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Nazis.

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styley | 23:17 Thu 20th Dec 2007 | Society & Culture
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Why do nazis dislike jewish people so much. I've never quite understood.
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Jews were big in the money business - this dates from the time when Christians were banned from usury (ie lending money at interest). Naturally, people ended up owing them money.

People hate those they owe money to. Some, particularly Nazis, became convinced that Jewish financiers weren't just ripping them off but were secretly controlling the whole world and bleeding Germany dry. (Actually, it was reparations for the first world war that were doing that, as arranged by the victorious allies to punish Germany; but the Nazis claimed Jews were behind this.) The fact that most Germans were pretty poor didn't seem to deter them. So they just made Jews the scapegoats for everything they didn't like.

Antisemitism is frowned on these days but look through the News section and you'll see various other people, mostly foreigners, blamed for everything wrong in modern life; so we're still searching for scapegoats, and the occasional thread even suggests we should kill them all.
Hatred of the Jews has a long history.

I guess it starts with the tradition that they killed Jesus -I suspect foul play here. When Constantine adopted Christianity as the state religion of Rome, blaming the Romans for this wouldn't have gone down well. But note that he was crucified - a roman punishment not stoned a Jewish one.

It continued well into the middle ages. Christians were forbidden to lend money for interest (usery) and as jews were forbidden many trades this was an area in which they could prosper. One called Aaron the Jew of Lincoln became the second richest man in England when he died he had assets of �15,000 and this was in the 1180s!

This didn't tend to make them popular.

Then there was the so called "blood libel" which was the widely held belief that Jews kidnapped children and killed them in human sacrifices.

Finally Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and not allowed back until Cromwell's time.

This is the experience in England but was fairly similar in the rest of Europe. Consequently it was very easy for the Nazis to stir up what amounts to ancient tribal hatreds.

Generally dictators like to do this conciously or unconciously to focus the hatred of the people away from home - George Orwell shows that very effectively in 1984.

You can see similar behaviour in Northern Ireland 20 years ago and towards muslims now. Imagine if you had a government joining in and taking sides.

Imagine a PM in Westminster denouncing all muslims and passing laws making it legal to beat them up take their property and even kill them.

You're probably getting the picture now
For a superlative read on Nazism, its roots and development, see The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L Shirer.
The Nazis believed they were "The Master Race" while Jewish mythology claims that the Israelites are "The Chosen People". Can't both be at the top.

In another ironic parallel both Nazis and Israelites believed genocide was a justifiable practice. The main difference is that the Israelite genocides were completed to every man woman and child belonging to more than 30 tribes they massacred. (Ref: Book of Joshua).

A further difference is that Neo-Nazis usually try to pretend that Hitler's Holocaust never happened while the Neo-Israelites still teach the glory of Joshua's murderous campaign to their children.
For an understanding of this racism, it is actually best to read Hitler's book 'Mein Kampf'.

Hitler saw European civilization 'threatened' by international capitalism, liberalism and communism. These forces were active in Germany / Austria at the time. It so happens that Germany and Austria had a large Jewish population, and many people active in these movements were Jews, so Hitler blamed the Jewish race for these things. It was in Vienna that he developed his prejudice, where he came across urban Jews on a big scale.

In those days, it was already accepted that some races were more advanced or evolved than others, e.g. whites above blacks, etc. Hitler expanded on this, citing the Germanic race as the top of the evolutionary tree, with the Jews at the bottom. He seriously thought the Jews, as a race, were out to destroy German civilization.

Jews had lived in Germany since the Middle Ages; refugees from their homeland in Palestine, and there had long been a prejudice, an anti-Semitism, against them as 'outsiders'. You know the sort of thing - 'taking our jobs', etc. Hitler played on this prejudice, and many people took it in.
Why do nazis dislike jewish people so much. I've never quite understood.

styley
I must say, styley ,it's always been a puzzle to me,too.
They don't seem very threatening,do they .
ALSO, the Jews were blamed for Germany losing the Second World War...

Just want to thank you for asking this, Styley, it's a nice bit of revision for my A-level History ;)
It is thought by many scholars that Germany would have won the 2nd world war if they had not concentrated resources killing Jews.
.....
And if they�d invaded Britain much earlier than they planned ...

And if they hadn�t attacked Russia (at the wrong time of year as well) ...

And if their allies the Japanese hadn�t bombed Pearl Harbour ...

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