Essay on Causes & Effects of the Holocaust

The Holocaust was one of the most horrific events in history. It involved the systematic mass slaughter of European Jews and certain groups of people that were unable to meet the standards of the Aryans. The Holocaust involved the slaughter of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators under Adolf Hitler. The three main causes of the Holocaust were, Anti-semitism, Propaganda, and Hitler.

Hell bent on creating a perfect “Aryan” race, Hitler used propaganda and lies to work his way into the government and into peoples minds. He and the Nazi party were weapons of mass destruction, killing anyone in their path. The Jews, above all, were Hitler’s main choice of prey. He blamed the Jews for all his failures and the failures of Germany and convinced others of the same thing. And the Jews knew this. The people in concentration camps were always asking themselves if God was real, whether they were going to eat that night, and how long they were going to be stuck in hell. In a time where the Jews were questioning everything about the world, Hitler was the only constant. Wiesel expresses this by writing “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone had kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people,” (81). God had failed them and put them in hell with their friends and family were dying around them. No matter what they did, the Jews knew that whatever Hitler said he would do he’d follow

Adolf Hitler wanted the Jewish race to be destroyed forever. But he didn’t just stop at beliefs. Even if you were a Christian, Catholic, Atheist, etc., you were still in danger. You were still in danger because if you looked Jewish to him then you were swooped up and taken hostage in a concentration camp.

Hitler believed the Jews were responsible for the loss of world war one and also the settlement that made the Germans pay for the damages in europe. Hitler thought the Germans were a superior race. Hitler wanted to destroy all educated Jews so that if the war was lost then they wouldn't know what to do after the concentration camps

According to Mail Online, Hitler’s animosity was very strong. “Hitler and the Nazis believed that the Jews were biologically and racially distinct”. They thought that every person that was a Jew was not a real human and they had no right to live. Once Hitler rose into control, he used his power to campaign against all Jewish people. Nazis made all German people stop shopping in Jewish shops because a Jew was thought to be a “sub-human”. (Mail Online) This was all a part of Hitler’s plan for their downfall. The presence of racism was growing so strong to the point that children were being taught anti-Semitic ideas. In 1935, a group of laws called the Nuremberg Laws were passed and all German citizens, that were Jewish, lost all freedom, independence, and even citizenship. The prejudice increased so vastly that a chemist would not sell medicine to a Jew, even if it would save their life.

The Holocaust was a horrifying genocide where Adolf Hitler and the Nazis strived to wipe out the Jewish race, as well as Poles, Slavs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Homosexuals, Gypsies, etc. Jews were taken from their homes and transported to concentration camps to work until they were seen unfit to do so, and then they were sent to “the chimney.” The Holocaust resulted in around six to eleven million deaths.

Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party, had ambitions to create a perfect race. This meant eliminating the Jewish race along with other undesirable races and disabled humans.

Hitler had many reasons on why the Jews should be ‘annihilated’, from them being the cause of Germany’s poor finances to them ruining the racial ‘purity’ of Germany, which apparently had no place for any Jews. When Hitler was convicted into prison in 1923, he wrote a book called Mein Kampf (Meaning My Struggle). In this book he boldly states, “As a result of this, we shouldn’t be surprised if our people someday view the personification of the Devil, as the symbol of all evil, as the Jew himself” (Ford 277). In this bold statement, Hitler says how ‘our

The holocaust was a horrible genocide, “The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators”,(ushmm.org). There were significant events that indirectly led to it becoming a major catastrophe, and a huge part of world history.

Despite Hitler's many accomplishments, one goal he failed to achieve was to “exterminate” all of the Jews and non-Aryan races. Despite the mass genocides performed in concentration camps, Hitler failed at completely removing the population. Today, many Jews are still standing tall and healing from the effects of the Holocaust. In order to understand Hitler’s actions, one must take into consideration the many misconceptions he had about these people. His hatred towards the Jews hindered him from understanding and ultimately this lead to his downfall. In Hitler’s eye the Jews were not a religious community. In fact, the Jews allegedly had their own mission to exterminate the whole of mankind, therefore the world needed to unite in order to eliminate

The Holocaust of 1933-1945, was the systematic killing of millions of European Jews by the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazis) (Webster, 430). This project showed the treacherous treatment towards all Jews of that era. Though many fought against this horrific genocide, the officials had already determined in their minds to exterminate the Jews. Thus, the Holocaust was a malicious movement that broke up many homes, brought immense despair, and congregated great discrimination. The Holocaust was an act of Hell on earth.

He believed that the Aryan race should dominate over those who weren't as superior. He believed that the Jews were the polar opposite of the Jews, and referred to them as ''dirty, clever, without any true culture, a maggot, eternal blood suckers, repulsive, unscrupulous, monsters, foreign, the destroyer of Aryan humanity, and the mortal enemy of Aryan humanity.''(Mein Kampf - Britannica). He thought the Jews 'had lost all resemblance to Germans,' and asked 'was there any form of filth or profligacy [depravity], particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in it?' (The Final Solution - Earle Rice Jr.) Hitler no longer saw Jews as human, so as a result he wrote that getting rid of the Jews "must necessarily be a bloody process."(Mein Kampf - Britannica). Hitler also believed that getting rid of the Jews was part of “the sacred mission of the German people...to assemble and preserve the most valuable racial elements... and raise them to the dominant position.” (Mein Kampf - Britannica). This meant that to make the German's blood pure, he had to kill all the Jews, and rid them from the German culture, as they seemed to him like parasites leeching off their land, and that they clearly didn't belong. As many people bought Hitler's books, and read it, they too also believed in this philosophy, and as a result the Jews were isolated from

After German lost WWI, Hitler became obsessed with the Jews conspiracy. In fact, the two greatest obsessions of his life is to conquest great empire in the east and the destruction of the Jews. Nothing was more staggering than Hitler’s belief that he could turn his obsession to reality by sheer will power. “he was trapped in his own beliefs, he created a myth about himself which he worked very hard at that he was a man sent by providence to save Germany” said Lord Bullock, biographer of Hitler (The Fatal Attraction of Adolf Hitler). One of Adolf Hitler famous quote, “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” (50 Famous Quotes by Adolf Hitler). Even he himself fell for his own lie.

The Nazis and Hitler used extreme propaganda in attempt for people to accept their actions. Hitler made the Jews out to be a problem and a threat to the purity and perfection of German society (Holocaust Encyclopdia: Nazi Propaganda ). In Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag in September, 1942, he states,

“Hitler began building weapons, training pilots for war, and allied with Austria. He also left an International Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations.” (Chomsky, 2009) Racial theories and goals were at the center of Hitler’s thoughts. He wanted to make Germany a formidable military power.