Victor E. Marsden

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Victor Emile Marsden (1866 - 1920) was a journalist and translator. He is known primarily for the translation of the most widespread English language version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The first English language publication of this text was in London in 1920. However, prior to its publication, the Morning Post, in 1920, utilized the text as a basis of 17, or 18 (depending on which authority is cited), articles making antisemitic allegations against the Jews. Thereafter, but that same year, the paper published a book on the same matter, entitled The Cause of World Unrest. Marsden is generally credited with a translation of the Protocols around this time. And Marsden continues to be associated with most subsequent American English language imprints of the text, known by many different titles, but most briefly, as the Protocols of Zion. In that regard he is only second (perhaps the more notorious of the two) to Serge Nilus.

However, the earliest (dated) edition of the Protocols of Zion held and catalogued by the British Library, a successor to the British Museum, is dated 1922, and had been published in London by The Britons Publishing Society. The first British English language edition, titled The Jewish Peril, whose Preface is dated, London, December 2, 1919, does not contain Marsden's name at all. Neither is it mentioned or associated, in the online catalog, with this first British edition — i.e., the Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd. edition. To the 1922 imprint of The Protocols, which bears the name "Victor E. Marsden" as "translator", the Integrated Catalogue of the British Library assigns the "System number" 009601120, and the Shelfmark W73/5522 DSC. The British Library's "Full Record" for this item is at [1]. The publisher is clearly indicated as The Britons Publishing Society. No major academic library in the United States appears to own or list an earlier imprint than 1922 of an edition of the book bearing Marsden's name. The exact description of this 1922 text — upon which Marsden's reputation as an antisemite primarily depends — is given by the British Library Integrated Catalogue as follows:

    System number        009601120
    Author - personal    Nilus.
    Title                Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion / translated from                  
                         the Russian Text by Victor E. Marsden.
    Publisher/year       London : The Britons Publishing Society, (1922)
    Holdings (All)       Details
    Shelfmark            W73/5522 DSC Request

In 1978, Colin Holmes wrote that George Shanks, a Russian emigre, first translated the text in Britain into English for The Britons — a publishing entity which subsequently became "The Britons Publishing Society."

Marsden is explicitly associated with the 1934 edition, however, and its subsequent imprints. Marsden worked as a correspondent for The Morning Post, a conservative London daily newspaper. On assignment he reported on events in Russia. As a consequence of the October Revolution, he was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. He was subsequently released and returned home to England. Marsden's name is associated with the 1934 text issued by "THE PATRIOTIC PUBLISHING CO." as the "author of the translation."

The standard work on the Protocols of Zion has been for some time Norman Cohn's Warrant for Genocide. Cohn only mentions Marsden in a single page, saying that the "Morning Post accepted everything it was told by its correspondent in Russia, Victor Marsden" and "Marsden was an Englishman who had lived many years in Russia and had adopted, with passion, the outlook of Russian right-wingers... Marsden went further and produced a new translation of the Protocols (it is still on sale in London today)." That is all we are told about Marsden by Cohn.

1 Henry Ford and Adolf Hitler
2 The 1934 Expanded Edition of the Protocols of Zion
3 Legacy
4 Works - Chronologically Listed
5 Editions of the Protocols of Zion attributed to Marsden posthumously
6 Critical Work
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Henry Ford and Adolf Hitler

Henry Ford purchased the Dearborn Independent with the publication therein of a series of articles in from 1920 through 1922 which were subsequently published in four volumes, as The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem.

When Adolf Hitler took power in Germany in 1933, both Germany and the U.S. were flooded with mass-produced anti-Semitic literature, at the core of which was the text of the Protocols of Zion. Ford placed his personal wealth, acquired from his ownership of the Ford Motor Company, and financed not only the writing in his Dearborn Independent, but the subsequent world-wide distribution of The International Jew. Hitler, on the other hand, directed the machinery of the German Reich to finance and produce anti-Semitic literature. But the nameless hired editors of The Protocols were faced with a dilemma: the text had no author, and was too brief for a book. It consisted of a collection 24 or 27 chapters — a mere short appendix (actually chapter XII, the last chapter) in a Russian language 1905 book, by one Sergei Nilus, prophecying the coming of the Anti-Christ. Nilus was merely the translator, however, and could not consistently explain or account for the "appendix," for which he denied authorship. By 1934, and thereafter, the name of Victor E. Marsden proved to be the appropriate solution to the literary need that every book needs an author or an editor. Marsden, its translator, had been dead for 14 years. It was therefore decided by these nameless editors to make him also its glosser. And since 1934, when the expanded edition was produced by Ford's and Hitler's agents, Marsden's name has stuck to it.

[edit] The 1934 Expanded Edition of the Protocols of Zion

The Protocols (On Spine); 1934; THE PATRIOTIC PUBLISHING CO.; P.O. Box 526; Chicago, Ill.

Marsden's name is associated with the Protocols more so than Nilus'. In the preface of this imprint is the statement the work is his "crowning monument" (1934 imprint). Popular biographical knowledge of Marsden derives from this edition of the text. The translation of Nilus' 1905 version was one of the first things Marsden undertook upon his return from Russia, as is the emphasis of the nameless editor(s) and compiler(s) of this version of the text.

In the 1934 text, the Russian Revolution and Zionism are portrayed as parts of the "Jewish conspiracy for world domination." The preface bears Marsden's name, but it is effectively and his obituary written by an unnamed editor. A substantial portion of the book is simply lifted out of Ford's serial articles, themselves paraphrases and extracts of the prior text.

Marsden is falsely credited with the allegation that a remark was made by Chaim Weizmann, at a banquet held on October 6, 1920, as follows:

    "A beneficent protection which God has instituted in the life
    of the Jew is that He has dispersed him all over the world."
        -- United We Fall, Divided We Stand
           The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion
           WITH PREFACE AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
           Translated from the Russian Text by
           VICTOR E. MARSDEN
           Formerly Russian Correspondent of The "Morning Post"
           Part II, "Text and Commentary,"" 1934(p. 138 of 300 pp.)
           [from the original 1934 imprint]

Marsden may very well have been an anti-Semite, but the following remark, lifted from the 1934 text, cannot be attributed to him:

"It proves that the Learned Elders exist. It proves that Dr. Weizmann knows all about them. It proves that the desire for a "National Home" in Palestine is only camouflage and an infinitesimal part of the Jew's real object. It proves that the Jews of the world have no intention of settling in Palestine or any separate country, and that their annual prayer that they may all meet "Next Year in Jerusalem" is merely a piece of their characteristic make-believe. It also demonstrates that the Jews are now a world menace, and that the Aryan races will have to domicile them permanently out of Europe." --ibid., pp. 138-139

[edit] Legacy

Very little is known about Marsden besides what the unknown and unnamed Protocols editor(s) have written about him. Neither have his writings for The Morning Post been collected, nor has his obituary in that paper been examined in any scholarly way since 1934, when his infamy increased.

One particular English language publisher is responsible for Marsden's posthumous infamy. An obscure publishing entity named The Patriotic Publishing Company gives its address on the imprint of the Protocols as P.O. Box 526, Chicago, Illinois, and it is stated, on the cover, to be "NOT INCORPORATED." It is further stated in this 300-page imprint that it was "issued," "compiled," and "edited" in 1934. It continues to be re-issued and distributed and circulated by others today in the US, and continues to bear 1934 as its date. The last page of the text, titled "INDEX", is really a Table of Contents. It is customery for American publishers to place the Table of Contents in the front of a book. No other known title exists which bears the imprint of this mysterious publisher at this Post Office Box in Chicago.

[edit] Works - Chronologically Listed

Finland: The Question of Autonomy and Fundamental Laws,

by N. D. Sergieevski; Victor Emile Marsden

(London: Wyman & Sons, 1911)

The Revolution in Finland under Prince John Obolensky

by Vsevolod Vladimirov;

trans. by Victor E. Marsden (London: Wyman & Sons, Ltd., 1911)

Russia's Policy in Finland

by G. A. Evreinov; Victor E. Marsden

(London: Wyman [& sons?] , 1912

The King of the Jews, a Sacred Drama, from the Russian of "K.P[R]" (the Grand Duke Constantine)

by Victor E. Marsden, M.A.

(London, New York [etc.]: Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1914)

Crossing the Line with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales:

in H.M.S. Renown, Friday - Saturday, April 16-17,

by Victor E. Marsden, (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1920)

"Germans,"

in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups

ed. by Steven Thermstrom

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980)

[edit] Editions of the Protocols of Zion attributed to Marsden posthumously

Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion

Translated from the Russian Text by Victor E. Marsden

(London: The Britons Publishing Society, 1922)

System number: 009601120

Shelfmark: W73/5522 DSC

British Library - Record - http: [2]

Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion

Translated from the Russian Text by Victor E. Marsden ...

(London: The Britons Pub. Soc., 1931)

The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion:

with preface and explanatory notes ; translated from the Russian text by Victor E. Marsden.

(Chicago: THE PATRIOTIC PUBLISHING CO., 1934)

299/300 p., [6] leaves of plates: ill.; 22 cm.

Note: The cover & frotispiece say that this "PATRIOTIC" entity is "NOT INCORPORATED," but it has "issued," "compiled," and "edited" the text, and gives its address as "P.O. Box 526" "Chicago, Ill."