imagery = German nation poisoned by Jews • Reflects Hitler’s fundamental belief in biological struggle between nations • Jews no Germans but separate ‘race’

8. Hitler’s medicalised language • Imagined nations as human bodies / organic creations / biological systems • Nations = national bodies under constant attack from parasites, illnesses, poisons, viruses • Jews ‘the plague of nations’, ‘disease’, ‘tuberculosis’, ‘parasites’, ‘poison’, ‘foreign virus’

9. Hitler’s medical diagnosis • Imaging Jews ‘dirty’ & ‘filthy’ ≠ ‘cleanliness’ of national body ↓ • Suggesting ‘parasites’ to be eradicated to clean national body of impurities → Genocidal agenda not openly announced but logical possible result of Hitler’s notions = Hitler responsible for creating genocidal climate