ABSTRACT
NOT all Germans, and certainly very few non-Germans, have been able to swallow whole the racial policy of Hitler and the Nazi Party. Had Hitler based his whole propaganda against the Jews, in Germany and abroad, on his race theory, it is very doubtful whether he would have met with much success. Within Germany he was thus compelled at the start of his propaganda activities to make out a case against the Jews which might appeal to those who would have laughed his race theories to scorn. He was obliged to appeal to the instincts of envy, and in addition he appealed to the political passions which were very lively in postwar Germany. Following the maxim laid down in Mein Kampf (“The skill of really great leaders of the people at all times lay primarily in not dividing the attention of the people, but concentrating always on one single thing…. It is part of the genius of a great leader to make appear as belonging to one category even enemies that actually have nothing to do with one another”)1 he invariably attributed all the difficulties encountered by the people to the Jews. Those who attributed all their sufferings to the evil effects of Communist machinations, were told that the Communists were really all Jews, or at any rate in the pay of Jews. The workers, on the other hand, were told that the bad working conditions were due to the machinations of the “Jewish capitalists” in the banks, stock exchanges, etc. The middle-class shopkeepers were told about the “Jewish department store”, and the students, who owing to over-crowding of the professions had but small hope of being able to earn a livelihood, were told that the Jewish lawyers and Jewish doctors took the bread out of their mouths. In every case, invariably, the influence of the Jew was magnified out of all proportion, so that finally people really began to believe that there were Jews everywhere and that all the troubles and hardships encountered in life were due to the Jews.
