Why Were Jews Singled Out?

The danger of this approach is that statements, no matter how vociferous, still need to be contextualised. Through an analysis of the many pre-war anti-Semitic statements made by Hitler, no proclamations of intent to kill the Jews were found, thus rendering the Functionalist belief that the Holocaust was not a part of Nazi policy prior to the enactment of the Final Solution as unquestionably correct. While the content of Hitler’s famous autobiography Mein Kampf (1925) undeniably proves that Hitler possessed an extreme hatred of the Jews and planned to make Germany Judenrein (free of Jews), there is no indication that he intended to carry out this cleansing through murder. In a speech made in Salzburg on the 7th of August 1920, Hitler stated that “This Jewish contamination will not subside, this poisoning of the nation will not end, until the carrier himself, the Jew, has been banished from our midst.” It is important to note the use of the word ‘banished,’ a term which means exile and deportation, suggesting that the plan was not to murder, but to force emigration. In an interview with the New York newspaper Staatszeitung in 1933, Hitler confessed that ‘we (the Nazis) would willingly give every one of them (the Jews) a free steamer-ticket and a thousand-mark note for travelling expenses if we could get rid of them." In Hitler’s Table Talk of October 1941, he

Hitler, in 1934-1945, believing in the works of Charles Darwin, made concentration camps for the jews. He discriminated against the Jews, and declared The Aryan race to be superior. The killing of the Jews was both out of fear and pride for Hitler. He feared the fact that the Jews might spoil the pureness of the Aryans. He took pride in the fact that his race was superior, and so wanted to maintain his race’s superiority to keep his pride intact.

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.

He labeled the Jews as "foreigners" who invaded their economy and took away jobs. The Nazis created a Jewish genocide, also referred to as the Holocaust. Over six million Jews were brutally murdered by the German Nazis. They were shot, stabbed, beat up and sent to concentration camps. All survivors were forced to go into hiding. By 1945 only one third of the Jewish population was still alive. Though the Jewish nation was the most affected the Nazis also killed millions of Freemasons, Jehovah witnesses and any other political party members. The Nazis committed crimes against humanity though, to their benefit, they did provide prosperity for their nation.

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

The Jews were starved to death, shot down for the most pointless reasons, were put through all different kinds of torture. Those who survived were forced to work in labor camps, all because Adolf Hitler had a bone to pick with Jews. Adolf Hitler was a dictator who had 850,000 Nazis under his hand. He despised Jews, and used his forces to take Jews hostage and force them to work in concentration camps. Ironically enough, it is believed that Hitler may have had Jewish ancestry. He wanted to rid the world of Jews, creating what he believed to be a perfect civilization.

The Nazis came into power on the 30th of January, 1933. By that year Hitler had total control over the country. Hitler possessed a dominant presence and was able to get people to listen to him, he was very persuasive in making the Germans believe that the Jews were the problem of Germany. He vowed to use his skill in public speaking and his position in authority and gain political power the right way. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler believed that Jews were an inferior race, alien threat to German racial purity. Anti- Semites such like Hitler believed that the reason for their country’s loss in 1918 were the Jews. Many Jews were killed during the Holocaust, the Nazis tried to keep this operation a secret but was made virtually impossible due to the amount of

Before the beginning of World War II the Nazi party took over in Germany. At its head was a man named Adolf Hitler. For some reason Hitler hated the Jews, we see this in World War II with the Holocaust. The Holocaust started in 1933 when Hitler rose to power; he made a plan in 1941 which was to eradicate the whole Jewish population. Hitler called this plan the “Final Solution” (An Introductory History of The Holocaust). Why did Hitler and the Nazis single out the Jews for genocide? And in what ways did the Nazis single them out?

This view of social dominance and evolutionary superiority is very in line with the views of the Nazi Party and ordinary Germans. This hate for the Jews starts with Hitler’s Ant-Jewish propaganda and the implementation of the Nuremberg laws. In “Perish the Jew,” Hitler puts his views of racial superiority into writing, “The Aryan regards work as the basis for the maintenance of the national community as such; the Jew regards work as a means of exploiting other peoples” (Hitler 223). With this writing and other propaganda, Hitler successfully spread a hate for Jewish people across the country. Hitler then created the Nuremberg Laws, which slowly but successfully stripped the Jews of all their rights and made them second-class citizens in Germany. The Jews slowly became, in the eyes of the German people and the SS, people who could be consciously oppressed and turned into slave workers.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.