Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Common-sense observers, most historians included, assert that the roots of World War II lay in the rubble of the Great War a quarter-century earlier. Most ascribe the fault to the draconian Treaty of Versailles that imposed such harsh terms on Germany, and that seems indisputable. But few find the origins of the second war’s signature event, the Holocaust, in the events of 1914 to 1920. And Canadian professor Jason Bell seeks to correct what he regards as that misunderstanding in the life and work of a remarkable earlier-generation Canadian professor with whom he shares a surname. In Cracking the Nazi Code, he traces the ideological origins of the Holocaust to the German General Staff in the closing years of World War I.
The true source of Hitler’s ideology
Bell’s subject is Winthrop Bell. “Code-named A12,” he writes, “he was a Canadian-born British secret agent who dodged gunfire and explosions in Berlin in 1919 to become the first Western secret agent to fight the Nazis.” In fact, as Bell explains, his subject identified the ideological forebears of Hitler’s National Socialists to the men who led Germany’s war in World War I.
The central figure in propagating the virulent antisemitic propaganda later adopted by the Nazis was the man who was effectively Germany’s dictator in the closing years of the war: General Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937). The general, Bell asserts, bankrolled and inspired the Freikorps of right-wing demobilized soldiers who ran rampant in Germany as the terms of the peace agreement became clear. The thugs in the Freikorps became the basis of Hitler’s movement. But they had begun killing Jews even before Adolf Hitler joined what later became the National Socialist German Workers’ Party in September 1919.
Cracking the Nazi Code: The Untold Story of Agent A12 and the Solving of the Holocaust Code by Jason Bell (2023) 352 pages ★★★★☆
Bell’s logic
Jason Bell is a professor of philosophy who specializes in phenomenology, as did his subject, Winthrop Bell. (No relation.) And that field is grounded in straightforward logic, finding hidden meaning in the words of an argument. So it’s hard to fault the author’s logic. It’s his profession, and his thinking is rigorous. Here, then, is the gist of Bell’s argument . . .
1. A German general’s ravings
General Ludendorff advanced plans to kill Jews en masse when it was clear Germany would lose the Great War. He regarded the wholesale murder of Jews in Germany as the first phase in a race war—a second world war—that would leave “Aryans” alone in the world. Slavs, Blacks, Asians—anyone at all who didn’t fit his definition of Aryan would be exterminated. By all accounts, Ludendorff had gone off the deep end by then and was widely understood to be out of his mind. Following his delusion to its logical conclusion would have required killing billions of people, not millions. But others in the military either believed his antisemitic rantings or found it convenient to act as though they did. The Freikorps, among many others, adopted them wholesale.
2. Antisemitism took new form
Right-wing Prussian militarists and their supporters among German industrialists spread the newly codified ideology of antisemitism throughout Europe. Hitherto, antisemitism was widespread on the Continent. But it was localized, and personal. Ludendorff and his followers elevated it to official military and government policy. And soon others began acting on the general’s lunatic ideas. (Admittedly, they needed little encouragement.) For example, the generals’ ally, White Russian general Anton Denikin, led a large-scale pogrom in Ukraine in which tens of thousands of Jews died. And the Young Turks who led another of Germany’s allies, the Ottoman Empire, carried out an even more horrific genocidal policy, murdering more than one million Armenians, Greeks, and Jews. All this happened up to a decade before Hitler wrote Mein Kampf.
3. Hitler adopted Ludendorff’s ideas
In his autobiography, Adolf Hitler only set down in print the ideas propagated by Ludendorff and his followers. A careful reading of Mein Kampf—which few did outside Germany before World War II—makes abundantly clear, in Bell’s view, that Hitler fully intended to exterminate the Jews of Europe. They became his scapegoat for the war. But it was not just Jews who were on the Führer‘s hit list.
When most people speak or write about the Holocaust, they refer to the wholesale slaughter of more than six million Jews from 1942 to 1945. It’s a fair definition. But the Nazis’ systematic murder of innocents was far more extensive than that. According to the latest estimates, the Nazis murdered a total of more than twenty million civilians. Jews, of course, But also Slavs (including 3.3 million Soviet POWs), Roma, homosexuals, the disabled, Black people, and others.
4. Winthrop Bell foresaw the Holocaust in 1919
As a graduate student of philosophy in Göttingen, an internee in Germany for four years during the war, and as secret agent A12 for what later came to be called MI6, Winthrop Bell witnessed the unraveling of German society and the emergence of the newly aggressive antisemitism propagated by General Ludendorff. In his reports to “C” in London, Captain Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, and in many of his dispatches from the Continent as a Reuters correspondent, he called attention to the right wing’s new-found emphasis on antisemitism. His editors typically discounted or disregarded his warnings. And when he wrote a book exposing Nazi plans for the Holocaust, laying out the evidence in careful, methodical fashion, MI6 refused to allow him to publish it.
Tragically, much the same happened twenty years later in 1939 when Bell, now a private citizen, wrote a lengthy article predicting the wholesale murder of Europe’s Jews. Magazine editors rejected it as fanciful. Only one Canadian magazine agreed to publish it. Though popular in Canada, the magazine had little reach elsewhere. Thus, Winthrop Bell was the first person—by several years—to bring the Holocaust to the world’s attention. But precious few knew anything about the Nazis’ master plan until word began reaching Allied leaders after the Wannsee Conference in January 1942.
How credible is this story?
Even a casual reading of this book will raise questions. The author repeatedly describes some events or circumstances as “likely” or “probable” or “almost certain.” Other than passages quoted from others’ books or memoirs, there are few direct quotes except from Winthrop Bell’s own writing. And certain statements smack of hyperbole. For example, it does seem a little much to describe Bell as “quite possibly history’s greatest spy” despite his admittedly considerable accomplishments.
Nearly all of Bell’s contributions to the Allies were as a diplomat, not a spy. (He appears to have played an instrumental role in preventing the resumption of war on the Eastern Front shortly after World War I.) However, Bell notes, his authoritative reports from Berlin helped persuade the Allies to moderate the terms they were proposing for the peace treaty. (Amazingly, what they first proposed was even more onerous than what they eventually demanded.) But much of what Bell turned up in his role as one of MI6’s earliest officers in the field—particularly his early claims about the Holocaust to come—was either entirely ignored at the time or disregarded by policymakers. Thus, the author’s disregard of the rules of historical practice mar what is, overall, a compelling portrait of an extraordinary man who, without question, was the most clear-headed early observer of Adolf Hitler’s mad schemes.
About the author
Google Books tells us that “Jason Bell, PhD, is a professor of philosophy at the University of New Brunswick. He has served as a Fulbright Professor in Germany (at Winthrop Bell’s alma mater, the University of Göttingen), and has taught at universities in Belgium, the United States, and Canada. [Bell] was the first scholar granted exclusive access to Winthrop Bell’s classified espionage papers. He lives in New Brunswick, Canada.” Bell holds a doctorate in philosophy from Vanderbilt University.
For related reading
This book appears in good company on 10 great biographies.
You’ll find many sources of related information at:
- 30 good nonfiction books about espionage
- 10 top nonfiction books about World War II
- Good books about the Holocaust
And you can always find my most popular reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page.
