ABSTRACT
Pre-Nazi Religious Infl uences Historians have attempted to reconstruct the particular events that led
to the Final Solution, and the path is not as straightforward as some might think. Some historians, for example, believe that Adolf Hitler expressed his desire to kill all the Jews of Europe as early as his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which he published in 1925; and most certainly by the time he took the reins of power in Germany in 1933. Others believe that the Final Solution that he eventually ordered in the latter half of 1941 evolved gradually through a process of incremental decision-making and cumulative radicalization, and that the Nazis’ actions take on the appearance of a preordained policy only from the vantage point of historical hindsight. As Karl Schleunes has suggested, “When the Nazis came to power, they had no specifi c plans for a solution of a [particular] sort. They were certain only that a solution was necessary.”2 The “Jewish problem,” or “Jewish question,” as it was known in preWorld War II Germany, has deep-seated roots, as the Nazis built upon, but did not create out of whole cloth, the widespread societal antipathy toward the Jews. Rather, they drew upon a centuries-old tradition of anti-Semitism rooted in religious prejudice and combined it with German nationalist aspirations and a pseudoscientifi c racial theory about the diff erence between Aryan and non-Aryan people.3 In Christian culture throughout Europe, the Jews had been resented for being almost exclusively responsible for Christ’s death and for forestalling his Second Coming, which, according to Christian prophecy, would occur only after the Jews had converted to Christianity.4 Their refusal to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior constituted “a permanent challenge to the certainty of Christian belief,” a constant reminder that Christianity was not universally accepted.5 According to Zygmunt Bauman, the persistent Jewish presence could “be repelled, or at least rendered less dangerous, only by explaining Jewish obstinacy by a malice aforethought, ill intentions and moral corruption.”6 As such, Jews were accused by Christian church offi cials and lay people of engaging in “blood libel” (murdering Christian children for religious purposes), desecrating the body of Christ (despoiling the Christian sacraments of bread and wine), poisoning wells, and spreading plagues and famines.7
