Dear Canem Malum,

Thank you for those base line figures for Berlin around 1900.

Out of a population of 1,844,151 there were 86,152 Jews or 4.56 percent.

To have an influx of Russian Jewry into Berlin to the tune of 300,000 (half the 600,000 who had flooded into Germany) as refugees would likely have had huge social consequences in the early 1920s, just as the country was suffering extreme economic stress.

In late 1922 Germany defaulted on its second reparations payment so France and Belgium sent troops into the Ruhr Valley to confiscate industrial machinery. They shot over a hundred workers and expelled over 150,000 of them from the area. Besides factories they took over coal mines.

There was also wide spread industrial action across Germany and the government printed more money to pay workers. This accelerated the dive into hyper inflation and far deeper unrest.

Taking advantage of the unrest nationalists called the Black Reichswehr attempted a rebellion in Berlin while the Hitler and the NAZIs tried one in Munich in late 1923.

The proposition is that the influx of 600,000 Russian Jews into this mix over just this particular period had no impact.

What do you think and do you think like another here they were fictitious?

The proposition is that the influx of 600,000 Russian Jews into this mix over just this particular period had no impact.

What do you think and do you think like another here they were fictitious?
Posted by SteeleRedux

Answer-

mhaze seems to have significant knowledge here so I would talk about an issue and say how I see things and ask him how he sees the same issue.

Personally I would say that the influx of 600,000 Russian Jews (or any ethnic group) would be significant anywhere- but it's dependent on the context- and how they influence the community. Obviously any people will stand up against being marginalized in their own home. And the dynamics can change over time. In some places Chinese boat and business people have come to represent a problem and there has been violence. When a group of people of similar ethnicity move to another place there is a dynamic- but there are also regional differences. See ex-patriot communities for example.

You need to find out from mhaze how he sees the situation.

He can choose to answer or not.

At the end of the day you can still agree to disagree. Maybe you'll come to see the world differently in future after reflection- maybe not.

Land, community, tradition, family, safety, peace, war, generosity, environment, etc are complexly interrelated. Some talk of Cultural Relativism.

SR write:"I have repeatedly said the refugee influx laid fertile soil for the rise of the NAZI party in places where they would not have otherwise enjoyed that popularity."

Yes, you have repeated asserted that. You have no evidence for it, just asserted it.

So let's go through this. According to your numbers which are unverified but come from one article, there were up to 600000 Russians (not all of them Jews) in Northern Germany in 1922. This had reduced to 150000 by 1927. According to the same article you use there were only 90000 EastEuropean Jews in the whole of Germany by 1925.

I can't verify any of these numbers since the issue was so unimportant in the rise of the Nazis that it isn't covered in any of the histories I've looked at.

So according to you these refugees provided the Nazis with " fertile soil for the rise of the NAZI party". So let's look at this fertile soil in Berlin.

The Nazis had no presence to speak of in Berlin in 1926 when this flood' was supposedly happening. They had 600 members in 1926. Whatismore, in the 1928 election the Nazis got 1.4% of the total vote in Berlin. 1.4%. Fertile ground?

Berlin was a city of 4million by the late 1920s. An extra 90000 or so Jews wouldn't and DIDN'T have any affect on that city. Apart from conjecture you have no evidence of that. But the voting results prove your conjecture to be wrong.

As the Nazis began to gain more support in Berlin,due to the economic situation, not the Jewish issue, they found that their Jewish policies were problematic in north German. So they began to downplay those policies. I've already provided evidence of that.

SR, I know that in your ignorance of the period, you've bought the story that the antisemitic stance was what got the Nazis elected. But the opposite is true, at least in north Germany.

The Nazis were socialists and their socialist policies during the depression was what got them into power.

Just a bit of history on the period in question.

In 1920, the German Federation was still a relatively new country. The difference between the old Prussian north and the Bavarian south was still very pronounced. These were regions that had developed separately over the centuries, often under competing empires and had very different cultures.

Antisemitism was rife in Bavaria where the Nazi party was founded. But the north was far more cosmopolitan and accepting of the Jews. Berlin was the most libertarian city in Europe - sin city.... http://historycollection.com/17-reasons-why-germanys-weimar-republic-was-a-party-lovers-paradise/14/

Hitler was quite dismissive of the northerners in the early 1920s and thought of them as utterly debauched. When he tried to raise the revolution in 1923, he ignored the north on the basis that they wouldn't be able to resist his forces due to their debauchery.

Later, having decided to gain power via the vote, he needed the north and changed his emphasis to get northern votes. Remember this was the 1920s so it was possible to tell Bavarians one thing and Berliners another and get away with it.

As with almost everythig else you do, you found one irrelevant piece of data and tried to turn it into the most important issue. The Jews weren't the most important issue in the rise of the Nazis much less a small, transient, wave of refugees which was already over by the time the Nazis became interested in getting northern support.

Dear Steele,

Hitler was not a socialist. Nazism was not a socialist
project. And saying they were is not just incorrect but
wrong.
Nazism was a project built on antiSemitism, racism,
and dictatorial verve. One that took place in a specific
country and a specific time in history. There's so much material
available for people to research from books, film, articles,
archives. My daughter-in-law is German. She's from Braunsweig.
Her family still lives there and we communicate regularly.

Anyway - I admire your patience - but sometimes it's best to
simply walk away than argue.

Dear Foxy,

Walk away? No fear, this is great fun.

I mean who would think having mhaze claiming Jewish refugees into Germany was fictitious and then being able to show there were 600,000 of them during 1922-23 wasn't a bit of a laugh. Now at least he is conceding there was a 'wave' rather than a flood so I suspect he is learning although he likely won't admit it.

Dear mhaze,

You really do have a quite an anaemic take on the history of the time don't you.

The protestant north compared to the catholic south was the single greatest division between the two but doesn't get a single mention from you.

I deem the militant Catholicism emanating from France was a significant player in the tragedy which befell the Jews in Europe.

But back to the German Jews. Cantor puts it quite plainly:

“An informed observer of German Jewry in 1910 would make only three cautionary, downside observations. One was that the Jews were much more at home in the Protestant north than in the Catholic culture of southern Germany. Prussian Belin was a Jewish city; Barvarian Munich, Germany's second city, with its spectral memories of the Catholic Middle Ages, definitely was not. Second, while Jews were fully at home in the plutocracy and as yet there was no great resentment against them by the working class, the petty bourgeoisie – lower civil servants, small tradesmen, school teachers, skilled workers in heavy industry – resented the triumph and felt severely the pressure of Jewish competition."

"Third, the Jewish emigration from Poland after 1880 not only further inflamed petty bourgeois resentment and inspired some hostility in the working class but more immediately marred the perfect picture of Jewish assimilation that had previously existed. By 1900 the influx of more visibly alien Polish Jews, slower to dispense with the signs of traditional Judaism, was raising concerns among Jews and Gentiles alike. How fast would the accumulation of the Eastern Jews occur?”