“Honored Chancellor, my name is Albert Einstein.
You may find this a touch presumptuous, but I gather I hardly need to introduce myself. I don’t say this out of arrogance, only to state a plain fact—please forgive the tone.
You may or may not know that Jewish blood runs in my veins.
Of course, I consider myself German, and my identity as a German is stronger than any identity as a Jew.
But it seems those around me do not see it that way.
This may sound abrupt, but I’d like to tell you something from my past.
As a small boy walking to primary school one day, I found a nail in the playground, red with rust.
I picked it up and brought it to my teacher. I did it partly out of worry that someone might step on it and be hurt, and partly in the childish hope that if I did the right thing and the teacher praised me, the teasing about being a Jew might lessen.
But the teacher showed the nail to the class and said, ‘The Jews used nails like this to crucify Jesus,’ and publicly humiliated me.
It broke my heart. If I could have, I would have screamed, leapt out the window, or crawled into a mouse hole.
Even as an adult, that day remains a wound I cannot forget.
This is the reality faced by Jews like me. We did not choose to be born of Jewish lineage, yet we live under discrimination for that single reason alone.
We live with pride as German citizens, loyal to the German flag.
As I became known, and gained some modest wealth and position, the discrimination and teasing vanished from my daily life, but others still suffer society’s scorn and persecution.
Even politicians—who should care and listen—have long been indifferent to the Jewish question. In this, the Kaiser was no different from the Social Democrats.
Perhaps we should be grateful they didn’t actively preach anti-Semitism. But what guilt will the children yet to be born bear, that they must repeat the discrimination we endured and still endure?
I earnestly hope you will open the way to a solution. I could write much more, but it would be discourteous to burden a man so much busier than I.
May God be with you,
Albert Einstein.”
“Huh… well, I’ll be.”
I never thought I’d see the day Einstein wrote to me about this.
The Second World War hasn’t even started, and I can feel history already swerving a hundred and eighty degrees.
Think. What now?
I could toss the letter into the furnace and act like nothing happened. My conscience would itch, but my life would be easier.
I don’t have to go kicking a hornet’s nest. Push too hard, and someone sticks a knife in my back.
I could do what I’ve been doing: close one eye, hand out a token scolding now and then, and maintain authority.
But in that case, the Jewish question will never be solved.
The discrimination and persecution will grind on, and Germans will never change.
Nor will the rest of the world.
It was always something I’d have to face head-on. More than that, no one but me can fix it—me, here and now.
So I fix it now.
***
June 6, 1933.
I gave a national address at the Reichstag.
Beforehand I told the press there would be a major announcement.
Right this minute, the entire German press—and half the world—are waiting to hear what comes out of my mouth.
“Honored citizens of Germany, I stand here today because there is something I wish to say to you.”
I had the front rows filled on purpose with people from every German Land.
They’d been prepped to answer when I asked questions.
But they didn’t know what I was going to say.
Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Hess, Heydrich—none of my inner circle knew the topic either.
By now they’re dying to know.
Let’s begin.
“First, a question. Young people—where have you come from?”
“From Bavaria.”
“From Cologne.”
“From Saxony.”
“From Hamburg…”
They finished. My turn.
“We were born in different places. Our faces are different. Our ages are different. Our lives are different. Yet we share something in common.
We are all Germans.
I was born in Austria—my hometown is a small city called Braunau am Inn. But I am German. Because I choose to be German.
I have only one thing to tell you. We are all living in Germany, for Germany, loyal to Germany—so why, exactly, must we live hating one another?”
No one spoke while I drew a breath.
Everyone held it, waiting for the next words.
“If possible, I want to help all Germans, Jew or non-Jew alike. We all want to help one another. Any true German should.
We want to live in the happiness of all, not in anyone’s misfortune. We do not want to hate, to loathe, to despise.
Germany is a great nation—the nation of Beethoven, of Frederick the Great, of Nietzsche and Bismarck.
But causeless hatred and ignorance have poisoned our soul, raised a great wall across the land, and marched us toward misery and death.
We fell by our own folly.
If we cannot change this, the hands of this nation’s clock will remain forever stuck in 1918. Is that truly the future you want?
Thanks to technology, we can hear one another’s voices without ever meeting face to face, across distances the eye cannot trace. Even now, my voice reaches tens of millions of Germans.
To all who hear me now, I say this: we must unite. Our indiscriminate hatreds, our discrimination and contempt—these are the tricks of those who fear our progress.
Think for a moment. While we brawl among ourselves, who profits most?
Germany’s enemies—Communists and those who follow their vile creed. Do not be fooled by the lies they spread!
I am certain: hatred will pass, ignorance will fade, and the strength our enemies stole from Germany will return to its rightful place—because we will all fight for Germany!
As long as we fight, body and soul, Germany will never vanish!
So let us fight for all of us. Reject greed, hatred, and ignorance. Eradicate poverty. Struggle together for victory. Forward—for the great Germany, the Germany that stands above the world, the eternal Germany.
Dear German people! In the name of the Germanic spirit—unite as one!”
The roar that followed was fiercer and bigger than any barrage I’d heard at the front.
Voices fused into one, a tidal wave crashing.
“Hitler! Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!”
“Sieg Heil! Heil Deutschland!”
Even after I finished, the fever didn’t break.
From every side they chanted my name.
I raised a hand to the shouters and stepped down from the rostrum.
***
“How was it? Worth listening to?”
I made a point of smiling at Himmler and Goebbels. Both looked like they’d been clubbed in the skull.
“T-the finest speech, my Führer.”
“Today’s address will live long in German history.”
“Heydrich? And you?”
“Ah—yes. It was… perfect.”
Even Heydrich, who rarely shows a ripple, couldn’t wash the panic off his face.
He’s been the most zealous peddler of Jewish-conspiracy crap, and I—of all people—just certified in front of the nation that ‘Jewish conspiracy’ is Red-propaganda horseshit. Of course he’s rattled.
After this, not just in front of me but anywhere I’m not present, they won’t dare let “the Jews this, the Jews that” pass their lips.
Say it out loud now and you’re basically announcing, “I disagree with the Chancellor. I’m a traitor.”
I’m not naïve enough to believe one speech will vaporize anti-Semitism that’s soaked through all of Germany.
If this were a novel where one rousing speech makes everyone wake up, wonderful—but reality isn’t a novel.
Reality is reality.
Still, after this, anti-Semitism won’t get worse.
Ripping it out by the roots will take decades, but at least we dodged the worst-case: the hate deepening.
At the same time, we won’t bleed off our top minds—scholars, engineers, doctors—draining Germany’s strength.
One of the Nazis’ peak dumbfucks moves was expelling or murdering Jewish scientists wholesale.
That slowed technology—and sent those scientists to Britain and America, where they helped smash the Nazis.
All we had to do was leave them alone and we could’ve used them. Instead we gift-wrapped them for the enemy. If that’s not idiocy, what is?
Over my dead body do I watch that farce play out again. Hell no. Not a chance.