Hermann Rauschning (3)

England and Israel

(This is not really part of the main point of this series of posts, but I can't resist putting it in anyway.) Rauschning describes a dislike of England on the part of the Nazis, associated not with its geopolitical position but with its national culture, which the Nazis saw as too closely akin to Judaism.

The German dislike of England is derived directly from the ideas of anti-Semitism. The Englishman in his Puritanism, saturated with the spirit of the Old Testament, has become the chief representative of the capitalism which, in the eyes of National Socialists, is the principal Jewish achievement; thus, the British Empire is a Jewish empire, an empire in which the typically Jewish way of thinking, guidance by economic considerations . . . dominates. The Liberalism of the English mind is the essential and almost insuperable obstacle to an alliance between Germany and England . . . . The English through their Puritans have become the nation that appropriated the promise to Israel . . . . England has made this identification of economic success with the blessing of God the ethical framework of her public morality and civic virtues. England is Judah. This is the character the national propaganda against England will one day assume, when it is found necessary in the Third Reich to prepare for a struggle (Germany's Revolution of Destruction, p. 205).

One cannot help thinking that the Nazis had a point here, and that such observations are even more apt in the case of the United States—which has been so congenial to Jews that they may be disappearing into the Gentile population. Many Jews do regard "the Anglosphere" as their natural home, or their second home after the State of Israel itself. One might also mention the Unitarian form of Christianity that became prominent among the ruling classes in both England and the U.S. in the 18^th–19^th centuries. Of course, what the Nazis failed to recognize was that merchants can turn into warriors. The English, Americans and more recently the Jews all turned out to be formidable fighters when they were pushed far enough, beating the militaristic peoples at their own game.

In view of this basic affinity between England and Israel, the recent upsurge of anti-Semitism in England, and the spectacle of planeloads of British Jews, no longer so welcome in their native land, making aliyah to Israel during wartime, seems one more sign that England has slipped her traditional moorings.

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Update (09/18): From February 2005, an intellectual bombshell of a review by Spengler of a book by Orthodox Jewish theologian Michael Wyschogrod, Abraham's Promise. Wyschogrod offers "a way for Christians to think of themselves as a special case of Judaism", and there is some interest in this idea among American Protestant theologians. Spengler, who is an extremely smart person, thinks that "this might be one of the most important books of the 21st century." He (Spengler) regards American Evangelical Protestantism as the most viable form of Christianity at the present time, and therefore as crucial to the survival of Western culture. Evangelical Christianity is so far not a political movement, but in light of Wyschogrod's ideas there seems to be "a chance that the US might return to the world view of its founders: that of a Chosen People in a Promised Land. If that occurs, the world will be a different place." The reconciliation of Christianity and Judaism would be no small thing either, though I suppose that sectarian divisions may appear even between very similar religious groups.