For those who had Luther’s opinion of Jews, remaining separate from them would be a psychological necessity. Separation and control would diminish contamination and danger. Images of contamination and threat were exploited by the Nazis. They adopted nineteenth-century racial dogmas, adapted them, and combined them with the most negative components of the existing image of Jews. Even those Germans who were not consciously anti-Semitic probably picked up enough anti-Semitism from their culture to be susceptible to Nazi propaganda and later to the influence of changing group norms.
The Nazi propaganda about Jews emphasized three broad themes: (1) profound devaluation, (2) threat to racial purity, and (3) threat to German survival. (1) The Jews were pests, parasites, bloodsuckers, low and evil creatures. Jewish doctors harmed their Christian patients; old Jews molested and murdered children; all Jews exploited and abused the rights of Germans. (2) The Jews despoiled Aryan purity. Their very existence threatened contamination and therefore the inherent superiority of Germans, the Aryan race. (3) In an international conspiracy, the Jews plotted to acquire power. This notion, already a theme of anti-Semitism before Hitler, was expanded into the fantasy of a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy. First the internal enemy, after the German attack on Russia, Jews were linked to the external enemy. The Jews within Germany had to be eliminated before the external enemy could be defeated.
All this was presented to the German people on radio, in speeches, newspapers, and plays; it became part of standard school education; and it was expressed in laws. The dehumanization of Jews became part of many aspects of group life and an important aspect of the German’s self-definition.
Anti-Semitism was part of the deep structure of the German culture and was enlarged by the Nazis. At the start, particular Nazis need not have been more anti-Semitic than other Germans in order to join the movement; given the existence of culturally shared anti-Semitism, or openness to it, intense needs and the satisfactions offered by the Nazi movement could be sufficient motivation. A Columbia sociologist, Theodore Abel, by means of an essay contest collected 581 questionnaires from members of the Nazi Party before 1933. Peter Merkl later used this material to identify characteristics of the early Nazis, for example, different levels of anti-Semitism.12
There was an extraordinary amount of prejudice and hatred. The material from about 33 percent of the respondents contained no evidence of anti-Semitism. It may be, as Merkl suggests, that they omitted expressions of prejudice because they anticipated a negative reaction from an American audience. Or it may be that within the Nazi group anti-Semitism was a given, it was the ground of the members’ experience, and for some not important to mention. The Abel collection does show, however, that the Nazis who were the most paranoid about the Jews, who were preoccupied by “the Jewish conspiracy,” were especially likely to hold Nazi Party, SA (Sturmabteilung), and SS leadership positions.
Self-concept, self-esteem, and national goals
People have not only individual but also collective self-concepts. Their “societal” self-concept includes shared evaluation of their group, myths that transmit the self-concept and ideal self, goals that a people set for themselves, and shared beliefs (e.g., about other groups).13 It may also include or mask uncertainties, insecurities, and anxieties.
The Germans as a superior people
Germans saw themselves as superior in character, competence, honor, loyalty, devotion to family, and civic organization. Groups tend to think highly of themselves; seemingly the Germans had an extreme positive view of themselves. They regarded German “Kultur” – literary, musical, artistic achievement – a further sign of superiority.
In the sixteenth century, De Germania, by the Roman historian Tacitus, was rediscovered and read as a celebration of the rough and wild life of the German tribes. Some German intellectuals used it to argue the specialness of the German people and claim the right of the Holy Roman Empire to rule other nations. Early in the nineteenth century Germany was occupied by Napoleon. Afterward, upon the demise of Napoleon, nationalistic feelings intensified.
The idea of Germanness became a special source of satisfaction and pride. Johann Gottfried Herder, writing around the time of the French Revolution, wrote of the common quality expressed in the behavior, thinking, values, and goals of people who belong to a nation, “a common ingredient, a Germanness, a Volksgeist that could not be abstracted and defined but represented the individuality of the nation.”b14 Gordon Craig of Stanford University explains the lethargy of the German middle class at a time when democratic revolutions took place in many European countries and in America as the result of their taking refuge in Germanness, “persuading themselves that, since they were imbued by the undying group spirit, they were already in a state of grace.”16 Following the failed revolution of 1848, the political activities of the German middle class were severely restricted, and this may have led them to console themselves further by contemplating the glory of Germanness. Whatever the reason, a set of ideas and images stressing the special quality of Germanness became widespread and highly influential. The Nazis were able to use this, especially the central idea of a volk, to rally the German people.
A related idea was that of a romanticized, superior Aryan race, whose prime representatives were the Germans. This was an aspect of the racial thinking fashionable in Europe in the late nineteenth century. As developed, for example, by Houston Chamberlain, Richard Wagner’s son-in-law, it expanded the concept of German superiority and
