Read Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History for Free Online Page A

said of General Ludendorff, widely trusted in Germany and seen as one of its finest and most intelligent generals. Yet when Ludendorff—who had emerged from a lost war with his reputation enhanced—was shown the Protocols , he too leaped upon the exculpatory opportunity. “Several publications have recently appeared which throw more light on the position of the Jewish people,” he wrote. When these documents had been studied properly, he predicted, “One suspects that, in many instances, we shall arrive at another version of world history.” 8
    Among young Germans, the text had a receptive audience. To them it was doubly believable because it fitted with what other people were saying and what they were already inclined to think. The year 1919 had also seen the publication of Friedrich Wichtl’s book The World War, World Freemasonry, World Revolution , which similarly advanced the notion that Jews and Freemasons had brought about the disastrous conflict. This book, a nineteen-year-old boy wrote in his diary, explained “all and tells us against whom we must fight.” 9 The young man was Heinrich Himmler.
    But even in the countries that had—officially, at least—won the war, the Protocols were not dismissed. Serious newspapers cogitated on the meaning of the revelations. In France, L’Opinion analyzed the content of the book as it would any other serious publication. In Italy, the Milan newspaper Perseverenza and the Roman Vita Italiana did the same.
    What seems most surprising now, however, was what happened in Britain. In 1920, the first English edition of the Protocols was published, a private commission from Eyre and Spottiswoode, who bore the distinction (and the imprint) of being His Majesty’s Printers. The British version was called The Jewish Peril and was soon being reviewed in some of Britain’s most prestigious journals. On May 8, The Times , newspaper of the Establishment, published an editorial, quite possibly the work of its celebrated editor Mr. Henry Wickham Steed. This leading article was titled “A Disturbing Pamphlet: A Call for Inquiry.” Its tone was urgent. “What are these Protocols ?” it asked. “Are they authentic? If so, what malevolent assembly concocted these plans and gloated over their exposition?”
    Then The Times asked, and seemed to answer, the key question. “Are they a forgery? If so whence comes the uncanny note of prophecy, prophecy in parts fulfilled, in parts far gone in the way of fulfillment?” Then the peroration. “Have we,” The Times demanded, “been struggling these tragic years to blow up and extirpate the secret organization of German world dominion only to find beneath it another, more dangerous because more secret? Have we, by straining every fiber of our national body, escaped a ‘Pax Germanica’ only to fall into a ‘Pax Judaeica’?”
    A week later, it was the turn of the Spectator magazine. The edition of May 15 contained a long and respectful review of The Jewish Peril , accompanied by an editorial. The Protocols were described as being “of very great ability . . . brilliant in moral perversity and intellectual depravity . . . One of the most remarkable productions of their kind.” 10 Both the Spectator and The Times were rapidly inundated by letters from horrified Jewish readers, an occurrence that for those who read the Protocols and believed them merely acted as corroboration.
    Worse was to come. The Tory Morning Post commenced a series of twenty-three long leading articles backing the Protocols , and bound them together in another pamphlet, which was sold under the title of The Cause of World Unrest. Here was revealed how “a formidable sect” had brought about the First World War by manipulating the Germans, with the ultimate objective being “the destruction of Christianity and all religion except the Jewish.” The Morning Post was doubtless influenced in this by its employee and former correspondent in Russia, Victor Marsden.