Do financial crises radicalize voters? We study Germany's 1931 banking crisis, collecting new data on bank branches and firm-bank connections. Exploiting cross-sectional variation in precrisis exposure to the at center of we show that Nazi votes surged locations more affected by its failure. Radicalization response shock was exacerbated cities with a history anti-Semitism. After Nazis seized po...

The basic role of Jews is defined as creating a motivating contrast between the mass of the people who often get into trouble, and the subsequently arising leader (prophet) who calls for conscience in order to help the people to survive the trouble. The words of the Old Testament: "You will bring the light to other nations" are understood as a reflection of the fact that such a prophet is impor...

Following eleven years' work, in 1998 a high-level Vatican commission instituted by Pope John Paul II offered what has become the official position of the Roman Catholic Church denying any responsibility for fomenting the kind of demonization of the Jews that made the Holocaust possible. In a 2001 book, The popes against the Jews, I demonstrated that in fact the church played a major role in le...

Dutch neuroscientist Cornelius Ubbo Ariëns Kappers is famous for pioneering neuroembryological work and for establishing the Amsterdam Central Institute for Brain Research. Less well known is his anthropological work, which ultimately played a role in saving Dutch Jews from deportation to their deaths during the Holocaust. Ariëns Kappers extensively campaigned against anti-Semitism and Nazi per...