Since 1945 the world has struggled to understand why Germany followed the Nazis into the Holocaust. What gave an ideology the parasitic dissemination and backing of armed forces seventeen million strong? With the rapid increase in worldwide antisemitism and societal and political instability, there have been many comparisons drawn from our current political and ideological times to Nazi Germany and the threat of Fascism. Are these comparisons warranted, or were Germany’s road from Democracy to Fascism and subsequent destruction of the Jews unique to Germany, resulting from an unprecedented, never-to-be-repeated set of circumstances? We would like that to be the case. It keeps history simple, halts the panic, and puts a hard stop to any historical comparisons when political and societal ruptures happen.
The Sonderweg thesis maintains this theory. The thesis explains why Democracy failed under the Weimar Republic, remaking itself into a Fascist dictatorship, and why Germany and not another European country such as France transformed their antisemitism into genocide. The Sonderweg thesis is widely debated among historians, leaving us with no consensus. To form their conclusions, historians survey the national character and ideology of the German people, historical differences with other European nations, and political, economic, and cultural failures, searching for explainable clues that led Germany to its undoing. Opinions run the gamut, with some historians believing they can track the inevitable culmination of forces leading to Germany’s breakdown and others asserting that the Reich period is a “one-off” unexplainably related to Germany’s history. Unfortunately, after eighty years of historical debate, we are left with the same questions and no agreed-upon answers.
One such question is whether the Holocaust could have happened somewhere else. A brief history lesson shows antisemitism at the turn of the century pervasive worldwide. As the 19th century came to a close, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion began its deceitful worldwide infiltration, and one might have guessed France over Germany as the country most likely for mass violence against the Jews to break out, with mobs in France shouting, “death to the Jews” during the Dreyfus Affair. The Twentieth century ushered in Russian and Ukrainian pogroms, forcing two million Jews to flee Russia, with the violence culminating in 100,000 Jews killed during the Russian Civil War, where often, those participating in the pogroms were from opposing sides united by their violent hatred of their Jewish neighbors.
By 1930, Europe was infected, boiling over with antisemitism. World War I had been a disruptive force; hyperinflation and the Depression of 1929 caused societal, economic, and cultural ruptures, and as the influence of nationalism and modernity clawed its way through Europe, irrational antisemitic finger pointing at the Jews became a pervasive sentiment all over Europe where Jews were blamed for both Capitalism and Communism, in an attempt to rationalize the destabilizing times. Yes, this was prevalent in Germany, but it was no exception, and one could imagine that had some or any of the driving forces in Germany been defeated, the Holocaust might not have happened.
America was not immune to the toxicity of antisemitism. The 1920s and 30s brought societal exclusion for the Jews just as their numbers and economic successes were growing. Universities and preparatory schools set quotas on Jewish enrollment and Jewish professors. Jews were denied membership in social clubs and turned away from jobs. Beyond societal marginalization, antisemitism in America was on a precipice, trembling with a more virulent strain. The Ku Klux Klan, with four million members, was gaining strength; Leo Frank, a Jewish man wrongly accused of murdering a young girl, was lynched by a mob, and in 1920, Henry Ford published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion along with 91 antisemitic essays in his paper, The Dearborn Independent. Ford published vapid antisemitic rhetoric and conspiracy theories claiming that Jews were plotting to destroy the world. He bound these essays into four volumes, named them “The International Jew: The Worlds Problem,” and beyond his numerous subscribers, distributed over 500,000 from his car dealerships, which widely circulated it nationwide.
In 1939, 20,000 Americans gathered at Maddison Square Garden for a pro-nazi rally, the stage draped in swastikas surrounding George Washington. Later that year, the ship the St. Louis, waiting at the United States shores with 937 Jewish refugees, was denied entry and sent back to Nazi-infected Europe.
— And then silence.
The Holocaust sent antisemitism underground.
Fast forward eighty years.
The rapid rise of antisemitism forces us to study the Holocaust not as a historical tragic event but laser-focused on the present with an eye to contemplating the future. However, historical comparisons are tricky as patterns are challenging to recognize, and the danger in the analysis is that you can easily miss what is different. Of course, this works both ways, as comparisons can be undervalued and overvalued, and how we choose to connect the past to the present may have to do with whether we perceive that the threat lies more from inventing connections than ignoring them. Yet, especially with the Holocaust, it feels like we should be wary of comparisons as “Planet Auschwitz” seems to fall outside of history and beyond our human vocabulary. Only the future knows the answer.
Mein Kampf was among thousands of world views positing apocalyptic conspiracy theories circulating in the 1920s. Why did Hitler’s worldview become actualized? Initially, the Nazis did not plan for mass annihilation of the Jews. This idea developed over time. They hoped to remove their citizenship and deport them — anywhere. Madagascar? Push them East? America? No one wanted the Jews. In the years leading up to the Holocaust, Nazi leaders understood this and knew that antisemitism was widespread in the world. They were banking on this, and when the world shut its door to the Jews of Germany, the Nazi’s beliefs were confirmed. No one wanted the Jews. One need only to read the minutes from the Evian conference to confirm that.
History may not repeat itself in its exact manifestations, but thought patterns do, and the stubborn proliferation of ideas may be our true enemy. Historian David Nirenberg, in his monumental book Anti-Judaism, argues that the “history of ideas shape the possibilities of thought,” and Anti-Judaism, the willingness to see “The Jew” or “Israel” as an explanation for the evils of the world, has historically been a powerful tool.
Even though after the Holocaust, antisemitism went underground, its theories and connections did not. Its past can be traced to the present with no interruption. Whether from the Nazis through the Mufti of Jerusalem to Islamic Jihad today. Or from the living rooms in the West where whispered tropes and stereotypes were passed down to the next generation. It is easy to blame toxic offensive thoughts on the uneducated extremists, but history proves this inaccurate. As in the past, antisemitism today knows no societal or political boundaries. It can be found on the left and right, among extremists and high society. The growth of antisemitism tells us much more about how a society thinks than its target, and as societal guardrails have been dropped, ideology is starting to manifest into action. Every day, news trickles in about the next violent antisemitic incident. It can be seen on the streets of Amsterdam, the subways of New York, the lecture halls of Columbia, and the playgrounds in Idaho. We are told by officials and those who hold power that it will not be tolerated, but antisemitism is a pathology, and I am not sure once it is let loose, it is possible to contain it before it runs its course.
How do we stop the fast proliferation and spread of anti-Jewish thinking? Is there hope? Maybe. Just like we are inclined to adopt old ideas, we are just as capable of rejecting them, and this is where hope lives.
Yet, there are challenges. Our minds have cognitive limitations, even among those who are the brightest and most gifted, and we are incapable of making complete sense of the complexity of our world. Our understanding of reality is filtered through multiple forces converging, fighting to influence our conclusions. From the man on the street to the upper echelon of intellectual and cultural society, the energy and movements of a time can affect how we think and cannibalize our ideas when the environment allows. The mood, the zeitgeist of our era, is moving in the wrong direction, and changing its course and the trajectory feels daunting. Additionally, the globalization of ideas and its lighting speed pathways on sound bites and social media are roadblocks we must jump over.
As historian Robert Wistrich says, antisemitism is “the longest hatred,” and so history feels stacked against us. But try, we must. As we sit on the sidelines, we slowly see fanatical thought once again metamorph and mobilize into action. So we must rally and go out and try however we can to change the trajectory of this malignant way of thinking. Say it wherever and whenever you can. Resist it, teach it, write about it, post it, and argue it on any platform in every country. Engage in the battle. Tell them. We are not your enemy. We are not the source of the world’s instability and suffering. Look elsewhere.
History struggles to answer the question of when thoughts become action, as ideology, regardless of how pathological it is, usually stays in its lane, corrupt but quiet. But what we do know is the proliferation of antisemitic thought has been exorcised from the rubble, and the world is going in the wrong direction. Of that, we can be sure.