I'm watching a BBC WWII documentary, and several times it mentions that Hitler and the Nazis hated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and blamed "the Jews" for it especially. I understand, of course, why any German would have hated the terms of the treaty of Versailles. But why blame the Jews for it specifically? Can someone enlighten me? Thank you.

I was under the impression that Hitler's mother died of an illness and he resented the Jewish doctor for not being able to save her. Although there were a number of things building up to his hatred of the Jewish people.

As to what you were pondering...

After the war (as you will know) the Germans were blamed for the whole thing and were made to pay vast reparations. This crippled the German economy and caused hyperinflation of their currency. The Jews, renowned for their hereditary flair for finance, positively thrived. Despite taking up a tiny percentage of the population, Jews had incredible influence. They practically controlled the German banks as well as the publishing trade, leisure facilities (cinemas, etc)and a great deal of the press. With the ordinary German people, who had lost everything and felt great injustices had been weighed against them, felt growing resentment against the thriving Jews. They saw their possession pass into the hands of people, many of whom, had not suffered much hardship after the war. The Jews had a monopoly on the biggest newspaper in Germany. It became even harder for people to get privileged occupations.

In a nutshell: What I understand is that predominantly Jews thrived when almost everyone else was badly effected. There was much ill-feeling towards them as a result.

I'm sorry L, but that is a giant heap of dangerous, slanderous bullshit.

You basically just repeated the widespread anti-semitic delusions of the time. You either simply don't know any better - in which case you should read up on the topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Feder;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism#Anti-capitalism;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth

(yes, these are all wikipedia but they're good enough to get the gist).

Or you're a revisionist.

I was merely speculating and adding to snippets that I have been told in the past. I would be interested to find out an in depth answer also. I will look over the links

I'll type one out later I'd done a massive one on the kindle but when i changed tabs to check sources it wiped my progress. So when i get on the laptop I'll do it again.

Essentially though gnull has it right, what you're saying reflects the emotion of the times but certainly not the facts.

Edited 10/10/2013 22:01:37

I'm sorry L, but that is a giant heap of dangerous, slanderous bullshit.

@Gnull
Read your links before you post them, you just proved that a majority of what L said is true. From your links:

The predominance of Jews in Germany's banking, commerce, and industry sectors in this time period was very high with consideration to Jews being estimated to have accounted for 1 percent of the population of Germany.

This over representation of Jews in these areas created resentment by non-Jewish Germans during periods of economic crisis such as in response to the 1873 stock market crash that resulted in a severe depression.

There was a massive economic depression following the end of WWI and the Jewish families managed to hold themselves together quite well during this time, having gained control over many German patents following the end of WWI, you're welcome to look that up.

Antisemitism is not exclusively German or Muslim, but is found in many cultures. There are many reasons for this and I won't bother getting into any of them because it's a complex topic and I don't know nearly enough to offer a great insight.

Their culture is strong and has survived several thousand years, through numerous hardships and that despite the fact that they haven't had a homeland for nearly 2000 years. That deserves respect, but success inspires envy more than anything else. There are libraries of knowledge about how the Jewish culture and people ended up where they are today.

You're better off reading up on it instead of believing a documentary that is made to be more interesting than factual.

Edited 10/11/2013 00:00:08

Popular beliefs (PB) and historical facts about medieval and modern Europe:

PB: Jews had Jesus killed. Jews are despicable and deserve punishment. Ex: (1) Crusading armies traveling through Europe en route to the Holy Land killed as many Jews as possible in city after city before having even seen a Muslim. (2) Plagues and diseases (eg bubonic) frequently devastated populations since the Roman Empire and earlier. Jews were sometimes blamed, giving rise to pogroms, since killing Jews (who God must detest) must be the way to stop the plagues and diseases (which God must have started out of anger). Here we have a long history of blaming and punishing Jews, despite the desires and letters of popes imploring people to treat Jews better.

Fact: In pre-Medici times when Christendom outlawed (and enforced laws on) usary, Jews were permitted to practice money lending. Royal finances were limited, and many kings became heavily indebted to Jews. Add some popular hysteria and prejudices to the mix and kings had the option of kicking Jews out of the country and confiscating their property (as well as solving their debt problem). This happened again and again, in England, France, and Spain. So here we have a long history of kicking Jews out of countries and taking their goods.

Fact: Muslims treated Jews better than Europeans did. But the Muslims also insisted on using symbols worn on clothing to identify who was a Jew (and who was a Christian?). I suspect Europeans decided to adopt the Muslim system of identifying Jews, without the relatively more tolerant or respectful treatment. So Hitler's use of the star of David worn on clothing was also nothing new.

In my mind, Hitler's ideas and practices would have been nothing new or special if done in the medieval or modern times. He simply put the old practices together in one highly structured system. What is new and special is the techologies used to organize the ghettos (barbed wire), to control the Jews (guns, trucks, etc.), to displace the Jews (trucks, railroads), etc. Old ideas + new tools can be a bad medicine.

Edited 10/11/2013 01:55:54

The anti-semantic language running thoughout this thread is frankly disgusting.

I bet you call American's who talk about the genocide against Native American's and cruelty of the Vietnam War, unpatriotic terrorists.

Also gnull I think you are way to quick to criticize L especially with no actual alternative theory. Surely the 'dangerous slanderous amti-semetic bullshit' widely believed at the tine was exactly what the origional poster was asking. 'why were the Jewish people blamed?'

Anyway I have never heard that Jewish people were blamed for Versailles, at least not directly. Not sure where the documentary got that from? I would be interested to see it. Is it on i player?

What I have always understood was that underlying dislike had been simmering throughout Europe for forever and the combination of hard times and Jewish peoples reletive prosperity made them an easy scapegoat for a charismatic but insane man to persicute. Creation of a common enemy is a standard dictatorship strategy. For the average man, particularly in hard times it is very often about making sure you are not the last rung on the ladder and therefore masses can be convinced if not to actually hate but to turn a blind eye.

Anyway I have never heard that Jewish people were blamed for Versailles, at least not directly. Not sure where the documentary got that from?

When I learnt about the Treaty of Versailles and rise of Hitler etc in History GCSE we were also told that the Treaty was blamed on the Jews.
Imagine you are a German citizen, who has been told throughout the war years that Germany was winning, making advances on all fronts etc. Then in November the Government and the Armed Forces say "we have secured peace for the world, we are great people, it is a peace treaty to benefit anyone, no-one loses etc". Then they find out that Germany had no say as to what happened in the Treaty, that it was dictated to them by the evil Allies. This created resentment in the public and then they hated the group of diplomats who signed the Treaty (I think the first group resigned or something) and perhaps a few of these diplomats might have been Jewish. They were definitely called traitors for what they did, and the Jews were easy targets so they just called them that, but that is why the Jews were blamed for Versailles (at least that is what we were taught)

I also heard some other story concerning Hitler and some Jewish person, possibly a teacher, and that the Jewish person had denied him a position somewhere or said he wasn't good enough at something which is one of the reasons he resented Jews so much. There is most probably no "sole" reason as to why he was so anti-Semitic, but even if there was we can't ask him so no-one can be sure if they are right or not

There is an interesting new book analyzing Adolf Hitler as private individual from the author Volker Ulrich: "Adolf Hitler, Die Jahre des Aufstiegs" (what means translated to english: Adolf Hitler, years of the rise"). One thing seems to be quite sure: Until the end of WW 1 he did not hate jews, he even had jewish friends the time he lived in Vienna. The author says its a proven fact, that Hitlers metamorphosis to a radical hater of jews took place during the Munich Revolution 1918/19 when Wilhelms II s monarchy was replaced by the leftist "Räterepublik" (council republic, following the political model of a soviet republic). This council republic, judged by Hitler as the evil itself, included several jews in leading positions.