If you were to ask 100 different individuals to answer the question
“Why did Hitler hate Jews?” you would probably get one hundred different answers or variations thereof. The term
“scapegoat” oftentimes comes to mind. By blaming the Jews for the economic crisis that Germany was suffering through as well as their defeat in World War I, Hitler targeted the Jews as the country’s main enemy. According to him, the Jewish people were directly responsible for Germany’s many problems.
The sad part about all of this is that so many individuals believed him or just stood by as he conducted his murderous campaign against the Jews. The result was that 6 million Jews lost their lives and saw their families decimated during the Holocaust. Therefore, his initial solution was to banish as many Jews from society as possible by imprisoning them in concentration camps throughout Eastern Europe. Eventually, the plan was to exterminate as many of them as possible.
Hitler’s Nazi Party won the election of 1932 and within a year of his victory, he and his party were in control of Germany. His political platform promised that Germany would once again return to power both economically and physically. But first, the Jews must be eliminated. The question that typically arises is why did Hitler hate Jews and did he invent the hatred of the Jewish people? Hitler used anti-Semitic ideas and philosophies to spurn his hatred of the Jews and convince his followers that they were responsible for Germany’s economic woes.
Hitler was born in Austria and spent his childhood growing up in Vienna. At that time, the mayor of the city was anti-Semitic and ensured that his hatred of Jewish people would be widespread. However, this may not be the primary reason behind Hitler’s hatred of the Jews. Many individuals think that this hatred stemmed from a childhood friend that was Jewish. However, it cannot be relegated to a single event in his early life.
One way of the other, anti-Semitism had been around for centuries prior to Hitler’s existence. On a closing note, Hitler and his Nazi counterparts felt that humanity was divided into a number of different races but that theirs (the Aryan race) was not only the best, it was the strongest. He saw the Jews as an inferior race – so inferior that he did not see them as even being human and felt that the only solution was to eliminate them entirely.
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