Antisemitism in the Weimar Republic

Abstract Antisemitism was an integral part of the Weimar Republic’s political culture and was widespread in society. During the 1920s, hostility towards Jews was often radical and militant, complemented by their increasing exclusion in everyday life. Right-wing anti-democrats weaponized antisemitic conspiracy myths against the Weimar Republic, defamed as the ‘Jew Republic’. In Reich and state parliaments and in the party press, antisemites attempted to charge public discourses with antisemitism and, in doing so, change the unwritten rules of what could and could not be said. Dwindling republican forces largely underestimated the looming danger. The defence organizations of the German Jews, from the early 1930s, had hardly any chance against the superior numbers of the right-wing extremist movement under the leadership of the Nazi party.