There was also a certain amount of jealousy among the Germans directed at the Jews. Whilst the rest of the country had been suffering in the depression the Jews did not do nearly as badly. And this was in what seemed to man as there own community, witch spoke its own language, Yiddish, and had there own political party.
Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats, at of the depression the time Germans were feeling very sorry for themselves and were looking to blame any one else but them selves. Hitler said that the Jews and communists were part of a conspiracy to bring down Germany. Many people believed this from the wealth of the Jews and communist leaders like Trotsky had Jewish background. This made the Germans angry with the Jews and as before led to a feeling of anti-Semitism.
The Nazis also used their propaganda used successfully in the election. They showed Jews as evil and whipped up anti-Semitism views into hatred. The Nazi newspaper often had cartoons of Jews doing malicious acts such as mincing rats to make into sausages. The Nazis used their propaganda machine to spread existing feeling of anti-Semitism and spread theories of a Jew–communist conspiracy. It was used with extreme success to make the Germans jealous, cross and anti-Semitist.
This all the Nazis the base they needed; this is the support of the people who due to existing and new anti-Semitism were ready to accept a basic persecution of the Jews. However the Nazis could not dive strait into the mass murder of the Jewish race. I will now explain how the persecution of the Jews developed.
On 1 April 1933 the Nazis started to boycott the Jewish stores, this was organised by the SA, often Storm troopers would stand outside and stop people from been able to go in. At the same time Jews were banned from having jobs in the civil service. The Nazis also started to try and take out of Jews from economic life. This was known as the ‘aryanization of businesses’. The people supported this and more joined the anti-Semite movement in fear of been seen as anti German.
On 9 November a German official was shot in Paris a young Jew was blamed for this. This gave the Nazis to step up the persecution of Jews. The way they did this was ‘Kristallnacht’ or ‘the night of broken glass’. It was called this as practically all Jewish shops had their windows smashed and all the synagogues in Germany were set alight. Much of this was done or supported by the public and the Nazis now realised they could form a legal base for the persecution of the Jews.
This legal base for the persecution of the Jews was the Nuremberg laws made on September 15, 1935. These laws took the citizenship away form all Jews and prohibited ‘Aryans’ from having a relationship with a Jew. They basically legalised the persecution of the Jews. By saying the Jews weren’t German they said that they weren’t human and it was perfectly all right to treat them inhumanely.
1939 WWII started with the invasion of Poland, this did not slow down the persecution of the Jews but rather intensify it. Ghettos were the next step of the persecution these were walled off areas of cities or towns. And filled them with Jews, here disease spread on starving, sleepless cold Jew, dead people lie on the street. Jews were forced to were the Star of David as identification. This separated the Jew completely from society and as they were treated subhuman the people believed that they were. And they did not really see what was happening in the ghettos. The Nazis now knew they could with anything.
In 1941 Germany invaded Russia and they seemed set to take on thousands of Jews. The Nazis decided that that ghettos and concentration camps were not enough for them. In 1942 the Wannsee conference was held where over a buffet lunch they came to a ‘final solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem’. This final solution was the mass extermination of Jews at newly built death camps. These could ‘process’ 2000 Jews at a time by leading them into what they thought were showers but really released a deadly gas. All 2000 would be dead within 3 minutes. This was the final part of the persecution of the Jews and without the end of the war they would have killed all of the Jews in the areas they controlled without hesitation.
The persecution of the Jews was simply down an historic prejudice and jealousy coupled with the want to blame someone else for their problems. This was used to start a boycott against Jewish stores. And from here it moved up to the death camps witch killed around 3 million Jews. They did this gradually so as it could be accepted by the people and the most horrific stages in the persecution such as death camps and the Ghettos were hidden from the public. They did this highly effectively and with disgusting effects from little more than jealousy.
