Theodore N. Kaufman

Theodore Newman Kaufman (February 22, 1910 – April 1, 1986) was an American businessman and writer of Jewish descent, best known for self-publishing the book Germany Must Perish! in March 1941 through his Argyle Press in Newark, New Jersey. In this 104-page work, Kaufman advocated the complete eradication of the German nation by means of mandatory eugenic sterilization of its entire population—excluding only males over 60 and females over 45—to halt the propagation of what he described as an inherent German "war-soul" and ensure permanent global peace by ending "Germanism" within two generations. He outlined logistical details, such as employing 20,000 surgeons to perform operations at a rate of 25 per day, alongside proposals for partitioning German territory and suppressing German language and culture. Though the book received limited attention in the United States, where it was dismissed as extreme even amid pre-war tensions, Nazi propagandists extensively promoted a German translation, framing it as proof of Jewish plots for German genocide to bolster their own ideological narrative and rally domestic support. Kaufman, who also headed the obscure American Federation for Peace and issued earlier anti-German pamphlets, remained a marginal figure whose eliminationist proposals found no adoption in Allied policy.

Theodore Newman Kaufman was born on February 22, 1910, in Manhattan, New York City, to Anton Kaufman and Fannie Newman, who had married on March 14, 1909. He was raised in a Jewish family; his father Anton, born in 1883 in Hungary to Seymour Kaufman and Julia Barger, had immigrated to the United States and begun his career as a reporter for the Berliner Morgen-Zeitung in Germany before relocating to Detroit in 1905 and later establishing himself as the publisher of the Jewish Chronicle in Newark, New Jersey, despite being blind.

Kaufman had three younger brothers: Herbert (born 1914), Julian M., and Leonard. The family resided in New York initially before moving to the Newark area, where Kaufman spent much of his early years amid his father's involvement in Jewish publishing and community affairs.