You are on page 1of 4

Cole Reiner

Mr. Hawkins
Modern World History P, Period 2
20 March 2016
What Were the Social Climates and Significant Events That Led to the State Sponsored Genocide
in Nazi Germany?
Nazi Germany was filled with anti-Semitic people due to popular false beliefs that
everyone grew up believing. Christians, that they abducted and murdered little Christian
boys to extract their blood to make Passover bread, that they desecrated the host, that they
rejected Christian revelation and in fact murdered Jesus Christ (Evidence 1). Throughout
the History of Europe there have been people against Jews because they believed that Jews were
the ones that killed Jesus and betrayed him, when in reality, it was not just Jews if they had any
real knowledge about the Bible. All it takes is for one person to share their beliefs and someone
is bound to agree with them. Hitler is a grand example of this because he blamed many things on
Jewish people even though they had no partaking in any of it what he said. People still believed
Hitler though because they trusted him. Nazi Germany had a state sponsored genocide because
the state agreed with it, they had an excuse to exterminate Jews, and most of Nazi Germany
agreed.
Hitler just about blamed everything on Jewish people because they allegedly actively
engaged in an international conspiracy to keep this master race from assuming its rightful
position as rulers of the world (Evidence 1). As everyone knows, none of this was true, it
was just to get more and more people to be anti-Semitic so that when he felt it was time, he could

easily kill all Jews without anyone even thinking about getting in his way. If time jumped a
couple years into the future, we can see that his plan worked. Local population eagerly and
willingly helped the German overlords in denouncing, hunting down, and executing their
Jewish neighbors (Evidence 1). Everyone in Germany was hunting down Jews because they
were told so many lies that the German people ended up believing most of them and for the
people that didnt believe in the anti-Semitic move, they had to keep very quiet or else they
would also face sever punishments. Daily anti-Semitic slurs appeared in Nazi newspapers,
on posters, the movies, radio, in speeches by Hitler and top Nazis, and in the classroom. As
a result, State-sanctioned anti-Semitism became the norm throughout Germany (Evidence
3). People were surrounded in the idea of anti-Semitism and it made it made it much easier to
accept that idea when everything at the time was blaring at them saying it was the right thing to
believe. Some people already were against Jewish people before all the propaganda and
advertising, but some accept the idea due to the smart thinking of the Nazi Germans.
There was one main event that kick-started the beginning of the murdering of Jews. It
was called Kristallnacht or The Night of Broken Glass and many Jews faced unjust
persecution. 17 year old Jew living in Paris, shot and killed a member of the German
Embassy staff there in retaliation for the poor treatment his father and his family suffered
at the hands of the Nazis in Germany (Evidence 2). This event made it very easy for Hitler
and his leaders to start his plan on the genocide of the Jews. Because of one person that
happened to be Jewish killed a Nazi, all of the Jews in Germany and other Nazi controlled land
was terrorized. Most of Germany also had a huge sense of Nationalism so when one of their
leaders died, it wouldnt matter who is was, that person would have died either way. It was very
unfortunate that it was a Jewish person that killed him because it ends up hurting all the Jews.

Jewish shops and department stores had their windows smashed and contents destroyed.
Synagogues were especially targeted for vandalism (Evidence 2). Everything they had was
destroyed along with their stores robbed and many of them were beaten very badly. According
to Germany at the time though, there was a good reason for what they were doing to them.
People believed that the Jewish people were all going to attack them or betray them because of
all the false propaganda and other false information. Hitler Youth beat and murdered Jews,
broke into and wrecked Jewish homes, and brutalized Jewish women and children
(Evidence 2). This strong idea of Anti-Semitic ways made people forget that they were still
people that they were murdering. Instead they just thought of them as unwanted beings on this
Earth that shouldnt exist. People were almost brainwashed into believing that Jews were
actually the lowest race on Earth and that it doesnt even matter if there was a reason because
they were Superior to Jews from what Hitler told them. This was socially accepted at the time
and it was just the beginning of something far worse that happens soon following The Night of
Broken Glass.
Hitler had everything planned out very perfectly because he got himself the perfect
situation where most of Germany will no care what he does to the Jews. In Germany, on
November 12, top Nazis, including Hermann Gring and Joseph Goebbels, held a meeting
concerning the economic impact of the damage and to discuss further measures to be taken
against the Jews meeting it was decided to eliminate Jews entirely from economic
life (Evidence 2). There leaders of Germany also believed in anti-Semitism also, and they felt
it would be right of them to exterminate the Jews also. They had a reason to do it, it was a
very terrible reason but they had reasons, and the German people, for the most part, agreed with
those reasons. Hitler had repeatedly blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat in World War

I and subsequent economic hardships (Evidence 3). Germans ended up believing that and
many other things and this ended up making people was the Jews to pay for what they have
done. Again, some did not believe this but there were not enough of those people that would not
believe the excuses for killing Jews for anyone to do anything inside Germany so they just had to
play along because if anyone was to help the Jews either, they would also face serious
consequences. The Nazis felt they had to find a permanent solution to what they called the
Jewish Problem, and that solution was extermination (Evicence 3). At the time the main
social climate was anti-Semitism and this is easily seen though-out World War Two in Germany.
By the time this idea was solution was introduced, all the Nazis and many Germans were fully
on board with this idea because many of them have made up their own excuses on why the Jews
should die.
Germany Ultimately killed millions of Jews because of this harsh belief in what they
were doing. The social climate that mainly led Germany to the state sponsored genocide of the
Jews was the anti-Semitism shown by so many Germans at the time. The one main significant
event that made even more people anti-Semitic was Kristallnacht because of the already on the
verge of genocide Nazis that gave them the final push to be able to start the murdering. By the
start of the genocide, only anti-Semitic ruled Germany and it made it that much easier for the
Nazis to kill all Jews.

You might also like