Hitler's First Antisemitic Writings

In May 2011, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center bought what is believed to be the first written statement that Hitler made with regards to his position on the Jews. While this by itself would have been an intriguing event, the article reporting about it in the Canadian Globe & Mail is sadly less than accurate in many ways.

Known as the Gemlich letter, the document has long been known to scholars and was certified as authentic in 1988 by handwriting expert Charles Hamilton, who had revealed the infamous "Hitler Diaries" to be fabrications.

Indeed, digging through the web revealed that the content of the letter was quoted verbatim as early as 1968 when it appeared in Ernst Deuerlein's Der Aufstieg der NSDAP in Augenzeugenberichten (The Rise of the NSDAP according to the Reports of Eyewitnesses). The Globe & Mail article tries hard to make this letter into some form of devilish early accusation of tendencies which would supposedly cumulate in the Holocaust twenty-three years later, but - in truth - it cannot deliver. [image error] Hitler's signature under the 1919 letter.

The date is 1919 and, decades before the Holocaust, the 30-year-old German soldier – born in Austria – penned what are believed to be Hitler's first written comments calling for the annihilation of Jews.

The only problem with this assessment of the letter is that it is blatantly false. Given what I've written in TBA: Wolf Hunt, there isn't much of a chance to color me as an apologist for Hitler or as an anti-semite. So understand that I'm writing this for the sake of the truth, not for the sake of Hitler's reputation: Nowhere in the actual document does Hitler call for the annihilation of the Jews. Sadly, I don't have any English language links to the content of the document. For those of you with some capacity in German, here is the link to a PDF-file of the letter. From the letter:

"Sein letztes Ziel aber muß unverrückbar die Entfernung der Juden überhaupt sein."

In the context of the letter this means, at worst, deportation, but not extermination. Given later Nazi policies, "discriminate against the Jews so they leave Germany" also fits. The claim is even funnier in light of the fact that the article itself provides a translation for this passage lateron:

[I]ts final aim, however, must be the uncompromising removal of the Jews altogether.

Also, omission is the eternal enemy of any objective truth:

In one section, Hitler said that a powerful government could curtail the so-called "Jewish threat" by denying their rights. 

What the article omits - and the letter blatantly states - is that here Hitler is not talking about denying the Jews equal rights, it is about curtailing and abolishing what he thought were practices of giving Jews special rights! It's irrelevant whether there really were special rights or not. Hitler, at least, seemed to think that the young republic was in a stranglehold of Jewish special interests, and that its leaders were financially dependent on that ominous group. It becomes clear from the letter that he thought Germany could not recover its status as an independent power while this supposed influence remained in place.

Hitler signed his letter, "Mit vorzueglicher Hochachtung," meaning with deepest esteem.

Which is nothing special. In fact, it is the contrary, especially given the social etiquette of the day and age. This type of addressing a superior officer within an official function - writing a letter which we would nowadays label a brainstorming document - would have been completely ordinary. The article itself is thin on actual information. I would have hoped to read more than translation mistakes and obvious sloppy writing like this:

Adolf Gemlich created propaganda for the German army. Hitler wrote the letter to him at the suggestion of Captain Ulrich Mayr, to help popularize the notion that someone was responsible for Germany's defeat in the Second World War.

It would have been great to see a scan of the actual letter itself - not because I suspect some kind of malpractice here, but because these kinds of historical documents really interest me. It would also be a great and easy way to gather further publicity (and counteract the inevitable few who will claim it to be a forgery no matter what). Either way, if you're interested in primary sources, take a look at the above linked PDF. If nothing else, it remains an insightful document about Hitler's thoughts about Jews and the situation of Germany in 1919.