Quoting Tony Greenstein’s Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation, pages 60–62:
Joachim Doron observed that: ‘the Jewish self‐criticism so widespread among the German Zionist intelligentsia often seemed dangerously similar to the plaints of the German anti‐Semites.’¹¹⁰ The [Fascist] leadership quoted Zionist sources to validate their claims that Jews could not be assimilated.¹¹¹ It was difficult for German Jews to refute [Fascist] claims that they were aliens ‘when a loud and visible group of their own continually published identical indictments… Zionism had become a tool for anti‐Semites.’¹¹²
Zionist leaders even used the same language as the anti‐Semites. [The Zionist régime’s] first Justice Minister, Pinhas Rosenbluth, described Palestine as ‘an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin’.¹¹³ Josef Sprinzak, the first Speaker of the Knesset, spoke of the new German immigrants as ‘a great deal of filth in the Yishuv.’¹¹⁴ Klatzkin held that Jews were:
a people disfigured in both body and soul — in a word, of a horror […] some sort of outlandish creature […] in any case, not a pure national type […] some sort of oddity among the peoples going by the name of Jew.¹¹⁵
Anti‐Semitic ideologues and politicians in the 19th century were almost unanimous in their universal endorsement of Zionism.¹¹⁶ They considered Zionism ‘a useful vehicle for ridding Germany of its Jewish population and thus found it worthy of support.’¹¹⁷
Heinrich Class, President of the hundred‐thousand‐strong Pan‐German League, who was made an honorary member of the Reichstag on Hitler’s assumption of power, wrote, If I was the Kaiser which was considered by German anti‐Semites as ‘trailblazing’.¹¹⁸ Class outlined a programme ‘for the complete expulsion of the Jews from German public life’, writing that:¹¹⁹
[…] among the Jews themselves the nationalist movement called Zionism is gaining more and more adherents […] They also declare openly that a true assimilation of the Jewish aliens to the host nations would be impossible […] the Zionists confirm what the enemies of the Jews […] have always asserted…¹²⁰
Theodor Fritsch, who was ‘greatly admired’ by Hitler¹²¹ and who wrote Antisemiten Katechismus, which by 1944 was in its 49th edition, quoted approvingly from Klatzkin, who believed that ‘the liberals have understood better than the anti‐Semites how to destroy a nation.’¹²² Other anti‐Semitic supporters of Zionism included Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Eugen Dühring.¹²³ Alfred Rosenberg, [German Fascism’s] main theoretician, wrote in 1919 that
Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations.¹²⁴
Rosenberg ‘intended to use Zionism as a legal justification for depriving German Jews of their civil rights’ and ‘eventually the Jewish presence in Germany.’¹²⁵ Donald Niewyk asked whether ‘the German Zionists’ assertions of racial and national otherness […] hasten the day when the Nazis might seek to make Germany Judenrein?’¹²⁶ Rabbi Jacob Agus asked if:
the Zionist programme and philosophy contribute[d] decisively to the enormous catastrophe of the extermination of 6 million Jews by the Nazis by popularizing the notion that the Jews were forever aliens in Europe?¹²⁷
Claude Montefiore, a founder of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue and President of the Anglo‐Jewish Association, accused the Zionist movement of having aided and abetted the rise of the [Third Reich].¹²⁸
The Union of Jewish War Veterans [RjF] argued that in demanding national minority rights ‘Zionism provided anti‐Semites with political ammunition.’¹²⁹ Robert Weltsch, the Editor of Judische Rundschau wrote that ‘If I am a Jew then I cannot be a German’.¹³⁰ Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a prominent German Zionist leader and later President of the American Jewish Committee [AJC] and Vice Chairman of the World Jewish Congress [WJC] described the [Third Reich’s] assumption of power as the ‘beginning of the Jew’s return to his Judaism.’
It was little wonder that the CV talked about German Zionism having inflicted ‘a stab in the back’ to the anti‐fascist struggle against Hitler.¹³¹ Weizmann wrote:
that unless some radical measures are taken fairly soon, we Zionists may stand charged, when history comes to be written, with criminal indifference in the face of the greatest trial to which Jewry has been subjected in modern times.¹³²
Click here for events that happened today (September 10).
1887: Giovanni Gronchi, Fascist Italy’s (briefly serving) Undersecretary for Industry and Commerce, was born.
1938: Hermann Göring claimed at a Nürnberg rally that the Czechs were oppressing Sudeten Germans. Aside from that, new air regulations in the Third Reich prohibited overflight by all foreign aircraft (except along specified air corridors established for civil aircraft).
1939: The Canadian declaration of war on the Third Reich received royal assent, and to make matters worse for the Fascists, Polish insurgents killed their Waffen‐SS general Wilhelm Fritz von Roettig at Opoczno around 1415 hours. (On the other hand, the Third Reich might have been happier to learn that the submarine HMS Triton accidentally sunk HMS Oxley near Norway, becoming the Royal Navy’s first loss of a submarine in the war.) Likewise, the Wehrmacht made a breakthrough near Kutno and Sandomierz in Poland.
1940: The Fascist bourgeoisie postponed by four days the decision to launch Operation Sealion, and foul weather in the United Kingdom restricted the Fascists to flying reconnaissance missions only through most of the day. At 1715 hours, six small raids approached London, yet they lost two bombers and all of the rest turned back because of British fighters. Overnight, the Fascists bombed the East End section of London, damaging the Buckingham Palace among others; the Fascists also assaulted South Wales, West Midlands, and Liverpool during the night. Lastly, the Regio Esercito crossed the Libyan–Egyptian border, and armed merchant cruiser Atlantis sank British ship Benarty 1,250 miles east of Madagascar, then took the entire crew of forty‐nine as prisoners.
1941: Generalleutnant August Krakau succeeded Robert Martinek as the commanding officer of the Wehrmacht’s 7th Mountain Division, and Axis submarines U‐81, U‐82, U‐85, U‐432, and U‐652 assaulted Allied convoy SC‐42 100 miles east of Greenland, sinking six merchant vessels and damaging two more. Axis submarine U‐111 also sank Netherlandish merchant ship Marken three hundred miles north of Brazil, but all thirty‐seven aboard survived and the U‐111’s crew gave them food. Axis submarine Topazio, on the other hand, sank British ferry Murefte off Haifa and killed somebody. Meanwhile, Panzergruppe 1 and Panzergruppe 2 completed the crossing of the Dnieper River in southern and northern Ukraine, respectively, and both headed toward Kiev.
1942: The British Army carried out an amphibious landing on Madagascar to relaunch Allied offensive operations in the Madagascar Campaign, frustrating Vichy France.
1943: In the course of Operation Achse, the Wehrmacht began its occupation of Rome.
1944: Berlin ordered that all deserters be shot, along with their families.
1945: Otto Skorzeny transferred from Wiesbaden to Nuremberg; he traveled by aircraft with other top Axis leaders. Coincidentally, Vidkun Quisling received the death sentence in Oslo.
