Paradoxically, at the very beginning of the war, German ideologists were more than skeptical of the Turks, considering them to be more racially inferior even in comparison with the Slavic population. Later, however, realizing the strategic importance of the antagonism between the Russian and Muslim populations of the Soviet Union, the Nazis change their doctrine towards them. They begin to actively introduce the Muslim and Turkic population of the occupied territories into the local administration, create national Turkic detachments in the German army, publish articles in the German press about the assistance of the local Turkic population to the Hitler regime.
Nazi ideologues and historians about the Khazars
Partly for this reason - the interest in the Turkic population of the USSR - German ideologists, writers, journalists and historians began to write about the medieval Khazars, whose state in the 7th-10th centuries occupied vast territories of modern post-Soviet republics from Central Asia and the North Caucasus in the east to modern Ukraine and Crimea in the southwest.
Despite the obvious belonging of the Khazars to the Turkic peoples, the Nazi ideological leaders treated them controversially due to the conversion of the Khazars to the "unwanted" Jewish faith. In addition, another important factor opposed the Khazars: firstly, the Khazars conquered the Gothic city of Doros (Theodoro), which was the capital of a separate semi-independent Greek-Gothic principality; secondly, it was precisely the Khazars in 787 who suppressed the uprising of Bishop John of Gotha, picked up by the people.
Given the reverence with which the Nazis treated the Crimean Goths, whom they perceived as their ethnic ancestors, the hostile relations between the Khazars and the Goths could not positively characterize the Khazars. It was in this critical vein that the archaeologist R. Shtamfpus and the general commissioner of the Crimea Okrug A. Frauenfeld wrote about the conflicts between the Crimean Goths and the Khazars, for example.
Khazars in Gardarick - a novel by Mara Kruger (Dagmar Brandt)
Of particular note is the novel "Gardariki" by the Nazi writer and publicist Dragmar Brandt (under this male pseudonym the writer Mara Kruger worked).
This novel, published in a critical period for Germany - in 1944, is a huge work of a thousand pages, dedicated to various periods of Russian history, from the Ostrogoths to the Soviet period. The collection consists of twelve books, each of which shows the malicious role of the Semitic element in Russian and European history, with the Khazars and Karaites being the heroes of many parts of the novel.
Historical views of Mary Kruger about Russian history are a bizarre mixture of Japhetic theory, Marrism, Nazi ideology, and … travel notes about Crimea by Russian traveler Yevgeny Markov. The writer portrays the Khazars as a stadially developing Semitic people, descendants of the lost tribes of Israel.
One of the main characters of the third book of the novel is Rahmani ben Eliya ha-Survani, a merchant in Kiev in 720-725. The novel takes place in Khazaria, Crimea and the Caucasus. Khazaria, entangled in a network of Israelis, is portrayed as a malicious and dangerous state. Malicious Khazars also appear in the third and seventh books. The seventh book is devoted to the history of the adoption of Christianity by Kievan Rus. Vladimir is portrayed there as a ruler entangled in a Semitic conspiracy.
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According to the author, the Karaite-Khazar missionary Jehu Fravitta ben Hanina proposes to Vladimir to convert to Judaism, and Prince Vladimir himself is half-Jewish, the son of the Jewish servant Malusha. The Khazars-Karaites are depicted in the novel as a hostile, anti-Aryan element who builds Jewish conspiracies and is guilty of the disintegration of the Russian state throughout history. In order to create her own image of the Khazars and Karaites, Kruger-Brandt carefully studied the classic works of P. S. Pallas, A. Garkavi, D. Khvolson, A. Kunik, Yu. Furst, N. Marr and many other researchers.
Khazars in the context of the discussion about the origin of the Karaites
The Khazars especially often surfaced in discussions about the ethnic origin of the Crimean and European Karaites, a Turkic-speaking group of Jewish origin, professing Judaism of a special, non-Talmudic pattern.
When studying the works of various researchers hired by the Nazis to investigate this problem (Paul Kahle, Peter-Heinz Seraphim, Reinhart Maurach, G. Montandon and others), it becomes clear that they did not have a unanimous and unequivocal opinion on this issue. Some of them believed that the Karaites were of Turkic, Mongolian, or even Finno-Ugric origin. Others viewed the Karaites as a suspicious artfremd (racially alien) nation with einshlag (Jewish admixture). Some called not to apply the Nuremberg Laws in relation to the Karaites, while others, on the contrary (for example, the above-mentioned bloodthirsty writer Mara Kruger) called them "the most fanatical Jews" and called for their extermination.
So, on May 11, 1943, Kruger wrote a letter addressed to the Fuhrer himself, in which she demanded the immediate destruction of the Karaites. Fortunately for the Karaites, the writer's bloodthirsty demands were ignored.
From the point of view of modern psychology, it is very difficult to understand how Krueger, a woman, a writer, could demand the destruction of several hundred people just because of their possible Semitic past. Orientalist Berthold Spuler, in a book about the Turkic independent state of Idel-Ural, written for the official use of Nazi officials in 1942, considered the Karaites to be Jewish sectarians and believed that "the alleged links between the Turkic-speaking Karaite sect of the Moses Faith … and the Khazars." Later, Spuler became one of the largest German orientalists, the author of a classic study on the history of the Golden Horde.
It is surprising that even at a critical time for Germany, in August 1944, the Nazis were still seriously discussing the problem of the ethnogenesis of the Karaites and the role of the Khazars in it. Only the end of the war and the fall of the Third Reich put an end to this threatening and not too academic discussion.
Despite the Turkic origin, the medieval Khazars were interpreted negatively by the majority of Nazi ideologists and scientists. This approach was explained, first of all, by the transition of the ruling elite of the Khazars to Judaism, as well as by the military victories of the Khazars over the independent Gothic (i.e., in the opinion of German scholars, ancient Germanic) state with the capital in Doros (Mangup) in the Crimea. Nevertheless, it was the theory of the Khazar (and, therefore, Turkic) origin that saved the Eastern European Jewish Karaites from total destruction during the Holocaust.
Mikhail Kizilov