# Hitler's practical reason for killing the Jews **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 2, 2014, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168 "2014-10-02T08:39:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2014, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/81 "2014-10-07T20:34:08Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > The issue, though, was that these areas - Eastern Europe (particularly Ukraine) - were exactly those the Nazis wished to exploit for food production; murdering off a segment of the population (some 20% or more of Ukraine was Jewish) doesn’t make sense, if you are worried about having enough food, as these people are necessary (or at least, useful) for growing it for you. No, not really. Let’s say that the population of Poland was thirty million people and ten million of them were farmers. You could, in theory, kill off ten million non-farmers without it having any effect on food production - the ten million farmers who were working before are still alive and working on their farms. But now instead of there being thirty million Poles to be fed, there are only twenty million. So enough food to feed ten million people is theoretically available to be sent to Germany. This was the theory anyway. In practice, the Nazi program drove farmers to cut down their production to basically subsistence levels. Why would they produce more food if it was just going to be seized by an occupying army? And the Germans found their ability to force food production was limited. As you note, they couldn’t easily threaten to kill farmers as a means of raising food production - that would have been too obviously counter-productive for even the Nazis. ---
**Author:** ![filmstar-en](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/50afbb/32.png) [@filmstar-en](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmstar-en)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2014, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/82 "2014-10-07T20:47:27Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Unfortunately, I’m convinced that the average Joe, is, in fact, perfectly able and willing to commit genocide. Examples abound. No leadership bent on genocide had ever any trouble convincing regular people to participate. Same for mass executions of civilians in time of war and so on. > > If you someday end up being part of a target group, don’t count on your nice neighbours to not hang you up from the nearest lampost, you might be disapointed. > [@clairobscur](#): > > Unfortunately, I’m convinced that the average Joe, is, in fact, perfectly able and willing to commit genocide. Examples abound. No leadership bent on genocide had ever any trouble convincing regular people to participate. Same for mass executions of civilians in time of war and so on. > > If you someday end up being part of a target group, don’t count on your nice neighbours to not hang you up from the nearest lampost, you might be disapointed. Then why are there not more genocides? Obviously it takes a special set of circumstances and most people don’t just lapse into mass murder at the drop of a hat or we would have no civilisation to speak of. There are also examples of soldiers refusing to kill and the military has to go to some effort to get soldiers into that frame of mind. The Nazis delegated the work to special units in order not to expose the regular soldiers to the psychological stress. However, I am sure no leadership, bent on genocide, had much difficulty finding people with the right psychopathic traits to do this work. But ordinary joes? I don’t buy that. The circumstances have to be quite hysterical, or we would all be fearful of stepping out of our door. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2014, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/83 "2014-10-07T20:48:02Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > No, not really. Let’s say that the population of Poland was thirty million people and ten million of them were farmers. You could, in theory, kill off ten million non-farmers without it having any effect on food production - the ten million farmers who were working before are still alive and working on their farms. But now instead of there being thirty million Poles to be fed, there are only twenty million. So enough food to feed ten million people is theoretically available to be sent to Germany. > > This was the theory anyway. In practice, the Nazi program drove farmers to cut down their production to basically subsistence levels. Why would they produce more food if it was just going to be seized by an occupying army? And the Germans found their ability to force food production was limited. As you note, they couldn’t easily threaten to kill farmers as a means of raising food production - that would have been too obviously counter-productive for even the Nazis. Most of Eastern Europe was in a low state of development - the majority of the population was involved, directly or indirectly, in agriculture. I don’t think you could murder off 20% of the population, however chosen, and not have a detrimental effect on production. However, that’s besides the point: the Nazis did not massacre based on usefulness to agriculture. Even if it was theoretically possible to manage killing off “inessentials” so as not to harm production, that wasn’t their plan. If you were Jewish, you died. If you were in a village associated with partisan activities - you died. Increasingly, you died on the whims of local Nazi commanders. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2014, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/84 "2014-10-08T02:02:27Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > As I said above, I don’t really buy this theory in whole. But I will note that the timeline fits better than what you’re saying. The biggest concentration of Jews in Europe were in Eastern Europe and the Nazi general extermination program didn’t really take off until after this area had fallen under Nazi control. Hitler was laying the groundwork for genocide in 1923. Nothing in his writings proposes that anyone be eliminated as a non-producing consumer of food. I see the appeal of a claim that either Hitler or the Nazis might have looked on the reduction of the Slavs and Jews as a way to avoid famine for the _Ubermenschen_, but like the proposed rationales of killing Jews to take their wealth or killing Jews and Slavs to prevent uprisings, I do not see any actual historical evidence for it. ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2014, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/85 "2014-10-08T05:47:12Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Hitler was laying the groundwork for genocide in 1923. How so? ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/86 "2014-10-15T06:55:01Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Hitler was laying the groundwork for genocide in 1923. Nothing in his writings proposes that anyone be eliminated as a non-producing consumer of food. ``` .. ``` [Quote=Hitler] But the result will be that one day existence in this world will be denied such a people; because man may certainly defy the eternal law of the will to continue, but nevertheless revenge will come, sooner or later. A stronger generation will drive out the weaklings, because in its ulti- mate form the urge to live will again and again break the ridiculous fetters of a so-called \* humanity’ of the indi- vidual, so that its place will be taken by the ‘humanity’ of Nature which destroys weakness in order to give its place to strength. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/87 "2014-10-15T10:55:20Z")
Nothing in that quote specifically about food, though. More about “the eternal law of the will,” and “revenge,” and the strong vs. the weak. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/88 "2014-10-15T13:19:59Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > > [@tomndebb](#): > > > > Hitler was laying the groundwork for genocide in 1923. > > How so? By defaming the Jewish people and declaring that they were, universally, parasitic criminals bent on destroying the Aryan “race,” he seeded the idea that they should have no rights to live among the Germans. While _Mein Kampf_ does not explicitly call for the eradication of the Jews, it firmly establishes the notion that Jews are undesirable and should be eliminated from (German) society. [ > [@](#): > > Hitler, at page 724 and 725 of Mein Kampf, spoke of the Jew. If the National Socialist movement was to fulfill its task, he declared: > > "It must open the eyes of the people with regard to foreign nations and must remind them again and again of the true enemy of our present day world. In the place of hate against Aryans-from whom we may be separated by almost everything, to whom, however, we are tied by common blood or the great tide of a common culture-it must dedicate to the general anger the evil enemy of mankind as the true cause of all suffering. > > “it must see to it, however, that at least in our country he be recognized as the most mortal enemy and that the struggle against him may show, like a flaming beacon of a better era, to other nations, too, the road to salvation for a struggling Aryan mankind.” ]([Avalon Project : Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Volume 1 Chapter XII - The Persecution of the Jews](http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/chap_12.asp)) He did not call for extermination in _Mein Kampf_, but it was definitely laying the groundwork for the eventual attempt to eliminate them, entirely. ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/89 "2014-10-15T14:22:02Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > By defaming the Jewish people and declaring that they were, universally, parasitic criminals bent on destroying the Aryan “race,” he seeded the idea that they should have no rights to live among the Germans. […] He did not call for extermination in _Mein Kampf_, but it was definitely laying the groundwork for the eventual attempt to eliminate them, entirely. Agreed. ---
**Author:** ![Knowledgable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/67e7ee/32.png) [@Knowledgable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowledgable)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2014, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/90 "2014-10-16T19:18:11Z")
In the times of the Holy Roman Empire, Jews were faced to convert into Christianity, leaving Judaism behind in order to get assimilated. This was of course necessary for the preservation of the Catholic Roman identity and the survival of their culture. Naturally, many Jews rejected this notion and thus were killed/tortured/exiled. Some were left though and their allowance to stay had a sole, diabolic and well-pllaned reason. They were enforcedly employed as taxes collectors… So they had to collect taxes from people, and guess what, people don’t like to pay taxes, hence they disliked the Jews and saw them as people who took away their hard-earned money that would be never recovered… This was to create pressure to the Jews, who rejected converting and to get them assimilated. It was also the first major step which created the base of anti-semitism in Europe. Today, still signs of anti-Semitism in Christian Democrat Europe is visible, thus we can say Romans did a good job indeed. Ignorance is bad. ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2014, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/91 "2014-10-16T21:04:35Z")
“The times of the Holy Roman Empire”? That thing lasted for a hella long time. You gotta be specific. Also, “the first major step”? Not really. One might as well argue that Christianity itself was the first major step, or else Matthew 27:25, specifically. Also, “Christian Democrat Europe”? What _is_ that? Also, “Romans”? That word is usually used to refer either to the, y’know, [_Romans_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire), or else to from people from Rome (the city). It is _never_ used to mean people from the Holy Roman Empire - which, as the quip goes, was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. ---
**Author:** ![IMfez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f07891/32.png) [@IMfez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IMfez)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2014, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/92 "2014-10-16T21:10:06Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > Also, “Romans”? That word is usually used to refer either to the, y’know, [_Romans_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire), or else to from people from Rome (the city). It is _never_ used to mean people from the Holy Roman Empire - which, as the quip goes, was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. What was the Holy Roman Empire then, if not Roman or an Empire? ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2014, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/93 "2014-10-16T21:16:37Z")
> [@IMfez](#): > > What was the Holy Roman Empire then, if not Roman or an Empire? It’s complicated. Wikipedia goes with “multi-ethnic complex of territories in central Europe,” which is nice and loose and quite correct. ---
**Author:** ![Knowledgable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/67e7ee/32.png) [@Knowledgable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowledgable)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2014, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/94 "2014-10-16T21:22:16Z")
It was called the Holy Roman Empire… So, yeah. The king was called the “king of Romans”. > **[Holy Roman Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire)** > > The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a political entity in Western, Central, and Southern Europe that developed in the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. > From the accession of Otto I in 962 until the twelfth century, the Empire was the most powerful monarchy in Europe. The functioning of government depended on the harmonious cooperation between monarch and vassals, but this harmo... ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2014, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/95 "2014-10-16T21:41:31Z")
> [@Knowledgable](#): > > The king was called the “king of Romans”. Aye, that he was. And the king of Spain is called, among other things, the “king of Jerusalem.” But when you refer to people from Spain, you don’t call them Jerusalemites, do you? Same here. Anyway, this is all wildly off-topic - sorry about that. ---
**Author:** ![Knowledgable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/67e7ee/32.png) [@Knowledgable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowledgable)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2014, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/96 "2014-10-16T21:53:25Z")
Noticed, agreed. We know that Hitler had crush on a Jew in his teens. He was rejected or something. Psychological trauma might a factor too… Stefanie Rabatsch was her name. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2014, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/97 "2014-10-16T22:07:13Z")
> [@Knowledgable](#): > > Noticed, agreed. > > We know that Hitler had crush on a Jew in his teens. He was rejected or something. Psychological trauma might a factor too… > > Stefanie Rabatsch was her name. Interesting tidbit of info … I read an article on this, and his bizzare stalking of her (fortunately for her, she never knew about it at the time). Imagine being stalked by … Hitler! 😉 Turns out she wasn’t Jewish though - only had a Jewish-_sounding_ name. A pity, that. > [@](#): > > In fact, it later transpired that, despite her surname, Stefanie was not Jewish. But crucially, Hitler and Kubizek did not know this at the time, signifying that the future perpetrator of the Holocaust had no animus against Jews as a young man. > **[Hitler's secret Jewish girlfriend](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-404301/Hitlers-secret-Jewish-girlfriend.html#ixzz3GLdl6uVo)** > > Revealed for the first time, the full extent of the young Hitlers disturbing sexual obsession with a well-bred Austrian 'Jewish' girl ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2014, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/98 "2014-10-16T22:10:12Z")
> [@filmstar-en](#): > > However, I am sure no leadership, bent on genocide, had much difficulty finding people with the right psychopathic traits to do this work. But ordinary joes? I don’t buy that. The circumstances have to be quite hysterical, or we would all be fearful of stepping out of our door. It’s the usual cite, but have you looked at studies such as the Milgram experiment (and derivatives)? Ordinary joes can be persuaded to do terrible things with little provocation. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168/99 "2014-10-17T06:57:29Z")
> [@filmstar-en](#): > > However, I am sure no leadership, bent on genocide, had much difficulty finding people with the right psychopathic traits to do this work. But ordinary joes? I don’t buy that. The circumstances have to be quite hysterical, or we would all be fearful of stepping out of our door. It may seem difficult for you to believe, but the ability of humans to engage in slaughter is pretty well established. “Ordinary Joes” are, typically, the ones who do it. In the Tutsi/Hutu conflagration, nearly an entire people turned on their “kill” switches and set out to make it happen. There is no evidence that the Armenian genocide undertaken by Turks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was carried out by psychopaths. In fact, unlike Nazi Germany, where all sorts of armchair psychologists have waded in on the subject of the (in)sanity of Hitler, Mengele, Eichmann, Himmler, and others, no one ever couches the slaughter by the Turks in terms of sanity or madness. Note that the two authors [to whom I pointed earlier](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17791504&postcount=63), Darren Wilson and Daniel Goldhagen strongly disagreed with each other on just how it could happen, but both of them agreed that the massive murders were carried out by “ordinary Joes.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitlers-practical-reason-for-killing-the-jews/700168.md?page=4)