All his life Adolf Hitler was seized by an obsession with the Jews and he had always been straightforward about his plans. His dream of a racially "pure" empire would tolerate no Jews and he announced at many occasions the "annihilation of the Jews" living in the territory under his control.

In Hitler's mind, murdering millions of Jews could only be accomplished under the confusion of war - from the beginning he was planning a war that would engulf Europe .. 

Hitler's very first political statement, his letter to Adolf Gemlich on 16 September 1919, already includes a clear declaration of his anti-Semitic position: "Rational anti-Semitism on the other hand, must lead to a systematic legal opposition and elimination of the special privileges that Jews hold, in contrast to the other aliens living among us (alien's legislation). Its final objective must unswervingly be the removal of the Jews altogether."

In those early days he often spoke of how he would deal with the Jews. His favourite words were Ausrottung (extirpation), Vernichtung (annihilation), Entfernung (removal), Aufräumung (cleaning up). Thus according to a police report of a NSDAP meeting on 6 April 1920 he declared:

".. we have no intention of being emotional anti-Semites who want to create the atmosphere of a pogrom. Instead, our hearts are filled with an inexorable determination to attack the evil at its roots and to extirpate it root and branch. In order to reach our goal every means will be justified, even if we have to make a pact with the devil."

Louis Bülow   ©2006-08
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