"The function of propaganda is to attract supporters, the function of organization to win members... Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea...." - Adolf Hitler, 1924
At the core of the Holocaust we find modern anti-Semitism, the current version of Jew Hatred - that same phenomenon which appeared throughout the centuries, perhaps finding its most blatant manifestation with the medieval Church. The modern German anti-Semitism was based on racial ideology which stated that the Jews were sub-human (untermensch) while the “Aryan” race was ultimately superior. The Jew was systematically portrayed as a low-life, as untouchable rot (faulniserscheinung), and as the main cause of Germany's difficulties.
Germany had major problems resulting from World War I. Although no warfare had occurred on German soil, the Emperor had fled, and the Weimar Republic was only established after years of severe political instability, with localised Bolshevist experiments and street terror in the cities. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 brought the relinquishment of land on almost all fronts, especially to France (Alsace-Lorraine, Saar) and Poland (Danzig corridor); the reduction of the German army to a home militia; and reparation payments beyond the prevalent economic capabilities. The rocketing inflation of 1922 and 1923 caused further economic instability, which became even worse with the advent of the Great Depression of 1929. By 1932, unemployment in Germany peaked, and it was in this economic and political climate that Adolf Hitler established the Nationalist-Socialist Party (with "Mein Kampf" as its manifesto). With Hitler's rise to power in 1933 the national policy of organized persecution of the Jews began."
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The Nazi ideal of a “community of the people” tapped into German traditions that lauded social harmony over conflict and in addition valued hard work, clean living, and law and order. For the Nazis, this idealized community could never see the light of day unless it was based on racial purity. To this end, the new regime set out to mobilize the nation around certain missions, including the elimination of recognizable social types (and stereotypes) who disturbed the peace or who did not conform to well-established German values, but also those who did not fit into the white “Aryan” race.
The Nazi version of the struggle between “us” and “them,” between the “community of the people” and the “enemies of the community,” was not just hostile, but vehement and full of language that dripped with war and images drawn from the Darwinian struggle for survival. In the kind of total-war rhetoric the Nazis used, it followed that mercy and compassion toward all enemies was portrayed as a vice, while intolerance and fanaticism were transformed into virtues.
Once social enemies were targeted, the police, the judges, and any number of civil servants were quick to take the initiative and swing into action, even trying to outdo one another in their fealty to the cause of making the new order. The authorities in state and society “below,” in the cultural realm, medicine, welfare, the penal system, and so on, showed they were pleased that Hitler allowed them the flexibility and freedom to implement measures that many of them had only dared to contemplate in earlier years.
No single target of Nazi propaganda took higher priority than Germany's young. By 1937, 97% of all teachers belonged to the National Socialist Teachers' Union. Every member of this union had to submit an ancestry table in triplicate with official documentary proof. Courses and textbooks in Nazi schools reflected the aims of Hitler. Of the topics that teachers were required to treat, the most important was racial theory and, by extension, the Jewish problem. In `The National Socialist Essence of Education’, a German educator wrote that mathematics was "Aryan spiritual property; … an expression of the Nordic fighting spirit, of the Nordic struggle for the supremacy of the world.”
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