Scapegoats In Germany

Writer Hannah Arendt, a well known German political theorist, is one of the front proposers of this unconventional ideology. Throughout various books, Arendt discusses the various reasonings of why Jews could be blamed for the big increase in antisemitic beliefs during the post-WWI era in Germany. Among these reasons is the believe that Jews were no longer performing a meaningful social function and were therefore more prone to be disliked by the German population. This reason, coupled with the fact that Jews had acquired vast amount of wealth and connections to governmental officials helped formed a “division” between the general German population and the Jewish population. Many German citizens often saw Jews as a group trying to create a social stratum that solely benefited them while hurting the rest of the population. The rising prevalence of this sentiment eventually allowed Hitler to use Jews as the scapegoat for Germany’s problems and blame them for all the negative events occurring. Germany was not the only case in which we observed something like this. Throughout history, various groups have discriminated the Jews because of the idea

For years follow the Holocaust and still today, people find themselves wondering -- why the Jews? Why would Hitler target the Jews primarily of all other groups that could be found in the population of Germany? The number of Jewish people in this world currently amounts to about 14 million people which results in less than 0.2% of the overall population. Hitler’s reasoning for blaming the Jews wasn’t because they deserved to be hated, but instead that they were already dug deep into a hole that made others find it easy to hate this group of people based on hundreds of years of discrimination and false information.

The Holocaust is widely considered to be one of the darkest times in history- an abominable genocide with casualties measured in millions. With infamy comes inquiry, leading many to question and examine the exact motives behind the Nazi regime that killed masses. There are various factors to be considered when pinpointing the root causes of the Holocaust, among these being the historical and cultural hatred of Jews, the growing German unrest following WWI, and the Nazi Party’s ability to effectively utilize propaganda as to spread their doctrine. Despite this, anti-semitic ideas and propaganda spread before and during WWII were decidedly some of the most influential causes of the Holocaust.

At the end of WWI in 1918, Germany’s economy was in ruins. There were very few jobs, and bitterness began to take over the country. According to the text, “Hitler, a rising politician, offered Germany a scapegoat: Jewish people. Hitler said that Jewish people were to blame for Germany’s problems. He believed that Jews did not deserve to live.” (7) This was the birth of Antisemitism--prejudice against Jewish people. Europe’s Jewish people have always been persecuted due to their “different customs and beliefs that many viewed with suspicion.”(7) Hitler simply reignited the flames, and a violent hatred was born.

Horror struck on January 30, 1933, when Germany assigned Adolf Hitler as their chancellor. Once Hitler had finally reached power he set out to complete one goal, create a Greater Germany free from the Jews (“The reasons for the Holocaust,” 2009). This tragedy is known today as, “The Holocaust,” that explains the terrors of our histories past. The face of the Holocaust, master of death, and leader of Germany; Adolf Hitler the most deceitful, powerful, well spoken, and intelligent person that acted as the key to this mass murder. According to a research study at the University of South Florida, nearly eleven million people were targeted and killed. This disaster is a genocide that was meant to ethnically cleanse Germany of the Jews. Although Jewish people were the main target they were not the only ones targeted; gypsies, African Americans, homosexuals, socialists, political enemies, communists, and the mentally disabled were killed (Simpson, 2012, p. 113). The word to describe this hatred for Jewish people is known as antisemitism. It was brought about when German philosophers denounced that “Jewish spirit is alien to Germandom” (“Antisemitism”) which states that a Jew is non-German. Many people notice the horrible things the Germans did, but most don’t truly understand why the Holocaust occurred. To truly understand the Holocaust, you must first know the Nazis motivations. Their motivations fell into two categories including cultural explanations that focused on ideology and

The view Adolf Hitler had on the Jewish peoples was that everything was their faults and he hated them. Before Hitler became a Dictator he was a soldier just like everyone else in World War 1 and when the German Empire lost he was in disbelief and just couldn’t believe it. Many nationalist and conservatives believed that Germany had not lost the war on the battlefield but due to betrayal from within, by a ‘stab in the back’. Socialists, communists and particularly Jews were blamed, even though more than 100,000 German and Austrian Jews had served in the war and 12,000 had been killed.

It is extremely evident that Jews were the main target for dire judgmental opinions, but there was one man who had a passion for Germany; he believed he was the ‘saviour’ of Germany, this man served in the first world war, and it was then, near the end of the war, recovering from a war wound, when Germany was weak and crumbling, he made a vow to himself, that he would be the one, to make Germany strong, he was: Adolf Hitler.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany, the beginning of the end for the Jewish. As soon as Hitler was named Chancellor he began passing laws that hindered the Jewish. It started with the Nuremberg Laws, which stated the Jewish couldn’t marry German citizens. Soon after, the Jewish were being openly thought of as ‘less than human’. The Jewish now had separate schools, hospitals, and even different park benches: “The Nazi persecution started with hateful words, escalated to discrimination and dehumanization, and culminated in genocide.” (ushmm). This quote shows how hateful words and indifference can have grisly consequences on the underdogs of the situation.The Jewish had to wear stars to show that they were Jewish so they could be avoided. Parades of anti-semitism were now common entertainment. German media was helping by spreading propaganda, in which they blamed the Jewish for all of their misfortune. The Jewish would be tortured in aforesaid ways for five years in silence before Kristallnacht, also regarded to as ‘the Night of Broken Glass’; for all the glass that littered the streets from Jewish businesses, which had been vandalized. Unfortunately, these acts were only the first of a myriad of adversities that the Jewish would have to suffer.

On September 1, 1939, Adolf Hitler and his army of Nazis attacked Poland, marking the first day of six years of war, fear, and suffering. Hitler had long since came to power in Germany. After World War I, Germany was stripped of many things; money, cultural worth, dignity and power. The Germans needed a place to look to for help; they needed a promising future, and Adolf Hitler promised them just that. Blaming the Jewish religion, Hitler began to rise from the masses of Germans. He convinced Germany that the Jews were “untermenschen”, of what roughly translates to in English as “subhuman” or less of a human. So eager for hope of a better way of life, the rest of Germany trusted and gave him the power he needed to carry out multiple acts of destruction.

Beginning when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in late January of 1933 and concluding with the official end of World War II in May of 1945, the Holocaust was a period when Jews residing in the German Empire and German-occupied territories were persecuted and harshly murdered. The individuals of the Third Reich were not the first to have anti-Semitic prejudices; however, they were the first to take this type of racism and accomplish massacres on such a grand-scale. The successful killing of approximately six million Jews during the Holocaust can be best explained through the actions of ordinary German citizens as a result of convincing propaganda.

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.

Many religious conflicts are built from bigotry; however, only few will forever have an imprint on the world’s history. While some may leave a smear on the world’s past, some – like the homicide of Semitic people – may leave a scar. The Holocaust, closely tied to World War II, was a devastating and systematic persecution of millions of Jews by the Nazi regime and allies. Hitler, an anti-Semitic leader of the Nazis, believed that the Jewish race made the Aryan race impure. The Nazis did all in their power to annihilate the followers of Judaism, while the Jews attempted to rebel, rioted against the government, and united as one. Furthermore, the genocide had many social science factors that caused the opposition between the Jews and Nazis.

Germany's antagonism from the loss of WW1 caused the rise of Hitler and hatred of the Jewish people. Germans after the loss of WW1, were angry and looking for someone as a scapegoat which lead to the hatred of the jews. Secondly, they were angry about their accumulated debt from WW1. After the loss of the war Germany wanted to recover their patriotism and develop a purified master race. Lastly the jewish group had a prior history of conflict between them which assisted in creating the blame and hate directed towards Jewish people. This is why the loss of WW1 created anger and a chain of events to lead to the scapegoating of Jewish people along with the rise of hitler and the holocaust.

At the beginning of the 1930s, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party exploited the widespread and discontent in the German government to attract political support. Hitler blamed the “treacherous politicians” and the Jewish people for the downfall of Germany that was caused by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Hitler promised his current and future supporters that he would do everything that he could in order to bring Germany back to greatness again. Hitler pledged civil peace, radical economic policies, and the restoration of national pride and unity. The Nazi beliefs were extremely nationalist and anti-Semitic in which the ‘subversive’ Jews were portrayed as the root of all evil.

Adolf Hitler is renowned for his aspirations of destroying a countless numbers of lives. Hitler strongly believed that the Jews were responsible for Germany’s problems after World War I, and his one and only motivating factor was to obliterate the Jewish race. Creating the NAZI party, Hitler went on, nearly achieving his dream of creating a global dictatorship. Ironically, Hitler was also known for his inspiring speeches that were rife with rage. His “pep talks” were about the ambitions of wiping out the Jewish population. He had explicitly lied, stating that the Jews were the cause of the downfall of their economy. Inspired by the merciless leader’s evil methods, his followers began to rapidly kill the Men of David. As determined NAZI soldiers were compelled by Hitler’s words, Jews were murdered in extermination camps, brutally shot down with guns, and killed in facilities with noxious gases. Hitler’s beliefs cost Jewish citizens their lives, and inspiration, in this situation, was used for a bad cause: to fulfill one’s greed and pride. His inspiration was nothing more than a nightmare in disguise for the people who suffered