The Judaism of Hitler

THE JUDAISM OF HITLER

By G. K. CHESTERTON

HITLERISM is almost entirely of Jewish origin. This truth, if inscribed in the noble old German lettering on a large banner and lifted in sight of an excited mob in a modern German town, might or might not have the soothing effect which I desire. This simple historical explanation, if written on a post-card or a telegraph-form, and addressed to Herr Hitler’s private address, might or might not cause him to pause in his political career, and reconsider all human history in the light of the blazing illumination, with which I have furnished him in these words. Finally, these words, placed even where they stand at the beginning of this paragraph, may not be wholly comprehended or connected with their true historical origins; but they are none the less strictly historical.

It is a horrible shame to say I was ever unkind to a Nordic Man. I have had many of these innocent creatures of God gambolling round my house from time to time, and I have always found them faithful and affectionate; when treated and trusted, as they should be, with faith and affection. I am very fond of the real Nordic Man, especially when he does really look like a Nordic Man; as, for example, when he is a Scandinavian. I think the Scandinavian is a thoroughly nice fellow; and probably a much better man than I. Hitler does not look in the least like a Nordic Man; but that is another question, and need not discredit his personal good qualities. But, when it comes to the reading of history, there is one thing that I can never for the life of me see. I can easily believe that a nice large Scandinavian may have brought great elements of strength or simplicity into any family into which he married; and what is true of the Scandinavian may be quite often true of the German. But what I frankly and flatly deny, in history as a whole, is that any Nordic Men ever brought anything in the way of an idea into the world. The Germans came in due course to describe their piracy as imperialism; but they borrowed the idea of imperialism from the Romans. They produced a sort of Prussianism that was praised or blamed as militarism; but they borrowed the idea of militarism from the French. The German Emperors modelled themselves on the Austrian Emperors, who had modelled themselves on the Greek Emperors and the Roman Emperors. The greatest of the Prussians did not even conceal his contempt for Prussia. He refused to talk anything but French, or to exchange ideas with anybody, except somebody of the type of Voltaire. Then came the liberal ideas of the French Revolution, and the whole movement of German Unity was originally a liberal movement on the lines of the French Revolution. Then came the more modern and much more mortally dangerous idea of Race; which the Germans borrowed from a Frenchman named Gobineau. And on top of that idea of Race, came the grand, imperial and insane idea of a Chosen Race, of a sacred seed that is, as the Kaiser said, the salt of the earth; of a people that is God’s favourite and guided by him, in a sense in which he does not guide other and lesser peoples. And if anybody asks where anybody got that idea, there is only one possible or conceivable answer. He got it from the Jews.

It is perfectly true that the Jews have been very powerful in Germany. It is only just to Hitler to say that they have been too powerful in Germany. The Germans will find it very hard to cut up their culture on a principle of Anti-Semite amputation. They will find it difficult to persuade any German, let alone any European who is fond of Germany, that Schiller is a poet and Heine is not; that Goethe is a critic and Lessing is not; that Beethoven is a composer and Mendelssohn is not; that Bach is a musician and Brahms is not. But again, it is but just to Hitlerism to say that the Jews did infect Germany with a good many things less harmless than the lyrics of Heine or the melodies of Mendelssohn. It is true that many Jews toiled at that obscure conspiracy against Christendom, which some of them can never abandon; and sometimes it was marked not by obscurity but obscenity. It is true that they were financiers, or in other words usurers; it is true that they fattened on the worst forms of Capitalism; and it is inevitable that, on losing these advantages of Capitalism, they naturally took refuge in its other form, which is Communism. For both Capitalism and Communism rest on the same idea: a centralisation of wealth which destroys private property. But among the thousand and one ways in which Semitism affected Germanism is in this mystical idea, which came through Protestantism. Here the Nordic Men, who are never thinkers, were entirely at the mercy of the Jews, who are always thinkers. When the Reformation had rent away the more Nordic sort of German from the old idea of human fellowship in a Faith open to all, they obviously needed some other idea that would at least look equally large and towering and transcendental. They began to get it through the passionate devotion of historical Protestants to the Old Testament. That, of course, is where the joke comes in; that the Protestants now wish to select for destruction what nobody else except the Protestants had ever wanted to select and set apart for idolatry. But that is a later stage of the story. By concentrating on the ancient story of the Covenant with Israel, and losing the counter-weight of the idea of the universal Church of Christendom, they grew more and more into the mood of seeing their religion as a mystical religion of Race. And then, by the same modern processes, their education fell into the hands of the Jews. There are Jewish mystics and Jewish sceptics; but about this one matter of the strange sacredness of his own race, almost every Jewish sceptic is a Jewish mystic. When they insinuated their ideals into German culture, they doubtless very often acted, not only as sceptics, but as cynics. But, even if they were only pretending to be mystics, they could only pretend to understand one kind of mysticism. Thus, German mysticism became more and more like Jewish mysticism: a thing not thinking much of ordinary human beings, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, the Gentiles or the strangers; but thinking with intense imagination of the idea of a holy house or family, alone dedicated to heaven and therefore to triumph. This is the great Prussian illusion of pride, for which thousands of Jews have recently been rabbled or ruined or driven from their homes. I am certainly not enough of an Anti-Semite to say that it served them right.

But it is true that it all began with the power of the Jews; which has now ended with the persecution of the Jews. People like the Hitlerites never had any ideas of their own; they got this idea indirectly through the Protestants, that is primarily through the Prussians; but they got it originally from the Jews. In the Jews it has even a certain tragic grandeur; as of men separated and sealed and waiting for a unique destiny. But until we have utterly destroyed it among Christians, we shall never restore Christendom.