Goebbels home run

In 1941, an obscure Jewish-American businessman, Theodore Kaufman, published a bizarre pamphlet titled “Germany must perish”. He promoted his work by sending miniature wooden coffins to potential reviewers! The campaign was successful, and Kaufman's pamphlet was (unfavorably) reviewed in several American magazines. Here, the story could have ended. Except, of course, that it didn't. Somehow, Kaufman's anti-German screed, which calls for the literal extermination of the entire German nation, came to the attention of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, who quickly seized the opportunity. The Nazi propaganda machine used “Germany must perish” for the rest of the war as “proof” that the Jews really controlled a worldwide anti-German conspiracy. Still today, anti-Semites reference Kaufman.

This little book reprints both Kaufman's pamphlet and an English translation of the Nazi German response, “The War Goal of the World Plutocracy” by one Wolfgang Diewerge, who worked directly under Goebbels. The publisher, Ostara Publications, describes itself as Eurocentric and is a White supremacist outfit associated with Arthur Kemp, a former high-ranking member of the British National Party.

Kaufman's genocidal rants are, of course, absurd. He proposes the elimination of the entire German nation through forced sterilization and forced labor. Germany itself should be occupied and partitioned between the Allied victors. Berlin should become Polish! The Germans, according to the author, are evil and war-prone by nature, as evidenced by Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm. Their goal has always been world domination, including and an attack on the United States to grab South America. Curiously, Kaufman says almost nothing about Nazi crimes against Jews. Even more curiously, Kaufman claimed to be a non-interventionist or even pacifist. My guess is that he was something of a “weirdo”, and he seems to have receded into obscurity immediately after the war.

Goebbel's response (via Diewerge) strongly exaggerates Kaufman's status. He is said to be a close advisor of Roosevelt, together with Bernard Baruch and New York mayor La Guardia. This “brain trust” is directly connected to Stalin and Churchill. “The American Federation for Peace”, a small group founded by Kaufman, is said to be a mass movement. In reality, Kaufman might have been its only member. The name Kaufman also surfaced, we are told, during recent “American terrorist actions” in South America! And so on…

Neither “Germany must perish” nor the Nazi riposte are particularly interesting by themselves. It’s the peculiar fate of Kaufman's self-published oeuvre that makes it necessary reading for World War II buffs. In a sense, Goebbels won this round. Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany did score a propaganda victory of sorts due to Kaufman's indiscretions.

Thank God, the Allies won the war anyway…