Germany in Crisis: Hitler’s Antisemitism as a Function of Existential Anxiety and a Quest for Sustainable Security

This article presents the utilitarian functional drive behind Adolf Hitler’s antisemitism. It argues that Hitler’s political and proto-genocidal antisemitism was a function of the existential anxiety he felt about what he perceived to be the greatest polycrisis in centuries and his ensuing quest for sustainable security. Regaining security lay at the centre of his politicization and radicalization as well as of all his actions once in power. As the article contends, three ingredients had to come together to produce Hitler’s genocidal antisemitism: 1) an awareness of, belief in, and anxiety about, the existence of an existential national and international all-encompassing crisis; 2) a linking of Jews to that crisis; and 3) a translation of that link into a programme of total solutions and a quest for sustainable security. The goal of his antisemitism was to overcome a life-or-death mega-crisis to be able to return subsequently to a conventional pursuit of security. It was not to produce permanent security for eternity.