FREE ESSAY ON JESUS OR HITLER?

JESUS OR HITLER?

Jesus or Hitler?
Anti-Semitism was widespread in Europe at the time Hitler came to power. Much of this
anti-Semitism was rooted, first, in religious beliefs that arose more than 1500 years
before Hitler came to power, and second, on political beliefs, often cynically exploited
for political gain. Though it was not accepted by everyone, this existing anti-Semitism
was common and provided a receptive audience for Hitler's anti-Semitic claims. 
Hitler did not just exploit the existing anti-Semitism in Germany; he changed it and
built on it until it became an all-consuming obsession both for himself and for the rest
of the National Socialist leadership. The most significant difference between traditional
anti-Semitism and the philosophy of the Nazis was that the basis for the anti-Semitism
was distorted and changed. Previous anti-Semitism had been based upon religious
convictions - primarily on the questionable fact that Jews were responsible for the
execution of Jesus - and political attacks to exclude Jews from the rest of society.
Although he exploited this religious anti-Semitism, Hitler and the other Nazi leaders,
who were opposed to traditional religions, found another basis for their hatred of the
Jews. They relied on the theories of eugenics and social Darwinism which were then common
in Europe and transformed them into race science. They also used the political expression
of anti-Semitism coupled with the myth of the Aryans. This myth had developed in Europe
the last part of the 19th century. According to Hitler's philosophy the Germanic peoples
called Aryans, were superior to all other races and had the right to rule over them.
Hitler and the other Nazis claimed that other races, such as the Slavs and the Poles,
were inferior species fit only to serve Aryan man. The Jews were even lower than the
Slavs. Hitler believed that Aryans were the builders of civilization while Jews were
parasites fit only for extermination. This racism had a political agenda as well. Hitler
blamed the Jews for the loss of World War I, which he called the stab in the back and
made the focus of his political campaigns. The combination of religious anti-Semitism and
political anti-Semitism with patriotism led many German people to accept Hitler's
message. 
One of the stumbling blocks to even wider acceptance of the Nazis' racism was the
assimilation of Jews into German life. Unlike the Jews of Eastern Europe, German Jews
considered themselves no different from other Germans, but in religion. They were
merchants and scholars and professional people who went to the same schools and gathered
in the same places as other Germans. And, for their part, the other Germans were used to
dealing with Jewish businessmen and having their ailments treated by Jewish doctors. As
Heinrich Himmler stated in a speech to SS officers long after the actual extermination
began, every German had a favorite Jew. When Hitler came to power he could not expect the
masses of ordinary German people to agree to his program of extermination. Instead the
Nazis led them to that end by gradual steps. From the day that Hitler took power in
January 1933 there were efforts to terrorize Jews and exclude them from German life. As
soon as Hitler eliminated his political opposition in Germany and suspended the Weimar
Constitution, he and his associates started to build a brick wall between Jews and the
other Germans. Jews were expelled from schools and fired from their jobs because of their
beliefs. There were organized boycotts of Jewish businesses enforced by brown-shirted
thugs known as stormtroopers or the SA. These early measures were only the beginning. 
The second step in isolating German Jews from the rest of the country were the Nuremberg
laws passed in 1935 which fashioned the anti-Semitic agenda of the Nazis into the law of
Germany. The Nuremberg laws forbade Jews from practicing professions such as medicine,
law, and teaching. These laws also regulated interaction between Jews and other Germans.
Jews were forbidden from employing non-Jews and it was a criminal offense for a Jew to
have a relationship with a non-Jew. Even the act of kissing a non-Jew could bring a long
prison sentence. The courts and the feared SA enforced these laws. During this period
Jews were also encouraged to emigrate from Germany, as long as they left their property
behind. 
After five years of Hitler's regime German Jews were isolated and terrorized. They were
no longer a part of German life. All that really remained of their former position were
Jewish merchants to which Germans remained patrons. This ended on November 10, 1938,
when, at the instigation of Joseph Goebbels, gangs of thugs attacked Jews and vandalized
Jewish businesses. About two hundred Jews were murdered and thousands of businesses
wrecked in a pogrom called Kristallnacht". After Kristallnacht the courts failed to
punish the criminals. Instead 30,000 Jews were kidnapped and sent to concentration camps.

The third step was to lead the German people into co-operating with the Nazis. It began
with Kristallnacht. For a brief period after Kristallnacht, the Jews in Hitler's Germany
were encouraged to leave Germany. This ended with the conquest of Poland in September
1939, when the Third Reich had about 2,500,000 more Jews with which they had to deal.
Instead of isolation and forced emigration, the Nazis began to concentrate Jews in
ghettos. Locked behind high walls, the Jews were even more invisible. It had been hard to
hate a person that the average German dealt with on a daily basis, but the absence of the
Jews and the different culture of the masses of Polish Jews made the anti-Semitic
propaganda of Hitler, Rosenberg, Streicher and Goebbels even more effective. 
One of the reasons it was effective was the change in all aspects of German life and
ideas wrought by the Nazi regime. The intellectual leaders of German culture who did not
agree with the Nazis, including church leaders, were either silenced or forced to leave
the country. The German people were subjected to a constant barrage of propaganda
designed to convince them that Jews were evil. In Hitler's totalitarian state no argument
or refutation of this hate literature was permitted, and the people who could have raised
their voices were gone. A generation of young people grew up under the influence of Nazi
propaganda that they had never heard contradicted. 
By the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Jews had become isolated
and despised in the Third Reich. The situation was ripe for the final step in Hitler's
program - the extermination of the Jews. The extermination began with mass shooting by
groups known as the Einsatzgruppen, which followed the German armies invading the Soviet
Union, and gradually evolved into to the gas chambers of concentration camps. Although
there were concentration camps in Germany, all of the mass shootings and extermination
camps were located far from the heartland of Germany. 
While many people knew what was happening, the reality of the extermination was not
immediately apparent to the average German. It was something that was occurring far away
and, about which they knew very little other than a sketch of what was happening. The
almost unbelievable crimes of the Holocaust meant very little to the average German. It
was something tolerated without really understanding to what extent the horror went to. 
The situation of those carrying out the plan of extermination was different from the
people at home. They were directly involved with the real horrors of murdering many
people and could not just conveniently ignore what that meant. The men assigned to this
task did it for a variety of reasons which ranged from a feeling that all orders should
be obeyed to complete compliance with Nazi philosophy. Even for these men, the effects of
participating in mass murder were so noticeable that the leaders decided to begin the use
of poison gas instead of the direct method of shooting at the extermination camps.
Personally I do not think that a 1900 year 'grudge' against the Jews is enough to give
rise to the Nazi regime and thus the sudden rise of hatred against the Jews. The Jewish
populace was evidently still a scapegoat in those times as evidenced by the unjust trial
of the French Officer, Dreyfus. But the French liberals and intellectuals led by the
novelist Anatole France and the poet and essayist Charles Peguy denounced the trial with
passion. Even Emile Zola entered the arena with his publication of the very much
controversial "J'accuse" which received him a prison sentence. In 1906 Dreyfus was
pardoned and reinstated to his rank after the French State and Church separated in 1905.
This is just to prove that had the Nazi Regime not expelled or censured the German
liberals and intellectuals they would not have been able to coerce a population with
lies, absurdity and propaganda against the Jewish community without opposition.