As an average white, Christian, American man living in the 1930s, what was my opinion of Jewish people?

by SenpaiSoren
AncientHistory

Casual anti-Semiticism was widespread; there were a lot of stereotypes about Jewish people, who were generally seen as "foreign" even if they were citizens. An excerpt letter from the Texan writer Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, ca. January 1931 might be illustrative:

I’m afraid that in a few generations Texas will be over-run with mongrels. Looking at the state as a whole: the great bulk of the population is of Anglo-American stock, mainly with Southern ancestry, but with quite a goodly proportion who trace their lines back to the Mid-West or New England. Central Texas is more dominantly Anglo-Saxon and Scotch-Irish than any other portion. On the Border there is a large Latin element, and on the coasts swarms of foreigners. The inevitable Jew infests the state in great numbers. You can hardly find a town of three thousand or more inhabitants that does not contain at least one Jew in business. And the Jew almost invariably has the country trade. It is a stock saying among rural Texans that if the Jew cannot sell his stuff at his price, he will sell it at yours. What they cannot seem to realize is that at whatever price he sells his shoddy junk, he is making a bigger profit than the legitimate merchant can make. No Aryan ever outwitted a Jew in business. I used to work in a Jewish drygoods store. Before each sale — and Jewish sales go on forever — I would “mark down” the goods according to his instructions. For instance, the regular retail price of a pair of trousers would be $5.00. I would mark in big numbers on the tag — $9.50, then draw a line through that and mark below, $5.50. Thus the duped customer, noting the marked out price and comparing it to the new price, would consider that he was getting a bargain, whereas he was in reality paying fifty cents more than the regular price of the garment. But you can’t make the average countryman believe that he’s not saving money and getting gorgeous bargains by trading with the Jews.

  • The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard 2.147

That's pretty typical; you can find similar sentiments expressed in the community newspaper, the Cross Plains Review (which has an excellent digital archive up). For example, in a 1935 issue there is the front-page comment:

Mrs. Indio Owens, of the Owens ranch. remarked that she wished she were half Negro and half Jew. For a negro she states, is happy when he has a dollar and the Jew always has the dollar.

Mercantile stereotypes aside, there were the usual condescending attitudes regarding Jewish courage, and various efforts to squeeze Jews into one or more racial categorizations, etc. With respect to the Christian aspect, there was of course a lively interest in Biblical history and scripture among many. Here, Robert E. Howard was probably a little different from the average, but I can quote another letter from Howard to Lovecraft, ca. February 1931, to give you a gist of how deeply felt racialism was at the time:

I cannot think of Saul, David, Abner and Joab as Jews, not even as Arabs; to me they must always seem like Aryans, like myself. Saul, in particular, I always unconsciously visualize as a Saxon king, of those times when the invaders of Britain were just beginning to adopt the Christian religion.

Another Hebrew who interests me is Samson, and this man I am firmly convinced was at least half Aryan. In the first place, he had red hair or bright yellow hair; I feel certain of this because of his name, and the legend concerning his locks. His name referred to the sun, always pertaining to redness, brightness, golden tinted, in any language; his strength lay in his hair; I connect his name with his hair. What more natural than a superstition attached to the red hair of a child born in a in a dark-haired race? And that angel in the field — well, in the old, old days of Ireland, there was a legend that the old gods had fled into the west, from which they occasionally emerged to bestow their favours on some lucky damsel. Many a wanderer from the western hills assumed the part of a god. I am convinced that the “angel” was a wandering, redhaired Aryan, and that Samson was his son.

The strong lad’s characteristics were most certainly little like those of the race that claimed him. He wouldn’t even associate with his people. He feasted and reveled with the lordly Philistines, and his drinking, fighting and wenching sound like the chronicles of some lad from Wicklow or a wild boy from Cork. He was a great jester, a quality none too common in his supposed race, and in the end he displayed true Aryan recklessness and iron lust for vengeance. When, in history, did a true Semite deliberately kill himself to bring ruin to his enemies? The big boy was surely an Aryan.

  • The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard 2.182-183