A Propagandist of Extermination, Johann von Leers and the Anti Semitic Formation of Children in Nazi Germany

Paedagogica Historica
Vol. 43, No. 3, June 2007, pp. 299–325

ISSN 0030-9230 (print)/ISSN 1477-674X (online)/07/030299–27
© 2007 Stichting Paedagogica Historica
DOI: 10.1080/00309230701363625

‘A Propagandist of Extermination:’
Johann von Leers and the Anti-Semitic
Formation of Children in Nazi Germany

Gregory Paul Wegner

Taylor and Francis Ltd

CPDH_A_236254.sgm

10.1080/00309230701363625

Paedagogica Historica

0030-9230 (print)/1477-674X (online)

Original Article

2007

Taylor & Francis

000000June 2007

GregoryWegner

wegner.greg@uwlax.edu

As one of the most prolific writers of anti-Semitic propaganda in the Third Reich, Johann von Leers
published numerous books, journal essays and daily press articles from 1930–1944. Leers wrote for a variety
of German audiences including the general public, academics, party officials, children and school teachers.
What constitutes the major focus for this study is the perspective of Johann von Leers on anti-Semitism in
the formation of young children. Although never a classroom teacher himself, Leers took a particular interest
in reaching children through a variety of media including school newspapers and story-telling, as well as
more indirect means like curriculum development for educators. The characteristic which bound together
much of Leers’ anti-Semitic propaganda, regardless of audience, was a crude reductionism associated with
criminalizing the Jews. A position as lecturer and later professor in the history seminar at the University of
Jena from 1936–1945 provided Leers with an academic foundation from which he could further legitimize
his racial and anti-Semitic teachings. Leers made his most original contribution to Nazi anti-Semitism by
insisting, as early as 1938 in writings to teachers, that Jews posed not only a racial threat, but also consti-
tuted a grave danger to the Third Reich and the Arab community in the Middle West through their lust for
land. Some two decades later, the message found a new audience via Leers’ anti-Israeli radio broadcasts
from Cairo. What sets Leers apart from several other colleagues in German academe like Gunther Franz
and Alfred Baeumler, both of whom rejected Nazism after 1945, was that he remained totally and unapol-
ogetically united to Nazi racial and anti-Semitic ideals until the time of his death. The Juan Peron regime
in Argentina and the Nasser dictatorship from Egypt provided Leers with new post-war channels for his
anti-Semitic invective. Overlooked by historians and mentioned only briefly in several works, the anti-
Semitic activity of this enigmatic and obscure figure in the history of anti-Semitic propaganda deserves
closer attention by scholars.

Victor Klemperer (1881–1960), a diarist of daily life under the Third Reich, offered
readers of

I Will Bear Witness meaningful insights about the influence of propaganda

in shaping conceptions about citizenship in German society.

As a Jewish professor of

Romance languages at Dresden Technical University until he lost his post in 1935,
Klemperer was in a unique position to observe the growing anti-Semitic brutality of
the regime. How deeply rooted anti-Semitism was in the population remained a ques-
tion which challenged him throughout many of his daily interactions with Germans

300

G. P. Wegner

on the street as well as in factories where he worked as a forced laborer.

In his phil-

ological notebooks which later appeared as

The Language of the Third Reich, Klemperer

noted that LTI (

Lingua Tertii Imperii), essentially the propaganda language of the

regime, ‘seized hold’ of all aspects of institutional life both public and private in nature.

One insight which emerged from his experience was the realization that not all

Germans were rabid anti-Semites. Some of his co-workers and neighbors provided
various kinds of assistance and support while expressing moral outrage against Nazi
anti-Semitic policies. Not to be overlooked was the fact that Klemperer also suffered
indignities and personal attacks from avowed anti-Semites in various quarters. The
legacy of German anti-Semitism, so Klemperer discovered, was more complex than
initially expected.

The profoundly anti-Semitic character of Nazi propaganda language revealed itself

in Victor Klemperer’s reading of the daily press and occasional radio broadcasts.
Among the multitude of propagandists espousing the anti-Semitic agenda with the
blessing of the Third Reich was Johann von Leers (1902–1965), then a professor at
the University of Jena. Klemperer encountered the writings of Leers in the popular
press several times beginning in the summer of 1943. Exploiting familiar anti-Semitic
themes in a lecture called, ‘The Jews are to Blame’, Leers castigated the Jews for the
defeat of Germany in the First World War as well as fomenting the Revolution of
1918. The propagandist concluded that the extermination of Jews in Europe was fully
justified as a form of retribution and self-defense. Klemperer captured what he felt
were the hallmarks of the anti-Semitic propaganda espoused by the professor from
Jena—‘feigned objectivity, the obsessiveness, the populism, the reduction of every-
thing to one denominator, the emphasis: The Jewish question is alpha and omega’.

Figure 1.

von Leers in Nazi uniform

The author extends special thanks to the Faculty Research Grant Committee and the Interna-

tional Travel Grant Committee at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse for supporting this study
as well as Professor Manfred Heinemann at the University of Hanover in Lower Saxony, Andrej
Doronin, Natalia Vladimirovna, and Director Vladimir Kuzelenov from the Special Collections of
the Russian State Archives (Moscow), Christian Ritzi at the Institute for Pedagogical Research
(Berlin), Simone Langner at the Federal Archive (Berlin), Karin Popp at the Institute for Contem-
porary History (Munich) along with the helpful staffs at the National Archives Branch II (College
Park, MD) and the European Reading Room at the Library of Congress.

Klemperer, Victor.

I Will Bear Witness. Vol. II. New York: Random House, 1999: 225.

London: Athlone, 2000: 19.

Klemperer.

I Will Bear Witness. II, 234. Note also the entry for 25 September 1944 in which

Klemperer ponders the “unfathomable hatred of Jewry” symbolized by Johann von Leers (hereafter
cited as JvL) and his claim in a newspaper article that Jews condemned German “heroism, love of
the Fatherland, and German ideals” while ignoring the Jewish dead from the First World War. Al-
most at the end of the Second World War in April of 1945, JvL still published his anti-Semitic lines
as part of “special articles” in a fashion described by Klemperer as “the most vile, the most loath-
some, the lowest, the most idiotic.” The “poisonous” rantings and ravings of Leers regarding the
alleged Jewish origins of Franklin Roosevelt and posing him as “The Moses of the Twentieth
Century” in a Dresden newspaper occasioned Klemperer’s response (II, 362–363, 439). For a more
detailed development of this theme by Leers, see his

Kräfte hinter Roosevelt. Berlin: Fritsch, 1942.

Paedagogica Historica

301

Klemperer’s observations suggest that Johann von Leers was more than simply an

ideological foot soldier for the Third Reich. Once called ‘a propagandist of extermi-
nation’ by a circle of scholars in Britain, Leers authored no less than 27 books and
countless journal and newspaper articles between 1932 and1944 making him one of
the most prolific of all anti-Semitic writers in the Third Reich.

His work connected

him in a variety of ways with the Ministry of Propaganda, the SS,

Kanzlei Rosenberg,

Wiener Library Bulletin (May–July, 1951): 19.

Figure 1

von Leers in Nazi uniform

302

G. P. Wegner

the National Socialist Teachers Union (NSLB), the National Socialist

Studentenbund

(NSDStB), and the university community at Jena.

As Klemperer noted earlier, schools represented but one of many institutional

settings for anti-Semitic propaganda. Although never a classroom teacher himself,
Leers took a particular interest in reaching children through a variety of media includ-
ing school newspapers and stories, as well as through more indirect means like curric-
ulum development for educators. Certainly, Leers was not alone in this endeavor.
With a doctorate in law, Leers was but one figure in a vast publishing enterprise
involving a large network of teachers, educational policy-makers, medical doctors,
professors, race hygienists, and school inspectors.

Establishing the Context

What constitutes the major focus for this study is the perspective of Johann von Leers
on anti-Semitism in the formation of young children. To better understand the
context for the pedagogical writings of Leers, readers are initially directed to historio-
graphical considerations regarding one of the most prolific propagandists in the Third
Reich. A number of biographical themes emerge thereafter including intellectual
influences, the formation of a young anti-Semite, and early activities in the Propa-
ganda Office of the Nazi Party as publicist, editor and speaker. Closing this biograph-
ical overview is a brief sketch of Johann von Leers as a professor in the history seminar
at the University of Jena, a post he held for almost nine years.

Leers enthusiastically exploited education as a means of advancing anti-Semitic

thinking. The major body of this study examines his anti-Semitic ideas for young
children through a series of writings published in

Hilf mit and collected essays from

Für das Reich. Essential to the efforts of Leers in reaching as broad a school audience
as possible were his ties to the NSLB. The NSLB provided a critically important
publication infrastructure connected to schools located in every district throughout
Germany. The NSLB monthly school newspaper

Hilf mit (translated as ‘Contribut-

ing’) deserves special attention since it reached the largest number of school children
among all of Leers’ education related publications.

More than any other ongoing

Nazi publication, it was

Hilf mit to which Leers contributed writings over the longest

period of time (1933–1941).

Note that

Kanzlei Rosenberg is used here in place of the much longer and more pretentious title

created by Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946) for his ministry, “Der Beauftragte des Führers für die
Überwachung der gesamten geistigen und weltanschaulichen Schulung und Erziehung der NS-
DAP.”

Kraus, Hans.

Die Grundgedanken der Erbkunde und Rassenhygiene in Frage und Antwort.

München: Smelin, 1935; Fetscher, Ranier.

Rassenhygiene: Eine erste Einführung für Lehrer. Leipzig:

Verlag der Dürr’schen Buchhandlung, 1933; Grau, Wilhelm.

Die Judenfrage in der deutschen

Geschichte. Berlin: Teubner, 1937.

Hilf mit subsequently became a propaganda expression used during the war and appeared on

boxes to encourage the contribution of clothing and other items to help German troops during the
winter campaigns on the Russian Front.

Paedagogica Historica

303

The anti-Semitic writing of Leers in

Hilf mit represented what Klaus Fischer called

‘German Judeophobia’ as well as an obsessive hatred of a culture he knew little
about.

The prolific storyteller certainly did not limit his efforts to

Hilf mit. During

the late 1930s, Leers began collecting a number of previously published short stories
and printed them in a volume called

Für das Reich: Deutsche Geschichte in Geschichts-

erzählungen (1940). The subtitle suggested that the stories belonged in the history
curriculum, but Leers cautioned students and their teachers not to view the volume
as a history textbook. It would be enough to please the writer, Leers told students, if,
by reading these pieces, even a few German youth could ‘feel pride for their blood-
lines and way-of-life’ growing from ‘the struggles to awaken long submerged racial
powers’.

The vast majority of the pieces Leers published in

Hilf mit were relatively short,

ranging between one and three pages in length. Although anti-Semitism remained
an obsession for Leers, the Jewish question was not the only issue he wrote about.
Military heroes, the historical struggle of German farmers to eke out a living,
ancient Germanic religion, and the importance of food production in the Reich
were among the other themes common to the writings he submitted for his young
readership, many of whom ranged in ages from eight to eighteen.

Thus,

Hilf mit

also became part of the literature read by some members of

Jungvolk and Hitler

Youth.

Studying the anti-Semitic propaganda flowing from Leers’ pen for the intended

reading of young children raises a daunting challenge. The dimensions of traditional
anti-Semitic thinking emerging from Leers’ pedagogical writings are interrelated in
nature and spring from the heart of his dedicated propaganda activity. One notes that
the criminalization of the Jew—the most persistent and pervasive of all anti-Semitic
categories of expression for Leers—remained invariably linked in his pedagogical
works to the power of money and religion. Such categories of thought are ancient in
the history of anti-Semitic prejudice and hatred, a fact about which Leers was keenly
aware. His was the propaganda of the familiar articulated against what he insisted was
an old enemy.

Concluding the section on Leers’ pedagogical writings is a piece intended for

teachers, one which linked Arab and Jewish conflicts over land in Palestine with the
anti-Semitic agenda of the Third Reich. As one will later note, Leers exploited the
issue of land in a way that invariably set him apart from the vast hoard of other

Fischer, Klaus.

The History of an Obsession: German Judeophobia and the Holocaust. New York:

Continuum, 1998; Bankier, David, ed.

Probing the Depths of German Anti-Semitism: German Society

and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2000.

JvL.

Das Reich: Deutsche Geschichte in Geschichtserzählungen. Langensalza: Beltz, 1940: Vorwort.

See the following essays by JvL in

Hilf mit: “Ein Kampf um deutsches Recht,” 2 (July 1936):

294–5; “Unser täglich Brot: Geschichten um unsere Nahrungsmittel,” 3 (Sept. 1937): 360–1; “Der
Blockadebrecher,” 4 (Febr. 1938): 130–1; “Deutsches Bauerntum,” 2 (March 1934): 162; “Die
grossen Seeschlachten,” 9 (Dec. 1940): 42–43.

The most complete collection of issues from

Hilf mit is found at the Institute for Contemporary

History in Munich.

304

G. P. Wegner

propagandists in the service of the regime. The question of Arab claims to a homeland
in Palestine remained a propaganda

tour de force for Leers not only for his time as a

Nazi agitator from the Third Reich, but even more so after 1945.

With these developments in mind, the essay moves toward a consideration of Leers

as a fallen Nazi scholar whose reputation suffered greatly among academic circles
during his professorship at the University of Jena. The story might have ended here
were it not for his successful moves to South America and the Middle East to
continue a new chapter in his life as agitator. Preceding the conclusion is a consider-
ation of the legacy of anti-Semitism in postwar Germany.

Historiographical Considerations

Johann von Leers remains largely overlooked by historians to this day. By contrast,
the historiography reveals several works exploring prominent figures in the propa-
ganda machine of the Third Reich including Julius Streicher (1885–1946) and
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) as well as the importance of myth in advancing Nazi
ideological perspectives.

Leers is mentioned only briefly by historians writing on

the history of Nazi medicine as well as German historians and university students
under National Socialism.

George Mosse’s notable volume on the intellectual

origins of the Third Reich described Leers as ‘a guiding spirit’ in ‘formulating the
racial policy’ of the Nazi regime.

Short vignettes about his work as a professor in

Bärsch, Claus.

Politische Religion des Nationalsozialismus: Die religiösen Dimensionen der NS-Ide-

ologie in den Schriften von Dietrich Eckart, Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg und Adolf Hitler.
München: Fink, 2002; Barth, Erwin.

Joseph Goebbels und die Formierung des Führermythos 1917 bis

1934. Erlangen: Palm und Enke, 1999; Lemmons, Russel. Goebbels und Der Angriff. Lexington: Uni-
versity of Kentucky Press, 1994; Bramsted, Ernst.

Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda. East

Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1965; Höver, Ulrich.

Joseph Goebbels: ein nationaler So-

zialist. Bonn: Bouvier, 1992; Baird, Jay. The Mythical World of Nazi Propaganda. Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 1974; Showalter, Dennis.

Little Man, What Now? Der Stürmer in the

Weimar Republic. Hamden, CN: Archon, 1982; Hahn, Fred. Lieber Stürmer: Leserbriefe an das NS-
Kampfblatt 1924–1945. Stuttgart: Seewald, 1978; Bytwerk, Randall. Julius Streicher: Nazi Editor of
the Notorious Anti-Semitic Newspaper Der Stürmer. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001; Winde,
Mathias.

Bürgerliches Wissen: Nationalsozialistische Herrschaft: Sprache in Goebbels’ Zeitung Das Reich.

Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2002.

Klee, Ernst.

Deutsche Medizin im Dritten Reich: Karrieren vor und nach 1945. Frankfurt am Main:

Fischer, 1999: 233; Schulze, Winfried and Otto Gerhard Oexle (Hrsg.).

Deutsche Historiker im Na-

tionalsozialismus. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2000: 116; Grüttner, Michael. Studenten im Dritten
Reich. Paderborn: Schönigh, 1995: 115, 169. Van Pelt, Robert Jan and Deborah Dwork called JvL
a “prominent Nazi ideologue” in their book,

Holocaust: A History. New York: Norton, 2002: 113.

George Mosse.

The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich. New York:

Grosset and Dunlap, 1964: 72.

Paedagogica Historica

305

the history seminar at the University of Jena appear in two institutional histories.

Studies of literature under the Third Reich give Leers short shrift.

A recent insight-

ful study of ‘scholarly anti-Semitism’ in the Third Reich briefly examined two
writings by Leers intended to persuade readers about the criminal nature of the
Jewish community.

The scope of Leers’ publication agenda is reiterated, albeit

briefly as well, in a thoughtful examination of anti-Semitic propaganda which also
appeared in 2006. Here one finds references to Leers’ exploitation of alleged Jewish
influences in the Franklin Roosevelt administration as well as his ruminations in the
journal

Die Judenfrage extolling the virtues of Islam as a natural bulwark against

Jewish domination in the Arab world.

Another work on the resurgence of fascism

devoted probably more attention to Leers than any other book in print.

Even then,

the coverage remains decidedly thin. No published book or academic essay exists on
the work of this enigmatic figure.

The recent scholarship of noted historian Christopher Browning on

The Origin of

the Final Solution (2004) suggests that roughly two groups of German anti-Semites
dominated the Third Reich. One group, relatively moderate, pursued a conservative
and xenophobic agenda which dismissed Jews as undesirable foreigners. By contrast,
radical anti-Semites took on the qualities of ‘redemptionist’ and ‘chimeric’ anti-
Semitism. To members of this group, Jews held responsibility for all of Germany’s
misfortunes and thereby deserved elimination. Radical anti-Semites thereby saw
elimination as a way of redeeming the country’s honor. Browning concluded that the
radical anti-Semites were never representative of the majority of the German popu-
lace or even a majority of Nazi Party membership. They got their way largely because
of the passivity and indifference of most other Germans.

What set the radical anti-Semite Leers apart from members of German academe

like historian Günther Franz (1902–1992) from the University of Jena or philosopher
Alfred Bäumler (1887–1968) from the University of Berlin, both of whom rejected
Nazism after 1945, was that he remained totally and unapologetically united to Nazi

Steinmetz, Max.

Geschichte der Universität Jena 1548/58–1958. Jena: Fischer, 1958: 637–8;

Annet Hamann, “Männer der kämpferischen Wissenschaft: Die 1945 geschlossenen NS-Institute
der Universität Jena,” in Jürgen John, Uwe Hossfeld, Oliver Lemuth, and Rüdiger Stutz (Hrsg.).
Kämpferische Wissenschaft: Studien zur Universität Jena im Nationalsozialismus. Köln: Böhlau, 2003:
210–3 and, also in the same volume, Herbert Gottwald. “Die Jenauer Geschichtswissenschaft in der
Zeit des Nationalsozialismus,” 924–5.

See Kamenetsky, Christa.

Children’s Literature in Hitler’s Germany: The Culture of National So-

cialism. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1984, 39, 203f; Barbia, Jan-Pieter. Literaturpolitik im Dritten
Reich. Frankfurt am Main: Buchhändler-Vereinigung, 1993: 33f; Ketelsen, Uwe. Literatur und
Drittes Reich. Schernfeld: SH-Verlag, 1992: 36f.

Steinweis, Alan.

Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 2006: 139–41.

Herf, Jeffrey.

The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During WWII and the Holocaust. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 2006: 134–6, 180–1.

Lee, Martin.

The Beast Awakens. New York: Routledge, 2000: 128–9, 144, 148, 151, 168.

Browning, Christopher.

The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy,

September 1939-March 1942. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004: 7–10.

306

G. P. Wegner

racial and anti-Semitic ideals to the time of his death.

Moreover, unlike many other

figures from the Nazi circle, Leers would continue spreading anti-Semitic propa-
ganda after 1945 during his years in Argentina (1952–1956) with the support of Juan
Peron (1895–1974) and in Egypt (1956–1965) under the auspices of strongman
Gamel Abdel Nasser (1918–1970) who offered him a post as propaganda adviser on
Jewish affairs in the Information Department of the Ministry of Guidance. More will
be said about these postwar developments later.

Johann von Leers wrote for a variety of German audiences including the general

public, academics, party officials, children, and school teachers. The sheer volume of
his writings and the range of topics addressed reflected the feverish activity of a person
determined to make a name for himself in the Nazi community. Although anti-
Semitic propaganda remained the central focus for much of his professional life,
Leers also assumed the role of expert on such diverse topics as the history of the
German peasantry, religion, Japanese culture, and the dangers of alcohol on the body
politic.

Intellectual Influences

In a sense, Leers was not very different from other anti-Semitic propagandists and
educators in that he tried to translate the major tenets of

Mein Kampf into the daily

instructional reality of the school. As a

Volkish writer, Leers drew from a nationalist

perspective which integrated notions of blood, soil, race, and soul. There were others
who passed before him in the Weimar era who advocated a strong racial and anti-
Semitic focus in the education of children.

The personal papers of Leers reflect a

deference to Count Artur de Gobineau (1816–1882), Paul de Lagarde (1827–1891)
and the subsequent work of Hans F. K. Günther (1891–1968), a man whose anthro-
pological and self-proclaimed scientific writings figured prominently among Volkish
thinkers of the Third Reich.

There existed the ruminations of one figure, by Leers’ own admission, who held

particular sway over his own formation as an anti-Semitic author and publicist. That
person was Theodor Fritsch (1852–1933), the author of

The Handbook on the Jewish

Question, a work that appeared in over 47 editions from 1923–1942. For Leers,
Fritsch’s journal called

Hammer, initially appearing in 1902, provided an important

Bäumler, Alfred. “Hitler und der Nationalsozialismus: Aufzeichnungen 1945–1947,” in

Der

Pfahl: Jahrbuch aus dem Niemandsland zwischen Kunst und Wissenschaft. München: Matthes und
Seitz, 1991: 159–204; Behringer, Wolfgang. “Bauern-Franz und Rassen-Günther,” in Schulze,
Winfried and Otto Oexle (Hrsg.).

Deutsche Historiker im Nationalsozialismus. Frankfurt am Main:

Fischer, 2000: 114–41.

JvL.

Die grosse Aufgabe: Werke am Neubau Deutschlands. Berlin: Siemens, 1933: 44–49;

Deutschen Bauern 1000 jähriger Kampf um deutsche Art und deutsches Recht. Goslar: Blut und Boden,
1935;

Der Kardinal und die Germanen. Hamburg: Hanseatischer Verlag, 1934; “Japan und die

frühnordische Kultur.”

ODAL 8 (Sept. 1939): 771–8.

Callischonn, Georg.

Geschichte und Volksaufgabe. Frankfurt-am-Main, 1922: 22–25; Mauren-

brecher, Max.

Völkischer Geschichtsunterricht. Langensalza: Beyer, 1925: 12–18.

Paedagogica Historica

307

foundational publication for early members of the SA or Brown Shirts of which he
became a member in 1930. With characteristic exaggeration, Leers later claimed that
these two works by Fritsch were most often recalled by the ‘old fighters’ from the Nazi
movement as being the most important in helping them understand the scope and
seriousness of the Jewish question.

Fritsch provided Leers with a model of prolific

anti-Semitic authorship which he never forgot.

What National Socialism offered the young and idealistic Johann von Leers was a

platform to articulate a linguistic violence directed against Jews which rivaled even
that of Hitler’s

Mein Kampf or Julius Streicher’s virulent newspaper, Der Stürmer.

Johann von Leers was a propagandist moved to write and speak about Jews through
exploiting the language of criminality. While engaged in writing for a variety of
audiences, the publication record of Johann von Leers and his personal papers
reflected a desire to reach both young children and their teachers with an idealism
that was both anti-Semitic and racist in nature. Before investigating the contribu-
tions of Johann von Leers to anti-Semitic education in the schools of Nazi
Germany, the reader continues with a biographical overview as part of the historical
context.

The Formation of a Young Anti-Semite

Born in 1902 in Vietlubbe bei Gadebusch (Land Mecklenburg) to a family of landed
nobility, Johann von Leers subsequently attended Gymnasium in Stralsrud, Neustre-
litz and Waren where he became enamored with the study of languages and culture.
Following the

Abitur, Leers studied law, history and economics at Kiel, Berlin and

Rostock. As a student bitterly disillusioned with the Treaty of Versailles, the Novem-
ber Revolution of 1918, the Weimar Republic, and the specter of world commu-
nism—all of which he insisted came about because of a Jewish conspiracy—Leers
joined the Viking Division of the Freikorps in 1923.

Completing his law degree in

1925 at Rostock, Leers moved to Berlin where he entered a seminar on Japanese
language. His fluency in Japanese helped him secure a post as cultural attaché in the
Foreign Ministry from 1926–1928.

The time spent by Leers in the foreign office came to an abrupt end with struggles

over the loss of family property under the hyper inflation of the Depression and a
series of legal judgments against him for unresolved debts. These disappointments
affirmed Leers’ already deep suspicions about what he derisively called ‘die Judenre-
publik’ and his assumption that the Jewish community bore special responsibility for

Bundesarchiv Berlin, (hereafter cited as BARCHBerlin), N2168 9, Nachlaß Johann von Leers,

Biographische Artikel über bekannte Personen A-Z. “Der Hammerschmied,” 100–106; “Der
Todestag des Grafen Gobineau,” 106–18; “Hans F. K. Günther zum 50. Geburtstag am 16.
Februar 1941,” 119–40.

BARCHBerlin, N2168 38, Nachlaß JvL. Geschichte des Judentums-Literaturverzeichnis o.J.

Antisemitischer Volks-Kalender.

JvL. “Die Zeit der Freikorps.”

Odal 8 (1954): 174–80.

308

G. P. Wegner

Germany’s failures. Not long afterwards, on 1 August 1929, the young Leers joined
the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) as party member Nr.
143709 thus identifying himself as an ‘alte Kämpfer’ or old fighter from the Nazi
movement.

Early Activities as Nazi Propagandist

Leers’ enthusiastic embrace of the Nazi anti-Semitic platform did not go unnoticed.
By the end of 1929, Leers already joined the fray as head of the National Socialist
Student League and district speaker for the NSDAP. Earlier that same year, his
dedicated work caught the eye of Joseph Goebbels who engaged Leers as associate
editor of the propaganda ministry’s journal,

Auf Wille und Weg as well as contribut-

ing author for the weekly newspaper,

Der Angriff.

Like many of the other freelance

writers in these offices, Leers made a salary by producing lines of copy.

Another sign of Goebbels’ favor came with the subsequent appointment of Leers
(1933–1935) to teach and assist in the planning of academic seminars for the
Hochschule für Politik in Berlin.

Beyond these academic and editorial responsibilities, Leers took on the ministry’s

charge to write propaganda designed to popularize Nazi ideology for the masses. A
flood of publications followed. The first book to gain public attention for Leers was
Juden sehen dich an (Jews Look at You), appearing in 1933. In a pattern to emerge
many times later, Leers integrated old anti-Semitic stereotypes associated with lies,
subversion, deceptions, lust for gold and an innate desire for Jews to exert political,
economic and intellectual control over Germany. To further personalize his message
and add a ‘human face’ to his charges, Leers printed numerous pictures of prominent
Jews including, among others, Theodore Lessing (1872–1933), Albert Einstein

National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter cited as NARA). Beauftragte des

Führers für die Überwachung der gesamten und weltanschaulichen Schulung und Erziehung der
NSDAP. Card file on JvL. Microfilm T81, frame 197.

Goebbels, Joseph.

Tagebücher. Teil I, Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, Band 1/III, Juni 1928-

November 1929. München: Saur, 2004: 304, 307, 314.

See Lemmons.

Goebbels und Der Angriff, 30.

JvL. “Die neue Deutsche Hochschule für Politik.”

Preussische Lehrerzeitung (May 12, 1934),

found in the collection of the Sonderarchiv in the Russian State Military Archives, fond 1283K,
Johann von Leers, No. 1, folder 14, “Kritische Betrachtungen.” The DHfP was originally found-
ed in 1920 by liberal thinkers in support of the Weimar Republic in its struggle against anti-
democratic tendencies in German society. Among the members of the teaching body were Carl
Heinrich Becker, Gertrude Bäumer, Theodor Heuss, Hajo Holborn, Arnold Brecht, Hans Del-
brück, and Reichsminister Walter Rathenau. Friedrich Meinecke, Friedrich Naumann, Walter
Simons, and Max Weber were among the founding members. Hitler’s rise in 1933 forced many
of the lecturers to emigrate. The appointment of Leers to the DHfP was part of a larger strategy
by the Propaganda Ministry to bring the institution in line with Nazi ideological principles. See
Eisfeld, Rainer.

Ausgebürgert und doch angebräunt: Deutsche Politikwissenschaft 1920–1945. Baden-

Baden: Nomos, 1991.

Paedagogica Historica

309

(1879–1955) and Lion Feuchtwanger (1884–1958). The captions included the
incendiary words, ‘Not Hanged Yet’.

The barrage of anti-Semitic writing from the pen of Leers continued without pause

during the year of Hitler’s rise to power with the publication and wide distribution of
Leers’ incendiary pamphlet calling for Jews to get out of Germany or to face brutal
consequences.

Once again, his prodigious output of anti-Semitic writings, which

continued throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, brought him recognition by certain
Nazi leaders. Agricultural Minister Walter Darre (1895–1953) extended enthusiastic
support for Leers’ writings on the Volkish history of the German farming commu-
nity.

In May of 1936, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) offered Leers

an honorary commission in the SS as

Untersturmbannführer attached to the Staff of the

Racial and Resettlement Office.

The Propagandist as Professor

Such developments served the propagandist well in his efforts to secure a special
teaching post at the University of Jena in the fall of 1936. With the aggressive

JvL.

Juden sehen dich an. Berlin: NS-Druck, 1933: 28–29. Note that Leers had already pub-

lished other works in 1932 including three pamphlets calling for the return of Memmelland, the Pol-
ish Corridor and Upper Silesia to Germany along with two bibliographical works on Adolf Hitler.
Also appearing was a novel envisioning a devastating air and naval bombardment of Hamburg by
the French. The story thereby legitimized Germany’s campaign to rearm itself in a world surround-
ed by enemies. See Großdeutsche Forderungen: Schriftenreihe zur Frage der nationalen Ansprüche
des deutschen Volkes, Heft 1: “Polnischer Korridor oder deutsches Weichselland?” Heft 2: “Me-
melland;” Heft 4: “Oberschlesien;”

Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler. Leipzig: Kittler, 1932; Adolf Hitler:

Männer und Mächte. Berlin: Siemens, 1932; Bomben auf Hamburg. Leipzig: Voightländer, 1932.

JvL,

Forderung der Stunde: Juden raus! Berlin: NS-Druck, 1933. Other writings by Leers coming

off the press in quick succession during the first year of the regime included

Das ist Versailles! Berlin:

Hermann Hillger, 1933;

Die große Aufgabe! Werke am Neubau Deutschlands. Berlin: Siemens, 1933;

14 Jahre Judenrepublik: Die Geschichte eines Rassenkampfes. Berlin: Verlag Deutsche Kulturwacht,
1933;

Kurzgefasste Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus. Leipzig: Verlhagen und Klasing, 1933; “Ju-

gend unter dem Foch.”

Hilf Mit 1 (1933): 3; “Nationalsozialistische Überwindung von Versailles.”

Der Deutsche Student 1 (Sept. 1933): 2–7.

Note the glowing recommendation Walter Darre wrote in support of Leers’ book,

Deutschen

Bauern. See BARCHBerlin, RK, Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda BO112,
Bilder 0948-0951 (Herbst, 1935).

Although these commissions remained honorary in nature and signified little or no influence

over the formation and conduct of SS policy, they are worthy of note in the case of Johann von
Leers. After the initial commission in May of 1936, the SS promoted Leers in November of 1936
(Obersturmführer), January of 1938 (Hauptsturmführer), and April of 1939 (Sturmbannführer).
Most significantly, the SS named him to the

Schulungsamt or Office of Political Instruction in No-

vember of 1938 in recognition of his background and “expertise” as propagandist in matters of race
education and the Jewish question. See BARCHBerlin, Der Reichsführer SS Personalhauptamt,
SS-Führerpersonalakten 249-A. Bild 94.7. 7 September 1939. Note that the SS also engaged Leers
as an instructor for their Administrative Academy in Berlin during the summer semester of 1943
where he taught a course on the history of Germany after World War One. See BARCHBerlin,
Nachlass JvL, N2168 53. p. 1.

310

G. P. Wegner

intervention of Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel (1894–1946) from Thuringia and Jena
University Chancellor Karl Astel (1898–1945), Leers joined the Jena faculty
lecturing students on ‘legal, economic and political history on a racial basis’ and
became closely involved with the NS-Dozentenbund or union of university lectur-
ers. The appointment raised more than a few eyebrows in the Nazi academic
community. Leers newfound academic position eventually meant the displace-
ment of Professor Günther Franz, a scholar who generally enjoyed a much stron-
ger reputation as a major historian in

Bauerngeschichte or the history of

agriculture. Under Nazi university life, a jurist like Leers could become a faculty
member in a history seminar and moreover, eventually gain promotion in 1938 to
professor at age 36. Such radical departures from tradition on the questions of
academic rank and expertise could find realization at Jena, the ‘brownest’ of all
German universities under the Third Reich.

The university in Thuringia

remained the academic home for Leers until the end of the war and the collapse
of the Third Reich.

The Story as Nazi Pedagogical Device: Leers and the Criminalization of the
Jews

With the Nazi assumption to power in 1933 came the challenge of ideologically
transforming German schools in a direction very different from that assumed by the
failed Weimar democracy. In one of the first curriculum policy directives on race
education coming from the Ministry of Education, Bernhard Rust (1883–1945)
directed educators to provide youth with a schooling based on ‘vision, feeling, think-
ing, and will’. In classes on

Rassenkunde initiated in the Volksschule, the ministry

applied a major tenet of Hitler’s thinking. Enshrined in the curriculum was the
cardinal rule that the racial composition of present day Nordic peoples was to be
presented in diametric opposition to ‘foreign racial groups, especially the Jews’. The
Jew as ultimate racial ‘other’ represented an ideological cornerstone for the Nazi
formation of the young.

Leers threw himself into this pedagogical task with the

passion of a zealous crusader.

The characteristic which bound together much of Leers’ anti-Semitic propaganda,

regardless of the audience for which he wrote, was a crude reductionism associated
with criminalizing the Jews. For older readers and adults, Leers often printed many
statistics—usually without citing any sources—for the purpose of ‘proving’ that Jews

See Ernst Klee’s enlightening chapter, “Jena, die braune Universität,” from his book,

Deutsche

Medizin im Dritten Reich. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2001: 230–53.

“Vererbungslehre und Rassenkunde im Unterricht,” (Erlaß vom 13. September 1933) in

Deutsche Wissenschaft und Volksbildung: Amtsblatt des Reichsministeriums für Wissenschaft, Erziehung
und Volksbildung und der Unterrichtsverwaltungen der Länder 1 (1935): 43–46. In this same directive,
Minister Rust quoted

Mein Kampf with Hitler’s call for schools to “burn the racial sense and racial

feeling into the instinct and the intellect, the heart and brain of youth entrusted to it. No boy or girl
must leave school without having been led to an ultimate realization of the necessity and essence of
blood purity” (trans. by Ralph Manheim, 1971 edition, p. 427).

Paedagogica Historica

311

held a greater propensity for criminal acts than any other part of the population.

the case of elementary school children, Leers exploited the old tradition of story
telling to socialize youth with anti-Semitic values legitimized by the regime. In

Hilf

mit and in other publications, Leers articulated anti-Semitic thinking by introducing
a distorted and falsified historical context.

‘The Crook from Betsche’, like many other of Leers’ writings, framed the Jewish

question in a fictitious historical setting. To accentuate differences in religious tradi-
tions between Christians and Jews, the author set the story in the Christmas season
of 1832. Investigating the theft of money intended for the end-of-year salary
payments for professors and staff at the university, local police investigators narrowed
the short list of suspects down to one person. Moses Löwenthal, a Jewish trader from
Mecklenburg, came under intense scrutiny and eventually faced trial. The ‘police
records’, so the story goes, revealed a long string of recent thefts by Jews throughout
the province. The author took special pains to rattle off a list of Jewish family names
from the arrest records so his readers would not forget.

With evidence stacked heavily against him, Löwenthal eventually received a very

light sentence. Frustrations among the townspeople rose when the police uncovered
a web of conspiracy involving the banker Baron Rothschild in Frankfurt. The power
and influence of wealthy Jews entered the picture and ensured that Löwenthal
would escape justice. Adding insult to injury, two of Löwenthal’s sons became
lawyers decades later to ‘pervert the law’ at the expense of German working
people.

A closer look at the story reveals something of what George Mosse described as a

mystical element in Volkish thinking. How was the reader to understand the motiva-
tions of Löwenthal? The answer rested in the ‘soul’ of the Jew. Not only did Jews look
physically different from Aryan Germans, they also possessed a distinctly different
‘soul’ which defined their criminal character. Leers thereby drew from an aspect of
Volkish thinking that existed since the late nineteenth century when he integrated into
the storyline a curious assumption. Existing inside the soul of the criminal Jew, the
author wrote, were two tendencies. One was his fear of a long prison sentence. The
other was his feeling that, as a Jew, he had to rely on the criminality of others to avoid
justice.

As a lawyer by training, Leers continued to exploit legal justifications for the

oppression of the Jews in much of the literature he wrote for children.

He already

See JvL.

Judentum und Gaunertum. Berlin: Fritsch, 1940: 52–64; Die Verbrechernatur der Juden.

Berlin: Hochmuth, 1944: 142–7;

Rassen, Völker und Volkstümer. Langensalza: Beltz, 1938: 400–8;

Atlas zur Deutschen Geschichte der Jahre 1914 bis zur Gegenwart. Leipzig: Velhagen und Klasing,
1936: 27–28.

JvL, “Die Gauner von Betsche” 7 (Sept. 1938): 376–8.

JvL. “Die Gauner von Betsche,” 377; Mosse, George.

The Crisis of German Ideology: The

Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964: 4–5; Clauß, Ludwig.
Rasse und Seele. Munich: Lehmanns, 1936.

See JvL’s largely unsuccessful attempt to integrate the history of law into school curriculum as

loosely articulated in his

Arteigenes Recht und Unterricht. München: Deutscher Volksverlag, 1937.

312

G. P. Wegner

had the full legal weight of the Nuremberg Laws from 1935 behind him to support
his anti-Semitic assumptions. Even more importantly, Leers exploited a long tradi-
tion of anti-Semitic stereotypes of an economic nature with roots extending to the
Middle Ages. Frankfurt am Main remained a strong geographical point-of-focus in
several essays for

Hilf mit primarily because of the perceived concentration of Jewish

money in the hands of the Rothschild family. Readers learned from Leers that
Frankfurt was a center of profound evil made possible by the lust for gold by the
Jews. The tentacles of the Rothschild bankers sunk deeply into governments all over
the world. In an illustration entitled, ‘World Enemy #1’, a stereotyped Jewish man is
shown sitting on top of the world planting flags with the star of David on all of the
continents.

The language of criminality which Leers used so freely and without any qualifi-

cation when applied to Jews came into even sharper focus in a story, ‘From the
Recollections of a Public Prosecutor’. As usual, what Leers hoped to elicit in his
readers was the unquestioned assumption that all Jews carried criminal tendencies
regardless of their respective stations in life. Although the author as lawyer did not
have experience as a public prosecutor, the essay assumed an authoritative and
presumptuous tone. One of the driest and most densely written of the essays he
published in

Hilf mit, Leers mythologized the experiences of a former prosecutor

named Kiel assigned to

Räuberbanden or gangs of robbers in the Rheinland of the

late eighteenth century. As expected, the merchant of negative and unfounded
anti-Semitic stereotypes pointed to the Jews in his rendering of the prosecutor’s
select memory. For the adolescent reading these lines, the conclusion remained
inescapable:

Yes, that was public prosecutor Kiel. During his entire life, this honest man fought crime.
I have in any case learned something from him: I initially assume that every person is
respectable until he convinces me otherwise. However, I assume that every Jew is a crook
and to this day, I still have not been convinced otherwise.

Any serious look at this series of writings from

Hilf mit would remain incomplete with-

out a consideration of Leers’ anti-Semitic exploitation of the German peasantry. By
the mid-1930s, Leers had already earned a reputation as an accomplished agrono-
mist.

The school newspaper provided yet another outlet for his anti-Semitic venom.

In ‘The Peasant King from Hessen’, Leers once again condemned Jewish moneyed
interests for holding peasants hostage through ‘debt slavery’. Who was guilty for the
sorrowful state of economic affairs in the countryside? Leers provided children with
a quick and easy answer. The essay opened with a call to action: ‘Peasants, wake up!
The Jews hold you in their claws! Defend yourselves!’ Returning to the page was the
ancient charge that, unlike the peasants who remained close to the soil and earned

JvL. “Familie Rothschild lastet auf Europa.”

Hilf mit 6 (July, 1938): 300–2. To extend his

conspiracy theory regarding Jews and money, Leers published a book for adult readers entitled,

Wie

kam der Jude zum Geld? Berlin: Fritsch, 1939.

JvL. “Aus den Erinnerungen eines öffentlichen Anklägers.”

Hilf mit 7 (Jan. 1939): 100–1.

JvL.

Deutschen Bauern; Bauerntum. Berlin: Reichsnährungsverlag, 1935.

Paedagogica Historica

313

their living by the sweat of their brows, Jews avoided working with their hands and
honest labor.

For a more mature audience, Leers appealed to a kind of rationalized pseudo-

science to justify his rank stereotypes of the Jewish community. As late as 1944, Leers
churned out a ten chapter volume on

Die Verbrechernatur der Juden (The Criminal

Nature of Jews) replete with warnings to those who would dismiss his psychologized
portraits of Jews as crooks, murderers, peddlers of pornographic literature, sexual
offenders, thieves, cheats, and gangsters. Assuming the role as race expert as he had
done so many times, Leers calls citizens to a great, unavoidable struggle with religious
overtones:

Judaism is hereditary criminality. The Jews are not a people like other peoples and also not
the result of some mere racial mixture. Rather, Judaism perverts the divine and actively
engages in Satanism. Because of this, there exists a duty for every individual human being
in the world to participate in fighting back against the Jews. No one can stand off to the
side.

Religious Anti-Semitism and Criminality

In yet another insidious way, Leers tapped religious prejudices in an essay which also
used Frankfurt as a cultural backdrop. The politically astute Leers, knowing that
many of his potential young readers were Catholic or Protestant, avoided any outright
condemnation of Christianity. This he saved for adult readers, more specifically his
attacks on Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber’s disdain for old Germanic pagan
religions.

In the story of ‘the evil alley’, one learns about the theft of a communion

chalice from a Catholic church. Boruch Singerle, a notorious Jewish usurer and
pawnshop owner, knowingly accepted the item as payment for a debt. When brought
before the municipal judge, Singerle lied about who brought him the chalice while
taking an oath on the Talmud. All of this happened at a time of great poverty in the
city. The story closed with impoverished members of the local guild which produced
the chalice leaving the city on Christmas eve amidst loud celebrations in the Jewish
quarter. The travesty of justice staged by Leers taught readers that a good National
Socialist could never trust the word of a Jew.

An underlying religious theme also emerged in a story about the archbishop of

Lyon and his unfortunate dealings with the Jewish community. What transpired were

JvL. “Der Bauernkönig von Hessen.”

Hilf mit 5 (Oct. 1937): 9–10. See also the mystical tone

Leers used to describe the sacred nature of peasant blood in “Die Ewigkeit des germanischen
Bauernblutes.”

Odal 8 (June 1939): 443–7.

JvL.

Die Verbrechernatur, 169.

JvL.

Der Kardinal und die Germanen. Hamburg: Hanseatischer Verlag, 1934. Also see BARCH-

Berlin, N 2168 12, Nachlaß JvL. Kirche, Gottbegriff-Manuskripte, especially the essays, “Zum
Thema Religionsunterricht in den Schulen” and “Kirche und Germanentum” along with the

Son-

derarchiv of the Russian State Military Archive, Fond 1283K, No. 1, folder 12, JvL, “Die Reforma-
tionszeit—Gewinn oder Verlußt für das Deutschtum?”

Sigrune (May 10, 1939): 19–20.

JvL. “Die böse Gasse.”

Hilf mit 4 (Dec. 1936): 94–95.

314

G. P. Wegner

the struggles of a community suffering morally and economically from the slave
trade. Without any basis in historical fact, Leers wove a story about a Jewish family
engaged in enslaving Christian children. More than any other of Leers’ entries in

Hilf

mit, this story demonized Jews with a language both shrill and damning. Appealing to
the archbishop Agobard, a grandfather asked for help in releasing his granddaughter
from the clutches of Jewish family Samuel. For the bishop, dealing with Jews was
most distasteful and, judging from his sermons, somewhat dangerous. After all, as
the prelate preached to his flock, Jews remained stained with the charge of deicide in
the death of Christ and, moreover, symbolized an inordinate influence in the king’s
court.

Throughout the negotiations for the girls’ release from money paid by the church,

the archbishop struggled with another kind of slavery gripping his community. The
Jewish lust for money and profit through usury exacted a moral price which ruined
the lives of many Christians. The propaganda value of this piece, so Leers thought,
came through drawing a simple but disturbing parallel. Moral degradation grew only
from

Schuldknechtschaft or ‘debt slavery’, but also from the enslavement of Christian

children under the evil hand of the Jew. Realizing that children constituted the major
audience for these particular writings, the author integrated a subtext with sexual
undertones. For a child to be brought under the control of male Jews through slavery
or any other means suggested sexual perversion.

The story of Archbishop Agobard

remained significant for another reason. This essay was one of the rare pieces in which
Leers lionized a Catholic clergyman.

The spirit of Theodore Fritsch’s vicious attacks against Jewish religion from

Der

Hammer in a previous generation took on renewed fervor with the writing of Leers
directed toward teachers. Goebbels’ enthusiastic understudy launched into a tirade
against the conspiratorial nature of Jewish religious traditions. Frequently misquoting
and fabricating lines associated with the Books of Moses, Leers applied the ancient
propaganda tradition of misappropriating language as a weapon against enemies of
the state. After all, Leers queried, didn’t the Book of Deuteronomy exemplify for
teachers in the clearest of terms the Jewish lust for the destruction of other peoples,
all in the name of Yahweh? Pupils were to understand that National Socialism was
the only salvation against this global onslaught and the threat of racial mixing with
this the most dangerous of peoples.

Leers had the power to choose his friends and enemies under the broad rubric of

Christianity. Like many of his fellow propagandists, Leers saw great promise in

JvL, “Erzbischof Agobard und die Juden.”

Hilf mit 5 (Jan. 1937): 120–1. The charge of sexual

perversion among Jewish males remained part of anti-Semitic propaganda under the Third Reich in
several books for children. See the illustrations of Hiemer, Ernst.

Der Giftpilz. Nuremberg: Der

Stürmer, 1938: 33; Bauer, Elvira.

Trau keinem Jud’ auf grüner Heid. Nuremberg: Der Stürmer,

1936: 11.

JvL.

Rassische Geschichtsbetrachtung: Was muß der Lehrer davon wissen? Langensalza: Beltz,

1934: 44–45. Leers mounted a shrill set of attacks on Jewish law and the Talmud in an essay for
teachers, “Stein der Hilfe und Schild des Rechtes.”

Der Deutsche Erzieher 5 (Dec. 1938): 425–7.

Paedagogica Historica

315

using the anti-Jewish fervor of Martin Luther to support the Nazi worldview. Liber-
ally quoting Luther’s incendiary pamphlet, ‘On the Jews and Their Lies’ (1543),
Leers encouraged teachers to introduce children to the Great Reformer’s violent
rage directed at the Jewish community. In a special issue of the NSLB journal,

Der

Deutsche Erzieher (The German Educator), the Nazi propagandist reprinted several
aggressive measures advocated by Luther in dealing with the infidels. Heading the
list was the burning of Jewish synagogues, schools and homes followed by the initia-
tion of forced labor—actions which subsequently found an eerie resonance in the
Third Reich.

Consistency was not a hallmark of Leers’ thinking about the religious implications

of anti-Semitism. On other occasions, in articles published by regional NSLB news-
papers, Leers castigated Christianity for being too soft on Jews. ‘Racial psychology’,
Leers wrote, suggested that one of the weaknesses of Christianity was its association
with Jewish tradition.

The special edition of

Der Deutsche Erzieher devoted to the

Jewish question came off the press only one month after the Night of the Broken
Glass. In this issue, Leers criticized Catholic and Protestant traditions for going ‘back
and forth’ on the status of the Jewish community. He praised Thomas Aquinas for
the anti-Jewish tone implicit in some of his teachings. On the other hand, Leers
condemned Pope Pius XI’s declaration of friendship for Israel and the prelate’s insis-
tence that persecution of Jews stood against Catholic principles. While Luther always
remained one of Leers’ great anti-Semitic heroes, he remained troubled by Lutheran
pastors from the twentieth century who saw the Old Testament as a foundation stone
for Protestant belief.

Conspicuous in its absence was any discussion about the

Jewish heritage of Jesus Christ.

That Christianity represented a potentially harmful barrier to the realization of a

racial state was a theme that Leers pounded incessantly into many of his writings for
teachers. In a series of instructional ‘self-teaching letters’ created by Johann von Leers
and Willi Becker for educators, the two writers mounted an attack on what they
regarded as the misplaced and uninformed liberal belief in the equality of human
beings. This time, their purview expanded to include other racial pariahs under the
protective auspices of church teaching:

If the individual is Aryan or Jewish, if he is German or Negro, if he is racially inferior and
subversive, if he is healthy or sick in blood and mind, that is all the same to the
church…The German woman of the Nordic race and the woman of the Sudanese race
from the former Cameroons are not only different based on their physical characteristics,
differentiated not only by the color of skin, the eyes, and the hair as well as the form of the
skull, the lips and the nose. Rather—and these facts give racial teaching their greatest
meaning—they are also mentally different from each other in their feelings, thinking and

JvL. “Man muß sein Segel nach dem Winde stellen.”

Der Deutsche Erzieher 5 (December 1938):

447–8.

See BARCHBerlin, N2168 12, Nachlaß Johann von Leers, “Gotteserkenntnis rassisch

bedingt.”

Der Schlesische Erzieher 7 (no date): 323–7; “Die Rechtsstellung der Juden im 18.

Jahrhundert nach gemeinem Recht.”

Der Thüringer Erzieher (12. December 1936): 632–5.

JvL. “Man muß sein Segel,” 447–8.

316

G. P. Wegner

will. No more than a Nordic woman can become a Negro either physically or mentally, so
it is also impossible to shape the Sudanese woman into a Nordic woman through
education, instruction or further influences.

That people with black skin scarcely existed in the Third Reich was not a matter of

concern to Leers and Becker. Their mere existence as a force in the world, like that
of the Jews, was justification enough for Nazi racial condemnation. Emerging from
this revealing passage for teachers is the ridicule of a profoundly anti-Nazi sentiment
enshrined in church teaching about social equality. Trained in German legalisms and
steeped in his own racial perspective on history, Leers also looked to the marketplace
and law as fertile areas for further exploitation of anti-Semitic propaganda for
children. Once again, in Leers’ propaganda universe, the interrelated nature of anti-
Semitic thinking linked economics with religion and criminality. As the master
reductionist wrote in a volume for a series on the Jewish question, ‘all money and
property which the Jews have is entirely stolen from Christians ten times over’
through ‘profiteering and deception’.

A relentless repetition thus remained at the

center of Leers’ propaganda strategy.

Jews in the Marketplace: Law and the Power of Money

When taken as a whole, the short stories from

Hilf mit and Für das Reich do not depart

from the long tradition of anti-Semitic stereotypes—both religious and economic—
which gained a foothold in the Middle Ages.

One notes in these two sources that

Leers remained uninterested in schooling young readers in the more recent and
complex ‘scientific’ elements of racial anti-Semitism which emerged in the late nine-
teenth century with roots in eugenics. Leers felt that the best way to reach young
people, especially elementary-aged children, was through mythologizing the Jew via
traditional stereotypes. Again, the connection between money and crime constituted
an essential propaganda relationship.

Law enforcement in the police state emerged once again as a formative theme.

Drawing from a book by A. F. Thiele called

The Jewish Crooks in Germany,

Leers

put together a vignette called ‘The Faithful Policeman’. The central character of the
story discovered, through brave and loyal service to the German community, that the
‘respectable Jew’ existed only as fiction. This courageous man of the law, Leers wrote,
discovered the level of criminality to which Jews were capable of reaching in order to

JvL and Willi Becker.

Nationalsozialistische Staatsbürgerkunde, Heft 1. Berlin: Honness und

Hachfeld, [1936]: 21–22. In the same pages, teachers found harsh criticism for Cardinal Michael
Faulhaber (1869–1952) of Berlin and his public attacks from the pulpit for Nazi forced sterilization
laws.

JvL.

Judentum und Gaunertum. Berlin: Fritsch, 1940: 40.

Katz, Steven.

The Holocaust in Historical Context. Vol.1. New York: Oxford, 1994: 225–399.

Thiele, A. F.

Die jüdischen Gauner in Deutschland. Berlin: Auf Kosten des Verfassers,

1841–1843.

Paedagogica Historica

317

satiate their lust for money. Here was an administration of law that saw Jews for who
they really were without flinching.

The Rothschilds never fell out of Leers’ sights for they provided him with a

convenient economic foil for anti-Semitic rhetoric. ‘Jews Sell the German Navy’ is
a carefully crafted tale showing how Bank Rothschild became involved in lending
money to keep the navy afloat in the wake of the war with Denmark in the late
1840s. Germany was not yet unified into a nation, so the navy found itself
without the necessary funding to continue the struggle. Leers’ capability for not
only exploiting historical imagination, but also cleverly passing myth as fact were
critical aspects of his writing. What he wanted young children to believe was that
the German navy became incapable of fully engaging the enemy because their key
ships were heavily financed with Jewish money out of Frankfurt. Jewish invest-
ment in the German Union had to be protected even at the cost of the navy’s
security.

Rothschild made matters worse by demanding full payment on all of the loans

heedless of what such demands would do to the already imperiled conditions faced
by the navy in its fight for national honor. In the end, the ‘fat Jewish brokers’, as Leers
called them, forced an auction of the navy to secure payment on the loans. Baron
Thun, representing German interests, became the target of Rothschild’s harsh insults
when the Jewish financier assured him that he could still retain ‘a tired civil servant,
a hungry wretch, and a stumbling sextant’.

Leers layered this anti-Semitic collection with yet another example of Jewish greed

to influence young minds. ‘So They Became Rich’ recounted events leading up to the
suicide of a construction tradesman in Berlin during the closing decade of the nine-
teenth century. Speculation in the city’s housing market, manipulated by Jews, made
it impossible for the man to continue in business. High interest rates made matters
worse. The refusal of Jewish bankers to lend him money for the continuation of his
business insulted his pride. A broken and exhausted man, he took his own life, a
victim of Jewish economic conspiracy.

The last paragraph of the story brought together what Leers felt was the core

message of history instruction. This collection of stories was not the only piece
Leers contributed to race education, but it remained one of the few he devoted
specifically to the readership of children in the elementary history classes. As was
his style, Leers appealed to emotion and often used potentially explosive language
to advance his anti-Semitic agenda. In this closure, Leers brought pupils to one
inescapable conclusion, the nature of which offered a justification for even more
brutal oppression:

Jewry is unabashed swindling. The Jews, in all times, beginning from the founding
fathers to the present, used the deception of working people as their weapon to gain
power. In economic life, the Jews have for centuries brought that serious spirit of the

JvL. “Der getreue Polizeimann,” in

Für das Reich: Deutsche Geschichte in Geschichtserzählungen.

Leipzig: Beltz, 1940: 305–12.

JvL. “Juden verkaufen die deutsche Flotte.”

Für das Reich, 313–21.

318

G. P. Wegner

black marketer which must also be removed from its last slippery corner. Also, the years
of rapid industrialization from 1872 were in reality a Jewish era. Those people who are
harmed by Jews every day have been in large measure falsely treated. In deep shame over
this, ruined economically and oppressed by crooked Jewish debt structures, many of
these people have given up or hidden themselves in the darkness of poverty. Correctly
handling the situation at that time were those who already freely characterized Jewish
crookedness. The struggle against the Jews is a struggle against ancient evil in the world.
If what matters is who survives this struggle, then we will survive and the Jews shall
perish. The fewer the Jews, the happier is the world and all working peoples! [Leers’
exclamation point].

This is the kind of loud and unrelenting anti-Semitic rhetoric for which Leers became
well known. There are few other passages with the possible exception of

Mein Kampf,

Der Stürmer or Ernst Hiemer’s work which brought to children such a direct and
powerful suggestion about the annihilation of the Jews.

His propaganda was relent-

less. The entire collection closed with yet another story of a failed farm family who
lost their property because they could not keep up debt payments to Jewish financiers.
This time, the story added a new and equally ominous twist with powerful religious
connotations. Faced with the prospect of Christmas without enough money for
presents, the dejected son Klaus, a member of the Hitler Youth, came home to his
father and explained to him what he had learned in school. ‘The Jews’, he said, ‘cruci-
fied Christ’. The father accentuated this point and added that this was a strong reason
why Jews were the enemy of the people, especially farmers. The family experienced a
kind of emotional catharsis by carving out a sign for the entry gate which declared that
entry for Jews was forbidden.

Jews, Arabs and Palestine

The tight and inflexible world view articulated for teachers and pupils on the Jews
also hinged on what Leers regarded as a geopolitical reality related to the Middle
East. Penning lines for the most widely circulated teacher journal in the Reich, Leers
praised Hadj Amin-el Husseini (1888–1974), the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, for
leading the Arab world in its ‘struggle against the Jewish invasion of Palestine’. Inter-
nationalizing the Jewish threat, Leers argued that Jews had already displaced Arabs
from their lands before the time of Mohammed. Setting himself apart from other

JvL, “So sind sie reich geworden.”

Für das Reich, 322–30. JvL wrote an essay for teachers on

“The Question of Jewry from the Viewpoint of the Nordic Race” in his

Rassische Geschichtsbetrach-

tung, 40–50. Also worth reading is JvL’s draft of an anti-Semitic essay submitted to the Head Office
for Teaching Materials in Kanzlei Rosenberg. The piece is entitled “Enemy of Every Land” and re-
veals that JvL was more interested in “getting out information” to teachers rather than considering
the issue of teaching methodology. See BARCHBerlin, PK H66, Kanzlei Rosenberg, Hauptamt
Lernmittel, 22 June 1943, Bild 1368.

Hitler, Adolf.

Mein Kampf. Transl. Ralph Mannheim. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1971:

300–26; Hiemer, Ernst.

Der Pudelmopsdackelpinscher und andere besinnliche Erzählungen. Nürnberg:

Der Stürmer, 1940: 72–73, 82–83.

JvL. “Der alte Hof.”

Für das Reich, 331–4.

Paedagogica Historica

319

anti-Semitic writers of his age, Leers warned educators that the ‘warlike strength’ of
the Talmud would lead contemporary Jews to plot a ‘cultural catastrophe’ in order to
destroy Arab peoples and satisfy the Jewish lust for land.

While not known for intellectual originality in his articulation of anti-Semitic think-

ing, Leers’ emphasis in 1938 on the Jewish threat through aggressive land acquisition
broke some new ground in the German propaganda war on the Jews. Heretofore, the
oppression of Jews remained justified by traditional religious and economic grounds
which later took on even more sinister character with the emergence of ‘racial science’
in the late nineteenth century with Jews designated as racial pariahs. Leers expanded
these boundaries for anti-Semitic thought in the Third Reich by insisting that the
criminal nature of Jews also remained closely tied to their lust for land at the expense
of the German community.

Moreover, Leers’ anti-Semitic propaganda reflected a shift in his own thinking

about Zionism as a solution to the Jewish question. As early as August 1933, Leers
expressed common cause with Zionists noting that the establishment of a Jewish
‘nation among nations in their own land is sound and justified, as long as it is not
connected with any plan for world domination’. He proceeded with a pointed
endorsement for a Jewish homeland in Palestine:

If Israel takes up the plough, the hoe and the scythe and is no longer intent on making
other nations its servants, and wants instead to be a free nation among free nations and
develop its productive power to the same extent that it developed its demonic powers, it
will find friends where before it only found enemies, and Israel and its neighbors will greet
each other across freshly-plowed fields.

Some five years later, the propaganda language of Leers in regard to Palestine took a
dramatic turn. Under Leers’ biting polemic from 1938, as noted above, readers of
Der Deutsche Erzieher noted the expression of a very different relationship between
Jews, Arabs and the land of Palestine. The scope of rationalizations justifying
violence against Jews now expanded to include the charge that Jews, as the ultimate
materialists, lusted for land for which they did not claim an honest title. As we are
about to see, Leers’ anti-Semitic activities after the war showed that ideas like these

JvL. “Islam und Judentum im Laufe der Jahrhunderte.”

Der Deutsche Erzieher 5 (Dec. 1938):

427. See also JvL, “Der gegenwärtige Stand des Judenproblems in der Welt.”

Id. 5 (Nov. 1938):

402–6, and “Der Kampf gegen die Juden im Altertum.” 6 (March 1939):

Id. 267–9. The largest

collection of writings in the Nazi popular press on Moslem religion and Islamic culture by JvL is
found in the

Sonderarchiv of the Russian State Military Archive under Fond 1283K JvL, No. 1, fold-

er 25. Letters by JvL to the German Foreign Ministry recounting personal visits with the Grand
Mufti in Berlin are found in the same archival collection under folder 12, JvL to Otto von Hentig,
German Foreign Ministry, August 8, 21 1944. For a study of contemporary anti-Semitism in the
Islamic world, see Holz, Klaus.

Die Gegenwart des Antisemitismus: Islamische, demokratische und anti-

zionistische Judenfeindschaft. Hamburg: HIS Verlag, 2005. The author noted the important role
played by the Grand Mufti in bringing Johann von Leers and Leopold Greim to Egypt during the
1950s. According to Holz, the two Nazi exiles eventually “took over leading functions in the
propaganda apparatus” in that country (p. 19).

JvL,

14 Jahre. Vol. 2, 126.

320

G. P. Wegner

remained potentially explosive for a life and death struggle between two Semitic
cultures.

A Fallen Nazi Scholar

Figure 2.

Johann von Leers, circa 1930 (Bundesarchiv)

As Victor Klemperer would remind us, the figure of Leers as master reductionist,

fanatic, and obsessive hater of Jews symbolized an important aspect of the Nazi
culture which produced this propaganda. At the same time, something of contextual
importance eludes us. There is another dimension of Leers’ experience which
demands clarification. The young Nazi idealist whom Joseph Goebbels took under
his wing eventually suffered from those who doubted the authenticity of his thinking
and scholarship.

Kanzlei Rosenberg, which exercised oversight responsibilities for party speakers

and research activities for university professors, eventually turned against Leers. In
the wake of a political fallout out with Alfred Rosenberg, Leers found himself the
target of growing criticism for his eclectic publishing activities. Uncritically
embracing the controversial research of Hermann Wirth (1877–1956) on ancient
Germanic religion and sacred runes, Leers came under renewed attack for lacking
academic integrity. Others in the academic community saw in Leers a certain arro-
gance for posing as an expert in disparate fields ranging from Japanese culture to
German agrarian history to Islam. Eventually, Kanzlei Rosenberg quietly removed
his designation as party speaker.

Not long afterward, Leers found himself in an

extended legal battle ending with a judgment against him for plagiarism.

The Postwar Journey to Argentina and Egypt

One might be tempted to write off Leers as just one of many career opportunists in
the Nazi bureaucracy driven to ingratiate themselves while speaking the party line.

BARCHBerlin, NS15/36, Letter from Kulturpolitisches Archiv to Amt NS-Dozentenbund,

26.7.1938. For evidence of Hermann Wirth’s research on ancient Germanic religion and his ren-
derings of sacred runes, see his

Was heißt deutsch? Ein urgeistesgeschichtlicher Rückblick zur Selbstbe-

sinnung und Selbstbestimmung. Jena: Diederich, 1931 and Die Ultra Linda Chronik. Leipzig: Koehler
und Amelang, 1933. Wirth signed and presented both books to Hitler. Original copies found in the
Third Reich Collection, Hitler’s Personal Library, Library of Congress. Wirth’s earlier and most
well-known work,

Aufgang der Menschheit (1928) came under a critical review by scholars headed

by Alfred Bäumler who edited

Was bedeutet Hermann Wirth für die Wissenschaft? Leipzig: Koehler

und Amelang, 1932.

The plagiarism case was serious enough to require SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler to step

in and appoint Professor Walter Krusch from Jena to serve as judge of the honor court hearing
Leers’ case. The evidence cited by Krusch for plagiarizing two legal texts in a book on German legal
history, although further damaging Leers’ reputation in academic circles, did not stop him from
continuing his position at Jena or from publishing. See BARCHBerlin, PK H66. Letter from SS
Personnel Office to JvL, 18. December 1942, Bild 1390; Judgment by Walter Krusch, 19. May
1943, Bild 1378.

Paedagogica Historica

321

While opportunism remained an important part of Leers’ strategy in trying to move
up through the ranks of the regime, it was his firm dedication to anti-Semitic ideals
which most deeply marked his character as a National Socialist. May 1945 meant the
end of the Third Reich, but the collapse certainly did not spell the end for Leers as
master propagandist. After his release from an American prison camp in September
of that year, Leers eventually went into hiding in Switzerland, Austria and Italy. Even
while in Zurich and Rome, Leers pursued a publication agenda under the pseudonym

Figure 2

Johann von Leers, circa 1930 (Bundesarchiv)

322

G. P. Wegner

Hans Oehler for

Nation-Europa, published in Colberg, and Der Weg, based in

Buenos-Aires for the German community.

The rise of the Peron regime in Argentina preceded Leers’ next move. In 1952,

Leers came to Buenos Aires where he took up another round of anti-Semitic writings
for the journal while expanding attacks on West Germany, the allied occupation
government and Israel. Four years later, Leers accepted a position in Cairo with the
Nasser government as adviser in the Office of Information attached to the Ministry of
National Guidance. His major charge from the Egyptian government was to organize
a vigorous propaganda campaign against Israel. CIA intelligence reports confirmed
that Leers remained directly linked to the leadership of the Arab League and the
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem with whom he enjoyed a long friendship.

Converting to the Moslem faith and taking on the Moslem name of Omar Amin

von Leers, he also joined the faculty at Cairo University as Professor of German. Not
forgetting his SS roots, Leers became an operative for ODESSA in the Middle East
and assisted former SS doctor Hans Eisele from Buchenwald to flee Germany and
settle in Egypt. Leers remained a committed Nazi ideologue and dedicated anti-
Semite to the end. Until his death in 1965, the aged propagandist remained
convinced about the righteousness of the murderous anti-Semitic policies pursued by
Hitler’s Reich under the banner of the war against the Jews. Buried as a Moslem in
Cairo, Leers saw in the Middle East the next great battleground over the fate of world
Jewry.

The battle continues with much bloodshed to this very day.

Anti-Semitism in Postwar Germany

Part of the legacy of Johann von Leers in the field of anti-Semitic propaganda is
evidenced in a deceptively simple finding. The power of myth was stronger than
reasoned argument regardless of the audience. His stories for children related this
conclusion in the clearest of terms. There is no doubt that his writing helped to legit-
imize an ideological justification for what became the mass murder of the Jews. What
remains unclear are the effects of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda on the lives of those
students who matured in postwar Germany.

Surveys conducted by the Office of Military Government-United States

(OMGUS) in 1946 and 1948 offer some useful revelations. Results of these surveys
concluded that about two of every ten Germans in the American zone of occupation
were ‘clearly anti-Semitic’. The OMGUS report noted that Germans between the
ages of fifteen and nineteen exhibited more anti-Semitic attitudes than any other age

Oehler, Hans. “Schweizer Brief.”

Nation-Europa 1 (Mai 1951): 43–45 and “Östliche Prophe-

tie.”

Der Weg 5 (Nov. 1951): 787–95.

NARA, Record Group 263, Box 32. Information Report. Propaganda Activities of Johann von

Leers against West Germany and Israel. August 28-September 9, 1958. CIA files declassified in
2001 under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. See also Rogge, O. John.

The Official German Re-

port: Nazi Penetration, Pan-Arabism. New York: Yoseloff, 1961: 380–1.

Die Welt (March 5, 1965).

Paedagogica Historica

323

group. These young German citizens were among those pupils to whom Leers had
appealed with his propaganda message. Anna and Richard Merritt, in pointing to the
results of an OMGUS survey administered in 1947, concluded that ‘it is not difficult
to demonstrate the persistence in postwar Germany of perspectives closely related to
National Socialist ideology’. Comparing the results of two studies completed on anti-
Semitism in 1946 and 1948, the authors noted that overt anti-Semitism had
decreased slightly. More importantly, over the same period, racist attitudes which
formed an essential basis for anti-Semitism rose from 22% to 26%.

Recent scholarship by Jeffrey Herf noted that anti-Semitism and the legacy of the

Holocaust remained important aspects of what he called, ‘the division of memory
along the fault lines of the Cold War’. East and West Germany legitimized their own
conflicting political interpretations about what should be officially forgotten or
remembered about the fate of the Jews under the boot of the Nazi dictatorship. The
anti-Semitic stem of the Third Reich did not disappear, although for reasons closely
related to the context of Cold War tensions.

The East German government exploited anti-Semitism as a means to consolidate

its power during the late 1940s through the mid-1950s. Moreover, the memory of the
Holocaust remained marginalized under the Walter Ulbricht dictatorship. Memorials
to the Holocaust, like the one established in 1954 at Ettersburg near Buchenwald,
downplayed the murder of the Jews while memorializing the anti-fascist resistance
fighters associated with the Red Underground. By contrast, the Adenauer govern-
ment in West Germany assumed a policy of silence on the legacy of the Holocaust.
Casting an extended and sharp focus on the crimes of the Nazi past beyond the
Nuremberg Trials as well as a prolonged denazification, so Adenauer feared, might
threaten West Germany’s chances in establishing a liberal democracy. The

Realpoli-

tiker sensed that consolidating political support for this purpose hinged on sparing
postwar Germans ‘excessive reflection on the Nazi past’.

The Allied occupiers in the West, like the Soviet rulers in East Germany and

postwar German leaders, remained targets of Leers’ aggressive postwar propaganda
tracts published in Buenos Aires during the 1950s. Not surprisingly, Leers saved
some of his most vicious attacks for the Allied initiation of the Nuremberg Trials from
1946–1949 which he viewed as a gross insult to German honor. Through much of

Merritt, Anna and Richard Merritt (eds.).

Public Opinion in Occupied Germany: The OMGUS

Surveys, 1945–1949. Chicago: University of Illinois press, 1970: 146–9, 239–40.

Herf, Jeffrey.

Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys. London: Harvard University

Press, 1997: 100.

Ibid., 107, 225–7. Wegner, Gregory. “The Power of Selective Tradition: Buchenwald

Concentration Camp and Holocaust Education for Youth in the New Germany,” in Hein, Laura
and Mark Selden (eds.).

Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan. Germany, and the

United States. London: M.E. Sharpe, 2000: 226–57. Also see Francois Fetjo. Judentum und
Kommunismus in Osteuropa. Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1967.

324

G. P. Wegner

this postwar period, Leers saved a special animus for the State of Israel while
resurrecting his old anti-Semitic rhetoric from the 1930s.

Conclusion

Leers lived long enough to work his vigorous anti-Semitic propaganda against Jews
not only in Europe, but also in South America, the United States, and Israel. We
are not speaking about a man highly placed in the Nazi pantheon. Evidently, Leers
was not important enough to be included in the dossiers of Simon Wiesenthal, the
Nazi hunter, for postwar investigation or prosecution. Neither did American
occupation authorities bother to go beyond the initial denazification process in
removing him from the faculty at Jena. Other Nazi professors—notably Alfred
Bäumler (1887–1968) from the Union of German Academics and a long-time critic
of Leers’ anthropologist friend Hermann Wirth—gained much more prosecutorial
attention from the Allies.

Even with these developments, it would be easy to forget something very essential

coming out of this study: Leers symbolized the kind of fierce ideological loyalist and
propagandist upon whom the Nazi regime depended. Moreover, as recently declassi-
fied CIA files suggest, the long and bloody history of Arab-Israeli relations in the
Middle East invariably connects with the dynamic campaign of anti-Semitic hate
language conducted by Johann von Leers during the late 1950s and early 1960s from
Cairo with the blessing of the Arab League. This curious and vital chapter on the
contemporary history of conflict in the Middle East remains unwritten.

The journey of Leers under the shadow of Hitler briefly sketched in these lines

invites a useful comparison to another much more well-known Nazi figure. Like the
young architect Albert Speer (1905–1981), Johann von Leers gained a certain entrée
into Nazi circles with the encouragement of Joseph Goebbels.

These three univer-

sity-educated figures shared a similar task—that of legitimizing and glorifying Nazi
ideas through propaganda. For Leers, the printed word provided the major medium
for his work of enlisting the passionate loyalties of fellow Germans in an anti-Semitic
crusade. Through architecture, Speer stage-managed a glorification of the Third
Reich on a huge scale through public buildings and party rallies.

JvL. “Das blies ihnen der Teufel ein!”

Der Weg 11 (1957):173–8; JvL. “Die Tragödie der

Demokratie.”

Id. 5 (1951): 295–9. A special edition of Der Weg under the title of Reichsverräter

(Traitors of the Reich) appeared in 1956 from Dürer publishing house and included JvL’s essay,
“Die Kirchen als Wegbereiter der jüdischen Macht” (pp. 48–67).

Alfred Bäumler, former professor of philosophy and political pedagogy at the University of

Berlin, served a three year sentence under the Allies during which time he began a self critical re-
flection on the meaning of Nazism. Among his notable writings from the Third Reich are

Politik und

Erziehung: Reden und Aufsätze. Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1937; Bildung und Gemeinschaft.
Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1942;

Weltdemokratie und Nationalsozialismus: Die neue Ordnung

Europas als geschichtsphilosophisches Problem. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1943.

Speer, Albert.

Inside the Third Reich. New York: Macmillan, 1970: 24–27.

Paedagogica Historica

325

As profoundly different these two men were in character, temperament and politi-

cal power, they shared both a boundless ambition and the universal tendency of
propagandists to mythologize the regime for which they labored with intense dedica-
tion. In the end, as former Reichsminister, Speer denied any personal knowledge
about the deadly outcome associated with the vigorous administration of anti-Semitic
policy. Leers assumed the opposite position. For him, the brutal oppression of Jews
remained the ideological centerpiece for the Third Reich and a celebrated symbol of
what he stood for in advancing anti-Semitic rhetoric as editor, publicist, educator,
and professor.

Speer subsequently mounted the docket at Nuremberg and faced conviction for

crimes against humanity committed as Minister of Armaments. Like so many of the
young idealists originally pressed into service by the Nazi propaganda machine, Leers
never stood before a tribunal for the violent anti-Semitic propaganda he perpetrated
through the power of the word. Nevertheless, both the architect and publicist bore
important responsibilities for legitimizing the public face of Nazism.

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