What was a major cause of the genocide committed by the Nazis against Jewish people?

Answer 1

Nazi Propaganda dehumanized Jews by comparing them to animals. That dehumanization helped people to desensitize themselves and see Jews as the "other," something outside what they believed to be human and valuable, which made killing them somehow okay. You see similar mental strategies used when talking about slavery, or even illegal Immigration.

Answer 2

The Nazis' primary issues with Jews, which led to the genocide, 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.