How Hitler Became an Anti-Semite

The Father of the Third Reich

Most people associate Adolf Hitler with one of the world's largest murderers who led Germany into war. He had beliefs that the only strong race was the Aryans. He had incredible hatred for the Jews, and murdered about 6 million Jews during the Second World War. How was Hitler's view on the Jews, and why did he get these thoughts about this specific group of people?

Adolf Hitler was born on the 20th of April 1889 in Braunau, Austria. Hitler was number four of Klara and Alois Hitler's children. Adolf's father was strict and regularly punished Adolf physically. Adolf got a lot of love from his mother, Klara. His father, Alois, died when he was 14 years old. Adolf and his family moved to Vienna in 1906. December 21, 1907 his mother died from terminal breast cancer, when she was supposed to be treated by Dr. Edward Bloch, a Jewish doctor who served the poor (Grobman). Until 1909 Hitler had been living on a small sum of money he inherited from his father Alois and money he had received from the government as an orphan (Grobman). As soon as the money was gone he was poor, and had to live in flophouses and shelters for homeless. It was in this condition as a homeless person in Vienna that he got interested in politics and started to fuel his hatred for Jews, and to learn his debate skills (Grobman). Hitler was fascinated by the fact that Vienna was a city with a lot of prejudices against Jews, and because of this Jews often got the blame for problems in the city (Grobman).

When the First World War broke out, the government was playing on patriotism to make people fight for their country. Hitler was heavily influenced by the patriotism and recruited to fight for Germany's cause. The German people became more anti foreigners, and looked at the German people as superior. Hitler was injured, causing him to withdraw from the battlefields, and was transported to a hospital in the Berlin area. Hitler kept on fighting for Germany's cause after his recovery. He was injured again in 1918 in Belgium. There were communistic revolutions in Germany which made the people mad. Many of the leaders for these unsuccessful revolutions were Jews. So the result was that people hated Jews as well as communists. The war ended in 1918 and Germany had to pay for all destruction the war had brought on other countries (Grobman). Some of the punishment for Germany was that they lost their colonies and big parts of their territory. Germany also got limits on their weaponry and military strength. These kinds of punishment were humiliating for the Germans, and especially for Germans who looked at Germany as superior to other countries (Grobman).

Just after the war, Hitler saw that the German Worker's party was disorganized and had no program to attract voters. Hitler looked at this as an opportunity for him to get involved in politics. Hitler's growing hate for Jews soon became a political stand for the party. Hitler made a program consisting of 25 points. Most of the points were targeted at the Jews. The points included "revoking the Versailles Treaty, confiscating war profits, expropriating land without compensation for use by the state, revoking civil rights for Jews, and expelling those Jews who had immigrated into Germany after the war had begun" (Grobman). The day after the release of the party's program, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" were in print in the local anti-Semitic newspaper (Grobman). Hitler's Anti-Semitism was reinforced by the false and alarming accusations. Just after Hitler changed the program so that treatment of Jews was a main theme of his orations. Hitler started blaming the Jews for the inflation Germany had, the political unsteadiness, unemployment, the humiliation of punishment and losing the war. Hitler changed the name of the party to National Socialistic German Worker's party (NSDAP). One of the local anti-Semite newspapers was becoming bankrupt, and Hitler's party purchased it (Grobman).