Yencken, who had won an MC in the war, was not unsympathetic to the familiar arguments justifying the mistreatment of Jews. After four years as a diplomat in the Weimar Republic, he shared the opinion – by no means confined to Nazi sympathisers – that Jewish domination of German affairs had been detrimental. He cited the bookstores which ‘throughout Germany were littered with morbidly revolting publications’,
