The Anti-Jewish Attitudes and Policies of Adolf Hitler
The anti-Jewish attitudes and policies of Adolf Hitler were ultimately expressed in the Holocaust, a program of extermination which played a major role in shaping relations between Christianity and Judaism in the period after the Second World War. Although others judged to be enemies of the state by the Nazis were sent to the gas chambers in the Second World War, by far the greatest number were Jews, who had fallen foul of the insti- tutionalized anti-Semitism of the Third Reich. Hitler had learned from the Armenian Genocide that actions committed in a situation of total war did not attract international attention, and appears to have assumed that his own program of genocide would not attract international condemnation.
The Holocaust had a strong impact on Jewish–Christian relations after the Second World War, raising difficult questions about Christian complicity in Hitler’s wartime poli- cies and projects. It was also an important factor leading to the creation of the state of Israel in May 1948.
