Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T09:48:18.090Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Our Most Serious Enemy”: The Specter of Judeo-Bolshevism in the German Military Community, 1914–1923

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

Brian E. Crim
Brian E. Crim
Affiliation:
Lynchburg College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

That the Wehrmacht participated fully in a racial war of extermination on behalf of the National Socialist regime is indisputable. Officers and enlisted men alike accepted the logic that the elimination of the Soviet Union was necessary for Germany's survival. The Wehrmacht's atrocities on the Eastern Front are a testament to the success of National Socialist propaganda and ideological training, but the construct of “Judeo-bolshevism” originated during World War I and its immediate aftermath. Between 1918 and 1923, central Europe witnessed a surge in right-wing paramilitary violence and anti-Semitic activity resulting from fears of bolshevism and a widely held belief that Jews were largely responsible for spreading revolution. Jews suffered the consequences of revolution and resurgent nationalism in the borderlands between Germany and Russia after World War I, but it was inside Germany that the construct of Judeo-bolshevism evolved into a powerful rhetorical tool for the growing völkisch movement and eventually a justification for genocide.

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 2011 , pp. 624 - 641
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Rathenau quoted in Bartov, Omer, Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

2 See Bartov, Hitler's Army; and Wette, Wolfram, The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality, trans. Lucas, Deborah (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

3 See Gerwarth, Robert, “The Central European Counter-Revolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria, and Hungary after the Great War,” Past & Present 1 (2008): 175–209, 200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Bartov, Omer, Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 7Google Scholar.

5 Arno Mayer argued that the collapse of the Hapsburg, Russian, and German empires after World War I endangered the Jewish populations of central and eastern Europe. Additionally, he noted that anti-bolshevism was a surrogate for anti-Semitism in multiple national contexts. See Mayer, Arno J., Why Did the Heavens not Darken? The Final Solution in History (New York: Pantheon, 1990)Google Scholar.

6 Volkov, Shulamit, “Antisemitism as a Cultural Code: Reflections on the History and Historiography of Antisemitism in Imperial Germany,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 23 (1978): 35–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Shulamit Volkov delineated the power of the “associative merger” model in Volkov, Shulamit, Germans, Jews, and Antisemites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 88–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Volkov argued that German nationalists considered Jews diametrically opposed to what constituted a healthy Volk. See Volkov, Shulamit, “Talking of Jews, Thinking of Germans—The Ethnic Discourse in 19th Century Germany,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 30 (2002): 37–49Google Scholar.

8 Volkov, Shulamit, “Kontinuität und Diskontinuität im Deutschen Antisemitismus, 1878–1945,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 33, no. 2 (1985): 224, 229, 239Google Scholar. Ian Kershaw also argued that anti-Semitism changed during the years 1916–1923 in Kershaw, Ian, “Antisemitismus in der NS-Bewegung vor 1933,” in Vorurteil und Rassenhass. Antisemitismus in der faschistischen Bewegung Europas, ed. Graml, Hermann, Königseder, Angelika, and Wetzel, Juliane (Berlin: Metropol, 2001), 29–32Google Scholar.

9 Chickering, Roger, We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League, 1886–1914 (Boston: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), 49Google Scholar.

10 Bergmann, Werner, “Völkischer Antisemitismus im Kaiserreich,” in Handbuch zur Völkischen Bewegung 1871–1918, ed. Puschner, Uwe, Schmitz, Walter, and Ulbricht, Justus H. (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1996), 461Google Scholar.

11 Mosse, George L., The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Howard Fertig, 1998), viGoogle Scholar.

12 Ibid., viii.

13 Trial against Organisation C and Wiking Bund 1924, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (hereafter BA-MA) Freiburg, PH26/4.

14 Puschner, Uwe, “Völkisch Plädoyer für einen ‘engen’ Begriff,” in “Die Erziehung zum deutschen Menschen.” Völkische und nationalkonservative Erwachsenbilding in der Weimarer Republik, ed. Ciupke, Paul, Hener, Klaus, Jelich, Franz Josef, and Ulbricht, Justus H. (Essen: Klartext, 2007), 61–66Google Scholar.

15 Bartov, Omer, “Defining Enemies, Making Victims: Germans, Jews, and the Holocaust,” American Historical Review 103, no. 3 (June 1998): 777CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Wistrich, Robert S., “The SPD and Antisemitism in the 1890s,” European Studies Review 7 (1977): 177–197CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Pulzer, Peter G., Jews and the German State: The Political History of a Minority, 1848–1933 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003), 154Google Scholar.

18 Heer und Sozialdemokratie (1908), BA-MA Freiburg, PH2/365.

19 Report, February 1912, BA-MA Freiburg, PH2/368.

20 Reichstag Verhandlungen, March 13, 1909, in BA-MA Freiburg, PH2/365. More radical SPD leaders such as Karl Liebknecht supported spreading pacifist ideas among army recruits on the eve of World War I. See Stargardt, Nicholas, The German Idea of Militarism: Radical and Socialist Critics, 1866–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

21 War Ministry Memo, May 10, 1912, BA-MA Freiburg, PH2/368.

22 Messerschmidt, Manfred, “The Wehrmacht and the Volksgemeinschaft,” Journal of Contemporary History 18, no. 4 (Oct. 1983): 720Google Scholar.

23 Angress, Werner T., “Prussia's Army and the Jewish Reserve Officer Controversy before World War I,” Militärgeschichte Mitteilungen 19 (1976): 96Google Scholar.

24 Angress, Werner T., “Prussia's Army and the Jewish Reserve Officer Controversy before World War I,” in Imperial Germany, ed. Sheehan, James J. (New York: Viewpoints, 1976), 103–105Google Scholar.

25 Reichstag Verhandlungen, February 25, 1911, BA-MA Freiburg, PH2/367.

26 In November 1916, the War Ministry undertook a now infamous statistical survey called the “Jew count” (Judenzählung) in an effort to determine the number of Jewish soldiers serving in frontline units. The official memorandum stated that in order to address the accusations from various sources that Jews were disproportionately excused from military service or poorly represented at the front, the War Ministry would conduct a census of Jews serving in the military and the breakdown of their duties. The order is reproduced in Forschungsamt, Militärgeschichtliches, Deutsch-Jüdische Soldaten von der Epoche der Emanzipation bis zum Zeitalter der Weltkrieg (Hamburg: Verlag E. S. Mittler & Son, 1996), 52Google Scholar.

27 See Aschheim, Stephen, Brothers and Strangers: The Eastern European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

28 Graf Szoegyney quoted in Zechlin, Egmont, Die deutsche Politik und die Juden im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), 121Google Scholar.

29 Erich Ludendorff quoted in Liulevicius, Vejas Gabriel, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 119–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Bericht der Verwaltung des Generalgouvernments Warschau, October 23, 1915, BA-MA Freiburg, PH30/II/5.

31 Joll, James, “Walther Rathenau—Intellectual or Industrialist?,” in Germany in the Age of Total War, ed. Berghahn, Volker and Kitchen, Martin (London: Croom Helm, 1981), 68Google Scholar.

32 Weindling, Paul, “Purity and Epidemic Danger in German Occupied Poland during the First World War,” Paedagogica Historica 33, no. 3 (1997): 825CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Viertelsjahrsbericht der Zivilverwaltung für Russisch-Polen, April 1, 1916–June 30, 1916, BA-MA Freiburg, PH30/II/12.

34 Halbjahresbericht des Verwaltungschefs bei dem Generalgouvernment Warschau, October 1, 1916–March 31, 1917, BA-MA Freiburg, PH30/II/15.

35 Weindling, “Purity and Epidemic Danger,” 831.

36 Ibid., 830.

37 “Deutsche Regimentengeschichten über das Judentum,” Der Frontsoldat erzählt 8, no. 10 (1938): 281Google Scholar, BA-MA Freiburg.

38 “Deutsche Regimentengeschichten über das Judentum,” Der Frontsoldat erzählt 8, no. 11 (1939): 319Google Scholar, BA-MA Freiburg.

39 Georg Michaelis quoted in Fedyshyn, Oleh S., Germany's Drive to the East and the Ukrainian Revolution, 1917–1918 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1971), 45Google Scholar.

40 Halbjahresbericht des Verwaltungschefs bei dem Generalgouvernment Warschau, October 1, 1916–March 31, 1917, BA-MA Freiburg, PH30/II/15.

41 Halbjahresbericht des Verwaltungschefs bei dem Generalgouvernment Warschau, BA-MA Freiburg, PH30/II/16.

42 Letter from Hermann von Stein, March 26, 1917, BA-MA Freiburg, PH2/414.

43 Bericht über innere Lage, October 31, 1918, BA-MA Freiburg, PH6/II/16.

44 Wilhelm von Gayl quoted in Liulevicius, War Land, 120.

45 Kellogg, Michael, The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 243CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Heeresgruppe Eichhorn, Kiew Politisches II: 1918, BA-MA Freiburg, N 46/173.

47 Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik, 559.

48 Report from Kriegspresseamt to Wilhelm Groener (Nov. 22, 1918), BA-MA Freiburg, N 46/162, 2–3.

49 Groener, Wilhelm, Lebenserinnerungen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957), 391, 403Google Scholar.

50 Grenzjäger Brigade, April 30, 1919, “Die Lehren der gegenwärtigen politischen Lage,” BA-MA Freiburg, RH69/104.

51 Message from Stellvertretender Generalstab der Armee, Abteilung IIIb to Kriegsministerium, Auswärtiges Amt—Politische Abteilung, Reichsamt des Innern, April 18, 1918, BA-MA Freiburg, PH2/479.

52 Besprechung beim O.K. Nord in Bartenstein, February 11, 1919, BA-MA Freiburg, N 42/14.

53 Report from Beauftragter des Generalquartiermeisters für den Osten (Major Ritter) to Herrn Generalquartiermeister, November 28, 1918, BA-MA Freiburg, RH61/14.

54 Report from Hauptmann Graff v. Pueckler: VI.A.K. (n.d.), BA-MA Freiburg, N 46/131.

55 Die innere Lage im Grenzschutzbezirk und die Bekämpfung des Bolschewismus, March 25, 1919, BA-MA Freiburg, N 97/6.

56 Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik, 565.

57 Jochman, Werner, “Die Ausbreitung des Antisemitismus,” in Deutsches Judentum in Krieg und Revolution, 1916–1923, ed. Mosse, Werner (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1971), 437–43Google Scholar.

58 Pamphlet, December 12, 1918, BA-MA Freiburg, N 280/59a.

59 Bericht der 23. Landwehr Division über die Ursachen des Zusammenbruches des Disziplins, Entwicklung der Zustände und Tätigkeit der Soldatenräte, December 30, 1918, BA-MA Freiburg, PH 8/III/3.

60 Das Gesetz über die provisorische Reichswehr vom 6. März 1919, BA-MA Freiburg, W-10/52140-15.17.

61 Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers, 233.

62 Memo, February 27, 1919, BA-MA Freiburg, PH8 V/2.

63 Gerwarth, “The Central European Counter-Revolution,” 195.

64 Most of the files concerning the Freikorps were destroyed during an American air raid in World War II. The surviving records comprise a relatively small record group located in Freiburg.

65 Auzug aus meinem Tagebuch über die Grenzschutzkämpfe 1918/19 in Schlesien bei Deutsch-Watenberg, Kempen u.s.w., BA-MA Freiburg, PH 26/34, 11.

66 Geschichte des Grenzschutzes Posen, West Abschnitt Birnbaum (1918–1919), BA-MA Freiburg, PH 26/33, 23.

67 Stinnesbeck, Bruno Uffz., Das Oberschlesische Freiwilligen Korps (1918–1919), BA-MA Freiburg, PH 26/22, 8.

68 Report, July 10, 1919, BA-MA Freiburg, RH 69/192, 246.

69 Das Freikorps Lichtsclag mit der Batterie Hasenclever 1919 und 1920 gegen den Bolschewismus im Ruhrgebiet, BA-MA Freiburg, PH 26/11, 1.

70 Walter, Dirk, Antisemitische Kriminalität und Gewalt. Judenfeindschaft in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn: Dietz, 1999), 51Google Scholar.

71 Smith, Helmut Walser, The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 160CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 “Die November-Pogrome vor Gericht,” Der Schild, June 1, 1924Google Scholar.

73 Fink, Carole, “The Murder of Walter Rathenau,” Judaism 44, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 11Google Scholar.

74 Hecht, Cornelia, Deutsche Juden und Antisemitismus in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn: Dietz, 2003), 138–155Google Scholar.

75 Eberhard Jäckel dissected Hitler's writings and speeches methodically in Jäckel, Eberhard, Hitlers Weltanschauung. Entwurf einer Herrschaft (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1969)Google Scholar. Hitler's influences concerning Judeo-bolshevism are delineated in Waddington, Lorna, Hitler's Crusade: Bolshevism and the Myth of the International Jewish Conspiracy (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007)Google Scholar.

76 Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf, trans. Mannheim, Ralph (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 61Google Scholar.