Background: One of the recurring Nazi anti-Semitic campaigns began in May 1943. Goebbels introduced it with a lead article in Das Reich titled “The War and the Jews.” Soon after, this remarkable document appeared. The Deutscher Wochendienst was a weekly publication aimed at magazine editors, providing more in-depth treatment than the Zeitschriften-Dienst (also intended for magazine editors). Both came from the same office. It is a summary of Nazi anti-Semitic argumentation at a critical point in the war. Although much of the killing of the Holocaust was completed, the Nazis were still focusing on anti-Semitism. For someone looking for a scholarly project, it would be interesting to trace how these directives were followed in German magazines.
There is an analysis of this issue available: G. Bording Mathieu, “The Secret Anti-Juden-Sondernummer of 21st May 1943,” The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, XXVI (1981), pp. 291–300. Although I seldom include German originals of textual material on this site, this is so rare and so significant that I am providing the original in this case.
The source: Deutscher Wochendienst, 21 May 1943 (# 8838-8846).

[8838]: German magazines currently have a unique opportunity to lead the anti-Jewish world battle. Since the Jews influence all areas of economic and cultural life in the most varied countries in the world, each magazine can address the theme from its area. We repeat once again that the claim that the German people knows enough about the Jews and does not need further education is in no way accurate. Even in domestic propaganda work, only constant hammering of familiar truths can drive this truth into the whole people and persuade it to act on it.
The effect abroad is currently even more important than domestically. The effect abroad even of a very small magazine is often underestimated. Perhaps an issue reaches the hands of foreign experts, or parts of the content become known abroad by citation, or in the form of letters that influence opinion beyond the borders of our fatherland. Think of the many foreign workers here, most of whom understand German and can read German. Although they may not get very many German magazines, there are still discussions between them and German workers who regularly read your magazine. Foreigners become conscious of the content of your magazine and it ends up in many daily letters going abroad. One may not underestimate the impact of such personal, intimate propaganda. What a father, brother, or friend writes to French, Belgians, Danes, Norwegians, and Ukrainians is truth itself for many. And these discussions make it into the enemy press, as this issue shows. Our propaganda has provoked anti-Jewish discussions in England, for example.
Our propaganda against the Jews can only be fully successful if the whole German press, meaning all newspapers and magazines together and simultaneously, reveal over several months the Jewish danger and the necessity of defeating it.
Since their beginnings, the Zeitschriften-Dienst and the Deutscher Wochendienst have provided their subscribers with information on the Jewish danger. We refer to recent issues like Nr. 196, where section 8314 discussed Bolshevism as a tool of Jewry in “When the Jew has Power” and 8315, which shows how Europe is resisting the Jews. We further refer to edition #204, with a lot of material on the theme “Jews are Criminals” under heading 8615, with examples from history. And in edition #207 (8712) which provided solid material to prove that the mass murder at Katyn was not an isolated case of Jewish hatred against the Poles, but rather a conscious continuation of Jewish policy against all Gentiles (“Judah Wants to Murder Europe’s Peoples”).
Collected Material:
To save editors the work of going through past years of the Zeitschriften-Dienst and the Deutscher Wochendienst searching for anti-Jewish material, we here provide updated and revised material on the most important anti-Jewish themes that we have previously covered. This issue also contains references to anti-Jewish literature. Every German county seat has a library that will have some of the many books mentioned here. Our intent is not that editors should pile hundreds of books on their desks, but rather use at least some of the many books that are available anywhere.
On Using this Material:
This special edition of the Deutscher Wochendienst may not be glanced through and then disappear forever into the filing cabinet. Rather, it is to be looked at each day and used to plan the next issue of each magazine. Our goal is that in the coming months each magazine page will in some way refer to the Jewish problem. It is less important to carry major articles on the topic than to make clear the activities of these human parasites through constant examples from Jewish history. Furthermore, each editor is to be sure that every statesman, businessman, scientist, artist, etc., who is a Jew, and every company, every bank, every concern of any type that is in Jewish hands or is led by a Jew, is clearly and openly identified. For example, always say the Jew Litvinov, the Jew Kaganovitsch, the Jew Rathenau, the Jewish bank Rothschild, the Jewish publisher Mosse, the Jewish newspaper the New York Times. However, never call a person or a company Jewish that is not Jewish. That must be followed with scrupulous exactness.
Political Magazines:
We want to give additional directives to magazines with a political nature or that carry political topics to provide additional themes. For example, cover Issac Adolphe Crémieux, the founder of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. He is the grave digger of modern France. And USA political leaders like the Jews Frankfurter and Rosenman are not examined enough. Jews in the Soviet Union are a constant theme for magazines. Some additional details. There was a Marxist conference in Zimmerwald, Switzerland in 1915 about bringing about a revolution throughout Europe. Aside from Lenin and Bersic, all of the twelve Russian participants were Jews, according to General Spirodovitsch’s book History of Bolshevism in Russia, which is based on official sources.
Jews have maintained their dominant influence in the Soviet Union to the present. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution, Moscow’s Jews sent a message to Stalin that called him “Jehovah’s chosen one and the model for all Jews.” The 12-Uhr-Blatt has carried excellent material about the Jewdification of the Soviet Union, which we recommend. Nr. 111 of 10.5.43 provides the names of leading Jews in the GPU and internal commerce, in Nr. 112 of 11.5.43 the names of Jews in the armaments and agricultural industries, in Nr. 113 of 12.5.43 the names of Jewish commissars in the army and in foreign trade. We also recommend the following themes:
Immigrants in the USA (American Magazine recently established that Jewish immigrants from Europe brought five billion dollars to the United States over the last seven years. The magazine reports that thousands of Jews brought fortunes in the form of jewelry and valuables, then bought enormous factories or buildings. They invested their enormous fortunes in ways that make them increase automatically. The Jews brought $132 million in diamonds alone to the USA. The magazine expressed its open concern that Jewish immigrants have become “lords of the manor” at luxury resorts and behave in shameless ways.). — Jews and Arabs in Palestine (The rector of the Jewish university in Jerusalem has proposed a plan for Palestine that recommends two states, a Jewish and an Arab. This revives the so-called “Peel Plan,” which the Arabs have energetically opposed.). — Jews and the Mediterranean. (An estimated two million Jews live in the Mediterranean area. Besides Palestine, countless Jews live in North Africa, usually in ghettos. The Mohammedan population despises the Jews, resulting in frequent conflicts. The Jews gained full citizenship in Algeria and Morocco in 1830 through Crémieux’s efforts, which was seen by the Mohammedans as a great provocation. Citizenship was revoked in 1940, but was reintroduced after Roosevelt’s attack.). — Growing anti-Semitism in England. (Recently the News Statesman and Nation wrote: The growth of anti-Semitism in England and America is not generally known. It is intensifying above all in those parts of the population suffering most under the burdens of the war. What is new is that one can find anti-Semitic sentiments in circles where they previously were absent. Some see the Jews avoiding military service, others as active in the black market. Workers complain about anti-social attitudes among Jews. The business world is angriest, complaining about unfair methods and lust for profits by the Jews. Women who rent rooms and hotelkeepers despise the Jews and refuse them accommodation because they bring a certain unpleasant tone. All complain about how Jews defend themselves. If the Jew even thinks that he has been treated unfairly, he causes a great fuss. However, he has neither sympathy nor understanding for his fellow men. His egotism is so strong that he thinks only of himself, even in these hard times.).
For Business Periodicals:
Most articles about business can criticize the Jews and their conduct without being directly, openly, and primarily against the Jews.
Business has been mechanized by the Jewish spirit and alienated from its real goal: satisfying the needs of a national or local community. The Jew seeks his own material advantage more ruthlessly and unscrupulously than other races and nations. Jewish solidarity does not extend past its own tribe and racial community. They carry an international tendency in business, both in amassing capital and its opposite, international collectivism (communism). They strive for control of mobile (financial) capital and property (physical) capital. They were always there when a national or economic body was sick and weak: after military defeats, after revolutions, inflation, and natural catastrophes.
The Jews have no interest in or understanding for the government of host peoples. Indeed, they are hostile to it. They ceaselessly look for gaps in the law and exploit them for personal benefit. In comparison to their proportion in the general population, they are responsible for a very high percentage of smuggling, black marketeering, contraband goods, and the supply chain. They are active in speculation, artificial shortages, and usury. They deal in everything that has value, passports, identity papers, permits, documents, and are most of those involved in falsifying documents, counterfeiting, profiteering, and criminal bankruptcies. They ignore or get around price and quality controls. They are involved in fraud, spreading false information, fencing stolen goods, and similar crimes far beyond their percentage of the population.
The Jews are the opposite of “merchant princes” and traditional industrialists. They know no national considerations and connections and are ready at any time to corrupt the values of their host peoples when it is to their advantage. As factory owners they are often ruthless and unsympathetic, being uninterested either in the welfare of their employees or customers. They are deeply anti-social, taking consideration of their tools and employees only as long as it is to their advantage.
The following themes are appropriate for agricultural and forestry periodicals:
The shifting, homeless Jew is rare among farmers. He is not satisfied with the results of his own work. Only where land is an attribute of high social standing or outward appearance does the Jew appear as a landowner, hunting ground owner, etc.
Industrial and mining periodicals can take the following approach: The Jews have limited ability and inclination for hard physical labor. They avoid occupations where it is difficult to exploit the labor of others. They lack any professional pride.
Magazines for the trades can always note that Jews generally have limited ability and interest in the trades. There are good possibilities here for magazines in commerce and transportation. The Jews particularly prefer areas of commerce in which large and uncontrolled profits are possible. These include livestock trading, metals and ores, precious goods, antiques, used goods, grain, textiles, art, and pawnshops. They have primary responsibility for the decline in business ethics in these branches. They offer low prices when buying and demand, whenever possible, usurious prices when selling. They exploit the inexperience of their business partners. They are the opposite of “trustees.” They oppose fixed prices and try to bargain; whenever possible, they mislead their business partners about quality.
The Jews have a particular fondness for real estate (property speculation), which offers appropriate periodicals good opportunities for propaganda. They benefitted from the growth of large cities. Their specialty — particularly in difficult times — is buying and selling land and buildings. Rental property was also mostly in Jewish hands. The drive for profit without labor is particularly strong here.
The Jews have a preference for money and financial businesses. That can be discussed in banking magazines, an area that was previously heavily Jewdified. Jews were almost entirely absent from the credit union system, which was founded on mutual cooperation. The Jews sought influence on important industrial branches with the help of their positions in banking. The Jews had a particularly large role among founders of shady businesses.
For Social Policy Magazines:
Magazines in the social policy area have opportunities to conduct anti-Jewish propaganda on current topics, without carrying obviously anti-Jewish essays and articles. Here is an example typical of many social policy topics. We can look back this year on ten years of National Socialist social policy. In #8686, magazines were given various suggestions to compare the period before 1933 with the achievements of German social policy. These comparisons provide opportunity for clever anti-Jewish propaganda. The negative domestic consequences of a class struggle determined by the socialism of the System Era can be discussed, which was above all the result of Jewish-Marxist incitement of the workers. In contrast, today there is a united front of all productive Germans. Similar comparisons with Jewish ideology are possible between views of labor and achievement. Jewish thinking saw labor as drudgery in service of capitalists; today it is seen as honorable service on behalf of the whole people.
Women’s and family magazines have good opportunity to treat unhealthy Jewish influence on population issues, which the press leadership wants emphasized in magazines (see #8210 and #8542). National Socialism sees the woman as mother of the young generation, as the natural and best life comrade of the man, in contrast to the Jewish degradation of woman, which sees her as a subordinate creature — or crudely expressed — as an object of lust. Here one can consider the role of the Jews in prostitution, the leading Jewish role in the erotic literature of the System era, and numerous Jewish sexual crimes. The destructive Jewish influence is clearly seen in the attitude toward the motherly woman and the family. The mother to us is the model of renewing life; the concepts of mother and family are among the highest values of our ethnic culture. From the Aryan viewpoint, Jewish intellectualism leads only to the decay and destruction of marriage.
Such thinking should be inconspicuously present whenever the tasks of the woman in National Socialist Germany or our attitude toward women are discussed.
In this regard, editors are reminded that Jewish influence in the German women’s movement is best not made the subject of polemical discussions. It may be hard to make clear to the average reader that the outward achievements of Jews in the women’s movement result only from typical Jewish self-interest, from the desire to have their hand in everything.
For artistic periodicals:
Culture is one of the oldest areas of Jewish activity. Artistic periodicals must always make clear to their readers that attractive-sounding and seemingly objective cultural-historical formulations that come from a Jew always have a certain tendency. Their nature is their seeming objectivity. If one studies Occidental literature, for example for the period between 1830 and 1933, one can prove that European youth was brought by leaders of the Jewish spirit to a point where the individual young person no longer had values or a foundation. That was the crisis of the young European for many generations. He found a way out only when he finally came to natural ethnic values that gave him a worldview on which he could build his life. The Jew, on the other hand, sought to trap him in relativism, believing one intellectual current today, the opposite tomorrow, thus preparing the fruitful ground that could cut the individual from the ties of his family and his people, making of him a worker and exploiting his intelligence in an exclusively Jewish sense.
It must always be emphasized that there is never a creative Jewish culture. That can be proven by thousands of examples. The Jews surround a creative spirit, take him in hand, attempt to infect his thinking with theirs, and to clothe their own goals with the words and deeds of a genius. But they always remain imitators and never have a creative relationship with their host people. It would be false to ignore the role of the Jews in German intellectual history. Instead, one must emphasize it and show that what the Jew called freedom in the 19th century was never what the German means by freedom. The Jew understood how to use German Romanticism for his ends. We must demonstrate the subversive role of Jewry during the First World War to reveal the methods that he wants to use to attain victory. #8842 in the issue, titled “The Jews in Culture,” shows how the Jew used literature, theatre, music, film, and radio to achieve his ends. Magazines must show that the Jew is now using the same methods in England and America that gives him strength in times of crisis and always works against the host people and for his racial comrades.
Besides these directives, this special edition provides a wealth of material about politics, business, culture, and sections about the USA, England, and the Soviet Union that will suffice to fill your magazine for months with the anti-Jewish spirit that the press leadership currently must expect of each organ. The fruits of this propaganda work, which we emphasize once again, must be evident in each magazine: The German press must become an anti-Jewish press.
Goal:
The constant task of all magazines is to make clear the racially and culturally destructive effects of the Jews in all areas. The last remnants of bourgeois sentimentality about the “poor Jews” must be eliminated. And the whole world must be educated about the Jews. Professional magazines have a particularly large role here.
Emphasis:
STRESS: Each individual Jew, wherever he is and whatever he does, is guilty. There is no “decent Jew,” only more or less clever concealment. The Jew is a notorious criminal.
AVOID: Inaccurate charges of Jewish ancestry of individual politicians, scientists, and artists, since false information puts the credibility of the whole argument in question. If in doubt, find accurate information. Strictly avoid discussing religious issues! (e.g., “Was Christ a Jew?”)
Themes and Suggestions:
History:
“The Jewish question is as old as the coexistence of this peculiar people with other peoples, who from the beginning rejected the Jewish people.” (Jüdisches Lexikon, v. III, p. 421.) Seneca (4 B.C. to 64 A.D.) stated: “The customs of that most accursed nation have gained such strength that they have now been received in all lands; the conquered have given laws to the conquerors.” Tacitus speaks of “this disgusting people” (deterriman gentem) in his histories. Theodor Mommsen, the greatest scholar of the history of the Roman Empire, wrote the following about the effects of the Jews in Antiquity: “The Jew is indifferent to the state; he is unwilling to give up his national peculiarities, which he willingly clothes with any nationality. In Antiquity, too, Jewry was an effective ferment of national decomposition.” He writes of Caesar’s period that: “How closely the Jews held together is shown by the remark of an author of this period that it was dangerous for a governor to offend the Jews in his province, because he might then certainly reckon on being hissed at after his return by the populace of the capital.” — Throughout the centuries there were repeated prosecutions of the Jews in France, England, Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Bohemia, Romania. Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Important historical judgments: Peter de Cluny (ca. 1146): “I do not recommend killing the Jews, but rather punishing their evils in an appropriate way. What is more just than to take from them what they took by fraud? They stole what they have in shameful ways, and worst of all they have not been punished for their insolence. It must be taken from them. — Everyone knows what I am saying. They fill their barns with grain, their cellars with wine, their pocketbooks with money, their chests with gold and silver, not by honorable farming, not through proper military service, not through any kind of useful employment, but through what they take from people by fraud, what they buy secretly from thieves, enabling them to sell the most valuable things for the lowest prices.”
Erasmus of Rotterdam (1487): “The poor man is robbed and swindled by the Jews. This can no longer be tolerated and may God have mercy. Jewish usurers reach into the smallest village, where they lend five guilders and take it back six-fold, interest is piled on interest and even more interest on top of that. The poor man loses everything that he has.” Martin Luther, Table Talk: “Just as the magpie cannot stop its hopping and pecking or the serpent lose its fangs, so the Jew cannot stop killing Christians wherever he can.” (Erlangen Editions of Luther’s works, v. 62, p. 375.)
Giordano Bruno, Spaccio, Paris 1848: “It is true that I have never encountered similar views of justice, aside from wild barbarians, and I believe that they originated with the Jews, for they are such a pestilential, leprous, and dangerous tribe that they deserve to be exterminated before being born.”
Empress Maria Theresa (handwritten note in the Imperial Chancellery 1777): “Henceforth no Jew, whatever his name, should be allowed to remain here without my written permission. I know of no more harmful plague for the state than this nation, as it can reduce people to poverty through fraud, usury, and financial crimes, things that an honest man abhors. Therefore, as much as possible they are to be kept away and avoided.”
Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique and Essai sur les moeurs: “The Jews are an ignorant and barbarous people who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched.” “The small Jewish nation dares spread an irreconcilable hatred against all nations; it revolts against all its masters. Always superstitious, always envious of the well-being enjoyed by others, always superstitious, crawling in misfortune, and insolent in prosperity.”
Domestic Politics:
The “Jewish question” after emancipation was encouraged by the American Constitution of 1787 and the French Revolution of 1789: Equality of the Jews on the basis of freedom and equality before the law. — Following Napoleon’s victories, emancipation in Hesse 1808, Frankfurt/Main 1811; complete lifting of barriers 1834; Baden 1808-1811; — Emancipation in Prussia through an edict of the king on 11 March 1812, Jews become full citizens; lifting of restrictions in Mecklenburg 1813. — Afterwards, many complaints, protests, and warnings, among others Goethe objected in 1823 to permitting mixed marriages: “All moral sensibilities in the family would be undermined by such a scandalous law.” Frederick Wilhelm IV: “Like Roland’s horn, I call to all noble, loyal men in Prussia to surround me as true liegemen, forgetting the smaller evil in the face of a greater, growing, dreadful evil.... The existence and rule of that vile Jewish clique with its following of silly and foolish dogs is such a misfortune for Prussia! The insolent band is attacking the roots of Germanic nature every day through speech, writing, and pictures.”
Last restrictions on the freedom of the Jews ended by the liberal revolution of 1848. — Proclamation of “Basic German Rights” in 1849, according to which civil or legal rights could not be granted or restricted because of religious (!) belief. — A cabinet order of the king of Prussia of 3 July 1869 lifted all limitations on the civil and legal rights of Jews, including “permission to hold office in all city and state bodies as well as public offices.” — Bismarck opposed this complete emancipation (speech in the United Parliament 1847): “I admit that I am full of prejudices; I have sucked them in, so to speak, with the mother’s milk and I cannot succeed in talking them away; if I should imagine having before me, as a representative of the King’s sacred majesty, a Jew whom I would have to obey, I must confess that I would feel deeply depressed and humiliated, that the feeling of pride and honor would leave me with which I now endeavor to discharge my duties towards the state. I share the feelings of the masses of the lower classes of the people and am not embarrassed by their society....”
Serious consequences from continuing Jewish emancipation. Statement by Heinrich von Treitschke in the Preußische Jahrbücher of November 1879: “Among the circles of highly educated men who reject any idea of church intolerance or national arrogance there rings with one voice: the Jews are our misfortune!” — Unwritten law prohibits unbaptized (!) Jews from high civil service positions and the officer corps. — The Jewish revolt of 9 November 1918 removes all barriers and demonstrates the power of the Jews over Germany. — This battle of the Jews to rule Germany is decisive for all Jews in the world, since the German people is the strongest carrier of Aryan cultural consciousness.
Jews infiltrate business, intellectual and cultural life, and then politics. After achieving political power, exploitation of it for intellectual and cultural foreign infiltration and economic exploitation (Example: Jews in the professions in Berlin 1933:
Total Jews Percentage of JewsDoctors 6203 2617 42Insurance doctors 3605 1879 52Dentists 1416 490 35Pharmacists 489 136 28Attorneys 3890 1879 48Notaries 2149 1210 56