THE LANGUAGE OF THE THIRD REICH LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii

A Philologist's Notebook

Victor Klemperer

Translated by Martin Brady

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154

VICTOR KLEMPERER

Life admits of combinations nu novelist wou Id Jilow himself, tor in .i 11< '', I

they would appear too fanciful. I had collected my notes on Europe lro111 1111

Hitler period and was considering whether we could now return to d 111111 1

notion of Europe, or whether we would drop the concept entirely, ll<'1 ·"'"' in Moscow, the place still ignored by the Frenchman Vall-ry, thl' 11111·.t

unadulterated European thinking is now being directed literally 'at l'V• 11 one', and, as far as Moscow is concerned, there is just the world a11d 1111

longer the special province of Europe - when all of a sudden I receivl'd 1111

first letter from Jerusalem from my nephew Walter, the lirst for six y<'.i 1 ·. 11 was no longer sent from the Cafe Europe. I don't know whetherthe call' l'\1·.1·

any longer, but l read the absence of its address as symbolically as I 1111·11 ously had its existence. 1-kcause the content of the letter also notiu .. 1ld1

lacked the European dimension that had been there before. 'You may 11.111

read something abou\ it in the newspapers (it said), but you can't begi11 1"

imagine what our Nationalisls are up lo here. Is that why I left l-li1l11

Germany?' ... So the Cafe h'urope in Jerusalem really did have nowhl'r•· 1"

stay any more. Hui this belongs to the .Jewish chapter uf my LTI.

25

The Star

Today I ask myself again the same question I have asked myself ;md all kinds

of people hundreds of limes; which was the worst day lor !he .Jews during

those twelve years of hell? I always, without exception, received the same answer lrom mysell and

others: 19 September 194 l. From that day on it was compulsory lo wear the •· kwish star, the six-poin!ed Star of David, !he yellow piece of doih which

today still stands for plague and quarantine, and which in !he Middle Ages

was the colour used \0 idenlify !he .Jews, !he colour of envy and gall which

has enlered the bloodslream; !he yellow piece of clo!h wilh 'kw' printed on

It in black, the word framed by the lines of the two telescoped !riangles, a word rnnsisling of !hick block capitals, which are separa!ed and given broad,

rxaggera!ed horizonwl lines lo effl'C\ the appearance of !he Hebrew script. The descrip!ion is too long? But no, on !he contrary! I simply lack !he

ehility 10 pen precise, vivid descriptions. Many was 1he time, when it came

· tu sewing a new star 01110 a new piece uf clothing (or rather an old one from

the Jewish clo1hing store), a jacket or a work coat, many was the lime that

I would examine the cloth in minule de1ail, !he individual specks of the yt'llow fabric, the irregularities of the black imprinl - and all of these indi­

vidual segments would no\ have been sufficien\, had I wanted lo pin an

1gonizing experience wilh !he star on each and every one of them.

A man who looks upright and good-humoured comes towards me ll'ading

II young boy carefully by the hand. He stops one siep away from me: 'Look

Ill him, my little Horst! - He is lo blame for everything!' ... A well-groomed

man with a white beard crosses the road, gree\s me solemnly and holds ou\ his hand: 'You don't know me, bu! I must tell you 1ha1 I u\terly condemn

155

VICTOR KLEMPERER

these measures.' ... I want to get onto the tram: I am only allowed to 11.,,

the front platform and then, only if I am travelling to the factory, and 01il1 if the factory is more than 6 kilometres from my flat, and only if the 1111111

platform is securely separnted from the inside of the tram; I want to get 1111 it's late, and if l don't arrive punctually at work the boss can report me to 1111

Gestapo. Someone drags me back from behind: 'Go on foot, it's much hcal1l1

icr for you!' An SS officer, smirking, not brutal, just having a bit of fun"" II he were teasing a dog ... My wile says: 'It's a nice day and for once I hJv1·11 1

got any shopping to do today, I don't hJve to join any queues-I'll come su1111

of the wJy with you!' - 'Out of the question! Arn I to stJnd in the street .111d

watch you being insulted because of me? What's more: who knows whe1lll'1 someone you don't even know will get suspicious, and then when you .111

getting rid of my manuscripts you'll Jccidentally bump into them!' . . i\

removal man who is friend I y towards me following two moves - good peopl•

with more than a whiff of the KPD - 1 is suddenly standing in front of nH· 111 the Freiberger Str<il~e, takes my hand in both of his paws and whispers i11 ,, tone which must be audible on the other side of the road: 'Well, I k11

Professor, don't let it get you down! These wretched brothers of ours will

soon have reached rock bottom!' This is me;mt to comfort me, and it "'' tainly warms the heart; but if the wrong person hears it ovcr there, my c1111

soler will end up in prison and it will cost me my life, via Auschwitz ... 1\

passing car brakes on an empty road and a strangcr pokes his head out: 'Y1111 still alive, you wretched pig? You should be run over, across your belly! .

No, the individual segments would not he sufficient to note down all 1111 bitterness caused by the .Jewish star.

On the Georgplatz there used to be a statuette of Gutzkow on the g1«w.

all that is ldt of it now is the plinth in the furrowed earth; I had a parti111

larly soft spot for this bust. Who nowadays has heard ol the !Wier vom <l<"1.11

(Knights of the Mind)? I had the pleasure of reading all nine volumes for 1111

PhD dissertation, and many years previously my mother had told me that""

a girl she had lapped it up as the most modern novel around, despite the L1< 1

that it was really proscribed reading. But it i<, not the Kn(qhls of Lhc ivli11,/

which I am reminded of when I pass the bust of Gutzkow. Rather, the Und

Acosla, which l saw in the Kroll as a 16-year-old. By that time it had bcrn dropped almost entirely from the repertoire, and il was the duty of evc1 \

critic to say that it was a bad play and point only to its weaknesses. l, on tl1c

other hand, was shattered by it, and one sentence in particular has stayed

1 Abbrevi,Hion of KommuJ1i.,tischc: Partt.:i Deutst'hfonds, the Genna11 Co111munist PJrty.

156

THE STAR

with me throughout my life. On an umber of occasions when I encountered anti-Semitic reactions I felt I could relate to it particularly strongly, but it

.. really only got to the heart of my very own existence for the first time on

that 19 September. It reads: 'l would truly like to submerge myself in the

multitude and go with the great flow of life!' I! is true, I was already cul off from the multitude in 193 3, and indeed so was the whole of Germany from

that point; but all the same: as soon as I had left the flat behind me, and the street in which everyone knew me, I could submerge mysell in the great

flow, not without !'ear, of course, because at any mmnent anyone with mali­

cious intent could recognize and insult me, hut it was nevl·rtlwless a sub­mersion; now, howeve1~ I was recognizable to everyone all the time, and

being recognizable isolated and outlawed me; the reason given for the

measure was that the Jews had to be segregated, given that their cruelty had been proved beyond doubt in Russia.

Now, for the first time, the ghettoization was complete: prior to this point,

the word 'Ghetto' only cropped up on postmarks beJring such addresses as 'Litzrnanns1ad1 Ghetto' - it was reserved exclusively for conquered lands

abroad. ln Germany there were isolated .Jews' Houses into which the .Jews

were crowded together, and which from time to time were provided with a

sign on the outside bearing the name '.ludcnhaus (.Jews' House)'. But these houses were situated in Aryan districts, and were themselves not occupied

exclusively by Jews; it was for this reason that one sometimes saw the dec­

laration on other houses 'This House is Free of Jews [judcnrcin)'. This sen­

tenn' dung to a numlll'r of walls in thick black letters until the walls

themselves were destroyed in the bombing raids, whilst the signs prodaim­

ing 'Fully Aryan Shop {rein arischcs Gcschi.ifil', the hostile 'Jewish Shop!'

daubings on display windows, together with the verb 'arisicrcn (to aryanize)'

and the pleading words on the shop door 'I-inti rely Aryanized Business!' very

soon disappeaft'd, because there were no more .Jewish shops, and nothing left that could be aryaniznl.

Now that the Jewish star had lll'l'll introduced, it made no difference

whether the .Jews' Houses were scattered or gathned together into their

own district, htTJuse every star-bearing .Jew carried his own Ghetto with

him like a snail with its shell. And it was irrelevant whl'lher or not Aryans lived in his house together with the .Jews, because the star had to be stuck

above his name on the door. If his wile was Aryan she had to put her name away from the star and add the word 'Aryan'.

And soon other notices began to appear here and there on the doors

leading off the corridors, Medusa-like notices: 'The .ll'w Weil lived here.'

157

VICTOR KLEMPERER

At which point the postwoman knew she didn't have to worry about hh

address; the letter was returned to sender with the euphemistic remark 'addressee gone away'. The result being that 'gone away {abgewandert}', wit Ii

its dreadful special meaning, definitely belongs in the lexicon of the LT!, in

the Jewish section. This section is full of official expressions and terms which were familiar to

those at whom they were directed, and who used them constantly in con­

versation. lt started off with 'non-Aryan' and 'to aryanizc', then there were

the 'Nuremberg Laws for the Preservation of the Purity of German Blood',

followed by the 'full Jews' and 'half-Jews' and 'mixed marriages of the first

degree' and other degrees, and 'Jewish descendants {Judenstiimmlinf!C)'. And,

most importantly, there were the 'privileged {l'rivilegierte}'.

This is the only invention by the Nazis where I am not certain whethn

the authors were fully aware of the diabolic nature of their contrivance. Till'

privileged only existed amongst groups of Jewish factory workers: the prel­

erential treatment they received consisted of not having to wear the star or live in the Jews' House. Someone was privileged if they lived in a mixed

marriage and had children from this marriage who were 'brought up as

Germans', which means they were not registercd as members of the Jewisl1

community. Perhaps this section, which in action repeatedly led to inequal­ities and grotesque hairsplitting, was really only created in order to protect

sections of the population deemed useful to the Nazis; but in practill' nothing was more divisive and demoralizing for the Jewish population than

this regulation. And how much envy and hatred it provoked! There are few

sentences that l have heard uttered more frequently and with more bitter·

ness than this one: 'He is privileged.' It means: 'He pays lower taxes than we do, he doesn't have to live in the Jews' House, he doesn't wear the star, he

can almost drop out of sight .. .' And how much arrogance, how much

pathetic gloating- pathetic because ultimately they were in the same hell d'

we were, albeit in a better district of hell, and in the end the gas oven'

devoured the privileged as well - how much emphatic distance was couched in the three words 'lam privileged'. Now, when I hear of accusations lev­

elled by one Jew at another, of Jcts of revenge with serious consequenn's,

my first thought always turns to the universal contlict between those wh" bore the star and the privileged. Of course in the cramped living rnnditiom

of the Jews' House - shared kitchen, shared bathroom, shared hall for dil­

lerent groups - and the close-knit groups of Jewish workers in the factories,

there were innumerable other sources of friction; hut it was the distinctirn1 between privileged and non-privileged which ignited the most poisonom

158

'

THE STAR

resentments, because what was at stake was the most loathed thing of all,

the star. Again and again, and with only minor variations, I !ind sentences in my

diary such as the following: 'All the worst characteristics ol people come to

light here, it's enough to make you an anti-Semite!' From the second Jews' House onwards, however - I got to know three - outbursts of this kind arc

always accompanied by the rider: 'It's a good thing that 1 have now read

Dwinger's Die Armec hinter Stacheldrahl (The Army behind Barbed Wire). The

people herded together in the Siberian compound of the First World War are

not Jews at all, they are racially pure Aryans, German military mL·n, German

officers, yet what happens in this compound is exactly the same as what

happens in our .Jews' House. It has nothing to with rJce or religion, it is the herding and the enslavement .. .' 'Privileged' is the second worst word

in the .Jewish section of my lexicon. The worst remains the star itself.

Sometimes it is viewed with gallows humour: I am wearing the !'our le Sbnitc

is a widespread joke; sometimes people claim not only to others, but also to themselves, that they arc proud of it; right at the very end people pinned

their hopes on it: it will be our alibi! But for most of the time its shrill yellow

illuminates the most agonizing ol thoughts.

And the 'covered star' phosplwresces more poisonously than any other.

According to Gestapo regulations the stJr has to be worn uncovered, above

the heart, on the jacket, on the coat, on the work coJt, it must be worn at any

place where there is the possibility of an encountn with Aryans. If you open up your coJt on a humid day in March so that the coat Jlap is folded back over

your chest, if you carry a bridcase under your ll'lt arm, if as a wolllan you

wear a mulf, then your star is covercd, perhaps unintentionally, and only for

a few seconds, or perhaps even intentionally so that just for once you can

walk the streets without stigma. A Gestapo officer will always assume that you

intended to cover the star, and the punishment is the concentration calllp.

And it a Gestapo officer wants to demonstrate his zeal, Jllll you cross his path,

then the arm carrying the briefcase or wearing the mull may as well be hanging right down to your knees, and it doesn't lllattcr how correctly the

coat is buttoned up: the Jew Lesser or thl' Jl'wess Wintnstein has 'covered up

the star', and, within three months at the most, the rnmmunity will receive a formal death certificate from Ravensbruck or Auschwitz. It will state the cause

of death precisely, l'Ven with variations and an individual touch; it may say

circumspectly 'died of an inadequate cardiac muscle' or 'shot attempting to

escape'. Hut the real cause of death is the covered star.

159

26

The Jewish War

My neigh hour on the front platform looks at me piercingly and says quil'll\

but commandingly into my car: 'You are getting out at the main s1a1i1111 and coming with me.' It is the first time this has happen<:d to me, hut, frrn11

the stories of other people who wear the star, I know what it's all about. II

all passes olf without serious consequences, they are in a jolly mood .11111

see me as harmless. But since I can't know this in advance, and since l'v1·11

lenient and jovial treatment by the Gestapo is not something to be relisl1<·1I the incident is extr<:mely exhausting. 'I want to get rid of this one's IJe.i., my dog-catcher says to the porkr, 'let him stand here with his fr1ce to 111 ..

wall until I call him.' So I stand on the stairs for about a quarter of an ho111

with my [ace to the wall, and passers-by hurl abuse and advice at me s111 l1

as 'Hang yourself you Jewish dog, what are you waiting for?' ... 'Not b<·1·11

flogged enough yet?' ... At long last the order comes: 'Up here, but rn.ik .. it sharpish ... quick march!' l open the door and remain standing in Jrrn11

of the nearby desk. He addresses me in a friendly way: 'You've never hl'rn

up here befor<: have you? H.eally not? That's your good fortune - you'vl' .1

lot to learn ... Two steps from the table, stand to attention and annou11u· yourself properly: "Jew Paul Israel Dirty Pig or whatever, here!" So, h.11 k

out again, left, right! left, right! and heaven help you if you don't annm111< ,.

yourself zackig (smart) enough! ... Well, it wasn't very zack(q, but good enough for a Jirst attempt. So, out with the fleas. Hand over your iden1i11

card and papers, empty your pockets, you've always got something stol1·11

or from the black market on you ... What, you're a professor? Yo11

wretch, how dare you think you can teach us anything! You deserve to lw

sent to Theresienstadt [or such impertinence alone ... No! You'1"

160

THE JEWISH WAR

nowhere near 65 yet, you'll end up in Poland. Not even 65 - and yet so

green about the gills, so doddery and always gasping for air! My God, you must have lived it up in your time, you look 75!' The inspector is in a good

mood. 'You're in luck that we haven't found anything prohibited on you. But

God help you if things look different in your pocket next timl'; you'll bl' on

your way if there's evl'n tilt' tiniest cigarette, even if you've got thrl'l' Aryan wives ... Fall out, on the double!'

I already have my hand on thl' door handle when he calls me hack: 'At home you'rl' all praying !or the Jewish victory, aren't you. Don't gawp at me

like that, and don't answer either, because J know you do. It's your war -

what? You'rl' shaking your hl'ad? Who arc Wl' at war with thl'n? Open your

mouth when you're asked a question, you're supposed to bl' a professor

aren't you?' - 'With England, France and Russia, with .. .' - 'Oh shut up,

that's a load of rubbish. We're at war with the .Jews, it's the .Jewish war. And

if you dare shake your head once more I'll hit you so hard you'll have to go straight to the dentist. It's the Jewish war, the Flihrer said so, ,rnd the Fiihrer

is always right ... get out!' The Jewish war! The Flihrn didn't come up with this idea, he had

certainly nevl'r hl'ard of Flavius .Josephus, he simply noticl'd Olll' day in

the newspaper or in a shop window that the .Jew Feuchtwanger had

written a novel called Uer jiidische Krieg (The Jewish War). 1 It is probably likl'

this with all the characteristic words and expressions of the LTI: England is no longer an island, VerrnassunH (de-individualization}, Versleppung {to turn

into steppes), h'inmal(qkcit {uniqueness}, l!ntcrmenschentum {subhumanity},

etc. - they have all been appropriated from somewhere, yet they arl' also all

new, and will rl'main forevl'r part of the LTI, bl'causl' thl'y all entered the

common language from secludl'd corners of intimate, technical or group­

specific usage and Wl'rc contaminated through and through with Nazi

ideology.

The .Jewish war! I shook my head when I heard it, and lislt'd each indi­vidual country at war with Germany. And yet, from the point of view of

National Socialism, the term is entirely appropriate, indeed in a much

broader sense than was intended at the time; because the Jewish war had begun with the 'takeover of power' on 30 January 1933, and on I September

1939 had only undergone an escalation of hostilities (Kriegserweiterun.']), to

use what later temporarily became a fashionable LT! term. I have long

1 Published in England in 1932 under the title .Josephus.

161

VICTOR KLEMPERER

resisted the assumption that we - aud it was precisely because I had to say

'we' that I considered it a narrow and conceited self-deception - that W('

should really be at the centre of Nazism in this way. But it really was the cas(',

and the way in which this situation came about is clear lor all to see. One only has to consult carefully the relevam pages in the chapt('t

'Apprenticeship and Suffering: the Vienna Years' in Mein Kampf; in whid1

Hitler describes his 'conversion to anti-Semitism'. Although much of it i'

dearly vague, embellished and fabricated, there is one thing which i'

undoubtedly true: this completely uneducated and insecure man first uimn

across politics at the hands ol the Austrian anti-Semites Lueger and Sd1iinerer, whom he looks up to from the perspective of the gutter. In tlH·

most primitive way, he categorizes all Jews - he will call them 'the Jcwisl1

people' until the day he dies - as Galician pedlars; in the most primitive way

he vilifies the appeJrance of the greasy old man wearing a kaftan; in tlH·

most primitive way he heJps the sum of all imaginable depravities onto thi'

person he has elevated to the status of an allegoric.ii figure, the '.Jcwisl1 people' indeed, and on whom he vents his anger in the midst of extreme bit­

terness at his lack of success during the period in Vienna. ln every malignant

'tumour of cultural lifr' he inevitably finds 'a littll' Jew {Jzidleinl ... like .i

maggot in a rotting corpse'. And all Jewish activities in every field arc, as fa1

as he is concerned, a pestilence, 'worse than the Black Death of old' ...

'Judlein' and 'Black Deal h', an expression of scornful derision and c111

expression of terror, of panic-stricken fear: these are the two distinct styk" that will always crop up with Hitler whenever he refers to the Jews, whit 11

means in every one of his spn·ches and addresses. He never grew out of hi"

initial childish and infantile attitude to the Jews. Herein lies a considerahil'

part of his strength, because it unites him with the dullest section of the pop

ulation, which, in the age of the machine, is plainly not made up of tlw industriJI proletariat, nor does it consist exclusively of the peasantry, but

rather derives from the conc,·ntrated masses of the petty bourgeoisie. Fo1

them anyone who dresses differently or speaks differently is not simply a dil

ferent person, but a dilferent animal from a different sty with whom ther•·

can be no accommodation, and who must be hated and hounded out. J{au·.

as a scientific and pseudo-scientific concept, only appeared in the middle ol the eighteenth century. But as a feeling of instinctive antagonism toward"

anything foreign, a tribal animosity towards it, the sense of race belongs t<>

the earliest stage of human development; it is overcome at the point whc1 ,.

the individual horde of people learns not to regard the neighbouring honk

as an entirely different pack of animals.

162

THE JEWISH WAR

But whilst Hitler's anti-Semitism is a correspondingly basic feeling, rooted in the man's intellectual primitiveness, the Flihrer also possesses, seemingly

from the outset, a large measure of that calculating guile which doesn't seem

to accord with an unsound mind, but so often seems to go hand in hand with

it. He knows perfectly well that he can only expect loyalty from those who

inhabit a similarly primitive world; and the simplest and most effective

means of keeping them there is to nurture, legitimize and as it were glorify

the instinctive hatred of the Jews. In the process he plays on what is the

weakest spot in the cultural thinking of the nation. When did the .Jews at last emerge from their segregation, from their special sty, and when were

they last integrated into the nation JS a whole? The emancipation goes back

to the beginning of the nineteenth century, hut is only irnplemenll'd fully in Germany during the 1860s, and in Galici;m Austria a tightly knit group of

Jews doesn't want to relinquish its unique way of life, and thereby repeat­

edly provides those who speak of an un-European people, an Asiatic race of

Jews, with the concrl'le illustrative material and evidence they are looking for. And just at the poi111 when Hitler is formulating his first political opin­

ions, the Jews themselves sl'l him on the path best suited to him; it is the

time of the rise of Zionism; it does not mJke much of a mark at the time in

Germany, but in Vienna, during Hitler's years of apprenticeship and suffer­ing, it is already noticeable. Here it amounts to - and I quote Mein Kampf

again - a 'major nmveml·nt of no mean proportions'. If you base anti­

semitism on the notion of race, you don't only give it a scientific or pseudo­

scientitic foundation, but also a basis in traditional lolk history {cine urspriin_q/ich vo/kstiimliche Basisl which makes it indestructible: because

a man can change his mat, his customs, his l'ducation and his hclid, but not his blood.

But what is to be gained from nurturing an indestructible hatred ol the

Jews retrogressively embeddl'd in the dullnl'ss of instinct? An enormous

amount. Such an enormous amount in fact, that I don't consider anti­semitism to be a specific application of their universal racial dogma, but

rathl'r am convinced the universal racial doctrine was only taken on and for­

mulated in order to justify anti-Semitism in the long term and scientifically.

The Jew is the most important person in Hitler's state: he is the best-known

Turk's head of folk history {der volks!Um/ichste Turkenkopf) and the popular

scapegoat, the most plausible adversary, the most obvious common denom­

inator, the most likely brackets around the most diverse of factors. Had the Fi.ihrer really achieved his aim of exterminating all the Jews, he would have

had to invent new ones, because without the Jewish devil - 'anyone who

163

VICTOR KLEMPERER

doesn't know the Jew, doesn't know the devil' it said in the S/urmer displ.1\

cases - without the swarthy Jew there would never have been the radi.1111

figure of the Nordic Teuton. Incidentally, the Flihrer would not have had .Ill\

great difficulty inventing new Jews, given that the English were repeatl'di \

referred to by Nazi authors as descendants of the lost biblical lineagl' 1>1

the Jews.

Hitler's fanatical guile is demonstrated by his perlidious and shameles"i\

blatant instructions to the propagandists of the Party. The golden ruk 1·.

always: don't let your listeners engage in critical thought, deal with evl'1 y

thing simplistically! When referring to various enemies, some people crnild

jump to tht: conclusion that you, the individual, are perhaps in the wro11g

the answer is to reduct: everything to a common denominator, brack1·1

everything togetht:r, show them the common ground! The .kw can provid1·

all of this graphically, and in a way that the people can relate to. In so doi11;:

it is important to observe the use of the personilying and allegorical sing11

Jar. Once again not an invention of the Third Reich. Traditional folk son;:".

historical ballads, and also the down-to-t:arth language of the soldit:r in till'

First World War are all partial to expressions such as 'the Russian', 'tl11·

Briton', 'the Frenchman'. But in referring to the .Jew, tht: LT! exlt'nds the""'.

of tht: allegorizing singular article well beyond the lormer domain of till'

landsknecht.

Der Jude - tht: word is even more prominent in everyday Na1.i usilge th.111

'fanatisch', but even more common than the word 'Jude' is the adjectivl'

'judisch {Jewish}', because it is the adjective above Jll which has the bratk

eting effect of binding togl'lhn all adversaries into a single enemy: thl'

Jewish-Marxist We/tanschauung, the .kwish-13olshevist philistinism, till'

Jewish-Capirnlist systl'rn ol l'xploitation, thl' kl'en Jewish-English, Jewish

American interest in seeing Germany destroyed: thus Imm I 9 31 every si11gi1·

hostility, regardless ol its origin, can be tracl'd back to onl' and the sarnl'

t:nemy, Hitler's hidden maggot, the .Jew, who in moments ol high drama i"

referred to as '.Judah' or, with even greater pi!thos, 'Alljuda {Univers.ii

.Judah}'. And whatever actions are taken, they Jre, lrom the very outsl'l,

defensive measures in an unavoidable Wilr, the Jewish war - from I

September 1939 'aufgczwungen {imposed}' is the customary adjective tu

accompany the word 'war', but ultimately l September didn't bring abrn11

anything new, only a continuation of the murderous Jewish attJcks 011

Hitler's Germany, and we, the peace-loving Nazis, are only doing what w1·

have done up to now - cleknding oursdves: sincl' this morning 'we a11·

returning enemy tire' as our tirst war bulletin puts it.

164

THE JEWISH WAR

However, this .kwish desire to kill is not a product of deep-seated reflec­

tion or particular interests, not even of a hunger for power, but of the kwish

race's innate and 'profound hatred (HaJW of all that is Nordic and Teutonic.

This profound Haj~ felt by the Jews is a diche which circulated throughout

the twdve years. There is no protection against innJlt' hatred other than the

dirnination of the hater: thus it is a logical step to proceed from the stabi­

lization of racially motivated anti-Semitism to the necessity of l'Xtcrminat­

ing the Jews. Hitler only once spoke of 'wiping out {Ausradicrcn}' the English

dties, it was a unique utterance which, as in J]] his uses of the superlative,

can be explained in tl'rms of his unrl'strained megalomania. 'Ausrallcn {to

exterminate}', on the other hand, is a common verb, it belongs to the genl'ral

vocabulary of the LT! and tinds its homl' in thl' .Jewish sectiun, it dl'notes a

goal to be aimed at zealously.

Racially motivatl'd anti-Sl'mitism, lor Hitler initially a feeling rl'sulting

from his own primitiveness, is thl' central concern of Nazism, well thought­

out and carefully developed into a n>lll'rl'nt system, right down to thl' last

detail. In Goebbels's Kampf um /!erli11 (Battle !or Berlin) thcrl' is thl' loilow­

ing passage: 'You could describe t hl' .Jew as a rl'prl'ssed infcriorit y rnmplex

made llesh. This is why the best possible way to sting him is to rdcr to him

by his real name. Call him a wretch, rogue, liar, criminJI, murdcrl'r or killer.

Beneath the surface he will barely be alkcted. But look him straight into thl'

eye long and hard and thl'n say: you're a .lt:w aren't you! And you will bl'

amazed to discover thJt hl' immn!iately looks insl'cure, embarrassl'd and

guilty .. .' A lil' (this it has in common with i.l joke) is i!ll thl' morT dlectivt·,

the more truth it contains. Goebbels's obsl'rvation is at"t"uratl', but lor thl'

mendacious word 'guilty'. Srnnl·one spokl'n to in this way would not

hecomt: aware of any guilt, but his prl'vious Sl'curity would turn into total

helplessness, bl'cause thl' Jsccrtainment ot his .lt'wishnl'ss would cut the

ground from umkr his kl'l and deny him any chance ol mutual under­

standing, or of lighting a battle as an equal.

Anything and l'verything in the Sl'Ction ol the LT! relating to the .it'ws is

geared to Sl'grl'gating thl'm as compktl'iy and irreconcilably as possible l'rom

everything German. Onl' lllOllll'Tlt they arc characterized as the .Jewish

people, as the .Jewish race, 1 he nl'xt as global .Jews or international .ll'wry;

in both cases what counts is their non-Gcrmannl'ss. Thl'y arl' no longer

allowed to practise as doctors and lawyers; and sincl' thl'y thl'mselvl's nenl

a few doctors and lawyers, who havl', ol' course, to come lrom their own

ranks given that the Germans arl' not supposed to have any more contact

with them, thest: medics and jurists who are only Ji lowed to deal with .kws

165

t

VICTOR KLEMPERER

are given special names, they are called Krankcnbehandler {medical workl'1 ·.1 and Rechtskonsulenten [legal consultants]. In both cases the imemion is 11<>\

only to segregate, but also to belittle. In the case of lhl' consultant tJfr, '"

more apparent because a distinction had been drawn in the past betwn·11 Winke/konsu/enten [shady legal advisers} and academic or state-licrns<"tl

lawyers; Krankenbehandler only sounds disparaging because it withholds t f,..

official and customary job title. In some cases it isn't easy to determine why a particular expression sou11tl"

disdainful. Why is the Nazi term 'JudenHottesdienst [the Jews' rdigi<111·.

service}' belittling'? It implied nothing more than the neutral 'jiidiscl1<'1 Gottesdienst {Jewish religious service}'. I suspen that the reason is that it '" somehow reminiscem of exotic travd journals, o! some African native nilt

or other. And here I am probably on the right track: the Jews' rdigirn1" service is dedicated to the God of the .kws, and the God ol the Jews is a tril>.il

god and tribal idol and no\, at least not yet, the one, universal deity to wlH>111

the Jewish religious service is dedicated. Sexual relations between Jews .111tl Aryans are referred to as l~assenschande (racial ddikmenl, li1erally: r<H i.il

shame}, the Nuremberg synagogue, which he has destroyed during a 'cc1<"

rnony', is referred to by Streicher, the leader of the Franconians, as 1111

Schande von NiirnberH {Nuremberg's shame}, and he calls synagogues i11

general robbers' caves - no analysis is necessary to explain why this sou11<I"

insulting rather than just frosty. Explicit abuse directed at the Jews is .ii""

exceedingly common; it is rare to come across the word 'Jew' from eitllt'1

Hitler or Goebbels wilhou\ its being accompanied by such adjectives as .'I""' sen (cunning], /ist(q (wily], bctriiHcrisch {deceitful],/e(qe (cowardly}, and I h('\(

is also no lack of traditional terms of abuse which relate to physical attril•

utes including plallfiij~iH [flat-footed}, krummnasig [hook-nosed}, wassers,hc11 (water-shy}. For the more educated palate, the terms parasitiir {parasitic} .111tl

nomadisch {nomadic} arc to hand. If you want to accuse an Aryan ol t l1t

worst thing imaginable you call him a slave of the Jews, if an Aryan wo111.111

doesn't want to be separated from her Jewish husband she is a Jew's wh"1' if you want to hit ou\ al the dreaded intelligentsia you can refer to ho"k

nosed intellectualism. ls it possible to discern any change, development or differentiation i11 1111

use of this invective during the twelve years? Yes and no. The poverty ol t 111

LT! is prodigious, ii uses exactly the same obscenities in January I 945 t li.11

it had already used in January 1933. And yet, despite the consistency ol t 111 ingredients, a change is discernible, indeed terribly so, if you considt'I .i

speech or a newspaper article in its entirety.

166

THE JEWISH WAR

I return for a moment to the Jiid/ein [little Jew} and the Black Death in

Hitler's Mein Kampf the contemptuous tone and the fearful tone. One of the most commonly repeated and paraphrased remarks of the Flihrer is his

threat to wipe the smile off the faces of the Jews, which later turned into the

equally common declaration that it really had been wiped off their faces.

This is true, and is confirmed by the bitter Jewish joke that Hitler was only

as good as his word when it came to the Jews. But the smile was also grad­

ually wiped off the face of the Fiihrer and the entire J'.fl, or rather it becomes

increasingly twisted and forced, bdore turning into a mask behind which

mortal agony and, finally, desperation attempt in vain to hide. During the

final years of the war one never comes across the comic diminutive Jiid/ein hut instead one senses the dread of the Black Death behind all the expres­

sions of contempt and affected arrogance, and through all the boasting and

bragging.

The most powerful expression of this situation may well be an essay pub­

lished by Goebbels on 2 l January 1945 in the Reich entitled 'The Aul hors of all the Misfortune in this World'. It claims that the Russians, who have

already reached the outskirts of Breslau, and the Allies on the western

border, are nothing but 'mercenaries in the global conspiracy of a parasitic race'. The .Jews are driving millions of people to their death out of repul­

sion at our culture 'which they sense is far superior 10 their own nomadic

conception of the world', out of repulsion at our economy and our social

institutions because they don't any longer allow them 'freedom of move­

ment for their parasitic roaming' ... 'wherever you hunt you'll hunt out

the Jews!' But the smill' has already been 'thoroughly' wiped off their fares

on a number of occasions! And so even now '.Jewish dominion will be over­

thrown'. All the same: Jewish dominion and the Jews - no Jiidlein any

more.

One might ask whether this endless assertion ol Jewish mJlice and

inferiority, and the claim that the Jews were the sole enemy, did not in the

t•nd dull the mind and provoke contradiction. The question would immedi­

ately broaden out into the more all-embracing one regarding the value

and endurance of Goebbels's propaganda as J whole, leading finally to the question of the correctness of National Socialism's fundamental thinking

In the field of mass psychology. With great insistence and a high degree of

precision right down to the last detail, Hitler's Mein Kampf preaches no\ only that the masses are stupid, hut also that they need to be kepi that way and

Intimidated into not thinking. One of the main means of doing this is to hammer home incessantly the same simplistic lessons, ones whiL'h cannot

167

VICTOR KLEMPERER

be contradicted from any angle. And think bow many threads there c111

connecting the soul of the (invariably isolated) intellectual to the masses ti1.11

surround him! I am reminded of the little pharmacist wilh the Lithuanian-East Prussi.111

name from the last three months of the war. She had passed her difficult Ii 1 «1

degree, had received a good <ill-round education, was a passionate oppom·111

of the war and certainly not a supporter of the Nazis - she knew perfl« Ii\

well that it was nearly all over for them, and she longed for the end. Wlil'll

she was on night duty we used to have Jong conversations together, si1"

sensed our views and gradually dared to voice her own. We were on 11111

flight from the Gestupo, living under a false name, our friend in Falkens11·111

had provided us with shelter and rest, we slept in the back room ol 11,..

pharmacy underneath a picture of Hitler ... 'l never liked his arrogant attitude towards other nations,' said ii11l1

Stulgies, 'my grandmother is Lithuanian - why should she, why should I i11

any Jess worth than some pure German woman?' - 'Yes, their entire doctri1w

is based on purity of blood, on the Teutonic privilege, on anti-Semili""

.. .' - She interrupted me: 'In the case of the Jews he may well be rigi11

that's a somewhat different case.' - 'Do you personally know .. .' - 'No, 1'11

always avoided them, they give me the creeps. You hear and read such c1 1 .. 1

about them.' I tried to think of an answer which would combine caution and eniigli1

enment. The young girl was at most 13 when all the Hitler business br"k'

out - how could she know betler, when'. could one pick up the thread'.

At that point a full-scale alert was sounded as usual. It was better nol 1 ..

go down into the cellar as it contained carboys of explosive liquid. W1

huddled up against the solid pillars on the stairs. We weren't really in .1111

great danger, the target for the pilots was usually the much more imporl.1111

town of Plauen. Today, however, there was a n<Jsty and horribly illllJ'.

minute. Heavy squadrons flew over us at short intervals, so tightly (hH k11I

and so low that everything around us quaked and trembled at the de,1k11

ing noise. Bombs could explode at any moment. Images of the nigli1 111

Dresden passed before my eyes, and the same sentence kept going thro111'.i1

my mind: the thrashing of the wings of death, it's not a hollow phrasl', 1111

wings of death really do thrash. Squeezed up against the pillar and rn1 l1 d

up into a ball, the young girl breathed loudly and heavily, it was a b.11"1\

suppressed groaning. Finally they were gone, we rnuld straighten up and return from the d.11 I

and cold stairs into the light and warmth of the pharmacy, like coming lo.11 I

168

THE JEWISH WAR

to life. 'Let's go to bed now,' I said, 'experience has shown that there won't

be another alert before tomorrow morning.' Suddenly, and with a burst of

energy as if she were ending a lengthy dispute, the otherwise gentle little

woman replied, 'And it is the Jewish war after all.'

169