“The policy of the Nazi state, which produced this situation, was the confused result of conflicting doctrines and conflicting centers of power. From 1930s onwards Hitler and the Nazi Party authorities had laid down strict rules, decreeing in principle that Jews, at least men of fully Jewish blood, were ineligible to service in the forces, but half-Jews and quarter-Jews continued to be called up for military service like other Germans. Hitler took a strong personal interest in the problem, and issues several thousand ‘approvals’ certifying that individual non-Aryan soldiers were ‘of German blood’, when they had distinguished …show more content…
During World War II, under Hitler’s leadership, Germans and their accomplices around Europe murdered 6 million Jews. They destroyed Jewish communities that dated back to ancient Rome and almost completely eliminated the Jewish presence from Amsterdam to Athens, Zagreb to Zhitomir. The Nazis had other victims, but they unleashed their fullest fury against the Jews, whom they hunted across every border, into every hiding place, in a systematic, total drive for annihilation.