The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

The Protocols of the (Learned) Elders of Zion ({{lang-ru|????????? ???????? ???????? or ???????? ?????????}}) is a fraudulent document purporting to describe a plan to achieve Jewish global domination.

History

The plagiarized document

The origin of most of what make up the Protocols lies in an 1864 pamphlet titled Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu or Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu by the French satirist Maurice Joly, which attacks the political ambitions of Napoleon III by using the device of diabolical plotters in Hell. In turn, Joly appears to have plagiarized a good amount of the material from a popular novel by Eugene Sue, The Mysteries of the People. In Sue's work, the plotters were Jesuits, and the Jews do not appear in the pamphlet. There seems to be some confusion here, because the Jesuit plotters were in Sue's book The Wandering Jew, which was not in fact about Jews.

Related Topics:
1864 - Machiavelli - Montesquieu - Maurice Joly - Napoleon III - Hell - Eugene Sue - Jesuits

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It being illegal to criticize the monarchy, Joly had the pamphlet printed in Belgium, and then attempted to have it smuggled over the French border. It was seized by the police, who confiscated as many copies as they could, then banned the book. The police traced the book to Joly, who was then tried on April 25 1865, and sentenced to fifteen months in prison.

Related Topics:
April 25 - 1865

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The forger

Hermann Goedsche, a German anti-Semite and a spy for the Prussian secret police who had been removed from his job as a postal clerk after forging evidence for the prosecution of political reformer Benedict Waldeck in 1849, included Joly's Dialogues in his 1868 book Biarritz, written under the name Sir John Retcliffe. In the chapter "The Jewish Cemetery in Prague and the Council of Representatives of the Twelve Tribes of Israel", he invented a secret rabbinical cabal which meets in the cemetery at midnight every hundred years to plan the agenda for the Jewish Conspiracy. To portray the meeting, he borrowed heavily from the scene in the novel Joseph Balsamo by Alexandre Dumas where Cagliostro and company plot the affair of the diamond necklace, and likewise borrowed Joly's Dialogues as the outcome of the meeting.

Related Topics:
Hermann Goedsche - German - Anti-Semite - Prussia - Benedict Waldeck - 1849 - 1868 - Sir John Retcliffe - Alexandre Dumas - Cagliostro - Affair of the diamond necklace

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Goedsche's book was translated into Russian language in 1872, and in 1891 an extract of the chapter containing the meeting of the fictional centennial rabbinical "council of representatives", including the plagiarized Joly's Dialogues was circulating in Russia; whether they originated it or not, the Russian secret police found the work useful in their fight to discredit liberal reformers and revolutionaries who were rapidly gaining support among the populace. During the Dreyfus affair in France in 1893–1895, when polarization of European attitudes towards the Jews was at a maximum, the Dialogues were edited into their final form, which appeared in Russia in 1895 and began to be privately published starting in 1897 as the Protocols.

Related Topics:
Russian language - 1872 - 1891 - Rabbi - Dreyfus affair - France - 1893 - 1895 - Russia - 1897

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Russian reactionaries use the forgery

It enjoyed another wave of popularity in Russia after 1905, when the progressive political elements in Russia succeeded in creating a constitution and a parliament, the Duma. The reactionary "Union of the Russian People", known as the Black Hundreds, together with the Okhranka, the Tsarist secret police, blamed this liberalization on the "International Jewish conspiracy," and began a program of widely disseminating the "Protocols" as a propaganda support for the wave of pogroms that swept Russia in 1903–1906 and a tool to deflect attention from social activism.

Related Topics:
1905 - Constitution - Parliament - Duma - Union of the Russian People - Black Hundreds - Propaganda - Pogroms - 1903 - 1906

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In 1905, a self-proclaimed mystic priest Sergei Nilus gained fame by publishing the full text of the Protocols in the appendix of the third edition of his book The Great in the Small: The Coming of the Anti-Christ and the Rule of Satan on Earth promulgating it as the work of the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897. After it had been pointed out that the First Zionist Congress had been open to the public and attended by many non-Jews, he claimed the Protocols were the work of the meetings of the "Elders of Zion" in 1902–1903, despite the conflict with his claim of having received a copy previous to that date:

Related Topics:
Mystic - Priest - Sergei Nilus - First Zionist Congress - Basel, Switzerland - 1897 - 1902 - 1903

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: In 1901, I succeeded through an acquaintance of mine (the late Court Marshal Alexei Nikolayevich Sukotin of Chernigov) in getting a manuscript that exposed with unusual perfection and clarity the course and development of the secret Jewish Freemasonic conspiracy, which would bring this wicked world to its inevitable end. The person who gave me this manuscript guaranteed it to be a faithful translation of the original documents that were stolen by a woman from one of the highest and most influential leaders of the Freemasons at a secret meeting somewhere in France—the beloved nest of Freemasonic conspiracy.{{ref|Hoaxers}}

Related Topics:
1901 - Chernigov

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Nilus was aiming for the position of the royal couple's confessor and managed to bring his book to the Tsar's attention, with the help of the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna. This was part of a faction fight against Papus and Nizier Anthelme Philippe at the Tsarist court. (Indeed Papus was accused in 1920 of having forged the Protocols to discredit Philippe.)

Related Topics:
Papus - Nizier Anthelme Philippe - 1920

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Nicholas II's notes handwritten in the margins are the evidence of his first reaction:

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"What precise execution of their programme!",

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"Our 1905 was clearly orchestrated by the Zion Elders!",

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"The Jews' guiding and destroying hand is visible everywhere".

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A subsequent secret investigation ordered by the newly appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers Pyotr Stolypin soon determined that the Protocols were authored by operatives of the Okhranka in Paris. The details were not made public to avoid compromising the chief of the secret service Pyotr Rachkovsky and his agents, including Matvei Golovinsky. When Nicholas II learned of the results of this investigation, he requested: "The Protocols should be confiscated, a good cause cannot be defended by dirty means". Despite the order, or because of the "good cause", numerous reprints proliferated.

Related Topics:
Pyotr Stolypin - Paris - Pyotr Rachkovsky

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Western distribution by Anti-Bolsheviks

After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, various warring fractions used the Protocols to perpetrate hatred and violence against the Jews. The idea that the Bolshevik movement was a Jewish conspiracy for world domination sparked worldwide interest in the Protocols. In a single year (1920), five editions were sold out in England. The same year in the United States, Henry Ford sponsored the printing of 500,000 copies and until 1927 published a series of anti-Semitic articles in The Dearborn Independent, a newspaper that he controlled.

Related Topics:
Bolshevik Revolution - 1917 - World domination - England - Henry Ford - 1927 - The Dearborn Independent - Newspaper

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In 1920, the history of the Protocols was traced back to the works of Goedsche and Joly by Lucien Wolf and published in London in August 1921. The history of the Protocols was similarly exposed in the series of articles in The Times by its Constantinople reporter Philip Graves, who took his information from Wolf's work; and the same year, an entire book documenting the hoax was published in the United States by Herman Bernstein. Despite this widespread and extensive debunking, the Protocols continued to be regarded as important factual evidence by anti-Semites.

Related Topics:
1920 - Lucien Wolf - London - 1921 - The Times - Constantinople - Philip Graves - Hoax - Herman Bernstein

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Some scholars compare the Protocols to The permanent instruction of the Alta Vendita, supposedly found by Italian Secret police and endorsed by several Popes. The nature of the plans in both is very similar, as the Protocols go into much detail as to how to replace the Pope as the head of the Catholic Church.

Related Topics:
Italian - Pope - Catholic Church

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Besides the Tsarist forgery, another popular theory among scholars was that the Protocols were written by an offshoot Masonic or other fraternal lodge (of which many invoked the name Zion in their name at the time), as a sort of fantasy as to how they would like to control things.

Related Topics:
Tsar - Masonic - Fraternal lodge - Zion

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Textual evidence seems to disqualify that the document was written by someone Jewish. One example is the semi-messianic idea that constantly appears in the text, of establishing a "King of the Jews". This was never a Jewish term, and was only referenced on the cross of Jesus.

Related Topics:
Jew - Jesus

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Western history after 1920

The author of the most widespread English language translation of the Protocols was the correspondent of The Morning Post Victor E. Marsden who was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks in the Peter and Paul Fortress. One of the first things he undertook upon his release and return to England was the translation of Nilus' version. Marsden wrote an introduction, concluding with a comment on the remark given by Chaim Weizmann at a banquet on October 6, 1920, "A beneficent protection which God has instituted in the life of the Jew is that He has dispersed him all over the world":

Related Topics:
English language - The Morning Post - Victor E. Marsden - Peter and Paul Fortress - Chaim Weizmann

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"It proves that the Learned Elders exist. It proves that Dr. Weizmann knows all about them. It proves that the desire for a "National Home" in Palestine is only camouflage and an infinitesimal part of the Jew's real object. It proves that the Jews of the world have no intention of settling in Palestine or any separate country, and that their annual prayer that they may all meet "Next Year in Jerusalem" is merely a piece of their characteristic make-believe. It also demonstrates that the Jews are now a world menace, and that the Aryan races will have to domicile them permanently out of Europe."{{ref|marsden}}

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In 1920, Henry Ford published the Protocols in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent and the next year, he cited it as evidence of a Jewish threat: "The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on. They are sixteen years old, and they have fitted the world situation up to this time."

Related Topics:
Henry Ford - The Dearborn Independent

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The Protocols eventually became a part of the propaganda arsenal of the Nazis in their justification for the persecution of the Jews. The book was prescribed for compulsory study in schools.

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In her book The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry 1933-1945, Nora Levin states that "Hitler used the Protocols as a manual in his war to exterminate the Jews":

Related Topics:
Nora Levin - Hitler

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"Despite conclusive proof that the Protocols were a gross forgery, they had sensational popularity and large sales in the 1920's and 1930's. They were translated into every language of Europe and sold widely in Arab lands, the United States, and England. But it was in Germany after World War I that they had their greatest success. There they were used to explain all of the disasters that had befallen the country: the defeat in the war, the hunger, the destructive inflation."

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Hitler refers to the Protocols in his Mein Kampf, chapter XI: Nation and Race, Vol I, pp. 307-308.

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"... To what extent the whole existence of this people is based on a continuous lie is shown incomparably by the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, so infinitely hated by the Jews. They are based on a forgery, the Frankfurter Zeitung moans and screams once every week: the best proof that they are authentic. the important thing is that with positively terrifying certainty they reveal the nature and activity of the Jewish people and expose their inner contexts as well as their ultimate final aims. "

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In 1934, the Swiss Nazi Dr. A. Zander published a series of articles accepting the Protocols as fact. He was brought to court, in what has come to be known as the Berne Trial, by Dr. J. Dreyfus-Brodsky, Dr. Marcus Cohen and Dr. Marcus Ehrenpreis. The trial began in the Cantonal Court of Berne on 29 October 1934. On May 19, 1935 the court, after full investigation, declared the Protocols to be forgeries, plagiarisms, and obscene literature.

Related Topics:
1934 - Berne - 29 October - May 19 - 1935

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In a similar case in Grahamstown, South Africa, in August 1934, the court imposed fines totalling 1775 pounds ($4,500) on three men for disseminating a version of the Protocols.

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In 1937 Italy, the Protocols were published by Julius Evola, who also wrote the introduction.

Related Topics:
1937 - Italy - Julius Evola

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In the United States, the Protocols were republished as fact in William Milton Cooper's Behold a Pale Horse.

Related Topics:
United States - William Milton Cooper - Behold a Pale Horse

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A Russian emigre, anti-Bolshevik and anti-Fascist Vladimir Burtsev who exposed numerous Okhranka agents provocateurs in the early 1900s, served as a witness at the Berne Trial. In 1938 in Paris he published a book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Proven Forgery based on his testimony.

Related Topics:
Anti-Fascist - Vladimir Burtsev - Agents provocateurs - The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Proven Forgery

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