Why did Nazis not kill christians in Holocaust?

Answer 1

They killed and tortured people because Hitler told them that they were not Aryan or part of an Aryan race.

If you read Hitler's book Mein Kamph you will understand fully. Specifically in the case of the Jews, the book strongly implies that Germany can never succeed at anything it attempts as long as there is a single Jew alive in the world. The book also repeatedly comments that the Jewish, Gypsy, Slavic, Black, etc. races are analogous to sewer rats and other vermin.

Answer 2

One answer:

Hitler displayed classic signs of prejudice. He decided that the Jews, who made up about 1% of Germany, were somehow to blame for Germany's loss of World War 1, and made them into a convenient scapegoat. He also held very stereotypic beliefs about the Jews, accusing them of being disloyal, untrustworthy, and not capable of being "true Germans." Although Jews had lived in Germany peacefully for a long time and had made positive contributions to the culture, suddenly, the rhetoric about them changed. Hitler began talking about the Jews as if they were a disease, something that needed to be wiped out. He repeatedly made statements that blamed the Jews for whatever problems Germany was having, and encouraged non-Jews to fear and distrust their Jewish colleagues and neighbors. This became official Nazi policy, resulting in Jews being segregated, forced to wear a yellow star, and ultimately sent off to concentration camps.

Hitler and the Nazis enforced a doctrine of "purity." They believed that only white people (preferably with Nordic features), were the ideal, and that these "Aryans" were the 'pure race' of Germans. Hitler lashed out at anyone who did not conform to this image and the Nazi policy was to eliminate the impure races (he created the myth that the Jews were a race, as well as a religion). Hitler also was the enemy of anyone who was not "perfect"-- in addition to killing more than 6 million Jews, he also ordered the deaths of people with mental retardation, dwarfism, etc. And while the Nazis saved their worst treatment for the Jews, they also persecuted many Christians who were believed to be enemies of the government, as well as Gypsies and other groups considered unfit for the new German empire. Hitler's policy was that all members of the groups he labeled as "undesirable" needed to be killed, in order to have a perfect country.

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Christopher Browning and many other historians see the killing of Jews in the Holocaust as part of a wider campaign to rid the world of 'Jewish Bolshevism'.

The media and the schools accepted and promoted Hitler's rhetoric. The Nazi Party was masterful at spreading propaganda, so even though there was no evidence that the Jews had done anything bad, it did not take long before the average German was repeating what Hitler had been saying. And although all of the accusations against the Jews were false, having one group that could be used as a scapegoat was very effective. Hitler was successful in persuading the vast majority of Germans that all the problems in Germany were caused by the Jews. And once this was the common belief, the next step was finding the right solution -- which meant getting rid of the Jews.

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It has to be understood that there is a difference between the use of the Jews as a scapegoat, or as a political tool to unify the country and actually killing them (as the question asks).

Many (in fact most) western countries were prejudiced against the Jews, but it was the Nazis who did the killing, the reasons for this transcend mere antisemitism.

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Two other points that have been discussed in documentaries are:

1. His grandmother (father's mother) worked in a Jewish home when she was young. After she left the home she had a child out of wedlock (his father) and the assumption that the father was someone from that household was implied.

2. When Hitler was young he tried to make it as an artist but he had a tough time. Some of the establishments that he turned to for help (food, shelter, etc.) were run by Jewish families and he felt he was mistreated in those settings.

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It is not at all clear why having a Jewish grandparent (if he did) would have made Hitler want to kill Jews. In any case, Ian Kershaw, in Vol. 1 (Hybris, Penguin Books, 1998, pp. 7-9) of his highly acclaimed two volume biography of Hitler says that there is no evidence that Hitler had a Jewish grandparent.

Kershaw also says elsewhere that the earliest solid evidence of Hitler's antisemitism dates from 1916.

Another Answer

This question implicitly has two parts. The first is a question as to the rationales that the Nazis believed in to justify Anti-Semitic beliefs and the second is a question as to why the Nazis felt the need to kill the Jews as a way to solve these Anti-Semitic concerns.

The Reasons for Anti-Semitism in Germany during that period are numerous, but some of the more important reasons were the following:

1) Decay of the German State: During the 1800s, Jews 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. The Nazis 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 stuck out like a sore thumb 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 Nazis capitalized on this cosmopolitan sensibility by claiming that Jews' allegiances were not to the German State, but to secret Jewish Councils organizing world events.

3) Economy: Whether it was true or not, there was perception among Germans and the Nazis 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. 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 were corrupt and thieving by their irreversible nature and that they could not be "cured" and brought up as proper Europeans. This formalized Racial Anti-Semitism in Germany and made the situation much more dire for German Jews.

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.

6) Hatred: (written by someone else) Because ppl hated them . . . . .not such a good reason, right? Its so sad . . . . . .

Why was killing the Jews necessary?

The answer to the second part, while cold, is brutally honest. The Nazis encouraged the German population to believe that this myriad of Anti-Semitic issues was ingrained in German Society by making it part of the national curriculum and teaching it to millions of German children. The Nazis proposed that the only way to improve Germany was to remove the Jews entirely. There were two options for such a removal: exile or genocide. Since no country was willing to take the Jewish population en masse (and this includes the United States and United Kingdom due to prevailing stereotypes there) the Nazis made the executive decision to commit genocide to "save Germany".

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The Nazis blamed the Jews for every problem in the world and they accused the Jews of:

1. Being Communists
2. Causing World War 1
3. Profiteering in World War 1
4. Profiteering from the German Inflation
5. Causing the Great Depression
6. Causing Germany to lose World War 1 by fomenting unrest and revolution in Germany itself
7. Undermining German morals by encouraging prostitution and homosexuality
8. Ruining German art
9. Trying to dominate the whole world
10. From 1939 on Hitler accused the Jews of starting World War 2 (as part of a global conspiracy to destroy Germany and dominate the world).

They blamed them for all the hardship in Germany. At the time Jewish people where in positions of power and wealth. Hitler believed that people of Jewish faith where not looking out for Germany's wellbeing only their own self-interest. This is a flawed argument because many Jews had lived in Germany for hundreds of years and had served in the German army. The Nazi's had no problem confiscating the Jewish people's money and possessions and using them to enrich themselves. Hitler also believed that Jews everywhere where bad for society in this way and they should be removed. Originally the idea was to deport all Jews out of Germany, this became more and more impractible and so they came up with the plan to just kill instead of deport

Answer 3

The Holocaust was Nazi persecution of the Jews. Some Nazis thought of themselves as Christians, others didn't.

The Holocaust was not a religious campaign. It wasn't some version of 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' that got out of hand.

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Well, that is not exactly true; one of the problems that Nazis had with Jews was that they could not trust that Jews would not follow what their religion told them rather than what the state told them.

Most of the Nazi leadership wanted to leave the Church, but Hitler would not allow it. Many Nazis did leave the Church, but whether they were active/practicing Christians is of less importance than the issue that they were brought up in a Christian culture with Christian values.

Nazi ideology (and Propaganda) in peppered with Christian references, from Goebbels saying that God had chosen Hitler to do his work, to the issues of mercy not being shown to those who had turned their backs on Christ, to one of the mottos of the army being "Got Mit Uns" (God with us) appearing on their belt buckles.

Though the Nazi persecution may not have existed specifically because of Christianity, it could not have existed without it. If you look at Roman Catholic sources you will see that they are proud of the fact that they (temporarily) stopped the T-4 programme (even though it is not true), they only protested when Christian lives were being taken. [The issues about this subject are a bit more complicated, but that is the gist of it].

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No Christianity, (probably) no antisemitism? Is that the point being made above?

Many politicians like to refer to God, providence and so on. That, together with the use of slogans like 'Gott mit uns' sound rather like rhetoric.

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No, but without Christianity there would be no Nazi antisemitism.

It was rhetoric, the point was that with their propaganda the Nazis had to use imagery that the German people were comfortable with. The point that i was trying to make was that regardless of whether the Nazis considered themselves Christian, the traditions and imagery (and rhetoric) united them in a common past/common experiences/something that they could all relate to, this and more was used to encourage antisemitism.

There is no single reason why people persecuted Jews in the Holocaust, but Christianity is one and hopefully I have explained sufficiently why that is.

Answer 4

They blamed the Jews for choking the German economy. The German Jews were a wealthy minority and the Nazi Party needed a common enemy to unite the people, so they used the Jews. For example, if the Earth was attacked by aliens, the people of of Earth would unite against the common enemy. Also, since they were wealthy, they could arrest them, confiscate their wealth and add it to their coffers. Furthermore, Jews were not allowed to own firearms, so they could not resist.

Answer 5

you will need to be a bit more specific, as many Christians were killed, but not because they were Christian, only for other reasons. Many Christian clerics were targeted for special treatment, but this was not death.

Answer 6

The Nazis were Christians. Why would they kill their own kind?

Answer 7

The Nazis were Christian, and only targeted other Christians if they protested against Nazi authority.

Answer 8

Because the Nazis were Christians.