I. Ideological Roots: Antecedents & Context - Historical Antecedents & Preconditions
Historic Roots of Nazism
SG#4 German Racial Nationalism and Antisemitism. Why Germany?
Antisemitism in Germany - By-product of German Racial Nationalism
Roots of Nazism. Modern Germany up to 1914
Lecture 4. Bauer, 50-56
Objectives - Students will be able to:
Describe and explain German racial nationalism and German antisemitism (discuss the role of racism, nationalism, right/conservatism, the rise of racial nationalism) in the mid-19th century.
Discuss the historical circumstances behind the question: Why Germany?
I. Define/Identify
Racism; nationalism, extremists nationalism; romanticism. Herder; Fichte, Volk; Arthur de Gobineau, Richard Wagner, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Paul de Lagarde. 1st Reich, Bismark, 2nd German Empire, Wilhelm Marr, Adolf Stocker, Karl Lueger, Heinrich Treitschke, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Henry Ford, 1893 Pan-German Association/League; German industrialization.
II. Multiple-Choice Questions
1. The modern political movement of the 19th c., which roots lie in a shared sense of regional and cultural identity
a) despotism b) nationalism
2. By the late 19th & early 20th centuries, extreme nationalism
a) was concerned exclusively with the greatness and the needs of the nation
b) rejected the liberal emphasis on political liberty, and ideal of equality
c) was the seedbed of totalitarian nationalism
d) all the above
3. Racist nationalism was expressed in volkish thought (volk means folk or people), in
a) Italy b) Germany
4. This word means "people" or "nation." Nationalist. Germans used the term to exclude Jews, Gypsies, and other "non-Aryan" people
a) Volk b) Aryan
5. Movement in philosophy and the arts, and a set of attitudes, in the latter part of the 18th c., initiated in Germany and England; characterized by emphasis on feeling, emotion
a) romanticism
b) liberalism
6. With fanatical devotion, Volkish thinkers
a) embraced all things German: medieval past, German landscape, peasant and village
b) felt that Germans were animated by a higher spirit than that found in other peoples
c) denounced the liberal-humanist tradition of the West as alien to German soul
d) All the above
7. In the 19th c., the Romantic ‘Volkish’ movement excluded the Jews as strangers and second-class citizens, because
a) It exalted folkway and emphasized the purity of the national tradition
b) It evoked the image of a mythical golden past, with a supposed superiority
c) It produced an idealization of the Middle Ages with Christian knights
d) All the above
8. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others; discrimination or prejudice based on race.
a) ethnocentrism b) racism
9. In the 19th c., a traditional, biased Christian perception of Jews and Judaism was supplemented by
a) national-racial considerations
b) a constitution to convert them
10. Whereas Christian anti-Judaism believed that through conversion, Jews could escape the curse of their religion, racial antisemites said that Jews were indelibly stained and condemned
a) because they are guilty of deicide
b) by their genes; their evil derived from inherited racial characteristics
11. They developed theories, which were based primarily on opinions, prejudices, and non-scientific observation, to prove that one race was superior to another
a) Racial theorists
b) Aryanists
12. Originally, a term for peoples speaking the languages of Europe and India. Twisted by Nazis, who viewed those of Germanic background as the best examples of "superior" “____ race." As used by the Nazis, this term refers to a non-Jewish Caucasian of the Nordic type
a) Volk b) Aryan
13. In mid-19th c., this Frenchman published Essay on the Inequality of Human Races; he argued that he and his fellow French aristocrats were superior to the French masses by virtue of their pure Aryan stock; and that the Germans had inherited their superior racial qualities; he warned that cross-breeding and race-mixing were threatening its very survival.
a) Arthur de Gobineau b) Lamartine
14. The author of Essay on the Inequality of Human Races, in 1854, saw in what he called the ‘Aryan’ race -blond, tall, blue-eyed, a cultural people ______ to the others
a) superior
b) inferior
15. Racialist volkish thinkers claimed that
a) the German race was purer than, and therefore superior to, all other races
b) intermarriage between races was contamination
c) Jews were international conspirators plotting to dominate the world
d) all the above
16. German composer (1813-83) who fueled racial difference theory; expressed a German nationalistic terminology called volkisch, in racist terms; denounced the Jews for corrupting German culture.
a) Richard Wagner
b) Chopin
17. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927) asserted that
a) races differed not only physically, but also morally, spiritually, and intellectually
b) Germans, descendants of ancient Aryans, were a superior race
c) the Jews, foreign intruders, were undermining German society
d) all the above
18. Modern German antisemitism was based on
a) religion
b) nationalism, racism, & false racial theories
19. German racial nationalists insisted that as a superior race, Germans had a national right
a) to dominate others, such as the ‘racially inferior’ Slavs of the East
b) to make conquest
c) all the above
20. In late-19th c., Paul de Lagarde (1827-1891) said of the Jews:
a) “One does not have dealing with pests and parasites; ... one destroys them”
b) they are enemies of Germany
c) “One must deal equally with the Jews: they must have equal rights”
d) a & b
Modern Unified Germany - Before World War I (up to 1914)
21. Germans has
a) a strong tradition of democracy
b) no tradition of democracy
22. The 1st Reich (German Empire), a part of the Holy Roman Empire for over a 1000 years,
a) was a loosely patchwork of independent regions
b) was a unified centralized democratic state
23. By ‘iron & blood’ Bismark succeeded in guiding Prussia’s unification of
a) France
b) Germany
24. In 1871, under Bismarck and Wilhelm I, was established the
a) First Empire
b) Second German Empire
25. In 1871, Jewish emancipation was confirmed, under Bismarck and Wilhelm I, with the establishment of the
a) First Empire
b) Second German Empire
26. The Prussian leadership of German unification meant
a) the triumph of authoritarian, militaristic values
b) the triumph of democratic values
27. Up until World War I, Germans were used to
a) autocratic & military rulers
b) democracy
Political Antisemitism
28. Jews who could not belong to German blood & soil, were held responsible for socialism, capitalism, stock market failures, & for labor strikes. German racial nationalists singled out
a) Jews as the most wicked of races & a deadly enemy of the German people
b) Italians as a danger to the German people
29. The term antisemitism was first coined & used by this 19th century racial thinker, in 1879 a) Richard Wagner
b) Wilhelm Marr
30. A ‘modern,’ ‘scientific’ term for Jew-hatred & anti-Jewish movement, in a secular society (calling Jews a physically and mentally inferior group)
a) antisemitism
b) Judophobia
31. In Germany, _____________ - traditional opponents of liberalism on the political right, wedded to preserving the existing order; deliberately fanned the flames of antisemitism to win the masses over to their causes
a) German democrats
b) German conservatives
32. Using prejudice toward Jews to gain votes - using Jews as scapegoat for political & economic problems in order to gain political power
a) political antisemitism
b) religious Jew-hatred
33. The radical right, in political parties
a) saw Jew-hatred as a popular formula for mobilizing all social classes
b) manufactured the myth of the wicked Jew
c) a & b
34. In 1878, in Berlin, this emperor’s chaplain, a prominent Protestant preacher, founded an antisemitic party, the Christian Social Workers’ party, to recruit the lower bourgeoisie to the cause of the Prussian monarchy, and to rally working-class supporters of socialism
a) Adolf Stoecker (1835-1909) b) Karl Smith
35. In German-speaking Austria, this leader of the Christian Socialist party, founded by conservative German nationalists, was elected mayor of Vienna, exploiting antisemitism
a) Karl Lueger (1844-1928) b) Frank Smith
36. In Austria, this founder of the German National party wanted to eliminate Jews from all areas of public life
a) Georg von Schonerer b) Theodor Herzl
37. Historian Heinrich ________wrote in 1879, that ‘the Jews are our misfortune,’ repeated in Nazi propaganda
a) Treitschke b) Wagner
38. The myth of a Jewish conspiracy, to take over the world, found its culminating expression in the notorious forgery, written in France in the 1890s by an unknown author
a) The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
b) Jewish France
39. The famous forgery known as ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ which purported to be the record of a meeting of Jewish elders bent on subverting civilization and ruling the world, was published for the 1st time in 1903, in
a) Italy b) Russia
40. The famous forgery known as ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ was introduced to the United States by
a) Franklin Roosevelt b) Henry Ford
41. In the 1920s, they exploited The Protocols to justify persecution of the Jews
a) the Fascists b) the Nazis
42. Antisemitic politicians who preceded Hitler
a) failed to get the state to pass antisemitic laws
b) were successful in getting the state to pass antisemitic laws
43. In the minds of many Germans, the image of the Jew as an evil & dangerous creature had been firmly planted. It was perpetuated by schools, youth groups, and
a) the Pan-German Association founded in 1893
b) the Fascist Association founded in 1893
44. Long before the Nazis came to power, in the 19th c., the ______ had become centers of an integralist, exclusive, and radical German nationalism, with growing racist-biological overtones.
a) universities
b) villages
45. Rapid industrialization in the late 19th c. brought about the following in Germany
a) the nation became the leading industrial country in Europe
b) Jews were blamed & used as the scapegoats for the problems of industrialization
c) a & b
Copyright, Fall 1999, January 2004 Edith Shaked
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