Lunkhead

I have no idea who this Murray guy is nor have I listened to @martyrmade’s podcast (yet) but he should drop the sneering tone because has no idea what he’s talking about.

Thread 

It is completely uncontroversial even among mainstream historians to note that Hitler downplayed his anti-semitism at various times, in both public and private, throughout the 1930s (and ‘20s) based on his audience and near-term political objectives.

From the outset of his political career Hitler was determined to rebuild Germany’s prestige, yet well aware that his more radical anti-semitic views were unpopular abroad. Thus he and his followers certainly gave the impression internationally from as early as 1922 that his public anti-semitic rhetoric was somewhat of an act.

A 1922 profile on Hitler in the NYT claimed "several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes."
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2015/02/10/1922-hitler-in-bavaria/?_r=0&smid=tw-share

Hitler was a master orator and a savvy politician. He advanced his station, especially in his early years, primarily by way of party speeches, and knew how to tailor his message to win over almost any given audience. His speeches sounded very different at party meetings compared to his appeals for support in more “respectable” circles. When campaigning for funding from sympathetic organizations, he abandoned his usual bombastic style in favor of a calmer approach: he won over prestigious audiences (cf. National Club of 1919, Atlantic Hotel, Feb 1926) not by appeals to racism, but by logic, patriotism, and the existential necessity of opposing Marxism. Hitler’s time at Landsberg had taught him the importance of winning over the masses, and he wanted a unifying message that would afford him the broadest base of support.

During the 1930 federal election campaign, in which the NSDAP gained significant traction and became the second largest party in the Reichstag, Hitler mostly refrained from explicit racial politics.

Of the 1930 campaign season, John Toland notes in his biography: 

“[Hitler did not] press his anti-semitism—particularly the ‘removal’ of Jews—except with völkisch groups and the workers. To the more educated and idealistic this issue was discussed either in whispers or an offhand manner.
. . .
“[Hitler] never allowed himself to take an aggressive stance on minor issues. Over and over he hammered at the money barons, the Reds, the Marxists and the ‘system’ that had brought unemployment, lowered farm prices and wiped out the savings of the middle class. He did not pit class against class. He could embrace them all. Never had Germany—or the world for that matter—been subjected to such persuasion.”

His polemics at this time were mainly directed against communists, not Jews, and many Germans were brought into the NSDAP fold based on the understanding that it was a simple choice between Hitler and Bolshevism. Indeed the decisive majority of NSDAP members viewed the Reds as their main enemy even as late as 1938, apparently to the great “astonishment” of some who consider themselves authorities on the history of right-wing thought:

During the 1933 federal election campaign when the NSDAP was once more trying to gain as much ground as possible across all voting blocs, many observers noted that Hitler had again revised his messaging. Theodor Heuss (a former critic of Hitler who would later become first President of the German Federal Republic) claimed Hitler was publicly moderating his position on Jews: “He rants much less. He has stopped breathing fire at the Jews and can make a speech nowadays lasting for four hours without mentioning the word ‘Jew.’” After the election the Jewish National Union endorsed the new NSDAP-led government and expressed support for Hitler’s ban on Eastern “peddler Jews.”

Later in 1933, shortly after his appointment as chancellor, doing damage control on his international reputation, Hitler angrily dismissed the foreign reports of German persecution of Jews and branded them as atrocity propaganda, while Secretary of State Cordell Hull gave assurances to American Jewry that the physical mistreatment of Jews in Germany had “effectively terminated.” Hitler tailored his messaging strategy as the situation dictated, and the simple reason he did so is that often, it worked.

In the August 1934 plebiscite Hitler received massive support (almost 90%) from all levels of German society as Hindenburg’s successor, including an endorsement from the League of National German Jews.
https://www.nytimes.com/1934/08/18/archives/berlin-jewish-group-for-a-unified-reich-league-of-national-german.html

In November 1938, Hitler privately expressed regret and lack of foreknowledge of Kristallnacht to his finance minister Walther Funk, despite having known and approved of it, in order to temper the latter’s outrage over the coordinated pogrom due to its impact on Germany’s finances and international reputation.

His periodic moderation was not limited to rhetoric and private conversation but sometimes extended to policy. In a Reichstag speech in September 1935 he characterized the newly signed Nuremberg Laws as potentially advantageous to the Jews: “The German Reich Government is guided by the hope of possibly being able to bring about, by means of a single secular measure, a framework within which the German Volk would be in a position to establish tolerable relations with the Jewish people.”

After widespread international, domestic, and internal condemnation of Kristallnacht (including by many high-ranking NSDAP officials) he changed his stance to support the Civil Service, which sought to protect in the part-Jew “that part which is German” rather than the party (which looked on the part-Jew as a carrier of Jewish influence) in signing the first regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law, effectively returning political rights to a huge portion of the German Jewish population.

This is hardly an exhaustive thread on the subject, just a few data points. Yes, Hitler absolutely downplayed and compromised on his anti-semitism when it was advantageous. The claim that “there is no historian” who says so is flatly untrue (both Toland and Kershaw note it in their biographies), and historians don’t need to say something for it to be true anyway. It’s just what happened, you can read the speeches and first-hand accounts yourself.

I’m not really sure what Murray is even so butthurt about anyway. None of this makes Hitler look any better. No one is saying he wasn’t anti-semitic. It’s mysterious to me what exactly he thinks is at stake here.

It’s incredible but hardly surprising that these people can be so arrogant and condescending about the simple facts of the case without having even a basic familiarity with the body of established knowledge they’re claiming to defend. MM’s efforts will be a success if he does nothing else but help clear the air of this insufferably shrill, neurotic attitude that constantly hinders all thoughtful conversation on WWII.