How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
To these developments Hitler, the fanatical young German-Austrian nationalist from Linz, was bitterly opposed. To him the empire was sinking into a "foul morass." It could be saved only if the master race, the Germans, reasserted their old absolute authority. The non-German races, especially the Slavs and above all the Czechs, were an inferior people. It was up to the Germans to rule them with an iron hand. (1.1.113)
The Nazi belief in the racial superiority of Aryans is well known, but Shirer shows how Hitler's racism was tied to concerns that were social, political, and economic—for instance, his deep frustration regarding non-Germanic peoples' access to resources, economic security, wealth, and power that should have belonged to Aryans alone. "Inferior" races didn't deserve it.
Quote #2
One day, Hitler recounts, he went strolling through the Inner City. "I suddenly encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black side-locks. Is this a Jew? was my first thought. For, to be sure, they had not looked like that in Linz. I observed the man furtively and cautiously, but the longer I stared at this foreign face, scrutinizing feature for feature, the more my first question assumed a new form: Is this a German?" (1.1.141)
As Shirer records, after reading all anti-Semitic literature which was readily available in Vienna at the time, Hitler went out to check out the Jews himself. He really hadn't known many. He writes in Mein Kampf that the Jewish men and women he saw on the streets now began to look different from the rest of humanity. His racial hatred propelled him from the question "Is this a Jew?" to "Is this a German?" and, finally, to "Is this a human?"
Quote #3
He was to remain a blind and fanatical [anti-Semite] to the bitter end; his last testament, written a few hours before his death, would contain a final blast against the Jews as responsible for the war which he had started and which was now finishing him and the Third Reich. This burning hatred, which was to infect so many Germans in that empire, would lead ultimately to a massacre so horrible and on such a scale as to leave an ugly scar on civilization that will surely last as long as man on earth. (1.1.146)
Anti-Semitism was prevalent in Germany—and in Europe more broadly—for centuries, well before Hitler's rise to power. What were some of the crucial differences between the anti-Semitism that existed popularly throughout Germany and Europe, and the anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime?