This post is not meant in any way
to justify Hitler's actions, to belittle the damage done by Hitler
and the Nazi Party, or to encourage holocaust deniers or anti-Semitic
conspiracy theorists. It is only meant to present what I feel to be
Hitler's side of the story: his motivations, how he came to hate the
Jews, his convictions, and the series of events that led to Hitler's
decision to systematically exterminate, rather than merely oppress
and relocate the Jews. If you wish to learn more about Hitler's
foundational motivations that led to his rise to power and
anti-Semitic beliefs and actions, I recommend you read his magnum
opus "Mein Kampf" (lit. "My Struggle").
I think Hitler was an opportunist,
and that was his primary political incentive. he wanted power and to
change the world, and saw the means to do so. He didn't actually want
to kill the Jews at first, and his original plan was to banish them
and get rid of their ability to conduct business. basically, prevent
them from causing any further damage.
It wasn't until after WWII became
an inevitability that Hitler started really wanting to kill the jews.
before that, he actually passed legislation to improve living
conditions for the Jews. It's far more complicated of a story than
anyone knows.
Hitler strongly felt that the
Germans had both the ability and resources to win the first World
War, and the Germans somehow lost anyway, he felt that the German
people were being betrayed, and that most of them were 'taking it up
the ass' (metaphorically speaking), even though they were betrayed by
their own politicians. He was certain the German defeat was the
result of the manipulation of the German military by a third-party,
and he made it a mission to find out what this third-party was.
After Hitler read some anti-semitic
literature, he first discounted it as tabloid material, but the idea
of a Jewish conspiracy remained in his mind. he did a great deal of
research, and came to the conclusion that the Jewish people were the
ones who brought about the betrayal of the Germans that caused them
to lose WWI, and that furthermore, the Jews were manipulating the
whole world, with the aim of taking it over completely. The more he
researched and thought about it, the more convinced Hitler became
that the Jews were the biggest threat the the world. He then made it
his mission to gain power in Germany by any means necessary, to save
the German nation from the scourge that were the Jews.
While Hitler was in prison (before
the Nazi party or any of the travesties he is blamed for took place)
"He announced that he wanted to completely destroy the
parliamentary system, believing it in principle to be corrupt, as
those who reach power are inherent opportunists"
this means that Hitler knew
that by reaching power he would become an opportunist, and even while
in prison he was planning to corrupt himself for the self-righteous
cause of freeing the German people from the two greatest evils the
world had ever seen: Communism and Judaism.
Hitler initially just wanted to
relocate the Jews, to conquer regions that had a Jewish population,
and then move the German-Jews over there. But his conquests got the
attention of Britain and France, and soon the whole world was
spreading FUD about the German National Socialist takeover, and WWII
had begun.
When Hitler realized that WWII
was coming, he once again blamed the Jews, because in the course of
his research he discovered that the Jews controlled the vast majority
of the media. He was certain that the Jews had used their power to
incite the European nations against Germany, that the Jewish had
manipulated the whole of Europe into declaring war against the German
nation. Thus, he said: "If international finance Jewry in and
outside Europe should succeed in thrusting the nations once again
into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevisation of
the earth and with it the victory of Jewry, but the destruction of
the Jewish race in Europe."
Hitler had become convinced
that the Jews were the cause of WWII, that they had used to media to
create war for profit, and that they were once again using their
media to mislead the people's of Europe, and to incite another world
war against Germany. So he had decided that if the Jews once again
brought about another world war, he would do everything he can to
exterminate them, so as to put an end to their destructive and
manipulative influence. It was with this quote that he had finally
changed his mind about what to do about the Jews. At first he just
wanted to strip them of their money and power, and remove their
presence from Germany. But now, realizing that the Jews were too
powerful to be neutralized peacefully, he vowed to destroy them
completely, for the betterment of both the German nation and mankind.
Hitler and his Nazi party were
devout Protestant Christians, and felt that their actions aligned
with the will of God and the German people. This is clearly expressed
in Himmler's Poznan speech:
"I also want to mention a very
difficult subject before you here, completely openly.
It should be discussed amongst us,
and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public.
Just as we did not hesitate on June
30 to carry out our duty, as ordered, and stand comrades who had
failed against the wall and shoot them.
About which we have never spoken,
and never will speak.
That was, thank God, a kind of tact
natural to us, a foregone conclusion of that tact, that we have never
conversed about it amongst ourselves, never spoken about it, everyone
shuddered, and everyone was clear that the next time, he would do the
same thing again, if it were commanded and necessary.
I am talking about the "Jewish
evacuation": the extermination of the Jewish people.
It is one of those things that is
easily said. "The Jewish people is being exterminated,"
every Party member will tell you, "perfectly clear, it's part of
our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, ha!, a
small matter."
And then along they all come, all
the 80 million upright Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They
say: all the others are swine, but here is a first-class Jew.
And none of them has seen it, has
endured it. Most of you will know what it means when 100 bodies lie
together, when there are 500, or when there are 1000. And to have
seen this through, and -- with the exception of human weaknesses --
to have remained decent, has made us hard and is a page of glory
never mentioned and never to be mentioned.
Because we know how difficult
things would be, if today in every city during the bomb attacks, the
burdens of war and the privations, we still had Jews as secret
saboteurs, agitators and instigators. We would probably be at the
same stage as 1916-17, if the Jews still resided in the body of the
German people.
We have taken away the riches that
they had, and I have given a strict order, which Obergruppenführer
Pohl has carried out, we have delivered these riches completely to
the Reich, to the State. We have taken nothing from them for
ourselves. A few, who have offended against this, will be [judged] in
accordance with an order, that I gave at the beginning: He who takes
even one Mark of this is a dead man.
A number of SS men have offended
against this order. There are not very many, and they will be dead
men - WITHOUT MERCY! We have the moral right, we had the duty to our
people to do it, to kill this people who wanted to kill us. But we do
not have the right to enrich ourselves with even one fur, with one
Mark, with one cigarette, with one watch, with anything. That we do
not have. Because at the end of this, we don't want, because we
exterminated the bacillus, to become sick and die from the same
bacillus.
I will never see it happen, that
even one bit of putrefaction comes in contact with us, or takes root
in us. On the contrary, where it might try to take root, we will burn
it out together. But altogether we can say: We have carried out this
most difficult task for the love of our people. And we have taken on
no defect within us, in our soul, or in our character."
Especially the last paragraph of
that speech, you can see that the German Nazis, all the way up to the
Fuhrer himself, felt justified in their actions, that they were
carrying out the will of God and the people, that everything they
were doing was just and right, and that they had taken the terrible
deed of eradicating the world's greatest enemy (the Jew) upon
themselves, for the betterment of the Germans and mankind.
