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“Our Most Serious Enemy”: The Specter of Judeo-Bolshevism in the German Military Community, 1914–1923

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

Brian E. Crim
Brian E. Crim
Affiliation:
Lynchburg College
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Extract

That the Wehrmacht participated fully in a racial war of extermination on behalf of the National Socialist regime is indisputable. Officers and enlisted men alike accepted the logic that the elimination of the Soviet Union was necessary for Germany's survival. The Wehrmacht's atrocities on the Eastern Front are a testament to the success of National Socialist propaganda and ideological training, but the construct of “Judeo-bolshevism” originated during World War I and its immediate aftermath. Between 1918 and 1923, central Europe witnessed a surge in right-wing paramilitary violence and anti-Semitic activity resulting from fears of bolshevism and a widely held belief that Jews were largely responsible for spreading revolution. Jews suffered the consequences of revolution and resurgent nationalism in the borderlands between Germany and Russia after World War I, but it was inside Germany that the construct of Judeo-bolshevism evolved into a powerful rhetorical tool for the growing völkisch movement and eventually a justification for genocide.

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Articles
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Central European History , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 2011 , pp. 624 - 641
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2011

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