How did Hitler become Anti-Semitic?

Answer 1

This is a difficult question.

The first answer is that Hitler was unhappy, and needed someone to blame for his misfortune. Then he met and discussed with people that had read popular theory at the time, that denounced Jews and Slavs as a lesser class of human being. He deliberated from these theories to create his own vision, which he published. He was no original thinker. Many others were out of work, in a recession and needed someone to blame. So it was easy to find others that supported these political views.

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According to Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler (Vol. 1: 'Hybris') the earliest reliable evidence of antisemitism on Hitler's part dates from 1916, when he was aged 28. What's more, when he was trying to live in Vienna as an artist, he preferred to sell his paintings through Jewish art dealers. Apparently, they generally got him slightly better prices than the others, and he was of course pleased.

So all those naive, 'homely' stories about him having been rejected by a Jewish girl, having caught an STD from a Jewish prostitute, or resenting the Jewish Doctor Who treated his mother are just guesswork - about on a par with funny stories about the number of testicles he had. (In addition to the well known claim that he 'only had one ball', it has also been suggested he had three. The possibility that he had two is, apparently, just too ordinary and boring).

Hitler's antisemitism seems to have 'taken off' in 1919, when he was supposed to be spying (for the German Army) on an obscure political party - the Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei (DAP). This party was founded in Munich 5 January 1919 as an expressly populist anti-Communist and anti-Jewish party to resist the Munich Soviet, which it denounced as 'Jewish Bolshevism [Communism]'.

It is often said, quite correctly, that Hitler hijacked the DAP; but the hardline nationalist circles in which Hitler moved seem to have influenced him too. (It seems that it wasn't all a matter of one-way traffic).

The belief that (most) Jews were Communists, and that Communism was a specifically Jewish ideology became widespread in the wake of the Russian October Revolution of 1917. (It was widely taken for granted in the US, Britain and France, too).

In addition, there were fanciful, but oh-so-trendy conspiracy theories that claimed that Bolshevism was part of a wider Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world ...

It seems that Hitler moved in circles that took all this uncritically, at face value and - what was even worse - desperately seriously. In a nutshell, the unemployed and largely unempolyable Hitler seems to have swum with the tide.

Among disgruntled nationalist veterans in the beer-halls of Bavaria Hitler's antisemitic message brought him round upon round of applause.