The fiction of a Jewish world conspiracy had practical value for the Nazi Party. As it had done for earlier anti-Semitic parties, writes Hannah Arendt, who was on the scene as a student in Berlin in the 1920s, it “gave them the advantage of a domestic program, and conditions were such that one had to enter the arena of social struggle in order to win political power. They could pretend to fight the Jews exactly as the workers were fighting the bourgeoisie. Their advantage was that by attacking the Jews, who were believed to be the secret power behind governments, they could openly attack the
...more
