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Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered "legal," as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into "protective custody" several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the Communist menace. The same day as the "defensive measure" was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):

Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered "legal," as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into "protective custody" several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler's government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the Communist menace. The same day as the "defensive measure" was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):

"The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war."  

"The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war."  

Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.

Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.

The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'':  

The violence of Hitler's anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'':  

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"If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain." <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref>

"If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain." <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref>

Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.

Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.

Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''[[Der Stürmer|Der Sturmer]]'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. "His blood," Streicher wrote, "carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws."  [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, "In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."

Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''[[Der Stürmer|Der Sturmer]]'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher's rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. "His blood," Streicher wrote, "carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws."  [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, "In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."

As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was, in fact, an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace:  

As Streicher whipped up Hitler's base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler's propaganda minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher's wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was, in fact, an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace:  

"One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question," Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, "….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?" <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref>  

"One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question," Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler's takeover, "….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?" <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref>  

Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30, 1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref>

Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30, 1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref>