Re: Hitler's Willing Executioners

January 30, 1999

Dear Members of the Board:

I request that the book "Hitler's Willing Executioners" by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen be eliminated from the Senior High School Library. The theme of the book is spelled out on the dust jacket: "They (the Germans) acted as they did because of a widespread, profound, unquestioned, and virulent antisemitism that led them to regard the Jews as a demonic enemy whose extermination was not only necessary but also just."

Before I take issue with that theme some background information. January 6, 1997 I sent you my challenge of the book "Smoke and Ashes" by Barbara Rogasky. March 10, 1997 I sent you my challenge of the book "Never to Forget" by Milton Meltzer. Both authors claim that the lines: "When Jewish blood spurts from the knife, Then everything will be fine" are in the Horst Wessel song, the Nazi anthem. When I confronted Ms. Rogasky with a copy of the Horst Wessel song (these lines are not there) I was told these lines are in "Das Kampflied des SA." Since I wanted to know the name of the author, the publishing house and the title of the song book in which the song containing these lines was published I was directed by Mr. M. to contact the Holocaust Museum in Washington. This I did.

A Mr. J.L. answered (April 29, 1997) and he included in his letter the pertinent pages from the German journal "Die Musik" (September 1938) .I quote: "Ein beliebtes Lied bei der SA. war das Kampflied  'War einst ein junger Sturmsoldat...'Die vierte Strophe lautet wie folgt:

Wir sind vom Gausturm Gross-Berlin
Und haben frohen Mut.
Wenn das Judenblut vom Messer spritzt,
Dann geht's noch mal sogut.

Um auf diesen Vers in meinen Liederbuechern der SA. Nicht verzichten zu muessen, habe ich in der vorletzten Zeile folgende Abwandlung vorgenommen: 'Wenn das Hackenkreuz voranmarschiert ..." Das Liederbuch entging zwar dadurch dem Zugriff der Polizei, aber von der SA. wurde das Lied trotz aller Gefahr zum Entsetzen der Strassenpassanten immer kraeftig in der 'Orginalfassung' gesungen.”

This is what Mr. L.’s  letter says: "This change; Baier writes, allowed the songbook to avoid confiscation by the police, however, the original text to the song was still sung at rallies and meetings. "

How dare Mr. L. falsify? Does he not realize that there are people who know German? Here is what Bajer really says: "A favorite song with the SA was the fighting song: “Once there was a young storm soldier” .The fourth verse went like this:

We are from the Gausturm {section) Gross-Berlin
And are of good courage
When Jewish blood spurts from the knife,
Then things will be twice as good.

In order that I did not have to leave out this verse in my songbooks of the SA I changed the next to last line into: “when the swastika marches ahead...” On account of this change the songbook avoided the confiscation by the police, but the song was nevertheless sung by the SA in the “original version” in spite of all the danger and to the horror of the pedestrians.

I want to make four points.

1. The lines "when Jewish blood spurts from the knife..." were never printed in a Nazi song book.

2. Where did L. get the idea that these lines were sung at rallies and meetings?  That is NOT what Bajer wrote.

3. Anybody knowing the political circumstances in Berlin at this time will realize that these lines were not directed against the Jewish butchers, bakersand candlestick makers, in short the Jewish neighbors these SA men might have had, but to goad their Jewish political opponents especially  the Berlin deputy police chief, Dr.Weiss, who was a Jew.

4. Point number 4 brings me back to Goldhagen’s book where on page 500 appear the lines:

When Jewish blood spurts from the knife
All is fine and dandy
Blood must flow thick as hail

Goldhagen uses these lines to buttress his theme of a murderous German antisemitism. But Bajer wrote that these lines were sung to the horror of the pedestrians. Where may I ask you was the murderous antisemitism of these German pedestrians?

Since Goldhagen is so willing to smear the German people as a whole I hope someone will write a book with the title "Stalin's Willing Executioners” meaning the Jews. The main ideologue of Communism was Karl Marx, a Jew.  Without  the Jews, Communism with its murderous atheism, with its promotion  of free love, necessitating abortion on demand, with its collectivization of Russian farms could not have been imposed on a conservative, deeply religious Russian people with a love for their land. The leaders of the Checklist death squad who murdered the czar, his wife, children, and faithful retainers  were the Jews Yakov M. Yurovsky, and Sverdlov. The main enforcer of that alien ideology was the Jew, Beria. The forced collectivization of the Russian agriculture was in Jewish hands. The majority of the members of the varied Communist committees were Jews. And look at Russia now. It is plundered by the Jews.

A look to Germany. April 13, 1919, three Jews, Eugen Levine, Ernst Toller and Max Levien overthrew the Bavarian government and declared Bavaria to be a Soviet Republic. This Republic was quickly overthrown, but the blood letting in the streets of Munich and Augsburg was horrendous. The street battles in other German cities, foremost Berlin, between the Jewish led Communists and loyal government troops were equally bloody.  It was only the victory of the National Socialists January 30, 1933 which finally exorcised the threat of a Communistic Germany. If Germany had fallen to International Communism I doubt if the rest of Europe could have been held.

For every reaction there first has to be an action. Let the Jewish collective look to their actions before they smear every reaction as antisemitic.