text: It can be argued that the seemingly arbitrary and petty nature of the decrees issued to strip rights away from the Jews represented opportunism on the part of officials and bureaucrats, but this misses the point. The fact these decrees were allowed at all – going much further than the stripping away of the Jews' post-Emancipation rights – fit in with the overall plan of the Nazi hierarchy, which was to make life for the Jews within the Reich intolerable. Nowhere else was this program pursued with as much rigour or conclusiveness as in Nazi Germany. The sudden emergence of antisemitism as the dominant political theme in Germany in the 1930s appears bizarre, because prior to 1914 no-one in Germany had espoused eliminationist antisemitism and the antisemitic political parties had met with little success.15 The personal role of Adolf Hitler in formulating his ideology and then putting it into practice must no doubt be acknowledged, and Hitler describes how antisemitism became the central tenet of his worldview while he was in Vienna.16 The participation of mob elements in the pogroms and curtailing of civil liberties of Jews in Nazi Germany should also be acknowledged, as must opportunism – it is far too simplistic to simply see Nazi policy as a manifestation of the German "national character". It is much more useful to examine the nature of Germany’s totalitarian government – different in kind to anything else in Europe at the time – and see in this the explanation for the remarkable success of German antisemitic propaganda and the unique nature of the action taken to solve the ‘Jewish Question’ here.
  The final state to be considered is Russia, which was also itself fundamentally different to the countries to the West in political and socio-economic makeup. The Tsarist government, while viewing the Jewish nation within its borders as unassimable and an alien threat, would never have allowed a mass political movement to arise as happened in the West. It instinctively distrusted any centre of authority other than itself and Russian political parties, such as were allowed to develop in legal form after 1905, never reached the sophistication of the Western European parties. Hence antisemitism here was essentially an intellectual movement, espoused by Slavophiles who saw the tricky and cunning Jewish nation as undermining and deceiving the humble Slavic peasant. Even more pernicious for the government was the attraction of international socialism to young Jews who were rejecting the Yiddish traditions of their forefathers. The government took action to stop the growth of socialism and came to associate the Jews with it, as well as with an international conspiracy rearing its head in the West. Tsar Nicholas II blamed the Jews not only for his defeat in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 – 05, but even for the Revolution of 1905: surely "his" people would not have revolted against him without being encouraged? The rise of the Jews in the West, such as Hungary, did little to make him feel better.17 But, unwilling to antagonise the people against the Jews for fear of unleashing the violence believed to lay simmering below the surface of Russian society, the government’s policy was disjointed and sometimes contradictory. Unable to harness the resources of a modern state with a strong economy, the Tsarist government could do little about the perceived perniciousness of the Jews.
  The general trend that can be seen lying in all strands of modern antisemitism is a reaction to modernisation. In countries such as Austria where the Jews were predominantly bourgeoisie, they were particularly at risk as capitalism developed. Enemies of the idea of a modern, secular nation-state identified the Jews with it and attacked them for shoring it up through service in the liberal professions or as bankers loaning money to the state. But the intensity of antisemitism varied both in terms of political rhetoric and actual action, mainly because until Hitler no "sincerely" antisemitic politician was in a position to do the damage he wanted to. Lueger, the antisemitic mayor of Vienna, needed Jewish capital and his time in office was actual a sort of golden age for Viennese Jews. Opportunism and a response to economic conditions could lead to bouts of antisemitism by conservative politicians who no longer recognised the society they lived in as legitimate or by socialists trying to appeal to a broad mass of voters. Mass politics, another modern phenomena, was ultimately what made antisemitism necessary for some failing political movements – they could find no other issue on which to unify the nation.
  2. S. Wilson, Ideology and Experience: antisemitism in France at the time of the Dreyfus affair (1980)
  Richard J. Evans, 'Anti-semitism ,ordinary Germans and the longest hatred' in Rereading German History (1988)
  Nancy Fitch, 'Mass culture, mass politics and modern anti-semitism' in American Historical Review, 1992
  
  I’m finally getting around to sharing our save the date engagement photos that we took with our wedding photographer. Fall is our favorite season so we wanted our official save the date photos to be in the fall – you can check out our summer photos here! We chose to take our save the date … Read More
  Happy Sunday! For me, there is no such thing as too many sweaters. Nothing beats a cute and cozy sweater! I’ve been sharing a lot of sweater outfits on my Instagram so I wanted to do an Instagram round-up of the recent ones that I have posted. I’m sharing all my favorite affordable winter sweaters … Read More