Obsessions With Superiority:
Why Jews Were Singled Out For Persecution
“If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example.” This was once written by the young Anne Frank. As Anne Frank was one of the many people to have endured the Holocaust and sadly not survived, we wonder why she and many other Jews were singled out for extermination by the Nazis. During the Holocaust, Jews were mistreated and sent to their deaths in concentration camps due to the uncontrolled authority of false-thinking Nazi rulers. Of course, Jews weren’t really a race as the Nazis had thought, but they were a people dedicated to the
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Hitler had been a part of the National German Workers Party, or the Nazis. According to the staff of History.com, he was then imprisoned for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. While he was in jail, Hitler wrote the memoir and propaganda tract Mein Kampf which means “my struggle.” In this, he foreshadowed the eradication of the Jewish “race” in Germany as a result of an European War. After Hitler was released from jail, he made the Nazis grow into positions that were in charge of great power (“Holocaust”). Hitler had a plan that he referred to as the Final Solution. Of course, the solution was to a problem that wasn’t an actual problem at all, but he decided to follow through with this corrupted plan. The “Final solution” was a term that suggested the Nazis’ path to completely destroy the Jewish people. It is unknown when the Nazi leaders decided to take the pathway of genocide and mass murder, but they used many codes and secret terms to refer to their evil plan to kill the hated Jews (“German Jews”). The origins of Hitler’s hatred for Jews and belief in this type of vicious anti-Semitism isn’t apparent. We do know that he followed a popular view among anti-semitism followers in Germany, which was that Jews were to blame for the country’s defeat in 1918 (“Holocaust”). Clearly, Adolf Hitler’s plan for the …show more content…
Another group that was persecuted in large numbers was the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Nazi Germany targeted Jehovah’s Witnesses because they wouldn’t swear loyalty to the Nazi government. In the beginning of the war, they weren’t persecuted, by they decided to go deliberately against the Nazi government. Jehovah’s Witnesses did this by actively pursuing their missionary works and refusing to serve in the military as it went against their religion (“Search Results”). Gypsies were also persecuted because Hitler feared that minority groups would rise up against larger groups like the Aryans, and essentially take over the world (“Search Results”). Another group that Nazi-Germany discriminated against was the Soviet prisoners of war. On June 22, 1941, the Soviet Union was invaded by Germany. Three million German soldiers were accompanied by the Finnish and cut off the Soviet soldiers from necessities, so the Soviets were forced to surrender. Germany violated every standard of warfare with the disrespectful way that they treated the prisoners of war. Around fifty-seven percent of the 5.7 million Soviets were dead by the end of the war. Consequently, the Soviet prisoners of war were the second largest group persecuted by the Nazis due to racial differences (“Search Results”). As you can see, even though the Jews were treated very harshly, they weren't the only group to be persecuted by the
Hitler believed that the German people were part of an 'Aryan race,' a superior group that should be kept pure to fulfill their mission of ruling the world. He felt that the Jewish people were 'sub-human,' when in actuality they were virtually the same as his 'Aryan race.' Not only did Hitler have a personal hatred toward the Jewish people, but he also blamed them for 'stabbing Germany in the back' after Germany's defeat in World War I. Hitler used them as scapegoats because they were a minority and were easy to put the blame on. 'Historians agree that the Holocaust resulted from a confluence of various factors in a complex historical situation. That anti-Semitism festered throughout the centuries in European culture is centrally important; the Jews were (and are) a minority civilization in a majority environment. In periods of crisis, instead of searching for the solution of
that Hitler wanted to eliminate the Jews before anything else. Hitler firmly blamed all of the bad things on the Jews, and wanted to exterminate them as a whole. Dawidowicz states, “The mass murder of the Jews was the consummation of his fundamental beliefs and ideological convictions” (Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews, 3). She expresses the idea that Hitler was taking place in early anti-Semitism,
The Jews were victimized because “Hitler blamed the loss of world war one on them” (Snyder). Hitler also believed that if you were not German you needed to be eradicated and this is why he killed the poles. Hitler also went after homosexuals because he thought that they were the devil and they needed to be cleansed. Hitler also went after the gypsies because they were nomadic and there religion and lifestyle choices. People with disabilities were targeted because Hitler believed they were unfit to live with “normal” society.
In the case of the Holocaust, Jews were discriminated for their religion, and not fitting the “perfect’ Aryan race that Hitler was trying to create. (History.com/salem Witch Trials)The Holocaust was led by Hitler and the German army, they administered the mass killing called the “Final Solution”. (History.com/Holocaust) Jews were not the only victims of the holocaust Gypsies, mentally ill, and disabled people were all discriminated by Hitler and did not fit his Aryan race. (United States Holocaust memorial museum.com) They were forced into concentration camps were they suffered until they were eventually killed or starved to
Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party, had ambitions to create a perfect race. This meant eliminating the Jewish race along with other undesirable races and disabled humans.
The Jews weren’t always liked, and they never had a place to call home, being spread out all across Europe. However Hitler took things to another level, blaming the Jews for Germany’s defeat in WWI and its following economic depression and. It is unknown why he chose the Jews as scapegoats, or whether he actually even believed the Jews were responsible, but all he saw at the time was Jews living in prosperity while Germans were suffering. Hitler’s hate made him feel like he had to exterminate all the Jews in Europe, so in his memoir “Mein Kampf”, Hitler wrote down how he planned to kill all the Jews. However the Jews then didn’t believe one man would be willing to go this far for no certain reason.
him or what made him hate the Jewish race so much. Studying Adolf Hitler’s beliefs can give the world history because he gave the world an insight as to why one would want to deliberately exterminate a race, political party, nationality,
The Jewish people have been one of the most persecuted groups in history since the days of Jesus, since the years of the Holocaust and still to this day (prezi.com). When the Nazis persecuted the Jews, one of the reasons given was the defeat of Germany in the First World War. The persecution of Jews reached its most destructive form in Nazi Germany, which made the destruction of the Jews a priority, culminating in the killing of approximately 6,000,000 Jews during the Holocaust from 1941 to 1945.
The Nazi government identified many groups to persecute. The most well known is the Jewish people. However, the Nazis did not stop there. Another group victimized by Hitler was the disabled.
German dictator, Adolf Hitler wanted a new order for Germany and his so-called Aryan race. As a part of achieving his ultimate goal, he would have to eliminate any and all other inferior races. This evil plan later became known as the Holocaust. Hitler, with the aid of the Nazis and concentration camps, brought terror and devastation to the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.
When thinking of the Holocaust and the discrimination included in it, we tend to think that only the jews were the ones “living” in the death camps, but that is false. Jews along with Political Prisoners (Communist, Socialists, and Trade Unionists),Gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, Disabled Individuals and Homosexuals were all prisoners in these concentration camps because Hitler didn’t like them for
Adolf Hitler came to power over Germany in January of 1933. He hated Jews and blamed them for everything bad that had ever happened to Germany. Hitler’s goal in life was to eliminate the Jewish population. With his rise to power in Germany, he would put into action his plan of elimination. This is not only why German Jews were the main target of the Holocaust, but why they were a large part of the years before, during, and after the Holocaust. Hitler’s “final solution” almost eliminated the Jewish population in Europe during World War II. At the end of the war and along with his suicide, the Jewish population would survive the horror known as the Holocaust and the Jews would eventually find their way back to their homeland of Israel
These two racial ethnicities were extremely persecuted because they threatened the Nazi idea of nationalism as they did not have a settled land or living place and normally lived in Diasporas . The Gypsies or Roma were one of the most
Hitler had every intention to “purify” Germany and to do this all the Jews had to be gone. He also thought that they were the reason for their defeat in world war one. He also wanted to ensure that German “master race” of blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin were not influenced by the Jewish characteristics that didn't match his description of the master race. Hitler killed, removed and slaved Jewish people so his country could be “pure”. This isn't the only example of genocide, the Rwanda genocide is another great example.
Hitler had shown unwillingness to tolerate the Jews and once he was appointed Chancellor, he started to take elimination measures like deportation, forced emigration, and isolation to enforce his belief. He took advantage of Germany’s weakness in World War One, then used it as an opportunity to blame the Jews for Germany’s defeat. Hitler’s political party was the largest political party in Germany thus allowing them to draw very large crowds to gatherings. He had very good oratory speeches with hand gestures that easily manipulated people to adhere to his views. Hitler constantly targeted the Jews because he knew people believed in these speeches. People in Germany were already anti-semitic but Hitler made it worse by constantly consuming them in his speeches. From the way he spoke about the Jews, we could clearly see the possibility of genocide. Hitler wanted Germany to be free of any humans that anyone other than his ideal master race so he personally selected bodyguards to be part of a group called the SS. Hitler was responsible for ordering the SS to carry out the extermination of anyone who did not fit this ideal. The SS handled oppositions using force and as a result of which people were forced to give into the idea of violence. Sometimes people purposely went along with this Holocaust ideal due to the fear of getting killed. These terrors allowed the holocaust occur