Germany Must Perish!

Last updated

Germany Must Perish!
Germany Must Perish! cover.jpg
First-edition cover
Author Theodore N. Kaufman
LanguageEnglish
Publisher Argyle Press
Publication date
28 February 1941 (1941-02-28)
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback and paperback)
Pages104
OCLC 11425880
914.3 [1]

Germany Must Perish! is a 104-page book written by Theodore N. Kaufman, which he self-published in 1941 in the United States. The book advocated genocide through the sterilization of all Germans and the territorial dismemberment of Germany, believing that this would achieve world peace.

Contents

Kaufman founded the Argyle Press in Newark, New Jersey, United States, in order to publish this book. He was the sole proprietor of the Argyle Press, which is not known to have published any other works.

The Nazi Party used the book, written by a Jewish author, to support their argument that Jews were plotting against their country. [2] [3]

Contents

Kaufman advocated the mass extermination of the German people through forced sterilization and the territorial dismemberment of Germany after an Allied victory in World War II. [4]

Kaufman summarized Germany Must Perish! in advertisements in The New York Times and New York Post as: "A dynamic volume outlining a plan for the extinction of Germany and containing a map showing possible dissection and apportionment of its territory." [5] Kaufman defended his plan for the "sterilization of all Germans" in an interview published in the September 26, 1941, issue of The Canadian Jewish Chronicle: [6]

Map showing Kaufman's proposed dismemberment of Germany (and Austria) GermanyMustPerish2.jpg
Map showing Kaufman's proposed dismemberment of Germany (and Austria)

I believe that the Jews have a mission in life. They must see to it that the nations of the world get together in one vast federation. "Union Now" is the beginning of this. Slowly but surely the world will develop into a paradise. We will have perpetual peace. And the Jews will do the most to bring about this confederation, because they have the most to gain. But how can you get peace if Germany exists? The only way to win an eternal peace is to make the punishment of waging war more horrible than war itself. Human beings are penalized for murder, aren't they? Well, Germany starts all the wars of magnitude. Let us sterilize all Germans and wars of world domination will come to an end!

Reception

In the United States

Although self-published, the book received considerable attention. Time magazine published a review in its 24 March issue that compared the book to Jonathan Swift's 1729 satirical essay A Modest Proposal , which proposed reducing the population pressure in Ireland by the cannibalistic consumption of poor Irish infants. However, the Time essay recognized that Kaufman's work was not satirical; it described the book as the "enshrinement of a single sensational idea". "Since Germans are the perennial disturbers of the world's peace, says the book, they must be dealt with like any homicidal criminals. But it is unnecessary to put the whole German nation to the sword. It is more humane to sterilize them." [7] [8]

According to one study, reviews in the United States "reflected an odd combination of straight reporting and skepticism". [9] Kaufman's second and more moderate pamphlet, "No More German Wars" published in 1942, was ignored in both the U.S. and Germany. [9]

An advertisement in The New York Times stated that the book was released to the public on March 1, 1941. Kaufman also promoted the book by mailing a miniature black cardboard coffin with a hinged lid to reviewers. [10] Inside the coffin was a card proclaiming, "Read GERMANY MUST PERISH! Tomorrow you will receive your copy." [7] [4]

The book's dust jacket contained excerpts from reviews of the book. One blurb read: "A Plan For Permanent Peace Among Civilized Nations! -- New York Times." [11]

Kaufman's book was cited by a prominent Jewish-American trial lawyer, Louis Nizer. [12] In his 1944 book What To Do With Germany, Nizer accepted the collective punishment of Germans and considered, though ultimately rejected, their mass "eugenic sterilization". [12]

In 1945, a Jewish journalist wrote an article claiming that the book was "little more than self-indulgence in dire vituperation by a man who sees Germany as the sole cause of the world's woes". [13]

In Germany

Kaufman was a Manhattan-born Jew and his advocacy of genocide attracted great attention in Germany. [7] The book was denounced in Germany as an "orgy of Jewish hatred", and it was seen as inspired by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt's supposed polemical anti-German agitation. [14] American journalist Howard K. Smith was in Germany when Germany Must Perish! became known. He wrote: [15]

No man has ever done so irresponsible a disservice to the cause his nation is fighting and suffering for than Nathan Kaufman. His half-baked brochure provided the Nazis with one of the best light artillery pieces they have, for, used as the Nazis used it, it served to bolster up that terror which forces Germans who dislike the Nazis to support, fight and die to keep Nazism alive ...

In September 1941, Julius Streicher published an essay in Der Stürmer that called Kaufman's book "the crazy thinking of [an] insane Jewish brain". He quoted Kaufman at length and then commented: "By destroying the German people, the Jew wants to stop up the spring from which, since the beginning, the world has always found its creative blood, the source of all that is beautiful, good and noble." [16] Joseph Goebbels also gave a radio address from Berlin warning Germans of "plans 'for sterilization of our entire population under 60 years' of age". [4] These concerns were echoed by Adolf Hitler himself after the US entered World War II; he claimed mass sterilization of German male youth was a "primary" American goal. [4]

When the Jews of Hanover were evicted on September 8, 1941, the local authorities cited Kaufman's book as one of the reasons. [2] Kaufman responded: [17] [18]

This is just a flimsy pretext for another of the innate cruelties of the German people ... I don't think it was my book that prompted this barbarity. They employed every possible German cruelty against the Jews long before my book was published.

The book appeared in many pieces of Nazi propaganda. The Parole der Woche 's weekly wall newspaper included it as evidence that the Allies' war aims included the destruction of Germany. [19] The pamphlet "The War Goal of World Plutocracy" detailed the contents of the book, although with some omissions from the text that it quoted. [20] It was used in 1944 in a pamphlet, "Never!", which described Kaufman's importance: [21]

The Jewish president of the American Federation of Peace is no anonymous individual, no fanatic rejected by world Jewry, no mentally ill crackpot, but rather a leading and widely known Jewish personality in the United States. He belongs to the so-called Roosevelt Brain Trust, which provides intellectual and political education and advice to the American President. "It is therefore beyond question that his book and its demand that 'Germany must perish' corresponds to the official opinion of the leading circles of world plutocracy."

At his Nuremberg trial, Julius Streicher cited Kaufman's book in his defense, claiming his anger at Jews was prompted by Germany Must Perish!. [4] The German philosopher and historian Ernst Nolte argues that the German reaction to Germany Must Perish! supports his contention that World War II was a genuine response to German fears of a worldwide Jewish plot. [22]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julius Streicher</span> Nazi German politician and publisher (1885–1946)

Julius Streicher was a member of the Nazi Party, the Gauleiter of Franconia and a member of the Reichstag, the national legislature. He was the founder and publisher of the virulently antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine. The publishing firm was financially very successful and made Streicher a multi-millionaire.

<i>Der Stürmer</i> German antisemitic tabloid newspaper from 1923 to 1945

Der Stürmer was a weekly German tabloid-format newspaper published from 1923 to the end of World War II by Julius Streicher, the Gauleiter of Franconia, with brief suspensions in publication due to legal difficulties. It was a significant part of Nazi propaganda, and was virulently anti-Semitic. The paper was not an official publication of the Nazi Party, but was published privately by Streicher. For this reason, the paper did not display the Nazi Party swastika in its logo.

<i>Völkischer Beobachter</i> Nazi newspaper

The Völkischer Beobachter was the newspaper of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) from 25 December 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from 8 February 1923. For twenty-four years it formed part of the official public face of the Nazi Party until its last edition at the end of April 1945. The paper was banned and ceased publication between November 1923, after Adolf Hitler's arrest for leading the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, and February 1925, the approximate date of the relaunching of the Party.

<i>Rassenschande</i> Nazi word for interracial contacts

Rassenschande or Blutschande was an anti-miscegenation concept in Nazi German racial policy, pertaining to sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans. It was put into practice by policies like the Aryan certificate requirement, and later by anti-miscegenation laws such as the Nuremberg Laws, adopted unanimously by the Reichstag on 15 September 1935. Initially, these laws referred predominantly to relations between ethnic Germans and non-Aryans, regardless of citizenship. In the early stages the culprits were targeted informally; later, they were punished systematically and legally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Propaganda in Nazi Germany</span>

The propaganda used by the German Nazi Party in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's dictatorship of Germany from 1933 to 1945 was a crucial instrument for acquiring and maintaining power, and for the implementation of Nazi policies.

Philipp Rupprecht was a German cartoonist best known for his anti-Semitic caricatures in the Nazi publication Der Stürmer, under the pen-name Fips.

<i>Untermensch</i> German word meaning "subhuman", used by the Nazis

Untermensch is a German language word literally meaning 'underman', 'sub-man', or 'subhuman', that was extensively used by Germany's Nazi Party to refer to non-Aryan people they deemed as inferior. It was mainly used against "the masses from the East", that is Jews, Roma, and Slavs.

<i>Das Reich</i> (newspaper) Nazi newspaper

Das Reich was a weekly newspaper founded by Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Nazi Germany, in May 1940. It was published by Deutscher Verlag.

<i>Der Giftpilz</i> 1938 antisemitic childrens book

Der Giftpilz is a piece of antisemitic Nazi propaganda published as a children's book by Julius Streicher in 1938. The text is by Ernst Hiemer, with illustrations by Philipp Rupprecht ; the title alludes to how, just as it is difficult to tell a poisonous mushroom from an edible mushroom, it is difficult to tell a Jew apart from a Gentile. The book purports to warn German children about the dangers allegedly posed by Jews to them personally, and to German society in general.

Jewish Bolshevism, also Judeo–Bolshevism, is an antisemitic and anti-communist conspiracy theory that claims that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was a Jewish plot and that Jews controlled the Soviet Union and international communist movements, often in furtherance of a plan to destroy Western civilization. It was one of the main Nazi beliefs that served as an ideological justification for the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Holocaust.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Holocaust in Lithuania</span> Genocide of Lithuanian Jews

The Holocaust in Lithuania resulted in the near total eradication of Lithuanian (Litvaks) and Polish Jews[a] in Generalbezirk Litauen of the Reichskommissariat Ostland in the Nazi-controlled Lithuania. Of approximately 208,000–210,000 Jews at the time of the Nazi invasion, an estimated 190,000 to 195,000 were killed before the end of World War II, most of them between June and December 1941. More than 95% of Lithuania's Jewish population was murdered over the three-year German occupation, a more complete destruction than befell any other country in the Holocaust. Historians attribute this to the massive collaboration in the genocide by the non-Jewish local paramilitaries, though the reasons for this collaboration are still debated. The Holocaust resulted in the largest loss of life in so short a period of time in the history of Lithuania.

Eliminationism is the belief that a social group is, in the words of Oklahoma City University School of Law professor Phyllis E. Bernard, "a cancer on the body politic that must be excised—either by separation from the public at large, through censorship or by outright extermination—in order to protect the purity of the nation."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theodore N. Kaufman</span> American activist

Theodore Newman Kaufman, sometimes given incorrectly as Theodore Nathan Kaufmann, was an American Jewish businessman and writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Themes in Nazi propaganda</span> Propaganda of the German Nazi regime

The propaganda of the Nazi regime that governed Germany from 1933 to 1945 promoted Nazi ideology by demonizing the enemies of the Nazi Party, notably Jews and communists, but also capitalists and intellectuals. It promoted the values asserted by the Nazis, including Heldentod, Führerprinzip, Volksgemeinschaft, Blut und Boden and pride in the Germanic Herrenvolk. Propaganda was also used to maintain the cult of personality around Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and to promote campaigns for eugenics and the annexation of German-speaking areas. After the outbreak of World War II, Nazi propaganda vilified Germany's enemies, notably the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States, and in 1943 exhorted the population to total war.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nazi propaganda and the United Kingdom</span>

Nazi propaganda towards the United Kingdom changed its position over time in keeping with Anglo-German relations. Prior to 1938, as the Nazi regime attempted to court the British into an alliance, Nazi propaganda praised the "Aryan" character of the British people and the British Empire. However, as Anglo-German relations deteriorated, and the Second World War broke out, Nazi propaganda vilified the British as oppressive German-hating plutocrats. During the war, it accused "perfidious Albion" of war crimes and sought to drive a wedge between Britain and France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anti-American caricatures in Nazi Germany</span>

The Nazi Party and its ideological allies used cartoons and caricatures as a main pillar in their propaganda campaigns. Such techniques were an effective way to spread their ideology throughout Nazi Germany and beyond. The use of caricatures was a popular method within the party when pursuing their campaign against the United States, in particular its then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hitler's prophecy</span> Adolf Hitlers speech on 30 January 1939

During a speech at the Reichstag on 30 January 1939, German Führer Adolf Hitler threatened "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe" in the event of war:

If international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.

Wolfgang Diewerge was a Nazi propagandist in Joseph Goebbels' Reich Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. His special field was anti-Semitic public relations, especially in connection with trials abroad, which could be exploited for propaganda purposes. He also played an essential role in the preparation of a show trial against Herschel Grynszpan, whose assassination attempt on a German embassy employee in Paris had been used by the Nazis as a trigger for the November pogroms in 1938. In 1941, his pamphlets on the so-called Kaufman Plan and the Soviet Union were published in print runs of millions. After the war, Diewerge managed to re-enter politics via the FDP North Rhine-Westphalia. However, the intervention of the British occupation authorities and a commission of the FDP's Federal Executive Committee put an abrupt end to this intermezzo. In 1966 Diewerge was convicted of perjury for his statements made under oath about the Grynszpan trial planned by the National Socialists. After all, he was involved in the Flick donations affair as managing director of two associations.

<i>Parole der Woche</i> Nazi propaganda wall newspaper

Parole der Woche was a wall newspaper published by the Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP from 1937 to 1943. Historian Jeffrey Herf describes Parole der Woche as "the most ubiquitous and intrusive aspect of Nazism's visual offensive ... no form of Nazi visual propaganda made so crucial a contribution to the regime's presentation of ongoing events".

The claim that there was a Jewish war against Nazi Germany is an antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted in Nazi propaganda which asserts that the Jews, framed within the theory as a single historical actor, started World War II and sought the destruction of Germany. Alleging that war was declared in 1939 by Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, Nazis used this false notion to justify the persecution of Jews under German control on the grounds that the Holocaust was justified self-defense. Since the end of World War II, the conspiracy theory has been popular among neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers.

References

  1. "OCLC Classify". classify.oclc.org. Retrieved February 14, 2022.
  2. 1 2 "Jews of Hanover Forced from Homes. Mayor Cites American Book, 'Germany Must Perish'". New York Times . September 9, 1941. Retrieved April 19, 2011.
  3. Benesch 2008, p. 505.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Lombardo, Paul A. (2010). Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court and Buck v. Bell (paperback ed.). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP. pp. 228, 236. ISBN   978-0-8018-9824-2.
  5. New York Post, Friday, February 28, 1941, p. 22
  6. Harold U. Ribalow (September 26, 1941). "Hitler Will Be Nothing But A Rosebud Says Author 'Germany Must Perish!'. One Man's Plan For Peace Forever". The Canadian Jewish Chronicle. p. 5. Retrieved December 4, 2011.
  7. 1 2 3 "A Modest Proposal". Time magazine. March 24, 1941. Archived from the original on June 15, 2008. Retrieved April 19, 2011.
  8. "A Modest Proposal (review from Time magazine)". The Nizkor Project. Archived from the original on November 14, 2017. Retrieved September 27, 2014.
  9. 1 2 Berel Lang, Philosophical Witnessing: The Holocaust as Presence (University Press of New England: 2009), pp. 130–131, 135
  10. Anonymous. Advertisement for Germany Must Perish!. New York Times. March 1, 1941. p. 13
  11. "Latest Books Received." New York Times. March 16, 1941. p. BR29
  12. 1 2 Nizer, Louis (1944). What To Do With Germany. Chicago: Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. pp. 3–5, 205.
  13. Donald F. Lach, "What They Would Do about Germany", Journal of Modern History , Vol. 17, No. 3. (September 1945), pp. 227-243
  14. "Nazis Attack Roosevelt" (PDF). New York Times. July 24, 1941. Retrieved September 27, 2014.
  15. Howard K. Smith, Last Train from Berlin (London: Phoenix Pr., 1942), p. 134
  16. Streicher, Julius. "The Battle with the Devil". German Propaganda Archive. Calvin University . Retrieved September 27, 2014.
  17. "Hanover Jews Victims of Latest Oppression". Associated Press . September 9, 1941. Retrieved April 20, 2011.
  18. "Unknown Title" (PDF). New York Times. September 9, 1941. Retrieved September 27, 2014.
  19. Bytwerk, Randall. "Parole der Woche". research.calvin.edu.
  20. Bytwerk, Randall. "War Aims of World Plutocracy". research.calvin.edu.
  21. Goitsch, Heinrich. "Never!". German Propaganda Archive. Calvin University. Retrieved September 27, 2014. The use of quotation marks for the last sentence of this quotation is unexplained.
  22. Nolte, Ernst "Between Myth and Revisionism", pages 17-38 from Aspects of the Third Reich, edited by H.W. Koch (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1985), pp. 27-28

Further reading

Text
Propaganda