How were the Jews viewed by the German people during the Weimar Republic?

Answer 1

Many, perhaps a majority of Germans, didn't share the Nazi leadership's rabid hatred of the Jews, but weren't prepared to risk their lives helping Jews or speaking out against Nazi antisemitism. * This is one of the reasons why the regime was very secretive about the Holocaust. * After World War 2 there was very little antisemitism in Germany

Answer 2

Germans hated Jews because they were jealous which is why Hitler said that Jews werent allowed to have over a certain amount in the Jewish homes. Other Germans didnt agree with Hitler but were not able to do anything about it.

Answer 3

In the Weimar Period (1919-33) Germany was not seen as particularly anti-Jewish. Certainly, any notion that the country was seething with antisemitism is inaccurate. Most observers did not think that the German Jews faced any particular threat. Moreoer, in the general election campaigns of 1930 and the (two) in 1932 Hitler was advised to downplay his antisemitism - which he did.

Zionists, for example, were much more concerned about the situation in Poland, Romania and Hungary.

Obviously, as elsewhere in Europe and in much of the Americas, there was a widespread view that 'the Jews' were Communists and there were all kinds of fanciful conspiracy theories.

German nationalists (not only the Nazis) refused to believe that Germany had been defeated on the battlefield and blamed left-wing subversives on the home front for the armistice of November 1918, often with the implication that they were Jews. Much of the nationalist press made a point of drawing attention to the relatively small number of Jews in high places, creating (or exacerbating) the notion that Jews were enormously influential; they also liked to draw attention to what they called 'over-representation' of Jews in certain occupations, such as medicine, the media and entertainment. However, this wasn't peculiarly German. (In fact, similar perceptions are by no means unknown today in the US, for example).

The nationalist press loathed the Weimar Republic, which it regarded as un-German and as some kind of latter-day eruption of the French Revolution of 1789 in Germany. These papers also claimed that 'the Jews' were doing well in this hated republic. The more extreme nationalists sometimes referred to the Weimar Republic as 'a Jewish repulic'.

As elsewhere in Europe, there was a widespread assumption that being Jewish was somehow very 'spicy' and made one rather different from the rest of the population.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933 the German Jews were nearly all unprepared for what was to follow - and also very bewildered. At the most basic level of all, few of them had passports, let alone plans to emigrate.

________________________________________________

There was very little or no animosity between German gentiles and the half million German Jews as they were well assimilated into society, as Himmler said (not verbatum), we all know a good Jew and would like him to be exempted.

But because of the much harsher treatment in Poland, there were increasing numbers of poor Jewish immigrants, these were viewed and treated badly, especially towards the end of the Weimar Republic. Many thought that the anti-Jewish sentiments encouraged by the Nazis were about these immigrants, not about those Jews contributing to society.