jews

When Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933 he had been cautious not to act upon his Jewish hatred as he had not yet achieved the support of the population whose attitude towards the Jews ranged from indifference to sympathy. However this was to change as the regime tightened its repressive grip. During the years 1933-35 Jews experienced a period of relative freedom as Hitler and the regime focused towards efforts to consolidate power and reduce unemployment. Throughout this essay I intend to highlight Hitler’s policies and to what extent it affected or changed Jewish lives in Germany.

As Stephen Lee states “the Nazi regime totally committed to the pursuit of co-racial policy of Aryanism, are the projection of the people driven as the master race”. Hitler had been drawn to the belief of an Aryan race that previously had been ‘poisoned’ by the Jews. Hitler; “all the great cultures of the past were destroyed only because the originally created race had died from blood poisoning”. Hitler believed in Darwin’s theory; he manipulated the theory of ‘survival of the fittest’. The target had now been put forward, the solution that “he who would live, let him fight and he who would not fight in this world of struggle is not deserving of life”. Throughout his book Mein Kampf it is clear to see his hatred toward this group referring to them as ‘filthy Jews’ and furthermore backing up his belief of the poisoning of the pure German blood as he explained the Jews were ‘contaminating’ pure German blood, Hitler’s main priority lay in the creation of a ‘volksgmeinshaft’ [peoples community]; a classless, harmonious and racially pure society united under his rule and in order to be effective needed to have its impurities removed. There included groups such as physically/mentally impaired or ethnic minorities, alcoholics, homosexuals, Jews and gypsies, any person or group which deemed undesirable by Hitler. He therefore on the Jews created a stereotype that they were parasite living off the wealth of the German nation. Furthermore his distain of the German Jews had been addressed in one of his speeches in which he fantasised about hanging Jews from Munich lampposts until their bodies ‘rotted’. Much of Germanys ills and grievances had been blamed on the Jews; these included the defeat in World War One, the economic depression and the acceptance of the humiliating dictat. Also blaming them of worldwide conspiracy to take over. Himmler like Hitler believed “we have a moral right to kill these people” but even though these feelings progressed even worse as time went on, nobody could have predicted the extent of which Hitler would truly go to, to achieve his aims.

During the…