One man in control of 65 million people at once during the 1930s is pretty incredible. But how incredible is it really, if this power is used for, what many people today consider is, evil. Adolf Hitler was a dictator in Germany that would eventually become known for how intense he believed in creating a perfect race.
Hitler was born in Austria and would eventually go to Germany, for many reasons, to take over the office and begin his extermination in search for the perfect race. During all of World War II and a few years before that starting in 1933, Hitler was able to successfully capture and kill millions of people. The group of people Hitler mainly killed off were Jews because he didn’t consider them of the superior race, in his opinion the superior race was the Aryan race. Not only were Jews part of a massive genocide, but anyone who was disabled, homosexual, or gypsy were in danger of being captured and taken to concentration camps.
The night of the broken glass is a day that can be seen as the day that truly began the genocide in Germany because people were being taken away from their homes in mass amounts. In November 1938, Ernst Eduard vom Rath, was murdered by a Jewish teenager causing for police in Germany to begin entering houses and looking for any Jew who had weapons in their possession. Hitler saw the killing of this German Diplomat as a threat against the Nazis by the Jews, and so began the Holocaust.
For over 10 years millions of people were taken away into concentration camps all over Europe, but there really can’t be an exact number as to how many were captured and killed because who knows if others were killed outside of concentration camps or used for experimentation, for now the number that is used as an estimate is 11 million people killed over a period of 12 years, 6 million were only Jews.
The goal of this research is not to focus on Hitler and how he governed Germany and what his political views were in the world, but rather look at how he grew up and how he was able to capture millions of people to kill them off, just to have his perfect race, and why? The main question is, why did he mainly target Jews? For one person to have control of about 65 million people and how they should be living their day to day life is pretty incredible. But the way Hitler went about making these people live did not seem like a very good idea, considering that Hitler was a very intelligent person.
Anti-Semitic views have been around since the time of Ancient Rome, which is interesting when we look back at because all these years have passed and there still seems to be a prejudice against Jewish people. While Jewish people are not the only group that face prejudice or discrimination, this group has had a tremendous impact on the history of the world because of the way they were treated during the Holocaust by Hitler, while it is not comparable to the slave trade during the sixteenth and nineteenth century, it is something that still amazes people because of the way it was executed.
Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Nazi Party in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s. During his time as leader, he rose to a high enough power that he began to order for the extermination of the Jews. Hitler is one of the most famous cases of genocides that is known in history today because of the amount he was able to successfully murder from 1933-1945. In history class, students are taught about WWII and how Germany’s defeat caused the end of the Holocaust. What many never wonder is why he did it; the amount of people that were murdered by Hitler and his Nazi group is still not exact because not only were Jewish people murdered, but anyone of inferiority to Hitler or his Aryan race. Like mentioned before, anyone with physical or mental disability were also taken to concentration camps because they were people who could destroy the perfect race.
Starting from when Hitler was first a child, he went through physical abuse at home. Hitler’s father would beat him because Adolf would find ways to taunt his own father and make him mad at Hitler. While this all happened, Hitler’s mother, would make him feel better and make sure he was okay because like most mothers, their instinct is to make sure their children are never hurt. While this might not be a contributing factor as to why Hitler’s main goal was to exterminate all Jews, this can be part of a reason many thought his views were insane; this instability at home definitely seemed to cause instability within himself and possible feelings and affection he could feel towards other human beings.
As Hitler grew up, it was evident that Hitler never cared for school work and would much rather learn about art and music as much as he could. According to Hitler’s sister, he was a student that would bring home bad grades and didn’t really care for the consequences he would face with his parents, and especially his dad. Eventually in 1905, when Hitler’s mother was very sick, he moved to Vienna in pursue of his dreams. While his mother being sick due to breast cancer caused great devastation to him, this seemed like a great opportunity to follow his dreams and pursue a career in the arts.
Hitler’s goal was to get into Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and become successful in the city of Vienna, where many artists got their name, but when he was told that his work was not good enough for the school, this caused anger within him. Hitler has always been very confident in the things he did and not being able to get into his dream school really shocked him. According to many sources, when he went back to get an explanation as to why he has not been accepted, he was told that his art lacked “human form” and that his artwork would be successful in an architecture school. While this doesn’t seem like a bad idea to people, to him it was horrendous because he had not finished high school and to get into the architecture schools, he would need a high school diploma.
While in Vienna, Hitler applied twice to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and got rejected twice. During his time there, many people believe that Hitler began to grow a hate towards Jews because Vienna, at the time, was populated with many Jews. His anti-Semitic views might have stemmed from there, but there is no exact reason as to why. According to a source, one of Hitler’s childhood friends stated that even before Hitler left Austria to pursue his dreams, he was ant-Semitic, but like many other sources that explain when Hitler became this way, they fail to mention why.
While there might still be no exact reason as to how Hitler grew into his views, sources can introduce new ideas and theories as to how he thought. During the 1930s, Hitler was perceived as a very important figure for the Germans because he helped them bring the economy to a stable point since Germany lost World War I. According to charts, Germany’s unemployment rate in 1933 totaled 6 million people, but as Hitler took power in Germany, he was able to lower it to about 300 thousand people in 1939.
Hitler was a very smart man, like mentioned before, he was even put on Time Magazine as Man of the Year in 1938. But when Hitler went into power in Germany, he already had anti-Semitic views in play because according to a book published in Germany, November 9: How World War One Led to the Holocaust by Joachim Riecker, it talks about Hitler believing that Jews did not care enough for Germany to win World War I at the time. Mr. Riecker goes on to describe how Hitler believed that the Jewish people in Germany ruined the government and its economy overtime, World War I was just a push towards finishing off the country. While this theory seems like a bit of stretch, it doesn’t seem entirely wrong as a reason to hate Jewish people, but Hitler was incorrect in saying that the Jews were the group of people that mainly were involved during the First World War.
According to a German census, the majority that lived in Germany around 1910, which were a few years before World War I, were either Catholics or Protestants. Most of Europe was mainly made up of these two religious groups, so to target Jews as the main participants of the First World War is incorrect. While there might have been Jews that participated in the war, not all of the Jews were to blame for, so this goes to show that this reason is not exactly a valid reason for Hitler to have anti-Semitic views.
Analyzing sources thus far, many of them mention many instances where Hitler has found an excuse to say he does not appreciate a Jew.