Anti-Semitism During The Holocaust

Anti-semitism, defined as hostility to or prejudice against Jews, was the most integral part of the Third Reich. Blaming Jewish people for various economic and national problems had been common in European culture for many, many years, and was made explicit in Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. Through Hitler's rule over Germany, anti-Semitism became a central part of German society. The Nazis aimed to purge the Jews from German life, which turned into the Final Solution. This is known as the Holocaust, which was the genocide of over 6 million Jewish people.
The Final Solution was based off of Hitler's pledge to free Germany of the Jewish people. He claimed that the Jews were polluting the Aryan race, and encouraged demonizing them. The Final Solution wasn’t actually publicly discussed before the outbreak of the war, and it can be questioned if the Nazis even considered it before 1939. Initially, the Nazis aimed to just exile the Jewish people from Germany, forcing them to emigrate from the country. Between 1933 and 1938, 50% of Germany's Jewish population emigrated, traveling to the United States and other European countries. In 1935, The Nuremberg Laws defined a Jew as anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent. To the Nazis, anyone with even a little bit of Jewish heritage was a threat. In 1938, the violence consumed Germany in Kristallnacht, and the overwhelming amount of fear the Jewish people in Nazi Germany had only grew. When Germany annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia, they brought in another 250,000 Jews, which only increased to 1.5 million with the invasion of Poland. The Nazi leaders weren't happy about this, and prejudice increased. Emigration was strongly pushed, but by this time most nations started restricting immigration. Even then, some European countries deported their Jewish population to concentrations camps. The Nazis began forcing the Jews into ghettos, and were legally restricted to these areas. The ghettos were overcrowded, and the starvation levels were high. Anyone who attempted to escape or smuggle goods into the ghettos were executed. While the Nazis were satisfied that the Jews were out of the way, the process of getting rid of them all would take a very long time. During this time, Jews were forced to wear a yellow Star of David, distinguishing them from everyone else. By wearing them, they were barred from most jobs, and were subjected to the confiscation of all their belongings. In March of 1938, Adolf Eichmann, head of the Race and Resettlement Office, was assigned to create the basis of the Final Solution. Eichmann implemented the mass arrest of Jews in all German occupied countries. The Jews would eventually be transported, via railroads, to extermination and labor camps, where they would be …show more content…
Hitler definitely had plans to remove the Jews from Germany from the start, but the method of removing them would have developed overtime. In the beginning, the Nazis forcibly removed the Jewish population from Germany, and only resorted to intense violence towards the end of the war. I think I lean more towards a more moderate functionalist viewpoint; the Nazis aimed to expel all Jews from Germany, but after that tactic failed and they grew desperate, they restored to genocide. Still, nothing can ever excuse the mass murder of millions of innocent people under the Nazi