Did the Nazis need Anti-Semitism to take over?

Did the nazis need anti-semitism?

  • Yes

    Votes: 17 24.3%
  • No

    Votes: 40 57.1%
  • Not Sure

    Votes: 13 18.6%

  • Total voters
    70

Yuelang

Banned
In short, it should be socialists who to blame, not Jews on general...

Could Nazis thrieve by blaming Socialism instead?
 
In short, it should be socialists who to blame, not Jews on general...

Could Nazis thrieve by blaming Socialism instead?
Possibly, but I think Jews made a more useful scapegoat. There's a lot of historical anti-Semitism in Mitteleuropa, just look at Luther's writings.
 
Even if they weren't antisemitic to the point of murderous insanity, it's not like a far-right fascist movement in Germany would be terribly nice to Jews or other minorities, even an ATL one. After all, such movements are based on the strenght of the nation against enemies both internal and external. Ethnic and political minorities would not fare well. Antisemitism wasn't the only moral and political failure of Nazism; there were many, many other prejudices.
 
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IMHO antisemitism of the "garden variety" right wing type (not just in Germany but pretty much everywhere in Europe and the USA) was going to be a necessary part and parcel of the Nazi ideology. One of the most popular acts of the Nazis after they took power was the exclusion of Jewish professionals from universities, law, medicine. For a variety of reasons Jews were over-represented in those positions and there reduction then elimination got the newly installed Nazis a great deal of support from the professional class that had been somewhat aloof due to their perception (quite correctly) of the Nazis and their tactics as thuggish. The policies of the Nazis both before and shortly after coming to power of forcefully discouraging and them basically forbidding non-Jewish Germans from purchasing at Jewish shops got them adherents as it put money in the pockets of "Aryan" shop owners in a depressed economy.

Limitations on Jewish enrollment in universities was essentially universal in the western world (only stopped in the USA in the early 1960s), and where the government had a good deal of control of entry in to professions (controlling actual numbers of lawyers, doctors, etc) limitations were placed there too. Because of the system of professional regulation in the USA while law firms, hospitals etc could be exclusive, the overall staffing of professions could not be as tightly controlled by "race" as in European countries. Initially the Nazis just took this a step further, and gradually heated the pot - racial hygiene laws etc. Germans as a rule did not care what happened to Jews in the east, and of course information about what was going on only came back through rumors and personal accounts and could be ignored. For German Jews, their removal was initially (after the Wannsee Conference) to Theriesenstadt or some unspecified work camp. The fact that the wealth and personal property of the German Jews devolved on their neighbors was an incentive to not concern oneself about where they really went.

On the other hand, had the Nazis said up front in 1932 that "if elected, we will exterminate all Jews of any age in territory controlled by Germany" that would have been a bridge too far. Even in 1942 they did not broadcast their plans to do just that. Ghettoization, impoverishment, deportation probably could have been sold even in 1932...the other not so much. Had the Nazis not been overtly antisemitic, somebody at a rally or in a newspaper would have asked "what about the Jews?" If they did not come back strongly antisemitic their right wing street cred would be gone.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
In short, it should be socialists who to blame, not Jews on general...

Could Nazis thrieve by blaming Socialism instead?
Wouldn't be enough. They needed a scapegoat usefull against both : the socialists as well as the capitalists - esp. the 'finacial capitalists', lesser the industrial capitalists.
 
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