Theodore N. Kaufman

Theodore Newman Kaufman, was born February 22 1910 in Manhattan, New York and died October 1980 in East Orange, New Jersey). He was was an American businessman, but was best known as the author of Germany Must Perish!, a text he self-published in 1941 which called for the extinction of Germans and the redistribution of the German lands. The text was used in Nazi propaganda in the wartime era as support that American Jewish groups had support of the U.S. government.

Family background

Theodore Kaufman was born in Manhattan, NY. His father, Dr. Anton Kaufman (1883-1943), had been a reporter for the Berlin Morgenzeitung in Berlin, Germany before immigrating to the USA in 1905. Anton Kaufman was the publisher of the Newark Jewish Chronicle in the USA.

Theodore Kaufman's mother died in 1939. His three brothers were Herbert, Julian, and Leonard.

Early Life and Career in Business

Kaufman traveled widely as a young man, as far away as the Sahara Desert and Algeria, which he spoke highly of in later interviews.

Eventually settling down in the business world, Kaufman was the owner of a small advertising and ticket agency in South Orange, New Jersey. He was an advertiser and published the New Jersey Legal Record. As of 1941, he ran a successful theater ticket agency in Newark, New Jersey. Kaufman founded the Argyle Press of Newark, New Jersey, USA, in order to self-publish his political sentiments.

Politics and Political Influence in The United States

Kaufman, was politically a radical pacifist, and wanted to end all future political conflicts in Europe, having an extreme belief to do so. In 1939, under the auspice of the "American Federation of Peace", an unknown entity of which he was the president and probably only member, he addressed the 1939 Congress of the United States and demanded, firstly, that the United States would refrain from involvement in any future wars in Europe and, secondly, all Americans should be sterilized so that their offspring would not become "murderous monsters".

Kaufman was reportedly friends with Roosevelt speech writer Sam Rosenman. The German press of the time misinterpreted this to mean Kaufman was an FDR adviser himself, which was not true. Kaufman was a rogue political actor, and had neither the contacts he claimed to have within the White House and US Congress, nor the influence in the American public sphere. Regardless, some historical revisionists have used his publication as evidence of an alleged conspiracy of the so-called world Jewry against Germany.

Mass Sterilization

In 1939, he demanded mass sterilization in the United States; two years later he shifted his focus to the forced, mass-sterilization, through castration, of all German men under 65 and the sterilization of most German women under 45. This would eliminate "inbred Germanism", proposed Kaufman, thus solving a great deal of humanity's problems. He also promoted the distribution of Germany's lands among its neighboring countries. His effort was spearheaded by the self-publication of the book Germany Must Perish! which was met with little public awareness in the U.S. (except for negative reviews in Time magazine.)

"Since Germans are the perennial disturbers of the world's peace," says the book, "they must be dealt with like any homicidal criminals. But it is unnecessary to put the whole German nation to the sword. It is more humane to sterilize them. The army groups, as organized units, would be the easiest and quickest to deal with. Taking 20,000 surgeons as an arbitrary number and on the assumption that each will perform a minimum of 25 operations daily, it would take no more than one month, at the maximum, to complete their sterilization. . . . The balance of the male civilian population of Germany could be treated within three months. Inasmuch as sterilization of women needs somewhat more time, it may be computed that the entire female population of Germany could be sterilized within a period of three years or less." The normal yearly death rate is two per cent. Thus, "in the span of two generations" there would be no Germans left.

Germany Must Perish

In late 1940, Kaufman began writing "Germany Must Perish", a 104-page booklet that was published in early 1941 and which inspired anger in Germany. According to a March 24, 1941, Time magazine review, Kaufman founded Argyle Press because, "he did not want to be edited." According to Kaufman, the publishing was "Strictly a one-man job". He claimed he has no organization, no help, and no backers. He indicated that the book took him four months to complete.

An advertisement in the New York Times, stated that the book was released to the public on March 1, 1941, which Kaufman also promoted by mailing a miniature black cardboard coffin with a hinged lid to reviewers. Inside the coffin was a card proclaiming, "Read GERMANY MUST PERISH! Tomorrow you will receive your copy."

The premise of the book was removing Germany's threat forever from the world stage:

"Since the fang’s poison and its deadly power rests not in the body but in the war psyche of the Germans, one can ensure the prosperity and security of mankind only by finally extinguishing this soul and the rotten body that houses it, removing it finally from the world. There is no other choice: Germany must perish!"

"Not only must there be no more German wars in fact, there must not even remain the slightest possibility of one ever again occurring. A final halt to German aggression, not a temporary cessation, must be the goal of the present struggle... [Germany] must be prepared to pay a Total Penalty. And there is one, and only one, such Total Penalty: Germany must perish forever! In fact -- not in fancy."

The book's back dust jacket contained excerpts from purported reviews of the book. One blurb reads, "A PLAN FOR PERMANENT PEACE AMONG CIVILIZED NATIONS! --New York Times." In reality, the Times never published a full review of the book. The quotation is the entirety, plus an exclamation point, of a one-line summary of Germany Must Perish! published in "Latest Books Received" section of the paper.

In the words of the 1945 Journal of Modern History, the book was intended to be "little more than self-indulgence in dire vituperation by a man who sees Germany as the sole cause of the world's woes."

Impact on Nazi Germany Politics

In Germany, the book was cited by Nazi Party politicians as justification for their assaults on German Jews. When the Jews of Hanover were forced from their homes on September 8, 1941, German authorities cited Kaufman's book as one of the reasons.

The Nazi Party claimed that the writings represented official US policy. In a press conference called by the Reich government on 23 July 1941, a representative of the German Foreign Ministry said: 'We know that Roosevelt dictated individual chapters himself. This programme of annihilation of Roosevelt's deserves the sharpest possible repudiation. It really is a programme of Roosevelt's policy.' Following this claim, the Nazi daily newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, ran the story on 24 July 1941 under the headline: 'Roosevelt demands the sterilization of the German people.' The publication date of the book, which actually had been at the beginning of 1941, was manipulated to place it just after the signature of the Anglo-American Atlantic Charter in August, to give it a further appearance of being official Allied policy, 'the cornerstone of thousand-year-long Jewish plans for world domination'.

Having made it to the highest echelons within the Nazi Party, and spurring a great deal of Nazi propaganda, it became the constructive basis of the so-called "Kaufman Plan". This was was alleged in Germany to be a conspiracy among American Jews, in cooperation with the U.S. government, for the planned extinction of the German people.

Kaufman Post WWII

Kaufman disappeared from public around September 1941. His final publication through Argyle Press was the March 1942 brochure titled "No More German Wars! Being an outline for their permanent cessation". It contained no hints regarding the sterilization of Germany, nor discussed German land distribution, but made ​​very moderate proposals for democratic re-education of the German population. Even behind the Allied war aims remained Kaufman's new demands far back, so Germany was only the return of occupied territories demanded by territorial concessions was not more talk. The work received no reported attention in the press.

Kaufman's writings

• Life Liberty Pursuit of Happiness - Where? In The Graves of European Battle Fields? Theodore N. Kaufman, American Federation of Peace, Newark, NJ, undated

• A Will and Way to Peace: Passive Purchase. Theodore N. Kaufman, American Federation of Peace, Newark, NJ, 1939

• Theodore N. Kaufman: Must Perish! Germany, Argyle Press, Newark, NJ, 1941, 104-page brochure

• Theodore N. Kaufman: No more German wars! Being an outline for their permanent cessation. Argyle Press, Newark, NJ, 1942, 16-page brochure

Review

Books: A Modest Proposal, Monday, Mar. 24, 1941, Time Magazine Online

External links

• Kaufman Portrait Kaufman's portrait photo at the U.S. Library of Congress
• Germany Must Perish Electronic Book, Germany Must Perish

See Also

• Germany Must Perish