Tony Biondi is a member of Gateway Church working with his family in Cyprus

What is the relationship between Nazi anti-Jewish ideology and earlier expressions of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism?

Tony Biondi

There is clearly a strong relationship between Nazi anti-Jewish ideology and earlier expressions of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, where the latter have been deeply influential over the former. The Nazis borrowed, used, developed and amplified many of the earlier expressions of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, both archaic and concurrent. Indeed, we may distinguish anti-Judaism from anti-Semitism in that anti-Judaism is "sometimes considered a more accurate term to describe [anti-Jewish] hostility during the ancient period" on religious grounds, whereas the comparatively recent concept of anti-Semitism refers to racial discrimination (Wilson, 1989, p. 91). Thus, the influences upon Nazi anti-Jewish ideology were predominantly racial and religious in origin, although historically, the overwhelming influence has been religious, and more specifically Christian. The racist influences were expressed in political, pseudo-scientific and philosophical thought, whereas the Christian influences can be traced back to the theology of the early church fathers to beyond the Reformation. Moreover, the predominant Lutheran Church of pre-war Nazi Germany was particularly disposed towards anti-Jewish ideologies and here the Nazis found a great deal of mutual support for their views. However, it is also true that the Nazis went much further than the church had ever warranted, and for some there was no relationship or compatibility between Nazi anti-Jewish ideology and a philo-Semitic Christianity. Indeed, it is difficult to see any precedent to parallel the extremity of Nazi anti-Jewish ideology, and especially, Hitler's fanatic anti-Semitism.  

Political, pseudo-scientific and philosophical racism began to distinctly develop in the Nineteenth Century, and formed an 'intellectual' bedrock for Nazi idealism. It was the German journalist Wilhelm Marr who in 1879 first used the phrase anti-Semitism:

He and other anti-Semites saw human history as a struggle between the forces of darkness (whom they defined as Jewish) and the forces of light (blue-eyed, blond-haired people known as Aryans). Political parties were formed to promote the view that an international Jewish conspiracy was preparing the overthrow of Christian civilisation (Bright, 1995, p. 10).

The issue of racial purity was central to Nineteenth Century anti-Semitism as it took on a "veneer of pseudo-science", so that as well as "measuring noses and analysing head-shapes, there was much learned talk of good and bad blood" (Chave, 1994, p. 3). In 1883 Theodor Fritsch wrote The Antisemitic Catechism (later renamed the Handbook on the Jewish Question by the Nazis), in which his 'Racists' Ten Commandments' included references to Jews as the "common implacable foe" (Landau, 1998, pp. 51-52). Furthermore, the "mingling" of Jewish blood with "noble Aryan breed" was a "crime", and Germans were to have no "social intercourse" or "business relations" with Jews (Landau, 1998, pp. 51-52). Jews were not to be trusted, and their writings were to be shunned "lest their lingering poison . . . unnerve and corrupt" (Landau, 1998, p. 52). Whilst Fritsch's influence on the Nazis was evident in their Aryan ideology and in their dealings with Jews in business and society, with the tenth commandment the inspirational relationship with Nazi anti-Jewish ideology ends:

Thou shalt use no violence against the Jews because it is unworthy of thee and against the law (Landau, 1998, p. 52).

A major influence on Hitler, and thus, Nazi anti-Jewish ideology, was the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a "literary hoax" that was "hatched" at the end of the Nineteenth Century with the advent of the First Zionist Congress in 1897 (Landau, 1998, p. 52). It depicted "power-crazed Jews engaged in an international conspiracy" to undermine the Gentile world - "fomenting wars, revolutions, dangerous ideologies and the collapse of organised religion" (Landau, 1998, p. 52). Jews allegedly employed political "liberalism", supported "Socialists, Anarchists, [and] Communists", whilst advancing the "demoralising" and "engineered" doctrines of "Darwinism, Marxism and Nietzcheism" to degenerate the "Goys" (Landau, 1998, pp. 53-55). These accusations were picked up in Nazi anti-Jewish ideology and the publication "enjoyed wide circulation between the wars, especially in Weimar and later Nazi Germany" (Landau, 1998, p. 52). Indeed, Hitler "blindly believed" in the Protocols as proof of a Jewish plot to "dominate the world" at any cost (Burrin, 1989, p. 27).

The Nazis found a wealth of anti-Judaistic ideology from Church history, and if it did not personally inspire their anti-Jewish ideology, then they certainly used it to support their views. Indeed, it gained great support for the Nazis because the Holocaust was undertaken by a nation that in 1940 had a population of which 95% were "registered as members of the Church" (Chave, 1994, p. 4). However, Christian anti-Jewish ideology was by no means a phenomenon unique to German Churches or the Twentieth Century - the Nazis had deeper wells to draw from because "the Christian world has a long history of anti-Semitism" (Bright, 1995, p. 10). Christian anti-Judaism can be traced back to around the Second Century and the 'Successionist' theology of the early church fathers:

The early Fathers of the Church built a theology around God's rejection of national Israel (because of their rejection of Jesus) and God's selection of the Church as the new Israel. Ignoring chapters 9-11 of the Epistle to the Romans, and much of the Church's own early history, the Church Fathers reasoned that God was finished for ever with the Jewish people, who were guilty of deicide, the murder of God. It was a charge that stuck. Christian anti-Semitism became legitimate (Crombie, 1991, p. 10).

In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin reckoned that the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome was a just punishment "because [they had] murdered the Just One" (Flannery, 1985, p. 40). Such was the influence of the fathers that by the end of the Fifth Century Theodosius "permitted the destruction of synagogues if it would serve a "religious" purpose" (Jessup, 1976, p. 109). However, the Fifth Century preacher, John Chrysostom, went further than the church fathers before him in preaching Christian anti-Judaism; stating that the Jews were demon possessed - the "pest and plague of the human race" (Chave, 1994, p. 26). Indeed, Chrysostom stood "without peer or parallel in the virulence of his attack" with the vitriolic charge that

He who can never love Christ enough will never have done with fighting against those who hate Him (Flannery, 1985, pp. 50-51).

During the Christian 'Crusades' of the Eleventh Century  "countless Jews" were murdered, and in Jerusalem the Crusaders burnt nearly all of the Jewish population in a day, before singing evening mass in the Roman Church of Jerusalem (Crombie, 1991, p. 10). Throughout the Middle Ages Christian anti-Semitism continued, violently expressing itself through the Spanish Inquisition which "offered thousands of Jews the choice between conversion to Christianity or death", and the pogroms of Eastern Europe in which "murderous mobs" were often "led by Orthodox priests as they rampaged through hapless Jewish communities" (Crombie, 1991, p. 10). By now anti-Judaism was firmly ingrained into Gentile Christianity, and Jews were forbidden to farm or own land and then forced to join Christian guilds in order to trade or practise a profession. In 1290 England expelled its Jewish community and other European countries soon followed. Anti-Judaistic attitudes were epitomised in extreme scaremongering and superstitious myths, and they resurfaced in Nazi propaganda:

They were accused of sacrificing children (the infamous "Blood Libel", to be used again later by the Nazis), they were even blamed for the Black Death! (Jessup, 1976, p. 111).

The Reformation never directly addressed Christian anti-Judaism, and some Reformers "carried on with the theology of the Fathers vis-à-vis the Jewish people" (Crombie, 1991, p. 10). Luther initially hoped to see the conversion of Jews to Christianity, but after subsequent disappointment he wrote Jews and Their Lies and Shem Hamephoras, in which he perpetuated further the cause of anti-Judaism. In his writings he called the Jew a "devil incarnate" and thus, "impossible to convert" (Chave, 1994, pp. 26-27). He explicitly instructed Christians to "burn their synagogues and houses . . . their prayer books [and] Talmudic works", and "let all Jews be outlawed and thus endangered on the public highways" (Chave, 1994, p. 27). The Reformation established a strong Protestant Church in Germany, in which the Lutheran Church became the pre-eminent denomination, and because Luther's "philosophy seeped deeply thereafter into many minds", it meant that

when its contents were used in vivid cartoon form in the Nazi propaganda magazine Der Sturmer, the people simply did what Luther had urged them to do in the first place (Miles, 1995, p. 31).

Indeed, during the Nuremberg Trials the editor of Der Sturmer, Julius Streicher, argued that "Luther should have been on trial with him" (Supple, 1993, p. 22). Whilst Hitler was not renowned as a practising Christian he drew upon Luther's anti-Semitic writings, and wrote in Mein Kampf of his belief that he was "acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty, in warding off the Jews" (Miles, 1995, p. 31). Thus, in 1933 Hitler told Church leaders "I am doing only what the Church itself has been preaching against the Jews" (Miles, 1995, p. 31).

However, the view that "Christianity was born out of Judaism" was one that "Hitler found unacceptable and which partly explains his attack on the Christian Church" (Supple, 1993, p. 11). Whilst the Nazis "developed Christian images of the Jew as a parasite" and as "the Devil", it "discarded the limits on persecution" set by the church fathers (Kernaghan, Diski & De Witt, 1991, p. 14). The Nazi solution to the 'Jewish problem' was "extermination", whilst early and Medieval Christian theology sought "no need for extermination because the Jews had a place - humiliated and subordinate" (Kernaghan, Diski & De Witt, 1991, p. 14). Moreover, Christianity offered an albeit anti-Judaistic, but less final solution in that a Jew "could escape damnation by converting" (Kernaghan, Diski & De Witt, 1991, p. 14). Hence, it has been argues that whilst "Nazism could only have developed out of a Christian European culture", it is only a connection and not an absolute derivation:

The Nazi view of the Jews was entirely derived from their pseudo-scientific, biological view that Jews were vermin and parasites, on racist grounds. They had nothing in common with the ancient and longstanding Christian discrimination and sometimes contempt of the Jews on theological grounds. On the other hand it is perfectly true that . . . Hitler and Goebbels were very adept at using theological terminology, but giving it a racist content . . . words like 'grace' and 'redemption' and 'salvation' for the nation. And in this sense it certainly lured Christian church people into accepting their nationalist propaganda (Kernaghan, Diski & De Witt, 1991, p. 14).

Moreover, whilst "Germans at the time of Marr considered Jews to be a different species", such a concept cannot be found in church history because "the ancients held no similar racial theory" (Wilson, 1989, p. 91).

It has also been argued that if the church supported Nazi anti-Jewish ideology because of Christian anti-Judaic theology; it can equally be said that Christians rescuers were motivated by a Christian philo-Semitic theology. Indeed, they were motivated by "well-established and theologically orthodox Christian traditions (such as the Calvinist tradition)" and these generated "respect and even admiration rather than contempt for Jews" (Gushee, 1994, p.10). Whilst the church recognised common ground with Hitler, some Christians could see no relationship between Nazi anti-Jewish ideology and their own faith: 

These were Christians who listened to Hitler's hate-filled rantings, watched the SS round up Jews in the streets and commit random murder, and simply knew that they were witnessing the antithesis of their most deeply felt religious and moral convictions (Gushee, 1994, p. 25).

The anti-Jewish ideology of the Nazis was shaped in no greater way than by Hitler himself; and regardless of the intentionalist/functionalist debate, his passionate and obsessive anti-Semitism was evident from the start. As far back as 1920 written records show Hitler's unequivocal stand that he would "carry on the struggle until the last Jew is removed from the German Reich" (Supple, 1993, p. 64). In 1924 Hitler's manifesto Mein Kampf explicitly revealed his "intention to exterminate the Jewish people" (Bright, 1995, p. 10). The German historian Golo Mann described the centrality of Hitler's anti-Semitism as the "most genuine feeling Hitler was capable of" (Mann, 1984, p. 446). More than any theological doctrine, Hitler was "profoundly influenced" by various Nineteenth Century anti-Semites, including professor Paul de Lagarde who referred to Jews as "vermin" to be "exterminated as quickly and thoroughly as possible"; and the composer Richard Wagner who wrote that Jews "did not belong to any European community" and were "incapable of true music, poetry or art" (Supple, 1993, pp. 25-26). He was also profoundly influenced by the racist politics of Marr and his Anti-Semites League (Supple, 1993, p. 26). He was relentlessly motivated in his quest for the Aryan dream of racial purity - a Germany purged of every pollutant:

For Hitler, humankind was comprised of races as separate from one another as species in the animal kingdom. Within these races was a hierarchy determined by historical greatness, an ever-precarious hierarchy; only pure-bloodedness assured a race's continued standing (Burrin, 1989, p. 26).

In conclusion, the relationship between Nazi anti-Jewish ideology and earlier expressions of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism is evident in the Nazis use of Nineteenth Century political, pseudo-scientific and philosophical racism, and the Christian anti-Judaic theology which litters church history. Overwhelmingly, church history is rife with anti-Judaism, and the seeds sown by the church fathers have flourished throughout the best part of two thousand years. It was the French Jewish historian, Jules Isaac (1877-1963) who summarised his studies of Christian anti-Judaism in the phrase "the teaching of contempt" (Isaac, 1962). Christian anti-Judaism from the fathers to Luther and the dominant Lutheran Church provided a mine of material for the Nazis to exploit, and they took the teaching of contempt to its "horribly logical conclusion" (Chave, 1994, p. 9). However, the extremes of Nazi anti-Jewish ideology by far surpassed even the most vehement preaching of the church fathers, and for some Christians there is simply no relationship between Nazi ideology and Christian faith. Whilst relationships can clearly be seen between Nazi anti-Jewish ideology and earlier expressions of religious anti-Judaism and racist anti-Semitism, it is also clear that the Nazis were uniquely motivated by Hitler's rabid anti-Semitism, which took anti-Jewish ideology to unprecedented levels.  

Bibliography:

Bright, M. (1995) History. Sociology. Cross-curricular Themes. London: Guardian Education.

Burrin, P. (1989) Hitler and the Jews. London: Edward Arnold.

Chave, P. (1994) The Holocaust: Its relevance to every Christian. London: CCJ.

Crombie, K. (1991) For The Love Of Zion. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Flannery, E. H. (1985) The Anguish of the Jews. New York: Paulist Press.

Gushee, D. P. (1994) Learning From The Christian Rescuers: Eight Lessons For The Church. Louisville: Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Isaac, J. (1962) The Teaching of Contempt. Paris: Fasquelle.

Jessup, G. (1976) No Strange God. London: Olive Press.

Kernaghan, P., Diski, R. & De Witt, J. (1991) The Longest Hatred: A Study Guide to Thames Television's Series on AntiSemitism. London: Thames Television/Screen Guides.

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Mann, G. (1984) The History Of Germany Since 1789 (English translation). London.

Miles, B. (1995) ‘Luther's Lies’ in Prophecy Today, Vol. 11: No. 5. Moggerhanger: PWM.

Supple, C. (1992) From Prejudice To Genocide - Learning About The Holocaust. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham.

Wilson, M. R. (1989) Our Father Abraham. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.