"Der ewige Jude" - an X-ray of the decision that led to Holocaust
Stig Hornshøj-Møller, Copenhagen, Denmark
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Perhaps the greatest stain upon the story of the twentieth century - if not upon the entire span of human history - is the Holocaust. It is hard to come to terms with such an apocalyptic horror and, for generations yet to come, people will strive to understand the diabolic impetus which drove a civilised nation to create a sort of "Hell on Earth".
In contemplating the ungodly carnage which was loosed upon the world, the very language we use becomes biblical in its intensity. "Apocalypse" - "Diabolic" - "Hell" - "Ungodly" ... those words which I have just used demonstrate how easily our thinking is coloured by religious imagery.
My intention now, however, is to be objective - unaffected by any of the emotional "baggage" which study of the Holocaust brings with it. I shall, nevertheless, use one more 'biblical' term. I hope now to define for you the "Genesis" of the madness.
As you all know, one of the crucial questions in Holocaust research is that very Genesis. Did Hitler actually take a conscious decision? Or was it the 'system', as it were, that started killing Jews more systematically by itself?
And if it was Adolf Hitler's decision, when and why did he take it? And how did he pass on his decision?
If we want to understand and learn from this terrible mass murder, we have to reconstruct the decision-making in the tiniest detail. One of the reasons for David Irving to have become the "historical prophet" of the Neo-Nazis is that serious historians have not been able to agree on the answer to this crucial question. Instead they have split into two major "schools of interpretation": the "intentionalists" and the "functionalists".
With some justification Irving can claim that his interpretation is "just as good" as any other.
I am now going to present a solution which integrates all the results of both "intentionalists" and "functionalists". In fact, my intrepretation explains why both schools of research can be said to be right in a most astonishing way. My interpretation is in accordance with modern studies on genocide from a general psychological and sociological perspective.
Historians normally use written evidence as their sources. However, it is my opinion that it was a film which led Hitler to his final and irrevocable decision. And, furthermore, this film is to be seen as his public pronouncement of the "Death Sentence of the Jews". The public and the "SS-system" were to draw their own conclusions from this so-called "documentary" which - according to the opening of the film - "showed the Jews as they really were before they hid themselves behind the mask of the civilized European."
It is also possible to give the exact date and place for this insane decision. It happened on June 1st, 1940 at around 6 p.m. on a little hill called "La Montagne" on the French-Belgian border, 2 kilometers to the south of the village of Wervicq. Here during the night of October the 13th and 14th, 1918, Adolf Hitler had been blinded by a British gas grenade.
You may also remember his description from "Mein Kampf" about what happened on November 10th, 1918. From this moment on he definitly suffered from severe PTSD, i.e. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When he heard that the Kaiserreich had disappeared and Germany had lost the war, he wept hysterically and again lost his ability to see. Later, he wrote on his decision to become a politician: "Mit dem Juden gibt es kein Paktieren, sondern nur das Entweder-Oder."
'With the Jew there can be no pact - only "either ... or"'.
In Pasewalk the future psychopathic "God" Adolf Hitler signed his Faustian pact with the Devil. At least that is how he perceived it himself.
It is also possible to give the exact date and place for his command to Heinrich Himmler to organize the extermination of the Jews. It happened on June 22nd, 1940 in his Fieldheadquarter with the symbolic name "Wolfsschlucht", right after the Fuehrer had received the formal capitulation of France. "Wolfsschlucht" does not only refer to Hitlers first name - the noble Wolf - but also to the German national oper "Der Freischütz" by Carl Maria von Weber where the Wolf's Gorge is the place of a Faustian pact with the Devil. And no doubt: In Hitler's mind what happened this day in the "Wolfsschlucht" was the main reason for choosing the same day one year later to launch the final battle against the Jews (which is the correct way of seeing "Operation Barbarossa" from Hitler's world view, where communism and bolshevic Russia was a subspecimen of Jewry).
For 25 years I have worked on the notorious propaganda film "Der ewige Jude", which all of you probably will have seen at least once. The film was originally ordered by the Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels who followed the production so closely that it must be considered his film - if, indeed, any one person can be singled out as the film's "maker". In his own words: He wanted to make "Der ewige Jude" into "a masterpiece of propaganda".
I have been able to reconstruct the genesis of the film. It was originally ordered by Goebbels on October 4th, 1939, and after many re-cuts at last had its opening night on November 28th, 1940. My detailed research is to be published by the Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film in Göttingen as a shot-by-shot analysis in much the same way that medieval manuscripts are now being published. And this research clearly demonstrates that the final product exactly matched Hitler's view of the Jews.
"Der ewige Jude" contained nothing new - except the use of film as the medium - and can be seen as an X-ray of Hitler's own insane hatred of the Jews. To use a psychological expression, the final version of the film is a kind of externalisation of his world-view.
Originally, however, it is to be understood as Goebbels' advocacy for such a radical solution as the ultimate logical consequence of Hitler's own anti-Semitism - the Fuehrer, not Goebbels, being the decision-maker in the "Jewish Question". But the Fuehrer was reluctant to pass what Robert Jay Lifton has called "The Threshold of Genocide" and turned several versions down. Indeed, Hans Mommsen is right when he characterizes Hitler a "weak dictator".
It was only when "Fate" once more had confirmed him in his "pact with the Devil" on May 20th, 1940, i.e. when German troops cut the enemy forces into two by reaching the Channel Coast that he gave Goebbels his approval of the latest version of the film. This happened two days later.
The externalisation of his thinking through the film had finally struck back. It had become the validation of his world view and had removed any last doubts he might have had in his subconsciousness. "Der ewige Jude" 'forced' him to take the ultimate and fateful, final decision - the Destruction of that which he saw as "The Evil".
To the World, the climax of this film was to be understood as the Führer's unspoken yet incontrovertible Sentence of Death upon the Jews. And yet in a way from his psychopatic point of view it was not him, but "Fate" - or "Destiny" - that commanded the extermination of Evil: He was just a "tool", a "saviour".
Goebbels' first version of January 1940 did not include the sequence with Hitler's notorious prophecy made on January 30, 1939. It contained only "Jewish" scenes (including the comparison with rats) and climaxed with the slaughtering scenes. Hitler turned down the version on January 11th.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to discern who came up with the idea of using this speech: Goebbels, Hitler or a film-researcher looking for a suitable Hitler-quotation. For psychological reasons, however, Goebbels seems to be the responsible man.
As the Fuehrer's public response to the Jewish way of slaughtering animals, it was included in the second version (made at the end February 1940) and thereafter. The quotation that 'if a war should start the consequence would be "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe"' was, as-it-were, "hammered" into Hitler's own mind by constant repetition as he viewed Goebbels' repeated editings. And in 1940, that war was already going on.
The film now made clear what the German public should infer, when, from January 30th, 1941 onwards, Hitler recalled the "prophecy" he has made on January 30th, 1939. Especially as he later on claimed to have said it on the outbreak of the war.
It was the dreadful images of the "inhumanity" of the Jews that the German public was expected to recall. In a time where real blood virtually did not exist on the screen, these scenes had the same psychological effect on the audience as videos of atrocities in the Bosnia of to-day. They are intended deliberately to create hate and remove psychological obstacles to killing in the same ruthless way as the enemy does.
We know for sure that this was exactly the reaction of Goebbels when he saw the slaughtering scenes for the first time on October 16th, 1939. He had ordered the shooting of these scenes himself. And he had ordered them to look like cruelty to animals, but Goebbels was nevertheless deeply shocked when he saw them and wrote in his diary: "This Jewry must be annihilated". That night Goebbels passed "The Threshold of Genocide" and he let these pictures as well as the whole film production be a cynical and ruthless advocacy for genocide.
Twelve days later Goebbels showed these slaughtering scenes to Hitler and others present at dinner time. According to his diary - they were all "deeply shocked". And one should not forget Hitler's general attitude towards animals: he was almost a religious vegetarian. To Adolf Hitler the whole film - especially with these scenes as the climax - must have been a corroboration and legitimation of his still repressed wish to exterminate the Jews as the "Evil of the World".
This is the reason why the film is, on the one hand, well "researched" and in an almost "scientific" way embedded in the tradition of anti-Semitic propaganda - and on the other hand was recut again and again in order to match Hitler's own view of the Jewish enemy. Hitler still tried to avoid taking a decision, but at the same time the viewing of different versions of the film so-to-say "forced" him, in effect, as the future God and Saviour of the German people, to act. Or, perhaps it would be psychologically more correct to say: to react.
I am now going to show you the crucial seven minutes of the film with the ritual slaughtering and Hitler's speech. His "prophecy" was recut from the original version in the newsreel where it was used to put pressure on the secret negotiations concerning Jewish emigration from Germany.
For an entire hour preceding this sequence, the film has shown the entire spectrum of anti-Semitic propaganda.
(Filmclip, slaughtering, Hitler-speech, "credo")
Few persons have been analyzed as thoroughly as Adolf Hitler. He present a clear case: To quote Norbert Bromberg, Adolf Hitler was "a narcissistic personality with paranoid features, functioning on a borderline personality level".
Many factors attributed to this development: His missing, left testicle, his disturbed childhood and youth and his traumatic experiences which happened at key phases in the evolution of his personality. For this I would like to make a general reference to the books by Walter C. Langer, Robert Waite, Rudolph Binion, Heim Stierlin, Alice Miller and Norbert Bromberg, to whom I have just referred.
The key to his succes was the trauma of "1918" which he shared with the German people. In short his confrontation on June 1st 1940 - firstly with Langemarck (which for the Germans symbolised the fallen soldiers of the First World War) and then with his own battlefield at Wervicq - made him take his irrevocable decision. Here, Adolf Hitler could see and feel that he had turned the wheel of History back, his personal of coping with his PTSD.
In his own mind, the Fuehrer became "God" - and a few days later he ordered Heinrich Himmler to work out a new National Socialist religion. And, standing on the very spot, where he was
temporarily blinded in 1918, he decided to carry out the last and decisive phase of his battle against the Jews. In accordance with the political programme which he had outlined in "Mein Kampf", he would now prevent them from racially destroying his new Europe.
For him it was the only viable solution after having seen "the real, unmasked Jew" visualized in the final version of "Der ewige Jude" which he had approved just a week before. Adolf Hitler decided, on this June 1st, 1940, to march against Jewish-Bolshevik Russia, as soon as Great Britain "had come to her senses". On the following day, June 2nd, he informed general von Rundstedt of that decision.
And standing on "La Montagne" near Wervicq he also took the principal decision to annihilate all European Jewry under the cover of the "Entscheidungskampf" with Russia. Or - to put correctly according to his world view - the campaign against Russia was one leg of his final battle against the Jews, whereas the extermination camps were the other.
Richard Breitman has given an excellent analysis of Himmler's crucial role in carrying out this insane decision. And Heinrich Himmler was the only one - with a possible exception of Rudolf Hess who also had to be treated for stomach cramps by Himmler's masseur Felix Kersten on June 24th - that Hitler actually informed at this early stage. Even Goebbels was not told, although he might have guessed. It was not neccessary. The Minister of Propaganda was just "let loose" with his rabid hatred in his so-called "masterpiece of propaganda".
Breitman's careful description of Himmler's activities enables us to reconstruct the date of Hitler's externalisation of his decision through giving Himmler the order and making him responsible for the extermination of European Jewry.
Felix Kersten gives a detailed account of what happened in the Wolf's Gorge early evening on June 22nd. The entry in Kersten's diary is dated November, 11th, 1941: Himmler at first refused to accept the order, because he considered it to be "un-Germanic" to kill an entire people, but finally he gave in and accepted the dreadful commission. According to Kersten, it happened "immediately after the capitulation of France" - and Himmler explicitly blamed Goebbels as the person who made Hitler take the decision.
As usual when confronted with moral problems Himmler got stomach cramps and let Heydrich take over. Heydrich wrote on June 24th a short but pointed letter to Ribbentrop, reminding him that in January 1939 Göring had entrusted Heydrich with authority over Jewish emigration. As Breitman points out, this letter is unthinkable, if Heydrich was not sure that he acted on the authority of the Fuehrer.
The existence of Hitler's direct order to Himmler from June 22nd also explains why there is no reference to the Jewish question in Himmler's memorandum from June 30th, 1940. It also explains the aims of Heydrich's wellknown report from July 2nd on the experiences during and after the Polish Campaign. It was intended for Hitler's eyes and a operational step to secure the independence of the killer force. At the same time it can be seen as the formal acceptance of the task. Himmler probably outlined his concept to Hitler on July 8th, two days after Hitler had returned to Berlin in triumph.
At least, they met this day under four eyes, and on July 11th, 1940, Himmler wrote to Gottfried Berger, the man responsible for
enlarging the Waffen-SS that he had something to tell him which could not be put to paper.
Himmler's "fee" for accepting the fateful task is both akward and significant: Hitler promised him his body, and Himmler began secretly to establish the mausoleum to receive it on July 12th, 1940. The possession of this "holy relic" would secure his power after Hitler's death.
The plan for sending the Jews to Madagascar was part of the cover-up, because it ensured the cooperation of the authorities and the Jews, while they still believed in this possibility of a "positive" solution to the Jewish problem. Judging from the psychology and moral thinking of Himmler, he was reluctant in carrying out his assignment and desperately hoped that the Madagascar Plan would be reality. However, both Madagascar and annihilation had the first phase - registration and segregation - in common, and Britain never adhered to Hitler's terms for peace.
Himmler also had to enlarge Hitler's private army, the Waffen-SS, for the gigantic task. Significantly, its formal recognition as a distinctive arm is dated June 1st, 1940, the day Hitler visited Wervicq. The designated murderers also had to be psychologically prepared, because they had to believe that they were doing something good - even while killing. For this I would simply refer to the works by Ervin Staub and the afore mentioned Lifton.
In a speech to the press the very evening after the Reichskristallnacht, which had demonstrated the gap between ideology and the German people on anti-Semitism, Hitler had described the strategy he was going to follow:
The media had to "elucidate certain events in such a way that, in the minds of the broad masses of the people, the conviction would gradually, totally and automatically be released. What you can't solve by good means, you will have to solve by violence. It can't go on like this."
As usual Hitler did not want to get - or to be seen to be - involved in persecutions. And in this speech there is no direct reference to the Jews at all. It was nevertheless to be understood as a harsh criticism on the anti-Semitic propaganda that apparently not has been efficient enough. Goebbels, at least, understood the message and launched immediately a virulent campaign against the Jews and decided to include film for the first time.
In 1940, the 'Fuehrer-God' left everything to his 'archangel' Heinrich Himmler, because what was going to happen should look like "destiny" and would thus underline his status as omnipotent and clairvoyant "God".
Nevertheless the Fuehrer carefully checked Himmler's various actions. For example, he had all his secret speeches recorded. Himmler later told Kersten about Hitler's rages when the Fuehrer
found these speeches or his measures too weak - or didn't like the speed with which the actions against the Jews were carried out.
"Der ewige Jude" was - together with the feature film "Jew Süss" - used to "elucidate" the Jewish problem to the Waffen-SS which had to cope with the gradually growing economical and social
problem. Just as the public showings of these films were a subtle way of making the whole German people accomplices in the killings - even if the task itself was delegated to the SS. Doing so, Hitler once more followed the strategy he had outlined in the chapter on propaganda and organization in "Mein Kampf".
Hitler's prediction of a "conviction" that would be "gradually totally and automatically released" became true, as we can discern from the notorious letter from Rolf-Heinz Höppner in Lublin to Adolf Eichmann on July 16, 1941. As you all know, Höppner found it more 'human' to search for a way of killing the Jews than to let them starve in the forthcoming winter. In his brain-washed mind they had to die anyway.
In a short communication like this it is only possible to present a very brief outline of my interpretation of the genesis of and the decision-making behind the Holocaust, based on 25 years of research. But I would like to close my paper by stressing some perspectives which to me seem vital for the understanding of these atrocities - and for the lessons we must draw - both as historians and as homo sapiens - in order to ensure that it never happens again.
First of all, we have to recognize the power of the audio-visual medium. It can create emotions which make logical thinking disappear. There are to-day many propagandists who use the methods of Goebbels in "Der ewige Jude".
Secondly: This means that scholars of contemporary history have got to use a wider range of sources than just the traditional written ones. In our society with its wide range of media which mix different kinds of "realities" (including "virtual reality") in our peceptions, we have to install a parameter of "structural change in social perception" in our interpretation of the past.
Thirdly: If we want to learn from The Holocaust, we ought to concentrate more on the history of the perpetrators and by-standers - and less on that of the victims. The cult of "Martyrs" can legitimize a new racism. And when racism becomes violent, it is often too late to stop it. One must react even to the very first signs of racism and segregation.
Finally, I think that "Der ewige Jude" is perhaps one of the most important sources for World History of the 20. century and should be used as a warning example of how racial propaganda was - and is - made. It could also make the incomprehensibility of The Holocaust comprehensible and thereby give us an ability to understand the human psychology that made it possible to kill six million people systematically - just because they were perceived to be "different".
Many scholars are afraid to use this film in their teaching - but exactly this fear is, for me, a warning sign. Why are we so afraid? This is giving in to the propaganda and abandoning the film to become a cult object for Neo-Nazism.
Don't be afraid! The film is so easy to tear apart and it can therefore be used as a vaccination against intolerance and racism.
Unfortunately, modern mass society has more and more need of such vaccinations.
Thank you so much for your attention!
Comments/Discussions
I would like to use a metaphor in order to make you reflect on the principal methodological and theoretical consequences of my analysis on historical science, perhaps even human science as a whole.
I do not want to overestimate myself and my findings and conclusions, but I nevertheless do not find another suitable word than the frightfully imposing "change of paradigma".
I would ask you to reflect the many semantic levels of the following metaphor. You will probably all know the film "Mr. Smith goes to Washington", made in 1939 by Frank Capra.
By making you recall this public externalization of "The American Dream" I think you are able to understand the whole range of complex thinking - ranging from my personal feelings just now, having the role of James Stewart, over the function of the film as a medium conveying social norms and ideals to the reasons for me to use this metaphor in this context.
With some few words I have created a complexed mixture of pictures, feelings, knowledge and advanced reflections in your minds.
Just the way I am claiming that Adolf Hitler deliberately tried to do when he recalled his prophecy from 30.1. 1941 onwards.
This is the reason why I dare to use the big word "change of paradigma". In historical sciende we have to integrate the discipline of Human Sciences using a parameter which could be called something like "the structural changes of social perception".