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The excerpt on the left, according to Richard Koenigsberg, reveals the meaning of Hitler’s “racism” or “anti-Semitism,” which has little to do with the popular idea, or even with typical conceptions presented by historians.
When Hitler spoke of Germans as a “superior race,” he was referring to their ability to sacrifice for a national community. The Jewish “race” was the opposite—characterized by its inability to sacrifice for a national community.
A crucial passage in the text to the left presents a judgment of the Cologne Labor Court, which denied the claim of Jewish employees to a vacation by asserting that the precondition for this claim did not exist because the Jew could not be a “member of the plant community.”
The Jew could not be a member of the plant community because of his “whole racial tendency, which was geared to forwarding his personal advantages and securing economic advantages.” The Jewish “racial tendency” that Hitler abhorred, Koenigsberg explains, was precisely selfish individualism, which compelled him to seek “personal advantages” at the expense of the community.
Hitler’s concept of the Jewish “race,” according to Koenigsberg, was actually psychological. However, Hitler believed that this Jewish psychological tendency was genetically given, and therefore could not be modified.
Hitler explained that it thus was beside the point whether the individual Jew was “decent” or not because “in himself he carried those characteristics which Nature has given him.”
The demonic Jewish characteristic, according to Hitler—genetically inherited—was selfish individualism; his inability to sacrifice for a national community. Jews completely lacked the conception of “an activity which builds up the life of the community.”
The peculiar characteristic of Judaism was its “hostility to human society,” which is why there could be “no solution to the Jewish question.” A true understanding of Jews and Judaism insisted on their “total annihilation.” What needed to be annihilated was Jewish selfishness.
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“JEWISH INDIVIDUALISM AS NEGATION
OF THE GERMAN COMMUNITY”
(Excerpt from Chapter I of Nations Have the Right to Kill)
The metaphor appearing with greatest frequency in Hitler’s speeches as a description of Jews was Zerzetzung, translated as “force of disintegration.” This German word—widely used in chemistry and biology—means that which breaks things down into their component elements; decomposition, decay, or putrefaction.
This term suggested that the Jewish race worked to destroy all “genuine values.” Jews symbolized negation of everything sacred to the German people—their traditions, culture, position in the world, patriotism, and patriotic symbols (Blackburn, 1984). Goebbels declared in January 1945 that Jews were the “incarnation of that destructive drive which in these terrible years rages in the enemies’ warfare against everything that we consider noble, beautiful and worth preserving.”
If the good German was characterized by idealistic devotion to a cause, Jews represented the inability to become devoted to a cause. Goebbels contrasted the “creative, constructive philosophy of National Socialism with its idealistic goals” to the Jewish philosophy of “materialism and individualism.” Jews were seen as lacking a soul—the precise opposite of the heroic, self-sacrificing Aryan.
Hitler’s Official Programme published in 1927 (Feder, 1971) put forth as its central plank: “The Common Interest before Self Interest,” stating that “The leaders of our public life all worship the same god—Individualism. Personal interest is the sole incentive.” Within the framework of National Socialist morality, the fundamental “sins” were individualism and the pursuit of private, personal interests.
The dynamic that generated the Holocaust grew out of conflict between the ideal of Volksgemeinschaft, the community of the German people, on the one hand, and ideas of individualism or individuality on the other. The fundamental characteristic of Jews according to Nazi ideology was their “free-floating” quality: inability to form an organic tie to a national community. The Jew was compelled by his nature to pursue private, selfish interests. The Jewish tendency toward individualism, Hitler believed, acted to shatter or “disintegrate” the human being’s tie to a national community.
The following judgment by the Cologne Labor Court (January 21, 1941) denied the claim of Jewish employees to a vacation (Noakes & Pridham, 2001):
The precondition for the claim to a vacation—membership of the plant community—does not exist. A Jew cannot be a member of the plant community on account of his whole racial tendency, which is geared to forwarding his personal interests and securing economic advantages.
By virtue of his racially inherited tendency toward “forwarding personal interests and securing economic advantages,” Jews were imagined to be incapable of participating in the life of a community. Hitler called Jews the “ferment of decomposition in peoples,” which meant that the Jew “destroys and must destroy.” Therefore, Hitler said, it is “beside the point whether the individual Jew is ‘decent’ or not. In himself he carries those characteristics which Nature has given him.”
Hitler stated that the Jew completely lacked the “conception of an activity which builds up the life of the community.” Nazi scholarship declared (Aronsfeld, 1985) that the peculiar characteristic of Judaism was its “hostility to human society,” which is why there could be “no solution to the Jewish question.” A true understanding of Jews and Judaism “insists on their total annihilation.” |