The Tragic Consequences of Perceived Superiority: Hatred, Persecution, and the Holocaust.

    European anti-Semitism goes back many generations and is rooted mainly, but not only, in religious beliefs. The idea that Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus is a notion that has survived thousands of years, as well as the idea that Jews are shrewd moneylenders, which also stems from that same period. Nazi anti-Semitism, however, is composed of completely different beliefs about Jews and has nothing to do with religion, but everything to do with blood. The hatred, persecution, and ultimate extermination of Jews stemmed from the fact that they saw themselves as the more superior race. They answered the Jewish question by proposing to eliminate them completely through state-sponsored policies, laws, and violence fueled by eugenics.

    In 1903, the Pan-German League tried to invigorate German citizens to unite and keep the awareness of themselves as “Germans” at the forefront. They wanted to make sure their ethnicity was preserved and that the next generation was being educated correctly about who they were. (Kruck, 10) Many Germans were swept up with this idea, Adolf Hitler being one of them. He gave a speech in September 1921, where he argued that Jews could not change because their qualities were inherited, and so the solution would be to separate the Jew from the rest of society to prevent corruption so that the Aryan race could be kept vibrant and healthy. “And in this characteristic, which he cannot transcend, which lies in his blood… -in this characteristic itself lies the necessity for the Jew that he must present himself as destructive to the state.” (Griech-Polelle, 67-8) Hitler was very passionate about excluding anyone from the community who could potentially disrupt the purity and health of the perfect German race, all before he was even in a high position of power.

    Once Hitler assumed power he had to be careful not to alienate the German people by enforcing his agenda too fast. The Nazi party created a 25-point party program back in 1920, where they declared their intentions to segregate the Jews from the Aryan nation. (Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume IV, Document No. 1708-PS) They never tried to hide this and were vocal and public with their intentions for years. During Hitler's rise to power, they were finally able to implement many of the points of their plan, using him as their vehicle every step of the way. Hitler had to work in such a way that the German people would also come to understand his point of view when it came to the Jewish question in slow, subtle, yet powerful ways. The meticulous and carefully planned propaganda against the Jews started by including communists and socialists in the same category thus making them all seem part of a bigger problem. On April 7, 1933, the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” was proclaimed, announcing that you could no longer work in civil service unless you were of Aryan descent. This was the very first anti-Semitic law of Hitler’s regime and the start of a laundry list of policies and laws aimed at Jews to ruin them financially with the hopes that they would give up and leave Germany voluntarily. (Griech-Polelle, 79)

    The idea that German blood and being of Aryan descent is what makes you superior was of great importance to Hitler and many others within Nazi leadership. After implementing policies and laws limiting Jews in many capacities, the Nazi party finally saw the need to define what it truly meant to be a German citizen. On September 15, 1935, the German parliament, now made up entirely of Nazi representatives, passed two new laws known as the Nuremberg Laws. “The Reich Citizenship Law” is the first of those two new laws and it defined a citizen as someone of German or kindred blood. If you were a citizen, you would be able to enjoy full political rights such as the right to vote. If you were Jewish, you were no longer considered a citizen, according to this new law, even if you came from a mixed Jewish family. This new law was a huge step backward for Jews in Germany, as they were now no longer considered citizens in a nation that many had lived in for generations. Article 2.1 of the new law states that a Reich citizen: “proves by his conduct that he is willing and fit to faithfully serve the German people and Reich.” (USHMM) Many Jews fought bravely for their country in World War I and considered themselves maybe even more German than Jewish. Now they were tossed aside like garbage because their blood on the inside mattered more than what they had contributed to their country in the past.

    The second law created was the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.” The first paragraph of that law reads: “Moved by the understanding that purity of German blood is the essential condition for the continued existence of the German people, and inspired by the inflexible determination to ensure the existence of the German nation for all time, the Reichstag has unanimously adopted the following law.” (USHMM) This law banned marriage between Jews and non-Jewish German citizens. It even criminalized a relationship between them and labeled it as race defilement. If you tried to skirt the law by getting married outside of the country, there was an addition that stated that your marriage would be invalid when you returned and that the government had the authority to annul it. Violation of this law resulted in prison time which could even include hard labor. The matter of race was taken very seriously in the eyes of the Nazi party, and the idea of defiling pure, healthy, German blood had caused them to take extreme measures such as the Nuremberg Laws.

    Between 1933 and 1939 more than four hundred different regulations, policies, and laws were implemented that affected Jews in all aspects of their lives. These included the laws I already mentioned above, as well as many others, ranging from ever-changing restrictions for Jewish students at Universities to Jewish officers being expelled from the army, and so much more.

    The never-ending list of anti-Semitic policies and laws were not created because of anti-religious beliefs against Jewish people. They were simply a way for the Nazi party to keep pressure on a group that already felt like they were drowning and there was nobody there to pull them to safety. With each new law restricting them even further some only saw suicide as the way out, and some paid the enormous tax and left with only the clothes on their backs, many thought this possibly could not last forever and things would eventually go back to normal again, but most could never predict that it would get much worse. The Nazi party would never see the Jewish people as citizens, and if they did not leave voluntarily after six long years of tightening restrictions and making life unbearable for them, the Nazis would have to come up with another plan, because they couldn’t have them stay and defile their superior race of strong and pure German blood. The final solution would have to involve something more sinister as expulsion was not working.

Sources:

Beth A. Griech-Polelle, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust: Language, Rhetoric and the Traditions of Hatred (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023)

Alfred Kruck, Die Geschichte des Alldeutschen Verbandes 1890-1939 [The History of the Pan-German League 1890-1939] (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1954)

Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume IV, Document No. 1708-PS, Translation of Document 1708-PS, edited by Dr. Robert Ley (Munich: Central Publishing House of the N.S.D.A.P., Franz Eher, successor).

United States holocaust memorial museum, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nuremberg-laws.

[Paper written for HIST 4130 class UVU Fall 2024]

Amy Brouwer . 2024 . All Rights Reserved