Antisemitism and judeophobia permeated generations of German Jewish people. It manifested in discrimination, fear and violence.
In 1918, 1923 and 1924 mobs gathered to terrorise Jewish German citizens, beating, wounding and killing Jews. That was an escalation the Nazis later capitalised on. These and similar Antisemitic discriminatory practices were essentially protected under the Weimar Republic.
Antisemites in the Weimar Republic turned to National Socialism as it offered them an outlet for their antisemitism. In 1922 Gustav Seifert then leader of the Nazi party, at a rally blamed the Jews for all of Germanys ills. They formed their party platform on antisemitism including denying them rights and legal process. Anthropologically jews were distinguished from their Caucasian neighbours from a much earlier period. This I think led to the justification for treating Jews as untermenchen. However thats spelled
But Hitler was a Narcissistic self promoter. And like many NSPs had very little substance, skill, intelligence, particularly original thinking of his own to bring to the table. He was a master manipulator as most narcissists are.
He may have claimed Mein Kampf and was committed to the ideas therein but they were not his ehhem .. genius. As many narcissists do, Hitler gathered SMEs around him, used their expertise to realise the NAZI agenda. And of course take credit for Nazi .. accomplishments.
In my opinion the Holocaust was an progressive culmination of years and generations of judeophobia and antisemitism.
The persecution of the Jews and the killing of the Jews was already in action and had a long history of precedents.
To my mind the Holocaust was already in the making. The writing was on the wall. It was guided by the top down but fully enabled because it was embraced from the bottom up.
Before Hitler came into power street mobs were already Participating in the legacy of violence and death.
As an individual German you may not have liked it, you may have feared the growing violence of antisemitism but it would be highly unlikely that you were unaware of its rise and even its potential .
Some claim not to have known, perhaps for some it was so. But particularly if you lived in urban Germany from 1918 - 1838 you surely knew of the rise in antisemitic violence, and deaths.
When antisemitic laws were introduced you had to deduce no good would come of this. Really the German people are not stupid. LOL like the American people and Trump. There are modest parallels.
But is it not interesting, watching the turn of the tide? If the lessons of history are ignored are we not doomed to repeat them.
So what of the Holocaust, the final solution. Were there indicators. Could it be predicted.
Im saying yes. An intelligent human possessed of the power of thought and observing the multitudinous antisemitic occurrences could surmise and for some take reward in the removal and of extermination of the Jews. They werent human, after all the Jews were nothing like us of the fatherland. These actions all occurred during the Weimar Republic period, which proceeded Hitler.
I have been debating whether it would have been possible, at some relatively "early" or preliminary point in time, to have rationally predicted the Holocaust. Let's suppose it was 1931, you're living in Germany, have a copy of Mein Kampf and a bunch of those other pseudophilosophy/pseudoscience books the Nazis used to construct their theory, pay attention to the news, are aware of German's history of anti-Semitism, etc. I think in MK there's something about gassing the Jews though how specific it is IDK. Basically, I think it would have been possible to survey the information in this hypothetical 1931 context and conclude that if Hitler took power (as happened 2 years later of course), there was a strong chance that he would try to oversee a genocide of Jews.
