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Explain how and why the Jews were persecuted in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. Explain why it was so difficult to stop the persecution of the Jews. Between the years 1920 and 1930, many stereotypes of Jews developed in Europe. All Jews were seen as large nosed, wealthy, obese, dirty, ugly, smelly, dishonest, greedy, and deceitful people. They were also seen as drunk, perverted, and seducing people. In fact any bad point you can say about anybody, they were classed to be. "The only thing that Jews could understand was the whip. " There was a lot of propaganda in Der Summer, a German magazine/ newspaper about the Jews.
A good example of that is a cartoon of a stereotypical Jew hugging what could be taken for a young Aryan woman. There is a bottle of alcohol on the floor. This shows the Jew to be a perverted, alcoholic user. Looking at the propaganda on the Jews, all of the visual pictures of the Jews had elderly people on them instead of young Jews. They used old people because it is easier to make an older person look uglier than she / he actually is. The ideas for these stereotypes originally formed when the Romans became Christians.
These Christians were against those who remained "traditional Jews." They tried to turn people against Judaism. The Christian stereotype of a Jew was a dishonest, scheming character, responsible for lots of evil things. During the Medieval period, myths developed, enhancing the general appearance of the stereotypes that had previously been formed. The Blood Libel was a myth that stated that Jews used Christian children's blood to bake their Passover bread. This idea was often aroused when a Christian child went missing.
The Black Death was supposed to have been caused by Jewish people poisoning the rivers and seas. This could not have happened, because otherwise it would also have affected the Jews themselves. "Life was very normal before the Nazis came to power, " says a woman who was a Jewish girl born in 1921. Jewish children could go to a Yiddish speaking schools. There was little conflict between the two religions and 13 million Jews lived in Europe. In Germany, Jews formed 1 % of the population. They had a sense of belonging to the German race.
After World War I, Germany was forced to sign, the Treaty of Versailles, which meant that she, was plunged into a desperate situation. In 1929, the Wall Street Crash occured, and America wanted all the money she had lent to Germany back, to fund her recovery. This meant that Germany was destroyed economically as well as socially, so everyone suffered. To get them out of this difficult situation, they all looked to extremist political parties to run Germany. There were two extremist parties, the Communists and the Nazis. People had little confidence in the democratic system and turned towards the extremist political parties like the Communists and Nazis during the Depression because they needed to get out of the crisis that they were in at the time.
The Nazis bullied all the other parties out of the July Election in 1932, so the only party to vote for were the Nazis. After the failure of the Munich Putsch in 1923, Hitler tried to gain power in a lawful way. He wanted to be elected rather than to seize control. In 1930, the Nazis won 107 seats in Reichstag (the German parliament) from the 12 seats it had in 1928. The Nazi vote was slow to increase during the 1920 s while things were going well, but the Depression changed the situation dramatically.
Because Hitler had despised the Jews all his life, he made a scapegoat of them. He blamed the Jews for all of the things that had gone wrong with World War I, and because this man who was to get them out of this "Depression" said so, the German public hated them also. Hitler believed in a hierarchy, in which Aryans, people with blue eyes and blond hair, were at the top. These were commonly known as the master race. Jews were at the bottom of this list. He believed that the Jew was trying to destroy the world and therefore Germany needed to be saved and rid of them.
He also stated that there was scientific proof that Jews were a sub-human race. In 1933, Hitler became chancellor and the Nazi party was the largest in the Reichstag, even though the other parties, working together, could still outvote them. On 23 rd March 1933, a law was passed "for removing the distress of people and Reich." This became known as the enabling act. From now on, Hitler could make rules of his own. The Germans voted for the Nazis in the 1933 general election. There were many reasons for this.
Firstly, Hitler was a great speaker. He could say what he wanted to say very well and with force. This gave him favour amongst the German public. Secondly, the other political parties were not prepared to work together. This gave the German public a feeling of mistrust for the other political parties. The Depression of 1929 created many economical problems.
The Nazis said that they would get rid of all this. That was what the German public wanted to hear. The Chancellors appointed by President Hindenburg did not have enough support in the Reichstag and had to rely on the President's emergency powers. In addition to this, a very clever and organised man called Goebbels arranged a very effective propaganda campaign. Hitler and the Nazis targeted specific groups of society with different slogans and policies to get their support. The fact that the strong views of the Nazis gave the impression that they knew what they were going to do also made them favourite to the German public.
The industrialist, Alfred Hugenberg, offered Hitler money and support from his publishing and media companies to attack the Young Plan for German reparations. Lastly, the fact that the SA and...
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