by Jeffrey Herf
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Product Description
The sheer magnitude of the Holocaust has commanded our attention for the past sixty years. The extent of atrocities, however, has overshadowed the calculus Nazis used to justify their deeds. According to German wartime media, it was German citizens who were targeted for extinction by a vast international conspiracy. Leading the assault was an insidious, belligerent Jewish clique, so crafty and powerful that it managed to manipulate the actions of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. Hitler portrayed the Holocaust as a defensive act, a necessary move to destroy the Jews before they destroyed Germany. Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, and Otto Dietrich’s Press Office translated this fanatical vision into a coherent cautionary narrative, which the Nazi propaganda machine disseminated into the recesses of everyday life. Calling on impressive archival research, Jeffrey Herf recreates the wall posters that Germans saw while waiting for the streetcar, the radio speeches they heard at home or on the street, the headlines that blared from newsstands. The Jewish Enemy is the first extensive study of how anti-Semitism pervaded and shaped Nazi propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust, and how it pulled together the diverse elements of a delusionary Nazi worldview. Here we find an original and haunting exposition of the ways in which Hitler legitimized war and genocide to his own people, as necessary to destroy an allegedly omnipotent Jewish foe. In an era when both anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories continue to influence world politics, Herf offers a timely reminder of their dangers along with a fresh interpretation of the paranoia underlying the ideology of the Third Reich. (20060817)
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Average Customer Review:
6 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
 STOP the intemidation, 2007-11-28
Is criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism?
Hundreds of politicians and historians were silenced with this career-killer, if not jail opener, label "anti-Semitic"
I am a palestinian who lost his home, which was given to three jewish families came from Morocco, by force, and hence I am very critical of israel. Does that make me anti-semetic?
I think you need to re-examine your assessment. Israel was not established on an empty land. There were cities, and thriving villages. Golada Maer statement : " land without people to people without land" does not change the facts. For those who want to stay blind and live with the "victim" , and "we are better than them no matter what we do" mentalities would find comfort is such "world of illusion" and very effective political blackmail.
0 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
 The Jewish Enemy:Nazi Propanda during WWII and the Holocaust., 2007-10-11
Although I haven't as of yet read the book(due to being a Finailst at Uni.), it arrived in an immaculate condition, just like it's brand new!
Only problem is cost of having to pay shipping when buying from abroad!If, however you're like me and don't mind paying that little extra as long as you get that book you really want, then this isn't that much of a problem!
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
Arresting, scholarly and profoundly unsettling , 2007-03-18
There are so many interesting and revealing facts and analyses in this work that it is hard to approach a review without leaving large chunks of information aside. On a personal note I found this one of the most interesting books I have read on the anti-semitism of the period. Moreover, many of the illustrative examples dredged up by Herf still echo sharply today.
The book charts a gradual adaptation of anti-semitism to lubricate the goals of Naziism. Traditional charges of racial impurity and economic shiftiness were reshaped to meet eugenic and planned economy policies. What comes across very strikingly is the sheer amount of anti-semitic propaganda produced by the Nazis. Jews were aligned with Bolshevism, the Allies, International Banking, etc. Typically the enemy was associated directly with any threat to Nazi hegemony.
Herf's very careful annontation of instances was disturbing at times, and as a reader rather than a professional historian of the period, it was hard to set aside one's emotional and ontological revulsion. Very troubling, in the light of Israel's modern travails, is Herf's extended acount of the propagandistic support given by Grand Mufti al-Husseini for the Nazi machine. Herf cites his address at the opening of the Islamic Institute in Berlin in December 1942. The Mufti, consistent with his Nazi hosts' anti-semitism, lays the blame for all evils at the door of Jews. In 1944, Goebbels, having noted the Grand Mufti's "absolutely Nordic appearance", was puzzling over how to the get the "right" propaganda into the Mufti's hands. While the Mufti's intimate collaboration with the Nazis is despicable and shocking it is worthwhile recording that the vast majority of those staffing the extermination programmes were of Christian origin.
After Stalingrad, anti-semitic propaganda ratcheted up a gear - hard to imagine - and Jews were routinely blamed fro the war (even though at this point the Nazis had eliminated half their final total of Jewish victims).
In the end, Herf concurs with other historians that the true extent of knowledge in German society of the Holocasut will probably never be known. It seems that most Germans were indifferent to the fate of Jews, and presumably as the reich fell in on itself that indifference increased. One can't however leave this book without the nagging suspicion that all too often people failed to ask the right questions.
22 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
Just superb!!!!, 2006-07-25
Jeffrey Herf's THE JEWISH ENEMY is a masterpiece. It is meticulously researched, beautifully written and solidly argued. Above all, it is a true original in that it tells us something genuinely new about the much-researched world of National Socialism and the Nazi genocide of the Jews. To be sure, age-old anti-Semitism DID play a major role in framing the Nazis' singular crime. But as Herf shows irrefutably, the REAL reason for the Nazis' decision to commit what has come to be known as the Holocaust and/or the Shoah, had less to do with their being part of a Europe-wide anti-Semitism, and everything with their viewing the Jews as their number one enemy that had to be destroyed. This is a great book. Kudos to its author.
38 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
Suggestive New Interpretations, 2006-06-05
Herf's materials are powerful and unsettling, even to readers who are well acquainted with the literature on Nazism. He shows, in detail that has not previously been seen, how the Nazi war-time hate propaganda combined verbal attacks against Jews with attacks against the Allies. To these Nazi propagandists, the Jews were the overall enemy, standing behind and stage-managing the Allies.
Herf's interpretation differs in some respects from previous work by others. He holds that the Nazis' anti-Semitic propaganda in wartime was essentially different from what they had done in the pre-war period: this war-time propaganda was, in his view, a deliberate incitement to commit the Holocaust, while previous campaigns had been no more than "traditional" anti-Semitism.
Since the Nazis were never explicit in their propaganda about the mass killing of Jews, Herf's assertions about their intentions in this propaganda cannot be proven. Nevertheless, I find his interpretations highly suggestive, if not conclusive.
Other aspects of Herf's interpretations of the war-time Nazi materials can be checked systematically. For at least fifty years, scholars have practiced and developed methods of content analysis, which, unfortunately, Herf does not use in this work. At least two of his claims should have been subjected to such analysis:
1) The relative prominence of anti-Semitic themes as compared to other themes, in the period in question, is a textbook example of the kind of problem for which content analysis is appropriate.
2) The periodization that Herf proposes -- the new themes that he sees in the wartime period -- can and should be tested by systematic methods.
Despite these shortcomings, the book is highly suggestive. It will no doubt influence the scholarly work of the future.
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