New York Times Misses The Evil Of Hitler

The New York Times' first article about Hitler's rise is absolutely stunning

Updated by Zack Beauchamp on March 3, 2016, 10:44 a.m. ET @zackbeauchamp zack@vox.com

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Adolf Hitler, circa 1922.(Imagno/Getty Images)

On November 21, 1922, the New York Times published its very first article 

about Adolf Hitler. It's an incredible read — especially its assertion that

 "Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded." 

This attitude was, apparently, widespread among Germans at the 

time; many of them saw Hitler's anti-Semitism as a ploy for votes 

among the German masses.

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Times correspondent Cyril Brown spends most of the piece 

documenting the factors behind Hitler's early rise in Bavaria, 

Germany, including his oratorical skills. For example: "He exerts 

an uncanny control over audiences, possessing the remarkable 

ability to not only rouse his hearers to a fighting pitch of fury, but at 

will turn right around and reduce the same audience to docile coolness."

But the really extraordinary part of the article is the three paragraphs 

on anti-Semitism. Brown acknowledges Hitler's vicious anti-Semitism 

as the core of Hitler's appeal — and notes the terrified Jewish 

community was fleeing from him — but goes on to dismiss it as 

a play to satiate the rubes (bolding mine):

He is credibly credited with being actuated by lofty, unselfish

patriotism. He probably does not know himself just what he wants

to accomplish. The keynote of his propaganda in speaking and

writing is violent anti-Semitism. His followers are nicknamed the "Hakenkreuzler." So violent are Hitler's fulminations against

the Jews that a number of prominent Jewish citizens are

reported to have sought safe asylums in the Bavarian

highlands, easily reached by fast motor cars, whence they

could hurry their women and children when forewarned of an

anti-Semitic St. Bartholomew's night.

But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the

idea that Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent

as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic

propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followersand keep

them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his

organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed

effectively for political purposes.

A sophisticated politician credited Hitler with peculiar political

cleverness for laying emphasis and over-emphasis on

anti-Semitism, saying: "You can't expect the masses to understand

or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses

with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be

politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you really are

leading them."

Now, Brown's sources in all likelihood did tell him that Hitler's 

anti-Semitism was for show. That was a popular opinion during 

Nazism's early days. But that speaks to how unprepared polite 

German society was for a movement as sincerely, radically violent 

as Hitler's to take power.

One other thing: If "violent anti-Semitism" was such a winning

 issue for Hitler, what does that tell us about the state

of public opinion in Bavaria in 1922?