Hitler, Germany, and the Jews: Context Is Everything, Part 1

Before getting into the crux of the matter, it’s important to set the stage by first defining an important term that is often neglected when trying to ascertain facts of the past.

Context

Contextualization is a fundamental ethical and scholarly principle in historical analysis. To understand history, one must analyze events within the moral, intellectual, and social framework of the time. This does not mean endorsing past actions, but rather understanding why intelligent, educated people believed them to be correct. Judging the past exclusively by post-war or today’s standards—a fallacy known as presentism—obscures the reality of how pre-war ideas and events evolved.

In other words, you cannot explore the incendiary topic of Hitler and Germany’s anti-Judaism without first putting the epoch in context and examining the circumstances and situation of the Germans at a time when anti-Judaism became the norm.[1] A complete analysis requires balancing intellectual ideas with the historic, economic, and social pressures that allowed these ideas to flourish.

Confirmation bias

Be careful when you consult anti-German or overtly anti-Jewish sources because they are more likely to be biased for understandable reasons as each one will tend to exaggerate or downplay events according to their interests and core beliefs. Ideally, you must explore neutral sources that don’t have an axe to grind, if that is at all possible, because everybody is influenced in one way or another by their cultural background and experiences.

If you use AI to do research and assess your arguments, you will be turned-off at first by the use of post-war rhetoric that is used to downplay an argument or to demonize Nazis. So, you have to train the AI—if it is truly AI and not just a propaganda prop—you are using to exclude post-war rhetoric or conclusions that are obviously made by people hostile to the Germans and Hitler. Command it to stick to facts and to concentrate on the perspective of the Germans up to the end of the war in 1945. It’s unethical to constantly refer to the Nuremberg trials and post-war rhetoric to judge that period. Which is what the mainstream historians cited herein explicitly do. All their assumptions and pre-suppositions are based on the fallacy of presentism.[2]

Western Context

In the context of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, eugenics and racial Darwinism were widely regarded as the cutting edge of progressive science. Leading institutions, universities, and governments in the United States, Great Britain, Scandinavia, and Germany embraced these ideas. They were seen as the logical application of Charles Darwin’s theories to human society—a way to use science to improve the human race, eliminate disease, and reduce social costs.[3]

The purpose of eugenics was to create a superior Nordic race by applying the same principles used to breed cattle and corn. The movement targeted all mankind and eventually spread to Germany where it caught Hitler’s attention. As Jewish author Edwin Black asserts in his book War Against the Weak, “The Nazi principle of Nordic superiority was not hatched in Germany but on Long Island decades earlier, and then actively transplanted to the Third Reich.”[4]

These ideas are the backdrop of anti-Judaism in Hitler’s Germany. They were championed by respected figures such as H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, Winston Churchill, Alexander Graham Bell, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, E. H. Hariman, and Margaret Sanger. To them, sterilization laws and racial hierarchies were rational, humanitarian policies designed to create a healthier, more efficient society.[5]

United States: By the 1920s, 32 states had enacted forced sterilization laws for the “feeble-minded” and “socially undesirable” resulting in over 60,000 sterilizations. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld these laws in Buck v. Bell (1927), and American eugenicists such as Harry Laughlin and Charles Davenport were honored by German universities for their scientific leadership.[6]

Scandinavia: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland all passed comprehensive sterilization laws between 1923 and 1941, targeting the mentally ill and disabled.  These programs were viewed as progressive social hygiene measures based on the best genetic science of the day. [7]

Jewish Context

In the 19^th century, anthropology classified the Jews as a race. They described Jews not just as a religious group, but as a distinct biological race or “people” with immutable characteristics. Jewish intellectuals and leaders accepted the “race science” of the day.[8]

The founders of Zionism such as Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940), Max Nordau (1849-1923), and Arthur Ruppin (1876-1943), for example, explicitly utilized racial theories. They shared an ideological framework rooted in late 19th-century race science, Social Darwinism, and the belief in a distinct Jewish racial identity. [9]

They argued that Jews possessed a unique biological constitution that had degenerated in the Diaspora and could only be “regenerated” or “normalized” through a return to the land and physical labor in Palestine. They prioritized Ashkenazi Europeans and expressed discriminatory views toward non-European Sephardic Jews, whom they considered less capable. [10]

Jabotinsky, Nordau, and Ruppin were key architects of the Zionist settlement, more important than Theodor Herzl, even though Herzl is considered to this day the primary founder and iconic figure of Zionism.[11]

German Context

Global ideas on race, eugenism, genetic determinism, and anti-Judaism were integrated into state policy as Rassenhygiene (racial hygiene). Leading German scientists (e.g., Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz, Ernst Rüdin) were internationally respected. Their work on heredity and race was considered cutting-edge biology.[12]

When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, they adopted these existing scientific concepts into a central state principle. The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (1933) was explicitly modeled on American laws and supported by the German medical establishment.[13]

High level intellectuals such as philosopher Martin Heidegger, jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt, theologian Gerhard Kittel, biologist and future Nobel prize winner (1973) Konrad Lorenz were all enthusiastic adepts of the national socialist ideology on eugenics, race, and genetic determinism.[14]

Within this framework, racism was viewed as a biological necessity. Jews and other races were classified as distinct, alien races, whose presence threatened the genetic health of the Volkskörper (national body). This made their exclusion and removal a matter of public health and national survival in the eyes of the regime and its scientific and intellectual supporters. In the Nazi worldview, behavior of these races was irrelevant to their fate.[15]

Shift from Cultural to Racial nationalism

The shift from cultural to racial nationalism in Germany began in the late 19th century and solidified in the early 20th century. It was driven by the völkisch movement, which emerged in the 1880s–1890s and redefined the German Volk (people) not by shared language or culture, but by “blood and soil” (Blut und Boden), an organic, biologically determined community.

Influenced by thinkers like Paul de Lagarde and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, this ideology rejected Enlightenment values and liberalism, viewing other races as biologically alien and threatening to the racial purity of the Volkskörper (national body). The rise of Social Darwinism and eugenics provided a scientific framework, transforming racism from a religious or cultural prejudice into a biological imperative for national survival. This racial worldview became central to Nazi ideology and state policy after 1933.[16]

With the transition from a cultural-nationalist identity to a biological-racial one (völkisch ideology), other races were no longer welcome in Germany and every excuse was made to push them out. As such, this shift in ideology made it impossible for other races to ever be considered “true” Germans again, regardless of their assimilation or patriotism.

Anti-Judaism in European Countries

Several Western countries exhibited significant anti-Judaism during the 1920s and 1930s.

United States

Widespread anti-Judaism included social exclusion, employment discrimination, and quotas in elite universities. Harvard, Yale, and others imposed informal limits on Jewish enrollment (e.g., Harvard’s president proposed a 15% cap in 1922). Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent propagated the “International Jew” which catalogued Jewish aggressive behavior against White, Christian society. [17]

The United States implemented strict immigration quotas based on national origin, heavily influenced by the eugenics movement. The Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act) established a quota system that:

• Severely restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe (countries like Italy, as well as Poland, and Russia, where most Jews lived).
• Favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe where the Nordic race was prevalent (Britain, Germany, Scandinavia).
• Used the 1890 census (when fewer Southern/Eastern Europeans were in the U.S.) to set quotas, effectively reducing Jewish immigration from 190,000 in 1920 to 7,000 in 1926. [18]

Immigration quotas were explicitly supported by eugenicists, who believed in a hierarchy of “superior” and “inferior” races, aiming to preserve a “homogeneous” America. This system remained in place until 1965 when the Hart-Cellar policy on immigration was voted into law and the flooding of the country by Third-World populations initiated.[19]

Poland

The government and far-right National Democrats (Endeks) promoted anti-Judaism. Policies included economic boycotts, restrictions on Jewish businesses and professions, and the implementation of numerus clauses in universities, drastically reducing Jewish enrollment from 25% in 1921 to 8% by 1939.[20]

Romania

Authorities pursued harsh anti-Jewish policies, particularly against Jews in border regions, associating them with Soviet communism. The fascist Iron Guard gained significant support with its platform of removing Jews from power and expelling them.[21]

Britain

While not state-sponsored like in Germany, anti-Judaism existed socially and politically, but the English establishment was thoroughly Judaized.[22]

Germany

While racial anti-Judaism (viewing Jews as a distinct, inferior, and dangerous biological race) became dominant in Nazi Germany, it built upon centuries of other forms of anti-Judaism:

• Religious Anti-Judaism: The origin of intellectual religious anti-Judaism is primarily from a critique of Talmudic law by authors such as Martin Luther in The Jews and Their Lies and Johann Eisenmenger in Judaism Unveiled. Both Martin Luther and Johann Eisenmenger viewed the Talmud as a malicious, anti-Christian corruption of divine law that justified Jewish hostility toward Gentiles. Luther condemned the Talmud as a repository of “idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy,” specifically stating it taught Jews that killing or stealing from non-Jews was a religious duty and that they were superior “masters” while Christians were mere “cattle.” Similarly, Eisenmenger systematically compiled Talmudic passages to argue that Judaism doctrinally mandated deception, the murder of converts, and the testing of poisons on Christians, portraying the text not as holy scripture but as a manual for ethical dualism and a global conspiracy against Christianity. [23]
• Economic Anti-Judaism: During medieval times, Jews were banned from many professional trade associations and Christians were not allowed to charge interest. Hence, few Jews had “normal” professions, but went into trade and finance instead, leading to stereotypes of Jewish greed and control of money.
• Political/Nationalist Anti-Judaism: In the 19th century, Jews were accused of being disloyal citizens and a threat to the nation-state, especially as they gained emancipation and entered politics, academia, and the professions. As it is written in the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch, Jews are loyal to no nation other than their own. The entire political Antisemitismusstreit in Germany in the 1880s and 1890s centered around the immoral Jewish laws contained in these books.

The Nazi ideology fused these older ideas with modern scientific racism, making Jewishness an inescapable biological condition. These ideas radicalized the rejection of Jews, but the roots were multifaceted. And propaganda was not the major influence on the outcome.[24] It did play a role, but as American maverick Eric Hoffer says,

[t]he truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. It penetrates into minds already open, and rather than instill opinions, it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients. The gifted propagandist brings to a boil ideas and passions already simmering in the minds of his hearers. He echoes in their innermost feelings. Where opinion is not coerced, people can be made to behave only in what they already “know.”[25]

As such, Joseph Goebbels did not invent racial antisemitism; he amplified it. Indeed, research indicates that indoctrination was particularly effective in regions where antisemitic beliefs were already widespread, suggesting a “confirmation bias” where propaganda intensified latent prejudices rather than creating them from scratch.[26]

Other Targeted Races and Groups in Germany

Jews were not the only ones targeted. From the contemporary perspective of the Nazi state (1933–1945), the focus was also on implementing biological policies on the following races and groups:

Sinti and Roma:

They were categorized as “asocial” and “racially alien,” subject to deportation and sterilization laws similar to Jews. However, as was the case for Jews, the pre-war regime did not describe their removal as “extermination.”

Homosexuals: Homosexuals were not targeted beyond what other nations did to them. Homosexuality was a crime in Germany under certain circumstances, as it was in many countries. It was so until the 1960s. Targeted were pimps, pedophiles, male prostitutes etc., but not homosexuals acting privately.[27]

Jehovah’s Witnesses: Jehovah’s Witnesses, who refused to serve in the army were imprisoned as was anyone else refusing to serve, so the practice was not directed at them as a group. In the U.S. during the war era, Jehovah’s Witnesses were subjected to severe mob violence including documented incidents of castration, beatings, and being tarred and feathered.[28]

Political Opponents: The first inmates of Dachau, the first concentration camp established in March 1933, were predominantly Communists, Social Democrats, and trade unionists. Their imprisonment in concentration camps was presented as protective custody (Schutzhaft) to safeguard national security, not as systematic persecution based on identity. The Nazi ideology posited that “Judeo-Bolshevism” was an existential threat, leading to the conclusion that a Jewish Bolshevik was not merely a political opponent to be re-educated, but a racial enemy. However, according to contrarian sources, Jewish Bolsheviks were not treated differently than non-Jewish Bolsheviks.[29]

Slavic Peoples: “Subhuman” (Untermenschen) propaganda was directed against Soviet Jews and on rarer occasions against Asians (Mongols). Ethnic replacement in the Warthegau and other Lebensraum policies was not based on inferiority, but on pure imperialism of the moment. Interactions with Ukrainians were extremely close and cordial on all levels. Slavic workers in Germany enjoyed the same worker’s rights as Germans, the most advanced social-welfare system in the world; in 1941–43, Germany invested billions into reviving political, cultural, social and economic life in the East devastated by Soviet scorched-earth politics.[30]

“Common law” criminals: Particularly “habitual” or “professional” offenders, were targeted as threats to the Volksgemeinschaft (national community). The Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals (1933) introduced Sicherungsverwahrung (preventive detention), allowing for indefinite imprisonment after a sentence was served. The Criminal Police (Kripo) used “preventive arrest” (Vorbeugungshaft) to detain individuals deemed likely to reoffend, often sending them directly to concentration camps without trial. While not targeted for expulsion based on race, they were subject to harsh treatment, forced labor, and sterilization under the regime’s eugenic policies. Preventive detention exists to this day in Germany, but only for violent felonies (murder, rape, armed robbery, etc.), and frequently with court review. [31]

All these groups had identification colours and their identification number tattooed on their forearm when they entered a camp:

• Red: Political prisoners
• Green: Criminals
• Purple: Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused to serve
• Pink: Homosexual men
• Black: “Asocials” (vagrants, paupers, beggars, etc.)
• Brown: Sinti and Roma (later addition)
• Blue: Emigrants and foreign forced laborers
• Yellow: Jews (worn as a Star of David, often combined with another color)

In summary, here are the major points, from a German perspective:

• All races, including the Jewish race, believed in Darwinism, racial reality, and genetic determinism; it was the norm in all civilized countries.
• Eugenics at the time was not a pseudoscience. It was pervasive among elites on the left and the right, and was not considered an ethical failure.
• The Nazi government—and all Western governments for that matter—viewed eugenic policies as rational, scientific, and necessary measures for national health and security;
• The idea of a Master Nordic Race was not a German invention; it was widespread in all Western countries; the champion of this idea was the United States; it was first promoted by people such as Madison Grant, author of The Passing of the Great Race and Lothrop Stoddard, author of The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy.
• Anti-Judaism reflected centuries of anti-Jewish sentiment and was based on actual Jewish behavior.
• Germans were not the only ones to dislike or hate Jews; all European countries had important laws or social customs targeting Jews; they had been expelled repeatedly from many countries across history.
• Jews were not the only ones targeted.

GO TO PART 2

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[1] Because 90% to 95% of Semites are Arabs, the term “anti-Judaism” is used instead of “anti-Semitism.”

[2] An assumption is a belief accepted as true without proof, often serving as a premise in an argument. A presupposition is a background belief or condition that must be true for a statement or question to even make sense; it is implicitly accepted before the argument begins.

[3] Edwin Black, War Against the Weak. Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, Dialog Press, 2012. Documents the American institutional roots (foundations, universities, laws) that influenced global eugenics, including Germany. It focuses on institutional responsibility.

[4] Ibid., p. xviii.

[5] Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity, 1985. Documents the American institutional roots (foundations, universities, laws) that influenced global eugenics, including Germany. It focuses on institutional responsibility.

[6] Edwin Black, book cited.

[7] Ibid.

[8] John M. Efron, Defenders of the Race. Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin de Siècle Europe, Yale University Press, 1994.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] “Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism,” Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia.

[12] Claudia Koonz, “Allies in the Academy,” The Nazi Conscience, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Robert N. Proctor, “Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis,” Harvard University Press, 1988.

[16] George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich, 1964. Traces the völkisch movement and Romantic nationalism in Germany from the 19th century. It explains how German intellectuals fused Darwinism with folklore and nationalism to create a unique worldview where Jews were seen as an “alien” element disrupting the organic national community.

[17] John Higham, “The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century,” Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925, ‎ Rutgers University Press. 2002 (first published in 1920).

[18] Ibid.

[19] Kevin MacDonald, PhD, “Jewish Involvement in Shaping U.S. Immigration Policy,” The Culture of Critique. An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements, 3^rd Edition, Antelope Hill Publishing, 2025, pp. 481-545.

[20] Michael R. Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, 1985.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Anthony M. Ludivici, The Jews, and the Jews in England, Ostara Publications, 2021 (first published in 1938 under the pseudonym “Corbett.”

[23] Information obtained from LEO AI of the BRAVE navigator.

[24] Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.

[25] Eric Hoffer, The True Believer. Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Harper & Row, 1951, p. 105.

[26] Information obtained from Leo AI of the Brave Navigator.

[27] Jack Wikoff, “The Myth of the Extermination of Homosexuals by the Third Reich. On the Making of a Propaganda Figure,” Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, June 27, 2023.

[28] Shawn Francis Peters, Jehovah’s Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution, 2000.

[29] Paul Rassinier, The Drama of European Jewry, Stepping Stones Publications, 1975. A French Communist survivor of the camps, who downplayed racial targeting. Major revisionists such as Arthur Butz, Ernst Zundel, and the Institute for Historical Reviews claim that Jews were treated the same way as any other prisoners.

[30] Hans-Jürgen Witzsch, “Foreign Workers in the Third Reich,” Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, August 1, 2003.

[31] The Institute for Historical Reviews claims that the “green triangle” (criminal) and “black triangle” (asocial) prisoners were treated according to standard penal logic of the time. The distinction between “punishment” and “protection” in Nazi law was similar to modern preventive detention, just applied more broadly due to the wartime emergency. They frequently cited the existence of modern Sicherungsverwahrung to argue that the Nazi laws were not unique or inherently genocidal.