Why Did Hitler Hate Jews — Transcript

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1. 0:00People think the Holocaust was the greatest  tragedy in human history, all driven by ego
2. 0:04and the personal madness of a failed artist. The  reality is far more terrifying. In January 1942,
3. 0:1215 senior Nazi officials met at a lakeside villa,  not to debate whether it should happen, but how
4. 0:17to make it work. Over Cognac, they synchronized a  continental operation, treating mass murder as a
5. 0:23logistical problem. In just 90 minutes, they  decided the fate of millions across Europe.
6. 0:28This wasn't a breakdown of civilization. It was  a product of it. On January 20th, 1942, Reinhardt
7. 0:35Hydrrich summoned 14 other top Nazis to a villa  in the Berlin [music] suburb of Vonyi. Hydrish,
8. 0:41who Hitler once called the man with the iron  heart, wouldn't make his mark in popular history
9. 0:46like Hitler's inner circle. But he was without a  doubt one of the most important and most sinister
10. 0:51figures in the entire apparatus of the Third  Reich. He [music] was a talented violinist,
11. 0:56fighter pilot, and fencer who oozed charisma. That  saw him rise through the ranks to become the head
12. 1:01of the Reich security main office, overseeing  the Gestapo, the criminal police, and the SD,
13. 1:07the intelligence arm of the SS. Hydrrich wasn't  so much the epitome of the benality of evil. He
14. 1:13was too ruthless to be called Benal. But he was a  cold, brutal administrator. He was also one of the
15. 1:19principal architects of the Nazi policy toward  what the regime called the Jewish question. The
16. 1:25Jewish question, what to do with millions of Jews  across Europe. The Nazis called them the unbench,
17. 1:31subhuman, a parasitic race at the bottom of  the Nazi racial hierarchy. Naturally, they
18. 1:36saw themselves as the Aryans, the master race.  The meeting comprised representatives from the
19. 1:41ministries of the interior and justice, the Reich  Chancellory, the Foreign Office, and the Office
20. 1:46of the 4-year Plan, and the Ministry for the  Occupied Eastern Territories. Also present were
21. 1:51representatives from the SS, including the Race  and Settlement Main Office, and the Office of the
22. 1:56Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German  Nationhood. These weren't fringe [music] fanatics.
23. 2:01They were lawyers, administrators, civil servants,  and senior government officials. The educated
24. 2:06bureaucratic elite of Nazi Germany. Most would be  dead within 10 years. But in 42, they felt on top
25. 2:13of the world. One of the most infamous was Adolf  Ikeman, a logistics man and an expert in Jewish
26. 2:18affairs. After the war, he would go on the run and  be captured and hanged in 1962. The big question
27. 2:24of the meeting was how to achieve the regime's  ambition of nullifying Europe's Jews. The Nazis
28. 2:30were masters of euphemism. Rarely in official  documents did they openly discuss mass murder,
29. 2:35genocide, or extermination. Instead, they  talked about evacuation, special treatment,
30. 2:41labor deployment, and resettlement, cleansing,  and pacification. The Nazi Minister of Propaganda,
31. 2:47Joseph Goubles, was more to the point in  his private diary. On December 13th, 1941,
32. 2:53just over a month before Vonyy, he recorded his  thoughts following a discussion with Adolf Hitler.
33. 2:58Here we can see the stark reality behind the veils  of Nazi persecution language. Quote, "As regards
34. 3:04the Jewish question, the Furer has decided [music]  to sweep the floor clean." That was more Nazi
35. 3:09metaphor, but he was clearer when he wrote that  Hitler had told him, quote, "The extermination
36. 3:13of the Jews is the necessary consequence, that it  should be regarded without any sentimentality." It
37. 3:19was the sheer lack of sentimentality or even  anger that would surprise many concentration
38. 3:23camp inmates. One of the most chilling passages in  Holocaust survivor Primo Levy's book, If This Is a
39. 3:29Man, [music] is when he watched a German guard  beat a prisoner without emotion. He was amazed
40. 3:34and he asked [music] himself, "How can one hit  a man without anger?" Levy's question stands as
41. 3:39a testament to the bureaucratic, [music] detached  nature of Nazi cruelty. But the practical question
42. 3:44before any of that happened was how to dispose of  so many people. [music] On December 16th, 1941,
43. 3:50at a government meeting in Kkow, Hans Frank, the  government general of occupied Poland, discussed
44. 3:55the same topic when he remarked, "We cannot shoot  or poison these 3,500,000 [music] Jews in Poland,
45. 4:01but we take the measures which will lead to their  annihilation." As for where this would happen and
46. 4:07by what means, Frank said that would be determined  in due course, and it was. A month later,
47. 4:12those men met in Vansi, an affluent suburb of  Berlin associated with bankers, industrialists,
48. 4:17scientists, and artists. Inside the lakeside  villa, refreshments were served and cigarettes
49. 4:22smoked as officials gathered around the conference  table. Notes were taken and later distilled into
50. 4:27a document that would become known as the Vansi  protocol. Hydrish had the answer to the question
51. 4:32everyone had been asking. The Fior had approved a  solution. The Jews would be evacuated to the east.
52. 4:38But it was what Hydrish said next that would  attract the attention of future historians.
53. 4:42These actions are nevertheless to be seen only  as temporary relief, but they are providing the
54. 4:48practical experience that is of great significance  for the coming final solution of the Jewish
55. 4:53question. In his presentation, he discussed the  approximately 11 million Jews living throughout
56. 4:58Europe. [music] 4.3 million were already under  Nazi control by early 1942. The number of Jews
57. 5:04in each country was listed on a prepared document.  The Jews would be put to work as forced laborers.
58. 5:09Hydrish was clear that many would die in the  process. [music] Doubtless the large majority
59. 5:13will be eliminated by natural causes, he said.  But he added something just as chilling. Any
60. 5:19final remnant that survives will have to be  dealt with appropriately because otherwise by
61. 5:24natural selection they would form the germ cell of  a new Jewish revival. Many historians regard this
62. 5:30passage as one of the clearest indications for the  Nazis. No permanent place existed for Jews within
63. 5:36their vision of Europe. The slaughter had already  started. The Einat Groupen Nazi death squads had
64. 5:41already executed hundreds of thousands of Jews or  more in Soviet territory that included women and
65. 5:47children. They also murdered Soviet political  officials, prisoners of war, and others deemed
66. 5:52enemies of the Reich. This was how they intended  to go on. But as was being discussed in the
67. 5:56meeting before the slaughter, the Nazis envisioned  Jews as being deported eastward. Germany and the
68. 6:02protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were among  the first areas to be addressed. From there the
69. 6:07process would be extended across Europe. Men,  women, and children would be concentrated in
70. 6:11ghettos, deported by rail, and subjected to forced  labor and ultimately for most death. The meeting
71. 6:17participants discussed what to do about mixed  race Jews and Jews married to non-Jews. Various
72. 6:23exemptions, classifications, and special cases  were considered. Sterilization was proposed as a
73. 6:28solution to prevent any more Jews from being born.  Otto Hoffman of the SS Race and Settlement Main
74. 6:33Office, who would outlive almost every other  participant in the meeting and die in 1982,
75. 6:39argued that extensive use should be made of  sterilization. Those classified as half Jews,
76. 6:45he believed, would often prefer sterilization  to deportation. From the regime's perspective,
77. 6:50it offered a way to eliminate what it considered  a racial problem while avoiding many of the legal
78. 6:54and administrative complications surrounding  mixed ancestry and mixed marriages. Considering
79. 6:59the topic and the pain it would cause, this was  brutally cold language. But for them, it was an
80. 7:05administrative solution for an [music] existential  problem. For Jews already in mixed marriages,
81. 7:10they agreed that the matters would be handled on  a case-by case basis. Much depended on who the
82. 7:15Jewish spouse was married to and whether special  exemptions might apply. The men agreed that if a
83. 7:20Jew was married to a prominent Aryan, deportation  could prove politically awkward. Similar concerns
84. 7:25arose for Jews working in industries considered  vital to the war effort. After all, they might
85. 7:30actually need these people. Erish Noman of the  4-year plan organization argued that Jews employed
86. 7:36in essential sectors should remain in their  positions until suitable replacements could be
87. 7:40found. The meeting came to an end after about 90  minutes. In the years that followed, historians,
88. 7:45lawyers, and judges would debate precisely how  explicit the participants had been about their
89. 7:50intentions. The methods of mass murder were not  detailed in the surviving minutes. Many post-war
90. 7:55investigators would say that the language  of the meeting pointed toward a policy whose
91. 7:59ultimate objective was the total annihilation of  Europe's Jews. If sterilization was presented as
92. 8:05a preferable alternative for some categories of  Jews, what fate awaited those who were deported?
93. 8:10When Adolf Ikeman was captured in 1960, he  answered that question. He testified that he
94. 8:16remembered discussions about shootings and the  quote business with the engine, but he claimed
95. 8:21poison gas hadn't been mentioned in the meeting.  By engine, he was referring to the mobile gas
96. 8:25vans already being used to murder Jews in occupied  territories. Ikeman had witnessed prisoners being
97. 8:31shot in 1941, an experience he later claimed  had deeply disturbed him. In another case,
98. 8:37he saw victims of the gas vans thrown into a pit,  but only after the gold teeth had been extracted.
99. 8:42He also recalled the conversation with Hydrrich.  He told me the Furer had ordered the physical
100. 8:47extermination of the Jews. He didn't witness the  gas chambers in use, but he had said he had once
101. 8:52seen the terrible airtight rooms being prepared  at Trebinka extermination camp. What the minutes
102. 8:57of the meeting leave out is this. In September  1941 at the Awitz Burkanau concentration camp,
103. 9:04the Nazis had already started testing a method  of wholesale murder. They were unleashing the
104. 9:09deadly gas cyclon be on Soviet prisoners. But  after the von conference, Awitz would become
105. 9:14the largest killing center in the Holocaust.  The implementation for what the Nazis called
106. 9:19the expulsion of the Jews was ready. But where  did the blueprint for this intense enmity begin?
107. 9:25Between 9 and 11 million military personnel and  about 6 to 13 million civilians died in World War
108. 9:31I. Germany lost over two million soldiers  and somewhere between 400,000 and 763,000
109. 9:37civilians. It was a disaster. Germany was said  to be the primary [music] aggressor it had to
110. 9:43pay. Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany  was ordered to pay reparations totaling 132
111. 9:48billion gold marks around 500 to600 billion  today. It lost around 13% of its European
112. 9:55territory and all of its overseas colonies. It  was a national humiliation. That sentiment was
113. 10:01never deeper than after the Wall Street crash of  1929 and the Great Depression that followed. The
114. 10:06German economy collapsed. Unemployment soared and  faith in the political establishment crumbled.
115. 10:11Men of working age queued for free soup at the  homeless shelters and soup kitchens. Meanwhile,
116. 10:16women told their children that they'd have  to go hungry. For millions of Germans,
117. 10:20the promise of stability and prosperity that their  government talked about after the First World War
118. 10:25was a lie. The country was broken. It was in this  atmosphere of gloom and disenchantment that Adolf
119. 10:31Hitler transformed from a minor political agitator  into a major political force. He promised that
120. 10:36Germany would rise from the ashes and reclaim its  lost greatness. But to do so, he needed a legend,
121. 10:43a conspiracy theory, one that said Germany had not  been defeated on the battlefield in World War I,
122. 10:49but had been stabbed in the back by disloyal  elements at home. He found it. According to his
123. 10:54narrative, liberal democrats, socialists, and  especially Jews had undermined the war effort.
124. 11:00They were the people who betrayed the nation at  the moment of need. He had taken this partly from
125. 11:05a 1919 parliamentary inquiry into Germany's  defeat. Field Marshal Paul von Hindenberg had
126. 11:10stated that the German army had been betrayed from  within. Hindenburg's exact words translated were,
127. 11:16"The German army was stabbed in the back. No  guilt applies to the good core of the army."
128. 11:21Supporters of the conspiracy theory pointed to  labor strikes, political unrest, and anti-war
129. 11:26sentiment on the home front at the end of World  War I. They blamed the Jews in part for what
130. 11:31they said were the strikes in the arms industry  that had left soldiers without war materials.
131. 11:36Hindenburg had claimed that he hadn't been  supported by the new German government. He
132. 11:40also claimed that the respected British military  writer, General Sir Frederick Maurice, had agreed
133. 11:46that Germany was stabbed in the back by certain  influential bad actors. On December 18th, 1918,
134. 11:52the reactionary newspaper Deutsche Tagon printed  a story that talked up those claims, which further
135. 11:58fired up German nationalists. Maurice later denied  he'd ever said that. While civilians letting
136. 12:03Germany down, had been discussed in some circles  in Britain, Maurice confirmed in his 1919 book,
137. 12:08The Last Four Months, that quote, "There is no  question that the German armies were completely
138. 12:13and decisively beaten in the field. It didn't  matter. The conspiracy theorists had already made
139. 12:18up their minds. The German National People's  Party, DNVP, and Hitler's National Socialist
140. 12:24German Workers Party, or NSDAP, ran with it. For  them, Maurice's original words were evidence of
141. 12:30Jewish sabotage." The myth was further emboldened  in Germany by the words of Douglas Hayek,
142. 12:36commander of the British and Commonwealth forces  on the Western Front. Prior to Germany surrender,
143. 12:41he had said, "Germany has not broken in the  military since her forces have withdrawn fighting
144. 12:46very bravely and in excellent order." But the  conspiracy theory didn't include another of Hig's
145. 12:51assertions when in October 1918, he had written  in his diary, "I think we have their army beaten
146. 12:57now." The truth was that Germany lost the war on  the battlefield worn down by years of attrition
147. 13:03and Allied superiority. There was plenty of  evidence to support [music] this including
148. 13:07the words of General Eric Ludenorf in 1918. He  concluded that Germany could no longer win the war
149. 13:13and so he urged that peace negotiations begin. Yet  after the war he became one of the most prominent
150. 13:19supporters of the stabbed in the back myth. He  had backed the claim that the social democrats,
151. 13:24the Catholic center party, socialists, trade  unions, and the Jews had betrayed Germany. The
152. 13:29conspiracy theory was transformed into a powerful  political weapon that poisoned German politics and
153. 13:34helped undermine the VHimar Republic. For some, it  would advance their political careers. For others,
154. 13:39it offered a convenient explanation for defeat  that shifted the blame away from the military
155. 13:44leadership and onto political enemies. For many  ordinary Germans struggling through the turmoil
156. 13:49of the 1920s, the myth and betrayal provided  a simple explanation for a complex defeat. It
157. 13:55helped them to preserve both personal pride  and national honor. The narrative provided
158. 14:00a scapegoat not just for losing the war, but for  many of Germany's problems, Jews. Around 100,000
159. 14:06Jews had served for Germany in the First World  War, and roughly 12,000 had died fighting. Some
160. 14:12were decorated for bravery. The data came from  a report after Jews had been accused of being
161. 14:17sherkers who had served away from the danger of  the front line. The report [music] published by
162. 14:22the war ministry census on Jewish participation in  the war discovered that this wasn't true. But the
163. 14:28report was suppressed. The myth of sherking lived  on. The German Nationalist Protection and Defiance
164. 14:33Federation, the largest anti-semitic organization  in Germany, claimed that Jews were proiteeers,
165. 14:39spies, and defeists undermining the war effort.  Nazi propagandists repeated the same story,
166. 14:44portraying Jews as disloyal outsiders responsible  for Germany's suffering during and after the
167. 14:49war. But a giant lie needs a messenger. Enter a  traumatized veteran searching for an explanation
168. 14:55for his country's humiliation. Historians  often disagree as to when exactly Hitler's
169. 15:00views hardened into the racial ideology he  would later embrace. The first sour notes
170. 15:04of his antise-semitism seemed to emerge when he  was trying and failing to become a professional
171. 15:09artist in Vienna. There the once positive young  man became disillusioned as he lived in near
172. 15:14poverty among the unemployed and dispossessed.  This likely contributed to the bitterness that
173. 15:19later shaped his worldview. [music] But those  experiences alone don't explain the genocidal
174. 15:24policies he would eventually pursue. In fact, one  of the Jews Hitler knew during his younger years
175. 15:30he greatly trusted and respected. Dr. Edward Blah,  the Jewish physician who cared for Hitler's mother
176. 15:35as she suffered from breast cancer. This was the  same man who had once treated young Adolf for
177. 15:41colds and tonsillitis. After his mother's death,  Hitler wrote to Block, "I shall be grateful to
178. 15:46you forever." He wrote to Block often. Some of  the postcards, embarrassing for the Nazi party,
179. 15:51were later confiscated from Block by the  Gestapo. On another occasion, Hitler wrote,
180. 15:55"The Hitler family sends you the best wishes for  a happy new year in everlasting thankfulness,
181. 16:00Adolf Hitler." This was the same man who would  later state that all Jewish people were polluting
182. 16:06Western civilization. It was a startling  contradiction. But Hitler's anti-semitism
183. 16:11wasn't rooted in primarily personal experiences  with particular Jewish individuals. Rather,
184. 16:16he transformed the Jew into an abstract racial  and political enemy. It wasn't personal hatred, he
185. 16:22told himself. He believed he was applying reason,  history, and science. His opinions of Jews,
186. 16:27he claimed, was a kind of scientific rationalism.  The evidence was in letters he sent before he came
187. 16:32to power. In September 1919, he wrote to a soldier  named Adolf Gamlich on the topic of the Jewish
188. 16:39question. The Nazis didn't invent the quote  Jewish question. The term emerged in the 18th
189. 16:45and 19th centuries as Jews across Europe began  gaining civil rights after centuries of exclusion.
190. 16:50The question facing many European states was how  Jewish emancipation would affect society. What to
191. 16:56do with their citizenship and political rights?  What about cultural assimilation, immigration,
192. 17:01and national identity? And not all of the  proposed solutions were rooted in anti-semitism.
193. 17:06Many had argued for Jewish equal rights and full  integration into European society. But that wasn't
194. 17:12what the Nazis wanted. Hitler made that abundantly  clear when he talked to Glish about it. The letter
195. 17:17stands as evidence that Hitler had rationalized  his hatred toward Jews, not any particular Jew,
196. 17:23but the entire Jewish race for what he conceived  was its pernitious effect on German society.
197. 17:29Anti-semitism as a political movement, he  wrote, may not and cannot be determined by
198. 17:34emotional factors, but only by the recognition of  facts. He said the fact was the dangers posed by
199. 17:40jewelry find expression in the undeniable  aversion of wide sections of our people.
200. 17:45Hitler already knew he could rouse the rabble  if needed. Not just the openly anti-semitic,
201. 17:49but the [music] majority, people he believed were  rightly racist. Nonetheless, he wasn't advocating
202. 17:55mass murder at that point in his life. He wrote,  "An anti-semitism based on purely emotional
203. 18:00grounds will find its ultimate expression in the  form of the pilgrim." But bloody pilgrims weren't
204. 18:05the solution for young Hitler. Bureaucracy was. He  wrote that a healthy anti-semitism should be based
205. 18:11on reason and this would quote lead to systematic  legal combating and elimination of the privileges
206. 18:17of the Jews. The legislation would lead to the  ultimate objective, the irrevocable removal of
207. 18:22the Jews in general. It wasn't personal. It  was much worse than that. Jews, he believed,
208. 18:27were a [music] parasite sucking on the lifeblood  of the German people. He contended that they
209. 18:32stuck together and would eventually have so much  power they would destroy Western civilization. At
210. 18:37the time, German Jews were disproportionately  represented in some fields, including finance,
211. 18:41law, science, publishing, medicine, and the arts.  But what Hitler ignored was that most Jews were
212. 18:47shopkeepers, clerks, [music] tailor, teachers,  factory workers, and war veterans. Many were
213. 18:52poor and almost completely powerless. Like other  Germans, they held a wide range of political views
214. 18:57and social positions. The vast majority had  no influence over government policy, banking,
215. 19:03the media, or the course of world events.  It didn't matter. With the right propaganda,
216. 19:07Hitler knew that many hard-working  Germans, some filled with resentment,
217. 19:11would express the enmity [music] against Jews  he so dearly wanted. He had seen with his own
218. 19:16eyes how an anti-Jewish policy can win votes. The  mayor of Vienna, Carl Luger, had repeatedly won
219. 19:22elections using violently anti-semitic language  that had stirred the masses. [music] He claimed
220. 19:28that Jews had control over too many businesses.  He said that the poor craftsman had to beg the
221. 19:32Jewish furniture dealer. banking high finance  he said was in the hands of the Jews Jews who
222. 19:38operated a kind of terrorism on society voting  for him was to liberate Christian people from
223. 19:43the hegemony of jewelry [music] his radical  anti-semitism depicted Jews as only specialists
224. 19:48in vile profits [music] in what he said amounted  to an expropriation of the indigenous population
225. 19:54this taring of millions of European Jews with  the same [music] brush was partly why Hitler
226. 20:00would call him the greatest German mayor  of all times of course Luger Anti-semitism
227. 20:05was mostly driven by selfish motives. It  was all backed by highly discriminative,
228. 20:09dehumanizing language. Luger would describe Jews  as quote beasts of prey in human form. For Hitler,
229. 20:16they were vermin pests and parasites. [music]  Importantly, such feelings weren't limited
230. 20:20to Germany and Austria. Anti-semitism was  rampant all over Europe, especially in Poland,
231. 20:26the Russian Empire, Romania, Hungary, and France.  Even in Britain, where the Jews had better legal
232. 20:31protections, they faced prejudice and were subject  to enduring conspiracy theories. Luger and men
233. 20:37like him across Europe argued that capitalism's  inequalities were deliberate [music] and that
234. 20:42Jews were the architects of the system.  As Europe searched for answers to poverty,
235. 20:46instability, and social upheaval, many found them  in anti-semitism. Hitler knew he could exploit
236. 20:52this. He just needed an audience. But when people  finally started listening, a secret would emerge
237. 20:57that contradicted his entire worldview. When World  War I ended and the Democratic VHimar Republic was
238. 21:03established, many German Jews supported the new  government. Meanwhile, in Russia, the Bolsheviks
239. 21:08had overthrown the old regime during the Russian  Revolution. Several prominent Bolshevik leaders
240. 21:12were of Jewish origin. Jews supporting the German  government, Jews participating in communist
241. 21:18movements. Hitler would claim that this was  evidence that the Jews were overrunning Europe.
242. 21:22They were orchestrating both capitalism and  communism from behind the scenes. At first glance,
243. 21:26that seemed like a contradiction. How could  Jews be both Marxist revolutionaries? And the
244. 21:31supposed puppet masters of international  finance? Anti-semites had an answer. They
245. 21:36supposedly controlled capitalism through banks  and finance, profited from war, and kept ordinary
246. 21:41people poor. At that same time, they were accused  of using communism to destroy nations from within.
247. 21:46The theory didn't need to make sense. Hitler's  ideology worked on the basis of turning an entire
248. 21:51race of people into villains and caricatures.  He would make complex stories a straightforward
249. 21:56good versus evil narrative. But his actions and  beliefs didn't square with his life. One of his
250. 22:01senior officers during the First World War was  Ernst Hess, a highly decorated officer of Jewish
251. 22:07ancestry whom Hitler respected. Another superior  officer was Hugo Gutman, who recommended Hitler
252. 22:13for the Iron Cross First Class, one of the most  important awards he would ever receive. There were
253. 22:18other examples and not just his family doctor.  Hitler's former associate, Reinhold Hanish, who
254. 22:24knew him during his years in Vienna, later claimed  that many of Hitler's acquaintances at the time
255. 22:28were Jews. Among them was Ysef Noman, who helped  Hitler sell his paintings, and Simon Robinson,
256. 22:34a one-eyed locksmith whom Hitler said to have  befriended. Like many from the stories of Hitler's
257. 22:39Vienna years, some details remain disputed. What  is clear though is that before politics consumed
258. 22:44his life, Hitler lived and worked alongside Jews  on a daily basis. How could Jews be portrayed as
259. 22:50inherently disloyal when many had fought bravely  for Germany? How could they be depicted as
260. 22:55parasites when some had helped Hitler personally?  These people were clearly not a monolithic group
261. 23:00sharing identical beliefs, loyalties, or character  traits. Yet, Hitler would depict them as a single
262. 23:06hostile force working against Germany. Rather than  abandoning the theory when confronted with seeming
263. 23:11contradictions, he treated those exceptions  as anomalies. [music] The existence of Jewish
264. 23:16soldiers, Jewish patriots, and Jews he personally  admired did not alter a world view. But in those
265. 23:22early years, few were listening. [music] It might  have stayed that way had something cataclysmic not
266. 23:26happened, something that cleared the path for the  rise of a tyrant. The hyperinflation of the early
267. 23:311920s had made money almost useless in Germany.  Still, the country recovered and enjoyed what
268. 23:37became a golden 20s. Life remained depressingly  difficult for many working-class families,
269. 23:42but larger sections of the middle class saw their  fortunes improve. Berlin became one of the most
270. 23:47cosmopolitan cities in the world, a center of  artistic brilliance, technological innovation,
271. 23:52and cultural experimentation. And then came the  crash. The American financial system imploded,
272. 23:58and Germany was hit hard because it was heavily  dependent on American loans and investment.
273. 24:02The country was suddenly ravaged by severe  unemployment and business failures. Families
274. 24:07lost their [music] savings. Young men out of work  scoured the streets for discarded food. Crime
275. 24:12and rates of self harm increased while political  extremists battled in the streets. Germans weren't
276. 24:18in this together. Far from it. Some wealthy  Germans lost substantial fortunes, but others
277. 24:23survived the crisis intact. In certain cases, they  even profited by purchasing distressed assets and
278. 24:29taking advantage of collapsing prices. To many  ordinary Germans, it appeared that those at
279. 24:33the top remained protected [music] while everyone  else suffered. Adolf Hitler was watching closely.
280. 24:39The cynicism Germans now felt at their elites, the  anger they felt toward capitalism and its winners,
281. 24:45was never more intense. Hitler's furious speeches,  once viewed by many as the words of a madman,
282. 24:50gained momentum. His ideas and his book Minecom,  had remained largely on the sidelines since he'd
283. 24:56written it. But within a period of about three  years, as German banks collapsed and factories
284. 25:01closed, many people felt that they had been  betrayed by a government that could not provide
285. 25:05stability. Betrayal was Hitler's favorite  explanation. The VHimar politicians were
286. 25:10weak and corrupt. He said the Versail treaty  was humiliating. He had reminded the people
287. 25:15who had not been listening years ago that their  country had been stabbed in the back. Suddenly,
288. 25:20this resonated, as [music] did his theory that  the Jews were at the center of all the carnage.
289. 25:25Germany needed national unity. He said it needed  strong leadership, a man who gets things done and
290. 25:30won't bow to selfish elites. With 6 million people  unemployed, compared to about 1.3 million before
291. 25:36the crash, many people were desperate. Hitler  suddenly seemed relevant. To many, he became a
292. 25:41savior, the man who would put Germany back on the  map. His hyper nationalist and racist ravings now
293. 25:47sounded not like rants, but workable solutions.  He had been chairman of the NSDAP since 1921,
294. 25:54but in those days it was a small movement of  hardline political outsiders. When Hitler was
295. 25:59imprisoned for attempting a violent coup, people  saw it as proof that he was an extremist. It was a
296. 26:04view reflected in the 1928 election when the Nazis  won just 2.6% of the votes. Yet by July 1932,
297. 26:12when Germany had floundered in a sea of economic  gloom, the Nazis had become the largest party in
298. 26:17the country, winning 37.3% of the vote. Those  were not merely votes of extremist thinkers,
299. 26:23but farmers, shopkeepers, clerks, laborers, paid  soccer players, doctors, and factory workers. In
300. 26:29just four years, a man once viewed as a malcontent  had persuaded nearly half of the country that he
301. 26:34could save the country. Under him, other nations  [music] would quiver. The economy would prosper.
302. 26:39The working people would be happy and proud. The  humiliation was over. But not for everyone. For
303. 26:45success to happen, someone would have to suffer.  The people Hitler blamed for the crash were shrewd
304. 26:50and unholy players on Wall Street. Invisible hands  he claimed controlled international finance. Jews,
305. 26:57German, American, rich, and poor. They were  all the same according to Hitler's reasoning.
306. 27:01And [music] once in power, the rhetoric that  demonized these people had to be codified into
307. 27:05law. In the 1930s, Germany was a very homogeneous  society. Out of a population of between 65 to 67
308. 27:12million, only between 500,000 to 525,000 people  were Jewish. Black and Asian communities were
309. 27:19tiny, maybe amounting to a few thousand people,  although census data isn't available. Jews were
310. 27:24the largest minority, but they were diverse. They  differed in wealth, region, politics, and culture.
311. 27:30Some of them married non-Jews, thereby seen to be  assimilating into a non-Jewish culture. According
312. 27:34to an academic paper, about 35,000 Jews, or 6%  of the total Jewish population, were married
313. 27:41to non-Jews throughout the 1930s. [music] It was  a small number, but intermarriage in those days,
314. 27:46regardless of ethnicity, was often frowned  upon. If the Nazis had their way, these numbers
315. 27:51wouldn't even exist. They did everything to unmix  society. The Nazis had a specific term for people
316. 27:56with mixed or part Jewish blood, Mitchinga. They  created elaborate racial categories to classify
317. 28:02them. A Micheling of the first degree was someone  with two Jewish grandparents. A Micheling of the
318. 28:08second degree had one Jewish grandparent. [music]  According to the 1939 census, Nazi officials
319. 28:13recorded roughly 72,000 first-degree Michelinga  and about 39,000 [music] secondderee Michelinga.
320. 28:19When they introduced the Nuremberg laws in 1935,  [music] the horror expanded. The Nazis wanted to
321. 28:24know exactly who belonged to [music] what they  considered the higher and lower races. They began
322. 28:29cataloging people according to ancestry and  bloodline. Under the Reich citizenship law,
323. 28:34people classified as Jews lost their citizenship  and basic rights. Roma, who were also regarded
324. 28:39as racial outsiders, would later face similar  treatment with Slavs. The Nazis racial thinking
325. 28:44was sometimes less straightforward. They were  viewed as possessing related blood, but millions
326. 28:49still died in German captivity and citizens  were annihilated in their villages. [music] The
327. 28:54brutality and rigidity of the system was further  outlined in the law for protection of German blood
328. 28:59and German honor. The law declared that the  Jews who married and had children with Germans
329. 29:04were polluting the nation's blood. Intermarriage  between Jews and Germans was outlawed. For many
330. 29:09already married and listed as privileged, [music]  they were sent to live in harsh conditions in
331. 29:14one of the Nazis Jew houses. The men were often  sent to work in factories where they were often
332. 29:19mistreated and humiliated. Extrammarital sexual  relations were also banned. The Nazis even banned
333. 29:25wealthy Jews from hiring German women under 45  as domestic servants. It was partly to prevent
334. 29:30the men of the household from [music] having sex  with them. Of course, love is a strong motivator,
335. 29:35and there were Jews and non-Jews who maintained  their romantic or sexual relationships. Some even
336. 29:41started relationships, but they risked  being exposed by neighbors, co-workers,
337. 29:45or disgruntled family members. The Nazis seemed  particularly outraged at relationships between
338. 29:50Jewish men [music] and non-Jewish women, but not  so much the other way around. Nazi propaganda
339. 29:56frequently portrayed Jewish men as predators,  [music] corrupting German womanhood. But when
340. 30:00the woman was Jewish and her husband Aryan, the  Nazis deemed this an Aryan household. The women
341. 30:06mostly avoided deportation and didn't always have  to wear the yellow star marking them as ripe for
342. 30:11persecution. Under Himmler's 1943 plan for the  elimination of Jews from the Reich territory, many
343. 30:17thousands of Jews were rounded up just [music]  in Berlin. Many of the non-Jewish wives refused
344. 30:22to abandon their Jewish husbands. In February and  March 1943, hundreds of them took to the streets
345. 30:27and protested against Nazi racial policy. The  women [music] stood their ground despite threats
346. 30:32from the authorities, and it worked. To the  embarrassment of the regime, and many of the men
347. 30:37were eventually released, the protest exposed an  uncomfortable truth for the Nazis. They could not
348. 30:43always separate people as easily as their racial  theories demanded. Their propaganda had failed
349. 30:48on those women. love had won out not because of  Nazi compassion but because they were trying to
350. 30:53nazify everything and everyone. They didn't want  to alienate Aryan people by taking away their
351. 30:58family members. It was strategic. They chose  pragmatism over ideological purity purely for
352. 31:04optics. Same-sex relations were also outlawed, but  they were already illegal in Germany before the
353. 31:10Nazis came to power. The law hadn't been strictly  enforced, though. Big cities like Berlin had an
354. 31:15open gay scene. The Nazis cracked down once in  power, raiding clubs and suspected gay people's
355. 31:21houses. About 100,000 were arrested and about half  of those were sentenced. It's believed that about
356. 31:275,000 and 15,000 were sent to concentration  camps. Close to 60% of them didn't make it
357. 31:32out. This was the Nazis attempt to eliminate all  traces of homosexuality from Germany. They often
358. 31:38called samesex attraction a Jewish conspiracy  that was undermining German society. To be gay
359. 31:44and Jewish was almost unthinkable for the typical  Nazi ideologue, but such people existed. There's a
360. 31:51famous case of a lesbian couple, Lily Vers and  Feliz Strajenheim. Feliz, a Jewish resistance
361. 31:57member living under a false identity, worked  for a Nazi newspaper. Lily was the wife of a
362. 32:02Vermach soldier. When Lily learned that Feliz was  Jewish, she didn't turn her in. She stood by her.
363. 32:08Their relationship endured despite a regime built  on racial hatred. For them, love proved stronger
364. 32:14than ideology. Did they have a happy ending?  No. As the Nazis widened the net in Berlin,
365. 32:19Feliz was arrested and sent to Awitz and later  Gross Rozen. It's believed that she was one of
366. 32:24the many Jews who died on a death march during  an evacuation. If there is a happy ending, it's
367. 32:30that Lily helped other Jews avoid the same fate.  One of the sticking points for Hinrich Himmler,
368. 32:35one of the main architects of the Holocaust, was  all of the half Jews and quarter Jews serving in
369. 32:41the German military. There were maybe 160,000 in  total. Some were tolerated and even decorated for
370. 32:47bravery, a glaring contradiction at the heart of  Nazi racial ideology. But as the war progressed
371. 32:53and the regime became more and more radicalized,  most Michelin soldiers and officers were pushed
372. 32:58out. Many faced discrimination, forced labor,  or imprisonment. conditions for them were often
373. 33:03harsh, but not comparable to the extermination and  starvation policies inflicted on those sent to the
374. 33:08concentration in death camps. Historians have  said that maybe 90% of Jews in mixed marriages,
375. 33:14including soldiers, survived the war, but they  were all counted. They were all condemned almost.
376. 33:22Edward BL and other Jews he had known were treated  with soft hands. Even Hitler's former right-hand
377. 33:28man, confidant, and bodyguard, and the SS's  second ever member, Emil Maurice, was discovered
378. 33:34to have Jewish ancestry. He was 1/8 Jewish by  Nazi racial calculations. Rather than discard
379. 33:40a loyal follower, Hitler overrode his own rules.  Like a handful of others whose existence exposed
380. 33:45the contradictions in Nazi ideology, Maurice was  declared an honorary Aryan. The public didn't see
381. 33:51this as openly contradictory because the Nazis  controlled all the narratives. When it came to
382. 33:56information and truth, they were uncompromising  and ruthless. Ysef Gubbles, a highly educated man
383. 34:02with a PhD in literature and a strong knowledge  of philosophy and history, understood the power
384. 34:07of myth. He knew how repeating lies constantly  can brainwash the public. He helped construct
385. 34:13one of the greatest lies many Germans had ever  been told, that their country's problems could
386. 34:17be traced to a single enemy. The timing was just  right. The sense of hopelessness and anxiety that
387. 34:23came with the economic crash paved the way for  totalitarianism. The Nazis hypnotized the people,
388. 34:28making once unthinkable ideas seem reasonable.  It's something modern academics have said is more
389. 34:34possible after a major crisis or what the writer  Naomi Klein called shock therapy. It is a fact.
390. 34:40When people are desperate and anxious, they can  more easily be molded to believe extreme ideas.
391. 34:45Mythmaking and villain creation became the task  of the Ministry of Propaganda. In films, Jews
392. 34:51were always the bad guys. Toxic, untrustworthy,  manipulative, and parasitical. People saw it or
393. 34:57heard it in daily radio broadcasts, in  cinemas, in the theater, in classrooms,
394. 35:01and in heavily censored newspapers. The language  used for these Jews was always dehumanizing. Rats,
395. 35:08foxes, lice, cockroaches, and vultures. By denying  a Jewish person their humanity to feel and think,
396. 35:14the Nazis justified the abuse and violence they  perpetrated. If citizens wanted to find criticism
397. 35:19of those stereotypes, there were few places they  could look. Some books were promoted, others were
398. 35:24banned and burned. Intellectual stimulation was  viewed as dangerous in what academics have said
399. 35:30became a cultural genocide. People had to tow  the line. A misplaced joke at work could get a
400. 35:36person arrested, maybe even executed, especially  if they'd already been labeled as politically
401. 35:40unreliable, an artistic degenerate, or worse,  a friend of the Jews. The Nazis, like many
402. 35:46totalitarian regimes, relied heavily on labels.  Citizens were encouraged to report suspicious
403. 35:51behavior, and denunciations became a routine part  of daily life. Neighbors informed on neighbors,
404. 35:57co-workers on co-workers, and in some documented  cases, even children reported their own parents.
405. 36:02Like the communists in the Soviet Union and later  in China, the Nazis sought to dominate the flow
406. 36:08of information. They aimed to shape how people  thought about almost every aspect of daily life.
407. 36:13From cooking food to falling in love to smoking  cigarettes or how they felt about gardening and
408. 36:18sport, they molded it all. Propaganda was not  viewed as a dirty word. To goubles, it was an
409. 36:25essential tool of government, a means of creating  unity and binding society. And it was very
410. 36:30expensive. The Nazis spent about 14 million Reichs  marks on its Ministry of Propaganda in 1933.
411. 36:36By 1941, it had risen to nearly 187 million, an  increase of over 1,200%. Gobles claimed it would
412. 36:44intellectually mobilize Germany. The ministry  started off with just five departments and about
413. 36:49350 staff. It eventually grew to 17 departments  and 2,000 staff. In what was a 10-year campaign
414. 36:56of lies and exaggerations, a minority of Germans  actively criticized the Nazis. sometimes for what
415. 37:01they perceived to be spreading misinformation.  They were usually arrested for it. Historians
416. 37:06estimate that between 15,000 and 77,000 German  critics and resistance were executed. But the
417. 37:12majority of Germans, their thoughts overwhelmed by  propaganda, either supported the Nazi policies or
418. 37:18quietly ignored what was happening. They believed  their leaders were restoring order. A kind of
419. 37:23collective double think took hold. Peace could  only be won through war. Unity would be achieved
420. 37:29through exclusion. Compassion became weakness and  brutality became strength. Truth became a rewrite
421. 37:35of history. Every morning the radio played and  the Reich Broadcasting Corporation talked about
422. 37:40the Jewish problem and how it was being dealt  with. To think anything else was a crime. Many
423. 37:45Germans who kept quiet likely didn't agree with  the more extreme measures, but they turned a blind
424. 37:50eye because life was indeed improving for them.  If it hadn't, the Nazis wouldn't have become so
425. 37:55powerful. Some of that working class gained access  to cultural events and leisure activities that had
426. 38:00once seemed out of reach. Many farmers, the people  the Nazis said were the bedrock of the Aryan race,
427. 38:06rejoiced at their higher incomes. Some  middle-class families saved for radios,
428. 38:10vacations in Europe, maybe even a car. After years  of depression and instability, millions felt that
429. 38:16Germany was finally getting back on its feet.  So, they said nothing as brutality took place
430. 38:21all around them. But over time, these propaganda  and laws eventually hit a logistical wall, forcing
431. 38:27the regime into its darkest corner. History shows  us that totalitarianism is not sustainable. The
432. 38:33power devour itself from within as each of  its organs v for a higher kind of ideological
433. 38:38purity. [music] Tyrants, bureaucrats, and  ideological citizens look to signal their higher
434. 38:43virtue and turn on each other. in the Nazi party  proper internal paranoia led to assassinations
435. 38:49and bitter power struggles as Hitler's faith in  his generals faded. The distrust came to a head
436. 38:54on July 20th, 1944 when a coupet failed and Hitler  barely escaped assassination by bomb. The Gestapo
437. 39:02cracked down immediately with pure vengeance. Some  of the conspirators were executed by firing squad
438. 39:07that same night [music] and another 7,000 people  were arrested. The Nazis eventually executed
439. 39:13nearly 5,000 [music] of them. Many were just  loosely connected to the plot or swept up in the
440. 39:18wider purge along with roughly 200 people directly  involved in the conspiracy. [music] People were
441. 39:24tortured as the Gustapo attempted to find  out who was for and was against them. Again,
442. 39:29Hitler and his inner circle claimed that they  had been stabbed in the back by traitors. They'd
443. 39:34even punished the accused men's families. The  exact reasons for the coup have been debated.
444. 39:39The plotters were mostly aristocratic Germans who  saw the war as a lost cause and [music] planned to
445. 39:44make peace with the allies. For Hitler, they were  cowards. But some of them, like General Friedrich
446. 39:50Olri, were critical of the extreme nature of the  Nazis anti-Jewish policy. Barbaric, he'd said
447. 39:55about Cristalln, the 1938 pilgrim, when German  Jews were hunted, beaten, and murdered. Businesses
448. 40:01were destroyed and plundered while synagogues  were burned to the ground. Not all high-ranking
449. 40:06Nazis and military officers agreed with the  final solution. Some viewed the mass murder
450. 40:10of Jewish and Soviet civilians as a moral stain on  Germany and a betrayal of the values they claimed
451. 40:16to defend. Still, the reasons for the coup attempt  were much more complicated. Some of the plotters
452. 40:21were conservatives, some liberals, [music] some  monarchists, and some were motivated primarily by
453. 40:26religious conviction. But for many, after watching  their countrymen die on mass in the Soviet Union,
454. 40:31they concluded that the war was unwinable and  that Hitler had to go. The Germans had been
455. 40:36beaten in Britain. Hitler's ambition to take  the Soviet Union in 6 to 10 weeks and operation
456. 40:40Barbar Roa had turned into a bloodbath. Troops  froze to death in that first winter and later
457. 40:46the battle of Stalingrad was a major loss. Those  men had been ordered on a mission of annihilation.
458. 40:52They thought that they were fighting to save  Western civilization from being overrun by the
459. 40:56lower races. Again, Jews were at the forefront of  the contempt. Each German soldier had heard the
460. 41:02order. This struggle demands ruthless, drastic  action against Bolevik agitators, savurs, Jews,
461. 41:08and complete elimination of any active or passive  resistance. [music] As Hinrich Hitler once said,
462. 41:13"The destruction of Asia and Jewry was necessary  for evolution of the species. So when things
463. 41:19started to go wrong, the Nazis became even  more ruthless toward the Jews at home and in
464. 41:24their camps. They escalated their extermination  policies. Historians have always debated exactly
465. 41:29how the Holocaust evolved. Some of them emphasize  Hitler's central role. Others focus on the actions
466. 41:34of subordinates who anticipated Hitler's wishes  and competed to fulfill them. They also disagree
467. 41:40about why the killing accelerated so fast. Was  mass extermination the plan from the start or did
468. 41:46it radicalize as the war turned against Germany?  One of the most influential explanations comes
469. 41:51from the British historian Ian Kershaw. He favored  the view of what the German historian Hans Momson
470. 41:57formerly coined as a cumulative radicalization.  In this theory, rather than following a single
471. 42:03detailed blueprint, the Nazi state became trapped  in a cycle of escalation. Bureaucrats competed
472. 42:08with other bureaucrats. Party officials competed  with the military. each vi to demonstrate loyalty,
473. 42:13ideological commitment, and their usefulness  to the regime as military defeats mounted and
474. 42:18paranoia spread throughout the leadership.  Extreme measures expanded. The result was a
475. 42:23system that continually radicalized  itself, driving the persecution and
476. 42:27murder of Europe's Jews to greater extremes.  There is no one-sizefits-all explanation,
477. 42:32but at the heart of it all lay the total  eradication of Jews from Europe that Hitler and
478. 42:36the Nazis had discussed at Vonyi. Human beings are  often tempted by explanations that reduce complex
479. 42:42conditions to the actions [music] of a single  villainous group. Jews, minorities, immigrants,
480. 42:47the defective. It will likely happen time and  time again in the future. And each time the group
481. 42:52casting the blame will tell themselves they are  the good guys. This kind of thinking [music] is
482. 42:57one of humanity's most destructive impulses. And  nowhere was it more evident than in Nazi Germany.
483. 43:03Unrest was exploited by a group of men who were  able to convince ordinary people that a minority
484. 43:08was responsible for their suffering. The Holocaust  is not just history. It's a warning. It shows what
485. 43:13happens when societies abandon nuance for simple  hateful answers. [music] And once that happens,
486. 43:19the outcome is never uncertain. Nazi Germany  was built on hatred. But what happens when the
487. 43:24regime collapses? Find out in how did Germany  get rid of the Nazis so fast or watch this