An Annotated Bibliography: What made Hitler want to kill the Jews?

Adrianna Amelio
Miss Schmidt
Honors English 9
April 4, 2016

"Adolf Hitler." Adolf Hitler. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2016.

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Even before Hitler took power, he convinced himself that only death would await him if
he failed to restore Germanys pride and fix what happened during the Treaty of
Versailles. His self-confidence and pride made his decisions rash and unreasonable. Even
on April 30, 1945, when Hitler lost just about everything, he didnt lose his pride. He
took his and his lover, Eva Buarns life, so they would not be captured by Allied forces.
His men then took his and Evas corpses above ground and burned their remains, so his
body would not be subjected to testing if found by the Allies. During his prime though,
Hitler constantly announced that the Jews were living in his territory. His territory was
only meant for the Aryan race and the Jewish people were not welcomed. Hitler thought
that he would be able to get away with killing millions of Jews if everyone else was
worried about the threat of war. He was also planning on taking over all of Europe
through dominating the war. Due to his rash thinking and reasoning, World War II was
the worst war on record, with twenty-five million military men killed and thirty million
civilians murdered. Hitler used any tactics he could think of to try to win the war, which
resulted in an extreme loss of life. Over eleven million people were killed over Hitlers
insane theories and six million of them were Jews.

"Anne Frank House: Why Did Hitler Hate Jews?" Anne Frank House. N.p., n.d. Web.
31 Mar. 2016.

Hitler blamed all of Germanys hardships on the Jewish people. He claimed that the
reason they lost World War I and the reason they had to pay five billion dollars until 1921
on the Jews. By doing this he created a common enemy amongst the German people.
Hitler first started to isolate the Jewish people by passing the Nuremburg Race Law, and
isolating the Jewish people from the rest of society. He promised to bring pride and
wealth back to Germany and he and the Nazi party was elected into power in 1933. Also,
Hitler grew up in Vienna, Austria, where the mayor at the time had a strong disliking for
Jewish people. Hitler grew up with the idea that hating Jews was okay and antisemitism
was also okay. Hitler defined the Jewish people as a race, which is not accurate. Hitler
wanted to make room for his master race of Aryan people, the Jewish people were in the
way of that and he wanted them gone. Anyone else who died with them was collateral
damage. Hitler had a goal and he strived to reach it and not be stopped. He was
extremely close to reaching his goal when he finally was stopped in 1945. Hitler and his
party had managed to wipe out 2/3 of the Jewish population in Europe.

Wiesel, Elie, Josh Perry, and Jon Natchez. Night: Elie Wiesel. New York: Spark Pub.,
2002. Print.

Elie Weisel and his family lived a normal, faithful Jewish life, before the Nazis invaded
their town. They ransacked their town stealing their valuables and herding all the
townspeople into the demolished synagogue. They then shoved them into cattle cars and
shipped them to Auschwitz. Dr. Mengele preformed the selection separating Elie and his

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mother and sister, whom hed see for the last time. His father and Elie were then put into
the labor force. It was brutal and it was every man for himself, the rations were small and
you were mostly starved. Elie and his father stuck together through the entire thing. They
witnessed random shootings, starvations, people being hung, and unjust and cruel things.
Elie was moved from Auschwitz, to Birkenau, to Buna. All of these camps were awful
and barely anyone survived. The labor was hard and all of the men were too weak with
the small rations they received to do the work well, so they were punished. As the camps
were being liberated by the Allies, the Nazis started taking people and making them
march to a new camp, a lot of the men were too weak to accomplish this task and died
along the way. When they got to the new camp his father was extremely weak and sick,
he ended up dying a few days later. Later that week, the camp was liberated by the
Americans and Elie walked free.
While in the camp a man told Elie, while he was in the infirmary that the Allies have been
supposedly coming to save them for weeks and never arrived, Hitler has kept all his
promises to the Jewish people. He promised they would all die and he was accomplishing
his goal. The question many people asked themselves is what made Hitler hate the Jewish
people so much that he tried to kill every single one of them. There was no reason for
Hitler to kill all of these millions of people. He was a cold hearted murder, who seemed
to be incapable of loving and forgiveness. He wanted a whole race of people
exterminated from the earth for no practical reason.

Goode, Erica. "Insane or Just Evil? A Psychiatrist Takes a New Look at Hitler." The
New York Times. The New York Times, 16 Nov. 1998. Web. 02 Apr. 2016.

Many people claimed Hitler to be mad, no one wanted to accept the idea that a man could
do what he did and still be mentally stable. Hitler did have many psychiatric symptoms
like paranoia, but was most likely not mentally ill. Hitler knew what he was doing the
entire time, and did it with excitement and fulfillment. He had no mental illness that
could be of blame for his actions. There were many accusations against Hitlers personal
physician, Dr. Morell saying that Hitler was in a weak mental state and was all of his
decisions were greatly influenced by Dr. Morell. These accusations turned out to be false.
Hitler was cleared from any mental illness, but had a lot of physical issues. After World
War I, Hitler suffered from two cases of temporary stressed induced blindness. Also
towards the end of his reign Hitler was diagnosed with Parkinsons syndrome. This
information was withheld from the German population, but his health was visibly
deteriorating. He was also diagnosed with Giant Cell Arteries, which would have caused
his headaches and blurry vision. Hitler was also prescribed amphetamines by Morell,
which he took on a regular basis, but was most likely not addicted. These drugs may have
impaired his metal state for a short period of time, but not long enough to impact
anything significant in the war. When Hitler realized that the drugs were harmful to his

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health, he stopped using them. Hitler did not commit the crimes in a bad state of mental
health, but in a clear state of mind.