Why did Adolf Hitler kill so many Jews?

Answer 1

Pure insane race hatred. Hitler believed that Germans were inherently superior beings who were supposed to rule all other peoples. He believed that the Jews had, for many centuries, been involved in a great conspiracy to rob the German people of their rightful place in the world and he was going to put a stop to it. Michael Montagne

Answer 2

Hitler wanted a German Empire which he believed could only be achieved by the aryan race. The aryan race being white, christian etc... Hitler rose to power because he promised an end to communism in Germany. After he rose to power he enacted the Nuremburg laws which basically put a lot of restrictions on Jews. At this point, Hitler did not want to exterminate the Jews... Hitler was more interested in his lebensraum (living space) in Eastern Europe. In his lebensraum, he wanted to enslave the slavs... All of this was stated in Mein Kampf (his book that he wrote in prison). Eventually, the idea of extermination of the Jewish people came from the support that he recieved. Most people were very willing to get rid of the Jews because before Hitler, they were making the money. Not only were they making money, they killed Jesus Christ etc... In addition to these ideas, there was already anti-semitism in Europe. In France, there were trials called the Dreyfus Affairs which falsely accused a Jew of treason. So many people believed that the Jew was guilty and there was a lot of Propaganda showing Jews poorly. It brought out the true anti-semitism in everyone. When he was finally found innocent--it was a surprise. Because of all this, Hitler was able to kill Jews. He hated them because the mass hated them. He hated them because he needed someone to blame. He blamed the communists, then he blamed the slaves, and then he blamed the Jews. Also because he thought that their noses were a funny shape, but that is of course discrimination.

Answer 3

Scholars and psychologists have many theories about this. We do know from research that some commonly held beliefs turned out to be myths-- he wasn't part Jewish, he wasn't treated badly by a Jewish doctor, etc. Mainly, he seems to have been an evil, hateful person who wanted to take out his prejudice on a group who made up only about 3% of Germany's population. That said, here are some of the theories from our contributors:

Answer 1

From what I've read, he did not want to kill Jews only. He believed that the Aryan race is superior to other races, and wanted to "cleanse" his world for them by killing what he considered inferior, undesirable or dangerous people. During the Holocaust, He killed around 17 million people; 6 million of them were Jews. According to Wikipedia: his victims included Asians, Poles, Slavic people, Africans, gypsies, prisoners of war, Jews, homosexuals, mentally ill and disabled people. Only Jews were killed specifically for their religion (or what people thought back then was their race).

Answer 2

Murderous greed. Adolf Hitler resented the Jews. He studied them and thought he understood how they were so successful. It seemed to him that everything the Jews did, whether in music or medicine or law or science or business, flourished and prospered. You name it, they excelled in it. He did not consider that maybe they worked hard or studied hard. He just resented them.

Upon entering the concentration camps, an appointed Nazi officer would ask the newly arrived Jew what his/her skill/trade was. He would use their accounting skills to help run the camps. Use their medical skills to ensure the health of the camp's Nazis. If you knew banking, he would use your knowledge and gain instant access to money that would fund his movement. Once captured, the Nazis would seize Jewish homes, bank accounts cars, etc... He utilized every commercial recourse he could get his greedy hands on. When he Nazis had gotten everything they could from the Jews, including slave labor in the camps, they were sent to their deaths.

Answer 3

Nobody really knows. But it is said that he thought they were evil and beastly and best kept captivated, which of course is not true. He was sick in the head probably and he thought that non-Aryans/people who weren't tall and blond weren't as good. That is strange because Hitler himself was not tall and blond.

Answer 4

To understand this you have to understand Nazism as a political belief.

Nazism taught that the nation state was of paramount importance. The individual was less important than the living, nation state. Nazism was nationalism taken to extreme. The the constant talk of expansion, of living room, of superiority of races in the Nazi culture.

At the other end of this political spectrum was Communism, a word derived from 'commune', a term often associated with the hippie lifestyle. It doesn't care much for the individual either, but sees the world as a one government entity. The communist does not support the nation state idea. The one government concept means, to them, that all means of production, all farm land, all religion, is controlled by the state.

Hitler believed the Jews were dominant in the development and implementation of Communism (this is a myth, but he believed it). In fact, he often spoke of Bolshevik (communist) Jewry. He considered the words interchangeable. He used this as an excuse-- by killing Jews, he believed he was aiding in the destruction of communism.

Answer 5

Hitler and the Nazis encouraged the German population to believe that the Jews were the cause of all of Germany's problems. Hitler engrained a myriad of Anti-Semitic beliefs into German Society by making it part of the national curriculum and teaching it to millions of German children; he taught it to adults by use of the media, which was filled with anti-Jewish propaganda. Hitler and 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 anti-Jewish prejudice), Hitler and the elite cadre of Nazis made the executive decision to commit genocide to "save Germany".

Additionally, killing Jews would allow Hitler and the Nazis to auction off their assets to other Germans, giving loyal citizens better homes or formerly Jewish-run businesses. This increased the citizens' loyalty, made it look like Hitler was making good on his campaign promises to improve the German economy (on a personal view), and increased "German living space" called lebensraum.

Answer 6

After World War I, Hitler was looking for a way to gather people together, as to rally them for dominating the world. The best way he saw that he could do this, is creating a common enemy that his people could learn to hate and attack. He decided the Jews made a good enemy; there were Jewish communities throughout Europe and he convinced people in Germany to fear the Jews and blame them for Germany's situation; he was able to get people to rally around that idea.

Answer 7

Hitler was an insecure and ill man, who chose to believe that one should live by his beastly nature and not resist it. Hitler believed that the Jews, being successful in many scientific and academic groups in Germany, were actually parasites trying to take over. With his warped perspective and paranoid nature, Hitler decided that no one should be as successful as the Aryan race, which was the dominant race in Germany.

Answer 8

One belief is that Hitler killed the Jewish people because he blamed them for Germany losing World War I. Another belief is that Hitler saw the Jewish people as a fault in the perfect race which was he was trying to create with the perfect empire. He saw them as subhuman and a threat to the ideal Aryan race.

Answer 9: Here are Hitler's Own Words (bear in mind that what he believes are not true statements about Jews or Economics, but they reflect the kinds of propaganda he fed to the German people):

"We were not foolish enough to try to make a currency coverage of gold of which we had none, but for every mark that was issued we required the equivalent of a mark's worth of work done or goods produced. . . .we laugh at the time our national financiers held the view that the value of a currency is regulated by the gold and securities lying in the vaults of a state bank." -Adolf Hitler, 1937 (CC Veith, Citadels of Chaos, Meador, 1949.) "And it proved sound. It worked. In less than ten years Germany became easily the most powerful state in Europe. It worked so magically and magnificently that it sounded the death knell of the entire (Zionist) Jewish money system. World Jewry knew that they had to destroy Hitler's system, by whatever means might prove necessary, or their own [system of usury] would necessarily die. And if it died, with it must die their dream and their hope of making themselves masters of the world. The primary issue over which World War II was fought was to determine which money system was to survive. At bottom it was not a war between Germany and the so-called allies. Primarily it was war to the death between Germany and the International Money Power." --William Gayley Simpson, 'Which Way Western Man' (p.642)

Answer 10

I believe there were deeper, more philosophical reasons for what Hitler claimed he had to do in order to "save" Germany. Hitler was involved in the Thule society, where he came to believe that the Aryan race was the chosen people. [Note from a historian: not everyone accepts this; there is NO credible evidence he was a member, nor that he ever attended their meetings.] But whether he was a member or not, he did share many of their beliefs, especially about the importance of Aryan purity, the belief in Aryan superiority, and the need to root out and destroy "inferior" cultures which has "cursed" the Aryans. In this view, Germany would never prosper until "Jewish magic" which had condemned Germany to misery, was finally destroyed, leaving a pure society.

Answer 4

Answer 1

The reason why Hitler hated, targeted and killed the Jews was because that:

1. He regarded (most) Jews as Communists.
2. He blamed the Jews for causing the defeat of Germany in World War 1.
3. He blamed the Jews for the Great Depression.
4. They claimed that the Jews were a morally and culturally corrupting influence.
5. He believed that the Jews were conspiring to rule the world.
6. He also believed that the Jews already, to a large extent, controlled Germany.
7. He believed that they were racially inferior and were in some sense 'contaminating' non-Jewish Germans and he wanted a Germany and a Europe without Jews.
8. However, this is at odds with the view that they were extremely cunning and were 'already controlling Germany'.

Answer 2

Hitler killed the Jews for more than one reason. The political reason given was that the Jews were aligned with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and were hence Communists. Communists were feared in Germany for not only their brutality but for what, they feared, was a totalitarian state in which there would be little freedom and the German culture and society would be radically changed, and everyone would suffer a lower standard of living. Great exhibitions were given to get that point across.

Publicly, Hitler did not talk about 'killing' the Jews, but about deporting them. He felt they were 'a people without a fatherland', and that all people, particularly 'Aryan' people and particularly German 'Aryans' were tied to their land in an almost spiritual way. To prosper, Hitler and the neo-pagans of the Third Reich felt that Germany had to be 'cleansed' of the people who were a 'nation within a nation' , and his first efforts were toward deportation. Germany looked into Madagascar off the eastern coast of Africa, but it was impractical.

Nazi propagandists began to portray the Jew as the epitome of all evil and the reason for all the defeat and societal ills in Germany. He reasoned that their influence was evil and degenerate, and that they had caused Germany to lose WWI, had ruined the arts, were defiling bloodlines, bringing in disease, introducing communism, etc and that if conditions were left to themselves, would threaten the overthrow of Germany. The Jews were actually a small proportion (525,000) of citizens when the Nazis came to power in 1933, compared to approximately 62 million others in Germany. The real reason almost has to lie in the firm belief that the Aryan herrenvolk [Master Race] could not emerge fully until the Jews and their influence were removed.

While it was debated for decades whether the mass Killings were planned, scholars today have amassed such a large amount of data and information, as to make that position beyond doubt. Hitler espoused the desire early on to destroy the Jews of Europe and create a New European Order, and the Wannsee Conference and Operation Reinhard , along with the lagers and Einsatzgruppen made it clear that the systematic destruction of the Jews of Europe was the clear intent.

Additional Causes of Anti-Semitism

In addition, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, all kinds of fanciful conspiracy theories claiming that "the Jews" were using Communism to achieve world domination became quite popular in some places. In Britain and the US they were not taken particularly seriously by mainstream politicians, but in Germany this kind of stuff was seized on eagerly by the Nazis.

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The first people to be sent to concentration were known political opponents of the Nazis. 'Outsider' groups such as homosexuals were also persecuted. The Jews were subject to a massive program of extermination and a total of about six million were murdered in the Holocaust. Hatred of the Jews was long standing in many parts of Europe. (America wasn't free of Anti-Semitism, either). The Jews were the traditional scapegoats. Originally, Anti-Semitism had been directed mainly against Judaism and its adherents, but from the 1870s onwards it became racial and ideological. The period from about 1870 onwards was one of rapid change (urbanization and a further wave of industrialism). Many people who disliked these changes or could not adapt to them identified the Jews with Modernism. In addition, in Europe there was a severe economic depression from 1873-1879 (and arguably much longer).

Answer 3

It was, above all, conspiracy theories about "the Jews".These had been circulated in Russia from about 1900-1917 by the Tsarist secret police. After about 1918 they also circulated increasingly in Western and Central Europe. After World War 1 there were all kinds of conspiracy theories circulating about the Jews. They were widely regarded as Communists and subversives. In Germany and Austria there was a widespread view (for which there was no evidence) that they had engineered the defeat of Germany.

There were also conspiracy theories claiming that the Jews were seeking to dominate the world.

Answer 4

This question implicitly has two parts. The first is a question as to the rationales that Hitler believed in to justify Anti-Semitic beliefs and the second is a question as to why Hitler 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".

Answer 5

The NSDAP executed many members of various groups, such as Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and others exact reason for each group is up for debate, but I'd guess a mixture of political antisemitism and wanting to create a sense of unity among the German people by pitting them all against the Jews.

Answer 6

for fun... seriously no reason he needed someone to blame for the downfall of Germany and no body could stop him in his gov. because he was supreme chancler and would kill you if you spoke out against him

First, Hitler did not only kill Jews. The Nazi's also killed basically any race they saw as "unfit" or a political view they opposed. The whole idea was to have a pure German race. Poles, Jews, Russians, Gypsy, Ukrainian, Blacks where all subject to murder and mistreatment in the hands of the Nazi's.

Hitler blamed the Jews for financial problems in Germany, control of media, basically a scapegoat for any and all problems the German people endured, especially after the end of the First World War which left Germany bankrupt. What was ironic was the German Jews who where persecuted had lived in Germany for 100's of years and saw themselves just as much German as Jewish. They loved their country and where dumbfounded at first by Hitler's views and extreme persecution.

Answer 7

Hilter and the Nazi killed Jews because:

Hitler hated the Jews and everyone who wasn't like him!

He killed most of the Jews to 'create a better world' for everyone or more likely for himself!!!!

Answer 8

Sir Arthur Keith was a British anthropologist, an atheistic evolutionist and an anti-Nazi, but he drew this chilling conclusion:"The German Führer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution."

It seems to be clear from the above link that Hitler had connections with the Roman Catholic church. At the same time it is clear that Hitler persecuted Christians (among others) who did not agree with him. Not all Christians were actually anti-semitic, as true Christians realize that Jesus Christ was himself a Jew.

Jesus himself indicated that Christians were to suffer persecution as indeed they did from the martyrdoms of Stephen and James onwards through the Roman Emperors, the Inquisition, Hitler and Stalin and down to this present day in China and Burma, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Pakistan etc. Christians were never, even though their teaching would frequently meet opposition and would sadly split families, to be the perpetrators of violence. They were taught to 'turn the other cheek.' Hitler and his Nazis specifically mocked this aspect of the Christian faith as they saw it as a sign of weakness, definitely not part of the 'master race' they were seeking to produce.

There are therefore conclusions which may be drawn regarding the position of the Roman Catholic church at this time. Whatever the reasons for their position, it clearly was not Christian.

Undoubtedly Hitler was violently anti-semitic. It seems that he drew his motivation from a number of sources.

The religious connection is interesting because the Nazis always sought to control the churches (like most other things) particularly because they recognized that there was potential at least for strong opposition to arise from this source. Many church leaders either gave in to their demands or left the country when they saw what was coming. Others like Bonhoeffer joined the resistance and paid the ultimate price. The infiltration of Nazi ideology into the churches involved a radical re-interpretation of Christian theology, Hitler himself almost becoming a messiah-like figure to 'save' Germany.

Hitlers evolutionary motivations are also well-documented and there is a clear connection. What is not clear is whether he actually believed personally in the theory of evolution or whether it was merely a vehicle to justify his hatred of the Jews and that he therefore 'used' evolutionary theory as he 'used' the churches.

Probably the major difference which must be noted is that Christian theology does not justify either anti-semitism or murder, whereas the evolutionary 'nature red in tooth and claw' and the horrific eugenics theories which also arose from it are certainly consistent with Darwinism as abhorrent as this may seem. The quote from Sir Arthur Keith, himself an evolutionist, is quite honest in this regard.

Answer 9

because he blamed them for Germany's difficulties during post WW1 depression,so he eventually went completely insane & attempted to annihilate that ethnic group.

Answer 10

Hitler and his army actually did outright kill Jews. Places Jews were killed include:

• in their homes
• in the streets
• inside businesses
• anyplace they tried to meet for religious services
• in 'hiding places' such as in friends' homes
• in the 'Ghetto' to where Hitler forced Jews to move
• on trains to concentration camps, either by gunshot or by the conditions on the trains, in cattle cars with no ventilation
• on long marches to camps, including weaker people who couldn't keep up
• anyone who didn't obey, anywhere
• at "check points" - which were all over

History tells us that Hitler began slowly, which is what many dictators do. By slowly indoctrinating the Germans, he persuaded many more people to agree with his views. HOWEVER, some Germans never agreed with Hitler's politics or policies.

Please see the Related Questions which give a more complete idea as to why Hitler did kill Jews.

Answer 12

He didn't kill them for power. He already had control of them and still killed them.He thought they were an inferior race and should be destroyed.

Answer 13

Adolf Hitler hated and wanted to kill the Jews because he blamed them for the loss of the first World War. Because of Hitler, many Jews were part of a genocide.

Answer 14

Hitler ordered the destruction of millions of Jews because he was limited in his scope of human compassion. He used racist and hurtful propaganda to brainwash millions into following his plan for Aryan domination.

Hitler killed the Jews because he claimed that they had turned against Germany during the First War. Also, he feared German expansion. hitler killed the jews because he believed they were communist, and behind the downfall of germany in WWI.

the jews saved their money, and in europe's depression, they were the only population who flourished. this angered hitler, and he got others to rally behind him against jews.

also, it's been said that hitler's perfect race of people, the arian race, did not include jews, gypsies, or communists, so he had them exterminated; hitler believed he was cleansing the world of "scum".

Answer 15

Hitler wanted to kill the Jewish race because he believed they were the cause of Germany's problems. He also thought the Aryan race was the best so there did not need to be another race competing against them.

Answer 5

He thought this was what God wanted him to do, but he was delusional.

Hitler was not at all religious, He thought as did many Europeans at the time that Jews were a scourge on the community and blamed them for the misfortunes that befell Germany, And whether he did or not doesn't really matter. The Jews were also a target to give to the people to vent their anger on. the same sort of targeting is still used today by every politician. people that are powerless such as Prisoners in goal and refugees come to mind. It is just good robust politics.
Because when he lived in Austria he was poor. He saw all these rich Jews with businesses while he was poor.

Answer 6

After the First Wold War, Hitler was homeless. His life had lost meaning as he was not part of the German Army anymore, therefore he was living on the streets of Munich. Whilst homeless there he saw many Jews whom were rich and had plenty of money. He resented them and blamed them for Germany and Austria-Hungary losing the Great War.

Answer 7

Because he was insane and he saw the Jews as the cause of the bad economic situation in Germany.

Answer 8

Adolf Hitler hated the Jews because when he was part of World War 1, he thinks that the Jews were the ones that made them lose the war.

Answer 9

Hitler wanted to kill all Jewish people because he wanted Germany to be 'perfect'. He also wanted the 'perfect' Aryan.

Answer 10

The only person qualified to answer that question fully and accurately,

without speculation, killed himelf on April 30, 1945.