Germany Must Perish! - Nazi Reaction and Use in Propaganda

Nazi Reaction and Use in Propaganda

The book soon came to the attention of the Nazis. It was - and still is - widely quoted as advocating genocide by a Jewish conspiracy against the German people.

"Few Americans have ever heard of a prominent fellow-citizen named Kaufmann ... In Germany every child has known of him for a long time. Germans are so well informed about Mr. Kaufmann that the mere mention of his name recalls what he stands for. In one of his recent articles Dr. Goebbels wrote, 'Thanks to the Jew Kaufmann, we Germans know only too well what to expect in case of defeat.' "

Kaufman was a Manhattan-born Jew, so his advocacy of such an idea attracted great attention. Nazi propaganda denounced the book as an "orgy of Jewish hatred" and accused President Franklin D. Roosevelt of having inspired it. Additionally, Germany Must Perish! coincided with other Nazi proclamations about "Anglo-American" intentions, which the German population digested in the midst of ongoing economic sanctions against their country, Roosevelt's Lend Lease program and the widely reported failure of the United States to sponsor negotiations after Poland's defeat. American journalist Howard K. Smith was in Germany when Germany Must Perish! came to light. He wrote:

"No man has ever done so irresponsible a disservice to the cause his nation is fighting and suffering for than Nathan Kaufmann . His half-baked brochure provided the Nazis with one of the best light artillery pieces they have, for, used as the Nazis used it, it served to bolster up that terror which forces Germans who dislike the Nazis to support, fight and die to keep Nazism alive ..."

When the Jews of Hanover were forced from their homes on September 8, 1941, German authorities cited Kaufman's book as one of the reasons. Kaufman responded:

"This is just a flimsy pretext for another of the innate cruelties of the German people ... I don't think it was my book that prompted this barbarity. They employed every possible German cruelty against the Jews long before my book was published".

It featured in many pieces of Nazi propaganda. The Parole der Woche's weekly wall newspaper included it as evidence that the Allies' war aims were the destruction of Germany. The pamphlet "The War Goal of World Plutocracy" detailed the contents of the book, although with some omissions from the text it quoted. Its last major use was in a late 1944 pamphlet, "Never!"

The controversial German nationalist philosopher and historian Ernst Nolte argues that the German reaction to Germany Must Perish! supports his contention that the Holocaust was a reasonable, if excessive, response to German fears of worldwide Jewish plot. In answer to this claim, it has been pointed out that while the book was a welcome piece of propaganda, its actual impact on Nazi genocide policies was not notable, and that Nolte regards the radical views of a single American Jew as representative of all Jewish people worldwide.

Ernest Hemingway would adopt the same ideas in his introduction to his anthology Men at War. Writing:

"When this war is won, though, Germany should be so effectively destroyed that we should not have to fight her again for a hundred years, or, if it is done well enough, forever.

This can probably only be done by sterilization. This act can be accomplished by an operation little more painful than vaccination and as easily made compulsory. All members of Nazi party organizations should be submitted to it if we are ever to have a peace that is to be anything more than a breathing space between wars. . . . It is not wise to advocate sterilization now as a government or allied policy since it can only cause increased resistance. So I do not advocate it. I oppose it. But it is the only ultimate settlement."