Introduction

The advent of Nazism in the 1920s and 1930s shocked many Europeans who believed that first World War had been fought to make the “world safe for democracy.” Many Europeans perceived the nineteenth century as an age of progress based on the growth of rationalism, secularism, and materialism. Germany entered the nineteenth century as a divided state and did not become united until 1871. Moreover, since most Prussians, including Bismarck and the emperor, were Protestant, suspicions quickly arose that Catholic Germans were not truly loyal to the new unified nation. In Germany, there were three primary variants of anti-Semitism. Religious, political, and racial anti-Semitism, were prominent features of modern German life. However, the fact that the German military had launched the infamous “Jew Count” in 1916, a census that attempted to ascertain whether German Jewish soldiers were doing their fair share in the conflict, only played into the postwar anti-Semitic myths.