Was Hitler homicidally racist from the start?

Was Hitler homicidally racist from the start?

  • Yes

    Votes: 45 41.7%
  • No

    Votes: 21 19.4%
  • To some extent

    Votes: 42 38.9%

  • Total voters
    108
  • Poll closed .
To be honest, no, the war and a few childhood experiences made him anti semitic later on in his life.
So, since you mention childhood experiences, you mean "no, he wasn't born that way." Which I think just about anyone would agree is so. (I do think he was at least a sociopath, and people do seem to be born that way--but most sociopaths don't become consistent mass killers either).

But the OP question is clarified to mean "by the beginning of his political career," that is when he leaves the army after the Great War. In terms of the OP, it seems to me you meant to answer "yes?"

One can suggest the OP sets the bar too late in Hitler's life. But there seem to be people here who actually think that he wasn't committed to racial genocide even some time into his dictatorship.

I guess it is also a subjective judgement, whether one interprets the OP's YES to mean "committed to get the killings done no matter what the consequences, as soon as damn possible" which would clearly be not 100 percent the case, or "committed to killing as many 'untermensch' as he could get away with without unacceptably undesirable consequences" which is what I'm saying YES to myself. Killing off "undesirables" was something he wanted to do, and the fact that he did often allow pragmatic considerations to deter and delay such actions in particular cases is even less difficult to explain than having a few individuals he chose not to treat as Jewish even thought he knew they were. It's simple pragmatism. It is in another moral dimension entirely from the moral question of whether he believed extermination on racial lines was the right thing to do. By the time he wrote Mein Kampf it was clearly settled in his mind, and I have argued that he couldn't be that settled about it without having decided, on an inarticulate level perhaps, very very long before that he would be able to do this.
 

All Rounder

Gone Fishin'
So, since you mention childhood experiences, you mean "no, he wasn't born that way." Which I think just about anyone would agree is so. (I do think he was at least a sociopath, and people do seem to be born that way--but most sociopaths don't become consistent mass killers either).

But the OP question is clarified to mean "by the beginning of his political career," that is when he leaves the army after the Great War. In terms of the OP, it seems to me you meant to answer "yes?"

One can suggest the OP sets the bar too late in Hitler's life. But there seem to be people here who actually think that he wasn't committed to racial genocide even some time into his dictatorship.

I guess it is also a subjective judgement, whether one interprets the OP's YES to mean "committed to get the killings done no matter what the consequences, as soon as damn possible" which would clearly be not 100 percent the case, or "committed to killing as many 'untermensch' as he could get away with without unacceptably undesirable consequences" which is what I'm saying YES to myself. Killing off "undesirables" was something he wanted to do, and the fact that he did often allow pragmatic considerations to deter and delay such actions in particular cases is even less difficult to explain than having a few individuals he chose not to treat as Jewish even thought he knew they were. It's simple pragmatism. It is in another moral dimension entirely from the moral question of whether he believed extermination on racial lines was the right thing to do. By the time he wrote Mein Kampf it was clearly settled in his mind, and I have argued that he couldn't be that settled about it without having decided, on an inarticulate level perhaps, very very long before that he would be able to do this.

The answer is, for beginning of political career and post war, yes but before hand he was at least having thoughts about it.
 
Hitler had the common mentality of many Germans, especially after The Great War. Besides the religious intolerance of Lutheran Germans, many blamed the Jews for being involved in a conspiracy to end or even be behind the war suddenly. Others were angry with how the Jews, especially those immigrating from eastern Europe and exposed to communism were doing so well. This mixture made it easy for many to have hateful feelings towards them.
 
I read in some book on physcology that when a person starts getting in his mind of vengance though thoughts could be very dangerous to the society. That book I read it when I was in high school almost 18 years ago.
 
Hitler had the common mentality of many Germans, especially after The Great War. Besides the religious intolerance of Lutheran Germans, many blamed the Jews for being involved in a conspiracy to end or even be behind the war suddenly. Others were angry with how the Jews, especially those immigrating from eastern Europe and exposed to communism were doing so well. This mixture made it easy for many to have hateful feelings towards them.

Well, this can very seriously be questioned concerning Hitler since young Hitler was in love for 4 years for a girl whom he presumed was jewish (although she actually seemed not to have been jewish) : Stefanie Isak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefanie_Rabatsch

It is most probably personal failure in his artistic ambitions and the search of a scapegoat after defeat in WW1 that was untolerable to german nationalists, that Hitler, like many germans, chose the jews as scapegoat. People change. People make choices. And that's what happened with the man named Adolf Hitler.
 
Well, this can very seriously be questioned concerning Hitler since young Hitler was in love for 4 years for a girl whom he presumed was jewish (although she actually seemed not to have been jewish) : Stefanie Isak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefanie_Rabatsch

It is most probably personal failure in his artistic ambitions and the search of a scapegoat after defeat in WW1 that was untolerable to german nationalists, that Hitler, like many germans, chose the jews as scapegoat. People change. People make choices. And that's what happened with the man named Adolf Hitler.
Well, this can very seriously be questioned concerning Hitler since young Hitler was in love for 4 years for a girl whom he presumed was jewish (although she actually seemed not to have been jewish) : Stefanie Isak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefanie_Rabatsch

Interesting, I'd never heard of her. It's funny, because as a kid I used to jokingly imagine Hitler saying, "Really, it was all because Rachel Weinberg wouldn't go to the dance with me."
 
Just read Stefanie Rabatsch and I think that if Hitler wasn't shy he would have married her. Maybe she was Jewish maybe she was not but she would have change him alot into becoming a good man and not a madman with the desire to erase all the jewish race.
 

Deleted member 1487

Just read Stefanie Rabatsch and I think that if Hitler wasn't shy he would have married her. Maybe she was Jewish maybe she was not but she would have change him alot into becoming a good man and not a madman with the desire to erase all the jewish race.
Would she have married him? It didn't sound like she knew him at all and there is no guarantee the rather boring and pedantic Hitler would have been able to get a wife at that point in his life, especially as he was broke and effectively homeless.
 

Deleted member 1487

Interesting, I'd never heard of her. It's funny, because as a kid I used to jokingly imagine Hitler saying, "Really, it was all because Rachel Weinberg wouldn't go to the dance with me."
It would be even more ironic if this turns out to be true:
 
There was a strong vein of anti-semitism running through European thought and later in political philosophy from the early church up until today. Hitler was just another maniac looking to hate someone and jews were convenient.
 
1. obviously racist from the start of his political career (c. 1919-1920)

2. and obviously willing to murder, selectively (eugenics in 1930s, 'knight of the long knives', etc.)

and he persecuted the Jews of Germany and then those in German occupied Poland from 1939 to 1941 - pushing them into ghettos and even semistarving them

3. I think Nazis would have been happy to see Jews migrate, but that didn't happen, en masse. Though half of Germany's Jews left before the war started.

4 but genocide didn't really begin until the invasion of Soviet Union;

5. the invasion of Soviet Union was driven by both (1) racist ideology (present in Mein Kampf) - that Germans needed 'room' and (2) by hope to outflank UK with quick victory

6. part of occupation plan was to starve the inhabitants ("Hunger Plan") and part was to murder all Jews in occupied Soviet Union by declaring them "partisans". Einsatzgruppen murdered about 1.5 million Jews in Soviet territory during 1941-1942. And they starved about 4 million non-Jewish civilians in Soviet Union 1941-1943. And they starved 3 million Soviet POWs.

7. so I think the orders given to the einsatzgruppen were the transformative moment, when the Nazis went from persecution tot actual genocide.

8 hard to say genocide was always the intent; though ethnic cleansing always was
 
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