[Sean Gruber]

4. The Jews in German Political Life

In Imperial Germany Jews did not play any important role in the country's political life, because they were not in possession of key positions. But this state of affairs changed radically with the 1918 Revolution and the introduction of a new constitution. It is unnecessary to examine here whether this new state structure was in line with the governing political ideas of Jewry. The facts show that from November, 1918 on, Jews made a veritable rush to capture the major key positions in the Reich and in the Federal States.

Among the six so-called "Representatives of the People" who formed the first Reich Government after the collapse were two Jews, Hugo Haase and Otto Landsberg. In Bavaria the Jew Kurt Eisner became Minister-President; in Prussia the Jew Paul Hirsch assumed a similar position. The first Reich government established in 1919 on a parliamentary basis contained five Jews. Many of the most important departments in the Reich ministries were controlled by Jews.

To appreciate thoroughly the significance of this Jewish takeover of political leadership, one must bear in mind that it began with a time of political weakness which led to total surrender and shameful servility in foreign affairs and total disruption and disunion at home. Even the loss of the War is certainly no sufficient excuse or explanation for this, although it had to lead to a profound change in Germany's position abroad and in her domestic affairs. When considering that particular period, even opinion abroad will agree that a more dignified attitude would have been helpful in improving the German position. It was the defeatist and servile policy of the German Jewish politicians, commanding nothing but contempt, that served to deepen Germany's national shame and misery.

Those Jewish politicians were in no way satisfied with the change from constitutional monarchy to a parliamentary-republican regime in German affairs. This is testified to by the Jewish author Rudolf Schay in his book Jews in German Politics [Juden in der deutschen Politik] (1929), in which he states: "Among the elements who carry on the revolution, and will not accept a free, bourgeois, and democratic-republican order — but who insist on the complete fulfillment of all social demands — Jews have played a dominant role; viz: Rosa Luxemburg, Eisner and Landauer…"

This fulfillment of all socialist demands would be no other than a realization of The Communist Manifesto authored by the Jew Karl Marx. But that would be possible only by surrendering all the national ideas and interests of the German nation.

It is therefore not surprising that Jewish politicians were playing a leading role, even during the War, in all those movements which aimed at undermining Germany's military and political strength. Which of the Allied countries would not have taken immediate steps to punish the author of a treacherous article such as that which appeared on October 20, 1918, in the Social Democrat paper Forward [Vorwärts], written by its editor, the Jew Friedrich Stampfer. He stated: "Germany must — that is our inflexible will as socialists — lower her war flag forever, without bearing it home in victory for the last time."

That is the same brand of defeatism which at the beginning of the War had already permeated the many pacifist organizations, all of them under Jewish control.

Prominent among those organizations was New Fatherland [Neues Vaterland], subsequently known as the German League for Human Rights. Its policy was principally set by the Jews Witting, Grelling, Bernstein, Magnus Hirschfeld, Heymann, Gumbel, Wulfsohn. The pacifist Youth Organization was also led by Jews: Max Hodann, Jakob Feldner, the Jewish Communist Scholen, and the half-caste Jewish sons of Karl Liebknecht.

It is not our intention to criticize pacifism as such. Unquestionably pacifism is a political conviction of great moral significance and is certainly worthy of every effort to support it. But pacifism is tolerable in a country's political direction only as long as it remains within the boundaries prescribed by the interests of that country, and particularly when all national forces of the country are strong.

It is those particular pacifists mentioned above who must be held principally responsible for the collapse of Germany's spirit of resistance, for the estrangement that took place between the people and its political leaders, and for the cleavage between the Army at the Front and the people at home.

No one was more successful than the leading pacifist Jews in giving Germany's enemies suitable material for propaganda. Prominent in this work is the Jew already referred to, Dr. Richard Grelling — a name undoubtedly still well-remembered in the former Allied countries. Before the War he emigrated to Switzerland and there published his two books I Accuse [J’accuse] and The Crime [Das Verbrechen] in which he attempted to prove Germany's alleged guilt for the outbreak of hostilities. These books were very widely circulated in the Allied and neutral countries as an "authoritative and convincing" personal document of Germany's war guilt and all the attendant horrors. In 1917 Karl Federn, Grelling's co-racialist and also an author, replied by denouncing Grelling's conduct as "dishonorable" and stated further that Grelling had built up his case "by lies and the use of false and forged documents." Grelling never replied to these serious charges, which were constantly repeated in later years. On the contrary, he was cowardly enough to attempt to deny his authorship of these two books.

Mention must also be made of the Jewish journalist Hermann Fernau who made anti-German propaganda from Switzerland in 1917 and 1918. His newspaper articles furnished the Allies with excellent material for disruptive propaganda in the German front lines.

Geheimrat Witting, a highly placed German official, brother of the Jewish author Maximilian Harden, was responsible for the unlawful but widespread publication in pamphlet form of a private memorandum (My Mission to London 1912-1914). This memorandum was the property of Count Lichnowsky, the former German Ambassador in London. It contained observations of a purely personal nature but its publication was just as disastrous for Germany's political position as the works of Grelling were.

Jews also had a prominent part in planning the 1918 Revolution, which finally led to the collapse of the entire Western Front. It was Dr. Oscar Cohn, the Social Democrat deputy, who early in November, 1918 accepted the sum of 4 million gold rubles from M. Joffe, then the Soviet ambassador in Berlin and a Jew. This money was intended to finance the German Revolution. Hugo Haase, a Jewish Reichstag deputy, masterminded the sailors revolt at Kiel, which was the signal for general revolution throughout Germany. At the national meeting of protest held on May 12, 1919, when it was unanimously decided to vote against signing the peace terms, it was the Jew Haase, as leader of the Independent Social Democrats, who alone insisted on accepting the terms. It must be added that in the Prussian Diet of that period it was a Jew, Kurt Rosenfeld, who on May 7, 1919, on the occasion of a similar protest meeting, demanded that these terms should be accepted.

Closely allied to these destructive elements and traitors to national interests, a few more prominent names can be mentioned: the Jews Georg Bernhard, editor of the Vossi Newspaper [Vossische Zeitung]; Friedrich Stampfer and Erich Kuttner, both on the staff of the Social Democrat Vorwärts; and Rudolf Hilferding, attached to the radical Freedom [Freiheit] press. Their united efforts were chiefly responsible for Germany's being forced to bow down and submit to the yoke of the peace terms, although political developments proved later that these terms could never be fulfilled: to the military collapse was added a total political and economic crash.

It is not possible to conclude this overview of Jewish defeatism without mentioning the following. It is true that there were also a number of non-Jewish Germans who both during and after the War committed treason on strictly Jewish lines. But the Jewish percentage in this dastardly political work is incomparably higher not only qualitatively but also absolutely. In fact, the percentage is so abnormally large that the list of non-Jewish perpetrators is almost insignificant.

Seeking an explanation of this curious fact, one finds that Jewry is outwardly as well as inwardly completely rootless. On the basis of its racial habits and its historical past it recognizes no ties which can in any way be connected with love for a homeland.

This attitude of the Jews shows up clearly in the glaring ingratitude that they have demonstrated in Germany. There is no country where the requirements of Jewish emancipation have been more justly fulfilled than in Germany, and there is not another country in which Jews were so obligingly allowed to fill positions in public service. But in no other country have Jews in times of such severe national distress played such an inglorious, destructive, and treacherous role.

Two instances from after the War will illustrate the Jewish lack of national feeling and the way Jews wounded profound national sensibilities.

The first case is the scandal in connection with Professor Theodor Lessing. During the election campaign for Reich President in 1925, this Jew, who had been entrusted with the work of educating German youth, published an article in a foreign anti-German paper — the Prague Daily Paper [Tageblatt] — opposing Field Marshal von Hindenburg as a candidate for the presidency. The article abounded in slanderous and ill-natured attacks on the Field Marshal, who was stigmatized as "inhuman," a "simpleton," and a "ferocious wolf." Lessing added that the Field Marshal would prove to be a "Nero" in office.

To grasp this dastardly attack completely, one must recall to mind that the Field Marshal, after a strenuous career, had at the age of 77 again placed himself at the service of the country. This was at a time when a disrupted Germany sorely needed a man who could collect all the forces needed for the work of national reconstruction. One must further remember that Hindenburg, as Commander in Chief of the German Army during the War, had become a venerable figure, the embodiment of all the glorious achievements of the Army at the Front. The slanderous attack had the same effect in Germany as a similar attack on Kitchener or Nelson would have in England, or Marshal Foch in France, or George Washington in America.

In response, a storm of indignation raged in academic circles throughout the country. Prof. Lessing, however, was not reprimanded and was even permitted to continue his slanderous attacks. The result was a further strengthening of the antisemitic tendencies of the whole nation.

The character of this Jew Lessing is further emphasized in his "War Memoirs" published in 1929 in the same Prague newspaper. He states with as much cynicism and stupidity as bluntness: "I became a shirker through sheer luck. During four years of war I was called to the colors regularly, once a month. Disqualification became more and more difficult. I kept on inventing excuses in order to keep away from the Front." This was the man who dared to slander Hindenburg.

The Gumbel Case, broadly speaking, is similar to the Lessing scandal. Emil Gumbel, a Jew, was also a university teacher. He belonged to those pacifists, traitors, and defeatists previously referenced; he was also closely connected with the Third International and Moscow. In a series of pamphlets he made seditious statements, which brought him into conflict with the law despite the fact that the sympathetic attitude of the government in those days was all in his favor. Gumbel also participated in the publication of a document titled "Germany's Secret Armaments," in which he endeavored to expose Germany's alleged breaches of the disarmament terms of the Versailles Treaty. This document was handed to the French, English, and Polish governments by the Jewish-controlled pacifist German League for Human Rights, and brought about a difficult foreign political situation for Germany. In speeches which Gumbel made in 1924 at various French universities, he even affirmed the oft-repeated false statement about Germany's war guilt. Hence there is no cause for surprise that this man (who had never seen the Front) was incapable of a spark of human feeling for the heroic deeds of German soldiers in the War. It was he who dared to declare at a public meeting in 1924 that our fallen German brothers had "died on the field of dishonor."

Despite these infamous statements and insults to the German people, which caused widespread indignation, Gumbel was able to maintain his position as a university teacher until 1933. Influential Jewish friends such as Georg Bernhard and Albert Einstein were his protectors. He was even able to continue his insults. At a later meeting at Heidelberg he declared: "The War Memorial to German soldiers is to me nothing but one big turnip."

Would it be possible — one must ask the question in view of this blackguardism — for an English university teacher to insult the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in a similar manner? Would not a storm of national indignation then sweep away Jewish blackguards of the Gumbel and Lessing type? National Socialism in Germany certainly accomplished that when it cleared out its Gumbels and Lessings, its Grellings and Bernhards, and the entire clique of defeatists and traitors. By means of legislation such disruptive work has been made impossible for all time.

In Gumbel's case one could already discern the connection that existed between people of his character and Marxism. Opinions may vary in regard to Marxism and its parliamentary champions, but when one closely studies the subject one cannot deny that Marxism and Jewry are closely related.

It is a well-known fact that the father of Marxism, Karl Marx, was a member of a rabbinical family; subsequent developments were only logical. Another Jew, Ferdinand Lassalle, stood next to Marx. Lassalle was the son of a Jewish silk merchant in Breslau. Both looked up to the Jew Moses Hess as their spiritual father, called the "Father of Modern Socialism" and the "Communist Rabbi" by the Jewish Encyclopedia [Judische Lexikon], the standard reference work for all German Jews. All Jewish thought since those days has felt itself drawn towards this Marxian socialism, and the preponderance of Jewish leaders in the Marxist workers movement has been maintained up to now.

Opinions may differ in other countries, but Germany's attitude towards this subject is guided by the profound relationship existing between Marxism and Jewry. The two are inseparable wherever they occur. The period in Germany during and after the War has proved the disastrous effects of Jewish Marxism as a political factor.

At the turn of the century, two Jews in succession were chairmen of the Social Democrat Party in Germany, Paul Singer and Hugo Haase. After that, Jews gained an increasingly dominant influence in all sections of the Marxist movement, in its parliamentary, journalistic, and literary work. The consolidation of Marxist theory and science became virtually a Jewish monopoly. Outstanding Jewish theorists in this work were Eduard Bernstein, Rudolf Hilferding, Adolf Braun, Jacob Stern, and Simon Katzenstein. The central intellectual organ of international Marxism was a publication called the New Age [Neue Zeit], published in Berlin, which started its career in 1883 with 12 Jewish contributors. In 1905 this figure had increased to 40, and in 1914 no fewer than 100 Jews from all parts of the world were contributing articles to this publication. The story of other intellectual and literary publications of German Marxism is similar.

The Marxist daily press was almost completely in Jewish hands. The Vorwärts, the principal organ of the German Social Democrat Party, was founded by Singer, a Jew. In 1929, according to a statement by its editor-in-chief, Friedrich Stampfer, his entire editorial staff, with only one exception, was composed of Jews. Later on, when the Communist newspaper the Red Flag [Rote Fahne] was published, the percentage of Jews on its staff was equally high. Its editors were the Jewess Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht who, although a Christian, had been twice married to Jewesses. Another preeminently Jewish publication was Freiheit — with an extreme Marxist policy — controlled by Rudolf Hilferding and Paul Hertz, both Jews. Jewish journalists dominated the Social Democrat press news services and foreign press offices.

In 1924 the percentage of Jewish Social Democrat Reichstag deputies totaled 22%; of Jewish Communist deputies, 15%. Here it is instructive to emphasize again that Jews totaled hardly 1% of the population of Germany.

The following is a list of the Jews elected to the Reichstag in 1924, as members of the Social Democrat Party: Aufhäuser, Dr. Adolf Braun, Bernstein, Eggerstedt, Frölich, Heimann, Dr. Hertz, Dr. Hilferding, Hoch, Jacobshagen, Kirschmann, Landsberg, Dr. Levi, Dr. Löwenstein, Ludwig, Stefan Meier, Dr. Moses, Dr. Rosenfeld, Frau Schiffgens, Frau Toni Sender, Stampfer, Frau Wurm.

In the same year, the Communist Party returned the following Jews as members: Frau Arendsee, Frau Gohlke (known as Ruth Fischer), Hoernle, Katz, Koenen, Münzenberg, Rosenbaum, Dr. Rosenberg, Scholem.

In 1932 Jewry in the Marxist parties was represented in the Reichstag by the following Jewish members. Social Democrats: Aufhäuser, Dr. Adolf Braun, Eggerstedt, Frölich, Heilmann, Heimann, Heinig, Dr. Hertz, Dr. Hilferding, Kirschmann, Landsberg, Dr. Löwenstein, Dr. Marum, Stefan Meier, Reuter, Schneppenhorst, Frau Schreiber-Krieger, Frau Toni Sender, Friedrich Stampfer, Frau Wurm. Communists: Gräf, Hoernle, Frau Kessel, Kippenberger, Münzenberg, Frau Sandtner.

It was natural that this influx of Jews in the Reichstag should have its effect on governance in the Reich itself and in the Federal States. Prussia particularly was their happy hunting ground and they were to be found in key positions in practically every ministry. No important step could be taken anywhere without brushing up against a Jew in authority.

When taking into account this overwhelmingly powerful Jewish influence in all Marxist organizations and parties, one is not surprised that the Social Democrats' policy was shaped and influenced entirely by their Jewish leaders. In it we see once more the same spirit of defeatism and treachery to which we have already referred. A start was made almost immediately, on August 4, 1914, when the Jew Hugo Haase led 14 Social Democrat deputies in the Reichstag in an attempt to stop government war loans. Two years later, 18 Social Democrat deputies voted against the same measure. Five other Jews had joined the Jew Haase in the ranks. The Jewess Rosa Luxemburg led the campaign of sapping Germany's power of resistance. The first success of this dastardly process of undermining became evident in August, 1914, when a Hamburg Social Democrat newspaper published a statement opposing the government's policy of home defense. That statement was signed by three leading Jews.

After the November, 1918 collapse, almost all the extreme leaders with Bolshevik tendencies were Jews. They took a prominent, and for Germany disastrous, part in the peace negotiations.

In Communism, which is the extreme form of Marxism, Jewish domination became particularly marked. Its leaders and propagandists were almost exclusively Jews. The Spartacist League, founded in 1918 as a forerunner to the Communist Party, was run by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. The League was modeled on true Soviet lines, and in the days of terror that followed the collapse of the nation it called on the proletariat to take arms. The League's Moscow agent was the Jew Leo Jogiches (formerly known as Tyschko). Mention has already been made of the fact that Oscar Cohn, the Jewish Social Democrat, received the sum of 10 million gold rubles from Joffe, the Jewish Soviet Ambassador in Berlin in November, 1918.

These German and Russian Jews systematically prepared the chaos and indescribable horror they loosed on the German nation, culminating at Munich. Here again it was a Jew — Kurt Eisner, an author — who was the leader and organizer. When, in 1917, Germany was still fighting for her existence, he had agitated for strikes and revolution. He established a Workers Council at Munich on strictly Bolshevik lines; his "Revolutionary Tribunal" contained nearly all Jews, five in number. Only those who have experienced that period of Jewish terror and slaughter, the murder of hostages, the plunders, the acts of arson, are able to see why Munich became the birthplace of National Socialism, whence the movement spread to other parts of Germany and finally put an end to Jewish domination.

The common interests of Jewry and Communism were in no way affected when the first Communist attempts at revolution were suppressed. The so-called Cultural Bolshevism of the extreme Marxists, sponsored mainly by Jews, now joined with those forces which were tireless in their efforts to overthrow law and order with the goal of Bolshevizing Germany. It is necessary to cite only a few examples of the work that was being carried on in this extensive sphere of moral corruption and disruption. During negotiations concerning a reform of the German Criminal Code, the Jewish radical socialist Kurt Rosenfeld intimated that he was opposed to punishment for the crime of high treason as well as for sodomy and homosexual offenses. Jews were also dominant in issues related to the education of children on Bolshevik principles. Jewish pedagogues, Jewish principals of official school establishments founded and supported experimental schools and "Juvenile Republics" modeled on Soviet lines. Authority was entirely banished in these institutions, the sexes were educated in an amoral manner, and sexual problems formed the major part of the school curriculum. In this respect much publicity was given to Kurt Lowenstein, the Jewish principal of Berlin's schools, and his colleague Fritz Karsen-Krakauer, another Jew.

To complete the sordid picture of the common interests of Jewry and Bolshevism, which brought Germany to the brink of Communism before National Socialism came to power, it remains to be said that Jews held certain key positions up to the last minute. Hans Kippenberger is number one on this list. He was the head of the terror and espionage branches of the German Communist Party. Heinz Neumann, son of a wealthy Berlin merchant, was also prominent. He was a member of the Central Executive of the German Communist Party and one of the most dangerous agitators among the general public. He coined the infamous phrase, "Kill the fascists wherever you meet them," which in 1932 led to a series of foul murders of National Socialist party members. Neumann was equally busy abroad. He was responsible for the Communist uprising in Canton in 1927. Because of this, the world press labelled him "the wholesale butcher of Canton."

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Next week:
5. The Jews in the German Press