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Concept
Jewish war conspiracy theory
Summary
The claim that there was a Jewish war against Nazi Germany is an antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted in Nazi propaganda which asserts that the Jews, framed within the theory as a single historical actor, started World War II and sought the destruction of Germany. Alleging that war was declared in 1939 by Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, Nazis used this false notion to justify the persecution of Jews under German control on the grounds that the Holocaust was justified self-defense. Since the end of World War II, the conspiracy theory has been popular among neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers.
After the Central Powers' defeat in World War I, false rumors emerged in the Weimar Republic and Hungary alleging that the Jews in those countries conspired with foreign Jews in order to undermine the war effort (the stab-in-the-back myth). Some also accused European Jews of working together to start the war for the purpose of ruining Europe and leaving it vulnerable to "Jewish control". Jews were also blamed for manipulating the peace negotiations to produce an unsatisfactory result in the postwar treaties, for their own profit.
Nazis claimed that the anti-Nazi boycott was an aggressive action by Jews, and launched the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in retaliation. The British Daily Express ran a headline on 24 March 1933 regarding the anti-Nazi boycott, stating "Judea Declares War on Germany", showing that such claims were not restricted to Nazi propaganda. Before the war broke out, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler repeatedly opined that Jews posed a severe threat to Germany, including on 30 January 1939 when he gave his prophecy speech and predicted that a war caused by the Jews would lead to the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe".
For Hitler, the start of World War II on 1 September 1939 confirmed the idea that there had been a Jewish conspiracy against Germany all along, even though Germany started the war by invading Poland.
Official source
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