Wegner, Gregory Paul. (2002)
Anti-Semitism and Schooling under the
Third
Reich.
Reviewed by Katherine T. Carroll
Loyola University, Chicago
August 24, 2003
Scholarly assessment of academic curricula
must place the perspectives and content contained
in the components under consideration in
the context in which the curricula were written
and the group for whom the work was intended.
Curriculum goals, foundational concepts,
and organizing elements can only be properly
evaluated when information providing this
understanding is accessible. Anti-Semitism
and Schooling under the Third Reich by Gregory
Paul Wegner explores "how the Hitler
regime articulated anti-semitism across the
curriculum as a central element to the understanding
of an educated person."(pp. 2-3) The
book examines curriculum materials developed
by pedagogues and theoreticians in Germany
for elementary school students from the early
period of gleichschaltung—the "meshing
of gears" of all aspects of political
and social organization toward Nazi ideological
goals when the Nazis gained control of the
German government in 1933-34—until late in
World War II . Throughout the study, Wegner
approaches these materials from a social
constructionist perspective, and places his
interpretation of these curricula and their
historical context firmly within the "functionalist"
school of thought. This perspective of scholarship
views the mass murder of millions of Jews
(as well as Sinti, Roma, Poles, and others)
as having "remained in flux until the
war with Russia in 1941." (p. 183) Assertions
to support the position that the Nazis' original
intent was to force migration of the Jews
to Madagascar, Palestine, Guyana, or Dutch
New Guinea appear regularly through out the
study. (pp. 19, 153, 156, 174, 183) Anti-Semitism
and Schooling under the Third Reich attempts
to establish definitively that the anti-semitic
ideas in these curriculum documents represent
both change and contintuity, seen in "historical
context," and that "Hitler represents
a critical juncture in the history of European
racism in that he was the first ruler of
a modern state to legitimize anti-semitism
through racial terms...(by) his clever propaganda
strategy of integrating contemporary elements
of race with older religious and economic
forms of anti-semitic prejudice."(p.
7) One of the means to implement this policy
was the "myth of Nordic pedagogy,"
a concept Wegner borrows from Hans-Christian
Harten (1993), which refers to the foundational
idea that a true, "Nordic" bloodline
and genealogy existed that was to be protected
and transmitted. (pp. 65, 88, 89, 126, and
251) Race science was to be the "conceptual
glue" that held the curriculum together
(p. 68), while "Volkish thinking provided
part of the cultural glue for this chapter
in the history of prejudice." (p. 5)
Thus, the curriculum materials selected for
presentation are of interest both as pedagogical
materials and as documents reflecting the
history of education in the Third Reich in
Germany.
The study is organized into six chapters,
with each of the first five based on a particular
aspect of anti-semitism, depicting how each
aspect was brought directly into specific
subject areas in elementary level curricula.
Wegner gained access to an extensive collection
of teaching materials which had never previously
been examined, included in the Henry Kroul
Collection of Nazi Writings at Hofstra University,
to which he added curricula and documents
examined at the Institute for Contemporary
History in Munich, the German Institute for
Pedagogical Research in Berlin, the Bundesarchiv
Berlin, the Weiner Library in Tel Aviv, and
the Institute for the History of Education.
Wegner had earlier accessed educational materials
of Alfred Vogel from the collection at Hofstra
for his article "Schooling for a New
Mythos: Race, Anti-Semitism, and the Curriculum
materials of a Nazi Educator," published
in Paedagogica Historica in1991. Unlike earlier
curriculum studies, like Gilmer Blackburn's
(1985) study of Nazi textbooks, which Wegner
asserts took a "macro perspective"
of history and geography in the curriculum
(p. 118), or the penetrating analysis of
National Socialist educational philosophy
and practice by renowned international education
scholar I. L. Kandel (1935), this study focuses
particularly on anti-semitism as it was used
to further the Nazi ideology of the racial
state. Wegner tells us that the "ambitious
project to transform curriculum along racial
anti-semitic lines through the union of myth
with science remains unprecedented in history....
Nazis were the first political culture to
legitimize racial anti-Semitism in school
curriculum with the full legal support of
the state." (pp. 3-5) Yet, this element
of Nazi education accessed "older, more
traditional forms of religious...(and) economic
stereotypes going back to ... emergent market
capitalism." (p. 5) The 262-page text
provides lengthy samplings of both older,
"traditional" antipathy toward
the Jewish people, as well as the racialized
anti-semitism included in elementary level
textbooks, charts, and curriculum formats
by the Nazi regime. Wegner presents extensive
text quotations, color plates, illustrations,
and tables to illustrate the approaches and
conceptual tools by which Jews were defined
to schoolchildren to appear as "race
enemies" in race hygiene, biology, history,
geography and literature as the National
Socialists attempted to reconfigure German
education to inculcate the racialist point
of view.
To provide understanding of the earlier
precedents
in anti-semitic thought, the Introduction
asserts that "hatred for Jews is an
ancient phenomenon with roots ... even as
old as the slavery suffered by the Hebrew
under Ramses II in Egypt." The "Jew
as cultural outsider (had) historical antecedents
orginating in the Middle Ages."(pp.
1-2) Quotations from scholar Victor Klemperer
(2000) are used to support one of the book's
central positions. Klemperer, a German Jewish
philologist, and French literature professor
who lost his position due to the 1935 Race
Laws, wrote that the Nazi use of language
was key to the success of Nazi propaganda
and that "the Jew ‘was the most important
man in Hitler's state' through fulfilling
the traditions of scapegoating and opponent."
Wegner asks, "After all, as Klemperer's
acid pen recorded, how could Hitler and the
Nazi state have come to pass without the
Jewish devil?" (p. 3) While Klemperer
is also cited frequently regarding the Nazi
manipulation of language, the inference that
Wegner draws from Klemperer's position becomes
the foundational construct that "German
Nazism could not exist without the arch-enemy
of the Jew." (p. 118), a construct supported
by multiple methods through out the study.
The author's own use of and theories on language
will be examined later in this review.
The process by which "traditional"
anti-semitic thinking and Volkish "idealism"
became entwined with race science and spread
through German culture prior to the National
Socialist period is examined in ensuing chapters.
Racial anti-semitism utilized "a long
tradition of animosity toward Jews... keeping
alive the ancient claim of Jewish conspiracy,"which
Hitler exploited in the National Socialist
advance to power. (p. 2) Nazi educators reconfigured
old and new elements in "selective tradition...
an intentionally selective shaping the past,
and a pre-shaped present," as do "all
cultures engaged with the socialization of
the young." (p. 2) Through out the volume,
the centrality of the Volkish, mystical base
is emphasized, as is the position that the
ideological framework for education was based
on ideas found in Hitler's Mein Kampf, and
reflected in a
1919 letter by Hitler asserting that
a "rational
anti-semitism" must be devised that
would include "facts" establishing
Jews as a "racial tuberculosis of the
people," a race, rather than a religion,
which must be removed. (p. 1.) As Albert
Speer, whom Wegner interviewed in 1977 in
conjunction with his Master's thesis, is
quoted as observing: "Hatred of the
Jews was the motor and central point for
Hitler."(p. 17) Historian James Carroll
(2001) is quoted in a later footnote, stating
that "Hitler was less the beneficiary
than the product of religious and racial
assumptions that had their origins, perhaps,
in the Jew-hating sermons of St. John Chrysostom
or St. Ambrose, and certainly in the blood-purity
of Torquemada." (p. 228, fn. 34)
In the chapters that follow, the study
examines
the implementation of the famous slogan of
Hans Schemm, Bavarian Education Minister
and leader of the National-Sozialistischer
Lehrer-Bund (NSLB) until his death in 1937:
"National Socialism is applied biology,"
in the restructuring of educational institutions
and organizations throughout Germany. Through
decrees in 1933 and 1934, all aspects of
education were brought first under the administration
of Hans Frick, Minister of the Interior,
and later under Bernard Rust, appointed Minister
for the Reichsministerium fuer Wissenschaft,
Erziehung, und Volksbildung (RMWEVB). Frick
disbanded all state teacher's councils, bringing
prior organizations under the jurisdiction
of the NSLB to ensure that pedagogy and approaches
served National Socialist goals. Alfred Rosenburg,
author of The Myth of the Twentieth Century,
chief of the Foreign Office, and "Representative
of the Fuhrer for the Supervision of the
Entire Intellectual and Ideological Schooling
of the NSDAP," and Phillipp Bouhler
of Hitler's Chancellery Office selected curriculum
materials deemed to be exhibit "ideological
purity" for publication. Fierce professional
competition particularly between Rust and
Frick, and among other levels of bureaucrats
and pedagogues affected both the decisions
of what form of anti-semitic ideology to
present at each grade level and in each subject
area, and the participation of some scholars
in this effort as each pursued career advancement
which was, according to Wegner, "at
least as important" as the furtherance
of racialist Nazi ideology. (pp. 20-21, 44
179.)
Historian Georg Iggers (2000) has written
that the term "misuse of history suggest[s]
the past is instrumentalized; distorted for
political and other purposes. It also means
there is a real past which must not be distorted."
When scholars perform academic evaluation
of historical materials, the professional
tradition—which originated in German scholarship
in the 1800s—of the "research imperative"
requires that the materials be presented
in such a way that they present a neutral,
disinterested, and reliable view of the individuals
and groups that created the materials, and
that these materials be placed in a contextual
perspective that allows the reader to assess
the documents within a genuine past. Though
scholarly work has often contributed to national
and ethnic myths over time, says Iggers,
this "does not mean that there are no
criteria of rational inquiry by which myths
can be taken apart... interpretations are
not arbitrary (and) research methods developed
for professional inquiry must be used."
(Note 1) It is in this critical aspect of
analysis that this volume requires particularly
cautious examination. Misrepresentations,
inaccuracies, omissions of information and
of conceptual components vital to understanding,
inappropriate equalizations, pejorative terminology
and re-organization of quotations, and the
presentations of canards and textual references
without any analytical background accompany
this presentation of Nazi actions and ideology
within a redefinition of the "historical
context" of these curricula. Though
Anti-Semitism and Schooling under the Third
Reich fulfills its mission to represent the
combination of older, culturally stereotyped
perceptions of the Jewish people with then-current
biological racialism in Nazi curricula, it
is in terms of the "research imperative"
Iggers refers to that is essential when dealing
with historical materials that makes the
exposition and approach in this volume highly
problematic and questionable for use in academic
and curriculum study settings.
In Chapter 1, the foundations of the
Volk
concept are explored and a cursory
examination
of primary theoreticians is provided.
In
this minimal discussion of the critical
foundations
of Volkish thought, inaccurate historical
descriptions and misrepresentations
appear,
setting the precedent for what will
become
a pattern—nearly a style—of confusing
and
misleading ideas, which will be of
central
importance to the validity of this
study.
The concept of the Volk was originated
by
Johannes Herder to symbolize a unique,
related
grouping—a "family write large
,"
as Justus Moser put it—which defied
comparison
or a definition of "normative."
Each Volk was self-defining; relationship
between Volks could be diverse, but
never
equal. This idea found many adherents,
reacting
to both the Napoleonic conquest of
Germany
from 1806 to 1811 and the rationalism
and
scientific advances of the English
and the
French later in the century. (Note
2) Wegner,
however, locates the roots of Volkish
thought
in the "Romanticism of the late
eighteenth
century [sic]... a reaction against
modernity,
and the rapid industrialization of
Germany."
(p. 7) Volkish pedagogues Julius Langbehn
and Paul de Lagarde whose "anti-semitism
was not racially based," presented
a
"strong strain of Romantic idealism
in Volkish thinking." (p. 9) The
Volkish
"Aryan myth"—that Germans
were
the heirs to genuine Western culture
and
the "original" Aryan race—was
brought
forward in the late nineteenth century
by
Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who "combined
mysticism with a certain kind of realism"
by linking science—such as phrenology—with
"a certain mysticism of race"
at
a time when "social Darwinism
enjoyed
growing support among the newly emerging
social sciences, especially anthropology."
(p. 8) The determination of the Hebrew
language
as "semitic," not Indo-European,
was developed by German philologists
in the
mid-1800s; the linguistic term was
adopted
by Wilhelm Marr as he founded his Anti-Semitic
League in 1879. (p. 2) The mysticalized,
Volkish linguistic foundation for the
Aryan
myth was a popular concept in the mid-1800s
that both Friedrich and August Wilhelm
Schlegel,
among others, had argued vociferously
for,
to overflowing university classrooms
and
in their voluminous writings. (Note
3)
Wegner cites famous composer Richard
Wagner,
Chamberlain's father-in-law, who was
an adamant
anti-semite, and Comte Arthur de Gobineau,
whose ideas were "not anti-semitic
in
nature" as two other key popularizers
of the racialization of the Aryan myth.
(pp.
8-9) However, according to Richard
Wagner's
wife, Cosima Wagner, who led the Wagner
Circle
after Wagner‘s death—a group whose
meetings
were attended by Adolf Hitler—Gobineau
and
Wagner had become deeply fond of one
another,
and often engaged in extensive conversations
on the need for "blood purity,"
and the "dangerous power of the
Jews."
(Note 4) Other than the inclusion of
phrases
indicating that "a certain mystical
relationship" existed between
the German
race and aesthetics, nature, soil,
and the
fatherland in his brief description
of the
Volkish ideology and the thinking found
in
Chamberlain, Lagarde, Langbehn, and
other
Volkish authors, Wegner never describes
the
pagan mythological and theosophical
foundations
of the ideas of these men. These foundations
were central to the work of Lagarde,
a devout
theosophist and Swedenborgian, and
Julius
Langbehn who "articulate(d) ideas
about
‘racial soul' ... transmitted through
bloodlines,"
an idea that was in fact similar to
that
put forward three centuries earlier,
by vitalist
Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus
von Hohenheim)
and, a century later in the pre-Adamite
theories
of Isaac de La Peyrere. (p. 10) (Note
5)
Similarly, theosophist Julius Langbehn
espoused
the idea that the Aryans possessed
the "life-force"
in a "'life-fluid' which flowed
from
the cosmos to the Volk." Jews
did not
possess this "life fluid"
because
they had "long ago forfeited their
souls."
(Note 6) Houston Stewart Chamberlain's
(1900)
two-volume work on the nineteenth century
is likewise replete with allusions
to the
greatness of the Aryan nature, described
in specifically theosophical terms.
(Note
7) We are advised in the final pages
of the
text that "Nazi science .... could
not
be grasped without the power of mysticism,
an element with deep roots in the Volkish
thought of the nineteenth century."
( p. 184) While footnotes for this
chapter
direct the reader to many studies of
merit,
the text, in the end, does not include
the
tools to comprehend the Volkish phenomenon
which is a centerpiece of this book.
Importantly,
the omission of analysis of the foundations
of this area of thought will become
a critical
hindrance to understanding in many
areas
of this book, notably in its discussion
of
the Talmud and "Yahweh, the God
of the
Jews," later in the text.
In chapters 1 through 5, the process
by which
race hygiene became integrated with pre-existing
economic and religious anti-semitism in curriculum
materials developed by Ernst Dobers, Werner
Dittrich, Fritz Fink, Paul Brohmer, Alfred
Vogel, Ernst Kreick, Johann von Leers, Erwin
Bauer, Deiter (Dietrich) Klagges, and Ernst
Heimer, among others, is described. To understand
this process, Wegner takes the position of
Thomas Kuhn (1962), stating: "Scientific
knowledge, like all forms of knowledge, was
and is culturally bound... One may well ask
whose science was practiced and for which
political and social ends." (p. 12)
Similar constructionist positions on science
are taken through out this study, as when,
for example, the reader is reminded that
"other civilized nations" engaged
in eugenics, and is informed that : "After
all, race hygiene was steeped in the history
of medicine as well as education." (pp.
94, 104) Wegner declares: "Passing off
prejudice as scientific fact remains a significant
part of the legacy left by Nazi education.
Democracies as well as dictatorships engaged
in this spurious activity, including the
race eugenics movement in the United States
which flowered from
1910-1940." (p. 185) To support
this
position, he asserts that "pre-Nazi
developments in eugenics and race hygiene...
demand a recognition." (p. 11) The development
of the eugenics movement, initiated by British
scientist, Francis Galton (1822-1911), and
the social Darwinism promoted by Herbert
Spencer, based on the ideas of Charles Darwin
"from its inception... took on an international
character," ( p. 11) (Note 8) Although
German Rassenhygiene(race hygiene) and the
international eugenics movement had different
foundations and goals, Wegner tells us that
"the Nazis certainly were not the first
to introduce race hygiene as a matter of
public policy," and that "race
hygiene and eugenics [were] used interchangeably
by the Nazis." (pp. 73, 85) These assertions
would have infuriated Julian Huxley, famed
British eugenicist, who, in his 1935 book,
co-written with Cambridge anthropologist
Alfred C. Haddon, We Europeans: A Survey
of "Racial" Problems, attacked
the ideas of "race science," ridiculed
Nazi stereotypes, and vehemently opposed
the misdirected and extreme measures in Germany
in the 1930s. (Note 9)
As is found through out this study,
inaccuracies
and misstatements appear in the discussion
of Nazi pedagogues. Frequent references and
citations are made to the early and important
work in curriculum formation and later in
education administration of Ernst Krieck,
described as "a faculty member with
a strong international reputation from Frankfurt-am-Main
and later the University of Heidelberg."
whose curriculum philosophy was central under
National Socialism. (p. 21) However, Isaac
Kandel (1935) describes Krieck in 1935 in
this way: "Ernst Krieck, a former elementary
school teacher, who has written voluminously
on education and who was given an honorary
degree, made Rektor of the University of
Frankfort-am-Main immediately following the
(Nazi) Revolution, and then, as the highest
expression of irony and cynicism, was appointed
to the chair of philosophy at the University
of Heidelberg." (Note 10) Similar discrepancies
appear regarding Phillipp Bouhler, head of
the commission at Hitler's Chancellery which,
after 1939, had total control over all textbook
publication, who is described by Wegner as
a "young bureaucratic operative"
seeking "career advancement ...(who)
did not write with the same anti-Semitic
virulence of others." (wegner p. 179)
By contrast, Gilmer Blackburn (1985) describes
Bouhler as an "ardent Nazi ideologue
...(who) bears major responsibility for the
'radicalization of the schoolbooks,'"
citing German Nazi education expert Rolf
Eilers. (Note 11) While these errors and
omissions regarding these important figures
in Nazi curriculum development may not be
of primary significance, they represent just
two of a large number of various types of
errors and misrepresentations in this area
and others which undermine the credibility
of this study..
A central technique through out this
study
is the frequent citation of actions and positions
of the earlier Weimar government and of other
nations purported to be similar to those
of the Nazis. The reader is repeatedly reminded
that international scholars were engaged
in eugenics work, and that Weimar textbooks
contained militarism and nationalism that
could be traced to the Wilhelmine period.
( pp. 28, 75, 126 ) However, Kandel (1935)
states that: "After ...1918 history
textbooks began to be rewritten from the
republican point of view....'in the spirit
of national character and of international
reconciliation.'" This led Nazi educator
H. J. von Schumann later to decry the "'emphasis
on everything foreign and neglect of the
national values, both marks of the liberal
school' of the Marxist system, with the result
that 'many pupils, especially in the secondary
schools, were more familiar with foreign
countries that with their own Fatherland.'"
(Note 12) While the short-lived Weimar government
was tragically unable to alter the direction
of Volkish, racialist, and militaristic inclinations
in Germany, education policies and materials
were effective enough to concern at least
some Nazi educators. Similarly, Wegner emphasizes
that the immigrations policies of United
States, France, and Australia were analogous
to Germany in this period, that Austria provided
the regime with Nazi death camp specialists
Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Adolf Eichmann, and
that the United States did not extend full
civil rights and constitutional protections
to African-Americans ( pp. 119, 39, 106,
149, 185). Missing from this analysis is
recognition that the critical distinction
between unjust policies in a democracy and
legislated exclusion of citizens and refugees
in a dictatorship is that democracies may,
and fortunately most often do, through legal
recourse, destroy monolithic attempts to
abrogate the rights of those living within
their borders, where the reverse is the case
in dictatorships. What is emphasized, however,
is a broad-brush perspective to relativize
the extremity of the actions of the Hitler
regime, and a consistent attempt to find
parallels in cultural settings with intensely
different directions of standards and governance.
A relativizing position is also taken
in
this study with regard to pedagogy in history.
We are told that "history as propaganda
is a feature of education prevalent in both
democracies and dictatorships," that
"history as propaganda under Nazi Germany,
not unlike other regimes, conceived of the
historical process as a means of legitimizing
the state," and "as with each generation,
the Nazis invariably decided whose history
would be legitimized as an ideologically
acceptable framework for interpreting the
past."
( pp. 117, 141, 120) Wegner cites the
work
of historian Karl Hahn, who "followed
the Nazi practice, not uncommon in other
cultures, of exercising tight control over
historical memory. Ideological control over
historical interpretation also meant control
over the historical identity of racial outcasts."
(p. 127.) Similar to techniques which will
be examined below in an exploration of Wegner's
use of language, the terms "historical
memory" and "historical developments"
serve an additional purpose in this methodology.
In an examination of Ernst Dober's curriculum
materials, Wegner includes a tale from 1571,
supposedly illustrating Jewish financial
abuses. After elaborating this story in detail,
Wegner writes: "Dobers made sure to
place this historical memory immediately
after a volatile quotation of Martin Luther
from ‘On the Jews and Their Lies,‘ regarding
the Jewish lust for money and power."
One sentence later, the reader is told "Dobers
kept pounding away at still other historical
developments that explained the unfortunate
expansion of the Jewish presence in German
culture" (p. 37) Numerous other apparently
explanatory configurations which blur the
nature of the citation occur alongside frequent
assertions that historical context must be
included in understanding various attacks
on the Jews by Germans over time. Another
example of note is the admonishment that
an understanding of historical context must
be employed regarding the pogrom against
Jews in Trier in 1349. Complaining that "Hahn
ignored the historical context," Wegner
states that "Trier was one of the most
extreme examples of scapegoating against
the Jews because of the Black Plague. Furthermore,
the mass murder of Jews that year in Trier
came largely at the hands of the Crusaders.
Usury, while certainly part of the larger
traditional Christian hatred of Jews, was
a peripheral cause in this case." (pp.
131-132) Absent in nearly all Wegner's citations
of historical events and accompanying commentary
in this curriculum exposition is a genuinely
larger historical context, which would challenge
the assumptions on which the citations are
based. This approach will be defining, however,
through out the study.
To Wegner's credit, the reader is continuously
reminded of the horrors of the mass murders
of the Jews, Sinti and Roma, Poles, and the
physically and mentally disabled which were
perpetrated due to the Nazi race science
perspective. At no time does the author side-step
the enormity and the gravity of the murders
of these human beings, targeted as "racial
enemies." Yet, the language, omissions,
errors, and arrangement of materials continually
create questions regarding the conceptual
repositioning which appears to be part of
the central technique employed through out
the study. Numerous examples will be cited
below, which illustrate of these troubling
areas of discrepancy. In addition, they will
demonstrate a peculiarity of language construction
that that both confuses the reader and raises
further qualms over the author's intentions
and scholarship.
Wegner points out that the Nazi curricula
were constructed utilizing the "power
of suggestion," that accusations and
epithets were presented "with deadening
repetition," that curricula demonstrated
"repetitive reinforcement of more and
more contemporary examples of alleged wrongdoing
in the community," and notes the "linguistic
subterfuge" and "the power of the
word in reinforcing preconceptions of the
negative other." (pp. 15, 24, 95, 142,
143.) He asserts that the purpose for repeating
"key anti-semitic phrases and relationships"
throughout the works was to "heighten
the racial consciousness" of youth.
(p. 144) Wegner's analysis of language extends
to the grammatical constructs used by these
ideologues, as we are told: "Heimer
used many of the same verb forms and nouns
in telling the story of the mutt and in his
exposition of the Jews. The power of repetition
and association, qualities so important in
the effective development of propaganda,
marked the ebb and flow of the stories Heimer
created for his young readers." (p.
167) Several areas of this study will illustrate
the use of the same language techniques as
those cited above.
To establish that the "rich Volkish
tradition," "old myths" that
were "durable," and "historical
religious and economic anti-semitism that
resonated throughout the Middle Ages,"
that was "associated (from) Egypt,"
resulting in "generations of Catholic
and Protestant hatred" for Jews were
not invented by the Nazis, Wegner conflates
and extends the accepted meaning of"tradition"
by applying the term to endless lists of
charges, statistical tables, black and white
graphics, and 8 pages of posters and drawings
reproduced in color, indicting the Jews.
(pp. 15, 28, 181, 50, 187) Though consistently
decrying the lethal results of this thinking
and the "distortion," "exploitation,"
"bias," and occasionally, "falsification,"
of the statistical sources for the information,
the tables and lists are invariably shown
.
Extensive quotations of some of the
most
violent, salacious, and vicious accusations
and descriptions of Jewish people from curriculum
materials in science, history, and literature,
are included in this text. On nearly half
the pages of this book appear an extraordinary
number of lists of charges, tables, statistics,
"proverbs," quotations from the
famous forgery, The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion, and historical "documentations"
about the Jews. The lengthy quotations and
citations from curriculum materials repeatedly
delineate: Jewish physical features and personality
traits, Jews instigating Communism, Bolshevism,
liberalism, and revolution, the dangers presented
by the Eastern European Jewish immigrants,
the Ostjuden (who are mentioned over twenty
times), Jews advancing the terms of the hated
Versailles Treaty, Jews perpetrating sex
crimes, perversions, pimping, drug-trafficking,
dishonesty, laziness, treachery, cowardliness,
dishonesty as cattle dealers, land fraud,
and nomadism, Jews as vampires, parasites,
vultures, Jews causing the fall of Rome,
Jews as the Devil, Jews cross-breeding with
Africans (having "Negroid blood"
(sic)), the tricks of Jews, the likeliness
of Jews to carry disease, commit ritual murder,
"Jewish Secrets," the Talmud as
a corrupt document and source of Jewish "crimes,"
and allegations of a Jewish desire to rule
and/or devour other peoples. Additionally,
curriculum materials are extensively quoted
or reproduced which repeatedly enumerate:
professions in which Jews were alleged to
dominate, businesses owned by specified Jewish
families in Germany and abroad, Jewish family
names with their "economic" meaning,
incessant references to the Rothschilds,
the names of Jews on administrative boards
of large businesses, alleged monopolies owned
by particular Jews, banks controlled by specified
and unspecified Jews, and so on.
The language used to present this material
does, again to Wegner's credit, sometimes
ameliorate the effect the often long and
brutal passages will have on the reader.
However, while the fact that sources for
the statistical information are often not
provided in the curricula is duly noted as
symptomatic, in several instances Wegner
identifies sources for statistics that had
indeed been provided or points out that the
statistics used were accurate. He then unfailingly
chooses to feature both "distorted and
unsubstantiated" and "accurate"
groups of information in their essence, most
often, in their entirety. Remarkably, all
the qualifiers and disclaimers notwithstanding,
these lists and tables frequently add accusations
with each appearance of what are referred
to as "familiar themes," "the
traditional Christian rejection of Jewish
culture and theology," "economic
stereotype resonating back to the Middle
ages," "the traditional, omnipresent
stereotype of the Jewish male as sexual predator,"
"Jews eternally tied to the marketplace,"
and similar reconfigured descriptions that
reinstate the nature of the charges themselves.
Richard Evans (1989), in his landmark analysis
of the revisionism of the "historikerstreit"
historians in Germany in the mid-1980s wrote
that "Nolte makes ritual obeisances
to current moral orthodoxies, while devoting
the larger part of his energies to developing,
often by innuendo and suggestion, a series
of arguments intended to subvert them and
to put forward an alternative view."
(Note 13) Astonishingly, by the exposition
and organization of curriculum content, the
use of language, repeated declarations of
needed "contextualization," and
especially by the relativization of the reliability
of various forms of knowledge which form
the structure of his analysis, Wegner appears
to be attempting to produce a similar effect.
This unsettling organization of language
and material is used in several particularly
troubling instances. Early in the text, Wegner
writes that Ernst Dobers, prolific curriculum
writer and teacher's training college professor,
in the second printing of his 1936 book,
The Jewish Question: Subject Matter and Treatment
in the School "added the words of Benjamin
Franklin who allegedly stated that every
country that had allowed Jews to increase
their numbers usually experienced a decline
in morals." (p. 34) Incredibly, 66 pages
later, Wegner repositions writing by Ferdinand
Rossner, Hanover Teacher‘s College professor,
who coauthored The Care of Health and Race
Hygiene with Heinrich Ihde and Alfred Stockfish
(1939), so that Rossner's material on "the
specter of the Jew as (a) sexual threat to
German womanhood, an 'infection' of the people"
is taken by Wegner from its original order,
and placed immediately before an astounding,
elaborated repetition of the Ben Franklin
canard! Wegner now presents the canard this
way:
[Rossner] more than many other writers,
exploited
a controversial speech by Ben Franklin of
the United States as a source of anti-Semitic
fear for the Jewish takeover of the young
republic. Quoting from remarks Franklin delivered
in 1789 during the opening of the First Congress,
Rossner wanted readers to know that the Jew
was a constitutional issue.... [The authors']
choice of sentences revealed an editing process
designed for maximum anti-semitic effect.
These statements are followed by an
eight
line quote from the "controversial speech"
by Franklin, which was "edited for maximum
anti-semitic effect," after Wegner,
in his introduction to the quotation, edits
Rossner‘s own words! (pp. 100-101) One would
think that the fact that this canard appeared
originally in American Nazi William Dudley
Pelley's magazine, Liberation, in 1934 and
was utterly discredited by American historian
Charles Beard and dismissed as fabrication
by Henry Butler Allen, the director of the
Franklin Institute and expert on the papers
of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, from whose
diary Pelley claimed to have derived Franklin's
"prophecy," soon after its appearance
would have been of historical interest for
Wegner‘s study, since by 1939 Rossner, et
al, no doubt knew the canard had been exposed
when they printed it. (Note
14) For Wegner to present this canard
in
the language he has chosen, editing the text
from which he is quoting (after commenting
on the Nazi pedagogue‘s use of the same technique!),
without any explanation of its source, its
rapid exposure as utter hoax, or any aspect
of its history is simply very faulty and,
unfortunately, dubious scholarship. Wegner
passes along two other canards in language
only slightly less ambiguous and with even
further omissions. He writes:
Drawing from Wilhelm Meister's Judas
Schuldbuch
(1919) ...(Ernst) Dobers quoted a pamphlet
published by a circle of rabbis in Austria
from 1901 that once again reflected the conspiritorial
intentions of the Jews. "Every war,
every revolution, every political and religious
change," so it was written, "brings
us every moment closer to reaching the highest
goal toward which we strive." ( p. 39)
Though Dobers is identified as attempting
to "paint the Jews themselves as aggressors
bent on destroying the fatherland... during
the First World War," we are not told
that Wilhelm Meister was the pseudonym used
by the intensely anti-semitic chief economic
theorist of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei
(DNVP), Dr. Paul Bang, whose Nordic spiritualist
and corporativist ideas led him to work actively
with the National Socialists in the 1920s.
The Judas Schuldbuch (The Jewish Book of
Crimes) reflected Bang's belief that the
"Jews were responsible for all crimes,
especially economic ones." (Note 15)
Similarly, Wegner describes without comment
Hans Warnecke's and Willi Matschke's 1942
History for the Elementary Schools rejection
of the egalitarian ideas of the French revolution
as a Jewish plot to enslave the world:
Equal rights... was the fateful step
leading
to an eventual Jewish takeover of governments.
Even kings and queens failed to take this
threat seriously. Queen Marie Antoinette
warned her brother Joseph II on the throne
of Austria about the unholy alliance of Jews
and Free Masons (sic), but he ignored her
pleadings. Louis XVI also remained blind
to the danger and went to the scaffold with
his queen wholly unaware of Jewish machinations
in toppling the government. The overarching
message was that Jews brought only disaster
to the host cultures. ( p. 141)
The reader is never informed that the
source
of this group of ideas is derived from the
pre-fascist writings of Lewis-Marie Prudhomme
and Joseph de Maistre, brought forward in
the unbalanced, pseudo-historical work of
Nesta Webster. The inclusion of these hoaxes
in misleading presentations with omitted
factual backgrounds necessarily raises concern,
given the nature of this study. Since the
Ben Franklin "prophecy" canard
and the conspiracy theories of Nesta Webster
appear regularly as foundational constructs
on extremist Islamic and neo-nazi websites
today, and are put forward routinely by Matt
Hale, founder of the World Church of the
Creator, a white racist hate organization,
these false and blurred representations become
problems of even greater importance . (Note
16) The aspect of currency in any study of
anti-semitism, as well as Wegner's structural
and apparent compositional oddities bring
forward serious questions both as to the
reliability of this study and of the appropriateness
of the constructionist approach when examining
documents relating to events and ideas that,
while historical, are, unfortunately also
very immediate. As above, ideas that are
repeated as fact, and as "historical
memory" can and will be treated as such
by practitioners of relativizing, constructionist
frameworks, and, more alarmingly, by extremists
who are only too happy to encounter such
information in a scholarly format.
Another critically important example
of omission
is in Wegner's description of the German
"Schwarze Schmach," or "Black
shame," a term which referred to the
German antipathy for "Blacks,"
renewed by the French occupation of the Rhineland
after the First World War. Wegner discusses
the "gross exaggeration " of the
claims of "Black" soldiers raping
German women, and suggests that this antipathy
may have originated in " the German
colonial experience." (pp. 89, 225,
fn 131, 215 fn. 90) What is stunning in Wegner's
omission regarding the background of the
German relationship to "Blacks"
is that the "German colonial experience,"
as he puts it, was typified by the German
attempt to conquer the Herrero people of
southwest Africa and the Maji-Maji in Tanganyika,
which resulted in the murder of three-quarters
of the indigenous population. This was military
action "brutal even by imperialist standards."
(Note 17)
The method of approach to this curriculum
content raises concern in another area. As
Wegner continually reinforces the idea of
"tradition and stereotypes" in
anti-semitic beliefs, he actively pursues
an explanation of institutionalization for
Catholic "anti-semitic policy."
(p. 53) However, despite frequent criticism
of Luther's drastic positioning in "On
the Jews and Their Lies" (1543), in
which Luther recommended burning the synagogues
with the Jews in them, repeated attempts
are made to place the "religious anti-semitism"
of Martin Luther in an "historical context,"
asserting that "what remains crucial
was Luther's orthodox intent to annihilate
the Jewish religion, not murder the Jews."
(pp. 32-33) In fact, in the same text Wegner
cites, Table Talk by Martin Luther (1566),
Luther states that if a Jew were to only
appear to be converted "I would take
him to a bridge, tie a stone round his neck,
and hurl him into a river, for these wretches
are wont to make a jest of our religion."
(Note 18) The author's outrage that Werner
Dittrich was "heedless of the historical
context defining Luther's religious anti-semitism."
and that "Warnecke and Matschke make
no distinction between Luther's religious
anti-semitism and the racial anti-semitism
of the Third Reich. The theological context
of Luther's reforms remain unaddressed,"
rings a bit hollow in view of Luther‘s positions
cited above. (pp. 48, 140) Similarly misleading
are attempts to diminish the intensity of
Luther's and others' anti-semitism through
statements which describe particular aspects
of the anti-semitism found in curricula as
the same as encountered "from Luther
to Shakespeare to the 19th century."
(pp. 160, 91, 127) Here the author is referring
to the Shylock image in "The Merchant
of Venice"—hardly a parallel to Luther's
vitriol aimed at the Jews. Interestingly,
Wegner chooses an excessively coarse quote
of Luther's indicating his loathing for "the
Messiah the Jews are waiting for." (p.
48) The alleged distinction between the Christian
and Jewish "God" will be of key
importance as we complete the review of this
study.
While scurrilous and sinister accusations
purportedly derived from the Talmud are mentioned
incessantly through out the curriculum materials
included in this study, the choice of citations
from curricula dealing extensively with the
Talmud and the language used to describe
them, once again, raises concern. Earlier
in the study, the curricula of Werner Dittrich
and Fritz Fink had included as informing
concept the idea that the Jews hated non-Jews,
wished vengeance on non-Jews, sought to devour
them, and had become racially suited to vindictiveness.(pp.
44, 45, 51, 62) According to this form of
anti-semitic rationalizing, the Jews deeply
hated the German culture, following the commands
of the Talmud to consider Germans and all
non-Jews as animals. (p. 62) Jews, in fact,
had caused the hatred the non-Jews felt for
them, since they were the "great hater(s),"
and throughout history had set an emotional
cycle in motion which ultimately resulted
in their expulsion by the surrounding peoples.
(pp. 115, 133) One pedagogue‘s approach held
that "the causes of anti-semitism were
tied exclusively to Jewish culture and history."
(p. 150) Wegner's interpretation of this
perspective is yet another example of the
problematic organization of thought consistently
found in this study. He writes: "Stripped
out was any recognition that European non-Jews
might hold some responsibility for hateful
actions taken against Jews across time."
(p. 150) High among the reasons for German
hatred and fear of Jews, however, was the
constructed "misinterpretation of the
Old Testament." School inspector Franz
Fink contributed an important "misinterpretation
of the Talmud" in his The Jewish Question
in Instruction
(1937). To further his "goal of
deepening
anti-Semitic attitudes and values among school
children," Fink wrote particularly assaultive
segments, condemning the Jews as "Old
Testament people whose God, Yahweh, was not
the God of the Germans."(p. 60) Fink
believed that the idea of being the chosen
people had been invented by the Jews, and
further that Yahweh had commanded that all
uncircumcised were to be "exterminated."
Like many other anti-semitic writers, "Fink
exploited the use of both undocumented quoted
language along with selected and documented
expressions from the Old Testament."
(p. 60) Though the unknown source of the
undocumented quotations was "not of
any importance to the writer," Fink's
"own biblical references are restricted
to the Book of Psalms and the Book of Deuteronomy"
to illustrate his position that Yahweh "was
unjust and cruel ...(and) demanded the destruction
of all non-Jewish people." (pp. 60-61).
Wegner paraphrases Fink's "undocumented
quotation" regarding circumcision, and
quotes his "documented biblical references"
in toto—Deuteronomy 7:16 and 15:6 and Psalms
2:8-9 (which isn't, strictly speaking, considered
part of the Talmud)—without a word of explanation
of the intentions of the author of the Hebrew
scripture.( pp. 60-61) Particularly in the
case of the quoted verse from Deuteronomy
7:16, the intention of the Hebrew author
is obvious. The verse states: "You shall
consume all the nations which the Lord, Your
God, will deliver up to you. You are not
to look upon them with pity, lest you be
ensnared into serving their gods." In
his groundbreaking examination of Nazi textbooks,
curriculum expert and historian Gilmer Blackburn
(1985), addresses two similar passages from
Hebrew scripture in this way: "The reasons
for this drastic policy were clearly explained
in the Scriptures: the presence of alien
groups with idolatrous religious practices
would threaten the purity of the Hebrew worship."
After quoting several more verses, including
Deuteronomy 7:16, Blackburn concludes: "So
absolute was Jehovah's covenant with his
people that violators of the most minute
provisions were dealt with as contaminated
persons....(one of whom) was ordered destroyed
so that Israel could stand victorious."
(Note 19) Instead of providing some balance
against the Nazi interpretation, as Blackburn
does in his examination of the usage of the
identical Hebrew scripture in Nazi curricula,
Wegner relates that Fink used the Talmud
to inform students that Jewish criminality
originated in the Talmud, "exploiting
the historically estranged relationship between
Christians and Jews." (p. 61) Similarly,
at no point in either the exposition of Volkish
ideas, or in the multiple inclusions of curricula
describing Yahweh, the "Jewish God,"
does Wegner provide any explication of the
apocryphal theological sources for the idea
of the "other God" of the Jews.
Originally formulated by such second century
Christian Gnostics as Marcion, and reflecting
the duality central to Zoroastrianism brought
forward by Mani, the idea that the Jews worshipped
the "demi-urge"—Ialdaboth, a creature
spawned in despair by Sophia during her alienation
from the Pleroma—was maintained and reconfigured
by the Albigensians and the Cathars, the
German Meistersingers and Minnesingers, and
in the theosophical constructs of Jacob Boehme,
Emmanuel Swedenborg, Helena Blavatsky, and
Rudolf Steiner. In the 1920s, German theologian
Adolf von Harnack wrote extensively on Marcion's
ideas, thus supporting this subterranean
belief construct, and making it current and
useful to 20th century anti-Semites. (Note
20) Anomolies continue as Wegner refers to
"Christ's" words used in Fink's
curriculum material regarding the Jews as
"born of the devil," and "a
child of hell." (p. 63). Once again,
the content of some of the most unsound and
hateful materials ever inserted into school
curricula is presented without analytical
challenge. At several more points in the
book, Wegner quotes from various writers
without providing necessary historical backgrounds,
such as Johann von Leers, Paul Broemer, and
Elvira Bauer whose work continues this exposure
of Nazi ideology regarding Jewish scripture.
"Secret laws," passages from the
Protocols, repetitions of "Christ's"
and others' references to Jews as associated
with the devil, repetition of accusations
of Jews as "killers of Christ,"
of "Jewish immorality" and "thieving"
as sourced in the Talmud, and repetition
of the charge of ritual murder appear through
out the text. (pp. 83, 84,
160,
162, 171, 62, 82, 163, 171,163) In
the conclusion
of Anti-Semitism and Schooling under the
Third Reich, Wegner informs us that the charge
of "deicide survives to this day in
anti-Semitic circles." (p. 181)
Conclusion
When I. L. Kandel examined the curriculum
and theories which were emerging from the
new National Socialist regime in 1935, he
included in his study the words of Johannes
Gottlieb Fichte, one of the foundational
theorists to Volkish and later Nazi ideologies.
Fichte wrote: "Truth in reality, is
what you wish to be true; false is what you
wish to be false." (Note 21) Kandel
quotes a Nazi pedagogue writing on history:
"Objectivity in the teaching of history
is only one of the numerous fallacies of
liberalism." British Professor Ernest
Barker wrote in 1934, "It is sad ...
that in a great country which has done so
much for the scientific study of history,
the writing of history should fall the to
the level of legend... a legend of hate."
(Note 22) As historian George Iggers wrote,
the "research imperative" in historical
examination, which originated in German scholarship,
demands "commitment to the idea and
the ideal of objectivity and disinterested,
neutral inquiry." Though the concept
has been misused not only by "authoritarian
regimes...(nevertheless) interpretations
are not arbitrary ... there are standards
of humanity and logical thinking which can
guide the rational discourse among historians."
(Note 23)
This is Professor Wegner's first book,
though
he has published several journal studies
and is the Director of the Center for Shoah
and Genocide Studies at the University of
Wisconsin at La Crosse. He has been quoted
as saying that the term "Holocaust"
for the death of the Jews at the hands of
the Nazi regime is inappropriate and that
the Hebrew term, Shoah, should be used, a
position taken by other scholars. Wegner
states in the Introduction to this study,
"in the Nazi ... experiment" various
factors contributed to producing "this
chapter in the history of prejudice,"
thus placing these events among the larger
group of tragic mass murders due to prejudice
throughout human history. However, whether
the mass murder of six million Jewish men,
women, and children, along with millions
of others, is termed the Holocaust or the
Shoah, this event is unique for two reasons.
First, the Nazi effort was unprecedented
in its aim of the absolute elimination of
an entire group of people the Nazis had determined
were a "race." Secondly, after
their murder, these people's remains were
converted into agricultural and household
products, and plundered for gold. These elements
disqualify the Holocaust as accurately placed
as another "chapter in the history of
prejudice." In addition, implying that
this group of events is endemically "inexplicable,"
as Wegner does in the final pages of this
study, citing Raul Hilberg's statement that
"he still could not answer the question
of why in relation to one of the greatest
tragedies of modern history," simply
serves to further "mystify the Holocaust,"
which, according to Yehuda Bauer, head of
the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at Hebrew
University, "can actually rob it of
significance." (p. 189) (Note 24)
Wegner uses Victor Klemperer's statements
to try make the case that without the Jews
there would have been no Nazis. A deeper
and more accurate examination and analysis
of the development of anti-semitism in German
thought and its lethal results through National
Socialism is available in some of the books
Wegner himself cites—for example, in the
works of George L. Mosse, Fritz Stern, and
Leon Poliakov—as well as in the Nazi pedagogical
study by Gilmer Blackburn, and the studies
of German university education before and
during the National Socialist period by Max
Weinrich and Fritz Ringer. (Note 25 ) The
delusional grandiosity of Volkish ideology
did not exclude only Jewish people from the
mysticalized racial state. Other non-Aryans
were also perceived as threatening and were
to be ostracized. Eugenics, tinged with racism,
was, as Wegner correctly asserts, gaining
currency internationally among "progressive"
thinkers of this era. But no other nation,
including the United States, despite its
shameful civil rights, sterilization, and
immigration policies at this time, was contemplating
doing away with the "unfit" as
an essential policy to achieve a hallucinatory
idea of "race" purity. The phantasmagorical
character of the Nazi ideology of mysticalized
racial superiority was what ultimately sounded
the death knell for the "unfit"
first, and then the Jewish people and other
"race enemies." A conceptual, historical
understanding of the Volkish mysticism which
was at the root of the National Socialist
race hygiene program, to which Wegner alludes
to but never provides a serious examination,
is essential to comprehending subsequent
Nazi ideology and practice. It was the crucial
ingredient of difference between the loathsome
sterilization practices of American eugenicists
and the Nazis' transformation of human beings
into usable product. Educational curricula
intended to bring pupils into service to
a master race state must, as must all curricula,
be examined for components which produced
unbalanced and distorted thinking. And, as
Wegner correctly admonishes, scientists,
citizens, and educators in the United States
and all the nations now involved in biotechnology
must think deeply and responsibly about the
horrifying legacy of the Nazi racial state
as they determine how to proceed in the attempt
to "improve life" through the use
of biogenetics and nanotechnology. But to
advance necessary deliberation on these crucial
issues, trustworthy information critical
to gaining understanding must be made available
in a format that can reliably guide inquiry
into the thought and activities of this group
who so appallingly erred in the past. That
effort is not served by attempting this examination
in a framework of social constructionism.
The position cited earlier of the seminal
Volkish ideologue Johannes Gottlieb Fichte,
that "that truth is what you wish,"
is foundational to relativizing approaches
in historical scholarship that have appeared
in the past twenty years. Discovering, (or
inventing) "a law, a causal nexus,"
for events, as Fichte believed he had done
in 1805, which would provide "the answer"
to a reasonable life became the foundation
for leading Nazi theorist Ernst Krieck: "the
law of the whole (is) above the law of the
part...(of) the individual." Fichte
called it Gattung—the individual "forgets
himself in the group." (Note 26) By
abdicating the critical responsibility of
rational assessment of the past as accountable
individuals, those of us who are alive at
this moment will create a future in which
the human "race" has no future,
in which the past is, truly, prologue.
As George Iggers was quoted earlier
in this
review: "... there is a real past which
must not be distorted." Though national
and ethnic myths insinuate themselves in
purportedly "objective" documents,
"that does not mean that there are no
criteria of rational inquiry by which myths
can be taken apart." Our assessment
of past events and attempts to decide on
the future direction of humanity cannot be
based on constructs which put forward the
position that "scientific knowledge,
like all forms of knowledge" is socially
constructed and that history is propaganda.
Examining anti-semitism in Nazi Germany from
a perspective which brings forward racial
myths and canards within a framework that
is grounded in the belief that all information
is culturally contingent is not an approach
appropriate to serious analysis of this issue.
Unfortunately, rather than a rigorously researched
and well-documented analysis of National
Socialist curricula, Anti-Semitisim and Schooling
under the Third Reich is, instead, a detailed
sourcebook of the delusional racist "traditions"
and legends held by Germans in the early
and mid-twentieth century.
Notes
1. George G. Iggers. (2000). The uses and
misuses of history." Apollon. Available
online: http://www.apollon.uio.no/2000_english/focus/misuses.shtml,
pp. 1-3.
2. See George G. Iggers. (1988) . The
German
Conception of History: The National Tradition
of Historical Thought from Herder to the
Present. Hanover, New Hampshire: Wesleyan
University/University Press of New England;
George L. Mosse. (1981) TheCrisis of German
Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third
Reich. New York: Schocken Books; Fritz Stern
. (1974) . The Politics of Cultural Despair:
A Study of the Rise of Germanic Ideology.
Los Angeles: University of California Press.
3. George L. Mosse. (1985) Toward the
Final
Solution: A History of European Racism. Madison,
WI: University of Wisconsin Press., p. 41.
It is worthy of note that Sir William Jones,
the Oriental expert, refused to support the
idea that languages in India and Europe had
common origins. Friedrich Schlegel traced
Aryan linguistic origins for Germany "using
the very word comparisons... Sir William
had deplored." Mosse. (1985) . pp. 39-40.
See also Leon Poliakov. (1996) . The Aryan
Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist
Ideas in Europe. tr. Edmund Howard. New York:
Barnes and Noble, pp. 191-93
4. Cosima Wagner. (1980) . Diaries.
Vol.
II. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich,
p. 864. In addition, Wagner's son, Gottfried,
states: "Influenced by the fascist philosopher
Arthur Gobineau, Wagner's anti-semitism increased."
Gottfried Wagner. (1999) . Twilight of the
Wagners: The Unveiling of a Family's Legacy,
tr. Della Couling. New York: Picador , p.
64.
5. Mosse. (1981) . pp. 41-44; Don Cameron.
The Legend of Noah. (1963) . Urbana, IL:
University of Illinois Press, pp. 86, 133-35;
Hiram Haydn .(1950). The Counter Renaissance,
New York: Grove Press, pp. 517-18.
6. Mosse. (1985) . pp. 97-9
7. Houston Stewart Chamberlain. (1968).
The
Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, Vol.
II, New York, Howard Fertig, , pp. 19-20,
37, 489-90 and passim.
8. Among other works cited as reference
in
this presentation is Stephan Kuhl's (1994),
The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism
and German National Socialism, a book which
avers that specifically American eugenics
theory and practice was directly and critically
influential on (and, inferentially, possibly
responsible for) Germany's later race policies.
9. Pat Shipman. (1994) . The Evolution
of
Racism: Human Abuses and the Use and Abuse
of Science. New York: Simon and Schuster,
pp. 146-149. In their book, Huxley and Haddon
originated the famous "Aryan" prototype:
"as blond as Hitler, as dolichocephalic
(long-headed) as Rosenberg, as tall as Goebbels,
as slender as Goering, and as manly as Streicher."
See also Julian Huxley. (1953) Man in the
Modern World. New York: New American Library,
pp. 38-41.
10. I. L. Kandel. (1935; reprint 1970)
The
Making of Nazis. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press. p. 46 Strangely, Wegner also attributes
the editorship of the journal Volk und Werden
to Alfred Baumler ( p. 22 ), when, in fact,
this journal was edited by Krieck. See Kandel,
p. 50; and Gilmer W. Blackburn. (1985) .
Education in the Third Reich: A Study of
Race and History in Nazi Textbooks. Albany,
N. Y.: State University of New York Press
, p. 208.
11. Blackburn. (1985) . p. 37, 189,
fn. 10
12. Kandel. (1935) . p. 65
13. Richard Evans. (1989) . In Hitler's
Shadow:
West German Historians and the Attempt to
Escape from the Nazi Past. New York: Pantheon,
p. 34
14. Paul F. Boller, John George. (1989)
They
Never Said It: Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and
Misleading Attributions. New York: Oxford
University Press, p. 27
15. Mosse. (1981) . pp. 247-50; 290-91.
16. Extremist Islamic websites are
readily
available through Google; for Hale see the
HBO production "Hate. com" in which
Hale presents this identical "prophecy"
story, and World Church of the Creator websites
for the Franklin and Webster quotes.
17. John Weiss. (1996) . The Ideology
of
Death: Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany,
Chicago, Ivan R. Dee, pp. 150-2; see also
Ann Topham. (1992) A Distant Thunder: Intimate
Recollections of the Kaiser‘s Court. New
York: New Chapter Press.
18. Martin Luther. (1952, orig. 1566)
. The
Table Talk of Martin Luther, ed. Thomas S.
Kepler, New York: The World Publishing Company,
pp. 218-19. Also see pp. 169-170: Luther
also expounded that Moses and his Law were
of this world and "of the devil,"
an issue of "tradition" regarding
the gnosticism inherent to Volkish ideology
that will be discussed later in this review.
19. Blackburn. (1985) . p. 91. Blackburn's
study includes many of the same sources as
Wegner and presents thoughtful and wide-ranging
analysis that is missing from the study under
review.
20. For gnosticism see Giovanni Filoramo.
(1992) . A History of Gnosticism, tr. Anthony
Alcock. Cambridge: Blackwell; regarding theologians
who brought these ideas forward see Koppel
Pinson. (1968) . Pietism, As a Factor in
the Rise of German Nationalism. New York:
Octagon Books, Inc.. and Klaus Koch. (1970)
. The Rediscovery of the Apocalypse: A Polemical
Work on a Neglected Area of Biblical Studies
and Its Damaging Effects on Theology and
Philosophy, tr. Margaret Kohl, Naperville,
IL: Alec R. Allenson, Inc. It is also worth
noting that Helena Blavatsky may have been
responsible for the composition of the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion, see Norman Cohn.
(1996/1967) . Warrant for Genocide:
The Myth
of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the "Protocols
of the Elders of Zion." London: Serif,
p. 110.
21. quoted in Kandel. (1935) . p. 25.
22. ibid, p. 73, and p. 73, fn. 7
23. Iggers. (2000) . Objective Standards
heading, para. 4.
24. Bauer quoted in Christopher Simpson.
(1993) . The Splendid Blond Beast: Money,
Laws, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century.
New York: Grove Press, p. 9.
25. See Blackburn (1985); also Fritz
K. Ringer.
(1983) . The Decline of the German Mandarins:
The German Academic Community, 1890-1933.
London: University Press of New England/Wesleyan
University Press; Max Weinrich. (1999/1946)
. Hitler's Professors: The Part of Scholarship
in Germany's Crimes Against the Jewish People.
London: Yale University Press.
26. Kandel . (1935) . p. 27
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About the Reviewer
Katherine T. Carroll is completing
a Ph.
D. in Comparative Education at Loyola University
Chicago. Her academic interests include comparative
studies of the major ideologies of the twentieth
century, and the history of ideas.
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