ABSTRACT
This chapter is an attempt to understand how the persecution of the German Jews, that started in 1933 and gradually escalated in the years preceding the war, conditioned the minds and behaviour of many Germans towards the eventual mass murder of the European Jews. This does not imply the existence of a blueprint or master plan, consistently put into action. Yet, no matter by which version of the ‘intentionalist’ or ‘functionalist’ accounts one prefers to approach this question, it soon becomes clear that without the prior deprivation, ostracism and institutionalized plunder of the German Jews-in full view and with the increasing approval and complicity of millions of Germans-the Final Solution would not have been possible. The cumulative radicalization of the Nazis’ Judenpolitik was primarily a socio-psychological and behavioural process, motivated by ideological aims, and disseminated by an effective combination of propaganda and perceptible actions.1 Only after these foundations were laid could it proceed, under the conditions of the war against the Soviet Union, towards the Final Solution.
