Sunday, May 04, 2014

National Socialists: Anti-Semitism from the Left

So, it was his socialism at the root of his anti-Semitism?

Against a ‘world of enemies’: the impact of the First World War on the development of Hitler’s ideologyBrendan Simms, March 2014

Adolf Hitler's experiences during the First World War have been much discussed, with historians tending to concentrate on his involvement in the fighting and the operational lessons he later claimed to draw. Much less has been written about the impact of the war on his world view, though recent work has tended to suggest that his paranoid anti-Semitism was not yet visible during the conflict.

Drawing on this latest research, but also on newly discovered sources and previously underused material, the author shows that Hitler’s main preoccupation during the war and its immediate aftermath was the overwhelming power of Great Britain and its American ally. He associated these two powers with the alleged international Jewish economic conspiracy that had crushed the German empire. Hitler’s anti-Semitism thus originated in an anti-capitalist, rather than anti-communist, discourse.

Anti-Semitism from the Left.



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