The Nazis came to power via democratic means, and then proceeded to use the machinery of

democracy to dismantle democracy and ultimately to pursue those whom they defined as their

arch enemy and the ultimate evil and those were the Jewish people.

At the time the Nazis came to power, there were approximately 16 to 17 million Jews in

the world, of whom there were about 9 million in Europe at the time, and in Germany itself,

approximately half a million or slightly more than that.

According to the Nazis' racist biological anti-semitic view of the world, the German

people, who were part of the Aryan race as they defined it, were the epitome of mankind:

They were the most creative, the most cultured, the best in their spirit, they contributed

the most to humanity, they were the builders of culture and society, and in that view,

the Jews were the exact opposite: the inverse of humanity. They were the destroyers, they

were the parasites, they were the devil incarnate as the Nazis viewed them. They described them

as microbes or germs that destroy the human body from within, and as such, the Jews as

a not quite human creature but in human form, posed to the Nazis in their sinister power,

as the Nazis imagined, the greatest threat to Germany and to the world.