Targeting Jews for Genocide Essay

Austrian born Adolf Hitler grew up in the midst of political antisemitism. Arrested for organizing a coup over the German government, Hitler was sentenced to five years in

Hitler had shown unwillingness to tolerate the Jews and once he was appointed Chancellor, he started to take elimination measures like deportation, forced emigration, and isolation to enforce his belief. He took advantage of Germany’s weakness in World War One, then used it as an opportunity to blame the Jews for Germany’s defeat. Hitler’s political party was the largest political party in Germany thus allowing them to draw very large crowds to gatherings. He had very good oratory speeches with hand gestures that easily manipulated people to adhere to his views. Hitler constantly targeted the Jews because he knew people believed in these speeches. People in Germany were already anti-semitic but Hitler made it worse by constantly consuming them in his speeches. From the way he spoke about the Jews, we could clearly see the possibility of genocide. Hitler wanted Germany to be free of any humans that anyone other than his ideal master race so he personally selected bodyguards to be part of a group called the SS. Hitler was responsible for ordering the SS to carry out the extermination of anyone who did not fit this ideal. The SS handled oppositions using force and as a result of which people were forced to give into the idea of violence. Sometimes people purposely went along with this Holocaust ideal due to the fear of getting killed. These terrors allowed the holocaust occur

Hitler believed that the German people were part of an 'Aryan race,' a superior group that should be kept pure to fulfill their mission of ruling the world. He felt that the Jewish people were 'sub-human,' when in actuality they were virtually the same as his 'Aryan race.' Not only did Hitler have a personal hatred toward the Jewish people, but he also blamed them for 'stabbing Germany in the back' after Germany's defeat in World War I. Hitler used them as scapegoats because they were a minority and were easy to put the blame on. 'Historians agree that the Holocaust resulted from a confluence of various factors in a complex historical situation. That anti-Semitism festered throughout the centuries in European culture is centrally important; the Jews were (and are) a minority civilization in a majority environment. In periods of crisis, instead of searching for the solution of

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

By blaming the Jews for the economic crisis that Germany was suffering through as well as their defeat in WW1, Hitler targeted the Jews as the country’s main enemy. According to him, the Jewish were directly responsible for Germany’s problems. Hitler hated the Jews leading up to the Holocaust because he believed that the Jewish financiers were responsible for sending the world into its first World War, causing the deaths over 100,000 Germans. According to the Nazis the “Aryan race” was the best and strongest race. Jews were of another inferior race. In fact so inferior that they were not considered to be “people” by the

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.

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.

In other words it was claimed that 'the Jews had caused Germany's defeat in World War 1'. Potentially, this made anti-Semitism explosive in Germany.

They feared that the Jews would be successful in their search for world domination and deny the existence of all others. This reason was why the Jews needed to be stopped and in Hitler's plan, annihilated.

With an outspoken anti-Jewish mayor, Karl Lueger, and many anti-Jewish newspapers and magazines there was no restriction on antisemitism, and Hitler was strongly influenced by this (“Why Adolf Hitler Hated Jews”). The First World War affected Hitler’s point of view on the world drastically. He was a soldier at the time and like the other soldiers, he was devastated about the German Empire being overthrown. Later, after the

The Jews weren’t always liked, and they never had a place to call home, being spread out all across Europe. However Hitler took things to another level, blaming the Jews for Germany’s defeat in WWI and its following economic depression and. It is unknown why he chose the Jews as scapegoats, or whether he actually even believed the Jews were responsible, but all he saw at the time was Jews living in prosperity while Germans were suffering. Hitler’s hate made him feel like he had to exterminate all the Jews in Europe, so in his memoir “Mein Kampf”, Hitler wrote down how he planned to kill all the Jews. However the Jews then didn’t believe one man would be willing to go this far for no certain reason.

The issue of Hitler’s psychological abnormality and the cause being has many believed that it also stems from him being rejected twice to his dream school, the Academy of Arts in Vienna. He has been raised with the constant influence of anti-semitic beliefs and many believed that a staggering amount of Jewish people who were in power during the time had a lot of impact whether he would have been accepted to his dream school or not-- this obviously made him dislike the general Jewish population more than he already did. However, it is not just Hitler’s psychological state of mind that enabled him to commit barbaric and inhumane acts of aggression towards millions of Jewish people, but also the German citizens’ defeated and worn out feelings that also allowed for the horrendous acts to be committed. This is due to the fact that Germany lost the First World War and were deemed to be responsible for the reparations that totalled to 132 billion gold marks, or over $33 billion US dollars, and with this plus the fitful psychological state of mind of the dictator himself, Hitler and the Germans sought out for revenge and found the Jewish population as the main target to place their rage. The idea of using the Jewish population as the scapegoat for their

The dominant political figure of German history in the twentieth century, Adolf Hitler, was born in a lower middle class family in the provincial Austrian town of Braunau am Inn on 20 April 1889. In 1907 Hitler applied to enter the Vienna Academy of Art but his application was rejected. After the death of his mother Klara, Hitler decided to move to Vienna. He drifted from job to job, often selling sketches or painting scenes of Old Vienna and it was a period that he himself later called the most miserable period of his life. Many of Hitler’s views of the world were shaped by his experiences on the streets of Vienna and it is probable that his violent anti-Semitism dates from this time.

This speech fully shows the hatred that Hitler and the Nazi Party had towards the Jews, and how set they were on eliminating the Jews (Jewish Virtual Library: Hitler's Threats Against the Jews). This hatred and irrational thought of the “threat” Jews posed to the German race led to Hitler’s “Final Solution”, which was ultimately to fully eliminate the Jewish race. Hitler used concentrations camps as his mode of carrying out his plan and fulfilling his prophecy. (Holocaust Encyclopedia: The

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.