Actually.... There was a very fashionable idea at the time called Eugenics. It was the basis for hatred of the Jews and the search for racial purity. These ideas were current in most of Europe and very popular in America.
The dirty secret behind the holocaust is that, at the time, many people in Europe and America AGREED with the ideas of racial purity, and purposefully overlooked what was happening to the jews.

Gosh, I bet you won't find that in your history books!! Ask yourselves why not..

Google 'Eugenics' - all the rage in the 1930s..

VirginiaL: 2 years ago

That's amazing, Waldorff...I remember the story of the ship that sailed from Germany with Jewish people escaping the holocaust, and both the U.S. and Canada, along with many other countries, refused them sanctuary.
So the Nazis were just acting upon the fashionable eugenics theory of the time!

Report as You have reported this

• Spam
• Offensive
• Threatening
• Off-topic
• Nonsense
• Spelling/Grammar
• Community Standards
• Offensive Username

neighborlady: 2 years ago via iPhone

I have read that as well.

Report as You have reported this

• Spam
• Offensive
• Threatening
• Off-topic
• Nonsense
• Spelling/Grammar
• Community Standards
• Offensive Username

VirginiaL: 2 years ago

Waldorff brings clear understanding, insight...

Report as You have reported this

• Spam
• Offensive
• Threatening
• Off-topic
• Nonsense
• Spelling/Grammar
• Community Standards
• Offensive Username

waldorff: 2 years ago via iPhone

Now I'm blushing....

I'm just a blushing crusty old engineer...

Report as You have reported this

• Spam
• Offensive
• Threatening
• Off-topic
• Nonsense
• Spelling/Grammar
• Community Standards
• Offensive Username

VirginiaL: 2 years ago

Even now, I continue to feel more and more alarmed at the public education I received. I believed it!

I truly feel children should be allowed/encouraged to actually think, and that the bias needs to be acknowledged at the time the stuff is fed to the child.

Oh well - at that time sixty years ago they still did teach us how to spell, I guess...

Report as You have reported this

• Spam
• Offensive
• Threatening
• Off-topic
• Nonsense
• Spelling/Grammar
• Community Standards
• Offensive Username

waldorff: 2 years ago

Well, Virginia, don't feel alone - they never tell kids the bad stuff, it seems to me.

After Bonny Prince Charlie, the English went into Scotland and killed all the Highlanders - men, women and children - it's called the 'Highland Clearances' - I learned NOT A WORD about it at school in England.

Who are the people who decide what kids will and will not be taught? Because after a generation, history has been re-written..

Look at the diabolical stuff that goes on in religious based schools - kids taught crazy, religious ideas, far beyond the ideas which are shared generally in the community - Jesuits, Baptists and Mormons being good examples.

Many people here and in Europe approved of Hitler's racial purity laws - It's very likely that some approved of his methods or 'turned a blind eye'. Now everybody says how shocking the Holocaust was. The real shock is how little people cared at the time.

Report as You have reported this

• Spam
• Offensive
• Threatening
• Off-topic
• Nonsense
• Spelling/Grammar
• Community Standards
• Offensive Username

VirginiaL: 2 years ago

"The Highland Clearances"...that must be a euphemism on the level of "Manifest Destiny" I learned in school. Integral to the wave of Europeans (mostly) spreading across the North American continent was the attempted extermination of Native Americans!

Free public education was a remarkable and progressive concept in its day, but...a dark side...

Report as You have reported this

• Spam
• Offensive
• Threatening
• Off-topic
• Nonsense
• Spelling/Grammar
• Community Standards
• Offensive Username

VirginiaL: 2 years ago

This is off-topic, but I found this quote from Richard Dawkins you might enjoy...

"We are all atheists about most of the gods humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
- Richard Dawkins (1941-)

Report as You have reported this

• Spam
• Offensive
• Threatening
• Off-topic
• Nonsense
• Spelling/Grammar
• Community Standards
• Offensive Username

waldorff: 2 years ago via iPhone

That is so good!! I've avoided reading Richard Dawkins because, well, I don't think he's aiming at me.
Thank you VL.

Report as You have reported this

• Spam
• Offensive
• Threatening
• Off-topic
• Nonsense
• Spelling/Grammar
• Community Standards
• Offensive Username

Add a comment...

Add a comment...

Submit Comment

The Nazi Germany were known for hating the Jews, because they were jealous of the successes the Jews had. The Jewish people have a long sad history of being hated by others.

Hi Jake,
I actually think the reason that hatred of Jews was state-sponsored in Nazi Germany was because of "scape-goating;" that is, if you can make somebody else responsible for your problems then you do not have to do the work of getting your own self straightened out.

I don't even think the hatred was toward Jews specifically...that is, there was nothing they really did to attract the hatred. It was more that this ancient spiritual tradition was a readily identifiable target when the Nazis needed someone to blame.

Scape-goating happens whenever someone refuses to look at their own fears, rage, greed and so forth. It is the same dynamic as when people here in the U.S. for example, will hate the other political party, or another ethnic group, another religion, the oppression of women, and so forth.

The answer is for each of us, one-by-one, to say YES to the love in our own hearts; first of all to love ourselves, to see our own inner beauty. And then to extend that kind of understanding out to those we love and ultimately the whole world.

The scape-goating the Nazis did was a serious form of mental illness, and we can give meaning to our lives by loving and healing our own selves.

its both, but to get more detail u are a jew when ur mother is, if the mother wansnt and the father was would matter, so hitler dad was jewish but mom wasnt so its not considered a jew and he hated them because of the success, plus hitler was a crazy..... and when jews were becoming very successfull when Germany was at it lowest they thought the jews caused it and hitler gave a very disturbing speech about jews did this...

KJosenhans is correct. The Jewish citizens were the most successful financially and Hitler was very jealous of the fact that Jews owned the majority of businesses and the German citizens were less well-off. This is, indeed, the fact that drove him to hate the Jews. It had nothing whatsoever with religion.