Question

Why did the scapegoating of Jewish people happen during these times of political and economic trouble in Germany?

Answer 1

Answer: Hitler was a known hater of Jews. He used the economical state of Germany to turn Germans against the Jews.

Explanation:Present in Europe long before the advent of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, anti-Jewish prejudice was a complex phenomenon that stretched across the continent and existed among all the peoples of Europe. The Jews were a people apart, not only by virtue of the fact that they maintained separate religious beliefs but because of distinct cultural practices as well. Klaus Fischer, a German historian of the roots of Nazism, has stressed that the Jews were "an ancient cultured people" who practiced a reverence for learning and philosophical thinking centuries before the existence of the early Greek city-states or the Roman republic. When Jews entered into Europe in large numbers during the Middle Ages, "they found themselves living among primitive Western people who were repelled by their superior intelligence and their clever business acumen. There was mutual contempt and hate . . . the two peoples were living geographically alongside each other, but they were immersed in different cultural stages." If Fischer is correct, then the Europeans' responses toward the Jews involved religious differences, cultural differences, the suspicion of one group of people toward 'outsiders,' and not a little envy. It was a volatile mixture that readily could be fanned into violence.

All of these responses and motives can be discerned in the remarks below, made by Germans about the Jews, from the 1500s to the advent of Hitler's Nazi movement. Hitler thus could draw upon a long tradition of anti-Semitism in making the Jews his special scapegoats for Germany's troubles.