Nick Smith

Modern World History-P, Period 3

Mr. Hawkins
8 April 2016
The Early Stages of the Persecution
The Holocaust did not begin in one day. It took a staggering amount of effort from Adolf
Hitler and his National Socialists to convince the majority of the German people to reject and
vilify all things Jewish. Once his work to make it to the top was finished, Hitler went about
achieving his aims for his country. Over time, he and his minister of propaganda, Joseph
Goebbels, flooded the country with virulently anti-Semitic movies and books and slogans. The
majority of the German people were convinced, gradually, to support Adolf Hitler in all of his
opinions and logic, including his hatred of Jews. This fanaticism for Hitler and his ideas led
inexorably to the genocide of the Holocaust.
One of the major factors in the buildup to the Holocaust was the institution of the
Nuremberg Laws. Anti-Jewish sentiment was already suffocatingly high in Germany, and the
Nuremberg Laws helped organize some of the hatred. One such law was the issuing of a
certificate of fitness to marry, which determined if one partner of a couple was racially fit for
another. The certificates were refused to those suffering from hereditary illnesses and
contagious diseases (evidence page 1, website 1). One of the Nazis primary goals was to
racially purify his country by racially segregating it. The instillation of laws relating to
marriages and the building of Jewish ghettos made Hitlers goal seem plausible. This law

accomplished its goal further by driving Jews who did not want to be subjected to such
conditions away from Germany. Another thing that the Nuremberg Laws did that had an
ironically favorable outcome for European Jews was that they defined exactly who was
considered a Jew by German standards. According to the laws, anyone who had three or four
Jewish grandparents was defined as a Jew, regardless of whether that individual identified
himself or herself as a Jew or belonged to the Jewish religious community (evidence page
1, website 1). Although the Jews situation then wasnt enviable by any stretch of the word, they
at least now knew where they stood in German society. In earlier years, it was entirely possible
for someone to be tossed into a ghetto for looking funny. Now, with the Germans meticulous
record-keeping, it allowed people to know exactly how they were viewed and what kind of
treatment they could expect from the government forces. Life was, however, still terrifying for
those who were classified as Jews by the new laws, and even more were thrown into the ghettos.
Later down the line, in 1938, laws were passed that set out to impoverish Jews by requiring
them to register their property and then by Aryanizing their businesses (evidence page 1,
website 1). The Aryanization of Jewish businesses involved Jews being forced to sell their
businesses to German owners for pennies. Jewish doctors couldnt practice upon non-Jews, and
Jewish lawyers couldnt practice law. The Jewish community ran out of money very fast, and
once they were out of money, there was nowhere else to go but the ghettos. Their situation was
desperate. However, these laws were only the beginning of the horrendous atrocities that would
occur in later years.
While the government was passing sweeping laws that directly affected Jews,
propagandists were working around the clock to get the German people on the side of Adolf
Hitler and his Nazis. One of the many propaganda mediums used in the pre-Holocaust years in

Germany was that of film. Many films degrading Jews and uplifting Germans were pumped out
and presented to the masses as factual. One film, Jued Suss, told the story of a Jew named Suss
Oppenheimer, who serves as a financial advisor to a German duke. Oppenheimer is
depicted as a horrible person who rapes the blond Aryan heroine, while the other Jews in
the film are dirty, immoral, and ugly (evidence page 3, website 1). The film was a massive hit
with German audiences. In fact, Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS, loved in so much that he
commanded all members of the police and all members of the SS to see it. The concentration
camp guards who viewed the picture were told to treat the Jews they kept like those in the filmcorrupt and evil. It helped propagate the extremely racist ideas of Jewish culture that Hitler used
as evidence to destroy the Jews during his chancellorship. Another movie that came out later was
Der ewige Jude, which was touted as a documentary, which supposedly revealed the Jews
to be filthy and parasitic leeches who deserved to be wiped out (evidence page 3, website
1). The film included evidence such as fake maps and testimonials to prove that the Jews were
evil sub-humans with no culture aside from hatred of all things Aryan. It even faked footage of a
Jewish ritual murder. These artificial ideas of Jewish culture seem vile and backward today, but
in 1930s Germany, they were widely seen as facts. The films spread fear and disgust of all things
Jewish, even transcending the borders of Germany. Jued Suss was a hit not only in Germany, but
all across Europe. It showed the extent of the power to which the propagandists had the general
populace under their collective thumbs. One more example of cringeworthy German antiSemitism was a board game called Juden Raus!, or Jews Out! The game is recognized as one
of the most infamous in history. The point of the game is to deprive the German Jews of their
property and make them leave the city (evidence page 3, website 3). The game played
similar to Monopoly in that each space on the board was a Jewish business. Each business had a

Jewish yarmulke on it, and if a business went bankrupt, the player who did it got the yarmulke as
a token. The first played to drive six Jews from the city was the winner. The game is a reminder
that propaganda against Jews and anti-Semitic hatred was omnipresent in 1930s Germany. Even
a thing as simple as a board game was converted into a means of cramming the public
consciousness with as much hatred as possible. And while the propaganda helped exacerbate the
maniacal hatred that most white Germans felt for the Jews, anti-Semitic ideas didnt just pop into
peoples heads because they watched a movie or played a game. These thoughts were largely
created from a different source.
Education in 1930s Germany would make most people living in modern-day America
want to vomit. As someone familiar with the ideas of 1930s Germany might be able to guess, it
was sickeningly anti-Semitic. Hitlers ideas of racial theory were taught as facts, and the
teachers manuals went so far as to maintain that German children have an inborn aversion
to Jews that is intensified by references to Jews in the newspapers, conversations, and songs
sung by members of the SA or HJ (evidence page 3, website 2). Explanations for why the
teachers were teaching the students how to effectively hate their fellow man were usually along
these lines. Hitlers racial theory was abundant in schools, telling children that Aryans were
simply better people than Jews, and it was their job to despise the Jews and drive them away
from Germany. Schools were hotbeds of Nazi ideology, teaching things like the marriage
segregation laws and the Jewish problem. Since some of the stereotypes about Jews might be
harder for young minds to understand, a lot of the curriculum focused upon the appearances of
the Jews. They were told that The Jews walk differently than we do. They have flat feet.
They have longer arms than we do. They speak differently than we do (evidence page 3,
website 2). Since German children werent going to be buying up Jewish businesses or sending

them to camps yet, the teachers needed immediate examples of why the Jews were to be hated.
The schools werent yet smearing the morality of the Jews- that would come later. Instead, they
needed to establish the fact that the Jews were simply different, and that was why they were bad.
Once these simple ideas about appearance were drilled into the students, the schools could begin
to focus upon Jewish ideas and how they differed from the upstanding Aryans ideologies. In
German schools, the Jew [was] depicted as someone who lives off the sweat of others by his
swindling activities as a lawyer, a merchant, or a banker, whose god is money (evidence
page 3, website 2). The German schoolchildren were taught that the Jews were dirty and
immoral- the diametrical opposite of everything that the good Aryan strove to accomplish
through honesty and hard work. They were taught that, as good Christians, they should hate Jews
for killing Jesus, as Jesus hated Jews until he was killed by them. Children were given chants
such as Judas the Jew betrayed Jesus the German to the Jews. This toxic stew of hatred
permeated every last nook and cranny of German society, driving the majority to a frenzy of
hatred, and in doing so, igniting the Holocaust.
There were many, many different anti-Semitic books, movies, board games, textbooks,
slogans, posters, clubs, and laws put into the mainstream during the 1930s in Germany. The
public had finally found someone to blame for their crippling defeat in World War One, someone
to pin all of their troubles on. They effectively strained all things Jewish from their society, first
ideologically through schooling, and then physically when the Holocaust got into full swing.
These things were the precursors to the Holocaust, the origins of the hatred, the reasons that it all
happened.