Antisemitism Before the Holocaust

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"In this comparative study, Richard E. Frankel explores the manifestations and significance of modern antisemitism in the United States and Germany before the Holocaust and challenges the general assumption that antisemitism in the United States was essentially different from the more extreme German variant that culminated in the Holocaust... Frankel's knowledgeable study persuasively refutes widespread assumptions about the comparatively moderate character of American antisemitism in the period 1880 to 1945...His findings will certainly inspire more comparative research on the manifestations of antisemitism in modern history, but also on the political and societal factors that enabled or indeed hindered the effectiveness of its exclusionary message."

Christhard Hoffmann, University of Bergen, Norway, German History Journal

"Placing antisemitism in Germany and in the United States side by side is not a mere intellectual exercise. Rather, the exploration of Jew-hatred as a transatlantic phenomenon speaks to our current moment of racial reckoning and to escalating antisemitic violence in the United States and Germany. Against this backdrop, Richard Frankel's erudite and powerful revelations remind us of how much "memory work" remains to be done in both countries... Antisemitism Before the Holocaust... offers a clear-eyed and forceful contribution to discussions of homegrown ethnonationalist movements in the United States."

S. Jonathan Wiesen, University of Alabama at Birmingham. German Studies Review, Volume 47, Number 3, October 2024, pp. 527-529.