In the mid 1990s I had
written a controversial article, “White Male Privilege? A Social Construct for Political
Oppression,” eventually published in the Journal
of Libertarian Studies Winter 1998-99.
Even prior to publication of that article, I had begun work writing on the
article below. Originally, I shaped it
as an answer to Heribert Adam’s article in Telos. I submitted my article to that journal and
was stunned by the enormous length of the editorial responses. Over 50 pages of single-spaced commentary on
my 15-page article! Of all the editors,
only one, a woman who taught at a prominent university in the UK, favored publication. She did not necessarily agree with my
position, but thought my article should be published to get a hearing on the
topic. Other editors demurred. One called my article a “piece of shit.” Another was not only furious with me, he
wanted to insure that the British editor might be barred from entering a
Middle-Eastern nation! Anger and
threats. This from a journal that had generously
published several of my controversial pieces.
But not this article.
I tried several other
journals. I had hoped that the Journal of Libertarian Studies might
publish this, as it was a companion piece to my article on white male privilege
in the United States. That journal
rejected mine, but printed instead a related piece by Steve Farron. Later, Farron was able to publish an even
lengthier version of his thesis in South Africa.
When my friend, Anthony
Flood, established his web site, he was kind enough to include several of my
articles. He also included this most
controversial, unpublished article. I
have lazily copied the article from his site to place it on my blog as well. I have made a few minor changes, and given it
a new title. I hope you find it
thought-provoking.----------Hugh Murray
10 March 2013
............................................
Provoked
by Heribert Adam's “Anti-Semitism and Anti-Black Racism: Nazi Germany and
Apartheid South Africa,” (Telos 108,
Summer 1996), Murray submitted an earlier version of this essay to that radical
journal's editor, the late Paul Piccone. Murray had published in Telos three times before, so
the latest submission was given careful consideration—and ultimately rejection
in the form of a 53-page critique by almost every member of the editorial
board! More than one other journal followed suit. I am proud to
have rendered all those editorial verdicts null and void since the launching of
this site in 2004 by posting a version of this paper that dates from about
2000.
Anthony
Flood
(This
note added February 20, 2007)
“.
. . the victims may be different, the perpetrators may be different, but
the spirit that energized Nazi race laws is clearly evident in the America of today.”
WHAT CAUSED THE HOLOCAUST?
Or: Why Liberals
Cannot Understand It
What caused the
Holocaust? To liberals, the cause is clear: irrational race prejudice was
unleashed by chaotic conditions in Germany following WWI. Defeat,
inflation, and later depression, mixed with the unhealthy German obsequiousness
before authorities from father, to teacher, to civil servant, to the military,
blended economic and psychological elements to produce a national
psychosis. The ailing electorate then voted for an expressionist- actor,
orator, prompting his rise from failure to Fuehrer. Germans first voted
for the fanatic, then followed him into war, and finally committed crimes
against humanity unequaled in history. Thus, the Holocaust was the result
of Hitler’s, and the Germans’, irrational, psychotic, hatred of Jews.
There was something sinister about the Germans that turned them into Hitler’s
willing executioners.[1]
Some trace this
German anti-Semitism back to Luther and beyond. But others note that
venomous anti-Semitism was not exclusively a German trait. It could be
found in equal or lesser degrees among the Poles, other Eastern Europeans,
Western Europeans, among all Christians, indeed all gentiles. Moreover,
some interpretations of the Holocaust maintain that it cannot be fully analyzed
or described—it is an event in history but beyond history; it is an occurrence
at the center of their religion.[2] The Holocaust is the example of
a supernatural evil in history that directs one to the supernatural good
outside of history. This is a more religious view of the Holocaust.
By contrast, the
orthodox Left saw the mass murders by German fascists as the consequence of
capitalist exploitation. If the final stage of capitalism was
imperialism, the the final stage of imperialism was Hitlerian barbarism with
its “final solutions.” However, the defeat of the Nazis did not destroy
the danger because capitalism still thrives. As Brecht quipped, the womb
that gave birth to Hitler is still fertile. And because new Hitlers might
be funded by capitalism, the Left demands preventive measures.
If free speech and
the libertarian culture of Weimar Germany prepared the path for Hitler, then
there must be restrictions to prevent the same exploitative class from using
the bourgeois democratic process to create new fascist dictators. To foil
future fascisms, “hate speech” codes must replace free speech, for free speech
resounds down the slippery slope to Auschwitz. In recent decades, the
Left has often replaced the demon of the capitalist exploiter with that of the
white male oppressor, and both are dangerous (if not synonymous), both must be
harnessed. Hate speech laws provide one method of doing so. To
forestall a future Holocaust, launched by white male oppressors, the Left
demands restrictions on free speech, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble,
the right to bear arms. To prevent future extermination camps, the Bill
of Rights and the American Constitution must be tossed into history’s
dustbin—or “reinterpreted” by Leftist judges until those traditional rights
wither away.
I contend that most
of the assumptions behind the liberal, religious, and Leftist interpretations
of the Holocaust are false. Though there are differences between and
among these outlooks, there is also overlap, and these views overwhelmingly
dominate both the academic world and the arena of popular culture’s film and
television.
I challenge these
assumptions. It is our duty to seek to comprehend human history.
There is no history “beyond” history to be treated as sacred knowledge; there
is no history that cannot be questioned, even if some deem such questioning to
be “insensitive.” Furthermore, like Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic, I contend that much
of the discussion on the Holocaust that preceded is evasive and
deceptive. The issue is not as complex as scholars imply. The
spirit that propelled many Germans, first to anti-Semitism, then to legalized
restrictions against the Jews, and finally to exterminating Jews is the same
spirit found in America’s courts, Congress, and among Presidents, and most
especially in university departments of Women’s Studies, Black Studies,
Hispanic Studies, etc. That spirit presupposes the view that justice
requires wealth and power be distributed proportionally by groups. Ideas
have consequences. When Germans accepted that view of justice, a logic
unfolded in reality that in time elicited surprising and gruesome results.
First, review the
history of the era from another perspective. Were Germans being
“irrational” when they finally voted for the Nazis? Was it “irrational”
for many Germans to conclude that Jews, a tiny percentage of their population,
were a threat and oppressors? During WWI many Jews fought for theVaterland and its Central Power
allies. However, during the war, another alliance was forged between
Britain and Zionists that culminated in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 with
its promise of a homeland for Jews in the Middle East.[3] To some
Germans, international Jewry had joined the war against Germany. Omer
Bartov notes the importance of Germany’s “notorious ‘Jew count’ . . . of 1916,
an official inquiry aimed at gauging under representation of Jews in the army”
in WWI.[4] Many Germans suspected that Jews were using their influence to
avoid dangerous duty in the trenches. The survey revealed that Jews were
actually slightly over-represented at the front, and because of that, it was
not released.
Shortly thereafter,
it was obvious that Jews were far more over represented in leading radical
revolutions in Germany and elsewhere. While many Jews in Poland,
Byelorussia, Ukraine, etc., welcomed German occupation troops above those of
the Czar, things were in flux. In early 1917 the Czar was overthrown and
a democratic, pro-Western, pro-war regime installed. The Kaiser’s forces
then aided Lenin who was trapped in neutral Switzerland, surrounded by
belligerent nations. The Germans permitted Lenin to travel through
Germany in a sealed train so that he could return to Russia in 1917.
Within the year, Lenin and his Bolsheviki proceeded to overturn the pro-war
regime of Kerenski. Many of the Bolshevik leaders were not typically
Russian; a high percentage were Jews like Trotsky; a few came from the
provinces, like the Georgian, Stalin. Even Lenin was part
Jewish.[5] Eventually the Bolsheviki had to sign a peace treaty with the
Kaiser’s representatives, ceding vast territories to become “independent” and/or
German satellite states carved from the old Russian Empire. By the spring
of 1918, the war on the East Front was over; Germany had won! The Treaty
of Brest-Litovsk expanded the Kaiser’s influence deep into the former Czarist
realm.
With victory in the
East accomplished, Germany had only to smash the West. But, before it
could do so, there was rebellion at home. German soviets in the navy and
in factories demanded peace and the overthrow of the Kaiser! Suddenly,
after all the sacrifice to win the war, after victory in the East, and with
German troops still in Belgium, France, Kiev and the Baltic states, treason on
the home front by social democrats, soviets, and others crushed Germany’s
hopes. In the fall of 1918 Germany sued for peace based upon President Wilson’s
14 Points—self determination of nations, open treaties openly arrived at,
etc. The Kaiser fled Germany and a Republic was proclaimed, headed by
Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert. With German victory so near, the new,
social-democratic republic sought peace—and with it, defeat. (Actually,
Ludendorff and the High command knew that the German Army had been defeated,
and its unpublicized revelation of that fact to the Kaiser in August 1918 and
its demand that he sue for peace had precipitated the crisis. But in the
propaganda about the events, the military was unblemished, while the theory of
the radical’s “stab in the back” gained ever wider support.)
Turmoil erupted
inside Germany. New Years’ 1918-19, the radical Spartacists attempted a
coup, but were foiled by soldiers returning from the fronts who formed into new
groups, the Freikorps (free corps). They killed the two Spartacist
leaders, Karl Liebkencht, and the Jewish Rosa Luxemburg. Elsewhere,
events went in the opposite direction. In the large southern German
province of Bavaria, a republic was also proclaimed, led by the Jewish
journalist Kurt Eisner, then by the Jewish playwright Ernst Toller, and finally
by the Jewish Communist Eugen Levine. Apparently, one of the supporters
of this radical Left regime was a young corporal, recently released, who had
been gassed in the trenches toward war’s end, Adolf Hitler.[6]
So the popular notion
that no Nazi could serve under a Jewish President is wrong; after all, Hitler,
the future Fuehrer marched in support of the slain Jewish President of the
Bavarian Republic. Shortly after, Hitler was elected from his military
unit to the local soviet.[7] The Bavarian Leftists requested support from
the new Hungarian Soviet government in Budapest, led by the Jewish Bela Kun,
but Kun was himself on the defensive and soon defeated.[7b] By the spring
of 1918 Levine’s isolated Bolshevik regime in Bavaria was brutally crushed by
right-wing troops; the young Hitler quickly switched his allegiance to the
Right and denied ever favoring the Jewish-led Soviet Republic of Bavaria.
Nevertheless, it is clear that another common assertion is wrong—some Jews not
only dreamt of overthrowing German governments before the onset of pogroms,
some were quite active in trying to overthrow them, and for short periods
actually succeeded in doing so.
The new Weimar
Republic sought to solidify support. It also proved instructive for those
who believed in the proportional-by-group theory of justice. Not only was
Hugo Preuss, a Jew, the chief author of the Constitution of the Weimar
Republic, but Jews dominated or were significantly disproportionate in numerous
lucrative occupations.[8] To those Americans who support Affirmative
Action, if they are honest and consistent, surely they would have judged the
Jews as oppressors of Germans, a threat to the German people and nation in the
1920s and early 1930s.
In January 1922
Walther Rathenau was appointed Germany’s Foreign Minister. Rathenau,
Jewish, was the son of the founder of AEG, that nation’s equivalent of
General Electric. During WWI he had headed the Raw Materials Commission,
and had been a kind of economic czar for the Reich, doing much to keep the
military machine functioning during the blockade by the Allies. As
Foreign Minister Rathenau negotiated the Treaty of Rapallo with the Soviets, an
attempt to end the isolation of both “outlaw” nations. But in June 1922
Rathenau was assassinated by anti-Semites.
In 1923 in Bavaria
Hitler and General Ludendorff, a leading military figure during WWI, launched
their coup against the new Republic. It too failed, and Hitler was tried
and imprisoned for his activities. However, his trial was broadcast
throughout the nation, and Hitler used the opportunity to place the Weimar
Republic in the docket. Many outside of Bavaria were impressed by his
indictment of the government.
And what kind of
regime was the Weimar Republic? In today’s America one is constantly
informed by the media, academia, and government that institutional racism
exists as evidenced by statistics that show that white men—a minority—are over
represented as CEOs, in medical schools, law schools, the professions, media,
government, etc. “White male privilege,” “racism, “sexism,” “black
oppression,” are all phrases commonly heard that flow from the
statistics. These charges are based on numbers—whites earn about 1.5
times what blacks do; men perhaps 1.3 times what women do. If white men
dominate the US and oppress others—as revealed by the statistics—then who
dominated Germany during the 1920s? Who oppressed the Germans?
Leftist scholar
Robert Proctor notes that in Germany in 1933, 13% of the medical doctors in the
nation were Jews. That meant Jews were represented more than 15 times
higher than they should have been (by EEOC-type standards) in the lucrative
medical profession. In Berlin, Jews were 60% of the doctors![9]
Some of the leading newspapers were owned by Jews—most important in the days
before television and where radio was government controlled. As for the
theater, Bernt Engelmann described the Weimar situation thusly, “The pre-Hitler
German theater would therefore seem to be a theater of Jews for Jews, with
predominantly Jewish authors, directors, actors, musicians, critics, and
presumably also mainly Jewish audiences.” Engelmann noted Hitler’s
revolution in the Reich’s movie industry: “It could be considered a miracle
that any German films continued to be produced at all, after nearly 40 per cent
of the stars and starlets had been legally barred from working, along with more
than half of all producers and directors.”[10] Georg Iggers, a refugee
from Hitler’s Reich, studied German universities. He reported: “Imperial
Germany saw the opening of the universities to non-converted Jews.
Statistics from the year 1900 reflect both the openness of the Prussian
universities and the extent of discrimination.. Taking into consideration all
ranks of university teachers, there were 35 Catholics per 1,000,000 population,
106.5 Protestants, and 698.9 Jews -- . . . But the representation of Jews
among full professors . . . was considerably smaller, suggesting discriminatory
patterns, namely per 1,000,000 16.9 Catholics, 33.5 Protestants, and only 65.5
Jews.” Iggers adds, “If the situation was inconsistent in Imperial Germany,
it was even more so in the Weimar Republic. On the positive side, more
Jews were able to obtain university positions than before,” but they were
confronted with growing anti-Semitism.[11] Of course, the statistics
Iggers discloses show such over representation that pro-Affirmative Action
groups should call it anti-Aryan discrimination.
Jews, less that 1% of
the population (a mere 4/5ths of 1%) in the Weimar era were 16% of the lawyers,
over 11% of the doctors; Jews owned 40% of Germany’s wholesale textile firms,
nearly 60% of the wholesale and retail clothing business, half the private
banks, composed 25% of the wholesales of agricultural products, and their
departments stores acquired 79% of that market.[12]
While the German
economy staggered and then recovered from the vast inflation of 1923, it soon
stumbled into Depression in 1929. Millions were unemployed, and at that
time the crisis was undoubtly worse in Germany than in Britain or the United
States.
Of course, in America
today liberals denounce white male privilege because white men are over
represented among CEOs, etc. Whites earn perhaps $1.50 for each $1.00
earned by blacks; men about $1.30 for each $1.00 earned by women. Because
of this disparity, in America Affirmative Action edicts legalize institutional
discrimination against white men in awarding contracts, hiring, promotion,
admission to university, scholarships, etc. (When everyone except white
males receives a preference, then white men are being discriminated
against.) The justification for such discrimination is to curb white male
dominance and oppression in the seats of power and wealth.
But during the Weimar
Republic, Jews earned 3.2 RM for every Reichsmark earned by German
gentiles![13] “Aryans” were thus earning a mere 30 Pfennigs for each
Reichsmark earned by Jews. And in the Depression! No wonder some
demanded that Jews be restricted. When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933,
he proceeded to do just that. The result, Germany recovered from
Depression. And with the marked economic renaissance, no wonder gentile
Germans were jubilant, thanking Der Fuehrer for restoring prosperity. The
Germans were no different from Americans who adored Franklin Roosevelt whose
New Deal, if it did not create prosperity, at least softened the impact of the
slump.
For many average
German gentiles the lesson seemed clear: in the 1920s Jews dominated important
and lucrative sectors of the economy, and the consequences were devastating for
Germany’s gentiles. By the mid-1930s, with Jews ever more restricted,
German gentiles thrived. Perhaps the Nazis were right; perhaps the Jews
were the enemy of the German people. Moreover, Jews holding
disproportionate influence outside Germany, spread propaganda to “slander” the
new Germany and engaged in boycotts of the Third Reich.
Many Germans,
deducing logically from the proportional-by-group theory of justice, blending
with their experience, reached certain conclusions about reality. Perhaps
the Nazis were correct that it was because of nature, innate racial reasons
that Jews managed to acquire such power in banking, media, academia, law, and
medicine. Or, perhaps nurture was the cause of this Jewish problem of over-representation,
perhaps it was a consequence of their history, environment, etc. Either
way, however, Jews held disproportionate power and were using it to hinder
Germany, trying to cripple its new prosperity. And if Jews refused to
remain restricted, severer measures, indeed a final solution to the Jewish
problem, might be considered. It was not the
inevitable outcome, but neither was it irrational if one adheres to the
proportion-by-group notion of justice. Some Germans undoubtedly reached
such conclusions as they followed logically from their assumptions about group
proportions and justice.
Then what
happened? For the moment, forget WWII. Consider only the period
January 1933 to early November 1938. The Depression eased and then
disappeared from Germany. While the New Deal in America staggered from
depression to recession and back to depression again, while Britain slogged
along with dole and depression-rate unemployment throughout the 1930s, while
the Soviets reduced unemployment through gulags, slavery, starvation, and the
murder of millions, Nazi Germany seemed to thrive. What about the
Jews? Some fled. But many asserted, “It won’t be so bad,” and
remained. The 1 April 1933 boycott of Jewish stores was worrisome, but it
lasted only a day, and the leading Zionist paper in Germany urged Jews to wear
the yellow Jewish designation with honor. True, Jews lost civil service,
university, media, and legal posts, but others continued working.
(Interestingly, Nazis who believed that German students should not be taught by
and could learn nothing from Jewish professors, like Einstein, and therefore
the Jews must be fired, are echoed by American Leftists who assert that Blacks
can learn only from Blacks, Hispanics from Hispanics, Asians from Asians, and
so children in American schools must have racially and ethnically appropriate
teachers.)
True, there were
humiliations. In 1935 Jews lost their citizenship and the right to marry
non-Jews, but at least Jews would not become extinct through assimilation and
intermarriage. Some, like Revisionist Zionist Georg Kareski, endorsed
these Nuremberg Laws.[14] In 1936 during the Olympic Games, visitors at
one of Berlin’s leading department stores were struck to see all the flags of
the participating nations displayed—all except the German flag. By then,
Jews were no longer permitted to fly the German flag (which was changed under
Hitler from the Republic’s black, red, and gold, to the Nazi’s swastika).
But Jews were allowed to display the blue-white flag of Zionism. The
emblem of Zionism was permitted because the Nazis cooperated with the
Zionists. And why not: both sought to get the Jews out of Germany.
Even in 1933 some Zionists welcomed the accession to power of Hitler as an
opportunity for Zionists. During an interview in 1957, Dr. Hans
Friedenthal, the former head of the main Zionist organization in Germany,
the ZVfD, declared, “The Gestapo did everything in those days to promote
emigration, particularly to Palestine. We often received their help when
we required anything from other authorities regarding preparations for
emigration. This position remained constant and uniform the entire time
until the year 1938.”[15] A deal was forged between Zionists and Nazis
whereby 50,000 Jews left Germany for Palestine and received imported goods from
Germany worth millions of Reichsmarks.[16] While the Left and some Jewish
groups boycotted German goods from the beginning in 1933, the Zionists rejected
the boycott and negotiated deals to get Jews from Germany to Israel with a sizable portion of
their wealth.
There was a major
problem for the Zionists in the early 1930s—many Jews did not want to leave
their German homeland, even if it was seeking to disown them. What would
the German Jews do in Palestine, anyway? Or Austria? Or
England? True, thousands were leaving Germany, but, as Proctor writes in
amazement, in the mid-1930s several thousand of the Jews who had left, returned to Nazi
Germany.[17] Why? As Hitler solved the problem of depression, many
Jewish companies not only survived, they thrived. Thus, the decision by
thousands of German Jews to return to Nazi Germany might be readily
comprehended by recalling Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign slogan, “It’s the
economy, stupid!” And, as Gordon Craig noted, “In the clothing and retail
trades, Jewish firms continued to operate profitably until 1938, and in Berlin
and Hamburg, in particular, establishments of known reputation and taste
continued to attract their old customers despite their ownership by Jews.
In the world of finance, no restrictions were placed upon the activities of
Jewish firms in the Berlin bourse (stock exchange), and until 1937 the banking
firms of Mendelsohn, Bleichroeder, Arnhold, Dreyfuss, Straus, Warburg,
Aufhaeuser, and Behrens were still active.[18] Rising waters had
raised many boats. For Jews, there might be humiliations in Germany, but
if they avoided politics, they might be better off than residing under
Stalinist tyranny or in depression-ridden democracies.
Historian Martin Gilbert
notes that during the first five years of Hitler’s reign “no more than two
hundred Jews had been killed, most of them in the first fourteen months of his
rule. The number of Jews, as well as of political opponents, liberals,
and churchmen, held in concentration camps, had continually dropped.”
Gilbert added, “Even Hitler’s anti-Jewish record over five years was open to
positive interpretation.”[19] That was hardly a “holocaust.” There
were probably more gays killed in this period than Jews. There were
certainly more Aryan Germans sterilized (estimates from 200,000 to 400,000,
mostly in the 1930s) or killed because they were physically or mentally
handicapped (about 100,000 mostly before the outbreak of World War
II).[20] To the average German, it would seem that Hitler’s policies had
reinvigorated the nation, created prosperity, achieved international
recognition and national pride in diplomacy, in sports, autos, autobahns,
medicine, etc. Restricting Jews seemed to free Germany so it could flourish
and regain its place in the sun. Goebbels could boast of a German
theater, a German film industry, German publishing, etc. The result was
the world’s first televised Olympics, the best sports film ever made
(Riefenstahl’s Olympia), and the
development of the Volkswagen (“the people’s car”). Nazi policy towards
Jews from 1933 to October 1938 could easily fall into the category of
“rational” racism.
Germany expanded into
Austria, Czechoslovakia, and with war in September 1939, into Poland. The
number of Jews under Hitler’s dominion multiplied geometrically.
Two-thirds of Vienna’s doctors were Jews.[21] A tenth of the Polish
population was Jewish, a third of those dwelling in Warsaw. And when
Britain declared war on the Reich, there was no hope of sending Jews to
Palestine, then ruled by the British. While there might have been other
alternatives, the Nazis decided on the “final solution to the Jewish problem,”
extermination of the Jews. Was it inevitable? This can be
debated. But clearly, it was only with WWII that mass extermination of
Jews began. Furthermore, it was hidden from many average Germans.
The film, The Fuehrer Gives the
Jews a City,
sought to portray the concentration barracks of Theresienstadt as a haven for
Jews. Euphemisms abounded from “final solution” to “resettlement in the
East” to “special handling.” Even when Jews were forced to march through
Germany, guards were told not to shoot them in the cities, where it could be
observed, but in the countryside. And if Jews looked ill-fed and
miserable, Germans by then knew their own homes and cities were being massively
fire-bombed in Hamburg, and later, even more devastatingly in
Dresden. To many Germans, all people, Germans and Jews, were suffering
from the war.[22]
Naturally, not all
Germans were sufficiently “knowledgeable,” “understanding,” and “morally
courageous” to partake in the enormous undertaking of exterminating Europe’s
Jews. This project was for elite units like the SS, which would cleanse
the continent of the Jews, the mentally ill, physical misfits, homosexuals,
gypsies, and other “low-lifes.”
To rationalize many
of the Nazi measures and murders, the proportional-by-group theory of justice
was essential. That is the identical notion of justice espoused today in
America by the EEOC, the NAACP, NOW, La Raza, and others who lead this nation
toward a time when whites will be a minority. Will a similar logic ensue
in 2050 by which time a possible final solution to the white male problem may
be implemented? (If the question appears absurd, insensitive, or
insulting, the question of German extermination of Jews would have seemed
equally so if asked in 1920, 1930, 1933, 1937.)
Bartov stresses the
importance of the “notorious” Jew count in Germany in 1916. What about
the “Jew count” in America of the mid-1960s? It did not occur and that is its
significance.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination based on race, sex, or religion.
However, an official of the EEOC, Alfred Blumrosen, set about to selectively
enforce the law. In violation of the Civil Rights Act, Blumrosen’s EEOC
sent out official forms to major American corporations demanding a “race count”
to determine the proportionality of various races working at the firms.
This annual race count should be deemed as notorious as Germany’s Jew count,
but it is generally ignored—or applauded—by scholars. Soon thereafter the
EEOC also required corporations to submit sex and ethnicity counts, all aimed
to force employers to hire a racially, sexually, and ethnically proportional
workforce. But Blumrosen ensured that the EEOC never inquired about
religion. He was determined to prevent a proportional workforce based on
religion—though religion was one of the categories mentioned in the Civil
Rights Act of 1964. Instead, Blumrosen selectively enforced the law so
there would be goals and timetables (quotas) by race, sex, and ethnicity, but
not by religion.[23]
One consequence of
the selective enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was that some Jews
complained in 1999 that Princeton University was being unfair in its admission
policies because Jews constituted a mere 10% of the incoming freshman class, a
decline from 16% in 1985. Jews compose above 2% of the general American
population. But some believed Princeton discriminated against Jews when
that university was compared to other Ivy League schools like Harvard, where
Jews were 21% of the freshmen, or at Yale, 29%. Some Jews were disturbed
that they were only 10% at Princeton and claimed they were discriminated
against, though they were 4 to 5 times over represented! Jews are about
25% of the freshman class at Stanford and other elite universities.
Yet, some complain they are the victims of discrimination![24]
Blumrosen also helped
create the hoax of white male privilege and cleverly deflected hostility toward
white men and away from his own, much more over represented group.
Blumrosen thus used his influence to impose Nazi-like race laws on Americans
while consciously exempting his own group from quotas by selectively enforcing
(or more precisely in this case, mis-enforcing) the civil rights law.[25]
Thus, the victims may
be different, the perpetrators may be different, but the spirit that energized
Nazi race laws is clearly evident in America today. That spirit is
summarized in the view that justice requires all groups achieve and received a
proportional share of wealth and power. Those groups who overachieve are
seen in this theory as oppressors who must be curbed, if not eliminated.
This view of justice is what links proponents of Affirmative Action to the
Nazis. Thus, one may properly conclude that American liberals have
created and enforced the Nazi-like race edicts that pervade America.
References
1 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing
Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust(New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1996).
2 For a discussion of
this, see the first and last chapters of Steven E. Aschheim, Culture and
Catastrophe: German and Jewish Confrontation with National Socialism and Other
Crises (London: Macmillan,
1996, pp. 1-30, 115-35.
3 Though Germany had
been a center of Zionism prior to outbreak of WWI, by 1917 the Central Powers
simply could not outbid the British on this issue. While the British could
offer Palestine as a homeland for the Jews, Palestine was then a part of the
Turkish Empire, which was one of the few nations aligned with Germany during
that war. The Turks were
determined to cede Palestine to neither Zionists nor Arabs, and Germany was unwilling
to offend its ally by promising as much to the Zionists as did the
British.
4 Omer Bartov,
“Defining Enemies, Making Victims: Germans, Jews, and the Holocaust,” American Historical
Review,
June 1998, pp. 776-77.
5 Though many on the
Left have dismissed the assertion as anti-Semitic and anti-Communist
propaganda, Lenin himself was partly of Jewish heritage. Dimitri Volkogonov
states in his revealing biography of Lenin, “In her letter to Stalin, Anna
[Yelizarova, an elder sister of Lenin who had studied the family’s background]
wrote: ‘It’s probably no secret for you that the research on our grandfather
shows that he came from a poor Jewish family, that he was, as his baptismal
certificate says, the son of “Zhitomir Meshchanin Moishe Blank”.’ She went on to
suggest that ‘this fact could serve to help combat anti-semitism.’ Paradoxically for a
Marxist . . . ,she also asserted the dubious proposition that Lenin’s Jewish
origins ‘are further confirmation of the exceptional abilities of the Semitic
tribe, . . . ’ . . . Anna’s sister Maria handed the letter to Stalin and
waited while he read it carefully. His response was
categorical and fierce: ‘Absolutely not one word about this letter!’ . .
. But Stalin, the Russified Georgian, could not allow it to be known that Lenin
had Jewish roots, and his strict prohibition remained firmly in place.” Dimitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New
Biography,
tr. And ed. By Harold Shukman (New York, etc.: The Free Press, 1994, pp.
8-9. The revelations from
the former Soviet archives simply demonstrate how often the Left has accepted
and defended Communist propaganda as fact. Chaim Bermant adds to
the discussion in his The Jews (London: Weidenfeld
and Nicholson, 1977) Not counting Lenin,
of the seven members of the early Politburo, four were Jews—Trotsky, Zinoviev,
Kamenev, and Sverdlov. Furthermore, after
Lenin’s death, the triumverate that assumed power in 1924 to block Trotsky
consisted of Zinoviev, Kamenev,
and Stalin. Only Stalin was a gentile, and he was married to a Jew. Sarah Gordon
recognized that one of the “genuine and objective reasons for increased
anti-Semitism during and after WWI” was the impression among ordinary Germans
that Jews were linked to socialism, communism, and revolution. See Sarah Gordon, Hitler, Germans, and
the “Jewish Question”(Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1984, p. 23.
6 The television
program “The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler: [Part] I, The Private Man,”
contains some revealing sequences. I quote from the
narration: “With the defeat [of Germany in 1918], revolution broke out across
Germany. In Bavaria a
revolutionary government was set up. The socialist
president Kurt Eisner was shot on the street in February 1919. The people turned out
to say farewell. Hitler had returned to
his Munich regiment, his only foothold, his only home. He was threatened
with demobilization and a return to the hostel. A fellow soldier
later remembered that Hitler seemed like a stray dog, searching for a new
master. In the funeral
procession for the Jewish Socialist Eisner was a detachment from Hitler’s
regiment wearing both red armbands and black armbands. The film clip shows a
lance corporal marching with the officers—Adolf Hitler. Contrary to his
legend about himself—he is wearing the red cloth of the soviets; he sympathizes
with the German Socialist Party, a hanger on with no political home. After the murder of
Eisner, Munich was shaken by revolution. The Bolsheviks forced
their way into power and for the month of April 1919 set up a Soviet
Republic. The Bolsheviks’
leaders demanded loyalty from the soldiers, including Hitler’s regiment. Spokesmen were being
elected; Hitler stood as a candidate. With 19 votes he won
a seat on the soldier’s council, or soviet, becoming a servant of the forces
which shortly after he said he had always hated. In early May troops
of the Reich’s central government captured Munich and crushed the soviet
dictatorship.” Only then did Hitler
change sides and later cover his past in supporting a Jewish led soviet government
in Bavaria. The film was produced
by ZDF in association with ARTE and the History Channel. Executive Producer:
Guido Knopp. Written and produced
by Guido Knopp and Maurice Philip Remy, 1997. The film shows one
who appears to be Hitler in the funeral procession, and displays documents
about Hitler’s election to the soldier’s soviet.
7 Ibid.
7b Concerning the
leadership in Kun’s revolutionary government—“ . . . of 48 Peoples’ Commissars
. . . 30 were Jewish, as were 161 of its 202 highest officials.” W. D. Rubinstein,
“Jews in the Economic Elites of Western Nations and Antisemitism,” Jewish Journal of
Sociology,
xlii, #1 & 2 of 2000, p. 19.
8 The percentage of
Jews had declined since German unification in 1871. Monika Richarz
presents the statistics showing the decline from 1871 when Jews were 1.25%, to
1900 with 1.04%, in 1910 with 0.95%, in 1925 with 0.90%, to 1933 with only
0.76% after perhaps 25,000 had immigrated because of Nazi rule. In raw numbers, Jews
were 564,379 in 1925, while only 502,799 in 1933. See Monika Richarz
(ed.)Jewish Life in Germany: Memoirs from Three Centuries, tr. Stella P.
Rosenfeld and Sidney Rosenfeld, sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute
(Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991, p. 6. Similarly, Saul
Friedlaender estimates the number of Jews as 535,000 in 1933, in Saul
Friedlaender, Nazi Germany and the
Jews, v. I, The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 (New York: Harper
Collins Publishers, 1997, p. 15. The total population
of Germany in 1925 was just over 63 million, by 1933, just over 66 million.
9 Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene:
Medicine Under the Nazis (Cambridge, Mass. And
London: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 153.
10 See Bernt Engelmann, Germany Without Jews,tr. D. J. Beer
(Munich: Wilhelm Godman Verlag, c1979; New York, etc: Bantam Books,
1984). His quotation about
the theater appears on p. 72, about the films, p. 67. The entire book is a
discussion of Jewish over representation in the culture, science, and
professions of Germany. Sarah Gordon writes
on the same subject, “ . . . in 1931, 50 percent of the 234 theater directors
in Germany were Jewish, and in Berlin the number was 80 percent; 75 percent of
the plays produced in 1930 were written by Jews; and the leading critics were
Jewish, and a large number of prominent actresses and actors were
Jewish.” Sarah Gordon, Hitler, Germans, and
the “Jewish Question,”p. 14.
11 Georg Iggers,
“Academic Anti-Semitism in Germany 1870-1933 from a Comparative International
Perspective,” paper delivered at the International Conference “Rethinking
German Anti-Semitism” at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 26-28 November 1996,
p. 17.
12 Donald L. Niewyk, in The Jews in Weimar
Germany (Baton Rouge &
London: Louisiana State University Press, 1980) writes: “ The role of Jews in
the economy and, indeed, in the culture of Weimar Germany has been exaggerated
. . . And yet, there can be no question that Jews contributed in some aspect of
German life between 1919 and 1933 in numbers disproportionate to their
representation in the population. Almost three-quarters
of them [Jews] made their living from trade, commerce, banking, and the
professions, especially medicine and law . . . Although professed Jews made up
at most 0.9 percent of the German population . . . In 1930, Jews owned four
thousand of Germany’s wholesale textile firms, or 40 percent of the total, and
nearly 60 percent of all wholesale and retail clothing businesses were in
Jewish hands, . . . Around a quarter of all wholesalers of agricultural
products were Jewish, . . . Jews were also important in the wholesale metal
trades and retail grocery business . . . Jews were highly visible as owners of
great department stores and chain stores. In 1932 department
stores owned by Jews accounted for 79 percent of all business done by such
enterprises . . . Jews were similarly prominent as bankers . . . Almost half of
all private banks, . . . ,were owned by . . . famous Jewish banking families .
. . Jews were less prominent in the leadership of German industry, although
they were well represented in a few fields . . . Only in the publishing
industry were Jews unquestionably leaders. The two largest
publishing houses in Germany, . . . , Jewish journalists were notable across
almost the entire spectrum of the liberal and left-wing press . . . In 1933
they made up 11 percent of Germany’s doctors, more than 16 percent of its
lawyers and notaries public, and around 13 percent of its patent attorneys.”
Pp. 12-15. Sarah Gordon wrote,
“Jews were very active in the stock market, particularly in Berlin, where in
1928 they comprised 80 percent of the leading members of the stock
exchange. By 1933, when the
Nazis began eliminating Jews from prominent positions, 85 percent of the
brokers on the Berlin stock exchange were dismissed because of “race.” Sarah Gordon,Hitler,
Germans and the “Jewish Question,” p. 12. It was not only in
Germany where Jews had a disproportionate share of the wealth. Rubinstein reports
that in Hungary in1887 some 62.3% of the top business taxpayers were
Jewish. Around 1914 it was
estimated that 35% of Russia’s mercantile class was Jewish. And in 1929 in Poland
45% of the highest income earners outside of agriculture were Jewish. See Rubinstein, “Jews
in the Economic Elites,” Jewish Journal of
Sociology,
xlii, #1 & 2, p. 6.
13 Niewyk, Jews in Weimar
Germany,
p. 16.
14 Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and
the Palestine Question (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1985), p. 56.
15 Ibid., p. 57.
17 Proctor, Racial Hygiene, p. 374, note 77,
reports that in 1935 some 90,000 Jews left Germany, but 9,000 returned.
18 Gordon Craig, Germany: 1866-1945 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1978), p. 633.
19 Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A
History of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War (New York: Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston, 1985), p. 57.
20 Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors:
Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic
Books, 1986) p. 27 reports 200,000 to 350,000 sterilized; Proctor, Racial Hygiene, p. 108, sets the
number at 400,00. On the euthanasia
program, Proctor states 70,000 had been killed by August 1941, pp. 191-92;
Lifton presents numbers killed in this program, which extended through the war
years and into the post-war era of occupation as 100,000. James Glass, “Life Unworthy of
Life”: Racial Phobia and Mass Murder in Hitler’s Germany (New York: Basic
Books, 1997) states, “Between 1934 and 1945, at least 1 percent of the German
population was sterilized.” P. 39.
21 Proctor, Racial Hygiene, p. 374, note 85.
22 For an account of
this see, “The Letter from Dr. Nash,” by Bill Luedens in Milwaukee’s Shepherd Express, 14 November 1996,
pp. 9-11. The newspaper,
Milwaukee’s equivalent of New York’sVillage Voice, introduced the
article in this manner: “When Erwin Knoll died on Nov. 2, 1994, he was perhaps
the nation’s best-known proponent of radical ideas, a national spokesman for
the political Left. Knoll, for 21 years the editor of The Progressive . . . ” was not a
native American. “ . . . Knoll’s
formative years were spent fleeing the Nazis in Austria. A letter from his
uncle, Eric Nash, who was captured, told his family what they missed.” On the question of
whether the holocaust was rational, see a series of my writings: “Nazi Science,” Polity, Spring 1990, pp. 545-556; “Science, Reason, and
the German Utopia,”Journal of Unconventional History, Fall 1989, pp.
33-51; the critique of that article and my reply, Ibid., Spring 1990, pp.
5-12; and my review of Zygmund Bauman’s Modernity and the
Holocaust in German Politics &
Society (published at
Harvard), Spring 1991, pp. 82-86. Though his
conclusions differ from mine, James Glass, Ibid., includes some
supportive observations. For example, he
writes on p. 120, “[Georg] Mosse’s analysis of culture is correct as far as it
goes; it does not however, give adequate weight to the role of science in
forging professional precepts ( . . . ) critical to understanding the
Holocaust.” On the book cover’s
inside flap, this is stated, “Glass, a leading scholar of political psychology
and political theory, argues that the answers [of why the Final Solution] lie
in the rise of a particular ethos of public health and sanitation that emerged
from the German medical establishment and filtered down to the common
people."
24 “Note Book,” Chronicle of Higher
Education,
7 May 1999, p. A49, and Ben Gose, “Princeton Tries to Explain a Drop in Jewish
Enrollment, “ Ibid., 14 May 1999, pp.
A47-48.
25 Murray, “White Male
Privilege?,” Ibid.
