What Hitler said about the Jews before he
came to power
LAURENCE REES, HISTORIAN
Laurence Rees, a former Head of BBC TV History,
has been making documentaries and writing books
about the Nazis and the Second World War for
many years. His award winning ‘Auschwitz: the
Nazis and the Final Solution’ is the world’s best
selling book on the history of the camp.
Just what did Hitler think about the
Jews when he was a young, struggling
politician in the aftermath of the First
World War, long before he came to
power? It’s an important question to
ask, especially in the light of recent
political controversy about the Nazis
and the Jews.
I have been researching what Hitler
wrote and spoke about the Jews
during this period for my forthcoming
history of the Holocaust, and what
the young Hitler said at the time
is revealing. The first irrefutable
evidence we have of Hitler’s views is
contained in a letter he wrote, dated
16 September 1919, to a fellow soldier
called Adolf Gemlich. Hitler, then just
thirty years old, stated unequivocally
who he felt was responsible for
the suffering of the whole German
nation. “There is living amongst
us,” wrote Hitler, “a non-German,
foreign race, unwilling and unable
to sacrifice its characteristics… and
which nonetheless possesses all the
political rights that we ourselves
have.” Moreover, he said, “Everything
which makes men strive for higher
things” was for this ‘race’ just “a
means to an end, to the satisfaction of
a lust for money and domination.” The
adversary Hitler had identified was the
Jew. And Hitler wrote that the ‘final
aim’ of any German government had
to be “the uncompromising removal of
the Jews altogether.”
Over the next few months and years,
Hitler preached his antisemitic beliefs
at countless rallies and meetings
of the National Socialist Workers’
Party (or Nazis for short). He said
that “solving the Jewish question
is the central question for National
Socialists… we can only solve it by
using brute force.” For Hitler, “The
political emancipation of the Jews
was the beginning of an attack of
delirium.” That was because “full
citizen rights and equality” had
been given “to a people which was
much more clearly and definitely
a race apart than all others, that
has always formed and will form a
State within the State.” Hitler also
attacked the Jews for bringing
democracy to Germany – “Democracy
is fundamentally not German: it is
Jewish” – and repeated the traditional
antisemitic fantasy that “the Jews are
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