Curt Prüfer, German Diplomat from the Kaiser to Hitler

Book excerpt: Examines the diplomatic career of Curt Prüfer (1881-1959), showing how the pre-World War I generation of German bureaucrats, with its nationalist and antisemitic attitudes, continued to function after the war, eventually giving Nazism support and a cloak of respectability. Based on Prüfer's diaries, demonstrates how his antisemitism and work in the Arab world opposed him to Zionism. His antisemitism drew on stereotypes rather than racial theory. He blamed the Jews for the defeat of 1918, despising them for entering politics at that time. Prüfer's diary for 1942 records knowledge of the Holocaust and his sole concern that it might excite anti-German feeling. In 1943 he fled to Switzerland where, even after the war, his nationalism and antisemitism grew. He continued to admire Hitler and blamed the Holocaust on the SS. He accused the Allies of hypocrisy over the Holocaust as they had done nothing to stop it when they could.