Killing of Jews

I'm currently taking a WWII class and the question I have is why did the Germans choose to kill the Jews? Please point me in the right direction.

Gene Brown

You're asking a question which has been asked by every historian who ever studied the 2nd world war, and nobody has come up with a satisfactory answer yet. What exactly do you want to know? Why the Nazis picked the ews( And the Gypsies, Slavs, Gays etc.), or why a civilized nation would murder millions of it's own citizens?

There is no documented reason. There is only speculation.

Its pretty well documented in Mein Kampf.

Well, Steve, Mein Kampf documents Hitler's thoughts and plans. There is _no_ reason, documented or not, in Mein Kampf that 'the Germans chose to kill the Jews.'

Heinz

'As hard as I try to be sensitive and politically correct, I can't avoid bumping my way into boorish opinions, thus offending those who are truly enlightened.' - Mike Royko

This emphasis on Mein Kampf is absurd. It was written many years prior to Hitler's rise to power. Unless Hitler had some divine guidance, how could he have written out more than a decade earlier exactly what his policy would be. As we see with American politicians, they have not policy direction for any length of time. Consider Wilson. He ran in 1916 on the platform that he kept us out of the war. Then, in March, 1917, we went to war.

GFH ******************************************************* ******** http://www.ankerstein.org/ The Anchor Stone Building Set (Anker-Steinbaukasten) Home Page See what makes me tick. ******************************************************* ********

And half a hundred other places as well, including the notes and recollections of those who attended the Wannsee Conference.

Come on George, your analogy is thin at best. The differnce is that Hitler did in fact follow the policy that he wrote down a decade before. He spelled out pretty clearly his hatred of Jews in Mein Kampf and the when he rose to power, acted on his hatred of the Jews. When did Hitler write Mein Kampf? When he was in Landsberg prison for treason for trying to overthrow the government? Was Hitler not attempting to secure power back in the 1920's?

To say that Mein Kampf had nothing to do with the Nazi policy of eliminating the Jews is absurd.

I will agree with you on the basis that the Germans had no documented plans to kill the Jews. As I stated in my post it was not a German plan but one laid out by Hitler and carried out by the Nazis. As the head of state, Hitler's plan to eliminate the Jews from Europe was based upon his personal prejudice of the Jews and therefore became policy of the Nazi regime.

I for one do not hold responsible Germany or the German people for the atrocities committed by the Nazis. I consider myself somewhat educated in seeing the difference from being German and being a Nazi, just as there is a difference from being Russian and being a Communist.

Hitler for his reasons, hated Jews to the point where he felt that they were such a menace to the world that they had to be exterminated. This hatred is clearly spelled out in Mein Kampf and after he rose to power became policy for the nation, not that everyone in Germany agreed with him.

Smart boxers don't discount an opponent's punch BECAUSE it's telegraphed ahead of time.

American politicians have imposed limits on the actualization of their desires.

Who was there to tell Hitler what he couldn't do?

*Warning*

What follows is pure speculation

*Warning*

Hitler's first love was and continued to be art. He failed at the canvas so he moved on to politics.

He envisioned a society created from fantasies located in the dark recesses of his mine.

To begin any work of art, an artist needs a blank medium. The painter a clean canvas, the sculptor formless clay, the writer an empty page, so on and so forth.

(I heartily apologize to any artist reading these words. I don't think you are potential mass murderers by any means.)

To create a new society, Hitler had to clean the slate. The foundation of western civilization is, at its core, Jewish. The moral guidance of the Decalogue undergirds our legality, the biblical stories permeate art and architecture through paintings, sculpture and cathedrals. Even the principles of human rights and limited government can, to a limited amount, be found in Old Testament law and literature. Of course, Christianity itself, was of Jewish origin.

Thus Hitler had to remove the main obstacle to his new 1000 year creation. The Jews. Once they were gone, he would move on to the other facets of society that displeased him, such as the Church, the Poles, etc. But first and foremost, in his twisted monomaniacal view, the Jews had to go.

Best Regards, Derek Copold