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

PROTOCOLS OF WISE MEN OF ZION 13At first the concept of conspiracy is purely symbolical. The humanmind, with its tendency to personify great objective phenomena,interprets surprising objective contexts as a personal plan. World historybecomes a moral drama; the eternal struggle between man and societybecomes the struggle between good and evil; the lofty ruthlessness ofhistory seems bearable only when it is humanized. Thus we give it amythological form: the great hereditary enemy, the Antichrist, thedestroyer, and finally, the conspirator. The nineteenth century in Europewas indeed full of conspirators, from the German Burschenschaften, theItalian Carbonari, the Irish Fenians, to the Russian Nihilists andSocialists. Behind all this, our imagination seeks a world context, aworld conspiracy aiming at world domination. Where is the kernel ofhistorical truth in the fantasy of a Jewish world conspiracy? It lies in thegreat world struggle for human equality to which the Jews owe theiradmission to modern society; this is the historical fact standing in thebroad daylight of truth, whence it casts weirdly magnified, indistinct,and unfathomable shadows into the background of fantasy. On theopposing side, the great principle of inequality fights to preserve itsrule; the ruling class philosophy of a natural hierarchy, of innatedifferences between men. Once this principle is expressed in the form ofhistorical events, it also soon assumes an aspect of conspiracy. The coupd'etat of Napoleon III on December 2, 1851, and The Protocols of theWise Men of Zion were not hatched out by the same mind. But they areacts of one and the same psychological type; only this made it possiblefor history to combine one with the other by the thin red thread of a documentaryconnection.The spirit of the Protocols, therefore, contains historical truth, thoughall the facts put forward in them are forgeries. Hence its influence onsuch varied times and peoples. When they were published, their deeper,genuine content beneath the varnish of falsification found a receptivemood in many sections of the Russian people — a mood of decadenceand despair. The Russian literature of the period from Tolstoi toSologub bears witness to this mood. The superstitious tsar permittedhimself to be frightened and influenced by wonder-working monks.Serious religious people were