(September 16, 1919)
Dear Herr Gemlich,
If the
threat with which Jewry faces our people has given rise to undeniable hostility
on the part of a large section of our people, the cause of this hostility must
be sought in the clear recognition that Jewry as such is deliberately or
unwittingly having a pernicious effect on our nation, but mostly in personal
intercourse, in the poor impression the Jew makes as an individual. As a
result, anti-Semitism far too readily assumes a purely emotional character. But
this is not the correct response. Anti-Semitism as a political movement may not
and cannot be molded by emotional factors but only by recognition of the facts.
Now the facts are these:
To begin with, the Jews are
unquestionably a race, not a religious community. The Jew himself never
describes himself as a Jewish German, a Jewish Pole or a Jewish American, but
always as a German, Polish or American Jew. Jews have never adopted more than
the language of the foreign nations in whose midst they live. A German who is
forced to make use of the French language in France, Italian in Italy, Chinese
in China does not thereby become a Frenchman, Italian, or Chinaman, nor can we
call a Jew who happens to live amongst us and who is therefore forced to use
the German language, a German. Neither does the Mosaic faith, however great its
importance for the preservation of that race, be the sole criterion for
deciding who is a Jew and who is not. There is hardly a race in the world whose
members all belong to a single religion.
Through inbreeding for thousands of
years, often in very small circles, the Jew has been able to preserve his race
and his racial characteristics much more successfully than most of the numerous
people among whom he has lived. As a result there lives amongst us a
non-German, alien race, unwilling and indeed unable to shed its racial
characteristics, its particular feelings, thoughts and ambitions and
nevertheless enjoying the same political rights as we ourselves do. And since
even the Jew's feelings are limited to the purely material realm, his thoughts
and ambitions are bound to be so even more strongly. Their dance around the
golden calf becomes a ruthless struggle for all the possessions that we feel
deep down are not the highest and not the only ones worth striving for on this
earth.
The value of an individual is no
longer determined by his character or by the significance of his achievements
for the community, but solely by the size of his fortune, his wealth.
The greatness of a nation is no
longer measured by the sun of its moral and spiritual resources, but only by
the wealth of its material possessions.
All this results in that mental
attitude and that quest for money and the power to protect it which allow the
Jew to become so unscrupulous in his choice of means, so merciless in their use
of his own ends. In autocratic states he cringes before the 'majesty' of the
princes and misuses their favors to become a leech on their people.
In democracies he vies for the favor
of the masses, cringes before 'the majesty of the people', but only recognizes
the majesty of money.
He saps the prince's character with
Byzantine flattery; national pride and the strength of the nation with ridicule
and shameless seduction to vice. His method of battle is that public opinion
which is never expressed in the press but which is nonetheless manages and
falsified by it. His power is the power of the money, which multiplies in his
hands effortlessly and endlessly through interest, and with which he imposes a
yoke upon the nation that is the more pernicious in that its glitter disguises
its ultimately tragic consequences. Everything that makes the people strive for
higher goals, be it religion, socialism, or democracy, is to the Jew merely a
means to an end, the way to satisfy his greed and thirst for power.
The results of his works are racial
tuberculosis of the nation.
And this has the following
consequences: purely emotional anti-Semitism finds its final expression in the
form of pogroms. Rational anti-Semitism, by contrast, must lead to a systematic
and legal struggle against, and eradication of, the privileges the Jews enjoy
over the other foreigners living among us (Alien Laws). Its final objective,
however, must be the total removal of all Jews from our midst. Both objectives
can only be achieved by a government of national strength and not one of
national impotence.
The German Republic owes its birth
not the united national will of our people, but to the underhand exploitation
of a series of circumstances that, taken together, express themselves in a
deep, universal dissatisfaction. These circumstances, however, arose
independently of the political structure and are at work even today. Indeed,
more so than ever before. Hence, a large part of our people recognizes that
changing the structure of the state cannot in itself improve our position, but
that this can only be achieved by the rebirth of the nation's moral and
spiritual forces.
And this rebirth cannot be prepared
by the leadership of an irresponsibly majority influence by party dogmas or by
the internationalist catch-phrases and slogans of an irresponsible press, but
only by determined acts on the part of nationally minded leadership with an
inner sense of responsibility.
This very fact serves to deprive the
Republic of the inner support of the spiritual forces any nation needs very
badly. Hence the present leaders of the nation are forced to seek support from
those who alone have benefited and continue to benefit from changing the form
of the German state and who for that very reason become the driving force of
the Revolution -- the Jews. Disregarding the Jewish threat, which is
undoubtedly recognized even by today's leaders (as various statement from
prominent personalities reveal), these men are forced to accept Jewish favors
to their private advantage and to repay these favors. And the repayment does
not merely involve satisfying every possible Jewish demand, but above all
preventing the struggle of the betrayed people against its defrauders, by
sabotaging the anti-Semitic movement.
Yours truly,
Adolf Hitler
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