Anti-Semitism: Spearhead of Universal Teror

This chapter examines the function of anti-Semitism within the framework of the Nazi system. Anti-Semitism had been the most constant single ideology of the Nazi Party, but its understanding was impaired by the widely accepted scapegoat theory according to which the Jews were used as scapegoats for all evils of society. The slaughter or the expulsion of the scapegoat, however, marks in mythology the end of a process, while the persecution of the Jews, as practiced by National Socialists, was only the beginning of more horrible things to come. While anti-Semitism had thus been a constant and consistent policy of National Socialism, its manifestations changed considerably from 1933 to 1943. The chapter discusses these changes in anti-Semitic policies in order to gain insights not so much into the fate of the Jews but rather into the structure of the Nazi system.