The Hoax Spreads
Impact of the Bolshevik Revolution
After the Russian Revolution in 1917, frustrated supporters of the ousted Czar rescued
the document from obscurity in order to discredit the Bolsheviks. The emigre Czarists
portrayed the Revolution as part of a Jewish plot to enslave the world, and pointed to the
Protocols as the blueprint of that plan. The scheme of yoking the Protocols to the
Bolshevik Revolution not only led to the allegation of a Judeo-Communist conspiracy, but
promoted the forgery internationally. In later years, vicious Soviet anti-Semitic
propaganda under Stalin and others echoed the conspiracy mythology of the Protocols.
International Publicity
In the 1920’s, two British correspondents, Robert Wilton of the London Times and
Victor Marsden of the Morning Post, each of whom had lived in pre-Communist Russia,
.promoted the idea of a Jewish conspiracy in Great Britain. Eighteen articles on the
subject of a Jewish conspiracy as well as on the "Protocols" themselves were
published in the Morning Post. Marsden translated the Protocols into English and in his
introduction to the document asserted:
. . . the Jews are carrying it out with steadfast purpose, creating wars and
revolutions, . . .to destroy the white Gentile race, that the Jews may seize the power
during the resulting chaos and rule with their claimed superior intelligence over the
remaining races of the world, as kings over slaves."
A Polish language edition of the Protocols appeared in 1920. The following year the
Arabs of Palestine and Syria used the Protocols to stir up resentment against Jewish
settlers in Palestine, suggesting that the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine
would further advance the "international Jewish conspiracy." This propaganda
tactic persists in the contemporary Middle East; Arabic editions of the Protocols have
been widely circulated by official Saudi sources, among others.
American Debut
The Protocols were publicized in America by Boris Brasol, a former Czarist prosecutor.
Auto magnate Henry Ford was one of those who responded to Brasol’s conspiratorial
fantasies. "The Dearborn Independent," owned by Ford, published an American
version of the Protocols between May and September of 1920 in a series called ‘The
International Jew: the World’s Foremost Problem." The articles were later
republished in book form with half a million copies in circulation in the United States,
and were translated into several foreign languages.
By 1927 Ford had repudiated the "International Jew," but hundreds of
thousands of people around the world had been encouraged by his initial endorsement to
accept the Protocols as genuine.
The Protocols and Nazi Germany
The Protocols served to rationalize anti-Semitism and genocide in Hitler’s
Germany. The myth of the Jewish world conspiracy permeated Hitler’s thinking, and he
linked Germany’s economic hardship during the 1920s to the secret plot. Once in power
Hitler invoked the Protocols to justify anti-Semitic legislation and suppression of all
opposition to the Third Reich. For example, the first anti-Semitic measure in April of
1933, a one-day boycott of Jewish stores, was deemed a defense against the "Plan of
Basel" (another name for the Protocols).
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