Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime was founded on the belief that Germans and people of Germanic descent were superior to all other races on earth. Hitler along with many Germans believed they should have won the First World War. They believed that being sanctioned by France and the Allies under the treaty of Versailles was a holy injustice. These proud Germans thought they were descendants of the master race, the Aryans. To the Nazis, the Aryan race was any white European that was not Jewish, Romanian, or Slavic. The Nazis believed these non-Aryan races to be untermenschen or subhuman ("Why Did the Holocaust Happen?", 2017).
Antisemitism dates to ancient times and has often been passed from generation to generation. Many anti-Jewish organizations fabricated stories that depicted Jews as bloodthirsty savages that also were passed on throughout history. Adolf Hitler and his followers took antisemitism to new extremes as they attempted to justify the extermination of a race. Hitler’s extreme disdain for Jews is uncertain other than the fact he served in World War One and blamed the Jews for Germany's loss. Mein Kampf, written by Hitler in 1923, foretold of a great European war that would result in the annihilation of Jews in Germany ("The Holocaust", 2017).
Nazi troops block the entrance to Jewish shops.
Photo credit: Hoosier State Chronicle |
The Nazis described Jews as rats and untermenschen, providing German supporters to not think of Jews as people but a vile creature or pest. In the early 1930’s, Hitler quietly began to implement his plan of racial purity for the Aryan race. Directed initially at riding and interning Communists and Social Democrats, the first concentration camp was opened. These camps that would later multiply would become the killing grounds of millions of Jews ("The Holocaust", 2017).
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“As long as there have been men on the earth, the struggle between man and the subhuman will be the historic rule; the Jewish-led struggle against the mankind, as far back as we can look, is part of the natural course of life on our planet. One can be convinced with full certainty that this struggle for life and death is just as much a law of nature as is the struggle of an infection to corrupt a healthy body." - SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler ("Der Untermensch", 2010).
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SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler
Photo credit: Warfare History Net |
SS troops moving Jewish prisoners.
Photo credit: Boston Globe |
From 1933 to 1939, the Nazis violently removed over half a million German Jews from society during the Aryanization process. German Jew doctors and lawyers were stripped of their clients by the Nazi regime. Furthermore, Jewish business owners had their assets liquidated. After the war began in 1939 Polish Jews were forced from their homes and moved into ghettos with high walls. The Jews possessions were given to Germans and non-Jewish Polish ("The Holocaust", 2017).
Auschwitz - Berkenau main gate
Phot credit: Holocaust Search Project |
Beginning in 1941, the Germans began mass deportation from Jewish ghettos, relocating the Jews to concentration camps. The SS started to systematically exterminate Jews by the thousands, culminating in the murder of millions by the end of the war in 1945 ("The Holocaust", 2017). Hitler’s untermenschen was a sales pitch to the German people to make them believe Jews were not human and their subsequent extermination was equivalent to putting down an animal. The Holocaust happened because the German people turned a blind eye to Hitler’s disgust for the Jews, that led to the murder of millions ("Why Did the Holocaust Happen?", 2017).
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