Adolf Hitler's Racial Ideas

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Hitler's racial ideas did contribute much to his defeat. They made enemies for the reich and contributed to its isolation. When nazi armies invaded the USSR, some Germans thought that the bulk of its citizens would be glad to be rid of Stalin and would support them. Many did but for the most part the Russians and other slavs could not support a racist system which relegated them to inferior status. Ergo, they not only opposed the reich but did so strongly. Determined to prove they were not inferior, many soviet troops were extremely tenacious and heroic. See e.g. Dr. Brautigam's remarks quoted in Shirer's "The Rise and fall..." And Downing's "The Devil's Virtuosos...." Downing noted that the idea of German racial superiority led to "underestimation…show more content…
Once the war started, and the Final Solution was implemented, every guard who now had to deal with killing Jews was not available for duty on the Front. Every able-bodied Jew--Jews who would have fought for Germany as they had during WW1--who was killed in the gas chambers was not available for duty on the Front. All the materials utilized to build concentration camps and gas chambers were not available to build defenses such as tank traps on the Front. 2. In the wars final stages, as the Red Army was approaching from the East and Patton and Bradley were approaching from the West, Hitler gave first priority to transporting Jews to Death Camps instead of soldiers to the Front, his hatred of them was that great. 3. Another unintended effect of the Holocaust occurred after the first Death Camps were liberated by the Allies. When the Allied soldiers, many of whom were themselves Jewish, saw what the Germans had been doing, they tended to stop taking German prisoners, especially members of the Waffen-SS, and executed them instead. 4. The Nazis did utilize slave labor, but the type of slave labor they utilized Jews for was not really meant for production as such, but to further a policy of "Death Through Work." As such, it was very inefficient and tended to be very
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