The Holocaust: The Most Significant Cause Of The Holocaust

The Holocaust, the mass killing of the Jewish people in Europe, is the largest genocide in history to this date. Over the course of the Holocaust nearly six million Jewish people were killed by the Nazi Party and Germany led by Adolf Hitler. There are multiple contributing factors to the Holocaust that made it so large in scope. Historians argue which of these factors were most significant. The most significant contributing factor is the source of the Holocaust, the reason it occurred. This source is Adolf Hitler and his hatred for Jewish people. In comparison to the choices of the Allies to not accept Jewish refugees and to not take direct military action to end the Holocaust, the most significant contributing factor of the Holocaust is that Adolf Hitler was able to easily rise to power with the support of the German people and rule Germany.

Hitler was able to rise to power because of desperation and a desire for change among the German people. The Great Depression began in the United States in

During World War I, Hitler was hospitalized from temporary blindness from a gas attack. Hitler had heard about the Armistice, and at that point “his hatred of Jews and Marxists, who it was widely alleged had ‘stabbed Germany in the back,’ became the keynotes of his worldview.” (“Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)”). Hitler had blamed the Jews for the loss in World War I, and he feared that they were destroying Germany by poisoning “pure” German blood. Hitler saw Jews as an “eternal enemy of all higher forms of culture...which he thought infected the purity of German blood” (“Hitler Adolf (1889-1945)”). Hitler stated in 1922 in a conversation with Joseph Hell that, “If I am ever really in power, the destruction of the Jews will be my first and most important job...until Germany is cleansed of the last Jew!” (Stein). Sadly, he truly did act upon his promise to the German