ANTI-SEMITISM, NAZISM AND MODERN GERMANY

Dateline: 19th November 2003

INTRODUCTION Rodney Atkinson.

Although genuine anti-Semitism is a pernicious political-racist disease with a quite horrific historical record, many Jewish groups have unfortunately greatly detracted from the true meaning and true threat of anti-Semitism by equating it with 1) criticism of individual Jews, (2) criticism of Israel and (3) criticism of Zionism - in all of which both Jews and "philo-semitics" themselves have from time to time indulged! Perhaps most inappropriate is the use of the term to describe attacks on Israel by Arabs - who are of course themselves "Semitic"!

In central and Eastern Europe attacks on the Jews as a race have been all too common over the centuries and nowhere more disastrously than in Germany in the 1930's and 1940's. The defeat of Nazi Germany however and the imposition of post war democratic structures no more guaranteed genuine democracy (as we have repeatedly demonstrated on this site) than the end of the Nazi regime and the repeal of the Nuremburg Race Laws meant the end of anti-Semitism. There follow some examples of - for British and American ears - quite astonishing expressions of dangerous attitudes towards the Jews. Even allowing for quite different historical experiences on the continent (especially in Germany and Poland) these are disturbing sentiments:

"The Jew, Rifkind"
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on the then British Foreign Secretary.

Many Jews survive today "thanks to the circumstance that they were forced labourers and not directly killed by the SS. Germans are tired of philo-semitic over compensation in the media and sterile grief rituals by politicians"
Professor Lutz Niethammer, Historical
Adviser to the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (2000)

"The Jews should consider whether they would have behaved heroically if they had not been victims of the persecution" Klaus von Dohnanyi, Former Mayor of Hamburg (1998) now a Social Democrat MP and former Minister in the German Foreign Office.

"Many Bolsheviks of Jewish descent took part in mass executions during the 1917 Russian revolution and therefore Jews, like Germans, could be called perpetrators" Christian Democrat MP Martin Hohmann

"An excellent speech….a truth and clarity of which one very rarely hears and reads in our country……….. with these thoughts you clearly speak for the majority of the people"
Letter to Hohmann from Commanding Officer of Germany's "Special Forces" Brigadier General Reinhard Guenzel

Needless to say the systematic extermination of Jews by the German State is not comparable to a Russian revolution where both perpetrators and victims were of all races. NB Hohmann represents an area around Fulda, a very Catholic region and the seat of one of the most Conservative Catholic Bishops in Germany. Hohmann has since been expelled from the CDU Parliamentary Party (not the same as the Party per se) but by no means unanimously, some 50 CDU MPs either voting against or abstaining.

In the extract below from a recent report by our German colleagues at german-foreign-policy.com where the Nazi influence in the German Armed Services is discussed, mention is made of Reinhard Gehlen one of the most important links between Nazi and post war Germany - and indeed with post war American foreign policy.

Gehlen was Hitler's Chief of Intelligence East - that means among other things that he was responsible for co-ordinating the myriad Nazi collaborator groups in Russia, which included Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Vlassov's Russians, numerous Moslem groups etc. After the war, he was taken under Allan Dulles's wing, started the so-called "Gehlen Org" - the precursor of the BND (BundesNachrichtenDienst, today's German Secret Services). He was crucial in establishing the CIA, and by the 1970's provided NATO with about 70% of its intelligence on Russia. In 1948, he received a Grand Cross of some description from the devoutly Catholic Sovereign Order of Malta.

Military Music
BERLIN

Following anti-Semitic views of a German Parliamentarian and enthusiastic agreement by a leading military figure the major German political parties are arguing about the "democratic reliability" of the German Armed Services. Despite differences the politicians assure each other that the German forces since their reform in 1956 are "firmly part of the constitution" and are immune to demagoguery. The "regretable exceptions" are attributed by the Berlin Defence Ministry to "isolated individuals" and "confused soldiers".

The official claims are in crass contradiction to actual developments. The public attack of the (mainly Catholic) Christian Democrat Party MP Hohmann who picked up the Nazi propaganda picture of the "Jewish-Bolshevist" criminal (1), had been welcomed by General Guenzel the commander of a German elite brigade. The Berlin Defence Ministry described the General as "confused" and suspended him - with full pension rights.

Since those events critical elements in the German media have seen this latest scandal as merely part of a ten year long series of similar cases - and yet there is no sign of any fundamental analysis of the political make-up of the Armed Services.

As US publications show (2) Nazi corps were integrated into the West German NATO army from the beginning and they had been inculcated with experience of the fight against "Jewish Bolshevism". This group was able to escape the official processes of post war "denazification" after they had been assigned to a special department of the American secret service under OPC (Office for Political Co-ordination) Director Frank Wisner (3). Among them was the General Reinhard Gehlen - later chief of the German Foreign Security Services (BND). Together with lower Nazi cadres those protected by the post war US administration planned and organized the new German Armed Services. Since strictly anti communist convictions were a prerequisite for the newly founded military, other models of Nazi ideology could be integrated into the services - like chauvinism and anti-Semitism.

The public treatment of chauvinistic and anti-Semitic behaviour in the German Armed Services have been characterized, since the foundation of the military, by embarrassing debates which ignore historical considerations. This denial of Nazi traditions makes possible a seemingly untroubled consideration of the past and could explain why the Armed Services could choose the 9th November this year (the 65th anniversary of the Nazi pogrom against the Jews) to take part in a festival of military music in Cologne.

(1) We have seen how strong and persistent were the Jews in their active support for the revolutionary movement in Russia and middle European States……Jews were active in large numbers in the leadership of the Revolution as well as in the Tscheka Firing Squads. Therefore one could with some justification describe Jews as a Taetervolk (a Race which perpetrated crimes).

(2) Christopher Simpson: Blow Back. New York 1988.