How did Hitler's relationship with the Jewish people change?

Answer 1

So many good answers here. Thanks to all who posted. I would just like to add one more thing that might help us understand this hatred of the Jews. In those days people read the child rearing books of ministers and Doctors who believe that children were born �with the devil in them�. We all know the old phrase �beat the devil out of them� but for the Germans and some other eastern European countries it was literally true. They beat their children until they were unconscious (this happened to Hitler on a regular basis). Children were to be OBEDIENT and obey ALL authority figures and adults. After Hitlers father died you would think he would be free from beatings but no, his school teachers took over, knowing the boy had no father, they beat him just for the sake of keeping him Disciplined. This was how it was for most of the children of Germany and perhaps eastern Europe too. Generation after generation of beatings were given to children in order to make the OBEDIENT. What they did then would be considered �child abuse� by today�s standards. Children were not allow to feel any anger or to rebel towards their parents or adults who beat them. They were told as adults that those beating were �for their own good� therefore they should do the same to their children before �the devil� takes them over and they become Undisciplined. So along comes Hitler and his anger and hated (which he does not understand) so he puts it all on the Jews. It�s convenient and he can intellectualize it. The result of this sick way of child rearing resulted in adults who lacked �empathy�. An American Psychologist at the Neurenburg trials noted that none of the SS on trial showed any �empathy�. They felt no remorse. If hatred of the Jews was because they owned factories and banks etc then how would you explain an SS officer taking a Jewish infant by the ankles, swinging him in the air and smashing his head into a brick wall - then laughing. This is not a result of Propaganda but �a lack of conscience� as found in Sociopaths. When day was done these men went home to their families feeling they had done their jobs to the Fatherland and without any remorse! Bottom line: Hitler and his propaganda gave the ordinary Germans permission to kill, beat, torture any Jew, Gypsy, homosexual or child born with birth defects (so called feebleminded German children). This is how we can account for the mass killings of Jews in Poland as well. In village after village where Jews and Poles lived together Jews were ruthlessly slaughtered by Poles after the Germans occupied their territories and gave them permission to do as they pleased. What kind of person take pleasure in this kind of slaughter except one who is sick and has no feeling for other humans. There are many good books written about this subject by ALICE MILLER. Among them is �For Their Own Good�. It�s the only writings I�ve read to date that fully explain how seeming ordinary citizens could take pleasure in manslaughter. What hard evidence is there that child-rearing in Germany and Austria in the later 1800s was so different from elsewhere? After all, these weren't remote countries but were frequently visited by foreigners. German (and Austrian) schools and universities were admired abroad. The German language was, probably, more widely known then than now in Britain and America. IF savage child-rearing had been widespread one would have expected comment on this at the time. Moreover, routine child abuse would have produced a whole host of problems much earlier. One needs to be very careful indeed about "psycho-history", otherwise one can end up attributing the whole Third Reich to the number of testicles that one thinks Hitler had. Yes, I've heard and read about the Adorno theory of the authoritarian personality. It was fashionable in the 1960s (and also quite amusing) but I don't find it very convincing. There's a useful golden rule when trying to find answers to complex questions: beware monocausal explanations, that is, explanations that ascribe everything to one single cause. After all, in New England and in France, too, discipline in the home was often very stern in the period c. 1870-1900. I'm aware that Alice Miller writes with passion and conviction, but that doesn't make her right. I know she's convinced it was those beatings that did it ... This kind of stuff is likely to appeal to people who yearn for simple explanations, for example, those amusingly classic authoritarian personalities, supposedly stuck at the 'anal' stage of developement. To cap it all, the only evidence that Hitler was beaten by his father is from remarks made many years later to his secretary, as later told by her. That's what courts call hearsay.

Answer 2

Hitler's relationship with Jewish people changed from one where he appears to not have had any issues with them to one where he blamed them for Germany's woes and initiated policies which would eventually lead to the murder of more than 6 million innocent people purely on the grounds of their religion and would plunge the world into confalgration.

It is assumed that Hitler first came into contact with antisemitic writings and politicians during his time in Vienna (1907-1913).During this time Hitler came into contact with the writings of Guido von List, an Austrian racial ideologist and antisemite (founder of the racist-occult "Ariosophy" - occult Aryan philosophy), and his pupil Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, as well as the antisemitic polemics of Austrian politicians Georg von Schönerer, leader of the Alldeutsche Bewegung (pan-German Movement) and the Mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger. Hitler's concept of a superior Aryan, so-called master race probably began to form at this time. But according to his friend, August Kubizek, Hitler was more interested in Opera, especially Richard Wagner, at the time than politics.

Hitler's relationship with Jewish fellow citizens is difficult to determine, his mother had a Jewish doctor until her death in 1907. Whilst living in Vienna, Hitler sold his paintings through two Jewish art dealers (Jakob Altenberg and Samuel Morgenstern) as well as Joseph Neuman, who acted as Hitler's agent/seller.

According to Reinhold Hanisch, a contemporary witness and one-time business partner of Hitler's during his time in Vienna, Hitler socialised almost exclusively with Jews during this time and that his best friend was a Jewish copper polisher called Joseph Neuman. Hanisch named another Jewish friend of Hitler's (which historians have been able to confirm, using Viennese records) as the one-eyed locksmith Simon Robinsohn, from Galicia. It is therefore questionable if his antisemitism was as pronounced at this time as he claimed in his book "Mein Kampf".

During World War I, Hitler's Regimental Adjutant was a Jewish officer, who recommended Hitler for the Iron Cross First Class after he was injured during a British mustard gas attack in the final months of the war.

It is more likely that Hitler began developing his antisemitic views following the First World War, when he was reporting on newly-formed political groups such as the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP, a fringe party with nationalist, antisemitic and socialist views, which at the time had barely 50 members), although in the immediate aftermath this does not appear to be the case as he attended the funeral of the Jewish Social Democat and Bavarian president, Kurt Eisner and was even (briefly) a soldier's delegate in the short-lived Munich Räterepublik (Soviet Republic of Munich).

By the time Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf"in 1924, whilst incarcerated in Landsberg prison his antisemitic views were fully developed and available for all to read.