During the 19th century, however, the nature of anti-Semitism took a more racial form. Many scholars, who claimed that nations needed to be fit to survive and rule, adopted Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Some, however, argued that a nation’s most important political task was to eliminate those who were racially weak and harmful. This is of course the argument that Hitler used to justify many of his actions.
In the second half of the 19th century, anti-Semitism in Germany became associated with militant nationalism. German nationalists promoted the idea that Germans were a master race with a great faith placed in the superiority of the German Volk. The ideas of this were based on a sense of community that arose from ancestral blood ties and which promoted the warrior virtues of Germanic society. These were Honour, duty, courage, and loyalty while in contrast the Jewish race was seen as standing for everything opposite to the idea of the Volk. They stood for liberalism, socialism, modernism and pacifism.
Later in the 19th century the roots of anti-Semitism in Nazi ideology became evident. In 1899, Houston Chamberlain wrote that the Jews were an evil, degenerate race, who were trying to achieve world domination at the expense of the Germans. Interestingly Chamberlain was the son-in-law of Richard Wagner, the famous German composer who was himself an extreme nationalist and anti-Semitic. The result of all this was that by the turn of the century many Germans, including the Kaiser himself, believed that the Jews presented a problem although they provided less than 1% of the German population.
The Germans felt if the Jews were not annihilated there would very soon no longer be any struggle for living space, not just the German nation, but ultimately all nations. But if, on the other hand, the German people failed to conquer new living space, it would die out because of that and the Jews would triumph. The Jews posed a threat for the Germans, which is why anti-Semitism played such a key role in Nazi ideology. Thus, the Great depression at the end of the 19th century meant that man passed for the blame of this onto the Jewish financiers. Thus they began to provide convenient scapegoats for the problems in German society. This is a theme that Hitler uses on a regular basis. By the onset of World War 1 there was a sense of anti-Semitism that permeated many areas of German society. It was though no worse than it was in other countries.
The main reason why anti-Semitism played such a key role in Nazi ideology, was because of Hitler himself. Although he was the product rather than the creator, Hitler was brought up in Austria, which was in many ways more anti-Semitic than Germany was. The end of the war seemed to cement the anti-Semitic ideas within Hitler, and he believed that the German soldier had been stabbed in the back by the ‘November criminals’, which consisted of Marxists, socialists and the Jews. It is from this point on that Hitler regarded the Jews as a sinister enemy of Germany. Hitler believed that the Jews weakened and subverted the racial purity of the Aryan race and poisoned their institutions. As a result Hitler blamed the Jews for many of the problems that existed in Germany. They were blamed for the defeat in World War 1, the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles, the weak Weimar republic, dangerous ideas such as Marxism and the Wall Street crash and the Great Depression of 1929. These were five major issues, which the Jews were blamed for, so anti-Semitism began to play a large role in Nazi ideology.
Hitler believed that to have a strong nation, there must be an increase in the racially pure Aryans, and the removal of not only the Jews but also the Slavs, Africans and Arabians. However, one of the key reasons why anti-Semitism played such a key role in the Nazi ideology was because of the weaknesses of the Weimar republic. This meant Hitler’s views were more popular by 1933, due to many reasons. The reasons being, the Jews had become prominent cabinet members and were therefore associated with the weak Weimar republic. The Jews had become associated with modern music, art and drama and the Jews were blamed for the Wall Street crash due to their role as financiers. As a result of this the myth of a Jewish Bolshevik conspiracy for world domination became more popular. It was not, however, their anti-Semitic policies that made people vote for them. The people were drawn to anti-Semitism because they were drawn to Nazism and not the other way round.
It was due to Hitler and his anti-Semitic policies that the majority of Germans who voted for the Nazi party in 1932-33 accepted anti-Semitism either fully of in part and the majority hoped that some action would be taken against the Jews. However, they did not want the Holocaust, they just wanted the Jews to have less involvement in the good jobs. They did not anticipate such a catastrophe!
