Language:
English
Year of publication:
1998
Titel der Quelle:
Leo Baeck Institute Year Book
Angaben zur Quelle:
43 (1998) 175-191
Keywords:
Antisemitism History 1800-2000
;
Jews History 1933-1939
Abstract:
Before World War I, German geopolitical thought was no different from that in Britain, the USA, Italy, etc. The defeat of 1918 not only increased interest in geopolitics in Germany, but also transformed its contents. The attention of German geopolitics was drawn more and more intensely to race, and Jews as a race took a prominent place in German geopolitical thinking. Increasingly, Jews were depicted in German geopolitical literature as dangerous aliens; as a foreign element in the body of the German people, lacking "organic relationship" with the country; as a force which always prevented the Germanization of Eastern Europe; and as promoters of racial mixing. Biological and environmentalist antisemitism infused German geopolitics even before 1933, and at the same time geopolitical thinking penetrated Nazi ideology. The synthesis of geopolitics and antisemitism was unique to Germany in the interwar period; it prepared the way for Germans' acquiescence and participation in the Holocaust.
DOI:
10.1093/leobaeck/43.1.175
URL:
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