It is the most haunting question in modern history. People often look at the sheer scale of the Holocaust—six million lives extinguished—and look for a single, logical "spark." But there wasn't one. If you're looking for a rational reason, you won't find it because the hatred wasn't based on anything the Jewish community actually did. It was a perfect storm of ancient prejudices, personal delusions, and a pseudo-scientific worldview that Hitler didn't just invent, but weaponized.
To really get why did hitler want to kill jewish people, you have to look past the mustache and the shouting. You have to look at a man who was obsessed with "purity" in a way that feels alien to us today. He didn't just dislike a group of people; he viewed them as a biological threat to the survival of the human race. It sounds insane. Because it was.
The Myth of the "Stab in the Back"
Hitler didn't start in a vacuum. After World War I, Germany was a wreck. The country had lost, the economy was in the toilet, and people were starving. For a proud, militaristic nation, the defeat felt impossible. So, they looked for a scapegoat.
This is where the Dolchstoßlegende comes in—the "Stab in the Back" myth. Right-wing circles began whispering that the German army hadn't actually lost on the battlefield. Instead, they claimed they were betrayed at home by "internal enemies." They pointed fingers at socialists, communists, and specifically, Jewish people. Hitler leaned into this hard. He claimed that while "pure" Germans were dying in the trenches, Jewish "profiteers" were getting rich and orchestrating a revolution at home.
It was a lie. A massive, documented lie. Jewish Germans had fought and died in the trenches at the same rates as their neighbors. But Hitler knew that a desperate population needs someone to blame. By framing the Jewish community as the secret architects of Germany’s downfall, he gave the public a target for their rage.
Racism Disguised as Science
Hitler’s worldview was essentially a perversion of Darwinism. He took the idea of "survival of the fittest" and applied it to human races. In his mind, the world was a constant, bloody struggle between different "bloodlines." At the top were the Aryans—whom he defined as the creators of all human culture, science, and beauty.
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At the bottom? He placed the Jewish people.
But he didn't just see them as "lesser." He saw them as "anti-race." In Mein Kampf, he describes the Jewish people as a "parasite" within the body of other nations. He believed that if the Jewish people were allowed to exist, they would eventually "poison" the Aryan bloodline through intermarriage and cultural influence, leading to the literal extinction of the Germanic people.
This is a crucial distinction. Most racists want to segregate or oppress. Hitler wanted to eliminate. He viewed the Holocaust not as a crime, but as a "clean-up operation" for the planet. He honestly believed he was saving the world from a biological infection. It's horrifyingly clinical.
The Red Menace and "Judeo-Bolshevism"
You can't talk about Hitler's motivations without talking about his terrifying fear of Communism. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the "Red Scare" gripped Europe. Hitler noticed that some high-profile communist leaders, like Leon Trotsky, were of Jewish descent.
He smashed these two fears together to create the "Judeo-Bolshevism" conspiracy theory.
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He told his followers that Communism was actually a Jewish plot to destroy national identities and take over the world. By linking the Jewish community to the "threat" of the Soviet Union, he made his hatred seem like a matter of national security. To Hitler, a strike against a Jewish neighbor in Berlin was a strike against the encroaching Soviet army. It was a way to justify violence as "self-defense."
The Power of Propaganda and the "Big Lie"
How does one man convince a whole nation to go along with this? Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, was a master of what they called the "Big Lie." The idea is that if you tell a lie that is so "colossal," no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."
They used every medium possible.
- Film: Movies like The Eternal Jew compared Jewish people to rats spreading disease.
- Children’s Books: Books like The Poisonous Mushroom taught kids how to "spot" a Jewish person in the street.
- Radio: Constant broadcasts blamed Jewish "international bankers" for the Great Depression.
After a decade of this, a generation grew up believing that Jewish people weren't even human. When you strip away someone's humanity, killing them becomes a matter of logistics rather than a matter of conscience.
Why Didn't They Just Leave?
This is a question that comes up a lot. "If it was so bad, why did they stay?" Honestly, it’s heartbreaking. For most Jewish Germans, they were German. They had lived there for centuries. They spoke the language, they had fought in the wars, they were doctors, shopkeepers, and musicians. They thought the Nazi craze would just "blow over."
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By the time the violence of Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) happened in 1938, it was often too late to leave. Other countries, including the United States and the UK, had strict quotas and often refused to take in Jewish refugees. The world effectively closed its doors.
The Path to the "Final Solution"
It’s a common misconception that Hitler had a blueprint for gas chambers the day he took power in 1933. The "Final Solution" was actually a gradual escalation.
- Legal Discrimination: The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 stripped Jewish people of citizenship.
- Ghettoization: Forcing families into cramped, starving quarters in cities like Warsaw.
- The Einsatzgruppen: Mobile killing squads that followed the German army into the Soviet Union, shooting hundreds of thousands of people into mass graves.
- The Death Camps: The transition to industrial-scale murder at places like Auschwitz-Birkenau because the shooting squads were "too slow" and were taking a psychological toll on the German soldiers.
The horror of why did hitler want to kill jewish people is that it wasn't just the work of one "madman." It required a massive bureaucracy of accountants, train drivers, architects, and soldiers to carry out the "twisted logic" of his racism.
Actionable Steps for Understanding and Prevention
History isn't just about the past; it's a warning system. To ensure these ideologies don't find a foothold again, we have to be proactive.
- Study the Mechanics of Dehumanization: Read The Nature of Prejudice by Gordon Allport. Understanding how "us vs. them" mentalities are built is the first step in dismantling them.
- Visit Primary Sources: Don't just read summaries. Look at the archives at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum or Yad Vashem. Hearing the testimonies of survivors provides a human context that statistics can't reach.
- Support Media Literacy: The Holocaust was fueled by "fake news" before the term existed. Support organizations that teach young people how to identify propaganda and conspiracy theories online.
- Recognize Early Warning Signs: Genocides don't start with mass killings; they start with "othering" language. Pay attention when politicians or influencers use biological metaphors (like "infestation," "disease," or "poison") to describe groups of people.
The genocide orchestrated by the Nazi regime was the result of a deliberate, decades-long effort to redefine morality. It was a world where "good" meant protecting the "purity" of the race, and "evil" meant showing mercy to those deemed "unworthy of life." By understanding the "why," we become better equipped to spot the "how" if it ever starts to happen again.