Jews were first define as a racial group in The Spanish Inquisition because according to Converos, people who claimed to be Jewish were considered “in blood” because they did not believe in Jesus. This belief spread through the churches and it resulted in a form of discrimination against the Jews. In lecture, Professor Thompson explained how the Enlightenment allowed the Jews go through a new modernization. In Eric D. Weitz book, A Century of Genocide, he explains what type of perspective the Enlightenment gave people a definition of antisemitism:
Jews became a constant, pulsing threat to the purity of the racial group, the ‘hidden Jews’ particularly dangerous because they steadily and secretively worked their degenerative impulses into the noble, upstanding, Aryan racial body. (Weitz …show more content…
Hitler being borned and raised in the border between Austria and Bavaria, he had come under the influence of the pan-German politician George Von Schonerer. This Politician expressed a lot of hate from the Czechs nationalities to the Roman catholic church; mainly the Jews. In 1885, when Schonerer was a leader, he strongly believed in ‘Germandom’ in which he connected an ‘Aryan’ clause that did take inconsideration German nationalist Jews in his movement. In Robert Wistrich book, Hitler and the Holocaust he points out Schonerer beliefs on anti-Semitism; Schonerer “proclaimed anti-Semitism as the ‘main pillar of a true foolish mentality, and thus as the greatest achievement of this century” (Wistrich 41). Schonerer wanted to exclude German nationalist Jews from his time of the ruling. Wistrich explains how Hitler fully accepted Schonerer radical views on anti-Semitism and applied it once he came to power in Germany against the Jews. Both Schonerer and Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews. Furthermore, Hitler aspired views on anti-Semitism from Karl Lueger. Lueger was the mayor of Vienna at the time Hitler was living there. The reason why Lueger became mayor of Vienna was by persuading the people that he was going to fix the problems Viennese Jews started. The Jews in Vienna uphold important positions such as liberal press, the stock exchange, banking, and industrial capitalism. (Wistrich