Hitler’s Source P.2
According to Eckart's
secretary, Hitler met Eckart in a small Munich pub in the fall of 1919. Rosenberg
later recalled meeting Hitler in the company of Eckart in a small pub in the
fall of 1919 as well. Hitler already knew of the writings of both Eckart and
Rosenberg in the newspaper “Auf gut Deutsch” at the time of their meeting.
Hitler impressed
Eckart with his persuasive power and intensity. Eckart and Hitler began meeting
with each other regularly. Hitler later dedicated his autobiographical work
Mein Kampf in part to that man, one of the best, who
devoted his life to the awakening of his, our people, in his meetings and his
thoughts and finally in his deeds: Dietrich Eckart.
Eckart wrote of
Hausen's translation of the Protocols in a December 1919 article in Auf gut deutsch, "The Midgard Serpent." He asserted that
one reads the Protocols "again and again and yet does not get to the end
of it since with almost every paragraph one lets the book fall as if paralyzed
with unspeakable horror." He claimed that Hausen's translation of the
Protocols and the "publicity leaflet" that the "Jewish lodge 'The
Wise Men of Zion"' in Imperial Russia that he had referred to in October
undoubtedly originated from the same source, demonstrating that "the
Russian Jews already knew in advance of the collapse of the Tsarist Empire as
well as the German monarchy in 1911 and just as surely already at that time
announced Bolshevik chaos with Jewish world domination as background."
Eckart cited some sections of Hausen's Protocols translation, noting that these
segments "suffice to attest to the authenticity of the entirety.”
In a November 1920
essay in Aufgut deutsch,
'"Jewry Ober alles"' (Jewry Above
Everything). Eckart demonstrated his belief in the Protocols' authenticity by
quoting a passage from them that had not appeared in his earlier article on the
Protocols or in the Voelkischer Beobachter, namely
that "the world ruler who will take the place of the currently existing
governments has the duty to remove such societies even if he has to drown them
in their own blood." For Eckart, this assertion represented a legitimate
warning of what the peoples of the world would face if they did not take
decisive anti Semitic action.
Eckart noted that the
"entire Jewish press" had labeled the Protocols a forgery, but he
dismissed this as "the usual tactic of the Hebrews. That which one cannot
refute, one chalks up as a forgery." Referring to the spread of the
Protocols across the world. Eckart argued that despite Jewish protests,
"in all peoples, in England, France, Greece. Romania. Poland, Hungary, and
so on, the scales are beginning to fall from [people's] eyes: everywhere forces
are stirring and engaging in the work of the liberation from humanity's mortal
enemy.
While Eckart
unequivocally believed in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a valid
warning for Gentiles around the world, Rosenberg adopted a considerably more
skeptical attitude. Konrad Heiden began his 1944
book, Der Führer, with Rosenberg receiving the Protocols from a mysterious
stranger in Moscow in 1917, but Michael Hagemeister, a German expert on the
Protocols, has stressed that Heiden's undocumented
assertion that someone gave Rosenberg a copy of the Protocols in Moscow and
that he then brought them to Germany belongs in the "realm of
legend."
In his first major
work. released early in 1920, Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeiten
(The Trail of the Jew through the Ages), he did not refer directly to the
Protocols.
When Rosenberg
examined the Protocols in his 1923 book. Die Protokolle
der Weisen von Zion und diejudische
Weltpolitik- (The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Amish World-Politics), he
remained more skeptical than Eckart. He claimed that the famous Zionist author
Asher Ginsburg could very well have written the Protocols, but no
“conclusive" proof of this existed, so the question of the authorship of
the Protocols remained "open." He further noted that there was no
"juridicially conclusive proof' for the
Protocols either as absolutely genuine or as a forgery. In a manner similar to
Hausen, Rosenberg noted that in any case. documents from -ancient times as well
as from the most recent past" existed that demonstrated -precisely the
same sense" as the Protocols, from "the Talmud to the Frankfurter
Zeitung (Frarnkfurt Times) and the Rote Fahne (The Red Flag)." He further asserted that the
Protocols stated that which the "Jewish leaders of Bolshevism themselves
openly describe as their plan." While he harbored doubts of the Protocols
authenticity, Rosenberg internalized what he saw as a profound point of the
Protocols, namely -first subversion, then dictatorship."':' The first
concrete evidence of Hitler's internalization of information from the Protocols
comes in his notes for an August 1921 speech:
starvation as power -
(Russia).... Starvation in the service of Jewry[.] 'Wise Men of Zion[.]'
Objection 'not every Jew will know this.' What the wise man comprehends
intellectually the ordinary one does out of instinct.... Starvation in
Russia[:] charitably, 40 million are dying. Here Hitler used horrible
conditions in the Soviet Union to support the veracity of the Protocols. In an
oration a few days later, he cited the Protocols as evidence of the age old and
continuing Jewish goal of the extraction of rule, no matter through which
means." In a speech on April 20, 1923. his birthday, Hitler stressed
that the goal of the Jews was "to extend their invisible state as a
supreme dictatorial tyranny over the entire world," the basic
warning contained in the Protocols. He again picked up the starvation
theme in context with the Protocols in an August 1923 oration, asserting that
"in the books of the wise men of Zion it is written: 'hunger must wear
down the broad masses and drive them spinelessly into our arms! ... In Mein Kampf Hitler asserted that the Protocols demonstrated that
"the whole existence of [the Jewish] people is based on a continuous
lie."'
The Protocols did
provide anti-Semitic arguments that strongly influenced the ideology of the
National Socialist movement, going through 33 editions by the time Hitler came
to power and becoming the most widely-distributed work in the world after the
Bible. The National Socialist regime did not reprint the Protocols after the
outbreak of World War II, though, perhaps precisely due to the Protocols'
parallels with both brutal National Socialist occupation policies in Eastern
Europe and public pacification efforts domestically.
The Knapp Putch
Eckart and Hitler's
collaborator Kapp used the specter of Bolshevism to justify the famous putch named after him, by issuing a proclamation "To
the German People!," in which he stressed that the Weimar Republic had
proved unable to fend off the threat of "devastation and murder through
belligerent Bolshevism.
He stressed that
Germany faced "external and internal collapse," necessitating "a
strong state authority."(1)
Kapp received initial
support or his undertaking from voelkisch Bavarian
circles, notably from Dietrich Eckhart and his pupil Hitler. Eckart had
mobilized his considerable social connections to assist the still little-known
Hitler, including tying him in to in to Knapp. (2)
Knapp met with Eckart
in Munich in early 1920. (3) Eckart then traveled to Berlin to confer with Kapp
in Berlin three weeks before the latter's putsch attempt. Eckart warned Kapp of
"Bolshevism" stressing that "the Jews" would use the
"easily led masses" to seize power in Germany "as in
Russia." To counter this danger, Eckart proposed incarcerating the Jews,
at least the most ones, while there was still time. After launching his putsch,
Kapp arranged for his Bavarian co-conspirators Eckart and Hitler to be flown up
from Munich to Berlin. (4)
In Berlin, Eckart
soon despaired of Kapp's chances of leading a successful national revolution.
Kapp did not imprison Jews as Eckart had recommended, merely confiscating flour
for matzos, which subsequently led Eckart to comment in his newspaper "Auf
gut Deutsch, "one does not provoke wild animals, one locks them up."
Kapp had refused to consider such a radical policy, and Eckart later asserted
that Kapp's "half measures" had ensured his downfall.
The last straw for
Eckart came when he witnessed three Jews at Kapp's headquarters.(5)
Eckart had wished to help Kapp's undertaking precisely to combat Jewish
influence, and the presence of Jewish representatives in Kapp's vicinity
disgusted him.
The Imperial German
intervention in the Ukraine, the land "at the extreme," led to
significant anti-Semitic ideological transfer from White sources to postwar voelkisch German circles in Berlin and Munich, including
the immediate milieu from which the National Socialist Party arose. Most
notably, the White officer trio of Fedor Vinberg, Plotr Shabelskii -Bork, and Sergei Tabonitskii,
all of whom went on to collaborate with Hitler, carried The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion from the Ukraine to Germany and then saw them into the hands of
Ludwig Mu1ler von Hausen, voelkisch publicist who
published them in German.
While Eckart and
Hitler despaired of Kapp's undertaking early on, leading White Russians
supported the undertaking more enthusiastically. The "Russian"
remnants of the Western Volunteer Army unequivocally supported the Kapp Putsch.
These forces under the direction of Biskupskii and Bermondt-Avalov bad long been prepairing
to support Kapp's planned takeover of the German state.(6)
One of the White
Russians that time, Gregor Schwartz- Bostunich, born
in Kiev to a Baltic German father and a mother with the maiden name Bostunich, whas ultimately to
rise in the ranks of Heinrich Himmler's SS.(7)
Schwartz- Bostunich had traveled from Imperial Germany to the Russian
Empire after the outbreak of War I before acting as what he later described in
an SS report as an "agitator."(8 )He preached with fanatical
conviction against Bolsheviks, Freemasons, and Jews in e Crimea. Scheubner-Richter later employed Schwartz-Bostunich speaker on behalf of the NSDAP and sent him to
hold talks throughout Germany.(9)
Like Schwartz-Bostunich, also Nemirovich-Danchenko
went on to collaborate with Scheubner-Richter in the
German "Aufbau Vereinigung" and to further
the National Socialist cause. Georgil Nemirovich-Danchenko worked as a key anti-Semitic agitator
under White regime on the Crimean Peninsula as the press chief of Vrangel's government.(10)
The mission of Vrangel had been decided upon during a German/White Russian
conference in May 1920.(11)
Other members of the
delegation included Kommissarov, Pelikan,
and Wagner, as well as some Hungarian and Austrian representatives. General
Ludendorff and former Latvian Intervention mastermind General Count Rildiger von der Goltz, the latter of whom resided in
Budapest under a false name, conducted negotiations with members of the
Horthy's government of Hungary on behalf of ScheubnerRichter's
delegation. Once in Budapest, the delegates emphasized the pronounced military
component of their undertaking as well as the economic one. Horthy approved the
mission and its goals, for which Scheubner- Richter
expressed his profound thanks. General Berzewicskii,
the Chief of the Hungarian armed forces, asserted that he had 70,000 soldiers
at his disposal to further the plans to abolish the Paris (signed at the end of
WWI) Peace Treaties.(12)
After its successful
layover in Budapest, Scheubner- Richter's mission
arrived in Belgrade in the middle of July, where Scheubner-
Richter also held talks with members of the local White Russian delegation, and
next stopovers was, Varna, Bulgaria.
Scheubner-Richter's other colleagues, Rosenberg and Kursell, both of whom collaborated with Dietrich Eckart,
Hitler's mentor, served as prominent members of Aufbau.(13)
Rosenberg in fact
acted as the primary National Socialist ideologist, Kursell,
who officially Joined the National Socialist Party in 1922, worked closely with
Scheubner Richter in Aufbau as he had earlier laborated with him during the wartime German occupation of
the Baltic region.(14)
Kursell simultaneously played a prominent role in the
"Baltic Brotherhood" a mystic/esoteric inclined group.15 And he also
served as the vice president of the Munich-branch of the Baltenverband
(Baltic League), with a membership of 530 in 1923. 14
Baltenverband leadership oversaw approximately 2,200 members in
1920, described Bolshevism as the "tyranny of a clique consisting mostly
of Jewish elements that wishes to prepare a springboard from which to extend
its rule over Europe."(15)
Other important White
Russian Aufbau members included Fedor Vinberg and Piotr Shabelskii-Bork,
who as we have seen in the previous part had collaborated on the newspaper Priyv (The Call) in Berlin. They transferred The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion to Ludwig Muller von Hausen for translation into German,
and also supported the Kapp Putsch. Vinberg served as
a leading Aufbau ideologue, ultimately engaging in lengthy theoretical discussions
with Adolf Hitler.
The increasing
political collaboration between National Socialists, and White Russians under
the guidance of the Aufbau Vereinigung between the
Kapp Putsch of 1920 and the Hitler Putsch of 1923 is the missing focus of
inquiry in most current books about Hitler rise to power and ideology to date.
Aufbau helped to finance the National Socialist rise to prominence, and it
coordinated Joint National Socialist/White Russian efforts to topple the Soviet
Union and the Weimar Republic through the use of force. And contributed the
specific Aufbau ideological contribution to National Socialism, the theme of
the "Jewish Bolshevik" treat as a horrific manifestation of a
worldwide Jewish conspiracy.
Hitler continued to
use White Russians and Ukrainian separatists under Poltavets
Ostranitsa, to undermine the Soviet Union. His
insistence on winning the Ukraine for Germany led him to divert the German Army
away from Moscow in 1941, thereby engendering disastrous military consequences.
Moreover, fundamental Aufbau ideas continued to evolve through the period of
the National Socialist rise to power helping to inspire the concentration,
enslavement, and mass extermination of European Jews as part of the Hitler's
National Socialist policy euphemistically referred to as the "Final
Solution."
But also General
Ludendorff next to Eckart and Aufbau, also contributed significantly
"Weltanschauung" and whom we shall focus on in our next two part
article tomorrow 20 June, 2003 on SESN.
Ludendorff released a
book in 1921, War Leadership and Politics, in which he claimed along the lines
of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion that "the supreme government of the
Jewish people was working hand in hand with France and England, perhaps it was
leading them both." Hitler later stated that Ludendorff's book
"clearly pointed out where it was practical to search (for the mistakes of
the past and the possibilities for the future] in Germany."(16)
Introduction: A Russian Connection
In this series of lectures I will discuss a number of early influences
on the rise of Hitler and the early Nazi party.
Hitler's Secret "Protocols" P.1
The Protocols of the Wise Elders of Zion, were not fabricated in Paris,
but within Imperial Russia between April 1902 and August 1903. The earliest
versions of the Protocols contain pronounced Ukrainian features, whereas later
ones were given French overtones in order to lend them the appearance of
credible accounts from abroad.
Hitler's Secret "Protocols" P.2
General Vladimir Biskupskil, who went on to
collaborate closely with Hitler in the context of the Aufbau Vereinigung in postwar Munich, played a leading role in the
Ukrainian Volunteer Army. "Conservative revolutionaries" in Imperial
Germany and Russia established detailed anti-Western, anti-Semitic ideologies
in the months leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution. The largely
internally-orientated voelkisch model focused on
alleged Germanic racial and spiritual superiority through a heightened capacity
to negate the will heroically, whereas the more externally- fixated Russian
version offered apocalyptic visions of concrete political struggle between
Russians at the head of all Slavs and perceived Jewish world-conspirators.
Hitler’s Source P.1
The Protocols did provide anti-Semitic arguments that strongly influenced the ideology
of the National Socialist movement, going through 33 editions by the time
Hitler came to power and becoming the most widely-distributed work in the world
after the Bible. The National Socialist regime did not reprint the Protocols
after the outbreak of World War II, though, perhaps precisely due to the
Protocols' parallels with both brutal National Socialist occupation policies in
Eastern Europe and public pacification efforts domestically.
Hitler’s Source P.2
Anticipating Tsarist pretender Kirill's arrival in Germany, General Ludendorff
worked to establish an intelligence service for Kirill in early April 1922. He
asked Walther Nicolai, who had served him as the head of the German Army High
Command Intelligence Service during World War one, to use his considerable
experience and connections to establish a reliable pro-Kirill intelligence
service for the struggle against Bolshevism.
The German Kaiser's Confident P.1
By 1937 the NSDAP, the Wehrmacht, and, to a lesser extent, German society
accepted Ludendorffs ideology. In the regime and the
Wehrmacht he had tacit allies who helped to legitimize and propagate Deutsche Gotterkenntnis. Those who sympathized with him and his
ideology existed at all levels of the Nazi hierarchy. Although today he may be
forgotten, and although his memorial shrine in Tutzing
may be neglected, Erich Ludendorff was one of the most important Germans of the
twentieth century.
The German Kaiser's Confident P.2
The Ludendorffs (now Hohe Warte) advocated a return to traditional rural German
culture since they believed that the demands of modem capitalist society had
tom the German people from the soil, causing them to forget their heritage and
ensuring their submission to finance and industrial capital. The Ludendorffs' ideology paralleled similar intellectual
developments among Conservative Revolutionaries.
The Ideologists and First Financiers of Hitler P.1
Before the establishment of the “Aufbau” Vereinigung in
late 1920, the collaboration between Eckart and Rosenberg in the context of
Eckhart’s Newspaper In Plain German.” Formed the crux of the fusion between voelkisch-redemptive German and White Russian world conspiratonial-apocalyptic anti-Semitic thought, where
"positive" notions of Germanic spiritual and racial superiority fused
with more negative visions of impending "Jewish Bolshevik"
destruction supported by Jewish finance capitalists.
The Ideologists and First Financiers of Hitler P.2
By 1923, Hitler had thoroughly internalized Aufbau’s and the people around it,
assertions, of the nature of socialism and its most aggressive variant
Bolshevism as mere tools of Jewish finance capitalism to enslave European peoples…
Dietrich Eckart, Rosenberg, and the White Russian Influence on Nazi
Ideology, P.1
The ensuing military conflagration, Eckart continued, had led to the
destruction of Imperial Russia so that "Jewish Bolshevism" could take
root there. He also warned that there would arise "from the Neva to the
Rhine, on the bloody ruins of the previous national traditions, a single Jewish
empire.
Dietrich Eckart, Rosenberg, and the White Russian Influence on Nazi
Ideology, P.2
Hitler in his unpublished 1928 sequel to Mein Kampf,
further expounded upon the Aufbau/Eckartian theme of
the "Jewish Bolshevik" annihilation of the leading elements of
Russian society as a precedent for further Jewish atrocities. He argued that
"Jewry exterminated the previous foreign upper strata with the help of
Slavic racial instincts."
The
"Final" Solution Before WWII, P.1
Hitler continued to express a view of history whereby Jews pitted Germans and
Russians against each other after 1923. As witnessed in his unpublished 1928
sequel to Mein Kampf. He argued of "the
Jew's" drive to dominate the European peoples that he -methodically
agitates for world war" with the aim of "the destruction of inwardly
anti-Semitic Russia as well as the destruction of the German Reich. which in
administration and the army still offered resistance to the Jew."
The
"Final" Solution Before WWII, P.2
That which Jewry once planned against Germany and all peoples of Europe. this
must (Jewry) itself suffer today, and responsibility before the history of
European culture demands that we do not carry out this fateful separation (Schicksalstrennung) with sentimentality and weakness, but
with clear, rational awareness and firm determination.” (Rosenberg 1941 press
release dealing with his public assumption of the position of State
Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories.)
Early Nazis and the Mystical Connection P.1
Like the mystical inclined author Sergei Nilus, who
had played a crucial role in popularizing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Vinberg viewed Jews as a satanic force.
Early Nazis and the Mystical Connection P.2
Hitler asserted that "liberalism, our press, the stock market, and
Freemasonry" together represented nothing but "Instrument[s] of the
Jews."
Early Nazis and the Mystical Connection P.3
By the time of Ludendorfrs death, Deutsche Gotterkenninis had become for Nazis a legitimate
Weltanschauung. Ludendorff's vision of a totalitarian society unified in the
face of external and internal threats was nearly identical to the
Weltanschauung of Nazism.
1) Kapp. "An das deutsche Volk!" [March 1920], BAK,
Nachlass 309. number 7.
2) Rosenberg. "Meine erste Begegnung mit dem Fuhrer,"
The National Archives. Records
of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. 1941-45. IZG, No.
454. roll 63, 578. "5LGPOP report from March 9. 1920, GSAPK. Rejwvitur77.
title 18 10. number 1. 76. 13c'Letter from Karl Mayr to Kapp from September 24.
1920, GSAPK. Repositur 92, number 8401. 4.
3) 137 Eckart's
examination at the A GAI on July 10, 1920. RGVA (TKhIDK).,fond
567. opis 1. delo 2496. 17.
4) Letter from Wilhelm Kiefer to Anneliese Kapp from June 24,
1958. BAK. Nachlass 309. number 20.
5) Eckart. "Kapp," Auf gut Deutsch. April 16, 1920, 4.
6) Hitler, March 29, 1920 report on
Kapp Putsch. Saemtliche Aufzeichnungen. 117.
7) AA report to the RUoO from April 23. 1926, RGVA (TKhIDK),
fond 772. opis 3. delo 927.
30. 32. 33.
8) RMI report to the RUoO from July 16, 1926. RGVA (TKhIDK),
fond 772, opis 3. delo 927.
47, and PDB report to the RUoO from May 28, 1926,
RGVA (TKhIDK), fond 772. opis
3. delo 927.40.
9) DB report from
July 23. 1920, RGVA (TKhIDK),-fond 7. opis 1. delo 1255. reel 2. 209.
10) Dienstaltersliste der Schutzstaffel der NSDAP
(SS-Obersturmbannführer und SS-Sturmbannführer): Stand vorn 1. 04-tober 1944
(Berlin: Reichsdruckerei, 1944). RGVA (TKhIDK). fond 13 72. opis 5. delo 89. 6.
11) Schwartz-Bostunich. SS-Personalakien. SS-OStubaf- IZG. Fa 74. 1. 2.
12) SG report from
August 1, 1939, RGVA (TKhIDK), fond 1. opis 14. delo 3242. 2. Letter
from Nemirovich-Danchenko to Count lurii Pavlovich from February 7, 1928, RSHA, RGVA (TKhIDK),fond 500. opis 1, delo 452, 28.
13) DB report from
July 17, 1920, RGVA (TKhfDK), fond 7. opis 1, deto 1255. reel 3. 220.
14) DB reports from
September 9 and October 10. 1920, RGVA (TKhIDK). fond
7, 02. deto 2575. reel 1. 21, 99.
15) 19 Protocol of a
Gait Neubrandenburg Baltenverband meeting on October
4, 1920. BA. Reich 8012. number 7. 59: speech of Landrat
A. v. Oettingen at Baltenverband
meeting on October 15. 1920, BA. Reich 8012. number 2, 128.
16) Thoss. Der Ludendorff-Kreis.p. 8.
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