Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Germany Must Perish, by Theodore N. Kaufman. 1941. Argyle Press, New Jersey

Exterminate the Germans! Kill All Jews Before They Kill All Germans

In 1939, Hitler threatened that if “international Jewry” causes another world war, he will retaliate by exterminating the Jewish race in Europe. Sometime in late 1941, which was 8 years after the Nazis came to power, the fateful decision was made to kill Europe’s Jews. It was at or before this time that Kaufman came out with this book. The appearance of the book in 1941, before the U. S. even entered the war, no doubt reinforced Hitler’s view that American Jews are influencing the U. S. to enter the war against Germany, thereby precipitating a world war.

Kaufman’s book quickly became a sensation in Nazi Germany and was enlisted as one of the proofs that the Jews were out to exterminate the Germans (in this case, by mass sterilization: p. 86). So, the Germans could now claim that they needed to preemptively exterminate the Jews before the Jews could exterminate the Germans. As Germany increasingly began to lose the war, this claim became more and more prominent.

The incitement to genocide has disturbing modern implications. Some LGBT activists would have us believe that LGBT is the object of genocide and blame Christians for striving to make this imagined genocide a reality. Remember, “it did not begin with gas chambers.” That goes both ways. For many years, we have heard LGBT slogans such as “Wipe out Christianity before it wipes you out.” Not exactly encouraging. Could this incitement to genocide eventually lead to the genocide of Christians? Who knows? At very least, such as at the school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, some LGBT and their many allies in the media are clearly trying to blame the Christian victim.

KAUFMAN WAS NO NUT. NOR WAS HE A NOBODY

The American Jew Kaufman does not specifically discuss the Nazi treatment of Jews, but focuses on deeper issues. Unlike today’s Jews, who often blame Christianity for the Holocaust, he puts the blame for German conduct squarely where it belongs, on the Germans. If nothing else, Kaufman’s book reminds us that there was much, much more objectionable to German conduct than just the extermination of the Jews.

Nowadays, the media spin is to pooh-pooh Kaufman as a wacky, unimportant person and as “just a businessman.” Not quite. It is very easy to dismiss a book as marginal after the fact. What if it was a trial balloon, intended to find out how receptive American public opinion and American government policies would be to the proposed extermination of the Germans?

The notion that Kaufmann was just some kind of nut that nobody heard of or that no one took seriously is contradicted by the facts. His book got glowing endorsements from prestigious American newspapers. For instance, Time magazine called it a “Sensational Idea”. The Washington Post lauded it as “A Provocative Theory”, and the most prestigious New York Times hailed it as “A Plan for Permanent Peace”. This does not sound like anything marginal.

The critics then backpedal and assert that Kaufman bought these endorsements. Oh really? Would not the alleged buy-ability of endorsements have been widely known, thereby negating the very reason for their existence? After all, if any nut could just purchase a glowing endorsement from a prestigious newspaper, pretty soon no one would pay attention to them. Surely the prestigious newspapers would have known about this fact and prevented this from happening.

KAUFMAN A DEEP THINKER. HE WAS MUCH MORE THAN “JUST A BUSINESSMAN”

Let us take a closer look at the author. Any notion that Kaufman had no idea what he was talking about evaporates upon reading his book. His work is supported by a bibliography of 26 books. (p. 96).

Far from being the musings of an ignorant nut, Kaufman went into considerable detail about German history, discussing Bismarck, Kaiser, Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel, von Bernhard, Rohrlach, Treitschke, Spengler, etc. (p. 5, pp. 39-40, p. 72). He was aware of the imperialistic Pan German League, which was active before 1900, and that was many decades before Hitler. (p. 42). He realized that Nazism was not just street gangsterism, but that it had penetrated all sectors of German society and was fully in line with long-established German ways. (p. 8).

Kaufman shows further deep thinking as he reflects upon the many proposed policies for dealing with the Germans, finding them all inadequate. An occupation of Germany could not be conducted in perpetuity, and then Germany would again go on the warpath once the occupation slackened. The German people could not permanently be made civilized, through education, and otherwise untaught the will to conquer. He compared this to a tamed tiger, which surely can be trained well. The tiger may be affable for a long time, but, sooner or later, his predatory instincts will resurface. (pp. 14-15).

The author also had a sophisticated awareness of the ethical dilemmas of his proposed Final Solution to the German Problem. He knew that millions of innocent Germans would have to die. Kaufman conceded that perhaps 20% of the German population, amounting to 15 million, was completely innocent. He solved the ethical dilemma in this way: The right of 300 million European peoples to live in lasting peace outweighs the right of 15 million Germans to continue to live. (p. 9).

Even Kaufman’s mass-sterilization proposal had a degree of sophistication. He calculated how long it would take for the German people to disappear. (pp. 88-89).

EXTERMINATE THE GERMANS! LIKE GERMANS LIKE JEWS

What the Jew Kaufman said about the German people is astonishingly similar to what the Nazi Germans (and not only the Nazi Germans) commonly said about the Jews:

“Germans are an execrable people. They think and dream of nothing but chicanery…They are capable of little else but hating and lying, even to themselves. They meddle in everyone else’s affairs, poking their nose into matters that do not concern them, criticizing everything, bossing everything, lowering and distorting everything…The universe belongs to it by right…The German has decided that his race has been elected by God to order the modern world…he does not argue but makes sweeping assertions and lays down the law…To give into him means becoming enlisted as his civil agent…He dips his pen in gall.   (pp. 22-24).