I am a very very lazy person. I like to pride myself on being in the running with Lebowski. And to me hate takes way way to much energy. Having even the simple idea of killing has to take some effort. Kind of seems like he just set out on a life not worth living IMO
There’s probably as many theories as there are people.
My own is that cognitive dissonance is a powerful force, especially for a narcissist. Hitler spent 4 of the best years of his life is the pure misery of the trenches of WWI, and even worse - running between the trenches to deliver messages. He was gassed so badly it put him in the hospital for the final month of the war. Hitler was probably also deluded about Germany’s failing position in the war, probably kept in the dark by German propaganda and made quite gullible by his fierce patriotism. So when Germany surrendered, that must have actually both shocking and enraging for him. And we know that because he frequently attacked the treaty of Versailles.
The “stab in the back” myth is the idea that Germany’s surrender was corruptly carried out by politicians, and due to common antisemitism across Germany and Europe generally it soon focused on Jews. In reality there was virtually no Jewish people significantly involved with the surrender and events leading up to it, but that didn’t matter because as is often the case today, emotional truth is more important than reality. Given that Hitler couldn’t possibly bring himself to believe that he incurred tremendous pain and suffering by voluntarily and stupidly buying into an imperialistic war that was doomed to failure from the start, the stab in the back myth would’ve been extremely appealing to him. He wanted to believe it, so he did.
So when he happened to be assigned to monitor the DAP - the predecessor to the Nazi Party - he was ready to wholeheartedly accept their antisemitic ideas. Even though he seemed to get along with Jewish officers during the war, by a year after the war he was already talking about “removing” the Jews.
I can’t be arsed going into detail, but I’ll give you a half-answer to get you started: “Negative integration”. It basically means that ones identity is based on who you aren’t as opposed to who you are. Ramp this up to 11, and you further this negative integration into defining who ones enemies are, and that’s a core tenet of how fascism takes root.
IIRC during the third Crusade, the Christians slaughtered 60,000 Jewish people before they even got out of Germany. The beef goes way back.
Some people will say the origin is Christ’s death. But even reading that story it’s clear that Europeans and Israelites weren’t on good terms then either.
It’s hard to find a “cause” for a belief that isn’t rational.
Pogroms were common throughout Europe for hundreds of years. Because Christians were forbidden from lending money at interest Jews were the ones doing the banking.
When a ruler got too far into debt they’d incite some religious hatred and miraculously be out of debt, because their creditors were dead or missing.
“Expelling the Jews” is a mechanic in Crusader Kings 2. And it gets abused like it did historically, too- borrow a shitload of money and then expel the Jews. Suddenly you found free money.
Is this a feature in CK3?
I don’t know. I have played very little CK3.
Some people will say the origin is Christ’s death. But even reading that story it’s clear that Europeans and Israelites weren’t on good terms then either.
Further, early Jewish Christians were persecuted by the Pharisees and other Jews who were angry with their breaking Moses’ Law. It was probably only natural to gradually amp up the anti-Jewish sentiment as the Gospels were written because there were open beefs happening in daily life.
Worked the same for Hitler as it does for Elon en Trump. The love for hate, the need to blame, the hunger for power.
Approaching this cynically, all right-wing politicians blame groups as others as being the cause of their country’s societal ills. That’s just how it works.
Jewish people were just one of the targeted groups, along with LGBT people, disabled people, and communists.
One universal truth throughout history is that it’s hard to unite people behind a common goal, but it’s easy to unite people against a common enemy.
Listen to any right wing politicians from around the world - their plans for making things better all start with getting rid of someone (be it a group of people or a governmental department).
Did nobody mention Nietzsche? Nazi worldview was largely inspired by twisting out cherry picking concepts from his works. The criticism of Christian religions idealizing the meek and looking back towards ancient Rome and Greece for strong, powerful, heroic characters and gods. The ideas of existence of superior and inferior humans. Etc.
The eternal enemy of Dudes and Dudeism everywhere: Nihilists and Nihilism.
Respectfully, do some reading of even middleschool level history books. He didn’t personally decide to “be mean” to particular groups. His worldview was shaped by the post WWI dynamics in Europe, latent stereotypes and domestic problems within Germany, and a whole lot of misapplied emerging science. He literally believed in racial supremecy and was trying to build an ethnostate. This motivated him to define groups of ethnic “undesirables” and also to lump in other groups that he found politically inconvenient. Read about the scapegoating of Jews circa that time. He likely believed his cruelty towards them was somehow justified because he laid all of Germany’s problems (economic issues, humiliation of the country and loss of territory post-WWI) at their feet.
TL; DR - Bad actors believe their evil behavior is justified.
You’re trying to find a rationale for some thing (xenophobia) that is utterly irrational. Some people are just shit humans.
He was a shit human, but he was also a politician. His political message had two parts: 1. Jews are responsible for all our problems 2. We need to conquer more lands.
He said this was the only alternative to handing the country to communists.
The simple xenophobic message appealed to the common people, fear of communism bought the elites in-line.
He wanted to be an artist, originally. His stepfather wasn’t having it, he was rejected from art school, and his step harshly physically punished him while a sibling escaped that (I have a hypothesis on other abuse for that sibling but there are no known facts, so it’s irrelevant). Women weren’t valued either. I firmly believe a different childhood experience may have had a different outcome. Additionally, plenty of celebrated artists also broke rules of art. We won’t ever know for sure.
As an authoritarian with an economy and power based upon the willing participation of the people its necessary to have a group u can blame for when shit inevitably goes wrong.
Every politician blames a group (that isn’t themselves) for their failings. Trump blames the immigrants the democrats blame racist voters.
Going to the level of mass killings that requires some seriously fucked up shit in ur childhood to permanently fuck u in the head.
Adolph’s childhood would certainly be described by nobody as a good time. The one story I recall was him stripping naked to try and squeeze through the window bars in order to escape his father’s wrath, only to get stuck. He found the humiliation of his father’s laughter worse than the beating he was expecting.
The way i understood it was that at the time Jews did own a lot of wealth, much more than other people, and saw themselves as some kind of “better” or “elite” class. Many people did not like that, and that is the major reason why it was so easy for Hitler to find a lot of people to follow him.
Not exactly (from my reading). The Jewish communities tended to be fairly insular, and focused a lot of their business inward. They still dealt with outsiders, but money flow tended to move mostly in one direction, so it seemed like the Jewish people were much better off and “taking” from the rest, when the rest of the country struggled. It was really more that a marginalized community took care of their own. Shocking, right?
Plenty of other communities do the same. It’s still a bunch of scapegoating.
No dude, please don’t spread the neo-nazi’s myths for them.
Your comment reeks of “they were snobby elites and are therefore partially at fault for their own persecution.”
Even if I accepted the first statement as true, your insinuation that jews in Weimar believed themselves to be of a superior class after they have already been the subject of discrimination for centuries is ridiculous. On top of that, your final statement that this is “the main reason” for the rise in antisemitism in the third reich is frankly disgusting.
I’m not spreading anyone’s propaganda, if that’s what you’re saying.
I never said they were at fault for their own prosecution. That would be stupid to think.
I don’t actually know, and maybe the Jews were the good guys and unfairly used as a scapegoat for the problems at the time, or maybe not, i was not there, i have no way to tell. I only mentioned that they did own a lot of wealth, which I think can be objectively verified. That does not make them in any way inferior people though, not at all. I am not one of the “eat the rich” people that despises people simply because they are rich. Not at all. In fact, i highly admire jewish culture. I was merely trying to lay out an explanation. There can be no discussion when there is no hypothesis. No need to react so butthurt. Now, cheers!
There was a large economic element to him persecuting the Jews that gets ignored in normal discourse.
He wanted their assets to shore up German capital among other sources like slave labour at industrial facilities.
Nazi nepo babies are benefing from it to this day but everyone ignores that the same way they ignore how a lot of US capital was extracted from slavery.
Ingrained racist beliefs, as well as a pragmatic ‘those are a group that can’t fight back if pushed against. I will blame them because I want the majority on my side.’
However one cannot overstate the role cultural antisemitism played. Hitler didn’t ‘one day wake up.’ Europe has had a long history of hating the jewish people. Scapegoating and Persicuting them. Blood liable for example was an accusation that popped up from time to time. Kidnapping people to mix their blood with matzah bread. Complete bunk, but the jewish people are a stateless people who do not share local traditions and norms nor do they worship at the same place. Plus they often found work doing the things that people either couldn’t or wouldn’t do, which lead to oft conspiricies of jewish money lenders puppeting from the background.
That is the sort of enviroment young Adolf grew up in. Same as how people in the modern US are essentially being taught to think of disadvantaged blacks and mexicans as a existenital threat sucking wealth away from them.
Also if you’re wondering why any person turned out the way they are, looking at their childhood explains a lot. Hitler, in this case, had a violently abusive father and IIRC a few of his siblings died (I think from unrelated causes?) when he was a child.
A lot of Hitler’s ideas about Jews came directly from Henry Ford
To add on there is a documentary on Netflix called the circle of evil that dramatically shows the way hitler came to power. It’s not just antisemitism in Europe it’s a party of echo chambers with anti semitism and Hitler was the one most radical in his speeches while being highly influential. You don’t convince a country without a good indoctrinating speech about how the Jewish population is ruining everything. Germany just came off WW1 and a lot of bullshit stigma was thrown at the Jewish population because the war torn population stereotyped them as “helping both sides”. A lot of factors that nobody will be capable of recognizing are crucial to Hitlers power.
You should listen to the English translations of the speeches. History doesn’t repeat but it sure as fuck rhymes.
When a child first hears an adult express a racist attitude they are confused and don’t know what to think. They may not even understand who is in the group being maligned or even have a concept of groups. And even if they do, they may think “huh? I didn’t realize they were all bad.” But like a lot of things you hear as a kid, it just kind of sinks in.
And that seed has been planted. From there, confirmation bias does the rest. Anytime that growing person sees a member of that other group doing something wrong, they notice it and think “hey that’s what Dad was talking about.” Any such missteps from a member of that group get assigned to the whole group. Of course, people not in that group are judged as individuals. Classic in-group / out-group thinking, which is universal.
By the time the person is grown up enough to think properly, they may have accumulated lots of these moments of confirmation bias. By then it’s likely that they start assigning blame to this group by default. Litter on the ground? Probably one of them. Something got stolen? Probably one of them. And of course if race relations are inflamed in general there may be plenty of active fuel for the fire. A gang of “them” beat up one of “us.” Now it’s basically war, and the person we’re talking about didn’t have to do anything or be a direct victim of anything. It’s all just socially transmitted and then reinforced through observation with cognitive bias. Incidentally, this is why we should never stop talking about racism openly, because that’s the only way to interrupt this process going on in the back of peoples minds. Yeah, sorry, Morgan Freeman.
I am with you as a fellow lazy person who can’t spare the energy. But I can see how easily others slip into it. Hitler of course used it to galvanize people and turn that in-group / out-group energy into a political force.
Wish I could upvote this more than once
If you have some time check out the Hardcore History Addendum episode “Superhumanly Inhuman” that delves into the nazis and the Holocaust. I just started it a few days ago
Damn, I thought the Holocaust started in the 1930s! Shows what I know
