Economic Entjudung in Nazi Europe 
money-centered modern economy was causing social upheaval and 
destroying established mores, then the unrooted “(money-)Jew” was the 
personification of that evil economic force, a blood-sucking parasite. In 
the course of the economic modernization processes, so it was said, the 
Jews had taken wealth and culture from their host societies. For once: 
the power of the Jews was connected to plain money and to its transla- 
tion into property and belongings. Moreover, the so-perceived Jewish 
principle of money had penetrated into and polluted society and think- 
ing. Consequently, it was not only all too right to take the valuables and 
money which the Jews had taken from the Volkseigentum back from 
them, but such an act would have a healing and redemptive quality. In 
his first political writing (from September 1919), Hitler expressed this 
understanding clearly: 
“And since even the Jew’s feelings are limited to the purely mater- 
ial realm, his thoughts and ambitions are bound to be so even more 
strongly. Their dance around the golden calf becomes a ruthless struggle 
for all the possessions that we feel deep down are not the highest and not 
the only ones worth striving for on this earth. 
The value of an individual is no longer determined by his character 
or by the significance of his achievements for the community, but solely 
by the size of his fortune, his wealth. 
The greatness of a nation is no longer measured by the sum of its 
moral and spiritual resources, but only by the wealth of its material pos- 
sessions. 
All this results in that mental attitude and that quest for money and 
the power to protect it which allow the Jew to become so unscrupulous 
in his choice of means, so merciless in their use of his own ends. In auto- 
cratic states he cringes before the ‘majesty’ of the princes and misuses 
their favors to become a leech on their people. 
In democracies he vies for the favor of the masses, cringes before 
‘the majesty of the people’, but only recognizes the majesty of money.” 
lish translation see: The Jews and Modern Capitalism, translated by M. Epstein 
(Kitchener 2001). On its broad impact in and outside Germany see several contri- 
butions in Berg, Luftmenschen. 
57 Adolf Hitler to Adolf Gemlich, September 16, 1919 (www.hitler.org/writings/first_ 
writing). — The original German reads as follows: “Bewegt sich schon das Gefühl des 
223