What made Hitler persecute Jews?

Answer 1

Problem of Non-Culpability

The way that this question is phrased would offend numerous people because it assumes that the Jews were guilty of committing some sort of offense and were therefore rightfully castigated. While it is not true to say that Jews were innocent lambs, the Jews did not do half of the negative nonsense that is attributed to them in order to "justify" Anti-Semitism and violence against them. Jews have been punished for being different, unique, and misunderstood and ever did anything worth punishing them for in the same way that Africans (on the whole) never did anything to merit enslavement. These actions were taken on account of bigotry and self-supremacy, not based on any system of equitable justice.

Issues Asserted by Hitler

Hitler's primary issues with Jews were the unfounded and erroneous assertions of which the following is a general list:

1) Decay of the German State: During the 1800s, Jews and other minorities began to become more integrated in German National Life. They served in its government, its military divisions, and its industry. As was typical of Western Europe, the Jews had more of a hand in the higher echelons of government than their population percentage would account for. Hitler saw this increasing Jewish percentage in the government as a slow takeover of German policy and a corruption of the German people. They contrasted the great victories under Bismarck with the depressing failure of World War I and noted how a much larger percentage of soldiers in the latter war were Jewish. There was also the sentiment than in the early 20th century, values were beginning to ebb (this is similar to current politics in the United States) and the Jewish integration in the German apparatus (becoming teachers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) was to blame for this recession of values as opposed to modernity as a process.

2) Nationalism: Germany was brought together under the Nationalist conception that all peoples with German culture, history, and language should be united regardless of which principality currently held control. The German self-conception also had an ethnic component, holding that the perfect German was blond and blue eyed. Regardless of the fact that the majority of Germans were dark haired, Jews and Gypsies stuck out like sore thumbs because they overwhelmingly had darker hair. In addition, the idea of a German Jew was still rather new and both Jews and non-Jews tended to see the Jews in Germany as being part of a vast Jewish network and that these Jews just happened to be in Germany. The same perception existed for Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Communists. Hitler capitalized on this cosmopolitan sensibility by claiming that these people's allegiances were not to the German State, but to secret councils made up of these minorities that conspired against the German people.

3) Economy: Whether it was true or not, there was perception among Germans and Hitler in particular that Jews were wealthy individuals and had a higher per-capita income than the Germans. In many ways (because of the above two reasons) Germans felt that the Jews were "stealing" their money while they were poor and suffering.

4) Pseudo-Science: The late 19th and early 20th century was filled with radical new ideas concerning Social Darwinism, a movement that Hitler was a part of. It was believed by the Pseudo-Scientific community (which was rather in vogue) that different groups of people or races exhibited different emotional traits that were linked to physical differences. This led to the belief that Jews and Gypsies were corrupt and thieving by their irreversible nature and that they could not be "cured" and brought up as proper Europeans. This formalized Racism in Germany and made the situation much more dire for German minorities.

5) Heresy: Although not as much an issue in World War II as it may have been 500 years prior, Jews were still considered the heretics who murdered the LORD and Savior. This helped to justify Anti-Semitism as the Jewish comeuppance for their accepting of the Christ Bloodguilt.