Richard Barsam writes the film's "essential contrast is between myths and stereotypes of Jews and the Nazi ideal of a '
master race,' between the alleged inferiority of the Jews and the superiority of the Germans." According to Stephen Fritz, Goebbels' intent was to create a film that would serve as "both a demonstration of the parasitical nature of the Jews and a justification for drastic measures against them."
Maria Tatar writes that the Nazis were able to use Hippler's film to "position the victims of their genocidal project as dangerous aggressors who had to be exterminated." Similarly, Barsam describes the film as arguing that "Jews are criminals;... they have no soul;... they are different in every way;... killing them is not a crime, but a necessity—just as killing rats is a necessity to preserve health and cleanliness."
Unser Wille und Weg (Our Will and Way), a
Nazi Party monthly publication aimed at propagandists, provides a rationale for why
The Eternal Jew was made. The author of the essay "The Film of a 2000-Year Rat Migration," who remains anonymous, believes the film shows "a full picture of Jewry" and provides "the best treatment of this parasitic race." The author connects the Jews' migration from the
Middle East to
Egypt and their following of German colonists to rats traveling as a group, who "even then displayed the same criminal traits that they still displayed". The film is complimented for "its portrayal of the Jews' vulgar methods and the brutality and all-devouring hatred they exhibit when they reach their goal and control finance." The slaughtering method causes the author to question the "so-called Jewish religion", as grinning butchers do their work. In closing, the author states the film will be a valuable tool in the struggle to break the Jews' "power over us. We are the initiators of the fight against world Jewry, which now directs its hate, its brutal greed and destructive will toward us. We must win this battle for ourselves, for Europe, for the world." Many Germans drew a distinction between the
ostjuden ("Eastern Jews"), the rather derogatory term for the
Ashkenazim (the Yiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe) who usually lived in poverty vs. the more assimilated and better off German Jews. In the early 20th century there was a moral panic in Germany about allegations that too many illegal Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe were settling in the
Reich, and that in turn the illegal immigrants were criminals and/or were spreading infectious diseases. The Canadian scholar Paul Coates noted that Eastern Europe was usually presented in German films in the first half of the 20th century in a negative way, being portrayed as a backward, barbaric place that was sinister and threatening. Coates argued that popularity of films that used Eastern European folklore about vampires as a subject matter were a metaphor for the
Askenazim who were often compared to vampires that were sucking the life out of the German economy.
The Eternal Jew sought to channel such fears with its claims that all of the allegations made against the
Ashkenazim were true in the most lucid terms possible.
The Eternal Jew goes out of its way to depict the
Ashkenazim as alike to animals, most notably the scene where rats turned into stereotypical
ostjuden who then turn into stereotypical German Jews. In turn, the film portrayed the
ostjuden as being precisely the "eternal Jew", namely who all Jews really were, when removed of their outward signs of assimilation. The film attempts to conflate all Jews with the
Ashkenazim of Eastern Europe, who were the type of Jews who Germans disliked the most. The widespread dislike in Germany of
Askhenazim was shared even by many German Jews who looked down on the
Askenazim, and used the pejorative term
ostjuden to describe them.. The film's thesis was to counter the widespread assumption that many Germans made that the "white Jews" of Germany and Austria who had embraced the German language and culture were different and better from the "black Jews" of Eastern Europe as the film argued all Jews were the same. Coates described
The Eternal Jew as extremely dehumanizing in its picture of Jews who were portrayed as disgusting animals.
Jews as an uncivilized and parasitic people for posterity. Richard Taylor describes the basic tenet of the film as arguing that "the Jew is an oriental barbarian who has insinuated himself cleverly into European society, and now exploits it parasitically." This point is emphasized throughout the film, starting from the very opening lines of the film's commentary: The "civilized" Jews that we know in Germany give us only an incomplete picture of their racial character. This film shows genuine shots of the Polish ghettos. It shows the Jews as they really are, before they conceal themselves behind the mask of the civilized European. The film utilizes a
montage that juxtaposes these images of ghetto Jews with images of rats to draw an analogy between the migration of Jews from Eastern Europe and the migration of rats. For example, one of the shots shows a pack of
rats emerging from a sewer, followed by a shot of a crowd of Jews in a bustling street of the
Łódź Ghetto. Close-ups of those in the crowd reveal sickly, malformed facial features. The narrator states that, as rats are the vermin of the animal kingdom, Jews are the vermin of the human race and similarly spread disease and corruption. Unlike rats, however, the narrator continues, Jews have the uncanny ability to change their appearance and blend into their "human hosts." A scene depicts four bearded men in traditional religious Jewish clothing, then shows them shaved and in modern business suits, while the narrator explains that only a "trained eye" can distinguish their Jewish features. "Where rats appear, they bring ruin by destroying mankind's goods and foodstuffs. In this way, they spread disease, plague, leprosy, typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery, and so on. They are cunning, cowardly and cruel and are found mostly in large packs. Among the animals, they represent the rudiment of an insidious, underground destruction – just like the Jews among human beings." The film also claims that: [Jewish people] need other people because they need the goods with which to carry on business. The things that are valued by the creative
Aryan peoples have been reduced by the Jew to the level of a mere piece of merchandise, which he buys and sells but cannot produce himself. He leaves production to the labourers and peasants of the people upon whom he has imposed his presence. The Jews are a race without farmers and without manual labourers, a race of parasites.
Economic impact The film claims: "At the beginning of the twentieth century, Jews sit at the junction of the world financial markets. They are an international power. Only one percent of the world's population, with the help of their capital they terrorize the world stock exchanges, world opinion, and world politics." The film blames Jews for inflation and unemployment in Germany. It charges that they had crept into all professions through
usury,
racketeering and crimes against German assets. "Out of a thousand workers in Berlin, only two were Jews. For the start of 1933, out of one hundred prosecutors in Berlin 15 were Jews. Out of a hundred judges were 23 Jews. Out of a hundred lawyers 49 Jews. 52 Jews out of a hundred doctors. And out of every hundred of businessmen 60 Jews. The average wealth of Germans was 810 marks each. The average wealth of each Jew amounted to 10,000 marks." The evidence for these assertions is unstated in the film. The occupational information is found in Germany's June 1933 census, which proves the claims made in the film to be greatly exaggerated. In 1933, 5,600 Jewish doctors and 3,030 Jewish lawyers were practicing in Germany, corresponding to 11 percent of doctors and 16 percent of lawyers. Still, an exceptionally large number of successful lawsuits over equal citizenship and rights had been filed in the
Weimar Republic, most of them by Jewish lawyers. Although the
Creditanstalt debts were assumed in part by the Austrian branch of the Rothschild family, its bankruptcy was later used by Hitler as an example of how the Jews were responsible for all the economic and social troubles of Germany and the world. The film goes on to assert that: "The most common expressions in the jargon of international gangsters and criminals stem from
Hebrew and
Yiddish words." According to the movie, Jews are likewise disproportionately plentiful in organized crime, where they represent 82% of international crime organizations, and 98% of international prostitution. This Jewish influence is seen as well in the international language used by criminals (see also
Rotwelsch). The evidence for these blatant assertions is nowhere produced. Insofar as "organized crime" represents lawbreaking other than that forced by the Nuremberg Laws, it has not been corroborated by subsequent research. It further claims that the Jewish people have some kind of "genetic predisposition towards
barter and
haggling", saying that "[Jewish people] rush into trade" because it is fitting "with their character and inclination", and that "For the Jew, there is but one object of value – money. How he earns it is a matter of complete indifference to him." It also accuses Jews of passing corruption on to their children by religious means, saying that: These children see no ideals before them like our own. The egoism of the individual is not used in the service of higher common goals. On the contrary, Jewish racial morality claims, in contrast to
Aryan morality, that the unrestrained egoism of each Jew is a divine law. His religion makes a duty out of treachery and usury.
Jews as abnormal and depraved In a long sequence of images, the film provides examples to illustrate its claims that Aryan/European culture had been corrupted by Jews. This sequence includes footage of notable figures who had earned Hitler's wrath, such as physicist and Nobel laureate
Albert Einstein and
Spartacist uprising leader
Rosa Luxemburg (erroneously named as one and the same person as anarchist
Emma Goldman) as representatives of so-called "
international Jewry". Einstein's image was juxtaposed with a series of images about the supposed Jewish control of the pornography industry. Einstein was characterized as "the
relativity Jew, who masks his hatred of Germany behind his obscure
pseudo-sciences". Other clips presented Jewish (or supposedly Jewish) actors from the Weimar era such as
Curt Bois,
Fritz Kortner,
Peter Lorre, and
Ernst Lubitsch.
Charlie Chaplin was also included and inaccurately identified as Jewish, possibly as a consequence of his role as the Jewish barber in
The Great Dictator. Two scenes from the 1934 Hollywood film
The House of Rothschild are featured; the first depicts
Mayer Rothschild, a rich man, hiding money and putting on old, shabby clothes in order to fool a corrupt
tax collector. According to Sharon Packer, Hitler used this scene to assert that "Jews transmit inheritable criminality and therefore deserve to die."
Degenerate art The film proceeds to suggest that pictorial art and music have degenerated under Jewish influence, with many spurious examples given.
Degenerate art included works of
abstract art as well as those from specific individuals such as
George Grosz and
Emil Nolde, while
degenerate music included
jazz and so-called
Negermusik, although here the connection to Jewry is unknown.
Jewish religious practice After showing how Jews have supposedly been responsible for the decline of Western music, science, art, and commerce, Hippler presents a scene of a cow being slaughtered for meat by a
shochet (Jewish ritual slaughterer). The scene is prefaced by a warning similar to that in
Frankenstein, warning the squeamish about what is coming next. This extended sequence, lasting roughly 3½ minutes, shows
cows and
sheep in their death throes as they bleed to death. The producers apparently filmed this scene because of Hitler's opposition to
animal cruelty. He had banned
kosher slaughter of animals in Germany and felt that such footage would shock the German public. This scene was cut from the version intended for young audiences. "These images are a clear proof of the cruelty of
Schächtmethode. They also reveal the character of a race, their blunt brutality hidden under the guise of religious worship. "
Hitler's Reichstag speech during the speech The film concludes with footage of Hitler's
30 January 1939 Reichstag speech in which he proclaims the
well-known statement: "If international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will not be Bolshevization of the earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" The film ends with images of brown-shirted
SA troops on parade. ==Release and reception==