18 No. 69 JUSTICE contemporary antisemitism with fantasies about Jewish world rule, which originated in medieval Europe. Nazi antisemitism is a mutation of all this. Actually, as far as the ideological elements go, there is nothing new in it, compared to the different forms of pre-Nazi Jew-hatred. But the crucial element is turning these phobias into a political tool possessed by ideology. This becomes very clear in Hitler's memorandum to his Number Two, Hermann Göring, in August 1936, in which he explained that Nazism's chief enemy is Soviet Bolshevism, whose only purpose is to replace all world governments with International Jewry. The idea of a Jewish bid for world government, so blatantly stated in the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion, becomes a political program at the end of which stands what we term the Holocaust. This ideology becomes a moving force in the development of World War II, and in this way, it is a danger for all societies where antisemitism gains the upper hand. Antisemitism is therefore a mortal danger not just to the small Jewish people, which is obvious, but to all societies infected by it. It played a crucial role, as we have seen, in the outbreak of World War II, becoming a major factor in the death of many millions of non-Jews, and a danger to all humanity. n Yehuda Bauer is a historian of the Holocaust, Academic Adviser of Yad Vashem, and Member of the Israeli Academy of Science and Humanities.
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