Hitler believed in ‘racial hygiene’. This is to mean that certain groups of people were allowed to procreate while others weren’t. Racial mixing was believed to create chaos. T4 program was developed as a way of promoting racial hygiene. He killed two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe. Others were taken as slave workers. Some died from starvation, diseases, or in the gas chambers.
Those that died in the gas chambers were usually poisoned with carbon monoxide. The gas chamber was developed by a chief chemist, Dr. Albert Widmann. He termed this a great mark in the history of medical health. Hitler invented policies that involved the killing of the Poles and Soviet prisoners of war. He killed 2.8 million non-Jewish Polish citizens. He also killed ethnic minorities such as Ukrainians and Belarusians living in Poland. In 1939, he ordered the killing of thousands of men, women, and children of Polish descent. They were to be killed without mercy. Genocide was conducted on Polish people.
Jews in Germany suffered greatly under Hitler’s rule. Some Jews were forced to leave Nazi Germany. Hitler had made his hatred for Jews obvious. He wrote a book expressing how he hated Jews and that they planned on contaminating German blood (Strobl, 2000). He referred to them as hating the white race and that they wanted to contaminate the white race and lower its cultural level so that they could take over. Once he obtained power, he used it to launch a campaign against the Jews. He blamed them for all the misfortunes and bad luck that had befallen Germany. He blamed the loss of the First World War on a conspiracy by the Jewish community to bring Germany to her knees.
The Nazis stopped Germans from shopping in Jewish shops. This was an economical attempt to bankrupt them. Jews had to sit on buses and trains marked specifically for them. Jewish children were ill-treated by teachers and bullied in school. Marriage between Jews and non-Jews was forbidden when the Nuremberg laws were passed in 1935.
Hitler had a plan in his book, ‘Main Kampf’. The aim of the plan was to convert Eastern Europe and convert it to become a part of Germany. He called it the German living space. His ideology focused on Slavs as a racially and culturally inferior group. Hitler was sick. He was termed to be paranoid and full of delusions. His paranoia and persistent delusions showed he was suffering from general paresis. This is a sickness usually brought about by syphilis. In 1908 he was infected with syphilis. 30 years later, the disease caused inflammation of the brain. He believed they would destroy him and that they were powerful enemies.
He behaved and made decisions the way he did because the inflammation of the brain caused him to be detached from reality. He passionately hated Jews because he used them as scapegoats for his inner subconscious conflicts. He developed a violent outlook on life. He believed through violence and brutality, all social problems can be solved. He hated democracy. Believed it corrupted the character of people. He blamed them for social vices such as prostitution and white slave traffic. He found this to be a reason for his ‘racial cleansing’ and obsession with killing Jews.
