World War II as Hitler's Perfect Opportunity

World War II as Hitler's Perfect Opportunity

In 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. The right wing

government was completely the opposite of the communist ideas of the

left wing government that ran Russia.. Hitler had been a soldier in

the First World War he earned the highest honour in Germany, The Iron

Cross.

Hitler had despised the Treaty of Versailles and was appalled about

his government signing the Treaty. Hitler believed that the treaty

crushed German economy and left the people of the country starving.

Hitler found a way he could come to power and reduce unemployment and

many other things that the German people needed in the country. Hitler

had not been in power before and the German people trusted him,

believing his ideas about what Germany would be when it returned to

its former glory.

Many people in Germany were jealous of the Jews and their prosperity

and thus began to blame the Jews for everything that went wrong in

their country, leading to the hatred of the Jews. Known as

Anti-Semitism. The Jews, in their adopted countries began being

persecuted. One such example of Anti-Semitism was in Russia where the

Jews were forced to live in ghettos. In most cases the ghettos were

unprotected and vulnerable to attack.

Many Germans blamed the Jews for the loss of the war and accused them

of trying to over-take the world. After the Nuremberg Laws, which

severely restricted the Jews. Violence against the Jews increased

radically and thousands fled from Germany to other parts of Europe,

but those who stayed could not have imagined what was to come.

The Jews of Russia had lived in ghettos for years before the nazis

began their regime but the Jews in Russia had to live a long way from

everyone else they were not allowed into public places outside the

ghettos. Jews had always been persecuted from the middle ages when the

crusades had taken place in their homeland and they had fled to Europe

to find a safer place to live.