The Anti-Jewish Policy Leading Up To The Holocaust

Hitler and the Holocaust is a very informational novel written by Robert S. Wistrich that not only explains this horrible time in history, but also gives us a look into the mind of Hitler and Nazi ideology. This book is not just centered on Hitler and Germany as it my sound, antisemitism spread like a plague all across Europe even before the Holocaust took place. In this work, Wistrich is not making an argument, but is trying to find an explanation on why so many inhumane actions were allowed.

One major, controversial event that occurred during the WWII was the Holocaust. There has been much debate about the causes of the Holocaust, as many factors have been discussed. Therefore, this investigation will assess to what extent was Hitler the cause of the Holocaust. The four factors that will be assessed will be the widespread anti-Semitism, the role of Hitler himself, the demonizing of Jews made by the state churches and the Treaty of Versailles.

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

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

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.

This identity as disgusting, impure creatures helped to set them apart from the pure Aryan race in society. This set up the Aryan race as superior and the Jewish race as inferior. This was reinforced physically through structural discrimination such as the Nuremberg laws and the forced wearing of the Star of David. The Germans the then found a false concreteness in this distinction that the Jews were evil and were ‘rats' who conspired against them. This allowed them to find concreteness in their belief that the Holocaust was legitimate. However, it was false considering that the Jews had fought in the German army and proved their loyalty to the German state. The Germans' perception of the Jews' identity allowed them to deny the freedoms of the Jews. They began by denying the Jews' right to be Germans, which opened the door for other denial of freedoms, such as even the right the life. These included the boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933, the Nuremberg

To begin, there were many political laws implemented against Jews. In the earlier years of World War II, the Nazis declared their goal to segregate Jews from the “Aryan” society.

Most of us have heard of the Nazi party’s horrific, genocidal regime on destroying the Jewish race, but what events led up to their dire judgement? In this study I aim to uncover the events, reasons and changes which led to the Holocaust and the further changes in the treatment of the Jewish race by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.

German anti-Semitism played the main role in Holocaust and extermination of Jewish population in Europe during World War 2. There are different views on this subject among historians. Some support the fact that German society was anti-Semitic and ordinary

Hitler's first plan was to demean the Jews' reputation. The Jews, who in 1933 numbered 500,000 in Germany which was less than one percent of the population ( The Holocaust), were blamed for economic depression and Germany's defeat in World War I. New laws were created that forced Jews to give their civil service jobs, university and law positions, and other aspects of the public life. Jewish businesses were boycotted in April 1933 ( The Holocaust). Also that year, the first concentration camps opened to begin in the destruction of the Jews, and they were expected to wear a symbol to differentiate themselves, a yellow Star of David. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws took all personal identity from the Jews and defined them by their religion and heritage alone.

The holocaust was a time of pure darkness. The German Nazi’s thought their race would be better off without Jews and so they decided to kill them off. The Nazi’s were a group who was under Adolf Hitler’s control and had the power to kill Jews. The Nazi’s were basically Hitler’s soldiers. Adolf Hitler was the current Chancellor of Germany during that time. The Nazi’s however did not only target Jews which accounted for nine million of Europe’s population alone, but also homosexual’s, Jehovah’s witnesses, Gypsies, disabled individuals, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, communists and socialists. The holocaust plays a role in the start of World War II. During the war, the Nazi’s managed to wipe out hundreds of Jewish communities and ended up killing around six million people total. They used to make Jews wear a badge on their clothes when going anywhere to show everyone they were Jewish. It used to be a law for Jews to wear such garments up until the nineteenth century and if they failed to do so, there was severe punishment. This is how Nazi’s chose whom to persecute.

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.

The anti Jewish sentiment was already strong in many parts of Germany and whilst anti-Semitism might not have been in the forefront of everyone’s mind, it was already a conscious part of everyday life. And in early 1935, a second wave of anti-Jewish agitation followed, once again , following pressure from within the lower party activists within the SA and Hitler Youth. This renewed violence, whilst sanctioned by Hitler, once again proved relatively unpopular amongst the German people and Hitler recognised the need to draw this damaging campaign to a swift conclusion. But at the same time, Hitler did not wish to lose face with his party activists, which led to the Nuremberg Laws of September 1935.

Adolf Hitler came to power over Germany in January of 1933. He hated Jews and blamed them for everything bad that had ever happened to Germany. Hitler’s goal in life was to eliminate the Jewish population. With his rise to power in Germany, he would put into action his plan of elimination. This is not only why German Jews were the main target of the Holocaust, but why they were a large part of the years before, during, and after the Holocaust. Hitler’s “final solution” almost eliminated the Jewish population in Europe during World War II. At the end of the war and along with his suicide, the Jewish population would survive the horror known as the Holocaust and the Jews would eventually find their way back to their homeland of Israel

In the tumultuous period leading up to World War II, a series of laws were devised in Nazi Germany that subjected the Jewish people to prohibitory and discriminatory forms of treatment. Although the Jewish people only accounted for 503,000 of the 55 million occupants of the country, Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship preached the incorporation of anti-Semitism into law and practice in order to quell the people he considered to be the enemy of the country.