Hitler, and many other Germans, believed that Germany *was* under attack by International Jewry. Here is something I wrote for a class I took recently:
To "understand" the Final Solution - not that it is possible to really understand it - but to have sufficient understanding of it as an historical event, it is necessary to understand what motivated Hitler and the National Socialists to attempt to eradicate all Jews from Europe.
Hitler's anti-Semitism must be understood in the context of Hitler's belief in the Aryan race, and his beliefs about race in general. His concept of race was amalgamated with his nationalism. Germany belonged to the Aryans, and the Jews were interlopers, who could never belong because the innate nature of the two "races" could never be overcome. Aryans were the founders of culture, of language, of civilization, of science and technology. More importantly, Aryans were idealistic, and that idealism had its highest expression in self-sacrifice for the community. Jews, on the other hand, were selfish, unable to create culture, parasites on the bodies of other races and nations. Worst of all, Jews were responsible for Bolshevism. Hitler's antipathy towards Jews, formed while he was an impoverished would-be artist living in Vienna, was visceral, and irrational. He foresaw a final cosmic battle between Aryans and Jews conceived on a mythical scale, like Ragnarok.
Hitler was not the first to believe in the superior nature of the mythical "Aryan race." This concept, a bastardized mish-mash of social Darwinism and early anthropology, originated in the 19th century with the French anthropologist, Gobineau, and was widely held throughout Europe and North America among the intellectual class. Racial anti-Semitism differed from religious anti-Semitism already endemic in Europe because the basis was not the Jewish religion, but the concept of "race" as something inherent in mankind, nature that expressed itself regardless of nurture. Even a non-practicing Jew was a Jew because it was his immutable nature, which he might not even be aware of, yet could never escape. That nature was so destructive that an Aryan woman who had sexual intercourse with a Jewish man just once would forever defiled, and would bear mixed breed children even if she married an Aryan man.
Anti-Semitism, in several forms, had been endemic in Europe for centuries. The earliest form was Christian anti-Semitism, an antipathy towards Jews because they refused to convert to Christianity and maintained their own way of life Jews were segregated, and viewed as alien.
In the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, Jews were invited to resettle into Poland and Europe east of the Elbe, to perform certain functions for royalty and landlords. They managed commerce, acted as estate managers, and tax collectors. Jews became associated with banking, international trade, and commerce. Jews were restricted to certain occupations, and became identified with these occupations. Some occupations, such as providing credit for interest, and tax collecting, caused great resentment. The aristocracy looked down on Jews because they were engaged in commerce. At the same time, Jews were prohibited from engaging in occupations which were honorable, such as the military. A combination of envy, resentment, and feelings of superiority towards Jews was the basis for class-status anti-Semitism.
Racial anti-Semitism, chronologically the next step, has already been described.
The next phase of anti-Semitism was a reaction to the assimilation of the Jews into German and European society. Modern Jews did not wear earlocks and big black hats; the men wore business suits and the women were fashionably dressed. Jews, only 1% of the German population, were disproportionately represented in such professions as law, medicine, and on the faculty of universities. Some were extremely successful financially, such as the Rothschild family. Some were brilliant scientists, winning Nobel prizes. Less successful Germans blamed their own failures on successful Jews. This antipathy was hardened by the end of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles. Jews were accused of starting the war and prolonging it in order to profit from it, on the one hand, and of betraying the country as socialists and Communists, on the other.
According to anti-Semites, Communism and Socialism were Jewish in origin. Communism is an international movement. It calls for elimination of class structures, national culture, private property and religion. Anti-Semites associate internationalism with Jews. The belief that Communism is spread by the "International Jew" wasn't limited to Germans. Otherwise reasonable men like Winston Churchill and Henry Ford adhered to this belief, as well.
The hatred of the "International Jew" was exacerbated when the Weimar Republic was formed, both in the way it was formed, and in the way it proceeded. Prior to the German surrender, leftists, especially Social Democrats, organized strikes and uprisings all over Germany. Hindenberg and the German Army claimed that they could have won but were stabbed in the back, implying that it was due to Jewish betrayal. The military did not sign the treaty. The Social Democrats did. The Weimar Republic was formed in the hope that Germany would be allowed to retain territory. The loss of Germany territory and the requirement to pay heavy reparations was felt by Germans to be another stab in the back - by Jews, of course.
The National Socialist Party was formed in 1919 as a reaction to the Weimar Republic and the Versailles Treaty. Weimar was democratic, liberal, egalitarian, and protective of the rights of the individual. National Socialism was anti-democratic, elitist, and collectivist. The individual did not exist for himself, but to serve der Volksgemeinschaft and der Führer. Weimar gave the vote to women. National Socialism wanted women to stay home and take care of die Kinder and die Küche (but not die Kirche). In Weimar, modern art, jazz, and deviant behavior like homosexuality was tolerated, or even flourished. National Socialism believed in cultural conformity, sentimentality, kitsch, cuckoo clocks and lederhosen. National Socialists blamed what they perceived as the worst aspects of the Weimar Republic on the Jews. Jews benefitted from democracy because it gave everyone equal rights. Jews benefitted from laws because they were good at talking. Jews were accused of owning all the newspapers and making all the films in order to promote Jewish ideas and destroy German culture. Astonishingly, almost every conceivable ill of society was blamed on the Jews, not only wars but even diseases and plagues.
In 1933, in the deepest trough of the Great Depression, the appeal of anti-Semitism to ordinary Germans was projection and scapegoating - someone to blame for the mess they were in rather than themselves. The stereotyped Jews imagined by Hitler and the National Socialists, and by the German people who embraced National Socialism, did not actually exist in real life. Neither did the idealized German Volksgemeinshaft. It was convenient to invent an "other" and displace all bad qualities upon that other, and blame that other for all that was going wrong, but it was not sane. The Nazis represented themselves as the antithesis of the Weimar Republic and promised to remove Jewish influence from Germany. When the National Socialists began Aryanizing Germany, it was acceptable to Germans that Jews be removed from all aspects of business, government, education, and social life. This schizoid division of human nature into Germans as all good and Jews as all bad allowed Germans who were not ideological Nazis to cooperate with apparently good consciences (for the most part) when the Nazis attempted to totally eradicate Jews from Europe, as long as it was escalated gradually, each year worse than the one before.
The turning tide on the Eastern front seems to have heightened Nazi paranoia of an apocalyptic confrontation between the Nazis and "Jewish Bolshevism" - or maybe justified fear of vengeance. In 1941, the Germans began exterminating Jews in mass killings. In 1942, killing centers were set up, at first temporary, gassing Jews with exhaust gas in the back of trucks. Then, principles of scientific engineering produced the extermination camps which used assembly line methods to strip, gas, and burn Jews by the thousands in short periods of time. The most efficient of these, Auschwitz, began operation in 1943, killing perhaps 1.7 million Jews.
In 1943, America and Great Britain invaded Italy, and began bombing Southern Germany and Eastern Europe, while the Soviet Union began to force the Wehrmacht backwards. Even then, and even until the very last day, the frenzy of the Nazis to murder Jews continued unabated. The Nazis threatened Germans that if they lost to the Soviets, the Jews would liquidate them. The soldiers fighting on the Eastern front believed that they were fighting to save European civilization from racial destruction by Judeo-Bolshevism. |
