Why did the Nazis target the Jews?
The Treaty of Versailles ended WW I. For Germany, it meant the loss of territory, payment of reparations, and the end of the German Empire. The Weimar government which followed was a multi-party system composed of political parties. They battled each other and struggled with political, economic, and social unrest in the face of world-wide depression, unemployment, inflation, and outrage at the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The Nationalist Social German Workers’ Party–the NSDAP Party–was founded in 1920 as a small radical party which promised to restore honor and greatness to Germany and, although anti-Semitism had existed in Europe for centuries, the NSDAP, or the Nazi Party, made anti-Semitism central to their platform as early as 1921. The Nazi Party co-opted a popular myth that Germany had not been defeated on the battlefield, but stabbed in the back by enemies within. They targeted the Jewish people as scapegoats, the enemies within the state, responsible for all of Germany’
