Tag Archives: antisemitism

Goebbels Blames the Jews for World War II (16 Nov 1941)

[Editor’s note-When this was originally posted the short bio was not included along with an additional photo.]

Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda
Heinrich Hoffmann (1885-1957)
German Federal Archives via Wikimedia

On 16 November 1941, Joseph Goebbels publishes in the German magazine Das Reich that the “Jews wanted the war, and now they have it.” This was part of the Nazi propaganda scheme to shift blame for the war to Jews and thus rationalizing  the Final Solution–the elimination of Jews.  German soldiers and the SS were infused with this propaganda and anti-Communist rhetoric to carry out their task of eliminating the Jews with enthusiasm.

[T]he prophecy which the Fuhrer made…that should international finance Jewry succeed in plunging the nations into a world war once again, the result would not be the Bolshevization of the world…but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe. We are in the midst of that process…Compassion or regret are entirely out of place here.

Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)

Joseph Goebbels joined the Nazi Party in 1924. He had obtained a PhD in German literature from the University of Heidelberg in 1920. Prior to joining the party, he had worked as a writer, journalist, and clerk. The same year he joined the Nazi Party, he became editor of the Völkische Freiheit (Folkish Freedom) where he honed his propaganda skills for the party. Goebbels became an admirer of Hitler and became unfailingly loyal to him. He was also a rabid antisemite.

He came to Hitler’s attention in 1926 due to his organizational skills, devotion to the party, and his clever propaganda. He was made a regional Gauleiter (party chief) for Greater Berlin. He built up the Nazi Party organization and ran his own newspaper (Der Angriff or The Assault in English) until 1935 where he advanced the Nazi Party goals of anticommunism, antisemitism, and promoted Hitler becoming dictator of Germany. He would be elected to the Reichstag in 1928 representing the Nazi Party in Berlin.

Goebbels was a tireless agitator as the District Leader in Berlin. He railed against the Communist and Social Democratic party members, marched with the SA (Storm Troopers) into working class neighborhoods where support for those parties was strong. Bitter street fights would result, and Goebbels would call those who were injured or killed as suffering for the party. He made sure through his paper and other media of the heroism of those who suffered. Films were made to dramatize the events and led to the creation of the Horst Wessel Song, named for one of those who were killed in 1930. The song would become the party’s anthem.

The image he crafted was one of bloodied stormtrooper (and overly muscled as well) that would appear in Nazi propaganda for years to come. They died, the party said, fighting the Marxist enemy.

Hitler would appoint him as Reich leader of propaganda for the Nazi Party in 1929 and would hold that position until his death in 1945. Hitler relied on Goebbels in the critical elections of 1932. Goebbels was the first of that era to use radio and film for mass propaganda techniques. Films of Nazi rallies, speeches, and other important events were filmed and broadcast over the radio to inspire supporters and draw new ones in. Hitler was depicted by Goebbels as energetic and using all the modern modes of transport to get around Germany. Films showed him flying all over Germany on the same day holding events.

German students publicly burn collected, “un-German” writings and books on the central boulevard “Unter den Linden” in Berlin.
10 May 1933
Photo: Pahl, Georg
German Federal Archives via Wikimedia Commons

After Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933, Goebbels would be instrumental in implementing the Nazi’s desire to control all aspects of German culture. Hitler established the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in March. At thirty-five years of age, he was the youngest member of the cabinet. Goebbels was tasked with decontamination of German culture, and nothing was considered outside of their control. Film, radio, and the press all fell under Goebbels control, and he used it to its fullest advantage. To make sure German’s accepted the anti-Jewish measures, Jews were cast into the worst possible light. Viewpoints unacceptable to the Nazi Party were silenced, books and publications were suppressed, and supported book burnings to cleanse the German spirit. Preaching national unity, Goebbels rallied people to support Hitler and the Nazi Party against those who had damaged Germany. And Jews were at the top of the list along with Communists, Socialists, certain religious groups, and others such as Roma. The doctrine of racial purity that party believed in excluded large swaths of people from German society.

Goebbels was the chief instigator for Kristallnacht in 1938. He convinced Hitler that the murder of the German diplomat in Paris was the perfect opportunity for a nationwide attack on Jews. And when Germany needed to invade other countries, he helped develop the Führer cult which glorified Hitler as both Germany’s war leader and savior. Mass propaganda was used to convince people that countries had to be invaded to save them from their mess created by Jews and Liberalism. Of course, during this whole time, the mass propaganda depicting the Jews and others negatively made it easier to target, imprison, and execute them. Right up until the end the near deification of Hitler and the rabid antisemitism would continue until the war ended in 1945. Goebbels was a complete supporter of the Final Solution-the Holocaust-the extermination of all Jews.

One of Goebbels last tasks in the final years was as Plenipotentiary for the War Economy which Hitler appointed him to in 1944. Goebbels had worked hard to keep morale up especially after the defeat at Stalingrad. In the new position, he was to help maximize manpower and arms production. He was not highly successful and ran into opposition with other ministers particularly Albert Speer who was in charge of armaments.

After Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945, Goebbels became the new Reich Chancellor. He refused the idea of surrender and knew full well he would be put on trial and executed. He and his wife Magda poisoned their six children and then both committed suicide on 1 May 1945. The corpses were partly burned but never buried. There were repeated burials and exhumations, and they were finally buried in Magdeburg at the SMERSH facility in 1946. The remains were exhumed again in 1970 under orders from KGB director Yuri Andropov and destroyed. They were then dumped into the Biederitz river.

Sources:

“Joseph Goebbels Publishes His Screed of Hate.” HISTORY, 16 Nov. 2009, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/goebbels-publishes-his-screed-of-hate.

Joseph Goebbels. encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/joseph-goebbels-1

 

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Goebbels Blames the Jews for World War II (16 Nov 1941)

Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda
Heinrich Hoffmann (1885-1957)
German Federal Archives via Wikimedia

On 16 November 1941, Joseph Goebbels publishes in the German magazine Das Reich that the “Jews wanted the war, and now they have it.” This was part of the Nazi propaganda scheme to shift blame for the war to Jews and thus rationalizing  the Final Solution–the elimination of Jews.  German soldiers and the SS were infused with this propaganda and anti-Communist rhetoric to carry out their task of eliminating the Jews with enthusiasm.

[T]he prophecy which the Fuhrer made…that should international finance Jewry succeed in plunging the nations into a world war once again, the result would not be the Bolshevization of the world…but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe. We are in the midst of that process…Compassion or regret are entirely out of place here.

Sources:

“Joseph Goebbels Publishes His Screed of Hate.” HISTORY, 16 Nov. 2009, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/goebbels-publishes-his-screed-of-hate.

Joseph Goebbels. encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/joseph-goebbels-1

The Anne Frank Controversy

May 1942 photo for passport
Anne Frank House, Amsterdam.
Public Domain via Wikipedia Commons

Yeah, Anne Frank had white privilege. Bad things happen to people with white privilege also, but don’t tell the whites that.” (Twitter posting)

Anne Frank, whose diary has become required reading in many schools, was a victim of the Holocaust. Except for Holocaust deniers, this is an unescapable truth. The fact that Nazi Germany was antisemitic is undeniable either. The Nazi’s devised the Nuremberg Laws that codified their antisemitism by denying Jews (considered a race by them and identified by family line) German citizenship. Yet now there are those on the Internet (and elsewhere) that try to posit the notion that what happened was not racism but rather a case of white superiority.

The proponents of this argue that since Jews are not a minority the Nazi’s did not practice racism but white superiority. It was simply one white group trying to dominate another and race had nothing to do with it. Whoopi Goldberg repeated this as well on The View and was put on leave because of the angry response to her claim. Jews, in this view of things, do not qualify as being members of a minority. One poster of this view quipped they were too white to hide their faces.

Antisemites are pleased with this because the posters of this thinking on social media are helping to continue to downplay what happened to the Jews, especially when those promoting it are African American. Antisemites love to point out to African Americans (and there are antisemitic African Americans as well) that Jews helped enslave their ancestors, used racial laws to keep them suppressed, had businesses that took advantage of them, and other nefarious things as well. So, this new tactic of trying to deny Jews being victims of racism is just a newer way to diminish what happened to them in the Holocaust.

It is a form of racial superiority but in a twisted way. Only certain groups, non-white ones, can suffer racism. Jews being white and being classified as a race by the Nazi’s does not count. It was just one group vying for power over the other. And since Anne Frank was born with “white privilege” her status as a victim of a horror is lessened. Thus, everyone equally born with white privilege as well. The mass murder of millions of humans is thus diminished and loses importance in this mindset. And what a dangerous one it is. For you can see the obvious extension of this already being played out. World War II then was just war between white people fighting out who would be in control of Europe.

Of course, those who advance this do have a problem with Japan, since they sought to establish their own rival empire in Asia and toss out the colonial powers. Turns out they had very definite ideas of who was superior and who was not as well. People who had thought the Japanese would liberate them from colonial oppression found themselves in the same position as before, just now it was the Japanese running things. Turns out other non-white peoples have notions of racial superiority as well. The argument of World War II being between two white powers seeking superiority over the others echoes what the Marxists said about World War I as between capitalist powers just being retooled for a new audience.

“Selection” of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau in German-occupied Poland, around May 1944. Jews were sent either to work or to the gas chamber. The photograph is part of the collection known as the Auschwitz Album.
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commo

The woke culture, in doing this, is helping antisemitism. Nazis and the adherents of their racial policies viewed Jews not only as a separate race but believed them sub-human. Through relentless depictions in every media available to them and in schools, Germans were taught to treat the Jews no better than rodents. That is why it was so easy for a German soldier to grab an innocent baby, bash it against a wall to stop it from crying, and hand it back to the mother. Once you dehumanize, it is all too easy to treat them in the most vicious way possible without remorse. Which is what many Germans did and were happy to shove Jews into trains, into the gas chambers, and ultimately into the ovens as well. They were rodents and unfit to live.

The attempt to diminish what happened to Anne Frank and all the Jews killed in the Holocaust to make yourself a bigger victim is despicable. People who peddle this nonsense should be loudly and publicly mocked as a form of antisemitism.

 

Goebbels Blames the Jews for World War II (16 Nov 1941)

Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda
Heinrich Hoffmann (1885-1957)
German Federal Archives via Wikimedia

On 16 November 1941, Joseph Goebbels publishes in the German magazine Das Reich that the “Jews wanted the war, and now they have it.” This was part of the Nazi propaganda scheme to shift blame for the war to Jews and thus rationalizing  the Final Solution–the elimination of Jews.  German soldiers and the SS were infused with this propaganda and anti-Communist rhetoric to carry out their task of eliminating the Jews with enthusiasm.

[T]he prophecy which the Fuhrer made…that should international finance Jewry succeed in plunging the nations into a world war once again, the result would not be the Bolshevization of the world…but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe. We are in the midst of that process…Compassion or regret are entirely out of place here.

Sources:

This Day in History (History.com)
Joseph Goebbels (Holocaust Encyclopedia-United States Holocaust Memorial Museum