Even if not everyone accepted it, the existing anti-Semitism was just common enough and thus provided a receptive audience for what Hitler had to say. Even if Hitler did to some extent exploit religious anti-Semitism, he unfortunately found new, more effective means for causing hatred of Jews: the theories of "eugenics" and "social Darwinism". These theories were already very common in Europe and soon became the building blocks of the Nazi Philosophy. They combined the political expression of anti-Semitism with the myth of the Aryans. .
The Germanic peoples, now identified as "Aryans," were superior to all other races and had the right to rule over everyone. Hitler and the other Nazis claimed that other races, such as the Slavs and the Poles, were inferior species and fit only to serve the Aryan man. And the Jews were of course even worse. It was believed that the Aryans were the builders of civilization while Jews were parasites fit only for extermination. After all the Aryan blood was to be protected against the deterioration caused by mixed marriages and mixed breeding. What was even more worrying was that the proper Aryans were not reproducing at the same pace as the "inferior- races. .
When Hitler came to power, Germany was populated with more Jews than any other country in Western Europe. Unlike the Jews of Eastern Europe, German Jews considered themselves different from other Germans only in the religion they practiced. This assimilation of Jews into German life caused wide acceptance of the Nazis' racism. The Jews were merchants and scholars and professional people who went to the same schools and gathered in the same places as other Germans. After the First World War the Jews had been strong supporters of the Weimar Republic, which of course had failed to lift Germany from the economic swamp it had fallen into. The inflation in 1923 and depression of 1929 only made things even worse.
