The Relative Importance of Theodor Nathan Kaufman's 'Germany must Perish!'
Debunking the Debunkers
Theodor Nathan Kaufman's 104-page booklet 'Germany Must Perish!' is a possibly one of the most unintentionally famous books in all history. It is frequently cited and discussed in anti-jewish and revisionist circles as well as is notably subject to a considerable amount of silence among many historians jewish and non-jewish, except when they are specifically dealing with either Goebbels or the propaganda of the Third Reich during the war years.
The reason for this is rather simple: the Third Reich - and more specifically Goebbels, became aware of this book just after it was published in March 1941 at a time when the Third Reich was increasing its propaganda effort against the United States at both home and abroad with a specific interest in Latin America. (1)
In September 1941 with Hitler's blessing; (2) Goebbels and the head of German radio broadcasting (3) Wolfgang Diewerge published a pamphlet of excerpts from the book with commentary called 'Das Kriegsziel der Weltplutokratie' ('The War Aims of World Plutocracy'). The print run for this pamphlet was an astounding five million copies (4) - remember this was during war time when paper was becoming scarce - which indicates just how important this discovery was to Goebbels.
It has since become a staple of many anti-jewish and revisionist discussions of the Second World War and the 'Holocaust' narrative: where it is usually held - much as Goebbels himself did- as an important indicator of what was to come should Germany lose the war. Conversely mainstream historians, such as Jeffrey Herf, have tended to significantly downplay the important of the pamphlet and suggest that the importance attached to it by Goebbels and the Third was either cynical or deluded.
This is what I intend to discuss in this article. Although I will not discuss the similarity between Kaufman's plan and the later Morgenthau plan which I have demonstrated in detail in a separate article. (5) It is important to stress on this point that Kaufman's and Morgenthau's ideas are very similar and there is clear evidence that the Morgenthau plan was based on Kaufman's plan.
To business then: Herf's case for the irrelevancy of Kaufman's booklet is based on several facts, which I will note below.
Herf's facts are thus: (6)
A) 'Germany Must Perish!' was Theodor Nathan Kaufman's first and only book.
B) He founded Argyle Press and essentially self-published 'Germany Must Perish!'
C) He distributed the book through the US post office not bookstores.
D) There was no such organization as the 'American Federation of Peace'.
E) Kaufman had no known affiliations with any jewish organizations.
F) Kaufman had no known affiliations with President Roosevelt.
Now let us de-construct these facts a little.
In the case of A this is really an irrelevant detail given that whether or not 'Germany Must Perish!' was Kaufman's first book or whether it was only one of several matters not about whether Kaufman was an important or influential personage. Indeed important and influential people - for example the Greek poet Homer - not infrequently have only one or two books attributed to them: so it is hardly an argument to say that an individual is not important or influential just because he published only one book.
The same applies for Kaufman's founding of Argyle Press as the publisher of his book (i.e., point B): it doesn't speak as to a lack of importance although it does suggest (but does not necessarily mean) a lack of influence. It does not follow - as Herf would have it - that this means that Kaufman was rejected by all the publishers he applied to (if he actually applied to any): indeed even if this was the case then it more speaks to the content of what Kaufman was publishing and the time at which he was trying to publish it (in late 1940/early 1941 when Pearl Harbour was still months away and German victory in Europe seemed all but assured).
Similarly with the distribution of the book through mail order (i.e., the post) rather than at bookshops; it does not speak to importance or lack of influence, but rather to the content that Kaufman was selling. To try and sell an outright genocidal plan to mass murder Germans through bookstores would obviously be a non-starter and it would be very unlikely to gain any kind of mass readership.
No: Kaufman - if he was rational as his clever use of shock in his advertising methods would suggest - (7) would have realized that the book would be unlikely to ever gain a mass following and accordingly in order to get his ideas put into practice as, or cause a change in, American policy then it would be necessary to influence key individuals as opposed to trying to win a mass following. This is the same policy that Robert Welch used in relation to his famous book 'The Politician', which was also distributed by mail to interested parties. (8)
The goal of such a distribution is clearly shown in Kaufman's own writing (9) precisely because he doesn't appeal to the American people or flatter them for their democratic traditions as one might expect if he wished to appeal to the average layman. Instead, Kaufman focuses on laying out the reasons why he believes that Germans in general - not just in Germany - would need to be ethnically cleansed via a policy of mandatory sterilization as opposed to a simple change in government.
That suggests that - much as Welch's book was intended to - Kaufman's goal was to change the minds of those with more influence than himself as opposed to being for mass distribution. This is also indicated by Diewerge himself when he says that:
'The leading political figures in the United States and in England received a small, long packet containing a miniature cardboard coffin. Upon opening the cover one found a card with the demand: “Read the brochure: Germany must die!” This notice was followed the next day by a red-bound book with 104 pages with the original title in gold letters “Germany must perish”.' (10)
In the above we should note that Diewerge is saying that this book was well-presented (i.e., it was expensively bound and used gilt lettering rather than being a cheaply covered, mass produced bit of work) and that Kaufman went to a lot of time and expense in making sure that when journalists and politicians received the book: they took notice of it.
This took the form of sending a black cardboard coffin to the persons concerned the day before with a note that they were to receive the book (this is confirmed by the Time review of the book which mentions the cardboard coffins). (11) This was essentially a gimmick, but it was the kind of thing that was both highly effective and straight out of Goebbels' own play book. (12)
Clearly then Kaufman wasn't looking for a mass audience as Herf (as well as to a lesser extent Benz) seek to imply, but rather to influence important individuals with his work.
Comparing Kaufman's to Welch's actions (which are after all less than two decades apart) is also a useful guide for thinking about Kaufman's creation of the 'American Federation of Peace'. This is because the John Birch Society was originally conceived as an elite not a mass organization (13) that would be a bit like the 'Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations' in that it would serve to act as a central medium of exchange and co-ordinating entity of anti-Communist (and in Kaufman's case anti-German) activities.
As such Herf's claim that there was no such organization are clearly nonsense precisely because what we read in Kaufman's text is his plan for 'world peace' by exterminating the Germans. That Kaufman formed such an organization as the 'American Federation of Peace' is - I would argue - incontrovertible, and that it was intended to be an elite organization/co-ordinating body (as opposed to a mass organization) based around the goals announced by 'Germany Must Perish!'
What Herf and Benz are standing on in relation to is the lack of formal stationery and registration that such organization existed and thus to them it must be a 'creation of the paranoid Nazi mind'. This is a technicality at best and merely indicates - as no one has ever disputed - that said organization never got off the ground, but it does not mean that it was never formed albeit informally.
That this was Kaufman's intention is also suggested by the amount of effort and expense he went to in bringing his ideas to the attention of opinion and decision makers in the United States (I have not been able to confirm who in England it was sent to if anyone as it could simply be an assumption by Diewerge) given that in doing so he was trying to gain attention for his work (which he clearly felt would be highly persuasive) and thus stimulate opinion and decision makers to contact him.
Whereupon he could then bring up the topic of their joining his 'American Federation of Peace' and in this way build himself and his new organization into being an elite coordinating agency/working group with his ideas being the guiding light.
The concept of course is rather like Herzl's own ascent from journalistic obscurity to a major political player and thinker in the jewish world on the basis of having written and promoted his book 'Der Judenstaat' by himself which in turn became the global phenomenon that Kaufman would have known in his day. I would suggest that this was the model that Kaufman was seeking to emulate and also explains why when this didn't happen: he faded into obscurity precisely because the power of reason - in his view- had unlike Herzl's been unable to cause the political revolution he believed that it would affect.
Such an explanation goes a long way to explaining the German reaction to the work as one crazy booklet recommending that the world kill all the Germans wasn't exactly new given that - as the oft-cited headline stated - in 1933 the jews of the world (with the notable exception of some Zionist organisations which enthusiastically made contact with the SS) had (quite literally) declared war on Germany. Some might at this point start quibbling about whether or not this was true: the fact is that it is inconsequential to the fact that the Germans believed this was the case and that there is evidence to support this contention so that it cannot be blithely dismissed as a ‘paranoid anti-Semitic fantasy’.
Jews from 1933 to 1941 had done little to remove the notion that this was a specific war against Germany which the jews were believed to hate without abandon, (14) which is particularly indicated by the fact that the Germans were well aware that the Poles had - particularly since 1935 - been enacting ever more stringent anti-jewish measures including official boycotts and organized local pogroms (15) while suffering no international repercussions for doing so in contrast to Germany which had been on the receiving end of anti-anti-Semitic attacks and boycotts for some time by 1935 let alone 1941. (16)
Rather than being discriminated against for their anti-jewish policies the Polish government - which was actually a semi-dictatorship - was actually rewarded by Britain and France with an offensive alliance aimed at Germany (i.e., the blank diplomatic cheque that the two powers wrote for Poland in mid-late 1939).
This - combined with the Poles own widely distributed propaganda about wanting to conquer Germany as 'former Polish land' - (17) obviously played into the German belief - as exemplified by Goebbels among others - that the jews of the world were uniting in action specifically against the Third Reich and thus in the standard National Socialist view against Germany (as 'Hitler was Germany and Germany was Hitler').
To Goebbels' mind Kaufman's book was simply the beginning of the next stage of this war against Germany, which view is exemplified in Diewerge's use of the wording that Kaufman's plans were the 'official opinion' of the 'leading circles' of 'world plutocracy'. (18) This wasn't - as Herf and Benz assert - a cynical propagandistic fiction, but rather his (and Goebbels') actual opinion based on the fact that Kaufman's book had not been censored or banned in spite of its genocidal content, had been sent by Kaufman to leading opinion and decision makers (including they reasonably assumed President Roosevelt) and that Kaufman had set up a new jewish organization (the 'American Federation of Peace') which - because of the above described context - they believed actually represented a new phase of what they perceived to be the jewish war against Germany.
Diewerge was not being irrational at all when he argued that this was the 'goal of world plutocracy' precisely because in the National Socialist view the outbreak of war had been instigated by the jews with Poland, the British Empire and the French Empire as their pawns. All Diewerge was doing was spinning the story slightly (per it being intended for mass distribution as war-time propaganda) where Kaufman was already the important figure and confident that Diewerge believed (per the common belief that Roosevelt was of a similar opinion) (19) that he would now become.
Understanding this then allows us to explain points E and F in that while it is true that Kaufman had no known connections to any jewish organization or President Roosevelt: his plan seems likely to have been to use the publicity and interest he believed 'Germany Must Perish!' would generate to establish those kinds of contacts.
We can thus see that Herf's and Benz's arguments about the irrelevancy of Kaufman's 'Germany Must Perish!' are right merely in the sense of technicalities, but their interpretation and conclusions about Kaufman's book are incorrect in large part because they have signally failed to understand what Kaufman was trying to do and did not interpret that in the context of what such a move would have looked like from a National Socialist point of view.
Now while Kaufman obviously failed in his attempt to build an elite coordinating agency/working group around the ideas enunciated in 'Germany Must Perish!' that does not mean Kaufman's ideas themselves lacked influence in the medium-long term. This we will cover in the second article relating to the relationship between Kaufman's plan and the later Morgenthau plan which clearly informed and was based on the blueprint provided by Kaufman especially as it had been modified to remove the more homicidal elements and take into account a different geopolitical situation on the ground in 1944/1945 rather than in 1940/1941. (20)
Part of the reason that Kaufman's 'American Federation of Peace' idea failed - aside from his own personal insignificance and apparent lack of contacts - was that he had launched it at precisely the wrong time when there was considerable support among American voters for isolationism while the American elite as a rule favoured intervention on the side of Allies. Had it been launched a year later then we can have little doubt that it would have had a much better chance of succeeding in building at least part of the group that he was looking to create.
We can thus see that Goebbels and Diewerge weren't so paranoid after all...
References
(1) Jeffrey Herf, 2006, 'The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust', 1st Edition, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, p. 110
(2) Ibid, p. 112
(3) Aristotle Kallis, 2008, 'Nazi Propaganda and the Second World War', 2nd Edition, Palgrave MacMillan: Basingstoke, p. 116
(4) Herf, Op. Cit., p. 112
(5) https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/germany-must-perish-theodor-nathan
(6) These are all drawn from Wolfgang Benz, 1981, 'Judenvernichtung aus Notwehr?', Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 615-630
(7) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,884346,00.html
(8) See Revilo Oliver, 2006, 'America's Decline: The Education of a Conservative', 1st Edition, Historical Review Press: Sussex, pp. 189-198
(9) The full text is available here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Germany_Must_Perish
(10) Wolfgang Diewerge, Anon. (Trans.), 2003, 'The War Goal of World Plutocracy: Germany Must Die!', 1st Edition, Preuss: USA, p. 5
(11) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,884346,00.html
(12) See Russel Lemmons, 1994, 'Goebbels and “Der Angriff”', 1st Edition, University Press of Kentucky: Lexington, pp. 24-25; also another National Socialist propagandist Johann von Leers used a similar type of tactic in his popular anti-jewish pamphlets (see Darren O'Brien, 2011, 'The Pinnacle of Hatred: The Blood Libel and the Jews', 1st Edition, The Hebrew University Magnes Press: Jerusalem, p. 30)
(13) Oliver, Op. Cit., p. 191
(14) Herf, Op. Cit., p. 53; also, for example see Lucien Sternberg, 1970, 'La Revolte des Justes', 1st Edition, Librairie Artheme Fayard: Paris, pp. 2-4
(15) Bernard Wasserstein, 2012, 'On the Eve: The Jews of Europe before the Second World War', 1st Edition, Profile: London, pp. 39-41; 46; 56; 108
(16) Like those organized in France by LICA (La Ligue Internationale contre l'Antisémitisme Allemand) cf. Paula Hyman, 1998, 'The Jews of Modern France', 1st Edition, University of California Press: Berkeley, p. 151
(17) For details see Udo Walendy, 1981, 'Truth for Germany: The Guilt Question of the Second World War', 1st Edition, Institute for Historical Review: Torrance, pp. 164-185
(18) Diewerge, Op. Cit., p. 6
(19) Kallis, Op. Cit., pp. 116-117
(20) https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/germany-must-perish-theodor-nathan