Can you explain simply why the Nazis hated the Jews?

Answer 1

The simplest answer is "scape-goating".

But that's not really a sufficient answer. Anti-semitism has been around for a very long time. Hitler and the Nazis didn't invent it. Not by a longshot. It's been around through medieval times, and even during ancient Rome. There's alot of 'justifications', but they are all some variation of 'Jews are different, so it's easy to project my fears and insecurities on them.'

Hitler himself had many reasons why he hated Jews and it's something historians have studied for years. His father (whom he hated) was part Jewish. He was turned down for art school and blamed Jews.

But the most potent was that Hitler, like alot of Germans, blamed Jews (unjustly) for their loss in World War 1. The government of the Kaiser kept telling the German people they were winning the war. So when Germany surrendered, it was a major shock to them. And Hitler was a soldier in WW1. It was, by his own description, the best time of his life because he thrived on the comraderie with fellow soldiers.

To Hitler and those like him, the only explanation for how they went from being in a winning position to suddenly surrendering was sabotage. And Hitler blamed Communism and Jews. Which in his mind, were basically the same because he viewed Communism as a Jewish plot.

Hitler and other German anti-semites (and it's important to acknowledge not all were) blamed Jews for the struggles imposed by Versailles and everything else that went wrong.

Answer 2

Putting it as simply as possible:

• The Nazis thought that the German Jews were 'alien', 'un-German' and a 'corrupting influence' on Germany and that they were encouraging immorality.
• The Nazis believed that the Jews were Communists (and that Communism was a specifically Jewish ideology).
• There were strange conspiracy theories that claimed that the Jews were trying to achieve 'world domination'.
• The Nazis said that the Jews were enemies of Germany, and that Jews and Germans were locked in a struggle to the death. (This was another of those conspiracy theories that many Nazis took seriously).
• The Nazis believed that the Jews had made Germany lose World War 1.
• The Nazis subscribed to racialist theories that claimed that the Jews were inferior to others.
• However, Nazi Propaganda also portrayed them as very clever indeed, very dangerous and close to achieving world domination: the two don't even begin to fit.
• With the start of World War 2 in September 1939 Hitler became obsessed with the idea that 'the Jews' had started the war.
• Earlier, 'religious' hostility to Judaism had often demonized the Jews and painted them as sinister and evil.
• Because some Jews were affluent and influential, they represented political positions in opposition to Hitler, and were targeted like others he saw as rivals.

All this was much more important than stories about what a Jew might or might not have done to Hitler in his childhood. There is no firm evidence that Hitler was anti-Jewish before about 1916. Beware of naive explanations.

For fuller answers click on the related questions below.

Answer 3

Because Hitler forced the Germans to believe that the Jews were responsible for all of their problems