>>510450280Nazis used Jews (and later others like Romani people, disabled individuals, and Slavs) to unify Germans against a common enemy amid economic hardship and national humiliation post-WWI. The obsessive focus on Jews as a racial poison was a defining Nazi tenet, not just a placeholder.
If only they realized the real siphon of wealth was upwards and systematically baked in. Historical data shows wealth concentration was already a global trend by the 1930s, with the top 1% holding about 45% of wealth in many Western countries, per estimates from economists like Thomas Piketty. The Nazis, however, fixated on Jews as economic scapegoats, blaming them for Germany’s post-WWI struggles, despite evidence pointing to broader systemic issues like reparations, industrial monopolies, and banking policies benefiting elites across ethnic lines.
If they’d targeted upward wealth extraction (e.g., Krupp, IG Farben) their ideology might have pivoted toward dismantling those structures. Instead, they reinforced them, with party leaders and cronies profiting from seized Jewish assets and war production. The real siphon, driven by unequal tax systems and capital accumulation, predated and outlasted Nazism, as seen in today’s GINI coefficients showing persistent inequality (e.g., 0.48 in the U.S. in 2023).