Background:This is a translation of a pamphlet titled “America and Europe. Failures in Building an American People.” It was published by Robert Ley’s Reichsorganisationsleitung der NSDAP around mid-1942. It was intended for those making propaganda. The first page notes that “Reprinting or giving to those who are unauthorized is not allowed.” However, it contains nothing particularly confidential. It is an interesting application of Nazi racial theories to the United States.
The source: “Europe und Amerika. Fehlerquellen im Aufbau des amerikanischen Volkstums,” Schulungs-Unterlage Nr. 18 (Der Reichsorganisationsleitung der NSDAP., Hauptschulungsamt, 1942).
Main Points:
1. The USA has no ethnic unity.
When speaking of the German people, we are dealing with a fixed group of people who are defined by their nature and territory. There is usually a “natural” relationship between between a people and its territory, such that naming the people brings to mind a territorial area. On this particular section of the world with its climate, its beauties, and its nature, the people’s history took place. Here its inhabitants found the source of their strength. Here its cultural landmarks give evidence of its spirit. Here its myths and fables have their roots in the distant past.
Such a relationship between people and space does not exist in the USA. They have no myths and fables, only facts. They jumped right into the middle of history — the only instance in world history in which the development of a governmental system and a “people” could be observed by historians from the very beginning.
The history of this governmental system begins with English colonial history. Long before, however, other Europeans had come in contact with the American continent. Vikings from Greenland reached North America as early as 1000. The second visit also came from the Germanic north, as the two Germans Pining and Pothorst landed in Newfoundland in service of Denmark. These were only brief episodes, however. Only with Columbus did America enter the consciousness of Europe. Columbus is also the reason why Spain was for a while the leading European power in the new world, although as early as 1497 the English under Cabot arrived and occupied Labrador and Newfoundland. They had to share the latter with France at first. The development of North America, once Spain turned more to Central and South America, was determined by the struggle between England and France. English seafarers had occupied a section of the East Coast by the end of the 16th century. With the help of commercial organizations, the land was settled and developed. A modern English colony of mercantile nature developed.
That changed as the first Puritans, the so-called Pilgrims, arrived in 1620. From the beginning, the goal of their settlement in the New World was to free themselves from the English motherland, which they had left because of their sectarian beliefs. They could not free themselves, however, from their racial nature, their genuinely English outlook and attitudes that influenced every area of their lives. That gave the settlements their distinctive characteristics. It also could not stop Germans from settling on the North American East Coast, particularly in Pennsylvania, which had been settled by the leader of the patient Quakers, William Penn. They were more tolerant of religious differences than the Puritans. Pennsylvania was the first settlement that was not settled exclusively by the English.
Developments in the next decades were influenced by the conflict between England and France. France had claimed the entire Mississippi River basin in 1700. That included English settlements both in the north and south. After a long and bitter struggle that mirrored the conflict in Europe, England succeeded in ousting the newcomers. The real issue was settled by the Peace of Hubertusberg, which ended the Seven Year War. France was forced to cede Canada and all the land east of the Mississippi to Great Britain.
After the British eliminated the Dutch, who had colonized Manhattan Island and New Amsterdam, later New York, England was the dominant power on the North American continent. However, a new difficulty soon arouse, one from within. London had overlooked the fact that the colonies had changed from mercantile outposts to agrarian colonies. The land was controlled not by foreign plantation owners, but rather by local settlers. England believed that it could continue to treat them as mercantile outposts, which resulted in resistance from the colonists. In the War of Independence (1776 to 1783), “the States” won their freedom.
After the War of Independence, developments took an entirely different course: The original English colony became a European colony. This change provided the basis for the establishment of a more or less racially unified population with a connection to territory. German immigrants above all sought to adjust to the new land. The other requirement, a population united by common blood, was also present. This situation changed fundamentally as a result of continuing immigration, however. There were three general periods of immigration, each with its own characteristics corresponding to the nature of the stream of immigrants.
In the first periods, which ended with the War of Independence, the Anglo-Saxon element predominated, though there were already around 250,000 Germans in America.
The second period included the 19th Century. It began with immigrants predominately from Northern Europe, including Germans, English, Irish and Scandinavians. In the third period, on the other hand, from about the turn of the century, the majority came from the Southern and Slavic nations. There were many Eastern Jews. By 1930, the ethnic background of the North American union was as follows:
| English | 41.4% |
| Germans | 17.2% |
| Irish | 11.2% |
| Scandinavians | 4.3% |
| Italians | 3.6% |
| Poles | 4.1% |
| Dutch | 2.0% |
| Russians | 1.8% |
(These figures include the Jews in the respective countries.) Ethnically, the USA had become a mirror of Europe, a kind of “United States of Europe” on American soil.
2. Every attempt to build an American people has failed.
Throughout the entire 19th century, North America exerted a powerful attraction on the people of densely populated Europe. People recognized what the technical methods developed in crowded Europe would be able to do in an area that did not suffer from the territorial limitations of Europe. Applying the methods of a developed continent to an undeveloped one made North America into a land of unlimited opportunities that attracted immigrants. Between 1820 and 1920, no less than 33.3 million people settled in the USA. They came from every nation of the old world. By 1900, the USA was a colorful mixture of nations.
As long as the primarily source of immigration was Northern Europe, there was really no racial problem. The various ethnic groups were close enough so that intermarriage had no negative effects. A unified people developed over the decades and centuries. That changed during the 1880’s. The immigrants from the north declined and were replaced by other groups. Between 1900 and 1910, only 23.3% of the newcomers came from Germanic areas, while 76.7% came from Southern Europe or the Slavic nations. Things were even less favorable in the following decade. The new immigrants had other customs, other languages, other ways of thinking, other religions, other skills. The nationality issue suddenly became a problem. Even the most superficial observer had to see the danger of a racial mosaic within the nation’s boundaries. Many occupations were practically monopolized by individual nationalities. In the housing industry by 1910, for example, the Irish did the excavation, the Germans the rough construction, the Italians the interior work, native Americans the plumbing and the Jews the painting. The most basic areas demonstrated the disunity of the USA. The problem of Americanization was clear.
Its seriousness at first was not recognized. People assumed that the environment would encourage unity and settled for economic equality. A Jew even thought he could prove that physical appearances were merging. Immigrants had to adapt to the environment — at least outwardly — to avoid unnecessary difficulties. People hoped that with time the new immigrants would become genuine Yankees. Such naive thinking was possible only because no one had thought about the idea of a people in general or an American people in specific. An American was someone who lived in the USA, earned a lot of money, and more or less spoke English.
Some began to look deeper. Economic leaders like Ford saw the frictions resulting from various ethnic groups as a problem in production and began to consider the problem seriously.
The process of becoming a people includes matters of culture, language, customs, history, and faith. There could be no immediate common history for people coming from the most varied nations, people who consciously or unconsciously still carried the marks of their homeland. The touchy matter of religion was also not easily dealt with. It was the matter that first made the problem clear to the American Babbit. Secret societies like the Ku Klux Klan were a way of resisting or actively opposing the growing influence of Catholicism. That left two ways to Americanize the immigrants: customs and language.
Even before the World War, efforts were made to teach the “aliens” the language and ways of thinking of the country. Courses in Americanism included not only the language and government, but also attempted to build American national pride. This resulted in the desire for records and gigantomania that always amuses us. Lacking a significant political and intellectual history, the American is forced to build his national pride on technology.
Customs were another leading factor. The immigrants sought to adapt to them as rapidly as possible to avoid standing out. The growing standardization of life reached such an extent in the USA that independence became impossible. Everyone wears the same clothes, and thinking like everyone else is a duty. In contrast to Europe’s variety, this seems odd to us, but we should not forget that uniformity is about the only way Americans can experience community. This process of Americanization was successful, but also superficial. A type developed, but not a people.
It is significant that a Jew was the first to recognize the inadequacy of Americanization. Israel Zangwill published a play titled The Melting Pot in 1909. This gave the USA the metaphor for its future: a melting pot of every nationality and race that would form a new unified people. His call for an indiscriminate and homogenized mixture found its theoretical justification in the Declaration of Independence, which spoke of the equality of all people. It agreed not only with Zangwill’s view of the inadequacy of previous assimilation policies, but also for the secret wish of the Jews for a nationality soup without instinct that would not stand in the way of its path to world domination.
The population, however, did put one limitation on the melting pot thesis. Mixing with Blacks was out of the question. Even today 30 states have strict laws against intermarriage with Negroes. (Naturally, that has nothing to do with illegitimate relations between Blacks and Whites; the estimates are that 20,000 mixed-race children are born annually.) The Negro problem, indeed the racial problem in general, is viewed differently in the industrialized North than in the more agricultural South, which had drawn a sharp line for centuries between the Colored and Whites. The limited penetration of the Jews in the South can also be noted. The Jew has an interest in eliminating racial boundaries and therefore always makes common cause with the Blacks. (The Jewish element in Roosevelt’s ancestry or the White House’s dependence on the Jews may be responsible for his attitude toward the Negro question. The president’s wife in particular takes pleasure in ignoring all racial boundaries. Political calculations also play a role — there are around 12 million Negroes in the USA. They have an important influence in elections. Despite all efforts by Roosevelt and his Jewish men behind the scenes, the melting pot theory does have its limits. This is one of the biggest problems in the domestic developments of the union. Time will tell if the growing demands for emancipation by the Black element, which in some Southern states comprises over half of the population, will succeed. That might eventually lead to a dissolution of an American state.)
The World War was a turning point in the Americanization process. Blood proved stronger than the environment. There is no point in wondering if Zangwill’s theory would have had greater success without the World War. It is not possible to determine the impact on the northern states and on the lower social class of immigrants who today are the primary source of relationships between Blacks and Whites.
Even before the World War, a certain re-nationalization of the masses was noticeable, which could even be decisive in presidential elections. The World War encouraged such developments. For example, the Germans were strong enough so that Wilson was forced to speak against entering the war. Other “hyphenated Americans,” above all the Irish, also held to their ancestry, showing the weakness of the melting pot.
3. Instead of an American people, there is an American class.
In view of the failure of Americanization and the renationalization efforts of various ethnic groups, the Anglo-Saxon element attempted to secure its unofficial leading position and to affirm its dominance in public life. The English element, above all in the East, had always had a special position, supported by the fact that immigrants from the United Kingdom had learned national characteristics and pride in the homeland. This was not characteristic of the German immigrants, who saw themselves as Hessians or Westphalians, etc. Both their number and confidence enabled the Anglo-Saxons to impose their norms on the others. English life was the model for American society. The customs and religious nature of the Puritans and Quakers also continued to bind the old colonies to the former motherland. Some rightly spoke of the Americans as covert Englishmen.
The new attitude received a jolt in the Immigration Law of 1921, which greatly restricted undesired immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.
The law stopped the flow of elements that were difficult to assimilate, but is made no fundamental change. The issue was not settled; a leading class in the racial mosaic had formed. It claimed social and political leadership. It was a minority among the other nationalities that was unwilling and unable to assimilate the other racially foreign elements. Unfortunately, this Anglicizing of public life went hand and hand with a suppression or elimination of the German influence, which alone could have had an ennobling and beneficial impact on the class.
4. Jewry is a primary reason for the absence of an American people.
Jewry’s domination is a major reason for the failure to develop a unified people that organically would include everyone from the leadership to the most basic economic activities. No country has more Jews than does the United States. That was not always the case. During the colonial period, they were rare. When one surfaced, he was a representative of some company. They were not found among the real pioneers. Only after the land was settled and industrialization offered new ways to earn profits did the immigration of Jews begin, above all from Eastern Europe. 90,000 Jews came to the USA annually between 1899 and 1914. Today there are around eight million Jews in the States, a quarter of whom live in New York. With some justice, it has been called Jew York. Their influence is out of all proportion to their numbers. The current president is their willing tool. He ignores Benjamin Franklin’s political testament, a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, who warned: “Wherever Jews have settled in large numbers, they have had a harmful effect on morality and integrity. They stay separate and are not assimilated. They form a state within the state, and seek to destroy a nation financially if people oppose them. This was the case with Spain and Portugal. If you do not exclude them from the United States, in less than 200 years they will be here in such numbers as to rule the land and change the form of government for which we Americans have shed our blood, sacrificed our lives and property and risked our freedom. If you do not exclude them, in less than 200 years our posterity will work in the fields to feed them, while they sit in their offices. I warn you, gentlemen: if you do not exclude the Jews, your children will curse your graves. Jews, gentlemen, are Asiatic, wherever they are born and however many generations removed they may be. They will never change.” [This statement is a widely quoted by anti-Semites, but it is a fake citation.]
The USA’s leaders ignored these words and gave their nation to the Jews. The arrival of the Jews was eased by two influential organizations: Freemasonry and the church. The help Protestantism gives to Jewry is evident in the frequency with which Protestant ministers preach in synagogues and rabbis stand behind Protestant pulpits.
What significance does Jewry have in the process of nation building? As we have seen, the Jews are the most ardent defenders of the idea of the melting pot. Unlike other proponents of Americanization, they do not even draw a “color line” between Blacks and Whites. Thus New York’s Jewish governor Lehmann signed a law in summer 1939 that abolished all differences between races, colors, and religions. The Jews have no interest in developing a nation with solid racial substance, such as was present in those coming from Northern Europe. To the contrary, they oppose every effort toward national affirmation and work toward a racial stew — except for themselves! Domination by the Jews and national distinctiveness are opposites that cannot be brought together even in the Land of Unlimited Opportunity.
The end result in the USA will not be the development of an American people, but rather the domination of the Jews. The Anglo-Saxon upper class serves them, and leads the American “people” in a way that serves Jewish hopes for world domination.
5. There is also a noticeable absence of a moral and national ideal.
The first English immigrants who left their stamp on political and intellectual life in the East were the Puritans. One must know the Puritans to understand the Americans. One of the most important aspects of this unusual faith is that it draws its entire intellectual strength from the Old Testament, forming its life by it and evaluating the world from its perspective. Persecuted because of their beliefs, the Puritans denied others the intellectual and religious freedom they had claimed for themselves. They went after adherents of all other beliefs, imprisoning, torturing and hanging them. (Later toleration was the result of German influence). This Old Testament fanaticism which extends to moral sadism is even today a foundation of Americans. It is the basis of their rejection of everything foreign and their superiority complex, as well as their claim to be able to judge the world. A Christian sect that was influenced by the Jewish spirit thus prepared the way for Judah’s later takeover of the USA.
A further characteristic of Puritanism — the result of the Hebraic influence from the Old Testament — was its materialistic emphasis. This originally had a religious emphasis, but later was transformed into materialism. Money-make [sic] is the American public’s ideal. It is the single American contribution to its own culture, which is otherwise entirely a European import.
Common ideals are necessary for a people. Great power dwells therein. Roosevelt knows this, and therefore tries to give his nation some kind of ideals. He tries to replace missing national ideals with a common ideology of “fighting Fascism and aggression.” This will have as little success in building a people as the idea of money-making. Money-making today is the idol, anti-Fascism the ideology of Americans, but neither is an ideal sufficient to build a people upon.
6. The development of a unified people is also hindered by streams of asocial elements from around the world.
The ideal of eternal success is a grave danger to a people’s morality. The result is that in the USA, people are valued only according to their success, ignoring all other measures. Such a view of life inevitably must attract materialistically-oriented people. The USA was their place. Alongside Nordic farmers desiring land, adventurers and gold-diggers of all sorts came to the United States. Even worse, the unfit elements who were outside the social or legal order were drawn to the New World. There only what one did counted, regardless of whether or not it was consistent with morality. It is certainly true that some dubious elements found useful work in the fresh air of the new nation, but others who had demonstrated their moral weakness back home brought their antisocial or criminal nature along to poison the US-American population. For example, during the 1860’s criminals condemned to death for murder in Germany could be pardoned if they emigrated to America. Such blood elements could not contribute to building a nation. They could only hinder the development of a community that put the good of the whole above the good of the individual, and that demanded one serve the community even at the risk of one’s life. This is yet another reason for the failure of the USA to develop a people. The political and criminal gangsters that are so evident today cannot be understood without seeing not only the national origins of immigrants, but also their social value. It is certainly true that the most valuable and active elements from overpopulated and cramped Europe went abroad, but also some asocial and less gifted ones. The reply that signs of decay in the USA are the result of European influences is actually the fault of the Americans themselves, since their indifference to firm moral standards drew such elements to their country.
7. There is therefore no unified people in the USA, only a population.
Despite all the efforts, the various elements of the USA have not been able to form a unified people. The attempt failed first because of the superficiality of an attempt that ignored racial and historical differences and was satisfied with external assimilation, and second because it met the clear and determined opposition of some circles that resisted active or passive assimilation. The most active groups included the Anglo-Saxons, who rejected connections to groups they viewed as inferior, and the adherents of certain religious groups who saw giving up their national characteristics as a threat to their religious survival. The problem of Americanization, for example, does not exist for the Amish-Mennonites, who for religious reasons stand outside the larger society.
Such behavior may be viewed as narrow-minded from the American standpoint, but still has significant impact on intellectual, economic and political life in the USA. One cannot ignore the fact that the source of strength — and the Union has had considerable strength — lies in the countryside and small towns where immigrants have held to their ethnic characteristics and languages longer than in the big cities. There the individual is needed racially, not merely physically. The melting pot theory found its greatest acceptance in big cities. We clearly see there the blatant perversions of American life that result from racial mixing. To judge the USA by that, however would be as false as if one had judged Germany during the Weimar period by what was happening in Berlin.
A guided process of nation-building through indiscriminate mixing — a contradiction in terms — is impossible, as is a legal separation of the various racial and ethnic groups living in North America, apparently the goal of the Blacks. The only remaining possibility is to let the various groups live as they wish, hoping that over time a common American culture will develop. Like Wilson before him, Roosevelt is trying to establish unity through a common ideology. He has succeeded in leading his nation to war. However, his ideology today is the ideology of the past, which is attempting to maintain the interests of the past. That is too weak a foundation on which to build a nation. Time will tell if it is also too weak a foundation on which to wage war. The USA as yet has not experienced a modern war that demands its full resources. Its participation in the World War was limited to a few months of battle against an enemy that had already been bled dry. Its political contributions at the end of the war at Versailles, its failure to ratify that treaty, and its refusal to join the League of Nations shows the unreliability and questionableness of policies based on ideology, not true national foundations. During a war, only a people can fight for its future, not a mere population that is racially, religiously, linguistically, ideologically, and governmentally disunified. Given all that has been said, the USA has no unified people, only a population.
[Page copyright © 1998 by Randall L. Bytwerk. No unauthorized reproduction. My e-mail address is available on the FAQ page.]
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