How did Nazi propaganda use the ‘Judeo‑Bolshevism’ myth to justify policies before and during World War II?
Executive summary
The Nazis weaponized the long‑standing myth of “Judeo‑Bolshevism” to fuse antisemitism with anti‑communism, presenting Jews as the hidden architects of Bolshevik revolution and a transnational threat that justified repression, war in the East, and ultimately genocide [1] [2] [3]. That propaganda framed domestic and foreign policy as pre‑emptive defense against a supposed Jewish plot, normalizing violence against Jews, Communists, and “Untermenschen” and securing broad institutional and popular acquiescence for Nazi measures Germany" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">[4] [5] [6].
1. The myth’s anatomy: linking Jews, Bolshevism and world conspiracy
Judeo‑Bolshevism was not a Nazi invention but an older European conspiracy trope that the regime repackaged: propagandists conflated sparse Jewish participation in revolutionary movements with an international Jewish conspiracy said to be behind Bolshevism, capitalism and even Western decadence, creating a single enemy that explained complex geopolitical change [1] [7] [8]. Goebbels, Rosenberg and other ideological architects insisted Bolshevism was in reality a “Jewish International,” a claim repeated across newspapers, posters and radio so that the public saw Jews as both internal traitors and external manipulators [6] [2] [4].
2. Preparing society for repression: domestic policy and early camps
From the Nazi seizure of power the Judeo‑Bolshevik narrative justified identifying and removing supposed internal enemies: Communists and Jews were targeted as linked threats, and early mass incarceration — Communists among the first sent to concentration camps — was legitimized as necessary to block Bolshevik subversion [9] [4] [10]. Propaganda campaigns and ubiquitous antisemitic imagery taught Germans to equate Jews with economic and political sabotage, fostering acceptance of boycotts, exclusionary laws and escalating violence that culminated in the Final Solution [2] [4] [11].
3. Mobilizing war: Operation Barbarossa recast as crusade against Judeo‑Bolshevism
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Nazi messaging transformed the campaign into an ideological‑racial crusade: Barbarossa was presented as a preventive war against “Judeo‑Bolshevik” domination of Europe, a narrative used to dehumanize Soviet soldiers as Slavic “Untermenschen” commanded by Jewish commissars whom troops were told to show no mercy [5] [9] [12]. This framing made a war of annihilation plausible in the eyes of military leaders and civilians alike, blurring lines between anti‑Communist military objectives and racial genocide [3] [13].
4. Instrumental effects: forging complicity across institutions
The myth facilitated complicity from the Wehrmacht, SS, bureaucrats, and local collaborators by offering a simple causal story—international Jewry caused Bolshevism and war—thereby answering political puzzles (why Britain resisted, why the Soviet regime persisted) and binding disparate actors to extreme measures as defensive necessity rather than naked aggression [14] [13] [12]. Propaganda ministries, military psychological units, and publications like Der Stürmer and The Word of the Week amplified a consistent message that conflated economic, cultural and political grievances into one monolithic enemy [4] [5] [2].
5. Alternative explanations, continuities and postwar reverberations
Scholars emphasize that Judeo‑Bolshevism drew on pre‑existing antisemitic tropes and political anxieties across Europe, not merely Nazi propaganda alone, and that its persistence after 1945 shows the concept’s deeper cultural roots beyond opportunistic Nazi instrumentalization [1] [3] [8]. While some defenders of the myth historically attempted to point to Jewish individuals in Bolshevik ranks, historians stress that correlation was distorted into conspiracy; the propaganda agenda purposefully exaggerated and falsified connections to mobilize mass support for repression and genocide [15] [10].
6. Hidden agendas and the machinery of myth‑making
Beyond explicit ideology, the regime used Judeo‑Bolshevism to mask real political aims—territorial expansion (Lebensraum), elimination of political rivals, and seizure of resources—by presenting aggressive policies as existential defense against a fabricated Jewish‑Communist plot; institutions like the Anti‑Komintern and specialized psychological units manufactured targeted materials to sustain the deception [5] [1] [6]. Recognizing those institutional incentives clarifies why the myth persisted: it solved practical governance problems for the Nazis by creating consent and circumventing moral restraints among perpetrators and bystanders [3] [11].