Karl,
It is always important to realise that the core of
Nazism lay in
Germany, but that
the roots of Nazism and
the collaborators of
Nazism weren't only
German or
Austrian,
Germans and
Austrians. The
NSDAP,
SA and
SS also had some
French,
British,
Swedish,
Swiss,
Italian,
Russian,
Roman-Catholic and
Protestant (
Lutheran) roots in the sense that there were under layers of
Christian anti-semitism,
colonial racism,
imperialism,
the Roman salute, the influence of
Italian Fascism (their
blackshirts will have influenced the uniform of the SS), the Russian anti-semetic "
Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion", British and French writers and perople like the British-born German philosopher
Houston Stewart Chamberlain (/ˈtʃeɪmbərlɪn/; 9 September 1855 – 9 January 1927) and the French aristocrat, novelist, diplomat and travel writer
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882), the French anthropologist and a theoretician of eugenics and racialism
Count Georges Vacher de Lapouge (12 December 1854 – 20 February 1936), the Swedish physician Herman
Bernhard Lundborg (April 7, 1868 in Väse in Värmland, Sweden – May 9, 1943 in Östhammar in Uppland, Sweden), the Swiss-born German psychiatrist, geneticist, eugenicist and Nazi
Ernst Rüdin (April 19, 1874 in St. Gallen – October 22, 1952), the American lawyer, writer, and zoologist known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist
Madison Grant (November 19, 1865 – May 30, 1937) and the American eugenicist and biologist
Charles Benedict Davenport (June 1, 1866 – February 18, 1944). I have mentioned the Dutch, Flemish, Walloon, French, Danish, Hungarian, Romanian, Croat, Ukrainian, Russian, Baltic, Bosnian and other collaborators with
the Nazi occupiers of
European nations and
the Holocaust before.
The Roman salute
Benito Mussolini is shown with members of the Blackshirt Legion during a demonstration in Rome in 1922.The collaborationalist Dutch police during the Second World War. Many of them were Nazi NSB members, but not all of themDutch Landwacht SS Nazi troopsThe Holocaust (Shoa) could take place due to thousands of larger, middle big and smaller Nazi concentrationcamps, extermination camps, Euthenasia killing facilities, and the work of German and Austrian Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany, Einsatzgruppen, but also regual Wehrmacht units, Ordnungspolizei (Grüne Polizei), the Dutch police which collaborated with the German SS, Ordnungspolizei, SD/SIPO and Gestapo in rounding up Dutch jews, the Dutch railways NS which transported Dutch jews to Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, Buchenwald and other concentration camps, Dutch Germaansche SS in Nederland, Weerafdeling (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weerbaarheidsafdeling ), the paramiliary collaborationalist Dutch Landwacht militia (
pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landstorm_Nederland ), Vichy France (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France ), Free Corps Denmark (Danish: Frikorps Danmark), the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party participated in The Holocaust in Hungary, the Slovak Hlinka Guard participated in The Holocaust in Slovakia.
Another collaborationalist example was the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS "Handschar" (1st Croatian) a mountain infantry division of the Waffen-SS, an armed branch of the German Nazi Party that served alongside but was never formally part of the Wehrmacht during World War II. From March to December 1944, it fought a counter-insurgency campaign against communist-led Yugoslav Partisan resistance forces in the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state of Germany that encompassed almost all of modern-day Croatia, all of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as parts of Serbia. It was given the title Handschar (Bosnian: Handžar) after a local fighting knife or sword carried by Ottoman policemen during the centuries that the region was part of the Ottoman Empire. It was the first non-Germanic Waffen-SS division, and its formation marked the expansion of the Waffen-SS into a multi-ethnic military force. Composed of Bosnian Muslims (ethnic Bosniaks) with some Catholic Croat soldiers and mostly German and Yugoslav Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) officers and non-commissioned officers, it took an oath of allegiance to both Adolf Hitler and the Croatian leader Ante Pavelić.
Back to some names I mentionned:
Houston Stewart Chamberlain
Houston Stewart Chamberlain (9 September 1855 – 9 January 1927) was a British-born German philosopher who wrote works about political philosophy and natural science; he is described by Michael D. Biddiss, a contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, as a "
racialist writer".
Chamberlain married
Eva von Bülow, the daughter of composer
Richard Wagner, in
December 1908, twenty-five years after
Wagner's death.
Chamberlain's best known book is the two-volume
Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (
The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century), published in
1899, which became highly influential in
the pan-Germanic völkisch movements of the early
20th century and later
influenced the antisemitism of Nazi racial policy. Indeed,
Chamberlain has been referred to as "
Hitler's John the Baptist".
Hitler's mentorIn
November 1918,
Chamberlain was completely shattered and horrified by Germany's defeat in the war, a defeat he believed to be impossible, as well as by
the November Revolution, which had toppled his beloved monarchy. Adding to his bitterness, Chamberlain was now so paralyzed that he could no longer leave his bed, something that he believed to be the result of poisoning by the British secret service.
Chamberlain saw both the defeat and
the revolution of 1918 as the work of the Jews, writing in 1919 that Germany was now[207] under the "supremacy of the Jews". In his last years, Chamberlain's anti-Semitic writings grew ever more violent and bloodthirsty as Chamberlain became even more intensely anti-Semitic than he had been before 1918. In March 1920, Chamberlain supported the Kapp Putsch against the Weimar Republic, which he called
the Judenrepublik ("
Jewish Republic"), and was even more embittered by its failure.
The Kapp putsch (13 March 1920) was defeated by a general strike called by
the Social Democrats which shut down the entire
German economy. A young
völkisch activist Josef Stolzing-Cerny and a
Chamberlain protégé who had participated in
the Kapp putsch wrote to
Chamberlain after its failure: "
Unfortunately Kapp was not all 'the man with the lion heart', much rather the man with the beer heart, for he continually used all his energies befuddling his brain with alcohol. ... In the same situation a Bismarck or a Napoleon would have hunted the whole Jewish-socialist republic to the devil."
Stolzing-Cerny went on to criticize
Kapp for not unleashing the
Freikorps Marinebrigade Ehrhardt which had taken
Berlin against the Jews of Berlin, instead ordering
the Freikorps to keep order. After the failure of the putsch,
Chamberlain no longer considered
Wolfgang Kapp to be one of his heroes, and instead damned him as a weak-willed coward all too typical of German conservatives who talked tough, but never followed up their words with action. More importantly, the failure of
the Kapp putsch to a certain extent discredited traditional German conservatism in
Chamberlain's eyes, and led him on the search for a more
radical alternative, a type of
"German socialism" that would offer a "
third way" between
capitalism and
socialism.
In
January 1921,
Stolzing-Cerny, who joined the
NSDAP in
December 1920, wrote to
Chamberlain about the new man on the political scene, "
one Adolf Hitler, an Austrian worker, a man of extraordinary oratorical talents and an astonishingly rich political knowledge who knows marvelously how to thrill the masses". Initially,
Chamberlain was hesitant about
Hitler, believing that he might be another
Kapp, but after the "
battle of Coburg", in which
Hitler had personally fought with his followers in a street battle against
the Communists,
Chamberlain started to see
Hitler as someone who practiced what he preached. From that a time onwards,
Chamberlain started to closely follow and admire
Hitler, whom he saw as "
Germany's savior".
Hitler in his turn had read
The Foundations,
Chamberlain's biography of
Wagner, and many of his wartime essays, and was much influenced by all that
Chamberlain had written. British historian
Sir Ian Kershaw, a biographer of
Hitler, writes that
... Hitler drew heavily for his ideas from well known anti-Semitic tracts such as those by Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Adolf Wahrmund and especially, the arch-popularizer Theodor Fritsch (one of whose emphasis was the alleged sexual abuse of women by the Jews)...The fact that
Hitler was an ardent
Wagnerite who adored
Wagner's music gave
Chamberlain and
Hitler a mutual ground for friendship beyond
their shared hatred of the Jews. Likewise,
Joseph Goebbels had been converted to
the völkisch ideology after reading
Chamberlain's books and essays, and came to the conclusion on the basis of
Chamberlain's writings that
the West could only be saved by removing the Jews from German society. During this period,
Chamberlain, who was practically a member of
the Wagner family, started to push for
the Bayreuth Festival to become openly identified with
völkisch politics, and to turn the previously apolitical festival into
a völkisch rally.
Despite his paralysis,
Chamberlain whose mind was still sharp, remained active as a writer, maintaining a correspondence with a whole gamut of figures from Admiral
Alfred von Tirpitz to the radical anti-Semitic journalist
Theodor Fritsch, the leader of the völkisch
Hammerbund ("
Hammer League"). From his exile in the Netherlands, the former
Kaiser wrote to
Chamberlain in
1922 to tell him that thanks to his essays, he had become a
Marcionist and now rejected
the Old Testament.
Wilhelm claimed that on the basis of
Chamberlain's work, he now knew that what had become
the Old Testament was in fact
a Zoroastrian text from
ancient Persia (
modern Iran) and was therefore "
Aryan". The former
Kaiser claimed that
the Jews had stolen and rewritten this sacred text from
the Aryan Persians, ending his letter: "
Let us free ourselves from the Judentum with its Jawe!" In
1923,
Wilhelm wrote to tell
Chamberlain of his belief that not only were
the Jews "
not our religious forebears", but that Jesus was "
not a Jew", was instead an
Aryan "
of exceptional beauty, tall and slim with a noble face inspiring respect and love; his hair blond shading into chestnut brown, his arms and hands noble and exquisitely formed".
In
1923 Chamberlain met with
Adolf Hitler in
Bayreuth, and in September he sat in his wheelchair next to
Hitler during
the völkisch "
German Day"
paramilitary parade. In
September 1923 he wrote a grateful and highly admiring open letter to the
NSDAP leader and published an essay ("
Gott will es!", "
God wants it!") on the front page of the Nazi newspaper
Völkischer Beobachter.
Chamberlain, paralysed and despondent after Germany's losses in World War I, wrote to
Hitler after his first visit in
September 1923:
Most respected and dear Hitler, ... It is hardly surprising that a man like that can give peace to a poor suffering spirit! Especially when he is dedicated to the service of the fatherland. My faith in Germandom has not wavered for a moment, though my hopes were—I confess—at a low ebb. With one stroke you have transformed the state of my soul. That Germany, in the hour of her greatest need, brings forth a Hitler—that is proof of her vitality ... that the magnificent Ludendorff openly supports you and your movement: What wonderful confirmation! I can now go untroubled to sleep ... May God protect you!Source:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Stewart_ChamberlainArthur de Gobineau
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) was a French aristocrat who is best known today for helping to legitimise racism by use of scientific racist theory and "racial demography" and for his developing the theory of the Aryan master race. Known to his contemporaries as a novelist, diplomat and travel writer, Gobineau was an elitist who, in the immediate aftermath of the Revolutions of 1848, wrote a 1400-page book, An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, in which he claimed that aristocrats were superior to commoners and that they possessed more Aryan genetic traits because of less interbreeding with inferior races (Alpines and Mediterraneans).
Gobineau's writings were quickly praised by white supremacist, pro-slavery Americans like Josiah C. Nott and Henry Hotze, who translated his book into English but omitted around 1000 pages of the original book, including those parts that negatively described Americans as a racially mixed population. Gobineau's writings were also influential on prominent anti-Semites such as Richard Wagner, Wagner's son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the Romanian politician professor A. C. Cuza, and leaders of the Nazi Party, who later edited and re-published his work.
Herman Bernhard Lundborg
Herman Bernhard Lundborg (April 7, 1868 in Väse in Värmland, Sweden – May 9, 1943 in Östhammar in Uppland, Sweden) was a Swedish physician.
BiographyHe graduated in medicine at
the Karolinska Institutet in
1895, and received his doctorate at
the Uppsala University in
1903. He also habilitated there that year for
psychiatry and
neurology, and in
1915 for
racial research and
racial biology.
For his doctoral dissertation,
Lundborg researched one of the genetic progressive myoclonus epilepsies first described by
Heinrich Unverricht in
1891. Besides giving an account of the disease, he traced an affected family back to
the 18th century, an analysis unique for that time. He concluded that the family had
genetically degenerated because of "
unwise marriages". The study has been described as "
of considerable historic interest in human genetics". Over the years,
the form of epilepsy became known as
the Unverricht–Lundborg disease.
Heinrich Unverricht (18 September 1853 – 22 April 1912) was a German internist who was a native of Breslau.He was on the editorial board of
the Hereditas journal, founded
1920, with
the scope on genetics.
Lundborg was
extremely negative towards the Jewish people, and strongly involved with
the ideology of racial hygiene. In the beginning of the 20th century,
the idea that eugenics could improve the biological basis of society was widely held by academics and lawmakers, particularly in
northern Europe and
the United States. In
1922 Sweden established
a eugenic governmental agency,
the State Institute of Racial Biology, of which
Lundborg was appointed as the head. Under his leadership,
the institute began gathering copious statistics and photographs to map
the racial make-up of about 100,000 Swedish people.
Karl Lueger
The roots of
Adolf Hitlers anti-semitism did not lie in Germany, but in the Austrian capital
Vienna where the vehemently anti-semitic mayor
Karl Lueger (24 October 1844 – 10 March 1910) and Austrian politician, and leader and founder of the Austrian
Christian Social Party spread his
anti-semitic ideas and poisonous anti-semitic ideology.
Lueger is credited with the transformation of the city of Vienna into a modern city. The populist and anti-Semitic politics of his Christian Social Party are sometimes viewed as a model for Hitler's Nazism.
Lueger was known for his antisemitic rhetoric and referred to himself as an admirer of Edouard Drumont, who founded the Antisemitic League of France in 1889. Decades later, Adolf Hitler, an inhabitant of Vienna from 1907 to 1913, saw him as an inspiration for his own views on Jews. Though not an explicit pan-Germanist, Lueger advocated racist policies against non-German speaking minorities in Austria-Hungary and in 1887 voted for a bill proposed by his long-time opponent Georg von Schönerer to restrict the immigration of Russian and Romanian Jews. He also overtly supported the völkisch movement of Guido von List and created the pun "Judapest", referring to supposed Jewish domination of the Hungarian capital, Budapest. Adolf Hitler described in his book Mein Kampf how much Lueger's anti-Semitism influenced him.
Cheers,
Pieter
Links:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Davenporten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Grant
