Threats and Premonitions: German Intellectual Debates on Antisemitism in 1932

Abstract

This article evaluates intellectual debates on antisemitism in Germany in 1932, the last year before the establishment of Nazi dictatorship. The focus is on understudied cases of journals and books, in which both Jewish and National Socialist authors published right next to each other and on the same pages. In this context, the article makes three arguments: first, it analyses apologetic themes by right-wing authors and shows that a significant number of National Socialists still pretended that they were not actually antisemitic in 1932. Second, it reflects on the problem that Jewish intellectuals often disagreed on how to respond to the rise of antisemitism and thus entered into very different forms of debate with the German right. Finally, and perhaps paradoxically, the article also demonstrates that Weimar media had simultaneously developed an acute awareness of future threats and the possibility of large-scale atrocities on German territory.