Why did the Holocaust happen?

Background to the Holocaust

• The Communists, Social Democrats and trade unionists, were all on the hit list before the Jews. One motive may have been robbery - it has been estimated that the Holocaust (including confiscated property and slave labour) profited the Nazis by a sum that would today be in the tens of billions of dollars.

• First of all, Hitler had just taken Germany out of the Depression which had devastated the economy so the German people sort of hailed him as their leader. Secondly, many people thought that the Jews had more money than them, especially during the depression , so they became scapegoats. Thirdly, many people didn't know what the SS was doing, and if they did know, they were too afraid to say anything. Fourthly, German people had been brought up to be obedient so, when Hitler became dictator, they followed whatever he said without question, or else they risked being sent to the camps themselves. Fifth, when Hitler was young living in Vienna as a poor, homeless artist he saw how the Jews were rich and that got him upset. [This is what he said in "Mein Kampf, but there's no solid evidence for it. - Joncey] Because Adolf Hitler and the Nazis believed that Jews, Poles, Slavs and assorted other groups were "sub-humans" and as such could simply be eliminated, the way you would eliminate rats or roaches or other vermin, and their lands and property appropriated for the use of the favored Germanic peoples.

• There were all kinds of fanciful but dangerous conspiracy theories about the Jews as the 'biological root' of Communism. The Nazis kept on saying, without any evidence, that 'the Jews' were enemies of Germany and so on. In fact, the German Jews were very pro-German, almost tragically in love with Germany, and many were reluctant to leave the country even if they were able to do so.

• The Holocaust happened because Hitler wanted to purify Germany so to speak...He wanted the Aryan Race, of which couldn't be obtained unless all Jews were gone (along with homosexuals, Gypsies, Russians...etc.) Concentration camps were a ploy for Jews...Hitler actually told them that he was just getting them out of the country for a while and ended up killing them there...the concentration camps were originally for Communists. The Jews were blamed for the loss of WW1, though it wasn't their fault.

• Hitler wanted Germany to be "pure". He invaded the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, because some of the people there were ethnic Germans. He wanted to unite all pure Germans in one State. But, many of the people in these territories were Jews and Gypsies. At first he tried to relocate them to other places, forcing them out of their homes. When this did not work, he just started killing them. Well, there where more "sub-humans" as Hitler called those poor people, than he could handle. He had to find ways to kill the masses without making it too obvious. That's when the real Holocaust started! He built extermination camps, where he could kill thousands of people at a time.

• Hitler blamed the result of WWI on the Jews and he hated them. When he took power he started rounding them up. He did the same when he started taking over other countries. He used the Jews, Poles, gays, Gypsies and Russians as slave labour and then started to kill them in gas chambers.

None of this explains why the Nazi regime moved from persecution to genocide. Please see the related questions.

For more information and recommended reading, see the Discussion page.

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First answer by Babydollprincess. Last edit by Joncey. Contributor trust: 1935 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 271 [recommend question]