Letter of Hitler’s First Anti-Semitic Writing May Be the Original

[rug]

FRANKFURT — In 1919, a soldier in Munich discovered that he could galvanize small groups of fellow trench warfare veterans with virulently anti-Semitic oratory. A superior officer, impressed with the soldier’s oral skills, asked him to commit his ideas to paper.

Thus came into existence the first written record of Adolf Hitler’s obsessive hostility toward Jews, an embryonic form of the worldview that would later lead to the Holocaust and millions of deaths.

Now, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles has acquired what it believes may be the original version of the document, known as the Gemlich letter. In July, the center plans to put it on public view for the first time, at its Museum of Tolerance, making the letter the centerpiece of its Holocaust exhibit.

The text of the letter is well known to scholars. It is considered significant because it demonstrates just how early in his career Hitler was formulating his anti-Semitic views.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/world/europe/03iht-hitler03.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[cleanhippie]

1. “By defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord” -Hitler

How Christian hatred for Jews led to the Hitler’s Jewish holocaust

http://christianwatchindia.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/how-christian-hated-for-the-jews-led-to-the-horrific-jewish-holocaust/

[trotsky]

2. And Europe was fertile ground for anti-Semitism.

Some of what Martin Luther said about the Jews would have made Hitler himself blush.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[skepticscott]

19. America wasn't much better

Hitler found Henry Ford an inspiration.

[laconicsax]

20. But...but...but...

That TV movie about the Nürnberg trial I saw back in the '90s implied that anti-Semitism was introduced to the US by an impressionable GI serving as a prison guard.

[struggle4progress]

6. I suppose that if you post Hitler quotes, with the intention that we take them at face value,

I ought not be surprised that you next link to a hate site:

"Christian missionaries are dangerous cancer to Indian society"
http://christianwatchindia.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/how-christian-hated-for-the-jews-led-to-the-horrific-jewish-holocaust/

Several major world religions began in India, so it's not astounding that Christians represent only a small portion of the population there -- perhaps 2%

The disease metaphor is, of course, familiar: calling India's tiny Christian minority "a cancer" resembles nothing so much as claims once heard that Jews are a plague

It being by now generally recognized that Hitler was a manipulative liar, I cannot see that quoting him proves much -- though if one wants to carefully examine quotes in their full context, one might learn something useful about the political dynamics of the time

[cleanhippie]

8. Here ya go. All the context you can handle.

Ready, set, GO!

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord"

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/kampf.html

Explain it away!

Wait, let me get my :popcorn:

[struggle4progress]

9. So you quoted from Mein Kampf, then linked to a hate site. I'm unimpressed

[cleanhippie]

11. So what is your point? You took the time to respond not once, but twice.

I think you are more impressed than you are willing to admit.

[rug]

10. The article in question is not Mein Kampf.

Pay attention.

[cleanhippie]

12. But that quote IS Mein Kampf.

Do try and keep up.


Perhaps if you had stated whatever point it is you are trying to make in your OP, we could discuss that. Instead, it seems you posted an article for general informational purposes, and I responded.


This IS a discussion board, you know, where people DISCUSS things. You really should pay attention.

[rug]

13. And the article is not about Mein Kampf.

[cleanhippie]

14. But it IS about Hitler and where he developed his hatred of Jews, and Mein Kampf ARE Hilters words.

And the quote is directly related to where Hitler used his christian beliefs as his basis for his hatred of the Jews.



pay attention.







Perhaps you would like to take this opportunity to state just what it IS you want to discuss. If not, I will respond however I feel like and with whatever I feel like.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[struggle4progress]

4. I suppose I'm sorry to see the Wiesenthal Center devote its resources to material like this

If one takes seriously the slogan "Never again!" then it is important to understand how the Shoah actually occurred -- but this is not a question merely of industrial technique or the personal histories of the top architects of the destruction: it is a question about the political dynamics of the time and how one of the great European cultures allowed itself to become captivated by a wanton totalitarianism

Moreover, the Nazis left an enormous trail of victims: it was their intent to abolish an entire group of people -- and I think it more fitting to work to remember the victims than to collect relics from the murderers

[trotsky]

5. Surprise, surprise: I couldn't disagree with you more.

To know more about how these attitudes came about, how they resonated with people, examine how Hitler's message was adapted over time to appeal to more people and/or become more violent and deadly, these are all crucial to understanding how it happened and more importantly, how we can recognize and prevent it should it arise again.

[struggle4progress]

7. !

:woohoo:

[onager]

17. Here's a good book on that...

Thoroughly antisemitic, not only did these German men of God not stand up for the Jews as they watched them being hounded, beaten, forced from their homes and country, and then murdered by their own parishioners, but they also actively aided the eliminationist enterprise.

By this is meant not just the many antisemitic sermons with which they - the German nation's pastors of morality - reinforced and consecrated the hatreds of ordinary Germans. The foundational element of the Nuremberg Laws was the regime's capacity to distinguish and demonstrate the extent of a person's Jewish ancestry, to know who was a Jew.

Enforcement therefore depended upon the use of the genealogical records in the possession of local churches. The historian of the Catholic Church, Guenther Lewy writes:

"The very question of whether the (Catholic) Church should lend its help to the Nazi state in sorting out people of Jewish descent was never debated. On the contrary...And the co-operation of the Church in this matter continued right through the war years, when the price of being Jewish was no longer dismissal from a government job and loss of livelihood, but deportation and outright physical destruction."

"Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" by Daniel Goldhagen

In writing his book, Goldhagen closely studied the records of one "ordinary" German Army unit, Police Battalion 101. These men were mostly cops in civilian life, from the Hamburg area. Detailed records on their religious beliefs were not kept, but Goldhagen notes that their section of northern Germany was overwhelmingly Evangelical Protestant, so most of them probably followed that denomination.

They tended to be older than the average German soldier, and before the war many were "settled" in life with wives and kids. Which didn't keep them from enthusiastically slaughtering Jewish women and children.

[rug]

18. That book concerns far more than the "men of God".

The book, which began as a Harvard doctoral dissertation, was written largely as an answer to Christopher Browning's 1992 book Ordinary Men Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Much of Goldhagen's book is concerned with the same reserve battalion 101 of the Ordnungspolizei, during which Goldhagen attacks every aspect of Browning's book. Goldhagen had already indicated his opposition to Browning's thesis in a review of Ordinary Men in the July 13, 1992 edition of the New Republic entited "The Evil of Banality".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_Willing_Executioners

[onager]

21. Thanks, but the topic in this thread was religion.

I knew about the controversy. Goldhagen mentions it in the book.

Interesting comment at the bottom of the Wiki article: Crawshaw further asserts that the book's critics were partly historians "weary" of Goldhagen's "methodological flaws", but also those who were reluctant to concede that ordinary Germans bore responsibility for the crimes of Nazi Germany.<1> In Germany, the leftist general public's insistence on further penitence distinctly surpassed the rightist desire for amnesia, according to most observers.

[Leontius]

16. Really don't see the importance of this

scholars have know for years that he made speeches about Jews and his hatred of them during his years in Vienna.