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The Holocaust And The Holocaust

Decent Essays

The Holocaust was a genocide which lasted from 1942 to 1945 in which around 6 million European Jewish people were killed. It was the result of the Ideals of the past chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler. Hitler came to power in 1933 by capitalising on worldwide events such as the great depression in 1929 resulting from the Wall Street crash. He began spreading his ideas of anti-Semitism to the German population in preparation for the ‘Final Solution' with the assistance of distribution methods like propaganda, violence, and an economic boycott. Most of the impacts resulting from his methods proved to be extremely valuable to the success of the preparation as they efficiently and effectively carved a hateful image of the Jewish population into the minds of the German people and aligned them with Hitler's ideas of anti-Semitism. However, some of his methods were not valuable to prepare the German people as they were not able to depict a strong enough bias against the Jews.

Propaganda was arguably one of the most effective ways for ideas to be spread around rapidly, this was shown in Hitler's autobiography, Mien Kampf, in which he states: "Propaganda tries to force a doctrine on the whole people….. Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea." It shows that Hitler understood the effectiveness of propaganda and utilised it to spread his anti-Semitist ideas towards the German people to create a negative image of the Jewish population. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Webpage states that the Nazi propagandists "exploited pre-existing images and stereotypes, and portrayed Jews as an "alien race" that fed off the host nation, poisoned its culture, seized its economy, and enslaved its workers and farmers." This hateful depiction of the Jewish people was enough to create fire in the minds of the German population and drove them into an anti-Semitic frenzy, resulting in the German people expressing their rage against the Jews through violent means. The impact on the German people that was created by the slanderous depictions of Jews was extremely valuable to prepare them for the Holocaust, as the hatred for the Jews was so deeply

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