Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

PROTOCOLS OF WISE MEN OF ZION 9Godsche's text was childish and none too convincing. But supposeyou take these rabbis conspiring in their cemetery and give them theworldly wisdom, the contempt for humanity, the seductive power ofJoly's tyrant. Don't just make them avaricious braggarts; make themsubtle and crafty: make them speak the accursed satirical wisdom ofMachiavelli, but in deadly earnest; finally, confound the fabulousnocturnal conspiracy with an international Jewish congress whichactually did convene to discuss such sober matters as the problem ofemigration. Then we have before us, in all its bloody romantic horror,the demon of Jewish world domination gathered in a congress and fixedin a protocol.That is what happened. The group of Russian conspirators dug upJoly's forgotten book; they were also familiar with the horror storyabout the Jewish cemetery in Prague; they knew by the newspapers thatin 1897 the Jewish Zionist Movement had very publicly been founded ata congress in Basel; finally, they knew only too well the golden aweemanating from the ancient fame of the Rothschilds. The ingredients ofa magnificent conspiracy lay at hand, requiring only to be mixed.The Ochrana, the tsarist secret police, furnished the means and thebrains. First General Oryevsky, one of its heads, had a pamphletprepared, based on the rabbis' conspiracy in Godsche's story. Thenovelty was that the pamphlet was written in the form of protocols; thisgave it a much more serious look. The pamphlet served as a frame towhich Joly's ideas were embroidered in glowing colors. This was thework of General Ratchkovsky, the leader of the French division of theOchrana. For the Ochrana had divisions for all countries. Everywhere ittracked down the activities of Russian, and not only Russian,revolutionaries. It was a kind of world conspiracy; a net of spies,intriguers, bribe-givers, and political agitators, which Russian tsarismhad cast over the world.With his eye for conspiracy, Ratchkovsky saw the explosive powerinherent in Joly's timeworn and seemingly harmless work. It describedmodern dictatorship, its secret and yet so open methods; laid bare itscogs and springs. A real tyrant would never have spoken so selfrevealingly;only a hostile satirist could have put such words ofbraggadocio into his mouth. The effect was a terrible