Why did the Holocaust happen?

Background to the Holocaust

• The Nazis' first target were the Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists and liberals. The Jews followed later, though they were persecuted from April 1933 onwards.
• The Jews had been subject to all kinds of earlier "religious" prejudice. From the 1870s onwards a new, racial antisemtism was added to this.
• Firstly, Hitler was a charismatic leader with a sense of mission, "unlike other politicians", and many Germans hailed him as their leader. Secondly, many people thought that the Jews had more money and influence than them, especially during the depression, and they became scapegoats for all Germany's problems - defeat in World War 1, the Great Inflation of the early 1920s and economic crisis of the early 1930s. Thirdly, during the actual Holocaust (genocide) many people didn't know in detail what the SS was doing, and if they did know, they were too afraid to say anything. Fourthly, German people had been brought up to be obedient, so when Hitler became dictator, they followed whatever he said without question, or else they risked being sent to the camps themselves. Fifth, because Adolf Hitler and the Nazis believed that Jews, Poles other Slavs and assorted groups were "sub-humans", that there were a threat and had to be eliminated, the way you would eliminate vermin, and their property was appropriated for the use of the favored Germanic peoples.
• According to the first part of Ian Kershaw biography Hitler, 1889-1939 Hubris, Penguin Books 1998 ISBN http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Special:Booksources&isbn=0140288988 Hitler was a "lazy leader" who did not like to bother himself much with formulating day-to-day policy ... As a result, his subordinates at various levels tried to guess what he wanted. This encouraged rapidly increasing radicalization (growing extremism). The terror apparatus, headed by Himmler and Heydrich, became a very powerful lobby.
• There were all kinds of fanciful conspiracy theories about the Jews as the 'biological root' of Communism. The Nazis kept on saying, without any evidence, that 'the Jews' were enemies of Germany and so on. In fact, most German Jews were very pro-German indeed and had fought well for Germany in World War 1. Many were tragically in love with Germany, and some were reluctant to leave the country even if they were able to do so. However, fear of Communism was a powerful force in many part of Central and Southern Europe in the interwar period, and was ruthlessly exploited by many politicians.
• The Holocaust happened because Hitler wanted to purify Germany so to speak...He wanted the Aryan Race, of which couldn't be obtained unless all Jews were gone (along with homosexuals, Gypsies, Russians...etc.) Extermination camps were a ploy for Jews...Hitler actually told them that he was just getting them out of the country and "resettling" them in Eastern Europe but ended up killing them there...
• Nazi conquests, especially in Eastern and Eastern Central Europe (Poland and the Soviet Union) resulted in large additional numbers of Jews coming under Nazi control, thus exacerbating the Nazis' self-imposed "Jewish problem".
• One motive may have been robbery - it has been estimated that the Holocaust (including confiscated property and slave labour) profited the Nazis by a sum that would today be in the tens of billions of dollars.
• Hitler blamed the result of WWI on the Jews and he hated them. He rounded them up. He did the same when he started taking over other countries. He used the Jews, Poles, gays, Gypsies and Russians as slave labour and then started to kill them in gas chambers.

The above is essentially background and none of it explains why the Nazi regime moved from persecution to genocide. Please see the related questions.

For more information and recommended reading, see the Discussion page.

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First answer by Peter Gibson. Last edit by Joncey. Contributor trust: 2360 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 291 [recommend question]