The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in postwar religious discourse

Record summary

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion continued circulating in postwar Europe despite its exposure as a forgery, sometimes appearing in religious, nationalist and conspiratorial publishing. This lead matters for comparison because it demonstrates how apocryphal authority, translation and claims of secret revelation can survive documentary refutation. Researchers can track editions, publishers, prefaces and polemical uses rather than treating the text as evidence of an actual assembly. The forgery’s relationship to earlier political satire and plagiarism is established, though specific local transmission routes require archival verification.