"For Eckart "Jewishness" was not a racial condition but a spiritual one ... The Jews are those, (he) said, who do not believe in a life after death; they therefore have no 'soul' themselves and seek to deny it in others."
-- Barbara Lane Miller & Leila J. Rupp
"There is no doubt that Mephisto, as Chamberlain says, embodies nature, since like an animal he is self-interested, quite brutal, insidious, and without shame or sorrow. In brief, it is as if he's soulless, and there is just as little debate that he symbolizes Jewish existence which is rooted in the physical world."
-- Dietrich Eckart, Das Is Der Jude, Auf Gut Deutsch, 1921
Toward a Hitler-Eckart Mythos
Hitler once told Josef Goebbels that Dietrich Eckart expressed "a clear, intellectually superior anti-Semitism, based on reason, not haphazard antipathies." [1] However, attentive readers will find it paradoxical and inconsistent. Eckart fancied his theories "spiritual," though they were actually profane. The chief expositions of his metaphysical anti-Semitism appeared in Auf Gut Deutsch articles "Jewishness In and Around Us" and "Das Ist Der Jude," and posthumous pamphlet "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin."
Between January and April, 1919 Eckart published the four-part "Jewishness In and Around Us." It opened with a scene from Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 23, with Paul being condemned by the Jewish Council for his belief in resurrection of the dead. As usual, high priests wanted to "reward ... the prophet's admonitions ... by stoning." [2] Eckart believed that orthodox Judaism's denial of post mortem existence indicated no "trace of feeling ... for the eternal in mankind." [3] Oblivious to spirituality, they concerned themselves exclusively with temporal matters. "If you do not believe in the immortality of the soul, all thoughts and endeavors are limited to ... earthly existence."4 According to Eckart, such
"pure affirmation of the world, ... the unchecked desire for transitory existence, leads to ... insanity ... Jewishness wants the de-spiritualization of the world and nothing else; but this would be the same as annihilation." [5]
Eckart's use of the terms world-affirmer (Welt-bejaher) and worlddenier (Welt-verneiner) comes straight from Otto Weininger's writings. World-affirmers are "half-natures mired in the here and now ... blind to the hierarchical nature of moral and social order. .. (who) embark on a journey of the flesh," [6] and have no appreciation of genius. World-deniers, on the other hand, realize that" ... the physical world is but a sordid reflection of a higher reality." [7] Eckart's "affirmer-denier" bifurcation corresponds approximately to the Aristotelian-Platonist distinction. He considered his anti-Jewish bigotry a boon to spiritual growth.
"My anti-Semitism rejects materialism and directs itself toward the positive free path of creativity." [8]
Citing Goethe's adage "as the man, so is his God," Eckart declares Jehovah "nothing but the projection of (Jews') innate existence." [9] For him this vengeful, legalistic, and xenophobic deity reveals Jewry's essence.
"Only the Jewish people exist for him; besides them no other volk is really worth thinking about. Unscrupulously, he robs ... other peoples of the fruits of their labor; they do that with equal joy. Often he abuses his own people; the same is true of them. Like the pettiest hairsplitter he sticks to the letter; they also ... " [10]
Since he does not acknowledge the soul's survival after death, Jehovah punishes the earthly descendants of evildoers "for the sins of their fathers, unto the fourth generation." [11]
Nowhere in this article does Eckart call for the extermination of Jews. He regards them as a part of creation, like tigers and jackals, which contribute to the planet's ecological balance.
"Jewishness belongs to the organism of mankind as, let us say, certain bacteria belong to the human body ... The body contains ... small organisms without which it would be destroyed, even though these microorganisms feed on it. Similarly, man needs the Jewish presence in order to remain vigorous until the fulfillment of its earthly mission." [12]
Eckart conceives of the Jewish "species" as a perennial and unavoidable scourge, like smallpox, sharks, and tornadoes. He asserts that the Jewish "crypto-nation ... will continue to survive until the end of time,"13 and concludes:
"Thus, we must accept the Jews among us as a necessary evil for how many centuries to come." [14]
The aging dramatist always had a greater interest in myth than reality. His worldview resembled a third-rate melodrama with Jewish villains persecuting hapless Aryan suckers. He agreed with Guido von List's conviction that the German Volk needed a new Ariosophical Mythos to replace Mediterranean Christianity. Germans must understand that Aryan blood meant "Soul" or "Inner Worth," which implied a special capacity to apprehend the Divine. In an Auf Gut Deutsch article he declared: "to be Aryan and to perceive transcendence are one and the same thing." [15] German idealists, like Parsifal, must form "a religious brotherhood of Templars to guard the Holy Grail, ... august vessel containing the pure blood ... that can absorb god-knowledge."16 According to this Manichean view lesser beings, such as Slavic "beast men" and Jewish "devil men", lacked Aryans' ability to comprehend the Transcendent. Eckart contended that any spiritual elements in Jewish tradition had been cribbed from other cultures -- monotheism from Atlantis, and the Kabbalah from Chaldea. These negative assumptions reflected deep-seated prejudices. Eckart deluded himself with his own myths, seemingly unable to discern where actuality began and his wild imagination ended.
Eckart's theological views bear a striking resemblance to Marcionism, an early Christian heresy which rejected Hebrew scriptures and Jehovah on the grounds that Jesus was sent by a Higher God. Marcion, a wealthy ship owner, and son of the Bishop of Sinope in Asia Minor, lived from about 110 A.D. to 160 A.D. His Antithesis, written c. 144, argued that Jehovah was
"inconsistent, jealous, wrathful and genocidal; and that the material world he created is (a) defective, ... place of suffering .... " [17]
The bungling and malicious demiurge who made earth into a den of strife and pain could not be the Transcendent God. This Higher Deity, which Marcion denominated "The Stranger God," eventually sent Jesus to reveal spiritual truths such as love and mercy. The Church excommunicated Marcion, who soon established his own sect in Asia Minor. In 208 A.D. Tertullian wrote Adversus Marcionem, which condemned his doctrines as erroneous and speculative. This five volume critique, which ironically preserved Marcion's writings for posterity, objected particularly to his acceptance of only Luke's Gospel and Paul's epistles as canonical, while jettisoning Matthew, Mark, John and the entire Old Testament.
Eckart despised the Old Testament and "black magician Moses," holding that "dark forces of separativeness and materialism use the Jewish race."18 "Diabolical" Jehovah was one of his pet hobby horses. He believed that Jews worshipped this malefic tribal deity and were consequently "possessed." Echoing Helena P. Blavatsky, Franz Hartmann, and other Theosophists Eckart regarded Jehovah as a wicked demiurge.
"Jehovah is the projection of the Jews' innate existence." [19]
He and other Ariosophists adopted the dualistic Zoarastrian legend which postulated that God created spirituality and Aryan super-men, while Jehovah made "sub-men" and the world of matter. Hitler shared this view, once telling Hermann Rauschning that Jews were "anti-men," creatures of an inferior God -- perhaps Uda Baoth, Helena Blavatsky's name for Jehovah. He and Eckart regarded Jews as "anti-natural," because of their internationalism, penchant for modernity, openness toward the synthetic and artificial, tendency to settle in urban areas, and supposed contempt for what stolid Germans considered "familiar and dear."
German Romanticism grew out of the Protestant Reformation. Every man could be a heretic and devise his own cosmology cafeteria-style. In the Protestant spirit, Helena P. Blavatsky, Franz Hartmann, Guido von List, Rudolf Steiner, Dietrich Eckart, and Adolf Hitler all designed customized belief systems. Eckart subscribed to an Ariosophical metaphysic. Though difficult to reconstruct exactly, its broad outlines conform to Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical doctrine that humans act as channels for spiritual forces. He repeatedly quoted Jesus's assertion in Luke 17:21: "the Kingdom of God is within you." Like Theosophy, Ariosophy accepted the Eastern doctrine that humans possessed not only physical bodies, but astral bodies of "higher vibration" and "finer texture." Communications from Spiritual Hierarchies osmose into men and women's nervous systems through these astral bodies, which are attached to the "crown chakra" (scalp) by means of an etheric umbilical cord. Unfortunately, lower spirits also inhabited the astral plane -- some benign, others evil. In either case, they often interfered with the Hierachies' transmissions. So did men's carnal personalities. Theosophists maintained that the Spiritual Ego (Oversoul, or Individuality) lies beyond our astral bodies. This ghostly "membrane" included previous incarnations, ancestral spirits, and other helpful entities comprising one's extended "support group." The next layer consisted of angels: Thrones, Dominations, Principalities, Seraphim, and Cherubim. Beyond them were the Seven Elohim who created the universe. They emanated from the Triune Deity -- "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," above which reigned the One/Most High (Atma.)
According to the Eastern Adepts with whom Madame Blavatsky communicated, each man and woman has a physical body, astral body, and spirit. After death, one's astral body dies in the etheric realm. This discarded capsule may take hundreds of years to decompose in Kama Loka ("Lower Heaven.") Mediums can only contact these "reliquae," or vacated astral remains, consisting of fading memories and "skandhas" (disembodied attributes.) Such Kama Lokic shells possess psychic intelligence merely by being outside earth's three-dimensional ambience. However, most of these ghostly entities are mischievous and amoral in character because of their detachment from the Higher Manas (Spiritual Ego, Hierarchies, Elohim, Trinity, Atma.) Hence, Blavatsky cautioned followers not to base metaphysical theories on information supplied by mediums.
Ariosophists referred to the Elohim's earthly interventions as "Sham ballas," and anticipated that one would occur soon. From the Armanen's revelations to Guido von List and Tarnhari, Pan-German occultists expected "Lords of Light" to send an Aryan Messiah to overcome "Lords of Material Form" who worshipped Moloch-like Jehovah. Blavatsky disciple Rudolf Steiner believed that Ariosophic mediums obtained such spurious information from elementals, not higher spirits.
In Eckart's eyes the crucifixion proved "Judah's hate for everything poured down from heaven." [20] The Jewish Temple establishment" had crucified Christ, who represented the Aryan spirit of transcendence. He quoted Otto Weininger's observation that the books of Exodus and Joshua showed Jews' "blind desire for annihilation" [21] against Canaanites, Moabites, and other neighboring ethnic groups. Because of Hebrews' alleged incapacity for state-formation, Palestine would never become their homeland, but only "an attempt at a state-or at worst, a training ground for the exploitation or destruction of foreign peoples." [22] They were, in Arthur Schopenhauer's words "a people governed by madness" who now hampered Germany's efforts to transfigure Europe.
Eckart contradicted himself when he labeled Jews a "crypto-nation" in one passage and "incapable of state formation" in another. Jewish kings ruled a national homeland from before the time of David (l,000 B.C.E.) until Zedekiah's defeat by Babylonian tyrant Nebuchednezzar in 587 B.C.E. Later restorations occurred under the Maccabees and Herods. Jews preserved a sense of nationhood -- with or without borders -- from the era of Egyptian captivity (1,400 B.C.E.) to present times.
In place of Judeo-Christian sects Eckart and other Ariosophists wanted to establish a Teutonic cult which preached racial hygiene, and used a liturgy based on Wagnerian opera. He lauded "Aryan Christ" (Chrestos) for driving moneychangers out of the Temple and rebelling against the narrow-minded Pharisaic establishment. Eckart repeated the absurd theory -- also held by Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Paul Lagarde, Julius Langbehn, Arthur Dinter, and others -- that Jesus was not a Jew because the word Galilee meant "district of the gentiles." On October 21, 1941 Hitler told those gathered in his drawing room that Jesus was the son of "Gallic" Roman Legionnaire "Pantheros" (or "Pandera") and a prostitute who might have been Jewish. Ironically, Hitler's sources -- probably Lagarde via Gougenot via Drach -- obtained the Pandera legend from The Talmud. King Solomon had sold that province to Tyre's monarch because so few Hebrews lived there. 2 Kings: 15-29 asserted that Assyrian potentate Tiglath Pileser had conquered Gilead and Galilee in 750 B.C., then carried off most survivors into foreign captivity. However, the province became predominately Jewish again more than two hundred years before Jesus's birth. Chamberlain quoted Jesus's words in Matthew 8: 12 as "further proof" that he wasn't Jewish: "the sons of the kingdom (observant Jews) will be cast into outer darkness." [23] Jewish high priests condemned the Aryan "Baldur Chrestos" to death because he preached against worldliness and promoted Nordic spirituality.
Eckart also praised Jesus as an Aryan hero:
"Christ stands never otherwise than erect, ... always upright. .. eyes flashing in the midst of cringing Jewish rabble ... His words fall like whiplashes: 'your father is the devil!' (John 8:44.)" [24]
Of course, the Gentile Jesus Theory doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Even a cursory examination of the Bible proves that Jesus was steeped in Jewish tradition. He constantly quoted Hebrew texts. For instance, "man shall not live by bread alone (Matthew, 4:4) comes from Deuteronomy 6: 13. "I desire mercy and not sacrifice," (Matthew 9: 13) cites Hosea 6:6. As New Testament footnotes confirm, Jesus alluded to Old Testament passages more than forty times in the Book of Matthew alone -- odd behavior for an "Nordic missionary." Eckart's anti-Semitic biases refused to admit that western civilization's saintliest man could be a Jew, but in fact he was.
Jesus the initiate (or Jehoshua) — the type from whom the “historical” Jesus was copied — was not of pure Jewish blood, and thus
recognised no Jehovah; nor did he worship any planetary god beside his own “Father,” whom he knew, and with whom he communed as every high initiate does, “Spirit to Spirit and Soul to Soul.”
-- The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena P. Blavatsky
Eckart declared himself "above politics." He considered himself a mystic like his favorite poet, Angelus Silesius, and appreciated Houston Stewart Chamberlain's aphorism that "every mystic is a born anti-Semite." [25] Germany's new order must be built on a spiritual foundation, not animal urges. Jewish popular culture prevented the German Yolk from actualizing their God-given potential. Eckart detested the advertising, fashion-madness, and consumerism of modern society, and bemoaned his nation's transition from a humane agrarian country to a soul-less industrial state. Germans must renounce acquisitiveness and get back to their roots. In "Men!" he wrote:
"I call a man substantial when he is so deeply anchored in essentials, that is, in spiritual things, that he can never wholly lose himself in worldliness." [26]
Eckart's favorite philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer compared the world's delusory appearances to "Maya's Dance." In order to see beyond this distracting show, one had to forsake sensuality-something that neither he nor Schopenhauer ever did. Eckart felt that the "Jewish-controlled press" functioned as Maya's instrument for propagating "world-affirmation" and secular modernism. In his March 23, 1916 letter to fellow Pan-German nationalist Ludwig Fruehauf he expressed fear of a Jewish "conquest."
"To me it appears that the thing so disastrous for our nation, an attack that one can do practically nothing about, is the demonic thirst for power of the Jews who tolerate no other leadership but their own: but as long as they have not reached it, they fight with all their strength to bring about disorder and chaos." p. 27]
By 1919 he wrote in Auf Gut Deutsch that Jews had already gained ascendancy
"by depriving mankind of its sentient soul, Injecting the cold, materialistic serum of Judaism into institutions of man, and by conspiring to assume power over the gentile world." [28]
Jewish domination hindered spiritually-evolved Aryan-Germans from "rescuing" mankind.
"If the Jews were to overgrow us permanently, we would never be in a position to fulfill our destiny, which consists in the redemption of the world, but would rather descend into insanity." [29]
Eckart dilated on this idea in "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," his final anti-Semitic treatise.
Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin
After the leadership crisis of July, 1921 Hitler turned more often to Max von Scheubner-Richter for political advice. Although unhappy about that, Eckart retained his status as Hitler's chief consultant on philosophical matters. In that capacity he wrote "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" during the last year of his life. This unsigned, unfinished pamphlet elaborated on his favorite theme, the alleged subversion of gentile societies by Jews. Despite its brevity "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" ranks with Hitler's Mein Kampf and Rosenberg's Myth of the 20,h Century as a key apology for Nazi Judeophobia.
The ominous propositions set forth in "Men!," "Jewishness In and Around Us," "Das Ist der Jude,"and other Auf Gut Deutsch articles foreshadowed "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," published posthumously in 1925. Although this vile dissertation truly sinks to the level of theological pornography, one cannot fathom Nazi anti-Semitism without taking it into account.
Hitler and Eckart shared a hallucinatory worldview. Both envisioned a nightmarish tableau in which ubiquitous Jewish "puppet masters" subverted Germany from within and without. Their unlikely conspiracy theory held that Jewish Bolsheviks, the Rothschilds, and "lice-ridden peddlers from Galicia" were all in league with one another to sabotage gentile civilization.
Hitler ranted that Germany had to root out these usurpers in order to survive. For Eckart, all issues boiled down to the "Jewish Question." In Auf Gut Deutsch he wrote that naive Germans ignored the issue, even though it was
" ... the chief problem of humanity, in which, indeed, every one of its other problems is contained. Nothing on earth could remain darkened if one could throw light on the secret of the Jews." [30]
Eckart insisted that Otto Weininger had unveiled "the secret of the Jews:" their mission to take over the world, secularize its institutions, and ultimately destroy it.
"To the Jew Weininger his own nation appears to be an invisibly connected web of plasmodium, always existing and spread over the wide earth ... The secret of Jewishness could not have been revealed more plainly. It wants the de-spiritualization of the world and nothing else, but this would be the same as annihilation." [31]
Eckart's biological analogy painted a bleak picture. The malignant fungus of materialism -- like The Great Boyg -- infested the German Soul, and would eventually suffocate it unless patriotic citizens quickly took remedial action. Anxiety produced by the vision of this encroaching blob prompted a violent outburst from the drama king.
"No people in the world would allow (the Jew) to remain alive if it could suddenly see through what he is, what he desires; shrieking with horror it would strangle him the very next instant." [32]
"Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," was an anonymous fifty-seven page pamphlet written in Eckart's hand and printed one year after his death. James Webb described it as "an approximation of an Eckart-Hitler consensus." [33] Konrad Heiden, Margaret Plewnia, and others consider it exclusively Eckart's work. Ralph Engelman suggested that he wrote it "to provide a literary testament to his role as Hitler's mentor." [34]
"Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" pretends to be a factual account of the "International Jewish Conspiracy" through history. Eckart characterizes himself as a seasoned reporter, and Hitler as an "expert" on the Jewish Question. Their discussion apes the conversational style of Schopenhauer's dialogues. Eckart again parodies sound journalism by presenting a faked "interview" with one who shares his own biases. As usual, he makes no attempt to solicit other sources for differing viewpoints. Hitler and his agreeable interlocutor want their prejudices confirmed, not challenged.
Imitating the approach of Theodor Fritsch's Handbook on the Jewish Question, Eckart makes his "authority" on Judaism appear learned by reciting anti-Semitic comments attributed to Cicero, Luther, Kant, Goethe, Dostoevsky, and other prominent thinkers. Ernst Nolte enumerated several additional sources for Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin, including historian Werner Sombart, pseudotheologian Friedrich Dollinger, Swiss prehistorian Otto Hauser, Hammerbund founder Theodor Fritsch, French anti-Semite Henri-Roger Gougenout des Mousseaux, and U.S. auto manufacturer Henry Ford. "Jewish specialist" Hitler begins with fictionalized history.
"My friend, the reading of Strabo shows that even in his day, which was shortly after the birth of Christ, there was scarcely anywhere in the whole earth that was not dominated by Jews." [35]
He omits the inconvenient fact that Rome ruled all of the Mediterranean basin -- including Palestine -- during that period.
The Hitler character emphasizes that Jews first utilized Mosaic Law, then Christianity, and now Bolshevism to inspire commoners to overthrow "the nations" (Goyim.) To support this claim he provides a plethora of fractured ancient history. Jacob's son Joseph cornered the Egyptian grain market. The Hebrews fled Egypt, not to found their own nation, but to avoid a pogrom at the hands of Pharoah Ramses II in retaliation for espionage against his dynasty. Captive Jews in Babylon and Persia helped bring those empires down. "The Secret of the Jews," an unsigned pamphlet distributed by Tsarist Secret Police circa 1905, expounded similar fantasies.
Hitler cites the Hebrews' extermination of Canaanites, Moabites, and Ammonites, then mentions the massacre of Persians described in Esther, and Edward Gibbon's questionable accounts of Jewish pogroms against Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans in 1st Century Cyrenaica, Egypt, and Cyprus which allegedly compromised Trajan's campaign against Persia. Lacking the power to subdue neighboring peoples by military force after 67 A.D., Jews redirected their energies toward undermining gentile states from within. Hitler claimed that "Jews ...destroy nations by vitiating their racial integrity." (Secret Conversations, Oct. 21, 1941, p. 101.)
In "Jewishness In and Around Us" Eckart featured Paul as a hero who defied the Sandhedrin's denial of an afterlife. However, the Hitler character in "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" portrayed "rabbinical student Schaul" as a revolutionary agitator, who weakened the Roman Empire by preaching "oriental idleness," meekness, and egalitarianism. His effete doctrines helped topple Rome and usher in the Dark Ages. Eckart's characterization of Paul as an anarchist derived from such 19th Century French anti-Semites as Louis Jacolliot, Charles Maurras, and Henri-Roger Gougenot de Mousseaux.
All men are equal! Brotherhood! Pacifism! No more privileges! And the Jew triumphant!... One can only understand the Jews when one realizes their final purpose: to master the world, then destroy it ... While they pretend to raise mankind up, actually they contrive to drive man to despair, insanity, and destruction ... " [36]
Eckart accused Jews of being the main impetus behind progressive ideas such as democracy, pacifism, internationalism, and humanitarianism. Jews gravitated toward liberalism because they had suffered persecution themselves. However, Eckart viewed Jewish leftists as cynical opportunists who wanted to acquire power by exploiting lower class discontent.
Recent archaeological research has demonstrated that the original Israelites were poor Canaanites who separated from Canaan's upper classes to form their own society. This same group subsequently endured periods of servitude at the hands of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia. Those bitter experiences gaev Jews a love of freedom as well as sympathy for the underdog. Concern for the downtrodden appears to be hard-wired into the Jewish psyche.
Hitler believed that any concern Jews showed for civil rights was pure self-interest. In Austria they liked having Czechs and Ruthenians around as "buffers." The worse Slavs behaved, the better. That took the spotlight off them. Austrian Social Democrats such as Viktor Adler didn't really give a hoot about Slovaks or Croats, but observed those minority groups' fortunes as a "barometer" of Jewish prospects. Jews monitored Magyar and Gypsy human rights the way colliers checked the condition of pigeons caged in coal mines. If police authorities began manhandling Gypsies, Jews realized they might be next.
Hitler believed Jewish liberalism to be a ruse. In Mein Kampf he predicted that "the democratic Jew will shed his disguise and become a tyrant." [37] Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg maintained in Myth of the 20th Century that Jews employed Christianity to bring down Rome in 476 A.D., and communism to oust lawful authority in November, 1917. Their modus operandi was to foment anti-aristocratic revolts among racially inferior slaves. Hitler went so far as to say "Jews invented class warfare." (Cf. Hitler's Secret Conversations, November 30, 1944, p. 664.)
How credible were these charges? In reality, propertied middle class Jews wanted no part of political insurgency, which would have threatened their own livelihoods. Ferdinand Lassalle, Hugo Haase, Otto Landsberger and most other Jewish Social Democrats repudiated Marxist revolution.
Fast-forwarding to the late middle ages the Hitler character informed Eckart that supposed Jewish popes and anti-popes, such as Innocent II, Clement VII, and Alexander VI, corrupted the Roman Catholic Church. Unnamed Jewish agitators allegedly fomented the Crusades in order to ruin both Christian and Moslem nations. Later, their unspecified descendants divided Christendom by concocting the Reformation. Protestants read the Old Testament which "Judaized" them, lending impetus to exploitative capitalism and legalized usury (banking.) In modern times "Jewish" Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian Tsar and established a communist government, killing "30 million" gentiles," [38] a fantastically inflated number Eckart obtained from Rosenberg's Russian emigre contacts.
Like Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux and Mikhail Bakunin, Eckart averred that Jewish plutocrats (the Gold International) and revolutionaries (The Red International) worked in concert. Political radicals undermined European monarchies, enabling financiers to siphon off their assets. Bakunin, a socialist anti-Semite esteemed by Richard Wagner, once asserted:
"This whole Jewish world ... constitutes a single exploiting sect, a ... bloodsucker people, a collective parasite, voracious and organized in itself, not only across the frontiers of states but even across differences of political opinion. This world is presently at the disposal of Marx on ... one hand and of ... Rothschilds on the other ... the Rothschilds, reactionaries as they are, .. highly appreciate the merits of ... communist Marx ... In his turn ... Marx feels irresistibly drawn by instinctive attraction ... to the financial genius of Rothschild. Jewish solidarity, that powerful (force) ... has ... united them." [39]
"Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" advanced the theory that the United States entered World War I against Germany due to the machinations of Bernard Baruch and a British Zionist named Samuel Landman. Though Landman and Baruch never met, many Germany nationalists -- including General Erich Ludendorff -- avidly believed this made-up story. Eckart called the deal as a "quid pro quo contract." [40] Landman supposedly induced Britain to issue the 1917 Balfour Declaration authorizing a Jewish state in Palestine by guaranteeing that Baruch would bring America into the war on the Entente side.
Wall Street wizard Bernard Baruch, the son of a Confederate Army doctor from South Carolina, married a gentile woman, raised his three children as Episcopalians, and once quipped that some of his best friends were anti- Semites. Baruch served on President Woodrow Wilson's War Advisory Commission between 1916 and 1918. Wilson asked this trusted counselor to accompany him to Versailles for the Treaty negotiations. In the interests of a lasting peace Baruch sought to reduce Germany's war reparations. Never a Zionist, Baruch once told Israel's Prime Minister David Ben Gurion: ''I'm more interested in the Stars and Stripes, than the Star of David." [41] When asked to purchase Israeli bonds, he replied: "I only buy American bonds." [42] Baruch became known in Jewish circles as a generous contributor to charitable causes, who only attended synagogue on high holy days. When he addressed Jewish groups, he invariably stressed the theme of being an American first and Jew second. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who criticized his apathy toward Zionism, once said: "he would be more likely to consider colonization by Jews on some undiscovered planet than Palestine." [43] Baruch deplored Britain's muddled foreign policy which offered part of Palestine to dispossessed Jews even though T. E. Lawrence had made conflicting deals with Arab tribal leaders to repay them for war-time operations against Turkey. During the late 1930's he supported Congressman Hamilton Fish's idea of a "United States of Africa" which would have provided asylum for refugees of all nationalities and religions in Kenya, Tanganyika, and Congo. Eckart's portrayal of Bernard Baruch as an Elder of Zion was a complete fabrication.
Referring to the Old Testament as "the arsenal of the Anti-Christ," [44] the Hitler character cited several Bible passages in an attempt to brand Jews as gentile-hating racists. Most of them were injunctions against idolatry, such as Exodus 34: 11-13, Deuteronomy 7: 16, Isaiah 19, Isaiah 61 :6, Psalms 2:8, and Sirach 36: 2-12. In Exodus 34: 11-13, Jehovah sanctioned ethnic cleansing:
"Behold, I am driving out from before you the Amorite, Canaanite, and the Hittite ... (Do not) make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going ... But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images." [45]
Jehovah had no use for multiculturalism. in Deuteronomy 7: 16 He thundered: "and you shall consume all the peoples which the Lord your God shall deliver to you; your eye shall have no pity on them." He ordered atrocities against gentiles for "abominations," such as idolatry, banditry, sodomy, child sacrifice, bestiality, and other violations of Mosaic Law. After Jericho's Fall Joshua's soldiers spared no one but the family of harlot Rahab, who had colluded with Israel's spies.
"And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword." [46]
I Kings 18:40 provided another example of Hebrew genocide against competing tribes. After winning a sacrifice contest against 450 pagan priests on Mt. Carmel, Elijah commanded Israelite soldiers to murder them all.
"Seize the prophets of Baal! Do not let one of them escape! So they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the Brook Kishon and executed them there." [47]
Of course, we must realize that some of the nomads roaming about Palestine in those days were murderous brigands, comparable to Janjaweed militiamen of contemporary Darfur.
"Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" reeks of irony. Deceitful Adolf Hitler applied Isaiah's terms "charmers and wizards" to Weimar politicians. The tyrant who liquidated millions of Jews during World War II labeled St. Paul as a "canonized mass murderer," and claimed that Jews want to exterminate Germans. Based on these invalid premises, he later rationalized the killing of innocents as "defense of the Reich." Through a process of psychological projection, Hitler superimposed the image of his own vindictive nature onto Jews.
Eckart and Hitler fully expected a Jewish takeover, which would result in the destruction of Europe. This bizarre hypothesis .originated from Indian sources, as interpreted by the likes of Guido von List, and Adolf Josef Lanz. According to Hindu belief, the Golden Age (Satya Yuga) gradually deteriorated into an Age of Gloom (Kali Yuga) due to race-mixing. "Chandalas" would overwhelm Aryan "Men-above- Time" during this final period of tribulation. As they accumulated decisive power,
"Men-in-Time" (soulless materialists) became "the most thorough, (and) mercilessly effective agents of ... Death-forces on earth working without hesitation ... (or) remorse (toward) the downward process of history and, ... its logical conclusion: the annihilation of man and all life." [48]
Eckart appreciated anti-Semitic Reichstag Deputy Josef Schleicher's metaphor comparing Jews to "a swarm of migratory locusts" [49] which transformed the Garden of Eden into a desert. He referred to them as "the ferment of decomposition." In The Dynamics of Nazism Dr. Fred Weinstein interpreted this view as follows:
"All Jews were internally fragmented ... They sought to reproduce a world in which this internal fragmentation could be expressed." [50]
Eckart's short last chapter functions as "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin's" coda. In this convoluted paragraph he reiterates the mad theory that Jews, though they cherish material goods and sensual pleasure, are programmed to destroy the physical world. An impasse provoked this crazy conclusion, which Eckart tried to pass off as an existential profundity. Why would Jews want to destroy Germany after investing so much into it? The only way out of this untenable contradiction was to posit the absurd proposition that they had a lemming-like instinct for self-obliteration.
"Chapter VIII
The truth is... one can only understand the Jew when one knows what his ultimate goal is. And that goal is, beyond world domination, the annihilation of the world. He must wear down all the rest of mankind ... in order to prepare a paradise on earth. He has made himself believe that only he is capable of this great task, and considering his ideas of paradise, that is certainly so. But one sees, if only in the means which he employs, that he is secretly driven to something else. While he pretends to himself to be elevating mankind, he torments men to despair, to madness, to ruin. If a halt is not ordered, he will destroy all men. His nature compels him to that goal, even though he dimly realizes that he must thereby destroy himself There is no other way for him; he must act thus. This realization of the unconditional dependence of his own existence upon that of his victims appears to me to be the main cause for his hatred. To be obliged to try and annihilate us with all his might, but at the same time to suspect that this must lead inevitably to his own ruin, therein it lies. If you will: the tragedy of Lucifer." [51]
Eckart's eccentric musings show up in Hitler's later writings and speeches. In Mein Kampf he wrote: "after the death of the victim, ... the vampire dies too." [52] In another passage he stated:
"If, with the help of the Marxian creed the Jew conquers ... the world, his crown will be humanity's funeral wreath, and once again the planet, empty of mankind, will move through ether as it did millions of years ago." [53]
It was highly ironic for Hitler to accuse Jews of being "annihilators." His own record of 49 million European deaths, hundreds of billions in property damage, followed by his own suicide, won't be beaten any time soon.
Though their jumbled formulations make hair-splitting difficult, Hitler and Eckart disagreed on one point. According to Eckart's spiritual anti- Semitism it did no good to kill Jews or destroy their houses of worship. "Burning ... synagogues ... would be of little avail... The Jewish spirit would still exist." [54] That quality must be opposed by both gentiles and penitent Jews. To Eckart "Mammonism" and Judaism were nearly interchangeable terms. Like Gottfried Feder he felt Germans should fight against "Mammonism," rather than persecute individual Jews.
Hitler's biological anti-Semitism identified spirit with race. In the words of Neo-Nazi exegete, Savitri Devi:
" ... in our eyes -- contrary to what ... Christians maintain -- the capacity to reflect the divine is closely linked with man's race and physical health; in other words, ... spirit is anything but independent of the body... And we (deny) that ... improvements... in education... or... technical matters, have ... made individual men and women more valuable ... " [55]
Eugenically-oriented Hitler fervently believed that Jews, gypsies, and Slavs were "bad seed," with hereditary predispositions for criminality. As Ernst Nolte explained:
"If spirit is character... A harmful spirit can only be eliminated by destruction of its 'substance of flesh and blood,' which for Hitler is the primary reality." [56]
Thus, he set up death camps to accomplish a "Final Solution."
Hitler explicitly renounced Eckart's nebulous spiritual anti-Semitism in a March 13, 1921 Volkisch Beobachter article.
"The internal expurgation of the Jewish spirit is not possible in a platonic way, for the Jewish spirit is the product of the Jewish person. Unless we expel the Jewish people soon, they will have Judaized our Volk within a very short time." [57]
Eckart's "spiritual" anti-Semitism, though blasphemous and deranged, did not advocate the extirpation of European Jewry. Before World War I he went along with Houston Stewart Chamberlain's vague plan of reducing Jewish influence on media, culture, and business-without physically harming Jews. After the war Eckart wanted Jewish-Bolshevik ringleaders executed, but not "kleine Juden" -- humble, law-abiding Jews.
With missionary zeal Eckart and Hitler abetted each other in disseminating falsehoods about Jews. The veteran playwright knew how to manipulate imagined scenarios for maximum effect. He was a connoisseur of prurience with a knack for making lies and half-truths credible. Utilizing salacious devices to shock audiences afforded him perverse gratification. In "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" Eckart attempted to legitimize his bigotry by couching it in high-sounding terms. This booklet's misconceptions reverberated through Hitler's discourse for the next two decades, and provided a warped rationale for the Holocaust.
_______________
Endnotes
1 Josef Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries, edited and translated by Louis P. Lochner, Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1948, May 13, 1943 entry.
2 Barbara Lane Miller & Leila J. Rupp, Nazi Ideology Before 1933, University of Texas, Austin, TX, 1978, p. 20, op. cit. Dietrich Eckart, Auf Gut Deutsch, 7- part series, Jan. to Apr., 1919, "Jewishness In and Around Us: Fundamental Reflections, also quoted in Alfred Rosenberg's Dietrich Eckart: Ein Vermachtis, Franz Eher Verlag, Munich, 1928, pp. 193 to 230.
3 Ibid., p. 21.
4 Ibid., p. 25.
5 Ibid., p. 25.
6 Ralph M. Engelman, Dietrich Eckart & the Genesis of Nazism, Washington University, 1971, University Microfilm, Ann Arbor, MI, 1971, pp. 70-71.
7 Ibid., p. 70.
8 Margarete Plewnia, Auf dem Weg zu Hitler: Der Volkische Publizist Dietrich Eckart, Schunemann Universitatsverlag, Bremen, 1971, pp. 56-57, op. cit. Auf Gut Deutsch #27, 1919.
9 Lane & Miller, p. 22.
10 Ibid., pp. 22-23.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid., p. 24.
13 Ibid., p. 25
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., p. 46.
16 Hannah Newman, The Rainbow Swastika, Philogos.org, p. 14.
17 "Marcionism," en.wikipedia.org, p. 2.
18 Eckart, "Jewishness In and Around Us," Miller and Leila J. Rupp, p. 22.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid., p. 24.
21 Newman, p. 10.
22 Eckart, "Jewishness In and Around Us," Miller & Rupp, p. 21.
23 The New King James Bible, Matthew 8:12.
24 Dietrich Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," trans. William L. Pierce, originally published by Hoheneichen Verlag, Munich, 1924, Chapter, IV, p. I.
25 Newman, p. 3.
26 Eckart, "Men!" Auf Gut Deutsch, 12/7/1918, Miller and Rupp, p. 3.
27 Plewnia, p. 28, March 23, 1916 letter from Dietrich Eckart to Herr L. Fruehauf.
28 George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, Schocken Books, New York, 1981, p. 297.
29 Dietrich Eckart, "Jewishness In and Around Us," Auf Gut Deutsch, 2/19/19 installment, Miller & Rupp, p. 23.
30 Mosse, p. 296-297, op. cit. Auf Gut Deutsch, 1919.
31 Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, trans. Leila Venewitz, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1966, p. 328.
32 Ibid.
33 James Webb, The Occult Establishment, Open Court Publishing Co., LaSalle, IL, 1976, p. 335.
34 Ralph M. Engelman, Dietrich Eckart and the Genesis of Nazism, UMI, Ann Arbor, MI, doctoral dissertation, Washington University, Sr. Louis, MO, 1971, p. 237.
35 Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," Chapter I, p. 1.
36 Ibid., Chapter V, p. 2.
37 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925, trans. Ralph Manheim, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA 1943, p. 326.
38 Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin, Chapter VII, p. 5.
39 Francis Wheen, Karl Marx, A Life, W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 2000, p. 340.
40 Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," Chapter III, p. 5.
41 Jordan A. Schwarz, The Speculator, Bernard M. Baruch in Washington, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1981, p. 559.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid., p. 562.
44 Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," Chapter V, p. 6.
45 New King James Bible, Exodus, 34: 11-13.
46 Ibid., Joshua 6:21.
47 Ibid., I Kings 18:40.
48 Savitri Devi, The Lightning and the Sun, Samidsat Publishers Ltd., Buffalo, NY, 1979, p. 36.
49 Brigitte Hamann, Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship, trans. Thomas Thornton, Oxford University Press, New York, 1999, p. 288.
50 Fred Weinstein, The Dynamics of Nazism, Academic Press, New York, 1980, p. 144.
51 Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," Chapter VIII, p. I.
52 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 358.
53 Eberhard Jackel, Hitler's Weltanschaung, trans. Herbert Arnold, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 1972, p. 52, op. cit. Adolf Hitler, Volkische Beobachter, 3/13/1921.
54 Eckart, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin," Chapter VII, pp. 4-5. Oddly, Eckart put those words in the Hitler character's mouth, which gave them a different meaning. Hitler agreed that destroying synagogues accomplished nothing. However, unlike Eckart, he thought that the "Jewish Problem" required genocide as a "Final Solution."
55 Devi., p. 4.
56 Nolte, p. 328.
57 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Eher Verlag, Munich, 1925, trans. Ralph Manheim, Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, MA, 1943 1940, p. 269.