A tenacious anti-semitic hoax.
Because of it’s influence on Nazi beliefs, it is arguably the most deadly hoax in history.
The text was based on several sources including Maurice Joly’s A Dialogue in Hell: Conversations between Machiavelli and Montesquieu about Power and Right (which had nothing to do with Jews), and the anti-semitic novel Biarritz by “Sir John Retcliffe” (aka: Hermann Goedsche)
The text was first translated into English in Henry Ford’s newspaper The Dearborn Independent.
Links
http://skepdic.com/protocols.html
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/przion1.htm