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Antisemitism can be difficult to fully describe. I believe its because hatred can be a truly irrational thing. People start "hating" and one of the reasons they keep doing it is that because many brains are "hard-wired" to hate. They derive a satisfaction of sorts from it. It may be an evolutionary thing with people. Perhaps, those early hominids who "hated the most" were more likely to kill their prey and survive than those who did not.
Those reasons that can rationally be advanced for the reason antisemitism occurred and kept occurring are these:
1. Christians blamed Jews for killing Christ.
2. Largely in response to #1, Jews lived in their own segregated communities and took on very specific social and cultural characteristics. Their clothing and appearance was often different and unique from other Europeans and they were readily identifiable.
3. Jews were prohibited from entering many trades and businesses and as such became concentrated in banking (financial services) and jobs that involved sales. Christian injunctions against "usury" made it difficult for many Christians to work in a field that involved lending money. Lenders of money are seldom popular as a group. Since Jews were seen as the primary lenders this lead to a great deal of bad feeling against them by non-Jews.
4. Some type of prejudice exists in virtually every culture and country in this world. Just like "hatred" it maybe something we our brains are hardwired to do. Humans need to stop wondering why and instead focus on dealing with it as a problem. Any group that is significantly different than the majority population has a virtual 100% certainty of experiencing some form of discrimination and prejudice.
5. Creating a "scapegoat" or the practice of "scapegoating" has always been an effective tool for politicians or those in power to deflect blame onto someone else for problems they cannot or will not fix. The Jews were frequently used as scapegoats throughout history for many years before the Nazis came along.
6. Envy and jealousy can be an enormous problem. When you have a society that is largely divided into "rich" and "poor", you set the stage for unleashing these powerful human emotions. Add to that mix racial and cultural differences and you will get something that is near explosive.
7. Germany went through terrible times following World War I. The people there--like the people in many places in Europe--were probably largely antisemitic to start with. However, going through the shame of their defeat in World War I and than to have to deal with hyper-inflation and an economic depression afterwards would have been difficult for any country to bear. These crises set the stage for a politician like Hitler who had an easy answer for these problems. That answer was "the Jews are responsible". Nothing complicated or nuanced about that. The implication was that if Germany deals with that problem it will never occur again.
8. Lack of leadership that could show the country a better way. The USA was fortunate during the Great Depression and World War II to have a great leader like FDR. FDR struggled with the Great Depression for years. However, whatever his faults, he never attempted to blame a racial or ethnic group for what was going on. Instead, he tried different policies and gave frequently radio addresses encouraging Americans to be patient. This kind of leadership could have prevented what happened in Germany from occurring.
This. When you actually study the evolution of anti-semitism in Europe these are the facts that you come back to. Everything that evolved into a negative stereotype about Jews that was then used to fuel hatred of Jews has its roots in traditional limitations placed upon Jews and the roles they found themselves in by necessity.
Ultimately, anti-semitism was not in anyway new to Europe when Hitler came around. He simply found a long targeted minority group that he could rail against and place "blame" upon for the losses in WW1 and the situation Germany found itself in. How could one claim the superiority of the "master race" if that race had just been defeated in a war and made to suffer with a harsh treaty? Easy, tap into the already nascent "stabbed in the back theory" and say it obviously wasn't the fault of the "master race" but of the greedy Jewish bankers and industrialists who betrayed us.
As was pointed out in the other thread, this was also not something unique to Germany either, anti-semitic thought was rampant in many place in Europe and often simply needed an excuse to be cut loose and there were countless examples of this occurring over and over again.
At the end of the day, the Holocaust is important to study because of how relatively easily it was undertaken and how generally apathetic most people were to it. Every nation is merely a step away from doing the same. In WW2 the US rounded up the entire Japanese population, siezed their assets and marched them off to live in camps where they wouldn't be a "threat". All of this is basically only a couple of steps removed from what was happening to Jews in Europe and was being done in a nation founded on the principles of personal freedom and liberty. None of the Japanese that were interred had done anything to the US, yet people were afraid and the government had an excuse bred out of that fear. Fear is a powerful motivator and when used by people with malicious intent can lead entire nations down a very dark path.
What led up to it was a funny little man with a plan. This was more than what most had; In the time of the build-up to World War II, people had seen runaway inflation eat up their savings. They saw their children starving on millions of Marks - People who had saved their whole lives found they no longer could live. Their country and pride was broken and they were desperate for answers.
Along came this funny little man with his plan. He promised that he understood what they were going through, that he loved his country and that he could fix all their issues. And he gave them someone to blame.
This is important: Rage can be directed and focused. Rage allows one to think that another group, like Conservatives or Liberals or Gays or Christians or any race or creed you can take your pick of , is Other. They are different and thus less than human.
This prevented despair from setting in.
It is Human Nature that we do this, and Human Nature that we deny it. They tried to export Jewish people all over the globe - Even let people know what was coming with his book - And they weren't welcome. Times were tough everywhere and the Jewish ex-pats were Other.
The saddest part of it - It has happened again and will happen again. Probably done by people very similar to you and me. The Other will be different, but times will become difficult and the Other will be blamed for it. The name might be 'One Percent' or 'Conservative' or 'Christian' or 'Liberal', but it will come again.
Anti-semitism existed for many centuries in Europe. Jews were confined to ghetto neighborhoods of European cities. The Russian Czars for years, continually approved pogroms (brutal attacks) on Jewish villages (shtetls) of their own country. In fact, the great religious reformer Martin Luther even advocated burning down Jewish villages and killing them all.
In the 20th century, people associated Jews with the founding of Communism as well as with Anarchism (Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Emma Goldman, others) and with the Abraham Lincoln brigade which fought Hitler's friend, General Franco the fascist ruler of Spain. Communism was evil by any measure, because Stalin's forced collectivization had caused the starvation of millions of Ukrainian peasant farmers in the 1930s, about the time Hitler assumed power.
Jews were also associated with modern abstract art, and with modern atonal dissonant classical music, which traditionalists didn't like or understand and considered demented or depraved.
I would be really interested if someone could point me to some economic data because I have a hunch that much of the hatred towards Jews came from the fact that they are heavily involved in finance and banking (hence the age old stereotypes which have some truth to them).
I'm assuming because they were successful as a group, it was easy for people to vent their anger and frustrations on them. The real culprit were the Allied powers who pushed Germany to the bring and allowed for a monster like Hitler to come to power and do what he did.
On a side note, to be fair, Winston Churchill and FDR were no better than Hitler as they too were known for making racist comments and disliking Jews and or blacks.
Some Jewish families were wealthy and involved in banking, most were just ordinary citizens. The hatred had been there for centruries as the Jews insisted on keeping their identity, as did the gypsys. It had been sporatically used to remove or kill Jews over those centuries, but it was usually in response to something needing immediate blame. There were removal of villages in Russia, but it was also as the land itself was wanted for some other reason, repeating the pattern of removial of pesantry which had happened several centuries before in Europe.
I've read books by survivors and the irony is the people that lived ordinary lives, considered themselves German or Austrian and many had served in WW1. They didn't live in segrated areas and they did a variety of jobs. But Hitler needed a war cry to blame, and as the allies had needed to punish Germany and reduce it to poverty, they gave it to him. It was primarily the French, as France was devistated in WW1, far more than just across the line of trenches, who demanded revenge.
At the time Hitler was a private getting out of the army, so they had no way of knowing he would rise. But even at the end of WW1, the powers that be were operating on a Victorian stage where it was something you'd do.
In a sense, WW1 was the last of a LONG succession of wars of revenge between what was origionally the borderland between Romanized Europe and Germanic Europe. The Romans attempted to revenge the first legion, and ended up absorbing the area without making it Roman. The cultural conflict continued in periods of war and peace and war again between what became France and what became Germany right up until then.
It took about a half hour for the Germans to pass through the area defended and soaked in blood during WW1. The modern world had erupted. They still distrust each other but its a bigger world for them now. The leaders of the victorious nations except the US in WW1 were doing what had historically been done, and France was going to put a stop to the repeat.
In a very real sense, they did. Just not how anyone planned. And it took twelve million civilians with it.
If the jews could not own land, or do most occupations, than where did they get the money to lend away to gentiles?
SOME of them were still allowed to be in SOME well-payed occupations; they were lawyers, doctors, they were bankers, they were musicians; I don't remember off top what else.
Even in such country as Russia where Jews lived with the pale of settlement, some of them were allowed to move to the big cities, to enter the Universities, commerce and all.
Russian kings/queens had a quota how many were allowed to leave schtetls, receive education/climb the ladder in the society.
If the jews could not own land, or do most occupations, than where did they get the money to lend away to gentiles?
And so over centuries of frugal living even such people as tailors, butchers can't accumulate enough wealth to become shylocks (Shakespeare)? Loan a little here, loan a little there, soon you are a lender, then you are a bank, and once you are a bank it's not that much of a leap to being a financial institution.
Ultimately, anti-semitism was not in anyway new to Europe when Hitler came around. He simply found a long targeted minority group that he could rail against and place "blame" upon for the losses in WW1 and the situation Germany found itself in. How could one claim the superiority of the "master race" if that race had just been defeated in a war and made to suffer with a harsh treaty? Easy, tap into the already nascent "stabbed in the back theory" and say it obviously wasn't the fault of the "master race" but of the greedy Jewish bankers and industrialists who betrayed us.Baloney. It sounds like an old outda argument that comes out of a post WW2 history class.
Not really. This only applied to Catholics and at the industrial revolution Catholics were no longer dominant in Europe.
You really have a problem with timelines...
"One of many myths about the usury doctrine - the prohibition against demanding anything above the principal in a loan (mutuum) - is that it ceased to be observed in Reformation Europe. As several authors have demonstrated, however, early Protestant Reformers, beginning with Luther, had essentially endorsed the long established Scholastic usury doctrines. The one major exception was Jean Calvin. Though retaining a strong hostility against usury, he permitted interest on commercial loans, while forbidding usury on charitable loans to the needy. That view may have been partly responsible for a crucially important breach in civil support of the usury doctrine. The first, in 1540, was an imperial ordinance for the Habsburg Netherlands permitting interest payments up to 12%, but only for commercial loans. In England, Henry VIII's Parliament of 1545 enacted a statute permitting interest payments up to 10% (on all loans); any higher rates constituted usury. But, in 1552, a hostile Parliament, with radical Protestants, revoked that statute, and revived it only under Elizabeth, in 1571."
Ultimately, anti-semitism was not in anyway new to Europe when Hitler came around.
As soon as Richard I left to join the Crusade in 1190, riots began again throughout England. In March 1190, a mix of Crusaders, barons indebted to the Jews, those envious of Jewish wealth and clergymen conspired to kill the Jews of York. They burned several houses and approximately 150 Jews fled to the royal castle in York. Led by Richard Malebys, a noble indebted to the Jews, the mob besieged the castle. The Jews had little rations and many killed themselves. On March 16, the citadel was captured and those Jews left alive were murdered. The mob then stole the records of debts to Jews from a nearby cathedral and burned them.
On July 18, 1290, shortly after money lending was made heretical and illegal in England, Edward I expelled the Jews from England, making England the first European country to do so. Most Jews fled to continental Europe, settling mostly in France and Germany, although some managed to remain in England by hiding their identity and religion. There is disagreement over the number — either 4,000 or 16,000) — who were actually forced to leave England. The Jewish exile from England lasted 350 years.
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