The end
of the Great War, or what would later be known as World War I, planted the seeds of World War
II. The treatment of a defeated and demoralized Germany at the end of World War Iin effect, the
conditions set forth in the Treaty of Versailles, such as a German admission of guilt for
starting the war (the requirement that Germany pay reparations while ceding control of
economically vital territories like the Rhineland, and accepting limits on its military) fed
into the bitterness and resentment among many Germans already rendered financially ruined by the
costs of the war.
World War I had been a particularly nasty affair, with the
brutal conditions associated with trench warfare and the introduction of automatic weaponry and
chemical weapons. All of this was noticed by an early and eager advocate of Germanys entry into
war: a young Austrian named Adolf Hitler. Hitlers rise to power would rely greatly on his
exploitation of popular resentments among Germans and Austrians, and his identification
(actually, his amplification of a group of people already targeted for discrimination) of
Germanys Jewish population as bearing principal responsibility for the war that left Germany in
tatters.
In short, then, the end of World War I began the path to World War
II, with Hitler having served in the German army and been mobilized by his experiences as well
as his belief in the role of Jews in facilitating Germanys destruction. Add to this the effects
across Europe of the global depression that had ravaged major economies, including in the United
States, and the enormous physical and psychological destruction that had occurred during the
war, and the roots of the most destructive conflict in human history were deeply
planted.
There is no secret to Hitlers aims regarding what was eventually
labeled the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem. As noted, antisemitism was already rampant
in much of Europe, including in Germany. While the road to the Final Solution evolved from the
end of World War I into the mid-phase of World War II (it was at a conference attended by high
ranking Nazi officials in the town of Wannsee on January 20, 1942, that the plans for the final
extermination of Europes Jews was formulated ), Hitlers views on Jews and on Germanys situation
were very clearly laid out in Mein Kampf, written while he was in prison
for his political activities, and in a series of speeches and conversations that followed
publication of his book.
The importance of Mein Kampf in
understanding Hitler cannot be overstated. Hitler did not engage in subtle aphorisms or nuance.
Note in the following quotes from Mein Kampf the authors unambiguous perception of Jews, and of
Bolshevism, the ideology that seized Russia following that countrys revolutions (and bearing in
mind Hitlers categorization of Russians and Slavs in general as racially inferior and the
prominent role played by Jewish communists like Leon Trotsky, Karl Radek, Maxim Litvinov and
Grigori Zinoviev in the rise of communism in Russia) and what he believed was the Jewish role in
Germanys failures:
The ultimate and most profound reason
of the German downfall is to be found in the fact that the racial problem was ignored and that
its importance in the historical development of nations was not
grasped
...
Not satisfied with the economic conquest of the world, but also
demanding that it must come under his political control, the Jew subdivides the organized
Marxist power into two parts, which correspond to the ultimate objectives that are to be fought
for in this struggle which is carried on under the direction of the
Jew
...
The Jews were responsible for bringing negroes into the Rhineland,
with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its
cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate. For as long as a people remain
racially pure and are conscious of the treasure of their blood, they can never be overcome by
the Jew. Never in this world can the Jew become master of any people except a bastardized
people.
Hitlers obsession with Germanys Jewish population
knew no bounds. Jews were an easy and unpopular target in much of Europe, including Poland and
France, two countries that would among the first victimized by Germanys armed forces. His belief
in racial purity and of conspiracies involving Jewish plans to taint German blood with that of
its own was overtly reflected in high profile speeches by the German leader after his ascent to
power. In a September 1938 speech at the Nuremberg Party Conference, Hitler declared:
Because we are National Socialists we can never suffer an alien race
which has nothing to do with us to claim the leadership of our working people.
And in November of that same year, Hitler wrote for a Nazi
publication:
So, we are going to have a total solution to
the Jewish question. The programme is clear. It reads total separation, total segregation!...No
German can be expected to live under the same roof as Jews. The Jews must be chased out of our
houses and our residential districts and made to live in rows or blocks of houses where they can
keep to themselves and come into contact with Germans as little as possible.
Statements like those above leave no doubt regarding Hitlers
intention to eliminate Jews from German society. He had by this point sufficiently demonized the
Jewish population and provoked ever more violent reactions to the mere sighting of Jewish
citizens and businesses as to make the execution of his more perfidious plans more
likely.
German Jews, as well as those in occupied countries, especially
Poland, forcibly moved into walled-off ghettos and, eventually, into concentration camps where
six million would be exterminated during World War II. What began as a plan to force Germanys
Jewish citizens out of the country evolved into a carefully designed and zealously executed plan
to murder every Jew possible.
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