In the American public school system three different history classes had lessons about the Holocaust. At age 11, 15, and 17. When I was 11 they even brought in a Jew from Bergen-Belsen "Marion Blumenthal Lazan" to speak to the entire grade. We had to read her book "Four Perfect Pebbles." Regardless I would say most American children probably think about Hitler when they are asked "who was the most evil man in the world".
I searched on google "Why did Hitler hate the Jews" and here are some results from page 1. In other words, these quotes are what the average American schoolchild will read and accept as the "official storyline' by an 'authoritative source' on why Hitler hated Jews.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/ ... MEX87.html
In his autobiography, "Mein Kampf," Hitler traced his anti-Semitism to his years in Vienna. For Hitler, Jews came to represent everything he despised and feared. They were responsible for Capitalism and Socialism, for Modernism in art, which Hitler hated, for pornography, for the anti-nationalism of the press, and for Hitler's own personal failures.
http://www.annefrank.org/en/Education/T ... hate-Jews/
Why did Hitler hate Jews?
An important term to mention here is ‘scapegoat’. Hitler and the Nazis said the Jews were responsible for huge events like losing World War One and the economic crisis. This was totally untrue.
...
Did Hitler invent hatred of Jews? No, Hitler built on and used antisemitic ideas that already existed. He was Austrian and grew up in Vienna where the mayor was extremely antisemitic and where hatred of Jews was widespread. His hatred of Jews cannot be tied down to a specific event in his life, for example a Jewish childhood friend, as many children think.
...
According to the Nazis the ‘Aryan race’ was the best and strongest race. Jews were of another inferior race. In fact so inferior that they were not considered to be ‘people’ by the Nazis.
http://www.hitlerschildren.com/article/ ... inate-them
If you were to ask 100 different individuals to answer the question “Why did Hitler hate Jews?” you would probably get one hundred different answers or variations thereof. The term “scapegoat” oftentimes comes to mind. By blaming the Jews for the economic crisis that Germany was suffering through as well as their defeat in World War I, Hitler targeted the Jews as the country’s main enemy. According to him, the Jewish people were directly responsible for Germany’s many problems.
The sad part about all of this is that so many individuals believed him or just stood by as he conducted his murderous campaign against the Jews.
...
Hitler was born in Austria and spent his childhood growing up in Vienna. At that time, the mayor of the city was anti-Semitic and ensured that his hatred of Jewish people would be widespread. However, this may not be the primary reason behind Hitler’s hatred of the Jews. Many individuals think that this hatred stemmed from a childhood friend that was Jewish. However, it cannot be relegated to a single event in his early life.
...
On a closing note, Hitler and his Nazi counterparts felt that humanity was divided into a number of different races but that theirs (the Aryan race) was not only the best, it was the strongest. He saw the Jews as an inferior race – so inferior that he did not see them as even being human and felt that the only solution was to eliminate them entirely.
http://holocaust-history.org/short-essa ... jews.shtml
Jews were the targets of the Holocaust because Hitler hated Jews and blamed them for all of the problems in the world. He especially blamed them for Germany's loss of World War I. Hitler told the German people that they could have won the first war, if Germany had not been "stabbed in the back" by the Jews and their conspirators.
So why did Hitler truly believe in a "Jewish Problem"? Notice
According to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Rev ... E2%80%9319
9/10 of the leaders of the communist army in the attempted takeover of Germany were Jewish, despite being 1% of the population.
According to Winston Curchill's 1920 article "Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People":
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Zionism_versus_BolshevismIn violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
...
There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd), or of Krassin or Radek – all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.
So did Hitler simply hate Jews because they were the driving force of communism? Were there other reasons? Were those reasons legitimate?