History Impossible

The Third Reich’s so-called war on the Jews was not one that they fought alone.In fact, their war had been being fought for decades before Hitler even took power, perhaps even a full generation. The fight began in the late 19th century in Jerusalem, within the office of the mufti of that city. He was an elderly, serious man who, unlike everyone around him, believed he could read the tea leaves and explain where these land sales to an ever-increasing number of Jews was supposedly heading (despite the fact that he himself was also taking part in these land sales). By the early 1900s, a young boy—the elderly, serious man’s son—was sitting in this office with his father, taking all of this in. No one at the time could have possibly known that this man would come to represent one of the most controversial parts of the Third Reich’s war three quarters of a century after its conclusion, thanks almost entirely to the words he spoke and wrote.This episode of History Impossible returns to the first long-form series, “T