Treitschke was one of the few important public figures who supported antisemitic attacks which became prevalent from 1878 onwards. He accused German Jews of refusing to assimilate into German culture and society, and attacked the flow of Jewish immigrants from Russian Poland. Treitschke popularized the phrase "Die Juden sind unser Unglück!" ("The Jews are our misfortune!"), which was adopted as a motto by the N.S. publication Der Stürmer several decades later. He made several antisemitic remarks such as: "The Jews at one time played a necessary role in German history, because of their ability in the management of money. But now that the Aryans have become accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of finance, the Jews are no longer necessary. The international Jew, hidden in tile mask of different nationalities, is a disintegrating influence; he can be of no further use to the world"
Document: Heinrich von Treitschke on war(1897-8)
Source: Heinrich Von Treitschke, Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1916), vol. I, pp. 65-8; vol. II, pp. 597-9.
"Without war no state could be. All those we know of arose through war, and the protection of their members by armed force remains their primary and essential task. War, therefore, will endure to the end of history, as long as there is multiplicity of states. The laws of human thought and of human nature forbid any alternative, neither is one to be wished for. The blind worshiper of an eternal peace falls into the error of isolating the state, or dreams of one which is universal, which we have already seen to be at variance with reason.... The great strides which civilization makes against barbarism and unreason are only made actual by the sword. Between civilized nations also war is the form of litigation by which states make their claims valid. The arguments brought forward in these terrible law suits of the nations compel as to argument in civil suits can ever do....
Moreover war is a uniting as well as a dividing element among nations; it does not draw them together in enmity only, for through its means they learn to know and to respect each other's peculiar qualities.... Such a state as Prussia might indeed be brought near to destruction by a passing phase of degeneracy; but being by the character of its people more reasonable and more free than the French, it retained the power to call up the moral force within itself, and so to regain its ascendancy. Most undoubtedly war is the one remedy for an ailing nation. Social selfishness and party hatreds must be dumb before the call of the state when its existence is at stake. Forgetting himself, the individual must only remember that he is a part of the whole, and realize the unimportance of his own life compared with the common weal. The grandeur of war lies in the utter annihilation of puny man in the great conception of the state, and it brings out the full magnificence of the sacrifice of fellow-countrymen for one another. In war the chaff is winnowed from the wheat....
To appeal from this judgement to Christianity would be sheer perversity, for does not the Bible distinctly say that the rule shall rule by the sword, and again that greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friend? To Aryan races, who are before all things courageous, the foolish preaching of everlasting peace has always been vain. They have always been men enough to maintain with the sword what they have attained through the spirit.... When a state recognizes that existing treaties no longer express the actual political conditions, and when it cannot persuade the other powers to give way by peaceful negotiation, the moment has come when the nations proceed to the ordeal by battle. A state thus situated is conscious when it declares war that it is performing and inevitable duty. The combatant countries are moved by no incentives of personal greed, but they feel that the real position of power is not expressed by existing treaties and that they must be determined afresh by the judgment of the nations, since no peaceful agreement can be reached. The righteousness of war depends simply and solely upon the consciousness of a moral necessity. War is justified because the great national personalities can suffer no compelling force superior to themselves, and because history must always be in constant flux; war therefore must be taken as part of the divinely appointed order.... War is both justifiable and moral, and... the idea of perpetual peace is not only impossible but immoral as well. It is unworthy of man's reason to regard the impracticable as feasible, but a life of pure intellect is all too often enervating to the reasoning faculty. War cannot vanish from the earth as long as human sins and passions remain what they are. It is delightful to observe how the feeling of patriotism breaks involuntarily through the cosmopolitan phrases even of the apostles of perpetual peace.... Yet again we must repeat -- the arbitrament of force is the logical outcome of the nature of the state. The mere fact of the existence of many states involves the necessity of war. The dream of eternal peace -- said Frederick the Great -- is a phantom, which each man rejects when the call of war rings in his own ears. It is impossible to imagine -- he went on to say -- any balance of power which can last."
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