In two earlier posts about the British ambassador to Germany, Horace Rumbold, and several despatches he wrote back to the Foreign Office, I pointed out that he correctly understood and predicted Hitler’s goals and actions, and he did so on the basis of public and published statements on the part of Hitler and the Nazis. Anyone fluent in German could have drawn the same conclusions, and anyone not fluent in German just had to have a translator. It’s common for people to assume that Hitler was tolerated by Britain because British political leaders and media were misled about his goals and aims, or engaged in wishful thinking. But, actually, quite a few actively supported him and understood him pretty well. They tolerated (or supported) him because they sympathized with him more than they sympathized with his victims.
I emphasized Rumbold’s report on his May 11, 1933 meeting, and argued that Hitler relied on standard internet asshole moves, like deflection (especially through whaddaboutism), open embrace of an irrational argument, and blue lies. Being an internet asshole means, basically, discourse is about proving your commitment to your group rather than proving your case.
In the last part of his despatch, Rumbold describes Hitler’s reaction when Rumbold pointed out that Nazi persecution of the Jews had alienated a lot of people, just when Germany was beginning to get more sympathy. And the short version of this post is that, as in this meeting, Hitler was open in meetings about his antisemitism—he couldn’t stop himself–, so anyone who met with him had all the evidence they needed to know that he was completely committed to a judenfrei Germany. They just didn’t care.
In his dispatch, Rumbold says that he mentioned that the Nazi treatment of the Jews had resulted in a revulsion of sympathy for Germany, and
“The allusion to the treatment of the Jews resulted in the Chancellor working himself up into a state of great excitement […] as if he were addressing an open-air meeting. “There is an immense amount of unemployment in Germany, and I have, for instance, to turn away youths of pure German stock from the high schools. There are not enough posts for pure-bred Germans, and the Jews must suffer with the rest. If the Jews engineer a boycott of German goods from abroad, I will take care that this hits the Jews in Germany. [….] Before leaving this subject the Chancellor added that the understood that Jews wishing to settle in Palestine must be in possession of the sum of £1,000. If the German Government had required the possession of a similar sum in the case of the Eastern Jews, who had entered Germany since the war, there would be no Jewish question in this country. As it was the Jews had brought every form of disease into Germany and made for the demoralization of the country generally.
[….] My comment on the foregoing is that Herr Hitler is himself responsible for the anti-Jewish policy of the German Government and that it would be a mistake to believe that it is the policy of his wilder men whom he has difficulty in controlling. Anybody who had had the opportunity of listening to his remarks on the subject of Jews could not have failed, like myself, to realise that he is a fanatic on the subject. He is also convinced of his mission to fight Communism and destroy Marxism, which term embraces all his political adversaries.”
So, Hitler moves from an argument that is rhetorically framed as though it is an issue of fairness “the Jews must suffer with the rest” to an argument rhetorically framed as legitimate self-defense to whaddaboutism to rabid antisemitism of a kind socially acceptable to many Brits. Before I walk through that argument more slowly, I have to point out that the second paragraph of that long quote is the most important for understanding the real lesson of Hitler: how racism is always rhetorically reframed as concerns about dangerous political commitment, social hygiene, and/or reducing crime. What most people don’t know is how important the notion of “executing partisans” (that is, killing socialists) was for justifying mass killings of Jews in what Timothy Snyder calls the Bloodlands. Nazis’ political agenda of serial genocides was, in public, always rhetorically framed as exterminating communism.
But, let’s get back to the first paragraph.
We’re still talking about internet asshole. One of the most frustrating things about arguing with someone committed to arguing irrationally is that they appropriate the verbal cues of fairness and rationality, while they’re irrationally arguing for their in-group being entitled to better treatment. But they hide their argument within modifying phrases.
Like all internet assholes, Hitler buried his weakest claims in adjectival phrases—pure German stock, pure-bred Germans—so he has an argument for entitlement rhetorically framed as an argument for fairness. This isn’t fairness as equal treatment across groups, but fairness as an entitled and powerful group being allowed to hold onto its power. It’s “fairness” as “a system that preserves a hierarchy we think is right.” So, it’s “fairness” as “our group being dominant.”
As I said, his most problematic claims are buried.
Let’s be clear: there is and never was any such thing as “pure German stock.” Hitler was relying on Madison Grant’s completely incoherent argument about race. Grant’s argument was that there were three white races: Nordic (what Hitler called Aryan), Alpine, and Mediterranean (what Hitler would have considered non-German speakers in Central and Eastern Europe), and he argued that inter-mixing of these races led to the destruction of a civilization. In other words, like a toddler who can’t stand the peas to touch the mashed potatoes, Grant believed that inter-mixing of races was bad. Yet, by his own narrative, the races were intermixed at various points, since the “higher” race slowly arose from a mixing of the “lower,” and the best civilizations were ones created by intermixing. A longer explanation of how bad his argument was is here.
It’s interesting that Hitler was not “pure German stock” even by his own standards. “Pure German stock” was a blue lie that Hitler sincerely believed, and that he phenotypically violated. His followers didn’t care. Hitler, very clearly not an Aryan, became the political leader to make Aryanism triumph. This isn’t particular to Hitler or his followers. Suckers often join a cult of a person not a Christian because they think he’ll make Christianity triumph or a financially unsuccessful person whom they believe will lead them to thrive financially.
Setting that aside, what his argument assumes is that Jews can’t be pure Germans. And that is the argument that needed to be proven on his side, and he never did because he never could. If a non-Aryan Austrian like Hitler can be a leader of pure Germans, why can’t German citizens be German? Hitler could never make that argument coherently, so he never tried. He just made arguments that rested on the premise that Germans who were Jews didn’t count as German. And that is the first step in politicide, religicide, classicide, or genocide, and people all over the political spectrum engage in it: declare your critics not really German, or American, or Christian, or whatever. They are people who keep us from the goal of a pure community, and so should be eliminated.
We need to stop doing that.
But, back to the May 11 memo, since I really want to post this on May 11.
What Hitler assumes, which is what all racists assume, is a zero-sum contest among races, and that not being dominant means being subordinate—equality is being dominated. But, more important, he assumes that people only look out for their own group. Thus, he can’t even begin to imagine that any non-Jews are objecting to the treatment of Jews, so the protest must be “engineered by Jews.”
As in the other two topics mentioned in the previous posts, he initially denies, then admits, and then deflects the accusation against him.
He denies the accusation by pretending that he is concerned with fairness, but his next argument confirms exactly what he started out denying—discrimination against Jews (since he’s saying “pure German stock” should have preference), and then he threatens retaliation for action that would itself be the consequence of the persecution he denied and then confirmed. It then shifts into a particularly irrelevant piece of whaddaboutism, before he exposes himself as having exactly the views he is accused of having.
The swipe about Palestine is typical. Hitler often made a point to representatives of other countries that their nations often had restrictive immigration regarding Eastern Europeans, especially Eastern European Jews (such as the US 1924 Immigration Act). And Hitler would say that they would do the same thing he was, but they didn’t have to, since they’d never let the Jews in in the first place.
It’s another argument that looks as though it has a point, but it doesn’t have one that is relevant. Britain did have the restrictions he mentions regarding immigration to Palestine, but, as far as I can tell, they didn’t require money to immigrate to the UK itself.
But, Hitler probably often found himself talking to someone who wished Britain did have such restrictive immigration, and so they would sympathize with his desire. Anti-semitic and anti-Slavic prejudices were widespread in Europe generally, including Britain.. And, while these people, ranging from Lord Londonderry to Viscount Rothermere (owner of the Daily Mail), might bemoan the most excessive violence, they wouldn’t empathize with the victims. Like Hitler, they considered various “races” (such as Jews and Slavs) essentially criminal and communist. And, like Hitler, they used the term “Marxism” for all their political adversaries. Thus, like the argument about Germans being victimized because they weren’t allowed to dominate, Hitler’s argument about Jews—as incoherent as it was—would resonate with some people because they didn’t really need the argument to be made; they already agreed.