Editing Conspiracy BBS Archive/Third Reich (section)

== ADOLF HITLER ==

[[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] quotations are usually introduced with the claim that Hitler
announced his goal of exterminating the Jews by means of lethal gas in [[Mien Kampf|MEIN KAMPF]]. To support this claim, one cites the following sentences from his book:

  "Hatte man zu Kriegsbeginn und wahrend des Krieges einmal zwolf - oder funfzehntausend dieser hebraischen Volksverderber so unter
  Giftgas gehalten, wie Hunderttausende unserer allerbesten Arbeiter
  aus allen Schichten und Berufen es im Felde erdulden mu·ten, dann
  ware das Millionenopfer der Front nicht vergeblich gewesen. Im
  Gegenteil: Zwolftausend Schurken zur rechten Zeit beseitigt,
  hatte vielleicht einer Million ordentlicher, fur die Zukunft
  wertvoller Deutscher das Leben gerettet. "

  "If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corruptors of the people had
  been held under poision gas, as happened to hundreds of
  thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the
  sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.
  On the contrary: twelve thousand scoundrels eliminated in time
  might have saved the lives of a million real Germans, valuable
  for the future. "

These statements are found in Chapter 15 of Volume II, which is
entitled "The Right of Emergency Defense". Here Hitler was attacking
international Marxism, in Germany then led primarily by Jews. He was not
attacking Jews per se, still less advocating their general destruction.
These lines, written in 1925, refer exclusively to a situation that existed
at the end of World War I. From them one cannot infer that Hitler had some
"general idea" of exterminating, let along gassing, the Jews, as [[Karl
Dietrich Bracher]], for example, would have us believe. To interpret them
objectively, one must bear in mind that Hitler is referring to the past,
and, moreover, is discussing a specific situation. These remarks can be
explained only in terms of [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]]'s view of why Germany collapsed at the end
of World War I, as well as his own experience of gas warfare (which the
English, by the way, initiated). They should be taken as an emotional
outburst, not as an embryonic plan. Indeed, MEIN KAMPF is for the most part
more propagandistic than programmatic.

This passage from [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]]'s book recalls the humanitarian sentiments
that Kurt Tucholsky, a Jew, expressed towards members of the German
middle-class who did not share his peculiar "pacifism":

  "Moge das Gas in die Spielstuben eurer Kinder schleichen. Mogen
  sie langsam umsinken, die Puppchen. Ich wunsche der Frau des
  Kirchenrats und des Chefredakteurs und der Mutter des Bildhauers
  und der Schwester des Bankiers, da· sie einen bitteren qualvollen
  Tod finden, alle zusammen. "

  "May the gas creep into the play-rooms of your children. They
  should drop dead slowly, the little dolls. I'd like to see the
  wife of the churchwarden and the editor-in-chief and the mother
  of the sculptor and the sister of the banker die a bitter,
  excruciating death, all of them, together. "

Now, we certainly are not charging that Tucholsky planned or
preached the murder-by-gassing of the German people. Yet it would be
interesting to see how those who accuse Hitler, on the basis of the passage
quoted above, of promoting the murder-by-gassing of the Jewish people would
react to Tucholsky's far more drastic outburst.

The first remarks in which [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] specifically uses the word
"annihilation" ("Vernichtung") and "eradication" ("Ausrottung") in relation
to "the Jews" or "Jewry" were made in 1939. They were a reaction to world
Jewry's anti-German campaign, which, by that time, had reached a pitch of
frenzy, as shown at the beginning of this section. In particular, Hitler's
Reichstag speech of January 30, 1939 is often cited. There he declared,
inter alia:

  "Wenn es dem internationalen Finanzjudentum innerhalb und
  au·erhalb Europas gelingen sollte, die Volker noch einmal in
  einen Weltkrieg zu sturzen, dann wird das Ergebnis nicht die
  Bolschewisierung der Erde und damit der Sieg des Judentums sein,
  sondern die Vernichtung der judischen Rasse in Europa. "

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

Obviously, this statement is nothing more than a response to the
war threats that were constantly being made by influential Zionists. It was
meant as an admonition to those war-mongers. [[Heinrich Hartle]] interprets
this text as a sign of Hitler's deep committment to peace. He believes
Hitler did not intend to cause a war in order to annihilate the Jews, but
raised the spectre of their annihilation in order to prevent a war. In
using the word "annihilation", Hitler was only borrowing from the
vocabulary of his Zionist foes. Even if one rejects Hartle's
interpretation, one must not jump to the conclusion that the opposite
interpretation is correct. As noted above, angry words were part of the
vocabulary of the times. The rhetoric of Churchill and Roosevelt was no
less vehement.

When quoted in context -as they seldom are- these remarks show that
Hitler was not really suggesting the physical annihilation of the Jews.
This is how he continued his speech:

  "Denn die Zeit der propagandistischen Wehrlosigkeit der
  nichtjudischen Volker ist zu Ende. Das nationalsozialistische
  Deutschland und das faschistische Italien besitzen jene
  Einrichtungen, die es gestatten, wenn notwendig, die Welt uber
  das Wesen einer Frage aufzuklaren, die vielen Volkern instinktiv
  bewu·t, nur wissenschaftlich unklar ist.
   
  Augenblicklich mag das Judentum in gewissen Staaten seine Hetze
  betreiben unter dem Schutz einer dort in seinen Handen
  befindlichen Presse, des Films, der Rundfunkpropaganda, der
  Theater, der Literatur usw. Wenn es diesem Volk aber noch einmal
  gelingen sollte, die Millionenmassen der Volker in einen fur
  diese ganzlich sinnlosen und nur judischen Interessen dienenden
  Kampf zu hetzen, dann wird sich die Wirksamkeit einer Aufklarung
  au·ern, der in Deutschland allein schon in wenigen Jahren das
  Judentum restlos erlegen ist. "

  "For the non-Jewish peoples are no longer without the weapon of
  propaganda. Both National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy
  have the equipment necessary to enlighten the world about the
  nature of a problem that many nations instinctively recognize,
  though they may lack a scientific view of it.
   
  For the time being, the Jews may carry on their agitations in
  certain states under the cover of the press, cinema, radio,
  theatre, literature, etc., which are in their hands. But if the
  Jewish nation should once again succeed in goading millions of
  people from other nations into a totally senseless war, to serve
  only Jewish interests, the efficacy of the kind of enlightenment
  that in just a few years utterly defeated the Jews in Germany
  will become manifest. "

Thus [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]]'s threat was that if another world war broke out,
Zionism would be politically eliminated -by disclosing to the peoples of
the world its role in that catastrophe. He started from the premise -and
we may leave aside the question whether rightly or wrongly- that the
preservation of world peace depended largely on the stance of international
Jewry, which did indeed have an extraordinarily strong influence on nearly
all governments.

Even after the outbreak of war, [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] continued to make such
threats. These, too, are cited in the literature on our topic as "proof" of
his ambition to exterminate the Jewish people, when, perhaps, they should
be viewed in terms of his repeated attempts to bring the western Allies to
their senses.

For example, on January 30, 1941, [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] allegedly threatened that,
if another world war broke out, all European Jewry "would be done for" ("im
Falle eines neuen Weltkrieges seine Rolle ausgespielt"). Likewise, in a
speech delivered on January 30, 1942, he reportedly declared that the war
would result in the "extermination of Jewry in Europe" ("die Vernichtung
des Judentums in Europa"). And, on February 24, 1942, he is supposed to
have "prophesied" that through this war Aryan man would not be
exterminated, but the Jew extirpated ("durch diesen Krieg nicht die arische
Menschheit vernichtet, sondern der Jude ausgerottet"). In other speeches,
Hitler made similar untterances, but they are really not worth quoting.

None of these remarks are particularly shocking when compared with
the strongly worded statements Allied leaders and influential Zionists made
along the same lines. As I have said, it was then customary to use strong
language against one's opponents. In any case, Hitler's "prophesies" about
the eradication of the Jews had scarcely been fulfilled at that time, or
even at the end of the war. More importantly, in all of Hitler's speeches
and statements one cannot find a single reference to the alleged homidical
role of the concentration camps, in particular, Auschwitz-Birkenau,
purportedly the center of "systematic mass extermination of the Jews".

In the final analysis, all the allegations regarding Hitler's
"extermination policy" are at odds with a statement he is said to have made
towards the end of the war, on February 13, 1945:

  "Wenn ich den Krieg gewinne, so mache ich der judischen Herrschaft
  in der Welt ein Ende, ich versetze ihr den Todessto·. Und wenn
  ich diesen Krieg verliere, so werden sie dieses Sieges nicht
  froh. Denn die Juden werden daruber den Kopf verlieren. Sie
  werden ihre Uberheblichkeit bis zu einem solchen Grade steigern,
  da· sie selbst die Reaktion herausforden. "

  "If I win the war, I will put an end to Jewish domination of the
  world. I will deal it a death-blow. And if I lose this war, they
  will not rejoice in their victory. It will go to their heads.
  They will increase their arrogance to such a degree that they
  themselves will provoke a reaction. "

These remarks are extremely interesting. If the "re-education"
literature is to be believed, the Jews in the German sphere of influence
had already been largely exterminated. According to this statement,
however, Hitler planned merely to end "Jewish domination of the world"
-something quite different from physically destroying the entire race. Thus
even as the war drew to an end, the "extermination of the Jews" could not
have been Hitler's goal. This is also evident from the text of Hitler's
Political Testament that was published by the Nuremberg International
Military Tribunal (Nuremberg Document 3569-PS). Among other things, this
document states:

  "Ich habe aber auch keinen Zweiful daruber gelassen, da· wenn die
  Volker Europas wieder nur als Aktienpakete dieser internationalen
  Geld- und Finanzverschworer angesehen werden, dann auch jenes
  Volk zur Verantwortung gezogen werden wird, das der eigentlich
  Schuldige an diesem morderischen Ringen ist: das internationale
  Judentum! Ich habe weiter keinen daruber in Unklaren gelassen,
  da· dieses Mal nicht nur Millionen Kinder von Europaren der
  arischen Volker verhungern werden, nicht nur Millionen
  erwachsener Manner den Tod erleiden und nicht nur Hunderttausende
  an Frauen und Kindern in der Stadten verbrannt und zu Tode
  bombardiert werden durften, ohne da· der eigentlich Schuldige,
  wenn auch durch humanere Mittel, seine Schuld zu bu·en hat. "

  "I also made it clear that, if the nations of Europe were again to
  be regarded merely as shares to be bought and sold by these
  international conspirators of money and finance, then that nation
  which is the real guitly part in this murderous struggle
  - international Jewry - would be called to account. Moreover, I
  made it clear to everybody that this time not only would millions
  of children in the European Aryan nations starve to death, not
  only would millions of grown men meet their death, and not only
  would millions of women and children be burnt and bombed to death
  in the cities, but the real culprit would have to pay for his
  guilt as well, even though by more human means than war. "

Two things are worth noting here. First, even shortly before his
death Hitler apparently knew nothing about a mass extermination of Jews in
"death camps", for otherwise he would have worded his Political Testament
differently. Second, if Hitler aimed at exterminating the Jews and this had
actually been accomplished, it would have been characteristic of him to
boast triumphantly of the accomplishment. But he only says that the "real
guilty party in this murderous struggle", "international Jewry" -but not
"the Jews" as such- would have to pay for its guilt, "even though by more
humane means than war". Thus Hitler was not reffering to any possibility of
physically eliminating the Jewish people, but anticipating that the Jewish
leader-stratum would receive some kind of punishment, which, in his own
words, would be more "humane" than the slaughter of European soldiers and
civilians in the war. His remarks could apply to the period after the
victory for which he may still have entertained some hope. If so, it should
be understood as a warning to the Jewish leaders and an assignment for his
successors.